AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

Losing rhythm is the deepest tragedy available on the market today, because you can never, ever, get it back. Once the beat is missed, everything else is all imitation. And when the music stops, you better grab a chair.

10% inspiration, 90% perspiration. Someday I hope to be successful (or even fake successful) so that I can start giving seminars on how to "make it", because I'll relish the opportunity to speak this phrase, which has been echoing inside me for almost a year now: "Having good work helps, but it's really a lot less important compared to how you present it and who you present it to. And luck. It's less important than luck. Or how physically attractive you are, or what your name sounds like when people say it out loud, or what your parents did for a living."

I can't even write a coherent sentence about my life anymore. I guess to an extent it's been like this from day one. Everything that's going on just seems like such nonsense anyway. When I have something on my mind that weighs on me heavily, I may start out with the intention of describing real events and real feelings that actually happened, but I won't get far before it has all degenerated into awkward end-rhyme verses and random descriptions of fantasy scenarios.

You know how there's this notion that most people think in words, and only a few people (mostly children and artists) think in terms of pictures? Well, I'm not sure which category I fit into. Sometimes, sentence fragments may pop into my mind, and sometimes, I'll feel conversations going through my head, but most of the time these are echoes of something that somebody else said to me, or that I said to them. They're not really my thoughts so much as they are my memories. Occasionally distorted ones.

17 August 2006 8:21 am

God, time passes so quickly that I can't even keep up with myself - and I'm barely moving.

I made an approach to the painted bridge last night, though I did not find a way onto the bridge. I probably could have, but I was too afraid to stick around - more on fear later. I learned some new things, though!

There's a third bridge below the Bridge of Art. A wooden footbridge in a "U" shape, and it too is a Path of Spiders. Unlike the upper bridge which had a single fine web between each bar of the rail, this bridge is absolutely filled with webs layered on themselves; silver in the moonlight, with multiple large brown spiders hanging fat and heavy from their strands.

14 August 2006 11am

I still haven't made it to the bridge. That's not just dissapointing, it's frightening. Everything becomes a distraction. One responsibility justifies procrastination of another.

My S.O. has been reading a lot of Haruki Murakami lately, and she told me that she was starting to get fed up with him because fundamentally, all his books struggle with, but do not address, the same issue over and over again.

When Murakami visited MIT a while back, S.O. told me she regretted not asking a particular question at the Q&A; regarding his level of personal investment in the world that his writings struggle with - this subconscious underworld of curses and watery emotion. After doing some more reading and pondering the matter for a few months - well almost a year, actually, she decided that, in a certain way, his writing is insincere.

11 August 2006 4pm

I think you've infected me with something. Before I knew you, I never wanted chocolate. I hated it. it would give me headaches just to smell it, and I personally found it ridiculous and annoying when other people said that it was their favorite thing or that they were "addicted" to it.

And I remember observing how you were consumed by chocolate. You didn't eat a lot of it - you just needed it sometimes. You always had some with you, and whenever anyone else had it, you wanted it, too.

It was only around that time that I started eating chocolate. It wasn't the only thing; I had kept strict standards for myself about what would not pass my lips; and many of those standards began to erode at that time. Onions, butter, ice cream, chicken and beef, alcohol. Some were things I had rejected consciously, others, like chocolate, were substances that had previously been unpalatable.

10 August 2006 12:45 pm

There really is so much to do and so little time

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What is it that I'm really saying? What is all this that I'm talking about? Where are these words coming from?

They're coming from reading the writings of those who have read the writings of the writers who wrote the writings that I should have read, but didn't.

Style, style, style. What else is there but style? And what is style if not an incomplete attempt to copy too many things all at once?

If originality is failed imitation, then Artistry must be controlled folly.

9 August 2006 12:30pm

Basically, I want to be a superhero; strange and special, weird and wonderful, different and dangerous.

I want custom everything; every tool that reaches my hands or garment that touches my skin. All of them embedded with my own unique symbols, designed to reflect my particular identity.

8 August 2006

Magick is an alternate mode of ego development. Instead of getting your self image from other people through conversation and interaction, you get it from the universe by addressing it as though it were something to be conversed with.

7 August 2006

I'm just really uncomfortable talking to people - I rarely feel like I communicate effectively with anyone about anything; even the most basic concept gets lost in the transmission.

And writing is even worse. Every time I read something, it sounds different to me. I write things down and I have no idea how they will be received on the other end of things.

Writing a simple email is a total chore for me because even a single paragraph can take an hour of revision before I can commit. I write a sentence and erase it. Write and erase, write and erase. Finally, it gets sent, often days or weeks after I had originally intended to send it, and soon I find myself obsessing over whether I was too honest, whether my attempts at humor are lame, whether the sentences could even be parsed in a way that makes any kind of sense. And then I reread it over and over again, and it looks like the ramblings of a crazy person.

I've lost some momentum in the past few days . . . I really can't afford to slow down . . .

Fuel the fire by doing the things that made you excited when you first decided that you would do them. Especially things that make no sense to you.

It's like ivy, moss, and mold. They prey on the stationary. They are agents of entropy.

There's a long list before you. Don't forget your commitments, but don't let them stifle you, either. It's more important to act on the strong, new ideas while they are strong and new.

"People who are interesting are people that are interested."