Today is a day of protest, allegedly against an administration aiming to attack an ample guardian of the internet. Which means there’s a thing in the US government stopping big corporations from making exclusivity a thing on the internet. For me and Radio Reality City, this would mean I could get crossed out of the internet as a whole thanks to me supporting my own website. If I’m not big enough or cozy enough to get in with an ISP, this site is history.
All that means is that I get to participate in what meager slacktivism I can by calling the FCC and putting what I did on the front page today. Hopefully I’ll remember to post a screenshot of that here.
So it might be back to printing after all if this adorable president who thinks he’s hiding all this business with the Russians can’t wrangle a reason as to why this whole internet thing is a big deal. A lot of people seem to think he did it. He denies it. There is evidence that he did it. Lots of it. Being tweeted by his son. And there’s a chance net neutrality will die because of this man. Fucking excellent. The only thing that’ll change is that more people will be mad. I love it, and I’ll love it even more when our president and his brood can’t tweet anymore because a different ISP has the rights to it.
So slacktivism it is for me, because I can’t do anything on my own. At least I’m not holding a sign up in the middle of traffic, blocking the infrastructure.
I feel like I’m edging closer and closer to contacting someone I really really don’t want to get into contact with. Do you as an artist ever put yourself in a situation for the sole purpose of knowing there will be something made from the moment? That is basically what drives me. It really really bites to sit and slow down, only to wallow in memories long dead and long made. What use is in remembering if not immortalization? Why do we create if not to cement something with meaning?
How many times must I make art of the same moment for it to have more meaning with everything combined? There might be something to that. Create so much that the creations themselves make memories. How incredibly flowery of a way to put it. Man, it’s like I’m a writer or something.
That’s fucking meta.
Off of that thought, I’ve REALLY slowed down on the poetry. This happens every summer and it really sucks. As I said in the last journal, it’s so much easier to write in an environment where the only other stimuli are slightly less interesting than the notebook I’m writing in. That doesn’t happen in the summer.
Once again, Skyrim is making that difficult. Now Overwatch is, as well.
Point is, in the summer it seems as if I’m surrounded by things that are all barely more interesting than my own thoughts. Like popcorn movies, I just sit back and tune out of myself and focus on things that don’t matter, like why that Genji keeps running away from me shouting “I need healing” while I’m Lucio and trying to track him down.
I tend to binge on games, but I don’t own any that are low stress. Rainbow Six, For Honor, Skyrim, Overwatch, and to an extent Mirror’s Edge are all pretty damn high stress experiences. You have to pay attention more to the game than be concerned about a notebook sitting beside you. It sucks because that means it becomes more interesting, and you’re focusing too much on the macro of the game and nothing else.
If I had to pick an ideal environment to write in, it would have to be my own room. I’d have to set the scene: incense burning, lights that react to the music playing on my stereo, window slightly open to let a breeze in.
In practice, my ideal environment has been a classroom where other (argueably more important yet less interesting) things are going on. That’s where I’ve done a bulk of my stuff.
At least for poetry, that’s how it goes.
For fiction, I’m on my laptop typing away like I am now. Usually bursts of pages at a time, but not much more than 10 if I can help it. I do more pages per hour if I’m working on a non-fiction essay or something similar.
I think for Labels and War Pigeons, it took me a good two hours to crank that out from start to finish. Interviewey/journalistic type stuff has never been my strong suit. I’m good at expressing myself, but I feel like expressing others is a little tacky. Even if it is in quotes.
Would you rather speak or be spoken for? This circles me back around to net neutrality. It’s much better to do something in your own words than to copy/paste or not say it at all because someone has “said it better”.
A lot of people really need to see that they should be proud of the things that they do because they do them. It’s something. It’s better to wake up every day sucking in harsh breaths but being happy to be alive than to be all depressed and mope like there’s no tomorrow.
Back in middle and high school, being depressed was in fashion. All the RAWR :3 gurls definitely had something to do with that. It was meant to be a character flaw, relatable, that anyone could come up and be asked “you okay?” It evoked sympathy for the sake of it, not because there was actually something up or something of substance behind it.
We were born depressed because it’s what made us want to talk to each other. Now it’s even more in fashion as the reality of life summits and there really is a reason to be depressed with the horrible state of the world and all that.
Take after the Comedian from Watchmen! Have some fun with your grief and your sadness, take your tiredness and your ire and smile, not because you have to, but because it’s all just a big joke when you get down to it. Not even a giant meteor wants to touch this planet, and I wouldn’t blame it.
This journal’s excerpt is from an as of yet untitled poem:
“A choking sawdust
Mixed together
With the rust
Of negligence
Bitter taste
Of blood iron”
This one is about a certain aura in the air that evokes something most sinister. That something sinister is a very tangible thing, but my metaphors aren’t just in poems. This frustrates the candid.
Lately I’ve been listening to feelgood music to curb this very real summer depression that I’m encountering again. Pink Guy’s “Kill Yourself” and “STFU” work wonders to bring my mood up!
So enjoy this blackout. This greenout of summer blues that infects the idle with fatigue. Slacktivism, unproductivity, wasted time.
Wasted time enjoyed is not wasted time, says John Lennon. I tend to agree.
If you’re reading this, you know who you are when I say I miss you.
Get out there! You’ll be depressed and like it!
Consume Reality! 