AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

Losing rhythm is the deepest tragedy available on the market today, because you can never, ever, get it back. Once the beat is missed, everything else is all imitation. And when the music stops, you better grab a chair.

10% inspiration, 90% perspiration. Someday I hope to be successful (or even fake successful) so that I can start giving seminars on how to "make it", because I'll relish the opportunity to speak this phrase, which has been echoing inside me for almost a year now: "Having good work helps, but it's really a lot less important compared to how you present it and who you present it to. And luck. It's less important than luck. Or how physically attractive you are, or what your name sounds like when people say it out loud, or what your parents did for a living."

Which form of effort is more worthwhile - working tirelessly to get what you want? Or grinding away at yourself to polish away all those desires and change what you want so you want what you get? World, and people - please don't torture me with that "little from column A, little from column B" shit/shite. A George divided against himself cannot stand. And besides. If it's both, it's neither, because then you have to pick and choose, and instead of applying a method, you're doodling around with technique. Trying to do both, or even *valuing* both approaches, is the same as doing nothing at all. It's aimless death.

It's impossible to take any endeavor seriously once you've failed once. Stumble once and you may as well never get back on that bike again, because your survival has ruined you. When the world doesn't end with you, everything becomes a game to be played over and over, stopping and starting at will. That's why people kill themselves over petty disgraces. They know something we don't - they know it's not the end of the world to fail, and out of that safety comes emptiness. No one can do anything twice. You only get one chance to begin. You only get one chance to be new. You only get one chance to be innocent and afraid.

It's why I'm a dilettante.

Fear of fear itself? No, not even close. Fear of the absence of fear. Fear of fearlessness. Fear of indifference to your own actions. I've stepped on and off a lot of carousels, thinking each time that I had found a way forward. I was disappointed each time when I came fully round to the things I thought I was leaving behind. And terrified. Terrified of the growing sensation that the next road I travel will wind round as this one does, and I at that realization I will feel neither confusion nor disappointment, but satisfaction. Satisfaction and recognition that yes, this is how it is. And this is what we do on the other side of giving up.

There's only one revolution. After the revolution, everything is a revolution. There are no more straight lines anymore. No bare lines at all, just circles of different size, everything folding back on itself when all is said and done. When all is sad and dumb. A hero is someone who rides a circle so large we can't see the curve anymore. A hero makes us forget the curve of time and space so we can look at our lives like stupid children - a field of destiny. Dots connected by force of will and gorgeous, sexy luck. Dots and dashes all the way down, like turtles turtles turtles.

It's too late to die, now. When we're young we sometimes hope to die young, so we can be lost forever. And sometimes when we're older we look back and wish we'd died young, before we'd learned to see the curve of the world. And now we're here and it's too late to die, because we'll never be that lost again, having stumbled and gotten back up again. Having had our asses kicked a few times, and learned, after all, that it's not the end of the world, and neither are we.