This Petty Pace

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day."
-Macbeth

Currently, I am sitting on a wonderful couch in my best friend's house 11.5 hours away from my home.  Two of my best friends sit with me.  One is writing music, one is writing a paper, and I am sipping Harmony House coffee (...yes...I am...), reading P.G. Wodehouse, musing on life (dangerous, right?), and Monk is playing in the background.

This is the first year of my entire life that I haven't been with my family for Easter, and I miss them dearly; however, I feel so much older now.  I feel as if a storm is looming (summer, specifically, as I didn't get the DC internship I wanted, so much is in the air, and it's possibly the my last summer at home before...whatever is next in my life...), but at the moment I don't care.  I'm completely ignoring it, and it feels great.

I rode a 4-wheeler today for the first time in years.  I recently got my hair cut, but it's getting back to where I like it: shaggy (in fact, a professional bassist I played drums with called me Shaggy for quite some time after we first met...he still does, and I love it).  Anyway, the wind throwing my Ginger mane straight back felt wonderful.

According to Josiah, you can't sing the blues if your only woe is not finding car insurance.  I'm sure DW would agree.

Also according to Josiah at 3am last night (he woke me shaking my leg saying "bro...bro..."), motioning towards the ceiling of the room we're staying in, he dramatically says to me "Bro...this is Luke Smythe."  After which he pulls out his phone and appears to take a selfie (...sadly, he didn't actually take the picture...), before letting his arm drop, falling back into "real" sleep.  Because...apparently...he was asleep that whole time.

Today I'm letting my mind wander everywhere.  Macbeth, 4-wheelers, poetry, Wodehouse, best friends, blues, football, flowers in the lap, blue eyes, Russian studies, grad school, cramped legs from car rides, cramped abs from laughter, new albums from obscure favorite bands, tango music...

I have no new poetry for you.  Perhaps you should write a Scarlequain instead of reading mine.  Yours will probably be better than mine anyway.

Smile today.  Don't ignore the petty pace; tomorrow creeps in faster and faster as we age.

Combating Reality in Grinder and Grains

Dear Reader,

I can't tell you how much I've missed writing you.  So much has been on my mind of late, and I haven't found the words or the poetry to express what this vortext is doing to my upper grey matter (yes, I did invent a new word; do you like it?  Yes, "grey" is better spelled that way.  "Gray" just looks too harsh.).  However, let the record show that, talks with fathers (mine), wonderful authors (specifically F. Scott Fitzgerald), and a surprisingly pleasant change of atmosphere do me wonders.

I had the good fortune to realize through someone (my mother, I think), that the location that my favorite coffee-shop in my hometown used to occupy was again filled, and it was taken by a mom-and-pop cafe.  I was deeply saddened when the coffee-shop had left its previous home (a 100 year old house), in exchange for a larger, warehousey building (there he goes again with the weird words...).  The coffee's quality suffered, and the atmosphere there took a change for the worse, in my opinion.  However, I am currently sitting in the very corner of Grinder and Grains Cafe (where, if I ignore the windows looking outdoors to my TN home, I feel as if I'm in a lodge in the Swiss mountains), and I am one of two patrons currently frequenting the quaint establishment.  The coffee here is satisfactory, and the chicken tortilla soup is exquisite.  I feel quite safe here, much as I do at Harmony House back on the Hill; for, as far as I know, this little cafe has yet to be found out by a large amount of people. I think I have found a treasure, and I revel in that fact.  A painting of a couple embracing under an umbrella adorns the wooden wall near me, typical coffee-shop music floats softly through the age-old house, and here I write.  Alone, but with my books, words, and thoughts to keep me company.

Lately, I have been feeling extremely...lost.  I know this sounds like the same words over a different tune (I suppose that would be an inverted form of strophicity?  For those of you wondering, I did just modify the word "strophic" to fit my needs), but I guess being at home, countless engagements of people younger than me (some of those old friends, an ex, or just people I used to consider much less mature than myself), my drawing near to the completion of my time on the Hill, and just a general lack of preparedness (or so I feel) for the future has amplified those feelings even more than normal.  For those of you who understood that previous sentence on the first try, I commend you.

At any rate, I have been wondering recently whether or not I am a child of the millennial generation, and how that will affect me in the near future.  I attribute much of the faults of that generation to a complete immersion in technology for most of their life (specifically feelings of entitlement and narcissism), and while this may not be completely accurate, from my experience it has had a large role in their upbringing.  While I generally do not think that I have been immersed in technology my entire life (I barely knew what the internet was until I was 15, and never had any type of phone or gaming system until at least my 16th year), I do feel as if I am an extremely immature person surrounded by people of a maturity unknown by most people in my generation.

I have friends in college about two years younger than me who are married and awaiting their first child.  And here I am watching/playing Pokemon (I even ordered Ash's hat), playing Legos, dressing like I'm still in my early teens, and relying on my parents for a lot of my livelihood while I'm in college.  And I can't help but ask myself if I'm somehow behind...if I've done something wrong.  Is it wrong to have the kind of fun I'm having at my age?  Should I grow up and move on to more serious things?  I have sworn most of life that I'll be wearing Converse from now on out, and I'll be a goof even when I'm old and white...but...why am I here and they are up there ahead?

I read The Great Gatsby (a MUST read...I don't care if you've seen the movie) and I read things in it like, “The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself…he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.” and I wonder (because that is exactly how I am...constantly Romanticizing everything, just as Gatsby did) if it is indeed possible to form a Platonic version of me: to forget my past on such a level that I can become the man I've always dreamed I could be.  That vision is nothing like Gatsby's in physical grandeur.  I don't want the house, the wealth, or the people...but to be a man that is worth remembering.  I want to do that as a Christian, and I know I should be constantly tempering what I think and desire by God's Word.  And I do.  I guess I don't feel the comfort a lot of people say they have in it.  I think God requires of us the blood, sweat, and tears that worldly people shed on their own personal ambition.  I think service for Him is the end goal, but we are still required Gatsby's ambition if we want to be truly successful for Him.  I feel like I have shed quite a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, but lest you think I'm feeling entitled, I do not say I deserve anything; rather, I query to the void what those wounds, labors, and tears have accomplished.  Who am I because of my past?  Or should I shed my past and become my own man?  ...some questions that are probably best left to hindsight.  Yes, it is 20/20...but it sure takes a long time getting here.  I guess growing up takes a lifetime.

Pokemon and pranks,

But to be frank,

Immature and irresponsible?

Is growing up logical?

Combating Reality.

Here I sit, comfortably musing in a new favorite place of mine.  I am listening to Pavarotti's rendition of "Nessun Dorma" from "Turandot" for the 12th time since I've been here, and I refuse to look up the lyrics.  

Why?

"I have no idea to this day what [he is] singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think [he is] singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, [his] voice soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."

I may feel like I'm institutionalized in Shawshank right now.  But regardless of the circumstances I'm in, and no matter that I feel as if I'm in a pond but pining to be in the ocean, I'll keep doing my best to be who I want to be, and who He wants me to be.  Join me?  I really could use the company.

Live the Question: Pursuance of Art

"When God created - and in that way made the perception of beauty and the human creation of art possible - he gave art a place in this world in which we live; and that world he called good.  Art is here because God meant it to be here."  - H.R. Rookmaaker

Imagine: as soon as God created, Art came into being.  It was the first thing to truly exist in our Universe, in our Reality.  Sure, He made Light first.  But in the same words he breathed Light into being, Art took shape too.  There was no war, no worries, no struggle.  In God's perfect Universe, alongside everything He created, there was Art.  God called this world Good.  Perfection centered around existence, praise to God, and Art.  After the Fall, that changed.  War and worry were added.  Our focus was violently shifted.  But Art is still out there, just waiting to be pursued.

In our society today, the arts are being mercilessly cut and removed from our education system to make way for the "essentials."  But really, when God created the Universe, were social studies, Language, Math, and Science the focus?  Not at all.  They were all in the working background.  I do not mean to say that these disciplines are unimportant; on the contrary, these disciplines hold the fabric of the Universe together.  But they are not the zenith of God's beautiful creation.  Always, there is Art.

There are some great people throughout history who have not forgotten this truth: Art is made to be pursued.
 Art is the capstone of every civilization.  In every Golden Age, the pinnacle is creativity.  Why do we remember the Golden Age of Athens or of Rome?  Great philosophers, sculptors, orators, painters: artists.  The nearest any civilization has come to perfection is always highlighted by the deepest Creativity.  There is a quote that is floating around on the internet: "When Winston Churchill was asked to cut arts funding in favor of the war effort, he simply replied 'then what are we fighting for?'"  The quote isn't verified to actually be Churchill's, but even if it isn't, the truth of those words has resonated in my head ever since I first read it.  Why on earth are we cutting funding to the Arts?  What then, are we fighting for?  Are we abandoning our Golden Age?  It seems we are no longer pursuing what characterizes the things that give the Lord deep glory.  It seems we are no longer pursuing perfection.

I have been searching for who I am for quite a long time, as most of you are aware if you read any of what I write.  Recently, however, I have decided that I want to be a music professor.  I love music; it is my Art.  I love writing; it is my Art.  Pursuing a graduate degree in music theory or music history (or both) is a place I can write and perform, and I can influence coming generations towards things that truly matter.

Like finding and using their Art for a Purpose that really matters.

And learning when a word needs to be capitalized.

I've been reading a lot of Rainer Maria Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet" recently (sincerely thankful a dear friend gave me that wonderfully insightful book), and I was led to the following quote that helped solidify in my mind that I'm on the right track.

"You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

I am not claiming to have The Answer.  I assume that will not come until very few breaths remain in me.  If any.  But I do know I feel as if I have been given some new sense of direction, and I am following it.  I feel somewhere deep within me that it is leading me toward the Art that I have, for most of my life, greatly enjoyed but thought I would someday have to give up.  A part of me feels an odd sense of completion that I am being pushed in a direction that will not require me to give them up, but instead to pursue them.  To pursue my Art - my offer of praise to the ultimate Artist.

The past few weeks I have had small glimpses into the true definition and existence of Art with a capital A.  I am immersed in its beauty in ways I never believed possible, and in ways that nothing else can achieve.  I have no witty or strategic way to incorporate the following three poems I wrote under music's influence.  As you read them, try to imagine the most beautiful and all-encompassing thing you've ever experienced.  These are the feelings I have tried to capture.  I feel as if I'm in the middle of a vortex of words of pleasure, and in reaching my hands out I can only grasp a few.  Know that many more wonderful words and feelings still rage about me.

Overwash and flow,
Sing, violin's bow,
Flood my senses,
Beautiful, yearning, pensive:
Intense musical pleasure.

Shiver down the spine,

Whisper in time,

So much pleasure,

Measure after measure:

Musically Aroused.

Back of the mind,

Rolling in time,

On or off the seat,

Plagued by the beat:

Drum fill.

I don't know for certain where I am going.  I don't know the answer, but I am living the question.  

I am pursuing my Art.  

Music and words dance constantly through my head.  Lord, please don't let the dance stop.

Literary Horcruxes

"You can only perceive real beauty in a person as they get older."

- Amouk Aimee

I heard someone ask the question recently, "What is real Beauty?"  It was obvious to me that they were asking about beauty with a capital "B."  And I admit I still don't have an answer.  I'm just glad they weren't asking me.  And when I read the above quote in a little book of positive sayings I have (another aspect of my beatnikness, I suppose), it sort of festered in the back of my mind.

Not to sound overtly morbid, but I chuckle at the fact that most poets, philosophers, and "great people" don't really become famous until after they're dead.  At the height and cessation of their age, they finally achieve real Beauty.  Made me think of the following by Peter Van Houten, from John Green's The Fault in Our Stars (a book that you must read if you haven't already):

"Witness...that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense.  When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.  You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them.  Language buries, but does not resurrect."

I guess that's the Beauty of being a poet: we pour our heart and soul (...if I had a soul, being a Ginger) into our work, and once we die, we are lost.  But much like a Horcrux, a part of us lives on in the little things we poured ourselves into.

The Literature lives.

This also made me think: what part of myself am I leaving behind?  Once I'm gone, what will people think of me based on the soul I left behind in my words?  As I said in my last entry, I noticed that many of my Scarlequain aren't exact the brightest and happiest of things.  So I'm trying to do better on that account.  I've also learned that one's day is greatly improved upon thanking your Heavenly Father for the simple things.  A friend asked the question "where would we be if we woke up the next day with only the things we had thanked God for the previous day?"  Made me think.

Cognitive thought,

Freckles and spots,

Life and breath,

A day stayed death:

Thankful, Gratis.

 Not everything has to be happy and thankful.  Life is rated R, and sometimes we need to know that there are hard things people go through.  And sometimes we need to know the silly things too.  They keep us Human just as much as the simple and the hard things.

Up in your face,

Put in your place,

As if we care,

Where's his hair...?

Just before break.

A blog I read ends every post with three things they're thankful for.  I don't plan on doing this much, but I thought it appropriate today.  So here you are:

1. A music prof. who stretches me and makes me see life in ways I never could without him, and who consequently inspires TONS of poetry.

2. The hard things in life that push me back to the simple things and to Him.

3. Literary Horcruxes.

Simple Harmonies

I feel very safe here.  It is as if this building is a safe haven from all the cares and worries and struggles we encounter on a day to day basis.  There is the soft drizzle of rain gently tapping on the roof and windows, Norah is crooning to me in the background, and I have finished my homework for the day.  My best friend sits on the couch beside me, and I marvel at the simplistically profound beauty that is all around me.

It has been a difficult week for both of us: papers, homework, practice sessions, life choices...you name it, we've probably been there.  And upon getting out of my last class for the week, I decided we needed some quality time at the local coffeehouse, owned by John Piatt, a man about whom I could write books.  He is quirky beyond all reason (something that attracts me to people instantly), and is always willing to share advice about life, the finer qualities of a stellar barista (he would use those words), and things he has recently discovered on his own spiritual journey towards Christ.


Today, John asked us a simple question: What if we could feel the satisfaction we experience at the commencement of the weekend...all the time?  What if we went about our lives experiencing and physically manifesting to others the satisfaction I'm feeling right now, having completed a week of work and looking forward to the next few days of rest?  What if we daily lived in light of who are as a part of the Imago Dei?

I feel very safe here.  Reading my P.G. Wodehouse, writing poetry, and basking in the warmth of the simplistically profound beauty that is all around me.

Deep advice,

Chase away, Vice,

Melt in the Rain,

Simple beauty plain,

Harmony House.