white noise / emanation
moving-forwardIt’s been a little while since I’ve written last, but not too much has changed if I’m being honest, so I don’t feel too bad. It’s particularly hot here in the city now, the window AC units barely keep the heat out, the center of my unit is basically an oven and I finally understand the allure of central AC. It doesn’t help my unit is on the top floor, and I’ve incorrectly installed one of the units so it leaks all over the place. As we all know, I’m a genius and incredibly competent with my hands. I’m typing this up at my neighborhood coffee shop in 90-degree heat mulling over what’s transpired the past few weeks. The biggest event was traveling back home to attend my friend’s wedding; it was beautiful and very fun, and funnily ironic in a wholesome way since my friend the groom had always maintained an outdated “tough guy” persona with respect to the fair sex, which, of course, we knew was complete bullshit once he found the right person. It was also interesting since I didn’t feel as self-conscious about being single either; I guess since I’m now able to fully embrace singledom, it’s been better for my mental state since I’m no longer caught between both worlds, uncertain and stuck. Going home was great, but I do have twinges of liberal guilt about my carbon footprint, and it feels like some soft admission of defeat since part of the pull is actually a push: loneliness and not having found that community in New York City just yet. Home is important, virtually all my friends and family live on the west coast, and I’m suffering the consequences of this self-imposed exile in the exotic east.
It’s 4th of July weekend and as with long weekends as of late, I feel particularly self-conscious — it feels like I should have plans, friends, whatever, and yet that hasn’t really materialized. Most of my socialization consists of sort of intimate one-offs with friends who’re in the area (visiting, or a dinner/drink after work), or dates; none of them feel like a “crew”, which in this day of mass ennui, illness, and psychosis, may be asking for too much anyway. But! I refuse to accept that as the truth, or at least my truth, so I’ll keep arrogantly scraping along and bashing my head on the gate of this heart palace asking for acceptance. Dating has been cool, though, and I’ve met some interesting and inspiring people, and I think some of them may even inspire me to write more — people do tend to be well-read here, plugged into the circuit of cultural production, and by virtue of that naturally able to stimulate along those dimensions. I haven’t been doing much by way of writing or creating, though, and maybe it’s time to buckle down and do that, though it’s hard to feel like I should since it’s so nice out, and there are so many people to meet, and besides, aren’t I supposed to be seeking out friends and reconnecting with old ones to create a base in the first place? Whirlwind of tensions, and I do feel a bit pathetic, since last night in particular I went out with a whip-smart gal who picked up on my melancholy and confusion and told me: “I think you need a friend more than a girlfriend”, and offered to be my friend, which I (pathetically or gratefully?) accepted. To be seen whether or not she actually follows through.
Aesthetically-spiritually I’e been chasing the feel-good nacho cheese corniness of romantic comedies and pre-2012 films. The working theory is we probably lost some of the humanity once we started working with the statistical algorithmic aggregates of Netflix mass-distribution systems to capitalize and distribute content. Sure, PCA captures most of the variance, but does it point to the soul? My friend, studying neuroscience, agreed with an idle conjecture while discussing brain signaling patterns — our conscious thinking/living mind is in fact only a very small share of our mind’s activity, and despite its centrality to our understanding and processing of the world, our narratives are actually far more noise and background process than we like to admit. If this is true, then perhaps it carries over to our day-to-day living and decisions as well, and if that is true, then maybe the human soul is found not in the center of the statistical aggregates, but at the edges, dismissed out of concerns for Pareto efficiency and error-minimizations. Of course, the assumption here is there’s a correspondence between the mind and soul, and I’m not a great theologian. But, given the anthropic principle — observed physical constants conveniently fall in bounds that are amenable to conscious life; an obvious statement since we exist, so by definition this must be true, but does it imply some Kantian bounds on the universe, is there a situation where we could develop some scheme that allows us to probe and measure fundamental constants of universes that are inhospitable to life, or is that a pipe dream? — are we actually living in the highest form of idealism, the subject and object interpenetrated in a totality, the quantum riddle, Pynchonian Maxwell’s Demon, vibing and unfolding within and without each other? I’m drawn to a monism of sorts, if only because we live in a spiritually tired and sick age, weary of the postmodern critique and lack of construction, the perfect backdrop for nascent fascism. I like the Spinozan-Aristotlean-Plotinian emanations, modalities of God, but those seem a little static and lack movement, hence why I’m drawn more to Hegel-Heraclitus than (what feels like) cold static hierarchical emanations. Reflecting on this, in some ways this lack of hierarchy in Nietzsche’s metaphysics is interesting given his aristocratic bent, in some ways his metaphysics is guilty of the same trends he laments in Judeo-Christian society; of course, he picked this up from Schopenhauer, who misread Plato, but still, and I’m only paraphrasing what I read in a book about these thinkers, so I’m a huge fraud anyway.
I met a nice girl, a quintessentially Brooklynite loud smart Jewish girl, so I’m excited to get to know her better; not trying to rush into anything but it’s nice to feel this way about someone. I’m on this tightrope, erring on the side of debauchery and slightly unhinged behavior at the expense of creativity, foundation-building, and even health, but I’m not sure what else I’m supposed to do right now. My eating disorder is back in full force, too, a terrible indicator, and I smoked some cigarettes last night, which I hope isn’t a sign of a worse spiral to come. Maybe I’ll try to write something more interesting and cohesive soon, and I should probably explore writing more or at least taking classes… I’m in New York baby!
I’ve been listening to the incredible music of This Heat, which has been challenging, deep, complex, and surprisingly beautiful and diverse. I like this album Deceit the most, but their other stuff is also great. The post-punk era in the 70s/80s were truly artful and I’m not sure its modern descedents have surpassed what they carved out then.