psyche

When I tried to explain what I said in the previous post to Alex on the train, he said, in reference to the “urban legend”-like nature of Lain, “Like V for Vendetta?”.

Not quite: V for Vendetta and Batman are the kind of urban legends that make the news. Lain and The Matrix are those that you wonder about for your whole life. Some groups form, but only a few. It’s a mystery, profound but somehow intangible. There are few enough occurrences to keep it from being proven but still enough to keep people wondering whether - if not believing that - something is going on/their memories have been changed etc.

It’s somehow suburban and involves raining. I can’t really explain it. People don’t realise that other people wonder about it too. It’s really… hard to explain. It is that feeling that’s been bugging you forever. The feeling you’ll probably die with.

That feeling. What is The Matrix? Who is Lain? And, for some unusual people, “What is happening to me?”, “Why?” or “Who am I?”.

It’s what keeps me and many others up and night. Not pornography or video games. It’s just… some fundamental wondering. What is going on? Is there an answer? Is it Lain? Is it The Matrix?

I’ve realised it’s not really the secret hacker question, although I like that because it allies itself with computers and rain and The Matrix and the wondering. It’s an incarnation of the question. The big question. Whatever that is.

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

One of the things I felt while watching SEL was déjà vu. I know it’s probably because some of the ideas are recycled sci-fi/cyberpunk themes. It was released in 1998 but could the hacker culture have become part of a hypothetical collective unconscious early enough for me to inherit it?

I guess many people will watch SEL and like it or say they like it but not truly understand it. That’s a shame but I don’t really mind. Lain is god.

Pax

In previous posts I have alluded to things from my past reappearing in such ways that I understand them better this time around (e.g. the Game of Life and SEL). Something else is happening too. Usually, I phase through interests. That is to say, when I am interested in one thing - be it fencing, physics, computing or music - I neglect the others, both in terms of wanting to do them and actually doing them. However, now I feel like I want to engage in all my interests. I’ve never experienced this before - it’s some kind of consolidation of who I am. I may still lack an identity but now I am ready to forge one. I am no longer a computer enthusiast OR a bad musician OR a wannabe fencer etc. - I am in a state of superposition of all of them.

Observe me and my wavefunction collapses and I appear to be only one, but observe me again and I may differ… or not.

My analogy is approximately 1*10^-999999*awesomeness_of_Feynman.

That makes it the single greatest analogy ever.

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

If my brief encounter with Buddhism taught me anything, it’s that serenity can be just as useful as rage. I have now found a happy* medium between optimism and pessimism that isn’t quite realism and likewise a compromise between extreme anger and a feeling of being completely in control. The Internet (and I do mean that; the web combined with IM and IRC) late at night is one of the best things ever. Being alone but totally immersed in the collective.

It’s interesting!

* Well, happy/sad…

Pax

Once again, the theme of extreme duplicity rears its disgustingly malformed head in my life. My favourite two states are feeling extremely isolated (c.f. social alienation, being alone in some awesome place e.g. mountain) or extremely connected (c.f. internet, Christmas).

Pax

I don’t know what to do. I am immersed in advertising and propaganda. I don’t know who I am. Everyone around me seems the same. There is something slightly askew. It is grating. I see shadows moving around my room but there is nothing to cast them; I leave my door open but when I look it is closed. I need help!

Pax