If opinions are like assholes, then ideas are like...?

Ideas. We all have them. Sadly, not all of us know what to do with them.

I have a blog. Why, I have no clue. Do I have anything valid to say? Probably. But most of the time, I find blogging frustrating, like most other creative outlets.

I have artistic aspirations. I've dabbled in writing short stories and poetry. I dream of one day writing a novel. But I'm never satisfied with what I write. Cliché. Predictable. Derivative. The words are there, swimming around in my brain, but they seldom find their way out. I can't even write lyrics to to the songs I write.

I make music; it might just be my best skill, but again I never feel like I can do justice to what's going on inside my head. I lack the skill. As a result, the music I write would probably seem contrived and pedestrian to anyone else. Boring.

Blogging was supposed to be an outlet for my creative pretensions. The Web, the free interchange of ideas, freedom of expression. Freedom of creation. But even now, I'm seldom happy with my blog posts, and most peter off and don't get finished. Who am I to think anyone would want to read what I have to say? Why should my opinions count for anything, when everyone's got an opinion?

The Internet is full of pretensious people making bad poetry (see previous post), amateurish music, drab art, etc., but there are also people out there doing great things. Amazing, incredible, brilliant things. I am a creative person, why do I always feel like I barely even qualify for the first group?

I do have ideas. Sometimes I think I have good ideas. If only I knew what to do with them.

An experiment in internet "poetry," part I

La pompiste

Girls who work at gas stations
are rebellious. Don't work in the boutiques.
Like their friends do.

Pumping gas in the rain
or snow,
they won't smile at you.
They're too cool for that - too Rock n' Roll, too Punk.

Too "Emo."

But they will wear purple
nail polish with their
work boots, work shirts and
reflective jackets.

Hmm....

Is it weird to have a blog and to want people to read it, but to not want those people to be people I know?

The 15-second loop

For the entire bus ride home yesterday, I sat near a man who, to my untrained eyes, had an obvious mental deficiency, despite the fact he was carrying a large file folder full of paperasse from the University. Although, bureaucracy being what it is, perhaps that is not so shocking.

In any case, the man was listening to some type of dance/R&B music on a Discman (old-school, I know) at what was an uncomfortable listening level for those of us seated around him. It must have been absolutely deafening inside his own head. What struck me was the fact that he was listening to the same loop of music, the first fifteen seconds of a certain track, over and over.

I was on the bus for about twenty minutes, and he continued to start the track over after hearing the passage he enjoyed the entire time. He was already on the bus when I got on, so who knows how long he did this.

Today's lesson: sometimes, people are a little eccentric.
Bonus lesson: sometimes, when it's just right, music can be greatest feeling in the world (I call this the goosebump effect)