crouch like a crow
Nov. 27th, 2011 06:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
methrowrockIt is in the soporific haze of the early morning that you glimpse the magick of the mundane. Your eyelids weighed down by the desire to close them, your eyes glazed with the luminescence of a million pixels, your mind engorged on the buffet of colours and movements. Blink. The world that appears is a world that conjures the corporeality of hopes and dreams. Inhale. Exhale. Emotions surge into the lungs, the aortas, the reticulated network of vessels and veins. A hulking and undifferentiated mass of a mess. It barrages through the channels, making its presence known like a swaggering overlord. It claims priority; it demands superiority. And in these bleary hours, certainty is certainly something that you desire and cherish. Certainty that your day has not been a waste of time; your month, your year, your decade, your life has not been a waste of time. Certainty that your future will not be a waste of time. Certainty that you are exactly who you are in where you need to be. And in these dreary hours, you give yourself a discount by conflating lived necessities with actualized aspirations. Things are going well, the best that they possibly can, given what you have. You smile. :) Then, the song stops. In the lull between two aural worlds, the one that you had painted with firm brushstrokes disappears. Things accelerate in reverse motion. The certainty curls into itself, the emotions recedes and swirls into a drainpipe on the floor of your imagination. Blink. You are yawning, you have a final in a day's time, you are slouching against a makeshift fortress of pillows with a laptop burning up your thighs. Bleargh. But that's okay, because you will soon sleep and have the sun do the smiling for you. And you will be soothed by the stable dreams you will have later.
But before sleep, I will go into a brief ramble about a documentary I watched today, PressPausePlay. It delves into the issue of the proliferation of the Internet and what that meant for popular culture. Mainly about how the digital revolution has democratized the cultural industry, by increasing the accessibility of tools and techniques to people all over the world. But does this diversification augment the quality of culture, or does it represent an "ocean of garbage"? What does this mean to the companies, to the audiences, to the individual artistes? I liked it quite a lot, being well-filmed and well thought-out, with interesting perspectives from a plethora of interviewees. And it was something that was close to the heart as well. I mean, watching all the youtube stars and overnight Internet sensations, who hasn't wondered about whether the same thing could happen to you too? The dominance of a certain way of growing up in Singapore left most people little choice but to conform to the average. Everything was planned for you; one progressed through the stages simply by following the linear trajectory of time and its tasks placed at strategic intervals with pedantic instructions. Over-regulation of the individual by the social? Hahaha never a bad time to whip out some Durkheim. But yes, this digital revolution, it could provide an alternative avenue to chart our life with, because structural obstacles have been overcome. Then again, there is the question of reception that comes after production. The ubiquity could be debilitating as well.
What I had the deepest impression of was that it doesn't matter whether you had access to conventional or unconventional methods, or possessed the required knowledge, what mattered most was that you have to believe in the intrinsic worth of something. You have to have a full-fledged passion that would blaze through obstacles and get you access to anything, anywhere. You have to trust and desire the meaning of what you do. Despite the constant creation of evanescent forms, the human motive that drove the content remained the same. Centuries and millenniums have passed, but ultimately, don't we want the same things? But what are those things?? That is the aspect that unsettles me, because I only have vague ideas of what is important to me. Or maybe I do, but am too afraid to pursue it, because failure in something that I love hurts more than keeping up the pretense of detached nonchalance. Which is a shit reason, I know. The heart that loves must be bigger than the pain created by love it has given away. Slowly and surely, I have been trying. But when you watch these documentaries, filled with people who are so assured of the congruity between their passions and careers, it is hard to be unfazed and it is easy to feel embarrassed by the comparative insignificance of your progress. But that is step one. Introspection and inspiration follows after, which makes PressPausePlay an engaging and aesthetically-pleasing watch. So catch it here on youtube if you have 90 minutes to spare and an interest in music, film, art. Which is practically everyone after finals haha. Which reminds me, MINE ARE NOT OVER. OK, WILL STUDY MY ASS OFF IN 7 HOURS' TIME.
And okay, why I keep lapsing into the second-hand narrative.. To add emphasis? To seek identification? To divorce myself from myself? To dramatize? Hmmmm.. And wahh, just noticed that this is my 701st entry. Has it been 6 years already!?
But before sleep, I will go into a brief ramble about a documentary I watched today, PressPausePlay. It delves into the issue of the proliferation of the Internet and what that meant for popular culture. Mainly about how the digital revolution has democratized the cultural industry, by increasing the accessibility of tools and techniques to people all over the world. But does this diversification augment the quality of culture, or does it represent an "ocean of garbage"? What does this mean to the companies, to the audiences, to the individual artistes? I liked it quite a lot, being well-filmed and well thought-out, with interesting perspectives from a plethora of interviewees. And it was something that was close to the heart as well. I mean, watching all the youtube stars and overnight Internet sensations, who hasn't wondered about whether the same thing could happen to you too? The dominance of a certain way of growing up in Singapore left most people little choice but to conform to the average. Everything was planned for you; one progressed through the stages simply by following the linear trajectory of time and its tasks placed at strategic intervals with pedantic instructions. Over-regulation of the individual by the social? Hahaha never a bad time to whip out some Durkheim. But yes, this digital revolution, it could provide an alternative avenue to chart our life with, because structural obstacles have been overcome. Then again, there is the question of reception that comes after production. The ubiquity could be debilitating as well.
What I had the deepest impression of was that it doesn't matter whether you had access to conventional or unconventional methods, or possessed the required knowledge, what mattered most was that you have to believe in the intrinsic worth of something. You have to have a full-fledged passion that would blaze through obstacles and get you access to anything, anywhere. You have to trust and desire the meaning of what you do. Despite the constant creation of evanescent forms, the human motive that drove the content remained the same. Centuries and millenniums have passed, but ultimately, don't we want the same things? But what are those things?? That is the aspect that unsettles me, because I only have vague ideas of what is important to me. Or maybe I do, but am too afraid to pursue it, because failure in something that I love hurts more than keeping up the pretense of detached nonchalance. Which is a shit reason, I know. The heart that loves must be bigger than the pain created by love it has given away. Slowly and surely, I have been trying. But when you watch these documentaries, filled with people who are so assured of the congruity between their passions and careers, it is hard to be unfazed and it is easy to feel embarrassed by the comparative insignificance of your progress. But that is step one. Introspection and inspiration follows after, which makes PressPausePlay an engaging and aesthetically-pleasing watch. So catch it here on youtube if you have 90 minutes to spare and an interest in music, film, art. Which is practically everyone after finals haha. Which reminds me, MINE ARE NOT OVER. OK, WILL STUDY MY ASS OFF IN 7 HOURS' TIME.
And okay, why I keep lapsing into the second-hand narrative.. To add emphasis? To seek identification? To divorce myself from myself? To dramatize? Hmmmm.. And wahh, just noticed that this is my 701st entry. Has it been 6 years already!?
