DANGER!

Are certain types of art practice dangerous?

Is listening to sentimental music dangerous? What about really catchy dark music, really singable sad music, really awfully true music that makes you dance? Will certain chord progressions lead your heart down a dark path? Some people know how to write manipulative music - they know what will make us sound-proles dance. What happens when they abuse this power they have over us? What if the musis they write sounds so happy and tells us to kill, to die?

I always use music as a metaphor for art. Music makes me feel something that art doesn't really. Climbing trees feels different from walking in streams. Slow dancing feels different than fast dancing.

I like what wizards like Gen P Orridge have to say about using magick, but I don't ever want to practice it myself. I never want to know how to manipulate people. I never want to lose to fun of discovering how to create something, even if it means making the same mistakes over and over. I like making mistakes. Or rather, I believe in it.

I guess I am happy being soft. Soft does not mean weak.

I don't really want to force love, trick love, or train love. If love comes naturally I will be ready. I will be happy. If it doesn't come, I will cry.

This is art - art isn't knowing how. It's only the parts that are barely there. That's the only part you can love.

I always say, but nobody has yet responded: I only like art that barely has meaning. Once it is too meaningful it has crossed the line into something else. If it is meaningless I hate it too. This means always straddling the line, which means often ending up on the wrong side of it. Often either becoming a little dictator or a useless bump on a log. But I hope to get better.

Some thoughts are almost impossible to catch. And some feelings (though I don't really draw a line, I just want to be clear). It's almost as if, well, imagine as a metaphor for complexity an origami animal. Some have five folds, some have fifty. Thoughts are really more like unfolded origami paper that used to be an animal. You can look at one with only a few triangles and squares and kind of fold it up in your mind until you see what it is - ah - that one was a simple fish or a crane. But some paper looks like a convoluted network of triangles and criss-crossing lines with cheating soft folds or tiny networks of veins. When you catch a thought like this it stumps your mind entirely. But sometimes, just sometimes, one of these origami dragons or crayfish finds its way inside, and this can be so beautiful that it sticks and sticks and sticks and it's shape becomes imprinted on all things. A brain is designed for an age with less folds - not that we should underestimate how complex an origami crane is, but not there is origami folded by computer, each fold scored with a lazer, and supported with an invisible plastic resin coat. Perhaps these advanced ideas are too complex, perhaps they burn us out? This is such a sad age considering how well our needs for food water shelter etc are met. I don't say that we should smash the factories (though I might suggest smashing the brains - but let's not get into that just now), just that someone should consider if all these crayfish may actually be unhealthy.

Oh but on the other hand, who fucking cares? It's not like we can switch direction at all at all at all. Society isn't a thought, it is an emotion. If it is wrong it doesn't care - it doesn't respond to logic, to begging, to meditation, to biofeedback, to threats, to cajoling, to bribery, to torture, to the silent treatment, to brainwashing. It will throw itself, sight unseen, in whatever direction it wants. You can't change your feelings by snapping your fingers, even if you snap very very hard.

How to get through this one? How can you flirt with danger without flirting? How can you avoid giving danger the impression that you are interested in danger? What if danger loves you? What if danger won't stop calling? What if danger stops calling? What if you discover much later that you always loved danger? What if you became united with danger?

I've been "using" people in my projects, using their thoughts, their opinions, the images in their heads. What if this is wrong? What if Luis von Ahn turns out not to be the hero of men, but of mechanics and death? What if these games turn out to be the key to a box that should not be unlocked? What if I, even with the best intentions, end up opening up a path to dehumanization and death? Why should I not fear action? What is so great about action? What is so admirable about great men? Where is the still point? Where is the center of gravity for a heart that is disoriented and... disheartened?

What happens in your mind when a fantasy dies? What physically happens to the brain cells or network of synaptic preferences? What to the elctrons caught zipping through forbidden pathways? What happens to the particles of love when they lose their polarity? Are they recycled? Or are they expelled? What happens to the portion of your spirit that lives in that fantasy world? Does it retract? Does it fade away? Or is it severed? Is it capable of life on its own? What happens to the mind-people-spirits in that fantasy world? Do they die? Do you die? How much do you die? How can you help yourself die faster? How can you make it less painful? How can you feel every agonizing last second of it? How can you save it? Preserve it under glass? How can you really save it? Bring it back to life? Make it grow again?

Sad songs, sad songs. Do they pollute us or do they save us? What about the sad songs we write ourselves? What about the ones we were going to write but never got around to? Or couldn't? Or that we just hummed a few bars and forgot? Or that we recorded onto a tape that now lies at the bottom of a closet somewhere? What if someone hums our song? Is this anything at all? Is this all there is? Is this everything? How real is that? I mean, really really, not being romantic or poetic at all? Why even bother reaching out with arms of sadness? Why is it done? Why is it so common? Why does it feel right? Why is it dangerous? What should be done about it, if anything?

I can't write a sad song though. Maybe I could find an inverter of some sort and write a happy song. I hear that it's been done. After all, the world is all strange loops of difference, not little slider-scales. The world is a necklace, not a mixing-board. The world just happens to be hanging in zero-gravity, not sitting on a tortise shell.