It Means They Just Nod Along Anyways

I'm listening to 'In Utero' right now. It's Nirvana's last album. Great music and so very full of passion, life and fury. You will never hear this music played in an office simply because it would be impossible for any of the workers to remain working. The power and the energy that pulsates from the speakers would simply not allow a person to continue to sit and plow away. The purity of the spirit of it all would too easily distract the worker, causing them to demand the music be silenced. They would play it off as noise and distraction, but they would know, if only they could look inside, that the real reason it bothered them so is because it was far more real than anything they'd ever done. It was no mistake that the bands name was Nirvana.

I listen to Nirvana whenever I remember to. It's hard to stay at that level all the time. Sometimes you just want to feel the wind in your hair. Oasis will suffice for that. Nirvana brings something primal up from within. An unapolegetic assault on your inner deceptions. Listen if you dare and see where you stand.

I'm listening to Nirvana tonight because I needed something real. The television was on all night and I can't do it anymore. The girlfriend - she can watch it. She was happy to watch a family King-Fu action movie tonight. I suppose it has it's merits, but a pimp would argue the same things in regards to himself. It wasn't as if she wanted to watch a Family Kung-Fu Action movie. First, she was tired. Tired television viewers are often television viewers because they are exhausted and wish not to do anything anymore, thinking included. It is this state that television makers have become billionaire's off of. They are the 'I don't want to think anymore' substitute delivery system. Turn off your mind and turn on the Television. It's almost nine-thirty and Celebrity Duets is on - believe me, you won't have to think at all....

It seems to me that television may be the disease that is killing us all. THE root of all evil. It's images and input sour our minds with facts that aren't necessarily true; Fills our homes with information that is not informative. It gives us Celebrity Duets and Entertainment Tonight, both shows which, along with many more of its kind, are nothing short of a psychic diahrettic polluting the intellectual well-being of our entire species quite negatively. Don't get me wrong - Patti Labelle and Carlton from 'Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' singing 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head' is an artistic achievement that would likely make Da Vinci shake his fist in jealousy. I drool in awe. Perhaps I drool in boredom.

September 11th was as much as a 'Made For Television' special as any Hallmark movie. It still is. Every year, specials air, re-living the horror for us all. Time may heal all wounds, but don't forget television is in the business of keeping all cuts fresh.

Wait - how did I get here? Wasn't I writing about Nirvana? Sometimes I get on a point, you know, and I want to roll. Then, I find, I usually start over-writing. That's why I like doing Stand-Up. When I get bored of a subject, rather than waxing on pseudo-intellectually, I usually make fun of someone for being something that isn't really shameful, we all laugh at the absurdity of it all, and I move on, as I had to there. My heart ran out of care for TV. Essentially, I hate it, and so should you, until I get my own show - then you should love it and buy all the products that the TV tells you to buy during my program.

I think the only way to make Nirvana-like expression is to throw it all against the wall and forget to care if it sticks or not. It's not the point. It doesn't even matter if you're in the room when it hits the wall. You just throw it - and that, THAT, is the art. You can do that, or you can grab one of the actors from Grey's Anatomy and dance a jig with them. Both of these qualify as genius art, I say.

Kurt's singing 'What is Wrong With Me' now. In a loop. I would have told him nothing. Too bad he's not alive now. I'd call him - we'd do a celebrity duet. I'd have to get famous first. Lose 30 pounds and the desire to be myself. No sweat. I'd be popular! We'd sing 'In Bloom'. Everybody would cheer.

What does it all mean? I'm starting to vibrate at that level that won't let me sit still. Might be some form of epilepsy - one can never be too sure. All I know is I'm missing a world full of passion and truth. From what I've heard, seems it's never been in full stock. Make a difference, the inside voice urges. You can ignite them, it hints. I want it to quiet down now; that sitcom star is about to dance.

And did you really think that was it?......

It's a diffirent world now.

It's 1:04 am - and that's late. I 'snuck' out of bed, totally unable to sleep. Even though I was down and out, I got up. The ten count was too slow and I got tired of hearing the numbers. It seems something in me is still alive. Something in me wasn't killed after all. The overhaul somehow left something in tact. As it turns out, Brett Martin, whatever that means, is far from dead.

I was going about my days in normal enough fashion. As I lay thinking, or stood walking or just happened to be and looking ahead, something from behind grabbed me, telling me to listen up, that I wasn't as lost as I thought I was. I knew it was there all along, but I suspected wholly that it was on it's last legs, and I wasn't gonna bring in life-support to keep it propped up. The skin had shed and I thought it was phantom pains. I was walking this way, dammit, and didn't need any distractions or riff-raff going my way. Silence, all, fate was this way and damn be my name if I wouldn't heed it's call. The voice would be silenced soon enough.

I stood at entrances to parking lots, telling cars you can or can't park there, and no, I can't take your money. I carried medical equipment to people who were partied to the nines on Lysol. I put on a logo'd shirt and played music with a cell phone. I did it all. I paid my bills. I ceased to smoke. I dropped the pot as well as the pop. I tamed the rage and stopped listening to it, too. I put on sneakers and sandals and got them wet in the river. I stayed alive, was up by five and smiled a smile of 'have to'.

It was all going in whatever dirfection that it was going in until one day, and I don't know which day it was. But what a day it was. I was working my most recent job. I was selling computers, in a way. It's a long story for another day, but when that story is told, it will not be one of glee, joy and sales. It will depict a man who had, besides love, lost it all, and was at the one-cent slots of life, just trying to get enough wins for more spins. The man who had once seen action at the biggest, glitziest no-limit tables in his world was reduced to playing for pride and pennies.

Then the day came, whatever day it was, where the satisfaction of a life well lived had ceased, and in it's place a sad realization that I was going through the motions - at best. What was once a existence based on pushing the limts of myself and, potentially, so many others, became a bill paying ritual aimed at staying afloat in an endless ocean sucked dry of hope.

I didn't really know, at that point, what was wrong. I finished the contract, had a big cheque coming my way, and that's that. Why the feeling?

The feeling is because I am not dead, but had been living as if my spirit was. In making the changes in my life, I had erased from myself that which I identified myself as, and simply went about my days being an honorable citizen trying to make ends meet. Problem is, I've never wanted to be an honorable citizen. I wanted to do something extraordinary, and as best I know, bill paying and all-in-all subordinating is the furtherst thing from that. I want to break the mold.

So, what awoke in me, and what kept me awake, both tonight and in life? That thing within all of us that is bigger and truer than what we do. It is the light which attracts the moths that are the events of our life to us. That thing that, no matter which it is dressed in, is still indeed IT.

I stripped myself bare of what I knew myself to be only to find out I was more what I thought I was that I could ever have imagined. Bills still need to be paid and feet still want to get wet, but after several months of being the walking dead, it turns out the answer is I am so very much alive.