Vai Levando

Song of the day…

Vai Levando
by Caetano Veloso

Mesmo com toda a fama, com toda a brahma
Com toda a cama, com toda a lama
A gente vai levando,
a gente vai levando,
a gente vai levando,
A gente vai levando essa chama

Mesmo com todo o emblema, todo o problema
Todo o sistema, todo Ipanema
A gente vai levando,
a gente vai levando,
a gente vai levando,
A gente vai levando essa gema

Mesmo com o nada feito, com a sala escura
Com um nó no peito, com a cara dura
Não tem mais jeito, a gente não tem cura

Mesmo com o todavia, com todo dia
Com todo ia, todo não ia
A gente vai levando,
a gente vai levando,
a gente vai levando
A gente vai levando essa guia

Mesmo com todo rock, com todo pop
Com todo estoque, com todo Ibope
A gente vai levando,
a gente vai levando,
a gente vai levando
A gente vai levando esse toque

Mesmo com toda sanha, toda façanha
Toda picanha, toda campanha
A gente vai levando,
a gente vai levando,
a gente vai levando
A gente vai levando essa manha

Mesmo com toda estima, com toda esgrima
Com todo clima, com tudo em cima
A gente vai levando,
a gente vai levando,
a gente vai levando
A gente vai levando essa rima

Mesmo com toda cédula, com toda célula
Com toda súmula, com toda sílaba
A gente vai levando,
a gente vai tocando,
a gente vai tomando
A gente vai dourando essa pílula

An official response to a statement by Matt Moore

This is what Matt Moore wrote about me a couple of days ago:

Ok, well this is to a certain someone that has been talking a lot of shit. How dare you generalize, stereotype, and categorize me. You don’t know anything about my life except what I let you know. You can hardly manage your own life so don’t even try to analyze mine. I choose to live my life a certain way and I don’t need your judgement OR your drama. You know I hate drama, thanks a lot of causing a hell of a lot of it. Don’t say I’m superficial. That’s something you will never, ever know about me. I may be self indulgent and greedy, but I am not superficial. I am as real as it gets. You will never know that either. Basically I’m done thinking about it. I’m so over it. I know you’re reading this and I hope you realize that obsessing over me and my life isn’t going to help solve your problems. Suck it.

I don’t understand people like these. They constantly rave about how real they are, but don’t understand the word itself. Instead, they seek the material to make themselves appear real. I wrote about Matt Moore and what he meant to me in USA, etc., which appears as a preface to my zine, The Book of Harmonies:

I must say that this zine in part was written with the thought of a former friend of mine, Matt Moore. He lives in Salt Lake City. He was the most materialistic person that I knew. He embodied everything I’m against: the body-fascism and self-consciousness of the gay world, that so often destroys and stunts the positive aspects of homosexuality. My hope is that this zine refutes the Matt Moores of the world, destroying every possible artifice of the rich, powerful and ‘snobby’.

In response to this ad hominem attack, specifically to the points that I can’t get my life in order, I must say that I have had little to no control over things that have happened to me. My bipolar and disassociative disorders, for example. You can’t just say to someone, ‘get over yourself, it’s gonna be okay’ when you’re this close to committing suicide. I don’t care how happy-go-lucky you might be. And also, when you’re whisked about 1000 miles away to a place you don’t really know, of course you’re going to freak out and go crazy and eventually try to commit suicide when things don’t go your way. It’s not your place to criticize other people’s lives when they don’t mirror your own. You can’t give clothes to Goodwill and say you clothed a naked person.

You, Matt Moore, will never know what it is to be in my situation. Your dad didn’t abandon you when you were little, your mother didn’t fall ill with a stroke and you didn’t live in poverty. In fact, you considerably well-to-do. I hope you come to realize just how good you have it. You need to be shown how much you depend on the material to satisfy your own insatiable needs. You are as transparent as water. You will never amount to anything except the emotionless, vapid person you’ve allowed yourself to become.

You’re a smart, intelligent person; why don’t you realize what I have realized? That the world doesn’t revolve around you and your vapid socially-conscious fashionista friends who have never had to work for a single thing all their lives. You and your kind disenfranchise everyone who’s ever been in need with your materialism. You pollute the intellectual skies of our society with your filth, spread it about with your ‘trends’ and otherwise make everything so ridiculous and stupid that no one wants to take part in changing what needs to be changed: our society.

Because Mom and Dad pay for your college, your car, your trips abroad and almost everything else does not make you ’socially aware’, or deserving of anything, really. You should go find work for some fast-food restaurant and see how it is there. Or you can work like I did, in the fields, in the sun. You don’t know how valuable something is until you’ve worked for it. You will never know what it’s like to be alone without anyone to help you. It’s the worse feeling in the world.

You think you know what life is? You haven’t even experienced it yet. Just because you’ve traveled and known what it is to be abroad doesn’t grant you one cent of knowledge. When you finally realize at the point of a gun what it is to be alive, then that’s worth more than everything in the world.

Granted this is what I know from what you have told me; but I am a good judge of character and I can see through the deceptive masks of honesty that you put on to make yourself look better. You’re no better than anyone else, Matt. You never were, you aren’t now, and you never will be. So stop trying so hard.

My only hope is that Moore’s character may be one in which people openly avoid; for if we all become like him, then how worthwhile will our lives be, if they are only filled with his self-admitted greed and self-indulgence? It is a truly sad day for humanity indeed, when we allow our society to become like this.

As an artist, writer and composer I am compelled to make such changes for the better. I am on a mission to question authority, life, and people’s rational choices. It is the layperson’s mission as well. In this, I hope we may all come to the understanding that we are living, breathing things; and not the brand-name mentalities of Madison Avenue we would like to be.

Some stories involving Matt Moore, from The Book of Harmonies:

Matt Moore is a junior at the University of Utah. He has traveled extensively in Europe and is a Francophile. In a recent conversation he told me he was going to New York City for Thanksgiving, and was anticipating staying there for some time. I was nonplused at that, since I always thought that people stay home for the holidays. So I decided to bring the issue to a front. I said, ‘Why would anyone want go away from home for Thanksgiving? Why can’t you stay at home, like everyone else?’ And he said to me, perhaps jokingly, perhaps not, ‘My family isn’t like everyone else.’

Once I was depressed at the fact that I was not in the same class as those who had graduated high school with me in 2002. rather I was two years behind everyone else, since I had just started to really get back into the mix of college life about a year after I graduated and still had not accumulated enough hours to be counted as a junior. Matt Moore was talking to me then. I voiced my opinion rather harshly. He said, who cares? Youre not in college to please anyone but yourself now, are you?

Matt Moore’s family is very well-to-do. His mother is a president of a bank and his father is a pilot’s instructor. As a result they have traveled all over the world. Once we were talking about where we would like to travel and live in. I said I would like to see America first. I am very American. I love America very much. When I asked matt where he would like to live, he said he preferred The Netherlands because there everyone treats everyone with respect and gay marriage is allowed. In the back of my mind I thought, “Isn’t that the child porn capital of the world, too?’

163

oque. i needed to update this blog so i thought i would take my time to do so. everyone’s asleep now, and the only one on is age. i’m supposed to do a paper for my theory class tomorrow, but i’m taking a break for now. it’s over minimalism and rational choice theory. they couldn’t be further from relevance now.

i just realized something. my whoie life i’ve been pedestalizing people for my sake, just to make them happy, and sacrificing my happiness on account of not being accepted. i was looking through a couple of myspaces this morning and i thought, ‘thank god i’m not this beautiful, thank god i don’t have to put up with the endless vapidity of clubs and parties and drugs and sex and everything’. granted it’s easier to get dates, but other than that i’ve been taking for granted everything else g-d has given me.

i am a vibrant individual with more talent than all those fuckers put together. i’m going to keep grinding at my stone, doing the best i can to make the most of what little time i have left here…and so what if people don’t find me attractive? fuck complacency. fuck materialism. fuck orderedness. fuck matt and his endless rants on how rich he is…fuck **** and his insistence on being this kid…fuck him and everyone who takes me for granted.

fuck you all. i’m a prophet. i prophesy your impending doom, your belated lives, it is i who will bring about your intellectual apocalypse.

i realize that i have been blessed with more than i could ever be grateful for. i don’t need to write letters of support to people that don’t even give a shit about me, or cry endlessly at the fact that they proally will never love me, or even care that i care about them.

it’s unfair that after all that’s happened, i’m the one who gets shat on for having the bleeding heart. i guess that’s my fault for being compassionate.

needless to say i’ve tried too hard. that’s my fault for caring, i guess.

fuck you all. i’m a fucking prophet. i am the voice crying in the wilderness.

you will hear me all soon.

The End of Something

As I write this I’m agonizing over the fact that I’ve thrown my chances at going to a really good school away. Last night Mom and I had a talk. She said she wanted me to go back down to South Texas and finish up school there, since it would be easier for her to see me and take care of me. I agreed with her, since I’m tired of going hungry and picking through the trash whenever I don’t have any money to eat. I’m tired of putting up with the outright race preference of this place and the constant feelings of inferiority that I feel because I’m not hemorrhaging money right and left. And I’m tired of being everyone’s pedestal, using me for whatever purposes they see fit. I’m tired of feeling like no one loves me, that the world owes me one. I’m not even sure I can make it up here even if I do decide to come back for the fall. I looked over my financial aid today and saw that I don’t have any more money to continue on for the summer semester, which means I can’t come back to school until next fall, when I have the money. After all this time, I feel like I’ve failed everybody, including people that I promised. I promised them I wouldn’t let this place get to me, but in my defense all I can say is that a person can only take so much. If this is how the rest of America is then I don’t want to be a part of it. The Matt Moores of the world have won: they have told the poor boy from Harlingen to take his shitty belongings and go back home. I have been reprimanded for my ‘wetback’ mentality and now am paying the full price for it. The man has one the battle, but he has not won the war.

I’m in a low now. I was in a considerable high until I started worrying about the state of my classes, one of which is now in a dismal state. I’m not sure I’m going to pass my other class–the one in Theory. But I am sure I will pass my other classes in Social Work and in Sociology of the Family. I wish it were still possible to feel that I can still make it, but people here are different. I just can’t do it anymore. I feel that I’m not up to their level, given my humble background and my irresponsibility. To them I am just another dirty Mexican. To them, I’m prime for washing their dishes and doing their laundry and cutting their yards. I just want to be the artist that I’ve always wanted to be. If they won’t let me be that, how am I supposed to live? Everyone does not know how bad I feel right now. There is no compassion for me. The Lord has deigned that I carry my cross alone, and if this is what I have to do then I must do it. I don’t know where to turn to now.

There’s been something else that has bothered me as of late. It’s Eric. I think I’m done with killing myself over the fact that he doesn’t like me the way that I’ve liked him. I can feasibly say now that I am no longer in love with him. It’s difficult, yes; it is sad, but I don’t feel anymore connected to him in a romantic way than I did before. Maybe I really never loved him, ever. I think of all the guys that I’ve been with and of course the thought of him never crossed my mind as I succumbed to my passions. I don’t even know what he looks like. Adrien told me that I deserve better–that I deserve someone who knows what is above me, who knows what I am capable of. I threw that away with Joe. I figured, ‘What the hell? Whom could it hurt?’ And of course I hurt him. I know that all we’re ever going to be is friends, me and Eric, but lately I’ve been feeling this horrible feeling of unwantedness. He tells me that he’s terrifically busy getting his life in order–and I believe him–but I feel it’s just the beginnning of his overall detachment to me. He’s gotten tired of me, I guess, and he wants to be away from my influences.

Anyway, aside from all of this tumultuousness I have little else to report. My expensive bottle of Carolina Herrera cologne went MIA yesterday, and I’ve still been looking for it. I paid alot for it, and I think it was Naval who took it from me, since he and I are no longer on speaking terms and since he’s coveted the thing from day one. Someone also burned a cock into my door with a blow torch, much to my ire, and we had the police over and everything. I was so pissed.

I want to kill myself. I will make plans to do so shortly.

I’M GOING TO KILL MYSELF

If anyone cares to listen to me anymore.

“Well done, good and faithful servant…”

The Holy Father has passed on to his heavenly reward.

I just hope he’s laughing it up with Jesus at the poor saps who continually believe that Catholics are going to Hell for supposedly committing acts of idolatry, such as venerating the Blessed Virgin Mary, or the saints, or simply believing in the power of making a difference as well as believing in Jesus at the same time.

I was never a really good Catholic, but I admired John Paul II. He was a wonderful man, a dedicated human rights activist who strived to make the Gospel a living example of Christ’s love for the human race. But I realize that he was never really liked very much, that he was hated as well as loved, that he was almost killed, that he suffered with closed-minded cardinals resistant to change, and with a conference of Catholic bishops that hid scandal after scandal in order to prevent the Church from getting shaken up.

I don’t care if anyone thinks of me as an idolater or a worshipper of Mary; that I’m not ’saved’, that I’m somehow fucked because I’m not a Protestant. That’s all behind me now. I loved that Pope like a real father, a ’spiritual’ father; I feel now that I can be a better person through his influence.

And for you who constantly persecuted this holy and Bible-believing man, I hope you got what you wanted. You wanted this man dead, or at least punished for his beliefs, for supposedly ’spreading error’ throughout the world. But now, he’s in a better place, with The Lord. He represented the great evangelists of the Christian era. He was the St. Paul of the postmodern age. He took apart the great deconstructionism of his day, and even unto our day.

Well done, good and faithful servant. Welcome home.