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

The Source, eh?

As soon as I started looking for Lain, I found her everywhere. Confirmation bias, anyone?

Pax

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

I’m going to attempt to define what it is about The Matrix and SEL that captivates me - apart from the whole computers thing. It’s related but not actually dependent on the computers. It’s a certain interpretation of the “quest for esoteric truth” thing; I’m going to call it the secret hacker question because it seems to involve hackers. “What is The Matrix?” and “Who is Lain?” (sometimes “Have you ever seen the Lain?” [sic]) are the two questions in question (ha ha ha).

They both deal with a truth that seems to be just out of reach and theoretically attainable, if only you could find them. It’s not that they don’t exist - you just have to find them. The whole way the concept is merged with social withdrawal, hacking, suburbanity (not a word, I know) and conspiracy theories is just very interesting. It’s the feeling that many people are searching for some answer and that it has a sort of modern but still mythical feel about it. It’s actually rather harder to quantify than I first thought. I’m sure you kind of know what I mean. You must know.

Pax

In layer:06 of Serial Experiments Lain¹, a gauge on Lain’s liquid cooling system is shown twice. Both times, “mebious.co.uk” is shown.

It’s linked to from the top left of http://www.guevin.com/ (the text is white on white so you’ll have to highlight it to see it).

mebious.co.uk itself used to show http://www.monkie.f2s.com/mebious/ in a frame and redirect repeatedly to http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/ (it’s now self contained, although the content is the same, so I think it’s still operated by UKResistance). Its favicon is an allusion to the pressure gauge in Lain that the URL was displayed on.

According to this Everything2 entry, it used to be fake so perhaps UKResistance are just capitalising on the fact that there was nothing there before to increase their own traffic. And Anime-Myth.com implies a connection with Baudrillard, a notion I obviously really want to entertain (watch out, the site’s very pink).

Having said that, why would a .co.uk thing be inserted into SEL? I don’t know if it’s just the UK version that has it - others say they’ve seen it, but I can’t be sure where their versions were ripped from. I suspect that it’s in all of them.

Earradhubh found Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mebious.co.uk.

Have a look at the Wayback Machine for its history (relatively boring).

For more discussion on Lain - or for now, text from the artbook omnipresence in wired - see http://disinformatics.com/lain.html.

Pax

¹ In this case I was watching the English dub on my Region 2 box set

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

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

It is Lain herself who asserts that people only have substance in the memories (did she mean minds?) of other people. This means that although she doesn’t literally “kill” or “delete” herself, she becomes nothing. No-one will ever properly know her and all her previous sacrifices are rendered meaningless by her final one. I am becoming insane. To be forever alone and never remembered? I don’t… understand.

That’s the worst form of immortality! I would have been less saddened by SEL if Lain had just killed herself! It’s too much.

People complain a lot about how slow and sparse SEL is, but isn’t that the point? The idea of eternal loneliness while surrounded by people… being totally forgotten… it is what disturbs and harrows me about SEL, but it’s the essence of SEL, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Eventually I’ll just call SEL “a good thing to watch” like I do The Matrix (and how I now think Harry Potter is “good” instead of totally amazing like I did when I posted Potter.) Nonetheless, at the moment, SEL’s bizarre combination of loneliness, sadness and psycho-horror is compounding my total aimlessness into some total delusion. I continuously Google “Who is Lain?” but am all the while hoping that I will somehow stop caring. It’s the same as when I’d ask “What is The Matrix?” or just generally feel that the world was messed up.

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

Apart from the obvious thematic connections, there are some things in Lain that I’ve seen in The Matrix, like the techno-punk raves, the men-in-black idea and the idea of a teenager killing themselves to escape this reality and enter another (Kid’s Story in the Animatrix).

Similarly, the idea of scouring the internet to find the answer to a nagging, slightly ethereal question. “What is The Matrix?” wasn’t, I think, as well executed as “Who is Lain?”, which, while not a theme in itself, was very well put in at the end (the feelings that everyone had of recognising Lain or recognising her absence but not quite knowing who she was. let alone that she was a goddess). I think I’m going to find the ending to this thing quite sad, actually.

Omnipresence in the Wired
I named Psyche Psyche and put a glider on it a long time ago. Now, SEL and Conway’s Game of Life cross my path again but this time I understand them better. It’s a little bit frightening but not unwelcome.

Pax