decisions, good thoughts, and absolute sillieness
Click to view...that Chris Cornell took from the stage in Chicago during a rendition of "Hungerstrike" by Temple of the Dog. the crowd sang Eddie Vedder's parts... seeing this (posted by CC himself on twitter) made me REALLY wish i hadn't been too exhausted to go to the show a few weeks back. i miss doing shows in general, and REALLY need to get in touch with Frank @ the Troc about getting some work, and I also need to get it together and go do some effing networking... i was never much for self-promotion, but if i don't have the confidence (which i do) or willingness (which is where the issues come in) to market the HELL my skillz0rz in this day & age, especially in a field like live production, i'm never gonna get back into the bizness... it's a means to an end, and i know i can do it without being a faker. can i do it *successfully* while still being real? well, that remains to be seen.
For various reasons, i have decided that i need to make certain decisions and stick to them pretty hardXcore. :P due to being asked to step up and help out with family bizness much sooner than i had anticipated, amongst many other things, i have decided to stay in philly for the foreseeable future. i want to do lots of travelling and don't necessarily think i'll stay here forever, but it will be my official home base from now on.
To many people, that might not seem like such a big announcement, but... when i came back here in early 2007, i was not sure how long i would stay. the idea was that i needed to establish a home, cultivate some stability for a change, and figure out if i could sort of "re-claim" my hometown as my TRUE home, on my own terms. so i moved to the exact opposite end of the city (in terms of the type of area/demographic/community) from where i grew up, immediately after having a metaphorical bomb dropped on my former self, and slowly began to rebuild and pick up the pieces. it's been a bumpy fuckin ride... and i am still kind of horribly broke. but i am managing... and i have developed a much stronger sense of who i am and where i'm going, i've found a place where i feel like i belong in for the 1st time in my whole life, i have a HOME for the first time in any meaningful sense, rather than just feeling like a nuisance in my parents' houses, i have fallen in love with the history and the community of this area... All in all, i'd have to say that the experiment has been a success. :)
2 years ago, i decided to see how things went over a 2-3 year period, see how certain situations worked out, and make my judgements from there. after getting various forms of sense fuckin knocked into me from various direxionz, i know what i want and where i am going. i know how things fit together, and my most recent existential clusterfuck (see the last several entries :P) borne out of a winter of discontent... that was the last part of it. i know what my role is now. i know what i need to do, how to do it, what i expect of myself, and what various angles to work in order to be able to succeed in the goals that i am setting.
That sense of belonging and home are the biggest things in the whole picture... the people in my life and my job have contributed to those things more than anything else. i grew up dreaming all the time about running away, i got kicked out constantly when my dad got drunk and i dared to stand up to him and then told by my mother that it somehow wasn't convenient enough for my stepfather for me to stay with them. i lived in my car, i stayed with friends for months on end. i made amends with my father over time and he sent me off to college... i came back briefly and went right back out on tour... as matt said at that time (early 2006) "you're always going away again"... and it was true. and i always came back. but i didn't ever really know what i was coming back to. not on any real or meaningful level. as it turned out, i had to create those reasons for myself. and in a strange way that was not quite how i planned, it happened. The Universe knew what i wanted, what i needed, and those changes began and they shook things up like a fucking hurricane. The cycle that seemed to begin last June-ish has now come to a close. now it's time for the next volume in the Story of Gwyddon. the last one had some pretty crazy, growth-filled chapters. i plan to make the next book in the series full of actual accomplishments and milestones of achievement.
it's about fucking time... it's sure taken long enough.
;)
the party i threw the other nite, aka: Tropical Party of Insanit00d) was, as usual, off the fucking chain. :D the preparations as well as the change of date from the 11th to the 18th and some people's lack of rides, work, etc prevented them from coming. there were roughly 15 people in attendance, and they were all my closer friends who are the most fun anyway. a pudding fight broke out thanks to Chris and Angelique... Chris mentioned a pudding eating contest, Alex jumped on it and goaded Tyler into it (the two of them were ALL about being bad influences on people that night) and suddenly, there were 4 people shoveling chocolate pudding into their mouths at top speed, and before i could even determine who was winning (probably Tyler, he likes the idea of being a competitive eater... he's insane) Chris and Angie were fucking *COVERED* with pudding, it got flung all over the kitchen, and massive amounts of hilarity ensued. i literally fell on the floor from laughing so hard, and could not catch my breath and it became somewhat painful... :P but it was also glorious.
had i not SERIOUSLY needed an awesome night with friends to blow off steam and built-up winter funk, i probably would have been kind of mad about the fact that the pudding fight started INDOORS rather than being used for wrestling in the baby pool OUTDOORS. i just didn't really have time to make enough to fill the baby pool, anyway, due to insomnia messing with the amount of time i had (i was a ZOMBIE on friday, y0) and the fact hat i had to drive all the way to Yardley to pick up Alie and then pick up the insanity cake (pix to come) and Angelique also. ::shrug:: oh well, better luck with planning things next time. :)
Alex, in addition to being a gigantic instigator and annoying both me and Tyler into chasing him across the yard and kicking his ass, took a lot of snazzy pictures. :) most of them i haven't seen yet, but here are a few under the cut...
i dunno why LJ makes these so blurry. Tyler and I had the best party gear, by far. :P he had a symbol drawn over his eye for yet another weird artsy film shoot he and Tyler were working on earlier that day. and yes, people, that IS a skirt. (and his mother made it out of tshirts; she sells them to local shops.)
Amy said the fact that he showed up in a skirt just made sense of the fact that we are even together in her mind; apparently it was the missing link that made it all seem logical to her... "Gwyddon can wear the pantz in the relationship, Tyler can wear a skirt... seems like they'll both be really happy." haha, she knows me well :D
...but Matt was pretty disco fresh, also. hehehe
Tyler ended up pinning him down and twisting his arms back and as usual Alex Did Not Win the altercation. it made me sort of nostalgic for New Year's Eve, (which i'm sure i posted about... now i have to go back and look :P) when i got taken to a very sillie party as Alex's "date" at the time, only having known him 2 or 3 weeks, and not really knowing what i was really getting into... This was the party at which i met Tyler for the 1st time and thought he was an asshole. :P the 2 of them bothered eachother into another wrestling match that night, and Tyler kicked Alex's ass then too, VERY thoroughly (they sort of took apart the couch) despite the fact that Tyler was significantly more drunk. I had to drive us home in Alex's car, and he then spent the New Year's Day (while i worked) face down in my bed, not quite alive and saying he was "landlocked by cobblestones" on Germantown Ave... because his head was gonna come apart if he drove over them. :Bi guess that's what happens when you drink weird green Czech liquor out of a bottle shaped like a bomb and too much homebrew & straight whiskey on top of it, and then wrestle your best friend who's mostly solid muscle and a "crazy stubborn Polack" by his own admission. ::shakes head:: he should have known. :P
I swear to god, the two have them have brought endless amounts of hilarious fucktardity into my life. it's simply wonderful. :P
i realized earlier today that i never got around to posting about tech week & the awesome performance weekend of Fiddler on the Roof. the cast party, which was pushed back due to timing conflicts with CHC's Easter break, is tomorrow at Kenny's house, and I'm really looking forward to it. I will post some pics showing off my lighting skillz & tell some stories from the show after the party or sometime weds.
:)
*