Author Archives: Ryan Driscoll

I Exist In A World Of My Creation

A way of life?

A subjective idea?

A bitchin’ band name?

A what-you-think-is-clever written expression?

All are possible. Everything is possible. Jesus, why not. Nothing crazy, nothing out-of-the-ordinary, just weeks of regular life cumulating. What do you expect? You think things are out of your control ALL  the time, and when that idea tries to rear its ugly head itself, you point and laugh. It proved its existence by trying not to exisit. and your brain hurts a little. maybe more than a little.

so you try and tip the scales by mentally rejecting this. You compare this to receiving the Rikisihi Stink Face from life. Bound to happen, but now you associate it with a pseudo-sumo wrestler’s ass with your face, getting rubbed in by hyperbolic announcers. you grew up with this, it makes too much sense. all you know is this is something to avoid, as far as you know.

but maybe getting over the stink face is the accepting. But the idea of it happening is too well-established in your subconscious. Scotty-2-Hottie and Grandmaster Sexay point and laugh while you get the stink face. and that’s the bridge too far.

god, that show was ridiculous. there is no defense for watching professional wrestling. no defense besides the pure joy of surrendering to that which is so understandable.

so it comes full-circle. there is no defense. but you know that’s not true because there’s always a defense. Life is such. Yin to yang, idiot. So why the title? why does it ring so true?

(surrender)

why not?

(surrender)

nice point, idiot. that is a really good title.

Right Now

That last one, i pasted and i didn’t want to transcribe it. it’s not a very pertinent entry anyways, so i have to highlight it to read it, it’s kinda funny that way.

I just wanted to check in here and just write a little, because of the comfort the typing brings me. I’m working surprisingly hard on my hip-hop project, and anytime that i set aside for writing pretty much goes to that. Only two weeks in, and already neck deep. It’s too much fun though, melding my writing voice with some guidelines. that’s why i wanted to come here, for that beautiful free-associating quickness where you can bang it out and not really go back and read it again. I just look at the posts and don’t think i’ve been putting up enough.

Funnily enough, my wife passed along that macklemore thing i wrote to the man himself, and he liked it. I can imagine why, but still, that was a little surreal to me. I post things here knowing they could be read by anyone, but at the same time, I don’t go broadcasting the fact that i do have a blog, and have had one for damn near a decade.

that’s some crazy shit. I’ve been doing this for 10 years coming up this summer. Right before 9/11, back when i tried to act like i didn’t know it all, but still felt i did. boy has that changed. not because of 9/11 though, just the passage of time.

i get more comfortable with me each passing day, whether i experience new things or the same old shit. as long as I’m thinking, my mind will change.

the whole adage of age being just a number makes more sense to me now. in that deep resonating way, not the surface way. 30 is not old, not young, it’s a number.

kinda like me.

Wake Up

You know you have power. Is it fear that holds it back? Fear of power? the idea that you can control things and influence? but if you hold that power, it inevitablly will be lost. fear of loss? so why even exert it in the first place. if you save it, then it will be there when you need it and not needlessly used on such unpredictable things, things you surrender control to.
You say that because you only see trends, you only see what you want to understand, and don’t really bother second guessing that which you can’t. unless it’s in this introspective, got-too-much-time-on-your-hands doldrums that you have that luxury. and luxurious it is. so stop reading this incessantly and get on with living. now is not a time to reflect, but a time to act, a time to generate content while the iron is hot.
do it!

Macklemore

Ridiculous.

Seriously, filthy and ridiculous. Heather and i went to see Macklemore perform to a sold out showbox, and it was one of the most melancholy shows i have ever seen. totally not due to macklemore though, it was all on me. He rocked it harder than i had ever seen him do.

But two songs in, i felt the melancholy. This is his big sold-out Seattle tour before he goes on his nationwide one, and the crowd energy waiting to see him off was thick in the air.  The opening acts had the luxurious luxury of a die-hard crowd waiting for Seattle music. All the opening acts rocked, and got a willing and able crowd. Then Mack came out and killed it like he always does. It felt different this time though. Like i was saying goodbye.

Not to get too sentimental, but i felt happy with such a touch of sadness. I got really cheesy and was trying to remember a Shawshank Redemption quote i knew fit so perfectly. I’m just going to type what i came up with as opposed to googling it because it’s the feeling, not the exact words. they go: “some caged birds are so beautiful, they make your world feel that much less bright when they leave, but you knew it was a sin to keep them in the first place”  it feels wildly inappropriate on reflection now, but the general idea is there. There was an element of farewell.

Just a mere 3 years ago, I saw macklemore flyering the hell out of a show he had coming up in a couple weeks, right at the neumos exit, after killing it as the most prominent opening act there that night. probably a year later, I went to Nectar on the Vs. album release and paid a $20 “suggested donation” (a term i am highly fond of) for the album he and this dude Ryan Lewis were putting out, because i loved what they were doing. Meeting and getting to talk to him at the various events of his we’ve been to, and seeing what a cool guy he is.

it’s been growing and has ended up at this big triple sell-out in seattle before hitting the road. seeing him put his usual A game and realizing he was going to be showcasing it for the rest of the nation gave me a little NW pride. Actually seeing the beginning and being there  for what i considered a culminlation was a little over-whelming for my sappy self.

as effusive as this seems though, my admiration pales in comparison to hers, my wife. he’s her “hip-hop husband”.

can’t blame her.

Something New

I like ben’s last post.

The idea of striving for something that is really nothing is something that’s always struck me about life in general. Water flowing to a pool by any means necessary, the easier the better.

The irony of escaping systems always cracks me up as well, it’s like trying to escape life without dying. What’s the first thing you do after breaking out of a system? Set up a new one. Bonuses being that you at least get to be in charge, and it tends to be less violent these days. There’s some serious issues of control buried in there, though.

Just some response thoughts, i’m not here to get terribly deep today, but we’ll see. I got no plan, just a two week gap in posts and some downtime.

The two weeks is strange to me. I have done alot in my life since my last post, but would be perfectly content to not list any of it here, when really it’s what i should be doing. I’ve been having some rocking times over the past few weekends, and in the long run, this blog is for me. If i end up living to be 80, i want to be able to read about things i did back in the day when i was young and actually had to go places to interact with people. I’d rather just list them bullet style, since hopefully my memory will be good enough to fill in the gaps.

-Making an awesome, nothing went wrong batch of beer out at my parents house.

-Going with a co-worker and my wife to the showbox for the sasquatch line-up announcement party and jetting after mad rad and das rascist, only to find out macklemore got some stage time later in the evening.

-Running around with the filthy beer gang and going to see Mark Farina kill it live at neumos, where i danced until my entire shirt was a much darker shade of green.

-Hanging out with new law peeps around beltown where i found some jolly roger on tap, then managed to get dick’s later in the night after having the window shut on us after seeing farina.

-Having an awesome valentine’s day with my wife where we urban hiked, napped, and saw Rock of Ages.

-Getting into the groove of the bi-monthly event of taking my grandpa to the snoqualmie casino, then wrapping up the day playing hours of video games and drinking homebrews with the filthy crew.

Putting it all in list form like that is such a great reminder. I have so much awesome stuff going on in my life, all the time. Just like i need to remind myself of how superfluous and insignificant i can be at times, i can also remind myself of other things less existential. swing that camera around to point at whatever i want.

ebb and flow, baby…so it goes.

Art

Again, i apologize for the last post, sort of. sometimes documentation is more important than content. on that note, let’s get started!

so here’s the counter-point, ideas running fresh and anew, somewhat un-ironically. apparently, i need outside influence to get out of idea-ruts. this version came in the form of  a documentary (mockumentary?) of epic proportions called Exit through the Gift Shop, done by infamous anonymous street artist Banksy. This film does an amazing job of blurring the line between fiction and reality these days, reminding you how much you have to hone your ability to question reality and what is presented to you. or just reality and what aspects of it you choose to believe. that’s the highfalutin vision of it, but you could just as easily look at it as the highbuffoonery it is.

in this regard, it really shows art for what it is, reflection of society be dammed. you watch shit like this and see just how important, and unimportant it is. how much you, as the viewer adds to the final piece. the creation of something this deliberate and high-concept is nothing short of amazing. yet the fact that i consider it as “high-concept” is already talking out my ass and out of my depth.

here’s the thing. for a moment in my life, Banksy made me care about an idea. as brief and limited as that moment was, it happened. it hit me hard enough to try and respond, to react. damn you, artists. is this your purpose?

Swirl

This is going to be bad, i can tell already.

It will be recorded, regardless.

The anxiety is killing me. Anxiety over nothing, over everything, over ideas i turn in my head and wonder about. I don’t even know what to think about them, it just feels so worthless. All i do is sit and observe, with occasional creations. When thought feels worthless, i can come here and dole it out. Expressing ideas about the inherent worthlessness they contain. The irony is not lost on me.

They come into my head and get turned around up there, examined. A distraction, an exercise in futility. You keep pulling back and the picture gets smaller, the relevance, less.  Sometimes it’s fun to analyze ideas, and other times it just seems ridiculous. You do it anyways, because there’s not a whole lot else going on.

You get distracted, and you roll with it.  Sometimes they are sought after, sometimes they drop in your lap. Sometimes you are amused, sometimes indifferent. As far as I can tell, it beats the alternative.

So it goes. You can run from yourself, but you can’t hide. Always there in the corner of your mind, pulling strings you can’t even fathom. This sounds worse than it is, really this is some stupid venting. but that was realized at the conception.

so get on with it already. daylight’s a wastin’.

Ween

A couple of months ago, i had a friend buy tickets to a show that we had missed out on 3 years previous. I had never heard of them , but they are his favorite band, and I was intrigued. The band was called Ween, and apparently they’ve been doing goofy rock for decades now.

I listened to some of the music nonchalantly, and saw the silly genius behind their music, but still never really got into them. There’s a ton of music out there, and not all of it goes into heavy rotation.

We went and saw them last night at the Paramount, and I was summarily blown away by the performance. There are some acts that can only be captured in a live venue. It was nothing about their stage precense though, nothing about the visuals or the huge amounts of smoke from smoke machines or anything that did it for me. It was their musicianship, their ability to play tightly together, despite slugging beers and hitting “jazz cigarettes” onstage the entire show. They were serious chameleons of classic rock, with good song writing and solid playing.

I know I’ve always felt a deep affinity for music, but much like everything in my life, i hold it at a distance, and never take it too seriously. That was the vibe i got from the crowd and the performers last night. It’s just music, but let’s do it really well. Let’s have fun. That’s a philosophy i can always get behind.

The fact that this was probably the first show my friend has ever plunked down any amount of money for gave me some perspective too. You gotta figure there’s something special about a band if someone who isn’t that into music (or live shows, anyways) pays to go to a show where the floor sells out overnight. There’s so much music culture I’m not a part of because I can’t pay attention to it all. But if i pay attention to people who appreciate music (or art of any kind, actually) i’ll end up somewhere i didn’t plan. my life needs more of that.

Of Love and Bicycles

For once, I come here with a point to make, an idea to flesh out.  I’ve never really sorted out my feelings as a bicyclist in the city of seattle, even though i’m pretty avid about my biking. There was a show about it on KUOW today, and both sides of the issue were being argued by idiots on either extreme, so i felt it was time to iron out my thoughts on the matter.

Here’s my philosophy for bicycle riding, especially in an urban setting: I am invisible. Too many times have I made eye contact with people in cars to establish some form of right-of-way only to almost be hit. I’ve avoided being doored so many times because you have to watch parked cars like hawks while riding along side of them. I can’t expect these people to see me, even in full reflective getup, covered in blinking lights.

I have to make sure I’m not the one getting myself hurt. I feel this is my responsibility because the big inequality in the relationship between bicycles and cars is the size/weight ratio. When the two collide, the most that’s going to happen to a car is some form of body damage. To the bike rider, you can total your bike along with seriously injuring yourself. There’s too much at risk as a bike rider to care about what’s right or lawful with stakes like that. if you get hit on your bike and it’s proven that the driver was at fault and you had the right-of-way, guess who’s still in traction.

So there’s a balance to be struck on how people bike around a city that wants more people to ride but has no money to put in any type bicycle infrastructure. Hell, Seattle has no money for any of it’s infrastructure, period. So yeah, i ride on the sidewalk, sometimes it’s necessary. I have no problem riding on urban streets, but only when the speed limit is 25, and there’s some way to pass me. I’ll sometimes ride the wrong way down a one way, on the sidewalk. I’ll sometimes cut through a median i wouldn’t be able to if i was in a car. This annoys alot of drivers, but i’m invisible, i’m not getting in their way, and i’m not hurting anyone. having a little license to go places you couldn’t in a car is one of the perks of riding a bike. you respect pedestrians, and watch your ass, it’s not that tough.

On both sides of the equation, there are assholes. There are drivers that will yell and throw things at you, there are bike riders who will clog a major arterial by riding three abreast during rush hour. I’ve always dealt with asshole drivers while on bikes but i never realized how bad bike riders could be until I got roped into critical mass once by some people i met at a riding event, and saw the depths of what assholes bike riders could be. It just comes with the territory of being extremely self-righteous with a feeling of superiority, i think.  that attitude is a part of both camps, though.

One thing that really bugs me about bike riders is that they complain about getting pushed around by cars when they ride on major arterials. Sometimes you have to ride on an arterial to get over a highway, hit a specific bridge, or get to a specific street.  most of the time, there’s at least a shoulder or a sidewalk to use because there are lots of vehicles and pedestrians on these routes. But more often than not, you can head one block over and be in much more bike friendly side streets. You avoid lights, heavy traffic, and the chance of hitting a pedestrian. It’s also a lot more pleasant, and allows you to find better ways to get around the city.

Seattle is a city connected by cars. The metro system is decent, but just barely. Walking is discouraged through few or extremely dilapidated sidewalks.  Without the infrastructure, there will be conflict. And just like drivers, there are idiots that ruin it for everyone else. I think that’s the bottom line. Willful or not, uninformed riders are just as bad as uniformed drivers. If you head out on a bike thinking that you always have the right of way due to your on-a-bike nature, you’re gonna get angry when you see not everyone thinks that is so, and most likely get yourself hurt in the process. You can head out in a car thinking the same way, but at least the road system around here is designed for cars.

Everyone just gets it in their heads that drivers treat riders with no respect, and vice versa. When in reality, there’s a few idiots on either extreme out there,  making it happen. My bike riding is always a pleasant experience, because i’ve ridden long enough to have common sense about what i can and probably shouldn’t try to get away with, and better routes to take.

I love riding my bike and will continue to do so. Even if we get some of the best infrastructure in the world, i’m not going to start thinking cars can see me anytime soon. I can get away with more if i’m invisible.

Welcome Back!

I go away for a week on my own, and suddenly ben has three posts up. the prodigal son returns! good to see a familiar face around here.

otherwise, i got nothing to contribute, i’ve been using slow work times to live it up. drink beer and be happy!