Mike's Blog

It’s finally cold, and I can do what I do best: Layer.  I feel more important in layers, I don’t know why.  Also, as I predicted, I feel happier now that it’s cold.  Not that I’m miserable the rest of the time or anything.  I’ve also been writing more music lately, except it’s all scattered with verses and choruses of various songs ripped and folded in my notebook and nothing actually finished.  I should probably finish those.

            I’m getting married on the 6^th of 3 next year.  Ecstatic is the word that comes to mind.

            I’m feeling rather introspective this evening if you can’t tell, and honestly I just want something other than Obama to be on my front page.  Not that I have anything against Obama, I voted for him after all, but you gotta admit his picture is kind of annoying after awhile.

            I’m going through the phase where all I want to listen to is spoon.  Spoon is a 4-piece rock/experimental band from Austin.  They’ve been around for about a decade but I just discovered their music last year and still can’t get enough.

            I will admit I’m in a bit of musical listening rut.  Last year I made a point of buying a new album every time I got paid, which worked out to about 2 new albums a month.  And I got acquainted with some rather fantastic music this way: Iron & Wine, Sondre Lerche, Andrew Bird, Spoon, Rogue Wave.  But times are tight and I’ve discontinued my musical exploration.  So Please, if you have any suggestions for amazing music I’m all ears (that was perhaps the best pun I’ve ever used). 

            Thank you to anyone who has made it completely through my random thoughts.

Passion shows itself in people’s eyes and hand motions.  People talk quieter about things they are passionate about, their expressions become economic and purposeful, and they seem to look past just the surface of your eyes like they are looking for some agreement or acceptance within your brain.

            I bet we are all made to be passionate about something, and I think some of us are made to be passionate about someone.  I’ve been thinking recently about the connectedness of it all, about how life isn’t meant to be fragmented like it is.  The divorce rate in America is pretty high, and I wonder if it isn’t so much because people don’t know how to be married as it is that people don’t know how to live life well.  When we are spending 80 hours at a job we hate I doubt it’s possible to be the husbands we want to be.  When wives stop drawing and creating because housework has to be done, and the kids have to be picked up I doubt they’re really able to feel alive most of the time.

            Do you see what I’m saying? Bitterness can’t be contained in a fragment of life; it will bleed over into everything else and get everything all bloody.  It’s quite a mess probably.  I think we assume we are being selfless and Christ-like when we live in self-denial.  And I think there’s probably some truth there.  But I wonder if maybe people around us would be a little happier if we were being who we were made to be, or doing what we were passionate about doing.  As long as we weren’t jerks about it, I mean.  I think people would like that, I think kids might actually want to be like their parents if their parents weren’t such boring shells.  And maybe if kids wanted to be like their parents they would be more inclined to listen to their parents and respect them.  Maybe spouses wouldn’t leave each other so much.  Maybe people wouldn’t look so bored all the time.