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[fivebyfive]

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
You don't know yet what you are...

*

This may call for a proper introduction.

I'm...
Speeding along Wilshire, through Westwood, he drives a small, sleek Mercedes convertible. Or maybe it's a BMW. Does it matter? It screams STATUS. It screams "I've got it!" at the top of its lungs, and whispers "...And you don

Comments

[asindreams]

This entry would indicate that you perceive yourself only in the context of how others perceive you. Or at least that you used to. If this is the case, a change in that is never a bad one. This seems to be a near-universal affliction of the creative in our generation (see Jan below). We were instructed as children to be snowflakes and stars and butterflies, but we've grown up into a society where that's inherently squashed and questioned and doubted. Does it take that much thought to conclude that adults these days fucking hate us?

To some extent this afflicts all generations/kids, but even the News calls us the "most narcissistic generation" ever. So there's that. I know that's horrifically subjective (and potentially insulting if I didn't group myself in that category) but it highlights a condition of our times. Hell, the mere fact that some old geezer scientists gathered for the SOLE PURPOSE of telling us how much we scientifically suck should be evidence enough that the Old are completely and utterly committed to destroying the Young, with extreme prejudice. Fucking abortionists, the lot of them! And that's a kind term compared to what most people in Hollywood deserve.

Likewise, we were thoroughbred and stabled for four years at USC, which has bred some nice horses before but has little leeway in picking winners - much less teaching horses how to run properly. All puerile horse jokes completely aside, things like "ordinary" or "special" or "average" are entirely fruitless endeavours to explore. All these things you're talking about are, in the end, only on the outside looking in. Inside looking out is where whatever "you" there is resides, and it doesn't take a red bracelet or an E-meter or any sense of spirituality at all to find that. Ever wonder why so many voraciously creative folk get suckered into believing all that shit? We're all looking for some goddamn ground to stand on, Chris, that doesn't make us failures or frauds or phonies. Everyone who's had their heartstrings tugged by a film has bought into fraud! You have to parse your fakery very carefully. We're not fallacious people or artists, Chris, we just work in a fake and fallacious business. You just THOUGHT your teachers weren't hungover, ho ho ho. With a horrific nerd like me in a classroom, half my teachers were probably shooting up just out of eyeshot. The Old never have any fucking idea what's going on, and the only thing scarier than that is that when some young Whippersnapper thinks he's got a clue. It's enough to drive anyone to rum, sodomy, and the lash. It's a joke, but these things actually happen to people who never learn to be their own masters. As kids we're students, we deliberately exculpate ourselves of true independence. And when we get it most of us have no clue how to handle it.

Navigating all of this requires some amount of intuition and some amount of experience. NEVER give up on your Intuition when godawful Trial and Error rears its nasty razor-sharp teeth. They're two halves of the creative drive, and both are necessary for any holistic artistic success. If you're in it for the art, Chris, if you're in it for the story (which you are or at least were, I know you that much) then being a star or being a loser doesn't actually touch or intersect any of that other shit. Even when it seems like the fact that I know I suck is going to make me suck, I've learned to concentrate on the story - and I always surprise myself in the end. That's all that perception is, a bit of surprise or disappointment - and paradoxically, like all good things, the story is the reality to the storyteller.

(All of which was a long way of explaining that you'll either get over it or choose not to.)

[fivebyfive]

I do often see myself the way others see me. I base a lot on it. I think about it a lot...too much. I also think I'm better than most at knowing what people are thinking about me...which can be crippling. If you know what people think of you, there's little drive to be anything more.

But this entry actually indicates a different perception of myself. Me as a character. When I talk about the perception of being ordinary, or a star, it's not seeing it through the eyes of other people much, but seeing it through the eyes of the (bing bing!) narrator, a cosmic judge. Which is also me. I see myself as something I created and yet can't quite control, perhaps not unlike a parent. I'm responsible for it but not always in control of it. Sure, I control my actions, but I'm unable to make the story go where I want it to. Still, when it happens, I see it as a story. Manufactured, with the pieces fitting together no matter how jagged. I see themes and character arcs, sections divided into chapters, events accompanied by particular music. The problem now, I guess, is that the character me has disappointed the narrator me, unable to live up to the story he's trying to tell.

I think about getting over it. Letting go. I've tried somewhat, but the result isn't me anymore. I lose anything that interests me about myself. You're right about this generation of narcissists...I just read a really interesting article in New York Magazine that had some interesting things to say about us. I think it was called "Say Everything..." I recommend it. I'm pretty sure whatever is going on with us right now, it's the result of something people will be saying, "Whoops!" about in the future. I think it really is a problem when a lot of capable people are being wasted when they could be doing much more. And yes, shitty jobs do give us skills that we wouldn't otherwise learn if we just shot straight to the top, and most who do crash and burn. But there should be some happy medium where we don't totally hate ourselves, or our lives, or the people around us, or all three. I don't think that's entirely healthy.

But what do I know?

[asindreams]

I just realized that part of it is that our parents were hippies who rebelled in young adulthood against the shitty repressive 50's - they thought they could prevent their comparative "slavedrivers" from cracking the whip. Upon the crushing defeat of the hippie spirit and political movement in the late 60's came the new conservatism - the Reagan conservative, and then the neoconservative - all of which are based on unfounded optimism (hippie leftover much?) and the flipside of free love: unending greed. Our parents, now baby boomers, still had the desire for us to transcend and swim where they went under, but they "learned" from the mega-profits of the 80s and the same in the 90s that success could only come from the individual. Think about it - we're taught to be not just snowflakes, but individual snowflakes. What was "teamwork" is now most often outright ignoring, and what was "sportsmanship" is now the perfunctory handshake after beating the shit out of someone. Competition is the watchword, and you better watch out if you lose, Bubba!

This is going to figure into my eventual earth-shattering Philosophy of the Endtimes, but that's all I can congeal in my brain about it now. More Hunter S. Thompson and significantly more weed will be required to formulate a fully cogent overlying thesis. I've actually thought about holding a conference. On my generation, not on weed. Although...

Oh, and I'll add this: our parents insisted it was the drugs that caused all the mental illness arising from their and their parents' respective fuck-uppings (hence the utterly failed War On Them), but they've got news coming. I'm thinking at this point that even if humanity physically survives the next 50 years without nuclear holocaust (so not kidding), society will have to be entirely different. The world barely handled 1 billion elderly people. It certainly won't take 6 billion. We are literally being driven insane.

[fivebyfive]

It always surprises me what people respond to in these entries. It's rarely what I expect them to. People seem to hang on to certain things I say and ignore other parts. The majority of this entry isn't even about me, and I think only one response even mentioned that. I'm pretty sure no one understands what this is really about, even though at the last moment I decided to add a few things that spell it out. I would be interested to see if anyone did pick up on anything.

What also may not be clear is that I choose a theme for the entries and my writing revolves around that. I explore that. What I write is how I feel, but not all I feel. I could just as easily write something else contradictory tomorrow. It's less of a world view and more like, here's what I'm thinking today. I have a lot of other feelings on the same topics that I don't always write about. But they're there.

My Dad, I guess, a little hippe-esque (though born a little late). My Mom wasn't though, she might as well have been a child of the previous generation. In ways. That article I mentioned had a surprisingly positive outlook on "kids these days" and suggests that maybe it's really healthy for us to be airing our lives on YouTube, in blogs, etc. That we'll become a more open and accepting generation that doesn't get phased so easily. Most of what you hear about all this is negative "what is the world coming to" type stuff, so it was refreshing to read an article that thought about all the benefits a society might have when we grow up to become adults who are comfortable sharing rather intimate details in our lives. It mentions LiveJournal and since I did start this in high school, I definitely feel like I was a part of that, I started doing this before blogs were very common, and I have obviously used this forum to share some fairly personal information.

In fact I think I'll probably post a link to it and write something about that.