Fortunate to Pummel the former 500th World Ranked ATP Tennis Player in a SoCal Open. Barely lost 7-5 in third set in professional tennis pre-qualifier. Whipped a handful of sanctioned 5.5 “A” champions, sometimes 6-1, 6-1. Annihilated a Top-10 Men’s 35’s player. Amongst the Top-5 Varsity tennis sluggers on NCAA D1 University of San Francisco team. Played internationally in Hong Kong and China. #1 Varsity tennis player for All-City San Francisco Lowell High and two-time San Francisco All-City Selection. For me, exemplar-bold writing, competition tennis, and visceral, evocative music creation empowers alpha dimensions of human consciousness from multiple, different angles, within. Thank G-d for the Persona of Sir Arthur C. Stackerazz, incarnate!
My autobiographical visionary fiction, The Ascent of a Barbarious Court Squatter, ennobles the reader to tackle adversity internally, regardless of external thwarts or realities. We may accentuate four hilarious personas within consciousness to steamroll our obstacles like magic. My Persona Theory is not immaculate although it is quite pragmatic in the absence of a quicker fix. It has made me a survivor as a hopeful romantic. Yet, maybe I could have bypassed Persona Theory, cut to the chase over the generations and asked a nice lady on a date sooner….
Please check out this excerpt from my autobiographical, visionary fiction, The Ascent of a Barbarious Court Squatter, about the yearning that good (but apparently not good enough!) music evokes from the all-too engrossed listener. Remember, I wrote this 20 years after I had composed/sang a few tunes—a decade BEFORE my recent, prolific 10 years of composing/singing circa 100 New Wave/Rocking/Popping/Electronica tunes! Note how closely my description of music parallels life! :
“SYMPHONIC CONSTRUCTION
Dear hopelessly enraptured music appreciation fans and mildly encumbered roadies:
Your hideaway is above the formerly classsy, French coffee parlor/diner with black and white marble floor tiles turned drabber, fancy schmancy outpost where Grant Street meets the edge of Chinatown. From the comfort of your raucous, inner-city futon in your cramped apartment that has no recruited wall posters, but is sparsely adorned with empty pizza boxes, you hear a semblance of musical perfection. You are privy to the clashing resonance of adventurous tourists finally gelling with the local hill boys to the fading in and out riffs of Howard Jones’ “Like to Get to Know You Well.” Evocative, electrical impulses tailor-conduct your sparked feelings into domain mode.
The better, synthy pop tunes from the eighties justifiably whirlwind the pretending listener on canoe rowing expeditions to otherworldly tropics. You know, the tunes that motor the plentifully-oared team along the glistening waters, free-spirited waters. This music is a temporary, moving shelter that hints at the prospect of the ship’s assured harboring on the party isle.
Semi-private, lagoon anchoring are traceable to the great seaward expanse….Where the thatched straw hula skirts, variable smoothie selection, and plentiful apple crepes palatable edge out the papayas, miniature umbrellas, and unconverted midnight luau kisses from the late 1970’s. The right tune might serve as a conduit for a twilight star to sneak most of the moonless accolades above without stealing the guest stage below. The beach is spongier than the blue hard courts at this year’s Australian Open.
While no human song is awesome enough not to eventually sound stale if replayed till nauseum, there are certain tunes that always evoke primo emotion-raging.
The song’s elevating gumption mirrors the stimulation of your peaking romantic mindset as the tune runs its course. Even though you have not done anything particularly different but rev your sensual brontosaurus’ brain in vogue with the gyrating music, you are more aware of the plausibility of life movement. The zeal and thematic content of the inertial melody, vocals, and beat echo the first spring spurts of a stag’s notched antlers. You are feeling the nonrefundable surface energy charge. You transpose yourself into the persona of the privileged vocal narrator who is at once daringly innocent by nature of his confession and worthy of redemption. You have adopted someone’s public outcry and you’re starting to believe in your own hype.
But you are so intent on perfecting the song that no groundbreaking moves of any sort will occur within the next three power minutes. You almost wish that you could ditch the music and join the revelry. But that might not absolutely guarantee your sense of yearning that the song coddles in you. So you instead cling to the partial, amorphous simulation because the longing alone is more substantial than nothing. A stranger songwriter perfectly reads your mind, but he won’t promote your idle hopes one iota. You remain absolutely loveless…
For the perennial bachelor who is trapped behind the steering wheel, driving music becomes far worse. The “empty shell” frustration is magnified. Successive songs blur into incessant tension harboring. Despite always being in transit, your desired destination is never disclosed to anyone else…nor to you. The contrast of the high emotional bombardment with your perception of your solitary stance is difficult to uphold, bottleneck, and continually regurgitate out. You attempt to play the lead. Yet, the electricity calls for a more attractive, less neutral approach than more of the same.
Even if the litany of tunes progressively gets better and better as you pipe dream, you will continually expel energy towards a romantic goal that will always be unattainable in between the end of one song and the similarly themed beginning of the next. The cyclical reminder of bachelordom continues while the methodical propulsion never dissipates faster than your addiction to harmonic friction. The exasperating disappointments of consecutive hypothetical longings compound without release. Not merely exhausting and stifling but overcooked without a stove, draining, and ultimately unrewarding. The Joust was not only never meant to be this flat; it is supposed to happen.
Sometimes even when hearing an ideal song, the right time for musical accompaniment is not always present in a moment that requires more contemplation and less dressing. Irregardless, we mechanically attune our beings to approximations of insightfulness, thereby compromising our experience of what might be. After the song, we are left wearing the remnants of funny looking wigs rather than David Lee Roth hairdos. While sometimes music enhances, we forget that during others, plain life requires no additives.
The mediocrity of classics and lackluster fillers alike rubs off in your captive awareness when you get caught up in an artificially generated rivet that does not quite live up to the revered assumption of its emoticon-elicitation status. Quite frankly, I am not only speaking about the sing-songy shells that simply are not worthy. Auto-tuning fosters a dumbed-down reality that we are supposed to gleefully wedge ourselves in between. These shells are driven home through the air a lot of the time. The foreign touch of a rock artist’s feng shui is not always revitalizing. These songs remind you that the pizza boxes are empty.
Listening to music can be a passive and brainless enough undertaking (compared to imagining, reading, writing, or composing music) that amazingly facilitates our seamlesss accessibility to our guttural wraths. It accentuates a harmony that concurrently weaves throughout life, thereby upstarting our awareness of motivations and optimism that already exist.
Without casting judgment, music considered by the trained observer in the abstract can be one-dimensional. It can cause surges of repetitive inspiration and/or frustrated perspiration. Music is at once wonderfully complete unto itself and incomplete as a limitation on our broader awareness.
Without proper discretionary focus, life can prove so vastly nonsensical that as much as we would like, we will never choose to get to know ourselves well. Thus, music has the power to channel the heartache of asphyxia while contributing to it. Like everything else, music is overrated although absolutely indispensable.
Rock Solid, Ace!”
My two other books of 150 creative non-fiction essays include Sporty Reflections of a Court Recidivist and Some Day You’ll Know Me (Until Then I’ll Vent!).
My fourth book, The Unheralded, Bizarre, and Most Fascinating Pop Star, Jacque D’Artichoke, is a PR journey into my music and writing. I play a “synthie MIDI dumbie boardie” hooked up to Mac software. In the past decade, I have created/sang 100 New Wave, Rocking, Pop songs and crafted 15 music videos under my John Royce Holtz’s occasional pseudonym, Jacque D’Artichoke, J.D..
I was coerced awake by the invisible, merciless, barf-evoking “Pitch-Forker” underneath my bed from 2012-2018, resulting in over a year of hospitalization to recover from forced sleep deprivation. The whole property was laced with Pitch-forks— there were even sensors in my car!
I did not want to be a hazard on the road so I loaded up on caffeine and specialty energy drinks from “Extra Mile” to sometimes stay awake for up to 14 days straight. From 2015-2017, I often wrote over 30 songs by staying up all night with my computerized edits. The folks at Apple are so kind to help me procedurally go where I want to end up substantively!!!! Phenomenal company and good peops!
At 3 a.m., I would anonymously saunter into the 7/11 down the street to load up on a large Colombian Dark Roast. The unsettling fury of coffee activates the grind within. It sometimes serves a bee hive rustling that one must circum-navigate to more directly achieve infinite thought gestation—more direct thought than had the buzzing bee hive obstacle not instigated. I’ll have a Tall—NO, better instead land me a Superdoozle!!! :) The sips even slightly transcend the insipidness of the trenches. Profound and sudden Boldness incarnate for this self-propeller man! Coffee helps wield the pre-existing Axe!!! The Compelling Fixation… Well, well, well, with my limited commodity of choice I may sometimes fire up my weary noggin and lagging physicality!
After writing a song, I would master it online and send it to 50 of my best friends to merely listen for their enjoyment—-It seems that some of these so-called friends took the liberty of assuming that just because I sent the extraordinary music to them that they had the G-d given right to keep my hard working intellectual property with my good name- -simply because they were aware of my talents. I would never spend taxing hours working all night just to fritter it away for naught—I always wanted to keep the rights of my own creations. I thought I was spreading joy of listening to hip tunes— not relinquishing the kitchen sink! I copyrighted many of these songs with the United States Library of Congress. Then, I would typicallly power up on more complimentary coffee at the Acqua Hotel on Shelter Bay, where I would send out email blasts of the Gift that apparently unintentionally keeps on giving….I paid for my MIdI dumb board, my speakers, my copyrights, my microphone—-all with my own income.. I did it to survive throughout the night, to make money and worthwhile art. I propelled myself forward into the dawn to survive in that haunted in-law unit 66 steps up the hill in Mill Valley. Whatever kept me awake underneath my bed was not particularly kind— and that is a euphemism! Now due much to other external factors, my internal speakers have been involuntarily blown out! I hope to keep creating music, a bit like Beethoven, deafer than usual—by trial and error, a bit of improvisation, and some luck in outputting soothing sounds for the listener that manage to darn well rivet……
My book writing is bold, avant-garde, compelling, humorous, full of aphorisms with a “linguistical preponderance” in terms of intricacy of language, breadth of scope, and plethora of inter-disciplinary humanities, including the philosophy of non-denominational spirituality and social conscience… I advocate virtually irrefutable arguments for the plight of the homeless, inner-city youths and their fundamental right for a quality, post-secondary education, the elusive quest for world harmony, and inter-faith cooperation. I’m not saying that my autobiographical, visionary fiction is the best thing since sliced bread; But does anybody have any butter knives?! :)
This web portal is an intermediary selling platform to hopefully land some substantial music and book deals…Is anyone reading this from Univeral Music, Sony, or Warner Brothers??! Penguin Random House Publishing is one of my favorites. One of the best times I ever experienced with my Mom was when we watched Flight of the Penguins— the Antarctic, unintentional comedians strut to the piped in music for the audience, flapping about the ice incessantly (LMFAO!)….John McEnroe’s bunting groundstrokes remind me of penguin wing-flapping….But his southpaw serve that precisely carves up the geometric service box is one of the 8 wonders of the world, despite McEnroe’s hissy fits and deft, follow-up volleys at the net… If Penguin can sign a book of stick figure drawings, it can most certainly sign an entertaining, mostly historically accurate account of my exemplar of persona theory that has the potential to make people’s lives not only more bearable, but triumphant!
Some people might inaccurately believe that a 53-year-old is too antiquated to break into the New Wave/Pop/Rocking music business. Nonetheless, even though this tired musician might need a tiara of hearing aids and a tele-prompter the size of a refrigerator, I can still dance like there is no tomorrow—perhaps because of my former NCAA D1 Footwork Guruing!….Mick Jagger is my athletic predecessor! Check out John Royce Holtz music on YouTube.com . (I’m actually all over the internet!) My first three L.P.’s are Carnivores and Their Hosts, Clandestine Ops., and Moon Palace—Stripped… Does anyone have any Moon Pies?! Bake a great one! :)
The following partially explains my captivating motivation to excel—in an unconventional manner, nonetheless: writing, tennis, and music (as well as academia):
Free Will v. Pre-Destiny—By John Royce Holtz, J.D.
A lot of life is not truly up to us— the circumstances from which we are born, live, and die, our socio-economic class that inceptualizes entitlement and prejudice, freak, spur of the moment tragedies and triumphs that forever change our respective courses as planet dwellers or sudden exiters (stage left), the values that have become imbued upon us by our role model(s) that instigate us to behave more or less morally or unethically. In short, we are lucky to be here and to be relatively well…
America is supposed to be el pais of opportunity and socio-religious-politico freedoms that offers us more control over our destiny than totalitarian dictators and ideologues. So the center of the super-abundant North American continent supposedly sways the balance away from complete pre-destiny by sort of keeping our pants above the equator.
Nonetheless, how we optimistically react to life’s tragedies and setbacks may vastly influence our quality of life. How we relentlessly struggle for the triumphs over quality time spent may help us transcend our circumstances to a very certain degree. This resplendent organizing of the collective, melting pot struggle is how America has become the greatest country on the planet…Let us not let the slack spiral…
It is amazing that we are even alive, despite G-d’s individually qualified and incredibly finite Gift of Life. Yet, we often take life for granted because we do not know otherwise…Often, we do not humble ourselves enough to take partial action…
On life’s predictable plateau of pre-destiny (and lack of certainty) lies a narrow meridian of free will for our quite pliable, malleable operations. Nonetheless, on this narrow meridian there is often ample room for maneuverability and the potentiality to circum-navigate many preset obstacles, at least with “wiggle room” for meaningful change. Change occurs especially if we realize this gargantuan opportunity that initially may seem like a mere hole in the spying wall may have unforeseen expansiveness and pleasing, pragmatic consequences.
In Milton’s Paradise Lost and Found , Adam and Eve are booted by G-d out of the Garden of Eden because they choose to disobey G-d’s order not to eat from The Tree of Knowledge, which makes the couple realize that they are naked…(Adam and Eve probably do not have sex before this momentous occasion!)
Perhaps the Serpent convinces Eve to partake of the forbidden fruit by connivery and the power of irresistible suggestion, making her less culpable. And, perhaps Adam is so attached to Eve without even comprehending her sexual or sensual nature because G-d makes for him a special “companion” that now more “ribless” Adam would inadvertently choose to lose his immortality in the Garden (and walk with the Lord) rather than part from her forever because of something he cannot quite know but somehow senses.
Maybe because Zen Rabbi Alan Lew suggests that “Sex is the most powerful force in the universe (except for G-d),” Adam and Eve have excruciating needs to fulfill after eating from The Tree of Knowledge that they are “dying” to fulfill…Perhaps they share a taste of each other’s “fruit” before G-d finds them covering themselves with leaves in embarrassment…
According to Chassidic Jewish lore, G-d has previously allowed Adam and Eve to see into the future of humanity. At this whirlwind juncture, Adam promises to shave 70 years off his life so that King David may one day become born. Not only does this suggest that Adam and Eve are the ancestors of the Jewish and Christian Peoples, but that the first two humans possibly know the history of humankind before it begins. And, they still choose to compromise their immortal stay in the Garden of Eden as G-d’s special guests with all of the likenesses of G-d except immortality….
Perhaps the unfulfilled power of attraction is so strong between these opposites (joined at the ribs!) that they disobey G-d despite sensing that they will be tossed out of the garden and forced to toil endlessly upon the relentlessly unforgiving soil, with perennial sweat and despair. Perhaps in the flash-forward they glean a premonition of the notion of sex and physical consummation of a relationship before they ever have the understanding to engage in the formalities (and informalities) of meaningful fornication. Maybe this suggests both the impregnable bond humans share as well as the elusive, albeit worthwhile nature of internalizing The Lord sans prophet status. Adam and Eve cannot help themselves from “falling in love,” despite born into exclusive favor with G-d. Maybe with the Earthly responsibility of progeny, relationships, and time-eclipsing mortality, Adam, Eve, and their descendants regain some of the free will that they have previously forsaken.
The above are all mitigating factors that make the couple less culpable of willful wrongdoing, tipping the balance towards pre-destiny. Also, the fact that G-d knows that Adam and Eve will “spill the beans” ahead of time because G-d is omniscient, suggests that the ill-fated, fallible couple are doomed from the onset to pillage, regardless of their usual good will. Perhaps after she ate the apple, Eve tempted Adam with more than words?….
Nonetheless, it is possible to implicate Adam and Eve’s wrong free choices are based upon their insistence to act not only adversely, but antithetically to G-d’s direct command not to eat from The Tree of Knowledge. G-d knows that if the couple subsequently partakes from The Tree of Life, they will be just as immortal and as strong as G-d. We just don’t have the experience, judgment, nor wherewithal to play the universe’s gatekeepers by pulling the strings of trillions of marionettes simultaneously while controlling all of the resultant soap operas. Therefore, G-d has little choice but to castigate the sinning couple through demotion to lowly Earth—despite the aforementioned, mitigating factors that make the couple’s actions more pre-destined than otherwise.
Once mortally bound to hoeing the soil in the dusty filth for food and the potentiality of awesome sex for a number of decades (along with the pangs of childbirth), Adam and Eve do redeem their free will to a more limited extent, for a survivalist rationale. Out of free reign expansiveless Paradise with omnipotent G-d as their ultimate, most direct companion and “Big Brother” playmate, the humans often may take more responsibility for their actions in Earth’s comparable dump to the laisez-faire policy of The Garden of Eden.…
But even on Earth, I believe one’s circumstances heavily influence if do not dictate the amount of free will that people may afford to exercise. For example, youths in the projects with one parent working two jobs just to keep a roof over their heads will not naturally gravitate one towards a 20-year, disciplinary study odyssey to land a university diploma— the ticket to socio-economic success. The lack of proper parental supervision and undue peer pressure from the streets curb the youths’ free will practically before its fledgling inception. Yes, it is true that often times in life we have more than one almost antithetical, free will decision to make—Should we study assiduously for a generation to become well-educated, outside the box thinkers? Without guidance and installed wherewithal, most youths will choose the half-assed education allotted to them and not study properly…
Youths do not have some sort of magical, cathartic coming of age with reason and tenacity installed to immerse into the books for decade upon decade unless dedicated adults teach youths the study skills necessary to flourish and ingrain upon them the dire predicament they will further face if they do not extricate themselves from their perilous, environmental predicaments. The juveniles’ unfair circumstances of poverty have enveloped and ensnared them from the outset, practically snuffing out the inception of their own free will.
The human mind is only so capable of propping itself up repeatedly in the face of danger, shame, unjustly accosted innocence, and exaction of unjust castigation. For most of us under these unfair detractors, pre-destiny is the norm.
Yet, for some under these incredibly harsh circumstances, somehow an irreconcilable spark ignites hope and/or faith that serves as an impetus to achieve the previously unthinkable and previously undo-able…That is the crux of human ingenuity and wherewithal. This is when we fulfill the bulk of G-d’s will with an uncanny, perfectionist approximation…An approach to the nets truly deep down the line, to utilize a tennis analogy….
It is ironic that we must judge ourselves by achieving optimal yield to exercise as much free will as possible. G-d offers us varying, inequitable although often palpable, amounts of free will so that we may impact matters favorably by encouraging us to control more of our thoughts, more of the time. So, as the saying goes, we might as well fake it until we make it, rather than self-doubting and second guessing, devouring ourselves in incapacitation and Fear. I believe we tend to worry too much about thought patrol, like in the novel, 1984 by George Orwell. Who the hell should care what anyone thinks about us, including what we think about ourselves, unless warranted? Nevertheless, I believe George Orwell did perish from consumption.
I do not say that everyone has to be the elephant in the room who can hear through its feet, but is not going far because of its chains to Bobby Riggs. Nonetheless, everyone should have some reserve gold (or at least, ivory) in respective trunks…Pragmatic, largely helpless grounding while sky bellowing with a resounding presence…Stretching the envelope of permutations on two hind legs clawing horizontally…waiting with armed, hopeful rider atop for a very brief skirmish with Khan….I guess whether everybody wants to be the free-willing, highly intelligent elephant in the arena is a different story entirely—still, with questionable outcome…
