2.10.2011
1.09.2011
keeping up appearances
it's always slightly startling to see one's own breath, expelled in arctic gust, exhaled at sub-zero. it carries on longer than you'd first expect, like cartoon wind. a surprise, we suppose, the bigness of it. the simplest instinct, the essence, so rarely regarded. so rarely an intent.
when the words (you know the ones, the only ones that matter) catch one of those big-ass breaths (the ride of their life) they never sound as you dreamed them. never the narrative you'd played out, nor in. liberating, to forget what you meant and just say what you mean. let words tumble out stark and nude, off the script. they take on this weight like gravity (that night a dash of fury, brute force determined, raw from heady tokes). pulled down into destiny like a chip through the pegs of a plinko board. the only way the way it goes. those mere minutes leave mark forever. those dances make up the truth of time.
we've always preferred to roll that way, filter free, from the call of the gut. to us it seems life might go smoother if everyone just said it straight, less the complications that bullshit will bring. must be tiring, keeping all that fake straight. we've since learnt our lesson though, since come to see we are most certainly the minority. ignorance (while not bliss) is at least a moving target, a lure to chase. the truth usually just fucking hurts.
1.03.2011
blogger blue balls
today the rest of us return to step with our realities, back to life with what we can only hope is rightly renewed chi, perspective, perhaps point. cliched as it may, the ringing in of a year anew can't help but inspire recalibration toward (at least in the direction of) bigger desires, intention for a greater good, however much of it we can muster. inspired after weeks of (mostly) fond memories with family, family of friends, it's almost impossible not to want more for the next, to lament at the last: the things we should have (ok shouldn't have) said, the things we didn't do, all those fucking emails we forgot to remember. the truths we ate, the ideas we abandoned. half-hearted. half-there.it's been hard for us to express our shit lately; get it out in any medium. by the end of the year we were tumbling in some sad creative shambles, the pace of work and its procrastination enough to leave us just fumes when time came to create for fun. we were completely blocked when we tried to write, scraps of sentence making their way across the wall of this sterile medium. they just lay there, square on a page, absent of thread theory theatrics. florid words forming nothing really, overdramatic leaves clinging to a spindly, silly vine. so we tried turning pen to paintbrush, keen to unleash in confident color, perhaps fearing this shy serif just no longer fit our fancy. but what didn't come out of our unrestrained (even bc-enhanced) brush tips but motherfucking blocks. bright, square things, textured terrorized frustration. frantic expression of an intolerable inertia.
in many ways the year we just survived can be represented by this shape, burly blockades in the way of that ever-abstract -fleeting happiness. we spent the months resisting our deposit into such definitive, determined surroundings: the return to work (still a cubicle, if a cube of concrete) confines of domesticity (confusions with love), our own designed doubts (mind's own self-mutilation). forces to resist (yet curiously fit) the mold, whether at work en blog or at play. a lot of time spent worrying, mostly about what we weren't doing. inaction. stuck. rut. block. blocked. blah.
it was in a fit of the flu, fuzzy cone of a fever, messages in dreams maybe sent to process (a visitor's pass to the realm of hungry ghosts) that we broke through, owned it, got on top and rode that bad boy. we realized: perspective. blocks or breadcrumbs. were they standing tall our way or were they stones to step on, just shit to do.
if you believe in resolutions, yours should probably be just this: do what you want. think of what you want, and get it done. while brasandranties has always been quite good at declaring what it is that we desire, we've only recently remembered that it's all for naught unless we up and fucking do something about it. so here's to 11. turn up the lights.
12.08.2010
a few good men
we've been sitting with this one, hesitant to rantie, timid to accuse. truth be told, we wondered if we weren't simply just a bit embittered, turned against a type as a result of our own tornado. so we sat on it, head down (a rarity), hoping for the best, expecting something else. lady in wishful wait.
the year seems to have been a strange one for love; manic months bringing about the break down of an awful lot of relationships (our own just the first of many, most more significant). and in the inevitable reveal of character and conduct that any great fall into (then out of) love but guarantees, how many of these men did indeed turn out to be boys. amateurs. house of cards, a house of cads.
truth is men have always been dogs, animals in their own right (aren't we all). but something real and transformational seems to have come along with modernity, tectonic shifts in the way we regard relationships. blame media (any sort, social celebrity mass). blame a generation's disenchantment with religion (what's left a tundra of spirituality). blame hollywood, blame silicone boobies, bald spots, tiny pricks. blame drugs blame facebook blame porn blame our parents blame tiger, we don't care. in spite of it let us declare: the decline of the gentleman. dead on arrival.
yes yes not all of them are shitheads. we know some great ones, and we admit one can never so-scientifically categorize. but we've also seen an inordinate number of lads behaving lousy of late, and frankly we're fed up. get a grip, and get a fucking reality check. a woman will walk in the face of insufficiency, unfulfillment, flagrant disrespect. maybe time to man up, non?
while brasandranties was left wondering if perhaps the search for a few good men necessitated the forceful motivation of more than a few good women (just a shit-lot of us to whip these mofos into shape) the good men at the good men project had a better, admittedly less invasive idea. a cultured, content-oriented project // magazine, designed to challenge the cliched constraints of a typical men's rag. for thoughtful men with a conscience. and if you aren't into that, well, best of luck to you boy.
there are still a few men who love desperately (jd salinger)
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