Thoughts on the mind, magic, writing, language, art, philosophy, psychology, culture and just about everything I suppose. Or, who am I kidding, this is probably some kind of fiction too. Some longer and more coherent thoughts, some short random ideas.
Instead of writing any of the novels, short-stories or essays I have planned I spend my entire forenoon sipping on coffee and staring unfocused at the screen while just thinking. I think that thinking is my favorite activity. Maybe I should just stop publishing my writing and just sit and think about my stories. Would avoid a lot of hassle.
The contents of my bookshelf is so good that if it somehow came alive as a person I would totally let it fuck me senseless.
The long-awaited summer holiday – but then you mostly lie staring at the ceiling, hoping to fall asleep to avoid the tears of hopelessness. You turn down social gatherings out of weariness, consume unhealthy foods and swell up like a sugar donuts in a deep fryer.
Nothing is quite real, the body hangs loose as you drag yourself off to shop for food, while the self clings to a tunnel opening that leads into fiction’s seemingly comfortable embrace. There you float in relative safety, forgotten by yourself, for a while, then it begins to fade.
Then you long to taste someone happy, so that you can be happy yourself. But you wish in vain. Actually you just lie there sweating on the damp sheets, actually you just lie there all sticky and staring at the ceiling before you finally sink back into half-sleep.
The vipers wrap themselves ever tighter around the heart.
If the thoughts of most people are like dolphins jumping up, one by one, from the blue water of the pool, eating a fish handed to them by their handler, then my mind is a dark and turbulent sea filled with lots of circling shark fins and bites you never see coming.
I am two persons. One is thinking, one is talking. None control the other. So you should know that what I say out loud is only an approximate interpretation of what I’m thinking – not what I’m actually thinking.
My thinking is me; my talking is me. But my writing? Well, my writing is not me – it’s some kind of demonic possession.
Nothing is certain to me at the moment. Who I am, what I do, what I am writing, where I am living, where I am going. I want to do something completely different. I want to move somewhere else. I want to delete every social media because no one on them knows me anymore and I got my actual friends in other channels. I wanna do wage-slavery as little as possible, live a simple and inexpensive life and spend my time on more important things. I’m not sure how I will manage this yet. I need a vision. I need to see beyond the web of illusion that has caught the modern world, that has trapped me here, tired and disillusioned, without knowing what I really want. But change is coming. A seed is planted. Nothing is certain. Everything is permitted.
I circle and return to things I once left.
I repeat a cycle through interests and thoughts.
But the circles gets wider and wider to contain
all the new knowledge and understanding
that I gather every lap around.
My life moves in spirals.
If you look at modern history and politics the last 70 years it becomes more and more plausible that it’s all a consequence of multiple and increasingly complicated time-travel events. They probably started as misguided attempts to correct an initial mistake in altering the original timeline, but then the error cascade escalated beyond control and the time-travelers panicked when their plot got too messy to understand. Either that or we have a world in disarray because of incompetence and chance.
Having explored my psyche extensively for the past few years I’m now turning to the outside. My carefully constructed model of reality needs to acknowledge that reality is indeed real.
The ego is a construction that grows more and more rigid with time until it becomes a prison that stops you from exploring and growing. Like a house full of valuables that you can never leave because you have to guard it against thieves.
Ego death, in a magical sense, is a transformation, a temporarily transcendence from self-centeredness, a way of cleaning out bad habits, misconceptions, etc, that bog down the mind, before the inevitable resurrection as a (hopefully) better person follows.
With magic I change reality. But it’s my model of reality that changes, and maybe yours, not actual reality itself. Actual reality may change though, through actions we make as a result of our changes in those inner models of reality.
2020 in review
I got my short-story The DreamCube Thread published in the British anthology Vast. I wrote, recorded and animated Ellinor’s Theme Song. I also published some things under another name, but I’ll ramble about that elsewhere.
On the downside I descended deeper into fatigue and anxiety again (unrelated to Covid-19). All personal development and my work with magic kind of stopped as I lost all energy. I didn’t feel like myself anymore. It felt like I took several steps back. From everything.
2021 in preview
I wanna get a grip of myself again. To feel like a person again. To understand what my goals are. What I want to do. Who I will be. To move forward again. So this year the focus will be on my mental and physical health. This time maybe with the help of professional health care. We’ll see how this turns out.
But while that massive work in progress develops I will probably do more of what I hoped to do last year: write some shorter stories, make some music and hopefully get back into doing more visual art. Whatever emerges will be posted here or maybe my Twitter.
Be seeing you.
Almost every day I’m reading something factually wrong posted on social media. But I don’t comment or question. Because if I did I would get drawn into a heated argument by an upset OP and with my zero defense against upset people I easily get very distraught and feel bad for the rest of the day. So instead I get irritated at myself, over this exaggerated sensitivity that forces me to leave false information that leads people to false conclusions unquestioned.
Our selves do not end in our bodies. We reach out, especially to other humans, but ultimately to the whole planet. This intertwining makes egoism impossible. The neurons in our brains are wired from how we were raised and what culture we were exposed to. By purpose and coincidence. We got our parents, our friends and our enemies reaching deep into our physical brains.
Based on past experience the brain, in every moment anew, predicts a model of reality. Senses are mostly used as error correction. The brain considers the state of your body and predicts the best course of action to survive and thrive. It predicts thoughts and emotions. It predicts what we experience as our selves. The self is a non-physical concept. Like a projection. Our brain is a prism and our self is the rainbow.
There is no innate self stored somewhere inside us. A newborn have no experience, no self. We are only born with tools and possibilities. With that the self is constructed by interaction and circumstance. Sometimes it is built by chance and habit. Sometimes it becomes a facade that we believe ourselves. But what may feel as different selves are facets of the same thing – your brain trying to make sense of the world to survive.
Modern neuroscience dispels the myth of our human side having to subdue our animal side in a struggle between the reptilian brain versus the neocortex. In fact it is all one unit, one network, developed all at the same time. Emotions are not uncontrollable beasts that live inside your head and your logic is not a shepherd trying to keep them in check. We have more control than we think.
Our brains are so tuned to predict all the time that they predict things that are not real. It predicts that the stick on the ground is a poisonous snake. Because that is better than to mistake a snake for a stick. The downside is when you get anxiety, which is the brain wanting to get away from a potentially dangerous situation, from having to much to do at work, which is rarely life-threatening.
Anxiety and depression could (at least in part) be results of prediction error. The brain shuts down attention and interest in the world to save resources for anticipated action. Comfort eating works because the brain gets satisfied by stocking up on energy that it expects to release, any minute now, as response to an imminent catastrophe. Which mostly never comes.
But, and here the beauty of it finally comes, prediction can be harnessed for many amazing things. We humans have, on top of physical reality, created a new social reality where intangible things exist. Concepts like Sundays, tickets, red means stop, chess, Osiris, social classes, the Cuba crisis. Many wonderful and horrible things that are not real but still affect us and thereby in extension also affect reality. Dreams, fantasy and fiction are predictions without error correction from reality.
Our lives are predictions. We are predictions. We love predictions. We love taking part in prediction-fiction. The fiction of who we are, the fiction of culture, of religion, of stories, songs and paintings. The arts are predictions which from a safe distance gives us the thrill of trying to figure out whether what we see are snakes or sticks.
At work I sometime get hints about doing things too good. I put a professional touch to what I do and colleagues allude to that being the reason I struggle with fatigue. That’s not the case, there are other reasons. But if anything it’s when I have to do a mediocre or hurried job I get stressed and drained of energy.
Of course I don’t spend too much time on one thing either. I know when enough is enough. But I got a professional pride and do the job I’m hired to do at a certain level. To release something that looks like it’s made by someone with less skill feels very disheartening and I lose all interest and motivation.
We live in a society that generally discourages people from doing their best. Anything above sufficient is systematically punished. High quality is apparently worthless. There’s no profit in anything beyond good enough. The problem is that good enough is the same as almost bad.
I know this is how profit is made. But I can’t stand it. Do not accept crappy things! Demand better things!
I put my book away, turned off the light and tried to sleep. Now, in the darkness, I’m instead getting more awake. I notice that the pillow is bumpy in the wrong way. I think that the subscription for the skills I need at work must have expired. I remember my ex being worried that I had no plan even for my nearest future. My legs are dry and itching and I should put some lotion on them. But if I do I can’t hold my book without messing up the cover. And if I can’t fall asleep soon I have to turn on the lights and read again.
Our selves don’t exist. We don’t have an I when we are born. I am not something unique or predestined we are born with. It is something we continuously create in the now our entire lives.
We build concepts that we call I from all we experience, or learn, about our bodies, our environment and our social reality. It is not constant, it changes with new knowledge, experience and ideas.
Our selves are inseparable from our bodies. The self is our body. The self change when the body change. Influenced by the self, or other persons selves, the body can in turn also change.
We have one self, but that self has many instances. Created by many networks in the brain it becomes an overlapping palette of personalities that are granted dominance in different situations.
All these concepts we create are what makes up our concept of reality. What we think is real is just a model of reality. The concepts change which causes our perception of reality to change
Working actively with trying to change the self, an by extension changing other peoples selves, by transforming concepts is what I in many previous posts on this website have referred to as magic.
It is however important to remember that magic doesn’t exist, even if it’s real. Because magic is also a concept that we create. Much like our selves. So we use one concept to change another concept.
We are all conceptions.
Not only do I have mood swings, I also have ability swings. And by that I mean my ability to do things fluctuate wildly. Some days I’m rather good at what I do – other days I struggle to manage even what I normally consider easy tasks. This is unfortunately mostly noticeable at work.
Maybe it’s like this: I am good at what I do, but I just can’t do it on order. I got good at media production because I did it for myself, when I felt like doing it. Now that I work with it I have to do what others tell me. And that won’t bring me the hyper focus I get from exploring my own ideas.
Knowing I can do something but having to spend twice, and often even more, time than usual is incredibly frustrating. But impossible to force. I once read someone comparing this feeling to having sex. If you’re not turned on it doesn’t matter how much you try to obey the orders and just come.
In some ways, having that incredibly boring, unqualified job I had for a while many years ago, was easier. On good days I just escaped into my brain while my body was working. On bad days I was a robot, sometimes half asleep while still working. I did the same quota of work every day either way.
I had nothing to live up to. I wasn’t an award-winning feature film director that suddenly didn’t know how to make a simple three minute film about how municipality clerks are supposed to archive their documents. No reputation of being capable and competent to uphold.
So on bad days I think I should quit my current job and not having to manage all the anxiety it can bring. But that would force me out of a job with great co-workers, good salary and that is actually pretty good on my good days. Only my stubbornness keeps me from escaping into the wild.
After being like this for my whole life I have finally come to understand that both mood swings and ability swings are consequences of chemical imbalances in my brain. Lifelong strategies and recent cognitive behavior therapy has helped, but is not enough.
Now I’m embarking on a journey into psychiatric care to see if I get to do a medical investigation for ADHD. If I get a diagnosis maybe medication will help. If it’s not ADHD my problems are caused by something else and I’m back to square one. Maybe there is nothing to do but endure.
Of course I do not wish to have a diagnose. But by getting it I would know why I feel the way I feel, why I work the way I work, and get access to tools to handle myself better. It feels kinda unreal. Maybe there is a reason to why I am like this. And maybe I could feel happy some day.
Hope often hurts, but it keeps us alive.
I have absolutely no control over what I write. I’ve written almost nothing for weeks now. And then, out of the blue, I had to pause the episode I was watching and go to my computer to write the following. Only later I found out that it by coincidence is World Mental Health Day today. So let’s consider this my unexpected contribution.
I love drawing, but very seldom do it. I get stuck when trying to decide which one of all my ideas to choose. Despite this will to draw I end up doing nothing. The ideas tumble in my head, while the paper remains white.
This may not sound like much of a problem. But it applies to many things in my life and is kind of crippling. I often feel paralyzed and unable to perform even simple tasks. Things I’m usually good at can take twice the time. Or more.
It’s a strong inertia that I have to fight every day. Inspired by a picture I saw somewhere I use to describe it like this: While other people are running on the beach, playing and having fun, I am deadly tired from trying to run along, but neck deep out in the waves of the sea.
The metaphorical drawing pad and pen is in my bag up on the beach and though I long to draw I’m stuck in the water. It’s too tiresome to struggle to the shore and dry up to draw only for a few minutes before I have to go back into the water.
So despite my potential I stay in the water to conserve energy. I see the achievements of others. I see opportunities drift by. Life slipping away while meaninglessness slips in. I get anxious and depressed. I feel kind of imprisoned in myself.
Constantly I think of escape. From the water, from the beach. I could retreat to an island where there is nothing I have to do. Where I could just be. Maybe then I could muster the energy to choose something to draw once in a while.
But here I sit, alone in the water and can’t get up.
A friend heard my voice over the phone. She asked if I was alright, said I sounded so fragile. I hadn’t noticed myself, but when I started to listen to myself I realized I was in some kind of light anxiety attack.
I wanted to talk and explain, but though I was grasping for words, I was constantly losing my breath just from talking. Not quite coherent, close to overwhelm, frustrated over not being able to talk properly.
But her listening and answering, her concern and questions, grounded me, pulled me back from my anxiety. Took me out of my spinning thoughts, back to reality. Eventually I managed to calm down.
We humans are extraordinarily equipped to deal with problems together. Social groups – friends – is the greatest strength we have. Together we can face any hardship. All will be well.