To Clarify...

Here's the question posed to me, regarding my survey about love:

Do you feel our culture idolizes LUV and ignores reality OR did you mean that common love, i.e.: awareness of our interdependent existence, is being weakened by sex and violence in the media?

(That's Tim Weld who asked me that, by the way)

I initially wrote that I think we've got love all wrong because I just had this really bad feeling about it, and the time that feeling hit me coincided with me writing my last blog entry. Like, I was mentally processing all of the things that people have said to me about love lately, and was coming up short of a satisfying conclusion. Which would lead me to say, have we got it all wrong? Or to use Tim's vocabulary, is something getting in the way of our experience of common love (awareness of our interdependent existence)? I would say that our culture (our media, among other things) idolizes some sort of mishmash of love with other emotions or states, like attachment or commitment or sex, but is that the only problem here? I guess, Tim that I'm asking both of your questions, in an effort to get at the root of a problem that I can't articulate clearly. If that makes your response any easier.

I've been wanting to go to bed earlier and earlier the longer I'm home. I started out on a roll, capable of working all day and then doing errands and minor jobs until it was time for bed. Now, it takes me a couple of days to get anything done, if I do it at all. Because, after you work, well, you've got to eat and then shower and then eat some more and then you got an hour or two and then you start really getting tired. This is that routine I mentioned. On the one hand, I appreciate the slowing effect it has on life, but on the other, it can be disturbing to eat up a day so proficiently. Next week I paint, so I won't be so strained at the end of the day.
I don't have any new sweet music links, as I alluded that I would downstairs on this page. My computer in this house is really noisy! I can't record on it. Fortunately, Anna comes into town in three days (!) with her totally sweet computer, which I will use. That last track that I put up was recorded in New York City on my brother Ryan's laptop. It turns out that all you need is a powerbook, and everything is dandy.
The guitar I'm building is started. If anybody has the blueprints for a Fender Telecaster (69 thinline), I'd appreciate it. Sweet. I'll post pictures of the progress of that. Fascinating.
Does it ever occur to anybody out there that maybe we've got this love thing all wrong as a culture? Let me know. I'm doing a survey.

New Web Space

Life in Potsdam continues as normal. Going to the coffee house to hear acoustic guitarists sing old pop songs. Practicing my own guitar, in preparation to do the same. Working a lot. Baking bread. Making waffles. It seems like when you set up a routine, the whole point is to *not* have anything too untoward come up in your path. The problem with leading an easy (or maybe straightforward would be a better word) life is that you don't have anything about which to complain. Or, put another way, having few problems doesn't force you to think about solutions. All this is an obtuse way of saying that I've got nothing to say.
I have been at work, though! I found a new web space for my photo page. Which means that I'll be able to post more photos and such, in addition to meaning that all of my old photos that were up on the internet previously are now accessible. I still need to update the main page, though. It's http://www.freewebtown.com/donaldlatif for those of you who didn't catch that link up above. Go check it out, and confirm that it's just like you remembered it! I'm excited.
The new album's almost done. I have a feeling that my next post will have a sweet link to a whole bunch more music by me.

Back in Potsdam

I finally made it back to my hometown. The ol' permanent residence. Among the changes here: there's a new wine bar downtown. The CD store/cafe has become the CD store AND the cafe. I have an apartment in a house across the yard instead of my old bedroom. Other than that, it's pretty much like I left it. That's one of the things to love about this place. It's so calm and detached and changeless. Although Walmart's coming to steal it all away from us. People here as everywhere are all to willing to throw their money away and out of the county/state on cheap shit that they don't need or that will break. But enough about that.
I won that CosmoGIRL contest. Thanks for voting for me, for those of you who did. Now I need to win a big one, that happens in May. So come May, go out to CosmoGIRL's Web Site and vote for me every day (or as much as you can if it's more than that) until I win a thousand bucks. Come on, people. It's going to be awesome. Let's give Macalester College a name in the world of people who are socially acceptable. I'm in it for the college, really.
Presently, I'm working construction, which is great in that it's satisfying, meaningful work. It's just that you're always sore and tired, and usually hungry. But it's good, in the way an office job will never really be.
It's time to go eat lots of food.