september 7th, 2021

how do you achieve individuality, or what is it to you

i'm having to spin up words on the fly, i have nothing ready for you, & that's good because you're prompting
me to base my convictions on things i can articulate, not just feelings... diversity is good. constructing
a self distinct from any others for the sake of diversity, maybe. or maybe that unique quality
is inherent to anyone but buried in the noise of patterns that people indulge

if there's only like five different people, each with a hundred million individuals living as that person,
& it's known what makes each of those five people tick, then all of the hundreds of millions of people
can be manipulated. maybe. or i just made that up as a post-facto reasoning for the tweet. it
makes sense as some words but it's impossible to verify or debunk empirically...

it's definitely more interesting day-to-day when people say & do things instead of
reciting & performing things. ignoring people who are in spaces intended for
reciting & performing things. i've picked up a habit of feeling disgusted
any time i think of lots of norms or traditions or value judgments

i also like the idea that: sometimes a statement's worth isn't in the detail behind it, the
articulated intent that you could ask the author for, for their "canonical" distillation
of its meaning, as much as its worth is in how reactive & interpretable it is, how
it might spark & pop differently against each person who reads it

hi
thinking

[...]

hi sorry i was sleeping, right after that. now i will type

sleeping is thinking. you "slept on it," as they say. your bed, i mean

i think a lot about identity, on what it means to be yourself. there is this fervent attraction (mostly by people who are normative) to
"be yourself." and i always am sort of disgusted by that notion. because whatever makes up someone is constructed, by them and
everything that surrounds them. i would almost say that there is no individual people: there is only a conscious point in space
that is pushed and pulled by every surrounding thing. what we can do is move around this space, angle ourselves properly, so
we can hopefully be carried into space we want to be in. but then, that want is only crafted from our starting point. we see
a point in space we want to go, we see places we don't. its a mesh of patterns of static, held together by forces impossible
to fully understand; i dont know if it possible to be diverse, equally i dont know if its possible not to be. there
is a weird nastiness towards people who try to fashion themselves to be different. or like,
constructing a self in any way. its seen as ingenuine, tryhard, etc

i like this. & i think that nastiness is interesting. it's like you have to decide where to set the line
between making oneself distinct & making oneself unreal, simply adorning oneself with things

i think usually when people craft themselves, its a sort of imitation. they see qualities and try to copy them, i think
thats the unreal. i think its more about playing with traits and ideas that are compelling for you, not what you
think is good for others. because there needs to be a deep interest in treating the way you move through space
as some sort of act, but not an act of "reciting and performing" but of, like, idk what word to use

being a statement of sorts?

yes i think thats close. i think everyone is playing to an audience, i think there is just different means.... also
i think there is also the goal of like, creating and being recognized as a creator instead of someone that
belongs. or helping others create. i am not sure. i meant btw as creator and helper of others creations

do you think there is a line between imitation and inspiration

i think the line may be understanding. imitation doesnt require reflection

yes yes! i was talking to _ about something just like this last night,
i don't know if you know her, let me copy & paste a bit of stuff

i've had a fixation for a while now on trying to be inspiring to anyone & everyone. & i think it has pushed me in a lot of ways.
& a lot, but not all, of it i think stems from: if i inspire other people, it lets me think of myself as a link in a chain, part
of an ongoing phenomenon. instead of me just being a weird endpoint stemming from others & whatever inspires them

it also lets me feel like someone who really means the application of all that i
derive, instead of. as i've said, an imitation. blindly following on a surface level

this is good. i think about that, i wrote a paper on something like
this. about how... my goals are to broaden rather then cement

diversity! broadness, freedom. everything should come back to freedom, i believe

yeah. i think if you look at fields of art and science you will see that there is a lot of reusing, but it is always to combine and create,
not to stagnate. i um. about stagnation. thats not the right word. dogma i think is better. taking things, considering them good or true.
or bad and false. i think this is offtrack now, im trying to remember what i wrote a while ago. but it doesnt matter! all thoughts

something maybe off-track i thought earlier & have been holding onto: i like to think about the perspective that there is no "what a thing
[is]," only "what a thing [does]." there's only relationships! it's like subatomic particles, which i think are very cool in that literally
their only traits seem to be their differences. no shape, no color, no nothing, only the variance of interactions. & what is a bird but a
set of matter coming together to dart in a long, long, windy path for a span of time before dissolving? it's not even the same matter
the whole time, it's always cycling a lot of it, like shed skin flakes replaced by nutrients. the bird is a pattern of matter grazing
it as it enters & exits... i have to hurry to the trolley stop but im open to talking more when i get to the coffee shop

i have to go back to work!!!! i have stuff to say about that. i
reallllllly like talking about this sort of stuff. words.... are EPIC!

[...]

one thing ill say about what you said about interactions: its really beautiful, i think, that one can take any metaphor about a concept and map
it to something completely distinct. some ideas as broad as this one could probably be overlaid on any natural concept if there was a lot of
linguistic skills in play. and every time these connections are made - birds;arrows;thoughts;matter;life;love;freedom;chains;innocence - it
doesn't weaken or kill another, they strengthen themselves and construct a meaning greater. thats really nice. i really do think that
everything is poetry in a way: abstract connections held in place by abstract patterns to craft something new that can be
in turn used for new connection... and we can change any part of it in any way. combinatorial fractals

i wonder if being an endpoint or a link is really the difference between imitation & inspiration

& i really love that takeaway

it's a horrible tragedy for the internet to serve as only an outlet, i think. like that's the mode where it's just serving disinformation,
when there's so much potential for people positively transforming one another. removed from geographic restrictions people are really
free to be conduits of traits & values & attitudes, there should be give & take. everyone should be on their best behavior for the sake
of each other, & this can only work insofar as the material people have to work with, the thoughts & ideas are considered & pure
& real. it feels like such a duty to me to strive for reality & report it as best as one can, keeping in mind that it's
only a report. i'm really hungry in a sweltering bus but hopefully that's all decent

its good. i couldnt even tell you were hungry. you didnt even mention food or ice cube

i love that the rapper's name is Ice Cube. because you have to imagine he just went, "I'm cool, like an ice cube." or maybe he meant it
like cold & deadly. can i temporarily post this conversation on tumblr later, NO PRESSURE!! if not i'll just poach my own messages

you can! but can you make me anonymous. and can i choose what my anonymous identity is

i'll probably just distinguish us by bolded & unbolded text, i like that format

okay yeah thats fine. a related thought, sorta: people treat ideas and media far too casually, i think.
this is going to sound a bit toxic, perhaps but i think referring to some media as cancer is apt

yes!!!

there are these ideas put forward by popular culture that metastasizes and swallows things whole. it is
killing ideas, and these ideas are important. they are the things that people leave behind. and there are certain
powerful ideas pushed by powerful people that are, by their vast spread, suffocating other forms of thought

yes! i've written before that i think keeping fragile things alive is like an incredibly virtuous
action, putting in energy to defy the entropy that would pull something apart, & by extension
the entropy, the paths of least resistance, that lead to so much carelessness & cruelty

and people don't care!!!! it is dramatic to be in anguish over an unoriginal movie that sold millions of tickets. but,
those ideas impacted people. they made people. and its not because its better than anything else, its because it is
cancerous. it had the resources to spread. and capitalized on, i think, a mundane form of manipulation

what's tragic is that nearly everyone having worldwide access would ideally entail the total breakup of
that monoculture, but it hasn't really happened thus far, to the extent that it should. but we can talk
about it right here right now, accumulate the sentiment, i can publish it later. conduits!

to an extent, some sort of underlying culture is important. we need to have form, a place to build. and we do have many
different cultures. its only that one has taken so much strangling dominance. and it should be okay to fight against that.
its good we have commonalities i think, a canon can serve as the basis for a lot of communication and growth. we
need a language, in many ways. but some words need attention, lest we forget what they mean

what's particularly repugnant about something like that movie, i think, is that ideally culture is supposed to spring from
the conditions of life but now we deal with culture that has nothing to do with anything anymore, yet it is dominant

there is this idea that basically goes like this: people used to paint sublime landscapes, they were representing reality through art. now,
pictures are taken of those same landscapes, captured in the same light and angle of those paintings, they are not trying to show reality;
they are trying to represent representations. printing to photocopying. eventually the copy will fade and decay and something new must be
printed. this has always existed, but the photocopying cycle seems a lot more profitable now. i think its just, people with a lot to lose would
like to produce copies of ideas that hold them in power. while those without power want to create something that will lift them up

the idea that culture isnt reprehensive of life anymore resonates. to me its more than that, because life to me is defined a lot by
consumption. but unlike life experiences, you cant turn media directly into media. something happens to you as kid that is funny, you
can write that down word-by-word. you cant do that to watching a tv show that you found funny. but, i think there is a proliferation
of that sort of thing with a lot of popular media. and since there are people that also had the same "life experience" of watching
that show, this other show now becomes a part of them too. idk, this is an idea that i havent mulled over

i guess what i am trying to say, in response to culture has nothing to do with anything, is that it does have to do
with something, but that something is far more objective than it ever has been. taking the complexities of your own
life and making into art, if done genuinely, cannot create something that means nothing, its impossible. but, taking
art and turning it into art - which can be just as beautiful and powerful - requires great effort to make it
mean something real. real meaning subjective, in this case. or at least, of life

i was thinking a day or two ago, i think it's interesting the extent to which people's nostalgic connections can now be founded
on media that can be totally re-experienced almost verbatim rather than, like... well, in the past, there were still, like,
books, but i would presume that nostalgia was limited to like, buildings, & things hosted by those buildings like
smells & particular objects & melodies that are passed down but maybe never played quite the same

i like talking so much. but i gotta work! i am sort of getting paid. ttyl :) good tidings to you

good luck