Synapses

“What I need to do is fuck up so bad I can't save myself.”

-Invisible Monsters

I’m sitting on the beach.

And I’m baked.

Last time I was on the beach I was in such a drugged up and in a drunk haze that I was literally passing out between thoughts. I was fried then, I’m baked now. I know I’m baked because I literally feel the tightening and browning of my skin. People who say that they’re smoking or drinking in the name of artistry are lying because there is nothing artistic that comes with being drunk or high, there’s no story that can be told better when thoughts are compromised. Emotions are the very soul of life and life is the very essence of writing--compromising one obviously means the other will suffer drastically.

They key is synapses.

The time between thoughts, the time between drinks, the time between spliffs, the time between everything and anything. You cannot write as you experience. Writing is a tool used to document dreams or document the fact that you’ve failed to attain those dreams. I’m sitting on the beach reading Palahniuk and pondering about my own writing, it’s ridiculous but I also think that maybe Palahniuk is me. Maybe he went back in time to when I was a child and wrote all these stories in a way that would motivate me.

And in the synapse of that thought Chuck’s words flash off the page like a cheap neon sign telling me where I can find Hot Nude Girls.

“Nothing of you is all-the-way yours. All of you is inherited.”

It’s when I wait and see what this really means that it really hits me, this common revelation that people use to avoid calling their work plagiarism. I had heard it before, I had even said it before to appear artsy and knowledgeable, but I had never really waited for it to sit in. In order for pain to reach your brain you have to wait for your neural synapses to be completed, the same could be thought for knowledge, for ideas and philosophy. I had been moving rapid speed, I had not allowed any of my knowledge to reach my brain.

Friday I was blasted, Saturday I was sober, Sunday I am planning to be blasted…

But in that between time I’ve thought more thoughts, I’ve read more books, I’ve written more stories and pieces than I have done in months. Two days time. The synapse for pain is almost instantaneous…for knowledge it is more of a slow process. Pain is stir fry, it grills quickly and can be eaten quicker. Thoughts are wine, they must be fermented for years before they really hit you.

Knowledge by itself is not the key to anything, it’s merely the address.

The key is synapses.

Perspective

"Just wakin' up in the morning gotta thank God, Iunno but today seems kinda odd"

-Ice Cube

There are something’s that people just don’t want to read.

They don’t want to read about a kid talking down to himself, they don’t want to read about people getting messed up, and they don’t want to read about anything ‘good’. Positivism genuinely means bragging. Negativity means whining. Introspection is only interesting to people who enjoy gathering up dirt on others. Bukowski wasn’t a genius, he was a drunkard. Hemingway found his answers looking straight at him with two 50 millimeter shells for eyes. Realism is just a name people give their work for it to be synonymous with relatable and surrealism is the same concept except strung out on peyote.

I’m not going to talk about any of those things.

There’s this girl I know.

She’s not really pretty but she has a nice body and a good heart. She’s stuck in a small town with a guy whom she no longer wants and she really likes me. It started off as a shallow relationship, me talking to her to get some cheap gratification and feel like I had some amazing power over women and it slowly twisted into me caring for her. It’s strange when you come to realize that you’re doing the same thing all these heartbroken writers complain about: faking love in order to avoid causing heartache. Accepting companionship you don’t want to avoid the loneliness you want to avoid more.

There’s a funny thing about the truth, it makes almost everything else seem like a lie.

There’s a group of people I know.

They spend their days getting wasted and walking around without a care. They get money, they get laid, and they live this fantastical life in the gutter of my city. I juxtapose my own life with theirs, but the truth of the matter is that we’re cut from a different cloth and that cloth is primarily colored by arrogance. These people are cooler than me and probably happier than me, but I’m smarter and envious of them. Intelligence isn’t a burden but intelligence without modesty is. Right now I’m writing confessions they will never read, perhaps because they don’t know how to read. I’m an outsider looking in, I touch upon their lives sporadically as I inhale their stories through countless grape blunts…

And then I romanticize it because just smoking weed in a car falls into another thing people don’t want to read about.

There’s a writer that I know.

He stays up late jotting down ideas and thinking about stories people will love. He calls himself a would be novelist but he lacks the patience to construct a story worth telling and he lacks the talent to write a coherent thought. He’s a writer who isn’t concise enough to be a poet. He thinks he’s going to be the greatest writer alive or at least he says it enough to convince himself of such a thing.

Arrogance with a dash of talent and an ounce of insecurity equals the next generations Bukowski, except it will be dirty south hiphop and Tom Waits who will provide the soundtrack to his writing as opposed to jazz.

Today I had planned on writing something.

I was going to get on my skateboard and skate off to a party, I was going to pay for it in quarters, get drunk and pray for enlightenment. Instead I’m sitting here stone sober and typing. Improv on the keys, looking for perspective and looking to reach into a pit of potential…

And that’s what’s the most frustrating thing about being introspective-- you know that you’re not failing to reach your potential, you just need time to reach it.

It’s even more frustrating when you’re impatient.

I don’t know the purpose of the piece, it’s not about brotherhood, it’s not about music, it’s not about booze, it’s not about bitches. It’s just a piece that is being written because it needs to be, because the only way I’m going to make it is if I keep thinking and keep putting things out there.

It’s all about perspective.