An Eleven-Year-Old

A few years ago, I did a writing exercise in which I wrote a letter to my eleven-year-old self. I'm not going to post up what I wrote because the exact words are irrelevant, but I clearly had a lot of animosity toward my eleven-year-old self back then, and I had to wonder why I had been so mad at my younger self. If I wrote a letter to my eleven-year-old  self today, there's no way I could be anything but loving.

Eleven, for me, was a major turning point in my life. Fifth grade (the year I turned eleven) was definitely the climax of all my creativity as a child; I had comic books, plays, movies, TV shows, etc, etc. I was doing everything. It was great! I loved fifth grade.

But, being the climax, everything took a nose dive as fifth grade ended. Eleven was when I started spiraling deeper and deeper into the depression that overtook my life for many years of my life. If you've never experienced depression, rejoice. If you have, then you know what I'm talking about when I say I lost interest in literally everything as time went on. When I wrote the letter to my eleven-year-old self right, I was at the upside-down climax of my depression: the lowest point of all lowest points, but also the beginning of a new direction.

It's been a few years since then. While I don't claim to be 24/7 happy, I am not depression's slave any more and never will be again. Now, when I look back at my eleven-year-old self, I see a little girl, perhaps one of my brother's classmates even, who is about to start the hardest years of her life. How could I write an angry letter to her? How could I blame her for making me who I am? How could I judge her for letting depression sneak up on her and begin the downward spiral? How could I be anything but loving and supportive to a small girl who's life is about to come crumbling down on her?

I don't regret struggling with depression. I don't wish it didn't happen. Sure, there are so many years of my life I wish I could have back, years that could have been so much better if I hadn't had to wrestle with something endlessly stronger than me at all times, but who would I be without that struggle? Where would I be? Would I have learned to stand as I stand today without walking through that hell?

I've spent the past few years struggling to find the strength to at last overcome depression, and what has given me hope is the strength and bravery of an eleven-year-old girl. If I wrote a letter to my eleven-year-old self today, I would only thank her for reminding me that I have strength I know not.

On Not Sleeping

You know what sucks? Forgetting that, in your rush to get over to band rehearsal, you managed to completely not post a blog or even finish. Luckily, you woke up at three-something-in-the-morning, so you could write! Right?

Wrong. At three-something-in-the-morning, my brain was not properly functioning, and I was in a half asleep, half awake fog until six when I finally started to re-join reality and took a shower. And so the usual morning business started. Waking my brother up, feeding the dog, re-waking my brother up because he hadn't really woken up and was still dead in bed, eating breakfast, forgetting the dog outside, realising that my phone battery was nearly dead and thus plugging it in, telling my brother for the umpteenth time that lying in bed grumbling at me does not count as being "up," reading a book for a 10-page paper I need to write tonight and finish tomorrow night, making lesson plans in my head, checking my email, and then suddenly realising that, oh shoot, I never posted a blog!

That's my Tuesday so far. Pretty typical, minus waking up at three-something-in-the-morning; my body usually wakes me up right at sunrise, but with the gloomy weather we've been having, my body is terrified of accidentally sleeping in and has now moved to waking me up incredibly early after my not going to bed at a "decent hour". I have to get back to going to bed before midnight at the earliest. It's always one excuse after another though.

Last night, it was my brother wandering into the family room (where the computer I generally use is), sneaking onto the couch, and then breaking down into crying. It was well past his bedtime. So I sat down next to the couch and started talking to him to find out what was wrong. Apparently, his 10-year-old mind had come to the conclusion that, "The world is going to end," and this was just the worst thing imaginable. Obviously, he couldn't sleep.

It's actually pretty common that he gets up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. As I laid in bed last night to sleep, my mind wouldn't shut down either, and I could not, for the life of me, get to sleep for sometime. I can't assure him that he'll be able to sleep easily in the future, because I've always gotten little sleep, and I hear it from those older than me all the time about not sleeping. Babies can't even sleep through the night. For some reason, we humans, at least in our society, can't sleep all night unless we completely exhaust ourselves and have no choice but passing out like we're dead.

I like passing out like I'm dead. I generally sleep quite well, despite not getting to bed at that magical "decent hour" we idolise and still getting up as the sun rises, because I'm always so exhausted, that I'm out like a rock whenever I sleep. My body is like, "Screw it, I'm exhausted. Let's just be dead for awhile, yeah?" It's a really good actor too.

My brother finally went to sleep after a long talk about science and life and religion and race and the Middle East and earthquakes and New Orleans and Where the Wild Berries Grow. He loves to tell me ideas he has for the play, and he gave me a few good ones last night. I really have to wonder sometimes whether he's really going to be a lawyer like he claims; his mind is too thrilled by physically creating things, just like mine. We'll see. Once we get enough sleep.

Re: Perfect Imperfections

This blog post was inspired by this blog post, written by my friend Jeremiah. I mentioned his blog yesterday in the post script.

The post brought up something I've only vaguely put into words before, remaining mostly floating thoughts in my head rather than actual communication of ideas. But I think it's something important, at least to me. In discussing principles of design, he wrote: "While one may be able to say from either an artistic or engineering point of view the the finished product has several imperfections, one can also say that, being balanced, it's the perfect product."

I think our definition of "perfect" is wrong. I think we need to re-think "perfect." Perfect, in our society and our language, is mathematical: there is only one solution and all other possible answers are wrong. Broken. Inadequate. Flawed. But we think of "perfection" in romantic and abstract ways, not concrete and un-malleable ways. We can't even all agree on what "the ideal" is we set our standards at.

To debate, you must start by defining the terms in the statement you are arguing. If you don't, you're just arguing nonsense. Everyone needs to be on the same page for a debate, understanding the terms correctly, though differing in interpretation of what may be inferred by these definitions.

So how should we be defining "perfection"? If it's not a mathematical formula for the ideal, what is it? This is where design comes into play. To keep it simple, let's say I'm designing a flyer:

It's for a hardcore band, and they want flames all over the place. Flames are awesome, right? I could fill the background with flames and even make the text on fire. But wait, you say, no one can read that! Okay, so I make the word-flames a different colour. Happy now? Of course not. The texture still makes you strain to read. I have to use less flame. So I redesign it to be super easy to read, but now it's plain black text on white paper. No one's going to even stop to read.

From a hardcore, flame-loving perspective, the first version is the pest, is perfect. But from a reader hoping to find information about the band, the last is the best: simple, clear, and nothing unnecessary. Each of these, as Jeremiah points out, could be considered "perfect" on their own, but in the world of design, this is no longer enough. Perfect instead comes when compromise is made and balance is reached.

So let us define "perfect" not as a mathematical constant, but as a symbiotic relationship between opposing forces in which strengths and weaknesses unite instead of fight. Let us define perfection as the fearless embracing of such concepts and acceptance of supposed flaws. Let us define perfection as ever-changing and indefinable.

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

How a Musician is Perceived

I've been hearing a lot of complaints lately about how music is all about looks these days. That anyone who is popular is popular because they're good-looking and not because their music sucks. Great musicians who aren't good-looking are thrown under buses while not-so-great musicians who are good looking get thrown up on pedestals and treated like gods.

I completely disagree: Music isn't about music or looks. Instead, it's about the "persona" of the artist. The actual music an artist makes and the look he, she, or they has is only a part of the number one reason we like or dislike an artist: who we perceive them to be.

Let's take a look at Justin Bieber. Preteen girls love him. Moms love him. Girls in their late teens/early 20s hate him. But why? Justin Bieber's persona. He's been marketed as a sweet, cute, ideal boyfriend . . . for preteens. For moms? He's that sweet, cute, ideal boyfriend their daughter really likes. For teenagers? He's that annoying kid who thinks he's cool just because he's in Xth grade now and won't leave you alone. Maybe you even babysat him when he was younger, and now he thinks he's old enough to date you. Yeah, that kid.

Not everyone in each demographic agrees though, because not everyone agrees on who an "ideal" person is. The artists who are popular (besides luck and great marketing) are the ones who best fit into society's perceived idea of what "attractive" is, based on the persona (which includes image) that they convey.

Note that I say popular though, not successful. Popularity and success do not go hand and hand. Success requires good business, which is whole separate blog post entirely. Maybe I'll write about that later, when I actually have the right to talk about success.

Music is about who your fans perceive you as. Every lyric you write, every note you play, affects that. Every blog, Tweet, and picture you post affects that. As a musician, or any kind of public figure for that matter, everything you do that your potential fans can see is just as important as the music you make or how you dress. It is therefore your job to make yourself appear likable. The best musicians, I've found, are the ones who make their fans feel that by being a fan, they're part of a group of "cool" kids (even the dorky, "we're so uncool" kind of cool).

I could probably write an entire book (not that it'd be good) just on this, but I'll leave you with something my dad has told me over and over again my whole life:

"If you want friends, you have to be a friend."

Christopher Allen Ryser

At last! My very first "creative writing" blog post. This was written in early 2009. Most of my Saturday postings will be new/unreleased, but I thought I'd start with a "classic" of my writing. Enjoy!

I fell asleep to the sound of him typing. Every night. I never asked him what he was writing. It was the Great American novel. Well, that's what he wished. Every night, he'd write and write and write. Type, type, type. Click, click, click. The sound of the keys, his sighs of defeat, gasps of inspiration, moans of desperation, all became part of me. I fell in love with the writer I barely knew.

His name was Christopher Allen Ryser. C.A.R. In my mind, he told me stories of his parents, both car-lovers, and how they gave him those initials. Other times, they did it on accident, and it was fate that made him a car-lover. Or ironic because he hated cars.

He had many stories. When he'd type at night, I imagined him telling me the things he wrote. They were fascinating stories. I sometimes wondered if his stories were anywhere near as good as the ones he told me in my imagination. I decided they were much better.

I did not know the colour of his eyes; I rarely saw him. He had short brown hair, a soft chin, and a tired face. My dreams were filled with him. He never stopped telling me stories. He whispered them into my ear as I laid in his arms. When he'd kiss me, his lips spoke to mine, telling them the most amazing things imaginable.

At times, the reality that he would never be mine, that he did not even know me, would consume me. It burned through me like swallowing hot wax. I moaned in pain when I thought these things. Christopher Allen Ryser, I whispered weakly. I wished my last name would be Ryser.
Was I wrong to love him? Perhaps, but it could not be helped.

He was a writer. He was a storyteller. He was a puppet master, and the world and I were his captivated audience. He was never published during his lifetime, though his niece managed to get some of his writings published after he passed away. She had been a beautiful little girl, always visiting her Uncle Chris and bringing him flowers. He told her stories. His voice was loving and strong and filled with a gentleness just for her. When he would speak to me, it was with a tired, weary voice, the weight of his writing heavy upon him.

He died young. Cancer. A week before he died, he did not write. Instead, he sat down at the foot of my bed and spoke to me in his tired, weary voice. This time, however, it was not his writing which ailed him; it was his own pending death.

"Look after her, please," he asked me. That was all he said, and then he wept. In my dreams, it was I who was in his arms, but this time, he was in mine. Neither of us said a word. He did not sob, but tears soaked his face and clothing.

After he died, his niece still visited. Now, it was I who gave flowers. I cared for her, just as her uncle had wished. As she grew older, she became a beautiful woman. She told me she was in love with me when she was 24 years old, so I married her and took her name. I knew I didn't love her the way I had loved her uncle, but I also knew I should never have loved a man.

She was a good wife, and I loved her as a sister. I wished I could have been a better husband, but she never complained. We had two children. Our son was named him Christopher Allen Ryser, Jr., after his great uncle whom he looked exactly like. Our daughter was named Lillian Alexandra Ryser, after her parents, Lillian and Alexander Ryser. She looked just like her mother. I loved our children just as I did their mother and great-uncle: with all of my heart.

In my dreams, I still heard him typing every night. He spoke to me. He told me stories. He cried in my arms, sometimes, and I told him how his niece and her children were doing. It seemed to make him happier. I never told him or anyone else, even in my dreams, that I had loved him. He knew.

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.

Thinking

I have an interview later today. I had no idea how nervous I was until I completely blanked and panicked on my English quiz. I'm sure I knew all the answers, but my mind was a complete blank. Burnt out, no doubt, from all the constant thinking it has been doing:

1. College thinking! "Should I take English 1A over the summer? If I placed into a math class much higher than needed for my major, should I even take math? How am I going to come up with all these thousands of dollars? I need a perfect 4.0 in all my classes to transfer and get the scholarships I need, but I have to work as many hours as possible to save up money, but I'm supposed to be working on as many film projects as possible to give myself a leg up over other applicants and aspiring filmmakers, but AHHHHHHH!!"

2. Interview thinking! "Should I wear make-up? I never wear make up! What should I wear? Is red too strong of a colour? Should I wear the big, expensive-looking coat, or the cheap, possibly more professional-looking jacket? Where did all my artwork for my portfolio go? Why is my resume such crap? What do I do with my hair? Should I wear heels? I don't have any shoes to wear! What time was the interview again? What do I say? What if I look stupid? This is stupid!"

3. Food thinking! "I'm hungry. Why is there no food in my house?"

4. School thinking! "What do you mean we were supposed to read? Why are we still pretending like the school year isn't over? Final project?? WHAT??"

5. Work thinking! "Why can't I find this font? Did I scan that right? How do you work this machine again? Adobe CS1??? But I use CS4! What am I supposed to be doing??"

6. Thinking thinking! "What am I supposed to be thinking about?"

As you can see, I'm quite thoughtful. Wish me luck!