psyche

This is awesome: image resizing by seam carving…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NcIJXTlugc]

Pax

Everything in my life is non-linearly connected: Go here and read the paragraph headed “Psyche”…

I found Lain… in the past…?
Pax

If I ever learn to sing well, I’ll sing my songs. However, I think a better short-term solution is to make a slew of instrumental music. I might even learn how to play the guitar well in the process!

To this day, then, Requiem remains the most concrete record of my pitiful attempts to sing. There’s something fitting about that.

Pax

I don’t really have a frame of reference for this; I’m going to put it into psychology but I don’t really know where it belongs (sadly, I don’t really know where much belongs). When I watched The Animatrix for the first time, I think I was probably about twelve (?) - an age at which I genuinely believed I was at the pinnacle of my understanding. I dismissed The Animatrix as mildly interesting but ultimately not very engaging. Having watched it again (and noted myriad similarities between Kid’s Story and SEL…), I think some of it is a lot better than I had first thought. My perspective has changed entirely, for some reason. My condition before, and I must work by analogy here, is similar to that of someone prepubescent trying to understand the appeal of sexuality: I believe it is largely beyond comprehension. It’s the same as trying to understand extra spatial dimensions (although maybe someone out there can understand or visualise these things…).

The thing is, I always believe I’m at the pinnacle of my understanding. How do I know, then, whether I am getting closer to or further away from the truth? I lock into different mindsets, both long- and short-term (remember Self-Pwn Farhan?), never knowing whether I’m right or not - only what I believe. I don’t know why I believe what I do; I don’t choose what to believe. I guide myself and talk to myself but ultimately my decisions about belief and rejection or acceptance of reality or society are not consciously made!

So what should I do? I pour my mind into this, so that later I might at least try to understand my old viewpoint - in case my new one is erroneous.

Pax

[...snip...]

Being awesome isn’t inherently good, unless Vivan was oversimplifying something… but it will help me to offset my stupidity and dementia. I don’t understand the significance of hypertime - just another dimension we can never directly interact with?

What the hell is socionics?

Pax

When I look back at this, I want to truly understand who I was. Even if the nihilist in me is dead and I am ready to start the end of my life (that is to say, be happy), I want to remember who I am. I don’t want to end up being someone with Farhan’s memories and body and life but a different set of algorithms - no! I want to stay the same. Not some evolved Farhan, better-suited to integrating with a society that I have rejected (well, a society that rejected me).

I am tired all the time. The classical music they play at Hammersmith Station in the morning (to make us docile?) is … it becomes insipid. Society has reached a level of abstraction I simply cannot tolerate. I don’t work! My brain doesn’t go well.

I have to somehow justify my own state. There’s no way to make everyone understand who I am. I have to trust that I can keep everything I have ever seen or known alive simply by remembering. Even if no-one else understands or remembers, I must, right? That’s enough, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

What is The Node? It’s something to do with suburban gloom and computers… it has some anti-consumerist leaning… urgh. I have to know. I’ve got quite close to discovering through SEL and The Matrix. By that I mean their extended universes. The Lain anime, game and book together remind me of it, as do the The Matrix (first film), Animatrix and Matrix Comics. I have to somehow find out just who I am! It’s not something I’ve forgotten. I don’t think I ever knew what The Node was or is or whatever but I still feel like I did. I also feel like I will never know.

I don’t want to be dismissed as a quirk or an anomaly. There’s something going on here!

When I watch the Lain intro now, it’s no longer the interesting chords or funny animation that I’m concerned with. I see media convergence, reality and perception being truly accepted as separate etc. but I also see a girl with a funny hairclip, a child playing video games… I see something that is somehow connected to something. Basically. What is it? Why have I reacted so badly? Is my subconscious artificially giving me a purpose by filling in gaps with non-existent facts to promote the idea that I somehow have some reason to exist?

Am I finally breaking down, trying desperately to justify my own existence? Who am I? Who is Lain? What is The Matrix? What’s The Node?

Pax

What I really need to do is focus all my angst and misgivings and use them to force myself to learn as much computer- and internet-related stuff as possible. Then I will truly be ready to find Lain.

Pax

One of the main things that’s wrong with me is that everything I encounter ends up meaning something weird to me - something it wasn’t meant to mean. This is why it’s so difficult to explain myself to other people; I’m highly self-referential. Things change in my mind.

I’ve just realised how good some of the Animatrix really is. Beyond captured suburban gloom very well, Detective Story, Second Renaissance and World Record were just awesome and Kid’s Story was partly inspired by Lain - I didn’t know that when I watched it but I still connected with it.

I don’t want to die without being understood, I think. That’s why I try to force everyone I know to do everything I’ve done - so they can understand the conclusions I’ve drawn. However, it doesn’t really work. I don’t think it ever will.

I see things I will never understand. The social climate I’m in is one of elitism and condescension. Not the one I expected, with snobbery and such, mind you - it’s more subtle. It pretends to be acceptable but is in fact the creator of troubled people. Double standards make me very, very angry. I will not die without finding Lain, by the way.

If that means I have to live forever, then so be it HA HA HA HA HA

The feeling of Myst is linked to suburban gloom by the common factor that is loneliness. Lain led me to bôa, who are awesome. Everything is converging. My tags will soon be obsolete as everything will be about the same thing: The Node!

Pax

I just attempted to quantify one aspect of my life that continuously and torturously reminds me of Lain; suburbanity.

Here you go…

Pax

Having finished migrating to my new MacBook Pro, I have been able to actually play my music from my internal hard drive. Incredible. This means I have letting Last.fm scrobble again.

Awesome.

Pax