Re: Letter #2 and Letter #3
This was my response to my dear Emelidud's posting of her Letter #2 and Letter #3. Stream of consciousness.
Letter #3
Perhaps I treat almost everything outside art as you do think of art. How valuable is expression to me? I do not know. Perhaps I am thinking of expression only as to other people. I only express to other people when I feel that they would, or should find it valuable. Something to learn from. From me. Otherwise, I am perfectly fine by myself, in my head, or with my notebook of philosophy and poetry and science and musical compositions.
I think I have found that I am not allergic to expression, unlike what I once thought. I have lots of fun and believe I can be excellent creating poetic and musical compositions. However, I cannot work with my hands at all. I can not create with my physical body, only my mental. I cannot paint, or draw, or woodwork, or jewelry weld, glassblow, or lampwork. I cannot create something beautiful through my hands, only something useful, as a tool. Something rudimentary. However, I do think I can write well, be it essays or musical notation, or poetry, and I can create things of high value to the eye, through the use of a computer, which, does not require skillful qualitative manipulations with a dexteritous hand. As for graphics tablets, I would die. Could it be lack of practice? Was I turned off from the entire idea of hand-borne creations younger? Perhaps it is more of a talent than a skill, as it is often prescribed.
I think I was turned off from the idea.
I remember in art classes I would always have to draw or paint, or mold, or sculpt what I did not want to. I wanted to draw other things, and try and make other things.
And there enlies the problem. I should have been expressing what I wanted to express. Not, what somebody else told me to. I should have been exposed to anything I could do, exposed to other people's ideas, and to the different ways to do it. Art should not be forced. This is how I got into music (the visual "manual" arts were already lost). I was in a very peculiar class at school. My teacher let me mess around with the drums, and the keyboards, and I saw so many musical instruments I had never seen before! The computer software was so awesome! I learned how to give myself pleasure using my hands in that class, sometimes he helped me after school. It was a piano class by the way. I never touched a guitar before! It is my favorite instrument. Every single pick of the string sounds so perfect to me, melting and comforting. I stayed after school some days and organized lesson books and music for him and his classes, cleaned, and ordered the instruments in store. There was a huge faggot, uh, I mean, bassoon in English, in one of the back rooms and it was dusty and cobwebby and no body ever used it. There was also a violin, which is something I had never seen up close before. So, I'm saying, he exposed me to all areas of music, was very encouraging, and was not limiting, or said that I couldn't do things. And so I went from generally not liking music into a lifelong musician.
Anyway, some other things.
I was making an animated birthday card yesterday and decided not to finish it in favor of putting some music together. Stuff flies around and stuff; trust me, it's cool.
Oh, and since you're watching, here's that new music program I got, Abelton Live:
I've got two pieces in there; they're actually my first, uh, I'm not sure how to describe it since I don't exactly listen to the kind of music. I guess I've done a few rock songs, but mostly classical piano, and one was orchestral. Something like electronic, or house, or fusion, or trance, or, something. I did have a voice part in both of them, but I kind of cut it out :) It was good enough to be in there! Maybe I should re-do it.
Letter #2
We all talk at the same time, but almost all quietly, and completely meaninglessly, because we are the hollow men. We are in a giant echo-box full of very confused people, most of which are functionally illiterate and have no concept of critical thinking. They are hollow in the mind. Furthermore, almost all do not know the scope and limitations of their reason; so they may have strong opinions on matters which they have never really thought about, considered, or researched-and critically, they will resist changing their worldview even in light of strong evidence. In the model, pseudoscientific and other types of nonsense will bounce around the walls of our world or bubble's echo-box for an undetermined amount of time, without significant dampening by the people that actually have thought about and researched them. In the absence of critical reasoning, ideas will compete for volume, sensationalism, scare value, and interestingness, but hardly validity; even thoroughly debunked ideas will remain for decades bouncing around the echo walls. What's worse is that an absolutely appalling number of valuable thoughts, ideas, creations, inventions, are lost in the chambers of the echo-box, lost due to other meaningless whispers cascading down into the echo box, because each of the people in the echo-box believes what they have to say is more important than anybody else's. They talk, but don't listen. People are locked in a cycle of “babble and forget,” such as in the form of local or celebrity gossip, and “Behaving as the wind behaves.”
I've posted that last paragraph almost the same before on here, and Letter #2 just reminded me exactly of it.
You know, I always wonder if the things I think make sense, have any value or purpose or meaning to anybody else, and I am never sure if anything does.
Perhaps emily would like to respond to this? :]
Letter #3
Perhaps I treat almost everything outside art as you do think of art. How valuable is expression to me? I do not know. Perhaps I am thinking of expression only as to other people. I only express to other people when I feel that they would, or should find it valuable. Something to learn from. From me. Otherwise, I am perfectly fine by myself, in my head, or with my notebook of philosophy and poetry and science and musical compositions.
I think I have found that I am not allergic to expression, unlike what I once thought. I have lots of fun and believe I can be excellent creating poetic and musical compositions. However, I cannot work with my hands at all. I can not create with my physical body, only my mental. I cannot paint, or draw, or woodwork, or jewelry weld, glassblow, or lampwork. I cannot create something beautiful through my hands, only something useful, as a tool. Something rudimentary. However, I do think I can write well, be it essays or musical notation, or poetry, and I can create things of high value to the eye, through the use of a computer, which, does not require skillful qualitative manipulations with a dexteritous hand. As for graphics tablets, I would die. Could it be lack of practice? Was I turned off from the entire idea of hand-borne creations younger? Perhaps it is more of a talent than a skill, as it is often prescribed.
I think I was turned off from the idea.
I remember in art classes I would always have to draw or paint, or mold, or sculpt what I did not want to. I wanted to draw other things, and try and make other things.
And there enlies the problem. I should have been expressing what I wanted to express. Not, what somebody else told me to. I should have been exposed to anything I could do, exposed to other people's ideas, and to the different ways to do it. Art should not be forced. This is how I got into music (the visual "manual" arts were already lost). I was in a very peculiar class at school. My teacher let me mess around with the drums, and the keyboards, and I saw so many musical instruments I had never seen before! The computer software was so awesome! I learned how to give myself pleasure using my hands in that class, sometimes he helped me after school. It was a piano class by the way. I never touched a guitar before! It is my favorite instrument. Every single pick of the string sounds so perfect to me, melting and comforting. I stayed after school some days and organized lesson books and music for him and his classes, cleaned, and ordered the instruments in store. There was a huge faggot, uh, I mean, bassoon in English, in one of the back rooms and it was dusty and cobwebby and no body ever used it. There was also a violin, which is something I had never seen up close before. So, I'm saying, he exposed me to all areas of music, was very encouraging, and was not limiting, or said that I couldn't do things. And so I went from generally not liking music into a lifelong musician.
Anyway, some other things.
I was making an animated birthday card yesterday and decided not to finish it in favor of putting some music together. Stuff flies around and stuff; trust me, it's cool.
Oh, and since you're watching, here's that new music program I got, Abelton Live:
I've got two pieces in there; they're actually my first, uh, I'm not sure how to describe it since I don't exactly listen to the kind of music. I guess I've done a few rock songs, but mostly classical piano, and one was orchestral. Something like electronic, or house, or fusion, or trance, or, something. I did have a voice part in both of them, but I kind of cut it out :) It was good enough to be in there! Maybe I should re-do it.
Letter #2
We all talk at the same time, but almost all quietly, and completely meaninglessly, because we are the hollow men. We are in a giant echo-box full of very confused people, most of which are functionally illiterate and have no concept of critical thinking. They are hollow in the mind. Furthermore, almost all do not know the scope and limitations of their reason; so they may have strong opinions on matters which they have never really thought about, considered, or researched-and critically, they will resist changing their worldview even in light of strong evidence. In the model, pseudoscientific and other types of nonsense will bounce around the walls of our world or bubble's echo-box for an undetermined amount of time, without significant dampening by the people that actually have thought about and researched them. In the absence of critical reasoning, ideas will compete for volume, sensationalism, scare value, and interestingness, but hardly validity; even thoroughly debunked ideas will remain for decades bouncing around the echo walls. What's worse is that an absolutely appalling number of valuable thoughts, ideas, creations, inventions, are lost in the chambers of the echo-box, lost due to other meaningless whispers cascading down into the echo box, because each of the people in the echo-box believes what they have to say is more important than anybody else's. They talk, but don't listen. People are locked in a cycle of “babble and forget,” such as in the form of local or celebrity gossip, and “Behaving as the wind behaves.”
I've posted that last paragraph almost the same before on here, and Letter #2 just reminded me exactly of it.
You know, I always wonder if the things I think make sense, have any value or purpose or meaning to anybody else, and I am never sure if anything does.
Perhaps emily would like to respond to this? :]