I can’t remember the last time I felt all right. At peace. Relaxed. Comfortable. Whatever. I don’t remember. Sometimes I think that it’s been months. But then I have the feeling that I was doing okay earlier this afternoon. I never record the sensation. I think that if I tried, I would lose it. Maybe the state of being ‘all right’ is when you’re not thinking about it. I don’t know.

    The burden of language kills me. I hate words. I hate the idea that I have to use them to get in touch with myself. To think. I need words to do it. I wonder what life would be like if I didn’t know words. I think that we should send copies of Coltrane’s records into space for aliens to find so we can trick them into thinking we are a civilized culture. Music like that is beyond words. It’s emotion translated into sound. A poet sitting in a coffee house somewhere wearing a beret can use all the verbal acrobatics he wants and still not come close to matching the sound of Coltrane’s horn.

    I don’t know how those two things are related-- feeling all right and listening to Coltrane. I was listening to The Best Of earlier, and it didn’t make me feel all right. That wasn’t the conclusion I was trying to draw. I wish it was, but answers aren’t that easy. It helps a little to have something like that on, if you’re going to listen to anything, but it still wasn’t good enough. Maybe my point is that I wish it was. I wish that I didn’t have the need to write sometimes. It’s good to channel your creative impulses or whatever, but I wish I could express myself in a simpler way. It’s the burden of language. The need to think of new ways to say the same things. I was lying there, listening to the music, and I was drifting in and out of it. I would start out focusing on a track, then lose my place and
think about writing. Writing this, actually. I’d get back to the track, and lose my focus again a few minutes later.

    I think that sometimes people think too much. I’m not saying that they should ignore their problems or drink themselves into a stupor to forget, but thinking about things doesn’t always help you. It can, but you can also spend too much time dwelling on it. Because of the burden of language. There aren’t that many ways to say the same things. If you repeat something, even in your head, enough times, you will start to believe it. I think it would be fascinating to spend a week without words. Without speaking, without even really thinking-- at least, not in words. If you could just switch the internal
monologue off. I don’t know what would happen, but it would radically alter your perspective.

    I don’t like the concept of drugs, but I see the appeal. It’s good to alter your perspective. It’s a good thing to occasionally change the way you see the world. I don’t like the idea of taking a foreign substance into my body to do it. I think that’s a weakness. I think that anything you can achieve through taking a drug you can achieve by yourself with the right amount of work and dedication. I would rather not have anything handed to me like that, so I don’t like drugs. Maybe it’s just stubbornness. I don’t know. I just think that everything that matters to you, everything important, should come as a result of your own hard work, not because you put a piece of paper on your tongue. If you want to build a strong body, you don’t take steroids. It’ll build muscle, but it won’t give you real strength. I think mental strength is the same way. I think that a drug is a shortcut that deprives you of the experience of building your mental, physical, or emotional strength on your own. The end result isn’t the goal-- at least, it shouldn’t be. You can’t look at something with pride that you didn’t earn.

    When I dream of being rich, which I still do from time to time when I am too poor to buy a sandwich, I don’t dream of winning the lottery anymore, like I used to. I don’t want to just wake up one morning with money. I would prefer it to being poor, but I would rather earn it. I would rather make money as a writer, or an artist, or whatever it may be, than to just stumble upon it. I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone else. Maybe I take things too seriously. Maybe I am wrong when I think that everything you gain in life you have to fight for. It’s possible. Sometimes I see myself as the guy in that
movie who tries for hours to push the piano up the stairs when the back entrance is on the hill. I don’t know.

-Dan
dan@film-411.com