i want
February 20, 2001 5:30 pm

I feel hopeless. I feel despair. I feel powerless. I feel useless, and I'm not talking about young adult angst here, unless you consider the following writing dilemma as angst.

I've been spending the past two weeks trying to force myself to write. And by that, I mean with a point, decent pacing, topicality and all such things important to writers. Right now I am at the point where I want to scream. But I can't. Because my dad's sleeping in the same room as I'm typing this. (No, I'm not joking.)

I absolutely cannot finish almost everything I write unless I have intense concentration. I'm talking way intense here. my writing can only get done if not a single interruption transpires. Not even food, or the dog jumping into my lap or answering the phone or changing the light bulbs. Absolutely nothing.

Even trying to gather inspiration is a killer. For example, about six hours ago, in the nearby coffee shop (a ten minute walk from my house) I was reading both Paul Levinson's The Soft Edge and the 7th issue of Mimi's slander. I remember thinking all sorts of things about the differences Philippine pop microcosms and the pop microcosms of Westerners, and how those relate to my personal microcosm... I was thinking all other things as well, I ran home so I could get everything down on digital print.

Read this entry and tell me I'm talking about those things. In the past I've tried writing the ideas down so that they would gain semi-permanence in the time it takes for me to get back to the computer. I stopped doing that, and now I'm doing it again at Claire's suggestion. Not working.

I don't mean to bloat myself here, but I AM a thinker. 

I think about speciesism when I watch the Planet's Funniest Animals or play with my terrier. I think about the socio-politics of pet ownership, what it means to "use" an animal for enjoyment or what it means to have to "take care" of an animal.

I think about what kind of beliefs are behind how a person subs or dubs Japanese anime titles. I think about how Marxism really applies to Hayao Miyazaki. I try to figure out how Don Bluth or Walt Disney (not the Disney Corporation) really thinks about animation and how they applied their beliefs without reading articles about them that are obviously filtered and biased by their words.

I think about social structures in computer games, and I think about what the implicated parallels are between the real world and game design paradigms. I think about how narratives and interactivity come together in game design, and how they do or do not work. I think about the social hierarchy of the then nascent game design industry in the 80s. I think about how Dani Bunten Berry's transgender status might relate to computer games and her design philosophy.

But the fact is I can't articulate everything the way I want to. Meaning, I can articulate it, just not how I want to, which consistently remains a nigh-unattainable ideal, a Holy Grail of sorts.

When your slant towards writing leans towards criticism, it's all too easy to resort to satire and humor rather than literally vocalizing (verbalizing?) those issues and addressing them directly. It's one thing to poke fun at the thus far lame executions of interactive narratives, and another to deconstruct them into a decent essay that could possibly make good pedagogy, and pedagogy is something I often aim for. And so far, I always miss.

I am too afraid to talk about politics because I obviously lack the academic background (or at least a level of academic background that is to my satisfaction) to be sure that I haven't mixed up the philosophies of Marxism, Socialism and Communism,

I am too afraid to talk about race and sociey because i don't have personal experiences to relate to race, and that questions agency and all. Race (seemingly) factors little in my life, as my grandfather removed himself from his Chinese heritage too far for me to be remotely connected to Chinese culture. I have little angst or issues to relate on that.

I want to have a motive, I don't want to be some lame liberal rich kid who suddenly has issues, I want it to be personal.

Maybe I put myself too high. My writing is reduced to whining about the act of writing. Maybe someone should walk up to me and tell me to shut up and just put anecdotes peppered with commentary and nothing more. Yes, Athena and Mimi and Kat do that all the time, but somehow I just don't now how to shut up in my mind and in my words.

They can theorize and spin tales with relative comfort, but I can't. I want to launch full on tirades. I want to say everything and leave no stone unturned. And if you think in holistic perspectives, you'll realize that everything is intertwined and connected, and if you tried to ask questions and pose potential answers the way I want to, you'll never be able to shut up.

Some writers will say for example, that something is so full of complexities and doesn't know where to begin on theorizing that, and then he or she merely ends it with a question. The question is placed before the audience and must question from there. I want answers. And I want them now. So I can say them and scream them out and kick and shit and piss on everyone so they can realize that they are all a bunch of screwed up people. 

But I don't. Because I want to know those things in their whole, and I unfortunately, fail to get any writing done that'll mean something. I want to be satisfied by what I say, and I won't publish until I do. I want to tell the world something, but I want to be sure that when I reflect on what I say I can take comfort and lie down and sleep happy. I want to be able to place conviction in the words I write and say, and that all the fist-shaking and spit-spraying is not full of bull.

Instead I sleep unsatisfied, wake up and play some more Elektra or FenceOut.

Tell me to shut up and try less.