Sometimes there are no fierce overtones. There's no rising crescendo or '80s movie montage expediting the great volume of work to be done. Mostly it's just this - black on white - over and over and over again. I wish I could say this was satisfying but then I found out satisfaction was a byproduct of perspective.
I don't know anything about relativity except that things only make sense in relation to other things. Would that imply the absence of objective value? And would that be a problem? Sure right because government attempts to use evidence and fact to implement fairness or whatever substitute is now in place that prevents revolution. But the idea of fairness (or whatever) only applies when we agree on that issue and we settle for democracy as a way to say "well if the people who have a mind to invest themselves in the argument largely believe x, then x must be true." There's little left for those marginalized to argue. Either they are dismissed or, if they have another relative authority like wealth, they just override the far more fragile authority of agreement.
I'm getting the sense that the only way for passionate artists and critical thinkers to live is through their attempts at strategic manipulation of the mass of minds seeking solace in the confusion of relativity. Be the most relevant and relativity is yours. Money provides a false medium for universal value because it's presented as the currency which accesses all of life's spoils.
Maybe the real asset has always been that which generates income - the people and ideas. And so it's greatest adversary is the force that confuses real contribution for false contribution. More simply put: earned income versus credit, activism versus consumerism, education versus employment training, etc.
We won't fight the war in this post but I'm going to envision what a community of contribution looks like . . .
There. It's beautiful. I can also appreciate how a limited view would confuse this vision for modern society - because technically we give back through taxes and barter to some degree - but we don't really see work as contributing to society. That's just something we scream at teenagers when they're in the way (and not me personally and hopefully not ever because I used to be one after all). We're really only ever working for ourselves because employment is too easily abusive. We don't operate according to transparent ideologies. Money has superseded intent and it serves only itself, conscripting souls along the way.
I've been getting on my own case because of how long it's taking to write my first post-graduate short story. I switched gears and finally started seriously editing my most recent films, shot last year. I'm going to get the series of films up on vimeo under lock & key and then submit trailers to youtube to share space with my self-shot reality show and gaming streams. After that I continue to write and produce films in seasons while turning my eye to community building and developing the art of the campaign.
My bank account is in the negative and it won't be long before they look to shut it down but it looks like the food stamps will kick in and Medicaid is back so that's something. The preoccupation with my own poverty has been a real distraction and source of poisonous anxiety. I'm tired of it sitting in my mind like a malicious gargoyle. I need to embrace my freedom.
For the first time in my life, my time is truly my own. I'm master of my voice and free from the slavery of income. I can set new terms for my contract with society and perhaps I can become the man I'm supposed to be.
Belief is a tool. It requires instinct and will to wield it. We can have these things and still deny belief out of fear. We can also invest our instincts and will into areas of our lives outside of our control and lose the context for belief. Alternatively, when we harness it and place it firmly into its place within the trinity - Instinct, Will, and Belief - I have to believe its manufacture predicates the basis for a preferred and powerful destiny.
The reminder: Steady young one. Focus.
Operating premise for Ronin Soul: Devil's Detour - Even our deepest will is only half our own.
-Carlos
Find the story. Bring it back. That is our mission.
Friday, May 1, 2015
Friday, April 17, 2015
The Path of Ease
Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor was one of the books on deck recently. The book was more a pamphlet - incredibly thin and no more then 70 pages or so if that. [SHIT. I can't believe it's 5 PM already. Got caught up with the Latin Jazz station on my Pandora account and totally concerned about keeping the kitchen clean, my stiff back, fighting the temptation to do anything else but write and I can confirm that waking up at noon didn't help. How the the hell am I ever going to make a "real" job work?]
I won't spoil the read too much by saying that within it is a criticism of religious indoctrination while investigating themes of government and freedom. I bring it up because I had a moment the other day at Metro PCS where the argument of the "free" had finally penetrated my consciousness.
Disclaimer, I hate "bosses," Boss culture in America today is largely part of the grander problem. Too many of them are assholes and it's not like the humble workers with justice and integrity in their hearts don't exist. It's that they're often too humble to step forward and claim leadership. So without proper advocacy and existing leadership willing to dig out the diamonds in the rough, you have an exponential increase in the amount of assholes stinking up the planet.
Ambition is something we all have but not everyone gives themselves license to execute their ambition when it comes at the cost of those around them. The problem: leadership implies a far greater level of service. As a menial, you focus upward. As a leader you are indebted to the customers you serve and those who serve you to maintain a strong course with all-around benefit. This means nurturing your community as often as it does keeping a firm grip on your agenda and these opportunities are hard to craft the appropriate agent for. So when an asshole arrives convinced of his/her own importance, they exude enough confidence to appear the most appropriate candidate.
This is my generalization. PRO TIP: You want the heroes who refuse the call because they understand the burden and then you want to convince them if they don't take control, the world will cease to exist as we know it.
In any event, I never hear about great bosses or even leaders in "real" job settings. They all have a "cover my ass" complex that prevents them from the flexibility needed to live and work among other human beings. Because they are the example promoted by the company, they give in to a preferred-status self-appraisal which will always be a false projection. I have a perhaps mystical view of equality and as long as I maintain it I'm apt to treat the traditional "boss" figure like it's due for a knuckle-sandwich.
So there I am at Metro PCS and I'm listening to the workers talk about some training and examinations they've taken and the conversation indicates this is for career development within the company. It' kinda went something like:
Her #1: "Girrrlll, you know I was handlin my business. That mobile exam I was like 'beep, boop, boop, beep! It was that Mac training I had to take, like, three four five times. Like dang!"
Her #2: "Yeah riiight?! So hard. My brain hurteded!"
Her #1: "Hyuck, hyuck!"
Here #2: "Wak, wak, wak!"
I was sitting there waiting for help. One man was being helped at the only open register and about 4 other workers were engaging or listening in on said conversation while my queue went from two minutes to four minutes to six minutes. The bill pay kiosk next to me was the alternative but some very perplexed adults were fussing with it since the time I walked in the store. I remained patient because the world is absurd.
I went through a range of emotions that ended with something I found I could marvel at. The first was annoyance. It wasn't that I minded the chatter or even being ignored at first. It was that the levity in the environment came from the emotional freedom derived from knowing that the job was, at the moment, a suitable vehicle providing so many typical life needs such that any compelling seriousness otherwise was of no consequence. A career in mobile sales? Sure, why not? I felt foolish for all my designs and my desires. Put on a uniform, I thought, and get on with it. I suppose I felt jealous and pained by their comfort.
Then I recalled the Grand Inquisitor and thought about how we define freedom. Must freedom from worry come from submission to an institution? Does a pursuit for financial freedom mean slavery and suffering beneath an ideal - akin in a way to martyrdom?
Am I free, when committing to blogging and filmmaking and video game broadcasting and fiction, even though I am stuck in the home I grew up in with a college degree that has sealed me in a level of debt I had no business taking on? Who is freer? The average Joe at Metro PCS filling the time with simple humor and the regular company of others also conscripted or myself? And what is the value of freedom if one the one hand you give up your freedom to make someone else wealthier or you preserve your freedom just to shuffle around in hubris and existential melancholy? Not everyone is ready to be the mascot of the American dream. Even given the opportunity to sell drugs, I had to decline because I really believed you had to be much cooler to pull it off!
I also thought about my work in a community leader position in my final years at college and realized the painful truth that the reason students couldn't comprehend my desperation for activism is because . . . they were happier not comprehending it.
What I marveled at before I was finally attended to at the store were the smiles and the easy humor of the workers. They belonged to a place. They had options to move forward. They helped each other (and covered for one another). They had standards they could understand and criticize and rules they could bend or enforce. They had a system in which they could quantify their value and identify a limited freedom that they could argue compensates for some quality of life which is better than an unproven standard where the weight of the modern economy is on them.
The film program at school forces everyone to eventually, even if briefly, abandon the illusion of safety. It forces students to strain their employment contract. It forces students to contribute more to team work and eventually lead those teams while, without question, making significant and costly mistakes. It forces students to analyze their own complacency and for that reason I'd say that the college experience was worthwhile. That reason doesn't hold up on a practical level at all but it's a way for adults to conceive of one day inheriting this Earth and making it better for the next generation.
It's just a shame the truth doesn't quite make itself known until all the trouble has already happened and that was the inherent challenge to working with this community. Now I'm considering rebuilding it as a non-profit outside of school and primarily communicating its services and opportunities to alumni.
The lure of slavery is so real. We need employment the way we need to know that something is out there beyond the cosmos and deep within us. That something holds a clue, if not the answer, as to the reason of our own creation. Consciousness is practically a cosmic element but what does it serve in a universe that is self-sufficient and constantly fluctuating in a dance all it's own? Our nature to explore the truth of physical reality and our ability to manipulate matter with design in mind is awesome in a universe with seemingly no other intelligent agent. Over time we might become masters of it if we don't destroy ourselves first.
But how does that happen when power is so distracting? If you know everyone around you would rather follow than lead, what would stop you from abusing that truth if you were so inclined? Greed is a symptom of complacency. Everyone wants to do what they want to do. But when their options are designed by you, then manipulation becomes currency. How could anyone with an equally conscious bearing resign him/herself to an entire life of manipulation?
We're not talking about consciousness here though. We're talking about the the confusion of and between what we give the term "happiness" and "the pursuit of happiness?" The definition and scope of happiness differs between slave and master. And the level of ease is measured differently between these platforms. For those of us who adamantly embrace the ideal of equality and democracy and personal freedoms, we strain a great deal presuming everyone deserves a right to the truth even when we acknowledge that the truth would expose these neighbors to a life of plight and quite possibly despair.
Most super heroes are free to fight the important battles because after much internal debate, they embrace their special nature. But the special nature of independent masters is simply a willingness to embrace the truth of the duality of civilization. You can't expect everyone to rally for their financial independence and their freedoms when the work involved is terrifying to them. Not everyone can afford to question the way things are. This life is not a platform for everyone's revolution at once. So the superhero embraces the needs of fantastical distance, whereby God or some other such form of divinity or spectacle arrives, in inhuman guise, to right the wrongs these people refuse to accuse directly and would not support if a higher authority did not seem to appear and demand of them their allegiance. This is why villains and heroes tend to find such common language with one another. They both know that despite popular thinking, it's their job to do the thinking for everyone else on the scale of which sets the tilt of the world and the standard by which determines the death vs. prosperity ratio for generations to come. It's simply too much.
So where does that leave those of us on the precipice, perceiving the greater design? What are we supposed to do when the path of ease is nothing more than a lifelong disease?
-C
I won't spoil the read too much by saying that within it is a criticism of religious indoctrination while investigating themes of government and freedom. I bring it up because I had a moment the other day at Metro PCS where the argument of the "free" had finally penetrated my consciousness.
Disclaimer, I hate "bosses," Boss culture in America today is largely part of the grander problem. Too many of them are assholes and it's not like the humble workers with justice and integrity in their hearts don't exist. It's that they're often too humble to step forward and claim leadership. So without proper advocacy and existing leadership willing to dig out the diamonds in the rough, you have an exponential increase in the amount of assholes stinking up the planet.
Ambition is something we all have but not everyone gives themselves license to execute their ambition when it comes at the cost of those around them. The problem: leadership implies a far greater level of service. As a menial, you focus upward. As a leader you are indebted to the customers you serve and those who serve you to maintain a strong course with all-around benefit. This means nurturing your community as often as it does keeping a firm grip on your agenda and these opportunities are hard to craft the appropriate agent for. So when an asshole arrives convinced of his/her own importance, they exude enough confidence to appear the most appropriate candidate.
This is my generalization. PRO TIP: You want the heroes who refuse the call because they understand the burden and then you want to convince them if they don't take control, the world will cease to exist as we know it.
In any event, I never hear about great bosses or even leaders in "real" job settings. They all have a "cover my ass" complex that prevents them from the flexibility needed to live and work among other human beings. Because they are the example promoted by the company, they give in to a preferred-status self-appraisal which will always be a false projection. I have a perhaps mystical view of equality and as long as I maintain it I'm apt to treat the traditional "boss" figure like it's due for a knuckle-sandwich.
So there I am at Metro PCS and I'm listening to the workers talk about some training and examinations they've taken and the conversation indicates this is for career development within the company. It' kinda went something like:
Her #1: "Girrrlll, you know I was handlin my business. That mobile exam I was like 'beep, boop, boop, beep! It was that Mac training I had to take, like, three four five times. Like dang!"
Her #2: "Yeah riiight?! So hard. My brain hurteded!"
Her #1: "Hyuck, hyuck!"
Here #2: "Wak, wak, wak!"
I was sitting there waiting for help. One man was being helped at the only open register and about 4 other workers were engaging or listening in on said conversation while my queue went from two minutes to four minutes to six minutes. The bill pay kiosk next to me was the alternative but some very perplexed adults were fussing with it since the time I walked in the store. I remained patient because the world is absurd.
I went through a range of emotions that ended with something I found I could marvel at. The first was annoyance. It wasn't that I minded the chatter or even being ignored at first. It was that the levity in the environment came from the emotional freedom derived from knowing that the job was, at the moment, a suitable vehicle providing so many typical life needs such that any compelling seriousness otherwise was of no consequence. A career in mobile sales? Sure, why not? I felt foolish for all my designs and my desires. Put on a uniform, I thought, and get on with it. I suppose I felt jealous and pained by their comfort.
Then I recalled the Grand Inquisitor and thought about how we define freedom. Must freedom from worry come from submission to an institution? Does a pursuit for financial freedom mean slavery and suffering beneath an ideal - akin in a way to martyrdom?
Am I free, when committing to blogging and filmmaking and video game broadcasting and fiction, even though I am stuck in the home I grew up in with a college degree that has sealed me in a level of debt I had no business taking on? Who is freer? The average Joe at Metro PCS filling the time with simple humor and the regular company of others also conscripted or myself? And what is the value of freedom if one the one hand you give up your freedom to make someone else wealthier or you preserve your freedom just to shuffle around in hubris and existential melancholy? Not everyone is ready to be the mascot of the American dream. Even given the opportunity to sell drugs, I had to decline because I really believed you had to be much cooler to pull it off!
I also thought about my work in a community leader position in my final years at college and realized the painful truth that the reason students couldn't comprehend my desperation for activism is because . . . they were happier not comprehending it.
What I marveled at before I was finally attended to at the store were the smiles and the easy humor of the workers. They belonged to a place. They had options to move forward. They helped each other (and covered for one another). They had standards they could understand and criticize and rules they could bend or enforce. They had a system in which they could quantify their value and identify a limited freedom that they could argue compensates for some quality of life which is better than an unproven standard where the weight of the modern economy is on them.
The film program at school forces everyone to eventually, even if briefly, abandon the illusion of safety. It forces students to strain their employment contract. It forces students to contribute more to team work and eventually lead those teams while, without question, making significant and costly mistakes. It forces students to analyze their own complacency and for that reason I'd say that the college experience was worthwhile. That reason doesn't hold up on a practical level at all but it's a way for adults to conceive of one day inheriting this Earth and making it better for the next generation.
It's just a shame the truth doesn't quite make itself known until all the trouble has already happened and that was the inherent challenge to working with this community. Now I'm considering rebuilding it as a non-profit outside of school and primarily communicating its services and opportunities to alumni.
The lure of slavery is so real. We need employment the way we need to know that something is out there beyond the cosmos and deep within us. That something holds a clue, if not the answer, as to the reason of our own creation. Consciousness is practically a cosmic element but what does it serve in a universe that is self-sufficient and constantly fluctuating in a dance all it's own? Our nature to explore the truth of physical reality and our ability to manipulate matter with design in mind is awesome in a universe with seemingly no other intelligent agent. Over time we might become masters of it if we don't destroy ourselves first.
But how does that happen when power is so distracting? If you know everyone around you would rather follow than lead, what would stop you from abusing that truth if you were so inclined? Greed is a symptom of complacency. Everyone wants to do what they want to do. But when their options are designed by you, then manipulation becomes currency. How could anyone with an equally conscious bearing resign him/herself to an entire life of manipulation?
We're not talking about consciousness here though. We're talking about the the confusion of and between what we give the term "happiness" and "the pursuit of happiness?" The definition and scope of happiness differs between slave and master. And the level of ease is measured differently between these platforms. For those of us who adamantly embrace the ideal of equality and democracy and personal freedoms, we strain a great deal presuming everyone deserves a right to the truth even when we acknowledge that the truth would expose these neighbors to a life of plight and quite possibly despair.
Most super heroes are free to fight the important battles because after much internal debate, they embrace their special nature. But the special nature of independent masters is simply a willingness to embrace the truth of the duality of civilization. You can't expect everyone to rally for their financial independence and their freedoms when the work involved is terrifying to them. Not everyone can afford to question the way things are. This life is not a platform for everyone's revolution at once. So the superhero embraces the needs of fantastical distance, whereby God or some other such form of divinity or spectacle arrives, in inhuman guise, to right the wrongs these people refuse to accuse directly and would not support if a higher authority did not seem to appear and demand of them their allegiance. This is why villains and heroes tend to find such common language with one another. They both know that despite popular thinking, it's their job to do the thinking for everyone else on the scale of which sets the tilt of the world and the standard by which determines the death vs. prosperity ratio for generations to come. It's simply too much.
So where does that leave those of us on the precipice, perceiving the greater design? What are we supposed to do when the path of ease is nothing more than a lifelong disease?
-C
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Ritual of the World Warp and Preparing to Do
Someone once told me that one of the things that made people unique among living things is that we had the ability to contemplate the nature of our own minds. The brain - if we assume our identity exists within that - thinks about itself.
That type of reflection comes with the logic that there forever remains things to think about - have you ever quite been able to put the questions of yourself to rest? So you can spend your whole life with your brain and your body and still not grasp them entirely. This is fine when we engage with life responsively. Why think when reaction takes care of the greater majority of our needs?
The problem arises when we need to focus. Let's accept for the sake of argument that the meme of us existing in an age of severely reduced attention spans is true. We lock into fluid streams of information but no longer are as inclined to derive context, express balanced criticism, analyze, sympathize and innovate upon. We need drugs for this or to be born with a genetic predisposition for obsession or stubbornness. We are driven constantly to consume rather than co-create.
Engaging the faculties of the mind needed to execute a vision and execute it consistently is a process that appears to me to be like Bruce Wayne becoming Batman. You consider something iconic and inhuman and utilize that form to disinherit your wayward nature (e.g. 'I'm indpendent,' 'I take care of myself,' 'I'm a hustler,' 'I'm positive,' 'no excuses,' etc.). You try to reclaim a more simplistic way of living - one that empowers the directive you've set for yourself. But really you are embellishing a narrative that you wish you could react to in only very few ways. You try to force the behavior by reading a book, or listening to a tape or criticizing and distancing yourself from others or reading your 10 steps of this or that to bind yourself to an ideal that is strict. You set standards that are restrictive and uninviting and you call it discipline. The trick is to collapse your range of responses and convince yourself it is good to freely remove your right to behave freely.
But the human mind is transcendent and our emotional range is vast. The minute you entertain an investigation of these depths, you gain a momentary perception of the void. Self-control, or lack of it, is the clue. Why are we tempted to do things we don't value? Why don't we value the things we know we must do? Why is freedom such a desperate nerve for us? Why are our emotions so much more influential than the thoughts that we can actually interpret properly? Could it be that denial of this expanse of meaning is not only unnatural but harmful? If we all thought and felt a little more and accepted what was there, what might be the exponential outcome?
Limiting is the first suggestion for those who attempt to use common language to teach success: "Don't think too much," "keep it simple stupid," "don't put the cart before the horse," "describe it in one sentence," "give me bullet points . . . "
Is that really what they did?
I believe they miss the point. These ideas try to encourage us not to confuse the issue. But it could be that the issue really is grand. Writing is not just about writing after all. It says something about who we are. Exercising or starting a business or taking up a musical instrument is a choice devised from a rainbow of influences rolling around deep within ourselves. These decisions are uniquely created, regardless of their outward similarities with others. Connecting with the spiritual history within inclinations is surely a route to true commitment because that effort requires self-acceptance and that requires forgiveness and that requires love.
You could do worse things than honor yourself when you commit to a practice. But how can you know it is an honor if focus is about eliminating what others will tell you confuses the issue? If the issue is really that deep, and you have taken the time to understand why, then conviction is yours.
I tried an experiment the other day when I was trying to get through page 3 of my first short story in this new chapter of my life. I was dealing with my pension for distraction. This takes the form of restlessness, talking to myself, pacing, sleepiness, and obviously the temptation to check my Twitter feed among other things. My interest and my focus kept being pulled away. When I began being reproachful, the anxiety poisoned the experience and creativity diminished. I had to do things the hard way and no shortcuts.
I first considered my surroundings. I took in my room. I took in the encroaching furniture and the clutter of papers and cameras and loose clothing. I took in the fact that this is the space I grew up in. I felt my shame and investigated it. What I found is that I actually had a great deal of options in which to determine the fault. I knew that accepting responsibility was the honorable choice but accepting myself was honestly the more nurturing. That's what I needed to work: I needed to understand I was still worth it.
This was a choice not to wallow in shame. It got in the way. The next step was to handle the aesthetic of my environment. It's one room for 30 years of child to man (I did move away for about 6 years and had to return after my last official employer laid off most of the staff in bankruptcy). I closed my eyes then and imagined each wall replaced with those of a sprawling loft looking upon the city skyline. I imagined the warmth of the uncluttered summer sky on my skin blasting through ceiling high windows and radiating off a minimalist and clean space ripe for serious work and social affairs. Most importantly I imagined it mine.
The funny thing about that dream: the new environment really didn't impact the nature of the work or the weight of its responsibility. As I turned my attention to the writing desk of my well-earned metropolitan palace, an old familiarity and perhaps an old ache returned and not much else mattered - not the sunlight and not the heights - just the page. The lesson there is that the craft of any great dream is elemental and indifferent to circumstance. That craft's relationship with focus is no less different.
Things are not inherently simple because we take in the entire universe with our eyes, imagine all the world's comfort in an instance and recoil at discomfort with every moment. Something important has to be at the root of labor and the return to the fields - something as vast as all the reasons to refuse the call. Sitting down to page 3 was all about remembering how much fun I thought this would be as a kid. Forming the world and a path through it was all about a character I was getting to know and had the freedom to know intimately up until the same forgiveness for her faults that I claim for myself. The healing soothed the effort.
Not breaking that connection was a matter of the consistent choices I made to stick with it. But here's how: all our interests and preoccupations divide a singular pool of energy that we distribute each day. Some distributions carry over and create stress for their stagnation. The discipline enacted here was the conscious emotional reclamation of other distributions of energy, other pools, and coursing them back toward the deepest well with whispers already commanding my attempt to try and urging me to succeed. Let's walk it through:
That type of reflection comes with the logic that there forever remains things to think about - have you ever quite been able to put the questions of yourself to rest? So you can spend your whole life with your brain and your body and still not grasp them entirely. This is fine when we engage with life responsively. Why think when reaction takes care of the greater majority of our needs?
The problem arises when we need to focus. Let's accept for the sake of argument that the meme of us existing in an age of severely reduced attention spans is true. We lock into fluid streams of information but no longer are as inclined to derive context, express balanced criticism, analyze, sympathize and innovate upon. We need drugs for this or to be born with a genetic predisposition for obsession or stubbornness. We are driven constantly to consume rather than co-create.
Engaging the faculties of the mind needed to execute a vision and execute it consistently is a process that appears to me to be like Bruce Wayne becoming Batman. You consider something iconic and inhuman and utilize that form to disinherit your wayward nature (e.g. 'I'm indpendent,' 'I take care of myself,' 'I'm a hustler,' 'I'm positive,' 'no excuses,' etc.). You try to reclaim a more simplistic way of living - one that empowers the directive you've set for yourself. But really you are embellishing a narrative that you wish you could react to in only very few ways. You try to force the behavior by reading a book, or listening to a tape or criticizing and distancing yourself from others or reading your 10 steps of this or that to bind yourself to an ideal that is strict. You set standards that are restrictive and uninviting and you call it discipline. The trick is to collapse your range of responses and convince yourself it is good to freely remove your right to behave freely.
But the human mind is transcendent and our emotional range is vast. The minute you entertain an investigation of these depths, you gain a momentary perception of the void. Self-control, or lack of it, is the clue. Why are we tempted to do things we don't value? Why don't we value the things we know we must do? Why is freedom such a desperate nerve for us? Why are our emotions so much more influential than the thoughts that we can actually interpret properly? Could it be that denial of this expanse of meaning is not only unnatural but harmful? If we all thought and felt a little more and accepted what was there, what might be the exponential outcome?
Limiting is the first suggestion for those who attempt to use common language to teach success: "Don't think too much," "keep it simple stupid," "don't put the cart before the horse," "describe it in one sentence," "give me bullet points . . . "
Is that really what they did?
I believe they miss the point. These ideas try to encourage us not to confuse the issue. But it could be that the issue really is grand. Writing is not just about writing after all. It says something about who we are. Exercising or starting a business or taking up a musical instrument is a choice devised from a rainbow of influences rolling around deep within ourselves. These decisions are uniquely created, regardless of their outward similarities with others. Connecting with the spiritual history within inclinations is surely a route to true commitment because that effort requires self-acceptance and that requires forgiveness and that requires love.
You could do worse things than honor yourself when you commit to a practice. But how can you know it is an honor if focus is about eliminating what others will tell you confuses the issue? If the issue is really that deep, and you have taken the time to understand why, then conviction is yours.
I tried an experiment the other day when I was trying to get through page 3 of my first short story in this new chapter of my life. I was dealing with my pension for distraction. This takes the form of restlessness, talking to myself, pacing, sleepiness, and obviously the temptation to check my Twitter feed among other things. My interest and my focus kept being pulled away. When I began being reproachful, the anxiety poisoned the experience and creativity diminished. I had to do things the hard way and no shortcuts.
I first considered my surroundings. I took in my room. I took in the encroaching furniture and the clutter of papers and cameras and loose clothing. I took in the fact that this is the space I grew up in. I felt my shame and investigated it. What I found is that I actually had a great deal of options in which to determine the fault. I knew that accepting responsibility was the honorable choice but accepting myself was honestly the more nurturing. That's what I needed to work: I needed to understand I was still worth it.
This was a choice not to wallow in shame. It got in the way. The next step was to handle the aesthetic of my environment. It's one room for 30 years of child to man (I did move away for about 6 years and had to return after my last official employer laid off most of the staff in bankruptcy). I closed my eyes then and imagined each wall replaced with those of a sprawling loft looking upon the city skyline. I imagined the warmth of the uncluttered summer sky on my skin blasting through ceiling high windows and radiating off a minimalist and clean space ripe for serious work and social affairs. Most importantly I imagined it mine.
The funny thing about that dream: the new environment really didn't impact the nature of the work or the weight of its responsibility. As I turned my attention to the writing desk of my well-earned metropolitan palace, an old familiarity and perhaps an old ache returned and not much else mattered - not the sunlight and not the heights - just the page. The lesson there is that the craft of any great dream is elemental and indifferent to circumstance. That craft's relationship with focus is no less different.
Things are not inherently simple because we take in the entire universe with our eyes, imagine all the world's comfort in an instance and recoil at discomfort with every moment. Something important has to be at the root of labor and the return to the fields - something as vast as all the reasons to refuse the call. Sitting down to page 3 was all about remembering how much fun I thought this would be as a kid. Forming the world and a path through it was all about a character I was getting to know and had the freedom to know intimately up until the same forgiveness for her faults that I claim for myself. The healing soothed the effort.
Not breaking that connection was a matter of the consistent choices I made to stick with it. But here's how: all our interests and preoccupations divide a singular pool of energy that we distribute each day. Some distributions carry over and create stress for their stagnation. The discipline enacted here was the conscious emotional reclamation of other distributions of energy, other pools, and coursing them back toward the deepest well with whispers already commanding my attempt to try and urging me to succeed. Let's walk it through:
- At my laptop with the document open and my hands on the keys (getting here used to be the hardest part)
- My tablet alerts me to a Facebook update
- I catch the intrigue and wonder if I can create it within the next paragraph of my story
- I hit a wall and wonder if I can use that as a break to catch up on movie or industry news
- I use the desire to read and reapply it to reviewing my story so far
- My cat approaches with repeated requests for attention
- I gently remove him from my space and close my door realizing that all my children need love and in their appropriate time
I am a writer and that means accepting that I write when a non-writer would likely be doing something else. I write fiction and that means when I could be writing besides fiction (including this blog unfortunately) I find my home in developing a new world.
There are no immediately available comprehensive definitions for focus if you were to just look it up. But imagine the joining of several different rays of light into a powerful lazer. The lazer becomes stronger as the beam intensifies through its concentration. Likewise you must at first leech the emotional energy already existing in your roster of distractions to empower your cause. Turn the blade. Look at your distractions favorably as they indicate the other places where your energy has pooled and then become selfish with that energy for your goal in the moment. It's a deliberate process. Your mind must be awake and energize. You must have sleep for this and food in your stomach. And being conscious this way is exhausting by the end of the day but we all know that anything you do long enough appears to get easier.
The meditative practice for this is to swap your emotional relations around. Imagine feeling about work the way you feel about a lover. Imagine feeling the way you do about your living conditions, the way you do about a growing garden. You can swap anything you like. The imagination is your empire. Then take this practice into the moment of your execution and free the vastness of your mind to settle upon your determination without reservation. In this way everything you have is pulling for this one thing that you've decided to do over a long term. You'll know its working when the days fly and the work, and it's inevitable complications, become familiar and seemingly effortless.
The actual craft of writing itself is a muscle that gets good with practice and reflection. But the beginning is all about masterfully operating the energy with which you charge that practice. It is not simple and you must forgive yourself the complexity of a being that will never truly know itself. That takes an immense amount of compassion but the most courageous actions will grow from it. I believe this will prove the heart of my success and the same for all those who consider themselves sensitive people.
-C
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Dreams Run Amok
I had a dream with my cat. Her name is Domino. She's a little less than a year old - mischievous but very kind.
I had a dream that her dopplegangers were sneaking into my home and pretending to be her but not very well as I could tell when they were all together that something had gone wrong. Some of them had chrome fangs and some of them were all white instead of pinto-colored as domino is. They varied in size and they all seemed quite dismissive of me. Their eagerness to be in my home and immediately find their hiding places was the most unnerving. I couldn't watch them all and there were signs of intelligence. It gave me a sense of the gremlins.
When I was telling my mother about it, it occurred to me that the threat I imagined could easily have been real. A new bloomed in my mind about a woman, a spinster, who is being manipulated to front for an invasion of demons.
I really want to write this. The campier, the trashier, the better. I owe no one! The problem: I got up and sat down and there were youtube tutorilas and my twitch page and e-mails and facebook AND a reflection of myself in a mirror just behind my laptop reminding me how utterly human I am. I'm only on page 3 of my first short post college, I still have at least half a dozen to edit and post and a bunch of other things to do which I'm tired of reminding myself.
How did a genetic make-up come about with a combination so awkwardly ambitious? I hold my face a lot.
ON SETTING ASIDE TIME
What a beautiful strategy. They don't tell you growing up that even when you're told things you don't really know them till about 20 years later. At least no one told me - the epiphanies I've been having, my goodness! Consciously adapting such a simple idea is the luxury of not being in a third-world country, being at war or being stricken with a chronic illness. I get to sit here on my ass and think . . . for hours. And to think there is a rich history of brilliant and industrious men building our nation. But what the hell was wrong with them?
I don't mean they were bad people. But how does a human being come out industrious? It's absurd. Highly valuable yes but also absurd. There are imbalances everywhere and we are supposed to be the crafty navigators of the treacherous oceans of ideology and personal culture. How's it done if you are a sensitive person? A writer writes, but apparently he also complains a great deal. Sorry for that.
For me there is yet to be a substitute for the time spent crafting original content. It is what it is. Slug it out. The war must simply be waged, season by season and inch by inch. And it saddens me that I've somehow made it three decades on this world without yet honestly determining my ability to successfully engage these wars. That's what frightens me. It's so easy to commit in just about every other way then the way you've been pointed. Knowing this means accepting that discomfort is the waypoint of progress. And if I must choose progress, and how I can I not when mortality is certain, then discomfort must become my new aphrodesiac . . . like miserable foreplay followed by the grim determination of a preposterous act of fornication BECAUSE in the end art is actually very hard work. Consuming it is fun, but making it sucks. And that's what dreams get you: a familiar bitch of a place to belong.
With that said, I will go dark on social media save news of releasing my shorts, videos and Twitch casts. And reopen engagement when the well dries up (or simply when I need it to). Wish me luck!
- C
I had a dream that her dopplegangers were sneaking into my home and pretending to be her but not very well as I could tell when they were all together that something had gone wrong. Some of them had chrome fangs and some of them were all white instead of pinto-colored as domino is. They varied in size and they all seemed quite dismissive of me. Their eagerness to be in my home and immediately find their hiding places was the most unnerving. I couldn't watch them all and there were signs of intelligence. It gave me a sense of the gremlins.
When I was telling my mother about it, it occurred to me that the threat I imagined could easily have been real. A new bloomed in my mind about a woman, a spinster, who is being manipulated to front for an invasion of demons.
I really want to write this. The campier, the trashier, the better. I owe no one! The problem: I got up and sat down and there were youtube tutorilas and my twitch page and e-mails and facebook AND a reflection of myself in a mirror just behind my laptop reminding me how utterly human I am. I'm only on page 3 of my first short post college, I still have at least half a dozen to edit and post and a bunch of other things to do which I'm tired of reminding myself.
How did a genetic make-up come about with a combination so awkwardly ambitious? I hold my face a lot.
ON SETTING ASIDE TIME
What a beautiful strategy. They don't tell you growing up that even when you're told things you don't really know them till about 20 years later. At least no one told me - the epiphanies I've been having, my goodness! Consciously adapting such a simple idea is the luxury of not being in a third-world country, being at war or being stricken with a chronic illness. I get to sit here on my ass and think . . . for hours. And to think there is a rich history of brilliant and industrious men building our nation. But what the hell was wrong with them?
I don't mean they were bad people. But how does a human being come out industrious? It's absurd. Highly valuable yes but also absurd. There are imbalances everywhere and we are supposed to be the crafty navigators of the treacherous oceans of ideology and personal culture. How's it done if you are a sensitive person? A writer writes, but apparently he also complains a great deal. Sorry for that.
For me there is yet to be a substitute for the time spent crafting original content. It is what it is. Slug it out. The war must simply be waged, season by season and inch by inch. And it saddens me that I've somehow made it three decades on this world without yet honestly determining my ability to successfully engage these wars. That's what frightens me. It's so easy to commit in just about every other way then the way you've been pointed. Knowing this means accepting that discomfort is the waypoint of progress. And if I must choose progress, and how I can I not when mortality is certain, then discomfort must become my new aphrodesiac . . . like miserable foreplay followed by the grim determination of a preposterous act of fornication BECAUSE in the end art is actually very hard work. Consuming it is fun, but making it sucks. And that's what dreams get you: a familiar bitch of a place to belong.
With that said, I will go dark on social media save news of releasing my shorts, videos and Twitch casts. And reopen engagement when the well dries up (or simply when I need it to). Wish me luck!
- C
Monday, April 6, 2015
Speed and Endurance (Blog, Write Fiction, Twitch, Edit Video, Produce Films erday)
I'm temporarily not including photos anymore in my blog. I'd pull stuff off the images tab in google that I felt would help explain a point.
Time sync.
I don't want to be lazy so I'll probably get back to it but seriously, time is friggin' precious. So much work. I think I'm going to have to clock in 70-80 hrs a day and keep a time card, just to make sure I'm being as proactive and efficient as I can be.
I am a disorganized SOB and distracted as F*ck! My short story is only a page in cause I had a massive brain fart just trying to get started. I believe there is a legendary moment in a writer's life where writing fiction becomes more or less familiar. Pfft. But here's hoping.
Meanwhile, two more stories have arrived on the Imagination Train: 1) A fable about a peasant girl who loses her queen's crown in the woods where a hidden fairy empire exists and threatens to keep her forever from returning home. 2) A smaller short about a boy who's been playing with a carnivorous alien in his room without his mom knowing and the one night where the boy unwittingly explains to the alien the value in eating everything possible to grow and get strong.
The first story was a test my girlfriend gave me to put her to bed in practice for having a daughter that would, on the fly, ask me to tell her a story. Unfortunately my gf fell asleep before I could finish the story so I know most of it up until the climax and then it gets fuzzy. The 2nd story, with the alien, is based on a recent recurring nightmare. This is maybe the first nightmare in 20 years that is recurring and where I end up actually being eaten in the end (thought I don't share the same space as the boy until that moment). It's also similar in ways to the short I'm writing - a familial issue spliced with some seemingly imaginary but actually dangerous circumstances apparently overlooked at the top level.
It's exciting as long as I can keep these keys moving fast enough to stay in pace with the wave of ideas and I really do intend to write them all. To think I almost convinced my gf to spend $50 on a web-developer program on Udemy. But honestly, I gotta work what I have and make my own cash. That's what this is all about and I really have to stay focused.
So it looks like I'll have to set an initial goal for to actively promote my website. I got my first follower on Twitch last night. While that's growing I can maybe write the first 10 shorts and 2 intro chapters to my leading ideas for serialization - including Ronin Soul (which I haven't formally introduced). Then I'll switch focus to revisiting and re-editing (alhaogha;oa;owe;awofnh!!!!!) my films from college, after which I'll remix my twitch highlights from Dragon Age: Inquisition. From there I'll make room for my Youtube program intro and writing my business plans...
But first, I'm gonna drink this big cup of coffee on the throne and think about absolutely nothing because sometimes that's about the only thing that makes sense.
-C
P.S. Oh yeah, speed and endurance: That's where this should all be headed. If I come anywhere close to achieving this as an independent professional - well I might finally start believing I'll deserve any of the rewards I've seen out there waiting for people like us.
Time sync.
I don't want to be lazy so I'll probably get back to it but seriously, time is friggin' precious. So much work. I think I'm going to have to clock in 70-80 hrs a day and keep a time card, just to make sure I'm being as proactive and efficient as I can be.
I am a disorganized SOB and distracted as F*ck! My short story is only a page in cause I had a massive brain fart just trying to get started. I believe there is a legendary moment in a writer's life where writing fiction becomes more or less familiar. Pfft. But here's hoping.
Meanwhile, two more stories have arrived on the Imagination Train: 1) A fable about a peasant girl who loses her queen's crown in the woods where a hidden fairy empire exists and threatens to keep her forever from returning home. 2) A smaller short about a boy who's been playing with a carnivorous alien in his room without his mom knowing and the one night where the boy unwittingly explains to the alien the value in eating everything possible to grow and get strong.
The first story was a test my girlfriend gave me to put her to bed in practice for having a daughter that would, on the fly, ask me to tell her a story. Unfortunately my gf fell asleep before I could finish the story so I know most of it up until the climax and then it gets fuzzy. The 2nd story, with the alien, is based on a recent recurring nightmare. This is maybe the first nightmare in 20 years that is recurring and where I end up actually being eaten in the end (thought I don't share the same space as the boy until that moment). It's also similar in ways to the short I'm writing - a familial issue spliced with some seemingly imaginary but actually dangerous circumstances apparently overlooked at the top level.
It's exciting as long as I can keep these keys moving fast enough to stay in pace with the wave of ideas and I really do intend to write them all. To think I almost convinced my gf to spend $50 on a web-developer program on Udemy. But honestly, I gotta work what I have and make my own cash. That's what this is all about and I really have to stay focused.
So it looks like I'll have to set an initial goal for to actively promote my website. I got my first follower on Twitch last night. While that's growing I can maybe write the first 10 shorts and 2 intro chapters to my leading ideas for serialization - including Ronin Soul (which I haven't formally introduced). Then I'll switch focus to revisiting and re-editing (alhaogha;oa;owe;awofnh!!!!!) my films from college, after which I'll remix my twitch highlights from Dragon Age: Inquisition. From there I'll make room for my Youtube program intro and writing my business plans...
But first, I'm gonna drink this big cup of coffee on the throne and think about absolutely nothing because sometimes that's about the only thing that makes sense.
-C
P.S. Oh yeah, speed and endurance: That's where this should all be headed. If I come anywhere close to achieving this as an independent professional - well I might finally start believing I'll deserve any of the rewards I've seen out there waiting for people like us.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
On consolidating an online presence
Every major site with social elements has a community with profile linking and supported commenting. They encourage usage, debate, feedback and even to platform these sites for your own ventures.
How much of it is a gimmick and how much of it serves practical use? I can't say. All I know now is that it's completely exhausting. I'm tired of combing through personal photos for profile images but I suppose the more you do it, the more you start to develop a mind for it.
I've begun writing a "scary" story about a young girl who's being encouraged by a mysterious being to push people in front of trains. I haven't committed to writing fiction in a long time and wow, this s serious business. The amount of time I've spent staring out of the window, pacing in my room and doing just about anything else, including writing this blog entry, should have really made for some progress but getting through just the first page of world-setting was like pulling teeth.
In my distraction, I veered off to twitch.tv again (which is probably why common advice is to turn off the internet and the electricity if you can manage it). I decided to look more carefully at how streams are growing. There's a lot of styling and branding that has to be accomplished. Certain sayings become memorable, certain colors become iconic of the player, and a look is usually immortalized via cartooning or digitizing of the player.
I doubt I can do a proper drawing without first putting a major investment in training myself in that craft but maybe with some more photoshop tutorials an short term and doable idea will come to me to place-hold until I can get some help. In the mean time, just improving my commentary is about all I can focus on during the show.
Additionally there's this highlight business which allows me to export clips from my cast and then put them on youtube. What I haven't figured out yet is the best way to pull a voice-over or what images I want to bookend the clips with to better brand what I'm offering.
On top of that I'm still sorta slacking in putting in serious editing time on my movies and my crafting my opening video introducing the "Build-It! Transmedia Project" which is pretty much this type of information but visual and more entertaining.
I'm learning lots and progress is really slow at the moment. But one thing is for certain: there are no shortcuts.
- C
How much of it is a gimmick and how much of it serves practical use? I can't say. All I know now is that it's completely exhausting. I'm tired of combing through personal photos for profile images but I suppose the more you do it, the more you start to develop a mind for it.
I've begun writing a "scary" story about a young girl who's being encouraged by a mysterious being to push people in front of trains. I haven't committed to writing fiction in a long time and wow, this s serious business. The amount of time I've spent staring out of the window, pacing in my room and doing just about anything else, including writing this blog entry, should have really made for some progress but getting through just the first page of world-setting was like pulling teeth.
In my distraction, I veered off to twitch.tv again (which is probably why common advice is to turn off the internet and the electricity if you can manage it). I decided to look more carefully at how streams are growing. There's a lot of styling and branding that has to be accomplished. Certain sayings become memorable, certain colors become iconic of the player, and a look is usually immortalized via cartooning or digitizing of the player.
I doubt I can do a proper drawing without first putting a major investment in training myself in that craft but maybe with some more photoshop tutorials an short term and doable idea will come to me to place-hold until I can get some help. In the mean time, just improving my commentary is about all I can focus on during the show.
Additionally there's this highlight business which allows me to export clips from my cast and then put them on youtube. What I haven't figured out yet is the best way to pull a voice-over or what images I want to bookend the clips with to better brand what I'm offering.
On top of that I'm still sorta slacking in putting in serious editing time on my movies and my crafting my opening video introducing the "Build-It! Transmedia Project" which is pretty much this type of information but visual and more entertaining.
I'm learning lots and progress is really slow at the moment. But one thing is for certain: there are no shortcuts.
- C
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
On release from the wheel
Good evening,
Fiction writing for novels is different from the script format in that a writer can return to the senses and wayward thoughts of the character.
For adaptations to screen this is awesome because it gives you solid footing for shooting with subtext in your composition and gives your actors a great deal of insight into the motivations moving them through a given scene. I feel like true adaptations are provided with a great deal of heavy lifting from the source narrative. That's why I want to keep the craft growing alongside anything else. It can double the work but if the original story is good, at least people can read it straight and find something in it.
I was thinking about this because it's only at the end of film school that I've finally begun to see how my mind visualizes information. Through the early part of my college career where it was all about the creative writing courses, we were going deep into literature and the words themselves carried the ruling potency. Sure they created images but the images were flashes, abstract, and usually combined with other types of stimuli like smells and touch. Now I can see scenes when I want to and that's pretty cool.
As an example: I recently wrote a very 'stick-it-to-the-man' e-mail to a big group of students that were once part of my constituency as film society president. In that I alerted them to a host of issues I'd recently dealt with prior to my resignation, including duplicitous faculty, obstruction, undermining language, just a slew of issues that distracted from getting the work done until eventually the loophole was uncovered that came with a threat ending my resignation. I'm so happy to get that stuff off my chest.
While I'm writing of course all I can envision are all the people I'm pissing off. Before the work probably would have stuck pretty close to the flow of the keys but now there are visual associations like these people with real titles and shit...I'm in my room at my laptop but I'm very much with their faces closely observing the way they contort and grimace before my loose-lips syndrome. It's like getting up close to a JHS bully in slow-mo, able to really observe the humanity in the eyes of someone too much of a villain to recognize that they are one; both human and a villain. It's all justified and what's most sad is that I probably could've easily crossed over to the dark side at many points in my life given the right circumstances. The appearance of something like righteousness is just a weird occurrence.
I don't know what happens to people when they finally get a salary or benefits . . . I mean we all need them but we're so afraid to lose them too. And then you become your salary and your benefits and you act as an agent in defense of the system that provides them. Freedom is abandoned and I can't say if the alternative is necessarily worse. But, for now, in the absence of money I've found a type of allowance to explore my potential and my voice. Apparently I'm good at thinking and analyzing and using those thoughts to make people in "powerful" positions uncomfortable. Well, school faculty isn't really a good test for that but relative to me as a recent student, it sure felt intense.
I'm glad to let go of that madness. I'm glad to have a brief time, even if I'm joke-broke, to fool around in my imagination and see what's inside. I can't wait to share something done - like really DONE. Then I'm gonna get smashed!
- C
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Story inbound: Thirteen year-old Mary is aloof, antisocial and a bit morbid. Her parents are patient, her 11 year-old brother oblivious. Her imaginary friend Norn is however quite skillfull in tutoring young Mary how to push unsuspecting commuters before oncoming trains and getting away with it. When a chance witness takes off, Mary gives chase and unwittingly alerts a nearby patrolman to investigate with Norn silently in tow.
Fiction writing for novels is different from the script format in that a writer can return to the senses and wayward thoughts of the character.
For adaptations to screen this is awesome because it gives you solid footing for shooting with subtext in your composition and gives your actors a great deal of insight into the motivations moving them through a given scene. I feel like true adaptations are provided with a great deal of heavy lifting from the source narrative. That's why I want to keep the craft growing alongside anything else. It can double the work but if the original story is good, at least people can read it straight and find something in it.
I was thinking about this because it's only at the end of film school that I've finally begun to see how my mind visualizes information. Through the early part of my college career where it was all about the creative writing courses, we were going deep into literature and the words themselves carried the ruling potency. Sure they created images but the images were flashes, abstract, and usually combined with other types of stimuli like smells and touch. Now I can see scenes when I want to and that's pretty cool.
As an example: I recently wrote a very 'stick-it-to-the-man' e-mail to a big group of students that were once part of my constituency as film society president. In that I alerted them to a host of issues I'd recently dealt with prior to my resignation, including duplicitous faculty, obstruction, undermining language, just a slew of issues that distracted from getting the work done until eventually the loophole was uncovered that came with a threat ending my resignation. I'm so happy to get that stuff off my chest.
While I'm writing of course all I can envision are all the people I'm pissing off. Before the work probably would have stuck pretty close to the flow of the keys but now there are visual associations like these people with real titles and shit...I'm in my room at my laptop but I'm very much with their faces closely observing the way they contort and grimace before my loose-lips syndrome. It's like getting up close to a JHS bully in slow-mo, able to really observe the humanity in the eyes of someone too much of a villain to recognize that they are one; both human and a villain. It's all justified and what's most sad is that I probably could've easily crossed over to the dark side at many points in my life given the right circumstances. The appearance of something like righteousness is just a weird occurrence.
I don't know what happens to people when they finally get a salary or benefits . . . I mean we all need them but we're so afraid to lose them too. And then you become your salary and your benefits and you act as an agent in defense of the system that provides them. Freedom is abandoned and I can't say if the alternative is necessarily worse. But, for now, in the absence of money I've found a type of allowance to explore my potential and my voice. Apparently I'm good at thinking and analyzing and using those thoughts to make people in "powerful" positions uncomfortable. Well, school faculty isn't really a good test for that but relative to me as a recent student, it sure felt intense.
I'm glad to let go of that madness. I'm glad to have a brief time, even if I'm joke-broke, to fool around in my imagination and see what's inside. I can't wait to share something done - like really DONE. Then I'm gonna get smashed!
- C
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Story inbound: Thirteen year-old Mary is aloof, antisocial and a bit morbid. Her parents are patient, her 11 year-old brother oblivious. Her imaginary friend Norn is however quite skillfull in tutoring young Mary how to push unsuspecting commuters before oncoming trains and getting away with it. When a chance witness takes off, Mary gives chase and unwittingly alerts a nearby patrolman to investigate with Norn silently in tow.
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