2023. I teach Music Technology across genres, and creative arts such as writing, at a University, through arts councils and non-profits, and I mentor a lot. I don’t ask brilliance to copy form. Creativity is not about copying.
Being an automaton has its positive place; like in composition where one might need to break down another’s voice as a pastime standard. To copy/variate source material so a musicologist can weigh in on if the emulation is different enough for the emulator or the emulator’s employer to not be sued for infringement. I’d like to see a branch of that profession within the showering principles of writing.
Perhaps the breadth of this is bigger city stuff. I’m saying to not take a dopamine hit by encouraging “free(ing) writing” within the realm of emulating, at least without an ethics lesson. You certainly don’t have a release form.
Everything is about to change, while the schools of theory can go on about their needs of standardizing the measure of trends. But there is something new under the sun. And there will be no renaissance of thought if we are cycling and regurgitating what we already see.
And what is emulation of writing? Good question if asked without sneaky or shady short roads to spirit: assessing getting by with a take. I mean, with that who knows what’s about conscience—their mentor said it was cool. O and O, I digress.
One of my friends had her book stolen by and copied, with some sloppy name changes, for the empire of an established name. It about broke her to have her life experience and work yanked away. Very hard to prove up until soon. Another reason I look forward to AI. She almost had those chronic thieves proved but juries were not equipped to definitely rule. Soon, my pets. All of you who suffered. The tools come and lawyers work on commission.
Um, back to whatever; if you’re a teacher who advises copying, then oof on you. When I see encouragement on variating written works and without even ethics statements, I feel like these secure encouragers confuse freedom with plagiarism and never heard of Napster or the fall of multiple industries. I mean, as long as you see the historic twists of parody’s mess in the English language and still think our time is a loanword/loantime then fine. As long as you see it and buh-leave you are aces with the free-for-all while ignoring containment and plagiarism.
I got a bit dramatic there. I like teachers but there is no need for this. The past 9 or ten years have been tone-deaf with the razing the entire creative industry. Writers share free audiobook narration while complaining about AI. Wake up the tropes and the troupes. Ethics within creativity is perhaps the best place we can teach freedom of ideas. Pure creative advancement has no pre-existing uniform. So, jump or don’t off a precipice without casting a feelgood mindset on theft. And Hollywood has never cared this place or most others outside of looking uncomfortably close at our trends.
This situation was not created by subjective ideas. So, what about a union of the person connecting to what they connect with while knowing that what is “not new under the sun” is an old maxim. I swear that freedom of creativity and emulating don’t have to be so infused…there are longer-term issues here and community is more expansive than who or what we see.
~LAFogle 7/17/23
p.s. And please, for your own peace, always give credit where credit is due. Sleep is important.
p.s.s. If not sleep then know that AI will help our government get control back on the explosion of copyright infringement that went away when the internet exploded. Don’t steal! Right is right and right is might.
Anyone hear that snapping sound? Like a tight bright 2k snap. A whining sine that niggled too long. Aw, crap, now I have to look up niggle and some ill-timed jester is going to write a story about the poor wee/ill/spunky girl/mouse/duck/ladle before I even get a chance to empty my bowels.
Speaking of morning perspicacity (I’d like to circle back to discuss lack of balls), I intended to write about Dr Kellogg this morning. But now, Oof, I’m going to have to circle back to this too. Circling, circling, circling WHEE! Oops. Wheel.
Let’s do something fun!
I apologize for spinning out this morning. I just don’t like advantageous curators taking the only stick I have and throwing it off their cliff of wisdom. Poetry is in my soul, dorketh. And all of this bull monitoring—oops: something is off.
None of us can trust completely. I get so mad at the “authoritative” beasts who deliberately drove people mad to test their ability to be destroyed then built back up into automatons. How about a self-examination of psychopaths with power instead? Your disgusting side effects of power. Yes, I’m bring up MKUltra again. Those people you destroyed and watched suffer while taking notes on your little mini psychopaths who were taking notes on the first layer of people you destroyed. Why, there’s a Milgram experiment right there. And there and there ad nauseum.
Let it go, Alice. Or they’ll write you right down into that hole until all language screams, while they mouth the words of their automatic pilots.
*scribble scribble scribble* Hmm, very interesting. I recall the Illiad and the Odyssey being separated by my blah blah Oedipus blah. Ironically, irons are very irony like ironlike mom complex things. Don’t you think?
I’m asking everyone except Cassandra. We have shunned her like a bunch of balless (without balls) children who are bow-wow animals who cannot feel separated from society’s intoxicating brew of love. No one talk to Her Weirdness or dare translate the epic tale of her madness on that curse of how no one can hear her. Rinse and repeat.
I get so confused—which curse came first?
You all should believe very strongly, as clearly as you see colors, in hell. I’m this close [<———————->] to taking both of your leaders hands and asking where I can best lend balance.
…uh-huh. Tempting. Of curse, I would need totally to be a free agent. None of that dual-duel working for you nonsense. Yeah? Great….ok, yes, I think we have a deal. No, I’m not signing that. Not until I word my end of the agreement. I don’t know, zoom? Or I can just call you back on this banana. Yep, love you, too. Bye.
CLICK AND SLIP.
I see some of you, students of institutions too smug for me, looking down and speculating hell. But wait, shut off your stories for a second because my kind are a twee bit more eternally fireproof—innoculated. The funniest thing, is that you’ve been breeding and cultivating this error! HA! Handing out your various big tall pointy hats and preaching about family while killing families at whim with your actual sick response to power. Is there any kind of connexion here between your bs and all these superhero movies? That’s why I like them though the tropes are tiring. At least AI can take over those five and ninefold tropes. Unless again they are fed that tripe.
M, C, S, O, et al, do or don't repeat after me: I am a curator, too.
And you there with the giant spectacle, take your self-cannibalism off of her. Go argue with a book about it.
Fonts. Which do I choose for FutureYou. Why isn’t Bookman in this app? Ooh, how about Apple Chauncery:
No, Apple Chauncery would get tiring for a long-format writing. Also, I have to be conservative with stock image selections this month and can’t re-purpose a unicorn atm.
Ugh! Do I have to download fonts. Haven’t I struggled enough to progress on content for mthrfkng decades to grandfather out of being chained to the transatlantic boob tube to give a like for a like. Then cut into any remaining non-work hours to Google “submit?” Cutter. I’m already somewhat environmentally damned just for the writing part. And, also, and keep this under your wigs, I see a lot of less-than-good stuff that blows up because some poor non-profiteer is working the algorithms. It’s true. We have to stop being free content providers for social media. Somehow somehow. This whole pipe dream shoved down the throat of artists is pure gasoline. I get that there are some way encouraging shows, like The Bold Type and Younger, about publishing companies being able to read and choose outside of influencer-level social followings, and it’s Bronte neat that they end some episodes intimating finding relevant work before the closeup of a teardrop followed by the words “this is why we do it.”
Therapy. My insurance requires four failed attempts, at anti-depressants, to cover Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, but that’s a story for another day. Yes, I finally have insurance. Don’t get me started. Snap off any comparative thoughts. Snap it off. Snap it off. Fonts. Does it even matter? Here’s Garamond:
Yeah, what do you want, Gentle Reader?
I said I wasn’t going to use the term “gentle reader.” It made a huge return in the early 1900s and was all over Hoffmann’s crucial tales in the 1800s and Swift used it in the 1700s for Gulliver’s Travels (if my sharp and forgiving memory serves me correctly, which it sadly does not always do 🙁 ).
That’s what I’m talking about. Thank you, Ken doll. I thought of this piece this morning while writing a scene for a book called FutureYou:
Cere is so in love here and I have to stay offline to write these scenes. Have you ever noticed how much people can suck? I should finish that sentence: the life out of your motivation and self-possessed belief in your abilities to handle the truth or not confuse myth? I need to pay tribute to Skroll again so he doesn’t drive me. I could schedule online days around scenes where a hammer needs to fall and write out all that angst after processing the confusion of Skroll’s kingdom.
Turns out I’m in a relationship with myself. I mean, obviously, but is it obvious. Am I nice to myself? I like you. You are a fun and constant companion <3 I have no suggestions for your body or your efforts except to maybe say that you could use some more hugs for those beautiful arms holding in one of my favorite souls. Come here, sweetheart. Big big hug.
I’m almost ready, dearie. Just a little more stirring.
Now, when one casts out suggestions planted in your pretty psyche—like what you should or should not be based on the layout of your glands—it is important to save a little nut butter for the next round. One day you’ll have the most delicious starter that no crawly can resist.
Ok, now I want you to be as angry as you’d like and I’ll make ready to snap that rat like a twig if it scurries out to try to call you ugly.
Ready?
Cahkoo cahkoo: the feminine ideal is not all soft … SNAP!
Cahkoo: the feminine and masculine is the union … SNAP!
Woo! We got some! AROOOOOOOOOOOOO.
You bare your teeth when it tells you to smile. Now look out the window, you see that long line of people waiting to criticize you? Well it’s actually kind of thoughtful of them to take the burden off of you like that. No worries, free bird, they can’t get in here. Wouldn’t know a pane from a salamander’s bark. That’s enough for today. That crazy rat is a big one and we gotta get some supplies to take down that little whispering dread. Those things breed like it’s their purpose and they get you right down to the mites because that entire clan is terrified of the Furies.
I’ve casually collected royalty cards for about 20 years. I like to study the differences in the faces. You know, take meditative mini breaks to gaze at images, as we do with art.
I recently posted a mention of the Suicide King’s head stab as being a lost-in-translation situation. I’ve met a handful of artists who associated with the haunting self-sabotage of this image. Just as I did and do. How funny to find out it is all a big misunderstanding stemming from generations of artists lightly tweaking what they see from worn copies (prior to the printing press). There’s something about the subtle decisions on facial expressions from deck to deck. The Queen is worried, determined, glum, drunk, manic, cherubic. There is one card where she has a teeny smile. Jack looks like a young boy who smelled something that turned him into a mustached man whose lip brow sits between himself and the kingdom, thereby proceeding him.
I know I’m streaming into my blog and therefore should explain that last bit, but it is already a lot that I’m forming sentences. No one really thinks in sentences except maybe TV characters like Carrie Bradshaw. Also, I explain references to the Book of Thomas and even Montessori in a video I shot last year using these cards. It’s a series of face morphs from card to card, shot to accompany an After-Death Plan song. We need to release that to the world…of course, ADP has been sitting on finished videos from just before the pandemic. I haven’t felt like sharing anything, except writing and that’s because I’ve been exposed to a supportive group of talented creators. One day we’ll all be okay again? Post-pandemic sages full of appreciation.
The power of the cards, to me, has to do with our developmental visual processing of high contrast colors, black and white with the flashing red. Yellow after we get out bearings on the first three. Then there’s the archetypal logic system, the four seasons divided into weeks totaling a year, a royal for each month, and a suit for each solstice. Basic highly metaphoric symbols that correspond to the four elements, then resound as one’s folds of vision and insight develop.
I’ll save it for the linear notes on the After-Death Plan video.
When I hunted for this picture, I found it in an email I’d sent to a writer friend last year. I’d gotten up early to write and was still stretching my brain waves out of a lucid dreaming state. Sometimes you can find a writer to correspond with who understands creative flow and you can say just about anything to them without it sounding weird. So I told him of the serpentine nature of my dream and what Jung said about the separation needed to birth new consciousness…and something about the order brought out of confusion in a process similar to the birth of the cosmos out of chaos. And of how several myths describe creation as separation.
I’d helped a friend move a lot of stuff after decades years of marriage and my lat muscles were spasming in my sleep, which probably translated to snakes in my back, which probably translated to the deeper processing about the destruction of a tribe member’s relationship and stability. I never did process the loss of my friend’s partner as tribe; I had to choose sides to help my person through the pain. Honestly, they’d nested in a way that had all on autopilot and something had needed to change for some time. As friend, all you can do is take notes for your own relationship, unless the person asks to hear what you think. Then hope they remember that they asked your opinion, so you aren’t used as a scapegoat once their anger/hurt recedes. Best of luck in those situations.
Anyway, the dream was a reframing; it broke a ouroboric cycle and from that came the divine creation of transcendence to greater meaning renewed from the rubble. Or something like that. I’m not currently in the thick of it. There were some million militia march madness dumpster fires everywhere then, as the shadows of a blaming world came online in their isolation, flooding the solitudinous with that brand of high school bestie posturing and not “overthinking” anything…in the least…except for perhaps ranting on how they’ve been wronged.
The worst shadow attributes of blamers were everywhere. Even a few people I’d liked enough to invest time on became negative peekers who lurked around policing people’s actions, rolling their eyes at their expression, and overestimating their importance when it came to the lives of others. Tragically, not as much good comes to people who do not celebrate fortune (unless their own). It’s basic law of attraction: fortune avoids those who avoid fortune, and their bitter pills. Envy is about low self-worth, which can be hard to dig into and heal. A lot of people turn to mantras or songs to generate a balance of wavelengths. It beats sitting around nodding about how narcissists and toxic people hurt them, when often they’re comfortable and didn’t want to read any further into looking at themselves or their projections. Too much effort! Overthinking! Or, someone scolded them as children for being too precocious or high-and-mighty. Told them that their forming opinions didn’t matter because they had not yet formed. Anger at this is a necessary stage, but forgive the souls behind such bad handling of stress, responsibility, and sometimes resentment of lost youth. Free them, free yourself.
I’m still trying to get the book FutureYou together, speaking of explosions and rubble. I need to bring in Cere’s ex sooner but can’t do flashbacks because it would further confuse the sequence. Think I’ll introduce him early via text.
[Cere is hanging out with Maena and Emma. ]
My phone buzzed. It was him.
“Everybody shut up.”
I’ll have to take you back several years for you to understand the psychic poverty I feel when I hear from him. Only thing worse is the constant feeling that I’ll never hear a thing from him again. None of these intense feelings of abandonment are even his fault. Most of them anyway and the rest is on me. I made a joke about it: Two anxious attachment styles walk into a bar and ignore each other. Rim shot: Ba dum tssh.
I looked at the text. There it was, short and sterile like a note to pick up milk on your way home—whatever hole or hearth you call home these days. I hate uncertainty. It’s like locking everything down in a waiting room. It’s like airport security when you’re late for your flight. It’s watching a train coming and not knowing if jumping in front of it would cause more or less pain. I’m so bunched up at this point that the preoccupation is all I have to move things forward past suppression–suppression that feels as if it is about to walk into detached repression and never look back. Rumi wouldn’t take that shit. You say what you want to say even if it’s crazed; no, before it gets crazed. Why am I so nonexistent? It’s probably that S&M pincushion he’s hung up on. I get that we feel nothing and hurt our bodies, but do you really want the mentality of a petulant and disconnected child for a lover? I realize I just described myself but my obnoxious discontent is wiser, seasoned…I daresay endearing? I mean, we keep the childlike state—keep the inner child’s freedom intact—but you have to curve the tantrums and the general qualities of an unexamined, immature human being.
She said as she stereotyped someone she’d only seen one picture of—fuck, this is some sophisticated posturing.
That’s enough of that. I’ll soon figure out a subscription button that doesn’t need a lot of extra steps. From there, I want to bring in some guest writers. Reach out if you want to get in on that action.
I get that half the esoteric groupies are D&D flunkies but this is a whole new level of bullshit.
“You sound like a conspiracy theorist. All that knowledge too much for you, Mr Crowley? You losing your shit?” I reached down and patted the chair. “Have a seat. Maybe lay down flat like the earth you live on.”
It’s too bad Greg didn’t do social media because he’d really enjoy some of the fringe theory groups. But he didn’t do social media. He’d get too upset. It’s wild to think about what Facebook would do to him with its groups and gangs of people engaging in relational aggression. Maybe they don’t think people can sense a bully/mean girl/gossip routine but sensitive people might. And sensitive people can be broken. Have you ever seen an isolated person experience paranoid psychosis? I have and it is awful. I like making Greg feel okay. He might have quirks but I can handle it because we clearly agreed to be friends. We’d determined a while ago that being annoyed with each other was okay and temporary. At least I think. Right now he was staring at the ice cream on his spoon as if he wanted to fling it at me. Or maybe that look was more about hunger.
He tossed the words at me real quick before taking the bite. “Um, duh, if the earth were flat then what about Atvatabar?”
“Atvabar?” Damn. I was the one who bit. Asking him a question could delay me by several days.
“At-va-TA-bar.” He pretended to choke on his soft serve. “You’ve never heard of AtvaTAbar? Are you kidding me?”
I sighed and took a seat. The “Are You Kidding Me” game always took awhile. It was a scolding really. Emphatic face gestures, eye popping, deep distant hilarity—a dawning of hilarity at the idiocy of the ape in front of him—some chicken neck stretches, hands at the waist, elbows out with a couple of stick legs strutting forward and back. Because of his emphatic preening, it took forever to get to the point. He beat around the bush like a prizefighter jabbing the shrubbery in the kidneys, remarkably light on his feet.
“I get it, I’m an idiot. You know all. What is AtvaTAbar?”
I wanted to impress Maena because she impresses me. And I thought no one could hear me. The shame that I’m doing it wrong squeezes my rib cage where the joints move to allow the lungs to expand, a parasitic backpack I carry like an infant nursing as though a separate helplessness. Not wanting to put it down where I can constantly see it—and when it feels gone, I know it can sneak up on me. What does it want? Blood, proteins?
Don’t say resurrection and peace because I’ve tried that so many times. I could make Halloween a day of the week. These are not demons and they are not saints; they are like emotive entities tied into me, living in my nerve endings. First thing in the morning and late at night they speak—not in words but in the feel of words and sometimes a symbol breaks through. Longfellow called the human voice the organ of the soul; these voices might be several organs come together, the beginning of tissues, a petri dish of consciousness that agreed to manifest. Agreed in pattern, agreed in likeness, agreed in tension, agreed in fear and solace. Agreed to try again and be our own children. I’d carry the obedient and the willful, the lost and the weary, the brave, the angry, the fools and the wise; carry them with me as family. Family tired of fighting and reconciled. You would not tell your lungs they are bad. You would not curse your eyes for all they’ve seen—no matter how much society says conflict is motivation.
We passionate automatons, clinging to story, clinging to a cast that exists outside of ourselves that we can relate to through a tight character we believe we should be. I ride the winged ram to the heavens so we can name the stars in the next galaxy, perhaps stand on the next new earth unfolding new myth under a new sun. And conjure the beasts who will take us there on their own form of oxygen. Star creatures.
Where else to go but middle earth, where else but cracking time, where else but the reaches of the ocean and the limits of our knowledge in the limits of our senses in the limits of our minds in the limits of our fables. Stuck on those first stories and the gender of holy trinities. Stuck, just separated from nature and caught up in tribal warfare and witchhunts and drama, lazily redeemed with religion and not internal peace. I welcome you, Maena. Come to me. Speak.
It took the story of the twin to explore another explanation for Maena’s presence without worry of madness. This was my gene, divided; my split sister who I took into me. Our brain, our voice, our heart, her soul. After I knew for sure, or rather wanted to know for sure, I started courting, summoning, and pleading with her.I could feel the way the others took over in the moonlight, in the filtered reflection of the unseen sun casting safe hiding spaces for shadows. They can grow desperate there but it’s more like feral and afraid. So many dullards will tell you that welcoming parts of yourself makes you insane; theirs are lives only realized by the measured light of day, while the natural world has use for all variety; its imagination conjures everything and tries to keep what functions. Expressiveness is key.
