Intelligence carries with it a burden. It's hardly an original thought, but it's something into which I've run lately. Intelligence. When you're able to see a bigger picture, you're burdened by having to consider it in all of your actions. If only you could see each issue as only having two sides, or better yet, one side. If only everything had one finite answer! If only a sort of universal truth were achievable for any single question! But alas, it is not to be so, and so those who can fathom that an issue might not be resolved, that terrorism isn't the fault of all non-Americans, whose origin is to be determined by those in power at any given point in time, that there are several ways of mitigating natural disaster, that there is no pro-life versus pro-choice. It's all much more subtle than that. Of course. I'm preaching to the choir.
Sensitivity makes you pay a price. I'm sensitive to other people. I think about other people driving on the road, how well they're doing, making up scenarios for what might be causing them to drive the way they drive. I think about other people on the subway. I can make headaches go away, I can absorb that pain. But I can't let go of it. I'm too sensitive, not tough enough, and it takes a toll. I have to learn now how not to care about everybody, how to not absorb the negative energy of others, for my own sake.
Emotional depth makes you pay a price. You can spend your whole life pulling people in, needing this and needing that from others, and it can work for you pretty well, with only the occasional heartbreak, for which we have many outlets in this society. But try sometime *not* holding on to people. Try sometime just loving without expecting anything in return. You can find that you had a lot of assumptions that don't hold true. Even if you know it's the right way to act, you can feel like you're taken advantage of, because being selfish and needy is so much easier and so much more frequently done.
Isn't it ironic that doing the right thing just paves the way for those doing wrong to do worse? You can't be an honest politician, because the dishonest ones will smear your image or worse faster than you can say "Paul Wellstone." You can't love others freely, because those who love with strings attached will move in some day and want to take all of that love away from you, keep it for themselves. You can't address problems with multiple solutions in mind, because those who see in black and white will be more present in the debate with their extreme views. It's hard to tread fine lines. We're all treading such fine lines.

Bikes in Boston

Did I mention that I do my commute on a bike? At least, right now. As long as I can, that's the plan. it's faster and cheaper than the bus (well, maybe not actually that much cheaper, with bike maintenance included). In fact, provided that there's not a huge pile of snow around, everywhere in Boston is faster to get to by bike. Faster than the "T" (Metro). Faster than a car. Ever heard of Boston drivers? Massholes? Ringing any bells? So I'm really psyched about getting a bike.
Today I managed to get a nail embedded fully into my back tire on the ride home. Fortunately, I got the flat next to the one bike shop on the eleven-mile ride home. So I just walked in, and they say "Nice bike. Wanna borrow some tools and buy a tire and fix that flat?" Sweet. I was back on the road in 15 minutes. Which is nice, because the alternative is to wait for the bus, and go home dejected that my biking master plan has failed. Instead I just strolled in 15 minutes "late" with a story.
This bike I'm riding used to have a garage-door opener on it, back when it was at the apex of suburban bike glory.

Musicians have a certain power to insinuate themselves into your life. You could meet a guitarist, say, who happens to know a song that you love. And then he plays it for you, and you're hooked. That song has taken on new meaning for you. That song is now firmly attached to whatever it is he meant when he played it for you. Was he looking you in the eyes? How did that make you feel? You remember that every time you hear that song. Musicians have a power, when we mean to.
Sometimes you play a song, and you really see it when you're singing and you really mean it when you're playing. And sometimes you're just going through the motions. You can tell when a musician means it, because that's when you're paying attention. When they don't mean it, that's when you're sipping your drink, looking for somebody interesting to talk to.
When you write a song for somebody, you have that same power as the cover song, but with greater potential. That power to do harm or good. But you only have that power if the subject knows that the song is about them. It's amazing how a song that you thought was so personal as to be non-applicable to any new situation can be taken out of context.
I guess there should be a point to all of this. Nope. No point. Just an observation. Point withheld.

people

i've been thinking about holding people close. a lot of people in my life, myself included, have gone through some sort of dramatic personal life change lately, and it's typically got a lot to do with breaking up with other people. everybody's doing it. these things come in waves (why) they come in waves is a whole other blog entry).
i've been told that a lot of hurt in life comes from holding people too close. you hold people too close to you, and it inevitably hurts you during those times when they lean away from you. and everybody's got their threshold for how far that leaning away is. that's beside the point. the point is, the closer you hold on to a person, try to draw them into your life, the greater your potential to be upset if change occurs and they don't want to be with you anymore.
there's one thought. everything changes. no two people are ever going to end up the way they started. you have to deal with change throughout any relationship. change happens everywhere in life, which is ironic considering the human tendency to try to organize the inherent entropy of the universe. even energy tends toward randomness. how can you fight with energy?
but there's the other side of the coin. commitment. there comes a time with certain people where you can't afford to or simply don't want to have them be some floaty presence in your life anymore. you want them to be a big presence. in some cases, the only or the biggest big presence in your life. you want, in short, to draw them in.
but commitment and attachment aren't necessarily the same thing. you can be committed to somebody, but not require them to be in your presence, or require that they be so thorougly thinking about you 100% of the time. it's something that maybe we all know, certainly something that i know, but something that you constantly need to remind yourself is the case. because in my opinion, to have a successful commitment, you need to be exclusive, but not overly attached. it's a fine line to tread. a fine line indeed. at some point, you have to acknowledge that things will change between the two of you. energy tends that way. if nothing else, your perception of the situation will change as time goes on. little things will start to nag you, or big picture things will come to light and make you all the more wondrous at who you've got in your life.
the answer, then, is to create an environment where change is acceptable, and you change with those people who are close to you. you don't abandon them when you're tired, and you don't ignore them if they're trying to tell you something, verbal or otherwise. not if you're committed. but you don't close yourself off to change either. some of that change is going to be intentional, and some of it is going to be gradual and subliminal. when you're committed, you're going to end up in a new place from where you started. and that's what's beautiful about commitment: you get to experience your whole life and know that someone's going to be there to see it with you.
this makes less sense in every paragraph. maybe some other time.

Road Trip

So I talked about moving in to Boston. Well, the latest turn in the move-in was that last week (or was it two weeks ago?), I was going to stop by Potsdam for a weekend, grab a bit of stuff and come back down to Boston. Then my mom was like, "why not stay longer and drive your stuff home in my car?" I was like "Sure." Then my dad went "Why not grab some of the stuff for your apartment that I've got in Ottawa?" I was all, "All right." Then I remembered that I was supposed to go to a wedding in Milwaukee a day or so after I was supposed to come back to Boston. So I asked mom, "Mom, how's about I take your car to Boston, then drive it to Milwaukee and then back to Potsdam?" She was totally down.
I just got back from that road trip. Boston to Potsdam in the car with Danielle Cornett, sister Renee, and Becca D., all high school friends who happened to be going back home from Boston. Hang out in Potsdam. Get myself to Ottawa. Hang out with dad. Drive stuff down to Potsdam in dad's car. Drive all of my stuff to Boston in mom's car. Turn around the next morning and head toward Milwaukee. Stop at a friend's in Columbus. Wedding in Milwaukee. Back to Mansfield, Ohio. Then to Poughkeepsie, NY for a few days. Drive up to Ottawa, Canada, and then to Potsdam. Then take a bus back to Boston. I just got back.
So, it's been a relaxing lil' break for me. There are good pictures of it all, but I didn't take them, so you'll have to wait for them to show up at alexmarvar.com or something before you can see them. Aw, heck, maybe I'll post a couple... Later.
Congratulations to Kjerstin and Adam on their beautiful wedding, by the way. Love you guys.

The Neighborhood

I live in Jamaica Plain, Boston. That could mean one of a million things. That could mean that I live in a mansion on a hill surrounded by trees or next to a pond. That could mean that I live in a Dominican/Cuban semi-ghetto. That could mean that I live in a hippy crunchy organic vegan co-op. Walking around here is a study in neighborhoods within neighborhoods, and just how small the boundaries between one and the next can be.
Today, I walked over to Franklin Park, which is about half a kilometer away from here. I leave my house, which is in a predominantly Spanish-speaking, not-too-wealthy little sub-section. Cross over Washington Street onto a street called Peter Parley, and the houses get big and ornate, full of white folks. Across a street and you're in a different world. The streets are narrow and windy, and there are more trees. Everything is more closed in. Then I get to Franklin Park, which is sketchily maintained at best. But it's gigantic. So gigantic, in fact, that I almost missed the fact that there's a giant fairground set up in it, minutes from my house. A big big fairground. With Ferris wheels and booths and a stage and everything. The rest of the park is largely wooded, with these boulders and piles of stones everywhere. It's kind of fascinating. But then you turn around and it's the same thing in reverse.
I live in a house of music. The landlords are in a band called Lovewhip (which has a website you can google in your spare time). They have a recording studio in the basement. My roommate goes to the NEC, but I think I'm treading on familiar ground here. I think I just wrote about this. I'll skip it for now.
More neighborhood. There's a subway stop minutes from my house, and another just a few more minutes in the other direction. Downtown Jamaica Plain is about fifteen minutes' walk from here. I get wireless internet. I found a desk on the front sidewalk. Life is good.

Apartment Update

I walked home this evening, and found that the upstairs neighbor is moving out, and left his desk that is perfect for my apartment out on the sidewalk right in front of the house. So now I've got a perfect desk, and all I had to do was walk it in from the sidewalk. That's totally bitchin', if I do say so myself. I'm going to try to get my camera working and possibly take some pictures right now!

Boston, Baby!

I moved in to my apartment in Boston on Sunday. Yes! It's really great. It's within walking distance of two metro stops; depending on whether I want to go downtown or not, I can choose one or the other. Sweet. It's a three-story house, I'm on the first floor with Tim from Macalester, who plays trombone and upright bass and goes to the NEC (New England Conservatory). The second story is more musicians, who are moving out soon I understand, and the third floor is the landlord, who's also a musician in a band called Lovewhip. It's funny music. They have a recording studio in the basement. This is great.
I still haven't really moved in. I have nothing but a suitcase full of clothes, some books, and a guitar amp. It's daunting. I suppose I'll get my digital camera up and running and then post some pictures on my web page.
Oh yeah! I changed the web page, also. If you want to download the latest album, go to latiflearned.com. If you want to go to my exceedingly outdated pictures site, go to Opus 1. If you want to see a page I made for a friend, that includes a lot of pictures of me, head over to alexmarvar.com.

latiflearned.com

My web page is now at a (more or less) permanent site. Head over to latiflearned.com to see my (more or less out of date) web page that's not a blog. Sweet. I swear that there will be more development on this in the coming months. Eventually, it'll have my music and not be at all about me, personally. but more about my invented personality Latif Learned who plays guitar and sings.
I'm moving to Boston in a few days. Maybe just maybe I'll take pictures and then put them up on my latiflearned.com. Word.

I Showed Up Again on the Web

Explo put me on the website again. Also, I'm told that if you Google image Search me that I actually show up, thanks to CosmoGIRL! Thanks CosmoGIRL!, for making my web presence that much stronger. The front page of an image search! Sweet.
In other news, New Haven is hot as hell. Today is the first time in three weeks that it's been below 90 and not like a billion percent humidity. Darn! I like the heat. Although it limits your wardrobe options. Survival first, looks second. Ummmm... That's all.

Def Leppard

The one-armed drummer from Def Leppard is going to be wearing a t-shirt designed by my brother Ryan in the next issue of Spin Magazine. It was originally going to be somebody in Death Cab for Cutie, but now it's Def Leppard. But if you're cockney, the first word of each band is pronounced the same way. I never thought in a million years that I would be in any way, even the most periphally, connected to the one-armed drummer from Def Leppard. This is like a vicarious dream come true for me. Amazing!
Go see Ryan's T-Shirt Designs. Check back at this site in a couple of weeks. It'll be more complete then. You might even be able to buy a t-shirt on it then.

Go check this out.
What a crazy fun summer!

Summer

It's summer. I'm in New Haven again. The problem with sporadically blogging is getting back into the swing of it. What do you say? Does anybody even read this anymore? Probably not. No problem.
I'm at Exploration Summer Programs again this summer, working as the computer guy again. This is good. So good, in fact, that I'm going to be working for them full-time starting in September. Right now I'm just one of the summer employees. So that means move to Boston (Jamaica Plain, of course), have a salary and health insurance once again, pay off some of that impending college debt, put money toward retirement. The plan is to move in to a house full of musicians in a neighborhood full of musicians with musicians and record more albums and generally be a better musician in my non-computer-guy time. Then I want to bike across the country. Interested? In two or three years? Give me a call. Or email.
I got a new laptop. This is a real boon for me, because it's the first time since early in the France experience that I've been able to keep all my thoughts/music/data in one place, which means that things like blogging and recording music and taking photos and what-have-you are much easier. Its keyboard lights up in the dark. It makes me happy.
So yes, Boston. Music. Computers. What you would have guessed if you were guessing, basically.

Update

I've added translation features to the blog. This is basically the funniest thing ever. Check the sidebar.

Minnesota, Chicago, Whatever

I'm in Minnesota now. You know, hanging out with Anna, seeing all of my newly dumbfounded recent-grad friends, in addition to the old-school graduates who've been dumbfounded for a year or two now. I'm gradually re-accumulating my stuff, so that I can put it all in one place for once in my life. I found my classical guitar and all of my cool music books here in a closet. Sweet. Minnesota is nice, in the way it's always been. The trick is not to be fooled when you visit during the warm months into thinking that the climate is livable. Because it's not. It's the arctic circle.
There's a radio station here in the Twin Cities that is rockin'. It's an NPR station, but it plays cool and new, generally hip (if not often rockin' to the max) music. Go check it out, because you're wasting time anyway, and you know it. Among the recent few bands they've played (off the web site): Spoon, Sly and the Family Stone, and Thievery Corporation. That's not bad for a radio station. Plus they do a webcast. Go listen. I'm going to submit my stuff once I've got it in totally awesome CD format for them to sufficiently digest.
By the way, stop and ask yourself, "Self, am I sufficiently pimping Donald's CD to my family and friends?" If the answer is no, your horoscope will start telling you bad things. It's written in the stars, bitches.

Y'all should check out Esther's Blog. Especially if you know her. Actually, you should really only check it out if you know her, or want to know her, because it's like this one: news for people who cared before they got here. And if you don't write anything for long enough, even those people stop caring. Esther has Lyme Disease, which gives her mad street cred. And she linked my blog, so I've got to link hers. Tight, yo.

I'm going to Minnesota tomorrow. This is part of a larger trend of not being able to spend any significant hunk of time in one place, uninterrupted. I haven't been in Potsdam for longer than a week at a time, really, without having to do something like drive to Montreal/Ottawa/Toronto/Boston/Rwanda. It's not like I want to complain about it, because really it's cool that I get to do things like hang out in exotic Canadian cities, but it kind of blocks my flow, you know? Like, throws a wrench in the gears of my flow. Plugs the pipe of my flow. Thumbs its nose at my flow. That kind of thing.

I swear that one of these days I'm going to put up pictures of the guitar I'm building. Probably when it's done. My digital camera pisses me off; this probably has something to do with why I don't use it very often. You have to hold it funny and tell it you love it just to make it take a picture. And it has to like the way you framed the shot, or it turns out sepia. Fucking sepia. Gross.

Minnesota, here I come!

Some News

I'm now employed as a real-time person. Well, I will be in September, anyway. So it's off to Boston, I suppose. In other financial news, I'm back up on CosmoGIRL.com because apparently I'm good-looking and I stand to win a thousand bucks for it. You should really go and check it out. Because Anna also wins a thousand bucks if I win. That's two thousand dollars between us, all because you clicked your mouse (once a week until I win). And let's face it, if you're here and reading this, you're procrastinating anyway. Go and make me a winner!
There's something about seing two big burly truckers lounging in a pit stop on highway 401, eating burgers, and speaking French. Ah, Canada.

Lots of Time

I just realized, as I wrote the title of this post, that some people write "lot's" when they mean "lots," and that this has always bothered me.
But I digress...
It's been a while since I last wrote, I suppose. This isn't to say that I haven't been busy. Because I have. I've been building a guitar, for instance. This is like the most exciting thing ever, the concept of having something so complex and personal, and having made it myself. You always develop this rapport (pronounced rap-poor) with your guitars, and it seems like if you make the guitar yourself, you've already got your best friend there with you when you play. Plus it takes the music-geekiness to a whole new level, which can only be good. He said, as though it were inherently true.
I'll post pictures of the progress of my new guitar in due time. Right now I've got a functional but no-frets neck and a body-shaped hunk of swamp ash (that's a type of wood, people). All in due time.
I'm also about finished with the next album. In fact, you can go download all of the tracks right now if you want. That was a link. You can click on it. And then you get my new music for free. The site is http://seasac.gotdns.com/UglyByNow/latiflearned in case you want to type it in yourself. The tracks I'm giving away for free are the unmastered mixes, which, being MP3, are of a lower quality than the CD is going to be. I'm going to make a production run of the CD after I get the cover art all squared away and the final mastering (sweetening) done. Then you all can (and will!) buy it. I'll make a web page for that to make it easy on you. Independent musicians. It's more effort, but it's worth it.
Other news in my life: I'm singing (tenor) in a church choir. I fixed my bike. I bake like 6 loaves of bread a week. I work construction all day every day and it's tiring. I'm learning how to play pieces by Heitor Villa-Lobos, the Brazillian guitar composer genius. I recommend his stuff.
I'll write more frequently now. I'm in the swing of things. And it occurred to me today that I've been neglecting my friends since I got home. I'm on it.

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.

I'm in Toronto. It's 12:30 AM. I wish that I could say that I'm doing something super-edifying, like reading poetry or writing songs. But I'm not. Not really. I'm in the final stretch of this funny online competition where I'm voted hot or not by teenage girls (see last post). Fabulous. My competitor (his name is Dawson. I mean, come on) cheats, but I've got a lot of good friends watching out for me. I'm still in the running.
I put up a new track for you all to listen to. I've got an album shaping up here. Anybody want to do cover art?
Toronto! Once apon a time, a friend (his name is Tom) and I were trying to get from Montreal to the hamlet of Potsdam, where we reside(ed?). But starting in Montreal, all of the highway signs pointed to Toronto. "Toronto, 400 million km" and the like. Toronto... Toronto... Toronto... But no United States. It's like they don't want you to find it!
But once you're here in Toronto, it's agreeable enough. My dad has a wonderful apartment in the super-nice part of town, so I feel privelaged simply by walking out of the front door. Been spending my time taking in movies, lazing about, coolin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool and all shootin' some b-ball out by the pool. There's a spa. And a gym. Boo-ya!
Thanks for votin' in this contest, to those of you who did. Congrats to Kjerstin, who's getting married!!! The first, the trend-setter. Way to go, lovely. You guys are awesome.
And that's our show for the day. As it says on the lid of the mayonnaise jar, "Keep cool. Don't freeze."

Battle of the Boys

The States, baby! Yeah! I'm back. And, actually, I'm not techincally in the States. I'm in Canada. You know, the *other* country in America the North. It took me going through Utrecht, Amsterdam, Boston, and New York to get here. Not to mention Potsdam, which is the ol' home town, through which I passed yesterday to get to Ottawa, where I am now. I'm going to Toronto on Sunday and then back to Potsdam to work like a dog and eat like a king.
Boring! Let's see... what's not boring?
First off, big fat props to friends Theo Marks and Mintje Whose Last Name I Do Not Know and Pascale LaFountain amd Ryan Greer for letting me stay in their places along the way. Without you wonderful people I would have starved and frozen and generally been uncomfortable and tired all of last week.
I made a couple of calls to the States from the Amsterdam airport and it cost me over $100. Watch out for making credit card calls anywhere at any time. You will be violated, in a quite uncomfortable way. Fortunately for me, I just found out that it wasn't $200 (!), because apparently some of the exceedingly large charges made to my card were fraudulent, which is rockin'. But not too rockin'. I'm still hurting.
Big news! I've been entered into CosmoGIRL's (a magazine for young teen girls, naturally) Battle of the Boys contest. It's like one of those hot or not contests, where you choose between two guys and decide who's hotter. But if I win, I get $1000. So on march 28, every one of you need to go to:
http://www.cosmogirl.com/guys/battleoftheboys/competitors/0,,,00.html
and vote for me, so that I win. That would be sweet in so many ways.
Anwyay, more stories will trickle out later, as always, but I wanted to put something down now that I'm home and the internet's stable.

Today worked out pretty well. We slept until around 11:00 (which is unusual for me, almost entirely unheard-of for Anna). After a breakfast of sweet condiments (jam and nutella) on toastie breads, Anna went to the gym (she signed up there a couple of days ago to combat the eventual boredom when I leave town), and I went to get emails with the computer. I sat myself in a good spot in the sun close to home and thought "wouldn't it be great if I got the internet here?" and I checked and I did! Score. So I figured out how I'm going to get back to the States, precisely. I leave in a week.
!
A week! Crazy!
And I uploaded a couple of new songs.
It was such a beautiful day we decided that we couldn't spend it indoors. We made up some chorizo sausage-and-gouda-on -baguette sandwiches, got a bottle of wine, I grabbed my guitar, and we went to sit in the park. Some wine and sandwiches later, I pulled out my guitar and I'm strumming and singing, and this group of three people about our age come over and just sort of hang around while I'm playing. This happens often, so I payed it no mind. Then they started humming, at first softly, so that I barely noticed, then louder. I offered them some wine and we sat there and I played and they sang and we drank wine. It was so warm that I was wearing sandals, and I had to take off my overshirt.
Since then, I've been sleeping. Chili for dinner and now off to a friend's to watch a movie. Worked out pretty well for a Wednesday.

Hey, this is pretty cool.
My friend Paulo put up some of the Ugly By Now stuff on a web site called ccmixer.org, where people can trade samples. Then some other guys took samples from my guitar and put them into their own tracks. There's this one and this one. I'm so flattered right now.
Also, I'm appearing, apparently, in the June/July American edition of CosmoGIRL! See if y'all can spot me.
cheers,
Donald

If you're reading this, it means that Anna and I just got back from our (just over a) week-long trip to Brussels and Venice. We can do that, you know, because we're in Europe. And you're (most likely) in the States. So there!
I'm probably glad that I'm back on a real computer, instead of an internet cafe one. I'm probably desperately trying to record a few more tracks before I lose access to the recording setup that I've got here (somebody else's computer). I'm also probably packing and mentally preparing for my return to the States, which will happen in a couple of weeks.
We probably had a wonderful time, visiting monuments you'll not see soon and eating food to which you wish you had regular access. Things like real pommes frites and Belgian beer and real Italian food from real Italians. Aah; a place where a soda is assumed to be an Italian Soda. Just like how toast here is French toast (not really) and kisses here are implied to be French as well (I haven't done any research into the matter). Beats Freedom Kisses any day of the week. But possibly not Hershey Kisses. Especially those caramel center ones that they've got.
At any rate, it's probably good to be home, even though the trip was probably really sweet and edifying and exhilarating and such. Please write, because we're probably lonely/sick of each other after a week together with nobody else. But don't write physical letters to me, because they'll get here about the moment I reach the States. If you want to write them, send them to the Potsdam address. But now I'm really getting ahead of myself, aren't I?
-Donald 02.16.2005

-Update 02.27.2005
Yes. All of what I wrote before I left is true. I would like to add that pizza in Italy is a billion times better than pizza in any other country. The trip was really great, mostly involving walking around for twelve hours a day, pausing only for local food treats (see above). Three weeks or so left in Montpellier! So begins the crazy countdown, where time loses its relativity and all of your experiences seem like a blur. Followed by culture shock on re-entry, then eventual boredom, followed by renewed desire to leave the country again. Boy, I really have a tendency to get ahead of myself these days!
-D

Assume that there is a heaven, and assume that most decent people go there when they die, like in the movie Ghost. Say you're Demi Moore and your love for your dead boyfriend has just been validated because he re-appeared to you after killing your potential murderer and then ascended to heaven. So there you are, certain that the man you love is dead, is no longer with you, just went to heaven. Furthermore, you're pretty certain that you're going to go there, because, you know, you don't covet your neighbor's wife or eat too much or anything like that. So what do you do? How do you live the rest of your life? Alone? Because you know that if you find another lover, and he goes to heaven as well, then when you get up there, there are going to be two guys who love you and they don't know each other and then what have you got?
Therefore, heaven is either a big faceless orgy, or we're already in heaven and when you die, that's it, because it would just be too complicated otherwise. Which isn't a huge loss, because how great can heaven be if you can't have sex there unless you're married? Is the main appeal of heaven the fact that there are no demons torturing you regularly and the central air works? Because I'd take no afterlife to the prospect of that one. Basically, how could heaven be any better than life here on Earth, for better or worse? Why not act as though we're already there?
Therefore we should all have more orgies. You only get one chance.

People are just locks and keys. Some people are closed up tight and they're just waiting for the right key to open them. Some locks have just one key, and there's only one copy. Some locks can be opened by just about anything; even a paperclip or a fingernail will do the trick. Some locks can't even be locked, and sometimes this causes trouble.
There are big ornate keys with jewels and gold. And there are specialized keys with six sides that open very fancy hard-to-open locks. There are plain keys about which nobody thinks twice, but that everybody has on their chain. And there are blanks that have lots of potential, but require some changing to really work. And there are master keys that seem to magically open up all of the locks on the block.
I got a new pen today, but otherwise it's been uneventful. In honor of my new pen, the digital ink stops here and I'm off to write a letter.
-D

I was talking with an acquaintance last night, whose main line of conversation was that she misses "emo people." This is what she said. After some probing, I found that this means that she misses cliques. She misses how at the lunch table in high school, everybody sat with their own group, and intermingling was kept to a minimum because in the world outside of your lunch table there is nothing to find but ridicule and possible rejection. She misses going to concerts with everybody dressing and acting and living and fucking and caring the same way. People who are "So LA" because they're always dropping names. People who wear dreadlocks and mean it, damn it!
At first, my inclination was to slap her in the head, and vacate the premises. But seeing as how the premises was largely occupied by good friends, who would most likely be disconcerted by me whacking their flat-mate and running away screaming, I decided to take the high road, and give what she was saying some thought, in an effort to possibly prolong the inevitable slappage.
It's a funny observation she made, and it's a strange, but valid, thing to miss in France. Because here, simply by being born and raised French, you undoubtedly dosubscribe to a certain set of preconceived notions. Wine is worth caring about, as is food. Strangers are to be regarded with caution. It's important that every time you leave the house, you're dressed like the mannequins in front of the stores downtown, whether it's the haute couture look or the vintage subculture look you're sporting. Everybody takes a break at lunch, and on Sunday, everything's closed down, and this is a good thing. It's called having a culture, and it's something we're missing in the States. In order to have a culture in the States, you've got to be an "emo person." Or a jock or an artist or a bohemian or a businessman or a New Yorker or whatever. You choose it and you be it, and for the while that you are it, you subscribe to it more or less fully. And you can potentially move on, change genre, if you like. Unless you're born into another culture, like, for example, your parents are immigrants and you speak a second language at home, or perhaps something less drastic, this is your option in the States. Because we don't agree on things like schedule, food, language, religion, whatever. It's a good and bad thing, because it's by nature an ambiguous thing.
But there's no real getting around being French. With rare exception, it's a culture of people who act in a certain set of ways. Which isn't to say there's not variation, especially between regions (for example, between here and Paris). But their look is just that, a look. At the bottom of that, they're still French. And we're still American. Which means we can understand your culture, and adopt it, but we'll never really own it like you do. And perhaps it's silly to miss that superficiality, but it's something that is lacking here, so it's not outright wrong to do so. It's just a little weird.
We did both agree, however, that Icelandic music is the coolest thing ever. Basically everything that comes out of Iceland is solid gold. Check it out: Bjork, Sigur Ros, Mum, the list goes on. Their government actually funds good music. When do you think our government's going to jump on that bandwagon? Four years? However long it is, it's too long. So the moral of my story is, give me some money.

Practicing to be a jazz guitarist is hard work. Duh. Lately, I've been finding that the technique is a real bastard. I admire classical musicians, and their static licks. When you encounter a hard run in a classical piece, you can rest comforted in the knowledge that you can just practice it, thousands of times a day if necessary, until you get it right. And because you're in the classical mentality, you're never going to play it absolutely perfectly and you'll suffer a career full of guilt for not being a music-producing emotion machine and you might as well just commit suicide right now, but at least you have the discrete nature of what you play. You play the black notes on the page.
But it's different for a jazz player. You have to practice and practice, sure, but, what, exactly? You have to know your standards, yeah. That doesn't take very long, and in fact, you can play songs that you've never even heard as long as they're in your book when you're on stage, or whatever. No, you just sort of have to practice for contingencies. "What if the song I'm playing has this crazy chord in it, and there I am stuck with nothing to play? What if I want to play really fast all of a sudden, and my fingers won't let me?" You just have to be prepared, and it's frustrating. I guess this is why it's best not to practice jazz alone, if you can help it. Jazz, like all other addictive habits, is best practiced in groups, in relative moderation.
Man, I gotta get somewhere where I've got musician friends. This country is in some crazy alternate music dimension where bad house and cheesy everything else reign. Well, to be fair, one can hardly blame them for making cheesy songs. Have you heard the French language?

I'm forcing myself to write poems. Song lyrics. Because I always seem to lean toward just waiting for inspiration to strike, which is an unreliable method for being a musician. A singer/songwriter type. It works, but not, you know, all of the time. And I want to be consistent. So I'm forcing myself to write lyrics as an exercise in craft versus inspiration, Trying to put a little more concertedness in the effort, as it were. We'll see if it bears any more fruit. Or if the fruit it bears is like, little and hard and only good for making juice or pies.
But it's not like I'm going to post them here or anything. Ugh. Too exposing. I'm not as brave as some people I know. But I wouldn't need to be brave if I wrote better lyrics. Hence the exercise.
Anna and I are going to Belgium (Brussels) and Italy (Venice) in a couple of weeks. So there. Because there's this Valentine's Day thing, and then there's a certain three year anniversary on the 24th. Boo-ya. And who says February is the coldest month of the year? Well, it is pretty cold... But there's so much red going around...
Okay, I can tell when it's just a rant I'm ranting. If you have more than two sets of ellipses in your document, it's time to say: Bye.

Books I've read since getting here:

The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Le Sabotage Amoreux - Amelie Nothomb
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues - Tom Robbins
Fictions - Jorge Borges
portions of Huit Novelles and Caprices des Femmes (collections of French short stories)
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
About a Boy - Nick Hornby
31 Songs - Nick Hornby
Sanctuary - Nora Roberts
Love - Toni Morrison
In the Beginning was the Command Line - Neal Stephenson
Checkpoint - Nicholson Baker
Diary - Chuck Pahlaniuk

It was cool when Kafka wrote Metamorphosis, but now it's old hat. Being in French just makes it more confusing. Le Sabotage Amoreux is delightful, but suffers from a case of being written in French. I re-read the French version of the Robbins, and discovered that the only people who would like the book are Americans who can read French. Borges is one of the greatest writers I've read, in any language. his work is the most consistenly creative stuff I've ever seen. The two collections were uninteresting, hence me only reading portions thereof. A Confederacy of Dunces is one of the best books ever. Nick Hornby writes books like the songs he likes. Watch High Fidelity or About a Boy, and read the books like you were listening to the soundtracks of those movies. Nora Roberts writes books for lonely women, and quite bored twentysomething men are a small minority of her readers. Anything Neal Stephenson touches is gold, but you have to have a secret desire to be a ninja or an engineer, or, even better, both at once!. The Nicholson Baker book is written in a modern style that's good if you read it fast, like every snippet of conversation is extremely witty and quick. Chuck Pahlaniuk writes books that, in your mind, look like Fight Club was filmed. That's because he wrote Fight Club.
Press Return.

You can probably get away with a lot of completely unromantic things if you subscribe to one idea: the idea of true exclusive love. The idea that, off all the 6 billion people in the world, there is one, just one, who's the perfect match for you. Who if you met them, you'd drop anything and everything and spend the rest of your life together and everything would be wonderful and no problems and no arguments (unless that's what you're looking for, in which case plenty of them). Basically, this one person is the solution to every problem you've got, and you're the solution to theirs, and once you get together, like Voltron, you're an unstoppable force.
You've seen them, or at least heard about them. Couples who, at 80, still love each other like they did seven million years ago when they got married, who are still frisky and make out in public and do all of those things that people in love do. And you're convinced that they've found it, the singularity: the true exclusive love.
Well, what if it doesn't exist? I don't mean that in a bad way. What if, out of a random group of 1000 people of the appropriate sex(es), there's probably a person or two with whom you wouldn't mind spending the rest of your life? Somebody with whom you've got enough in common to make a relationship work? Doesn't it seem more likely that this is the case? And wouldn't that be amazing: look at how much better that math works in your favor: one amazing incredible outstanding generally fantastic person, or thousands of people with maybe a couple fewer adjectives in front of their noun. Or maybe not. Hmm...
But, once you've got one, you can't treat that person like they're an interchangeable part, as it were. Nope, you can't do that at all. Everybody wants to think that once you've found love, you've found the one love to end it all, and everybody wants to be treated like that one love. Because we're afraid of the limbo time between people. We're afraid of being alone, being rejected, not having somebody with whom to go to the movies or go on walks with or make out with without having to ask politely or make some slick combination of socially pre-defined moves. We're afraid of what the possibility that there are thousands if not millions of people out there that you could marry and be happy with (if you wanted to) means. We don't like to be a dot in the universe. It's one of the things that makes humans great and one of the most frustrating things in the world to deal with.
I miss eating burritos. There's not a Mexican in sight in this country. South of the border they do speak Spanish (except they call it Castellano), but their idea of a tortilla involves eggs and potatoes down there. It's sad, but we make do. On fait avec...

I have this issue with trying to make another album. In fact, it's always been my problem making music. I'll write a song, and it'll be a song that I like, but it will be totally the wrong genre for the album I'm trying to make. It'll sound more like Johnny Cash than Iron and Wine, more like Frank Zappa than The Postal Service and, well, that's just not what I'm going for sometimes. I'm trying to make music that sounds like it was written in this century. Which is hard. So I'm here accumulating a back catalogue of unrecorded songs at record speed, but the album is moving along slowly. And I'm stuck with the quandary: do I try to bend the songs into the right genre? Do I try to make them something they're not, with some trick of production, some doubled voice or synthesizer noise, some change of tempo or instrumentation? Or do I try to make several albums simultaneously, each of which having its own theme and feel? Or do I forget about it all and pursue a career fixing people's computers and making lots of money and buying lots of shit?
Part of the problem is that I've only got one path for recording. My voice, my acoustic guitar, this one microphone, this laptop. That's it. The question is how much can I do with this setup? Sometimes I feel like everything sounds the same, and other times I'm boggled by the vast array of sounds I can make even given this limited equipment. But it's another question: I could wait until I get back to the States and I've got an amplifier and more microphones and more money and start recording then, but I'd lose some temporal freshness, and my willingness and time available to do the project might be diminished. And do I really need more sounds than I've currently got? I promised myself this album would be better than the last, but does that mean I need to have fancier equipment? Or just spend more time? Or what? Not sure...
And will anybody even listen to it?
By the way, if you want to hear how it's all coming, you can go to seasac.gotdns.com and navigate over to Latif Learned. The current work is all under the section called Demos, but that's for lack of a better title, and also because I've not decided if these recordings are final or works in progress. More are being put up soon.

It's easy enough to fall out of the habit of writing regularly in this blog, or Mass Email That Never Was, or whatever you (or I) want to call it. I had this problem before when I tried to write in a personal journal. I would only write when something went wrong, so reading through it years later makes my life sound morose and mismanaged and other m words.
But then, I've got a daunting amount of information that I could theoretically write here. The problem, as they say, isn't whether or not I can write, but what to write. And I just spent a week in Asia. So, where to start? What to say?
I spent a week in Asia. As the regulars of the other blog will note, I went there to rescue my brother from a hospital. What happened was, he was vacationing in Phukhet, Thailand, which those among you who watch something other than Fox news will note is one of those spots outside of America. Specifically, it's located on the west coast of Thailand, near the gigantic earthquake (something like 8.9 on Mr. Richter's scale) that struck on December 27th. My brother was there, and he narrowly survived that, and managed to get to Bangkok, not only with his life, but with his luggage and passport and money. Miraculous.
Then, in Bangkok, he went into some sort of shock state, and it happened in public, and there was a run-in with the police, who didn't know how to handle it (language barrier, we can assume), so they threw him into a hospital. So I went, and being family, was able to sign him out. Then I went with him to Japan, and then I went back to Bangkok (having two round-trip tickets that centered on that city - one from Paris to Bangkok and back, and one from Bangkok to Fukuoka, Japan, where Gabe works and lives, and back), and then I went back to Paris. Where I discovered that the trains were on strike, and was forced to buy a plane ticket home.
So, that was nine days of my life. What should I say about it? I don't know if I have anything at all to say about it. Or, if I do, it's too jumbled up and current to make any sense right now. Some days, at the end of them you can say, "Today I did X Y and Z." Others take more days to absorb, and you have to let the things that happened in them leak out over the course of even more days. Some days are full of stimulus. Some people live entire lives of those kind of days. Near the end of their lives, they're still leaking wisdom from things that happened to them when they were younger, and they're mistaken for being exceptionally sage and wise. When, reallly, all they did was live their lives the way you're supposed to.
So, as I believe I've said before, I may have to leave this post at that, and let the story leak out anecdotally in future posts. Which is okay. It's good to be guaranteed something to talk about. It beats not writing anything at all. Or always writing sad things, and leading an m-based life.
It's good to be back.

Go to http://donaldandanna.blogspot.com for an update; no time to write the same thing twice.
-Donald

So, sitting here all day, reading old emails in a sort of attempt to start 2005 with a clear idea of just what went on in 2004, I come to a couple of realizations. Which have nothing to do with old emails. Or maybe I just came up with one. I'll keep writing, and we'll see how many come out.
First, I realized at some point that I'm in the habit of not trying at all to understand people when they speak French to me. That's not to say that I don't understand them. I just don't listen very closely. I can't seem to convince myself that it's a good idea to closely listen to somebody speaking French, even if it's to me, and I care about what they are saying.
For example, earlier today, in the street, Anna and I walked by some altercation, wherein one man was yelling at another, loudly enough to hear, and then they exchanged blows, and then one guy pulled out a knife, and then the whole thing was over. I was curious enough to watch them, and wonder what they were arguing about, but I didn't try to comprehend their words, even though I most likely could have if I'd put forth some effort, and it undoubtedly would have shed some light on the situation.
Another example: when our landlord Mr. Palate talks to me (admittedly about complicated subjects like mold and construction) I never comprehend what he's saying, even if he's directly talking to me. I end up asking Anna later what happened.
Maybe that's it: always having somebody around who really can understand French has made me lazy. Or maybe I was already lazy. Or maybe I've just become generally non-commital to people in general. The France effect.
As far as what's happening these days, I'm practing guitar and writing and recording songs, and reading books, and generally trying to enjoy myself and edify my life all on my very own, with Anna as a kind of cohort. Or, according to Robin Rich, just a hort. That's it. The super-interesting things that happen happen either in my head, or in retrospect. I've adopted a certain jaded attitude to shield me from the harsh realities of life that are surely happening to somebody else. If they happen to me, I don't realize it until later. You should all write me letters in the meantime, pending actually talking to me.
I also realized that I have developed a penchant for not making any sense at all. Definitely the France effect.

Two thousand motherfucking five! Woo!
All right, people. I hope y'all's year starting as entertainingly as mine. I personally made sure that from midnight to three o'clock Europe time, everybody on Rue de Fauborg something-or-other had a happy motherfucking New Year. It was a a blast, let me tell you. I like to think that I made the world a better place that night.
I'm trying to put my photos from things up on the web, but I'm out of space (lame!) on the server I was using, so now I have to decide whether I want to delete old photos, or try to find new web space. If anybody's got some, and wants to host my photo site, do tell!
Anyway, I'm really very much not entertaining today, but I feel, as the maintainer of a blog, it's important to put up a holiday message. I'm going to go give myself a holiday head massage.
-D

The holiday seasons are an interesting concept. Everybody who's related decides that they should all get together, back in some location that they unanimously decided to leave (by and large), and try their best to get along, sometimes for an extended period of time. Now, that's fine and good, except that in most families, this getting-along stasis was never achieved when everybody lived together. IN most famlies (that I know), everybody getting along means everybody not seeing each other regularly. Therefore, the precedent is bad. How is a family going to get along well during a holiday season when they never succesfully did during any other season when everybody was living all together? So, in the spirit of the holiday season, everybody tries and hopes that for a few days, everybody can put aside their differences and forget the past and focus on making right now a good moment. Easier said than done. It inevitably leads to dad yelling at mom over some minor incident, or sister punching brother in the arm because, like always, he's a total jerk. Therefore, the families getting together for the holidays premise is flawed. Assuming that your family is like mine.
Fortunately, we avoided the whole issue this year by all being spread to the four corners of the world. Lilith is in Oregon, mom in Potsdam, dad in Ottawa, Rebecca with me, and Gabe in Phuket, Thailand. Right now, I'm hugely worried about Gabe, because him being in Phuket, Thailand, during Christmas means that he was in Phuket, Thailand during that huge earthquake in the ocean, and that he was in Phuket, Thailand, during the huge tsunamis that destroyed much of the city (apparently). So keep Gabe in your thoughts, even if you don't know him, because he was there when it happened, and we haven't heard from him yet, and basically I'm about to have an aneurism from occupying my mind with him so much and this typing and reading the news and waiting for the time to pass so I can call my parents is the only sort of therapy available to me right now. Also, if you know anything more about it, send me an email or something. I'm going to go and try to find some internet I can steal so that I can read the news.
-Donald

PS I just got an email from Gabe. He managed to survive the first wave in Phuket, even though he was on a boat on the pier. His boat was one of the only ones that made it. He got away from Phuket by bus before the second wave struck, with his baggage and money and passport and everything. Amazing, even more so considering the horrible tragedy that befell so many other people in Asia that day. Extreme luck, for which I thank whatever force responsible. I'm going to go nap now.

Now for the real holiday message. A little bit more than the smidgen I was able to type yesterday (Christmas) while I was stealing internet from the Apple store down the street from my house on the way to the video store and having to go to the bathroom in a powerful way. I was really getting in the spirit of sharing. Specifically, I was in the spirit of Apple Computers, Inc. paying for my hugely fast internet connection for just one day. I figure that’s the least they can do to help out a poor recently powerbook-less quasi-expat. Especially on Christmas. I don’t think anybody minds.

But I digress. Which I do a lot. I also write “But I digress” a lot. There’s a pattern here. Hopefully it’s not recursive, and all future posts won’t be locked into a cycle of me digressing and then commenting on how digressive I’m being in general. That would be really boring. Not at all the high standard that this blog normally achieves.

But I digress.

Ha! I’m just kidding.

It’s the holiday season. Hard to miss it. Montpellier gets lit up, well, like a Christmas tree during the holiday season. They hang these ornate light sculpture things over ever major street in the center of town (pictures are coming, I swear), and plant Christmas trees in the stone in the Plazas and spray everything with fake snow (that, fortunately, doesn’t wash off in the rain). There are all of these booths set up downtown, where they do things like get the whole town drunk tasting different local wines for 1 Euro a person, or sell local artisanry, such as glass jewelry, olive paté, and sausages drowning in hot string cheese. Basically what you’d expect. A very high standard of entertainment and consumption. There you have it: the holiday season.

Rebecca (oldest, wisest sibling) and Tim (oldest, wisest sibling’s boyfriend) are visiting for the holiday season. This is great for everybody involved. They come from Nantucket, which is more expensive in the low season for two than Montpellier is in the holiday season for four people. So they stay in our apartment (on the futon they so graciously purchased), and we guide them around town and generally speak French for them. It works out well for every concerned party. Not that we’re concerned, mind you. But I digress.

Oh well. My hot chocolate is finished, so that means I have to close up Anna’s fancy computer and go send this post off. I hope that everybody’s holiday season is awesome. And by awesome, I mean totally sweet.

Joyeuses Fêtes!

I'm back from the computerless abyss. My options were get a new computer, or leave France. Anna, bless her soul, upon hearing this, decided that it might be a good time to get that iBook after which she's been lusting for a long while. You know, to have a nice computer and to keep the boyfriend from actually having to abandon her in France for a piece of (admittedly finicky) technology. I know, it's geeky and sad, but that's where it stands. France is great, but not so great that I could stay here and do absolutely nothing computer or music-related for four months and justify that personally or to the world at large. Voilá.
I guess that I'm going to have to catch y'all up on what's going on. Because I'm running on the assumption that you care. Because any other assumption would lead me to stop writing entirely in the blog. Duh.
Okay, so a month ago I hitchhiked to Spain. There's so much to say about that that I'm so super-daunted that I'm not going to really be able to say much, except for in random installments, as it relates to some other topic that happens to come up in my mind. Here was the itinerary: the first day, I went from Montpellier, France to San Sebastian, Spain, by way of Foix, Toulouse, some town just outside of Toulouse, Bayonne, Biarritz, St. Jean-de-Luz, and Irun. The highlight of that trip was being insulted (good-naturedly) by several drunken tri-lingual border-dwellers as they trotted me to the train station and smoked hashish and bragged about the two legs of cured ham in the back (which were admittedly quite impressive) that they'd won in a card game. Classic. Then, from San Sebastian, I (and a friend Alex Marvar) hitched to Santiago de Compostela, which is the west coast of Spain just above Portugal, by way ot Bilbao, Oviedo, Aviles, and some other random sides of highways. Much tuna fish, chocolate, tea, and peanut butter consumed. The way back was more southerly than the northernmost coast, passing just north of Madrid before heading back to San Sebastian and taking a train back to Montpellier. In all, the trip was one week, a hundred euros, and many many friends made. Send me an email, if you want to know more, in a more timely fashion than sometime indistinct within the next two months or so.
Do you follow?
Pictures on the way, but I have to set this new computer up properly, so it may be a week or so.
After Spain, I tried and failed to get a job here. Which is for the better, because it goes contrary to my visa to work. Keep an eye on my music, though, because I'll be updating that regularly. Because making music is precisely the kind of thing I should be doing here.
Then Anna and I hitchiked to Lyon, just a few days ago. You know, just because. Hitching with a girl, coincidentally, is way easier. We never waited for longer than five minutes, and got to Lyon, which is 400 km or so away, by about 4 PM. Pretty solid travelling time. Also, we got to ride in an 18-wheeler. Which is key. More on that later, too. Lyon is fucking gorgeous, and awesome to boot. By which I mean totally sweet.
Now, my sister Rebecca and her boyfriend TIm are in town for the Christmas, so we've been touring and eating and drinking. Fun.
That's the basics. I'll fill in the details in the short time to come. Gotta get the facts out of the way so I can start focusing on something more interesting. It's just the way I work. I hope that everyone is doing well and being safe and having happy holidays or whatever it is you do where you come from.
-D

Back from Spain

Hi all,
I got back from Spain around 15 hours ago, and slept for 12 of them. Shit, there's so much stuff that I could talk about that I'm probably not going to get to any of it. My head's swimming so rapidly that I can barely concentrate on writing coherent english phrases. Maybe that's because I've had to be so comprehensively trilingual recently that my brain's turned to tapioca.
Okay, for the record, hitchiking is not on the way out. You can still do it. Just don't stand on the side of an interstate. That's illegal almost everywhere, and dangerous to boot. Also, don't do it at night. But otherwise, if you've got a good face and you're clean, somebody will pick you up. There's all types of people. I managed to get myself from Montpellier, France, to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and back to San Sebastian, Pais Vasco, before I got too tired and took the train home. Go in pairs, a guy and a girl, if you can. That helps everything right along. Never solo as a woman.
My computer is broken irrevocably, expensively, and for good, I think. That means that this blog and the other will probably be a lot less complete in the time to come, either until I get a new computer, or a job, or whatever it takes to get reliable internet around here. Sorry. That sucks right now, because I have a lot to write, but I'm not willing to pay for the hours of internet cafe access that it takes to write it. Sorry. I'm really really pissed off about my really awesome computer not working, by the way.
Okay everybody. Start sending me letters or calls or something, because until further notice, my internet presence is going to be way low. Maybe it'll be a good experience for my soul. I doubt it. It'll probably just continue to piss me off.
But it'll be pissing me off in France.
love, Donald

Okay,
I'm packed. I leave tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.
-Donald

As in the other blog, it's been a while since I wrote anything. There's no real super-good reason for this, except for the fact that I probably have nothing interesting to say. Not that that's going to stop me today. Hold on tight.
Here's a bit of news: my good friend Paulo who lives in Brasil is now serving my music, as well as the musics of various other super-awesome totally independent to the max bands all over the world that everybody needs to know about, online. You should all go there and download everything. It might be a bit slow, apparently his ISP is "sticking it" to him. But it's worth the wait. I think you'll be able to figure out which stuff is mine :) Also, I now have a link on the sidebar (Seasac Records) where the Ugly By Now link used to be, because that's also where the Ugly By Now stuff resides these days. Much much music for free! And it's updated often often. I'm currently putting a track up every few days or so, but we'll see how long that lasts.
I was sick yesterday. So I figured out how to write graphical applications for Mac OS X. There's this thing called Cocoa, and it contains the power of white magic. Let me rephrase that. There are these things called Powerbooks. When you can get them to turn on, they are like God machines. Apple can quote me on that, provided that they give me another one that turns on consistently. Having to do a Cirque de Soleil balancing act, with a laptop poised on my fingertips, pressing various buttons, while I chant in tongues, in the park, every day, is hard on my social profile. Do you hear me, Steve Jobs? Are you out there? You want the French to like me, right? By the way, whiskey and soup and tea and Emergen-C take care of being sick. It's mostly the whiskey is our take on the matter here in Montpellier.
Being in the park with my laptop is like a social event.. Curious people ask me things like, "Does the internet come from the air?" or "Hey, is that WiFi (pronounced weefee in French)?" or "Where did the sleek-looking God machine come from?" or "Want some hash?" when I sit in the park with it on my lap, furtively stealing internet so as to download tracks by Miss Kittin and post blog entries. I answer yes yes yes. It feels good to be so positive. Although, I have to turn down the hash guys. Just not my thing.
I'm going on a hitchiking trip soon. I'm planning on getting around northern Spain and southern France. I'll probably not be updating the blog while I'm gone (like the last week of November), but with any luck, I'll have some good stories to write when I get back. You know, to keep everybody riveted to their seats, pressing "update" frantically in the hope that maybe I'll have posted one more, just one more, while you were reading the last.
Hasta entonces.

I'm reading a book of short stories by Jorge Borges, called Fictions (at least, that's what it's called in French). One of the stories in this book is called "The Library of Babel." It's funny how, a day or two after writing this post, I'd find that many of my thoughts and sentiments have been visited already by greater thinkers. Anyway, read that story, and consider these last couple of posts supplemental reading. The book is great, by the way, even for those of us who are reading the French translation, and who don't speak French very well. It's more entertaining than the biography of Adam Smith, the "father of economics." Trust me.

Addenum

This occurs to me a day after writing the other post, though I'm posting them both on the same day:
I mentioned before how, when dealing with complex issues, simple unambiguous statements and platitudes are simply not sufficient to gain an understanding, let alone a glimpse into the solution to, a problem. This is due to the fact that simple, single words cannot wrap themselves sufficiently around complex issues. This is part (a small part of a large whole) of the reason why I dislike George W. Bush, and his style of politics, so much. He tries to make issues that are unfathomably complex seem simple, by creating a world where his three words that he says about any particular issue are all there is to know about that issue. This is not the way I would go about solving anything more complicated than a simple algebra problem; it's not the way I would hold a relationship, and it's not the way I think the ruler of the United Three Countries of America should run them. Words like "terrorist" and "crusade" are so incredibly loaded and ambiguous that we should worry when they come out of the mouths of people in power.
Disheartening, that a majority of Americans are so fearful that they'll allow their lives to be run by such unproductive ambiguity. It's so much easier to tear things down than to build them up, and I'm sad right now, as I'm sure much of you (who've been able to wade this far into my dribble) are, that America is going to have to see so many more things go wrong before they can start to go right (left?) again.

Words

Ever wonder about words? It happens a lot learning a foreign language that you have this wonderful idea, but no words with which to express it. So you look for some other way to say what you want to say. Instead of "High Icelandic is spoken in falsetto," you might say something like, "In Iceland, they speak strangely in the court." Both of those are true statements, and they both sort of mean the same thing. Often, you'll leave a conversation wondering if you really communicated anything at all.
It happens a lot that my Spanish or French isn't enough. And, learning these languages, I notice that it happens a lot in English. You never think twice about it. Somebody doesn't understand what you say, so you try to say it in a different way. But have you ever left a conversation feeling as though you never really said what you meant, so what could the other person possibly be thinking about what you said? Almost as if you'd been speaking Spanish to a Portuguese speaker, only not so extreme?
Words are simply a medium of communication, much like music or art or holding hands or exchanging glances or sharing some sort of special hidden philotic link. It's common human nature to hold words as the ultimate in meaning, but this isn't true. How many times have you felt a feeling for which there was no expression, no single word that really sufficed?
The fact is, no word really suffices at all. Words are containers for ideas. Take a simple concept, like apple. Everybody agrees that an apple is an apple. Or do we? I think of a Red Delicious. Do you think of a Granny Smith? If you say pomme in French, are you talking about a potato, or an apple? If a concept as simple as a noun can be confusing and ambiguous, what about an emotion, like love? What about an adjective, like great? The fact is, no two people have exactly the same idea about what any word means, but we conduct our daily lives on the assumption that we all do.
Often times in the later stages of a budding relationship, I'll find myself arguing semantics over issues. I'll end up not actually arguing an issue, as in whether I did indeed leave the toilet seat down or forgot Valentine's Day. No, I'll be arguing what I mean when I say neglect, or something to that effect. Because at some point in a communicative relationship, you've got all of the easy problems solved, and you need a little more subtlety in your communications to simply understand the nature of the problem you're discussing, let alone the solution. Complicated problems require specific, focused solutions, and at a certain point single words or unambiguous phrases simply don't suffice to create understanding.
Talking to people is like an asymptotic curve in mathematics. You say something, and once it comes out of your mouth it's What You Think. From that point forward, each time you say it, you try out different word combinations and it becomes more and more What You Think, and less and less ambiguous for you. Eventually, you find the shortest combination of words to communicate what you feel is the essence of what you think. Approaching that asymptotic curve, as it were. Cutting the corners off of a square eventually makes a circle, if you do it enough. Thinking in this way is second nature when you're speaking a second language, but it's important to keep it in mind when you're speaking your first language, too.
-Donald

ugh.

Okay America,
I spent much of today carting my computer around Montpellier, trying to get some of that sweet sweet free wireless internet in the rain so that I could know about the election results. I couldn't ask French people; the answers I got varied from "I'm watching cartoons" to "I don't care about that." Some people did care, but they weren't of much help, so it's to the internet I turned.
My point is that I spent all of this effort just to find out that Bush won the election, and America hates gay people, among other things. What the fuck, America? It's like you want me to stay here. I might have to seek political asylum or something. Bush? Banning same-sex marriage? It turns out that America is indeed short-sighted (although only by a 3% margin), and that things are going to have to get much worse before they get better. But we all knew that already. Of course, y'all reading are the choir to whom I'm preaching. But what the fuck? That's all. I'm going to go drink some wine.

PS I thought the map with Republican states in red and democratic states in blue that they had on CNN really summed up the situation in America. "Yeah, I never would feel really comfortable in those red states," I thought to myself as I perused the chart. God Bless the Three United Countries of America.

Anna and I just got back from a week in Spain. The little French schoolchildren have their 1.5 week break for All-Saints Day, which coincides closely with Halloween. We would learn after our trip that French children are now prowling the neighborhoods in search of candy on the night of October 31st, much like their American counterparts. But I'm getting ahead of myself. My point was that after one week of teaching, Anna gets an almost two week break to do things like explore countries to the south of France.
This trip was important to me, because as most of you know, I lived in Spain around one and a half years ago. Our trip itinerary included (exclusively) Granada and Barcelona, both cities in which I'd spent considerable time, and cities of which I had very fond memories. So, the question is, are these towns going to be able to live up to my mental image of the way they used to be? Was I totally wrong about Spaniards being out so late, partying more, everything being cheaper in Spain, Barcelona being gorgeous, Granada being twisty and turny? Are these cities in reality just like Montpellier, France? Or are they boring after having seen a little bit more of the world? Kind of important to my internal sanity to establish some sort of answer to these questions.
To make a long story short, I was right. Spain is cheaper than France, and Barcelona is beautiful, and you can still get tapas for free in Granada, and the Alhambra really does kick ass, and the Sagrada Familia is still under construction, and a million other things that I remember still exist. My spanish came back, after a couple of awkward days of franglespañol being the only thing that would leave my mouth. I've not gone insane, and France really is a lot different from Spain, so I'm justified in being surprised by how my expectation of living here was so off base. That furthermore justifies why I had such a culture/life shock experience in the first (quite long) while here in France. This is good. It allows me to move on.
We took pictures. Go see them.

I've made passing references before to how similar I think America and France really are. How this is the real reason why our countries have a more-than-passing distaste for each other, overall, etc.
Today, Anna and I went futon shopping. Because, you know, if we're going to be the hostal, we need the bedding. Fortunately for us, aforementioned shopping is being split-financed by various family members who are going to be visiting in the future sometime. The whole thing works out because they pay less than for a hotel, and we get to have a futon. Of course, nobody gets to have any sex at the house while people are staying here, but no plan is perfect. I don't think Anna's mom and grandmom will mind.
But I digress. To get this futon, we have a couple of options. We can go to Futon Boutique in town, or The Universe of Slumber, etc., also in town, or we can go to the larger, more corporate stores out of town. The suburbs, as it were. So like good anti-corporate world-crusaders, we checked the local, private businesses first. Because they're close, and if it works here, why go somewhere else? Well, that didn't work. Beds are exceptionally expensive in those places, and our sense of community only goes so far. So we went out into the suburbs.
This is what blows my mind: it was exactly like suburban United States of America. In Lattes, Montpellier. I felt like I was in Woodbury (Minnesota) again. There were malls. Everything in English. Huge huge huge department stores, that sell everything. I shit you not, there was a department store (called Carrefour) that is even bigger than Home Depot. Home Depot! The warehouse super-monster to beat all space-wasters, and there are stores in France that are even bigger! I realized that the French are importing our culture, but I never thought Europeans would be putting up a fight on the "who takes up more space" front. I thought that battle was over.
So basically, I'm disillusioned about this. I thought that, of all things that Europeans might be wiser than Americans about, space-consciousness would be right there at the top of the list, and keeping money local would be, like, second-top. To be fair, the French government mandates that big department stores be closed on Sunday, to give the little guys a chance. That's a step in the right direction. The next step would be to not follow Sam Walden's example. But hey, we bought our futon there. Torn between our morals and our bank accounts. Our sense of community goes that far, apparently.

Some towns, you meet them, you fall in love, you never want to leave, you're enchanted. All the rest of your life after you've met, you're happy when you're there, and when you're not, you always harbor a (perhaps secret) desire to go back, to be with the city you love. Other cities, you meet them and you think "Well, she's pretty cool." You feel perhaps indifferent at first, but after you've been together for a few months, you start to realize a change. You're smiling more when you're together with your city. You're signing letters to the city "Love, Donald" instead of "Sincerely, Donald." You have secret places that you share, and fond memories together. You realize that a bond has developed, and maybe someday you'll leave, but you'll always look back happily, and you'll never regret the time that you spent together.
Sometimes, you'd see a town like Montpellier and think, "How could you meet this town and not fall in love?" I'll tell you one way. You get here, and you've got other towns on your mind. Towns where you know people and places. You think, "I've been in so many towns that I love, how could this one really take me and hold me?" And, for a while, this blinds you to the truth of your surroundings. That this town really is all the things you wish for from a town. Even though other towns have fit the bill in the past, this one's here, now, and it works too. After a while, you develop that slow bond, but your preoccupation and hesitation at the beginning has kept you from falling flat out in love. Perhaps that's for the best. Falling flat out in love can be detrimental; it's easy to burn out, to forget what you ever saw at the beginning after the passing of time. Platonic love, friendship love, seems to last longer.

Bonjour tout le monde,
It's been a while since I wrote. No real reason for that. I suppose there are lots of things to say, but last time I sat down to write stuff, it ended up being a preachy sermon about not creating social heirarchies and I deleted the whole thing.
Here's some news: my digital camera works again! I took it apart with a mini screwdriver, and put it back together again, and now it turns on! There is some magic involved in not knowing what you're doing and making something work again just by fiddling with it. Same thing "works" with my computer. Maybe it's the same thing with my entire life. Anyway, Anna and I went to Avignon, and took some
PICTURES
there. It's kind of ironic that the first set of pictures from Montpellier, France, actually come from some other town. But just wait, some more will be on the way.
I hacked my first wireless network yesterday. When I upload this post, it will most likely be from the beautiful Parc Rimbaud, just down the street from my house. This beats, for example, sitting in the street twenty minutes from my house in the middle of downtown, with lots of people around, (and, coincidentally, just across the street from an internet café) just to steal wireless. I think we all agree that parks are better than crowded streets with pooping pigeons overhead for stealing internet. And, of course, the park certainly beats paying for internet. Gasp! Why the hell would I ever do that? When my time is worth so little, and I'm so poor? But don't worry, if any one of my free wireless links goes down, I know of five others that I can use at any point in time. It pays to be wireless savvy. Specifically, it pays about 1.50€ an hour. Which, coincidentally, is about what you make playing in the street, depending on the day of the week and weather.
More later, I'm going to go steal some internet.
-D

We've been eating strange things here in France. This is not because the French are strange, or because we particularly want to try super-different cuisine. It's motivated entirely by price-consciousness. The things that are the absolute cheapest to buy, to eat, to wear, etc., are those things that are used most regularly by the denizens of the area where you happen to want to be buying/eating/wearing/etc. something. In America, eating crackers with brie and Nutella for breakfast, eating salami and roqefort sandwiches and drinking wine for lunch is not the kind of thing one normally does particularly on the cheap. But that's the kind of thing we're eating here, because brie is the cheapest cheese that there is here. And wine, litre for litre, ranges from about as cheap as water (for what would cost about $8 a liter in the States) to about as expensive as soda at a restaurant (what would be a $20-$30 bottle). Of course, there's really expensive wine and cheese and other things, but, as always, they might as well be on Mars, because I'm not about to pay for them.
But try to find a burrito in France, and if you have any success at all, it's probably going to taste strange, and it's definitely going to be expensive. This makes sense, but the net effect is strange. Hey, at least we're eating, which is a big step up from poor people everywhere else. I think I already ranted about how rich the French are, at least here in Montpellier, compared to the Americans with whom I come into contact (most of whom are definitely rich by world and sometimes American standards). So I'll spare y'all.

My gadgets have been a real pain in the ass lately. I don't mean to complain; it seems like that's largely what I've been doing since I got here, but let me just summarize: My camera stopped working. I dunno. It just doesn't turn on. Of the two phones I brought to Europe to use, one doesn't get any signal (I think it's an America-only phone, contrary to what I believed), and the other is blocked by a Canadian phone company, and unblocking phones is illegal in France. Fortunately, my dad's been kind enough to take on the task of trying to get his phone company to unblock the phone there in Canada, thus allowing me to have a (really nice) cell phone in France without having to buy a new one.
My computer is a riot. For one, it won't turn on reliably. I take that back. It turns on semi-reliably, but not when you simply push the power button. No, you have to (get this) unscrew several of the back screws, then turn the power on, then hope that the screen turns on, then screw the screws back in. It doesn't go to sleep anymore, either. So every time you want to take it somewhere, this process gets repeated. Also, either the European power system doesn't sit well with this computer, or all my unscrewing has de-grounded it, but I get mild shocks from the exposed metal parts of the case where the paint has worn away. Ah, the joys of old laptops. I'm going to retire this one when I get back to the states. But hey, free wireless internet is a blessing, and just as close as any internet café. Ironically, there's one internet café with a free wireless hotspot just across the street.
Oh well, I'm still surviving, which goes to show how non-essential to life those items really are. However, I hope nobody was holding their breath on pictures, because between Anna's camera being stolen a couple of months ago, and mine ceasing to function, and our budget not exactly accomodating a new camera, it might be a while (Christmas, family members?) until any visual account of our voyage will take place.
Keep us in your hearts, though.
peace out.
-Donald

All the cars in France are the same.
I counted, one time on the street, while Anna was in the store buying sandwiches at 10:00 PM after a hard night of scrounging in the streets for house supplies. Among the items we found: two pots for cooking, some cups, a wicker chair, a knife. But I digress: while Anna was in the store, I counted cars. 9 out of 10, the same type. Different brands, years, sure. But all the same. That hatchback, small, Euro-style economy size with the decent gas mileage and surprising cargo space, if low headroom. The rest are trucks or rich people driving cars that look like '85 Mercedes sedans. I literally can't tell the difference between tens of manufacturers and makes of cars.
They all look the same. I guess that's the style that works. And the style that works, if it works, is applied uniformly here. Look at the hair, or the clothes. Everybody in the latest fashion, which means everybody wearing the same uniform. The one that says, "Don't mind me, I'm hip and up-to-date. Nothing to see here." Or they wear the uniform of the concerted nonconformist, the one that you get at the non-conformist store next-door. And not just clothes, but hairstyles, lifestyles. But it's just a uniform. This is a by-product of rich society. When you have the luxury to be bohemian, to be a beggar, or to be a pinstriped businessman all with the same amount (or lack) of effort, it follows that the distribution would be uniform between them. But they end up looking the same, because the approach is the same: buy the latest thing, discard the old. Where does it go? Right in the street, for the taking. That's what we're finding out.
The beggars here look like everybody else: wearing nice clothes, but asking you for money. I'm thinking, "Are you sure you shouldn't give me some money? You see, my supply is limited, and the dollar-Euro exchange rate is pretty pathetic these days." On the one hand, it makes me feel good busquing in my normal clothes; I'll not seem out of place. But sometimes it feels like everybody is an impostor. So, basically, I feel right at home here. Same as in the States. Come visit!

la france!

Hi all,
You (the people that actually know me who read this) are probably wondering why I've been incommunicado for this last while. If you weren't, well, at least I have a reason. I moved to France, you see. I'm writing this on my laptop in my new apartment just off the center of Montpellier, FR. The town is in the south of France, about 1.5 hours from Barcelona, Spain, and about 4-5 hours south of Paris by train.
The apartment is right next to the town center, and it's beautiful, and all newly redone, and not too fantastically expensive. Definately less than a hotel ;-) We had it secured within 28 hours of arriving here. That's not to say that it wasn't extremely frustrating finding it! Even though it was unfurnished, between finding (nice!) things in the street and extremely nice neighbors and landlord, we've got a bed and a table and some chairs and a hot plate, so really the only things we need are a fridge, and an oven of some sort. That's pretty good, for no money thus far! At least we can cook, eat it on a table, and then go to bed. That's some pretty important stuff that one takes for granted when one is not travelling.
I've been using lots of exclamation points. That's to imply that I'm excited. Actually, I should write that we're excited, because none of this would have been possible without Anna, her french, her patience, her money, her companionship. She's the one who got everything done. I just haul it home. They call me "muscles."
The address:

Donald L. Anderson
244 Rue de St. Maur
34000 Montpellier
FRANCE

That's probably enough for now. I'm going to put another post when I get a phone number. And, of course, I'll write more and more and more, as time goes on. Send me an email, or your address if I don't have it, and I'll write you letters. It'll be great!
paix et amour,
Donald

Two Things..

Don't use a Windows computer. Have you noticed that it totally sucks? Normally, I try to stand the middle ground on these issues, but there are better options, people! Did everybody keep using the Ford Pinto after they found out that the fuel tank could explode? No. Your fuel tank is exploding, people.
Also, I put up some new pictures of a trip I took with friends Anna and Daniel to Montreal. Go and see them, if you crave visuals.
paz y amor,
Donald

Anna and Donald Go to France!

As you might have noticed if you were really closely reading this blog in the last month, the whole tense of all of the verbs in the introduction paragraph at the top changed from "we" to "I" at some point. That's because this blog was originally supposed to be both mine and Anna's, and we'd post our travel musings here. But then I wrote a whole bunch, and Anna felt like this blog wasn't hers. So we made another one! Donald and Anna Go to France! This is where you can read up about our adventures/see our pictures, etc. The especially keen among you will notice that I put another link there on the sidebar where you can get to it as well. Yay! More ways to waste your time, while simultaneously informing your personal relationships with me and/or Anna K. Przybylski! Life is good.

Montreal

I went to Montreal (pronounced "mon hray AL") yesterday. A preparation of sorts for going to France (you know, because they speak french in Montreal...). Every time I drive into Montreal, it's this logistical driving nightmare that involves half an hour of frustrated driving (I accidentally wrote "deriving," which would be even more frustrating), ending in randomly ending up exactly where I want to be. But I'm not writing just to complain (contrary to popular belief). I just like writing (parenthetical phrases).
Montreal is sexy. It's big. It doesn't feel law-abiding in quite the same way that the rest of Canada does. There's a bit more of an edge to the city. Like people are thinking a bit harder, or giving it their best shot, as opposed to coasting by. Something like that. Something to differentiate it. Going in the beginning of September, it's almost easy to forget that the whole city is encased in a block of ice for six months out of the year. But, unlike some American cities I know, they really make good use of their summer when they've got it. Bodies wall to wall. I like that. Sexy wall to wall bodies. Well, maybe not all sexy. But good enough, for Canada.
In other news, I'm painting and scraping paint off of things ("which is it?" you say. I say "Both."), like for money. That's a hoot. Anna's here. She's really great. We do things like go for walks and canoe and (potentially sometime in the future) go for bike rides, and have french lessons, and cook dinner, and chat and roll around on the floor. These are good things. These days that's what it's all about: maximizing the good things and trying to avoid/deny the existence of the bad things.
Okay everybody, repeat after me, "Everything is fucking great. Bad things have no power here" (make sign of cross with your fingers and wave them around in the air).

Muse-Meister Muses More

I've noticed that some people play up or down, depending on the team they're playing. They'll just barely scrape by, your worst game ever, playing against the losers, but you give the real good players a solid run for their money, and sometimes they win and sometimes they don't, but they tried their best. There's something about seeing those other people play well that makes them play well, but they forget when the other team sucks.
Then, there are those people who always play at the same level, regardless. This is typically a very high level, in my experience. You may remember these people as the ones who ruthlessly trounced you playing badminton in high school gym class, and had no remorse about it whatsoever, even though you were just being nice and you let the scrawny ninth-grader in on your team. Those people went on to be Olympic athletes, or gas pumpers, depending, not on their consistency, but on their original level of quality.
I'm one of the former. By virtue of being surrounded by all of these wonderful people, I look really good in relief. I'm that scrawny ninth-grader, who just played the best badminton game of his life, because y'all were nice enough to put me on your team. So keep up the good work, people. You're making me look good.