It's Sunny finally…

It's sunny, I got up early and I had a glass of chocolate milk. If you don't like chocolate milk, well, what's wrong with you? Oh, lactose intolerance? Damn, that's a shame. Sorry, dude.

Had another Gamelan practice this morning and I feel like I've got it, as long as I focus. It's meditative. and it's new. I'm not used to learning new things. It's so weird to have to focus singularly on this rote action. I'm trying to read the music, really read it, not just memorize it and stare at the page, which is what I've always done with music. When I actually read it, and play along, it results in this immediate (if momentary) trancendental state in which there is no room to think about anything else. And since my specialty is thinking of random things, this is a nice vacation from that.

Next topic:

Sunday, Lucy and I went to see The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, the latest Wes Anderson movie. I just adore the guy and his movies. What I like so much is that he manages to tell these tales of guys struggling. And I think this is very timely. In the past decades, we have (thankfully) seen great progress towards gender equality (at least in the West), which has led to much great female stuff. But I think there's a very real place for examining the effect of the modern world on men. Wes Anderson's movies always seem to do this, in a way that is poignant, hysterical, and profound. He seems to sympathize with males who have sort of done what society has expected them to do, and yet still end up so fucking lost on some level. He takes these male characters who are on some basic level going what am i doing? and give them an opportunity to grow, to bloom even. And the fact that many of these characters are older is, I think, the most significant thing, because it doesn't cater to this youth & beauty culture that we are so sick on. Instead he supposes that we can all learn things, even later in life. Especially later in life. And that along with the journey, the searching, the falling down— come acceptance, and that acceptance is in itself a form of happiness.