Nil Creative Impulse (Loops)

the first wu album
method man's tical
gabba comps
geto boys
pil's "theme"

i would certainly recommend eliminating the speed. possibly the alcohol but i know that's kind of different. it is probably not helping. but speed is definitely no good

as you know, i've been through the ringer recently, things have (i think) turned the corner now (still the one *big* thing unresolved but...), but i've really struggled this summer.

i'm westcoasting next spring (provided i survive my eastern seaboard joint)

what do you think of the song by nelly and kelly?

i stand by everything i said above, although i don't quite think i would have posted it if i hadn't drunk half a bottle of whisky last night.

anyway. yeah, shit's tough, but it's nothing i particularly i want to get into right now on a public forum.

hah, mark, no hurry. i feel like i should send you an update email before you even bother to tackle the last one.

Whenever you feel the urge or reflex to check ilxOr, take that as an instruction from your muse to sit down and write / compose something more personal / universal instead. Do it for 25 minutes, an hour, whatever. Exaggerate whatever feelings you're having, make them into fictions and personae, externalise and exorcise them.

Then -- and only then -- browse and post. You may feel better quite quickly. You'll certainly feel more productive.

(also i wonder if part of this sort of fatigue isn't due to the problem jg ballard mentions here: "I think the enemy of creativity in the world today is that so much thinking is done for you. The environment is so full of television, party political broadcasts and advertising campaigns, you hardly need to do anything. We're just drowning under manufactured fiction, which satisfies our need for fiction - you scarcely need to go and read a novel.")

(and yes, i do see the irony of using a quote to illustrate that particular theory.)

i would think that shutting down in the face of overstimulation isn't an uncommon reaction, esp. when so much of that stimulation is nothing more than cheap noise.

congratulations (i guess) on running in a super-creative, high-signal circle, though.

This is what I think sometimes, anyway. I feel bad too because the direct communication I had with people online - through IM, email etc. - has mostly been replaced by the indirect communication I have on ILE, and I sort of resent ILE for that when it's my fault. But that's really a different story. Also I've been working for 14 hours today and when you're working long hours posting something to ILE is so so so so so much easier than trying to write something 'from scratch' or having a conversation :(

bump.

stand by everything i said above, although i don't quite think i would have posted it if i hadn't drunk half a bottle of whisky last night.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, September 28, 2002 12:04 PM (fourteen years ago)

i feel this.

i enjoy reading these voices from the past, including some that are still with us. and i appreciate the ones that are still with us. i make it sound like they died! but for the most part, they no longer speak directly to us, or to me at least.

i haven't made anything in about 2 weeks or a little more. this is a problem because i quit my normal job because i couldn't concentrate on the tasks at hand, and i couldn't concentrate because i had all these other ideas about what i needed to do and make, and not enough off-work and off-sleep hours to make it happen. there's this constant drive to realize something, and it some ways it replaced the religious fervor i used to know when i was younger. i basically splooged my christian pants during a jesus camp when i was 12, and then 13 to 17 was an awful gap, just the worst emptiness. but i started to find meaning again later in high school through trying to make art. i didn't have anyone around me that could show me good art, so i just sat in my room and tried to make something that was new to me, at least. later on i learned that nietzsche went through similar shit, looking for meaning and finding it only in art. why do we live, if we don't believe in heaven? what really matters? what makes us happy? art. we live to see art, to hear it, and to make it. and love, i'd add. ha! "also, love." nietzsche didn't figure that part out because he was an asshole. but for those of us who aren't believers, art and creativity in general assumes an outsized role in the absence of some larger, obvious point to our existence. there's still a desire to live on after you die, but instead of walking the golden paved streets of eternity, you just want to make one single thing, anything, that touches someone apart from you. OR SOMETHING

so when it all goes away, even for a few days, it's fucking terrible, because there's nothing else to replace it. the thought of the afterlife is dusty, and love is something that's outside of your control. but your creativity is the most inside, the thing that can't be replicated or explained (esp by this post, sad lol) or understood by anyone else. it's a kind of alt-holy thing, even if your creativity isn't the kind that is generally appreciated by others, in fact, especially if it isn't appreciated by others. it's your secret that no one can unlock, and it's an actual fountain of youth. your memories will deteriorate, but if the creativity remains you can remake them.

and when it all goes away for a week or two it's terrifying.

also on top of this, the idea that knowledge destroys creativity. you come up with a great idea, only to learn that someone made a living off of it in the 1870s. or that the thing that's ripping you apart was debated at length in the 1950s.

gin! it's a hell of a drink.