Buried Treasure

Okay, I'll admit it: I miss blogging daily. I should focus on NaNo, but I need to blog. It makes me think and reflect even when I don't want to. Blogging, as annoying as it gets sometimes, is fun. It's freeing, liberating—it understands me. You understand me. Even if you don't.

When I blog, I explore a little corner of my mind, find some buried treasures, and re-organise everything so I can find those treasures more easily next time. Blogging, for me, is a never-ending process of cleaning and discovering and re-organising what's in my head. And translating. Somehow, the clutter must be turned into coherent words for others to understand, and the process of doing so helps me to appreciate my own self more.

I cannot stay mad when I blog. If I'm angry or upset or unhappy in anyway, blogging helps me see what's bothering me, and then, more importantly, find a way out. Blogging gives me solutions to the problems lost within my cluttered head, even if it never spells anything out for me.

Without blogging, I don't think I would have made it to today, to the point I am at right now. I wouldn't be able to hold the weight of all the things I hold if I did not take time every day to make sense of everything. Because what I do is not just narrate, but analyse. I have to analyse. I'm incredibly analytical, even if, for those who know me beyond this blog, I'm also incredibly emotional.

Blogging has helped me come to realise who I am, in a way. I've learned to throw out the either or definitions and embrace my own definitions of fluidity. Because nothing is black and white. I'm not only analytical or only emotional; I'm not only feminine or only masculine; I'm not only extroverted or introverted—I am all that and more.

I like those silly "How male/female are you?" checkbox tests, actually. I mean, the criteria for being male and the criteria for being female are both incredibly stupid, but a high "male" score doesn't mean a low "female" score, nor does a low male score mean a high female score. You could be anywhere from 0% male and 0% female to 100% male and 100% female. Masculinity does not mean the absence of femininity just as femininity does not mean the absence of masculinity. Nor does introspection mean a lack of extroversion or emotion a lack of logic.

I know this instinctively. It's in my nature to recognise this. Blogging has helped me dig this inborn instinct out from underneath all the learned ideas about society and human nature from my environment and culture. With every moment I spend blogging, I am digging up more and more buried treasures, all the things I knew before society burdened me with conflicting knowledge.

I'm back to blogging every day already.

Empowered

There is so very much in this world one may fight for. An endless litany of causes, movements, revolutions, struggles, hopes, dreams, and passions. We live in a sea of politics, conflicting ideas, and endless confusion. Who is right? Who is wrong? What is right? What is wrong? It's enough to make anyone feel helpless.

I feel helpless a lot. For all the moments I feel strong and empowered, there are still plenty of moments when I feel like nothing more than one of the billions of humans, simply one species of millions on this plant, simply a pale blue dot in the vastness of the endless space around the tiny planet we call home. When I consider how tiny we really are, how incredibly unimportant and powerless we are in the vastness of the multiverse, every thing we do and value just seems to ridiculous. Every day, we kill each other over irrelevant differences, but does the multiverse even notice or care?

But one human in 7 billion can change our society. It's happened many times. When I consider that, I can feel powerful again, like what I do might truly have an effect. If one person can change humanity, maybe one species truly can have an impact on our planet and even beyond our atmosphere, somewhere in the wide reaches of space.

But I don't think we're ready. I have so much faith in humanity, but it's the future I believe in, not now. I cannot help anyone unless I can help myself first, nor can humanity ever help our world until we learn to help our own species, to help each other. And so the never-ending debate of morals comes in, making it so hard to know where the defining lines of right and wrong truly lie.

We all know, of course, that killing someone without "good" cause is most definitely wrong, but what is a "good" cause? Is there any good cause? Is there any good reason to kill someone? My answer is no. But then someone always has to ask me, "What if killing one person would save hundreds/thousands/millions/everyone?" Our classic example is Hitler. If I could have killed Hitler before the Holocaust, would I? And, somehow, I know the answer is no. Given the hypothetical chance to save the lives of millions of people by taking one life, I couldn't do it.

I don't want to justify my morals. That's not my point. I believe something, and I know I could be wrong. Perhaps the right thing to do, given that chance, is to kill the man who, like me, once dreamed of being an artist. I don't think I have the right to ever take another human life no matter what, but perhaps I'm wrong. I could be wrong. That is the trouble with trying to "do the right thing." It's not that the act of doing something right is so hard or wrong is so tempting; it's that we don't know for sure what's right or wrong. And that is where the helplessness truly comes from.

Knowledge is power, but we can never know. We can only believe. We can only have faith. I have been fighting to have faith for a very long time, and I will always have times of struggle, but I've learned that I cannot ever know, and that I just have to have faith. Faith is my power.

And though I wish I could know (So much for the Tree of Knowledge; what a misnomer.) instead of just believing, I almost like not knowing. Every day, I wonder who is right, and sometimes, my definition of right changes. I learn. It doesn't feel so bad to be wrong, because I can learn. Though I am wrong today, perhaps tomorrow I will learn what is right and become right.

I was not the best director a year ago. I know I wasn't. I did things wrong, morally wrong, by the definition of right and wrong I hold today. And in another year, I will look back again and see all the things I did wrong this year. But each year, I will learn. Each year, I will get closer to bringing our species to that ideal of forever helping each other, getting along, respecting each other, and at last being ready to fight for more than just our own selves, our own little worlds, but for the multiverse.

This blog post, to my amazement, will influence someone. It will make a change in the world, no matter how small, because it will make the tiniest change in at least one person's life, heart, mind, soul. Somehow, with my words alone, I have that power. I am not helpless; I am empowered. You are not helpless either.

George Carlin

Disclaimer: Like most commedians, George Carlin can be vulgar and offensive. Watch his stuff at your own discretion. You have been warned.

Speaking of deceased people who I wish I could have met while they were still alive, (Isn't that redundant? "Met while they were still alive"? Can you really meet dead people?) I love George Carlin. As I write this (back to being ahead of schedule, thankfully!), I've just been watching videos of his old stand-up routines on YouTube. His segments on cats, stuff, and airplane safety will always be my top three. I've made it a rule to always watch his bit on airplane safety before going on a plane and insist that anyone else travelling with me watch it before too. It just makes airplanes much more enjoyable, because everything is just so much more ridiculous.

But George Carlin had a lot to say about our society, from our obsessions with "stuff" or our material possessions to the flat-out arrogance in thinking we are superior to even the planet on which we reside. To think that humans, who aren't even capable of caring for each other, can care for every living thing on our planet and in existence is just insane. We can't even care for our own children. Animals all seem to have their systems worked out, and they work without any issues nearly all of the time, but us humans can't even figure out whether to use breast milk or formula, how much, and how long. Meanwhile, we're all just blowing each other up over our perceived differences.

But then he has things like his bit on the ways in which we're all alike. Like when it's Wednesday, but it feels like Thursday. Then you wake up the next day, and you're back to normal again. Or the mystery of the jumping pillow. You know, the way the pillow moves if you close one eye and then switch to the other when you're lying down in bed. Or when you fall asleep in the afternoon, and then you wake up, it's the middle of the night, and you have no idea what day it is. Or you walk to a room, and when you get there, you can't remember why you walked over.

I love George Carlin because he makes me think while making me laugh. That's something not many people can do. To both entertain and teach all at once takes much more than to do only one or the other, but when you're entertained, it becomes easier to learn, and when you're learning, it's easier to be entertained. Have you ever noticed that? Two people can try to teach you the same thing, and the more successful one is always the one who manages to entertain you and make it interesting. You could be talking about the dullest subject, but if it's presented right, you'll be engaged. And when your mind is learning, when your brain starts functioning and processing things, you appreciate the world so much more suddenly. You get the references, the allusions, the subtle things which make everything that much more enjoyable.

Maybe I should employ some comedy into my Friday posts.

Article from a Multiverse

After my post about automated blogging, I'm going to be kind of lame and use an article I read as the main content of my blog post today This article, to be specific. "Are we living in a designer universe?"

I didn't read it entirely. I plan to later this week, but I wanted to share it. I don't know how to wrap my head around it, really. (For those of you who didn't read at all, it's basically about the theory that our universe was created by something near-human, and that we're getting very close to being capable of creating universes too.) I can't take a stance because my mind just won't process it at all. It alludes me.

What really interests me though is that humanity could be close to creating actual, fully-functioning universes. That idea is crazy. As an artist, a writer, I feel compelled to create. It's like the ultimate dream sort of thing to create an actual, fully-functioning universe. I feel like I spend my whole life building pieces of little universes, but never complete ones. Just imagine having a complete one!

But then how would we feel about having created an entire universe? How big would it be? Would we feel parental towards it? That said, suppose the theory about our universe is true: how does our creator really feel about us? And how many universes are there right now?

This just opens up a whole new wave of questions and thoughts. Boy, do I love thoughts.

What are your thoughts on the article and the ideas and concepts it presents?

P.S. Yes, I got the link from Jon Rosenberg's wonderful comic Scenes from a Multiverse

Bryce Avary: A Role Model

Happy Friday! I haven't learned a thing today, so I thought I'd talk about Bryce Avary.

Bryce Avary, also known as The Rocket Summer, is one of the two people who most inspired me to teach myself piano and finally get (back) into music at the rather chaotic age of sixteen. Bryce Avary (and Alison Sudol, also known as A Fine Frenzy) saved me.

Sixteen, for me, was the beginning of huge changes in my life. I went through a lot st sixteen. In early 2008, I fell in love with "My Typical Angel" as I lamented my oh-so-tragic "lost love". Soon, I was searching through CDs at Best Buy to find The Rocket Summer. Having fallen in love with both Bryce's piano-driven rock and Alison Sudol's much more ethereal piano music, I started teaching myself piano that same summer.

And then my entire world was turned upside down: a friend of mine, who had been like an brother to me while we were in school together, committed suicide, and whatever semblance of faith in God I had left was completely shattered. Piano, The Rocket Summer, and A Fine Frenzy were the only means I had to cope with and try to wrap my head around the death of a friend.

I clung to Bryce's music especially that summer. He had all the faith I didn't, all the faith I wished I could still have. But I knew I would never be the same; my faith was forever changed at sixteen: first utterly destroyed, and then slowly brought to life as a different kind of faith through Bryce's own faith.

And boy does Bryce Avary has faith. He questions God, questions life and meaning, and through it all, he continues to have faith. I hated God, hated Christianity and Christians for lying to me my whole life, but here was this Christian who I could not hate. I could not believe God, but I could believe in Bryce Avary. On my darkest days, Bryce Avary's never-ending faith could still somehow light my day.

Bryce Avary pushed me to believe in something greater than myself, to believe that I was important and owed it to the world to be the best I could be. I don't believe in a God who sits up on a throne in the clouds, playing puppeteer or even simply watching, but I do believe in something: humanity. That every person is capable of good, of being "saved" if only they can believe.

Music, and not just Bryce Avary, has completely changed my life. Because it is art, and art is the universal language, the language of our hearts. When I was 16, Bryce Avary showed me the kind of person I wished I could be. I grew weary of dark, fearful, faithless hate and longed to instead fearlessly light the world with love and faith.

Bryce Avary plays every single instrument in his music: guitars, piano, bass, drums, and vocals. He writes it all and makes it all happen. And he's been doing it since he was a teenager. Maybe one day I'll be able to do that too.

Bryce Avary, you are my hero. <3

Prop Mosque

Let me first say that I hate political debates. People get angry and nothing happens. Seems like a big waste of time to me.

That said, I need to come out of the political closet: everyone knows me as a "liberal", but I know myself as "conservative." But the arts community is full of hatred for conservatives. It's ironic, really. For all the "tolerance" that "liberals" supposedly speak of, they are the people who I am most afraid to admit my own beliefs, my own self around for fear of their hatred.

But you know what? I'm tired of being afraid. Hey, liberal artists! I'm conservative and proud of my beliefs.

"But I thought--!" Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm all about "tolerance" so how can I be conservative? Newsflash, bigot and conservative are not synonyms, just as liberalism and tolerance are not synonyms. According to our great president Abraham Lincoln (who, by the way, was a Republican, despite calling for the abolition of slavery; I guess not all "Republicans" hate people who aren't white, Protestant, straight, males!), conservatism is "the adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried." Weird, I see nothing about being a bigot in there.

The thing is, both "liberals" and "conservatives" are the victims of misunderstandings, prejudices, and stereotypes, just like everyone else. Just like I don't like identifying myself as "white", "18", "straight", or even as "artistic" because each puts me into a group I don't fit in 100% in, I don't like stating my political beliefs for fear of being put into a stereotype. I have liberal values and I have conservative values, but in the end, I stand behind our founders and our Constitution, not the whims of a particular era.

To call me white is to neglect that I was raised in part by family members who had been born in Honduras, a small, little-known country in Central America. To group me with all 18-year-olds is to put me with drug addicts and people with real jobs alike. To simplify sexuality to a yes or no (gay or straight) question is to deny others any middle ground. To label me artistic is to forget every other aspect of me.

I don't support Prop 8: not because I think gay marriage is unquestionably right, but because I believe our government has never been given the right to decide religious issues such as marriage. I don't oppose the "Ground Zero Mosque": not because I believe in the symbolic progress toward tolerance it represents, but because I see no way in which our government has reason to intervene. Prop 8 and the mosque are both issues that have exploded into huge ones because of what they represent, but they're simple for me: our government exists only to protect the minority from the oppression majority, so no matter the issue, it is simply a matter of protecting the inalienable rights of everyone, including the not-as-popular groups, like conservatives in the world of liberal arts.

So there you have it: a "conservative" who supports gay and Muslim rights. Because the Constitution tells me so.

One Hit Wonder

I should do this daily. Blog, that is.

I have this ridiculous fear that someone will figure out that I'm not actually as great as my 130 fans on Facebook seem to think I am (What?? 130??? When did THAT happen??). They'll tell someone else, and then it'll spread like wildfire that I'm just average and everyone will move on. Ever since I miraculously managed to write, direct, produce, and star in Without Direction, it's been about 100 times better and 100 times worse.

I accomplished something. I really did something! And no one can deny it, not even my self-depreciating, highly critical self. Without Direction is not something an average person could have done; it took someone incredible!

Somehow, the fear comes back, just as powerful as ever. It hits me with a profound, "So???" So Without Direction was cool, so what?. Is that all you've got? Peaked at seventeen? One hit wonder.

It's like a virus, mutating and adapting. Fear. It's everywhere. As I complete another script and begin production, I can feel the fear lurking in the back of my head, already mutating and adapting. It knows what I'm going to say. "See? I'm not just a one hit wonder! I did TWO plays!" It's spent months informing me that I'll never be able to come close to Without Direction, and, worse, that no number of plays at my old high school will make me anything more than a loser, a one hit wonder.

So I mutate and adapt. It's a never ending battle. Some days, it looks like I'm going to crush fear, and some days it looks like fear will crush me. I'm not sure I want to destroy fear though; for all the knocking down it does, fear, or overcoming fear, is what pushes me beyond my limits. Without fear, I'd probably just go take a nap.

The Technological Age

The interview went quite well! And, more importantly, my unpaid internship is now a soon-to-be-paying job. THANK GOD. Funny thing about college: it costs money!

Anyway, this whole social networking phenomenon is incredible. The way in which we connect and communicate has changed so dramatically in just a few short years, and it's continuing to change even more dramatically. The idea of "privacy" seems to be vanishing at an exponential rate. All you have to do is read someone's Twitter or Facebook, and BAM! You know everything you never wanted to know.

And while our society evolves so rapidly, our brains don't. Long, long ago, we learned that "real" things are the things we can physically sense. It worked. But now we've created this second reality, and it's not instinctive to connect this second reality to the physical reality we know.

People act differently on the internet than in person. Our brains don't connect what we see on our computer screens to the people we know in reality. Nor do we seem to connect that the things we put on that computer screen are travelling through intangible space to the people in reality. It is literally like a second life.

We say whatever we want on the internet. If it comes to our mind, we say it. The results of our online actions are not direct and therefore harder for our brain to connect. It's not like it can't; our brains are amazingly powerful, and are the reason we have such amazing technologies.

There is no self-control on the internet. And now, as the internet becomes our primary means of communication, we are losing self-control in our communication. I wouldn't blame anyone for feeling misanthropic after a few minutes on some of the nastier parts of the internet.

But technology hasn't just turned us into rampaging monkeys with no self-control (sorry monkeys!). Technology has suddenly turned everyone into a "photographer" or "musician" or something. Even people with no budget can create just about anything now it seems.

Case 1: My little brother's toys were all over the staircase today, and when they were nearly pushed aside by an unhappy foot, he wailed, "But I'm doing a shoot!!" Apparently, he's working on some stop animation movies. I'm a little worried that the (future) lawyer in the family is doing more filmmaking than the filmmaker (and the filmmaker is doing much more legal business than him, but he's only a kid, after all).

But on the other hand, people seem to think that having the equipment for something makes them a professional. Newsflash!: Taking a picture of a flower with your camera phone does not make you a photographer, like microwaving leftovers does not make you a cook, like amusing your carpet does not make you funny, like copy and paste does not make you a writer, like AutoTune does not make you a singer, like owning a car does not make you a race car driver, like being on stage does not make you an actor, like nice clothes do not make you nice, like matching your outfit does not make you a fashion designer, like owning a surfboard does not make you a surfer, like never giving more than your 18% of effort for something does not make you cool.

It really irritates me when people call themselves "photographers" after taking one poorly-lit, mediocre picture of a flower in their backyard. Worse, when they take 30 of these, and there's nearly no difference between the pictures. Photography, like all art, is not simply re-iteration; something has to happen between when the artist first takes in the information and when they share it with others. It requires thought and feeling and emotion.

If you want to be a photographer (or anything, this is just my example because I just happened to read someone claim to be a photographer on Facebook with unexciting pictures of flowers), you can. REALLY. You just have to want it. You have to work, have to fight, have to learn.

And that's what excites me and scares me more than anything about the internet and technology: how accessible learning is becoming-- and how easy it is becoming to "function" without ever learning.