10,000 Spoons

Posted on December 30, 2024 by max

I will write no resolution.

I say this every year~

12/31/21
It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m stuck back home in Kent because the snow got my flight cancelled. I’m trying hard not to take any symbolism from that.

Because if I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that the New Year does not always unfold the same way you ring it in. If that was the case, then I wouldn’t have spent 2020 looking out my window. And 2021 would have been a year of sameness, stagnancy.

I read my diary entry from last New Year’s. It’s uncanny how today, I’m tempted to write exactly what I wrote then. As much as my situation changed in 2021 – unrecognizably so – my thoughts remain remarkably the same. I bet if I found my diary from New Year’s 2011, the entries would say the same thing then, too. The Mad Libs might just read a little different.

– (Insert Girl You’re Currently Pining After) doesn’t think I’m (Insert Current Insecurity) enough to love me back.
– Your friend (Insert Person Who You Currently Compare Yourself To) is so much more (Insert Current Definition of Success) than you are.
– You’ll be a lot happier once you achieve (Insert Current Obsession) and will most definitely certainly be happy forever once you do.

I am not the same person I was in 2011, but I act the same 10 years later because thoughts beget actions. Actions beget habits and habits beget destiny. Well, I saw my destiny this year, frozen in my headlights at the end of the road. I was sure, so sure, that my mental framework would last me forever. It served me well in high school. Got me through college. But now it suffocates me. It’ll hurt like hell to shed, but it hurts even more to test the seams on snakeskin 2 years too small. I resign myself to my failure, and dutifully pack my suitcase and head out of town once more. Top hat and all.

A good friend of mine was convinced that, eventually, he could stop the constant cycle of breaking down and building up. He was determined to find the right formula, the right framework. So he read books and honed his body. A true renaissance main, he’d make Da Vinci proud and circle his own square. Shake hands with his past selves. Conquer his inner world so he could conquer his outer one. A few days ago I met up with his cousin and she gave me an earring with his ashes in them. I think he just wanted to figure it out.

In 2021, you all heard my music just in time for me to forget what music is. I fell in love so hard I almost forgot that I don’t know what love is, either. My best friend died and I realized I never really learned how to live. A year of questions and reflections. Here’s to 2022 being a year of answers and actions. I’ll get up and try again, because I’ve done it enough times now to realize that’s all we really have to do.

2021 has one more punishment left for me, but in 2022 we’re ungrounded baby. I’m getting my phone back. Allowed to sleep over at Log’s house. But enough with the metaphors. My flight takes off at 6:38 AM on New Year’s Day and I’m doing my best to find the levity in that, at least while my suitcase is still light enough to carry on. Okay, last metaphor, I promise.

I will write no resolution. Thanks for being here.
-MBK

That’s actually a pretty beautiful entry. Good job, past me. It felt powerful, too. Things changed after that one. I reached the zenith of my framework that year. ’Twas an embarrassing showing at the end of 2021, but what can I say? I was crashing out. I went back home battered and bruised. Jevandre died, I was hopelessly smitten with Codename: Emily and I tried to flush it out by hooking up with [REDACTED] and attempting to reignite things with Codename: Jenny Jones. We were just supposed to go sledding but I was left feeling like a fool. And cold. As some sort of divine punishment my flight got snowed in and I was forced to stay in Kent for New Year’s Eve. It’s probably a good thing, too, because despite how seemingly self-aware the 12/31/21 entry was, I secretly hoped that I could make it back to LA in time to plant a big ol simpy smooch on Codename: Emily. God must have stopped that from happening. And it’s good, too, because that night I did some of the classic psychotic shit I’m wont to do. As the clock struck midnight, I locked myself in the background and stared at myself in the mirror until I truly saw myself. It was a bit scary. After ~4 minutes you get a sense of how you appear to others in the world. Good Lord, I looked tired. The year was weighing on me. I swore the next year would be different, and this time it felt like it would. I wrote no resolution, but as soon as I got back to LA I decided to move out of the garage. Okay, well really I had a tiny backslide with Codename: Emily, got locked out of her bedroom and slept on her couch, and THEN decided I was done.

***I never learn my lesson***
So much for “Always Never Again” mirite?

Okay, so after the briefest of detours I got my first apartment in Hollywood and was determined – no more women! No more distractions! I’m doing my own thing. What’s that thing they say about God and the plans of man? I hadn’t even started moving out of the garage by the time I met Codename: Didi. In fact, there’s a brief crossover event in which she appeared in the Melrose house, and I saw it for the first time in the light of day: a dingy railroad house with a detached garage. It wasn’t this magical place anymore. We corporeal beings try our hardest to line things up energetically, but our bodies betray our sense of timing.

***Allow me to explain***
We are the last to know when the time is up.

The Melrose house was perfect, until it wasn’t. So by the time I left, I had not only outgrown it, but recognized that I had outgrown it, so to be there was stifling and sickening. But leases and all that. So when Codename: Didi came into the house it was like someone from the next chapter appearing the page before they’re supposed to appear. The first time I noticed this phenomenon was in 2019 with Codename: Apples. We knew our time was up, but by God we kept fighting. There was even a specific end date: the beginning of grad school (hers, not mine). We were in a sort of post-relationship limbo. Undergrad had ended, but we both happened to move to Washington. Her because school was starting in Pullman in the fall, me because I wanted to save money before I went to LA. We were in the same state, so even though we knew the relationship couldn’t last beyond syllabus week, we at least had to try.

***For the people in the back***
Pullman and Kent are 8 hours apart.

When I went to go see Codename: Apples the weekend before school started, I drove my dad’s shitty Dodge Neon over the Cascades and got stuck somewhere near Spokane when it broke down. It felt like I was going out of bounds in a video game and the physics engine was crashing. The devs were saying, “don’t you know the story is over? Why do you keep playing? The map ends here.” But Christ, I loved her and I wanted to say goodbye. So I had my dad drive all the way to Spokane, swap cars with me, and I drove the remaining 3 hours. I didn’t even WANT to do this. That was the shittiest part. I had to move mountains just to do some shit I didn’t even want to do. And as soon as I got to her new apartment, and we walked around her new campus, and I got a sense of her new life, I knew I had came too far. I felt out of place, and I felt out of time. I was displaced like fuckin Billy Pilgrim. When the time came for us to say our tearful goodbye, and the universe popped our little pimple, it was already leaking. That’s gross I’m sorry. But I’m serious. My soul didn’t fit in Codename: Apples’ little apartment.

Similarly, Codename: Didi didn’t fit in the garage. And a few years later, when I went to go visit Codename: Didi in Wales, and I didn’t want to admit it was over, I felt the same thing. We were looking out beyond the edge of the world, past St. David’s, and I thought, hey this isn’t real. I shouldn’t be here. I have to go. But everything I have here, in this moment, exists only here, and the second I walk away from this little bench it’ll begin to undo itself. And it did. I didn’t think you could outgrow an entire country the same way you can outgrow a garage or a tiny one-bedroom, but our souls don’t follow the same rules our bodies do.

So she’s seeing somebody now. So? I am too. SomebodieS. Hah! Sucker. But for real, I felt relieved to hear it. Honestly. But I can’t shake the feeling that I woke up on the other end of something today. More moved on, more removed, more free. But maybe I didn’t want that? How can it ever have been real if it can dissolve so quickly? I suppose it’s been awhile. And the strangest part is understanding that you can have a few weeks, months, years with someone and they give you a lifetime of thoughts and feelings to make sense of. It’s like when you truly collide with someone’s soul there’s such an explosion of energy that… well, it’s like a big bang, where the hydrogen atoms are still twisting and rearranging billions of years later, until it all falls to entropy. I mean shit, it’s been five years and since then I’ve had 124 journal entries mentioning Codename: Apples. You meet someone, you fall in love, it ends, and then you’re left with the hydrogen atoms. Ya’ll know I always lose the metaphor.

I’m a simple guy. I want simple things in life. Money, power, fame, world domination. But in love I want the complex things like laughter and touch and kindness and smiles. I’ve been searching for one thing my whole life and I’m getting pretty good at finding something close. This year I will write no resolution, but I know that this was an extremely important 366 days. Despite the tragedies, I daresay it was my happiest. I overturned countless stones and found lots of worms and tons of slimy things. I climbed a hundred hills and felt a dozen suns. I took a thousand flights and saw two million countries. I lived in seven trillion houses and felt ten gazillion feelings. Yeah yeah, we packed it up and I lost my pillows but hey – at least I got the couch. And the towels. A jumbled definition of love that is now my intellectual responsibility to untangle. Oh, and ten thousand spoons.

***The tragic irony***
All I needed was a knife.

’Til next time -mbk

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Well, The Blog Works Now

Posted on December 29, 2024 by max

Going into a bit of a blog overdrive as I’m finishing up this site. As you may know by now, once I get my brain latched onto something I become absolutely obsessed. Once I can define the idea, I’m cooked. “I’m gonna start a blog” is too nebulous, but “I’m going to start an authentic 2010’s-era blog using only HTML” is something I can fucking dream about.

***It’s sad, but true***
I had a breakthrough about a line of code in a dream last night and it was the first thing I woke up to do.

I suppose the next step is to define what the blog is ABOUT. This is my typical cycle when it comes to a new hobby or passion….

***The steps***
1. [Insert idea] sounds fun. I bet I can become the greatest in the world at this.
2. Get hooked and begin learning all I can about [insert idea].
3. Realize this is a whole field in and of itself, and feel shame thinking I can treat someone else’s entire life pursuit into a hobby and expect to play at the same level
4. Either face the beast and become world-class, or realize it’s a fool’s errand and turn my attention elsewhere
5. Ooh, [insert idea] sounds fun

I’ve reached step 3 now. Yes, what is this blog about? I’ve decided, for now, to have two broad categories. One will be Diary entries: unfiltered thoughts about my life. The other will be Blog entries: the rough theme being my pursuit of my various main interests (art, technology, romance, travel, spirituality, self-discovery) and the strangely inevitable ways in which they intersect. Maybe there will be more categories later. I think it’d be fun to do a serialized story for some posts.

I sometimes wonder if my attention would be better spent focused on a single thing. I have artist friends who have reached depths unbeknownst to me because of their singular focus and dedication to a specialized area of their craft. But that’s never enough for me. George R.R. Martin (one of my biggest inspirations for creating this blog) calls himself a “gardener” writer, and I like to think of myself as a “gardener” artist. I water various aspects of my creative endeavors and love to see the ways one area of the garden helps the other areas grow. Perhaps my water would have been more wisely spent on one plant, but I feel that after a decade of tending to my garden I’m beginning to see a full harvest. Okay, the metaphor is losing steam a bit. Let’s get practical.

When I was burnt out of music after the “Junk Male” EP, I turned my attention to the Junk Male short film. I had always wanted to be an actor, but I watered the musician area of my garden first. The shade from the musician tree let me then water the actor tree for a little while, which then did [insert botany term] in return to my musician tree. Okay, I said I’d quit the metaphor for a second. Basically, when I burnt out of music, I worked on acting, and that reinspired me to work on music again. I reached a new level of overall artistic depth by making the film, which was a huge unlock when I returned to writing music. Then I did the film this summer which deepened me even more, so when I returned to music I felt like an even more well-rounded artist. This approach has the greatest return when bouncing through different artistic disciplines, but I find it helpful with more craft- or hobby-centric pursuits. In fact, I know that starting this blog will see returns in my music. I’m not exactly sure how, yet, but I am faithful that it will. It’s never failed me before.

I have a few unstructured diary entries from when I was building the blog out the last week, hope you find those interesting. Until next time -mbk

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Travels

Posted on December 28, 2024 by max

At the airport, like I always am. My family doesn’t travel much. I was raised with a sort of uneasy fascination with airports. I was told stories about how hard traveling is, how busy the airport is, they’re going to lose your bag, the flight is going to make you tired for a week after. So the first time I flew off to Arizona for college, it was a BIG deal. A huge rite of passage into independence. I was doing something my family never does. And I was only flying a few states away.

Fast forward a few years later and I fly almost every month. I’ve lived partially in London, New York and LA over the last few years. This was the product of my previous relationship with a supremely cosmopolitan woman, but it’s something I’ve tried to maintain even after.

My parents would hear my flight schedule (or especially hers) and comment on how taxing it must be. But why? I think people who don’t like flying don’t like it because they’re not good at it. I was that way. When I was going back and forth between WA and AZ during undergrad, I had this giant duffel bag I would completely overstuff and have to pay the oversized bag fee for.

***A clarification, for emphasis***
Yes, a duffel bag with no wheels. I had to drag it around. It looked like there was a corpse in there.

But who WOULDN’T need every single pair of underwear they own? What if I shat myself twice a day, every day of the vacation? But once the duffel was safely checked, I would try to sleep on the plane by resting my head on the tray table in front of me. Of course, I couldn’t, even though I ALSO wore near-pajamas to the airport so I’d fall asleep easier.

Now I’m sitting here, at the bar with a $13 beer and plenty of time to kill, with my hardshell rolling back with an AirTag in the lining and a neck pillow I can attach to the headrest for supreme support. I have my noise cancelling headphones on to drown out the sounds of people rushing to their gates, I’ve downloaded 15 episodes of How I Met Your Mother (the flight’s not even three hours, but who WOULDN’T need to have extra downloaded, just in case?), and best of all I am fitted the fuck out. That’s right, no pajamas anymore. The single best tip for a more pleasurable flight is actually to look your best. I’m mewing the whole way from Clear + Pre-Check to the gate B3. Oh yeah, I’m on my third free trial of Clear. They have yet to call me out on it. With that lethal combo, I’m through security in the same amount of minutes as ounces of 3-1-1 liquid they let you carry on.

LAX to JFK, JFK to LAX, LAX to SEA, SEA to LAX, LAX to JFK again. That’s this month of my life.

***Something I’ll talk more about later***
Have I mentioned that I’m moving to New York?

I wrote a line, once, in a previous life. “Something about airports makes me cry.” Yeah, that’s it. That’s the line. Haha. I think I was trying to evoke the Motion City Soundtrack line about hating the ocean, theme parks and airplanes. But it’s true. I’m not much of a people watcher, really (I’m far too myopic) but I like being AROUND people moving quickly and with purpose. I think that’s what I like so much about New York. Those fuckers walk at a BREAKNECK speed. They’re gliding. A very kind but presumptuous woman tapped me on the shoulder in Flatiron and told me that, excuse me but did you know you’re walking too slow? I appreciate it, I did. How else would I have known? I hit Mach 2 after that.

I still have a bit of a fixation on airports but it’s turned into more of a romantic feeling. It’s a meditation now. I like finding new and inventive ways to make it even more of a breeze. I like to think of it as a sort of commute. It’s funny, because last time I had a proper job, the commute was the worst part. And it’s even funnier because in LA if the ETA is over 30 minutes, I’m probably not going. I’m going on 5 years of job sobriety and there are some aspects of a 9-5 that still creep their way into my life.

I suppose the routine of the airport is a good way to punctuate my months, give me something to look forward to. Otherwise, what’s really the difference between May and June? July and December, even? Especially in LA where it’s Groundhog Day. But now, I can think of January as Washington, August as North Carolina, December as New York… And the times between as LA. It makes me sad to think about leaving, but it’s less home as it is home base. But I’m determined to make it harder for me to leave.

***Coming soon***
The LA bucket list.

Oops, about to miss my flight. Til next time -mbk

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A Meta-textual Analysis Level of Navel-Gazing Headassery

Posted on December 27, 2024 by max

1,237 journal entries since 7/1/19. There are scattered entries before, but 7/1/19 is the day I count as the start of my journal. It’s been 2,007 days since. 1,237 entries is 61.63% which means that I’ve journaled a bit more than half of the days since I set out to make this a habit.

***A disclaimer***
The data is offset by some days having more than one entry, but that’s just getting pedantic.

Of course, 1,237 only accounts for the entries Notes app. The second time I did The Artist’s Way, I filled up about 6 spiral notebooks with my Morning Pages. I have dozens of other entries in my Google Drive. And let’s not forget the live novelization of my life I began when I was 11 and continued until I was 15 (It was in this iteration of the journal that I came up with the name “Max Bennett Kelly).

I suppose after a decade and a half of writing about myself, it was about time I started a blog. When I first started journaling, I had this secret pipe dream that one day I would be world famous and someone would publish my journals, and people would read it for fun. That was when my entries looked like this:

7/18/19
– Make $100 tips
– Be showered by 8:30
– Finished laundry
– Read 20 of 4 Hour Work Week
– Drank protein shake
– Less than 1 hour negative self talk
– Be on time

It’s funny to look back on because not only were they impersonal, they were BORING. Of course I wasn’t afraid of that being posted. But also.. WHY did I think anyone would want to read that?

I suppose the question still stands – who would want to read this blog? I try not to ask myself questions like that anymore. Nowadays, when that kind of question pops up, I just let it go. If you go back in time in my journal, you’d find a lot of that, especially 2+ years ago. “Who would want to listen to my music?” “Who do I think I am to put my art into the world?” Alternatively, if those questions weren’t there, you could find them in the subtext. Let’s look at previous December 27th-ish entries to see what I was saying.

12/28/20
I’m on the plane and going home.

I’m home in Seattle, but I’m going home to LA. I’ve accepted this. My life is bounded by flights and sudden changes from cold to hot weather.

I feel good. I feel sad, but good. I’m sad that I’ve been sad for so long. That everything I do becomes sad in retrospect. But I’m done.

My dad said that his coach once told him, “one day you have to just decide to stop doubting yourself.” I’m gonna do that. I’m just gonna stop being sad.

It sounds terrible. The exact opposite of any mental hygiene check I’ve been told the last few years. But no, I think I’m just done being sad.

Every time I think about something that happened in college, and it’s tinged blue, I’ll remember the heat of the Arizona sun on me and the freedom that came from knowing even if I did absolutely nothing each day, I was making forward progress.

I will mentally retrace my steps and flip every individual memory into a good one. Every time a memory enters my awareness, I’m flipping it from blue to yellow. It’s easy. I’ve tried this.

I’m so excited to see all of my Arizona friends on New Year’s. I’m tired of thinking resentfully of them. I feel horrible for it.

***

The plane took off and I see the world from up here. I love flying. I love the perspective. I love when the place I just was turns into the image I saw on a map.

And the scope of it all.

I’m me. It all comes back. I didn’t even realize I had forgotten it. I’m Marcello. My parents made me. I grew up. And I’m on a plane and I get emotional looking at the ocean. I’m me. I’m in this body. I’m in this mind. And I know who I am.

Sometimes I forget.

Or perhaps I never really knew? Maybe I’m not remembering anything. Maybe I’m discovering it for the first time.

The weight of life sometimes seems too much for me. I’d rather glide through it. Sometimes the darkness of it all fells my flighty soul.

I was born. I grew up. And now I’m here.

Three short sentences with an entire life in between each period. A life of love, and heartbreak, and art, and light, and darkness, and laughs and hugs and tears and essays and deadlines.

I’m done being anxious right now. I’m done doubting myself. And I’m done being cosmically constipated. I know why I create. To make a lasting reminder of something that moved me. Not art for art’s sake. Art to remind me that I existed, that that moment happened, that I was there. And the medium is the message. The fact that the songs exist is PROOF that I was here. I don’t need to even make songs about that concept. I want to make songs about Puerto Penasco. About my trip to Portugal. About driving around Tucson. About parties at the Hartnett’s. About the girls I’ve loved. About my mom. About my friends.

I’m ready to exist, permanently. Through my art. I’m here. I was here. I always will be. I am.

A bit of a long entry, actually. You can see that I got much better even between 7/1/19 and 12/28/24. I underlined some sentences that made it into the spoken word section of “Superinlove.” Can’t hear it? Listen to the bridge after the second chorus, going into the outro. There’s a bunch of yelling in the background. I’m saying “And when the plane took off, I saw everything. I saw the scope of it all. I’m me. It all comes back. I’m ME. Sometimes I forget. But I know who I am.”

I’ll include the isolated vocals:

Sometimes there’s a bit of kismet when I go back and look for the day’s journal entry on previous years. Usually there’s a parallel between what I write on any given day across the last five years of consistent entries. Today’s wasn’t super pertinent (mind you, I didn’t even have a 12/27 entry any other year). But I did have a 12/26 entry and THREE 12/28 entries, one of which I showed you, the other of which I included above. Now, I write my daily entry, and after finishing (or whenever I feel inclined) I find it useful to analyze my previous years’ entries and see if there’s a pattern I’m either continuing or breaking.

I’m not joking when I say that almost every time, I find a very suspiciously similar tidbit that crossed my mind, every year. Here’s an extremely private example I’ll give you in exchange for making it this far. On 12/21/24, I wrote an extremely elaborate journal entry, and mentioned How I Met Your Mother, because I’m rewatching it right now. It made me think of my first girlfriend, because we watched it together. I offhandedly mentioned her in my journal. When I was done writing, I searched 12/21 and found it to be one of the rare dates that I have an entry for every year since 2019. And what do you know? On 12/21 there’s a single offhanded remark about this girl for the last 5 years. Isn’t that bizarre? I tried to rack my brain about why, and I remembered. ON 12/21/12, that date 12 years ago, I lost my virginity to that girl (TMI, sorry, and not it’s not weird that I remember the exact date because it was the day the Mayan Calendar said the world would end, so we were like… fuck it, let’s do it). And it just so happens that on that day, 12/21/12, we must have been on our first HIMYM watch. And here I was, 12 years later, thinking about that same girl, watching the same show, on that same date. I like to think that I was on the same episode, too.

The only explanation is that our body or soul has some connection to a point in time, and that there’s some inherent MEANING to each date in the Gregorian calendar. But what IS a date? I suppose it’s a way to describe the position of the Earth in relation to the Sun. It repeats every year when the Earth and Sun are in the same position. And for some reason, the position of the planets for the last five years has made me think of the girl I loved when I was 15. Is there some astrological significance here? Does journaling make me believe in astrology? Sort of. Sort of not. But it makes me think that we are creatures caught in a loop that we have no hope of escaping without acknowledging our predicament first.

Journaling at first was useful as a way to keep track of what I was doing during the day. I was inspired to journal in earnest after reading Michael Crichton’s Travels. He says (paraphrased) that keeping a detailed log of what you do every day is the only way to certify that you are not going insane. Funny enough, back in the day, I used to fear I was going crazy. In fact, in my 12/27/21 entry, I’m freaking out about losing my mind (a common theme back then).

12/26/21 Pt II
here i am freaking myself out again. i thought i was over this, this fear of going crazy.

it’s obvious why i’m afraid of it. because of jevandre. because of jimmy.

but no one has ever said anything to me. tim literally said i don’t show any signs of it.

i just decided there was something wrong with me and have been rolling with that idea forever. but what if there’s not?

i love all the things running around inside my head. ideas, songs, characters. why am i afraid of them?

it’s kind of a funny idea. fear of imagination. what a way to become a boring adult. like the pixies in fairly odd parents.

its crazy how easy it is to slip into these bad thought patterns when my habits are messed up. going home throws it all through the ringer.

i want to go back to la and get going on my music stuff. i want to have the same motivation i had months ago, before happy healthy. i want to have fun and be happy. i want to sleep soundly. i want a rockin bod.

what’s getting in my way? (cont.)

There was a lot more to this one but I’ll cut it here. I’m extremely proud of myself for not being as afraid of my brain these days.

Also I lied for dramatic effect. There was a 12/27/21 entry but it’s just my tarot reading.

12/27/21
past inverted ten of cups
present inverted the world
future inverted four of swords.

I suppose what I can garner from this time of the year every year, I am extra interested or connected to spiritualism and mysticism and am in a state where my brain is pliable and open. I used to be afraid of it, in ’21, but now, I accept that my brain has to be a putty sort of mush to be open to the energy of the world.

And what better way to start the blog? I suppose since I’ve reached the meta-textual analysis level of navel gazing that my headassery has to go SOMEWHERE. Thanks for reading. Talk soon -mbk

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12-26-24

Posted on December 26, 2024 by max

Hi

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