the lies of reality

When there's an idea brewing inside of the Fairmount home, it could run into one of two sharply different ends: one where it pretty much gets shat on by everyone or it has a snowball's effect of growing and growing, for better or for worse. Despite the very springy April we're having, we've had a snowball rolling down the mountain and it's got us all in the right state of mind. There's also a slight feeling of comraderie that I'd always hoped for since moving out to the farm in October. We'll always have our spots amongst each other where we're pissed off at one another over eaten slices of pizza or d-bo'd alcohol. However, it's no surprise that something potentially big has climbed up over the horizon, and I feel like it's going to be up to me to make sure that this snowball doesn't instantly melt on us.

Years ago, freshmen year in Murray to be exact, my group of friends/football teammates were about to take some shots before hitting up a party. A strange red bottle was passed around the room and we poured the red liquid into shotglasses. "Hey, guys," Demetrius yelled. "Fuck it; we're taking shots of it--we should just call ourselves Aftershock!" It was cheered and we laughed at it...and then it stuck for all four years of college. Our group name was Aftershock; we were known to peers and professors as being part of the big Aftershock clan. We were from different walks of life, mostly black, but all in all different. There was no one with the same points of view on anything, yet, we were able to coexist for years. It was the tightest group of friends I had except the guys I grew up with back in the old, old days. There was always talk about starting a company that encompassed all of our skills--music, law, film, finance, art, etc. We wanted to do something to keep the group going after college because, hey, we were having a blast and didn't want it to end. Unfortunately, it did, and it looks as though that dream of the old Aftershock crew sticking together looks more naive than anything, considering people are spread all over the country now, with some having kids and others thinking about marriage. A host of issues made me let go of the dream years ago...and then the opportunity to realize my dream returned.

Robbie blurts out one day, "our lives here are so random, we should make a reality show of it." Laughter followed and then ideas started flowing...and they didn't stop. They haven't stopped. A reality show posted on YouTube sounds fun, like something to keep up busy over the summer. But then I got to thinking about what this could mean. I don't expect MTV to call and say, "hey guys, you want a spot on our network?" However, this reality show concept, which mixes a little bit of stupidity with our reality, could be just what I need. Anyone who has known me very well for a very long time could easily say that I've always been interested in writing and production for film & television. I mean, what if this does work out? Then maybe my Aftershock/Imprint company idea could finally come into fruition...wow, a dream realized. Of course, I worry that I'm hyping myself up for failure. But I don't want to fail at this, so I imagine my effort will be ever-increasing to avoid the obstacles that come behind dealing with producing something/dealing with my roommates. Hey, say the show fails and no one watches it on YouTube. Okay, fine and dandy. But what would the next step be? Ahh, a vast canyon of ideas have come into my head where I'm dealing with publishing, music, fashion, all kinds of art projects. Music videos, movies, epic shoe design, non-profit charity work, the possibilities are endless.

Good Lord, have I found direction? I've been so lost without it for years, like in a holding pattern. Now, it seems like I know where I want to go and even though I'm not positive if I'm going to make it, the whole point of my new attitude returning from Ireland was to do what I wanted to do. It's all about being free to do what I can while I can. I expect plenty of naysayers and doubters, but that's okay. They can be useful, helping me to make sure that I prove them wrong. That's part of the fun anyway. Gosh, imagine what could happen if this whole idea in my head--which I haven't explained very well, I'm sorry, but I'm saving details and trying to keep from throwing all of my ideas on here where anyone can read them and steal them from me!--blew up and got me to the level I want to be on. It's way bigger than having lots of fame and fortune; it's about being able to reach people. I think that's way more important than the accolades of being famous. I don't care what people would think of me and I don't care for being a celebrity. It doesn't seem terribly appealing. However, the ability to say, "I'm Rocky Williams and I've got a project (let's just say film) that I'm going to make and in two years, it's going to be a box office hit." That means a lot of fucking people have seen something I've done! Maybe something good I've done! I don't feel like I necessarily have a lot of important messages to spread either, but if I have the opporunity to do so, I might as well try to get people thinking positively about charity or being healthy or being planet-friendly, and that's exactly what I do.

Ahh, it could just be me California dreaming....but so many different pieces of the puzzle I never questioned before are being questioned now, and the whole Fairmount reality-show is just the baby version of the big picture. It's all starting to make sense...for the time being.

you haven't lived until you've loved life

One night a while back, Matt said something I thought was really stupid--that his passion was life itself. It didn't make a lot of sense to me considering how I had just explained what my passion was in life: writing, filmmaking, storytelling, etc. It seemed specific, thus easy enough for someone to understand. However, Matt's answer to what his passion was in life--life? really?--seemed to me like a copout, like he hadn't given much thought to a thoughtful question. Yet, after a little thought, Matt's answer might not have been stupid as once thought, if you look at the answer from a certain perspective.

At the tender age of 25, there are a lot of roads open for me to take: marriage, fatherhood, workaholic, starving artist, fashion designer, politician, skydiver, blah, blah, and blah. The doors are open. Life is huge, as Emily once said to me. When I thought about my life in Louisville as I left Murray behind in May of 2006, I wondered what I was heading for. I knew the party life of undergrad was probably not exactly going to be the same here, and I was right. I knew living with my parents wasn't going to be like living with Weave or DW, and I was right. But I didn't really realize how complacent I've been for the last few years until really this year. 2009 has started off right, thankfully. Usually my odd years are my most troublesome, but so far I've been fortunate to be living the way I want to be. Left and right of me are friends that are getting married, sometimes for stupid unexplainable reasons and sometimes just because they feel they need to be married at this age. More power to them both, but I'm thankful that I'm not in that mindset. I prefer the freedom I have right now. You'll never call me and hear me give an excuse for not hanging out because I have to take Easter pictures with my kids.

My roommates and I (along with the ol' boy, Mike) have been ballin' out of control this year, as we should be. We're all healthy mid-20s bachelors that have intelligence and wit, as well as healthy drinking habits and the money to burn on shots of Kamikazes. That, my friends, is life. A couple of weeks ago, Robbie and I got to hang with The Audition, one of my favorite bands. I envy the road band life. They get to see a new place all the time, talk to new people, and express themselves seriously on a stage. It's not glamorous all the time, especially in those long hours in a beat-up Ford van, but those guys kinda rock. We drank and partied with them like we were in the band ourselves. And for a moment, I guess we were, especially when we were singing songs like, "It's So Cold in the D." If you don't know about that video, look it up on YouTube right now!!! Anyway, the point is that I'm no rock star, but I feel like my life isn't very different than that of Danny Stevens, pictured with me up there at the top. He's a free man. I'm a free bear, because while I'm writing and dreaming and drinking and dancing and singing and kicking it to Cold War Kids while the Mets are on ESPN HD, I'm free to do that all of that shit anywhere I fucking please! And that is why I love life, my friends. I'm free, not boggled down and neither are you...unless you're married with kids and a house payment. Then you're boggled down, but you're still free enough to be able to do that shit, so in a way, you should love life just as much as I do!

This is a happy-go-lucky post, I know. It's kinda qurrr, but what can you do? I'm doing it big, beacuse my passion too is life. I just didn't realize it until I started living it the way I wanted to.

i will bend the light pretending that it somehow lingered on

I wish I could update this a little more, but time and opportunity allude me. Nevertheless, here I am. Even more, I wish I had more profound things to talk about, but I don't. When I kept a LiveJournal (haha, who didn't?), I always had something to say and something to question, but I was living on a college campus where I was constantly trying to figure things out. It didn't matter if it concerned women or the number of electrons in an atom, I was trying to figure things out. Nowadays, I'm done questioning and trying to answer all of the questions, perhaps because I realize that I don't have to waste a lot of time doing so.

Heavier Things, the sophomore album by my favorite playa in the game John Mayer, made sense to me in 2003. At the time, I felt like I was leaving the high school mentality completely having a full year of college under my belt. John was singing about mature love, carving a piece into the world and having a place to fit into, aiming for inspirations bigger than we can possibly dream to achieve and not caring if we fail to do so as long as the attempt was made. I understood that completely. I was over my high school infatuation (hard to call her love considering I've had that "mature love," yahmean?), I was trying to make the most of being a Murray State scholar, and I wanted to be the world's greatest pediatric neurologist. The album struck a chord, so to speak. Yet, John was 25 when he made Heavier Things, and after listening to it as soon as I turned 25, it struck a completely different chord.

I had just returned from Ireland and had my awe-inspiring epiphany about life, blah blah blah. We've been through that. I also had my epiphany about friendships and what real friends meant to each other, blah blah blah. We've been through that too. So I popped in the album one day and it sank so deeply that I got a little emotional, you know? No crying, but I was moved nevertheless. From songs like "Clarity," where John has his own epiphany about the way life is going for him, to songs like "Split-Screen Sadness," where he pines for a distant lover he let go of, I related to every song and began to think about what I've been doing as a 25-year-old. It's only been a couple of weeks thus far, but it's more about where I am in the lot in life. I'm a college graduate who is not the world's greatest pediatric neurologist. I'm not learning much anymore either, even though I'm still in school. I haven't been asking questions anymore, which bothers me most of all. My quest to learn about all things that make the world go round simply went kaput and it seems if I learn anything, it's something I read on Cracked.com, which is a humorous website, but not really where the answers lie.

Most importantly, those days of learning helped me fashion together so many stories I'm thankful to have been able to tell. Most of my literary ideas come from me seeing things I'll never see again, not as long as I sit at a desk job working 3rd shift. This must come to an end, for it's beginning to drain me. I need to be up with the sun, where the light keeps my brain cells running a little bit better. It's more than UPS though; I can't blame it all on the job. It's gotta be about me and figuring out what questions I haven't answered. Some I never will--like why women are...the way they are--but sometimes, it wasn't about the answer itself but instead about what I learned along the journey of figuring it out. Hell, often, that was the best part! I'm not one of the folks in their mid-twenties that had even begun to think that it's time to settle down and get "the next phase" ready, where I get married and feel like starting a family is what I must do. If you do that so soon, aren't you really telling yourself that you've got enough questions answered?

All in all, I have just one thing I want to do--get back to that sophomore feeling where I felt like I had something to pursue. And I do. I have plenty trials, successes and errors to make with finding love, which I must admit is pretty important to me. I have to figure out why I was given the gift to formulate a story so well. I have to figure out why I'm able to do calculus problems in my head, like another form of mental math. I have to see why learning the piano so late in life is one of the easiest new things I've done in years. I have to see why logic doesn't explain everything and how it sometimes loses the battle against emotions. I've yet to carve out my spot in the world, and to quote my boy John, I'll go down in flames if a flame is what it takes to remember my name.