Made this last night. Given hardware limitations it took three hours just to render two clips stuck together. Ain’t nothin spectacular just riffing on various odds and ends like: dealing with procrastination, what’s actually vulgar, and then there’s a bit of musical nonsense.
Was hoping to refine it but it was all I had time for.
I still got a more in depth look at McNamara, Shindo Renmei, and Psychology on my other channel later in the week. Thanks for watching.
This is from my informal/music YT channel which you can subscribe to here.
…if so why? Just a bit of impromptu musing on how shifts in information processing (internet skim/deep reading etc) may be why movies from prior decades seem better.
(I know that Castaway was made in 2000)
This is from my music/informal channel. Please subscribe if you feel so inclined.
The pines creaked and swayed. Cold settled like a chill blanket as the sun slowly sank.
If I followed the advice I’ve found in some writers guides I’d have never arranged words in that particular order. Those sentences wouldn’t exist.
Description is gauche you see. Everyone has talked about sunsets and the advent of evening so no one will ever enjoy reading about them again.
Don’t set up background for your stories. Especially if you use pesky polysyllabic words in those backgrounds. What are you some kind of writer?
I bet you used a thesaurus to look up those community college words. Nobody uses those words.
You gotta be conversational.
You’re distracting from the pacing.
Jesus Christ. Given the prevalence of these Formica table board room strategies at Wanker Startup Ltd. it’s a wonder anyone bothers to write anything at all.
You think the last sentence was wobbly. Good. That’s the point. Not everything has to be tailored to the ear of an idiot. In ancient Greece idiot meant a person who was not involved in city politics i.e. someone who was unaware of things that affected him.
I’m not saying that if you didn’t understand that by ‘Wanker Startup Ltd.’ I was referring to the trendy ‘everything is business and we’re all savvy entrepreneurs’ culture that’s sprung up in every facet of life in recent years – that this means you’re an idiot. What I’m saying is that the risk of being misunderstood is no cause for weird minimalistic corporate gibberish focusing on core competency of making everything a sitcom.
You see, it’s fine to miss the point that ‘Formica table’ is actually a modifier for ‘strategies,’ calling them cheap. It might mean nothing to you on a first reading. Later on it might mean a lot. Or not. There are other readers who may enjoy it. Or not. The point is the sentence has a right to exist in all its wobbly glory.
I often hear everyone and their dog complaining about the lack of original content and constant reruns. Well, what do you expect when writers and actors are all designed at corporate?
* AFAIK – Dudebro Sixfigs may have been coined by Aaron Clarey of ‘Asshole Consulting’
* Using the random image I found on my search for shitty startup/boardroom isn’t meant to poke fun at the guy in the photo. It was just too perfect of an amalgamation of certain trendy philosophies and styles that are in vogue.
The internet is not a trendy cafe and you are not the Grand Barista.
Technology is a cumulative collaborative process. Ideas form all round the world, needs arise, and information converges – pens are made with ball points! And internets!
So at the end of this millenia long cycle whose product is it? Sundar’s, Dorsey’s? Is it a product at all?
So I was doin a bit of studying and stumbled on a U2 song with a sweet and simple (somewhat trite) lyrics ‘you’ve been everywhere.’ Which got me to pondering the funny way music and glib phrasing allows us to overlay our own lives and interpretations over a piece.
Saturdays often find me gathering strength for the coming week. They are often as productive as any other day but their charm lies in that they don’t have to be.
So I sit here giving my eyes a rest, nearly blind without my contacts, perusing Vanity Fair. I come across an article discussing a zeitgeist shift of ‘serious writers’ ceasing to shun Television writing. Opting instead to embrace it and taking TV shows they watch ‘very seriously.’
I did not put ‘serious writers’ in snark quotes for any elitist reason. I am huge Michael Crichton fan and have always (when it’s done right) understood both the big and small screen as rich and valid mediums.
I put serious writers in quotes because the term confuses me. I feel that anyone who takes the trouble to write is a serious writer. Perhaps the piece was using the language to highlight the fact that accomplished writers (whose work is expressive of the sort of nuance that one associates with those who appreciate literary art) were no longer shunning an industry pariah.
Which is fine but I can’t help but fiddle the hilt of my sword. I am on guard for the king called disinterest and his prince ‘l’art pour l’art.’ A position that I feel is increasingly rare. When I hear ‘serious this or that pursuit’ these days I am wont to think that ‘serious’ means commercially viable.
I am decidedly steeped in Classicism as I’ve come to understand it. I do not mean by this any restrictive form but rather a mindset. A mindset tracing its roots back to the ancient city states of Greece where merchants were shunned.
The commercialization of science and art is a decades old story. It is a story too broad and important for this uncharacteristically cool Carolina morning. Books will be written about it for decades. The purpose of this wee essay is to serve as reminder that every fertile thing that elevated civilization is now being processed into quick, unnaturally tasty, canned goods.
The Vanity Fair article is an excellent springboard for thrusting the Classic outlook back into the collective conscience. It’s a rich little morsel that raises all sorts of questions.
Questions like the namesake of this article: “Is ‘pitch culture’ gonna improve novels?”
If ‘serious writers’ are being funneled from the world of the novel into the world of the sitcom as the authoress suggests then what does this mean for novels?
I do not necessarily think it means anything foul. The pithier more economic approach of television writing is certainly good to have and maintain in one’s literary tool belt. And I do enjoy a good show so the presence of ‘serious writers’ means that I will have a richer life.
But, even if these pros I’ve highlighted existed without their shadow cons then one must still remember the ground bass of classicism. That little voice that says, “Is the greatest number, the greatest good?”
Paradoxically, I think that history attests to the fact that the greatest good, for the greatest number is meted out by that little voice. A voice that is often too modest and too much of a minority.
avoiding the cons of ‘Pitch Culture’ means giving ear to that voice.
What do I mean by pitch culture? To those unfamiliar with marketing a pitch is a proposal. It’s putting forward an idea that’s likely to get people hooked to a guy in the business of making money getting people hooked. And getting the guy to think that the idea will get people hooked. With so many hooks you can see how quickly the process gets crooked.
The obvious problem here is the difficulty of making something as inherently subjective as art as objective as a studios bottom line. This is an art in itself that I don’t necessarily disdain, I just think it like any market requires ethics and oversight.
You don’t want metrics, things that in themselves are fraught with the chaotic problem domain of social statistics, to become the cookie cutter for your artistic treats.
The article argues that today due to the presence of serious writers this cookie cutter approach is rarer. I do see some evidence for this but that evidence is of course shows that I happen to find engaging and is thus suspect.
That being said I feel that many shows are not so much abdicating the cookie cutter but simply using a cookie cutter that tries really hard to not seem like a cookie cutter.
Everytime I hear words like ‘groundbreaking, raw, gritty, etc’ I immediately encounter a funny sensation. It’s a dull sort of malaise that settles over my mind as I picture a litany of industry standards like ‘Dr. House accepting his lesbian daughter while taking potshots at corporations and Jesus as he fights off zombies that put him face to face with the surprisingly violent nature of average people in a shitty situation.’ This is the cookie cutter that I call ‘shit just got real.‘
South Park did a really great bit that highlights the overindulgence of shocking realities when the character Butters tires of ‘all the gay weiners’ in Game of Thrones.
A pretty standard line of advice for any profession is that ‘you have to know the rules before you can break them.’
I think that the lack of a strong reading culture makes audiences particularly susceptible to cheap tricks. And if serious writers are going to revolutionize an industry known for cheap tricks they’d better be careful when catering to the whims of that audience and the farmers at Madison Avenue.
O dear, it’s happened again, someone asked me if I Facebook…
There is a now ancient video of Michael Crichton sitting in with a panel of sci-fi writers discussing the state of that industry. During that discussion he brings up how the increasing presence of cameras has the potential to change the way that people interact. He says that being in front of a camera certainly makes him act differently than he does in a more private setting.
This behavioral shift is the problem with sites like Facebook.
Ok, but behavior changes from generation to generation and is often brought about by technology. So why is this particular behavioral shift a bad thing? Aren’t these Luddite concerns?
The sort of behavioral shift that seems to be the trouble is group-think, confirmation bias, and insecurity. Though the three things are distinct phenomenon they share a common thread and are thus treated as the ‘behavioral shift’ in question.
This phenomenon is supported by four ‘emergent properties’ common to all social networks, electronic, and otherwise.
1) The Constant Peanut Gallery
2) Increased Misunderstanding
3) False Security
4) Increased Preening
All of these properties emerge from the need for validation.
Validation is the core of many goods and many ills. It is important to check your perceptions, ideas, and at times your very person against the ideas, opinions, and persons of others. It helps to form a balanced opinion and is arguably the animating principle behind parliamentary government and peer review.
Yet, peer review and parliament often act as agents of confirmation bias rather than guardians of truth. Galileo’s works were reviewed by the experts of his day and found lacking. Does this mean that we should do away with parliament and peer review?
By no means. It was corroboration of his findings that eventually led to their acceptance in the scientific canon. Bad peer review can be reviewed by good peer review. So long as the process is ongoing issues will be resolved.
This brings us to the core of the problem with Facebook: Stagnation.
The constant peanut gallery often leads one to adopt the biologically expedient role of ‘crowd pleasing’ whether consciously or unconsciously. Increased misunderstandings arise because folks choose to share views dampened by crowd pleasing. A false security arises from the perceived confirmation of one’s views and person leading to increased preening or display of those characteristics.
All of these are the recipe for group-think, confirmation bias, and insecurity that form the stagnation which makes Facebook an unsavory medium. The sort of things that I believe to be at the core of Crichton’s concerns while on that panel.
I use Word Press, YouTube, Mastodon, and Minds. These are all social networks in their own right. Am I then being unfair to Facebook? Isn’t vlogging and blogging and posting subject to the same problems as Facebook. Why don’t I get a Facebook account?
Well, for one Facebook has a rather checkered history. It is also different from the sites I choose because it involves ones immediate circle. Due to its reaching so close to home its effectiveness for debate and unbiased analysis of ideas and persons becomes compromised.
It is much easier to focus on ideas and arguments with sites like Word Press and YouTube. All the problems with Facebook do of course occur there but it is with less frequency and degree that they do. This is as I have said due to the close and personal nature of Facebook.
Which not only compromises privacy but brings us all the dark sides of a global village with alarming speed. I am rather cosmopolitan in my outlook so I am not at all promoting provincialism in criticizing ‘the global village.’
It is in fact provincialization that we have to fear from ‘the global village.’ The provincialism of ideas. Human beings despite their variety of cultures and philosophies do share a certain common psychological profile. Due to this common thread all of their variety becomes endangered rather quickly when filtered through one global ‘common room.’
This is why the majority of the world is now California. I’m serious. Look at all the dudes, and jeans, beards, and t-shirts. It’s been going on for quiet a while. This narrowing of style and ideation. Where a girl in Frankfurt is nearly indistinguishable from one in Orange County.
Yes, all right but, Facebook isn’t meant to be a place for the exchange of ideas. It’s meant to be a way to connect with friends!
Ok, well I do have a phone and a car, and an email, and a post office. Why does the whole world need to know of my circle of friends? Why does my circle of friends need to be privy to my every interaction with my circle of friends?
Is shooting messages and inviting/excluding people from events publicly really ‘connecting?’
I rather think it has the opposite effect. To where I can hardly enjoy a beer with friends, without one of them shoving a little screen in my face. Bearing the latest meme or Facebook faux pas, glowing with hi-def brightness that the table behind me can read.
I give a brief description of an idealized day for an indie sorta guy or gal. I also discuss the need for a stronger emphasis on craftsmanship in arts as a vehicle for economy and SANITY. Thanks for stopping by.
More articles and stories coming in the next week.
The Fractal Journal 