Special Topics in Experimental Causality
I am going to write this here. I am going to write this now.
I am going to write this here and now, and see what happens, and then decide what to do next. This is an experiment in causality.
I could think more about it first; think about who owns this platform, where the servers are located, who reads these blogs, who benefits from content posted here, then make a guess about the consequences, and pre-emptively react. But my confidence in my own ability to draw reliable conclusions is at an all-time low. I feel like my mind-life is in Cynefin-esque chaos and novel practice is needed: act-sense-respond. This novel practice is a literal act: to write.
Despite the storm of mind-life drama that I find presently myself in, the trigger for this novel act is mundane: YouTube took down the obviously copyright violating channel that hosted the complete season one of FLCL and I need to write about it.
It was probably the YouTube algorithm that first brought the 1983 animated short film Daicon IV to my attention; a cartoon to mark the opening of a pop-culture, entertainment exhibition in Osaka, Japan in 1981 and 1983. And that based on that viewing, YouTube subsequently thought I might like episode 5 of Kazuya Tsurumaki's original anime, FLCL, a.k.a. "Fooly Cooly". Honestly, I really did not know what to make of it. But the truth is, I haven't been making very much of anything for the past 7 years.
A YouTube channel that has quite recently been taken down, was hosting all six season one episodes of FLCL and I had watched all of them more than once. The stories are childhood comings-of-age amidst battling robot/ alien super-being nonsense that has no business being particularly captivating, yet, many people, including myself, returned to it regularly. I think an argument can be made for comparing episodes of FLCL to Bob Dylan songs. They both combine almost random-seeming elements into a memorable narrative.
It is the choice of random-seeming elements that appeals most to me in FLCL: they are things the creator likes; guitars, Vespas, baseball, robots, Ingram MAC-10 machine pistols, Crystal Pepsi, Hustler magazine (the one with Anna Nicole Smith), etc. This mish-mash of popular culture, all strung together by a the experiences of a main protagonist coping with the problems of time, is, well, very appealing to me. It is what I think I do.
I was preparing to wash some dishes and I cleared some space on top of the microwave large enough to fit my laptop so that I could play something to help help alleviate the tedium of my chore. This filler-type of entertainment has to be interesting enough to blunt the edge of boredom, but not so interesting as to require focussed attention. I thought FLCL would fit the bill.
It was odd that my subscription link was missing from the left navigation bar of my YouTube homepage. Odder still that the familiar search failed to return the channel. "It was really just a matter of time," I thought, and surrendered to idea that copyright powers had finally caught up to with another small band of fan-pirates.
But the take-down triggered a personal insight that the proliferation of streaming entertainment services in my life has changed the way I take in this content. The ability to simply replay digital content without having to rely on my memory has actually diminished the depth of my relationship with it. It is much less contemplative than the earlier works that I found meaningful in my life, say, the Hannibal Lecter novels, Interstellar, Ghost in the Shell, or Blade Runner. I feel poorer for it.
So, what am I trying to say with all this? That I am trying to change.