I'm not back, but I try.

Two phrases have popped into my mind this morning while conversing with a good friend and nursing one of those hangovers which makes your whole body tremble as you try to nurse what's left of your pride from the night before and its aftermath.

1) "We are all victims of circumstance"

This to me makes a lot of sense and puts people into two categories. The first being people who seem to be shat on by life in general because they simply fall flat against the wall which circumstance represents. These people seem to lack the lucidity needed to make their own lives work. It's unfortunate but very real and, in fact, most people fall into this category. It's worrying to me that we have some such a long way as a race but only because of the few people who fall in the second category, hence why we are still so far behind.

The other group of people, the rare ones, the ones I envy greatly, are the ones who look circumstance dead in the eyes and take control of it. Those people who we tend to see in the films who have an epiphany and then make their lives their own. I have yet to learn how to do this. Maybe one day.

2) "Luck is there for people to rely on when they lose hope"

If you know me well enough, or even if you have read a couple posts here, you will know that I am cynical about many things. One of them being luck. I hate the idea of luck, I think it's nonsense. I imagine that the reason why I believe it is nonsense is because I wish so desperately that it were real. Then I could blame all my fuck ups on bad luck instead of knowing that they are my fault.

Kind of like how humanity always needs hope so they create false hope just to convince themselves there is still some after they've really given up. Luck is a waste of time. It's false. It kills you in the end.

On that note I would like to thank the handful of people who still visit this page. I haven't actually been on it for the last 5 or so months but it seems that I still get regular visitors hence this post. I still write, I just don't publish anything. I am too defeatist nowadays. Circumstance dictates that this is a waste of time, but then again writing has always been on the borderline between public art and personal escapism.

Good afternoon, the interwebz

Maybe I will write soon, or maybe I will wait another few months, who knows.

Clarification. (Read: Cynicism)

As predicted, my last post was read and received in a plethora of ways. This is the reason why I write, the comments and discussion caused. So without further ado, let me finally write a proper reply rather than leaving a dangling conversation hanging in the form of a shoddy comments thread from my side.

It seems that my maxim of "live and let live" left a lot to be desired as it was taken to mean something a little different to what it was supposed to mean but, as the quoted subtitle and URL of this blog point out, everything is subject to interpretation. Allow me to attempt to clarify my position further.

I was accused of being too relativistic, meaning basically everyone has their opinions so you can't judge them and let everyone have them, etc. This isn't exactly what I meant. After a few days of deliberation and a further conversation I had with another friend of mine, I can now finally gather my thoughts.

I dislike the idea of relativism greatly. Especially the kind of relativism rampant within the current "liberal" wave of thinking. I refuse the notion of relativism because it basically leaves no room for actual opinionated discussion, instead it just lends itself to instant and constant disagreement which can never actually be disputed or argued which will, in turn, lead to no reasoned conclusion ever being reached.

I like to think that my position on religion is actually a cynical one rather than a relativistic one. Yes, I am all for everyone having their own beliefs and opinions as long as they don't offend anyone else. However, I am cynical about most opinions. That means that whatever you believe in, I will accept and respect while bearing in mind that it might just be based heavily on bullshit.

On the other hand, rather than claiming that my own views and opinions are the right ones, I know that since I came up with them myself and I am human, most of my own opinions might and probably are heavily based on bullshit too. I am cynical to the point of doubting my own ideas, basically.

My ideas are prone to change, as everyone who knows me well enough can tell you with great confidence. I am uncertain about everything and I am prone to changing the very way I think if an argument to the contrary is good enough. Yes, I'm stubborn, but still, if my arguments are completely destroyed, then I can never say, "Fuck it, I'm right anyway." I will also never, ever, for the love of all that you believe in, resort to "It's just my opinion" because that's when you know that the only thing between you and defeat is stubborn disinclination to accept it.

Hopefully this will clear the relativism argument, which leaves me one more thing to address. In my last post I said that I noticed I wasn't really committed to my belief when I was 15. This does not mean that I took a moral stance at 15 and stuck to it. Far from it! I am still trying to figure out the meaning of life and I am still trying to figure out what is morally right and wrong to this day. What happened when I was 15 was mere realisation that I was full of shit when I said I believed in the Catholic faith because, in reality, I didn't.

If somewhere along the lines I find myself leaning towards a particular faith, I would be inclined to take back my stance against organised religion and become devout to it, it just so happens that, so far, I have never been convinced that religion is not human and flawed. The conclusion being, I'd rather rely on my own human flaws than be expected to believe in things which I think are based on other human flaws.

Feel free to comment and discuss things as per usual, I do genuinely enjoy your reactions.

Good afternoon, the interwebz

The theological argument.

Just been inspired by a brief discussion with a friend of mine about religious beliefs and what not. Now I'm sure most of you either know or have deduced that I have renounced my faith and have been going through a journey or spiritual and ethical self-discovery for the last 6 or so years.

Why am I not still a Catholic? I was brought up, like the vast majority of people on this island as a Roman Catholic. I practised the faith and I believed in it until I was about 15 years of age when I realised that I was actually practising it out of habit rather than pious belief. This is the problem that about 80% of Catholics in Malta still have to recognise, the fact that they actually don't practise their faith, they merely exist within the framework of it without paying attention to what they're actually doing. This annoyed me at that age, and it annoys me no less now.

I believe that religion, from it's very conception, has been created by man to aid in his search for a purpose. If anything, it gives man hope. I am in no way going to disrespect a person for genuinely having faith, if anything, well done for being able to commit to it because I couldn't. As far as I'm concerned, live and let live. As long as you don't cram the fact that I'm going to hell (or whatever cosmic punishment your religion speaks of), then I won't go flailing around calling your beliefs 'horse shit'. I promise.

I am unable to invest myself in any particular faith because, as far as I'm concerned, the big religions have been distorted by generation of the other of blatant human influence. I believe that humans are fundamentally flawed and I'd rather live my life with the burden of my own flaws than claiming that theories changed by years and years of other people's flaws are true.

In essence, any ideal has the potential to be beautiful. I think that Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, even Communism, are essentially beautiful ideas. It the way that they've been presented by humans and their images and notions distorted by years of translation and editing that has basically fucked up the lot of them.

I want to agree with Nietzsche and say that "God is dead: of his pity for man hath God died", but I don't think the idea of God is actually dead. It can never be dead as long as man looks for a purpose in life and as long as a higher power can be described as the cause for all we have. Unfortunately, I tend to believe that if there was a higher power, than describing it in human terms is derogatory because it will be beyond our mortal comprehension in any case.

In a nutshell, I do not believe in any organised religion because even if they had an original divine creation, they are now merely human interpretations of the original ideal. Sort of like Plato's thoughts on art being a weak copy of a feeble copy of the ideal. That, in Platonic terms, is religion to me. I will keep living by my own moral compass created by years of thinking, reading and living within a civilised (barely) society and if, after I die, I find out there is a higher power and how I've lived is not good enough for it, then so be it.

Good afternoon, the interwebz.

"Write about your dog!" + rant about debate and religion.

While lamenting to a friend about not having updated this blog for a very long time, he just suggests in his usual lacklustre fashion to write about my dog. So rather than responding that I'd like to write about something while maintaining some sort of dignity instead of writing an essay-type post which harks back to when I was five years of age, I said, "ok."

So, my dog. She's cute, white, fluffy and old.

Right, that's enough of that.

This is just an excuse to update this little website because I genuinely feel like a disappointment. Not only because of not updating the blog, mind you, but that's one of the reasons. I've been lacking so much motivation recently. It's like the world has conspired against me in this weird inter-dimensional scheme to make my life a living hell. However, it's quite selfish of me to think that the universe actually cares about my puny existence. It's also silly of me to consider the universe as a sentient entity rather than just a vast amount of space. If I did, I might as well go back to faith rather than reason and nobody wants that now, do they?

Speaking of reason and lack thereof, why can't Maltese television debates ever stick to them? I was watching a show about nudist beaches in Malta which had promising argumentation on the show itself but then the idiots who actually bother to care about what they're seeing started calling in. Oh. My. Sweet. Jesus.

Out of the five people calling; two of them mentioned Adam and Eve as key examples of why we shouldn't be nude because when they realised they were nude, they wanted to cover up for feeling shame. Another one had her own logic where she implied that we're already shunned by the rest of the world for dressing like whores so clearly having nudist beaches will actually turn us into whores. Another one was in favour simply because there are nudist beaches in other European countries. The final one which annoyed me the most said that they were mentioning a lot of morals and ideals without mentioning the root moral compass for Maltese people, the Church. What does the church think about nudist beaches and how can we adhere to dogma?

This irks me because I don't consider a system of faith and its physical establishment (clubhouse) to be considered the morality of the Maltese people. I for one consider myself a Maltese person who merely regards the church as being something there rather than being something which I am a clear part of.  I like to think I have my own moral compass, as broken as it seems to be most of the time, and I live in a way which I see morally fitting to today's age as long as I am happy and I don't harm too many people along the line. It's impossible not to hurt a few, unfortunately.

Anyway I've gotten some shit off my chest. I'm guessing this blog is going to go back to the basics where I rant and vent my frustrations before I have the structured and planned things to write like I used to do a while back. Fuck structure, who needs it?

Good afternoon, the interwebz.

What's in a name?

I had a sort of epiphany the other day. The kind of panic-stricken moment of thought which fleets by most and is a cause of fixation for the select unfortunate who tend to brood on the insignificant.

My own name, Mathias, doesn't actually mean anything. I have spent my whole life identified by a brief collection of sounds which inherently has little meaning and outwardly shows nothing whatsoever about the person it denotes. For instance, a quick Google search will tell you that the name 'Mathias' means 'Gift of God', which is blatantly ironic because I'm quite certain there is no god. At least not in any way close to anything anyone has ever been able to imagine in their head of heads.

I find myself unable to identify with my own name, or any name, for that matter. Perhaps the only real names which I can possibly accept are the ones which I tried to ignore as a schoolboy riddled with bullying. The ones that only brutally honest children with no real sense of political correctness can come up with and still maintain a relatively clean conscience. Ones like 'Fat Boy' or 'Bocca' (the loose translation for any readers who aren't native Maltese speakers is 'marble'). At least these names are descriptive, albeit somewhat too descriptive.

At least these names are caricatures of what we seem to be to others. They are somehow acceptable in relation to the world. Instead we are stuck with a birth name which was given to us when we had little or no identity. Sure we can always change our name in the eyes of the law, but that wouldn't really change much, would it? We would still be 'Mathias', 'Tom', 'Dick' and 'Susan' in the end and we would all know it.

It's just such a pity that the one sound which truly chases us around throughout life to the point that even hearing something similar to it instantly catches our attention because we are conditioned to conform to the "call - response" physical nexus, actually means nothing to us at all most of the time.

Good night, the interwebz.

If that is your real name.

Goodnight.

When I started boxing training, you told me a little story. You told me how when you were young, possibly in your teen years about 60 years prior, you and your friends had one pair of boxing gloves between you. You used to go down to the local hang out, choose an opponent, wear one each, and then attempt to pummel each other with one hand.

I remember talking to you about music because I knew that you played the French Horn in your late teens and well into your twenties too. You told me how you couldn't afford to buy an instrument at the time, so you walked into the band club and asked for one. You had a choice, but you chose the horn. You said it wasn't difficult to learn at all because it was merely an accompanying instrument so there weren't any particular melodies to be played. You stuck with it though, I admired that.

One day while playing with the band during a feast, your girlfriend - soon to be wife - my grandmother, was watching you proud. A man shoved past and nearly knocked her to the ground. One minute you were up there playing with the orchestra, and the other you were running towards this man who nearly hurt your most important spectator. You were going to hit him with your French Horn, silly bugger. Luckily your friend held on to your arm before you could. Unluckily for the man who pushed grandma, your mother was also there at the time. She ended up hitting him over the head with her purse yelling at him not to hurt you.

I spent every day every summer until I was 11 years old at your house and still saw you every weekend the rest of the year. You were a man of few words, but the words you did say were generally either amusing, or thoughtful. You did complain a lot, and you didn't like noise, but you still loved every second of when the whole family was there making the noise. We knew it, even though you wouldn't let us have that little victory. Just that smirk after hearing that joke was enough.

Two days before you died, you were in a lot of pain. They gave you morphine to help and you eventually got out of it. The calm before the storm, as it were. When your family asked you how you were, you took a few seconds to think and then calmly said, "Fucking Hell!"

On the 20th January, you passed away surrounded by your children and your wife. I had just left your side after 6 vigilant hours to go home and get something to eat and to take something for my glorious headache. That was just enough to miss your last breath. I was disappointed, to say the least, but I was glad you weren't feeling pain any more. I was also too shocked at the time to be able to express any of that, however.

On the 22nd January we said our last farewell. I stole away from the rest of the family and cried tears of pure anguish smoking a cigarette where you smoked who knows how many standing on the porch looking at the cars.

I'm going to miss you more than anyone can ever begin to understand. Your influence has made up a big part of who I am today. Your stubbornness, your character, your sense of humour. On the other hand, also things like your sensitivity to the negatives in life and your penchant for depression when faced with harsh reality.

I will never forget when we were alone and you waited for my grandmother to leave before you broke down to me. It was just me and you. I would give anything for one more minute alone with you just to try to let you know how much you meant to me, despite not seeing you as much as I should have the last couple of years. I'm sorry I wasn't there often enough. I like to think you knew that I cared anyway.

I love you and I always will.

Goodnight Grandfather, or as I took to calling you, to your amusement, "Trouble".

Overnight Success

Is it just me that's annoyed at all the little steps one must take to reach a goal? I mean you always hear of these incredible success stories that happen overnight, why can't that be me?

I've been in music for almost a decade now and only now am I getting some sort of success margin. Still it is almost negligible to some local talents, let alone how totally insignificant I feel in comparison to international stars. It just seems to come so easy to some people whereas I've been busting my arse to the point of almost giving up for as long as I can remember. I go to bed after every gig with so much back pain I can barely stand. I've always joked that that's the sign of a good gig, not being able to walk properly for a few days but in reality, that's also how someone feels after getting bummed in prison.

How about writing? I started to enjoy writing as a child. I used to love my English homework, go figure! I always enjoyed all the different combinations of words and all the potential each bloody syllable has to move and inspire. Unfortunately, not really much has happened there either. I've been writing here for god knows how long and I'm stuck. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that I tend to have an audience to read my rambling and I even get people who have read my things stopping me in person to discuss them. I love every second of it, even the seconds spent defending something I've written which isn't necessarily agreeable. Now I've started writing for a separate website/magazine I'm also enjoying the potential for a bigger audience, but I'm not quite happy yet. There's a lot more left to do.

A hidden desire I've always had is that of acting. I've always gazed with admiration at the actors in film. Any and all kinds of films simply enchant me. I want to be there on screen. I want to have the badass catch-phrases and the side-busting one-liners and all the other hyphenated film-related jabber. However I'm stumped because I can't stand the idea of acting for theatre which is a necessary stepping stone for most acting platforms. It's all down to my need for instant gratification and general apathy for really getting down and working until the last possible minute. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that I can't learn lines for a play overnight like I'm able to learn things for an exam. I also don't have anywhere near the right credentials to improvise any sort of script like I can do during a gig if I forget what I'm supposed to play. It just doesn't happen.

In the end I just want one of those Hollywood success stories. I just don't want to deal with all the hard work it takes to get there. I want to be a global star, as childish as that seems. I now know that as a child I never really wanted to become an actor/singer/writer/entertainer; I just wanted to be famous. I craved attention as an only child and I still do however I want attention when I want it, not all the time. I'm also selective about the attention I crave. I'm a walking conundrum in the sense that I don't want all kinds of attention, just the attention I want. Get it?

On that note, good night/morning the interwebz