I will tell you why I have little to say. It is because I am very, very little.
One can use the term insignificant, it means nothing to me anyways.
I want to create more than I consume.
The thing about creation is that you do so much of it that sometimes you have to take a break and decide what you want to share--that break is not really coming.
The process of creation is simply a process, and it starts with about a years worth of observations and attempts from me before my creations begin looking something like what I thought.
The process is also dynamic as any creator would tell you, so unlike God, often I'm being transformed by my attempts.
Daily I write a script, or a story, or some freakish hybrid of both--the idea is just writing, not outcome.
I take a character, and put him or her in a place. I give them a series of adventures, and let me tell you, some of them are just terrible, and none are really any good, yet; of course, that isn't really the point--and isn't that the point?
If you begin reading movie scripts on a regular basis before you watch the films they became you find the importance of nuance, and the great trepidation from which creation can be born. Conversely, bold creation is also a blessing--and for me, that exists mostly with songs.
Film takes time, a lot of time; even a music video for a few minutes takes a shit load (technical term) of time to plan, storyboard, capture, manipulate, edit and process. All of those steps stand on the throat of creation. The love of digital capabilities grows accordingly.
For the really great stuff, I will use film. I'll be lucky to do that even once in my lifetime. Hopefully many times, but really, I'm no filmmaker, yet, not even in practice. I'm interested in the medium's ability to capture and train imagination so that it forces the unsuspecting deeper down into Wonderland. I believe that trip down is what helps us enable joy.
The future is always new, because any conception of it is based on our previous and current processing; the future, however, will not be so tame. It is unknown, and the very nature of speculative thought is impossible to convey articulately. It's what the ancient world knew before The Age of Reason kicked emotions out of the room of rhetorical value.
Dreams of the future therefore also consist in a series of end games. In a land of Capitalists, the consumer is inundated with the best 'new', and as the tired old tale is becoming, with a shorter attention span; as if philosophical training is anti-American--though when considering our national proclivity for pragmatism, at once one understands what Alexis de Tocqueville is driving at in the first sentence of his second volume of "Democracy in America."
The fact that most Americans wouldn't even read this, let alone wonder why the quote referenced above isn't linked easily here is exactly what I mean by the pragmatism of our industrial model superseding the desire to explore and discover. Discovery takes a relinquishment of the end, and I know some of us have been saved from this, and I have supposed that it's why we feel like outsiders, or as I like to refer to a thinker and a lover, the Mad ones.
Being sold on the end goal, humanity forgets the importance of how that end is reached. People these days are more concerned with their branding than their products viability; and the viability of the product is only important if that is also considered to be a value of the brand. If someone has a shitty brand name, perhaps KIA motors, but a substantial product, then it makes sense why we're still not so sure about those 'Korean Import Automobiles.' If something has a great brand, say the iPhone, then even though there are more powerful devices, there is a security in purchasing Apple (ps. I'm still a fan boy for Apple, so my bias must be taken into account.)
In the end then, the celebration of process gets lost among the glitz and glamour of the end result. It's the subtle pincer that disables our creativity and keeps the majority of us solely consumers. From clicking around the internet to watching television, we are all passively taking in, yet not considering the latent affect on our imaginations--many look at media to quell too-busy minds, instead of using this amazing proliferation to sniff out desires. If you're reading this, then you're one of us that do this to varying degrees.
Perhaps that's why I've not been writing on here very much. I realized how much of it is self-serving shit, and I can do that elsewhere before taking my mind public. What you, internet stranger, read here, is the process, and yet it appears as the end result.
Hopefully I'll get over myself enough shortly (I'm certain I will) to put up some more of my process here. The next steps are pedantic music videos. So that ought to be a blast to laugh at and enjoy--which can be mutually exclusive if I do my job half-properly and focus on stretching my limits to the point of surfacing glaring deficiencies for future refinement.
Exposing your process is a weird and fulfilling feeling. The future may have a greater appreciation for it, I wouldn't know, my imagination--like yours--is filled with the end results. Perhaps being insanely ourselves, the being and becoming of the 'it' and the 'I' is the new future.
It's also so funny how much like Man I am. The process includes so much speculative thought about oneself, that it dichotomizes the person from nature; that is to say, in conclusion, that it separates the process from the product.
Come then, let's make the future today, and be concerned primarily only about the next step in our macro evolution, created on a micro scale.
Karn
One can use the term insignificant, it means nothing to me anyways.
I want to create more than I consume.
The thing about creation is that you do so much of it that sometimes you have to take a break and decide what you want to share--that break is not really coming.
The process of creation is simply a process, and it starts with about a years worth of observations and attempts from me before my creations begin looking something like what I thought.
The process is also dynamic as any creator would tell you, so unlike God, often I'm being transformed by my attempts.
Daily I write a script, or a story, or some freakish hybrid of both--the idea is just writing, not outcome.
I take a character, and put him or her in a place. I give them a series of adventures, and let me tell you, some of them are just terrible, and none are really any good, yet; of course, that isn't really the point--and isn't that the point?
If you begin reading movie scripts on a regular basis before you watch the films they became you find the importance of nuance, and the great trepidation from which creation can be born. Conversely, bold creation is also a blessing--and for me, that exists mostly with songs.
Film takes time, a lot of time; even a music video for a few minutes takes a shit load (technical term) of time to plan, storyboard, capture, manipulate, edit and process. All of those steps stand on the throat of creation. The love of digital capabilities grows accordingly.
For the really great stuff, I will use film. I'll be lucky to do that even once in my lifetime. Hopefully many times, but really, I'm no filmmaker, yet, not even in practice. I'm interested in the medium's ability to capture and train imagination so that it forces the unsuspecting deeper down into Wonderland. I believe that trip down is what helps us enable joy.
The future is always new, because any conception of it is based on our previous and current processing; the future, however, will not be so tame. It is unknown, and the very nature of speculative thought is impossible to convey articulately. It's what the ancient world knew before The Age of Reason kicked emotions out of the room of rhetorical value.
Dreams of the future therefore also consist in a series of end games. In a land of Capitalists, the consumer is inundated with the best 'new', and as the tired old tale is becoming, with a shorter attention span; as if philosophical training is anti-American--though when considering our national proclivity for pragmatism, at once one understands what Alexis de Tocqueville is driving at in the first sentence of his second volume of "Democracy in America."
The fact that most Americans wouldn't even read this, let alone wonder why the quote referenced above isn't linked easily here is exactly what I mean by the pragmatism of our industrial model superseding the desire to explore and discover. Discovery takes a relinquishment of the end, and I know some of us have been saved from this, and I have supposed that it's why we feel like outsiders, or as I like to refer to a thinker and a lover, the Mad ones.
Being sold on the end goal, humanity forgets the importance of how that end is reached. People these days are more concerned with their branding than their products viability; and the viability of the product is only important if that is also considered to be a value of the brand. If someone has a shitty brand name, perhaps KIA motors, but a substantial product, then it makes sense why we're still not so sure about those 'Korean Import Automobiles.' If something has a great brand, say the iPhone, then even though there are more powerful devices, there is a security in purchasing Apple (ps. I'm still a fan boy for Apple, so my bias must be taken into account.)
In the end then, the celebration of process gets lost among the glitz and glamour of the end result. It's the subtle pincer that disables our creativity and keeps the majority of us solely consumers. From clicking around the internet to watching television, we are all passively taking in, yet not considering the latent affect on our imaginations--many look at media to quell too-busy minds, instead of using this amazing proliferation to sniff out desires. If you're reading this, then you're one of us that do this to varying degrees.
Perhaps that's why I've not been writing on here very much. I realized how much of it is self-serving shit, and I can do that elsewhere before taking my mind public. What you, internet stranger, read here, is the process, and yet it appears as the end result.
Hopefully I'll get over myself enough shortly (I'm certain I will) to put up some more of my process here. The next steps are pedantic music videos. So that ought to be a blast to laugh at and enjoy--which can be mutually exclusive if I do my job half-properly and focus on stretching my limits to the point of surfacing glaring deficiencies for future refinement.
Exposing your process is a weird and fulfilling feeling. The future may have a greater appreciation for it, I wouldn't know, my imagination--like yours--is filled with the end results. Perhaps being insanely ourselves, the being and becoming of the 'it' and the 'I' is the new future.
It's also so funny how much like Man I am. The process includes so much speculative thought about oneself, that it dichotomizes the person from nature; that is to say, in conclusion, that it separates the process from the product.
Come then, let's make the future today, and be concerned primarily only about the next step in our macro evolution, created on a micro scale.
Karn
I sometimes think the Internet--and certainly the way we are invariably habituated to use it--makes us much less creative than we used to be.
ReplyDeleteObviously this is out of fashion to say as we are to believe that the new creative class are all internet and technology entrepreneurs (they're not making movies about poets after all). Certainly there is tremendous creativity going on with and around the Internet today. But we really lack stillness of mind. We don't contemplate much. We pause briefly between the next staccato burst of data in what now forms a rarely turned off on-rushing river of information to try to swallow and push onto a mental sandbar in the hope--but not too much real expectation--of being able to access it meaningfully. And it is getting worse by the day.
I sometimes wonder what it would be like if there were somehow a worldwide day, where by agreement and mandate, everyone everywhere had to turn off all computers/TV/Media and other paraphernalia of the distraction and just be. Be still. Be with people. Be thoughtful.
I realize the irony here of using a web log and now a YouTube clip to get the point across (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fia1DkgMf1U).
But this is our new irony isn't it? Because of the merciless speed of the internet, everywhere, always on, and that with globalization, we must always work harder and ever longer, produce more, just to keep up, the only outlet most of us half time and resources for to try to have a few moments of intellectual conversation, are on this infernal internet.
Did people once feel like this about the printing press? I doubt it. Radio? TV? There seems to be something different with the internet and perhaps part of it is that the web includes all these past mediums - audio, video, and text. endless, endless mountains of text flooding us, awash in a sea of data bits.
Anyway, I'm getting ready to log off for the day.