Encourage me to quit my job

Discussion in 'BOARDANIA' started by Garner, Mar 19, 2008.

  1. Garner Great God and Founding Father

    Opinions and criticisms are sought. Also, please give a nice round of applause to Coppe who helped hammer this into something readable:

    You might wonder what I’d be doing going out to clubs and pubs; the bar-diver scene’s a bit social for me after all, right? Well, it’s like this: The human ear can’t hear anything below x cycles per second, instead those really deep bass notes are felt, right behind your breastbone, shaking you from your lungs to your toes.
    I remember once my parents took us to one of those activity nights at the Y, try out some of their classes and activities for free sort of thing. I sat in on some Jap martial arts class, and the instructor – round-eyed gaijin with a bald patch – talked about qi. Your qi centre is below your navel but above your groin, a metaphysical bladder that fills itself with energy.
    I’ve always liked to believe that when the music’s just right you don’t feel those low notes in your chest, you breathe them in through your qi, Yang triumphant. You can’t get that kind of volume in any home stereo I could afford, and the neighbors would take exception – neighbors always have shit taste in music, this is a law of nature.
    So here we are, the bar scene. University co-eds in free drinks push up bras and middle-aged homosexual predators who offer speed for a bathroom blowjob, all under cycling colored strobe lights. The humanity of youth culture, with its sweaty bodies, salted beer, poorly washed glasses and plastic cups that dissolve from a gin and tonic…
    But you can’t beat the sound, or the throbbing atomic motion of the dancers as they masturbate themselves against each other. The band was good, they had that lean hungry drive that separates successful musicians from true artists. They’d get noticed and get signed one day soon, and then that tortured soul at the microphone would cash in his hard won truths and individualism for whatever post-alterna/goth/indie/emo teenage craze was the dépêche mode du jour de rigueur.
    I didn’t come for the band, though, good as they were. I came for the music, that white light little death; a rollicking boogie that was the holy lovechild of a Gibson guitar and mongoose. All riki-tiki-tavi, fur and teeth. It grabbed you from somewhere below your breathless qi and took you along a full Gee rollercoaster of Yang. It would be criminal to waste good amphetamines on pulling the young gays (and the merely curious) in attendance so I bought a drink for one of the mutton dressed as wolves and charmed him for a while as the guitarist replaced a string.
    I’m a white boy, through and through, and this was white kid college rock, but sometimes you have to let go. Crest the wavefront on that perfect union of sound and chemical and give birth to motion. There was a black prophet once who left a gift to the white man, a perfect Zen koan: “free your mind and your ass will follow.” I got out there and danced, joy and music and motion, mongoose and cobra, arms waving free like that lonely little NH2 amine that made it all just right.
    There are times when everybody needs somebody to dance with. A room full of strangers, every one of them a nation of loathsome humanity building up their GDP of groove, dancing to paradise. I didn’t want to know names, I didn’t want to remember faces. I got out there and I moved with the speed behind my qi, soaking up that Yin. No matter how much you try to stay to yourself, there’s always something you need from someone else. Human mercantilism doesn’t work, we’re social animals.
    Even so, John Donne was wrong. You have to work at it, but you can make time to yourself. There’s a joke I like to make about my surname, a little pun for one. My name’s Thomas Everyman, and I’m an island unto myself.
  2. redneck New Member

    I really liked the emotion and vision. Some of it I wasn't too sure about, especially some of the Zen and Yin/Yang parts, just because I'm not too familiar with it. I could still make out what it meant, but it just took me a little longer.

    Were you just writing this for fun or was there a deeper purpose behind it.
  3. Katcal I Aten't French !

    I started reading and like it by I'm so tired mty eyes are trying to crawl out of my head through my ears right now, so I haven't finished but it's nothing to do with the text. I'll try again later, sorry dude.
  4. Maljonic Administrator

    It reads to me a bit like Holden Caulfield enjoying himself, as you might expect him to be if he could have time traveled to now from the boring times he was stuck in.
  5. TamyraMcG Active Member

    Makes me want to dance. I can almost feel the beating throb of the music. nice work.
  6. Katcal I Aten't French !

    Ok, read it now, a night of sleep does help, I must say... I must say mal has a point it does kind of remind me of that kind of personnality, and I like the way the character analyses things... Any more coming?
  7. Hsing Moderator

    I thought that described it really well.
  8. Garner Great God and Founding Father

    Had to look that one up - I dread the possibility of re-creating such a character, if only because there are no decent rock musicians left to murder and I wouldn't want to waste my first novel on the frontman from Razorlight.
  9. Katcal I Aten't French !

    Well, you know, instead of robbing the world of a great talent, there are a few out there whose cold-blooded murder would probably be welcomed by millions. Maybe you could inspire a "good deed" instead, eh...
  10. DTM New Member

    I enjoyed that. It reminded me of parts of my misspent youth (acid raves..). It wasn't til I'd read it, I realised It was reading for reading pleasure. Still finding my feet in this here forum see..:redface: Good stuff
  11. Maljonic Administrator

    Well I've known Garner for years and I was confused for most of it until I figured it was a work of fiction. :)
  12. Katcal I Aten't French !

    I only got that when I read the first comment, and then actually managed to read the whole text. Although the idea of Garner going to a club to dance kind of freaked me out, so that should have been a clue. :bunny:
  13. Garner Great God and Founding Father

    hehe, that one aspect of it completely prevents it from being autobiographical.

    I remember one live show in particular, some frat boy next to me leaned over after the first song and asked if i had some problem with the band or something, as i'd just stood there like a statue throughout it.

    the first time i saw Bob Dylan, i was doing my usual 'i'm in a room full of other people' social shutdown up until about Rainy Day Women #12 & 35. Now, its important to understand that I don't even like that song all that much. If i was making a list of my favorite works form the Dylan cannon, it would not be included. regardless, it got to me (the whole place was dancing by that point) and i started to groove a bit - so, I'm doing my geeky bobbing and weaving thing and I notice Dylan looking over at me. I did my usual eyebrow waggle that passes for me saying hello to someone from a distance, and Bob Dylan, His Holiness, did the same eyebrow waggle right back to me and laid into it on the guitar a bit more. that did it for me. that time, that one time, I actually tried to dance in public.

    The downside is, now everyone who knows me has to put up with me saying "Bob Dylan smiled at me once" every two months or so.
  14. mazekin Member

    Damn, I liked that. I could feel the beat in my Qi :) Nicely done, Mr. GGG!

    PS, when I saw the title of the thread, I got all prepared to encourage you to stay in your job, thus using reverse psychology to encourage you to quit it. Now I'm bummed...::pout:: I'm good at persuasion.
  15. Katcal I Aten't French !

    ZOMGLOL, you got an eye-brow-wiggle from BOB DYLAN??? Shut UP !

    [IMG]
  16. redneck New Member

    Kat, what in the hell does the Z stand for? I get omglol, but does the Z stand for "Zoiks" or what?

    Clay, congratulations on the eyebrow wiggle receiving. I've not gone to many concerts but there isn't a band made that can make me dance. At least not that I've found. The closest I've ever come to doing that was at the Bela Fleck and the Flecktones concert four years ago. I think the song was Boogie Mountain Hop (or Stomp can't remember which).
  17. Katcal I Aten't French !

    You know what ? I have no idea...

    Actually, I just looked it up, and the Z doesn't mean a thing, at least I have learnt one thing about lolculture today, I now feel like my life has a meaning.

    Urban Dictionary: zomg
  18. Garner Great God and Founding Father

    Good lord, you mean there are still people on this earth I haven't bored to death with my story about bob dylan smiling at me! Well, it all started this time we were at a dylan concert...
  19. Maljonic Administrator

    I hate that second entry where someone has written "oh my gosh's variant." instead of God, it's a pet peeve of mine where people are too bashful about using the right word in context, because it's a swear word or whatever, and actually distort the meaning for future readers - polluting the minds of millions with there non-swearing nicenessness...
  20. Katcal I Aten't French !

    Yeah, that kind of annoyed me too. But then I always replace it with "Oh my Garner" anyway so I no longer notice all that much.
  21. randywine Member

    At least that's better than 'Oh My Gates' for those who worship the great god of Microshaft.
  22. TamyraMcG Active Member

    This just made me laugh, and I really needed one of those. Garner, you are permitted to bore as many people as you want to just because it is Dylan, my only brush with celebrity was seeing the guy who does the voice of Patrick leaving an office building at Universal studios (you do know Patrick don't you?, he's Spongebob's friend).
  23. Garner Great God and Founding Father

    I am woefully ignorant about most things spongebob. I did see part of an episode once, seemed like good Kids TV from what I could tell.

    I've had other near misses with celebrities - once litterally. I was running around the corner in downtown Athens, Georgia, and Michael Stipe (plus maybe Peter Buck, I didn't actually get a good enough look to be sure) was coming around the other way, and I nearly plowed into him. I said sorry and he nodded at me.

    When I was a small child, maybe 6 or so, my dad was showing me around the museum in the state capitol, and we saw Ralph Abernathy enter the building. Dad explained that Mr Abernathy was a civil rights champion, and a colleague of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, so I went over to ask if I could shake his hand. He smiled at me and my parents and we shook hands.

    Some years later, I heard on the news that he was arrested for trying to smuggle a quantity of marijuana into the states from Jamaica. I hope he got let off on a suspended sentence :)
  24. TamyraMcG Active Member

    I wish they would just legalize that stuff, the war on drugs seems to be lost to me. It seems to be an unreasonable response to a fairly harmelss weed most of the time.

Share This Page