Reality? Check.

I just had my sanity re-evaluated by a perfectly normal looking stranger in a green fleece jacket. He introduced himself with a joke I didn't understand, peering into my computer lab suspiciously and then laughing, "I'm just kidding, how are you doing?" After that entrance, he walks in and begins talking about graduating from West High, but he wants something more from his life. West High, so do I know this guy, is that why he's talking to me? He doesn't look familiar. He says he doesn't want to take away my time, but could I tell him where he could get a new Air Force Uniform? He needs a new one, he says as he pulls from his wallet a laminated picture of himself, a few years younger, in full regalia.

"No, I'm sorry, I really wouldn't know where to get one..."
"The VA, maybe? Sorry, I don't mean to be rude."
"Yeah, I'm sure they can point you in the right direction anyway."

Some talk follows from him (with no space for contribution by me but smiles and affirmative nods) about West High, new beginnings, getting his credits transferred to the U, his dad works here, he doesn't want to go back to the gravel pits, he's riding on the second wave of his life, and this is a letter from his bishop saying that he could use some on-the-job experience. Girls don't like him because he never served a mission, but he doesn't think that's too important.

This man is smiling an immense, braces-laden smile as he talks, finding humor in every few sentences, enough to laugh and watch me to make sure I'm smiling too. He looks young, fresh-faced. He looks like he belongs in the front row of a freshmen chemistry class. He is not the fast-talking conspiracy theorist that rides your morning UTA bus to work, who blinks too often or looks past you with glassy eyes when he talks. He looks vaguely ethnic, but in a sort of American Melting Pot way, nothing identifiable. He has shallow, sad eyes, and he takes his steps without purpose, as if he'd walked into my lab but might just as well have walked into any room in any building on campus.

"My uniform was stolen, you know."
"Oh, .... I'm sorry."
"Yeah, It wasn't you though. Or you," pointing to my co-worker and little brother Clayton, whose eyes are understandably glued to his computer, "or my dad or anything. I think it was a former roommate of mine. Not you though. I don't know. I've got this whole stack of paperwork." He laughs again. "So I just want to get the things back that are mine, you know? I'm trying to get things back that are mine, and it really upsets me. But it wasn't you."

I'm pretty sure by now that we're about to break through this dreamlike mess of an interaction. I'm convinced that the illusion of insanity he's cast will break down any minute and, in spite of his genuinely harmless appearance, he'll ask us for money or drugs, or try to sell us some kind of contraband, or make a grab at my laptop, because if the interaction moved to that level it would become concrete again, and I'd know immediately why he was here, talking endlessly in apparent non sequitur. But he gives me no such shift.

"So can I do that next week, can I get my credits transferred from West High and the Air Force to the U and start taking some classes, because I don't want to go back to the gravel pits," laughter, "I want to figure out who I want to be, if I want to be a teacher, or a car collector, I just don't know, but my plate is full of possibilities."
"I'm really sorry, but I can't really help you with any of that, I think you want to be talking to student services, they can help you get your credits transferred."
"Ah, of course, yeah, I don't mean to be rude..." he stretches his hand out for a fist-bump, which I give him slowly.
"Well, good luck with your uniform and getting your credits transferred," I say after he's talked again for a little while about wanting to go to school, more or less.

At first he's unfazed, but with his next disjointed sentences, he puts his picture back in his wallet and starts walking back toward the door.

"Well thanks, you know. I'll come back though, with some more time. I'll be back with some more time."

Mrs. Cold

So I know Kings of Convenience are old news. But I'm sick of the insistence in blogging culture, and music culture, and internet culture, on making newness and undiscoveredness our most important measures of worth. I get it, nobody wants their online presence to appear un-savvy, but it's tiring, and I'm tired. Plus, back when I was first shown these guys at 15 or 16 years old, I was still a pretentious music snob (only in the other direction; newness was an indication of detriment). Even when they were shown to me again two years later by my girlfriend at the time, who deserves the entirety of the credit for delivering me from my musical pretension, I thought they were a carbon-copy - minus Paul's virtuosity as a songwriter - of Simon and Garfunkel. The bottom line is, now that I'm ready for them, I'm excited about it and I'd like to share that with you, okay? So we could talk about musical pretension in all of its forms, including my history with it, and you could stutter through your teeth, "Luke, I'm mad, because when I showed you *insert band/musician I now like* you hated them!" and I would say with a sigh and half a smile, "I know I did. I'm sorry. It's not your fault. I am sort of annoying." Or we could talk about girlfriends, or we could talk about real worth in music, or we could talk about how freaking awesome Paul Simon is. Seriously, we could talk about that. But for now I'd just like us to listen to this song, which is good.

Monolukeleosis

Well friends, It's been a bit of a sad week here at Roots in the Sky. Luke Williams, your kindly curator of all things simultaneously aerial and subterranean has come down with the Cootie Fever (mononucleosis, in layman's terms). Here is an image of a man who supposedly has the condition:

Fig. 1

I'll tell you this much, that man does NOT have the same thing I have. I'll tell you why.
1. His neck is not bulging out on the sides due to his tonsils deciding they must free themselves of their throaty prison.
2. "Soreness," "Reddening (x2, apparently)," "Swelling," and "White Patches" just don't cut it as descriptive terms to put under Throat and Tonsils here. I haven't swallowed without wincing since Saturday, and from the look on my mother's face when she snuck a peek at my tonsils, she didn't see white patches. She saw multi-dimensional, ghostly abscesses made from the nightmares she had as a small child. But nobody really uses that archaic swallowing mechanism anyways, right? It's become as useless a part of the modern human body as the spleen. Ha! Spleens are funny. Good thing it wouldn't make any sense for this sickness to have anything to do with..... What's that you say?
3. Mono can do what to my spleen?
4. Who is this creep anyway? Especially with that exposed brain on his forehead. He reminds me of Krang, only Krang's brain was closer to where most people's spleens are. That would've made things complicated if he had ever gotten mono.
5. Actually, I think this guy's subtle yet diabolical stare is more descriptive of mono than any of the text-and-pointy-lines describing the symptoms. For the past week, I believe my throat has been thinking the same thing Mr. Mono here is thinking: "Silly mortal, mere steroids and incrementally greater doses of hydrocodone cannot destroy me.... I have become... unstoppable...."

If I were to contribute my own visual representation of the "Main Symptoms of Infectious Mononucleosis" To wikipedia (which is where I found the former image), I would make the following changes:

Fig. 2

Now, I know I'm being a bit melodramatic about my illness. Once this sore throat from hell is gone, supposedly I'll just be tired all the time. 

Fig. 3 ("It's tired in here")

Matteo disturbing the peace.

Or possibly adding to it, if you think hearing live folk music on your doorstep in the 
afternoon sounds peaceful.


Matteo from Jake Larsen on Vimeo.


Matteo || Part 2 || from Jake Larsen on Vimeo.

You can watch them bigger and read a little bit about the experience here.

This was really fun to do. We were looking for an elderly Chinese man that Chip and Brinn know (apparently not that well), but he was no longer living at the address we had for him. Instead, by a truly weird coincidence, we were greeted by a young guy from China that was equally excited about the instruments and willing to hear us play a couple songs, and we even attracted a few passers-by.

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes

Sometimes a song or an artist that's been a part of my root system since I was a small child will unearth itself in a new light, wonderfully and inexplicably, as if it can feel that I need it in that new capacity. Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, and especially this performance of it, is at the moment revitalizing some long-forgotten foundational roots, and helping me dig myself in for the coming midsummer thunderstorms.



Suite: Judy Blue Eyes
Crosby, Stills, and Nash
It's getting to the point
Where I'm no fun anymore
I am sorry
Sometimes it hurts so badly
I must cry out loud
I am lonely
I am yours, you are mine
You are what you are
And you make it hard.

Remember what we've said and done and felt
About each other
Oh babe, have mercy
Don't let the past remind us of what we are not now
I am not dreaming.
I am yours, you are mine
You are what you are
You make it hard.

Tearing yourself away from me now
You are free and I am crying
This does not mean I don't love you
I do, that's forever,
Yes and for always
I am yours, you are mine
You are what you are
You make it hard.

Something inside is telling me that
I've got your secret.
Are you still listening?
Fear is the lock, and laughter the key to your heart
And I love you.
I am yours, you are mine, you are what you are
You make it hard
And you make it hard.

Friday evening, Sunday in the afternoon
What have you got to lose?
Tuesday morning, please be gone I'm tired of you.
What have you got to lose?
Can I tell it like it is? (Help me I'm suffering)
Listen to me baby.
It's my heart that's a suffering (Help me I'm dying)
It's a dying, that's what I have to lose
I've got an answer
I'm going to fly away
What have I got to lose?
Will you come see me Thursdays and Saturdays?
What have you got to lose?

Chestnut brown canary
Ruby throated sparrow
Sing the song don't be long
Thrill me to the marrow.

Voices of the angels, ring around the moonlight
Asking me, said she's so free
How can you catch the sparrow?

Lacy, lilting, lyric, losing love, lamenting
Change my life, make it right
Be my lady.

Que linda me la traiga Cuba,
La reina de la Mar Caribe.
Cielo sol no tiene sangre allí,
y que triste que no puedo vaya,
Oh va, oh va, va.

(Translation: Oh, what beauty Cuba brings me,
The queen of the Caribbean Sea,
Sunny sky has no blood over there,
And how sad that I cannot go,
Oh go, oh go, go.)
P.S. Get this: Woodstock was CSN's 2nd show, ever. Granted, they were all famous before they got together, so they're seasoned performers, but I still think that's pretty cool. 

Love, Luke.

Lighter Things

I'm going to a screening of this on Friday!

Also, I changed the blog up a bit today, visually. It feels like an apartment that I'm finally getting around to decorating.

Breakups, feminism, and now politics! Aren't you glad you read my blog?

I promise I'm a happy, optimistic person. I really am, but sometimes, things just get me down.

Prologue: Andy Hoffmann, one of my favorite professors at the U, sent me an email that said:

"Isn't it beautiful the way we carry tunes? I think this is why my heart is so broken about the oil spill, because I know sea critters carry tunes as well. Apocalypse is heavy."

I don't know if you have read about this, but I was unaware of it until today. Apparently, Nigeria has been the focal point of spills from many international oil companies for the past 50 years, amounting to more oil spilled per year than has been lost so far in the Gulf of Mexico. I know the recent gulf spill has only been going for a few months, and it is certainly horrific. It's just funny/awful to me that the developed western world is so willing to literally ravage the third world for the sake of its prosperity, and that it takes so long for anyone to say anything about it. I'm growing incredibly weary of this pattern, friends.

It's also funny/awful to me that even once something like this happens on our own soil, our population is so quick to just direct all our anger at a company like BP, who really did nothing other than to take on the risks associated with running an oil company, which is necessary in order to supply the needs of a country whose upper classes will point their fingers and yell"F*** BP!!!" at the MTV movie awards while their town cars idle in the back parking lot. In the meantime, the lower classes watch this on TV and feel that they are responding adequately to the situation; we're all fighting the big guys, right? There's a serious cause/effect disconnect happening here. The fact that BP is trying to throw blame around for the corrupt and brazen policies that led to this particular spill becomes ironic and sickening when we realize it's only a reflection of the attitude of our entire populace. It's what we all do every time we max out a credit card (I don't get paid enough, I needed new ______ for ______), every time I drive instead of bike because it's raining, or because I'm tired, every time we lift that bag into that magic green trash-be-gone compartment on the side of the road (Landfills? Gross!). As humans, we are incredibly adept at circumventing blame, which seems like a survival mechanism that may have worked well for hunter-gatherers, but in my mind it's a boulder we're all tied to as we try to pull our weight toward the promise of a peaceful global society. How do we learn to own up to our mistakes, all of our mistakes, every time? To live more sustainably? How do we teach the next generation?

I'm realizing now that a lot of these ideas I have about human nature stemmed from reading Freud's Society and its Discontents in a Theory class last year. I didn't understand it very well that time, so I'd like to re-read it.

"Why is the sky brown, mom?"

"Well, BP did it."

"Dang those poop-heads!"

"I'd ask you to watch your language Jeorg, but no words are too cruel for those villains. Now let's get in the van, or we'll be late for your painting class."

Side-note: Anyone want to buy my car?