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( thoughts from the throne | previous decrees | propaganda | outside guidance | sit with me )
December 9, 2000
2:55 A.M.
"They're Just Words, How Bad Could They Be?" So I haven't been updating. So sue me. On second thought, don't.
I've been deprived of Internet and computer access for a month. My brother promised to bring the whole oatmeal gray tower of data back here from Marikina every two weeks, but that never happened.
This means that I haven't been paying as much attention to the world of digital entertainment as much as I usually do. This also means that any words I have at any given moment are being channeled temporarily into my notebook.
Unfortunately, using a pen as the means of wording stuff down is not where I am most capable as a writer. The memory bus that connects by brain to my pen hand is as efficient as the development team of Battlecruiser 3000 A.D., so to speak.
Everytime I think of the tenets, structures and underlying processes of media communication while I write, one of two things happen:
a) a considerable amount of time passes with a blank expression on my face expressing brain lock generated by running to many thought-paths at the same time , or
b) a small inexpensive object, such as a pencil or one of those complimentary PULP magazines, ends up getting destroyed, immediately followed by my booting up a game so that a million digital beings may be slain by crashing rollercoasters, solitary confinement, hot laser death and many other divine acts of Matt.
Nonetheless, exasperation is generated in both situations.
An epiphany that has shown up, time and again, in several conversations (either in the topic of conversation itself, or whilst I am analyzing how a conversation is progressing as an "interactive flow of ideas") is that there are many variables that one cannot control when it comes to personal expression.
An intended audience knows nothing about the what is going on within the mind of the author/artist during the creative process. Similarly, the author knows nothing about the internal thoughts taking place within the minds of the intended audience, as well as from what perspective that audience is coming from in approaching his work.
Thus, there is no guarantee, despite the author's proficiency, or however "controlled" his audience maybe, how his work is to be interpreted, and what kind of messages are to be unveiled from it.
By approaching my media consumption with this philosophy, a horde of questions arise and my brain goes a mile a minute. Unfortunately, my brain doesn't end up arriving anywhere significant, so I can't qualify myself as any sort of superthinker. Where it does arrive is a whole lot of bloody questions.
Did Shakespeare or any other popular writer actually plan any of the meanings that Literature teachers (as well as writers of Cliff's Notes) have assumed for daily practice? Is my reading of the oil tanker community in Fallout 2 as a satire of the totemization of subcultures by their participants intended and deliberately planned by its writers, or sheer coincidence? What kind of spiritual implications can be found in the philosophy of Planescape: Torment's Dustmen ?
When I distance myself from this piece that I am currently writing, even more queries are generated:
How many of those last few questions did I really ask myself? Did I come up with those questions for the sole purpose of proving the aforementioned points, and/or did I make a conscious effort to choose the only good-looking questions?
Furthermore, why on Earth is a pretentious dunderhead who comes up with phrases like: "satire of the totemization of subcultures by their participants" not writing for SPIN magazine? (chuckle)
But I digress. I'm not here to layer my own prose with an internalized criticism. The point is, there will or will not be messages that are extraneous to someone's work.
At this point, I'm beginning to fear that I'd sound awfully Zenlike if I said that nothing can be held for certain, and at this point, I'd have to agree with that. That is... if I said that. Which I didn't. Or something. None of the work that anyone creates has concrete messages because viewers will distort, skew and twist everything they perceive into what they want to perceive.
Can you imagine then that all this makes it very difficult to get a lot of my writing done? That I have crossed the zone of meticulousness into the sector of anal? Can you imagine that being one who knows these principles of uncertainty makes it all so hard?
Why, if you were in my shoes right now, you'd realize the following: First, that hole in your socks is really bugging you. Second, that you'll never get as much writing done as you'd want to because you'll be constantly trying to pin down your words so that they'll maintain an empirical delivery of the messages you intend to deliver. The efficient and exact delivery of a message becomes the Holy Grail of authorship.
Furthermore, you'll be envious of every other writer who can write with a clear mind. A writer who can get his work done, unafraid of millions of people who may misinterpret his work. After all, let the people think they want.
As the catch phrase of Gossip goes: "It's just words, how bad could it be?"
* There's an interesting article about this in a similar vein, written by Michael Brady. The idea of the fuzzy lines of authorship is placed in the context of geekdom, and an audience's expectations towards their consumption of geek media. I also like it because it cuts down all those bloody "I'm right, and everybody else is wrong" uberzealots that I so very much want to kill. Ahhh, if only we could go back to those prehistoric days when murder was still an accepted means of social control. Whoever invented "civilized behavior" and the phrase "let's discuss this like rational people" is to blame, I suppose. C'est la vie.
CORNER OF CULTURE CONSUMPTIONCODED: Squaresoft's Parasite Eve II, Xenogears and Psygnosis/Leeds Studio's Colony Wars: Red Sun for the Sony Playstation.
PENNED: Thoughts on Technology, (combo-zine of Fucktooth and Spectacle) by Theo Wissell and Jen Angel, High-Tech Heretic by Clifford Stoll