of thee i sing

so this morning, I was sitting outside for a moment while my dog was eating breakfast, and I paused. just for a minute. just stopped shivering, stopped lamenting the fact that I wasn't in bed any longer. stopped everything, and just listened: and i heard something i haven't heard in a long, long time. a bird chirped. a little 3 or 4 note song that i'm taking as a sign that spring is coming. it's still february, at least for a couple more days... but i can honestly say that I haven't heard that bird's song for 4 or 5 months. I feel like the last time I heard it was last spring. almost a year ago. finishing Angels in America, getting ready for Sweet Charity. God, that was a year ago.

I'm getting tired of car commercials, computer companies and home improvement stores telling me what life is all about. telling me that if I'm not that wacko on the subway dancing to the music I just downloaded, or the person who isn't afraid to "make a statement" by painting my walls the same color as my favorite shirt, that I must be somehow dead inside. the only people grabbing life by the balls and really expressing their inner voices are the people who are ordering the three course meal deal at TGI Fridays. this is the thing that annoys me about "alternative" music. what is it the alternative to? it used to be something different... and then everyone was assimilated. it seems that any time someone does something different, it doesn't challenge the Institution. it doesn't send a shockwave of revolution throughout the populous, marking a time and date where the trajectory of human existence changed directions... it seems that it just becomes the new Institution. and then all of it's power is gone.
I don't know where any of this is coming from. I think there may have been some acid slipped into that last pot of coffee or something. wait until I tell you about my matrix theory about what it means to be "human." and, if I may, please notice that that is a lower case 'm' in matrix, and not "Matrix." I'm not getting into a big computer/what is reality/master & slave thing... just your good old rows & columns.

note to self: begin a television show. it will become popular and successful as long as you start each episode with a character asking a question (preferably in voice-over). then, over the course of the show, the characters and situations go about exploring that question. finally, ending each episode with a voice over where the same character that first asked the question discusses the question a bit more, and finally offers some nugget of wisdom... beit an answer or not.

See also: Sex and the City

See also: Grey's Anatomy

See also: Doogie Howser, M.D.