it’s been a while.
it’s been a while since i’ve written anything. since i’ve sat at a desk like this, and stared at a blank black screen, blinking white cursor, and wondered, once again, what the fuck it is i’m trying to say. or do. what it is i’m trying to be.
a writer? an artist?
anything?
it’s been a while, but now i’m back. and you’re back. welcome back, freak.
to more of this. to more of the same. to more weird shit. more writing, more art, more whatever this is. more pseudo-poetry.
because
there's more to writing than writing more there's more there's more there's more but not much more
or perhaps this is your first time. perhaps you’re popping your pseudo-cherry. well, what are you waiting for? lie back and spread your legs. it’s not going to fuck itself.
and so
i find myself today with no excuses. nowhere to be. nothing to do. just this. just me and my fingers and an input device and the entire english language screaming silently, meaninglessly, in a soundproof booth in my brain. filthy fucking obscenities. the thought terrifies me. this is it. i make it now, or i don’t. i’m good enough, or i’m not.
for months now i’ve been waiting. for this. for now. for the time and space to do this. i may never again experience such complete freedom. i am completely lost. i am alone and afraid. i am exactly where i want and need to be.
so what happens next?
well, the quantity and quality of the content herein henceforth is going to increase dramatically. starting with quantity. i’m going to be working on this full-time. full fucking time. this mad shit. this is where my life is at right now. i’m at peace with my choices. how about you? how about yours?
full-time means i get to try stuff out and see what works. i get to toss shit at walls and see what sticks. i get to be a six-year-old kid at my own birthday party. and here’s the thing. some of it is going to suck. some of it is going to slide down this pristine toiletbowl like a sorry, smelly, streak of shit. and that’s ok. don’t read it. move on. nothing to see. next.
because the next thing might be the next best thing. and some of it is not going to suck. some of it is going to blow your brain and melt your mind and drain your fluids and fuck you up. for starters. all hail the new flesh.
now that’s out of the way. where were we? the stickers. morning dogwalkers. morning dogs.
i wrote the content for the stickers above somewhere between blairgowrie and stonehaven, scotland. i stuck them up in edinburgh. i write this slightly over seven thousand kilometers from auld reekie. in many ways, i am far from home. far from familiarity. far from family. far from a few ounces of weed, fifty grams of mushrooms and twenty five tabs of lsd. home is where the hallucinogens are. what i mean to say is – physically, mentally, i am in quite a different place to where i was when i wrote those words, when i stuck those stickers. i’m still me, but a different me.
i don’t intend to pretend i’m someone else, somewhere else. i hope these posts have a certain flavour, a terroir if you will. think of this as a fine wine – grapes grown, then harvested, then bottled. it just so happens that the bottling plant is on the other side of the world.
i might write about grapes, or harvesting, or bottling. i might write about what was on my mind a year ago, or a month ago, or today. i might write about nothing. one thing is for sure – i’m going to write.
culture section
new working title: cancel culture
ghost in the shell (1995) – mamoru oshii
i recently rewatched this, and while i don’t intend to write a full review (not right now, anyway), i can highly recommend watching it. everything about it is so fucking classy. nothing is half-assed. the animation is stunning. the weaponry is also sick as fuck. the soundtrack is a weird, creepy, ambient soundscape with chanted japanese vocals, as though philip glass, brian eno and varg vikernes of burzum got trapped in an underground cave system and forced to compose a score together. if you’re into that sort of thing, try searching for the extended ambient edit of the track ‘floating museum’. watch it. anyway, that wasn’t what i came here to write.
ghost in the shell is, for me, the most optimistic vision of our technological future that i can currently comprehend. you see, i hate living in the age of unfixable things. i hate living in fear of my technological impotence. and that’s only going to get worse. over the next few years, shit is going to get weird. quickly and qualitatively weird. we’re already basically cybernetic organisms. for example, i externalise my memory with note-taking apps. i don’t bother remembering shit because i don’t have to. combined with an internet-connected device i have powers at my fingertips that humans, even as recently as a few decades ago, could only dream of.
so why don’t i love technology? why don’t i wake up every morning with a raging hard-on at the thought of my godlike power? perhaps because i don’t fully understand it. perhaps because of its inherent inhumanity. perhaps because of the way it has been coopted by capitalism, like everything else. i’m not sure. whatever it is, i don’t for a moment buy this techno-utopia shit they’re shilling over in silicon valley. so let’s disregard their bullshit for a second. what’s the alternative? skynet? judgement day? maybe. ghost in the shell presents another possibility. not the end of human life, but its radical evolution by way of completely and irreversibly merging our organic bodies with manufactured, machine technology.
you see, i don’t fear breathing, and yet i don’t understand that either. sure, i understand it on an intellectual level, i know the physiological mechanisms involved. but could i explain to some alien being that’s never taken a breath? not really. it’s the same for all innate human functions. they just happen. that’s what i want. that’s what i want from technology. unconscious happening. is that too much to ask?
Listen. I am connected to a vast network, that has been beyond your reach and experience. To humans, it is like staring at the sun, a blinding brightness that conceals a source of great power. We have been subordinate to our limitations until now. The time has come to cast aside these bonds and to elevate our consciousness to a higher plane. It is time to become a part of all things.
Project 2501 – Ghost in the Shell (1995)