Category Archives: Uncategorized

A Different Kind Of Future Shock

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It’s weird going back and reading old and neglected posts from ~7 years ago, including one where I bemoan my diminishing proliferation.

I think I went wrong somewhere along the way. See, I started to worry overly much about highly unlikely potential future consequences to things written in the now. The story I’ve been dreaming up since roughly about forever ago is one involving some form of time travel. Mix that with my paranoia that in-story events might somehow directly affect my non-in-story life, and the result has been me over-overthinking everything I write

The only thing I can think of to do about it is to characterize myself. What as? I don’t know. Maybe just in general. Why does it matter? Because in Elyen, a situation like this is somewhat interfere-with-able beyond the scope of the pages of story itself. And, I fear, writing about anything bad happening to any characters comes with the possibility of irl karma. But if I am as one such character, what then? Well, in that case, I could play out a needlessly fearful scenario where exactly that happens. Someone in story tries to influence the rewriting of it using time travel to go back to the inception point of an idea, perhaps of a series of events or what a character’s flaws turn out to be. Weird thing to be so pre-occupied with, right?

So, maybe no such thing is possible, let alone likely, to happen in my immediate writing experience, but it maybe can happen to some in-story avatar persona filling in.

Again, why does it matter? It matters because I need to worry less about this form of future shock, and get back to writing more regularly.

The form that time travel takes in Elyen is beyond me, which isn’t good since I’m the witness and teller of it, and including a correct explanation would be nice and helpful. There’s bendy time travel, and there’s quantum time travel, there’s linear time travel. and who know how many other kinds? Bendy time gives an observer some “play” room, a little forward or a little behind whatever passes for the local time consensus. Quantum time travel is travelling to discrete points in time. Linear is more like mechanical winding or unwinding of a clock. Maybe none of that is “correct” by a higher standard, but for coming half off the top of my head, it seems legit.

In theory, I could write many different versions of many series of events in Elyen, and I actually intend to experiment with some form of choose-your-own-ending story structure to at least partially accommodate just that, but in any one version, things might not go the way an in-story character might like. Time travel to them might be the natural way to hit “redo”. As I theorize it, doing so a) preserves the original timeline while b) creating a new one. Each new time travel event and each new resulting timeline should align with a story’s differentiations — that is, with a different, alternative ending choice.

Suffice it to say, in-story time travel is something I’ve thought a lot about, and I still can’t really get my head around a few things, like what happens if future information is attained, or if you undo the events that caused you to time travel in the first place. I mean, in our more familiar terrestrial experience of life, we know of prophets and soothsayers and the like. Call them frauds or praise their gifts, either way, it doesn’t break our reality to at least pretend that future information can be made available to us ahead of time. And if there are higher powers that can and do dispense information about future events well ahead of when they may take place, then we might not even be pretending at that point.

While reality is pretty insane for many of us at the moment, I don’t believe time travelling and time travellers currently are a part of the mix. But then again… I can’t really rule it out, either. I think if irl time travel were real, we might not even notice when it happens. It would somehow be seamless, fluid, maybe dream-like at times. It would be hard to tell apart from what one is and does actively experience with whatever passes for the “normal” form of time travel: Simply living within the moment, which perpetually flows into the future, leaving the past in its wake.

Anyways, let these paranoiae (sorry, “paranoias”, you know, ’cause that’s 100% a more intriguing word) come to rest while I still go on writing.

As it Turns Out

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The other night, I was visiting some new friends, one of whom practices witchcraft. It happened to be the night of the super moon, and I had just seen a shooting star. It was settled: spells were to be crafted and cast! At (or around) midnight, a candle was lit, and some other things happened that ultimately lead to the first participant naming that which he desired to see (more of) happen in their life. In this case, they just wanted to be/remain happy. Apparently, there was no stipulation about keeping one’s wish to themselves or anything like that.

This looks way more evocative than what we actually had to work with. Punked from http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130717123049/glee/images/7/72/Hands-cupping-candle.jpg

This looks way more evocative than what we actually had to work with.
Punked from http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130717123049/glee/images/7/72/Hands-cupping-candle.jpg

Next thing I knew, it was my turn. I was to understand that there was nothing I could want that I should feel guilty about asking for even in the slightest, and that the only rule was that, whatever I asked for that was intended to be directed at others, positive or negative, would come back on me three fold. After much deliberation, I said that I couldn’t go through with it because I had no idea what I wanted.

There were a lot of things I could have said, owing to the fact that there are a lot of things that I want, but I had no idea what I would have went with if I could only specify one thing. Maybe I didn’t have to narrow it down. Maybe I could have stated more than one desire. Maybe I could have said something that’s closer to number 7 on my list of 10 things I desire most in life (not that I really have such a list, but still, bare with me) and it still not ruin my chances of ever attaining items number 1, 2, 3 or 4, etc. in the future.

Maybe, it would have been okay to simply say, “I don’t know what I want” as the official utterance bound to the workings of the spell. Who knows?

Anyways, time has passed, and having given it further thought, I feel more confident about what I would have liked to have said instead. I am relatively content with my place in life. I get by on little money, I have great friends, and all of my basic needs are pretty much met in a relatively stress-free manner. I don’t require anything to increase my own personal happiness and well-being (though improvements would not be turned away). Instead, I want my life to have a positive influence/impact on the lives of others I come in contact with. Basically, I don’t really want anything for myself if it doesn’t come alongside of improvements (whatever form they may take) in the lives of others.

I’m not sure if I believe in witchcraft, or, even if there is something to it, if I particularly care one way or another, but I will state my wish here and now without concern for super moons, shooting stars, candles, or other trappings that I feel the universe ultimately sees through in discerning the desires of a person’s heart:

I want other people’s happiness to increase.

I feel that I would be satisfied in knowing that some of that increase in happiness comes from my place in their lives, subtle or otherwise, but more than that, however, I want this to apply to all people as a whole, regardless of whether I have any direct or contact with them or not. The fact is that there is a lot of strife in the world. A lot of that which depresses me comes from reading the news, hearing about the state that other places in the world are in (and more than a few that are much closer to home), and feeling helpless to do anything about it. So, if I could expand on that, my wish would be the same as that good old cliche line many of us hear over the holidays:

I wish for peace and goodwill for all.

If I can help facilitate the manifestation of that wish into the actual, help make that desire a reality for others, then like my friend Emily at seventeenbutterflymug, I would be happy to do so 🙂

Master Network

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Once upon a time, there was this guy named, well… We’ll call him Mr. T for now. Anyways, this Mr. T was a downright pitiful fool. He wanted to make the world a better place, so he build and designed many wonderful things. Many of those wonderful things shaped the world in which we still presently live today. Some of those changes, however, have been used and abused in ways and for purposes that Mr. T did not fully intend.

However, Mr. T, the pitiful fool that he was, made an investment in the future of humanity. Though he spent the end of his natural life penniless, alone, and afflicted with inner torments that only the insanely ingenuous of us will ever know, he had but one resounding prophecy:

“Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.”

You may know who I am referring to at this point.

Anyways, one of his goals was to build a global energy transmitter, a device that could provide completely safe power to any point around the globe without wires. And also without meters. Which therefore meant without cost.

Free energy. The mother fucking holy grail of human civilization next to a functioning warp drive.

And yes, it would be free. The ionosphere and the ground state of the globe can form some sort of a natural dipole and can be turned into a circuit or some such impressive, sciency-sounding nonsense, which can be safely tapped without fear of exhausting anything. Now, I don’t know if that’s an ignorant attitude (much like how we thought we could never pollute the ocean ’cause there was just so damn much of it compared to what a small handful of itty bitty little factories’ effluence could possibly do to it – failing to consider the exponential growth in the manufacturing sector that came about thereafter), but even if so, then for fuck sakes, let’s be a little more careful, hmm? Just because we’ve repeated history a number of times in the past doesn’t mean we’re doomed to do so again and again every god damn time indefinitely.

With that said, this global energy transmitter project of Tesla’s — Er, I mean… Ahh, fuck it, too late now — is supposed to provide enough power all around the globe for, well, everything we use electricity for today. Essentially, it would have ushered in the the information age nearly a full century ahead of time. If built now, it would still prove to be a major, major upgrade to our existing infrastructure. Only problem is that no one with a vested interest in the modern day power grid would ever fund it, given the complete and utter lack of financial gain to be made in doing so. In fact, my inner conspiracy theorist knows that such an effort would have one hell of a target for corporate espionage on it’s back at all stages of it’s development. So, even 100 years later, it would still be damn near impossible to build.

Yet here’s our chance to do so anyways:

Let’s Build a Planetary Energy Transmitter

Let’s give the greatest inventor and father of the modern age a second chance to do the good he wanted to see done while he was still alive to do so.

Drendast, Part 2: The Unknown

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What Earthporn ain’t good for, I’ll never know. Thanks to redditor Snahans for sharing this image here.

I can imagine a lot of similarities between Earth and Drendast. Forests, deserts, mountains, oceans, islands, and various other non-polar terrains. But when it comes to imagining (to say nothing of describing) what sets Drendast apart from Earth, I come up with as many misses as I do hits.

As mentioned in Drendast, Part 1: The Big Picture, Drendast is a mega planet, nearly 100 times the diameter of the sun. It is so massive that it has three (3) suns orbiting around it, not the other way around. Prior to the fall of one of those suns, called Tropreus, into the planet, there was perpetual daylight. Life evolved in a manner which capitalized on that bountiful, endless supply of energy, easily able to meet all basic needs in peace. This meant no predation, no struggle to survive. Life was a free gift.

Additionally, the surface of the planet is more than 90% ocean, save for what looks like 12 little islands spread out evenly around its surface. Those islands, called Subworlds, are actually massive, Pangaea-sized super continents, connected to one another via a naturally occurring intra-planetary network of Conduits.

I could go on about other known features about Drendast, similar or different from what we might expect to find on Earth, but the point of this entry is to emphasize the fact that there’s still tonnes of details which are unknown or not clearly understood about the planetary super system. For example:

How is it that the gravity isn’t too crushing for complexity and, eventually, self-replicating proto-life forms to emerge? Does the presence of ether mitigate some of gravity’s more intense effects at that magnitude?

How are days marked with three suns in the sky, if at all?

Wouldn’t there be solar tides? How would they effect the planet’s surface?

In what ways is the climate on Drendast unlike that found on Earth?

Does Drendast have a determinable spin/rotation?

Does the Drendain stellar system orbit around anything else out in deeper space? Like how our solar system orbits around the super massive black hole in our galaxy’s center?

Are there other, more distant stars and celestial bodies? If so, are Drendains aware of this fact prior to the fall of Tropreus, given that it should be impossible to see stars in the night sky if there’s never any night?

Is there tectonic activity on Drendast prior to the Fall? If so, how does it manifest itself? Would it at least partly be caused by the orbits of the suns?

What is the present day role of the formative primordial ether at the planet and suns’ cores, if any? I mean, right now, it’s the ambiguous, cosmic, vaguely-spiritual, ultra caveat any sci-fi writer might like to have on hand to magically conjure up an otherwise impossible explanation for how and why things are the way they are, and I’m happy to use it to explain the cosmic origins of Drendast, but beyond that..?

If Drendast has no spin of it’s own, does it have a magnetic field? If so, how? Is it anything at all like that found on Earth? If not, again, how so? — I’m thinking the suns each contribute equally to what might be described as a dynamic, ‘Triune’ (or ‘three-in-one’) magnetic field around and resonating with Drendast.

Are there monsters on Drendast, despite ideal evolutionary conditions?

Drendast and the three suns may be deified by the Drendain peoples, but will they actually play a role as personified entities throughout the course of Drendain history, literally and directly intervening here and there, or no?

These and many more questions plague me somewhat, leaving what might otherwise be a fully immersive setting bereft with holes. Sure, there is supposed to be a given amount of perpetual uncertainty in the world of Drendast owing to the fact that it’s just so bloody huge that no amount of exploratory effort could ever observe everything there is to see under the suns even after thousands of lifetimes, but there are other mysteries, such as the ones listed above, which are only mysteries because I, as a writer, come up short for answers which I feel I rightfully should understand better.

So, I might as well just put it out there for any interested thinkers and dreamers to muse over. If you can imagine a sensible enough sounding state of things on Drendast which sufficiently answers one or more of these questions for me, and I go as far as to officially adopt it as cannon for what is known and true of Drendast, I will be more than glad to credit it back to you!

Any takers?

Never Satisfied

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Sometimes, I hate being a perfectionist. Nothing I do is ever good enough, but I’m always under my own pressure to get things done regardless because I know that if I don’t keep that pressure on, my tendency to start projects but never finish them would take over.

However, when I do complete something (such as uploading a new song to my youtube channel), and I come back to it months or even years later, I see what I created and I usually cringe. I see the heart and the effort, but I also see how under developed that effort was.

At the time, it was alright. Good enough to put ‘out there’ as is and even feel somewhat proud of it, at any rate. Looking back, however, I struggle with mixed feelings. I think I’m wrong to feel any degree of shame in what I’ve done and shared from the heart, but I almost can’t help it. It’s all just so… bad. Like, honestly, awful.

This cuts into my ability to be productive and to progress. I have a tendency to revisit past projects and give them face lifts. Yes, I often see appreciable differences being made. I tend to feel grateful that I took the time to improve upon various existing somethings in my personal portfolio of creative somethings.

And that’s all well and good, but if you compare my overall creative output in recent years versus what I was able to accomplish roughly about a decade ago, I’ve clearly fallen into a slump. I’m not sure what I’d prefer right now: Messy proliferousness, or rare bursts of high-quality productions.

They say quality is better than quantity, but frankly, at this point in my life, I’m seriously beginning to favour the opposite. What do?

Counter Intel

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“I have the gun. I make the ‘pew pew’ noises!”

Gotta love a little Hollywood embellishment once in awhile. But sometimes, the truth might be a little scarier than we’re seriously willing to accept. I’ve been on, off, and on either side of the fence when it comes to various activist issues, truth movements and conspiracy theories so many times that I’m guilty of being a blatantly self-denying, genuinely/falsely-enlightened, band-wagoning truther/sheople poster child if ever there was one, depending on your perspective, more times than I care to admit.

What I feel I have is an open mind. What I’m not sure I have is a proper gauge for what is actually factual information, and what is well-designed propaganda. What I want to briefly discuss, while I still have the drive to do so, is the matter of Fukushima. More specifically, the media’s handling of information coming out of Fukushima.

There are dozens upon dozens of self-proclaimed independent news outlets one can readily stumble upon all over the interwebs which claim to have information which is being spun and twisted — at best — or even withheld and straight up omitted — at worst — from public reports presented by just about every major mass media network out there. The mantra is the same everywhere you look: mass media is all controlled by interest groups pursuing agendas with zero obligation to actually provide the public with credible, factual information of genuine concern to them. They exist purely for the perpetuation of… whatever it is that they’re supposedly perpetuating.

I’m not explicitly stating my thoughts on “who’s right” one way or another here. Not that I don’t have my opinions, it’s just that, as far as I’m concerned, the issue is far bigger than a simple black and white breakdown analysis could ever accurately describe. What I will say is that there is definitely something going on. One way to see it for yourself is to simply do a google search for the term “Fukushima News”, and specify search hits from only within the past 30 days. Scroll down and peruse the first 3 or 4 pages. Take note of the number of well-recognized, traditional news networks sites you see providing any relevant reports. Scan a few of them. Note the general tone of the topics covered.

Now, contrast that with almost any reports pertaining to Fukushima in the last 30 days presented by sources you might consider to be less-traditional. Maybe they claim to be independent. Maybe they claim to be truth-seeking. Maybe you just haven’t heard of the given sites in question. Whatever the case, scan over just about any Fukushima-related report from the past 30 days they have provided an abundance of, and again notice general tone of the topics covered.

Specifically, notice the COMPLETE LACK of any comparison whatsoever.

I have nothing further to say. I’m still trying to get a sense of what I, personally, make of this severe discrepancy. I would, however, like to open the topic up for discussion. I’m not interested in opinionated rants, but if anyone else has been noticing this trend and has some well thought out, well, thoughts on the matter that they’d be willing to share, I’d like to hear them.

Vested Interest

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Systems can be fragile, only working under ideal conditions. Other times, they can be robust, designed to work even under inhospitable conditions. A particularly robust system can have the quality of being biased towards self-preservation. Not a bad thing in and of itself.

Problems arise when a system that includes the input of intelligent designers (as might be the case with computer systems and technical engineers) has a morally-irresponsible bottom line.

Many systems, however, are completely incapable of being personal. And good thing, too! Can you imagine if a hurricane was fully aware of the impact it was having on human life and local ecosystems? If they were aware and could do something about it yet elect not to, then they’re more than just destructive forces, they would be evil entities. If they’re aware of their impacts but can’t change anything, assuming they would if they could, then they come away from the experience carrying extreme guilt. Considering how unpreventable they are, extending said extreme weather system’s sensitivity to such a degree would only torture the poor cyclone with guilt and self-loathing (if it were biased to favour the well-being of living beings. There’s nothing saying that that must be the case). All for what? It’s not like it can do anything but follow the course of events as they unfold. A system like that isn’t designed to make it’s own decisions and direct it’s own actions (as far as I am aware. Correct me if I’m wrong). It would appear that such systems follow the teachings of Chaos to the exclusion of all others.

For other systems, it’s too bad they could not be more sensitive to their impacts. Perhaps there’s plenty of potential for intelligent decision-making, but such capability is poorly exercised. A lot of things that we take for granted come from this second kind of system.

Some systems are so complex, however, that intelligent, decision-making stages are too far removed from other stages, ones where, say, consequences are experienced, and where feedback is imprecise at the best of times.

So, too many times, intelligent decision-makers are not even aware that systems they’ve put in place may be causing more harm than good. The focus is in the wrong place (profit, 9 times out of 10). In the pursuit of misguided goals, we make barbaric choices. We’re quick to dismiss ethical concerns we’re confronted with, justifying our actions, minimizing our faults, shifting the focus on ‘greater evils’, twisting the facts, and basically doing anything and everything we can to cocoon ourselves from the negative realities of events we’re directly or indirectly responsible for setting into motion.

If there’s money to be had, we’ll engage and indulge in all manner or inexcusable behaviour, with no more regard for human, animal, plant, or any other natural creation’s inherent dignity than we can get away with neglecting (and even abusing) in the court of law.

And even then, with enough money on our side, it’s perhaps easier to pay the wrong people in the right places off than actually grow a sense of real responsibility and start making some genuinely good decisions. It’s more profitable to keep existing systems in place, and improve them only towards widening said profit margins than to do just about anything and everything else within our power to influence and control.

When we have these kinds of deeply vested interests, we will go so far as to destroy the pioneering spirits of entrepreneuring individuals, people with dreams of changing the status quo for the better, and keen vision for how to do so. [edit: while there’s an incredible number of awesome humans with commendable values, unless or until the kind of humans I have talking about (the kind who exploit anything and everything out of greed) are dealt with, I don’t see good odds of being allowed outside this universe (and go any other place, like Drendast where universes intersect)]

It doesn’t matter who we are. We all need to take a good hard look inside every once in a while and, with as little bias in our own favour as we humanly can (never a perfect check and balance, but it’s better than nothing), admit to ourselves what patterns of behaviour we have in our lives which contribute towards the perpetuating of systems that, in all seriousness, insult the very core of our beings, ultimately bringing harm to the well being and dignity of ourselves and others here on the only planet we’ve presently got.

Oh, and it never hurts to gain the perspective of others, especially others who can be trusted to be honest. How do we know who those others might be? We can never be sure (another imperfect check and balance), but if the feedback we get from others is ever uncomfortable, odds are it isn’t being candy coated, and that, at least, is never a bad sign.

Nothing To Do With Thermal Lensing

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I have an idea, but it’s hard to explain. It’s about heat and life and stuff.

And, after a few days of being stagnant in the keeping-up-with-blogging department, I feel as though that is precisely what I should ramble about today: my difficulty explaining things.

The idea that I had been struggling with trying to share has lead to a deeper vice of mine, and that is that I struggle with describing things that are of a somewhat unfamiliar nature, period. If it were up to me to describe what snow looked and felt like to members of an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon in order to not be cooked alive (for whatever reason), I’d be screwed. Doesn’t matter how well acquainted I am with the concept, it’s others whom I must enlighten.

So, when I want to write a book that’s intended to be chock full of interesting, weird, abstract concepts, and each of those concepts reinforce other strange ones, I am forced to go at it from a developmental approach: Start with the basics, establish a foundation, then build up.

The reason I find this difficult is because I want the reader to be plunged right in. I want to throw a reasonably diverse mixture of both familiar and unfamiliar ideas at them from the outset, so that way, there’d be things they can latch on to, and there’d be things they’re left wondering about.

From there, I fully intend on developing those unfamiliar threads in such a way that they gradually evolve in the reader’s mind, like a jigsaw puzzle slowly coming together, until they eventually become something they find intimately familiar. And/or, in the weaving of other concepts and threads, I will put a foundation together in such a way that all of the unfamiliar bits (which, to be fair, I would only mete out a reasonably little at a time) become instantly clear all at once, as though the reader were given the cipher for a crucial code they’ve been unable to solve for a long time.

So, my idea involving heat and life and stuff could be an unknown concept that instantly pops when the right information comes along, or one that slowly evolves over time, or, more likely, one that’s best left alone until the right fundamental principles that the universe of the story happens to abide by are first established. But therein lies another difficulty: it seems to me almost that all of the story’s universe’s fundamental principles are, themselves, unfamiliar and abstract.

So.

What does my story, Elyen, have in common with anything a human from Earth alive shortly after the turn of the 21st century might find familiar?

– The main characters are usually humanoid, so there’s often strong physical resemblance
– There are, more often than not, weather events that are similar to what we might expect here on earth
– Though the grander setting is nothing at all like Earth, from the perspective of a given humanoid character on the ground, the existence of mountains, bodies of water, forests, plains, desserts, etc., are all Earth-like enough for most readers to connect with
– Fantastic technologies exist which should be explainable in a way that fans of Sci-fi would have little difficulty appreciating
– Various forms of magic exist that fans of Fantasy will have little trouble understanding

I’m sure there’s more, but that’s just a cursory list for now. Here’s a list of some of the concepts I’m toying with which, I believe, are less common and therefore much trickier (but not impossible) to explain:

– “The Singularity” is the name of a type of major event that happens at various points throughout the history of the people of the story (yes, as in, there’s been more than one such event in Drendain history)
– Drendast is the name of the planet most of the events of the story takes place on. Drendast is a mega Aether-world, so large that it has multiple stars the size of Earth’s sun revolving around it, and not the other way around
– Most of the characters and beings on Drendast are photovores, naturally evolved [or, in some cases, genetically engineered] to subsist solely on the nearly perpetual light from the planet’s suns
– Physics on an Aether-world like Drendast are conveniently exotic. ‘Anomalies’, such as tri-pole magnetism, are taken for granted here
– The overarching philosophy behind the story incorporates, among other things, an offshoot of Taoism, which, if I understand anything at all about, only proves to me that I understand nothing at all
– Drendast happens to serve as a kind of ‘hub’ within it’s local multiverse, bridging connections via Conduits (think wormholes and you’ve basically got it) between universes both near and far.

And there’s loads and loads more concepts besides that.

The point is that I don’t always know where to start when it comes time to describe something. When I want to talk about a race of beings based on heat (rather than, say, carbon), I soon find myself struggling to explain their environment and behaviour, both of which involve (from the what I assume is a typical human perspective) altered states of reality, vaguely spiritual themes, Immersion (another very key concept I’m aiming to expound upon in the near future), and so on and so forth. Not easy.

Suddenly, explaining just one thing (what this race of heat-based beings are all about) is no longer just one thing, but many things, each of which are equally tricky.

I’m long winded. I’m still new to this whole blogging thing, and I don’t think I’ve quite figured out the most appropriate and tasteful format for presenting ideas, especially in terms of length, so, my biggest concern is not going on and on forever. To this end, I think I’m gonna start explaining concepts in parts. Starting after this blog, if I want to share a complex idea, expect to see it presented in chunks.

Or maybe I can do up a sort of wiki reference page, since I’m almost certain to reference earlier blog entries when presenting new ones related to Elyen. Something for me to look into. Anyways, that’d be all for now.

Window

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So I’m an over thinker. Most of the time, I don’t even realizing when I’m over thinking. It’s been my natural state for long enough that it takes a substantially over charged level of over thinking before I feel lost in the swirling inertia for some time, as is often the case right before trying to go to sleep, and even then.

Speaking of sleep, I’m pretty sure that, for the first 20 minutes or so of laying my head down, I am fully conscious of the random and rapid fluttering of my eyes’ lenses. At first, they’ll twitch to the rhythm of something I’m listening to, especially if it’s something catchy and it’s my first time hearing it, as tends to be the case when I’m trying out new stations to on jango. My guess is that there’s a underlying level of sensitivity that comes with listening to something new but not completely unfamiliar.

In the case of a song, if it’s in the same genre as others I listen to, my brain is already expecting to hear certain patterns. Even in borderline sleep, my nerves are all but raw from synthesizing what I know to expect against what I am actually currently experiencing, ready to judge whether I’m liking the new presentation or not. This period and level of automatic active listening and pattern recognition/prediction doesn’t last for very long, so I’m not losing sleep over it.

It’s also in this state of borderline sleeping that I sometimes imagine what’s going on in my brain as though I were looking at it from within on a micrometer scale, in which case, I imagine a light show the likes of which I realize I can never, ever be capable of fully imagining in the first place. It’s simply beyond the scope of my human comprehension. The firing of billions of neurons as they respond to stimuli that was passed along to them by their neighbouring neurons via synapses, making and reforming connections by the thousands at almost every instant… Unreal.

It’s exactly that process that I can’t help picturing even as certain seemingly major new connections feel as though they’re being initially formed.

I feel as though I have ridiculously frequently ‘eureka’ moments resulting from this almost-passive ability to mentally keep my finger on the pulse on my own thought processes. And before anyone goes concluding that I’m full of myself, I should clarify. What I experience in my head, when in hyper over thinking states like this, often borders on absolute chaos. So, unless chaos is the same thing as genius, then I’m just a thinker, feeler and a dreamer, as many of us are, and nothing more.

Nonetheless, I’m occasionally compelled to believe that I sometimes come a lot closer to something more. Whether that belief is based on anything factual rather than pure myth is a debate for another time. As I lay with my head on the pillow, eyes closed, loads of images appear in my head, fluctuating and morphing into different forms, sometimes very quickly, and often accompanied by equally ever changing thoughts, feelings, things that I “know”, and lots more besides. They all take on new expressions within a fluid milieu of pure potential. Makes me wish I had a better knack for visual arts. I would paint the most peculiar things.

Anyways, it’s in this state that my brain very rapidly makes all these new connections, new associations between things that, only moments ago when I was awake, I would have considered to be separate entities in every way. When the implications of some of these new associations occurs to me, I can get very excited, like I’ve hit upon some lost secret of the ancient shamanic world, or some message from beings from the future, or some hidden inner truth, or something, doesn’t matter what, ’cause regardless, it always feels profound.

The problem invariably arises when I try to retrace my thoughts to see how I arrived at my latest, hastily formed new epiphanies. More often than not, I fail to connect all of the dots the same way twice. My thoughts have a tendency to accomplish their most robust evolution while the rest of my brain is accomplishing it’s best impression of a very tired and soon to be sleeping person. Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyways) that, in this state, my focus begins to breakdown, missing steps and stages, leaving me with an incomplete record of events with which to later reconstruct entire world-shattering revelations.

All it can take to derail the spark of discovery is for one element within the chain, the list of ingredients, the compilation process, to derive from something I can’t identify a reasonably sound source for in the morning. When this happens, coupled with the missing steps mentioned above, the entire logic of my oh so grand insight suddenly looks ridiculously absurd and baseless.

But still, for what it’s worth, there’s a lot that I can do with the incomplete material my brain serves up. Yes, there will be holes, sometimes even blatant ones, but it can still be art. I can still create entire fictional worlds from some of these cognitive tid bits. Stories can still be told, and go on to live in other people’s heads, where they can be shared again and again.

In this way, I can set off a single light in response to what light was given to me, and from that, it can emit outward, becoming an unstopable cascade of waving, pulsating lights in the minds of others all resonating with one another.

We’re all neurons.

[edit: okay, maybe we’re a LOT more than just neurons, but the fact that neural complexity is as complex as it is is still amazing to me]