Alcohol gets me out of my head, and God bless it. Singing gets me out of my head, most of the time. Playing guitar puts me outside out of my head, and often out of my body as well. This is perhaps why I love it best.
Alcohol is the least effective of these, but it's the easiest to accomplish correctly. It clouds things, and nothing more. Singing is incredible. It takes everything good in me and pulls it towards the outside. Lets me produce something of beauty, when I have the courage to allow myself to sing properly. My singing voice is the only aspect of myself that I have near-unwavering confidence in. I can sing. And it feels like flying. Forgetting when the sound comes from me is the best part. Forgetting that I'm creating it, that I exist at all, and just listening to the sounds coming out of my lips and belly. It makes me cry, sometimes, when I get deep enough into this state. Very little can compare to it. To the beauty of being and living in pure sound. To the peace of losing every other aspect of myself. It's my dream, and sometimes I get to visit that place in life. Playing guitar is very similar to that for me, but tends to get me to that place more often. It takes marginally less concentration to play guitar properly, and get good tones with it, than it does to sing properly. Depending, of course, on how much I've been doing either one at the time I'm playing or singing. Playing produces the same feelings as singing, but tends to get me into that higher plane of existing more than singing alone does. Perhaps because I'm not such a perfectionist with my guitar as I am with my voice yet.
Caffeine grounds and elevates me, when I get enough. But mostly it's the taste of tea that I tend towards. The internet is knowledge, to me. I read articles more than I talk to people. Politics, economics, world events, utterly random facts. It doesn't matter. It's also where I tend to do most of my thinking about myself. Whenever I read there's downtime. I can't read and only think of what I'm reading. I sound the words out inside of my head, so there's always space between the sounds to contemplate anything else I can't get out of my head. Books are much the same, though they tend more towards knowledge about individuals in the human race than the world as a system. My internet readings tend to improve my knowledge of the latter category.
And those are my addictions. Those are the things I do and love and that keep me from despair. And sometimes set it off.
I need to play and sing more. I realise this all the time. I do every day as it is, but I should be spending hours and hours on them. They're the only things that make me truly happy. That I can accomplish on my own, at least.
revoless.
11:42 p.m.
February 18, 2004.
Listening to: Elliott Smith.
Happiness is or I've been brainwashed! And it's killing my music collection!