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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

For the first time I can actually determine that my hearing is less the day after a concert than it was the day before. I feel like I need to turn my music up just a touch louder to hear it, I can’t hear the conversations in the hall quite as clearly. Next time I’ll be bringing ear plugs. Cause I like being able to hear. Also, it’s easier to hear the music without all of the hum, and I don’t miss the hum, especially when I can feel it in my chest competing with my heart for rhythmic superiority.

An awesome concert. I would have loved it if I had paid for tickets, I loved it even more because I didn’t. Also, hanging out with spectacular people for a couple of hours can never be bad.

And Britt Daniel and I had a moment.

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

A proposal:

There are dozens of interesting people I have encountered through the internet. Mostly I quietly observe their doings, their art, whatever form it takes. I know about them what I can gather from what they decide is important.

A thought.

All of these people create, in some way or another. They all put something into the world that was not there before, they create beauty, or ugliness, or a new way of looking at things, or a new way of thinking about things.

And they are all very busy doing it. Some work full time, some are students. I’, constantly running into a problem… there are simply not enough hours.

And sometimes you get tired. Sometimes you feel like no one is paying attention, that no one would notice if you stopped doing what you’re doing. If you just went to work to get the money to pay the rent, and came home and watched tv. And no one would notice if the small things that you used to send out into the world simply stopped coming.

I want to create a community of people who would notice. People you don’t know other than through the abstract movings of the internet. I want to take the concepts that exist on the internet and create something tactile, something real in the world. Because when I hear the music you’ve created, it isnt really your music, it’s a series of 000111000011101 that translate into your music. likewise your pictures arent your pictures, your art is not your art, it is all just a sequence of binary code which represent these things that we do.

And so I propose a community of art by mail. You input your address, and you chose an address. Don’t chose a name you know, chose a name you don’t know. Write a letter, make a mix, glue a whole bunch of stuff to a shoe, and send it out.

Reclaim the romance of getting something that isn’t a bill in the mail.

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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

The time: Tuesday night
The place: some bar on Colfax
My state of inebriation: Not quite as drunk as I let myself feel.

So there I was, out with two people I barely know. Strangely, one of them I have known for over ten years, and yet… I barely know him. I think I may have scared him some, when I off handedly mentioned the clothes that he used to wear in middle school. I suppose that if someone I hadn’t seen in five years turned to me and listed the clothes that I wore ten years ago I too might have been slightly… curious (if not downright alarmed).

It got me thinking about the ways we remember things. I remember his clothes, in a general sort of way (X Files tee shirt and a green trench coat, not anything more or less than that). I remember that that was the time my friend Rico wore a lot of tie-dyed Star Wars themed tee shirts. I remember that there was a stoner girl on my bus who had a pair of corduroy pants she always wore, to the point that the cords were actually worn down in the knee. I remember there was a kid I would always see on my way to wood shop who had a Marilyn Manson shirt he would always wear.

Strangely… I don’t really remember what I was wearing at that point. I assume it was my fairly standard jeans and over-sized teeshirt. It was before I knew really anything about music, so i couldn’t tell you what the tee shirts were (since they wouldn’t have been concert/ band shirts yet). I remember that some kid who sat next to me in the gym line said something along the lines of “so you finally got *real* shoes” when I bought a pair of suede low top converse soccer style shoes. for all i know those may actually be in my closet at my moms.

i guess what i wonder is… why do we remember what we remember? why do certain people stick out in my mind more than others? This person I was at the bar with the other night… He and I were never really friends at all… I don’t know if we’re actually friends yet. He mentions people, and I know the names. I know we were more than acquaintances in high school. But I haven’t given these people more than a passing thought in the last five years. Except for the ones I have. The ones I was never quite brave enough to try and talk to in high school. The ones I admired from afar… for whatever reason. Their art, their intelligence, their ability to captivate my friends, their courage, their beauty.

I don’t know if I was ever quiet. But I’m curious… if anybody googles my name and wonders what I’m doing now.

Paper Cranes.JPG
Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Listening to: Badly Drawn Boy “Easy Love”

To: The World
From: ariel
Re: This bites

Look, I just want you to know, it really sucks. I’m an awesome person, and I pretty much deserve to be around awesome people my age. I deserve to be wooed, and even seduced. I’ve earned the right to be around people who aren’t depressed, who enjoy their lives, and who adore me as much as I adore them, and the world.

I just thought you should know. It’s not like I’ll stop putting up with it. It’s not like I really have a choice. But come on, can’t a girl catch a break? Just you know, every once in awhile?

Listening: Tarkio “Devil’s Elbow”

My apartment is not clean, but it’s not outrageously messy. I know I’ve been eating but I don’t feel like I’ve been eating. I feel… disconnected. As though nothing really matters in this moment. What *does* matter to me right now is that I can’t find the first disc from the Tarkio Omnibus, and my cat keeps eating the houseplants, and consequently he vomits. Damn cat. I look around and I’m not quite happy with the state of my apartment, but I’m not unhappy, I mean, it’s not a shithole. I don’t know why this is important to be writing about at the moment. There are at least seventeen other things I could write about.

Here’s one of them, I saw Jonathan Safran Foer last night with a new friend from high school (I knew this person in high school, but we were not friends then. Actually, I met this person in middle school. There was going to be a cute anecdote there, but I couldn’t figure out a good way to relate it). I have decided that I have a crush on Jonathan Safran Foer. I would be interested in marrying him if he were not already married with a nine week old baby. I mean, that would just be wrong. But Jonathan Safran Foer = my ideal man (he’s even tall, skinny, wears glasses, and is Jewish. I’m not going to think about it any more).

Tonight is the Dresden Dolls. An instore and a concert at the Bluebird. w00t. I wish the Decemberists would do something like that.

“God I love you, but you trouble me”
In his blog last night Neil Gaiman said that his favorite possession is his ipod, or rather the idea of his ipod as opposed to the rather well worn device itself, but the idea of having access to all of his music at any moment. I relate to that sentiment in a very strong way. I remember back in high school thinking that if there were any way for me to hop on a train with all of my CDs and a change of clothes I would have done it in a heartbeat, but that travelling with all of my cd’s was an absurd prospect. And then came ipods. About nine months after I graduated high school and made had it to a situation that I was not constantly fantasizing about escaping from. If Ipods had been invented when I was in 10th grade, well, things may have been quite different. Or maybe that was just my excuse. I tried, a couple of times, to leave home, and I never quite made it. I had an overactive sense of responsibility. From an early age, my attention to guilt was fine tuned. I haven’t turned it off, I’ve just found better ways of rationalizing.

Yes.