Consider the Birds

Dissociation

I ran three miles this afternoon. I had to. I needed to clear my mind and get rid of the spiritual pollution I put upon myself. For whatever reason, in a moment of poor judgment, I re-activated my Twitter account. Five minutes of scrolling and I became nauseous. The idiotic banality of the digital world is too much to take, especially after my long detox. Endless stupidities and petty nonsense, nothing of value. I deactivated my account; I think for the last time.

In the past, I held on to the dopamine machine because I would come across the occasional interesting discussion but for every good bit of aesthetic pleasure, I would have to endure hundreds of inane garbage spat out into the ether by spiteful mutants. The site itself is broken, the majority of people are broken, and our greater fucking culture is broken.

I want nothing to do with it anymore.

I’ve developed a newfound love for birds. South Carolina in the spring is beautiful and almost every tree and bush attract numerous bird species, many of which are new to me, a longtime Californian. My backyard attracts a pair of Cardinals, the male a shocking bright red and the female a beautiful caramel brown. We have house finches, bluebirds, doves, Carolina wrens, mockingbirds, pine warblers, brown threshers, blue jays, crows, a flock of sparrows, and my daughter’s favorite, the tufted titmouse.

The slower more relaxed lifestyle makes me happy. I’m tired of feeling anxious that I’m not doing enough, or that I have to be doing something or accomplishing something all the time. I’m tired of the internet, the news, culture wars, and all of the nonsense that consumes so many people. I just don’t care anymore. I’m going to brew my cup of coffee, write, and watch birds. Forget everything else.

Dreams, vivid dreams about the city of Bucharest. My upcoming trip is affecting me a lot more than I expected. I’m going to write a lot about the trip, and my early life, and hopefully grasp the thoughts and emotions around the whole topic.

Reading

Last week I read Eileen Warburton’s biography of John Fowles, author of one of my favorite novels, The Magus. He was a fascinating man, difficult and selfish, boorish middle-upper class in some ways, intellectually liberal but deep-down conservative. Something I struggle with myself is this oscillation between two poles.

I’m starting to believe that an artist must avoid being political, an artist does not belong to any camp or ideology. I find myself at a crossroads. Often, I lean towards conservatism, at least the reactionary flavor, but I don’t belong in the dogmatic, buffoonish puritanical camp that so many conservative traditionalists embrace. I order to be an artist one must embrace all manner of experiences and ideas, to lock yourself in a dogmatic prescription is to be nothing. The artist must have an internal compass but cannot allow himself to become part of a movement that solidifies and crystallizes his mindset. One must be a vanguard, always pushing forward, but most of all he must stand for truth. Truth is often difficult, and speaking the truth will alienate you from all sides because your side often needs to hear the truth the most. Movements require mythology and lies, and the honest artist cannot lie without compromising his art. A great artist must be an island, free from politics.

Journals

In the summer of 2017, I started keeping a journal. It was mostly jotting down ideas in an unruled moleskin notebook. Over the years the notes turned into autobiographical entries where I outlined my thoughts and feelings. A lot of my stories began as journal entries, and most of my posts were first outlined in one of several journals. Last week I decided to type up my journals, about 80,000 words. It took me several days, but the experience was interesting, immersing me in my past. When I finished I decided to switch my journaling away from pen and paper and go fully digital.

Starting new things is often hard, the initial step, the breaking through the jelly-like membrane of the initial start. This is a new beginning, a re-evaluation of how I do my journal. After five years I’m retiring my notebooks, or sidelining them and taking my journaling to direct to digital medium.

I weighed the pros and cons and ran this through my head for several days. Traditional pen-to-paper journaling has a lot of benefits, one of them the slowing down of the mind and the focus on body to pen to paper that you don’t get when typing. But the same thing that is a benefit in one way is a hindrance in another. As an early millennial digital typing has been my primary mode of communication and expression for the majority of my life. I type so fast that the act of typing, the process itself is almost invisible, creating a near-direct brain-to-text transmission. A process that is interrupted due to my slower and substandard handwriting. Reviewing my handwritten journals I noticed the start of interesting topics that got sidelined due to my poor penmanship and the medium itself. For example, in the last 30 seconds, I wrote all of the above, over 200 words, something that would have taken me a much longer time if I would have been writing in my old journal.

Another benefit is that my writing is hard to read, its readability fluctuates, and sometimes I have decent print other times I slip into a strange pseudo-cursive that is barely readable. Having my journal across multiple typed files makes it easy to read, search through, cut, and paste as needed.

Finally, this allows me to practice free-flow writing techniques I’m applying to fiction writing. Just fast writing, that comes out without forethought or outlining nonsense. Just writing from the subconscious. I’m fascinated by the idea of Jungian Active Imagination. That art and writing come from the well of Imago, the spiritual subconscious, and the artist can attempt to directly access this river of creativity and channel the spiritual energy into work.

I’m conceptualizing the process, not as a writer pulling ideas out of a stream but as the writer channeling a stream of universal creative energy through himself, allowing it to flow through him, allowing it to power his imagination, thus molding and reshaping that energy into creative output. The writer is a channeler, a filter, between the awesome creative subconscious river of universal energy and the material world. One pulls the force through himself and uses it by shaping it into creative output.

This whole concept is touchy with a lot of people and I think that there will always be a raging debate between the creation of art from a practiced craftsman perspective versus my above framing. I think one can create beautiful and proficient work, but without the powerful spiritual connection to the universal truth that work remains wooden, and lifeless. You can see this clearly in so many of the well-made, proficient, high-budget films that lack spirit. On the flip side, you can see tremendous energy, the supernatural power in work by spiritual masters like David Lynch. His work goes being technical skill and craft, he manages to write and direct, film, and arrange his work, in a way that when you are experiencing it in full you can feel, taste, and smell, the psycho-sphere-charged electricity that he channels from the realm of deep universal imagination.

So, yes, the switch in format is because I can eliminate the physical barrier and allow myself to pour thoughts down as fast as possible, unhindered by my physically inadequate writing.

My cup of coffee has gone cold. Until next time.