I guess the goal of every day was a bit too much for my current ability to focus on writing things. There's still so much so trapped in here and I'm not really sure that this writing space has helped, although I would hope that it does. But the words just don't come to me. I barely know where I am, without them. So it looks like I'm still drifting..

Fuck, what do I even write here? I'm off in my own head, most days, but also tonight, although the empty draft beckons to me. Also the empty canvas, but I actually feel differently about that tonight, sort of shy? It's because I am not entirely sure what's going on in my head. You'd think that's a sure thing, wouldn't you, "Oh, I'm thinking this thought, that is what is going on in my head," but you'd also be surprised at how easily that falls apart - not under inspection, exactly, since there are really so many of us with our eyes open. it's really just a testament to how the thing works, and why, which is something I'm still looking for and beginning to truly hate that question.

Probably not in the way it could be, though, for which I'm grateful but mostly curious. which kind of redefines the point. I guess. Anyway, by the time you read this it'll be too late to do anything about it. I'm almost certain of that. am i wrong

Either way, I'll just carry on, and there's really no need to worry, the shape of my emotional landscape has been shaped into something that lets go of something good before it's even over, following the pattern of my experiences. It's a colder place than where I've been before, but it seems to be necessary if I am to get any rest. And it is rest, here and now, even though there is more life and buzzing in me than before. That is expected, at least by me, because we are alive, it is in our being to be in and with and participating.

And so it seems I have made at least one more step against whatever resistance or heaviness is in me, which would be easier to combat if I could take a hammer to it, rather than doubting its existence at all. The question "who is my enemy" has arisen and been without answer so many times that all that's really left is the restlessness that comes of not having something to fight. And yet the fight remains. (I'd call that a paradox, but not really - there are other, much more disruptive of those.) Waking up to myself, like clawing to the surface, feels like all but might only be part of it.  I still don't know where my isolation is.

I'm not at all sure what this writing project is becoming. I'm merely glad it's not dead yet. Alive, instead, which is what I'd hoped and supposed I would find in it, even if just on the inside.

It's about this morning.

Communicating in this way is as ambiguous as ever, but certain things happened this morning, and well, I've decided to use them as an anchor point. I have to start somewhere, you see, and it just works a little better if I have a structural system that supports itself, regardless of its "reality." This is where the visuals help, because without that, all I have is the rest of my perceived existence, and although I'm sort of being flippant, that can actually be a bit misleading. There's so much that happens in my head, or maybe that's not the precise location, but who's measuring anyway - and despite some effort, not all that happens in here stays in here. except for when I don't want it to. of course.

That event just now, that won't show up in the published post. I know that much, so what i'm fuzzier on is who does get to see it and when. It's that kind of verification i'm talking about.

So I guess what I want to talk about is communication, and that has to do with this morning too. When you're communicating like that, with variables jumping out from every shadow and time is.. well it's going to be against you for sure, with certain luxuries missing and all. Look, I feel like I did pretty well, all things considered, and then it was better, which means of course that I can't believe in it, and would you call that a shame or would you call it fate?

It's been a rough day for me. Every day I try to regain control over my mind, and some days it's exhilarating and hopeful, and other days I get exhausted and angry. The anger is a hindrance of course, but it's difficult to dispel. I used to be capable of so much more, on the inside. Nowadays it takes the entirety of my attention and focus to speak in my head with my own mindvoice - something that happens naturally and by default for most, and used to for me as well. There are many other similar limitations that I don't know how to combat, and today my limitations are all I can think about. It's a negative cycle, but I doubt it will last long. Every day my mood and thought patterns are slightly different - I can count on that, at least, and it's a relief to do so.

This blog is showing me that I really have nothing to say. I mean, I do, of course, a million things to say, all boiling in me, drowning me - but either due to my limitations or my own inadequacy as a writer I can't seem to pull any of them out. It's frustrating. I mean, I've never been amazing at it - it's why I've never been able to maintain a blog for very long. The medium I'm best at is discussion, conversation, interaction - which is why I did my best writing and playing on reddit. but things are different now, and so here I am, talking to myself, substanceless and boring. I'm nothing without the input of the world around me, but I can't even find that world anymore through all this invisible, maddening interference that keeps me from myself and doesn't let me think and keeps me from the things I love so much. And so I'm angry.
I'm glad this day is over.

My body is full of blood and buzzing nerve endings. I move in it, with it, through it, waiting. Hidden away somewhere inside is a wellspring of touch, electricity, heat.

Hidden away in my mind is a playground, secret and now lost, a space of rush and longing and connection, of touch and struggle and celebration. From this space I could reach outward, bringing into myself pieces of the great cumulative exhibition of body, beauty, and breath. or inward, pulling at my own inner tides, deep hungers, clashes of want.

everywhere, others are sharing this dance, riding the rise and fall of their various passions, dipping into the current of the rushing heat. Many come to share and be shared, as slowly we leech the poison from it, very slow, very sure, separate and together like the forces that pull us and make us reach for each other.

and I, longing for longing, hoping to join again, to find the gates to me and the world, and all we share, and all that we don't yet, all that we might. from my isolated empty place I can sometimes feel it stirring,so deeply a part of me, so deeply unreachable.

I've been doing me some learning about the human voice. Check out the larynx!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35bzHJf_Kk4

Ew! Pretty cool looking. We are slimy, slippery machines.

Reminds me of this fun little snippet:

http://youtu.be/26REYsR0K_I?t=2m1s

ART.

I've been trying to do some observations lately about some of the stuff that goes on on the inside, and I wanted to try describing some of the different mechanisms that I can identify. Specifically, the types of thought that exist within the human brain, the way these thoughts behave, the way they "look," etc.

Highly prominent in the mind is the thought composed of Image, and of this I think there are probably a few different types. There's associative image, which is probably just recall in response to an external input: "hey, this thing looks like that other thing I remember." There's also creative imagery, which is the subject's conscious attempt to construct and impose an image into their own mind.
Now, there's also the fact that we as humans tend to understand our own perceptions through the very idea of image, (the reason we call it imagination and say "I see," and so on), but I think that's a bit of a different topic since it's about how thought works instead of what thought is.

Mindvoice is another, usually highly prominent method of thought, and it seems to be inextricably tied to entirely other types of goings-on inside and outside of the individual brain. (This is a significant one to me in terms of my own narrative and perceptions, but I haven't organized all my thoughts about it yet, so it'll take some ruminating time before I want to post more about it.)

Both of those types of thoughts require a different kind of consciousness focus than what I might call more "immersive" types of thought flow, and these seem to have less strict form. (I'll try to divide and organize these types, since that's just kind of what I tend to do, but  as usual such a delineation is going to be incomplete)

There's certainly a narrative immersion thought of some kind, usually associated with memory. Image can be a part of memory, but it is certainly not the only component. The subject already perpetually exists in a state of narrative observation, internally experiencing an entire whole of perception at all times. Whatever format this whole exists in seems to get partially reconstructed through the process of memory, and the subject sort of swims through , or is carried through, this type of thought. Unless interrupted, it has a movement and momentum, the mechanics of which I haven't yet observed closely.

Another type of thought that I find difficult to differentiate and describe is the puzzle-solving logic process. The occasions that I've tried to notice myself thinking this way and observe it have been difficult. There doesn't seem to be any consistent "format" that I can yet see. Memory is often a component, sometimes even immersively, but the pieces of perception for this type of thought seem to come from anywhere, and interacting with them appears to be an interaction with something that I don't have words for yet and so will call abstraction. Perhaps the basic unit for this type of thought is the idea? I also wouldn't know how to describe the 'form' of an idea, except as a component of constructive (and destructive) thought.
Recognition of pattern, manipulation of symbol, bits of corresponding information, the simple act of creation through this process, the brain tends to do this by default, background or foreground, which might be why it's difficult to see or even notice. If I'm not mistaken, it has a certain autonomy, and is foundational to the structure of subjective reality, and at times works collectively. I wouldn't know how to directly investigate the bond between an individual mind's processes and a subjective structure (composition?) of any stability, but some of my models predict how that bond might function. (Alternatively, you could say I've produced some speculative fiction about how reality might work. Without a decent scientific method here, I'm sort of flying blind.)

Then there's attention-focus, associated with object and mindfulness, which I would suggest is also a type of thought, or at least utilizes thought processes even if the internal experience is very different from these other types. Essentially the process is simple, just directing awareness to external inputs of experiential content. It creates memories and associations and probably activates a slew of other subconscious activities. This type of thought can often be difficult to sustain, except for a curious little collective phenomenon that I will probably talk about later on sometime.

Well, that's what I have for now. Provided I keep on living for a little while, I will have more occasion to observe these things, and I'll come back with any other ideas that I have.

I'm not really satisfied with yesterday's post. I don't think it quite communicated what I really wanted to say. But that's well within the parameters for this blog, of which the only purpose is practice.

Writing is sometimes more difficult for me than at other times. There have been periods where I've sailed through the process, communicating exactly what was intended, and there are periods where trying to string words together feels like stumbling down the street. It's hard to be articulate too when there's nothing significant I'm really trying to say. The truth is that most of my ideas for writing are pretty heavy shit, philosophy and cultural trends and human nature and all that stuff feels so heavy sometimes I feel like I can't get out from underneath it.

But the more I continue, I'm optimistic that I will improve at bending my creative process to my will, and then I'll be perfectly free to blog about trends or cartoons or internet memes and may actually be entertaining about it too - which at this point is something I can only vaguely imagine.

As a general rule, though, my thoughts tend to gravitate to the big, grim, and heavy. Not too grim, most of the time, since I still believe in humanity and all that shit. I guess I also believe in other things now too.

And here I go now thinking about diving into the structure of perception and alll that, but I really am tired of that kind of thing. And I wonder if it would be okay to just let go of it. All my models and conceptual frameworks brought me to where I am, but they haven't taken me anywhere new in a decent while. I used to be so proud of them, but it turns out pride is difficult to maintain when its only justification is in decaying echoes bouncing around in your head.

I just don't know what to do with me and my rattled brain. My aim at this point is simple: keep walking, keep my eyes open, smell the wind, feel my body, just be in the world. Why does it feel so difficult?

Today I was thinking about music.  There are all sorts of ways I could go into talking about that deep ocean of art, but today in particular I was thinking about the way it changes, and the way it changes us. I tend to surround myself in music, and I never really think about how new that is. Like other arts, it's erupted as a staple of modern society - as well it should, it's pleasurable, personal, monetizable, frequently viral in nature: it fits almost idyllically into the ecosystem of commercial art as we forever try to glut ourselves on beauty.

One of the things I want to talk about is the interesting divergence between instrumentation and lyrics. I've heard it suggested before that lyrics are the successor to poetry, but where poetry is completely carried and shaped by words, lyrics take a back seat in music. They can certainly be moving and affecting, but a song's effect on a person is a synthesis of every different piece, and it's how a song makes someone feel that guides the internal experience. The lyrics act as a contextual placeholder, restricting a song to a given theme or loose narrative, but it's not usually the meaning of the words which guides the listener. The experience is much more sensory, shaped by the movement and intricacies of the instrument.  It's easy to see the malleability of the lyrics' role in a song when listening to the same song by different artists; change the method and manner of playing and you can entirely change the whole meaning of a song, without altering the lyrics once. This puts lyrics in a sort of symbolic limbo: less potent in and as themselves, but holding a potentiality that expresses itself with each listener in a different way. And that way will be influenced by each individual narrative and psyche, transforming the song as a collective experience into something more symbolically amorphous than what the original artist first created.

This is something that happens with all art, and it happens in a different way, with different variables, depending on the medium and format. I like it with music because of the intimacy of music - intimate both physiologically (the mechanics of sound and our ears) and subjectively. Music makes me feel things I would simply not be able to feel otherwise - unique as well, as all subjective experience, generated by elements that will be arranged in a combination that only I exist in, that only I can ever touch and feel.

You'd think the ease of access to such experiences would be difficult, and indeed it used to be, but the internet is overflowing with these things, little packages of power, all waiting to ride. Whether music is a drug or a virus or a natural harmonic expression of the resonance of the information flowing through our bodies, it continues to expand into our world and fill us and shape us, as we shape it in return.

I'm interested in this as a cultural phenomenon, of course, but I'm also interested in the economics of it as I mentioned above. You can expect more posts about this sort of thing in the future: the interplay of how any given content is experienced internally, collectively, and economically creates the patterns that guide our society, and this one is certainly in a state of flux.

Look, the reason all the assholes (you know, those ones) fail and then die is because the human mind is beautiful. And it's changing and it's growing and we're all here taking part in that. Each word spoken and image created is a reflection, a processed recombination, of input - and the input is infinite both inside and outside. And it all has value, even though value in itself is a warped tangle of ideas, structurally weak in the mind and expressed toxically outside of it. But it all has meaning, and as creatures of symbol we can only deny meaning for so long before reaching truth. And like so many other inevitable creative things, that shows us our selves, and our world, separate and non separate, growing together, aching together, dying together, even in opposition pushing each other forward. And anyone who can see that can see where we are, if not where we're going, and that is where we are as worlds together, that is where we stand. Sometimes it's the only place to stand to avoid getting swallowed up. It's where I try to be, because I can see it even when I'm not there, when doubt devours me from the inside out and strikes me silent and angry. And the value in that, well, that is how my path touches me, and how I ripple and cascade in response, and that's not nothing. It never really is.

And of course, now that I can begin, I don't know how to start. Of course, if any given subject is on the table, it often induces that "freedom-as-paralysis" sort of thing which is one of the peculiar parts of creativity.

I suppose since it's because of my struggles with creativity that I'm here, that might be what I want to start with. The human mind is of course creative by nature, so technically it's not something I can avoid, but that certainly doesn't mean that I can feel it or access it. The problem with that is that I am a big proponent of the idea that getting through creative blocks just involves pushing. can't draw well, draw anyway; don't feel inspired, just make something; crushed by doubt, create and then bury it. etc. I've generally picked up that attitude from artists I follow online, after doing that for a while good artistic wisdom seems to float to the surface. Only, I can't seem to follow that wisdom, which leads me right into the "i'm a miserable failure" wash-and-rinse-with-tears cycle if I'm not careful.

But my current dilemma truly has less to do with motivational problems and more to do with what feels like what is within me cannot find what is sort of within-me-sort-of-without, where I reach for image (usually image, sometimes word) and reach and there is only nothing there. and then I look back and see a memory of what it was before, of reaching and touching pattern, story, symbol, flow - there as they ever belong to the mind, and I don't know what the difference is, within me or without, I only know what the blankness feels like, and feels like in comparison. and then I drift away from my collected wisdom and I think about creativity differently, I think about what it is to create alone, and to create collaboratively, and of course I have to wonder, I have to question if there is really a dichotomy there, though I would never come to that conclusion I think about patterns in the way I think about them and I see a chemistry or alchemy or ecology to the way these things move through mind. because these intricate masses of information and representation erupt from and through the human brain and this is not new, just unexamined yet.

what is there to examine in the inert emptiness? even speculation feels to me like excuse-making. what is my mind doing instead, the parts that move in places I can't see, to what use have the mechanisms been placed? All the little mind-gizmos of touch and response, do they change, or even die? perhaps the space I've been wandering is a desolate boneyard after all. maybe these words themselves are shaped to fit the skeleton of something that was once lively.

speaking of mechanism, that image feels right (as they sometimes do), so I will hold it with me for a while, at least to feel around its edges or reach deeper in. when I find something I can touch or grasp, perhaps I can bring it back with me - likely not as image (not one of mine, at least, not this deep and formless), but sometimes word can come close, and maybe it will.

I need to write. I'm dying to write. My goal here is to find something to blog about, once per day, without any intended audience but myself, in pursuit of voice, in retaliation against fear of inadequacy (a falseness), in desire to shape these symbols, but mostly just to crawl out of my own silence. I won't be constraining myself to any particular topic, theme, or style. Just writing.