Dropping hints.
Again, my head is off in the outer limits where the ozone thins and this might be one of those weirdo (I’m a creep/I’m a weirdo) kinds of subjects to try and hold a discussion around, but I have my personal reasons for asking about people and communicating in hints.
(more…)Here’s a question for you. I won’t get much into a preamble because it is an oldie (but goodie) that is rattling around in my fat head for some reason or another and I’ve decided that I’m curious on the current state of affairs with opinions on the subject.
What are your thoughts on the concept of “love at first sight”? Does such a thing even exist, or is it a romantic notions more akin to fantasy than reality? If it exists (for you), does it require the other party to reciprocate that love? Or does it still exist when the feeling is unilateral? What the heck is “love at first sight” anyway?
As things are wont to do on these 1/2p posts, feel free to go off on your own tangents with your comments, just stick to the concept of “love at first sight”. I have my own thoughts but I am more interested in what you might have to say about it, no matter how mundane or outlandish those thoughts might be. For science! Or, just to satisfy my curiosity.
And… Go!
The only thing they feared more than failure was success.
– appropriated variant of a common phrase, applied to The Replacements
There are several variations of the above quote from across time; I’m not sure who said something like it originally. There are several people credited with saying something like it. It has been rattling around in my head since I saw it (again), although I cannot say exactly why.
There’s something somewhat terribly romantic in that notion, isn’t there? That idea that failure is somehow more desirable than success, even if driven by a fear response.
(more…)In completely unrelated news…
Is it my imagination or are a lot of comments on folks’ blogs starting to look like bots/AI wrote them?
I was scrolling through a few comments on other sites and I’ve noticed that more of them are increasingly sound “off”. Commentors with this flavor of comments don’t dare add value to the conversations; they seem mostly to confirm and affirm. And the truly “weird” ones seem to miss the main topic of discussion entirely, often glomming onto something said in passing.
Maybe I’m just paranoid? Or a grump? Maybe I need more cigarettes.
In still other news:
I’minlovewiththegirlwhoworksatthestorewhereI’mnothingbutacustomer…
Odd day today: I found out an old bandmate’s spouse was found unresponsive this morning in bed. Cause of death, TBD. He just woke up next to her and she was no longer there. She was in her early 50s with no real history of chronic illness that I am aware of. He certainly seemed surprised by the news.
(more…)Sometimes dreams are just dreams. I get it — if all of our dreams were always meaningful, insightful and future-seeing, we’d put all of the oneiromancers out there out of business. Or give them panic attacks when we call them in to join us in the dreaming to help interpret and…
Whatever.
But there are dreams and the are Dreams. The proper noun versions demand you pay attention to their contents, which the other ones might linger on the fringes of memory until the morning fog burns off (if your lucky). And that’s only if they are particularly good or bad.
(more…)I sometimes wish I could be the knight bewitched by La Belle Dame sans Merci. I might be doomed to an imminent grave, but at least I will enjoy heading to my doom.
Or, perhaps, I feel more like hopping in my skiff and riding the stream after failing to keep my focus on the mirror, and looking at beauty riding on by as did The Lady of Shallot.
Or give myself to the waters in a fit of madness, as poor Ophelia did.
Who suffered more? Tristan or Isolde? Let me taste that joy in the time before they fell.
This is all absurdity, and yet… and yet… At moments there was joy.
Happy Thanksgiving, if you’re the kind of folks who celebrate such things. My mother didn’t give an option to decline the festivities and, having grown up in an environment where Catholic Guilt Syndrome was (and is still) employed as the weapon of choice, I’ll be heading out in a bit to do family things.
But, as Arlo Guthrie sang, “Alice — remember Alice?”… [listening to Alice’s Restaurant Massacree on Thanksgiving is about the only personal tradition worth keeping in my mind, but—]… let’s get on with my weird, cheap thoughts for the day. But first:
In my shower moments, maybe in those moments leading up to the shower as well, I was thinking (once again) about the nature of crushes.
(more…)…[R]eviving culture requires a new generation of outsiders willing to create their own movements from scratch.
Unfortunately, the current media ecosystem discourages this. The major internet platforms encourage creators to chase virality rather than cultivate smaller, self-sustaining communities. Global brands tease lucrative deals to emerging artists and micro-influencers, reinforcing the idea that “getting the bag” is the ultimate goal. […] In an era when we live as personal brands, every decision is made to increase our own shareholder value.
Making art with lasting meaning requires resisting the pull of instant exposure and early buyouts. We must think through ways to encourage artists to disappear into their own worlds for a while, developing ideas away from corporate influence and assimilation. Not everyone will have the discipline or capacity for this, but those who do or can will shape the future. And the least that critics and fans can do is give them esteem—when justified—for attempting to move culture forward, instead of ignoring them as marginal, castigating them as pretentious, or belittling their view counts. The past 25 years have taught us that the contemporary economy and media will not prioritize creative invention. The question is: Will you?
— from W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century in Make Culture Weird Again, originally published at The Atlantic.