Danny Boy
i think when i tell people "read a book read a book books are so great" i am not actually simply trying to share this great joy that i have ; it's not for their own good. it's 50% so that they will be able to talk about a book with me and 50% an attempt to make them more interesting
i want them to feed their brain
and it felt really good to talk about a book that i just read with xxx but i think xxx is good at pointing a thing out for what it is -- he'd be the best journalist ever
his writing is damn good, he's great with words, and he just tells it like it is
but i miss Danny.
sylvia plath said something that i liked: (she's listing things she's disappointed by)
"to yearn for an organism of the opposite sex to comprehend and heighten your thoughts and instincts, and to realize that most American males worship women as a sex machine with rounded breasts and a convenient opening in the vagina, as a painted doll who shouldn't have a thought in her pretty head other than cooking a steak dinner and comforting him in bed after a hard 9-5 day at a routine business job
to realize that there ARE some men who like a girl as a companion in mind as well as body, and want to take picnics in the sunlight instead of parking on a dark road at midnight after an evening of sexual stimulation while walking around a crowded dance floor and embracing breast to breast, stomach to stomach"
when i think about the past there is only one person who strikes me as like the Perfect Hangout.
it's my friend Danny.
Danny played with me intellectually and artistically.
it was fun to listen to music together because I shared his taste
and it was fun to discuss theories together
here is an imaginary convo i might have with danny:
Me: “Do you think that we can invent something as rudimentary and low tech but potent as books or board games? i don't mean a new genre of book, but something along the lines of the idea of ‘books’ itself”
Danny: “I don’t know, I think maybe all of the most rudimentary and obvious things have been invented, you know? Like they are just extensions of our human capacities. Books are an extension of language-thoughts and board games are an extension of competition and problem-solving and goal-striving.”
Me: “So then we won’t invent anything until we come up with a new faculty of cognition?”
Danny: “Right.”
Me: “Fuck. I wanted to be the person to develop a new thing.”
Danny: "Wait, maybe we can invent a way to express thought in a different way."
Me: "Like visual thought?"
ok fuck this. i'm going to try to have this convo with xxx and see what he says
but i want to play with myself a little bit so i will continue this fake convo
Danny: "no but that's just called 'art'"
Me: "well in what other way does a person think?"
Danny: "that's just it, we basically don't; i mean sonic thinking is just like, music"
Me: "but music is pretty sick though, because it isn't even rudimentary. it isn't like a direct translation of sonic thought. music is so ...made up, like language"
Danny: "i think it's just a simplification of language. like if you take the fractals of voice inflection and pare it down to a more simple and more easily understood form, mathematically-speaking, it would be music"
Me: "yeah, you're right. why is everything in 4/4 time? i mean why is it common-time?"
Danny: "because it's like, a number that we're pretty comfortable counting to"
Me: "but isn't 3 even more comfortable to count to? and 3/4 is less common than 4/4"
Danny: "I guess it's because nothing is divisible by 3 except 3 and 1, but 4 is divisible by 1, 2 and 4, so you have more options"
Me: "mm yeah maybe. so do you think we essentially experience the world as a story? doesn't that strike you as suspicious? like why should we experience things as a story? because stories don't exist in reality. stories only exist when we put frames around events. but in reality there are no frames around events"
Danny: "i think stories are also a simplification of reality, just like music is a simplification of natural speech"
Me: "Fuuuuck"
Danny: "yeah"
Danny was just the perfect hangout. it was fun to listen to music together. i feel like i have never enjoyed music as intensely as when i listened with Danny.
it might be related to smoking weed.
but i feel like i also smoked weed with other people and music was playing. but it was like they didn't respect the music. they used the music as a background thing.
Danny and I would FEEL the music viscerally, and TALK about the music. like, he'd be like, ok listen to this one. what do you think?
and meanwhile danny would be like really into it. he would bob his head up and down diagonally and get so into it that makes me like it too. i just start mimicking his emotions because he displays them so histrionically (lmao at my word choice)
and i'd be like "ok here is what i loved about it. i loved this and that. i loved the beat. i loved the way it sounded so clean, like it was just the voice with very little distraction in the back, except the beat. and i like how the beat was like a clapping sound. it felt very acoustic and special and i liked it. but i hated the end when it got all gospel-singy on me. like it just felt like it was dragging on and on"
and he'd be like "ok ok how about this one"
and he'd show me one with the things i loved without the things i didn't and i'm making this all sound like such an intellectual experience right now but it was very viscerally pleasurable because we were high so we could hear the music so clearly
each line of sound, each element, stood out more clearly. you could zoom in with your focus and single out a single element and enjoy it.
plus being on his couch was so pleasant too. it was warm and soft, a lot like his energy.
the music we listened to together made me feel excited and happy
i wonder if that's because we're both excited and happy people
and we both like a good beat