Through The Desert

  Apr 30, 2022

Just woke up. It’s 10 am. I woke up at 9 am, but I was right in the middle of a dream. I’m pretty sure its not good to wake up during REM sleep. I think it’s better to wake up at the end of a cycle. I went back to sleep and woke up by myself at 9:45. I wanna start waking up at the end of sleep cycles. Maybe one of the sleep apps can help. 
I don’t remember too many dreams last night. They’re all a little broken up. 
I don’t remember the order of these. 
I was watching a windmill. It was enormous. I was watching the blades turn round and round. I was sorta holding my eyes in one spot and seeing how long it took for the blades to pass through that section. It was moving fast and blades were huge. It was close to some houses, and I remember wondering if the blades ever flew off and destroyed things. The sky was a deep red. I guess it was sunset. It had this feeling of the dawning of a new age, it felt exciting. Felt futuristic. Elon Musk was there. He said that in the past, people wouldn’t have expected the blades to be able to move so quickly. I asked him if it’s like a freight train, in that it’s a lot easier to pick up speed once the vehicle is moving, as opposed to when it’s just leaving the station. He said yes. He said an issue with them is that they can disrupt the air flow around the windmills. I asked him if the best windmill would be one in outer space, because it could spin really fast. (I realize now that might be tricky if there’s nothing to spin the blades). He said that there is a difficulty with doing it in space. I think it had to do with storing the energy. 
This dream made feel sorta excited. I felt optimistic about the future and very curious. 

After that he took me out across the desert. We were following this road that went deep into the desert. The road was super tiny below us. We were walking. I don’t know if we were huge or normal sized, because at one point I got down on my hands and knees and saw that the road with all the buildings and cars was just a model. I remember pretending like I was an airplane high above the road. 
I think I felt sorta confused in this dream, because I couldn’t tell if I was normal sized or huge, because I was comparing myself to the road and buildings below, and I couldn’t decide if it was real or just a model.
He and I got to some cliff. When were there we noticed two Lions. One male and female. I think he started running away. Or maybe he threw a rock. I remember thinking that the thing he’d done was the worst thing you could do to escape a lion. Neither of us were scared though. I knew that if the lions got me I could just escape somehow by thinking.
I felt very alert here. I was very conscious of doing the right thing to keep myself safe, but I knew that I’d be safe no matter what because I could in my mind if I needed to.
The lions started going after me. I just started doing this thing in dreams where I kinda really believe that I’m gonna be ok. I see all blackness. It’s kinda like going to sleep. It’s not really lucid dreaming, but sorta like that. This time when I did it I could really feel the vibration of my body. I have this memory that there were two stages. I was feeling my body vibrate, and then it went into a second, more pronounced vibration. After that I was safe. I was in the same spot but there were some other people there. The male lion was just hanging out next to me. He seemed friendly. He reminded me of a dog. The two new people told me to just be still and he’d be ok. They were impressed with how I’d been able to escaper danger. They said that what I’d done reminded them of a technique they knew of. It had a weird name that i’d never heard before. I don’t think it was English. They asked me how I did it and I told them about feeling the vibrations. 
I felt calm here and excited that people were impressed with what I’d done. I was still very very alert because the lion was right next to me and I knew that I just had to make sure I stayed still and that he’d be ok. He was sat right next to me, panting heavily with his tongue out just like a dog. He seemed friendly but very powerful in that moment. I was facing the people, leaning against some rock, and the lion was to my right facing behind me, kinda looking off into the distance. 
My crush and I are on the couch in the living room. We’re holding each other. She tells me how long she’s wanted me. I tell her the same. It’s very romantic and exciting. Then she asks me some question that is totally unnecessary. It’s sort of a hypothetical question that would apply to our future. I don’t remember what it was. I think I answered with ‘I don’t know’, but she kept pushing and pushing. I realized that she must have Border Line Personality Disorder or something. She was reminding me of Chloe. In that moment I had no issue at all with having her leave. My feelings completely evaporated. I knew that it was not at all worth being with someone who was gonna be like that. I told to leave, and I told her I had no interest in dating someone who was being so weird. She kept wanting to argue with me and was throwing things at me. I can’t remember how I eventually got her to leave. 
I was talking to Liam next, who was still living downstairs. I told him that I’m really good at noticing the warning signs of a girl who might have BPD. I think he or someone with him offered their joint. I think I turned it down. 
I think I must’ve smoked at some point in the dreams, because I woke un in bed pretty upset that I’d caved and smoked. I thought I was high, but then I realized I probably hadn’t smoked. 
It was this dream that made me feel really good. I was proud and impressed with myself for not willing to put myself in a situation that I knew was bad, just for the sake of dating a beautiful girl. There wasn’t even a second of considering. I just immediately was able to make the right decision and there was nothing she could do to sway me. 

There was a similar dream later on. I think I can only remember the end of it. I think I kept buying chips and was eating them a lot. I was feeling dirty. I feel like after I’d eaten I’d walk with some people, and one of them was a cute girl. I feel like it kept happening over and over, but the last time my hands were very greasy from the chips. I rubbed my hands on this cute girls sweater, causing the grease to get across her sleeve. She got really really angry. It was a similar feeling to before, where I didn’t even care that I might’ve blown my chances with her. It’s not that I wanted to suffer. I knew that she would be ok. I jus didn’t have any longing for her, and I was able to turn away from the group of people and just walk in some other direction. 
I was around a table with Lee Lisa Holly Renee and Liam. I think Liam was a girl? And she was apologizing for something I think, I can’t quite remember. 
At one point in the night, or maybe a few points, these weird things would happen and I don’t really remember the specifics asides from that they felt really interesting, and that they felt important. There were these moments where something made a lot of sense. It was like I saw some sort of tether between the dreams and being awake. In those moments I was sort of awake in my bed but still kind of asleep. The only thing I remember seeing was these multiple layers of people saying ‘WOW!’ It was like a person within a person within a person being amazing, and I think I was one of those people. I think one of them was also a bald guy. 

I think I forgot to write about this a couple days ago, but the weirdest thing happened. So the other night I had a dream where. Was telling dad that death isn’t real. That’s when the guy showed up and tried stabbing me to death.  Iwoke up with the fear and strong sensation in my stomach. 
That morning, as I was writing about the experience, I began to have this insane pain in my stomach. I thought that it had something to do with the coffee I was drinking, or something I’d eaten, but it didn’t feel like that kinda pain. It felt like I had been punched, and I had a bruise. It was very very strong and very painful. And I realized that the pain had arisen as I was writing about being killed, and the that the pain I was feeling was super similar to the feeling I’d had when I’d woken up in the night. 
I’ve sorta noticed that when I write about my dreams, I kinda get this funny feeling like I’m ‘feeling’ once again how I felt in the dream. If it was an interesting dream, I sorta start to feel that sensation in my body and I get tingling. It’s almost like writing about the dream brings back the physical sensations I’d had in the dream when I was sleeping. 
Part of me feels that the feeling is just as important as the visuals or what I hear in the dreams. 

What Are Dreams

  Apr 29, 2022

    Just woke up. Everyone seems to need something from me this morning and I gotta go to work soon. 

    Dreams

I was in the dining room of El Pueblo. It was like being in a 30 story building. There was an earthquake, and the building was rocking forwards and backwards, but it was almost cartoonish, because the building would bend wayyy over forwards and then backwards. The building was like rubber. I remember that after a while the bending became faster. I have this feeling that there was some sort of splitting, like I was seeing two different perspectives of everything. I remember someone next to me saying something like it was making them dizzy and that they weren’t expecting it to look like this. 
I didn’t feel scared during the earthquake. I might’ve been a bit concerned. 
I had a super brief lucid dream. I was in the kitchen and I had a spatula and a cup of water. I started putting the spatula into the cup and it just kept going all the way in! The whole thing fit into the cup! That’s when I was like ‘this isn’t supposed to happen’ and I realized that I must be dreaming. It was kinda shocking, because that particular dream was so mundane. I was just standing in the kitchen. It was kind of an interesting moment. 
I was walking along a sidewalk. The road to my left was very busy, and on my right there were all these plots of land. It reminded me of Mexico. The first plot of land had a gate I think, and I’m pretty sure I could see someone riding a horse. I THINK I got some sorta religious vibes, like it was a christian commune or something, but I can’t really remember. 
I came onto another plot of land. This one was a hill that went way way up. All the ground was like dry grass I think. It reminded me of Mexico. I climbed a path. I remember that I kept passing people playing sports.
I think I was looking for Dad and Liam. I think I was looking to see if Liam was playing any of the sports. I found Dad. I found him next to some people playing baseball.
I remember that I had to wait a second for the players to finish what they were doing before I could cross between them and get to dad. Then the two of us kept climbing. The hill got very steep. 
The next thing I remember is we’re in a room looking out the window. We’re as high as the skyscrapers that are around us. I can see the CN Tower, but in front of us is a building that I know to be in Hong Kong, 1 International Finance Centre. It was the shorter of the two towers. I think it was sunset. It was very beautiful. 
I think Dad wanted to keep going. From there we were going down. 
Eventually we got to a house. It was Diego’s house. I think Liam was there. I think Diego was letting the three of us stay there while his family was away. Dad said he was hungry. I went and found a little fridge. There were hotdogs inside. I asked if he wanted one. I felt like we were on the boat. He said no and I think he got mad about something. I think I wanted to leave and play guitar. At one point I had to cross the room by walking along a raised plank of wood for some reason. 
Something about having to sneak onto a boat. I think we were on a big boat sneaking onto a smaller boat. The boat we were on was huge and high above the water. We were using a Tesla for some reason. We were able to do something so that the Tesla could stick to the hull of the boat and descend down. We got to the smaller boat and I think there was only room for like 3 people. We were hiding I think. 
Later we were in a Russian army building of some kind. I think we got there on the little boat. I think we had to blend in. There was a pretty blonde girl who I was talking to at one point. I think she was going to some sort of army school there. Later on she graduated and she called me over. I think she just wanted to say bye. I think she saw me as a good friend that made her laugh, but I was attracted to her. She waved goodbye and left but she made some remark about my hair being a bit weird. 
I wasn’t sad when she didn’t have a crush on me, just a little surprised I think. I was still flattered that she thought I was a nice guy. 
I remember a huge man walking past me as I went back to the other people at the little boat. I wasn’t intimidated by him. He reminded me of a jock from malvern. Kinda friendly but not someone who I felt much connection to.

I remember there was a lot of rain. I joined a bunch of people under a tarp/shelter. I think I was with Liam. Someone was playing dance music. Evyn started dancing to the music. He was very good. I was impressed by how he was just going for it and really getting into the music. Then Nathan Lee was there and he was also dancing. He was really getting into it as well.
At some point I was in a basement with a band. Evyn was there but I don’t remember who the third person was, maybe Jackson. There was a ring of people standing around us. It felt like a house party. I think I was playing guitar. At one point I swapped with Evyn and went on drums. I was playing horribly and couldn’t keep a beat going. It felt like the drums were falling apart around me. 
I felt sorta excited. Similar to when I perform music. Excited with a bit of anxiety.  
I’ve been feeling lots of funny feelings the last couple days. Lots of tingling in my head and around my body. I keep feeling slightly disoriented. It kinda feels like everything is almost rocking slightly or pulsing. It feels like under water and feeling the force of the ocean. It feels very strong like I’m being kinda moved around, but not quickly or aggressively. Sometimes when I really feel my body and get calm I start to feel like the tops of my eyelids are wet. It’s a feeling I remember getting when I did mushrooms. They sorta feel moist. 
Every once in a while I feel like some part of my body is stretching. Like just as I’m writing this it feels like my head keeps getting stretched forewords or to the side. It feels kinda fun actually. 
I read some stuff about dreams not meaning anything. I got annoyed. I put my phone down and felt the annoyance. It was like a big ball of something in my chest, kind of where my heart is. It seemed to have such a distinct form. It felt like a ball. I just watched it and felt it. It had an edge, by that i mean it seemed to have a definite shape. I wondered if I’d generated it, or by being annoyed I’d opened a channel in myself and let it in. I just watched it. 
It became smaller and smaller and then disappeared. I could feel my heartbeat quite strongly afterwards. 
I began to feel very blissful and calm. Then I got sorta flustered. Often when I feel good it’s followed by confusion. It’s like this panic. I get worried that the good feeling is going to go away, and I feel like I can’t remember how I made it happen in the first place. I can still feel very strongly but I can’t seem to just feel. It’s like my brain is analyzing as opposed to just feeling. 

A Deep Forest

  April 28, 2022

Just woke up. I only really remember one dream.
I was at an Apple Event. Steve Jobs was next to me, sitting in a soft chair. He was giving the presentation, but I was the one actually holding the device and showing all the features. I don’t know if it was because he was sick and couldn’t stand or what. It wasn’t explained. His voice sounded fine, and he was doing a good job of walking us through how the device worked. 
We were presenting an iPad. I don’t know if it was the first iPad. I had the feeling that this was my first time with the deceive. I didn’t feel like I had rehearsed this presentation with him. For example, when he decided to demo the camera, I had to look for the camera button. I never actually saw or heard the audience. I wasn’t facing them. I was facing the big presentation screen. This screen had a big blown up view of the display so that everyone would be able to see what was happening on the tablet. 
I remember two things. I remember at one point being inside an application that wasn’t designed by Apple, or at least I don’t think it was because Steve made a remark about how that interface is not as simple and intuitive as the home screen. He wanted me to hit the home button to go back to the main page of the tablet, but he didn’t say ‘go home’ he just kinda made a dry remark about how overly complicated and unintuitive other developers UI’s are.
The thing I remember really clearly was that as I was giving the demo I noticed that the back of the tablet had this little piece that could be opened. It was like the little door on the back of remote controllers for changing the batteries. I slid that cover off, and I found that in fact there was a SMALLER device inside! It looked sorta like an iPhone but not quite. I understood that this device was what was actually powering the tablet. The tablet was basically just a monitor for the little device. The little device could be taken out and used on its own if one wanted, since it had a screen and all the features of the tablet, just shrunken down. 
I can’t remember but I think I was slightly disappointed by this. I sorta thought that it was sneaky, in a way, since I knew that it wasn’t gonna be part of the presentation. Everyone would think that the tablet was its own device, when in fact it was really just a shell connected to the smaller device. I can’t quite remember how I felt about it though. I just though it was interesting, and I remember that there was this one piece inside the cavity of the back that caught my attention. It was like this piece of tin foil almost, and I remember thinking that it had something to do with the flash. It was very small, and placed where the flash on the smaller device was. I felt it had something to do with light. I remember thinking that when you use the tablet to take a photo, the smaller device probably uses its flash, and that the light is caught by this super reflective little piece and gets sent up through to the bigger tablet so that it can use the same light for its flash. 
The feeling of this dream was pleasant. There was no stress. It was enjoyable. 

I remember some more dreams that I’d forgotten. I was looking for UFO’s. I was in a car with some other people and we were out driving. I don’t know if we’d gone for a drive specifically to find them, or if we were going somewhere else. I started seeing them and the other guys in the car would see them too. They were just these floating things. They looked a bit like white fedoras. When we got close you could see that the surface of them was rotating. They seemed pretty small, and they were a fair distance away. I remember that we were driving next to some fields and they were out over the field. I remember being happy that the other guys in the car had seen them.
Later we were at a Lake. I had strong Salt Spring vibes the whole time. We were at this lake and we saw the UFO again. I can’t remember if there were two. I think there was one. It came close and landed right in front of us in the water, at which point it had become very small. I think we were probably a little uneasy and unsure of what it was gonna do. 
I don’t remember the order of events, but I know that at one point it had become this animal. It was an ugly thing. It was like a big black cat and had big eyes and just looked weird. It kinda looked like an electrocuted cat. No one wanted to go near it. Eventually I realized what had happened. I realized that the UFO had taken some sort of DNA sample from Nana’s cat, which was suddenly there. Nana’s cat was now just kinda there on Nana’s couch, sleeping, next to the lake. And so the UFO’s had taken a bit from this cat and kinda made their own weird clone version of the cat. I remember I suddenly had this urge to kill the thing. I was suspicious of it, and was just waiting for the moment when it would suddenly lunge out and try to hurt us. I got it in the water and was using a big long stick to hold its head under the water. I felt uncomfortable killing it, especially because the animal hadn’t actually done anything bad yet. 
The thing was pretty weak and it didn’t thrash around or anything like that. I just held the stick to its head until it stopped moving. 
I think I was trying to justify killing it, and one thing I told myself was that it didn’t make sense that it should grow so quickly. Nothing natural should grow that fast. I don’t remember seeing it being ‘born’. But I knew that when the UFO deposited the thing, it was much smaller and had grown up very rapidly right in front of us. It just seemed artificial or something like that. 

During all of this, and I don’t know if it was before or after, there was a woman and her kid that had shown up to the lake. I think it was after the UFO’s had already been there. I think the UFOs became little objects after they landed in they water. They were sorta like those things you use to play Air Hockey with. Those little things you hold in your hand, except that these were rubbery and you could bend them around. I remember that one of them had become this weird toy that was like a big rubbery octopus. It had a cartoony face on it. It looked like it was just a toy for a child, and I think I was wondering if it belonged to the boy. 
There was a message on the toy! There were three lines, but I can’t remember any of them! I just know that the first two lines were very ‘serious’ and that the last line was very light hearted and jokey, and in a way kind of disregarded the previous lines. There was something about this last line that made me think it had something to do with the mother and her child. I read it to them, thinking that they would understand something and maybe grab the toy, but they had never heard it before. 
After that I was in the car again with the other people. I think Tyler was there. We were driving alongside the lake and there were all these little buildings around us, but they all looked like they’d been abandoned for a while. In the dream I felt that I was on Salt Spring and that we were driving past lots of stores that I remembered from my childhood, like the movie rental store. Everything was built between the lake and steep cliff walls.
In the dream we got to the section of road where you have to be careful because of falling rocks. Someone in the car made a remark about how steep the rock wall was, and I told them that when I was little a big boulder came down and hit a car. The man inside driving was killed. The man was the father of a classmate of mine in school. 
That’s all true. I remember being in grade one, and Ian Hall was sitting on the teacher’s lap crying. His dad had just died. Looking back now, I don’t quite understand why everyone in the class would have known. Why would they have announced it to everyone? I don’t remember any announcement. Maybe I saw him there crying, found out later what had happened, and then was able to put context to why he was crying. I was down on the carpet and Ian was sitting on her lap. He looked scared. I kinda remember his eyes, just looking scared and red and he was crying. 
I felt sorta weird in these dreams. There was this constant anxiety. It was this feeling of uneasiness and uncertainty the whole time. 

There was this one other thing I sorta remember. I was in the woods. I think I was looking for UFO’s. I was trying to climb over a fence so that I could go deeper into the woods. This woman was suddenly there. She put her hand on my shoulder. She was stern but not mean. She said I couldn’t go in there. 
I left the woods and I remember seeing another woman. I don’t know if it was the same one. I went up and talked to her for a bit. She was super friendly. I feel like she was talking about her son. I remember there was a big raised highway above us. It was really sunny, and there were all these golden coloured reeds. 
I remember saying goodbye to her and walking away. She was sorta standing guard to the entrance of the woods. Standing guard isn’t the right word. It was more like the person who opens the door for you at a hotel. It was just her job to be at the entrance to the path. 
This dream made me feel sorta magical. It reminded me of when I was little and would be in the woods on Salt Spring playing Harry Potter. I so strongly believed that I would find clues or ‘things’ related to Hogwarts.

9:08 pm 
Mom called me earlier. She said she’d had a really weird dream about me the night before and wanted to know if I was ok. She asked if I’d done mushrooms or some psychedelic drug. She said she had this really unsettling dream where she felt like I was thinking about death and floating up to the ceiling. She felt that I was too young to die. She wondered if I was suicidal. I told her how insane that is, because I’ve been thinking so much about death!! I told her not in a negative way at all, but in a really positive way.  I asked if she’d write it all out. I really wanna have it so I can read it. I felt like it was validating for me. It confirmed that I’m going through an interesting transition. She could feel it! 
The longer the day goes on the more the dreams from earlier make sense. I gotta look inside to find the truth! That’s where the secret is! Looking for it externally in ufos or whatever might just lead to more confusion. The ufo might just be a symbol, or an indicator, that you need to go inside. 
It’s funny because a couple months ago I realized that if aliens are so smart they’re probably in our minds, not just in the sky and the ocean. I realized that I’m probably just as good looking for ufos within myself. They’re not exactly this external thing, I think. The external thing might just be an indicator to look within. 
The middle of the day I started feeling weird. I felt like I was getting sad and that I was losing the connection to ‘God’ or whatever. I don’t want to fall into the trap of trying so hard. I know that it doesn’t work that way. The harder I want something it’s almost like tensing myself up and preventing things from flowing. I tried telling myself that I shouldn’t be trying to get any specific results. As i was making dinner I was feeling better. I was listening to people talk about Charles Swedenborg. They were reading his journals. He was writing about the struggles he was going through in his spirituality. It basically made me feel better to hear someone else struggling. 
Then they said something that made me feel a lot better, and kinda reminded me how to turn the light on, so to speak. 
I’ve always thought about how I feel like there’s two versions of me. There’s the little creative kid who is wild and doesn’t care what people think and wants to do everything and is naive and vulnerable. Then there’s the adult who is extremely protective of this child. Their job is to prevent anyone from doing anything that would stop the kid from believing in whatever they want. I realize that for this spirituality stuff, similar to with music, it often helps to inhabit that child state. From that point of view anything is possible. 
It’s a weird thing to get used to, but for progress to be made you seem to have to ‘believe’ or ‘have faith’ which kinda goes against what so many of us are taught. 

The Stabbing

  April 27, 2022

Last night I had a bunch of dreams but one in particular woke me up. I remember lots of bits before I awoke but I’m not sure I remember the order.
I think the family was getting ready to go to an event. Sorta like how we used to all get in the van and head over to Lee and Lisa’s but along the way we’d pick up Nana and buy a bottle of wine or stuff like that. 
I remember that as this was happening I was trying to explain to Dad that death wasn’t real. He thought I was being kinda wacky and sorta poking fun at me. I was telling him that he’ll find out for himself when he gets there. 
Later on I remember being in a mall. I was with Dad and Nada, and I don’t know if Papee was there. I felt he might’ve been there, but I don’t remember seeing him. I know Nana was talking about him, saying that when he was alive he used to like to come inside this mall if they were driving by. He liked to come inside and just check out the second floor. From the second floor you could see the first floor of the mall. It was like a balcony. 
I remember going to a similar mall with him and nana when I was really little. It had a ferris wheel inside the mall and we used to like going on it. I don’t remember a ferris wheel in the dream. 
I remember being at the event we were going to. I remember being at the front door and saying hi to people. A couple showed up and instead of shaking hands, you had to hold out your hands to them for them to kiss your fingers, like royalty, except in reverse, because they were kissing everyone else’s hands. I remember being a bit anxious because before they kissed me. I looked at my fingers and saw that I had some dirt under my fingernails and I didn’t want them to see that. I held out my left hand which had less dirt, but the woman didn’t notice the dirt. She was very kind, shorter than me. I don’t remember what she looked like but I remember it made me feel like she was a fun person. I don’t really remember what happened inside the house, although I sorta have this memory of a big tall rectangular window. I don’t know if it was a window in the wall, or a skylight in the ceiling, but I feel like there was a green forest on the other side. 
Later on I was at a table with Nana and Dad. Maybe this was inside the house, but I remember that it looked and felt very much like the inside of the mall from earlier. Our table was pretty big and round. I think there were other people sitting there, but I only remember dad and Nana specifically. The weird thing about Nana is that she looked nothing like Nana, but I don’t think that occurred to me until I’d woken up. She looked like that creepy girl from the ‘The Ring’. She was wearing all white and her head was hanging down so that she was staring at the floor. Her hair was wet and seemed to hang very heavy, so that you couldn’t see her face at all. I wasn’t disturbed in the dream. I kinda got the feeling that she was mourning Papee actually. So anyways, I was sitting next to dad and again explaining to him that death isn’t real. I was really frustrated, because he wasn’t taking me seriously, and every time I’d start a sentence he would kinda cut me off to poke fun at me. I remember also being annoyed at myself for having even brought this up with him. I was thinking that I should have known better to talk about this kinda thing with him. 
I remember telling him the things people see when they have and NDE. Right when I said that he said something like ‘when does that ever happen?’ And I said ‘like a coma? You ever heard of a coma?’ I remember this good feeling of being able to kinda mock him in that moment, the way he’d been mocking me. I remember asking if he knew what a coma was, obviously poking fun at him, and as I was saying this I had that good feeling, sorta a feeling of revenge, and I remember seeing a green field with a curved path cutting through it. Actually, now that I think of it, it was curvy in the way the road was from this really old memory I have of him and I. It was when we were driving across Canada moving to Salt Spring. I have this one very distinct memory of being in the back seat while he was driving. I think there’d just been an argument and I remember feeling that awkward silence. For some reason the curve of the road from that moment has always stayed with me. We were driving slightly uphill and there was a gentle curving of the road. It was raining slightly, I think. I remember that the road was wet.

In the dream last night it looked more like a path than a road, or at least it felt more like a path. And I think it was sunny. But that’s what I was seeing as I was enjoying mocking him. 
After that I told him the woman’s description of death, and how we get whatever we imagine death to be. So if you imagine death being dark and cold, that’s what you’re gonna get. I was telling him the woman said that she was still aware, but that it was very very dark and very cold and empty and she felt very alone. I remember thinking that my dad would be more inclined to believe a scary story than a happy one. (That’s sorta interesting. I wonder if that’s a clue to the fact that my dream was a scary one.) 
That’s when I felt there was something bad behind us. I turned around and saw a man wearing a hoodie that  covered his face. His head was hanging down a bit. He was coming towards me. He had a little wooden mask in his left hand and he was holding it out towards me. It sorta reminded me of the wooden masks that Mami has on her walls. I remember the mask was wooden and that you could see white teeth. In his right hand he had a little knife. It reminded me of the letter opener Nana had. It was like this beautiful sword that had been shrunken way down, and she used it to open letters. The knife in the dream didn’t seem to have a hilt, though. 
As the man came towards me he was holding out the mask in front of him and holding the knife down by his side. He was walking quickly towards me. It really scared me. I fell out of my chair trying to escape. I was tripping and falling backwards away from him. Then he quickly raised his right hand with the knife and tried stabbing me. I knew that he wanted to stab me over and over again. I was so scared. That’s when I woke up in bed. I calmed down pretty quick. I got up to use the bathroom. It was 6 am and the sun was just rising. 
I went back to sleep, but when I woke up again I lay there trying to figure out what it meant. I wondered if the man trying to kill me had something to do with feeling that I can’t talk to anyone about death. He had tried killing while I was talking about death not being real. 
I also wondered if it has to do with what I’ve heard a lot of people saying, and the thing that I was telling my dad at that moment, which was that we all create our own reality. In that moment I was describing how death will be a dark lonely and sad reality if that’s what you’re expecting. In that moment that’s what I was imagining, and that’s when this guy showed up to kill me. 
This morning I wanted to tell Carter and April about the dream, but then I realized that I can’t because it means revealing to them that I don’t think death is real, and I don’t feel like I can talk about that with them without being laughed at the way Dad laughed in the dream. So that’s interesting to me. In real like I feel like I can’t talk about it, and in the dream I couldn’t talk about it, or else I was killed. 
I was thinking about who I could talk about it with and I realized that Nana is the right person. She was in the dream, and her and I have already talked about this kinda stuff. She won’t question me or treat me like I’m weird.  
When I first woke up from the dream, at 6 am, I remember thinking that it wasn’t surprising that my dad wouldn’t believe any of that stuff. I remember thinking that if he can’t even realize that he’s a section of the universe that’s become aware of itself, how is he ever gonna entertain the idea that death isn’t real? 
I told him that he’s a section of the universe that’s become aware of itself. I told him that back when he was in Toronto, and he was very sceptical, just like in the dream. He seemed weirded out by this idea. I remember being so confused that he couldn’t rap his head around that. It seems so obvious. It revealed to me how separate he must feel from the universe, like he’s somehow not part of it? It’s so obvious to me! We’re in the universe, we’re made up of it! How can we not be the universe? It literally makes no sense! We’re just a section of the universe that notices itself! Although I’m starting to wonder if all sections of the universe are aware of itself, and it’s actuality HUMANS that are the sections that DON’T notice that they’re there, in a funny way. He was a section of the universe that didn’t seem to fully notice that he was there. 
I went to an open-mic at Free Times Cafe last night. It was nice. I was the last musician up. After I played they had comedy night for new stand-ups I guess. I watched for a bit. They were’t too good but I really thought it was brave of them. I talked to one of the guys afterwards. He talked about how he sees what I’m doing to be wayyyyy better than what he’s doing, meanwhile while I was telling him that what he’s doing is wayyyyy braver and more intense than what I’m doing. I got the sense that stand-up people sorta have this low opinion of themselves and of stand-ups in general. It’s different than what I’ve felt with the musicians. I don’t feel any sort of hatred or feeling like we’re all kinda disgusting, bottom of the barrel kinda people, but I got the sense that the comedians kinda see themselves and each other in this way. 
I’ve been meditating a lot lately and they’ve felt really beautiful. I feel so happy that I started doing this when I was 18. I really understand the value now. It was so good of me to start when I did. It’s not just about feeling the body, it’s about KNOWING that you’re feeling the body. It’s about watching yourself have the thoughts. I sit down to meditate and I feel whatever I feel, but then I step back into like a removed awareness that’s watching myself have those thoughts. That part is important I think. 
The plastic rap on the mug was dirty. I tore it and then fucked a bitch nice and slow, just to reveal to her how much of a man I am.
“Let her go! Screamed Borat, from a balcony. “Take your hands off her gown!”
I looked up and crawled out of my skin and got angry. I held an envelope up to the sky and asked God if he would open it for me. 
“Know Thy Self!” Answered God like an angry dog.
I thought that was funny and told him I didn’t care. He said neither did he. He said that it was up to me. It was always up to me. 
“No one can do this this for you! No one can open the envelope but yourself!”
I grumbled and walked to the Apple Store. I played with the new iPhone and watched some porn on it. I laughed like a donkey and then went upstairs. There was a garden with children and they were building a boat. There was a glow around them. I could see their auras very easily. 
“Who’s doing the cooking around here?” I asked, clapping my hands together. 
“That one!” Said a young boy, pointing towards a girl from Taiwan. I nodded. I went over to her. “What’s for dinner?” I asked.
The girl held out her hand. I looked into her palm and saw the Well of Creation. I saw all the galaxies swirling and colliding. I saw dogs having sex and bananas falling from trees. I saw the skyscrapers being hit by planes. I saw the war in the woods. I saw men throwing spears. I saw laptops being mass-produced at the speed of light and then flying onto the laps of students. I saw a million fireflies building a web of connections. I saw a third war, and all the days that would never end the way they should have. 
I took a deep breath and turned away quickly. I left the store and walked across the street to where there used to be a fast food restaurant but now there was jus a cliff that went down forever and ever. It was sunny down there, and white clouds drifted by.

I Can Love

  April 26, 2022

I went for a jog today. That’s good. It was a nice jog. I had some coffee and read 1984. 

I woke up at about 10:30 because I’d been up pretty late the night before. I went to an open-mic downtown. It was at a bar called The Cathedral. I think it was one of my favourites so far. The inside of the building was really beautiful. Lots of stained glass all over the place. The stage was raised way up above the seats. It was a real stage. The host was a guy I met a couple nights before at the Fox and the Fiddle. He’s an extremely nice guy. His name is Mark and he just oozes positivity. He really reminds me of Patrick from Malvern. He seems slightly less anxious than Patrick, but I do get the funny feeling there’s this sadness. It’s hard to explain. He just seems very vulnerable and real and like you can see right into him. I really liked that place last night. He played the drums for me on my songs. It felt really nice. 
While I was there a guy came up to my table and asked if he could sit with me. He was super nice. He was one of the performers. I think he’s from India. His name is Mudit. I could tell he understood that ‘thing’ from talking to him. That thing about art. We were talking about how it’s not about how good of a singer or instrumentalist you are, so much as it is being able to be fully yourself and unique. He was extremely positive. He was basically bubbling with excitement and positivity and really seemed to want to talk about the importance of being yourself. 

From talking to him I could tell he really got it, BUT I was sorta waiting to form an opinion until I actually saw him perform. That’s sorta the ultimate test. It’s not about seeing if they can sing or play the guitar. It’s something more subtle. The fact that he played originals was super impressive, and I could tell pretty much right away that he definitely understood that ‘thing’. He knew what chords to put next, and how to make a nice melody. I’ve seen guys go up and do originals and there’s just sections of the songs that don’t quite feel right, and we can feel it, but I don’t think they can. I’m always looking for the people who not only write clever songs, but sorta know WHY it's’ working. It’s like this certain consciousness. You can find it in people who do covers too, but I kinda feel that people who do covers are really on a very different mission. We’re both on stage with instruments in our hands blowing air into a microphone, but that’s about as far as the similarities go. It’s ok though. It’s not evil of them, and I’m not better than them. It’s just a different journey. I’m trying to really not see myself as being better or more courageous. We’re all trying to overcome something. 

People who do stand up comedy might be the most courageous of all. They’ve removed even the instrument. What they do is a totally different thing. We’re both on stage blowing air into a microphone but that’s as far as the similarities go. What they’re doing is extremely linked to the audience. You can really feel it when it’s working and you can really feel when it’s not. It’s a whole other thing and I’m super interested in it. 

Last night a guy went up to do stand-up comedy. You could tell he hadn’t been doing it for long, but the audience was still being supportive and smiling and being kind. But as it went on you could feel the audience kind of turn on him. It’s almost like the audience comes to this amazing realization of how important they are to what’s happening. They realize that all the power is in themselves to decide how the performer does. If they don’t like the performer, all they have to do is literally nothing. It’s this amazing realization. I could feel the audience just almost start to dislike him, and the fake smiles just faded and everyone just kinda stared off into the distance. 

Performing music is not really like that. At least certain genres. I can see how gospel music might be similar. I’m really interested in performances that rely on the the audience interaction. I’m so not there yet. 
The last two times I’ve performed have probably been my favourites, and I think it’s because I’ve started sitting down and closing my eyes. I can start to feel free and natural. That’s not what I wanna do forever though. It sorta feels like training wheels for now. 

As I was leaving the bar two young guys asked me where I was coming from. I told them. They said that they were really interested in performing together and so I told them about my story so far and how I only just started but I’ve found so much love and support from doing it. I showed them the Facebook group and told them that these things are happening every single night and that there’s no judgement and that they’re very positive. I could feel them getting excited. They seemed really motivated when we parted. 

It’s those moments where I really REALLY feel like I’m in the right place. I feel like that’s what I’m meant to do. I love motivating and inspiring people. Or actually I think it’s about showing them that they can do it too. I can remember when people have done that for me. It’s those moments that can totally change a person’s trajectory. It’s about really getting people to KNOW that they can do something. Not believe, but fully KNOW it. That deep instinctive understanding.

Of course it takes so much practice to progress, but for a lot of people starting is the hardest part. I know it’s often been the case for me. When I started doing the open-mics by FAR the hardest part was walking out the front door to catch the street car. It wasn’t memorizing songs or performing. It was just putting my shoes on and leaving the house.

My grandfather was shot so many times by his pupils. They got on the tables and just shot him full of holes. He screamed like the captain of a sinking ship as he waved a white flag of surrender. The kids didn’t let up. They emptied those rifles. They did what they thought was right. God watched and a tear rolled down his cheek. Then my grandfather was up in the  highest corner of the room, watching the students move towards his bleeding body. He watched them move cautiously. He saw all the smoke from the rifles wafting upwards. 

Then he zoomed out an open window and flew across the fields and up into the sky. Then he couldn’t remember where he’d just been, or how long he’d been away for. Was the stuff before just a dream? He started to feel a mighty rumble. 

I can feel ‘God’ or ‘The Universe’ or ‘Jesus’ or ‘Papee’ with me. I feel really strongly that I have Papee. I’ve always thought about him a lot and about how I wanted to know him and how I had so many questions for him. He died when I was 6. 

I can feel my body very well because I’ve spent so much time meditating. Now I really how valuable all of that was. I didn’t really know why I was doing it. I felt it was just very practical, like brushing my teeth and exercising. Now I see that it was so much more than that. I understand now what they mean about how we all have this built in connection to ‘God’. I just need to feel my body and feel the aliveness! I just need to think of Love. When I think of love, THAT’S God. 

There’s this confusion about who is doing the thinking. A person is like a telephone operator. Those people in the old days who were in front of the switch boards. That’s ‘Kai’. When I think of love, that’s me plugging in that certain wire, and allowing love to come through. It’s so easy. All I gotta do is think ‘I love you’, and that’s God right there. That’s not really ‘me’. I’m just the air traffic controller who’s deciding which run way can be used from moment to moment. It’s always my choice. When I think of love, I’m letting love come through. That’s not me though, it’s something else that I’m allowing in and I can turn off whenever I like. 

When I think of hate that’s something that I’m allowing in. I actually don’t think hate is something ‘tangible’. I think it’s more like it’s just closing the door to love, or closing the curtains in a room. All the plants in the room start to die. It’s just the absence of love. I don’t know if evil exists in the same way love does. You can feel love. I think evil might be more the absence of love. And so I want more love? Just think ‘LOVE’ or ‘I LOVE YOU’. That’s not me thinking that! I just opened the door! The love is it’s own thing that wants to rush in! It can’t help it! It’s like opening a curtain! The sun can’t help but rush inside. I think that deciding to think ‘I love you’ is like deciding to open the curtain. 

Starting Over

  April 24, 2022

What a relief I feel. The last 2 or 3 days have been special. It makes sense now. Well sorta. It’s like I’ve been in a dark room all my life and there’s all these paths and I’m not sure which is the right one, and I fucking FOUND it! And I think of it like one path actually. It was always one path, except this path was snaking all around the floor. It looked like a bunch of different paths, and so every once in a while I would cross over a section and see something really interesting and magical, like when I first read Autobiography of a Yogi, or when saw the UFO’s, or when I went to the meditation retreat, or when I took mushrooms and felt that there was something aware in the room with me. All of those things now make sense kinda. I feel like I FINALLY found the beginning of the path. I feel like instead of starting at level 5 or 3 or 25, I finally found level one. It seems that you’re allowed to go to any of those levels whenever you want, but they don’t really make sense unless you start at the beginning. I feel like I found the level 1 in the last 2 or 3 days. It’s funny, because there’s this slight sadness. It’s the sadness that I will never get to experience realizing it’s real again. That moment when I first realized that UFOS are real, and the moment when I first noticed that death isn’t real- that joy and AWE. I won’t have that again. 

I get a feeling that I’m wrong about that though, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life is that it just keeps getting crazier and crazier and you never stop having your mind blown. So maybe I’ll never be awed by those particular things again, but there’s so many other things that can still blow me away that I haven’t discovered yet. 

I wanna know my past lives. I want to understand why some people in this life seem so familiar, like April and Carter. Did I know them before? Why did I choose this particular life? Did I choose it? And I think most of all I want to know what my mission is, although to be honest, I’ve always felt a tug in a particular direction. I didn’t understand what the tug was, and I figured it was self-imposed, but now I’m starting to feel it’s not something to feel weird about. It’s a beautiful journey that I might have chosen for myself a long time ago. I’m not sure. 

I think I’ve written about this ‘tug’ before, but I’ve just always had this insane urge to change the world with my ‘creations’. My art I guess, but  I don’t like that word because it doesn’t seem right. 

This feeling really went into overdrive when I was about 15 or 16. I remember realizing that my childhood was over. There was no longer any chance to change things about it. My childhood was set in stone, it felt like. That kinda disturbed me, because I felt like I hadn’t done enough. I remember really realizing that I was gonna die. I remember asking people like Mami if they were afraid of dying. I remember her crying and saying that she noticed that it was getting harder for her to do little things like climb the steps. That’s when something in me just totally exploded and wanted to make things that would last long after I’d died. I didn’t want to just dream about these things, I felt the urgency to start making them. I felt like I had already squandered so much time. 

It’s funny how it all makes sense looking backwards, like that Steve Jobs quote. All those years I spent in my room making music. Trying to be famous on the internet, and just failing over and over and over. I feel so lucky I had that failure. It left me with this really really pure love for music. 

That thing that wants to have lots of instagram, YouTube, sound cloud followers. I had that craving more than anyone! And it died slowly, over the course of about two years. I started trying for real right when Covid started. I’d already been making music for like 4-5 years, but that’s when I started trying to really make it on the Internet. And it was just under 2 years of trying. I finally stopped this past New Years. That’s when I was posting an originally produced song and music video every day to TikTok and YouTube. It was going absolutely nowhere. I think some of those songs are the best things I’ve ever made, and it was really funny because the last 3 or 4 songs are like I had forgotten how to make music. I was suddenly really interested ‘art’ and was really trying to make something new. Something that I didn’t know yet, something to do with connecting the music to the visuals very tightly. It was kinda freeing because since I knew nobody was watching any of the stuff, I felt I had permission to try anything. 

But anyways, I’m really interested in performing live. I want to grow that ability. The desire is so strong, and the love I want to give through the songs is so real. And the songs that are coming to me are so nice and fun and real. I just gotta grow this ability of performing. Just little things, like how to use a microphone, or how to introduce myself. That stuff is totally new. I’ve been doing it for a couple weeks. 

Here is some pain in my chest. Not that painful, but just a very real feeling. It’s solid. I’ve got a body. I know it. 
Do you? You can feel it too? I’m not saying you gotta love or hate it or whatever, but you notice it's there? 
Yah so I was in bed and waking up to the feeling of being allowed to go towards something very pure and powerful, but I was scared. It was just a little overwhelming. It was like - ‘do I wanna go towards the love? You’re allowed to go if you want!’ 
That’s what it felt like. And I kinda just dipped my toe in and holy crap yah it was pretty strong. Kinda reminded me of yellow light. But then I went back to dreaming. 
Now I’m just waiting around for the sun to set I guess. Kinda wanna try again. I guess I have ‘worldly’ responsibilities to take care of first. FINE!!! I’ll do it. 

I gotta do groceries today and feed this meat body. I recognize you, body! Thank yeeeee!!! I shall buy food today so that I  can nourish you and keep you working as well as possible I guess! Thank you for carrying me around from spot to spot, event to event! I used to be embarrassed by some parts of you, oh dear body!! I used to think my wrists were too skinny and my nose was too big for my face! I used to think my hair was too puffy and that too much of my gums showed when I smiled! I used to think that my voice was high-pitched and I used to be embarrassed by the mole on my chest!

Awake!

  April 23, 2022

Yesterday was interesting because I started to believe in God. Now I get it. At least part of it. I’m really happy. But I’m also really sorta tired of having a body. I’m excited to leave it, but I don’t want to necessarily die right away. I’m just not scared of dying. Like at all. Not even a little bit. I’m so fucking excited. This is similar to when I realized that there’s UFO’s in the sky, but this is even more exciting. Actually maybe that was more exciting. That was what really set the ground work for this. I love how each amazing thing is so connected to everything else. 

Basically it all started when I was watching the documentary series ‘The Comedy Store’. It’s this documentary about a comedy club. There was a part where one of the guys was describing the night that Sam Kinison died. He talked about how he was holding Sam in his arms on the road, and that Sam was talking to someone that only Sam could see. He said ‘I don’t want to die’, followed by- ‘but why now?’ And then he went ‘ohhhh’ and got really happy and closed his eyes, and then the friend said he felt Sam leave the body and travel up through his own body, through his face, and up into the sky. And then the documentary just continued on, but I was like, wait, he felt WHAT go through his face? 

So then I went to Nana’s place and I told her about how interesting I thought that was, and she told me that when Stephen was dying in the hospital she was holding his hand, and that she felt a funny tingle in her palm and then this funny feeling that he was floating just above them. 

So then I went on YouTube and discovered all these interviews with people who’d temporarily died, or had near death experiences. And they all describe what it was like, and holy fuck it was amazing! Then this song just totally poured out of me sooo easily. In fact I felt like I made it with the help of ‘God’, because I was doing this thing I sometimes do, where I pretend I’m on a stage and I say to the crowd ‘Let’s write a song together,’ and I tell them to just yell out notes, and I imagine them yelling out random notes and I use those for the song. And I did that, and this really nice song came out that really felt right.

 
And so yesterday I was thinking non-stop about the story mom told me about how I came into her head before I was conceived and asked if she would be my mom. I explained that I was a universal traveler and that I wanted to have a body for a while. I’d chosen her to be my mom. 

I always loved that story because something about it felt right and made sense in a weird way. So I was thinking about that a lot yesterday, and how maybe it’s true, and later in the evening I was at one of the open-mics and I received a bunch of texts from her. She sent me photos of things she’d been painting, and one of them was of the universe. She said that she had painted it thinking about that story! I couldn’t believe she sent it to me the same day I’d been thinking about it! 

The other thing that was really weird was how this all seemed to coincide with when I lit these two candles. They’re religious candles that have pictures of Jesus and Mary. I bought them with Myriam years ago as props for a video we were gonna make.  We never ended up using them and so they just sat in a box for years. But since I’ve been going through all the stuff under the stairs I found them and left them out because I needed candles anyways. So I had one on the table next to my bed and the other on the table in the living room. And then I lit them either yesterday or the day before for the first time, and that’s when all this stuff happened. It’s so fucking weird. 

I feel good. It kinda all makes sense in a weird way, like I feel I’m on a mission while I’m here. I really REALLY wanna make things now. I want to help people I guess. The money is so not important. And there’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s all gonna be ok. 

The Tao Taco

  April 21, 2022

Today is grey and rainy. I guess all the plants are gonna start blooming soon, so that’s good. I didn’t run this morning. I don’t know why it feels like such a chore. It used to be so easy to just get out of bed and run. Now it’s so hard to convince myself to do it. 
I’ve gotta go to Nana’s today. I talked to Dad yesterday and he said that whenever he talks with her she ends up saying that she feels so scared that she’s bugging me with asking for things. I find it so confusing, because I DO feel like she’s asking me for so many things. I do find it kinda annoying and I always dread having to go there. I was thinking about what she could do to make it better, and honestly, if she just offered to buy me a burger or a sub that would make such a difference! She just has me go there and deliver her things and fix things and then I leave. And then she’s worried that I might not be too excited. Well of course I’m not too excited, I don’t understand how it doesn’t occur to her to just offer something like a snack, or even to pay for the TTC transit to get there. It’s $6.50 to get there and back, which isn’t a ton, but I could buy like 3 tins of sardines with that. Dad said that he knows exactly what I feel, and even Mom has been through this. You get the feeling that she only sees you as a person who does stuff for her, even though she’s scared of us seeing her as that. It just doesn’t make any sense to me how if she’s so scared of being that, why does’t she ask herself what she could do for me in return? A burger would make a world of a difference! I would look forwards to going if I knew that I was gonna get a cheap meal from McDonald’s or a slice of pizza! That would make such a big difference for me! 
I sold some stuffed animals yesterday. I sold them for $20. I’m pretty sure the man I sold them to was on Jimmy Kimmel. When I met up with him I just had this feeling that I’d seen him before, but I couldn’t remember from where. He seems to be in his 50’s, he was in a motorized wheel chair, very overweight, but super friendly and out going and had this booming voice. Then I remembered that during the basketball finals in Toronto Jimmy Kimmel had someone interviewing people in the streets of Toronto about the upcoming game. One of the people was a guy in a wheel chair who I’m pretty sure was the guy I saw yesterday. They both had glasses, although the guy yesterday was wearing a mask so I couldn’t see his whole face. Their voices sounded the same. 
I’m going to another Open-Mic tonight. It’s at a place called Taco Taco in Kensington. I’m excited to go. It’s nice now that I know so many of the people. There’s quite a few people who regularly hit all the open-mics. It’s really cool. I’m gonna do a new song I’ve written, it’s called Swimming Pool. I performed part of it last time I performed, but now I’ve added to it. I really like the way that stand up comedians do their stuff. They kinda work on it and add bits and remove bits. It keeps evolving. I’m watching a documentary about The Comedy Store and it seems like Richard Pryor was one of the first guys to fully embrace that. He didn’t mind going up with all new material and bombing, because he knew that he would get all these valuable nuggets for the next night. He didn’t care that every single show be perfect. A lot of people talk about how they want to be great every night because you never know when the right person or whatever is watching. He didn’t seem to be interested in that approach. It wasn’t about giving everyone a great show. It wasn’t even really about the audience at all. It was about the material, and refining it night after night. I really like that approach. I like the idea of using the performance as just another spot to refine and experiment, as opposed to seeing it as the point at which everything must come together and be perfect. 

Pray For May

  April 19, 2022 

It’s another grey ugly day. It snowed a bunch yesterday. I was out doing errands with Jack and the sky just started dropping massive chunks of snow. It got freezing. It didn’t stay on the ground for very long. 

Last night I went to another Open-Mic. The place was called Grape Fruit Moon. I knew a couple of the guy there from other open-mics. It was a super relaxed time. The only people there were the musicians who were playing, which I kinda like. I felt that I played a bit better than the night before. One of the songs that I’d written that morning was fun to play. I’m starting to write more Nirvana sounding songs. They seem much more appropriate for the open mics. By that I mean songs that are just very melodic and have lots of hooks. A lot of the songs I was performing before were very involved and had tons of chords and lots lyrics. I like to write that kinda stuff, but it doesn’t seem like the proper music for those places. There's usually people chatting, the sounds of cars outside, people taking orders and washing up. I didn’t take any of that stuff into consideration when I was just writing the songs in my room. I think I had this expectation that everyone would be sitting, watching the performers in rapt attention. It’s not really like that. So I’m writing some songs that are more appropriate. 

I sold all the Thomas the Tank Engine stuff this morning. I sold it all for $50. Tomorrow I’m selling a bunch of teddies for $20. 
I can’t wait for May. I’m so sick of the grey sky and the wind. It’s all just so depressing. At least I’m not freezing my ass off every time I leave the house. 
I’m excited to start the Second City Classes. I really hope they don’t get cancelled. 
I really want my fucking passport. I want it so that I can apply for my Australian Visa and so that I can get a busking permit. I feel like busking will really speed up the time it takes for me to improve. The problem with the open mics is that it takes about an hour to get there, an hour to wait for your turn, and then about 10 minutes to perform. Then you gotta sit and listen to some of the other performers, and then another hour to get home. With busking I can just play, and I can do a lot of the songs over and over again because it’s constantly new people every 10 seconds. 

Love To Kill

Apr 18, 2022 

Today is windy. It’s not that nice out. I hate the wind. It’s uncomfortable. I love it when it’s windy and I’m inside, though. Or when I’m in bed. I feel cozy. 

I sold all my Bionicles this morning. I sold them for $55 on Facebook Marketplace. I also put up an ad for the Thomas Trains. Someone is coming tomorrow to get those for $50. I wanna sell more stuff, it feels fun. I can sell my blue electric guitar for sure. I’ve had that for like 6 years and I played it like 3 times. I’m gonna try selling a bunch of my old webkinz. I’m putting them in the wash now and then I’ll take some photos. 

I walked Harry this morning. Yesterday Brooke, the owner, gave me a bag with treats and $40 as a thank you and because it was Easter. That was very kind of her. 

Last night I went and did another open-mic. I went to Film Cafe. It was my first time doing it at that place. I was the ninth person to go on. I could tell that I was getting more comfortable with performing, because I was very aware of how bad it sounded. The first few times all I cared about was getting through the songs without fucking something up. It was the first time where I didn't’ really feel that nervous before I went on, and where I wasn’t shaking when I took the guitar out of the case. A few of the other performers said that the sound at that place really sucks and how that definitely has a negative impact on how well the sets go. I couldn’t hear myself too well, and everything sounded super bassy and muddled. I figured that I should have a few songs written that use chords very high up on the neck, just for those kinda situations. I felt the whole time that I was singing a few octaves lower. It was really weird. I also gotta get a capo, now that I understand what they do. 

Today I wanna record the sets I’ve done. I feel like it would be a cool idea to document the songs I play, because they’re changing pretty often. It’s interesting to see the progress. I started off by playing stuff that’s wayyyyy too complicated. Way too many chords and stuff going on. So I wanna record that stuff today. 

I finished reading Change By Design. It was pretty interesting. I really liked the parts where he talked about prototyping. I felt like I could apply that stuff to the gigs. He talked about how a good way to tell how innovative a company is, is to see how quickly they can design and test a prototype. It inspired me to just keep trying new things, as opposed to worrying about having the perfect set or waiting until I can sing properly. He talked a lot about failing early and quickly in order to succeed sooner. I liked that a lot. 
My initial goal with doing the gigs was to get over the stage freight and to have a couple songs fully memorized so that I always have a set ready to go. I’ve achieved that, and now my goals are to have done an open-mic everyday of the week, that way whenever I have a day off work I can look at my list on my phone and see what’s open that night. I want to have done most of the places at least once. I’ve done the open-mics on Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday so far. I’m doing one tonight so I’ll have one for Monday.

 
My other goal is just to be somewhat decent. I don’t want to come across as one of the people that you feel sorta sorry for, or who you just clap out of respect for. I don’t have any illusions of being amazing after just a few shows, but I do want to be OK. 

Maybe that’s actually asking too much, too early. It probably is, to be honest. Ok I’ll change it. A goal that I really want is to be able to not run out of breath while I’m singing. I notice this happening a lot. I’ll run out of breath which causes me to kinda just say the words, as oppose to sing them. I have a hard time remembering to inhale and knowing when to inhale. It almost feels like rubbing my belly and patting my head all at the same time. I watched some videos today that talk about how to breath properly. I started doing what she said and I immediately noticed that it was just easier to breath in general. I realized that I always breath with the focus on my face. I think that has a lot to do with why I feel that my nose doesn’t work properly. I was probably breathing too quickly and sharply through my nose, causing it to kinda close. Know I’m focusing on expanding my diaphragm when I inhale, and that seems to make it much easier to fill my lungs completely with air. Before it always felt like I had to take two breaths through my nose to get enough oxygen. 

I’m really wanting to write the random stories, but I’m not interested in posting them to Commaful anymore. Every time I write one that I really like, usually the ones that are super random and don’t make much sense, they get a handful of likes and people commenting things like ‘what is this’ or ‘I don’t get it’. I hate checking what people say. It’s hard to ignore it. I’ve got 16,139 followers, which is quite an accomplishment, but it really doesn’t seem that exciting anymore. I don’t really care. I kinda just want to delete the account. It’s definitely given me a bunch of confidence but at this point I don’t really feel that I’m get anything out of it. 

Make up your mind today and then throw all the rocks into the ocean. Just be free for fucks sake. Take all that shit and burn it in time. Look away. Don’t look at the vortex. Feel it burning your ass. Make sure that it’s behind you. 

It’s gone now. Feel the cool feeling of starting from scratch. It’s amazing to suck again. It’s humbling and powerful. Get used to sucking all over again. Get used to starting from scratch. Be talented in a bunch of things, not just one thing. Don’t keep all your sardines in one basket. A wolf will come along and eat them all up. Or a Nazi. They’ll shoot them with guns. They fucking love to shoot things. They love to kill.

Lizard King

  April 13, 2022

The Lizard King rounded up all the players of the hockey team and made them lick a piece of coal. That’s how they summoned good luck.
Then they got inspired by last months magazines about home decor. They studied the papers super intensely. 
“This one is all about how to kill the other team.” Declared one of the hockey players.
“That’s good to know. Now how about getting to fucking heaven? How do we achieve that? That’s why we’re here!” Screamed the Lizard King.
“Oh- right. I forgot about that.” Mumbled the hockey player as he want back to rubbing his knee caps and reading the magazine.
The Lizard King got on top of a bottle of Coke and hailed his fellow friends.
“Listen up! All of you losers need to get one thing into your bald heads! That’s this- all the time is now! You’re here and it’s all for you to feel! The future will never come and the past never happened! The present moment is all there is!” 
The hockey players got confused and agreed to eat the Lizard King. They’d heard enough verbal acrobats from this Lizard. They took that reptile and picked him apart, limb by limb. The Lizard King cursed them all to hell as he was eaten alive.
“You’ll pay for your sins! You’ll be locked up under the ice-rink along with Jack and his crooks!
The hockey players got really sweaty and laughed like kids who love to eat at McDonalds. Then they laughed for seven months until their bodies were skinny. They had to give up being sports-men. They opened up a flower shop and sold flowers and plants to local farmers. That’s all they knew to do. 
The world order was changing anyways. China was becoming ever more present on the world stage and all the boats in the ocean were being powered by things like blood. Not literally, but figuratively. 

Last night I went to Kensington Market. I did two gigs. I did one at Free Times Cafe and then another at Handlebar. I’ve done 3 solo performances know. I’m excited for the next one because that will be the fourth show and it’s usually around the fourth time that I get comfortable doing something new. 
It’s really interesting how performing live really reveals what parts of the music are and aren’t working. It’s not necessarily based on the reaction of the audience, since at these places they’re pretty supportive no matter what so it’s hard to know what they actually like. It’s more just a feeling I get while I’m performing. The last bit of my set was way to ‘chordy’. I already knew it was hard to memorize, but once I was up there I really realized how over complicated it might be. I decided to drop it this morning. The song was ‘Loving Bri’ which went into this little key change song thing, which went into another thing, which went into a MegaBus reprise. I like each of those songs on their own, but it was too much happening all at once. So I’m dropping all of that and going with ‘On My Own’ right out of ‘Isolation’. 
I was listening to a podcast with Rick Rubin and he was taking about how when he works with artists they’ll work on like 20 songs, and then once they’re done they’ll pick their top 5 and get rid of the rest. It’s painful to have to remove songs even if you like them but It’s important. So that’s what I feel like I’m doing.
It’s also fun to just keep revising the set, that way it’s a little different each time for people in the audience who’ve already seen me, and hopefully it gets a little stronger with each iteration. The thing that I forgot when I’m practising in my room, is that at these gigs there’s a lot of people in the room who are just talking, so it feels a little silly playing these songs that have tons of chords. For these kinds of gigs I want to have songs that feel very direct and simple. Not necessarily simple in the chords or melody, but simple in that you don’t need to really ‘try’ to hear what I’m trying to get at. It’s just there and you can feel it. 

Vader Fest

  April 12, 2022 

A very tall ladder was pointed up the sky. A crowd of people stood around it, gazing upwards.
“What do you suppose lies at the top?” Asked a terribly ugly man.
“Pumpkin?” Suggested a boy. “A field of pumpkins perhaps?”
“That’s a fucking crazy idea. Where do you come up with this nonsense. Will you just go fuck yourself already? I’m sick of this feeling of trying to do what pleases you. It’s like this building up of pressure. I just want you to go fuck yourself and die in like 65 years. Can ya do that for me?”
The boy laughed at his hand and tried to be confident. He got down on the dirt and fucked it like his life depended on it. “You may say I’m a dreamer!! But I’m not the only one!!” Howled the teen.
Later that day the police showed up and arrested all the peasants. The cops then went into the homes and burned all of the Bibles and smashed the plates. They used the silver ware to scour the earth for riches. 
Darth Vader sat in his throne just down the street. He beckoned for one of his boys to come over and give him an update. “How’s my shrimp coming, you loser?” 
“It’s cooking as we speak. It’s three times hotter than last week. No cold shrimp for your majesty.”
“Fuckin rad, my friend,” nodded Darth Vader as he gabbed some hamsters from a bowl and placed them into his breast pocket. 
“Are we almost ready to rape the island of Nantucket?” Asked the soldier.
“Yah just give me a few days to love myself and I’ll get back to you. Are you ready for some fun?”
“Sir?” Asked the soldier. His voice shaky. 
“Get on the floor. Get on your hands and knees. Let me ride you like a black stallion. Let’s go to Texas and explore the mountains for lizards and gizzards and trophies.”
The soldier did as he was told. Darth Vader mounted him and the two of them made the long precarious voyage south. They met a bunch of losers along the way and forced them to hand over all their passports. It was a fantastic time, and by the end of it the two decided to seal the deal and just get married. 

Getting Better

  April 11, 2021

I’m at home right now. I’m drinking coffee. I’ve been working on my song for the open-mics. That’s basically what I’ve been doing with my time. I’m just trynna memorize it. That’s the hardest part. I’m pretty close to getting it all down. It’s kinda this enormous thing that has like 6 songs squished together. I’m trynna just refine it and remove parts that feel sticky. Right now the last part that feels kinda funny is the song ‘Loving Bri’. Something about that one just doesn’t feel right yet. I’m thinking of removing one of the first verses. Maybe two actually. It plays through 4 times. That’s probably too many times. I’ll do 2- one where it’s just the chords and then one with the lyrics. Then the chorus. I like the chorus but something about it doesn’t feel quite right, like there’s just one chord too many or something. 

I think I got an idea. The 3rd last chord should be similar to the 4th last, but just one of those chords that’s almost the same but slightly ‘elevated’. I don’t know what the word is but Beatles and Beach Boys do it a lot. I think that will help because that’s around the section where things start to just feel a little too much. 

I’m not trynna make this perfect before I go out and perform. I don’t want to fall into that trap. It’s more about just wanting stuff memorized. I can continue to refine it. But I really don’t want to to be up there forgetting chords and lyrics and shit. I want to have at least one 10 minute set that I can fall back on at any time. I just gotta get this one memorized and start performing. Then I can write more stuff if I want. 
One of the nice feelings is that I don’t have this feeling of needing to ‘make it’ anymore. I don’t have any desire to have someone want to sign me. I’m not working towards that goal. I’m not looking for a producer. 

I feel so fortunate to have spent 2 years in my room just trying endlessly to ‘make it’ on the internet as a ‘bedroom producer’ or whatever. I acquired soooo many skills and become extremely self-sufficient and confident in my abilities, but maybe more importantly I had my ego totally decimated. It just felt like I got punched in the stomach every single day. I got beaten down a little bit more day after day after day, until by the end of it I just didn’t care anymore. 

Just about every single  time I uploaded a song, photo, video,I was SURE that this was the one that was gonna go viral. I don’t mean just slightly hoping it would explode, I was pretty confident it would! I remember thinking that the ‘Isolation’ video in the bathroom was gonna explode, the ‘Christmas Shopping’ video, the ‘Love Me Do’ cover, the ‘Radio Foozeball’ video, especially ‘The Avocado Song’ video, and pretty much every other video! Every single time! Over and over again! Nothing ever happened. I remember actually losing followers over time. It wasn’t like I was plateauing. People were leaving. 

And thank God. 

I think that was the best thing that could’ve happened. For one thing, when I watch some of those videos now I cringe so hard. It’s so clear to me how hard I was trying. I’m so happy that so few people saw most of them. I still love all the music. That stuff makes me really proud, but the videos cringe me for the most part, especially the ones where it’s just me. I’m trying so hard and it’s so fake. 

The thing that was really good about ‘not making it’ was that it confirmed something that I was unsure of. I always used to wonder if the only reason I made music was because I wanted people’s attention. I used to always wonder if I’d ever pick up the guitar if all the people on earth disappeared. The fact that I kept making these songs and really really putting in effort when no one was watching, kinda confirmed for me that I actually genuinely like music. I enjoy it a lot. 

So my ego, to some degree, was just nuked, and I find that veryyyyy freeing. I don’t have the same expectations now when I go on stage to perform. I’m just trying to improve. That’s my only goal now. The only thing I care about is improving. I don’t need someone to sign me because I don’t need to be promoted. I don’t need a producer to agree to work with me because I’ve learned how to produce myself. All I wanna to do is improve! 

The other ‘failure’ or lesson I learned that’s been super helpful has to do with doing creative stuff for money. I learned that something weird happened when I would do freelance videos for money. This slight unpleasant feeling would arise, and it would get stronger and stronger to the point where I dreaded having to edit for other people. It turned something I love into chore. As soon as someone agrees to pay you they basically own you, and they have a certain level of control. I fucking hated that feeling. Collaboration is good, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that in some circumstances money is the quickest and surest way to insure that the ‘fun’ dies very quickly. 

So having learned all that I don’t really have a desire to get paid for performing. It’s not that I don’t want to make money, it’s just that I don’t want to have to perform with someone else’s expectations. I don’t like how I feel when I know I’m getting paid. I was thinking last night how a payment I would really love would be that if I performed at a restaurant but instead of getting money at the end I was allowed to pick anything off the menu for dinner. That would be cool.

I think it might be important to continue doing jobs that aren’t necessarily creative, like working at the Fox. There’s something a bit humbling about that and I don’t at all feel weird about making money that way. Something besides the Fox, though. Something new. Working for Yoga at the Taco place sounds great.