I feel overwhelmed

I'm not human, or at least I tend to create an artificial environment for myself so I can operate on a semi-mechanical level. Alien. Psuedo-semi. A faux-rational level. Thing is, when you take hormone therapy to castrate yourself, your voice doesn't go up, but you might cry at the movies, and maybe you can collaborate with a group more efficiently. People are hairless apes - emotion machines, not number machines. Some emotions are rational - others, not so much. But I'd like to play it safe and only deal with the sensy onese, pretending they aren't special. So I create fake spaces for myself - like this blog - like my notebooks - like my art projects - in which my mind can claim dominion over an imaginary, simulated rational space. Plus I "hide out" a lot...

But recently I've been to too many places where there are people everywhere. Surrounded by strangers, it tends to stimulate your imagination. Eyes and clothes and the exploding things they say when they walk by. Plus spring is going to change my mind with hormones and erase the winter me. The new me is juicier and harder to control. Women wear clothes that really explode my simulation. Then I succeeded at getting in some grad schools, which means I have a social self, an identity I can share with other people in a few short words. That really gives me a chit in the game that plays out in the emotional world, the consensus reality game. Which tends to embarrass my simulation, dry it up like a puddle in the sun. But it's dangerous. I am sleepy all the time from thinking. Getting this ID has been my goal for a while, and now that I have it I am transformed by confusion.

I can only see clearly when I have a few variables on the move. Of course I can handle more than one variable, I carry around the world's most powerful calculating machine all the time and I use it to decide what to cook for dinner, who to call (usually no one), what to blog about. But there are so few constants nowadays, and I forget what loose thread to pick at to untangle the knotworld. Writing for me is just a sounding. Pick a location in the brain, any level, and put a mic there. What comes out is just a constant resampling of the landscape of connections played out from that nexus-point. Sometimes it's words, then I've scored. Opened up, and filtered through a sense-maker some of the time. I can't see myself very clearly - this is not among my skills - but recently I've noted there have been an increasing number of soundings that have been aborted due to signal strength issues (poor strength, ultra-hi freq., or inconstants). That means there is a chaotic reconfiguration of the system. The poles are flipping, the magnetic field is stormy and spotty. I don't know which end is up.

My fantasy version of FameIsMagic for this evening is operating in a world full of real-world events that keep the mind full up busy calculating emotional possibilities. How can you write about the streets? Other people provide the most variables - do you want your head to catch fire? How can you do it? It makes me feel like I am falling backwards, like I've hopped into a new body and my hands are huge. If you keep on puncturing your emotional-fantasy bubble, how are you going to dry it up? How are you going to be able to concentrate and say what you mean? Zen is a complicated process of pointing at the world and saying "this is it." You seem to be trying some kind of alternative practice where you point at other people's minds and say "this is it." How can you do this? It makes me want to find a cabin in the woods or better yet a martian cave. But you seem to be able to handle it. Watching you write was terrifying for me in a way - it was fast and direct and pink. I can sometimes see the real world, but I can't play it out in my emotional-simulation. That's like trying to plug your computer into a wire fallen from those high-voltage erector-set monster power lines. But that's your thing, no wonder you need a smoke. Oh - I'm sure for you that there is a balance point. Of course I can't imagine what it's like to be you. But I wouldn't be able to survive. I wouldn't be able to survive and prosper. I've met a lot of creative people and asked them - do you do any kind of practice to calm yourself - you know simple meditation like counting your breaths? And you were the only person who was like - no no ha ha. And this is my fantasy version of you, so don't be offended, but we need to help each other live more healthily.

Finally, there is the "impostor complex" - when I enter an institution I have to play up to their idea of who I am - and of course I can't because, oh man, they use the biggest words. And I use big words about myself too, but different ones. But sometimes I can be so small. Sometimes I can be a kitten playing with a piece of string, sometimes I can be a single electron. But I am hardly ever a giant striding across the noble landscape. But the truth is, nobody has a head. They've got a whole lot of fake ones, and these hardly ever screwed on strait. What I'm saying is that there is no such thing as solid ground. There is decadence, aging, conservatism, and money. I am not an irrational rationalist - I think there are a few facts in the world, but they are like ribbons of seaweed in the churning surf. A lot of art is terrible. Awful stuff. Dangerous? I don't know, but misdirected. I want to find my tiny who-world on a strange seaweed-scape and broadcast a previously-opaque nexus. I need something to slow me down. But with all these churning variables I don't know if I can do it.

In the Temporary Autonomous Zone, Hakim Bey said "Kidnap a stranger and make them believe they are the president of an imaginary country." That's so direct and godlike. I can't even find my shoes in the morning. But an artist is a philosopher who works with his hands. I wonder if, as a thinking artist, I'll be able to stick my head above water. We all need reprogramming. Thing is, I know that the minds from the future, the ones that are an order of magnitude more complicated than ours, are reading this as soon as I put it down. I know that you are able to handle a lot more variables, and I know you know more than me, and I'm sure it feels amazing, like being high all the time, or being tortured by the CIA, like being a room full of people. Whatever. You could have sent me a message, you could have given me a hand. Any sufficiently-advanced technology looks like magic. Yeah yeah. I know. But aren't you spinning as well? Isn't the universe still infinitely vast? Doesn't looking at the springtime people still make you want to say hello and hide at the same time? Don't be mechanical! We're both going to fizzle out in the end. What's the point of all this knowledge, all this smart talk, all this speed? Isn't it just exhausting? Can't we join the picnic in the warming sunshine, lie under the tree, stare at the canopy, and roll down a hill hugging each other?