Completely self-contained.
Oddly pleased to see that this place is more-or-less as I left it. More active than I expected, though I admit to not expecting too much. Lately a place to reflect has seemed useful, and occasionally even necessary, but I'm not certain that's going to happen. Not today.
Growing up has produced the strangest things. I am not self-conscious, I am not hesitant, I am not pretentious. Everything folds together into a unified whole that, to a large extent, could have been predicted in my youth. Too much time spent on philosophy, but I've been pondering the meaning of life since seeing Bill and Ted as a child, so that may just be an inevitable quirk of my character.
I love music. That's what surprises me. Love and love and it may just be the most important thing in my life. Cue my complete consciousness of the absurdity of that statement. And the embarrassment of the truth. And the consequent lack of shame, because I don't think an honest assessment of oneself should ever provoke disdain. Unconscious hypocrisy is one thing, but to know that your values are simply different. Well, that's just being human.
But I don't have much music these days. I look through my collection, I am amazed by how much of it is still brilliant, but I don't want to listen to it. Myself has changed too much from the teenager who collected it. And, perhaps most importantly, I don't want to hear lyrics that completely fail to resonate.
I don't care about alcohol, drugs, early romances. I don't care about not fitting in. I don't care about wearing masks. I don't care about angst or fear of growing and being. I don't care about love. I don't care about how horrible the world is.
I know, and I know, and most of it simply doesn't matter. Which is to say, I've largely been listening to instrumental music to bridge the gap in my soul, though I'd love to find more music to relate to. Or at least that doesn't actively annoy me when I listen to the words.
Maybe I just want my music to grow up a little. To think about different things.
Amused more often than I'm angry, and generally while thinking about the same topics. Generations, and what it means to be human are on my mind a lot lately. Information changes, and people interact with it differently, but at the end of the day everything is always so similar, over and over again. The manifestations simply change as opportunity allows. We're all learning the same things repeatedly until the end of time. And that's amusing, particularly with how much effort we all expend to avoid it, or spare our children the same fate.
But the world is what it is. And you can make it something else, or make your own world instead. Or maybe do some combination of the two. Everyone dies anyway, so we're really just passing time until the end. And that's a comfort, albeit one that brings some trepidation.
I used to want to be someone. To find a label and fit. I wanted to make sense in a concise and easily comprehensible way, and to have that be a connecting point for others. Now I just want to know what I want to do, and that tends to be synonymous with what I want to make.
It doesn't really matter what you do, where you go, how financially solvent you are if all you care about are the worlds inside your mind, and helping them to get out. And that's where I am right now, to a large extent. And I can't really comprehend caring about anything else.
For a long time I was trying to find myself in other things, to bring things in and change myself in an attempt to make it fit more precisely. But there's no need, not anymore. Not when it's so much simpler to let the water flow in the other direction.
Not that I don't enjoy finding things that resonate well, that are in the same place and producing things to the same effect that I would myself. That's glorious. But the quantities are few these days, and that's alright as long as I can supplement the materials myself. That's what's changed.
Maybe I'm just not afraid anymore. Of anything.
Growing up has produced the strangest things. I am not self-conscious, I am not hesitant, I am not pretentious. Everything folds together into a unified whole that, to a large extent, could have been predicted in my youth. Too much time spent on philosophy, but I've been pondering the meaning of life since seeing Bill and Ted as a child, so that may just be an inevitable quirk of my character.
I love music. That's what surprises me. Love and love and it may just be the most important thing in my life. Cue my complete consciousness of the absurdity of that statement. And the embarrassment of the truth. And the consequent lack of shame, because I don't think an honest assessment of oneself should ever provoke disdain. Unconscious hypocrisy is one thing, but to know that your values are simply different. Well, that's just being human.
But I don't have much music these days. I look through my collection, I am amazed by how much of it is still brilliant, but I don't want to listen to it. Myself has changed too much from the teenager who collected it. And, perhaps most importantly, I don't want to hear lyrics that completely fail to resonate.
I don't care about alcohol, drugs, early romances. I don't care about not fitting in. I don't care about wearing masks. I don't care about angst or fear of growing and being. I don't care about love. I don't care about how horrible the world is.
I know, and I know, and most of it simply doesn't matter. Which is to say, I've largely been listening to instrumental music to bridge the gap in my soul, though I'd love to find more music to relate to. Or at least that doesn't actively annoy me when I listen to the words.
Maybe I just want my music to grow up a little. To think about different things.
Amused more often than I'm angry, and generally while thinking about the same topics. Generations, and what it means to be human are on my mind a lot lately. Information changes, and people interact with it differently, but at the end of the day everything is always so similar, over and over again. The manifestations simply change as opportunity allows. We're all learning the same things repeatedly until the end of time. And that's amusing, particularly with how much effort we all expend to avoid it, or spare our children the same fate.
But the world is what it is. And you can make it something else, or make your own world instead. Or maybe do some combination of the two. Everyone dies anyway, so we're really just passing time until the end. And that's a comfort, albeit one that brings some trepidation.
I used to want to be someone. To find a label and fit. I wanted to make sense in a concise and easily comprehensible way, and to have that be a connecting point for others. Now I just want to know what I want to do, and that tends to be synonymous with what I want to make.
It doesn't really matter what you do, where you go, how financially solvent you are if all you care about are the worlds inside your mind, and helping them to get out. And that's where I am right now, to a large extent. And I can't really comprehend caring about anything else.
For a long time I was trying to find myself in other things, to bring things in and change myself in an attempt to make it fit more precisely. But there's no need, not anymore. Not when it's so much simpler to let the water flow in the other direction.
Not that I don't enjoy finding things that resonate well, that are in the same place and producing things to the same effect that I would myself. That's glorious. But the quantities are few these days, and that's alright as long as I can supplement the materials myself. That's what's changed.
Maybe I'm just not afraid anymore. Of anything.