03.16.10
What good are words without truth behind them?
09.20.09
Written Offshore
With men and steel and a purpose driven –
to fuel the machines that conquer the world,
We push iron deep ’til earth is riven –
oil flows, flares light, and hell’s fire is unfurled.
08.29.09
Secret blog post, 9-12-06
When I read deep, insightful, or even merely pretentious books, I feel a vast ocean of deepness and insight and pretention in myself in turn. I don’t have any deep thoughts or insightful comments to give, though. All I have is a directionless, featureless expanse of desire that has only pretentious prose for an outlet.
New wordpress version. Need to get used to the layout and features. The web is always changing, whether you like it or not.
I dislike change but enjoy widgets/gadgets/features, so technology is sort of a double-edged sword for me.
08.18.09
Delighting in half-finished dreams and plans unconquered
Speculation makes for better fantasies than fact
An idea stops being when it’s made real. And some things are better thought than done
07.01.09
There is significance buried somewhere within this train of thought, but I fear I cannot decipher where the tracks must head.
04.26.09
In/sanity
What does it mean that I most want to write/draw/create when I’m out of my right mind? Sleep deprivation, alcohol slightly past prudence, caffeine to excess… these are the things that release my artistic side. I can only surmise that creativity is a candle, where insanity is an inferno. A touch of neuronal dysfunction brings creativity, but only so long as it’s kept within safe limits. These short-lived psychological tourniquets, these substance-induced suffocations, scramble my frontal lobe just enough to produce meaning beyond normalcy. Sanity and art are not good bedfellows.
Or perhaps I always want to create, and only turn to art when I’m no longer capable of science? I turn wrenches and drive nails, I take pictures and capture concepts. I insatiably acquire methods and reasons. Is this not a form of creation? Is a formula not an expression of man’s ability to form ideas from the void? I find myself wondering why art is inferior to algorithm. Both epitomize humanity’s ascent from animalia.
So I am scientific when in my right mind, and artistic when impaired. I’m forced to wonder if this relationship is universal. We know that artists tend to straddle the line between sane and otherwise. We know that scientists tend to disbelieve in intangible and interpretive things. We know that only truly great men are noted for both realms of acheivement. Did Da Vinci invent when sober and paint when drunk? Were his autopsies clouded so as to be palatable? Were his inspirations entirely right-minded or did dysfunction spark inspiration?
?esnes yreve ni elbapac ylurt eh saw ro ,weiv tnereffid a dnif ot riapmi-fles eh diD
04.04.09
Most noteworthy lines use iambic time. The resonant sound lends dignified grace, and significance lives in measured pace.
03.29.09
Trapped inside my own sense of unreality
I wonder how many things my mind’s dissected, taken apart, been inside. I’ve got this maddening drive to see every angle of every concept. Sometimes that means getting into the very core of it, and sometimes that means finding a remote vantage point from which to see the whole. I pride myself in acquiring pieces of knowledge to tie together to form some monstrous web of ideas and relations. It’s part of me. That web is a piece of who I am, and I love how it catches most every morsel of the world flitting by.
Sometimes though, it’s utterly draining. I see interconnected layers and unifying principles every I go. I can never give a complex question a simple answer. I can always give a simple question a complicated answer. Nothing is straightforward — there are useful simplifications, but always a deeper truth that no one has time to hear.
I wish there were easier ways to turn off this relentless searching, combining, analyzing, memorizing. Restless speculation has kept me awake at night for as long as I can remember. As a simple survival strategy, I’ve had to structure my life and my time around exhausting myself before it’s time to sleep. I don’t always succeed, but alcohol helps a lot. I suspect there’s some existential masochism in there as well. What is a vodka tonic, ultimately, but an attempt to put away the most lucid part of yourself? What is a white russian, really, but a blanket with which to smother one’s own humanity?