Things I do, slightly revised

About that last post; that's more or less 100% esoteric bullshit I pulled out of thin air for my friend Margaret Manning's junior project. Essentially, she wanted a travelogue written by space aliens for space aliens on the subject of visiting Earth.

The discussion rapidly diverged into this, a rambling polemic about a theoretical plane of existence made out of pure emotion designed to support the idea that human beings are essentially sponges for negative emotional energy. It is what it is, I cannot apologize.

In other news, I blew off my classes again today and at 2:00 in the afternoon, am sitting at my computer in my bathrobe, showered but unshaven, generally unkempt.

The following are significant things I need to do in the very real short term:

2 projects for my AfterEffects class
1 fairly large paper on Rear Window for Film 114
1 multichannel video installation for the video art class I'm taking
2 or 3 finished 10-15 minute segments of "Catch This Fox", or else fail my senior project grade, incomplete since last semester.

CTF is more or less in the can, and now it's just a nightmare of editing. Fox is down in Indiana seeing his family in a time of grief, and presently I'm feeling more or less like dung for the pressures I've put on him to give me access to that. I wanted to be there, to express through Fox and his personal tragedy something real, something universal and yet intimate enough to connect on a one-to-one basis. It'd make a great balancing counterpoint to all the outrageous cartoony "Miles Fox Is Your Leader" stuff we've got. I don't want to make a cartoon of him, even if the cartoon he's made of himself is the only part he's keen to publicize. Let's face it, I haven't mastered the art of making a camera sympathetic. I don't know how people do that. I want to be able to do that, to be able to build that level of trust, but sometimes the same cheap, exploitative manner in which I deal with myself winds up coloring the way I deal with other people. My God, I am an asshole with a camera, and that's dangerous.

In case you haven't heard, I'm on both sides of a documentary camera these days.

Seeing a thing changes a thing. Tomorrow night I'm once again hosting the intrepid one-man film crew that's been making a movie about me for the last year and a half. Now, me, I harbor no secrets. Regardless of what my family and friends think about me I've gladly and willingly corralled them in front of the camera in the hopes that they'll say something interesting about me. Good, bad, I don't care. In fact, I'm almost keener to see the bad stuff. It must be something pathological in me but in my more fanciful daydreams I imagine what it would be like if everyone were omniscient.

What is it to truly know the mind of another human being? I picked Fox as my first legitimate experiment in that field and it's been a longer, stranger process than I ever imagined. Especially since at first glance he presents himself as a fairly simple-to-understand type of person.

The truth is always infinitely more complex.

I've done casual research over the years on Asperger's syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism the result of which is essentially not being able to percieve a consciousness apart from your own. People with Asperger's are routinely highly intelligent yet socially handicapped. I have that in common with them. Still, it's an easy label, which is maybe a bit disingenious.

I am at a point where I'm even starting to doubt what I know about my own mind.

I want an easy label now. I want an excuse for deliberately and self-destructively avoiding anything that smacks of work. There has to be some sort of psychological term that makes debilitating laziness socially acceptable.

Clinical depression?

I know it's a catch-all but maybe they're right. I can't afford antidepressants, however. Since I haven't even paid so much as a dime for tuition this semester I can't even see the free campus doctors about the water that's been in my ear for the last week and a half, all affecting my balance and auditory capabilities and such, let alone see the free psychologists they've got. A free psychologist, for the record, is the only way I'll go to see one since I still have deep-seated guilt over the money my parents spent on expensive ones for me when I was younger.

If I do wind up getting back in to see their free psychologists, I'm going to ask for a different one. Dr. T's a nice enough fellow but it's hard to talk about body image issues with a 300+ lb. man who hates life more than you do.

And I'm saying this fully aware of my increasing disdain for the field. After all, we're talking about an institutionalized industry devoted to inventing excuses. Excuses for not functioning properly. Excuses for not getting things done. Excuses for freaking out and not using your brain to its fullest potential.

One of the most tragic yet beautiful things about being human is that we can concieve of things that are better than reality. We can concieve, theoretically, of perfection. Perfection is not an option available to us. Not in this lifetime.

The nice thing about computer games is that if you screw up, you can just load a previously saved game and start over. I'm 26 years old and I'm running out of real-world do-overs, and the fear of that is starting to consume what little sanity I have left.

I have human wants. I want financial security. I want a certain measure of fame. I want these things on my own terms for my own sake, which is probably immoral or something. Beyond all of this, and I've realized this only recently, I want love. Real, actual, reciprocated love of the type between a man and a woman. That's not something I've experienced.

But we're going to stop right there because that is hell of lame to put in a blog. That is borderline emo or something, and emo kids get punched in the face by life. Life sneaks up and punches them in the face. And they're all about that.

Not me, boy-o. Not this one.