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I've been thinking a lot about this page, and, in general my own personal need for my art style.
A lot of my art was used to express my own cabin fever, accrued from a lack of strength to leave the house, and the lack of will to gain the strength. It was a feedback loop of sadness I was too afraid to express. In the style of McArthur Wheeler, I was caking layers of my paint on my face as a new, shitty safety blanket. The paint is poisoning me, I think.
I get to go outside now, and the paint is still poisoning me. Every time I check my website another random hundred or so people visit. I don't know if they're bots, but it at times feels like I've made what should've been a time to pass into a spectacle. Rather than letting the scars fade, I willed that time into a keloid.
I don't think I want to make my art anymore. I've finally gotten a taste of nature and wind and clouds and Her, and GOD... Her, and I don't know if I want to keep up my same old act.
I'm at the the threshhold, the point of attrition between the chariots of sawblades and the lovers who grow back. I am afraid. I am so so afraid of what'll happen when I see Her again. Afraid of the ecstatic joy cracking my facade, like I'm a clay jug scared of its lover's roots and tubules taking form.
Clay covers? adorns? insults? my face. With a symbol written in dry-erase marker, my mask is only capturing stale air and faded smudges from readjusting. The symbol is a gold inner ring, with a green ring protecting it; A far simpler display compared to the past, but the truest one. It came from a dream, where I peeled away a mirror made of foil and indium and saw the form past my face. My mask is a crude reconstruction of that starry night, but how can you refine such a lovely smear?
Fear Fear Fear Fear Fear. Low grit. Deep shit. I am not afraid anymore.
Walk.
Walk.
Walk. Talk. No Talk? What? Love? Hug. Love! Hand in hand. Soft. Sandy. Inverted. Tangled.
Words fail. Where words? Miss words. Hi! Wow. Wow! Kiss. Eyes level. Eyes kind. Tea reminds. Brings back it all. [I wish.] Run. Skip. Joy. Happy. Smile with all mouths. Clay rubble is only rubble. Past pragmata. Past ratios. Play. Friends. Happy. Happy. [I wish.] Rest. Leaves. Rustle. Clouds. Love. Love. [Stop. This needs to stop. I am coping. This is pure coping. This is not a thing that happens. I need to stop. I need to stop. I need to stop.]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]No. Even if only one smile smiles wide. Even if the clay and the face are one and not. Even if there's no tea to drink. Love Love Love Love Love. Love is liquid in a cracking jug.
Headlight! Euphone! Cascade! Flourish! Water! Moonlight! Cloudy! Flower! Frustrate! Confound! Shatter! LOVE!!! YOU!!!!!!!!!
The corridors have stopped burning. The ash washed into the soil, and the soil is now bearing stems that may one day flower.
I am doing okay, by the way. I'm just not doing okay in another way.
This is (not) coping.
A lot of my art was used to express my own cabin fever, accrued from a lack of strength to leave the house, and the lack of will to gain the strength. It was a feedback loop of sadness I was too afraid to express. In the style of McArthur Wheeler, I was caking layers of my paint on my face as a new, shitty safety blanket. The paint is poisoning me, I think.
I get to go outside now, and the paint is still poisoning me. Every time I check my website another random hundred or so people visit. I don't know if they're bots, but it at times feels like I've made what should've been a time to pass into a spectacle. Rather than letting the scars fade, I willed that time into a keloid.
I don't think I want to make my art anymore. I've finally gotten a taste of nature and wind and clouds and Her, and GOD... Her, and I don't know if I want to keep up my same old act.
I'm at the the threshhold, the point of attrition between the chariots of sawblades and the lovers who grow back. I am afraid. I am so so afraid of what'll happen when I see Her again. Afraid of the ecstatic joy cracking my facade, like I'm a clay jug scared of its lover's roots and tubules taking form.
Clay covers? adorns? insults? my face. With a symbol written in dry-erase marker, my mask is only capturing stale air and faded smudges from readjusting. The symbol is a gold inner ring, with a green ring protecting it; A far simpler display compared to the past, but the truest one. It came from a dream, where I peeled away a mirror made of foil and indium and saw the form past my face. My mask is a crude reconstruction of that starry night, but how can you refine such a lovely smear?
Fear Fear Fear Fear Fear. Low grit. Deep shit. I am not afraid anymore.
Walk.
Walk.
Walk. Talk. No Talk? What? Love? Hug. Love! Hand in hand. Soft. Sandy. Inverted. Tangled.
Words fail. Where words? Miss words. Hi! Wow. Wow! Kiss. Eyes level. Eyes kind. Tea reminds. Brings back it all. [I wish.] Run. Skip. Joy. Happy. Smile with all mouths. Clay rubble is only rubble. Past pragmata. Past ratios. Play. Friends. Happy. Happy. [I wish.] Rest. Leaves. Rustle. Clouds. Love. Love. [Stop. This needs to stop. I am coping. This is pure coping. This is not a thing that happens. I need to stop. I need to stop. I need to stop.]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]No. Even if only one smile smiles wide. Even if the clay and the face are one and not. Even if there's no tea to drink. Love Love Love Love Love. Love is liquid in a cracking jug.
Headlight! Euphone! Cascade! Flourish! Water! Moonlight! Cloudy! Flower! Frustrate! Confound! Shatter! LOVE!!! YOU!!!!!!!!!
The corridors have stopped burning. The ash washed into the soil, and the soil is now bearing stems that may one day flower.
I am doing okay, by the way. I'm just not doing okay in another way.
This is (not) coping.
how to not be dead anymore
Jun. 20th, 2023 12:45 amHey, boss. I know this is a really bad time, and I know we're all just a week before the deadline, but do you mind if i don't come into work today? I'm dead.
Yep, yep, I know.
Yeah, I just had a really bad night and got stabbed, couldn't make it, you know how it is.
Yeah, don't worry. Don't worry at all. I'm currently taking a skillshare course on DIY necromancy and I should be in ship shape once I figure out how the runes work.
Yeah, thank you.
Oh! Also. Does our insurance cover for more than 3 pints of blood?
Hello?
Yep, yep, I know.
Yeah, I just had a really bad night and got stabbed, couldn't make it, you know how it is.
Yeah, don't worry. Don't worry at all. I'm currently taking a skillshare course on DIY necromancy and I should be in ship shape once I figure out how the runes work.
Yeah, thank you.
Oh! Also. Does our insurance cover for more than 3 pints of blood?
Hello?
(no subject)
May. 23rd, 2023 08:59 pmPlease god let me do something.
Please. Please.
In the beginning, the pages were covered in mud and tar, so only a few words are visible at a time. But from the holes of lucidity and memory, we see aperson tool being fixed. Fixed and fixed through another pit to the stomach and another few minutes to wait for its ears to stop ringing. The answer to a question growing quieter and quieter.
But even when it got so quiet gnats were talking over it, the gnashing maw still closed down. So it became more and more polite. "May I please have seconds?", "Hi, uh... I know you're busy, but why are we going to the park?", "I'm sorry, but I'm lost here; what are the numbers above the numbers called? I just don't know the term, that's all."
The maw chewed softer that week.
And so it was learned! Like a curse twisting the tool's tongue into knots, the final domain was domineered, the neighbourhood, the home, the room, and finally, the mind. Such a good tool!
It was never taught how to remove nails, or measure, or unscrew, otherwise we'd be calling it a hammer, or a screwdriver. But no, it's just our lovely tool. A tool loved, a tool forever.
We eventually gave it means to train itself! And my my, it did it with such fervor and with such panting yelps, that after the year was done it didn't want to do anything! Such a good tool.
Wear and tear came for it, though, and now it catches fire in the afternoon, leaving it to burn in the corner until it's only embers. Don't worry, we have plenty of glue to give itself back its form in the morning. Sure, It never looks the same as yesterday, but that's just variety!
Our tool wants to leave sometime soon, but why? I want to have our lovely little tool here forever. Ours, forever, to hug and place down.
==
I like collaborating. It allows me to measure and screw when my arms grow weaker and weaker with each passing day.
Please. Please.
In the beginning, the pages were covered in mud and tar, so only a few words are visible at a time. But from the holes of lucidity and memory, we see a
But even when it got so quiet gnats were talking over it, the gnashing maw still closed down. So it became more and more polite. "May I please have seconds?", "Hi, uh... I know you're busy, but why are we going to the park?", "I'm sorry, but I'm lost here; what are the numbers above the numbers called? I just don't know the term, that's all."
The maw chewed softer that week.
And so it was learned! Like a curse twisting the tool's tongue into knots, the final domain was domineered, the neighbourhood, the home, the room, and finally, the mind. Such a good tool!
It was never taught how to remove nails, or measure, or unscrew, otherwise we'd be calling it a hammer, or a screwdriver. But no, it's just our lovely tool. A tool loved, a tool forever.
We eventually gave it means to train itself! And my my, it did it with such fervor and with such panting yelps, that after the year was done it didn't want to do anything! Such a good tool.
Wear and tear came for it, though, and now it catches fire in the afternoon, leaving it to burn in the corner until it's only embers. Don't worry, we have plenty of glue to give itself back its form in the morning. Sure, It never looks the same as yesterday, but that's just variety!
Our tool wants to leave sometime soon, but why? I want to have our lovely little tool here forever. Ours, forever, to hug and place down.
==
I like collaborating. It allows me to measure and screw when my arms grow weaker and weaker with each passing day.
I wish I could be AFK
May. 8th, 2023 03:28 pmI've been thinking a lot about vomitdistrict's essay, and in turn, biddyfox's response to said essay. Linked here and here.
The TV gave a bad, but powerful reason to stay inside. An end to your grueling shift gave you an opportunity to experience ultimate, inertial comfort; A time where socialization happens to you, without the labor that comes from talking back. Why wouldn't you skip a few nights at the bar to watch your show? You're exhausted, so why not?
As people stopped attending their local cafe to watch the newest episode or Rawhide, the third place became less and less of a social force. What good are our games of darts if it's now just the two of us?
This left the formation of social groups much, much harder, as people that would normally engage in conversation are now trapped in a loop of exhaustion and exhaustive comfort. It thins groups and condemns even more friends to the same fate - A spreading of social atrophy through the act of crashing.
As the internet came along, the longing never went away. A longing of chatting with your friends festers within you, and entertainment then takes that longing and sates it with talk shows and podcasts. And why wouldn't you watch them? The bar shut down years ago, where else can you go?
We've established the talk show is meant to emulate a friend group, but there's so many facets of socialization that entertainment took with it. Sitting in the park benches with people you'll never talk to, but have given so much. Starting a conversation with a stranger when giving them an extra rice krispy treat that fell in the vending machine. The love and generosity that comes from being in a scene. God, the scene.
What can we even do about this? This slow extinction of the small things? I'm not fully sure. The shutting down of physical spaces is a wound that can't be dressed well, and the internet currently does it especially poorly.
Virtual landscapes, while they have very powerful examples such as VRChat, most of the time only reach towards surface-level recreations of physical reality; A world of tables with nothing on them, beer that you can't drink, and windows with views that never change.
I think this is a serious problem inherent to digital socialization. We try to put reality into the computer, when it should be the other way around. Illegally installed places where you can make information with others. A refashioned ice cream truck that blasts MOD tracker music and is full of detachable computers and sensors, where anyone can make a video game or a book out of cardboard and paper, while drinking a soda taken from the cooler in the back.
We 100% should use very small, cheap computers as a form of graffiti, too! Stealthily install birthday card sound chips in the unused drawer in the bank's bathroom to play stuff from your last noise show. Solar powered connectable servers full of PDFs, bolted behind road signs. NFC cards are literally a dollar each! If we could, we could literally install webpages on bathroom stalls.
Reclaiming socialization means that we need to, in part, reclaim the physical world, whether the landlords like it or not.
There are a few vague ideas that I also want to look into, but I'm not currently knowledgeable enough to tackle those. Sorry. I'll let you know when those are out of the oven.
The TV gave a bad, but powerful reason to stay inside. An end to your grueling shift gave you an opportunity to experience ultimate, inertial comfort; A time where socialization happens to you, without the labor that comes from talking back. Why wouldn't you skip a few nights at the bar to watch your show? You're exhausted, so why not?
As people stopped attending their local cafe to watch the newest episode or Rawhide, the third place became less and less of a social force. What good are our games of darts if it's now just the two of us?
This left the formation of social groups much, much harder, as people that would normally engage in conversation are now trapped in a loop of exhaustion and exhaustive comfort. It thins groups and condemns even more friends to the same fate - A spreading of social atrophy through the act of crashing.
As the internet came along, the longing never went away. A longing of chatting with your friends festers within you, and entertainment then takes that longing and sates it with talk shows and podcasts. And why wouldn't you watch them? The bar shut down years ago, where else can you go?
We've established the talk show is meant to emulate a friend group, but there's so many facets of socialization that entertainment took with it. Sitting in the park benches with people you'll never talk to, but have given so much. Starting a conversation with a stranger when giving them an extra rice krispy treat that fell in the vending machine. The love and generosity that comes from being in a scene. God, the scene.
What can we even do about this? This slow extinction of the small things? I'm not fully sure. The shutting down of physical spaces is a wound that can't be dressed well, and the internet currently does it especially poorly.
Virtual landscapes, while they have very powerful examples such as VRChat, most of the time only reach towards surface-level recreations of physical reality; A world of tables with nothing on them, beer that you can't drink, and windows with views that never change.
I think this is a serious problem inherent to digital socialization. We try to put reality into the computer, when it should be the other way around. Illegally installed places where you can make information with others. A refashioned ice cream truck that blasts MOD tracker music and is full of detachable computers and sensors, where anyone can make a video game or a book out of cardboard and paper, while drinking a soda taken from the cooler in the back.
We 100% should use very small, cheap computers as a form of graffiti, too! Stealthily install birthday card sound chips in the unused drawer in the bank's bathroom to play stuff from your last noise show. Solar powered connectable servers full of PDFs, bolted behind road signs. NFC cards are literally a dollar each! If we could, we could literally install webpages on bathroom stalls.
Reclaiming socialization means that we need to, in part, reclaim the physical world, whether the landlords like it or not.
There are a few vague ideas that I also want to look into, but I'm not currently knowledgeable enough to tackle those. Sorry. I'll let you know when those are out of the oven.
Eat my face off. Give me your face.
Apr. 21st, 2023 09:13 pmI had a very nice conversation with a friend last night, someone who, like me, felt like they were a concept. A thing. This feeling is something that's stuck with me for a long time, and has made looking into therian circles deeply frustrating and isolating.
To me, it's because concepts are so small, so basic, that you can't put your ego in them. It's a defense system from perception.
I'd like to define two things that I personally believe to be true.
There's a lot of empty space in the perception of egos, whether it be another's or our own. So:
Relatability: Filling in your perception of a person with yourself.
Empathy: Letting a person fill your empty spaces with their perception.
You may disagree, but at the time of writing I believe this fully. It articulates an anger I've felt with parasocial relationships.
When we encounter a mysterious, barely documented figure on the internet, we look for more of them. And why do we do that? The thing I've seen most searched for for these mysterious people is their face. They want their face so so bad.
I think the reason why people want to see another's face so bad, is that they want to replace that person's face with their own. To build their empire of recognizability. To have no stone unturned beneath their ego.
I realize that when making art online invites the unfortunate chance that someone is going to think they're my friend, even if I've never met them. Where they'll look for this personal blog, and, in the end, my face. So they can erase it and replace it with theirs.
If you've found this blog post, and I don't know you, and you know the person behind these posts without my permission: Hi! You're carrying a disease. A disease that emboldens your ego to meet everybody, whether they want you to or not.
It animates your hands to search for OSINT terms, and it itches your eyes for more. More intimacy, more kisses, more blood to drink. You're so parched, dear. Do you think you might have cholera?
To me, it's because concepts are so small, so basic, that you can't put your ego in them. It's a defense system from perception.
I'd like to define two things that I personally believe to be true.
There's a lot of empty space in the perception of egos, whether it be another's or our own. So:
Relatability: Filling in your perception of a person with yourself.
Empathy: Letting a person fill your empty spaces with their perception.
You may disagree, but at the time of writing I believe this fully. It articulates an anger I've felt with parasocial relationships.
When we encounter a mysterious, barely documented figure on the internet, we look for more of them. And why do we do that? The thing I've seen most searched for for these mysterious people is their face. They want their face so so bad.
I think the reason why people want to see another's face so bad, is that they want to replace that person's face with their own. To build their empire of recognizability. To have no stone unturned beneath their ego.
I realize that when making art online invites the unfortunate chance that someone is going to think they're my friend, even if I've never met them. Where they'll look for this personal blog, and, in the end, my face. So they can erase it and replace it with theirs.
If you've found this blog post, and I don't know you, and you know the person behind these posts without my permission: Hi! You're carrying a disease. A disease that emboldens your ego to meet everybody, whether they want you to or not.
It animates your hands to search for OSINT terms, and it itches your eyes for more. More intimacy, more kisses, more blood to drink. You're so parched, dear. Do you think you might have cholera?
Cut never, measure forever.
Apr. 17th, 2023 03:47 amHi. I'm not really used to writing outside of instant messaging, so this is going to be new to me.
A patch of quicksand I continuously sink in is the idea of transaction: builder of the false self and the destroyer of empathy. It turns the closest connections you could have with another into RPG stats. A layer of unreality that slowly fades out actual reality in a fade to black. It feels like frostbite. A slow falling into the self, the core, with all things that reach the outside world withering and falling away. Combatted only with warmth. Warmth that brings bright, bubbling agony, but survival. Thank god that hurt fades.
That agony is a lot like a game of whack-a-mole, but with an axe. The moles pop up forever, but the axe leaves marks that last. So the longer the game goes, the more the moles look less like moles. They're transformed into gored, grotesque icons of themselves, infused with violence and fatigue. Disconnection of disconnection of disconnection of... well, at some point there was being a bad person, but I can't see it well anymore. Wait. Where am I?
I'm in my chair. Staring at a text file titled "new 1". It's 9:58 PM, 3 hours later than I thought. Around me is indistinguishable from yesterday's surroundings. A footprint on reality so thin, it'll be wiped away with tomorrow. I wonder what all this aching is even for. I'm going to go make some peanut butter toast; I'll be back.
I'm back with peanut butter toast. Peanut butter toast is fucking delicious. It has a very unique soft crunch to it and a very mellow, but rich taste of peanuts that mixes well with the toast. It's so good, in fact, that I've realized how ridiculous this post even is. So instead of attacking my ghosts, I'm going to instead talk about the buildings that need to be destroyed.
Productivity youtube will leave a deep, infected wound onto the minds of young men. A wound where approaching every friend, every partner, and every Arby's cashier will make the phrase "What can you do for me?" scream and scream itself, pounding on the inner walls of one's skull.
Self optimization abstracts, quantifies, and in turn distorts the experience of growing as a person, so much so that there's an entire website for it, originally called HabitRPG. The establishment of habit-based systems is like rules for a game, so much so there's apps upon apps like HabitRPG.
It works at a point, and then you become a hobbyist. A person so transfixed on the ever-shifting, ever-nebulous "goals" and micromanaging every 15 minute chunks they have to maximize growth, to the point where "High density fun" isn't a hyperbolic punchline in that person's mind.
I deeply worry for those youths. They're slowly distancing themselves from unscheduled, unrestrained play in the name of prescribing themselves maximizers upon maximizers, never experiencing the quietness of dead time (Even then, dead time is only accessed if it's for their daily 20-minute meditation session they feel scared not to do.)
The worst bit of irony is that it builds into a deep fear of actually doing, the whole reason why productivity systems exist. The measuring and repeated measuring and never ending with a cut. I would laugh if it wasn't for their tired, scared faces.
We try everything to get a foothold in this world, a place where corporations try their damndest to maximize the 5 or so verbs we have to do. Desperation builds and, well, we might at some point treat ourselves like both a corporation and it's employee, just to get ahead.
I can't say the rest, and you know why.
A patch of quicksand I continuously sink in is the idea of transaction: builder of the false self and the destroyer of empathy. It turns the closest connections you could have with another into RPG stats. A layer of unreality that slowly fades out actual reality in a fade to black. It feels like frostbite. A slow falling into the self, the core, with all things that reach the outside world withering and falling away. Combatted only with warmth. Warmth that brings bright, bubbling agony, but survival. Thank god that hurt fades.
That agony is a lot like a game of whack-a-mole, but with an axe. The moles pop up forever, but the axe leaves marks that last. So the longer the game goes, the more the moles look less like moles. They're transformed into gored, grotesque icons of themselves, infused with violence and fatigue. Disconnection of disconnection of disconnection of... well, at some point there was being a bad person, but I can't see it well anymore. Wait. Where am I?
I'm in my chair. Staring at a text file titled "new 1". It's 9:58 PM, 3 hours later than I thought. Around me is indistinguishable from yesterday's surroundings. A footprint on reality so thin, it'll be wiped away with tomorrow. I wonder what all this aching is even for. I'm going to go make some peanut butter toast; I'll be back.
I'm back with peanut butter toast. Peanut butter toast is fucking delicious. It has a very unique soft crunch to it and a very mellow, but rich taste of peanuts that mixes well with the toast. It's so good, in fact, that I've realized how ridiculous this post even is. So instead of attacking my ghosts, I'm going to instead talk about the buildings that need to be destroyed.
Productivity youtube will leave a deep, infected wound onto the minds of young men. A wound where approaching every friend, every partner, and every Arby's cashier will make the phrase "What can you do for me?" scream and scream itself, pounding on the inner walls of one's skull.
Self optimization abstracts, quantifies, and in turn distorts the experience of growing as a person, so much so that there's an entire website for it, originally called HabitRPG. The establishment of habit-based systems is like rules for a game, so much so there's apps upon apps like HabitRPG.
It works at a point, and then you become a hobbyist. A person so transfixed on the ever-shifting, ever-nebulous "goals" and micromanaging every 15 minute chunks they have to maximize growth, to the point where "High density fun" isn't a hyperbolic punchline in that person's mind.
I deeply worry for those youths. They're slowly distancing themselves from unscheduled, unrestrained play in the name of prescribing themselves maximizers upon maximizers, never experiencing the quietness of dead time (Even then, dead time is only accessed if it's for their daily 20-minute meditation session they feel scared not to do.)
The worst bit of irony is that it builds into a deep fear of actually doing, the whole reason why productivity systems exist. The measuring and repeated measuring and never ending with a cut. I would laugh if it wasn't for their tired, scared faces.
We try everything to get a foothold in this world, a place where corporations try their damndest to maximize the 5 or so verbs we have to do. Desperation builds and, well, we might at some point treat ourselves like both a corporation and it's employee, just to get ahead.
I can't say the rest, and you know why.
