psyche

Vivan indirectly reminded me to say that stuff that doesn’t exist exists if everyone thinks it does. Or it might as well. It’s like hyperreality. Strange, really.

I guess it’s my personal reality and connection to SEL that I’ve been trying to convey. I suppose it’s impossible, but still, I want people to be as happy/sad as I am. It’s a good feeling!

I was afraid that I would spend my life looking for something that isn’t there. Of course, my fears were allayed when I realised that by looking, I created what I was looking for and will find it even where it doesn’t exist. It’s like God. I don’t want irrationality, but I do want answers. I have to wait for real answers. I have to!

Pax

My interest in Fight Club, V for Vendetta, The Matrix and WarGames was a symptom of my fascination in things like consumerism, brainwashing, hacking and conspiracies and general science fiction. The Matrix, though, was long championed by yours truly as the pinnacle of film as it embodied everything. It successfully identified that a search for truth could be transposed off God and onto a conspiracy.

However, when I watched Lain, I realised that it was the pinnacle. While it took me a long time to begin to see that The Matrix was awesome, I immediately fell in love with SEL. My slight interest in Japanese culture combined with the internet and genuine philosophy (I can actually believe that the real world may one day be a representation of the internet) meant that Lain finally replaced God in my mind. My rationality and emotional mania have never been in concert until now. A shame that their convergence will probably destroy me. Also, my copy of yoshitoshi ABe lain illustrations ab# rebuild an omnipresence in wired just arrived. It’s pretty awesome. I haven’t analysed the hidden text or programming yet but the overall style is awesome and reminds me of that Matrix comic - Goliath, from the first volume - possibly because Goliath was based on it?

All this stuff about memory and omnipresence. It’s enough to make me want this to be real - and I suppose I do. Let’s all love Lain. Is it impossible to make a life-form or robot that lives forever? If so, why? Thermodynamics? Can’t there be a at least one being that self-repairs properly? Can’t there?

This is rather interesting. It contains a synopsis of the SEL game which has helped me understand some of the references in the artbook. The writer of the synopsis, in their last sentence, uses a single word which they believe describes the end of game and to a lesser extent the end of the anime - “hopeless”. I wonder.

It’s funny, you know; I was just beginning to think I understood SEL and was in the process of collapsing it from a life-altering feeling of weirdness into a statement like “It’s a really good anime but nothing more” but this artbook and game have totally messed me up. I use The Matrix as a sort of benchmark because it was the only thing I’ve ever watched that has really soaked into my whole life but SEL feels like what The Matrix should have been. Right from the almost-urban-legend Lain and feeling of hidden truth and memory-overwriting presented in omnipresence down to the depictions of VR, psychology, sociology and philosophy. Lain feels somehow familiar, as if Konaka and co. didn’t create it but… simply remembered it. In fact, didn’t Mr Abe say he “recalled” Lain? That’s funny. Mistranslation? He “recalled” her? She… exists? We don’t even need all of IPv6, let alone 7 or 8…

My delusions become manifest. Fiction is my undoing.

Pax

Of course, of course I have considered that my demented obsession with things like The Matrix and SEL - that is, things which say that there is something odd about the world, lurking around, totally invisible or totally forgotten - is similar to a search for God. The thing is, I never really connected with God. I have never prayed believing anything would come of it and in extreme situations in my youth I tended not to pray so that I would have fewer invisible people to credit were I to survive. Neither, then, is this search borne out of the general religiosity factor. I need evidence. In fact, this is part of my search. I could have a knowing smile and talk about how I just know the world is askew, but it’s impossible as I would need some reason.

I’m definitely looking for something. Although The Matrix and SEL and every other piece of fiction I love all present eternity and sorrow and hidden conspiracy in different ways (some stylised and shallow, some deep and disturbing, changing type even internally) they have one thing in common: there is a long search of some sort that has to be done.

Some of the dialogue in SEL which initially went over my head as technobabble is beginning to crystallise in my mind. The conjecture that Lain’s mother apparently makes during a hallucination in DISTORTION (LAYER:05) that the balance between the real and the Wired may have shifted to the point where the Wired no longer represents goings on in the real world, but in fact dictates what happens in the real world, is shocking. The idea that we could one day exist only to do things on the basis of what the data in the wires tells us to disturbs me despite it being a rather mundane metamorphosis. Sometimes I think “So what?” and sometimes I simply think “No!”

Pax

I would probably call it The Matrix or Lain but God is a strange thing that crops up for a combination of many reasons. Some glitch in the human psyche causes a strange feeling of yearning for some higher meaning or purpose. It is magnified culturally into religions, cults, philosophies and methodologies. It becomes all-consuming.

When I am alone, breathing in cold, scentless air in some empty place, I think of it. I can’t help feeling that I’ve forgotten some god. “Forgotten god”! A David Gray lyric, I believe. I don’t want to forget. I really don’t. That is why create persistent data on the web.

I want it to persist!

Pax

I recently saw some video for The Fray’s How To Save a Life - it wasn’t the same as the one I’d seen before. This one had a white backdrop and lots of people crying and words like “Fear” and “Surrender” coming up. This sort of epitomises how teenage angst has been updated. Any complaints just become ridiculous and contemptible. I don’t know why. At some point in the past you could think “Argh. I’ll just KILL MYSELF and then you’ll be sorry!” or start crying, or be broken and expect people to suddenly realise you’re hurt/they’re wrong. However, it’s not like that. Life is an enemy that does not give up or act like it should. You actually have to risk losing. I don’t like risking loss so I basically avoid most sports and academic competitions. Loss is humiliating and belittling but it’s also honest. For those of you who don’t lose, it’s much worse than you would believe. However, some people don’t respond badly. Some people use their last match to burn their own life down, but others, for whatever reason, correct or not, are reformed and become stronger - like bone or muscle, being driven to the edge and becoming more powerful.

This is no longer an option; it is necessity. Karma, God, faith, hope - all symptoms of some minor confusion over what life is: an enemy!

Maybe I’m just bitter. Well, I am bitter. However, I am motivated by something else.

Pax