Saturday, December 28, 2013

Theft

As 2013 draws to a close I am thinking about how my creativity will flourish in 2014.

It's time to steal!

I was recently gifted(though it was actually given to my wife)...and I am not really sure who gave it to her(us).  I will just say that it was contentious amongst the givers who was giving and who was receiving.  But that's okay because the book was called Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon.

In a side note he moved to Austin.  My friend LA moved to LA.  Names can influence jobs too!

The gist of the book is that nothing is original, and that a good artist steals from many things rather than one, and mashes them all together into their own creative smoothie.  Then the book gives ways to stay creative and productive.  It also says when people give advice it is really to their younger selves, so maybe this distant boom is for past Dan.

Dear Past Dan,
    Hey Dan!  I guess it's not too far in the past or you would be Daniel, but in middle school you were so uncool the one thing you could do was go by your nickname to try to turn things around.  How it that working out for you?

Past Dan:  That's funny!  I'm actually writing a letter to Daniel, me at 6 years old.  I'm telling him to stop peeing the bed and to not be OCD.  What a weirdo!

Present Dan:  I know, right!  (Past and Present Dan high five) Well, stop for a second and listen up,

Keep writing.  Keep being creative.  It all connects.  You're not going to get famous by writing 3 novels and never finishing them.  All your passions connect.  Create alone and with other people.  Don't be in box.  You can be a serious writer and be a silly clown and be manly and also be emotional.   And all of this can be apparent at the same time.  You aren't a great rapper but you are pretty funny.  Lonely Island is gonna be famous before you anyway.  And that haircut when you part your hair down the middle: not working.  The short blonde goatee: not working.  You can barely see it, so just blends with your face and makes your jaw look kinda pixelated.  Bring coolant on your road trips and enjoy your friends and family, Bindlestiff, and anything you love.  It won't all be there by the time I write this.   And be nice to little Daniel in the letter!

Love,
Present Dan (2013)

PS: In the future, you can talk to your letters and they can talk back.



So anyway...2013...I did some good stuff.  I finished grad school, wrote 100 pages of a novel, and feel my life is a little more balanced with friends and family than a year ago.  I'm also still struggling with social anxiety and how to be the best Dan I can be.  Oh, what's this?  A silver envelope with my name flashing on the cover!  Let's open it....


Dear Past(2013) Dan,

Hello Dan.  This is your Future Self, The actually Present Dan(2023).  I'm 45!  I wanted to say to be nice to yourself, and all your past selves.  They are just doing the best they can, and so are you, and don't deserve to be insulted.  Sure they seem silly now, and you seem silly to me, but so what?  What is so bad about you, or anyone?  In the future we don't lament these things.  There's not enough food and water and cable shows, but we all moved to the moon where I'm REALLY good at basketball.

When you steal ideas and use them, do it with love.  Do everything with love.  I don't mean in a cheesy way(whatever that means...we use different slang now) I mean it in a respectful way.  Don't just culturally appropriate, but learn from and use for the world.  It's a slippery slope, but at least you're not on the moon and don't need to keep tumbling down it for 30 miles, and you lost control and shat your suit, and then you were stuck with that smell while you waited for a rescue crew...for 3 hours!!!!!!!!

Well, I've got to go watch myself on TV.  Yeah, it's the new Reality show, where we watch a show of cameras that follows you around.  My favorite camera is the one in my throat so I can see my food after it comes into my mouth.  Let's see what I'm doing.  Oh, I'm writing a letter.  Now I'm taking it to my building's time travel mailbox.  I don't have my own yet, but don't judge me I'm saving up for one, so I can send letters to the past at all hours of the day.  Oh look it's a letter from my future....it says..."don't waste money on a personal time travel mailbox.  Just walk down the hall."  but if I sent this from my own mailbox, and I don't get it, then that means...(time travel paradox implodes the universe.  Nothing is left but this moment)

Love,
D. Joseph Weil (in the future we always use our first initial.  And I know you're wondering how I signed the letter but get over it)


Saturday, June 29, 2013

Neptune

In a far away country
as foreign as Neptune
there is a trailer
left to rest on a cliff above the ocean

Some days it is a green hill
some days gold and dry
with laundry blowing in the sun's breeze. 

A black and white lady 
snores luxuriously in the sun
even as her eyes are clouding over
She won't notice what she loses in time
only what she has. 

Somewhere nearby
Iron & Wine is playing and 
two people are falling in love. 

The country is long gone
as is the trailer
and the black and white lady
They have swam back out into the sea. 

Here on the coast
two people are falling in love



Friday, June 28, 2013

Yep, More Haikus

take a long look out
squint your eye at the horizon
eyelash fuzziness

madness trickeld down
but he stayed dry under a rock
and then down it fell

birth a cymbal crash
that echoes then it fades
echoes hear nothing

sand in fingernails
blow through the grooves of my brain
mind is a sandstorm

the pain and the cure
two different sides of the coin
blurring the air

pinhole of feeling
spin out through the galaxy
we are all star stuff

please please stop talking
your words don't mean anything
can we please just move

oh shit that's my life
concreting the mountains
story is the same

fathers and sons alway
why do I keep looking through leaves
crouched in the same tree

through the windows glass
sun, wind and viruses dance
sick boy now sick man

music and laughter
bouncing ball the floor the wall
smile in dappled leaves

castles made of sand
fall away like a close shave
feel air when no wind




Sunday, May 26, 2013

Haikus 4 and Beyond


sunshine the burn shine
bright new shoes for the jingle
barefoot still you stare

leaf shiver raindrop
threatened by the fall to dirt
taken by the sun

the tables with food
turned away from the wanting
mirrors divide spoils

desert throat looking
for moist air from mountain trees

fed by rotting soul

the spirit of the times
floating over our faces
masks upon the mask



(this next little poem was written without normal grammar.  It was during a training or something and I tried to just let the words g to me, brought by the previous word and my mood but not by literal meaning.  It was fun!)

when the breaking is for leaving
containing the fall
stand still in blown
sad slice epidermal
squirrel instantly beneath




Dan Updates:

MUSIC:
We (Beat Salad ) have got 5 songs now!
Performing in Sebastopol on June 8 at the Hopmonk!


No summer break!  Aaaaa.  Full throttle til about a month off in August, then back for my final semester!


Writing:
I am working on a story.  Been trying to write every day in 2013, but hasn't always happened.  I am getting back into it.  I have a story up over 30 pages right now and is going well.  Not really ready to post yet, but includes some old  and new(to me) themes:  Parents, memory, talking cats, death, dementia, immigration, therapy, anxiety.  Working title: The Dark Side Of The Moon.