change: a. To cause to be different. b. To give a completely different form or appearance to; transform.

shannon hoon would have me believe that when life is hard, i have to change.  i don't see life that black and whitely, cause and effectly, that simply.  feel free to listen to him in a stripped down version of "change" as i continue on  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdXXgppVU4c&feature=player_embedded

for me, i'm the force of my change, which i've brought about for myself up and down the relative scales of hard/easy, happy/sad, challenging/easy.  conversely, there was a significant time in my life where i was bringing about little to no change, and this time coincided with one of the, if not the, hardest times i'd ever gone through.

i think the same holds true for mr. hoon, also.  he reportedly wrote the song "change" at the tail end of a 3 day coke binge when he barely had the energy to stand.  note he was in indiana at the time.  then he got up and wrote his words on the face of many today's.  today's that i experience in a time void, listening to his angelic voice from some past time, in the present, while agreeing on multiple levels with him as he sings, "keep on dreaming boy, cause when you stop dreamin' it's time to die."

"change" is heralded as the 1st song hoon ever wrote.  he could have done better.  barring resurrection, my opinion is, he won't.  he'd decided to only make a slight change with his cocaine use, then died after an overdose of it a few years after writing this song. maybe he had decided to stop dreaming - that's a rough place to be.  some of the song's lyrics are engraved on his gravesite (me thinks i may have just discovered the origin of the word engrave) -

in my rough as a brillo pad period, i wasn't dreaming much.  this after spending much of my early life seemingly dreaming more than most or all the people i came in contact with. and the dreams that matter most - my individual dreams for me - were writing duets with my soulful mystic in a lock box under layers of self inflicted spiritual scar tissue, while i continued distorting truth on so many levels that hitler and rove woulda remarked they couldn't have done a better job themselves.  

life being hard wasn't enough to change.  i found it easy to adapt to the pain.  then adapt to even more, and more.  i won't argue that i was welcoming it in.  and i found a way to "change" throughout - by becoming (ie changing) comfortable with the pain, comfortable with the fear telling me not to make any big change, comfortable with believing the fear wasn't so much fear as it was reason, comfortable, comfortable, comfortable.  then i - i, not some outside or inside unseen - decided to fuck comfort.  and i recognized that what really mattered to me was living out my dreams.  i wrote them out and set forth on a parallel path.  

years later, i take joyful pride at still being on this path.  joy that doesn't seem to be mixed with the guilt i once learned to associate with pride.  still dreaming.  still running down dem dreams.  still being thwarted ocasionally, as i was this week with a second tier dream that had potential to merge into the core level.  and happily staring my pain down, feeling it, not distorting it and the situations surrounding it, into something they aren't.  to me, it'd would be a compromise of my values to do otherwise.  it'd be an unhealthy change, similar to a non-change when change is called for, similar to answering the distorted and masked call of fear for so long.  it's reasons like that i rarely say phrases friends and entertainers alike utter- "i'm not afraid," "i ain't skerd," etc.  

fear is a large part of my past, it's present in my present, and there's a damned good chance it will accompany me for the remainder of my today's.  these today's, i give that fear a knowing wink and nod. and i write my words.  and walk my walk.  sometimes with a thong on; comfortably ;)

addendum - i appreciate hearing from people that they enjoy reading this blog, sometimes from them actually saying so, sometimes merely from seeing that people are clicking onto this page even when there hasn't been a new blog in ages.  i was in a dry spell recently.  again, i call on y'all for ideas, ideas that you and/or i or you may turn into a writing.  japan?  libya?  philosophy?  me?  ideals?  alternative voices?  what is worthy and wanted people?  and if no ideas come, worry not, i plan to continue however the fuck i feel like.

until we pass each other on the information superhighway further on down the road than we're allowing ourselves to see now...