We are more weather than emoticons; more ambient noise than PSAs. It's silly to try and focus on being a specific version of ourselves, to define ourselves with a ballpoint pen, when our identities are better defined as nebulous clouds of gas than they are the results of a personality test. The forces and things that move us and make us and respond to us are all much greater and wilder than our brains allow us to tangibly dictate.
That said, here's a song:
0:40
I catapulted down 395 with a mixed bag of dark blues and whites hovering above. A black helicopter turned its spotlight toward me as it flew over with a head-echoing buzz. The road was loud, rampant. These motorists had their end-goals, their loved ones, and their ticking microwave-dinner-seconds counting down their staggered arrivals. I didn't look over to see their faces, but I could guess the paint smeared across a canvass portrait that I'd see. They were my herd. Their rules of engagement were deranged and contradicting, but they held to them as though at gunpoint. I hopped exit 3A, exit 52, and Duke Rd., and I kept up with them. I sought my pick-up, my package, but not without a sense of adventure. Getting lost was the best to find what I needed, and I'm lucky I didn't get side-swiped. The clouds rolled over and with my package in the passenger seat, I circled back in an arc, and headed home.
I think you missed the note that experimental writing month was NEXT month. :)
ReplyDeleteit's so experimental that experimental month's posts fall in other months
ReplyDeleteI was thinking there was no way you were catapulting down 395 at rush hour, then realized it was probably a little bit after rush hour.
ReplyDeleteyeah, 7:30/8 is a wild time on 395 and 50
ReplyDeleteThis is a "still be there tomorrow to high-five you yesterday" post if I've ever read one.
ReplyDeleteBeautifully written, Daniel. Though, some would imply that your views of the human character are highly romanticized. Some, like my favorite poet, Mark Doty, would surely assert that personalities are cognitive delusions developed by humans to ease the painful reality that we're truly unoriginal. Doty feels we should openly embrace the beauty in this, though. I'm attaching the poem here:
ReplyDelete"A Display of Mackerel
They lie in parallel rows,
on ice, head to tail,
each a foot of luminosity
barred with black bands,
which divide the scales'
radiant sections
like seams of lead
in a Tiffany window.
Iridescent, watery
prismatics: think abalone,
the wildly rainbowed
mirror of a soapbubble sphere,
think sun on gasoline.
Splendor, and splendor,
and not a one in any way
distinguished from the other
--nothing about them
of individuality. Instead
they're all exact expressions
of one soul,
each a perfect fulfillment
of heaven's template,
mackerel essence. As if,
after a lifetime arriving
at this enameling, the jeweler's
made uncountable examples,
each as intricate
in its oily fabulation
as the one before.
Suppose we could iridesce,
like these, and lose ourselves
entirely in the universe
of shimmer--would you want
to be yourself only,
unduplicatable, doomed
to be lost? They'd prefer,
plainly, to be flashing participants,
multitudinous. Even now
they seem to be bolting
forward, heedless of stasis.
They don't care they're dead
and nearly frozen,
just as, presumably,
they didn't care that they were living:
all, all for all,
the rainbowed school
and its acres of brilliant classrooms,
in which no verb is singular,
or every one is. How happy they seem,
even on ice, to be together, selfless,
which is the price of gleaming."
But, please, also refer to the full short story, here:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15847
I think everyone would really enjoy it.
Interesting. I think it's interesting that he says what if we "could." Not that we "should." The old debate of East vs. West. Individuality/romanticism versus the collective spirituality of the East. I agree the Eastern way seems better, but I wonder if it's possible. I suppose many things are possible, though. Certainly it's much harder for us than for the fish, since they don't have that awareness that they are unoriginal or an insecurity that it's even "bad" to be unoriginal. Of course we are all unoriginal. It really bothers me that people think they are something special so often in our (especially American) society when they actually are not. But I also see the immportance of this since we live in such a culture that demands we BE something special or that we will live unfulfilled, unhappy lives.
ReplyDeleteBut honestly, being a person who has suffered from depression throughout my life, I always thought it would be nicer to be happy and satisfied than to be great and original and unhappy. When reading Brave New World I remember thinking is this world really SO bad. Yes, everyone is the same, but they are also happy. But I guess you could say that shows the viewpoint of someone who has profound doubts about humanity's ability to BE happy. But that is very much a book about a society of people like the fish described in the poem.
Are people in non-modernized, agricultural societies in little villages with close family connections really happier than those in Western society? We are led to believe they are, but I really couldn't answer this based on anything concrete. Is all the great achievements of art and science and pure achievement really worth the alienation we all feel from not being connected with anything really concrete? Bleh I wanted to make this better but the writer is at my door.
Now, THERE is the retort I was praying for. To be continued, mon frere...
ReplyDeleteOne of the most interesting subects there is. Indeed.
ReplyDeleteI love that poem. Iridescence is easily one of the coolest visuals out there. It's interesting to me that both of you guys went to discussing the indivual vs. collective whole, west vs. east thing, because I hadn't really thought about individuality when I ranted in the opening or described in the ending, but it's obviously an element in there.
ReplyDeleteWhen I said people are weather, that applies to both the individual and the group, as both have their own nuances and shiftiness. I wanted to get across that it's more satisfying and freeing to let people (both individuals and groups) be organic and not constrained by over-simplification.
Forced individuality does come up though, because the emoticons and personality tests are really just representative of the internet pushing us to eternally define ourselves in our little individual profiles with usernames, screenames, about-mes, likes and dislikes; all these little elements that do more to erase someone than give them a name (cue Daniel Day Lewis in Crucible).
I tend to think of the individual/group battle less as a battle and more of two sides to the same coin, a yin yang, or (to give more analogies!) the way light is defined as particles and waves at the same time. Quantum theory of being in two places at one time. All that wonderful stuff that sounds cool and I don't understand.
You don't understand that stuff? n00b
ReplyDeleteAlso, this is as good enough time as any to post this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb-dhzSPFiU&feature=related
ReplyDeleteAlso, I pretty much just went off Bethany's own comment. That is basically what happens in the comments section--it turns into something else altogether.
ReplyDeleteas it should, delving like tunnels, tunnels like #5 here:
ReplyDeletehttp://demonsinmybritches.blogspot.com/2010/07/top-10-greatest-videogame-moments-part.html
Thank you. You would think being as you made a post of the best posts of 2010, people would be reading those. But I have my doubts.... KEWL, I'LL JUST READ ABOUT WVA AGAIN!
ReplyDeletethe video game posts are about the densest, had-to-be-there posts ever made, so if people make it through them then I congratulate them. i do expect them to at least look at how long they are though.
ReplyDeleteI mean, I thought they were pretty funny....
ReplyDeleteyeah, me too.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your response, Daniel, and I certainly was not assuming that that was the basis of your entire post. I just went off on a tangent and ran with it. Clearly, Edward did the same. It IS an interesting, albeit somewhat depressing, debate in general. I guess I find myself perpetually grappling with over-romanticizing the individual "Me" whilst striving to squelch out my ego in its quest for domination. Oftentimes, we all seem to live out our day-to-day existences as if we're the main character in a novel written solely for/by us. We oft forget that, universally speaking, and harking back to Quantum Physics and String Theory in general as you previously mentioned, we are all parts of the same whole that is founded in matter and energy at the subatomic level. Though, as Doty would propose, there is an innately ineffable beauty to be found within this knowledge, as well as solace to be had. I think it goes without saying he would certainly approve of your own yin/yang comparison.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, your video game posts were (sometimes) pretty funny.
Yin/yang thing basically summarizes the argument. We maybe be parts of a whole, but we are still just that--parts. We COULD be exactly the same, one uniform mass, but we are not. In any case, those more spiritual among us would indicate that we are more part of one mass than it appears at first glance. However, on the level of intelligent, sentient thinking, which is what we are doing when we are even addressing this issue, it seems obvious that we ARE all individuals. I'm not sure if fish have this ability to differentiate themselves from their brethren, but human beings obviously do. Whether that makes us unhappy or not I guess is up for debate. Personally, I think it does. Religion is there to fill that whole inside ourselves, but it's obviously not working for more and more people in our society.
ReplyDeleteActually, and excuse me if I'm sounding argumentative, I would say the "Scientific" argument would assert quite the opposite, really. Scientifically speaking, we're one race-- the human race. We're members of a single species on a single planet, floating through time and space. We all share the same DNA, etc. I don't believe members of the scientific community would champion the notion of individuality and uniqueness as they pertain to human personality traits. I think science would prefer a more formal and less idealized concept of mortality. Furthermore, I would also ascertain that religion does, in fact, exalt the individual, almost ridiculously so. Religion is used as a vessel for human beings to believe they are communicating one on one with the very source from whence they were created. You really can't get any more romanticized than that. I personally, take after what Doty is saying in his short story when he states:
ReplyDelete"The poem held one more surprise for me, which was the final statement--it came as a bit of a shock, actually, and when I'd written it I knew I was done. It's a formulation of the theory that the poem has been moving toward all along: that our glory is not our individuality (much as we long for the Romantic self and its private golden heights) but our commonness. I do not like this idea. I would rather be one fish, sparkling in my own pond, but experience does not bear this out. And so I have tried to convince myself, here, that beauty lies in the whole and that therefore death, the loss of the part, is not so bad--is in, fact, almost nothing. What does our individual disappearance mean--or our love, or our desire--when, as the Marvelettes put it, "There's too many fish in the sea . . . ?"
I find this consoling, strangely, and maybe that's the best way to think of this poem--an attempt at cheering oneself up about the mystery of being both an individual and part of a group, an attempt on the part of the speaker in the poem (me) to convince himself that losing individuality, slipping into the life of the world, could be a good thing. All attempts to console ourselves, I believe, are doomed, because the world is more complicated than we are. Our explanations will fail, but it is our human work to make them. And my beautiful fish, limited though they may be as parable, do help me; they are an image I return to in order to remember, in the face of individual erasures, the burgeoning, good, common life. Even after my work of inquiry, my metaphor may still know more than I do; the bright eyes of those fish gleam on, in memory, brighter than what I've made of them."
I'm aware that this will now be an absurdly long comment, but I haven't been inspired to write new posts of my own, so I'll chalk it up to that.
Says someone who just wrote a new post....
ReplyDeleteI stand by my opinion that we clearly are more alike to each other than different. However, that doesn't change the fact that we each exist as a separate consciousness. And definitely our DNA isn't exactly identical. Sure, most of it is--probably 99.9% of everything in our bodies is the same, but that 0.1% means the difference between you and Hitler, or you and Jesus Christ.
Now I know as well as anyone that living life for the individual and by oneself leads nowhere good. I can see the poem being a good parable. But I will have to agree with Daniel here that it is a yin-yang equation. You can look at it either way. Ultimately, we could be way more different than we are, but because we are so used to everything being the same, we (inter?????)subjectively see the differences in ourselves only. I think it would indeed be helpful to try to conquer these differences. I can see your particular attachment to this given your mortality fear. I don't necessarily have the same fear (perhaps even a longing for mortality?!), and in some ways I feel both not a part of humanity at all, and other times as just a face in an endless, meaningless crowd. Because really what do all of our petty achievements and pride matter when everyone does, and in not-too-great of a time?
Well, I certainly never proposed that we exist as a collective consciousness. For God's sake, this isn't Avatar here. I'm just pointing out that when we feel the need to define ourselves so intensely as individuals, it is actually fuel for our ego to separate and detach us from the commonality of everything. It detracts from the majesty of life to assume that you are alone in your existence and uniqueness. Everyone is clearly unique, which actually makes it impossible for you to be unique, if you think about it (because so is everyone else?). That being said, I think we're basically saying the same things when it comes down to it. Despite our apparent differences regarding our feelings toward mortality. And your consistent need to question my usage of the word "intersubjectivity."
ReplyDeleteAlso, the gift of 2 am has afforded me the luxury to reassess what you wrote. Did you really play the "Hitler/Jesus" card?
ReplyDeleteHaha, I thought about using some other names there. But those were the ones that came up fastest.
ReplyDelete