There is always something going on in the background when there is stagnation in the foreground. Don't be deceived so easily. Here are the snippets of what has been going on recently:
- I've been moving 1.09 GB of childhood notes so eagerly stored away in the weirdest places over a period of 15 years.
- I've been thinking about swapping equipment around and reevaluating the necessity of possessing certain electronics.
- I've been taking care of my company, trying to find clients for the sake of financial support.
- I've been searching for a perfect creative living space with a couple of good friends.
Now let's sneak in the shadows of our lives, have a wine together in the forest and think everything through.
Background seems like a better option than foreground.
A Proper Glitch
You probably couldn't tell that I'm in a fairly good mood. Sitting in a room with 'hospital green' walls, slouching on a wooden rattan chair, face in a twist as I'm staring at some pixels at the center of the screen, hands typing away some ritual strokes to charm the reality.
As the weird green walls make my mind swirl I venture out and think about what has been accomplished this year.
- Bachelor Degree: check. Wonderful document acquired.
- Passion Statement:: check. Feeling good about knowing myself a bit more.
- Job: blank box. Smile starts to fade a little.
- Further Education: blank box again. Deadlines are gone.
- Plan Section: the big space underneath is blank as well. There are some scribbles present there but nothing solid.
At least the page is not tabula rasa but the smile is gone completely now. Frantic thought please come in, you are obviously very welcome, have a coffee.
The truth is I'm a tiny little bit on edge here. Only a tiny little bit. I would go as far as saying that I'm a halted happiness-becoming embodiment. I'm stuck in an unformed hybrid. Surely Gilles Deleuze would have put it that way if he had a mouth. But now he literally doesn't and neither do I.
You know, forefront of a different line of flight would feel much better to me right now. Past me would say 'it's barely a matter of transition. just do it' but now it's not that simple. I'm planning that transfer almost like the main character of Circulo Uno by Cesar Pesquera Muro. Piles of sand are appearing in the corners of my apartment.
But hey! Look! Plan Section has some scribbles in it, I could go through them. Let me take my pen and dive into my sea of GTD and perfect task distribution. Let's charm it this way, no? Smile is back on my face despite the lack of mouth. The problem is that just charming the reality isn't really working anymore.
I will need a proper glitch instead. Handmade one.
I'm still smiling though, just in case.
Let's Talk About Trees Music Project
Back in November 2010 I shot a concert video with one of my friends of a hybrid band project by Washington Irving and John Knox Sex Club. It was supposingly a one-off event organized in Stereo Club in Glasgow dedicated specifically to the album launch. It gathered quite a lot of people and was definitely a massive success.
I would like to thank my fellow co-operative camera-man, half-editor and networker Paul Yates for doing all that he did. It was a pleasure and it still is. After a couple of months of delays and distractions the whole thing is now coming together. The planned 52-minute-long footage from the concert itself is done and the only thing left to edit is the bonus feature: the interview/behind-the-scenes footage. I'm editing it as we speak.
The idea is to create a special DVD presenting the unique concert including an atmospheric introduction showcasing an interview with the artists and their road towards the album. It should be available at some point this year.
If it sounds pretty cool to you and you want more information about the band itself here you can read an interview with the creators of the project on Peenko Blog in the Scots Way-Hay episode #42.
You can also check out various networking profiles to listen to the music of the bands: Let's Talk About Trees (BandCamp); Washington Irving (Myspace) / Twitter; John Knox Sex Club (MySpace).
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Visual Memetics of The Music Scene
A friend of mine described this music video as a perfect visual representation of memes and how they work. Some great animation skills from Anothony F. Shepperd.
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Memelessness and Meditation
Today I found an interesting fragment of discussion in Journal of Memetics thread way back from 2001. It is available below in a .png form and here is the source link. What the mentioned discussion did was that it managed to fill another gap in my understanding of memetics.
What triggered the way towards experiencing that 'little source of enlightenment' was a simple thought stream that led to a notion of something that would oppose a meme. Since I usually think spacially I immediately thought of a memeless space, how one would look like, how would a person interact with such a place.
I googled 'memeless space' to see if the net had some interesting information and there it was. Between some random meme-related Reddit entries, 齋藤 孝 x 梅田 望夫 and a blog of Christian Real Estate Professionals, which looks like a scam website, I found a memetics discussion list archive.
I immediately devoured it and contemplated for a while...
I realized I haven't actually followed the whole conversation going on about 'toggling nature's auto-erase' but that little snippet was just enough for me to reach understanding of an element that kept me in a 'fluid, uncertain space'.
I am talking about meditation.
I've been thinking about it as a method of stress-relief due to my day-to-day uneasiness and a way to obtain a creativity boost through clarity for quite some time now.
In the past I have briefly looked into Buddhist and New Age methods of meditation but never decided to follow up on them. I was bouncing between gathering information and trying to figure out on my own how to do it but it would never turn into an actual activity.
It is also worth mentioning that recently I attended a local introductory meeting to Transcendental Meditation, which was fairly intriguing, however due to financial instability I was not willing to participate in it.
There is something off-putting about charging incredible amounts of money for simple beneficial knowledge.
Trailing back to the main issue: reading Robin Faichney's response in the mentioned thread reawoken my intention to learn meditation, however using an entirely different perspective.
Never before I have thought of it as a way to clear myself of actual memes and temes. A way to stray away from the path of meme replication and a method of restoring an unobstructive view for the mind.
According to memetic theory everything you think at any given moment either comes from a meme that has been started long time ago or is a new meme in its own right. Including the meditation in the equation enables us to keep a distance and see a much larger picture. A clarity to create emerges and we become conscious of the origin of the swirling memes.
Now that I connected the dots it all seems clear and fits perfectly with the memetic verions of reality. Thank you Robin Faichney from 10 years ago for your insight into this matter.
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