psyche

Duvet + Lain = heart attack

Heeeeeeexduuuuuuuuuuump!

Pax

I went to a talk with my mother about dementia - it was to help us care for my demented grandmother. Most people there wanted to complain about the NHS’s stupidity in terms of distributing an acetylcholine-conserving drug (I won’t go into it; it’s pretty dumb) but I found the guy’s stuff quite chilling. Some was straight out of Memento (being unable to “make new memories”, reverting to old memories “for comfort”), some Lain (”if your patient doesn’t remember it, you’re best off pretending that it never really happened”) and the atmosphere - support group, like - was straight out of Fight Club…

I wish I’d known about XFN before! I have to add it to Psyche… and my blogroll.

This is cool and this may come in handy.

The whole OiNK/Pirate Bay thing reminds me of the Great Hacker War somehow.

I’ve seriously had to start sending emails to myself to remember stuff. I think I will use notes in Mail in Leopard after all…

There’s a new David Gray song!

From Everything2:

Serial Experiments Lain begins to scratch at the surface of what is on everyones mind, but is not yet full developed, quite similar to the show. The fears of a nation barreling towards self-oblivion, with ultra high suicide rates, low-paying-high-stress jobs, and family structures that are crumbling because of a lack of communication of emotions, and moral values.

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

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

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’ve just realised that the multiple personality thing in Requiem is in Lain. Argh, worlds converging… I think I’m becoming slightly demented. The sounds of computers humming or random chatter or the sight of anything electronic reminds me of SEL, or of Lain herself.

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 have said this so much it’s becoming meaningless but actually I’m becoming glad that David Gray and also The Wallflowers aren’t actually too successful. It means their stuff retains some intelligence and isn’t overplayed. They (Gray and Dylan) are actually great songwriters.

Pax

Just saw it; it was okay, actually!

Getting an A in music will haunt me for the rest of my life, won’t it?

Won’t it?

Pax

Saw Evan Almighty today; was okay but unfunny. Got Core 1 result, was good. Expecting V for Vendetta graphic novel tomorrow, will be awesome. Will start writing song about Harry Potter innuendo tomorrow.

Pax