implode
05-16-2005, 08:37 AM
okay. here's a quick story: i like the deftones. chino has a wonderful voice and teams it with thoughtful lyrics (occasionally), so i was eager to hear what team sleep (chino's side project) had to offer. upon first listen, i was greeted with mellow electronica... almost a radioheadesque sound, but with chino and some guy that contrasts chino leading the way. very nice, okay. and then i reach a song called "tomb of liegia" - and it's beautiful. best song on the album, upon first listen.
entering "tomb of liegia" into google comes up with about 6,000 hits that all say the same fucking thing "tomb of liegia is based upon a poem by edgar allen poe." not ONE of these links tells you which poem it's based upon, leading you to the conclusion that chino might've mentioned it once to an audience of kids that went home and wrote about it in their blog, which scores of other kids ripped from that blog, which came to be accepted as fact. whatever. it was at this point that i realized that outside of the raven, cask of amontillado, and the tell-tale heart, i really hadn't read anything by the man who was "goth" before "goth" could be purchased with VISA. so over the past few days, i've been reading poe, and have come to the conclusion that what i wrote this morning was a direct rip of the crazy structure he employed when setting that quill to paper.
this is what i wrote this morning. it's pretty crazy.
---
it was an era in which active thinking was frowned upon. but do not misunderstand - as the concept of thought can be applied to whatever process a brain goes through whereupon a new result is inferred from prior data - but truly, to understand, you must accept that anyone who could understand what "active thinking" was would not be in charge of mandating the social implications behind it. wanting to change the channel from the remote control was not active thinking, but so many accepted it to be that it became so, just as so many had accepted that the remote control in itself was a worthy enough device to be catapaulted into the center stage. prevailing attitudes amongst specific communities have always influenced those not vital enough to distinguish an attitude all their own, and few doubted that it was better off that way.
and as such, alternative routes needed to be persued - in the form of transcontinental communication, mostly. it was a luxury that afforded "the thinker" with ample time to organize his thoughts and present them to the class, in the vein of a teacher mulling over a fascinating article in the wee hours of a sunday night. and in such a way, it conveyed an image that was not true to it's forebearer, but rather the inside of the forebearer's mind. the forebearer himself would fancy that deduction up with clever analogies about internal combustion, a topic he vaguely understood outside of the fact that he could make reference to it in an address to himself. he might say "the sum of the parts is available for scrunity at the turn of the key, but the opinion has no merit without a full day of driving under your belt."
and as was so, the thinker had very few people close to him in his own personal life. were he to bore you with the details of his ascent to nothing, you would undoubtedly be persuaded by clues to psychoanalyze his own existence, as if though life were simply a puzzle that was always complete, yet still always growing. with the right combination of pieces, a final product is always produced, and in looking backwards, you can see how the knot connects the two loose garments together and fashions them into a rudimentary sundress. he always thought this the key - if ever an onlooker could connect those pieces, trace them back, and come up with a coherent hypothesis, he feared too much insight would be available on his own existence, to the point where he'd be able to question the pieces that created the whole. and in negating the existence of integral pieces of the puzzle, would it not be true that what followed would be the genuine definition of magic that skeptics spend their entire lives caustically clamoring for? if a part disappears from a whole, what you look upon then is nothing less but a miracle of the universe - a self-sufficient structure that has no symmetry. pieces can no longer be rearranged to form a whole - should that structure ever be disassembled, it would become painfully evident that it was never a whole in the first place, but rather a mirage of false splendor that only a few moments of observation could send toppling into oblivion. the thinker knew this. the thinker thought he knew this, in any event, and though no one had ever come close to doing so (or nay, ever even attempted, outside of the example that had many a time brought him to a perilous tremble that needed the help of his knees to support the vertical constant) he both feared and cheered that one day it might, and he might have some insight on whether the sum of his parts made a whole worthy of continuing to update.
but it never came. perhaps it was the awkwardness of his interactions - he often feared that the side of himself he exposed was a paradox in itself, an unanswerable concept on the whole, yet one dangerously easy to contradict topically - and perhaps it was the haste he took to shield himself from any interaction that COULD manifest into what he looked upon as his final checkpoint on the way to the finish line. and as time went on, it became increasingly clear that this particluar mental eccentricity would unravel him from the very seams of the existence he acted so ominously in. had what he been doing every day been considered "fun" (too many interpretations of the bastard word to avoid using quotation disclaimers) he might've been able to avoid such a fate, but daily it proved so that too many unanswerable questions about a subject turned the subject into a myth, an old-wives tale that the norm of decision-making society-hounds would hardly look upon beyond it's mythical qualities. the decision-makers, he mused, do not look upon that cannot be frilled by the soft edges of the imagination. either it is black and white, or it is fantasy - there is no ground in between for which you can safely burrow yourself and regard your own being as fantastic yet worldy, a mineral of indeterminate origin that begs both speculation and observation by the scientific and empathetic communities alike! no, he thought. people are not worthy of such reverence. only that which was there before us can be regarded as an unanswerable fact.
he struggled to remember where he started. it was a pointless chore - where he started was of no consequence, only where he ended up. how to connect the two was evident in the writing directly before him, yet the connection could not be made. understood. made? surely made, as we've just traversed, it was sitting right before him. but the catalyst that shifted one contruct to another remained shrouded in mystery, and it was that catalyst that deserved the true analyzation. if you understand WHY one piece connects to another, only then can your comprehension be regarded as final. he stirred. this was the feeling of making progress that would be disregarded immediately - another paradox, in itself. why can the process of moving forward be discarded at whim, transporting you back to where you started without ever manifesting itself in physical traits?
an uneasiness fell upon him. this was the look of the outside observer - he took it upon himself to become someone far different from himself at any available instance, who would regard his deductions as infantile, or incomprehensible, or merely obvious. the outsider that he possessed in himself was never sated. were he to die right here, on the floor next to his death, the outsider would question both the grace in which he fell from his chair and the reality of the ailment inside of him that sent him toppling in the first place. he would quite literally be a skeptical observer of his own death - even the finality of the situation would be obscured by the disbelief at the sum of it's parts. he considered weeping, but scorned the thought immediately, as any bellow that first required speculatory inquiry was evidently not mature enough to be considered valid. he wrote, for the first time in minutes, on the ink stained page:
"if you cannot accept your own death, how then can you accept your own life?"
this sent his tongue into fitful spasms for a few moments. if this reality could be questioned by a reality of your own mind, where might the two realities meet? two railroads constructed independently of each other were destined to meet eventually, as long as laborers on both sides continued their work. and once the trains felt comfortable enough to leave the station, it was only a matter of time before catastrophe struck. and who would be to blame when it did? society-hounds always looked to assign blame to find comfort in tragedy. it was as if they believed that finding the cause of the tragedy was a reasonable substitute for mourning it.
he paused. this was monomaniacal thinking - all his mind eggs in one cerebral basket, so to speak in an adorably naive pretense. the answers would come were he able to stop this. to become one with the life force he claimed to strive to understand, yet never took the time to actually observe in a light equitable to understanding. he feared he did not know how - making him far simpler than he may have wished to be. if all that can be produced is merely the waste matter of a mind unfocused, than any experience that took place inside his own mind could be concluded to be waste. society burns waste. society buries waste in huge underground catacombs, willing itself to forget its existence. and socety plods on, with the same stupid smile it's had since he learned of it's concept. society, however paradoxial it might be, found a way to go on.
he realized he was standing up. wondering what may have led the action portion of his mind to this decision, he stopped with the musing - action was about to be taken, and he would not be a quiet observer of what was bound to affect his next bout of quiet observation. yet however fast he made the decision to make decisions, he was already halfway descended down the steps, inarguably headed for the front door. he tried to exercise his control over his legs and make a change of direction towards the faucet to procure a glass of water, but all for naught. the doorknob had already been turned, the humid may air biting his face with its sultry combination of displeasure and intrigue. he was headed for the garage. very little was in the garage, of this he knew, and also considered to be fitful, as there must be very little inside his own mind presently, as well. and all at once, the lock was conquered, the heavy doors swung open with one determined yank, and he observed himself from beyond himself: standing on a dirt-lined structure, hands heavy with the weight of the shovel.
entering "tomb of liegia" into google comes up with about 6,000 hits that all say the same fucking thing "tomb of liegia is based upon a poem by edgar allen poe." not ONE of these links tells you which poem it's based upon, leading you to the conclusion that chino might've mentioned it once to an audience of kids that went home and wrote about it in their blog, which scores of other kids ripped from that blog, which came to be accepted as fact. whatever. it was at this point that i realized that outside of the raven, cask of amontillado, and the tell-tale heart, i really hadn't read anything by the man who was "goth" before "goth" could be purchased with VISA. so over the past few days, i've been reading poe, and have come to the conclusion that what i wrote this morning was a direct rip of the crazy structure he employed when setting that quill to paper.
this is what i wrote this morning. it's pretty crazy.
---
it was an era in which active thinking was frowned upon. but do not misunderstand - as the concept of thought can be applied to whatever process a brain goes through whereupon a new result is inferred from prior data - but truly, to understand, you must accept that anyone who could understand what "active thinking" was would not be in charge of mandating the social implications behind it. wanting to change the channel from the remote control was not active thinking, but so many accepted it to be that it became so, just as so many had accepted that the remote control in itself was a worthy enough device to be catapaulted into the center stage. prevailing attitudes amongst specific communities have always influenced those not vital enough to distinguish an attitude all their own, and few doubted that it was better off that way.
and as such, alternative routes needed to be persued - in the form of transcontinental communication, mostly. it was a luxury that afforded "the thinker" with ample time to organize his thoughts and present them to the class, in the vein of a teacher mulling over a fascinating article in the wee hours of a sunday night. and in such a way, it conveyed an image that was not true to it's forebearer, but rather the inside of the forebearer's mind. the forebearer himself would fancy that deduction up with clever analogies about internal combustion, a topic he vaguely understood outside of the fact that he could make reference to it in an address to himself. he might say "the sum of the parts is available for scrunity at the turn of the key, but the opinion has no merit without a full day of driving under your belt."
and as was so, the thinker had very few people close to him in his own personal life. were he to bore you with the details of his ascent to nothing, you would undoubtedly be persuaded by clues to psychoanalyze his own existence, as if though life were simply a puzzle that was always complete, yet still always growing. with the right combination of pieces, a final product is always produced, and in looking backwards, you can see how the knot connects the two loose garments together and fashions them into a rudimentary sundress. he always thought this the key - if ever an onlooker could connect those pieces, trace them back, and come up with a coherent hypothesis, he feared too much insight would be available on his own existence, to the point where he'd be able to question the pieces that created the whole. and in negating the existence of integral pieces of the puzzle, would it not be true that what followed would be the genuine definition of magic that skeptics spend their entire lives caustically clamoring for? if a part disappears from a whole, what you look upon then is nothing less but a miracle of the universe - a self-sufficient structure that has no symmetry. pieces can no longer be rearranged to form a whole - should that structure ever be disassembled, it would become painfully evident that it was never a whole in the first place, but rather a mirage of false splendor that only a few moments of observation could send toppling into oblivion. the thinker knew this. the thinker thought he knew this, in any event, and though no one had ever come close to doing so (or nay, ever even attempted, outside of the example that had many a time brought him to a perilous tremble that needed the help of his knees to support the vertical constant) he both feared and cheered that one day it might, and he might have some insight on whether the sum of his parts made a whole worthy of continuing to update.
but it never came. perhaps it was the awkwardness of his interactions - he often feared that the side of himself he exposed was a paradox in itself, an unanswerable concept on the whole, yet one dangerously easy to contradict topically - and perhaps it was the haste he took to shield himself from any interaction that COULD manifest into what he looked upon as his final checkpoint on the way to the finish line. and as time went on, it became increasingly clear that this particluar mental eccentricity would unravel him from the very seams of the existence he acted so ominously in. had what he been doing every day been considered "fun" (too many interpretations of the bastard word to avoid using quotation disclaimers) he might've been able to avoid such a fate, but daily it proved so that too many unanswerable questions about a subject turned the subject into a myth, an old-wives tale that the norm of decision-making society-hounds would hardly look upon beyond it's mythical qualities. the decision-makers, he mused, do not look upon that cannot be frilled by the soft edges of the imagination. either it is black and white, or it is fantasy - there is no ground in between for which you can safely burrow yourself and regard your own being as fantastic yet worldy, a mineral of indeterminate origin that begs both speculation and observation by the scientific and empathetic communities alike! no, he thought. people are not worthy of such reverence. only that which was there before us can be regarded as an unanswerable fact.
he struggled to remember where he started. it was a pointless chore - where he started was of no consequence, only where he ended up. how to connect the two was evident in the writing directly before him, yet the connection could not be made. understood. made? surely made, as we've just traversed, it was sitting right before him. but the catalyst that shifted one contruct to another remained shrouded in mystery, and it was that catalyst that deserved the true analyzation. if you understand WHY one piece connects to another, only then can your comprehension be regarded as final. he stirred. this was the feeling of making progress that would be disregarded immediately - another paradox, in itself. why can the process of moving forward be discarded at whim, transporting you back to where you started without ever manifesting itself in physical traits?
an uneasiness fell upon him. this was the look of the outside observer - he took it upon himself to become someone far different from himself at any available instance, who would regard his deductions as infantile, or incomprehensible, or merely obvious. the outsider that he possessed in himself was never sated. were he to die right here, on the floor next to his death, the outsider would question both the grace in which he fell from his chair and the reality of the ailment inside of him that sent him toppling in the first place. he would quite literally be a skeptical observer of his own death - even the finality of the situation would be obscured by the disbelief at the sum of it's parts. he considered weeping, but scorned the thought immediately, as any bellow that first required speculatory inquiry was evidently not mature enough to be considered valid. he wrote, for the first time in minutes, on the ink stained page:
"if you cannot accept your own death, how then can you accept your own life?"
this sent his tongue into fitful spasms for a few moments. if this reality could be questioned by a reality of your own mind, where might the two realities meet? two railroads constructed independently of each other were destined to meet eventually, as long as laborers on both sides continued their work. and once the trains felt comfortable enough to leave the station, it was only a matter of time before catastrophe struck. and who would be to blame when it did? society-hounds always looked to assign blame to find comfort in tragedy. it was as if they believed that finding the cause of the tragedy was a reasonable substitute for mourning it.
he paused. this was monomaniacal thinking - all his mind eggs in one cerebral basket, so to speak in an adorably naive pretense. the answers would come were he able to stop this. to become one with the life force he claimed to strive to understand, yet never took the time to actually observe in a light equitable to understanding. he feared he did not know how - making him far simpler than he may have wished to be. if all that can be produced is merely the waste matter of a mind unfocused, than any experience that took place inside his own mind could be concluded to be waste. society burns waste. society buries waste in huge underground catacombs, willing itself to forget its existence. and socety plods on, with the same stupid smile it's had since he learned of it's concept. society, however paradoxial it might be, found a way to go on.
he realized he was standing up. wondering what may have led the action portion of his mind to this decision, he stopped with the musing - action was about to be taken, and he would not be a quiet observer of what was bound to affect his next bout of quiet observation. yet however fast he made the decision to make decisions, he was already halfway descended down the steps, inarguably headed for the front door. he tried to exercise his control over his legs and make a change of direction towards the faucet to procure a glass of water, but all for naught. the doorknob had already been turned, the humid may air biting his face with its sultry combination of displeasure and intrigue. he was headed for the garage. very little was in the garage, of this he knew, and also considered to be fitful, as there must be very little inside his own mind presently, as well. and all at once, the lock was conquered, the heavy doors swung open with one determined yank, and he observed himself from beyond himself: standing on a dirt-lined structure, hands heavy with the weight of the shovel.