Listening: NIN
Enjoying: thinking about art, really

Something I jotted down last night...

I'm not afraid of dying, I'm afraid of dying before I do anything.

I'm not afraid of being forgotten, I'm afraid of never being remembered.

I'm not afraid of being hated, I'm afraid I won't be loved.

I'm not afraid of being alone, I'm afraid of having no friends.


I'm not much of a writer. I think I can be decent with words but I'm pretty weak on new ideas and things. But still I might find myself moved to try and write something, write a story, come up with a poem and set down and make it good. I don't tend to get far. I'm a much better critic than writer.

Even when I just write for myself I feel like apologizing and I don't quite know why. It makes sense when I write here and I know I've invited people to observe, I feel I have to keep things entertaining and sensible. It's maybe not the best way to think of keeping a journal but it's what goes through my head.

It's just that some sensations pound at me from within and I want to share them. Sort of. I don't know. I want to know if anyone else feels like this or I want to know if anyone else "gets" it and can tell me what to do. Which is silly. I'm not you and you're not me and while I'm not always very good at this I try not to give advice when I can tell that one of you is coming from and going to a different place than I am. I don't like to be told to cheer up and I can't imagine you enjoy being told to just switch your persepective and you'll be ok.

This is where Nobody comes in. If I could just tell you things, real things (as far as my reality is concerned) without worrying about interpretation or motive or desire for any interaction, then maybe I could set things down like the good writers I know. I could just spin a story that might be a fiction but you can be sure it would never be a lie. But I'm bad at it. Essentially I want that interaction, I want the give and take. I want to know that you're alive out there and hopefully paying attention.

I feel kind of vain and narcissistic writing that down and reading it back. It can't be much more than anyone else with a published journal so it hardly seems like something unhealthy or wrong. It just strikes me that I want to drag your attention to things that matter to me for a just a little bit. And in a way, maybe, that's what many artists seek when they choose to let their artwork be viewed. At least this might be specific to artists who work with the specificity of language and with the body as the artistic instrument, again specifically to those of us dedicated to the veritas of theatre or film. The less specific the art is (and in this I include listening to songs in an unknown language - not the music, just the words, be they in German, Latin or some other language unknown to the listener), the more abstract the pull the audience from a preconcieved notion and into the thematic point of view of the piece. When we're talking about artwork made of people or images of identifiably humanoid creatures we key in more easily. From Tim Robbins standing up in The Shawshank Redemption to recieve the rain in his first minute of freedom, to Rodin's The Thinker to Edvard Munch's The Scream we can see and know the sentiment involved instinctively.

The less specific something is to a whole human person the more we make it up with it's shape and theme. Obviously, other forms of art affect us on an important level. Music, photography, a story told over a campfire, even high end meals that are culinary events can and regularly do bring us to some understanding of a communal self. In that moment, right then when we start tapping a foot to the beat, or look at a picture and can smell the air on the other side of the lense or hold our breath to better hear the storyteller our priorities have been moved. They've been affected permanantly and for just a second we would see the world from eyes that are not quite our own.

Grandiose perhaps, but I think it's the oldest instinct that humans have in socializing. We're constantly checking with each other on our individual conditions trying to see if what we're going through is common, if anyone has found a better situtation or at least some remedy to alleviate the negatives of a given condition. It's our instinct to tell each other about our days, our troubles, our hopes and everything else. It then follows, I think, that this is why we also listen for any likeness and stick by those with whom we can identify. We won't be similar to our friends, necessarily, but our friends will be people who we can listen to and feel like there is an understanding. What I mean is you and I may have wildly different goals in life and may disagree on a great deal of things but we present ourselves to each other in such a way that we each of us manages to escape our point of view from inside our skulls for just a moment and try on (something like) the other's POV for just a second.

anyway...rambling over.