(Abandoned substack draft)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
how do we find joy in an existence within constraints? how does art break through the bandwidth limitations of symbol and letter? how is life to dance ecstatic, hand-in-hand with inevitable death?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTo make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he or she has been born \u2014 the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to he accumulated records of other people’s experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it be-devils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.\u201d \u2015 Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I love these oil painting cityscapes by Jeremy Mann, they take my breath away every time. When you make art, I think it’s always useful to ask the question, “What is it about this medium that lets me do something I can’t do with any other medium?”<\/em> And when I look at Jeremy Mann\u2019s paintings, I feel like he has this figured out. There\u2019s something about the deliberate splotches, the way the colors bleed and smear out of the outlines, that feel like the reality of the experience of perception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While writing this essay I looked him up and I\u2019m delighted to report that there\u2019s a 40 minute documentary about him and his process, A Solitary Mann<\/a> (2018)! And his approach is pretty much exactly as I had imagined it would be. He started out more chaotic and freeform before learning \u201cproper\u201d paintings later on, which is also what I like about these paintings \u2013 there\u2019s a \u201cunschooled\u201d energy to it. I\u2019ve described Billie Eilish as having a similar energy<\/a> \u2013 surreal, chaotic, goofy, serious all at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More on mediums. I believe it\u2019s worth examining what mediums are best suited to what things. Movies are a great medium for (amongst other things) Jackie Chan style action flicks \u2013 they\u2019re just not as fun to read and imagine in your mind. Novels, on the other hand, are great for articulating long, meandering, intricately woven threads of thought \u2013 it\u2019s possible to write a riveting chapter of writing that\u2019s just about some guy sitting in a room reminiscing about his childhood, maybe even an entire novel\u2019s worth. That can be quite hard to translate into film. Video game movie adaptations have been notoriously bad, while Edge of Tomorrow (2014), a movie that\u2019s not<\/em> about a video game (it\u2019s actually based on a Japanese scifi novel called All You Need Is Kill)<\/em>, has repeatedly been recognized as an excellent \u201cvideo game movie\u201d \u2013 because it does a fantastic job of embracing the logic<\/em> of video games. Which in turn reminds me of one of my favorite quotes about translation, by poet John Ciardi who was translating Dante\u2019s Divine Comedy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTranslator’s Note: When the violin repeats what the piano has just played, it cannot make the same sounds and it can only approximate the same chords. It can, however, make recognizably the same “music”, the same air. But it can do so only <\/em>when it is as faithful to the self-logic of the violin as it is to the self-logic of the piano.<\/em><\/strong>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s something important here. Every medium, every instrument, has a certain \u2018internal logic\u2019. Tweets have them. Substack essays have them. Youtube videos have them. TikToks have them. Books have them. Songs have them, albums have them. This extends to everything, I think. Note-taking apps have them. How do we even begin to perceive this, think about this? A lot of it has to do with the \u201cuser experience\u201d, the expectations people bring to the interaction, the context. Look again at Jeremy Mann\u2019s painting. There are certain universal principles of rhythm and contrast \u2013 darker here, brighter there, time and space and distance, similarity and repetition \u2013 these are all things that you can also discern in other mediums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I remember once being curious to analyze Haruki Murakami\u2019s Norwegian Wood<\/em>, and I found that there was a distinct rhythm to the way he alternated between characters in different chapters. Rhythm and repetition are very basic principles that you\u2019ll see in everything from embroidery to songwriting, and once you start to discern these universal patterns, you can spend time immersed in one subject, and find that you\u2019ve become a better creator in another. Learning to play the drums or the piano benefits almost any musician, because they develop rhythmic and harmonic sensibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I used to work in marketing, which trained me to be brief, be clear, be succinct. The marketer in me would consider eliminating \u201cbe brief, be clear\u201d from the preceding sentence, because you get more punchy phrasing with \u201ctrained me to be succinct.\u201d It\u2019s more \u201ceffective\u201d. If it\u2019s easier to read, it should \u201cimprove retention\u201d. It reduces cognitive load for the reader, who we are \u201csupposed\u201d to assume is busy, distracted, and needs everything to be made as simple for them as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Honestly, fuck that. Marketing is a toolkit. It\u2019s not the boss of me. Those words came out of me the way they did, and I am choosing to leave them the way they are. Why? Because that\u2019s what I like, that\u2019s why! I\u2019m not writing these essays for some hypothetical reader I don\u2019t even know. I\u2019m writing these essays, first and foremost, for me. And I like it when things are poetic, beautiful, complex. I am particularly tired of scrolling through what feels like oceans of psychological baby food. I want to be challenged. I want something with bite, something that doesn\u2019t feel like it\u2019s been watered down to nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And sure, I can argue for the other side on this. There\u2019s definitely a type of artist who delights in creating complexity for its own sake. The more indecipherably convoluted the sentence, the smarter the author must be! Ew. I\u2019d rather be a passionate dumbass. When I\u2019m done writing this essay, I\u2019ll probably re-read it once or twice and look for instances that feel overwrought, and untangle those if I can. But if it feels good, I\u2019m leaving it as-is. It really shouldn\u2019t be difficult to say that things shouldn\u2019t be simpler or more complex than they have to be. \u201cAs simple as possible, but not simpler,\u201d Einstein allegedly said. Works for me. It\u2019s not that one side is better than the other, it depends on the context. Sometimes it seems to me that people get obsessively invested in choosing a side to avoid the tedious work of asking \u201cWell, what do we have here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, what do we have here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today I\u2019m thinking about mediums and constraints. I\u2019m thinking about tweets and essays and videos and books. I\u2019m thinking about what the fuck I\u2019m doing with my life, what I want to be doing, how I feel about it as I do it. I guess I\u2019ll start by talking about Twitter, because at the time of writing, that\u2019s where most people know me from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I never really set out to be a prolific tweeter. I did set out to be prolific in general, and I tried to write profusely in every channel I had access to \u2013 and Twitter just happened to be the context that was most receptive to it. I created a Twitter account fairly early on, in 2007, mainly to follow celebrities and to talk with some friends. My usage sorta ebbed and flowed, I didn\u2019t really have much of an \u201caudience\u201d. I\u2019ve revisited my older tweets a bunch of times now at this point, and it\u2019s been interesting to try and recreate the mental state I was in when I wrote some of them. I would often ask questions or make terse little observations that I wanted to share with people immediately \u2013 I was doing most of my thinking and writing in my notes and blogs, so I was drawn to Twitter mainly when I was hopeful to get responses \u2013 even when I wasn\u2019t hardly even getting any.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is obvious to people who are on YouTube, but I\u2019m not so sure it\u2019s obvious to people who are text-natives. YouTube changed the world\u2026 wrote the rest of this as a thread lol<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n a phrase like “youtube changed the world” is probably super trivially obvious to anybody who’s on it, uses it significantly, etc, but I feel like it might still not be obvious to people who are text natives<\/p>\n\n\n\n the fact that you can record basically infinite video, for basically free, to be played for basically free* (* yes, it’s funded by ads, yes there are very valid criticisms re: ads) anywhere on the planet, is astounding, and not all of us think or know to take advantage of this. (just read a thing about an NBA player who learned from youtube)<\/p>\n\n\n\n yes there are also other concerns like is the moderation screwed up, “community guidelines”, bla bla. I don’t actually know the specifics. i’m sure if you go looking for bad stuff you’ll find it. maybe if you just hang out long enough, and I haven’t, it finds you. elsagate, etc..<\/p>\n\n\n\n around 2020 or so I decided to “pivot to youtube” somewhat, from sitting down and doing an analysis of the state of the internet, what options are available to me, etc. I didn’t do as much as I hoped bc writing Introspect<\/a> took me much longer than I anticipated, but still\u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n the discoverability on YT is amazing. on twitter if you make a tweet, it’s ~typically~ dead & forgotten soon-ish. even if you do what I do, which is build elaborate threads of threads and reference old stuff often, that’s a rounding error in comparison to youtube discoverability<\/p>\n\n\n\n a lot of people i talk to assume that because i have 50k followers on twitter, most of my youtube subs and views must come from twitter. this is hilariously not the case. my sense is that people who enjoy typing and reading dont like videos. ~25% of my views come from off-yt<\/p>\n\n\n\n and I havent even really begun to *try* making youtube videos that appeal to wider audiences. I know from my marketing background\/experience that if I start talking about specific events, people, topics, etc it’ll explode<\/p>\n\n\n\n consider this. Roko, who came up with Roko’s Basilisk, has less than 10,000 followers on Twitter. the top video ABOUT Roko’s Basilisk has 4,600,000 views. all the other videos combined probably put it at about 6m views. and this wont stop tomorrow. it’ll keep growing and growing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n twitter is great bc you can ideate easily, just think a thought and fire it off. fantastic. love it. it’s why I’m here all the time. but once you’ve found your voice, a sense of what you have to talk about, what your talking points are, I strongly recommend getting on youtube<\/p>\n\n\n\n I got a lot more to say about this, I can talk about it for an hour probably. the optics of youtube hit different. on twitter, we’re all equal, which is great. on youtube, there’s this perception of creator\/audience distinction<\/p>\n\n\n\n which is good news if you want to become a creator, be taken seriously as a creator. even if you’re an author, I recommend talking about your favorite books. literally like you’re on a zoom call. that’s honestly good enough you don’t need production quality<\/p>\n\n\n\n i will say that in all creative pursuits, yea it takes years to start to see Results. but the wonderful thing about yt vids is you can share them with people repeatedly. i’ve recorded conversations with friends literally so we can get other ppl up to speed w\/o repeating ourselves<\/p>\n\n\n\n there are pitfalls of chasing the white whale on youtube, trying to optimize for maximum ad revenue, or subscriber count, etc. then you’ll encounter the standard demons of fame and celebrity etc. but you can really just… Not Do That. i think there’s a lot of opportunity there<\/p>\n\n\n\n one tricky thing about youtube i find is that people feel and talk like they know you more\/better. the parasocial thing is stronger. people will straight up comment on your voice and appearance etc so you gotta be prepared for that. this must sucks wayyy more for women<\/p>\n\n\n\n the good too tho \u2013 i find that the +ve response i get on youtube is so much more. i guess it’s things like body language and tone of voice. i feel like i put in more effort writing my threads than just rambling out loud in front of a camera, but some ppl LOVE me for the latter<\/p>\n\n\n\n which, at 4k subs i’m starting to discern the necessity of some subtle like status-management-y things, which I guess I’m lucky to have had a long time to build up the skill\/knowledge\/awareness for. becoming a celebrity on youtube at a young age must insane, worse than drugs<\/p>\n\n\n\n some people think that they’ve missed the boat by not being early to youtube, but honestly you can start at any time. sure you probably won’t be in the top 10 but you can be in the top ~million and still be happy with an engaged audience abt stuff u like. (Girlfriend Reviews published their first video in November 2018- about 6 months before OP posted something like \u201cI wish I started a YouTube channel in 2005\u201d. They now have over a million subscribers It\u2019s never too late. We are still in the early days. Makers are busy making).<\/p>\n\n\n\n if you’re not sure about what to do for your first video I recommend using your phone front camera or laptop webcam and just talk for maybe 5-10 minutes about some topic you care about. “today i wanna talk about \/ ykno, i’m always telling people…”<\/p>\n\n\n\n if it’s something you’re actually always telling people, congrats now you can save yourself hours of time by just sending the video to ppl instead. lol. you can also get a transcript to turn it into a blogpost… endless possibilities. just sharing bc i want my friends to<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s hard to appreciate what Malcolm McLuhan really meant when he said that \u201cthe medium is the message\u201d, in part because people keep reinterpreting it, and also I suppose in part because the context has changed. That was kind of his point. That the medium changes the context. The context is always collapsing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ok goodnight i\u2019ll update\/edit tmr<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve been reading Marshall McLuhan\u2019s Understanding Media (1964) \u2013 seminal book, might do a post just to review it later \u2013 and there was a bit that jumped out at me today, where he talks about how the advent of the photograph affected other mediums like painting and novels:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPerhaps the great revolution produced by photograph was in the traditional arts. The painter could no longer depict a world that had been much photographed.<\/strong> He turned, instead, to reveal the inner processes of creativity in expressionism and in abstract art. Likewise, the novelist could no longer describe objects or happenings for readers who already knew what was happening by photo, press, film, and radio. The poet and novelist turned to those inward gestures of the mind by which we achieve insight and by which we make ourselves and our world. Thus art moved from outer matching to inner making. Instead of depicting a world that matched the world we already knew, the artists turned to presenting the creative process for public participation. He has given to us now the means of becoming involved in the making-process.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n (ChatGPT recs: French artist Gustave Courbet, Cervantes, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This is a specific instance of a wider thing that I\u2019ve been fascinated about for some time. Questions like, what is the purpose of an essay, in an age of tweets and TikToks? I don\u2019t believe that the format has become entirely irrelevant, but I do believe that it has to be updated, to adapt. I remember when people used to say that blogging is dead \u2013 and in some ways, sure \u2013 there was a thing we called \u201cThe Blogosphere\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n I do also believe that a lot of authors of great works from the past, if they were brought into the present, would do things quite differently now. (Most recently: I mentioned to someone that Marina Abramovic wouldn’t I\u2019m reminded as well of someone tweeting that movies like The Social Network and Black Swan, which came out in 2010, would not do as well in the 2020s. I think this is true, but it\u2019s largely because those movies were made in a world where those movies didn\u2019t exist, and we are now judging them in a cultural context where those movies exist. I thought about PSY\u2019s Gangnam Style, which was a global cultural event in 2012, which would definitely not have the same impact today. Because we live in a post-Gangnam-Style world! Carly Rae Jepsen\u2019s Call Me Maybe came out in 2012 as well, and it was in the right place and right time to be a similarly huge event, where people (including US military personnel stationed in Afghanistan<\/a>) would make 3 minute long videos lipsyncing and dancing to the entire song.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nobody has that kind of patience anymore. Breaking Bad was perfectly made and perfectly paced for its time (season 1 was in 2008), but if you try binge-watching it in 2023, it will feel a little sluggish and slow-paced. This is not Breaking Bad\u2019s fault! It was made perfect for its time! And this applies to all media ever.<\/em> Old novels devoted loads of words describing things that no longer really need description. Ghost In The Shell (1995) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) both can feel kind of tedious if you\u2019ve already watched other movies that have been influenced by them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The relevant TVtropes here is \u201cSeinfeld is unfunny<\/a>\u201d \u2013 people who are evaluating Seinfeld against other sitcoms in a post-Seinfeld world often note that Seinfeld isn\u2019t as good as its successors. Similar things could be said about Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This also rhymes with how I describe the problem of great ideas. Good ideas are easy to appreciate, great ideas are not. Good ideas plug nicely into existing structures, great ideas need entirely new structures that don\u2019t currently exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to do a post about “in media res” \u2013 something about how we are always in the middle of things. we are born in the middle of things. we die in the middle of things. if you were to write a book, the book has covers, it has a first word and a last, but even that book itself, is “in the middle of things”, in the sense that it’s part of a greater conversation. the meaning of each word is something that’s negotiated in relation to other words. everything is a work in progress. we don’t live long enough to grow wise, though that’s a topic for a separate thing…<\/p>\n\n\n\n artful incompleteness<\/strong>: everything is incomplete. i feel embarrassed that I haven\u2019t completed things. for example I have this idea that everything can be reframed as a set of questions. and then I feel embarrassed that I haven\u2019t already done that. But why? Why am I embarrassed about my imperfections?<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s a whole essay I\u2019ve been drafting around the idea of \u201cartful incompleteness\u201d, and I continue to stew on it because it doesn\u2019t quite seem artful in its incompleteness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
marketing is a toolkit. it\u2019s not your boss.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
twitter is a parliament of hallucinations \/ global mind having a stroke \/ you can at-mention anybody anywhere instantaneously \/ crazy how everyone is right there<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
youtube changed the world \/ it\u2019s a golden age \/ incredible discoverability \/ stable consumer behavior<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
the context is always collapsing \u2013 previously this said the medium is the message and that made me freeze because i can just sense the tedious disagreements i might get with people. and even if nobody disagrees i would feel iffy about it<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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in media res<\/h2>\n\n\n\n