gl2enniv-blog

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There is so much isolation about living in the world. It's interesting how differently you can see yourself than others see you-- or even more-- how differently you can see yourself once you know you're wrong about how you thought others saw you. I've toyed with the idea of being certain ways, but I've never been satisfied with any projection I've sent to the screen. I wonder why it is that I can't settle on an opinion of myself that I agree with. I wonder if that's uncommon. 

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Come on over to the Tumblr page for Grindr:The Opera-- my good friends' upcoming project. You'll feel better when you do.

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13/14/15/16/17/18/19/20/21/22/23/24

John,        Room for Squares came out when I was in seventh grade—so really, I’m about ten years behind you both in age and in accomplishment. I’ll be 25 soon, and I’m starting to be someone in the world, so I’ve finally approached an age that I’ve seen you through, and can now feel things you talked about when I was just a kid trying to empathize. I feel like I’ve spent the last ten years fighting like hell against what 24, and I’m sure 25 will force me to accept. It’s funny how 13 to 23 are so much about trying so hard to prove that the things that are terrible for you are actually your saving grace. It’s such a peaceful tragedy when that finally hits you. I really got “Why Georgia” tonight—and I’m sure you, ten years ahead, can understand that. So I, coming back to my apartment with wood in places to make it feel like home, feeling alone, am just grateful that you’re still ten years ahead. It’s a strange and interesting thing to know for so long that someday the things you’ve been humming for years would eventually start to sound like things you mutter on the phone to your friends when you’re in the middle of another argument with yourself. It’s even stranger to know that it’s all to be expected, and that it can’t be out-witted. But that’s 24, isn’t it? Thank you for coming home to both of our homes tonight.  Love, Jil  

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This bathroom stall door plays a beautiful trumpet. #musiciseverywhere

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I'm finding that things that aren't starcrossed are more worth the wait. No one has to wonder how something is built if they remember the work, the effort and the foundation that went into it. Magic feels better, but it doesn't better anyone or anything. I want to be bettered. I want my wheels to propel me forward. I want to use the thick skin I was born with. I want to stop thinking and start doing. I want to be challenged to be the antagonist and protagonist in my story. I want to exist and role play. I don't want to keep pontificating about what human life could be like. I don't want to spend years preparing for a battle that's rigged for my loss. I don't want to be destined. I want to walk where I'm going, not teleport. I don't want to dream and lust anymore. I want to produce. And I want to both give and take.

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Drums of My Own

As a child, a teenager, and now an adult, I am aware of the scope of what I am. I have alternated being lost in the maze with running through with precision and ease on and off since for as long as I’ve been alive. And it has been difficult. I have been difficult. I am relentlessly difficult to satiate, and require a copious amount of things I’ve never had to begin with. It’s almost comical to consider missing something that no one else can prove exists or ever has. I want so much for my fantasies to come true that I spend many of my hours working, tirelessly, to secure everyone else's. I am who I want. I exist and live as the proof I need that people can belong and are worthy, and that things like unconditional and specific, affection, admiration, respect and insight are achievable from another human being without wavering. I have the ears that would hear me. And I am also the flawed, rude, vulgar, desperate, self-righteous, jealous, expectant mess that I would love anyway. I am aware of the scope of what I am. I am who I want.

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Is Tumblr not a thing people do anymore?

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Cover

My and Marianuhtella's Cover of John's "Everything You'll Ever Be" (adjusted for gender). Listen, rinse, and repeat. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8hQEx2WAOs&feature=youtu.be

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This genuinely hurt my feelings. I failed? Cause I'm too sexually weird for Kinsey?

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Brandon's Questions 8/9/13

1.     What culture, media, or technology are you the most inclined to adopt immediately? Equally, name one that just leave you cold and indifferent.

This is extraordinarily difficult to answer because pretty much anything “State of the Art” leaves me cold and indifferent for whatever reason—not because I am a tool who rebels against “the man” or anything—but I guess I just am put off by the whole “run for the piñata candy” process—I get excited about things when everyone else has forgotten that they are exciting—I got a Wii three years late, an iPhone four years late, I pick up fashion trends that are five years old. It’s not that I don’t like things everyone else does… I guess I just can’t be part of the rush.

2.     Is nostalgia seasonal or circumstantial for you? More seasonal than anything else, especially at the turn of seasons. Winter reminds me of myself—all soaking wet in snow pants, stuck in an isolated sensory hell somehow never quite with who I want to be with. It’s a feeling of hope, drive, and optimism, but also reminiscent of an emptiness and a lonliness. Spring smells like rain and duck ponds—and every ex-boyfriend I have. They both came and went in the spring. Summer reminds me of loudness, of brightness, and of passionate fighting. Nights sent to bed early were better in the summer because I had a pretty tree outside my window that still looked sunny at 7:30pm. Fall sounds like Chris Garneau, feels peculiar, and smells like beauty, importance, and reminds me of Chris. Few circumstances give all five senses quite enough to generate nostalgia.

3.     You invented an ark to save a percentage of the world and everyone you know and care about, including you is granted passage. What one species would you be lease diligent in preserving?

I’d get rid of Chupacabras. We’ve lived this long not knowing dafuq they are, so it’d be fine if they didn’t exist.

4.     If you could recast a major movie completely, which one and with whom? Inception. Bradley Cooper as Leo’s role. Andrew Garfield as JGL’s role. Hayley McFarland for Ellen Page. Zachary Quinto for Cillian Murphy’s role. And let’s let Alexander Koch play Tom Hardy’s role so we can look at him a little more.

5.       Do you feel basic core emotions the same with everyone/every situation, or do they change person to person, setting to setting? Is happy a constant? Can it be?

I feel 100% different with every person in my life—even down to the part of my body that’s effected when I’m most passionate about them—positively or negatively. My anger is different, my sadness is different, my anxiety is all different person to person. Setting factors in much, much less. My entire emotional realm exists in the invisible space between myself and everyone else, regardless of where we are. I don’t really ever react to situations, now that I think of it. I only react to the people in them. For example, I don’t get “Road Rage” as a rule, but sometimes I’m offended enough to bang my fist on my steering wheel if someone makes an unpleasant face in their rear view as they cut me off with no blinker. Happy is not a constant, and it can’t be. Neither can angry, anxious, or sad for me. The only constant in my life is the sensation of what I can only describe as “pending emotional response”. I’m far more “on deck” in my life than I am “up to bat”. Nothing concrete lasts very long—how can it—there is so much criteria that must be met to actually feel something.

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THREE TICKETS TO JM IN HARTFORD--SECTION 400 AISLE SEATS

Hi Everyone,        I’m selling some John tickets for the Hartford show on August 16th. Please click the link below if you’re interested. I’d even be willing to drop the price if I knew someone was looking for all three.

https://www.stubhub.com/john-mayer-hartford-comcast-theatre-16-8-2013-4261728/

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Symphony

This past week I've had some of the most important conversations with clients that I've had in my entire career. I explained to a 6th grade girl's mother (who fears, tremendously, that her daughter will be bullied in middle school) that because her daughter is an artist, that she is uniquely equipped for ridicule and that by putting herself in front of an audience over and again, she is fierce and beautiful, strongly withstanding fervent and maticulously calculated risks. I had the honor of being the first to tell a nine-year-old, critically authentic, loud, and present young man that he need not be so sorry for offenses he has never committed-- that adults are in charge, but that does not mean their authority should ever supercede the truths about respect and love that he seems to have been born insisting. I had the privilege to be the first person to tell a beautiful 11-year-old that everything she wishes she was, she already is, and that the intricate plan that she has for her life will not detour whatsoever no matter the gender of the partner she chooses to spend that life with. I am just so grateful to know these people, and to record the bass line for the million symphonies they will each divinely produce for us all someday.

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Brandon's Questions 7/29

1) You know how most serial killers have a motif (some fetishy detail in ALL their crimes)? What would be yours, if you were, say, a serial killer? Why you always trying to make me violent? Sigh. If I were a serial killer, my motif would be killing. I would kill them, most likely some kind of pattern, probably keep some things from them to remember them by, then be caught by someone who has similar education as I do. I will probably be somewhat discrete at first, as a theme, you know, on the counta ILLEGAL, then I'd mess up. So yeah, my motif would be killing people, serially. 2) What kind of animal do you see each of us as, if we were to voice Disney characters? Chris- a small (teddy) bear who dances-- quite well-- to beatboxing. Thom- I don't really see an animal, more of a cartoon human, but if I had to choose an animal, I'd say jaguar. Sarah- Octopus, for sure. No reason. Bethany- Mouse-- a quiet one who gets caught when in her own mouse hole, not caught sneaking around. A persecuted mouse. You- Owl. Wise, night bird. 3) What's grosser, vomiting toddler or nasty surprise in a diaper? Vomiting, by far, 'cause vomiting's an emergency. Nasty diaper surprises are just stinky secrets. Poop's easier to clean up and doesn't infect people as much or show up out of nowhere all over a bus seat (if you're careful). 4) What is the right age for kids to start watching "adult" TV and movies? Does gender factor in? Gender factors in less than maturity. No younger than 10 for violence or sexuality-- foul language or whatever else is different. It would depend on why the kid wants to see the film, an what they stand to gain vs. what they stand to lose. If watching "Happy Gilmore" with his dad brings a son closer to his fathet, it trumps the questions he might have about telling golf balls to "suck (one's) white ass". 5) You were always taught to color inside the lines. I have just demanded you freestyle and go surreal answering this non-question : pterodactyl? Was never taught to color inside any lines, was given crayons and encouraged to proove that the picture would look better if I didn't. Pterodactyl.

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I can feel how commercial any magic I’ve had has become, as my accomplishments start to disgust me. Sick with jealousy, no better than the people I can’t relate to, I’m trapped with the worst of both worlds, entirely uncertain if I’m part of either.

All I want in the world sometimes is some mystery, something I can keep quiet about, some information that anyone would want. I want to feel that I’ve been called “angel" for more of a reason than a boy finding it easy to convince my shirt to unbutton, or I want to believe that I can inspire something that causes more momentum than “well if she’s here, I’ll say hello." But what could be the point of wanting anything else than what continues to be. What’s the point of trying to mend vulnerability with even more honesty and even less defense. What good will anything do, when I constantly know, unable to stop it, that any approval is disgustingly temporary and insatiable. So fuck me and how I write and why. Fuck me and every mess I make. I just want to run my hands on my own skin and not seek something to peel away.

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Brandon's Questions 7/26/13

1) Name one place, business or residence, that you would redecorate to make it more “you".

For a long time, I felt that way about my house, but it’s coming along. Unfortunately, I don’t really have an office location, but when I do, it will be super important that it is allllll “me". My new car is super “me", so that is probably my biggest accomplishment in that realm.

2) Are there children so far lost that you won’t or can’t work with them?

Never too far lost. The only thing that will ever keep me from moving forward is if a child can’t find a use for me. It’s one of the things that tends to separate me from other more traditional therapists— I will compartimentalize myself to be something that is already useful to someone instead of insisting that I be useful in the capacity that “I want to be" or “that a therapist should be", if that makes any sense. In other words, I don’t have an image I need them to buy into, but rather, I see them all as hiring me for my own little jobs. Some jobs have more responsibility, some have less, some are more therapeutic than others, some are less. I don’t focus so much on having anyone meet a pre-determined standard, so it’s hard to say anyone is “too" anything.

3) what kind(s) of people scare you the most?

It’s a combination of three things: A. Judgemental people or people with specific or high standards. B. People who are “right" in some big way. C. People that I “want" in some way to be close to me, or to like me.

People who meet one or even two of those criteria points are harmless, but all of them— terrifying.

4) You can relive one day from your past as a do-over, knowing then what you now know. Which day gets the magic edit?

As silly as it is, I’d redo the day I met John Mayer because I’d want to tell him to hold my phone up to his ear so that he could hear Thom talking to him, and to tell him about the video we made. I’d also want to record it. It’s just one of those magic edits that really wouldn’t have a “butterfly effect" or change too much about what happened after, but it’d be a sweeter memory than the one I have.

5) Which form of euthanasia is more humane, the death penalty or assisted suicide?

Assisted suicide, by far. The death penalty is backwards and ultimately unsatisfying for everyone involved, but assisted suicide is quite satisfying and beautiful. Those are two very opposing spins on the idea of “deliberate" death, one that is purposeful and empowered, and one that is bitter and shallow.

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I love it when he calls me "Tumblr User".

Clip of “On The Way Home" from the forthcoming Paradise Valley album. I never like to ask you to click on a link to purchase something without a little something extra up front… This song is the book-end to “Wildfire," which kicks the summer off. Hey, tumblr user, why not also come see a show? We’re having the time of our lives out here. It’s getting good… 

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mello-dramatic:

Everyone who reblogs this will get the title of a book to read based on their bio/posts.

Everyone. I mean it.