AUTHOR.CALHO: If I didn't write it, I would be hitch hiking cross country to Maine and then Alaska in that order. While taking frequent breaks to spread leaflets. And sit in diners. And write on things because I wasn't at a computer. I may still do that in a few years. Writing this also helps me forget about and better understand the limitations of being human, and keeps me busy enough to allow me no free time to burn the world down.

THEMATIC.ABOUT : Collapse often. The things that hold people together and hold them apart and scatter brains. The things that make thoughts go boom. The things that ooh and aah and [expletive deleted]. Sometimes poking around the margins where responsibility ends and the only one to look to is the Original Equipment Manufacturer and say "but, I already pressed 9 for more options and the menus are exactly the same. Can you just replace it?" The answer will be: "please hold." Sometimes hanging out in dark corners. Sometimes following the train tracks. Looking for ways out and ways in and all the while sharing the things seen and heard and done and drawn and written and scorched and healed and teased and caged and dreamed along the way.

8/15/10

Where the Lost Things Go

Is sort of where I've been. In and out of dreams and stuff. I literally woke up in the middle of the night and there were kittens all over the floor so I did what any reasonable person waking up in the middle of the night to find balls of kitty cuteness everywhere: I started flailing around the floor trying to get them off of me. Turns out they weren't real. And it turns out I sleep on the floor. Hopefully that'll change soon.

In other news, the world is a fascinating and gross and scary fun place. I've sort of been in a project gridlock again. Turns out the answer to the gridlock was... I completely missed that. The source of the gridlock was that I've been looking for a place where I can simply spew information and I haven't been able to find one. I feel like my head is so pressurized with stuff that if I were to sneeze I would blow my fucking brains out.



In using google reader I feel there is an obligation to only share the things that you think other people may find interesting or helpful or possess some sort of value to them, be it comedic or otherwise. Therefore, if I am sharing things there, I am basically saying to people who follow me: I think you might like this. I ran into a similar jam when I found myself clicking the "like" button for every single thing I came across. The thing is, I do sincerely like the things that other people are sharing, but is the "like" button supposed to be reserved for the things I cherish?

For the most part it seems a fallout of the amplification syndrome for text based communication. I only type in "lol" when I do laugh out loud. I laugh a lot. Other people don't laugh so much. Am I obligated to adjust my own inputs to help people feel less patronized. I'm not trying to be creepy, but somehow I feel like others might misunderstand that I laugh easily as me buttering them up for ulterior motives. Not true. I just love to laugh and I love to like and I love to share.

To solve this problem I joined twitter. However in joining twitter, where I hoped I would find a fantastic outlet for the bits of things that keep firing off in my head that eventually stifle my ability to focus on anything, I ran into the same problem pretty much instantly. Am I just the guy with no filter? No. At least I don't think so. I filter a lot, it's just that so much more is generated that is interesting to me to say and hear aloud and hear other people say. I don't really want attention or specific responses or responses at all. I just want to see it outside of my head to remind me that my brain is still working and that I am not talking to myself. But therein lies another problem. Is it not okay to talk to myself. I hate talking to myself actually. I prefer to spit it out and then read it somewhere else so that it at least feels like I'm not talking to myself and that way I can sort out who is who upstairs. It keeps things organized. My major concern then, in this rambling analysis is that in being myself I will distance everyone because there is so much chatter and not all of it is important or relevant to them. In fact, probably twenty percent is relevant to other people. You people. The rest is important to me. None of it is garbage. I just don't have enough storage space to keep my mouth shut. And I am a little sorry for being so. A lot sorry.

Well, to help curb the rush I've decided to start a comic:



I have no idea what it will be about specifically, but mostly it'll just be where I talk to myself about all of the things that I don't talk about here (because I want this to be interesting to other people).

Life is full of so many questions and very few easily digestible answers.

with some exceptions. Mainly I was thinking about the whole "when is an artist an artist" question. That's when it struck me just how obnoxious a question that is. To ask for a definite quantitative boundary between the artist and the non-artist is to ask the question of if you cut a distance in half an infinite number of times, when do they touch? People have asked me if they were writers before and I've always said "you're a writer when you know there's nothing else you really want to do." I think a better answer, now that I've mulled it hard over the last few weeks is that you're an artist when you can solve art problems to your own satisfaction. You're a writer when you can solve writing problems to your own satisfaction. Same thing goes for photography.

What I'm saying is, if you wake up one day and you say to yourself "I want to paint a portrait" and then you sit down and paint a portrait and you finish it, if the thing you have when you are done makes you happy and satisfied that it is a portrait then you are a portrait artist. If, when you finish, you look at the thing and you say to yourself "it is like a portrait, but not what I would call a portrait" then you are not an artist yet. If you sit down to write a story and when you are done you yourself cannot without a doubt call it a story of whatever length or genre then you are not a writer yet. If you sit down to write a program or perform some chemical solution or diagram some molecule and when you are finished you are not satisfied with the result then you are not whatever it is you set out to be just yet. Maybe satisfied is the wrong word there. If you are not contented with the fullness of the work, allowing for individual levels of mastery, then you are not whatever it was you set out to be that day.

So now I know. I am an artist, but I am not a photographer. I am a writer, but I am not a scientist or an accountant or a manager. I am an athlete, but I am not in great physical condition. It's made life a lot easier to understand and has helped take the hesitation and judgement out of things. The community be damned, and I mean that in the nicest way, when it comes to personal qualitative judgments. I finally understand that if I keep looking to the community for approval I will never get a defacto answer until I'm dead and gone, and quite frankly I can't really wait all that long.

Anywho, where the lost things go is where I've been. I didn't bring anything back, but hopefully next time I'll spear myself a fine trophy to prove I was there.

///Luke Slater - "Stars and Heroes"

Something has just occurred to me as I close this entry; if I have no followers on twitter I have an infinite jar to pour the excess in. Maybe that's an answer. The funny thing is we're talking this over right now and there's an argument happening and I really just wish I could have a moment of quiet at an hour as late as this.
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