:: a.whisper.in.water ::

:: Sunday, May 09, 2004 ::

An absolute dinosaur of a post, more than a month old, and as of yet, clearly incomplete. However, its woeful redundancy prompts me to simply post it, such that I needn't worry about its sitting around. It treats the events of the end of March, actually; the concert detailed herein took place on Monday night, March 29th.

In a brief, preview-sentence: life has been miles outside Okay, and is still far from its borders, but at least it's turned back for the moment. 75 minutes ago, I was packed and ready to haul ass to New York City on Extreme Fucking Emergency. Now that the adrenaline's out of my system, I'm ghastly tired. Enjoy a happier, younger Aziz.

[ how do i master / the perfect day? ]

So, as mentioned prior, they've got me on this medication (ha ha). Along with My Very First Prescription came this explicit renewal of my expected pursuit of perfection: I now had no excuse to fail to do work on time, perfectly, brilliantly, and exceptionally, no excuse to utterly fail exams, no excuse to ostensibly waste the money (and subsequently, the hard work earning it) that ensures my attendance. I certainly had no excuse to stay up past 6 a.m. for a week and a half, unable to simply fall unconscious besides lying in bed for hours. Oops.

Oh well. This bout of pseudo-insomnia (calling it the real thing is a sort of injustice to the folks who spend years doing this) wouldn't have been anything more than a faint blip on the radar had it not persisted so long, and come on so inexplicably, especially after such a fantastic first medicated week. Holy shit, I hadn't worked so diligently so consistently without panic as an inspiration since before I can recall. Medicated-school was going so well, I didn't get a chance to tell everyone how well it was going. And then within the span of a weekend, poof. Worst non-exam week sleeping schedule ever. Missing class right and left, failing to catch up on back work, studying poorly for a Soc Psych midterm that drew heavily from readings that, realistically speaking, even I could have done (Aronson's text is remarkably accessible).

Personally, I blame David Bowie. Not the concert, the individual. I haven't been able to sleep since witnessing his high kicks, legendary good looks, and charming-as-fuck stage presence that speak nothing of his age (pushing SIXTY, for Christ's sake. Happy Easter, incidentally). Given not only how physically-demanding rocking out with one's cock out is, but how many of this first group of now-legendary rock stars have either died*, become washed-up-reunion-tour lame, or simply faded away, his longevity is all the more remarkable. If he HADN'T become a rock star, he'd probably live past 100 easy, assuming he still signed a contract with the devil to live forever as Prettiest Man Alive.

*Sweet everloving CRAP, I just scanned through that site I linked above, and it is some freaky evangelical shit. The choose-your-own-adventure layout, coupled with its sickeningly-dogmatic religious fervor does great injustice to calm, rational, open-minded devout Christians everywhere. The homepage houses the "Dial-a-Truth Ministry," whose stance on just about everything has me open-mouthed in disbelief. There appears to be a serious discussion as to the World Wide Web's actually secretly being the devil. I won't spoil the surprise.

The Kitten, in a bolt of amazing, managed to get us tickets to his March 29th show at Philadelphia's Wachovia Center. Setlist was as follows:

1. Rebel Rebel
2. Hang On To Yourself
3. New Killer Star
4. Fame
5. Cactus
6. All The Young Dudes
7. China Girl
8. Reality
9. The Man Who Sold The World
10. Hallo Spaceboy
11. Sunday
12. Heathen (The Rays)
13. Under Pressure
14. Quicksand (Aborted upon his forgetting the lyrics)
15. Life On Mars?
16. Quicksand
17. Looking For Water
18. Days
19. Blue Jean
20. Ashes To Ashes
21. White Light, White Heat
22. I'm Afraid Of Americans
23. "Heroes"

Encore:
24. Five Years
25. Suffragette City
26. Ziggy Stardust

Lamentably, the lighting crew was feeling misanthropic, and didn't bring the lights back on immediately after "Ziggy Stardust's" thundering conclusion, but rather about two minutes thereafter: ample time for a naive crowd to believe a second encore was on the way (hey, it happened at Radiohead). So, when the lights finally crept back after a fair amount of Baby Boomer hollering and Bics held aloft, it was hard not to feel cheated, despite having just heard 25.5 David Bowie songs performed by David Fucking Bowie himself.

And yet another night finds me awake past 6 a.m. Thankfully, it's Sunday (N.B. At the time of these words, it is, actually, coincidentally Sunday), and I can sleep until 2 remorselessly (though this is hardly true).

In Human Bio a few Mondays ago, we talked about Ebola, and thereby reawakened an old phobia of infectious diseases induced by the generally forgettable mid-nineties drama "Outbreak," and exacerbated by my devouring The Hot Zone in two days while visiting relatives in Kashmir, which, while gorgeous, falls short of my princess-y standards of obsessive cleanliness hygiene.

I ran into Greg Greenberg (bassist of the band I'm in, and damn fine one at that) outside of Lunt Saturday night. He complained that someone called him Aziz. Keith then joked that if anyone called Greg "Keith," they were mistaking him for me. I suppose Greg's sort of my Havertwin, though that's a coarse, corner-of-the-eye judgment.


:: Aziz 8:06 AM [+] ::
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