Capricorn

Alan Waller
Sep 6, 2018 · 5 min read

I’m a Capricorn, and I seem to be a stupidly classic example of one. All I want to do is work, but not at my job: at my personal hobby-projects, be it making music, writing, making videos, etc. I basically treat my day to day as a factory, churning out products of labour as much as I can. And I don’t feel bad about that, I just want to write about it and understand it a bit better.

Today I finished work (my job) and the first thing I did was this: start writing, my “other” job. The other Capricorn trait is to do it step by step, slowly, climbing the mountain only when it feels safe to climb it. Each step is taken meticulously, not brazenly. I see this as being…a certain willingness to be patient, sometimes too much. To not get stressed out by time passing. Years passing and my projects moving an inch forward. Another way of describing this would be perfectionism, a trait that I am also trying to counter-attack, by indulging in very sloppy, messy forms of art (like this post). Stream of consciousness stuff. I am obsessed with stream of consciousness. I could say that maybe the day I “committed” to stream of consciousness was the way I started having a “spiritual awakening” (and by that I mean things getting simultaneously better and harder at the same time). Yes, harder — not “worse”. Harder, the harder the better! Another Saturnian thing maybe. I am aware that sun sign astrology is an overly simplistic way of looking at this (after all, Capricorn is just an archetype we all share in. We all have some “Capricorn” in us, so to speak, I believe. it may be simply that sun signs identify with that archetype, it’s like our “ego” archetype, perhaps?), but it serves as a sort of model for speaking of what I want to speak. Now, let’s talk about Ian Bogost.

Ian Bogost

Ian Bogost talks about this “harder” thing. For him, videogames are fun precisely because they are hard. That doesn’t mean that “the harder the better” — he’s not taking the classic “hardcore gamer” position, where easy “childish” games are less worthy of being considered games. No, I think he’s talking more about a fundamental quality of games, all game — challenge, challenge in the sense of “obstacle”, an obstacle to your satisfaction. Or, put in other words, that satisfaction doesn’t exist without obstacle; that satisfaction is obstacle, our relationship to obstacle.

(Again, this does not mean that “challenging” games are better games. Ian himself has made a few art-games which play more like visual haikus, games where the words “difficulty”, “interactivity”, etc, are made more flexible, explored in new directions. I think this is precisely what he’s talking about: that the word “challenge” can have a more flexible meaning than what is usually understood)

“A Slow Year”, a game by Ian Bogost

So in this sense, “spiritual awakening” (and I hate that term! But I’m not sure how else to describe it. We may get into this at another time) was, for me, a process of “hardening”, of life becoming hard, and therefore, fun. Why? Because suddenly there is meaning. Hardness implies challenge, and like in most videogames, challenge implies “direction” — you’re going somewhere! Teleology. Even in Animal Crossing or The Sims, games where “nothing happens”, there are no missions, etc, you can water the plants, take a stroll down the fields, go for a swim in the sea, eat a bun, and so on. All of these things have “meaning” to them, you are doing things, not just “being”. There is action, regardless of how “soft” it is in the eyes of videogame culture.

In this sense, for me spirituality implied exiting the swamp of “lack of direction”. It was a certain movement, but a movement wrought wildly in two opposite directions: my perfectionist direction, and my messy direction. It was when I engaged with my messy side, when I started experimenting with stream of consciousness art, with “mistakes” on purpose, that a dynamism was born: the perfectionism and the mistake-ism generated energy, like two magnets of opposite poles being put close to each other. This seems to be what started it all, in hindsight. And this pull between opposite magnets is hard, it is an ordeal, it must be withstood. It is a dark night of the soul, the way most of these heroic journeys begin. So, when you exit the dark night of the soul, does that mean it’s “over”? No, I would say that “exiting the dark night of the soul” simply means “being able to withstand it”, “becoming stronger”, etc. It’s as if a dark night of the soul (DNotS) were the act of moving to a colder country after years of living in the tropics. The first few years are going to be hard! But eventually you will get used to it. Does that mean the weather has gotten warmer? No, your body is more acquainted with it. The same happens when you turn on the light after spending the whole night in the dark: your eyes hurt! They’re not used to the light! But that harshness goes away as your eyes become acquainted. That’s how I see the DNotS, not as a passing phase but as an entry into a new place which you are going to stay in for the rest of your life, a more real place, in the sense of “less bullshit” from yourself to yourself. Less self-deceit, more honesty, etc. This brings about more release of unconscious content, and that’s the hard part, the hidden part, which constitutes the DNotS probably.

Now, there is probably also a “passing phase” component to it. There is probably a “detox” quality to it: getting rid of bullshit, dishonesty, stuff you were holding onto that was getting in the way of what you wanted, etc.

Anyway, I think that’s enough for today. Thanks for reading, I hope my articles get better step by step by learning from mistakes and acquiring experience. Cheerio!

Alan Waller

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YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC27ryMo1t2IiMyUbo4GCXRA

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