Wolf Parade...

Anyone who has the stones to even put down an 11 minute song, and then release it, and then absolutely at least blow my mind deserves chronicle. Everything here is exquisite...

1925-2008...

Friday Night 9:45-11:00...

Dear Kim & Val...

I apologize, it's been a while since we checked in. Or, since I've checked in. See, I've been busy. I've been working -- sweat, blood, tears to bring the two of you to life. I've been fighting, every day, nearly a thought a minute, doing everything I can to help you find immortality. You've taken my sleep, my calm, my rational thought and replaced it with fury and invincibility and hope. You've made my mind and heart unstable. To that, I give profound thanks. Every day, you get inside me, save me, occupy me...and to that, I give profound thanks. All I can offer in return -- a promise to not let you down, to not stop until you're on that screen, until your story pours out onto the world. That I promise.

Since we met, you've been my obsession. And I hope that's not weird, me coming out and saying so. I believe in and value honesty above all things and can't help but think our rapport is strong enough to handle any truth.

Recently, as you know, I sent your story, in progress, out to the first line of gatekeepers in charge of making possible everything we envision. And they loved you. They're fascinated by you. And now there's a team working to give you due perfection. We're working together to bring you to life - not one inch short of what you deserve. And with this team behind me behind you, you will be unstoppable. And you'll find life. And your story will take over the world. And you'll never die...

But patience now. Much work ahead. Soon, we begin.

All love,

Burn

Fascination...

A few days ago, I was standing by the pool at work, mind clenching, face numb - something like that after a long day of work and being at work was this terrible drag, something pulling on me something awful.

And I was holding this pen behind my back, in my right hand. This metal pen and I bent it until it snapped and it echoed through the courtyard. I looked to my finger and it was torn open, nothing too awful, but not too pretty. And it was bleeding, and I'm looking at it now and the Neosporin I'm now pouring on and into it because it's starting to hurt and I think it's going to have to get amputated because the pain is pretty deep and I keep on envisioning myself with 9 fingers -- a right hand without a thumb and I think that would look pretty cool. Pretty cool.

And I look to my body and I'm looking for scars - worry a day will come when I feel there should be more - that I've been cheated or that I've cheated myself. Then I laugh. Just because they can't be seen...

I remind self - I'm doing a fine job, a good job - that the line is falling, and I toe it as it falls. And I'm mistaking happiness for madness, because there's so much of one or the other at any given moment and it's a lot, asking someone to deal with either or both, everything all at the same time. I just breathe.

Because I'm still learning to be capable -- of handling -- of managing these assets of mind. On nights like this, in the past, I'd head out and grab a drink, let it spiral into something special. And by special, I mean the opposite of. But that's where I'm headed tonight - out to see what's what. I feel alright, like I'm headed somewhere, away from destruction and this is the new path, tonight, for a while...to see what's what...

Show me a faraway land. Show me a faraway land. Show me a faraway land.

Kings of Leon...

Oh, Kids...

I woke up today the same way I've woken every day for the past 2 weeks. I eat, settle and greet the kids -- Kim and Val -- for a span of time ranging anywhere from 5-9 hours. And I slam and destroy and bend words and feelings, trying to make something so flimsy into something so concrete - something that'll fetch me my 5-6 figures - something that officially ends playtime and begins, well...playtime.

I'm abstract when I'm working, at least when I'm in deep. I have nothing left at the end of the day. Things get simple, things are simply simplified. And the harder I work the harder I have to work to blow it all out, to fit it in a box and dispose of it somewhere outside of my person. Today, after a brutal but all affirming day of script work, before going to the gym, I ran up Sunset Plaza Drive with my buddy Will. Last March, we somewhat ran the LA marathon together and have made this something of a weekly appointment - to climb the steep and winding hill until we reach the top, above the smog, above the cars, above this wonderfully poisoned city . It's metaphorical to say the least. Between breaths, we talk shit and of ideas that fetch far. And when we get to the top, we check the clock at Ice Cube's house, slap hands and decide the pace of decent -- all depending on how much time we have before the real workout starts.

I left the gym sometime after 7 tonight, overdone as usual, but lighter. My motor skills and skills of mind had long ago departed. When I'm in work, I lose my gift of communication. The vocal webs I usually sling with such skill and savvy hang limp like Durban's whiskdic. People think I'm on drugs. I'm actually not. It's all good...because I'm on pace. I'm at the exact spot I want to be. And this progression is my vigor, and I'm moving into something of a rare form, only wanting to be composed of three things -- moving towards a day where I am all and only three things...Muscle, Brain, Heart. That's all, all I have a tolerance left to carry.

Hangin' Wit J...

Somewhere In The Night...

I'm on a new kick, back to Knights of Cydonia - and it's pounding me, somewhere in my guts, because I listen to everything too loud, because I want it to explode my head. And it's pulling back memories -- of seeing the Muse boys play live and feeling something so profound, so big, so charging.

I'm berserk. Last night, lightning struck, something coming into me, changing me with a no discussion declaration -- that the things that have brought me happiness will no longer serve - that the things making me content will no longer suffice. I felt in an instant I would never get back the person I had so recently been. And I can't point to exactly what caused it. I got back from dinner sometime around midnight and couldn't sit still. I paced and analyzed and fantasized and spoke to myself in such abundance that I had to stop, find a mirror, tell myself I was speaking to myself in such abundance - because calling it out makes it okay. And I couldn't settle. I couldn't right my mind and didn't want to -- it was involuntarily righting itself.

There's something big afoot here - something that's bigger than anything I've ever been. I can feel it. And the thought of it stretches, and the thought of it is the aim of my every search, and the thought of it transforms the world I know - teaches me to cope with revelation.

Because this, THIS has to be bigger than everything in this life. And I feel like life has to suffer for it to flourish - because nothing gives me glory like it - and I'm okay with that - I feel like I'm going to have to be okay with that - and I'm never going to apologize for it. This is a state of evolution. When I don't know how to handle these things, I simply sit back and let them handle me.

In Dreams and Welcome Back...

I woke up yesterday with this great gift. Usually on Sundays, I wake up with an apocalyptic mind. Yesterday was different.

I was sleeping when I got the phone call. When I answered, I was still sleeping, if you follow. Someone was yelling on the other end, so angry at me - my actions, my lacking responsibility. The voice told me to come to the hospital and fast.

When I arrived, there was this line of people waiting for me, eyes like razors as I made my approach. And they were judging, hostile. I felt awful, not so much as for what I'd done, but for what I would have to live with. When I got to the room and turned inside, I found this girl, and she was holding a baby. I recognized her straight away - a girl from my past. She was beautiful, so beautiful. Durbs, you woulda been so proud - a mag girl on many occasions. I remembered a distant feeling, lusting after this...her and her face and her body like possibly no other I had known. But when we spoke, I'd float away. We went to dinner, maybe a movie a long time ago and I remember this numbing feeling crawling over my body and mind, so un-held. I remember taking her to bed, knowing I wanted to but shouldn't. And I remember that being that, knowing it was going to turn out exactly like that.

Everyone in the room started in on me, yelling and screaming, evidently pissed that I had slept through the birth of my child. I looked at the mother and she was indifferent, soul-less, like they or I or everything had sucked it from her. They were yelling and screaming and I felt like I was dead or wanted to be.

I woke up a few minutes after 8 and didn't move, let it settle that what happened in my sleep wasn't my reality. I considered the possibility that laying in bed not being a father was my dream, that the alternate reality was in fact, mine.

It wasn't. It isn't. I was okay.

...

It's Monday. I woke today before 7 to start back in on my two darling, deviant lovers. I woke up with some shit in my guts, still some remnants of the recent girl, one held in distantly higher esteem. The fact that she's still here is marveling and maddening. I want to go to the bathroom and puke her out, all of her - be clean again - for moments. But then comes back my thirst for self destruct, something inside me and all it wants to do is embrace the shit, teach me how to love it like I would my would-be bastard child.

Good things, I'm in. Promise.

...

This room is dark and long and would echo if you let it. These headphones swallow my head. This instrument beneath my hands makes me strong. My heart is bleeding. This feeling feels like home. I'm home. Now I eat the world.

Bonnie & Clyde...

Butch & Sundance...

I spent the day at the WGA library, glued, leafing through William Goldman's 190 some page Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. I was reading it for style...how he handled the stick up robberies of the old days and how to send two brilliantly drawn characters to their death and into cinema immortality. The day was awe-inspiring. I mean, Goldman goes so far beyond brilliant that it's like he's all ease. His pen just glides. Fiction, screenplays, whatever. Read Princess Bride and tell me otherwise.

And this...oh, this...

Clarence & Alabama...

"Well, Lee, it's like this. You're getting the bargain of a lifetime because I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. You're used to dealin' with professionals. I'm not a professional. I'm a rank amateur. I could take that and I could cut it and I could sell it a little bit at a time and make a helluva lot more money. But, in order to do that, I'd have to become a drug dealer. I'm not a drug dealer. And I don't want to be a drug dealer. Deal with cut-throat junkies, killers; worry about gettin' busted all the time. Just meetin' you here today scares the shit out of me and you're not a junkie, a killer or a cop, you're a fucking movie producer. I like you and I'm still scared. I'm a punk kid who picked up a rock in the street, only to find out it's the Hope Diamond. It's worth a million dollars, but I can't get a million for it. But you can. So I'll sell it to you for a couple a' hundred thousand. You go make a million. It's all found money to me anyway. Me and my wife are minimum wage kids, two hundred thousand is the world." QT

4:38 destroys me...

Romeo & Juliet...

This weekend, I met with a gentleman who is going to manage me and career. We're on the same path - two young bucks, foaming at the mouth, eyes with aim on world domination. He took a liking to Kim and Val, embraced its strength, its weaknesses that I was too weak to see and we tore through it with a plan -- go back to work, spit it out in a couple of months when its undeniable, let it alter our paths in life. And I feel there's a weight been carried away. I got a corner man.

The process for this week is simple. Read a script, watch the film. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Last night was Boondock Saints. This was today's:

Dear Durban...

Sound advice, chap. (In case you aren't wise to the exploits of my friend, John Durban, kindly play catch up link right).

Let's stick to themes here. You quote me, I quote you. It keeps going through my head, you, knowing some girl just touched me up, explaining the ways and woes of love. I want to play a game. Since your readers suffered the luxury of playing out my shit at home, let's turn a table, call the name of my game, "Consider the Source."

This is you in love. I know. I've been there...

"She took me into her mouth. I think it was the taller one, but I had lost track. By now they were both on their knees, double team revival. Nothing was happening. Nothing. Not a movement. I didn't know what it was. I tried to explain. I said things like whisky and blow and weed and that mystery yellow pill I dropped on Marnixstraat and fucking blue balls and double fucking two Japanese school girls and the combination of everything but they didn't speak a lot of English."

And that's what I always admire about you, John, your invested heart. You lay it out there. You delve, and deep. The authority by which you speak is warranted and staggering. I've found that only those in possession of a hyper-ripe moral compass can expect to dish beliefs by which I pay even a momentary mind. So let's put you to the test. Speed round, shall we Durbs?

"I didn't know anything about the pills we took. I didn't know what had brought me to the Italian coast, but I was driving, fucked out of my mind and she was screaming at me and I couldn't hear a word of it. Nothing was processing. I was winding the coast in and old Alfa Romeo - topless - trying to hit a hundred miles an hour screaming back I want to die I want to die I want to die."

Nice.

"Prague is good for two things -- hookers and cocaine."

Excellent.

"There's a very distinct sound that happens when you clear out a man's teeth with a rusted hammer, like breaking through an egg shell -- soft, delicate, yet there's enough fortitude there to actually give the metal of the hammer a slight ring."

Sensational.

"Let her go. You'll be fine. You'll always be fine. You're the fucking Burn, man. The fucking Burn."

Thanks, D.