My Foolish Ship

September 24, 2006 1:42 AM

irst and foremost, a hearty congratulations to Mr. Zachar who, in a stunning display of his trigger pulling abilities, beat 50 other competitors today and took home the Dean's Cup Texas Hold'em championship. His prize? Pride. And, together with the second-place finisher, the knowledge that he helped bring 9 additional points to the law school, increasing our lead to over 20. We're gonna fucking win this year, I can feel it.

After poker, Zachar and I went over to Laurence and Cristina's, where we watched Dodgeball, which is awesome, walked to State Street, I ordered way too much Taco Bell, and then came home.

It was an interesting night. I had this song stuck in my head for a long time, and I couldn't figure out what song it was. But then, right at the moment it was my turn to order at T-Bell, I realized that I knew where the song was from. I suddenly realized that the song was in American Beauty. But a search on Amazon.com for the American Beauty soundtrack revealed nothing. So I popped in the movie - it's one of my favorites - and watched. Turns out, it was the song that Mena Suvari put on just before Kevin Spacey almost has sex with her. It's "Don't Let it Bring You Down" by Annie Lennox, originally written and performed by Neil Young. So I downloaded it from iTunes and have been listening to it continuously for a few hours.

This one time in college, my friends and I went to an art show held by the school. It was notable for a few reasons. First off, Karen had some art in the show, I think. Second, Dee's former roommate also had some art in the show. I remember that well because this former roommate was blind. Except she wasn't. Apparently, the roommate was able to determine that Dee's friend was short, even though she had no way of knowing other than by seeing Dee's friend. Also, the roommate was apparently very good at Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo, which, again, does not seem consistent with her being blind. Whatever, the roommate made art, apparently - again, while blind. The TV station I worked on even did a story about how awesome it was that the blind girl could make art. But we knew - she wasn't blind.

In any event, we were at this art show. I usually find myself bored at these things because most art sucks. Or maybe I'm too stupid to appreciate art. I don't know. I think the real reason is that it takes me about 2 seconds to see a painting. Given that there were probably about 100 paintings at this things, that means it took me about 200 seconds, or roughly 3.33 minutes, to see all the art in the place. But we were there for at least an hour.

Anyway, there weren't just paintings at this art show. There were sculptures and shit, too. As I was walking around, I noticed a little sculpture of a ship. It wasn't a very good sculpture. The ship was all warped and disfigured. You could tell that the sulptor had taken only a few minutes to make the ship, or had taken a very long time to make it seem as though it had taken only a few minutes. The ship looked as un-seaworthy as possible. Aside from being made of clay, it looked like it would fall apart on the open oceans. In any event, I thought it was realy strange and kind of interesting. My interest grew when I saw the title of the piece: "My Foolish Ship."

I think I'm thinking about that sculpture tonight because I'm feeling like a ship that's being tossed around on the waves right now. I might have a direction I'd like to go in, I'm not sure. But even if I do it doesn't matter because I don't have the ability to get myself to where I want to be. I don't feel like I'm sinking - not yet. Not at all, in fact. I love the place I'm at in my life. But I also realize that I can't stay here forever. Nor do I want to.

I always tell people that what they should do is decide what they want to do and then do it. Well, I'm pretty sure I know what I want. That's the part where lots of other people seem to get hung up. But now, for the first time, I'm having to deal with the issue of how to get to where I want to be. And that's something I just don't know how to deal with right now.

2 Comments

RPM said:

Pulling the trigger, I'm bummed I missed it. Too bad I was busy being sick yesterday. I could have finished in the top three in poker to take another point away from the medical school. I could have saved you from t-bell. I could have told you the song in your head.

My favorite anecdote about "Don't Let it Bring You Down" is from CSNY's live album 4 Way Street. Neil Young introduces the song by saying "here's a song that's guaranteed to bring you down. It's called 'Don't Let it Bring You Down'"

It also seems to be the backbone to Dana Carvey's tune "This is Every Neil Young Song You've Ever Heard" which begins "dead dog lying in the ditch, cigarette smoker has an itch..."

September 24, 2006 6:35 PM

Ismael Tapia II said:

Indeed, it's too bad for the law school that you weren't there. I hope you're feeling better, by the way.

That's funny about Mr. Young. For a song with that name, it sure is depressing.

I swear, I wished you were around. I knew you'd be able to immediately identify the song. It was tearing me apart inside to not be able to remember where the hell the song was from. When I saw that it was a Neil Young song, I immediatey kicked myself for not remembering.

An interesting Neil Young/pull the trigger correlation: this guy I worked with at the TV station was a guitarist/songwriter guy. He wrote and recorded this song that completely and blatantly ripped off the melody from "Heart of Gold." He named the song "Pull the Trigger."

He was a cool guy, though. Apparently, he once partied with Fuel.

September 25, 2006 12:37 AM

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