Aug 15
Twitter Updates for 2008-08-15
- @kidelle I have no response to that… #
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Aug 15
Terminal Bar
I spoke too soon. I’ll be playing the Terminal Bar show after all. Keep your calendars open for September 27th…
Filed by ryan on August 15th, 2008 under Personal Journal Entries || No comments ||
Aug 14
Twitter Updates for 2008-08-14
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Aug 14
Connections
I had intended today to post a synopsis of a really interesting discussion I’ve been involved in on a UU Theology mailing list about the historicity of Jesus. I still may do that, but there is something more pressing I want to try to write about even though the attempt will be something of a challenge for me.
It’s about me. And it’s about my relationship to you, whoever you are, and it’s about what is happening here, on this blog, and out there, in our lives.
I read a quote yesterday that said something to the effect of “low self-esteem, also known as ambition” and it caused me to sit and stare at the page for a couple of minutes. I’ve always been an ambitious person and I’ve never considered myself to be somebody with low self-esteem. And yet, there was something in that sentence that hit me like a ton of bricks. What is ambition if not the desire to impress upon the people around you that you’re worth a damn? Recently it has become to be clear to me that a lot of my problems in my life, historically, have stemmed from a low opinion of myself, or, more accurately, a firmly held belief that others have a low opinion of me.
I’ve never felt I was worthless, uninteresting, or any of that, but I have long had the feeling that others felt that way about me. This, my wife is fond of reminding me, is completely false. People genuinely care about me, some respect me, some even look up to me, and I know this intellectually, but on some emotional level I still feel like the kid who gets picked last for the team, the guy that people tolerate more than they accept and I have felt that way for nearly my entire life.
Among my early childhood memories is a time when my brother Reed as a toddler was upset over not being allowed to join in to an activity the “big kids” were partaking in. I asked my mom why Reed was crying and she said it was because he felt “left out” of what was going on. A day or two later I was playing in my room and suddenly became aware of the fact that nobody else was in there with me. I went out to see where everybody was and found the whole family, mom, dad, Rhett and Reed, in the living room. They weren’t doing anything in particular, but I started sobbing uncontrollably. My mom asked me what was wrong and I said, “I feel left out”.
When I told this to my therapist I said, “I have no idea why I suddenly started crying then” and he said, “it’s because it’s how you already felt and your mom just gave you a name for it”. And he was right. He was absolutely right.
Now, I’m not writing this because I want to gain any sympathy or to have a pity party for myself. The goal is quite different. I want to acknowledge this situation, this emotional state, this component of my life, and look at where it’s gotten me and how I can approach things differently.
I’m aware that I cannot simply re-write my childhood. I can’t erase the fact that I always felt like an outcast in my own family, like the black sheep. I can’t erase the fact that I currently am an outcast, making a reality what I’ve always felt. I can’t erase being picked on and laughed at and made fun of in middle school for being a “nerd” (a word that used to be intensely painful for me) and I can’t change the fact that I went from being a little kid who was so emotionally sensitive that he cried his eyes out for days after watching “Puff the Magic Dragon” to being a teenager who was often compared to a Vulcan for being so dispassionate and logical.
What I can do is be realistic about it. See how it shapes my actions in my life today. See how those feelings shape my reactions to situations. What does that look like?
God this is hard to write about. I have started this paragraph a dozen times and erased them all. What does that look like? One of the difficulties here is figuring out how to write about this topic without it either seeming as if I’m whining or seeming as if I’m being ridiculously hard on myself.
OK. So, I think maybe a good way to approach this is to talk about something that happened recently, my on-again-off-again upcoming musical performance at the Terminal Bar. I love playing live music. It is one of the most enjoyable things I ever do. To be on-stage singing is just a rush not unlike going on a roller coaster or having sex. It’s thrilling, although I’m the first person to admit that I don’t know exactly why. I just know I like the thrill of it. So, why is it that I so rarely perform? That gets into this whole disconnection thing. You see, music is something that I’ve always had, something that has always been a part of my life and the one area in which I have never had to fight for acceptance. I played with Rhett and he always loved and accepted what I did, always contributed to it himself and made it his own. I was never afraid to share my music with him, never worried that he would be disinterested or that he wouldn’t like it. When I lost that connection, that partner, I started casting around for other musicians to share my love of music with and I found that for the most part they were not easily found. Despite myself, despite knowing that this was how it would be until enough time and circumstance had passed that I would be able to meet new people, I was disheartened and the part of me that felt like an outcast, like a reject, piped up to tell me that the reason I wasn’t finding new people to play with was that people just weren’t interested in me. They just didn’t like me or they didn’t have the same interests, or whatever.
So I’d sit there, well aware that I needed patience and persistence and time to get involved here in this new world while having to battle this internal voice telling me, “people think you’re just a nerd, people just aren’t interested because they can’t see the real you, they’re not worth it, you should just give up the effort and go it alone”. That is how it usually winds up. I work for something, I put myself out there, then when I don’t get the immediate reaction of acceptance that I’m looking for, the reaction I used to get from Rhett, I find myself wanting to cut my losses and get out of Dodge. I decide, far too quickly, that people aren’t worth risking the crappy feeling I get. I agreed to play this gig, I wanted to play it, and I tried to string together a band to play it but I was trying too hard. It didn’t just happen naturally, I was forcing it. When things didn’t work, I took it personally, felt that I couldn’t rely on other people, that I should just go it alone. It’s a common pattern in my life.
It’s also one I have to learn to change. I must. My wife was kind enough to point out to me that my hypersensitivity to not feeling “included” leads me to cut other people off, to do precisely what I am always so afraid of people doing to me. If I don’t get the immediate love and acceptance I am looking for from people then I reject whatever they are offering instead of taking the time to adjust and follow things. If I want people to care about my life, I need to get involved in their lives. This is so painfully obvious that it’s hard to believe it had to be pointed out to me, but I learned to form social connections in a closed system, a world in which everybody you met was already your “brother” or “sister”. My parents didn’t really ever treat me with the love and acceptance I needed, so I got it from my brother and from within the congregation, places where I could take it for granted, where I didn’t have to work much or give much of myself. Those old rules, however, don’t apply any more. My brother is dead and my religion is too. I have to adapt if I ever want to truly connect with the new people in my life. And I can’t make that adaptation until I can understand why I cut people off, why I keep myself aloof and why I respond in such a hypersensitive manner when they fail to read my mind.
It may be that I’ve always felt like a black sheep. It may be that I’ve always assumed that others aren’t particularly interested in the geek boy with the guitar. It may be that there has never in my life been a time when I have been more sensitive, more unsure of myself and more of an actual outcast than I have been since that fateful day 4 years ago when I lost my faith. But learning to be patient, to accept people for who they are, to give them a realistic chance of accepting me (and not blaming them or myself if they don’t), this is something I can and will learn to do. I have a choice. I don’t have to be a flake or a drama queen or feel all this pain and anguish always feeling “left out” of everything, desperately hoping somebody will pick me for their team. I can learn to join the human race, to have a thicker skin, and to be patient. I need to.
Filed by ryan on August 14th, 2008 under Personal Journal Entries || 5 comments ||
Aug 14
Helium and Celluloid
Famous Balloon Movies - 18 Chapter Collection
Filed by ryan on August 14th, 2008 under Personal Journal Entries || No comments ||
Aug 13
Twitter Updates for 2008-08-13
- Upcoming Ryan Sutter gigs (Acadia-8/28, Terminal Bar -9/27) canceled due to inability to get commitments to play from band members. Sorry. #
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Aug 13
Upcoming Gigs Canceled
Hate to do this to everybody, but the gigs I had scheduled for August 28th @ Acadia and September 27th @ Terminal Bar are both being canceled by yours truly due to an inability to put a band together. I’ve had three drummers who have committed and then uncommitted and without a drummer, I can’t put a band together so, I won’t be playing. Sorry.
Filed by ryan on August 13th, 2008 under Personal Journal Entries || 3 comments ||
Aug 11
Twitter Updates for 2008-08-11
- Will my mom return from Alaska? Who knows? #
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Aug 8
Twitter Updates for 2008-08-08
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Aug 8
Potluck
Yesterday I started the following blog entry…
Some f***ing motherf***er made caffeinated coffee in the decaf pot yesterday at work. I know this because a) the coffee tasted better than usual and b) my head feels like 1000 jackbooted thugs are holding marching drills on the backs of my eyeballs. I wish I could pour scalding hot coffee over the head of whomever is responsible for hijacking the decaf pot. Hey asshole, some of us get migraines if we have have caffeine. There are THREE other pots you can use to make caffeinated coffee. One for one blend, one for another and one for double-strength. Keep that poison out of the pot marked DECAF. God…
Anyhow, seeing as how my head is killing me so badly, I can’t string two coherent thoughts together in a row right now. This means that today’s blog installment is going to be a potluck, a smorgasbord if you will. Prepare to be whelmed….
Recent Read: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - I have to admit I was nervous about reading this book. It is, after all, one notorious piece of literature. I knew that since it was written in 1955 and written by someone widely considered to be one of the great novelists of our day that it was not going to be kiddie porn, but, well, that’s sort of the reputation the book has. Be tough to write a story about sexual relationship between a 37-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl even today without people crying obscenity. The thing is though, I had seen Kubrick’s film adaptation of the book when I was going through a Kubrick phase and I had found the film to be anything but an advertisement for pedophilia. I felt that the film attempted to (as tastefully as possible) tell the story of a tragedy, the tragedy of being an adult with sexual development that has been stunted at a pubescent level and the tragedy of being a precocious, sexually adventurous “tween” and more than anything the tragedy of what happens when those two forces collide. 12 and 13 year old kids have sex. That’s a fact of life. Sure, they usually do it with other 12 and 13 year olds, granted, but it doesn’t change the fact that it happens. It’s something our culture doesn’t like to talk about, but it’s been true throughout the history of our species and is still legally accepted in many parts of the world. So, even after understanding that this book was not a celebration of pedophilia, why bother to read it?
For one thing, I had just finished reading another book by a classic Russian author about an unsavory situation, Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I think that was what finally motivated me to read Lolita. I have meant to give Nabokov a try for years and this was arguably his masterpiece. I had been impressed by Dostoevsky and it inspired me to try a more modern Russian author. Another thing was, I gotta admit, I was curious. What was all the fuss about, you know?
The book, ultimately, did not disappoint. It would have had I been looking to be turned on, but I wasn’t so it didn’t. The book was, frankly, poetry. The narrator, Humbert Humbert, is one of the most tragic figures I’ve ever read. A self-loathing, pathetic, creature who fully intends to keep his pedophile ways to himself, to admire Lolita from afar, until she seduces him, pretty much for fun, she having already lost her virginity at 12 at summer camp. Lest you think that Nabokov is in some way trying to portray H.H. as the victim, however, it is what follows that is the most heartbreaking. The gradual growing up of Lolita into an adult and the flowering of resentment towards Humbert while Humbert becomes more and more obsessed with her and his life unravels. As a novel, as a love story, and as an examination of this complex topic, this book has the power to disgust, to intrigue and to break your heart for both Humbert and Lolita. It’s a great novel and it’s sad that it’s pretty much consigned to being thought of as “dirty” in the eyes of many because it tells such an unusual and discomfiting story.
Brett Favre Traded to the New York Jets: OK, this is just wrong. I don’t understand what happened here. Brett wanted to come back into the league, the Packers held his contract. They didn’t want him back so he wanted to go to Minnesota. They couldn’t have that, but really had no leverage to stop him if he simply maintained his position. Eventually they had to give into his demands, put him on the field, or cut him (in which case he could sign with MN). Instead he caved in, decided he didn’t want to be a “disruption” and went to the Jets. The frakking Jets. The 4-12 Jets. Instead of maybe winning a Superbowl with Adrian Peterson, Jared Allen, Bernard Berrian, The Williams Wall, Chester Taylor, Steve Hutchinson, Matt Birk, Darren Sharper, a Vikings team that is strong at every position except QB, he’s going to struggle to take a pathetic franchise to a first-round wildcard playoff loss IF he’s lucky. With that line he’ll probably get injured. What a lousy way for a legend to end his career. Sad sad sad for football and stupid stupid stupid of Favre. He held all the cards and he let Thompson and McCarthy get their way. Un-fucking-believable.
iPhone - So I’m getting an iPhone. I’ve been contemplating it since the thing was introduced but now it’s finally happening. Whenever one is in stock, that is.
My major concern is whether or not the iPhone will be a realistic replacement for my iPod Classic 160GB, Palm Tungsten C and Motorola SLVR, the collection of devices I carry with me most days. There are trade-offs, that’s for sure.
The iPhone vs. the iPod Classic: The iPhone wins in terms of screen size and user-interface, but falls woefully short in the area of storage space. My iPod has literally 20X the storage of the iPhone I’m getting (the 8GB model). However, I can’t listen to all 60GB of my music collection in one day now, can I? So, I’ve decided to start using the iPhone as my listening device and my iPod as my backup of songs to listen to. I have some software called Floola that lets me arbitrarily take music on and off of the two devices so I should be able to load up the iPhone with 8GB or so of tunes/podcasts/movies/etc every few days and keep myself happy. The iPod will still accompany me on my daily routines but will be relegated to living in the backpack with the laptop.
The iPhone vs. the Palm: This is really not a fair comparison on the face of it. I mean, after all, the Tungsten is an aging little handheld PDA with a fairly primitive set of primitive apps and a tiny chiclet keyboard. I got it for $35 at an antique store, seriously. I use it primarily as an eBook reader, to play solitaire, for Internet access when my laptop isn’t around or would be inconvenient (the Palm has WiFi), and as a word processor. I wrote almost my entire NaNoWriMo novel last year on the Palm. For this purpose, as a word processor, it kicks the iPhone’s butt. For one, the Palm has a removable SD memory card and a Microsoft Word-compatible word processor. This means I can work on a file, save it, eject the card, put it in the card reader connected to another computer and continue working on the file. I do this all the time. The tiny keyboard is no biggie either because for $7 I bought a folding keyboard with normal-size keys that fits in my pocket and snaps into the bottom of the Palm. I can reach into my pocket, pull out the Palm and the keyboard and be writing in seconds at my full-typing speed. This is not possible with the iPhone. First off, the iPhone doesn’t have a full-fledged word processor that I’m aware of and even if it did, the on-screen touch typing could never be as fast as using a real keyboard, which the iPhone does not support. That’s right. Even though it supports Bluetooth and Bluetooth keyboards are available everywhere, the iPhone doesn’t support Bluetooth keyboards. So, where word-processing is concerned the score is iPhone 0, Palm 1. Where everything else is concerned it’s more like iPhone 200, Palm 0. I may keep the Palm and relegate it to the bag along with the iPod or I may part with it. We’ll see. If I can’t get much money for it I’ll probably just keep it for it’s mad word processing skillz.
The iPhone versus the Motorola SLVR: Please. Not even close. Everything the SLVR does, the iPhone does better. SLVR works with iTunes, so does the iPhone, but faster and with cover flow. SLVR plays music and 3GP video (which looks like crap), the iPhone is a multimedia powerhouse. The SLVR has a camera phone, the iPhone’s is better. The SLVR has over-priced mind-bogglingly slow Internet. The iPhone has 3G. The SLVR is a bit smaller, and has a removable MicroSD card slot which, for some reason only works right with cards up to 512MB in size. So, in theory, if you had your music stored on 16 MicroSD cards you could match the capacity of the iPhone 8GB and even surpass it by buying more cards. Tiny cards the size of a fingernail that you could lose so easily that it’s scary. I’ve used the hell out of my SLVR, I loved it for awhile, but this is not even close. The SLVR goes bye-bye.
The iPhone versus the iBook: Are you nuts? Of course I’m still keeping my laptop. This thing ain’t gonna replace that.
Now to move on to more blogging perpetrated today…
iPhone, Sushi and Cigars: Last night was fantastic. Got home and found that my order of cigars from Thompson had arrived. I got two 25-count boxes of Thompson Maduro box-pressed Dominican’s, as well as some Rocky Patel Olde World Reserves, Cusano 18’s, La Gloria Cubanas, Oliveros XLs, CAOs, Indios, Victor Sinclair 55’s, cedar-wrapped Arturo Fuentes, and a few other choice cigars, mostly maduros but some Connecticut wrappers. Mmmmmm… Filled both my humidors.
Then we went to the AT&T store and actually reserved an iPhone because last time we were there the staff said the direct fulfillment had been ended so that they could get some stock in the stores. Well, they called yesterday and told me that in fact it had been reinstated so I put in my order. Hopefully I’ll have an iPhone by this time next week.
To top it off, Es and I went out for sushi at Osaka. I went nuts and got every piece of nigiri that I like: tuna, salmon, scallop, shrimp, sweet shrimp, smoked salmon, salmon roe, smoked eel, yellowtail, octopus, mackerel, king crab, squid, and surf clam, as well as squid ginger yaki for an appetizer. Oh. So. Good.
This morning I learned that my appearance on the MN Atheist’s “Atheist Talk” show is now online.
Life is good.
Filed by ryan on August 8th, 2008 under Personal Journal Entries || 8 comments ||
