the indelible impressions of repetitions, or maybe 'why it happens the same way'

these humans are for sure creatures of habit. when we get ideas and then write them down, we remember them. they make sense when we do that, and then the ideas might grow into something useful, or they might not. when we get ideas and dont write them down, we rarely remember them. and then they are useless. its either one or the other, for me it is at least. and for the last few weeks it's been one and now it'll be the other. the flip happened.

i've never been able to particularly identify what initiates my bouts with writer's block, well damn i suppose ive had bouts of a lot of things. in fact, as human do, projecting our lives forward, i cant help but predict many more bouts with various things in the future. some good some bad. but i digress, severely. i have ideas, just as we all do im sure. and in case you forgot, im talking about writing. but the 'hows and whys' arent really important to me, because i love very little more than that feeling just before i get that spark to write. its worth it to not write for a while in order to feel like this. thats what im trying to say.

given im in the smithing mood, then what to say? well thats not really a question. not one that ever merits answering directly anyway. but we do it anyway.

dylan is on the mind. dylan started it. this time and maybe the time before that, certainly he starts it most times. i hear dylan and i feel aware, motivated to do something, anything. whatever it is would be great and meaningful. i notice what doesnt make sense. i think about what my room looked like before i lived here, and what it might look like afterward, then i see this place decrepit. and then i think about what itd be like if i lived here when it was in such a state. i hover on that thought. then i move on because i think 'who gives a shit about that.'

i think about that day in 1966 that i wasnt alive. one of those days you most wish you had been though, in any capacity. good thing they made a recording of it.

it wasnt after the intermission that the paradigm shift of dylan non electric/electric occured. its not like the journos try to say it is. but it has to be made easy, or else people forget it.

the discussion of that event, or newport, or 65-66 in general inevitably begs the question for a listener casual or dedicated,' which are you for, electric or acoustic.' to answer by ignoring the obvious absurdity and apathetic simplicity of the question i'll answer it with what will probably be perceived as more absurdity and even more apathetic simplicity. id say id prefer the dylan of the intermission between the two sets. there was the dylan who knew that it was not he who was fixing to change his own figurative hat, but that it was in fact the audience and those around him who were, the ones actually in control of the framing of his image. here was the dylan who was not one or the other, but both, which is really neither at all. to the audience he no longer existed and so he could only be himself. with everybody knowing that he'd walk onstage in a few minutes and be immediately framed as a different person, as a traitor and not a champion. its fascinating to think about such transformations in such a pejorative context. to think about that is to wonder what change really is. and i dont know what it is. not sure we can know. not tonight anyway.

makes me wish i had a scrapbook of ephemera from my life. or really just concert tickets. but perhaps its better that my concert tickets are scattered around, in different boxes, pockets and whatever else. itll make that occasional finding of them meaningful, and gloss over the perpetual re-losing of them. because thats just what seems to happen.

decided to read blood meridian again. this happens from time to time. so incredible when the best western ever written is a categorical denouncing of manifest destiny. i'd sure like to rewind history on that one. im going to do so right quick.

horace greeley says 'go west, young man.' hello american exceptionalism.
creepy way to claim the presence of divine intervention. not sure it worked out so well here, unless you were a white guy.
ratzel comes to the usa, sees what he sees, goes back to germany saying 'lebensraum' and then we get the nazis.

anyway. might talk tomorrow about the bison economy. thats a fun one. good one for pissing people off.