| 2003-01-11 13:10:22 ET |
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I HACKED DbD.
- Anima.
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| 2003-01-10 16:35:31 ET |
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unfortunately i will be unable to attend tomorrow nights festivies due to a work mixup.
and the following may not mean anything to anyone on here at all- but is in fact a big step for me....
i am attempting to write a story. this story has been in the works for years. the pieces are coming together faster, and thanks to someone helping me (you know who you are), i may actually write something good. something worthwhile.
i will not give away the plot, but it is probably going to be categorized as 'cyber-punk', whatever that is.
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today's epiphany
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(warning: many of the concepts here can be found in Lajos Egri's 'the art of dramatic writing'... i can explain to anyone who asks... )
>>>>>> something clicked today-in regards to writing. i had always had a problem with 'premise', and a story having to grow out of such an idiot simple idea like "great love defies even death" (Romeo and Juliet)... it seemed that stories (and life) were far more complex than any idea that can be summed up in so trite a statement. Life is too wandering, too chaotic, too meaningless... to encapsulate into a three part statement, and besides it is life (and beauty) which inspire me, not morals, or point-proving. Therefore any attempt at story structure seems condescending, limiting, inane.
i was wrong.
perhaps the combination of reading existentialist philosophers (meaning of things isnt as obvious as you think, if there is one at all) and studying the binding laws of Drama have congealed in my head... to something not-quite-liquid-not-quite-solid... Jello, if you will =)
in all seriousness, i have seen through the problem instead of ignoring it, or trying to dance around it. the epiphany came to me when a book i bought today drew the line between story and plot.
Story is a sequence of events.
Plot is a sequence of events that are causal and have meaning.
Life is story. Arbitrary, loosely connected at best, if anything, the organization of man's ideas have structured themselves around the phenomena and not vice versa. When we believe in our ideas before the phenomena (aka reality) that is when the surprises (and disappointments!) begin.
So many arbitrarily cruel things have happened to me. And yet i seek out coincidences that could have greater meaning. I do this to the point of borderline schizoid personality disorder. The conspiracy... of beauty and death... connecting the dots of a chaotic life like a child would invent constellations. It's not clear whether which constellations you decide to pull out of the sky matter, or whether they need to agree with other people's constellations.
What is clear is that people seek meaning. People try to turn the story of their lives into plot, try to draw in patterns where there is none. Acute symbolism and abbreviation of experience rob of us true perception, especially in this age of sensory overload. the meaninglessness of a single experiences in and of itself can be maddening. Almost like looking at a friend's face and seeing the face of a stranger...
"things are divorced from their names. They are there, grotesque, headstrong, gigantic, and it seems ridiculous to...say anything about them. I am in the midst of things, nameless things, defenceless..."
-J.P.Sartre, "Nausea"
And yet, the very fact that I am reading this existential bullshit means that i am looking for something. Answers. (answers, you want answers?) I am seeking to impose meaning upon ontological phenomena. this very act is un-existentialist. ("i want the truth!" "you cant handle the truth!")
THEREFORE- It is okay for stories to have premises. It is okay for sixteen plots to be beaten to death to infinity. It is okay for me to place a value judgement in my story (my story=obsession leads to isolation) that only means that particular value was true in that place, in that time, in my story not in all places, times and stories.
It is okay for stories to need meaning, for plots to require premise. I can forgive them because i now realize that in my search for meaning, I participate in the creation of fiction every moment of every day.
10 billion pseudo-intellectual snob points if you read all of this.
<3
dbd
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| 2003-01-09 17:32:07 ET |
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Dear Cruel World of Illusion and Inauthenticity:
I hate you and i hope you fucking die.
Sincerely,
J.P.Sartre
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| without any reason, without any sense... 2003-01-07 16:10:42 ET |
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"I see no changes ..wake up in the morning and I ask myself...is life worth living should I blast myself?"
-2pac, Changes
"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental questions of philosophy.
-Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
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one time i went and saw a terrible movie. it had something to do with sports. i walked out in the middle of it. i did not complain or ask for a refund. i just simply lost interest, cut my losses, and left. not with a bang, or with a whimper, but with the quiet click of a door closing shut behind me.
I am beginning to see my life in the same manner as i saw this movie. Somewhere i know that things will get better and that i should stick around to see how it ends. somewhere in me there exists that faith. but i would be a liar if i did not say that it was being direly tested right now.
An unexamined life is not worth living, and i have nothing but time in between transactions and trains to contemplate. i am not at all satisfied with the conclusions i have been finding. Something is wrong with everything (by wrong i mean more wrong than usual) and i have to find it and fix it or i am certain i will die. (don't worry kids: the very act of my stating this is a testament to my will to live.)
so what is wrong with me. i'm working too much and dwelling on the past, kicking myself for mistakes that i made over the past years.. nothing new there. my social life is interesting, to say the least. but i think that the biggest obstacle to happiness is that i'm not living up to my ideals, i'm not being myself. whatever that is. everything i do is for the most part motivated by fear; being motivated to avoid something never works, thats called negative motivation. Life should not be an exercise to avoid pain. and i'm sorry but 'my new years resolution is to get out of debt' is not a very motivating statement.
to put it quite simply, my life right now lacks meaning. i miss warmth; i miss friends, i miss being in college. i miss electronics class. i miss time to read and write and draw and play keyboards without feeling pressure to 'achieve something great' with the 2 1/2 hours left in my day (if i'm lucky). Art does not respond well to performance pressure. I'm burning out, i can't keep doing what i'm doing (2 jobs + complex social life + insane commute) when there is no progress. i'm taking crazy amounts of ephedrine but everything is at a standstill. i'm seriously considering jetting as soon as my lease is up to some trailer park in Bayonne, NJ... where i won't have to keep 2 jobs just to pay the rent..
I <3 my boyfriend but i think we may go back to being just friends; i'm just too fucking depressed to be of any use to anyone; yet another way my life is devoid of meaning; i cant even take care of myself and so i am unable to contribute anything of value to anyone else, besides my company, which isnt worth much when i'm tired and pissed and getting sick again. besides i am entirely too fucking hung up on something else i know i shouldnt be right now and its not fair...
The thing that bothers me the most is that i'm not doing anything meaningful with my life. thats the bottom line. No music, no art, no writing, nothing NOTHING. it just wont fucking come and i try; i stare at my plot outline or the keyboard and i just want to fucking cry. i think about all the people who have made things more beautiful than i have.. like when in Mallrats Brodie asks Rene what she's doing in the bathroom.. and she tells him that she's crying, he asks why; "You want to know what i think about Brodie? I think about all the people who do something with themselves, the doctors who save lives, the politicians that decide the fate of nations. the architects that design skyscrapers... and then i think... that i have nothing better to do with my time... than fuck you."
i dont know what else to say except that i want out and that is good enough for now; and that if a way exists i will find it. i have stopped drinking and that has cleared my mind enough to understand that my current mode of being is NOT okay. step one: remove tranquilizers, so that pain may be felt. it exists for a reason.
<infestation>
apparently my computer has every virus known to man.. there are so many viruses on here i can't even get Norton to install right. my midi interface is fucked, my webcam is fucked, my CD burner is fucked. friend points to DasK for coming to my house and trying to fix it till 5 am, friend points to Chris from mindless faith for hanging out with us while scandisk took forever to scan the temp internet files i should have deleted first. I believe the Klez virus has been successfully removed; my machine is behaving slightly better but this is just the beginning of a long battle ahead.
</infestation>
//////Reading: Notes from the Underground: Nihilism and the Matrix
//////listening to::2pac
///////Drinking: Arsenic
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