Above the sea of lights

So one of the customers asked my age today and it fucking threw me for a second. I’m 21, but for a good short while there I wasn’t sure. It’s easy to work out because I was born in 1997 so it’s just le current year XD plus three. Still, it’s the first time I’ve not just been able to recount it without even thinking. I don’t know if it really tells me anything, but I just can’t help but feel quite sad. I’m so detached from everyone, I even live in a rather isolated place. I mean I still live in a busy part of a busy city, but to get up to my building you have to walk up off the street onto an elevated and most of the time almost completely desolate area of land. Just to get to street level takes a few minutes, it’s almost nothing when put like that but you’d be surprised by how such a minor inconvenience can change people’s behaviour. See, I moved a few times before finally coming here when I was nine. We lived at three different places, plus my dad lived separately from me for a long time and so lived at two more places. All of them were normal places, walk out and onto the street etc. So growing up it was normal for people to be visiting, family or friends of my parents or the people my dad lived with or friendly neighbours or my own little friends. People being around was normal, and then I moved here. I’ve sometimes jokingly referred to it as the wizard’s tower because that shit stopped after coming here. I remember a noticeable change, not immediately because people made an effort at first, but after a year or two they gradually all stopped visiting. My uncle and cousins and their mother/ his partner (who was actually a good friend of my mum before the two ever met actually) for example came here a day after we moved in for a housewarming and would visit fairly often. By the time my mum died though and my dad moved in we were seeing them a few times a year at most.

It’s interesting that this change in a way rhymes with a greater change in my life in many other regards. I can almost sort my life into pre and post 2008 with the actual year of 2008 as this weird transitional time where things were all going crazy. Of course, I’m not the only one who feels this. Not only did my life and perception change quite significantly, the world at large seems to have. This idea of 2007 as the last good year is quite popular on /r9k/ at least and anywhere on the internet inhabited by my demographic really. I’m not going to go into that though it’s been done to death, you know the basic idea, obongo, financial crisis, social media, smartphones, new console generation, etc. It’s the usual thing, new decade new trends and a couple years before the new decade starts is usually when you see the ripples in the water it seems to me. A good example being in music, which in the second half of the 20th century was a defining aspect of the various decades’ identity. So The Pixies debut album and their best work (in my opinion obviously) Doolittle which sound 90s as fuck were actually both released in ’88 and 89′ respectively. Pretty Hate Machine was also released in 1989, Kate Bush’s debut was 1978 and there were a bunch of pop singles in those eights and nines which defined the coming sounds. Baker Street, Heart of Glass, Fortunate Son (It ain’t me, meme song 2bh) etc. I don’t know what I should talk about though, I’m kind of just going for a stream of consciousness with this entry so there’s no real plan or idea in mind. Another entry I write in a couple of long sessions again and then maybe I’ll go back to my more drawn out routine after this.

Anyway it makes me wonder how much this physical separation from the rest of the people around me has affected my mind, and how my mind has developed. I think this weird romanticism I had in my early teens for the modern archetype of the hikkikomori or NEET is something I mentioned before so I’ll just assume you already know about it. Well it does seem to have come about around a year or so after moving to the wizard’s tower. See I of course get upset about being lonely, loneliness bothers me a great deal and yet at the same time I find it very nourishing. I have grown dependent on some loneliness and this job I have now has taught me that. If I have a busy few weeks where I’m doing 5 days of work in my days off I just want to get away from everyone, I need some time to be away from people. When I go outside into the real world, especially after a longer period of isolation, I feel very strange almost like a mild feeling of intoxication. My head sometimes feels like it’s spinning and I get shaky and I can’t speak to people properly. I literally can’t bee myself, it’s like I’m inside a cage and the cage is what is interacting with everyone in my stead. I grasp the bars and see the interaction take place, I know what I want to say and I feel like I could be normal and accepted by people but can do nothing. That’s all an aside though, as I was saying by being isolated I grew to not just enjoy or be comfortable in loneliness but view it in this romanticised way. Of course anyone who’s been following me here will be aware of my fascination with ascetics, that’s another expression of this. I of course took a long time to fully embrace such a lifestyle myself, but had I have never developed this outlook would it have happened at all? I’m really not sure, I always hesitate to say there’s one crucial reason for any complex situation. I know that the year between September 2013 and 2014 had a huge affect, because I finally really came to terms with my mother passing away around that time and also because the isolation drastically increased. I moved to a new school, which at the age of 16 everyone does here, and I didn’t get to bring friends.

That year wasn’t all bad, even the darkest clouds have a silver lining. See I stopped going to classes but my dad was often at home and I had to get to registration in the morning so I wasn’t missed. After that I’d go to the library and just wait there often the whole day until school was over. I’d go to a few classes a week just to keep up appearances but I never got any work done and by the end of the year I knew I was so totally fucked I didn’t even show up for most of the final exams. I didn’t make it into the second year, of course. I read a lot though, given that the library computers had 4chan blocked and I didn’t have a smartphone at the time. Speaking of that phone I had, I only got rid of about half a year ago. There was one teacher who would actually send me a text message every time I didn’t show up to his lesson and I kept all of them (seeing him slowly get more and more frustrated as the months pass is really funny) saved right until I got rid of the phone. It wasn’t all the best stuff to be reading, I read Heavier Than Heaven because I was still quite a big fan of Nirvana at the time. I read this absolute unit of a book, Stalin, which was another biography obviously. It was written by such a fucking blatant commie sympathiser looking back, but I guess so was I at the time (forgive me), could you even imagine an equivalent tome about Franco or Mussolini being left around for kids to read. I read The Republic by Plato which kind of went over my head, and I intend to go back to. I read The Prince by Machiavelli, The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (and jesus is she mentally ill, I’m not going to reveal my misogyny power level today maybe some other time, but this idea of ugliness as empowering is something I could go on about for a while). I also read the ASOIAF books, all that have been published so far anyway. I know it’s genre fiction and I’m a pleb for enjoying that stuff but I do enjoy it and I’m looking forward to The Winds of Winter. It’s a shame Elliot will never get to read it, he was quite a fan of the books too. The show Game Of Thrones is unfortunately not very good past series three, which is a shame because those first three seasons were admittedly fantastic and the reason I decided to read the books.

I think I read more in that year than any other, I just had nothing else to do. There’s probably some other books I forgot to mention as well. I don’t know how much of this blog should be me talking about other people’s art, because while I have of course in my years up here in the tower experienced a great deal and much of it has influenced me, I don’t just want to regurgitate other ideas. “Me like this film/ book/ etc.” isn’t anything worth your time, it’s hard to tell if I could do something worthwhile talking about art because I don’t know what anyone thought about the Cure posts which is the only time I’ve done something like that. I do wish I got more comments, I’ve only ever had one. I know I have very few regular visitors, although I think I’ve got a couple more since last time I complained about it, but it’d be nice to have some idea of what you people are enjoying about these. Of course I don’t want anyone to be uncomfortable, I hesitate to comment or write anything online that isn’t a 4chan post (because the total anonymity there makes me feel safe) so I get it, but if that’s not what’s stopping you but rather something else maybe you could reconsider. I do wonder why I don’t get any comments. At risk of sounding like a total self important dipshit, one reason I’ve considered is that because my posts can be quite thoughtful and in depth (for a short blogpost that is) and maybe people are thinking they need to have particularly lengthy or thoughtful comment but really that’s not necessary at all. Anyway I’m not sure what else to say here. I’m still finding it kind of difficult to write for some reason, even though I have a few ideas. I really find it relaxing to write though, this blog is becoming a nice little hobby for me so I just decided to start writing this evening and see how it goes. The shroom spores I think I must have mentioned before have been developing into a mycelium bed nicely. Perhaps in a few weeks or so some actual fungi will have grown as I get into the final part of the process and they’ll give me something to talk about.

Your weekly dose of total claptrap

I mentioned a woman in my second part of The Cure retrospective thing I did, and that I remember her so fondly specifically because I didn’t ever developing feelings or oneitis or whatever you want to call it. It’s hard to explain exactly, but I think what I said in that post was that the acquaintanceship (kind of a weird term, but it would feel strange to use the word relationship for someone I only knew a few weeks) will never feel tainted or impure. See I always feel gross or perhaps… sinful whenever I am attracted to or interested in a girl. I’ve had plenty of oneitises, I can’t even remember all of them very well at all. I always feel like I’m doing something wrong, that my mere interest is a great crime of some sort. Of course I know it’s not, but it’s one of those deeper things that can’t just be rationalised away. I’m really struggling to explain things in a way that makes sense, I’ve already had to delete several paragraphs of a different attempt at this post. See I’ve developed a technique for this blog thing now, when I started I was completely unstructured and would sit here writing for 6 or 7+ hours in a row and start and finish a post in one frantic session. Now I’m generally writing for an hour or so a day and that’s why I’m sort of keeping to a schedule by finishing a new one early every new week. The problem is that my mind doesn’t work that way, my mind will be racing with ideas about a subject when I start but I can’t just turn that on and off or even direct it. After a few days with something I’ll start obsessing over something else and it’s hard to stay focused. I know I have to though, I know that whatever I started a post about fascinated me and inspired me to share it for good reason. Surprisingly enough finding ideas to talk about is not getting harder like I was worried would happen after a month or two, if anything it’s getting easier. Having an outlet and having to be thinking about things more has stimulated my imagination and I find myself monologuing internally about all kinds of pointless things more than I have in years. It is helping me to feel like a child again in a way, and that is something I’ve longed for greatly for some time.

I am getting a really bad case of writer’s block though, not that I would call myself a writer but you know what I mean. I’m trying and trying and today I actually have been here for a good three hours with nothing to show for it. I’ve written quite a lot but it’s just going nowhere or I can’t get to what I really want to talk about. I don’t know what it is, I just need some kind of in. I had this for a little while with some other posts but I eventually always managed to get on a roll and write some of my favourite stuff from this blog in some cases all in an evening. Right now it’s like a night when I struggle to get to sleep, I roll from side to side and it’s getting later and later and that makes me more stressed and less likely to get any sleep. I’m having that exact same frustration right now, I know exactly what I want to talk about but I just can’t do it. I have all these ideas for a really clever entry that ties all these seemingly unrelated things together and has a central theme and usually I think I pull it off but I don’t know what’s going on today. Well today and yesterday, I started writing yesterday morning but got nowhere and deleted what I did have written when starting today. Essentially I had a surprisingly busy weekend, both evenings I went out to a restaurant. Nothing particularly special, but I am kind of a shut in so for me anything I do outside of work or hanging around at home is noteworthy. The first evening I went with some family friends and the second it was a social thing for work. I was planning for this post to go over some thoughts I was having over the weekend and link the two evenings in a few interesting ways. The problem is that for every little thing I feel I have to preface it with loads of information and that just bogs me down and I end up with a bloated mess that just has to go. I think I’m losing track of what I want to even be doing with this fucking blog thing. I got carried away with this idea of it being my own spiritual successor to My Twisted World, but that was never the original intention and it’s already something entirely different. It also is affecting what I do and don’t write here, because there’s this part of me thinking maybe don’t talk about certain things because I don’t want people who might one day read this to see me in that way. I think I should just stop disregarding my original title for this blog, even though it’s a kind of cringy title, because it’s when I follow that that I do my best. This isn’t a fucking biography, it’s not Anon’s manifesto, it’s just me collecting my thoughts as best as possible and spilling it out in (figurative) ink on a page.

I mean the idea was never a good one, that whole embarrassing situation that kicked this fucking blog off would be the worst first impression if I wanted someone to get an accurate picture of who I am. Just the fact that it was what motivated me in part to start writing here will make it seem way more important than it is. No, I think I got a little carried away with myself. This is really freeing actually, I’ve also felt like I need to try and make this more biographical over time trying to gradually tell all the more important stories that have happened to me over the years. I don’t need to do any of that, you don’t need to know a bunch of useless sob stories. I should stop writing for an imaginary group of people who don’t currently exist and do what has been going down well with those of you who read today. Of course when these stories about my life are relevant to what I want to talk about I won’t avoid them, but I should never be trying to fit my ideas around telling the story it should be the other way around. The information about me should serve the ultimate goal, of expressing what I’ve been thinking about. Because my whole life I’ve been plagued by excessive thinking, and I think that in a “throw enough shit at the wall” kind of way it does sometimes lead to interesting places. So this should just be a catalogue of these thoughts, a simple idea and hopefully actually worthwhile to anyone who chooses to read. It’s what I said I was going to do in my original introductory post after all.

So on this second evening, the less enjoyable of the two but probably the more interesting one, I remember that same feeling of disgust or maybe disappointment in myself I talked about right at the start hitting me. If you read all of these you might remember me mentioning not too long ago some new people started, and one of them I almost started to develop feelings for but luckily found out she had a boyfriend before that could really grow into anything. Luckily really is meant here as well, I realised this at the restaurant while there with her and of course all my other co-workers. It was because, and I know this might sound silly, I was enjoying myself. I had a really nice time, and I was able to enjoy being around them and chatting (not that much I’m still incredibly shy, but I’m warming up to them all a little and spoke more than the last of these certainly) without anything else. I wasn’t enjoying it like I’d enjoy conversations with one of the many oneitises I’ve had over the years, where I would be glad it went well because it felt like “progress” of some kind. No instead of it being a means to an end, and my gladness being for having achieved that, my enjoyment was of the actual conversation itself. I just liked talking to her, to all of them but of course for the context of this issue I’m talking about she’s most important. I feel really bad that those feelings of mine were ever developing at all, so soon after meeting someone. It just goes to show how false they were, like I’ve said (not that it’s any revelation) before it’s just my lizard brain or instinct trying to find a mate and my conscious self trying to rationalise it.

The problem is what I talked about in a lot of detail before in another post, Living up to my shitty blog title I think it was. That we’re essentially all God having an animal experience, and asceticism and rejection of many natural behaviours being so universal is because the explicit rejection of instinct is the easiest way we can perhaps get in touch with our divine aspect. So a buddhist sitting cross legged up in the Himalayas without eating for days and a nun taking a vow of celibacy really are getting at the same thing. The idea of artistic integrity I think ties in to this actually, another thing which seems to almost have universal importance to everyone. Why? Well I think because all art, anything which doesn’t just serve survival but has a more abstract purpose, is again an attempt at getting in touch with this higher aspect of ourselves. So the reason you see so many people who think “pop music sucks” or “modern Hollywood is trash”, etc. all feel that it’s a product designed to materially enrich certain people masquerading as “pure” art. Whatever original artistic vision there was has been corrupted, it feels wrong to them in a way they can’t fully explain. Now of course it’s far more complicated than that like all things, but I can understand their attitude I think. This is a complete tangent though, I was talking about work wasn’t I? The problem, as I was saying, is this conflict we all have between our instinct and our better nature. Id and super-ego? Maybe I am more off in the clouds than most, because any kind of behaviour motivated by instinct alone bothers me on principle. Being a human though, means I am still ultimately subject to this instinct. So to keep me from going fucking insane I convince myself somehow of all this crap that isn’t true. It’s not just desire to “go forth and multiply” I care about this person I know nothing about deeply that’s it.

It’s complicated, because I really do still even now kind of doubt it’s just sexual desire. In fact it’s definitely not that exclusively because often my oneitis at any given time isn’t the most attractive woman in the environment. I suppose like those major motion pictures that feel so hollow to everyone I need something real and true to manufacture the product around. To create this person in my mind, I have to know just enough and see some hint at a person I could like or even love. Still, I’m actively searching all the time and I still kind of am manufacturing this purely to satisfy the better nature. The beast is still the one who’s ends are being served, even if totally unsuccessfully because I’m a fucking incel haha… Anyway, I’m doing a really bad job of expressing myself. I say that so fucking often it’s like a recurring joke at this point. Maybe this will illustrate things best, an example. Often people will say “I wish I had a girlfriend” or that most famous line of poetry “tfw no gf”. Now something about that has always got under my skin, really bothered me in a way I couldn’t quite explain. See it might not be purely a sexual thing for the person saying it, they aren’t saying “I want to get laid” or “tfw no sex” they want someone to love but still they look towards “the gf” almost as a metaphysical ideal rather than any real life person. It’s dehumanising. I guess what I’m saying is that.. I don’t love. None of us do. I think I’m trying to say two things at once, and failing to communicate either. To try and somehow bring things back to the start though, I found something out about that woman from my days training at that social event for work. I thought I was her replacement but it turns out she actually got fired. Something I found amusing, anyway. Next post will hopefully be a lot less shit.

Maybe I’m just a schmuck

Some guy tried to scam me the other day, or maybe scam is the wrong word because it gives the wrong impression. It was more of a quick con, a clever little trick. It seems not to be that clever when you think about it, but then after thinking some more you go back to your original position of it being quite a clever little ruse. At least that’s my experience and I’ll explain. It worked on me once actually, this was the third time someone has tried this on me in the year since I started here. See, it was at work and it starts off with someone paying for what they want with a £10 note. The actual value isn’t important here for the trick, the number is, so you can substitute a note of your own currency that is a ten of something and this should still make sense. So they pay with a note for something very cheap maybe a pound or two, and then complain to the guy behind the till (me, in these three instances) when he gives them their change that they don’t want to carry around a load of coins and then they ask if they can give back all the coins along with some others they have adding it all back up to ten for the original note back. Now it should raise some suspicion already at this point that they have enough in change to get back to ten in coins, after all doesn’t this mean they could have just paid for the original item with coins alone. Yes, it does but you don’t realise this and in fact I only realised this after the third attempt was over when going over it. Because they’re quick, and they keep talking and can be very friendly. They know to try this when the shop is busy, so you’re not taking your time with each customer but trying to finish as quickly as possible and move on to the next person waiting in line and they know how to gain your trust.

The first time was the most “professional”, the guy actually asked me to double check the coins he was giving back to me definitely added up to ten “take your time mate, no rush”. Now of course, it takes a lot less time to give a note just handed to you back then it does to fish coins out of your wallet. So you always end up giving them the note before they’ve finished scraping £10 in coins to give back to you. Again, this extra few coins they find is what could have been used to buy the original item, they literally have to get specifically the value of the original item in coins to make it back up. It’s so fucking obviously suspect at this point I’m shocked I didn’t even realise this until after the third attempt was over. I mean like I said not until my time thinking about this yesterday, which is basically going to be what this entry covers, did I realise it. So then with the coins all counted, he then hands you back the original note as you’re putting it back into the till and says now he’s given you £20 (half true, he’s just handed you that much, but of course half of it is yours) can he get a £20 note back. I know I know it’s so fucking insane that I or anyone ever fell for this, but I promise going through it all step by step and being there in the moment especially when you’re just not expecting to be scammed (which I will get back to in more detail later) and it’s all happening so fast are two very different things.

The first time this happened to me, I didn’t even fully realise until the guy was long gone. I kind of knew something felt wrong during the last step, as I handed him the £20 note, but there were customers waiting and I suppose I didn’t want to bother the guy in case my suspicion was unfounded and no mistake/ scam had took place and I’d just be slowing down the queue. I kept going over it in my head as I was dealing with customers though and after half an hour or so it slowed down and I had a brief moment with no customers waiting. Then it all made sense, and I just paid £10 of my own money into the till so I wouldn’t be accused of stealing from the till or something by the higher ups. It’s not a huge deal, just over an hour’s work at this place, and it serves as good motivation to not let it happen again. So even though I didn’t fully realise until it was over my suspicions were raised at the point where he asked for the £20 note, the very last step. This is one of several crucial points, and I keep changing my mind over which is most important. These several points being places both where the scam can fall apart, and yet have to happen in order to pull the scam off. In some ways that might not seem immediately obvious as well, there is a surprising richness to it all. I almost have to respect those who can pull it off properly, the first guy in my case. I mean sure in part he got away with it because it was my first time, but I’m not so sure the other two would have been able to pull it off even if they’d got there first. They just didn’t have the adroitness that he did, the second guy was a balding manlet who was with his mother or perhaps she was his sister (or both probably) and I ended up throwing the money over the counter at him when he wouldn’t leave and the most recent guy the other evening got all pissy with me after being called out and I was a little worried he might get violent. He called me really rude and told me to never touch his hands again (because I’d pushed the hand holding the note away when he kept trying to reach over the counter and put it in the till) then kept staring at me from outside the shop for a while. In fact the second guy and the old bitch with him also did the same months ago when they tried it, scowling at me from just outside. The totally unjustified indignation of these people is really something to see.

So speaking of these crucial points there seems to me to be three of them. Firstly when you hand them the note back, which has to happen before they give you your coins. The most recent time this didn’t happen, he was maybe not so experienced and handed the £10 in coins to me pretty fast. I, at this point recognising the motions as well also was deliberately holding onto the note so that was a factor as well but if he knew what he was doing he’d have at least tried something to get the note off me before handing me the coins. “Yeah, so just pass me that note mate while I get the rest of the coins out” or something, it would also work as a distraction. After all if I’m busy getting the note I’m not coming to the realisation that he has enough coins to just pay for the item with those. Which I didn’t anyway I know, but someone sharper than me might. See it’s important because if he then has all the money, when he hands you it all together there’s the psychological trick of it seeming like it’s all his to give. This entire scam falls apart if each step is done in a slow and deliberate fashion it has to be snappy, which must make it difficult to practise now I think about it. There’s this kind of unspoken rule in shops that the customer hands you the money first and then the person behind the till reciprocates by giving them what they paid for. So that could be the item, a receipt, everything together placed in a bag. The point being that the final action taken is by the person behind the till. So when the guy hands you all the money not only is the psychological trick playing on the fact that it seems like everything they handed to you (all £20 in both note and coins) is theirs but the natural ending to your customer interactions is almost always with you handing them something. It’s not something that is taught, when I did my training both where I am now and at another place I worked for free that I’m sure I’ve talked about here before it was never mentioned. It’s just something you end up doing, it’s cultural maybe or just some kind of natural law idk. What I do know is that it’s never really something you’re consciously aware of until you have to be, like in the case of overthinking this scam. So when you get handed the money you’re thrown for a second because the interaction seems to be over but they and not you made the last move. I suppose in this state you’re more suggestible, and then they come in and ask for a £20 note for it all and without enough time to think it through rationally you just go with it.

That’s just one thing though. Of equal importance is the moment when they take that extra amount in coins to add to the change you just gave them making it of equal value to the note. Like I said, they literally have to get exactly the amount in coins for what they bought which means they never needed a note in the first place. It should be obvious, so why even in the two examples of this scam failing to work on me did I somehow miss it. Well there’s this idea of the big lie, in Mein Kampf (which again I haven’t read in full, I’m just aware of some ideas talked about inside) Hitler speaks about a lie so brazen and obviously false that people just accept it. After all, would someone lie about something like that. Every step of this scam is done right in front of you, right fucking there less than a meter away, and this step is the most obvious of them all. Because people are looking to catch a lie, somewhere something sneaky is taking place. You might smell a rat, something might seem suspect. You’re entirely unprepared for someone to tell you the sky is red, or whatever, and if you’re not really concentrating you might nod your head and go along without even realising it. Of course they target the kind of person who isn’t expecting to be lied to or tricked at all, in a sneaky way or a totally open and upfront way. I’ll get to that later though. If you do call them out at this point, if you’re one of the sharper tools in the shed, they haven’t yet done anything wrong. They can say they just didn’t realise until after paying they had that extra change, or something along those lines. This is the most obvious point in the scam and it’s before any real wrongdoing has taken place, if you don’t say anything they know they can probably get away with the rest of the scam which is less obvious until the very end and if you do they can exit the situation without any embarrassment.

Now the third and final crucial step, which is probably the obvious one, is before they even walk in. They of course need to figure out if they think they can get you to fall for it before they even start. I don’t think it’s entirely just a stupid person they’re looking for (because I don’t believe I’m a stupid person, although maybe I appear to be?) but more someone who seems to have a certain naivety or innocence. Which is definitely something I’m aware of about myself, I look very young I get told this often and not only that but because of my shyness/ timidity it’s exacerbated even more. I hate this faggy term so much but you could say I suppose that I lack, or at least look like I lack, street smarts. I’m an easy mark I know, a good target, someone that you can take advantage of. I’m aware of this weakness at least, but nevertheless as much as I think about it I can’t just logic my way out of this one. I’m a pushover, I’m better at standing up for myself now than I was but I still have a way to go. Maybe I’ll never get there as well, there’s part of me that doesn’t want to for fear of losing some part of myself. Think about it, I am this way for two reasons. First of all because I want people’s lives to be easy, within reason I will do what I can to help. Secondly because I would never scam or take advantage of someone myself and I’m honest about my intentions with people I’m kind of expecting the same from other people. Yes I know it’s stupid and to keep being this way after being taken advantage of is… even stupider, but it’s who I am. So I’d have to either become a scumbag myself in order to become not a pushover or at the very least become way more mercenary and cold to people. Which I rationally should do, I mean sure some people are nice to me but no one (well, my dad so one person) cares about me really. So why should I care about anyone else? I do though, it’s just instinctual I want people to be happy.

I think about this a lot, obviously, and I guess the real problem is that my ingroup is just way too easy to get into. You should be aware of the idea of ingroups and outgroups, but you can look it up on Wikipedia if you don’t. Basically most people have a relatively small group of people they care about, which would be their ingroup. Family, close friends, etc. To these people they are far nicer than everyone else. Now because of various circumstances both within and outside of my control I don’t really have many people in my life. I have my dad, my uncle and his partner and their children, a couple of close-ish friends and a few other people with more unusual roles in my life. So I have this idea which could be complete conjecture but seems to make some sense, that perhaps because I have so few people around me, on some level not fully consciously (I know, I say that way too much) I’m way more open than most to letting people in. After all we are social animals, as I’m sure you’ve been told a thousand times before, so perhaps in some attempt to build an ingroup like everyone else has for myself my lizard brain takes the wheel and despite me knowing that being like this with everyone is not a good idea at all for all the obvious reasons I still do it. Of course ironically, because being completely spineless just disgusts people, it actually ends up having the completely opposite effect from what is intended. This could take me back down the whole “nice guys” rabbit hole again if I let it, and it’s a complete tangent anyway, but it’s something for you to think about if you want.

To wrap things up, they target people look like they can be taken advantage of because they’re more inclined to trust them and they need to be trusted for that final part. Remember when they hand you all the money and ask for the £20 note, that works because you’re kind of thrown off by the order of things being wrong and they then come in to bring order almost by asking. If you don’t trust them that doesn’t work, and that’s why they act so friendly and do little things like that first guy asking for me to make sure all the change he handed me was correct. None of this even works if you’re not already quite a trusting individual. See looking at all of this it shows to me how purposeful it all is, sure you can say I’m overanalysing this but given that these crucial parts were not done properly by the other two who didn’t get away with it I don’t think I am. Moral of the story, at least in my view? Everything is deliberate, and I really do mean everything. At least, I think I do. Anyway I’m listening to The Killing Moon by Echo and The Bunnymen right now, it feels appropriate for some reason.

My favourite band: Part 3

It’s funny that only recently I was talking about dreams, because dreamlike is the first word that comes to mind when I think of Disintegration. It’s touted as this great return to the gothic gloom and doom of earlier Cure records, and it’s certainly more similar to those than the more poppy albums I talked about last time, but it’s quite a different experience to either. It’s more like a third direction, and the following records which sound very similar to me (especially Bloodflowers) further support this idea. Another thing I like so much about this band is that in most cases if asked what a specific album sounds like you can point to the art on the cover and say “well it kinda sounds like that”, and Disintegration is a perfect example of this. Sure the general goal seems to be to capture the feeling of the record visually with most album art, but in my opinion it’s not usually successful. It all makes sense even if everything seemingly doesn’t fit, just like in a dream. The colour palette as well is so perfectly suited, the deep blues and greens further draw you in to this spectral realm. Listening to this album is like taking a lonely evening walk through a haunted fairy tale forest, the navy blue shallow pools reflecting the gradually darkening sky above you, and the details on the leaves becoming harder and harder to see as night slowly falls. It’s just undeniable that Robert Smith (and yes it really is in this case mostly just Robert, this album was initially planned as a completely solo project) makes his best stuff while taking lots of drugs. In particular, psychedelics like LSD, which his return to regular use of in part inspired him to create Disintegration. I think this view of Disintegration as a concept album of sorts, telling the story of a pensive evening stroll through the woods just really adds something to the experience. There’s certainly a common theme, this anxiety over reaching the age of 30 and not having a real legacy to leave behind which is partly what makes this album while similarly gloomy like the early gothic trio feel more mature, and it gives this album more wide appeal than those also. After all this concern is a natural part of the human condition, think of the famous (and probably quite embellished) story of Julius Caesar weeping in front of a statue of Alexander the Great.

The album starts with a mostly instrumental intro, with only some echoing and reverberating vocals coming in towards the end. There’s a good ten seconds of dead silence to start with and then slowly a twinkling sound can be heard, at first so muted you might not hear it unless the volume is up fairly high (which it should be, the original copies came with a little note specifying that the record was meant to be played loudly), then after gradually getting closer to you it explodes. The effect is like fireworks in audio, it’s beautiful and you just want to focus on it and ignore whatever else is going on. There’s the occasional heavy drum being beaten in the distance somewhere, not like a consistent drumbeat throughout instead it’s quite sporadic. After a couple minutes the vocals come in, it always seemed to me like someone going over a past conversation in their head. With the “you said” being repeated over and over and there’s also the echo effect adding to that. Then the singing comes to a stop and the guitar (I think it’s a guitar) which had been there most of the track but not prominent becomes the focus as the song closes out. After that is Pictures Of You which I don’t like so much, maybe because I find it harder to relate to the things he sings about on here but then again I really like Lovesong which is much more explicitly a song about romantic relationships. Anyway it’s not really the lyrical content that is the issue here, in fact when listening to this album with my friends last spring this is the one that we were all singing along to. Maybe that’s it actually, this album is kind of meant to be listened to alone I think I even remember reading an interview where Robert himself said that, but this song is clearly better enjoyed in good company. So it’s a little out of place, although it still has a very similar sound to the rest of the album. The twinkling chimes, the specific kind of effect he gets with his guitar, etc. Third in the tracklist is Closedown, which is a kind of conflicted song in my opinion. The words are not very cheery at all, describing the state of being Robert was in while recording the album. Sleep deprived and back to regular drug and presumably alcohol use, it’s not too different from the environment which led to Pornography although this time more deliberate and controlled. Speaking of Pornography, the way the words are actually sung also reminds me of some of the songs on there quite a bit. The rest of the music though is quite uplifting, it sounds almost like something from The Lion King at first before the guitar comes in. Lovesong is exactly what the title suggests, if it wasn’t for that trademark undertone of melancholy which can completely change your interpretation of the lyrics it would feel totally out of place on the album. I’ve heard a couple of covers of it and they demonstrate this perfectly.

Other than Plainsong though up until this point the album is at it’s weakest, the last two thirds are the real experience. Last Dance is what starts off this run, and it’s so integral to my experiences with this album (especially the first time hearing it, which was the first time listening to a Cure album in full) that I was really surprised to find out that on the original releases it wasn’t even included and only later in CD copies was it put in. Another drawn out and minimalist intro starts this off, before the song really kicks into gear and you realise the huge scope. It sounds like it’s all around you, like you’ve floated up into the stars and there’s so much empty space between all the different parts. It’s very reminiscent of the last section of Pornography which starts with the song Cold and very cleverly this song includes a hidden line from that song whispered softly “your name like ice, into my heart”, which I never noticed myself while listening but read about online. Lullaby is next and is one of my favourite songs from the band and just one of my favourite songs generally speaking. I don’t think I really need to go into detail talking about the music, overanalysing might have a negative effect if anything. It’s just so… pleasant. I can’t really explain why, it just has this calming effect on me so I suppose it’s appropriately titled. The lyrics talk about this “spiderman” creature, a half man half spider which ate little children and was a regular feature in the bedtime stories of Robert’s uncle according to interviews. Fascination Street follows immediately after and completely changes things up, being much faster and energetic. The drums are much more prominent on this than the rest of the album, and these bell things like maybe cowbells are used as well I’m not sure exactly what they are but they work really well. It has a really triumphant feel to it, which carries on onto at least the intro of the next song Prayers For Rain.

Things slow down again here, and the lyrics are the most depressive and gloomy on the entire record “I suffocate I breathe in dirt and nowhere shines”, but the drumbeat throughout feels like a lifeline of sanity that will allow you to come out on top. The hopelessness of Pornography is not really present on this album, the next song The Same Deep Water As You is the only time it slightly approaches those depths of despair. I’m not really talking about the lyrics here either, a lot of people have read into and wrote their ideas about the lyrics on this and I’d only do a worse job so I won’t bother. The music itself though, the way it drags on for almost ten minutes and captures this feeling of total emptiness reminds me of Faith (the song and the whole album) a great deal. The “prayers” were answered as well it seems, as there’s this rainy/ stormy effect on this track so it sounds like you’re sitting in a small wooden cabin or under a thicket of tress with the drops hitting something above you. Then a smashing sound, like a window being broken and this upbeat drumbeat hits. The title track is actually surprisingly cheery, although after the last song most songs would seem to be. The guitar offsets this a little with a more melancholic melody, leading to that trademark undertone I mentioned earlier. It’s something they’d been doing since the Japanese Whispers era, but was perfected on this album. Honestly this album is where they perfected everything they’d been developing and doing, it is the first album with the famous Cure “sound” and everything after while enjoyable mostly feels derivative or when they do try to experiment it fails. It’s the band’s peak, and this song is the best representation of the album as a whole so it feels appropriate as the title track. It’s not the end though, Homesick and Untitled are what end off the record. Another two long drawn out songs that go for the gloomy vibe, but don’t quite do it as well as The Same Deep Water As You in my opinion. If it’s not obvious I love this album, I don’t really have any specific memories tied to it other than it being my first Cure album and getting my friends to listen to it in full also for the first time for both of them last spring. I have maybe listened to it half a hundred times and still keep going back.

Next came Wish, and as I just mentioned it does sound very much like Disintegration. It’s just missing the soul of that record though, Robert Smith managed to forge the legacy he was so concerned he wouldn’t manage to do with that record and it’s like since then he’s been trying to recreate that. The song Trust is a perfect example, it seems to have all the components of the classic gloomy Cure songs but just doesn’t stick the landing for whatever reason. I can’t really explain it, it’s just an intuitive thing. On Wish he seems to not want to fully commit to this anyway though, so there are also tracks that feel more inspired by the stuff from Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me which just makes the album feel tonally inconsistent. There are some tracks on here that are absolutely fantastic of course, both moody and cheery ones, but it feels more like a compilation of songs rather than a proper record with a distinct identity. The opener, Open (haha), has this great mechanical sound to it. From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea, Doing The Unstuck and the closing track End (haha) are the highlights here certainly. A whole album of stuff like these three would have been something special. It’s only really on these where the balance between Disintegration and Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me is actually handled well. The singles from this album I really do not like, other than Friday I’m In Love which is actually quite catchy. High and A Letter To Elise are the ones I really have a problem with, the sounds just all seem to be mushed together so you can’t really pick anything out, they don’t reward you paying closer attention. It’s like they were designed to be background noise while driving to work or walking around in the supermarket. Apart is another song which tries very hard to capture that Disintegration spirit, and does a much better job I will say. If it had been included on there it wouldn’t seem out of place I don’t think, as Trust would. It has the whispery vocals from some of the songs on there, and the eerie feeling to it that was all over Disintegration. In fact if this song and Pictures Of You swapped places it’d make more sense. To Wish Impossible Things is one I’m coming around to, the violin is really nice on it and an instrument quite rarely used by the band. In fact I’m warming up to the album more generally speaking, there’s definitely a few songs I doubt I’ll ever be able to enjoy but having to listen to it a few times for this entry and more closely too has given me more of an appreciation for it.

Wild Mood Swings which came after is certainly an attempt to go in a new direction, which is appreciated, but as I said from this point forward it’s mostly attempts to relive the glory days of Disintegration or failed experiments. This is one of the failed experiments, and not just in my view there seems to be a consensus that this is one of the worst Cure albums. A lot of people say it’s the absolute worst, and I think I might agree. It’s certainly fighting with Three Imaginary Boys for the bottom spot, I can’t decide for sure. It’s very similar to The Top in my opinion, both in the frenzied or even wacky vibe it goes for and the various influences from all over the world. The 13th sounds like there’s a mariachi band backing Robert, Gone! has these brass band style horns in the background, there’s an oriental sound at the very opening of the song Numb etc. However unlike that album which grew on me quite a bit after a few listens, a lot of the tracks on here still just sound abrasive and even grating. I had to go through it again for this of course, and I did kind of want to skip a couple. The second song Club America is one of the worst and a great example of what ruins this record, it has this awful electric guitar that’s way too loud and keeps schizophrenically switching to play a completely different tune. It’s so loud and at the forefront it makes it impossible to focus on anything else, in fact this is kind of a problem all over the album. Almost the complete opposite of Disintegration in a way, with that feeling of spaciousness it created, everything on here feels so close like you’re in a small room with the band playing live all crowded in and squeezed in there with you. All the different components that make up the music don’t get any room to breath, you can’t focus in on something in particular you really like on certain listens. Even on the tracks on here I quite enjoy, Want, This Is A Lie, Strange Attraction, Gone!, and Trap (notice the quick snappy song titles, which does kind of reflect the faster pace of this album) that problem still exists the different parts just seem to fit together more harmoniously so it isn’t a total mess. They’d still be better given some space I feel anyway, but then again I’m not a musician and I don’t know anything about how to make a good song I just know what I’ve liked and disliked. I guess it doesn’t really need to be said, but I rarely put this on and don’t have any real memories or emotional attachment to it. I’ll certainly listen to it again on occasion though.

Bloodflowers is the most similar to Disintegration, it’s basically a sequel. I’m not saying it doesn’t have it’s own identity at all, there are some elements specific to this album so it doesn’t just sound like a collection of songs that didn’t make the cut first time around, the acoustic guitar being so prominent throughout for example. Which is something I’ve heard and even agreed with at one point, but after getting to know it better I’ve grown to appreciate this album a lot more. Robert Smith has said in interviews that it along with Disintegration and Pornography are the three albums which best represent the band overall, or something like that, and he calls them his trilogy. I would personally say there are four essential Cure albums, Seventeen Seconds, Pornography, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me and Disintegration. Although I’ve read another interview where he says Seventeen Seconds is his favourite, I suppose in a four decade long career he’s gonna change his mind a bit, and of course whenever there’s a new record coming out you have to praise that. There is a feeling I get that the melancholy/ moodiness is played up a little here, which is fine because I like that kind of thing but it’s just done more maturely on Disintegration I have to say it. It’s not that it doesn’t feel genuine or that it’s coming from a real place, just that things are… well played up a little like I said. Anyway, onto the songs. The intro sets the mood pretty effectively, it’s nearly seven minutes long and that was after being shortened supposedly. The longer six and seven minute songs are something else borrowed from Disintegration, along with it’s overall sound and mood. Again though it’s something I enjoy, long drawn out songs that bring you into a different world. You have that acoustic guitar being strummed throughout like I mentioned earlier, and while I’ve never really payed close attention to the lyrics on this album you can pick up on the wistful vibe from snippets here and there. The second track on here is probably what prevented the album from clicking with me for so long, it’s this huge 11 minute epic that takes ages to build. It should be perfect for me, I’ve listened to Carnage Visors (mostly on nightwalks) a bunch of times, which is this half hour instrumental/ ambient thing which has only recently been so easily accessible to people since the re-release of Faith. For decades it was like a bootleg cassette tape you had to track down. So I really dig the longer stuff, but this song just really doesn’t work for me. The intro as well, but this track in particular just doesn’t resonate. I wish I could explain why, but I can’t it’s just how it is. So together what with the long length that’s almost 20 minutes. A really weak first part, and an obstacle that really did stop me from relistening to this album in full after the first time because I kept giving up during this song.

It was worth pushing through when I did though, because from here on out it’s much more enjoyable. Where The Birds Always Sing which is the highlight of the album absolutely and I’d already heard it plenty of times before hearing it in the context of the full album from the early days first discovering the band. If Disintegration was a twilight wander through the forest, Bloodflowers is a walk home during the sunset at the beginning of autumn. That’s the feel I get, maybe because that’s what I was doing when it finally “clicked”. In fact that’s definitely why, it’s been almost a year and that image is still firmly what comes to mind when I hear this record. There’s even a song on here called The End Of Summer, it all comes together quite nicely. It wasn’t a very eventful period for me, just before I got the job actually. I was pretty aimless, I still am but this was the peak, there wasn’t any kind of future in my mind. I was living in a haze staying indoors for often two weeks straight and I might’ve stayed inside without leaving the flat once for that entire five month period (between losing my voluntary job which I took after falling for the “experience” meme and finding my current job) if not for the fact that I had to go to the jobcentre to get my NEETbux every couple weeks. I’d wake up late, I’d struggle to get to sleep every night and then to force myself out of bed in the ~~morning~~ afternoon. I had more free time than ever to play vidya/ watch anime or films/ read all those books I’d been meaning to get around to and yet I ended up doing less of all of those and just scrolling through the catalog on one of my main boards for ten hours a day or wasting my time listening to idiots on youtube repeat the same stupid shit over and over. I’m not trying to whine or feel sorry for myself I understand that I choose to be the person I am, but it was fucking miserable back then. Probably the second lowest place I’ve been in, for an extended period of time that is. Maybe the first I could go into another time. I will take being a wageslave over that any day, even when I have a really busy month and it’s going really shit I have felt far more spiritually satisfied since starting work. So this album and it’s association with the changing of the seasons is symbolic, because it also brings me back to a time when I entered a “new season” of my life in a way.

After Bloodflowers the next release was the self titled The Cure, which is quite ironic because this album to me is the least Cure sounding album of all of them. It’s the least definitive one in their entire discography, and I know I said that Wild Mood Swings and Three Imaginary Boys are fighting for the worst spot but after relistening to this today it might have just snuck in and snatched the title. It’s not terrible, and there are some really good songs, but as a whole I really didn’t enjoy listening to it again. Which is weird, I remember about half a year or so ago I quite liked it and was listening to it quite a lot. I listened to it for the first time maybe a year ago or something, then kind of forgot and after going back to it I found it a nice change of pace from the other Cure albums. It was released in 2004 I believe, and very much seems to have been influenced by some trends in music at the time. Like a lot of the really accessible nu-metal bands, korn, limp bizkit, and was even co-produced by Ross Robinson who produced for those bands apparently. You can find this shit on Wikipedia if you care anyway, and the influence isn’t that strong you don’t have Robert doing harsh metal vocals and wearing those cringy Halloween masks when performing this stuff. It sounds like The Cure still, but you can feel the influence in subtle ways that are hard to explain for a pleb who doesn’t know shit about music. The tracks where the influence is most noticeable are actually my favourites on here though. Us Or Them has this great really heavy guitar which feels really present throughout and holds everything together, Robert’s yelping fits perfectly and even makes the edgy lyrics “Get your fucking world out of my head” … (gonna be a yikes from me) not sound completely cringe. Labyrinth sounds like a Nine Inch Nails song, which is a good thing because NIN is fucking rad. This grinding sound, like a motor or something is fantastic. Great angery music, it’s like if you took the bitterness from some of the pornography tracks but without the gloom and introspection there to tame it. The intro Lost as well I quite like, with the words “I can’t find myself” repeated over and over like a mantra getting more and more aggressive and the music spiking out at you alongside it. Everything else is forgettable or outright skippable, I hate to say it because I really don’t like skipping tracks when listening to an album but there it is. There’s another over ten minute “epic” right near the end, which again just doesn’t do it for me. It doesn’t totally suck like Watching Me Fall, the long one from Bloodflowers, but it’s still not deserving of all that time being given to it. At least it’s at the end as I said so it doesn’t create this obstacle just for you to get started with the album. It’s still worth listening to in my opinion, every single Cure album is even if just once or twice, but it might have the most duds. I have no problem with angery Robert, and when he does it well it’s great.

Finally, 4:13 Dream, the last Cure album at least so far and almost a decade old now. Supposedly there’ll be another one, I hope there is. It’s not that this album is bad, it’s pretty good at least as good as Wish. It’s just for a band with such a fantastic career one last hurrah, another real masterpiece if Robert has it in him, would be great. This isn’t that, it’s not a masterpiece it’s kind of unremarkable honestly. Maybe they just don’t have the desire to make new music, in fact they clearly at least didn’t for the last ten years because of the long gap. They still perform, but I’m not and never have been interested in live music so it doesn’t matter to me. I actually completely agree with Varg, the studio release is the version of the music that is truest to the artist’s vision. Also music fans of all types are generally fucking trash, crowds of annoying faggots and concert thots singing along to the famous tracks would just make for a shitty evening. I’m not saying music is always a completely solitary experience, sometimes with the right people and the right choice of music the opposite is true, but I find most music is indeed best enjoyed alone. The first track on here Underneath The Stars is very Disintegration (I’m saying that a lot I know), it even has the twinkling chimes sprinkled in at one point. Most of the album is a lot more upbeat though, supposedly this was originally a double album like Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me but they scrapped most of the songs and this album collects the more cheery ones. Which becomes apparent on the second track The Only One, which has this bouncy guitar sound that I really like. The guitar playing is really nice on this record overall, it’s what saves the song Freakshow which would otherwise really not be my thing. Then you have a bunch of really unmemorable songs in the middle, which just drag on. Sirensong, The Real Snow White, Switch, The Perfect Boy and This. Here And Now. With You. You also have the song The Hungry Ghost in there somewhere though, with this really nice sound effect with the guitar. I had to look up a video of a live performance to figure out what it was they were doing. The guy, some bald dude don’t know his name, waggles that bar that’s on some electric guitars. I forget the name, my dad did tell me once because he knows how to play but I forget. The record finishes with It’s Over, which has this chaotic and really loud electric guitar drowning out the vocals so you can barely understand what he’s saying if you’re trying to pay attention. A mediocre end, to a mediocre record, hopefully not but very possibly at the end of a career that is anything but mediocre.

I’ve been thinking about why I consider The Cure to be my favourite band more seriously since I started this back in part 1. I remember reading this article a while ago, I’ll link it but archived because it’s the jew york times, although in the current year of 2k18 who still isn’t using adblock http://archive.is/poojo. Now the idea that the music we listen to in our youth, the age it gives as most important in the article being 13-16, isn’t groundbreaking news by any means but it’s nice that someone took the time to collect some real data on this. It’s worth reading, but I’m not really here to talk about the article just use that as a jumping off point. See most of the other bands who’ve made music that really emotionally resonates with me are all from that period of my life, 13-16 years old. Not that they were all formed or making music in that time necessarily, but rather they were just what I listened to regularly in that period. Kasabian (specifically their debut album and Velociraptor), Nirvana, The Smiths, Blue Oyster Cult, Summoning, The XX, and some others. The Cure are the only band that affect me just as much and aren’t associated with that time period. In fact they’re kind of associated with a really shitty period of time, listening to the music from the band was an escape in a way. Also the weird and changing mood and style of their music, from completely miserable and depressed to manic and energetic, really makes a lot of sense to me. I’ve spoken here before about how I can get mild mania sometimes and of course this feeling of mental desolation. I don’t think it’s that bad, like people who have actual mental illnesses, it’s not something that negatively impacts my life in any meaningful way. It is there though, and something I have to work with. Honestly though, I can’t really explain what it is about The Cure and their music that just so perfectly works for me. It’s something intuitive that I can’t explain, it’s almost something spiritual. Those other bands I just mentioned can take me back to a happier time, but The Cure and no one else so far can take me away from all the bullshit entirely. Not unlike a dream.

The truth hurts

I saw her again even though I thought I never would and had mentally moved on a lot quicker than I expected to, for reasons I’ve already speculated about in earlier posts. I’m talking about the girl, my “oneitis” for a time I suppose, who left the place we both worked at a few months ago and just before I started this blog. From what I can tell we were at some kind of daycare centre or some place like that, looking after the children supposedly but I can’t actually recall any kids being there now when I think back. It was strange, the walls were a flaxen yellow and there were colourful childlike drawings all over the walls. A rainbow with a pot of gold, a dinosaur or monster of some kind, an attempted self portrait, and plenty more. It was from what I could understand one room in a larger building with several purposes. The daycare/ children’s area that we were in was one big rectangle separated into two halves almost by these metal beds and some wooden book and toy shelves. So there was a little narrow pass near the wall halfway across the room, but the shelves were all quite low of course because kids can’t reach high up so you could see the entire room from either side. There were also toys strewn all over the floor. I remember holding one for a moment, a little painted wooden train.

I can’t even really remember how or why I was in this situation, I just was. I had been trying to send a message to someone else, another woman who I’ve never met before or since and was supposedly lost in a forest. She had an internet connection though, because she managed to contact me somehow and was asking me for help to find her way out. She wanted me to give her the directions which I must have known at the time and they had to be in the form of several brief vocaroo messages. Even though I couldn’t see her as I was in the daycare centre, although unaware of it at the time, I somehow knew what she looked like. She was sitting down against a giant oak tree trunk with her hair in a ponytail, wearing that kind of middle class outdoorsy style of clothing. A quilted jacket and check shirt, wellies without any mud or dirt on them, fine leather gloves and a woollen hat, you know the look. So I sent the first message and then listened back to it as you do, but I had the very common experience of hearing your own voice recorded and it sounding way different to normal. So feeling uncomfortable about that I put my phone away and decided to just forget the whole situation, and realised I was here in this daycare place. In there with me was oneitis (maybe ex-oneitis now, idk what to call her) and another third person I didn’t recognise. The third person never said anything, I think she just faded into the background after some time. I was surprised to see her as I’ve already said, and she seemed surprised as well. She asked me how I’d been, and what I was doing there (I had a reason at the time I’m sure, but it escapes me now) and told me this was where she worked now. She was so friendly, it was just like when we were both working together. Actually no it wasn’t, but it was like the few times when I was actually able to hold a conversation with her. So we were cleaning up or doing something else menial for some time, and she just turned to me at one point and said she got the note I left behind the last day I saw her. I said I was really glad to hear it, I’d worried for a little while if it had blown away or somehow not been seen for whatever reason and it was nice to know that not only was it seen but it was appreciated and didn’t come off as creepy or weird. She told me she had wanted to reply, to text me a quick thank you but had been so busy and after a couple days worried herself it would seem weird to reply because of the time gap and decided to leave it. The whole thing came out of nowhere, a real sense of closure but only after I had first accepted there wouldn’t be. I mean it, I felt a genuine satisfaction that this whole embarrassing lapse in judgement was behind me for good even after waking up and realising it was a dream.

It’s weird, we think of a dream as “not real” and sure it’s not “real” but we’re still definitely in there. When you wake up it isn’t a hard cut, often after a particularly vivid or intense dream it can take a good 20 minutes to fully separate the two worlds. Usually it’s less, maybe a few seconds or a minute, but nevertheless it still disorients you waking from a dream however briefly. So that’s what I was getting, that warm feeling of knowing my message had been seen and getting to say a proper goodbye which I’d missed remained with me for some time as I was slowly coming around. I went about my usual morning routine, made a cup of coffee and sat down in front of my laptop and immediately wrote the first line for what would eventually become this entry. “The walls were a flaxen yellow”. I knew already the dream was important, but I hadn’t even had time to process it completely and I didn’t actually go back until this afternoon and start writing again. I know it’s been a while, I’ll be honest I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 in almost all my spare time when not at work. I haven’t been this invested in any kind of vidya since Dark Souls 3, it’s so fucking comfy. I have been thinking about the dream and this lingering feeling that stayed with me though, and I realise it’s been a week since I’ve uploaded so I’ll try to get something finished. See, it might not be materially real sure but that feeling I had was as real as if I’d have bumped into her walking around one day and had a similar interaction. At least for a time anyway, after waking that is. I already talked about this before, but I kind of fell for a character anyway not really the person herself. Not an entirely separate person sure, but I suppose the best way of explaining this is to say that when she wasn’t actually around is when I got to know her best.

So what does it matter if the thing that inspired this feeling in me wasn’t “real”, because the feeling itself certainly was. If anything it’s appropriate that an interaction in my head is what it took to bring me some closure. It didn’t last forever, I eventually woke up completely and that feeling had faded. Still I know I felt it, the feeling was as real as can be, the brain processes that would have taken place following a similar interaction irl happened in my head just because of a dream. It was real, real real, materially real, I can’t think of another way to put it. It makes me think of this video I saw a while ago, maybe a year or two. There was this youtube e-celeb I followed for a while, I always tire of these people eventually but he lasted quite some time, and he made this video about a lighter he bought while visiting the US. It might be one of my favourites of his, a brief 10 minute thing. It’s the delivery that I appreciate, he presents things much more intelligently than most on the platform and especially in that sphere of it. Instead of the constant and irksome authoritative statements most of the dunning-kruger faggots on there constantly shit out, he tended to present things as if he was not entirely sure himself. Some would say that shows weakness or cowardice because he’s not willing to commit but that’s misguided in my opinion. I think people who are more intelligent (or at least more thoughtful, I’ve already gone into the distinction in some detail before here) do linger at this earlier stage in the thought process. So anyway he talks about how he kept this lighter, misplaced it for a while and then one day found it again. This lighter, which he’d bought in the US, was like a keepsake. So while the lighter itself was had no real material or monetary value (it had even run out of lighter fluid) it had the good memories from that time tied to it and also served as a little reminder every time he looked at it to one day return there. He had also been to one of the Scandinavian countries since then though, and they have 7/11s as well, in that period between losing the lighter and finding it again. That trip had been more brief and hectic, so he might have picked another lighter up and forgotten all about it, and now he thought he’d found the original but it was actually just another empty plastic lighter among millions. Those memories that were brought back from looking at this maybe-not-the-original-lighter that first time finding it again were just as real as if he knew for certain it was the original. If anything, knowing for certain might sever the connection and so the truth would only be a negative thing. I’d agree because after I’d fully woken up I lost that sense of closure again, but when I was coming to and still between two worlds the connection remained. It was the last thing to go actually, I suppose because I wanted to hold onto it far more than the flaxen yellow room and that little toy train.

There is one crucial difference between the two anecdotes of course, his original lighter and holiday were very much real and if there was a second it was also, whereas my dream was all in my head. Why do I have this attitude that my feelings being a response to a dream make them less.. meaningful though? I mean dreams can be very powerful, plenty of real world decisions made by various important figures throughout history were inspired by dreams. From my own experience, I know I’ve seen a different side to people I know in dreams (as I’m less spergy and more comfortable around people in them for whatever reason) and it has genuinely made it ever so slightly easier to be around them irl. This other side has even turned out to be quite accurate to how they are somehow in some cases. So dreams aren’t just the refuse dump for our subconscious as some people say, they clearly have at least the potential to be a powerful tool of intuition. You can learn something about yourself by looking at the content of your dreams as well, often something you dwelled on very briefly will shows up there weeks later while things you in your most sober waking moments think to be most important never do. It’s rather unusual, at least for me anyway, for something to feel worth paying attention to in both states. I’m not quite sure, I feel like I could have done a better job with this but I’m having a small mental block. It’s really late (or early) and I’ve been sitting writing this for hours. I know, for several hours of time I haven’t got much to show for it. This is what’s been really making me think this week though, maybe I’ll come back to the subject another time more prepared.