honestly now, i can’t tell you what to do son. you can fill your time as you like, but however you do it you’ll never be doing nothing because when you do those things which some call nothing you’re in fact training to do those things which some call nothing. but to put your foot down and push off, that’s more than vocational. to scour the terrain for leads, for footprints, broken twigs, old tin cans. you look for paths. when you run across one you turn about and see that you, too, have an origin and trajectory. you will know at that moment where and when you embarked and you will know too the direction of where others have oriented themselves. all the while these discoveries will have no bearing on what it is you search for, for though the others may have sought their own infinities, you know not what these infinities concerned and if the others had truly found what they needed. you will chase some and ignore others.and it is in the desert sifting through sand that you encounter gold: that infinity is a choice you make for gravel and diamonds — that infinity is a destination unreachable by steps but obtainable by choice– a choice you will not always be able to make, for the paths of men cannot escape their beginnings, veer and squiggle as they may.

I’ve got my backpack full of fourteen cartons
Of cigarettes, cigarettes
I’ve got a bumper sticker on my chest that says
No regrets, no regrets
I’ve got your love draped all around me like
A big black cape, a big black cape
All the billboards on the highway say
Don’t be late, don’t be late
It’s just you and i
It’s just you and i
When all the world turns into hospitals and jails
I can always count on your love to be my bail
We’ll go traveling on from year to year
Just you and i, my dear

- Mason Jennings

As if a person’s most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there’s the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They’re probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists’ problem is exactly the same as the story’s unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn’t even know he’s locked up.

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.

via David Foster Wallace – Commencement Speech at Kenyon University.

september has been one of the most stressful, insane, busy, and inspirational months of my life. a truly memorable month, alternating between the terrible lows of 2:30 AM cramming and the terrific highs of incredible concerts and speakers. more later.

It’s almost like . . . [pauses] when you just step one little step off your own life, you can just see something open up in front of you, and you just follow it.

via I AM FUEL, YOU ARE FRIENDS: Be here now: Interview with Mason Jennings.

Mason Jennings, originally uploaded by dreamingyakker.

I was born on a railroad track
the weight of the world
strapped to my back

born to be a soldier boy
born to be a soldier boy

Wizard Island, originally uploaded by dreamingyakker.

Certainly as awesome as advertised, probably more so.

Crater Lake, Oregon, originally uploaded by bearsgonebad.

off to crater lake, oregon now for the rest of the summer.

The Road is no tease. It is a brilliantly directed adaptation of a beloved novel, a delicate and anachronistically loving look at the immodest and brutish end of us all. You want them to get there, you want them to get there, you want them to get there — and yet you do not want it, any of it, to end.

via The Road Movie Review – Inside Movie of the Road – Esquire.

But Beirut’s music benefits from an open borders world. In the unworldly way that a college-aged kid can question the inherent language of sound and centuries deep weavings of a geographically-specific culture, Condon has fused nations through his singular, absorbent quest for rich sound. It’s not a small task for anyone, but maybe it’s not an impossible one for someone who doesn’t have enough experience with life’s failures to stop him from trying.

via The FADER – FADER 60: Beirut Cover Story – Features .