it is really hard to use Listerine for the full minute
failing panoramas (at East Village)
First hint (and later confirmation) of simulacra as a theme in Lolita.
edithh im so curious what do you wanna study
I actually agonize over that. I dunno. I sorta wanted to do math+philosophy double major with a creative writing concentration thing, but I got worried that that wouldn’t give me enough practical career stuff. I feel like I “should” study Econ but I hate the economy! Maybe I’ll be a lawyer. I don’t know. I want to study everything and combine it all
when the gapbox is below you
(and other briefings, posted here in a last-ditch effort to clear out some other mediums)
- Car rides make me think of mortality. Ha, ha?
- Lolita, as a character, is a simulacrum that has erased the original. Jean Baudrillard’s text and definition (as far as I understand it, that is; keep in mind I’ve read only several pages) refers to the simulacrum as an economic or market-produced good, but Nabokov’s description of his unreliable narrator’s fixation fits it better. Baudrillard writes, “Something has disappeared: the sovereign difference…that constituted the charm of abstraction. The real…no longer needs to be rational, because it no longer measures itself against either an ideal or negative instance. It is no longer anything but operational. In fact, it is no longer really the real, because no imaginary envelops it anymore.” Humbert-as-Nabokov writes of Lo, “…the vacuum of my soul managed to suck in every detail of her bright beauty, and these I checked against the features of my dead bride. A little later, of course, this nouvelle, this Lolita, my Lolita, was to eclipse completely her prototype.” Prototype.
- I am about to quote a lyric from a Fun. song, so prepare accordingly. “Try twice as hard, and I’m half as liked,” WOWSOFAST. Things are designed for the middle or the median. When you’re slightly above that thick mark, your work doesn’t aim for the middle. Then everyone who is in the middle succeeds in their work because it is appropriately aimed. This makes YOU work harder because you know the gap is below you but you can’t stoop down to it, so instead you work above the gap and continue ceaselessly to dissatisfy yourself, because doing precisely that is the only option; you think your only way of success is to be out and above the gapbox entirely. You work so hard to raise yourself above that you become pseudo-unaccomplished.
[ ]: Absorb
ihsu:
I used to think that my peers who were talented—at math, at art, etc. were more or less born with their talents. Obviously, this is not the case. There are scores and scores of things dedicated to the discussion of talent. People like Malcolm Gladwell are famous for it (Tipping Point, Outliers…
on things unfinished
I try to be explosively consistent, and I do so in spurts. I’ve never kept a lifestyle, or even a habit that’s a part of one, for more than a couple weeks straight. Maybe it’s funny (or maybe just sad) that consistency means so much to me while I’m unable to attain it. Or maybe that’s a causal relationship. I dunno.
I often rush things because when I get ideas they’re QUICK. That’s why I capitalize so much and why I don’t like to edit myself - I’m convinced that bursts of productivity, while hot and genuine, are isolated at their core. I try to get them out and record from them as much as I can, and so for the sake of optimizing quantity, I put trepidation and a little bit of thoroughness at slight risk.
But is that bad? I don’t know. Putting something out there (a story, a theory made into a pseudo-article, a ramble) is better than nothing at all. And for someone like me, who agonizes over where to do things (literally -on the computer? on my phone? WHERE), I sometimes think it a wonder that I get stuff out at all.
I suppose “consistency” in my case (maybe everyone’s) doesn’t mean uniform distribution of creativity, or a single creative outlet through which everything is processed, but rather a gradual adjustment to pursuing the valuable inklings rather than jotting them down in the corner of a looseleaf page in class, like I’ve been doing for four years. I’m quite legitimately grown-up now, or at least technically well on my way. It’s high time to turn on the power and keep it there. Let the little goons inside sober up and put themselves to good use.
So my goal is to have things and put them out. I have to be the one who does the joining of all. That is my life - bridges, tunnels, mainlands… untying all the knots before rearranging them etc.
I do most things and I’ll continue to, but I have to try to do so with increasing dedication. Spottiness and an “I know this stuff NATURALLY” attitude don’t produce shit.
I know where I am going to college!!! and of course (because, after all, I am who I am) there are song lyrics to go with the decision:
I FELL IN LOVE AGAIN
ALL THINGS GO, ALL THINGS GO
DROVE TO CHICAGO
ALL THINGS KNOW, ALL THINGS KNOW
(i made a lot of mistakes in my mind i don’t mind)
ha. but I grow more and more convinced that it’s the true fit for me
