Written whilst listening to Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam & Merriweather Post Pavilion.
Oliver Shiny: I have a bit of a contradictory response for you. A “yes…but no”, ordeal. ‘Psychic lay lines’. That’s a good one, I’m gonna run with it if you don’t mind. Also, I invented a word. See if you can spot it.
“The brain…named everything, including itself”
On Psychic Lay lines
Finding threads, not in tapestries, but in the things that construct the tapestries themselves. I believe in intuition; I trust my intuition, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have to give what I say: Serious Care & Consideration. That’s more or less what my earlier response was about. My intuition works only when everything else is on top form and has undergone good polishing. Everyone thinks intuition comes first “as the moment arises”— even I did, for a stage. Perhaps that’s because we separate life into ‘events’, in which case intuition would appear to be “arriving” first, although I now believe intuition actually “arrives” last— coming chock full with insight from all the previous events. Hence the need to be disciplined in order for intuition to actualize. So…on this medium thingy:
Once or twice, maybe in a mere moment, maybe over a long period of time, I will throw in a psychic lay line…here…and maybe there. If it works, I will keep throwing lay lines in that direction, maybe even a few more, spread laterally even. Dude, I mean…why not? It seems to be working, and although I don’t know exactly what I’m doing… I definitely don’t know exactly what I’m saying: that’s kinda the purpose isn’t it?
Open < >Uncertainty : I advertise upfront that I am a participant in an act of creation, not The Creator.
[ I only know what I create, often only after it has been created and its creation is never finished, thus I never know absolutely/consistently].
After enough psychic lines have been laid — there’s a darn fucking impressive railroad. Doubt and uncertainty have become temporarily steamrolled. I’ve made a connection, with someone…somewhere.
ON TO THE YESES AND THE NOSES
How important is reading fiction in socializing school children? Researchers at The New School in New York City have…www.scientificamerican.com
^Your empathy^ isn’t supernatural, but it definitely is the result of intense focus & study of fiction. Now, you could either be ‘normal’ in the sense that you seriously understand different thought/nuance machinations(a different connotation to what people normally consider ‘empathy’), or you could be ‘different’ in the sense that you seriously understand different thought/nuance machinations.
See what I mean about the yes/no ‘ordeal’? They are both possible, and neither is any different from the other: its trickery. ‘Being normal’ has always been a matter of context, which in actuality makes ‘being normal’ redundant, because the whole point of ‘being normal’ is acting on an ideal that is supposed to exist in a fixed state/ be static, but it doesn’t/isn’t, so you can’t.
[Hence why I said “Never trust a normal compliment”].
A (Charles) perspective of this finding would be:
The written word, unless it gets mounted on a pole, Whipped with a Cat ‘o Nine Tails… and Emptied of all Humanness — is innately thought orientated( I mean that not in the obvious sense, I don’t think the written word is as categorical as people think). Saying “language communicates meaning” is the short of it(in this instance perhaps talking more so than the written word).
But the written word is by no means ‘meaning’.
The written word is thought.
Editing is thought.
Poetry is a good representation of words as thought. Isn’t poetry written under the impression that it is thought? Or higher than words/simply meaning?
The reader may just end up thinking/feeling like the writer, as the reader reads the carefully constructed syntax(Like running a computer program. There is no other way for the code to be executed: it does exactly what it does.[I’m not speaking of interpretation in this statement]).
Look at the correlation between the arrival of typewriters and the mass production of ‘stream of consciousness’ writing. And I mean sure, stream of consciousness — that’s obvious that — that’s obvious, but still, I don’t think people take it far enough when they evaluate the meaning/implications of words as thoughts. SOC are your thoughts at any given moment…downloaded directly onto a page. Facebook/twit lit is a contemporary example of this also(I mean it really isn’t difficult to supplement ‘tweet’ for ‘thought’).
Knowing fiction like you do, knowing words/worlds like you do, the outside world may chastise you for smartassary.
The boring sentiment: drawing a correlation between writers & odorous leakages of gaseous obnoxia — is well run, yet people can’t help but repeatedly drive it home anyways. I know I smell. I’m smarmy. ‘Can’t help it. Individuality is obtrusive; it reeks of ‘I will not fall in line’. The more you work on your writing, the better you represent yourself; the more obnoxious you will appear to the outside world. If you are truly idiosyncratic, words are no longer ‘public domain’ — you own the words you use and you own meaning — that's obnoxious. Telling a writer that they reek of obnoxia— after reading their writing — what is somebody like myself supposed to do with that information? I’ve already invested so much in representing myself, and the better I become at it — the louder I am, obviously. At least, that’s what I think about myself(and some other people).
Some people probably read you and think you smell too. But I tend not to mind if people in the backseat are dissatisfied, so long as I’m at the wheel and I get to see the sights: I’m dandy. As writers, it’s only our responsibility to drive our mind to the page: if people don’t like the ride…THEN GET THE FUCK OFF.
I digress, you do have ‘knowledge’ and whatnot, but what people don’t know you have, actually, is a ‘more direct’ line to the mainframe. You are not the main frame, nor will you ever be directly connected, but you spend so much time dialing up, that it wouldn’t matter if you were on a foreign planet — you would still get connected without much hassle, or at least less than most. My point is, you are not other people, and I am not other people, but both of us spend our lives not only religiously observing other people and life — but literally letting other people’s minds into ours. In essence, I believe words are just ‘mind’, on a page. If you can make sense of other peoples words…you can make sense of other people’s minds. There: it’s really that straightforward. Obviously the only dynamic variable is accumulation, so: practice practice practice!
In my instance, when I say things about/review other readers on Medium, and they say ‘Wow that’s actually very accurate’; my successful interpretation is not because I’m clairvoyant or psychic. It’s because I’m a big reader of fiction, and they provide their minds in neat little packages that my intuition enjoys unwrapping. It’s interesting, because no matter how selfish/self-interested I ‘become’…so long as I read lots’a fiction my empathy will become more…and more… acute. I mean… I’ve more or less locked my doors to the world and yet… I feel it shining through my windows clearer than ever.
[There’s more to fiction than ‘mind’, but the more a fictional work tricks you into thinking that it’s not ‘mind’, the more ‘mind’ it is/the deeper in ‘mind’ you go. I say this, because you like your fantasy stuff, but no matter how far away from ‘reality’ it goes — you are only ever walking down the cavern of mind].
WHICH LEADS ME TO THE LOST SOULS
For the effect of delivery, WATCH THIS FIRST. If you don’t, you won’t be disappointing me, you would be disappointing yourself. If you’ve gotten this far, you aren’t “just skimming”, so you might as well indulge.
Start at 1:52.You’ll know intuitively when to stop.
Have you watched it?
Are you sure?
Really sure?
“We are, in a way, gradually turning ourselves inside out” — Tao Lin
I ‘lied’
You can dial up directly to the mainframe. However only with everybody else in tow. The more minds that are online, the more empathy. The more empathy, the more capacity minds will have to ‘think like other people’. Ad infinitum, until of course…infinity is eventually reached. Is any more demonstration needed? I don’t see how, but jump in if I’ve gotten ahead of myself.I consume a lot of art. I would definitely say fiction is the most productive of the bunch to my empathy faculties. I am super happy to say, Medium comes a very close second. I have long thought, well in truth I immediately thought — (when I discovered it )— that the aesthetic of Medium is a pretty close representation of/facilitation for ‘mind’.That’s generally speaking.
+Specifically speaking, the response/highlight function: I honestly believe, maybe in a short time , however , I speculate far longer in the future than necessary: Medium will be regarded as a revolution in writing tools. It will be acknowledged for putting authentic communication back into the forefront of social media. Furthermore, it will be appreciated as a well-organised system for ‘ interactive/mass stream-of- consciousness’ quite unlike anything before it. (I mean, responses aren’t treated like comments here, they are treated like stories in and of themselves. There may still be discrepancies, but this forces people to put a lot more time and effort into responding/reacting to things instead of the traditional “I was here” signposting that a platform like Facebook promotes. I mean, if anything doesn’t it seem like it harkens back to letter writing?Also…does medium not simultaneously look like both a ‘page’ AND ‘mind’?). The highlight function shares this praise, but it also promotes the absorption of other people’s words(and in some sub-textual way provides attribution for inspiration), and quite significantly — allows other writers the ability not just to praise stories in their entirety but to provide line by line commentary. (That’s unheard of on the internet/a website (at this scale/in this manner). It has a alot to do with the aesthetic). We are all editing/helping each other write! Now isn’t that just fucking marvellous?
[I don’t know how necessary it is to point — whats about to follow — out, but part of my character is the great length I will go to do unnecessary things. For me ‘demonstration’ is an important partner to ‘word’(If I say something that needs no demonstration because it is self-evident, then what demonstration I commit is purely meant to represent the intensity/sincerity of my feeling/the sentiment].
Back to ‘psychic lay lines’
I got to this < > point because of you/ by interacting with you. I guess that is not so significant, so let me rephrase. This ^ ^ ^ has been on my mind very recently, as in the past few days. Even before that however, the whole fiction/empathy thing had been running in my mind for the past couple months…unable to be written down…but it was only after talking with you(the basking lay lines line really triggered it) that I got here < >, so thank you.
This is satisfying, encouraging & interesting. Thank you for making my day ‘shiny’.
So in terms of helping out lost souls.
We just need to keep building lay lines, bra. The people reading will start hitching rides. Readers have always been hitching rides. You and I both know: hitching rides on other writer’s trains/rails…tend to encourage(whether consciously or not) the construction of one’s own rails.
After seeing ‘mind’ represented, the mind may very well seek to represent itself
I spent my whole life feeling lonely, never for a second realizing it was because I never got to know — the company of — myself. If we all indulge in the selfish exercise of turning ourselves inside out — an inversion on the traditional idea of sharing — I swear there is no possible way that we won’t all be connected, lest we lose the internet.
