Death to Perfection

So here in Vermont my grandma has a lot of novels, and because I am a fast reader I like to scour the shelves in the morning for a book and finish it within the day. Today’s is Stained Glass by William F. Buckley, and it is pretty good and I am halfway through it, but it is pissing me off.

Tt is a spy novel set in the ’50s so it features both spies and aristocrats, the two very most annoying types of people to make fictional characters out of. Why? Because they’re perfect. They are fluent in many languages. They are educated at the very best universities and excel academically, socially, romantically. They have all sorts of hobbies and interests at which they are experts. They are jacks of all trades except for those they are masters of. they have no weaknesses. It is extremely lame to feel jealous of a person who doesn’t even exist.

I have never met such a person who is truly good at everything without some sort of cost. A lot of smart people are not very well-adjusted and a lot of educated, accomplished people are insufferably arrogant. But I can’t help but think that’s true only because I’ve never been to Europe. Maybe that’s where all the perfect people are?

It annoys me that by pure chance I was not born into circumstances where it was likely that I would learn concertos as a teenager or end up at the Sorbonne, especially since I know I could. This is mitigated by the fact that I don’t want to learn a concerto or go to school abroad, but then again, I might if I had been raised in an environment more hospitable to lofty ambition.

The big challenge here is one that has always been an insecurity of mine – appreciating what really kicks ass after cutting away cultural indoctrination. There are people my age who are far more successful than me, but in whose eyes?  I can do most everything pretty well, with the caveat that it takes me a long time to care enough to do them. Why do I minimize myself by analyzing my life against the pace of others? And if I don’t, is that a copout, because I am modifying my perception of value to include what I feel I offer?

That’s another thing that pisses me off – you know how Gandhi (I think) said “be the change you want to see in the world” and people will put that in their Facebook quotes section so they seem ambitious? I hate the imperative tone, the implication that awesomeness is reserved for the future, a pie in the sky beyond the grasp of any regular people. I am the change I want to see in the world. I am fine even though I am not a 4.0 Ivy League prat (though admittedly I could have been) and I have never been on TV. Instead of Gandhi I would order people to change the world to what you see in yourself. That is why I think Fear.less is great, because it helps people. Because I feel that the purpose of life is to help others and cover their weaknesses, I can’t stand specious “success” that is of no benefit and doesn’t uplift, I can’t stand arbitrary achievement for achievement’s sake and I can’t stand people who have no weaknesses. Well, I wouldn’t if I met one.

Also I find myself terribly compelled to write a book, though I don’t know what it would be about yet. The reason for this is twofold. One, William F. Buckley is a good writer and so my appreciation for the craft is currently blazing.  Two, perfect characters are so damn annoying and I would subvert this by populating my pages with deeply-flawed people.

Inconsolable Rage

It happens.

A while ago I decided I wanted to start playing the piano again and I downloaded a pdf book on chords and stuff, how to figure all that out again. The author was adamant in his attitude that piano should be fun and you should play only for yourself. I totally agree and this makes it extremely annoying when people make unsavory comments on what I decide to play, alone, from downstairs in the basement.

“That song sounds like the same thing over and over.” Yeah, it’s almost like I’m practicing. “What’s that other one you play that’s more lively?” The song I want to work on today is slow and has a minor key. But it’s nice (and “but” shouldn’t even have to be said) and that’s why I’m playing it. Get over it. Complexity, optimism and repetitiveness are not qualities I consider when I decide I want to learn to play a song. I don’t play for other people. I don’t want to become the piano man. I hope I never compose a song that gets played by anyone who could be called the piano man. I don’t want any of my music to join the realm of as complete drunken overplayed absence of meaning as Don’t Stop Believin’.

Mowing the lawn today, I thankfully avoided shredding a toad. I was quite happy about this, and the more I think about it the more I’m hoping it has some sort of hidden deeper meaning in the context of the rest of my past couple days. It’s probably because I saw the toad and then swerved to evade it. It didn’t jump out of the way without me noticing. I actively decided not to kill it. I was reassured of my own benevolent power. I was in control.

Recently in a few facets of my life people are no longer seeing eye-to-eye with me and the frustration I feel is immeasurable. When one senses that one’s words are beginning to bounce off walls, it’s important to somehow be reminded that you still have control over something.

Looking Forward To

What are you looking forward to?

We are occasionally blessed with things in life that are both A) pretty much guaranteed to happen if we stay our course and B) good. Remaining aware and reverent of these events is a good way to maintain stability in times of stress or boredom. One time in May my roommate and I went on a late night run around the UIUC campus as it started to storm. Wildly. We were ducking lightning strikes and getting soaked and it was nuts. We eventually retreated into a building, unsure how long it would take for conditions to get safe enough for our return. I kept thinking, in all likelihood, at some point in the near future I will not be here. I will be home. I will not be in this wet, disheveled state. I will be near a warm bed, in the company of dear friends and a pretty girl. We hauled ass back to our dorm before it was safe, and when we burst through the front door, there was a spontaneous and ebullient outpouring of joy that involved crazy dancing. Thinking about the future made living it better.

Things I have to look forward to with no foreseeable obstacles to their occurrence, in rough chronological order:

• The publication of Fear.less
• Girlfriend visiting me (or vice versa)
• Vacation to New England
• Start of the school year
• Bunch of my favorite bands’ albums coming out in September

I use this thought process when I am sick. When I become better, I imagine the afflictions back into each body part and acknowledge that they are no longer there. Time has passed. I have transcended the illness. Feels grate.

Why I Hate Heroes 1

I could go on forever and ever and ever about why this show is so irredeemably flawed. Seriously, it’s like a how-to manual on making an awful show. No, even worse, because it started out okay. It was a decent show that fell apart, and then the pieces fell apart.

Anyway, they’re gonna turn the de facto main character gay. Seriously? There is no way in hell this show will make it to a fifth season. If it does, I will scream. I will do crazy naked things for the Internet’s viewing pleasure.

I’m not a big fan of gimmicks and this is just insultingly obvious. Stop being gimmicky, dammit! Give the characters some real depth for once! Come on! I can barely comment on this. It’s so grating that I’m surprised it’s even a part of my universe at all.

The Future

I’ve realized there’s a certain feeling of security in always having work to do. When editing Fear.less I had this. I knew exactly what was coming next – another batch of stories to pore through. Now that that’s pretty much done, the future is uncertain. That’s not to say I’m not excited for it though.

Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this out loud, but it’s entirely possible that Fear.less’s success may pave the way for sequels and spinoffs. I would feel grate to be a part of Fear.less 2 or Home.less or whatever. Working on this project has illuminated for me the social media world and my own abilities. But only slightly, and that is why I would like to continue to be on board.

I saw some of the pages from the Fear.less e-book proper and it looks damn sweet. I never realized just how much content we had. This will be a good book.

One Month

I have now had this blog for one month and been working on Fear.less for just a little over that. I am very thankful for these diversions to give me something to do. It seems insulting at first to call Fear.less a diversion until you realize what it’s diverting me from: humongous boredom.

We have somewhere between 0 and 1 stories left to edit, which I am enthusiastic about. Ishita and I have come a long way in picking the stories apart, separating the wheat from the shit. Many of the stories are truly quite touching and it is my sincere hope and conviction that they can inspire people.

I’m actually not sure what is left to do. A while back we considered that we may be responsible for organizing the order of the stories, in the manner of a tracklist on a music record. I’d like to have a part in this because the flow of the stories can really enhance their resonant power and also it’s fun. I will continue to post on the Fear.less blog and in the Facebook group and page. Soon I will discuss the ramifications of my slow immersion into social media and the other opportunities that may come my way and I hope that I discover something rewarding soon, particularly since summer is only half over so I still need stuff to do.

I still feel a lot of insecurity in my skills but I have been assured that they are there and just need to be cultivated but I am definitely pleased that I was able to concretely and meaningfully credit a project like Fear.less.

This is not a very exciting post at all so to keep things interesting will somebody please tell me what the hell this is?

Jeff Zhao

A while ago I talked about Regina Spektor taking mostly just her voice and piano a long way and how inspiring that was. Well I recently realized how similarly inspired I am by a close friend of mine named Jeff Zhao. I met him during my year at Northwestern and starred in his final project for his first film class: Evidence (Also featured is Rujman, another one of my closest friends.)

Jeff also makes music, and I have linked on the right to his Last.fm profile.

My first experience with Jeff’s music-making process was hanging out with him in his dorm. He lived in a single, with no roommates, so he had his own space (paper-thin walls notwithstanding). He had his computer with a couple arranging programs, a microphone, and a Flying V guitar. That’s it. But he gets it done. You can hear for yourself, since his music is available for free download. (And in high quality, potentially, but that download does not include the sixth track of his EP.)

Oh right, his EP. He kept working at his music and completed one, titled .exEP after the first track. It contains six songs. Jeff’s music is aggressive, humorous and stylish. On Facebook a while ago he told me he planned on “cranking out a song a week” this summer and I really hope he does because he has taught me a very personal lesson. He is a shy college kid with few resources who still manages to Make It Happen and I find that uplifting.

I am now listening to his catchy new tune, Delta Niña, and you should too.

Sehnsucht

I felt so bizarre today with a feeling that I thought was saudade, which I have talked about before in a linguistic sense, but I don’t think it’s that. Nostalgia is a yearning for the past, but that’s not what I do at all. It’s like I feel a nostalgia for the future, for things that haven’t happened yet. Events and situations that I cannot draw a clear line from to my present self. A hazy, dreamlike state, simultaneously mordant in its utter realism, where every word and step has a profound effect, warping the very air. Is this just a mad amplification of everyone’s desire to matter? I don’t know.

There are a couple songs that I like to listen to when I get this feeling that may be able to shed some light on it. One of them is Motion Picture Soundtrack by Radiohead. It features a momentous organ and a mournful tone – the organ is the most important feature of the song for me. As the closing track of its album, Kid A, that song has added punch from its sense of finality, of having come to the end of a journey. So maybe I feel like I am heading somewhere.

Then there are a couple songs by Counting Crows. Round Here opens with the lyrics “step out the front door like a ghost into the fog where no one notices the contrast of white on white”, which makes me think of a house in the woods, isolated but not lonely. And apparently, round there, “something radiates”. I sort of hate the song for not saying exactly what the hell is going on. The other song is Another Horsedreamer’s Blues. Maybe it’s because the opening riff sounds like something you would hear in an elevator in a good dream, and maybe it’s because the song is about a girl with a similar name to my girlfriend and both of them like horses.

Horses in particular evoke this feeling and it’s been years since I’ve ridden one. Sunsets, organs… I guess these are all romantic (in both senses of the word) images. I guess I want the destination I am heading toward to have some sort of fiery intangible resonance beyond simply what it is. If I ever wrote get around to writing a novel or making music or something, at some point I would simply be compelled to attempt to capture this feeling. But apparently, it’s impossible.

C.S. Lewis had a lot to say about it, including that most people don’t have a lot to say about it. It’s called sehnsucht and the following paragraph is not such a bad approximation of how it feels.

“In speaking of this desire for our own faroff country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

I don’t know. I can’t think about it too much. Maybe I will have more to say later.

.thE nexT leveL

In Max Payne 2 there are many TVs strewn about the levels, and over the course of the night the game takes place in, the channel that they’re all tuned to is running a marathon of a bizarre show about an insane serial killer. It’s called Address Unknown and one of the characters is a flamingo who talks in a distorted, awkward voice, like he was talking backwards and what he said was played forwards, Twin Peaks-style. In the subtitles, this weird voice is written thus:

.shE haS dyeD heR haiR reD

.thE flesH oF falleN angelS

And that scared the crap out of me in a cool way. That method of punctuation is just so unsettling to me. Back in the day when I was really unstable, if I was journaling, I sometimes wrote in that fashion to put across clearly how unhinged I was feeling.

On a similar note I was playing SWAT 4 today and there is a level where you raid the tenement of a crazy suicide cult, and they have creepy REDRUM-esque things written on the walls. I love creepy things written on walls. .especiallY iF theY eveR lookeD likE thiS

There’s got to be a name for it. I will look it up on TV Tropes. This is all closely related to my favorite kind of horror that I’ve never been sure how to describe, things that unnerve me for reasons I don’t und H҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘Ȅ̐̑̒̚̕̚ IS C̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̚̕̚̕̚̕̚̕̚̕̚OMI҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘NG > ͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̚ ҉ ҉҉̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑ ͡҉҉
҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡ ͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̚ ҉ ҉҉̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑ ̒̓̔̕̚ ̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚̕̚ ̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̚ ̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔ ̕̚̕̚ ̔̕̚̕̚҉ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡wha ͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̒̓̔̚̕̚ ̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚̕̚t the ̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̚ ̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔ ̕̚̕̚ ̔̕̚̕̚҉ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡f.jusT givE uPuck is ͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̚ ҉ ҉҉̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡ ͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̚ ҉ ҉҉̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑thi ̒̓̔̕̚ ̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚̕̚ ̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̚ ̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔s shit ̕̚̕̚ ̔̕̚̕̚҉ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡ ͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̒̓̔̚̕̚ ̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚̕̚ ̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̚ ̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔ ̕̚̕̚ ̔̕̚̕̚҉ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡ ͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̚ ҉ ҉҉̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑ ̒̓ ̒̓

I Hate the Internet

So here are my closed-minded frustrations of the day.

Today one of my best friends was looking at some stories we had worked together on in high school. Naturally they are unpolished, unfinished, and total Mary Sue-fests, but they were fun. Now that we are older, wiser, and better with time management, Ethan decided that we should continue or reboot the stories in some way because there’s no way around it – we like writing fiction and thought the yarns, at their core, were worthwhile.

I saw this as an opportunity to not only develop a sustainable vessel for creativity but also plunge Ethan into the world of social media so I made him make a WordPress blog. It’s linked to over on the right and titled Light in the Abyss.

Once that was settled we had to figure out how we were going to integrate our blogs with the presentation of our creative works.

We considered having a second WP blog exclusively for creative writing. Then I discovered that  the “add page” system not conducive for that, so what we would have to do is make post categories named after each work so you would have to click on them to reel in the chapters of everything. Eehhhhh…

Then I thought of making one new blog for each work, and naming it thusly: http://justgiveup-title.wordpress.com. But you can’t use hyphens in that part of the URL! You have no idea how much that pissed me off.

We wondered if we would have to make a separate space, say on Freewebs, with a page for each work, which is more suited to the serial format we would likely use but still not quite optimal because it is off WordPress and difficult to organize.

Also, did you know that the username “justgiveup” is taken on every website ever except WordPress? Dammit!

I’m going to try to search for some site designed exclusively for our nerdy purposes. There must be something. I’m hanging on to a shred of faith that says eventually, yes, I will out-think the Internet.