Achtung Baby!

my old friend

no escape from loneliness

Sent to me by my Leonard Cohen fundamentalist Muse.
+ Leonard Cohen told us back in 2008 why he loved seeing other artists cover his songs.


+ Leonard Cohen : Une brèche en toute chose

Let's begin again

[R.E.M: Begin the Begin.Live]

While I'm on this R.E.M. kick, one for my Muse: [R.E.M. You Are The Everything.live],
and also thanks for all the encouragement to my dear be your pet.

as you get older

I read somewhere that as you get older, the brain cells associated with anxiety begin to die. [Pauses] A lot of other brain cells die, too, so you’ve got to watch out
Leonard Cohen

Hayden: Starting Over And I feel like starting over / More now, as I'm older 

i don't know how to hope anymore

the love...
And i don't know how to pray anymore
and in love i don't know how to hope anymore
and for that love i don't know how to wait anymore

By Friday life has killed me

just another false alarm

+ Low - Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me

bruises that won't heal

So see you when you're 40, lost and all alone

+ 40 Things Turning 40 in 2016
U2, Apple, Alicia Silverstone.

+ 40 Is the New 20
Twenty-year-old women think that forty-year-old men are too old to date. Thirty-year-old men think they’re young enough to date twenty-year-old women, while thirty-year-old women think they’re old enough to date forty-year-old men. Forty-year-old men think we’re all in the same general dating “age range.” Forty-year-old women think that forty-year-old men are too immature for them to date.

I think I'm forgetting her now

+ Jeff Buckley - Forget Her (Alternate Take)

not so lonely....

Mr.Robot.eps2.2_init1.asec

Home

After a long absence I have returned Home. The place where this blog was born and a majority of it was created. I'm back.

nostalgia is a liar

nostalgia is a liar. nothing was ever as good as you remember it to be. there’s a reason you don’t talk to that person anymore, there’s a reason you’re not part of each other’s lives. don’t trust nostalgia. grieve. reflect. move on. /via

If you have never heard the live version of Buckley's FORGET HER...Buckle up and fix that RIGHT NOW:

image: © 2011-2015 BRANDON JORDAN via

and then my muse found me

10 Years ago today my Leonard Cohen loving beautiful muse wrote me for the first time and the rest is history.

+ Leonard Cohen - Famous Blue Raincoat.live

+ Leonard Cohen - Joan of Arc.live

I'm not an addict

The Leftovers | Dona Nobis Pacem 2

 

This instrumental breaks me in half. Max Richter is a Genius.

When you add in how brilliant the show has been in season 2, I can't deal.

Amy Brenneman was amazing in Season 2, Episode 3: Off Ramp. I was floored by it.

+ The Leftovers Season 2: Season 1 Recap 

  

loneliest moment

"The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly."
F. Scott Fitzgerald

you've got no one to talk to

“I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.”
Ferdinand de Saussure

"I'm in a deep depression...."

My whole world
Breaking down
The pressure's on
The pressures' on
This whole way's
Falling down
The pressure's on

[ James: Pressure's On ]

Feelings Illustrated

For a long time I've been debilitated in bed. Thinking too much. Sometimes not enough.

There's a rain cloud above me. Like all the good days have come and gone and now there is nothingness. 

I have to draw the line in the sand and proceed towards contentment. 

 Mazzucchelli & Maleev 

Don't you think I'm looking older?

 

Sometimes I wonder if you think I'm older or younger than I actually am.

+  George Michael: Older.Unplugged

Strange, Baby
Don't you think i'm looking older?
But something good has happened to me
Change is a stranger
You have yet to know

Change is a stranger
Who never seems to show

 Quote by L. Cohen 

I have wasted my life

“By being too sensitive I have wasted my life.”
— Arthur Rimbaud

There are days I want to open up and spill my guts.
There’s static in my inner voice. 
If you ask me "How are you?"
I'd say "I'm not sure if I can't breathe
or if I don't want to breathe".
Choked by memories
Tortured by Anhedonia
Paralyzed by Failure
Flirting with  Nihilism
Estranged from Melomania
Lacking Romantic Endeavours
Inside a complete lack of motivation and dicipline
I'm too old to de-fragment myself. It's too late to rebuild, to Push the button and restart.

"Remembrance, like Rembrandt, is dark but festive." 
— Vladimir Nabokov

[console me in my darkest hour]

He was in a troubled and obscured state of mind which was incomprehensible, from the sky to that yellow tram rumbling along the clear track of the Hohenzollerdamn (along which Yasha had once gone to his death), but gradually his annoyance with himself passed and with a kind of relief–as if the responsibility for his soul belonged not to him but to someone who knew what it all meant–he felt that all this skein of random thoughts, like everything else as well– the seams and sleaziness of the spring day, the ruffle of the air, the coarse, variously intercrossing threads of confused sounds–was but the reverse side of a magnificent fabric, on the front of which there gradually formed and became alive images invisible to him.
Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift

+ The Killers live from the Royal Albert Hall - Losing Touch

A decade

Today marks the 10th anniversarry of this blog. This was the first post.

a state of low mood...

 dvdp 

I feel so alone on a Friday Night

{I'm incomplete} [I'm incomplete] {I'm incomplete}

 Monday: Taiyo Yamamoto 

In a little while I'll be gone

Radiohead: [ How to Disappear Completely.live.2000 ]

‘What if?’ has no power against ‘What if not?’

‘What if?’ has no power against ‘What if not?’ The not of you is unbearable. I must have you. Let them prate, those scorn-eyed anti-romantics. Love is not the oil and I am not the machine. Love is you and here I am.
Jeanette Winterson, The Poetics of Sex

I've lived my life in vain

ERIC CLAPTON: [ Born To Lose ]

the rivers of my memory

Madeleine Peyroux: [ Gentle On My Mind ]

"He idolized it all out of proportion..."

My Muse went to Europe and when she returned she couldn't stand America. I told her that's how I feel when I come back to Texas from NYC. I told her that when we vacation in NYC together she will finally get to see the Fun version of me.

 sources 1,2,3 

others emphasize my loneliness

“I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don’t know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness.”
Anaïs Nin

Fabrizia*Milia

I'd lay down my sword if you would take it

I was introduced to the album that has the live version of this song by Neil. It's very me. One of those songs I must have written in another life, in another timeline where I didn't quit keyboard/music lessons when I was kid.

what you are

“Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.”

—	William S. Burroughs

+ Tegan and Sara - "Shock To Your System"

...more vulnerable...

addicted

By the grace of a friend I've turned myself On (depression is Off) and can do a few posts to amuse myself away from the slow buildup to my upcoming manic episode.

Kaiser Chiefs: [ Addicted To Drugs ]

 By MY VELVET UNDIES 

[I'm not leaving my bed depression]

Dear You,

This has been the worst year for me. I've been inside a bed bound depression for three weeks now.  I feel like I only have one friend. The only one who calls.  She's a very funny, inspiring, beautiful, sexy as fuck, smart and mischiveious one at that. Alas, she doesn't live in my town. She's been my lifeline ( without knowing it) during this very trying year. I had a breakdown that destroyed the life I had spent years rebuilding. Gone in a flash. I'm back to square one. It's very unpleasant. I'm Fianancially¹, Emotionally and Creatively bankrupt. My heart feels so empty. The Holidays are just a dissaster for me ever since my mother died. I long for someone. I'm getting old and it sucks..but there is a light at the end of my bed....I believe IN CHEMICALS.  At least "I'm Still Alive" (this gets carried over to the next post Obvs.)

^{1 in fact: if this blog ever goes down 'cos I can't pay for typepad: Bookmark achtungbaby.org. I have to back it up over there eventually but it's years worth of stuff and I'm not in the mood to fuck with migrating to wordpress or whatever the fuck. unless one of you wants to do it.} 

Frustrating Mess

"sadness, anxiety, guilt, anger, isolation, or hopelessness; disturbances in sleep and appetite; fatigue and loss of interest in usually enjoyable activities; problems concentrating; loneliness, self-loathing, apathy or indifference; depersonalization; loss of interest in sexual activity; shyness or social anxiety; irritability, chronic pain (with or without a known cause); lack of motivation; and morbid suicidal thoughts."

both

[ Yes ]

aturdido de soledad

"Estoy aturdido de soledad." / "I am stunned by loneliness."

Antonin Artaud

 ilaydatunca 

Old New York City is a friendly old town

I wish I was in NYC with my friends More than anything in the world. To be So certain that you are not where you are supposed to be is very taxing on my mind, memory and existential existence.

Bob Dylan: [ Hard Times In New York Town ]

My happiness is a kind of challenge

Listen: I am ideally happy. My happiness is a kind of challenge. As I wander along the streets and the squares and the paths by the canal, absently sensing the lips of dampness through my worn soles, I carry proudly my ineffable happiness. The centuries will roll by, and schoolboys will yawn over the history of our upheavals; everything will pass, but my happiness , dear, my happiness will remain,in the moist reflection of a street lamp, in the cautious bend of stone steps that descend into the canal’s black waters, in the smiles of a dancing couple, in everything with which God so generously surrounds human loneliness.
― Vladimir Nabokov, Selected Letters

 kinbote  

BROKEN AND BLURRED

Your Favorite Enemies: [ I See A Darkness ]

 Nabokov, The Gift /  Konstantin Samarin  

"...my future wife is probably doing her calculus homework right now..."

“Most people live through the day with this or that part of their mind in a happy state of somnolence: a hungry man eating a steak is interested in his food and not, say, in the memory of a dream about angels wearing top-hats which he happened to see seven years ago; but in my case all the shutters and lids and doors of the mind would be open at once at all times of the day. Most brains have their Sundays, mine was even refused a half-holiday.”

— Sebastian Knight in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, by Vladimir Nabokov (via)

I've had a terrible and stressful day. I have to move in a few days and I detest moving. This year's excursion back to Austin was a catastrophic failure. I am ruined. Thank Buddha for my Mistress. She called me and I was able to loose myself in our intellectual conversation of secret origins, missing histories and youthful romances. It added some levity to my agitated state. We are both age-gap inclined so I made her laugh by saying that my future wife is probably 15 at the moment and doing homework, she'll find me in a few years when she's 18. I was trying to emulate the same age difference between my mistress and her very lucky future husband. Making her laugh is the best. Even though all you read is my depressive side here, I think she would attest to how funny I am on the phone. Today I realized just how much truth there is to my principal personal maxim: "I like Smart Girls in Short Skirts", being that two of my closest girlfriends are a doctor in training and a lawyer. I should have been a professor. Teaching and introducing "Lolita" to a new class every semester. Annotating "The Dark Knight Returns" for fun as an extra credit project (I tried to do this in High School and I convinced my English teacher into reading the book and appreciating it). Making fun of Dave Eggers and a long list of elitist literary twats. Elevating the prose issue of Detective Comics by Grant Morrison into the curriculum. Obviously Batman would be my hero with a 1000 faces of choice for discussion. Visiting all the places in Canada portrait in Beautiful Loosers for summer classes on the one book that blew my mind open when I was 18. I would be a peculiar professor no? Affairs with students: optional. This is making me want to watch "Wonder Boys". It's the middle of the night and the silence dictates I put the kind of movie that feels like a safety blanket. Something to make me feel better. "Lost In Translation" it is.  

prelude to a deluge (1)

[ Prelude to a Deluge of Posts: Part 1 ]

And I'm working at trying to find a kind of language
where I won't be so easily modulated by expectation.
Kathy Acker

I've druged myself with what I fondly call chemical truth serum. I need relief. My fastidious life has taken such a turn that I just want to dig a hole in the ground and jump inside and cry. Alas, my medicine does not let me cry at all. Any and all "sad"-like feelings get turned into "boredom". Lately I've been thinking long and hard as to why I saved myself. Why did I bring myself back from the brink of extinction? What are all these tribulations leading to exactly? I have to do whatever it takes to avoid self examination.

 unsoundwilderness 

A WAR

Tender Trap: [ Memorabilia ]

 cloud-on-my-tongue 

I love you but

Lianne La Havas : [ Is Your Love Big Enough ]

painful to be alone

I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. I’ve had this tendency ever since I was young, when, given a choice, I much preferred reading books on my own or concentrating on listening to music over being with someone else. I could always think of things to do by myself.”
Haruki Murakami

"I've had enough of romantic love Yeah, I'd give it up, yeah, I'd give it up"

Romantic love, in the full sense of the term, is an emotion possible only to the man (or woman) of unbreached self-esteem: it is his response to his own highest values in the person of another—an integrated response of mind and body, of love and sexual desire. Such a man (or woman) is incapable of experiencing a sexual desire divorced from spiritual values
Ayn Rand