Dreams that End

I can't say it is exactly a trend, but two of my dreams now have been incredibly uncomfortable apocalyptic experiences. 

In the first one, I was out on a balcony looking at the stars and suddenly the stars arranged themselves in ordered grids and there was a general unease and a feeling of "oh no it is happening." Then the stars pulled into the formation of a wormhole, suggesting we were moving through them at high speeds and I began to feel very hot, and the feeling intensified and I think I was vaporized. 

In the second dream, I was standing out on what I think was the shore of Long Beach, but out in the ocean were huge structures which might have been overturned cranes that had fallen from the sky, as well as what were definitely overturned cargo ships. Everyone had gathered on the shore and there was a collective feeling of dread. But then there was a deafening lurching sound that sort of gave way to a sort of metallic symphony of catastrophe, and above was another huge falling cargo ship that appeared right above our heads. The ship hit a house and rested there, miraculously, with me caught under. I think I survived. 

I've also had a lot of previous dreams about huge tidal waves, huge translucent green walls with dark shapes moving at their base and gradients of light near their glimmering crests. But instead of being afraid of such waves, I've always dived into them where I'm transported into another state and can breathe on the other side. 

Dream analysis would suggest these dreams are representative of the anticipation of or longing for great change. This could be the perception of the end of an era and the anticipation of the next, perhaps mixed with emotions of excitement and dread. Some of these dreams end with the feeling of ego disintegration, some of them involve breaking through to another side, as it were.  

The objectivity of such dreams is always in question. Often our intuition seems eerily prescient. But it is hard to tell what truly happens down in that subconscious, unless you explore it more at length in lucid dreams, meditation, and in chemically altered states. 

Is the subconscious truly hooked up to a collective unconscious, as Carl Jung believed? Could paying attention to these movements offer a glimpse of greater tectonic forces? Or is it simply a collection of our individual convictions, convictions made more intense in accordance with our observations of inner and outer realities? 

Upon surveying history, we find there are periods of great change, but it is hard to tell whether those distinct boundaries are a natural phenomenon or just an illusion that arises when we label the periods with symbols. Systems theory observes systems that can completely change in state after a hypercritical period of tension. For example, the point at which water evaporates. 

What is the experience of such a thing on the ground? Something is happening now. Will it continue to happen in gradients until we are there? Or will we reach a tipping point? Or a combination of both? How long will all this take? This interplay of our symbolic analytic systems and the organic real we analyze, and the tensions that interplay produces, has been referred to as "perpetual war." 

Anyways. Back to work. 

The Artist

When he talks his charged words, his energy fills your head with ideas that shower about the walls of your skull like sparks.

He's a genius of vision, every collection of words melting away in cascading imagery with a logic like that of a science. He can zoom in on the microscopic and then zoom out to the cosmos and putting all of the layers together you view glimpses of infinity.

His emotions erupt from him like molten lava out of cracked earth. His conversations are charged with an urgency and an earnestness not unlike underground rap.

His works are bursting with energy and motion. Energy and motion coming to life out of the suggestions of images. Remarkable!

He is an artist of the feminine. Of creation and the reconstitution of the social body.

White hot ideas spitting forth from a new consciousness. The right medicine.

Freelance: The First Week

Wow. Freelance work doesn't feel like the word sounds. At least the kind I'm doing. Granted, it is partially my fault for not being more aggressive in the creative industry, but I did try for a bit.

Basically, that whole working your ass off until you "catch a break" thing exists because you have to fight your way to the top through constricted material avenues, avenues that are constricted by virtue of the fact that most resources gravitate towards large power centers that care nothing for intrinsic value.

It's probably better to explain my daily task. My job is basically a manufacturing job. Calling it creative writing and talking about going online and doing research obscures the fact that really what I am doing objectively is scouring the web for pieces of relevant information, information that has already been produced, and copying and compressing it into a compact, SEO friendly unit. These SEO friendly units are then inserted into vast information structures full of links and keyword-dense 300-word articles (I guess the Google spiders like 300-word or more bodies), so that they can reach the top of Google search lists in a vast array of subjects, accumulating the maximum amount of traffic possible. Traffic which should then pass through the many advertisements and sponsored links on the website. Think of places like About.com and EHow.com

So large portions of the web work like this now. All media and information is aggregated in these huge informational structures that are structured precisely to funnel in as much traffic (paying customers) as possible, generally dictated by the logic of Google algorithms and the behavior of social networks. And so behind each of these informational structures is a company (or a conglomerate), and at the top of each of these companies is a CEO that makes a lot of money (or symbolic power). So really, all of this information is simply instrumentalized to accumulate power for someone who is probably a white male. Probably.

I'm manufacturing power. Again, the information doesn't matter. This is apparent in the nature of my directions. Vague outlines are given with vague directions and you can go out and grab any kind of information off of the web you can find, so long as it is coherent and not outrageous. There is a massive veil between the labor and the finished product. I have no idea where it goes, or what any of it means. I just follow directions. Like a factory laborer pressing buttons on a machine.

Much of the Internet works like this now, as well as much of our economy in general. Each large economic entity is a manufacturing apparatus for power. Whatever that can be still produced of value in the real economy is cannibalized and manipulated to accumulate more money for the few men behind these structures. Each of our daily tasks is a micromoment in assembling playing pieces to be used in power games.

Each new structure is essentially a vehicle for increasing efficiency and effectiveness of the accumulation of money. Much of our manufactured goods are less valued as actual objects as worth. Consider a shirt from Target or a toy from Walmart. They're shit. But they still mean something because they're marginally useful. And the fact that they mean what little they do means people still want them. And so they can be effectively used as instruments to further the logic of accumulation. But again, the big players now don't really make anything. They aggregate. They are vessels that have evolved to manufacture power for their controlling masters. The structure of the Internet mirrors the structure of the real economy in this way. The Internet serves as a ballooning network of veins and arteries that continues to facilitate this very task. And all this focus on accumulation when the logic of accumulation is what ails us most. Hah!

This is the nature of alienation. See, we feel really good when someone else appreciates us for our work. We also feel really good when the products of our work give pleasure to others. Even in the office when the boss or a coworker compliments your work, for just a second you feel really good. It only takes a little bit. But most of the day, most of the psychological and physical energies are concentrated on mechanical labor without end, without closure. The end product is enjoyed far away and all of the love and admiration trickles up to the top. This happens in cycles, through our entire history. Marx pointed all this out over a century ago. All that knowledge has been buried since. The individual must strive for power after breaking from the whole until the disintegration is so complete, there is nowhere left to go.

So, we have a very small collection of individuals that have essentially monopolized the power game. The rest get scraps here and there. But those scraps themselves are all that's needed. Soon sympathetic networks will become robust enough to separate from the decaying machine, to live of course. We can give each other all the love and admiration (and hopefully resources for actually physically subsisting) we need. Soon everything must come back together.

Cycles like this repeat themselves in patterns through all life. The archetypal male diverges out, the archetypal female collects back in. We are left with power games to be played with the remains of an old idea, an old way of life, itself born out of the necessity to repudiate the older power games. Why?



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Freelance Writing has Its Problems

When I'm doing research I come across some things that are strange, some things that are funny, some things that are depressing, etc. And I get distracted.

Here is something too precious not to record:

(1) Todd N. Talkish says:

I want to comment on your “aleve” commercials .

The “SOUND EFFECTS” on your “aleve” commercials with all of the “SWALLOWING”
sounds ; the “glug glug, sklog, glak glak,
sklok, sklarg, sklog sklog, sklok sklok,” is
so “SICKENING,” and “DISGUSTING,” that
I cant hear “anything” else you all have
to say in the commercials, in fact, after I
“frantically” reach for the channel changer
or the “on/off switch on my tv, the
sickening “sound effects” that you all
seem to absolutely “glory” in, those
absolutely “sickening” sound effects
“linger” in my mind, “long after” I have
changed the channel, or turned my tv
off, and I am 100% “convinced” that
whoever “directed” these “aleve”
commercials is, “mentally ill,” and
that, they “enjoy” listening to those
“sickening” sounds, and they “put”
those “sound effects” in your
commercials for the “express purpose”
of, “grossing people out” !!!!

February 5, 2012 at 11:51 am

(2) Tom says:

Todd N. Talkish, I completely agree with you.

That commerical disgusts me to no end.

Because of that commercial, I will NEVER, NEVER, NEVER EVER buy Aleve.

I can’t imagine the idiots that made that ad, watching it in a conference room, and saying, “great swallowing noise, let’s air it.”

Absolutely repulsive.

March 12, 2012 at 10:19 pm

(3) Todd Talkish says:

I see you “took down,” my last comment.

“GOODBYE,” YOU …….. “LIBERALS” !!!!

( liberals are such sad, strange, people )

May 10, 2012 at 11:26 pm

(4) MM says:

That’s the third time I’ve seen that disgusting commercial while watching Jeopardy. Slurp- Gulp! No manners, and obnoxious. I guess I’ll stop watching Jeopardy, and of course, never, ever buy or recommend Alleve. How crass!

Kickin in Berkeley

It is nice here. My head hasn't settled yet but I imagine the words will come. 

For now, doing some freelance writing work to keep afloat. It is mind-numbing, but freer than a 9-5. An advertisement I came across while researching ulcerative colitis had someone whining, "I suffer flatulence farting..." I thought that formulation was funny in numerous ways. 

Also, moving is fucked. 

A Lot of Reading I Know

One of the most enthralling pieces I've read in some time. You could watch it too.

I'm Going To Outsource This One

Another thread breaks, this one pregnant with deep meaning.

Everything that needs to be said is said there and said well.

Biiiiiiirds

There's these fat little brown birds in the backyard that sit in the wood chips out by the side fence and just peck around for a bit, and then kick their little feet back to rustle up the chips (like someone trying to kick a rug back into place while standing on top of it) and then they peck some more, supposedly in search for insects. All day. Hah! What a life.

A Walk in the Wind

It was very windy today. The ocean churned and crashed into the cliffs below and there was great energy in the clouds in the distance, a sense of movement and exertion, as if they were trailing smoke from explosions far off. To behold the landscape was to experience an overwhelming sense of movement and urgency. Trees swayed with leaves clustered at the top of their trunks like shimmering green bolts of lightning as they quivered and caught the light. Water caught everywhere on the rocks below rippled in the wind, sending glittering patterns of light off their surface. 

Most coastlines are quite beautiful. The distinguishing charms of the West Coast of Santa Cruz are most certainly the rock formations. Fascinating patterns crop up all along the cliffs due to varying rock materials and their position in relation to the oscillating tides. Strange, jagged, geometric patterns become cut into the rock by the surging waters, patterns which seem chaotic but give off a vaguely ordered sense of beauty, following a logic of their own. Some regions of rock remain dry and bleached by the sun, while others darken with moisture and moss, the moss a brilliant electric green that asserts itself on the rock like a beautiful, nationalistic ecosystem celebrating its existence. 

Some rock flowed jaggedly like a frozen river, progressing at a crawl as the tide rises and pulls more material down with it, pools cutting in and collecting in basins as rock dissolves underneath and is carried out. 

Some clusters of rock give off the impression of physical violence and perpetual motion and energy, especially where the waters constantly slam into the cliffs with force. They look scarred and weathered, yet jut out over the ocean as if with pride. 

Others project an elegant air of peace. They're astonishingly smooth with deep dark color and smooth, rounded basins, with various patterns of moss growing where it can. 

A strange world of unlimited complexity, this world of ours. Solids, liquids, gases, all interacting through various forces and shaping one another. It makes me think of this strange culture we find ourselves in now, full of atomized people orbiting in increasingly inert structures, obsessed with property and objects. I wonder if peace and violence themselves are properties of deep, historical tectonic movements, each of us consisting of slightly different material and existing in slightly different contexts like the varying types of rock, ultimately formed out of infinitely long causal chains that extend deep into cosmic history. 

Why capitalism? Why empire? Why decline, I wonder? All the people I pass with closed faces, glancing over quickly to asses me or not looking at all, most of them interacting in small, tight clusters and employing the same caution with contact with everyone else. All these particular individuals, disconnecting from the greater social webs that hang like potentials over our heads somewhere, all busy in their own heads projecting their thoughts onto the world, trickling over these walking paths along the edge of the coast. 

So this is what it is to experience as a human being. And within a social formation. This great formation that had to inevitably bubble up over tumults of thousands of years of vying empires. 

 The wealthy neighborhoods above the cliff sit there as part of the city of Santa Cruz, an ecosystem of its own, embedded within ecosystems within ecosystems, each acting slightly different but in concert. The city, where the administrative power is concentrated, seeks to retain certain elements while keeping others running through, establishing a social environment through law. 

Signs warn sternly not to sleep in one's car. The homeless for the most part are passed through as if they were toxins within urine, while the wealth builds up on the coast and is retained like fat. 

Yes an organism, but as an organism fundamentally antagonistic to the environment it is housed in; it must eventually be dissolved.

I wonder what it would be like if everyone managed to share the land, if everyday there were various festivities on the cliffs and on the beaches full of spontaneous expression. To walk the coasts in this social context feels strange. I am filled with awe for the great natural beauty but feel like a transgressor, slinking temporarily along someone else's property, only seen as harmless because I will soon be gone. I feel alienated and apart from the land. The land itself full of these walking, gingerly people, all seemingly conscious (however vaguely) of their precarious positions in social time and space. More of us should be aware of the incredibly limited nature of social phenomena that are allowed to happen on these cliffs.  

Yes, indeed. Maybe for the vast proportion of the human population, alienation is a natural property of experience. Or maybe it is an unnatural experience, or at least subjectively discordant due to its conflicting relation with nature, a temporary wrinkle in history's fabrics. 

Well, here's to harmony and the ongoing proliferation of collective and creative consciousness. Not to mention the rapture invoked upon contemplating bare nature. 

Hold On

Sometimes, I get this feeling in which I am simultaneously enraptured with existence and terrified of it. I am ready to shake myself apart in an existential fear: here we are hurtling through space on this rock. Space dust. Insignificant space dust.

And yet the music, the ideas, the nature...this subjective experience of simply being us...it can be very lovely and exhilarating.

So Psychedelic

Another phenomenon in this area worth mentioning is the loose usage of the term "psychedelic" when it comes to the music and art scene.

It has been observed that music and art cultures tend to oscillate between a highly cerebral, meditative, and conscientious worldview and a hedonistic, nihilistic one. Each side of the coin begins with a creative burst of energy and then looses vitality as the old thoughts and patterns are repeated to the point of exhaustion. Upon the perception of a given scene as disingenuous and contrived, there is cynicism followed by a minor revolution, with the ideas and values of that given revolution supplying the emotional vitality of the next cycle.

Psych rock and Funk collapse into Disco which continues into New Wave, and then Grunge comes along, to supply a rough example. Funk and grunge can be taken to be the heady, contemplative, psychedelic-inspired bookends of a long period of musical, artistic, and drug-induced pleasure-seeking. But these are just labels, and the language I am using is itself highly limited. These genres house a seemingly unlimited array of variations and subcultures, all occupying different cultural moods and drawing inspiration from countless threads across history. Within each cycle are thinkers and anti-thinkers. Hedonism can become revolutionary and contemplation can reinforce the status quo. This is only meant to be a stylized model.

Around here we seem to be stuck at the tail end of a hedonistic cycle: it is mainly dubstep out here. Mostly bass and highly simplistic structures and repetitions. The stuff I heard was mind-meltingly simple. The music was primarily meant to act as a sort of binding agent between people and their pleasures. People would dance with each other, watch various sorts of hypnotic lights, hook up with each other, etc. The music was good insofar as it got people moving and feeling and connecting. One was spared from the burden of thinking. Some of the songs had interesting textures that acted as variation, but most of it was pretty repetitive.

And I get it. One gets tired of thinking. Eventually we just want to feel good and experience each other. This is the bright side of hedonism.

I also feel like these hedonistic cultural cycles come at times of heightened political repression and an exhaustion among the revolutionary classes. Well, that repression takes its toll. People want to think again. They get tired of the endless repetition and drudgery, and even the mindless hedonism that's supposed to sweeten that up.When people start thinking again, and imagining different ways in which society could be organized, the culture takes on a different tone. And then power gets nervous. Not that grunge was that revolutionary, but anyways, I'm getting distracted.

People keep describing this scene as "psychedelic" which strikes me as strange. The true psychedelic involves being lost in labyrinths of thought, in contemplating the nature of the cosmos and in being struck with the realization of how absurd your given cemented traditional social system is (in this case consumer society).  It is not just an aesthetic but a spiritual experience.

Granted, some of this dubstep stuff appropriates the psychedelic aesthetic: you hear droning notes and eastern-sounding textures coupled with the simplistic beats. The psychedelic art seems static and flat. Merely meant to dazzle rather than induce deeper cosmic feeling.

I don't wish to complain. It is good to find that people in vastly different sub cultures can borrow from others to create something new. More than anything, this is a striking illustration of language drift: of the tendency of language to diverge from its original referents. Even imagery and concepts can be decoupled from their native contexts and reappropriated somewhere else to create something new. This is dialogue.

But personally, I find myself craving deeper textures. I want more contemplation. Deeper cosmic feeling. I want integrated cultural movements seeking to address wider questions. I can't help but be completely bored with this dubstep party culture.

Northern California For Now

There's great beauty in Santa Cruz. Bad place to be if you don't have a car though. The city is remote and surrounded with hilly forest with one major highway feeding into it. You can take a bus in and out if you really need to. And then once you get to the BART system you can go pretty much anywhere. About a 3 hour trip into the bay area from here. Yes, a robust mass transit system is a good thing.

Pleasant trip really. The nice thing about not having a car is that it forces you to explore places you would have never cared to set foot in previously. You find yourself venturing into the thickets, meeting interesting people and seeing interesting things along the way. You grow hungry and find some hole in the wall food joint and it tastes very good after travelling all day. Fascinating people here. And highly damaged people too.

And it is as if the BART train generates its own genre of atmospheric drone music. The various sonicscapes whipped up by screeching rail can be very dense and fascinating. One can simply sit and read or glance at the window or watch people, or do a little of everything. It is a better way to travel. One is left to attend to various activities that would otherwise be impossible considering the concentration and energy it takes to drive.

In terms of people, I think it is only partially true what they say, stereotypically anyway. Los Angeles people are supposed to be self-absorbed and image obsessed, while San Francisco people are down to earth and gracious. I've seen a mixture of both in both areas. It is true the culture is quite different: Northern California doesn't seem to be as materialistic and there is a more widespread interest in ethical food, environmental concerns, and other topics subsumed under progressive politics in general.

But these interests themselves become mere tribal symbols, or signals one can use to identify themselves with a certain trendy culture, if one is not adopting a greater ideology of change. Patterns of self-interest and daily social cruelties manifest themselves here as well, unfortunately. There's a serious drug culture here, but a good dose of LSD is not necessarily a panacea for the serious modern problems we are contending with, but only a piece of the puzzle. Upon taking a psychedelic, one becomes blissfully aware of the great beauty of all things, but upon repeated dosage I'd imagine the effect wears off, which is what I've seen in many drug enthusiasts.

It is the opening of the valve itself, and the immediate experience of the stark differences between the unfiltered world and the contrived human world of symbols that should inspire the greatest changes in one's worldview. But as the experience becomes repeated and then modulated with the help of other drugs, it just becomes another distraction to be paid for, not unlike our myriad forms of mass media. Though I suppose one's own personality determines much of the overall drug experience.

And it always comes back to the money. Here as well as everywhere else, there is a vague sense of a tightening, and a darkening. Horizons that used to be wide open (this is why drugs could inspire such revolutionary movements in the 60's) are now slowly and subtly constricting. People are growing fearful and stressed, keeping their food separate and nickel and diming each other when it comes to favors, instrumentalizing each others' relations as it all goes back to how much money one has to keep a roof over their head and food in their stomach, and of course, drugs coursing through their blood, tickling their brain to take them away from the realities of our late empire, where they, along with the rest of the bottom are slowly being ground to dust. During sobriety, they walk the halls and streets like ghosts, murmuring about how they can't wait to go to this weekend's electro party. Mood rhythms follow a bi-polarity: smiles and good feelings for a bit and then a minor setback and the clouds come in and suddenly people are treating each other monstrously. Energy levels are low. Everyone keeps to themselves most of the time. You meet someone bright and vibrant and then go to contact them and there is nothing.

The environment doesn't fare too well either, ironically enough. This house in Santa Cruz must have been a beautiful place. There's a great backyard that has a potential for thick gardens but the overgrowth is full of dog shit. There's a garage full of junk and the house at least stays clean but there's much more to be done.

And so who is to blame? The more you begin to think about it, the more difficult it is to spread blame. People are tired. Still forging ahead, thankfully, but tired nonetheless. People need their distractions to maintain simple sanity. And there is little energy left to create when one is working 40 hour work weeks in a meaningless job simply to pay rent and eat.

Well, I could go on. There are great things happening here. As they are everywhere else. There are bright spots among the darkening oceans. You just have to find them and cultivate them. Hopefully eventually we could link them up. There's people doing great things with food, with housing, with energy, with really anything you could think of. We see that the problems are holistic. When we speak of crisis, we sense that there is something deeply wrong with an entire system of thought and action. Thanks to our growing interconnections, we continue linking up the good parts of our culture, the parts worth keeping. It is important not to get too bogged down where it sinks.

Not sure how long I'm going to last out here. Not getting too many bites for work. Running out of money. So it goes. It has been interesting.