The End of the World

I was just looking through a CNN list of eight movies to watch this holiday season (the result of a train of thoughtless just-brought-up-my-browser autopilot choices). The eight were broken up as if by genres - Avatar under Sci-Fi, Nine under Musical, The Lovely Bones under drama, New Moon under Romance ... but then I came across The Road in, as if it were its own genre, Apocalyptic, and that struck me as funny. But that got me thinking about the millennium and 2012 and such and fundamentalist religion's constant apocalyptic focus, and wondering if there might be a stronger apocalyptic awareness now than in other times, like around the previous Gregorian calendar millennial point in 1000.

Each movie had a What, Who and Why description, and the others had Whys that explained their context within the scope of current cinema and people's tastes and awards season and such, but all there was under Why for The Road was "It's the end of the world as we know it."

And I scoffed at first. Because I assume the intent of the writer was to make a pop culture reference to mask his lack of anything substantive to say about the movie or fun reasons to go see it (since it is, from what I hear and hope, astoundingly bleak). But then, in the vein of my recent adoration of looking for all the possible contextual meanings of bits of words (particularly free and fun with concise, contextless groups of words), I considered it as not a pop culture reference and merely a declarative sentence, and that made me realize that in many ways, thinking in terms of these decades around us in both directions as where we are temporally and the few thousand years of recorded human history in comparison, it could really be said to be the end of the world as we know it, and I think that in the zeitgeist right now there is a really powerful subconscious sense of that.

Experiential existence

All is experiential; there cannot be said to be anything that isn’t experienced. In fact, even things which cannot be said to be material in any way can still be experienced. Experience is the fundamental matter of existence.
Similarly, experience is innately experienced by a self. There cannot be said to be anything experienced that is not being experienced by some self. Experience is the verb of the self subject. They are logically tethered and inextricable.
There cannot be said to be anything else with any kind of logical proof or reason. While the experience is always that there seem to be many selves out there experiencing a variety of perspectives, it will never be possible to prove the existence of another self than one’s own.
Experience equates to distinct information, which is to say – the experience of all information in one moment is meaningless; it equates to the experience of nothingness in one moment; both are meaningless. Whatever the sum of reality happens to be, omniscience of it would be no more experiential than a complete lack of experience. Experience requires a shattered eternity and incomplete perspective of self.

You will never experience a self not-your-own. We can expect a future where the potential for brain-computer interface will allow brain-information to be broken down into data, and those data to be transferred potentially from one experiencer to another, meaning that you may, at some point in the future, be able to switch from the input of your brain to the input of someone else’s, or to a non-brain input. But the experiential self will still be you.

So what distinguishes you from me? If we could swap experiential inputs briefly through technology, including the full complexity of the brain’s ‘ego’ and ‘id,’ we each might briefly experience what it truly was like to be the other. Presumably there would need to be something that might capture some essence of where my experiential process had just been in my brain and bring it over into my experience through your brain so that while I’m there I might have some sense of having just moved from mine to yours, to give me a perspective upon which to find your experience different, and then some also some kind of cache of what I had just experienced there to bring back into my own brain-processes when the switch was over. But if such experiential smoothing did not exist, the switch might not be noticeable by either of us at all. An instant switch from my brain’s experience to yours would simply put me instantly into the experience you are having, without the context of where I had just come from, such context existing only in my brain. We would switch experiences, and ‘I’ would briefly be ‘you’, and ‘you’ would briefly be ‘me’, and when we switched back, we might not know that anything had just happened. Unless there is more information than the brain through which we experience input, some spiritual or etheric dimension equally existent to the brain, but which science has not yet explored. But then, wouldn’t we eventually create spiritual technology to do the same thing as the neural-switch technology had allowed? No matter how much unknown geography of experiential information there may be, at the end of it is the invisible, non-existent (and yet fundamental) experiencer.
It seems we each must be that same fundamental experiencer, looking at the world of information through its many self-eyes. This seems very similar to a notion of God, however omniscience equating to experiential emptiness, standard notions of God are obviously wrong. Really, it is just Us – not the sum, but the network, of all experiential perspectives.

sweet new webpages

I'm in the process of updating the pages of the website, and feeling satisfied with the result for the moment. I still need to figure out how to edit the metadata for my mp3 files, so that they can be downloaded with all the information for iTunes or whatever already there. Anyone who knows how to do this on a Mac should please let me know.

It is an auspicious day!

It is an auspicious day; new Portishead! And it is fucking boss. I was just saying something to Annie about the amazingly surprising choice Portishead makes with their shit (I had to pause Third to play the beginning of Cowboys for a moment, to remind her of what I was referring to in making that point), but how just fucking brilliant it becomes once you get into it. Mmm; damn.

Also, for the world out there that only knows what I write in this blog, I should add that Julie and I finally got our check (though it was made out to Julia and George Hanrahan, so we're having to get it recut). We are in the process of setting up a casting session at the end of the month, and I'm hoping to shoot in June or July, depending on sheduling. So, it's on.

And I'm going to spend a week with Joe in Elkhart at the beginning of June. Can't wait. Miss that dude.

illuminating letter to Joe

Hey man. We haven't talked in a while. How are things? I just had my first interview, at last, yesterday, though it wasn't even really for a job so much as for a staffing agency, though the guy seemed really excited about me and the potential to get me something more like a graphic design or marketing assistant position, though he focuses on data entry/administrative assistant type stuff, which he feels doubly confident he could get me if not the other, so ... he got me feeling optimistic about what he could find for me. We'll see. It was nice to feel like I was seeming impressive. Also, on my way walking to the interview, I was stopped by this gruff middle-aged guy who said, "You got an eccentric look," then told me I looked like Rick O'Casek (don't know how to spell it, lead singer of the cars), then told me that he had just gotten out of a stint in prison down in Boston for two counts of bank robbery, and that he was from Southie (South Boston), which was why he had no upper teeth (bared the lack), cause he was Irish, and all they know how to do is box, and by that point I was like, "Hey man, I'm diggin your story, but I'm on my way to an interview," and he was like, "Ah, well," and just called out to the next guy who was passing, "Hey buddy.." Who knows what he was gonna ask me for, but the truncated experience I got was lovely. It was nice. I said, "Hey Man, sorry, but it was good to meet you," and went on.

So, I am still expecting the money in "a couple of weeks", Julie insists its a sure thing. But I've also gotten in touch by email with a friend of Justin's, the bartender at his restaurant, who supposedly is also a writer and interested in directing, and has a show he's written that might be getting picked up, and he knows JJ Abrams, supposedly ... but anyway, I got his email and he finally got back to me, and he's teaching a filmmaking class for teenagers, and they're shooting a short film next Friday which he invited me to come hang out for, which I'll try to do though I'll have just had my wisdom teeth out on Wednesday, so we'll see. But if I could, I could meet some teenagers interested in film and/or acting, with casting for IWJAD in mind. Julie's also going to talk to Kieran's counselor about getting in touch with drama people or whatever at Waynflete, to try to find actors or figure out how to spread the word. Because it struck me recently that, with the mic on the camera being fine for non-movie stuff, for hearing if the sound isn't excellent, we can do casting, and then even rehearsals and camera blocking before we get the mic and fully finished editing system and such. So Julie and I are going to press ahead with casting how we can. So one thing I am going to need to do soon is talk to Allen Baldwin, filmmaker friend here in town who's made one movie, and who can help me set up a casting session at a space here called Space.

Annie and I just saw 10,000 BC, which was fun but bad, but I love Cliff Curtis, and it made me think about how I love him and Keith David and Tony Todd in the way that PTA wante to work with John C Reilly and Philip Baker Hall, and how I really want to write good roles for these guys. Then I was thinking about Dmose in bridges and what Will being black adds to the character, and it suddenly struck me that there's nothing in the script that couldn't be tweaked keeping Will from being in his thirties or even fourties, and that in some scenes maybe that would add some real gravitas and believability to it, like when he's reading his poems and such, or whatever, and how Will (A) is still self-destructive the way he is, even at that age ... I started imagining Keith David in Bridges scenes as Will and FELL IN LOVE WITH THE IDEA. Think about it, dude. With a minimal but real type budget, I bet we could get him...

We should talk soon. I miss you, man.

G

Phase Transition

There seems to have been a significant phase transition going on over the past couple of months or so, and it feels like it is finally moving into view of the next phase. I am speaking vaguely, astrologically, personally, macroscopically, of course. But the coming phase, for me, I can already feel. I should be getting the money to start filming within the next few weeks, my work is out there being reviewed by The Bollard for issues later in the year, my artwork is coming along nicely so that I may have enough for a show this summer, and my planning with Annie for our wedding has finally made some headway. (We are going to be married on Sep. 27 of this year, out in Casco Bay.)

Anyway, as part of preparing myself to be the guy that I am going to need to be as I start making some short films and have an art show and my first novel and Headphoneboy albums get their day in the reviewer's mouth this summer, I am realizing that I really ought to keep up this blog better. My original idea behind it would be that I would write in it near-daily, giving at least some kind of pinhole view into the mind of a working multi-media artist. But I've barely even updated it when I have new material lately. So I will try to be better about this. It's a little bit hard to figure out how exactly it is I'd like to write in a medium like this, since obviously I want to be eloquent, but I can't spend my time going back and editing second and third drafts of blog posts. It's sort of a disposable text medium, but not entirely. Getting my fingertips around it.

So as far as what I'm working on right now - I am currently uploading seven new mashup tracks that I finished last night, some of which I am very fond of. One is a mash of Tarheel Slim and Lil Annie over Roger Waters' Sexual Revolution, which I am adoring right now. Also a crazy mashup of Busby Berkley Dreams by the Magnetic Fields over a Cypress Hill song. Check em out - www.man-likemachines.com/mashups.html

I'm also continuing to work on my drawings, and just the other day I perfected the script for I Was Jesus and Dracula such that I feel I've addressed all the issues various people brought up with me about it. And I storyboarded it a bit in my head as well, while making some music decisions. Looking very much forward to getting that money so I can buy that equipment and get these motherfuckers filmed. It is going to be fun and a wonderful challenge, something I need right now. Some do or die shit.

Oh right, and I'm also right now working on a book for Lulu, a full-color square book of my artwork that should be under 20$ once it's done. I just need to scan the I'm In Cloud Futures drawings I made for Julie.

Kitten-Like Machines

So I have somewhat overhauled the Man-Like Machines website with a new frontpage/menupage and such. Getting happier with the way that it looks. For a while I hadn't been able to upload new files to the site, but now I can again, which is good. This also means that there are seven new mashup tracks available on my mashups page. Just produced them the other night; very happy with several of them.

My kittens are wrestling across the apartment, biting each others' faces and kicking each others' stomachs.