Public discourse is vital to a free and open society. Effective public discourse faces many challenges. One such challenge is Pundits Disease – moralizing about pet issues from a high tower.
Pundits and commentators whether mainstream or independent tend to be removed from direct involvement in what they are discussing. A position that leads them to cover vague notions more than they do the practical application of those notions.
A huge problem with this trend is that it dwarves huge issues behind a cloud of hot air and trendy topics.
Just another mish-mash of ideas in vlog form that I’ll just refer to as Idea Medley. Today we’ll be talking about pineapples, gut and performance, and reasons for writing, among other things.
Links
fractaljournal.com is my main site where you’ll find stories, essays, webcomics, and more
Here is Stefan Mischook’s YouTube channel and the course I’m taking
I talk a bit about how to gain momentum as a content creator. The key I think is to have a good idea of your format. So if you’re a talk-show, vlog, or reporter: ask and answer good questions. Knowing simple things like this will help overcome the psychological hurdle of ‘is it good enough?’ Which too often leads to ‘why bother?’ Go forth and create!
The Regular – Irregular ‘Jeder Rilke ist schrecklich’ Poem with Essay
Hardly are there any hours
Scarcely do they ever stay
Called as if by unseen powers
This strange gift loves to stray
First, it was giddy
Tearing at tinsel
Then it was less greedy
A casual spell
Finally, I learned to see
That unwrapping is entirely unnecessary
Here all my watches blossomed
Every clock was a trade-wind
My steps were more assured
To those who’d say
That’s the mechanical way
Machines with their precision
Are no way to make decision….
Yet, I’ve turned my broken gardens into woods
Our park of long-rusted mistake into understoods
Yes
I am a regular
Irregular
Good-Day
2:16 PM on a Tuesday
Schrecklich
I do recall it. I recall often. Or at least so often as it recalls itself. At times reconstituted from the way that summer rain brings that moisture peculiar to doors left open at twilight.
Rainer Maria Rilke
I’d have never known the name save for a friend. She was a working musician that I’d met at a party half a decade ago.
She had a small room with what I think was a red couch. On one wall there was a picture of Christ with ashen eyes and a crown of thorns. There to watch me sin. On the other a picture of Virginia Woolf to scoff at our lack of gravity. Then some jaunty looking flapper with a black sunhat in hand striking a tom boy’s ‘Jack the Lad.’
It was in that room with the smell of rain that I pulled from her shelf of books a paperback of Rilke’s. At such times that we’d separate ourselves, I’d read. So I read.
It was the introduction rather than the poems that interested me. As far as I recall they tell of a young or perhaps not so young Rilke’s struggles. The point is I at the time imagined Rilke to be about twenty-two years of age like myself.
The struggles seem to have been primarily regarding a lack of productivity. One recounted episode (if my memory serves me well) was about how Rilke would endeavor to sit every day with punctuality to write something. He’d end up doing nothing. Or so was the effect of the tale on my imagination.
The feeling it produced in me was fear. They say that the most fearsome things are unknown. But it was the familiar that struck fear deep within me.
Was my tongue forever to be stilted? Was I merely going to pass my days in such a fashion, caught between worlds, dizzy with the urgency of that which must be said, and fornicating instead? Metaphorically of course.
It did or didn’t help that Whitman was there as contrast.
Yet, I had my gravity. The thing that would pull toward creation, toward a pulse.
Though it has taken some years. I believe that I have begun to manifest the strange momentum of a chance discovery.
I’m coming at this from a ‘psychological’ angle. This differs from most people’s usual take on our tendency to not look beyond grocery store shelves because I’m not promoting or contesting ‘organic’ claims. This is just a bit of informal speculation on unseen effects of our ‘abstracted lifestyle.’
– Abstracted lifestyle as I use it here is just a reference to the depth and intricacy of our division of labor. We do not take actions or very often come in contact with those that take actions to ensure health and survival on a ‘primordial level’ (food, water, shelter, heat) and thus are ‘abstracted.’ i.e. Accounting and Computer Programming are abstract professions.
I do not support or deny any of the claims in the following links. They’re presented to help you form your own opinions.
*sic is here used in a somewhat unconventional way as a reminder that there is no neutral party of information since it’s all framed by human beings. USDA is by no means impartial or neutral whatever its attempts may be. Not due to any shortcoming on the USDA’s part necessarily but simply the nature of organizations and people. That being said I believe the information contained in the link is about as ‘impartial’ and rigorous as it probably gets.
Since I haven’t had the time to write an essay or record new material today I:
Thought I’d share something I recorded when I actually had a mic. This is far more ‘minimalist’ then what I posted here: Mirror Pond Demo
I really like the recording quality I got with the little Focusrite kit that I bought. I also opted for using Ardour (an open source DAW) instead of ProTools. Just cause FREEDOM!
(Disclaimer: I’m not being paid by anybody. I just really love the ability to record fairly decent sounding takes without breaking the bank too much and hope sharing this will help others do the same. Go out and compare and contrast things, maybe you’ll find something better. But the most important thing is to just keep creating and having fun.)
Ray Manzarek gets fun:
I know it’s sort of cringy (to mention) but I find it great when people you admire and whose work you use as a benchmark have similar thought process and feelings to you.
I’m fond of the Foamy series which I’ve been watching since I was a teenager. I find that this episode I just stumbled across fits really well with the theme of some of my recent posts.
There’s sometimes a bit of language and risque stuff in these cartoons so be forewarned.
The idea of working hard for yourself rather than a company that doesn’t treat you right is one I’m on board with. But as I pointed out in my post on loving uncertainty you have to temper that feel good notion of entrepreneurship with realism, diligence, and flexibility.
Hope this was fun, helpful, and cathartic cause that’s the intent.
The Fractal Journal 