What exactly do you think you are?
The millions and trillions of thoughts, memories,
juxtapositions — even crazy ones like this, you’re thinking — that flash
through your head and disappear? Some sum or remainder of these?
Your history? Do you know how long it’s been since I told you I was a
fraud? Do you remember you were looking at the respicem watch
hanging from the rearview and seeing the time, 9:17? What are you
looking at right now? Coincidence? What if no time has passed at all?*
The truth is you’ve already heard this. That this is what it’s like. That
it’s what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent
fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you
can never show another soul. And you think it makes you
a fraud, the tiny fraction anyone else ever sees? Of course you’re a
fraud, of course what people see is never you. And of course you know
this, and of course you try to manage what part they see if you know
it’s only a part. Who wouldn’t? It’s called free will, Sherlock. But at the
same time it’s why it feels so good to break down and cry in front of
others, or to laugh, or speak in tongues, or chant in Bengali — it’s not
English anymore, it’s not getting squeezed through any hole.
One of the things that's difficult is that we are all conflicted messes so much of the time. Emotional honesty is hard because you have to squeeze stuff into a form that others will understand, care about, react to. language by its very nature forces you to leave stuff out, tell a single story. to have something make sense to someone else we have to sacrifice parts of the experience
this is a bit defeatist droid, so what are you doing now? nobly captaining the ship while it goes down?
All worthwhile boards are to some degree intimidating: that was certainly the case on alt.movies.kubrick (on which Padraig and I cut our teeth) when it was good. It was intimidating in the same sense that I used to find the NME intimidating, when Penman and Morley wrote for it. Intimidating in that it demanded something of you, made you want to be more than what you were, made you want to be worthy of it. ILM is intimidating. My problem with ILM is, again, not antagonism, but smugness - the one-liner, one-upmanship culture of getting one over on someone else with no deeper project.
I can see that. That definitely gives the impression of a discussion between friends that all have the same reference points, so not welcoming. I think it was longer more in depth discussion on a few threads that encouraged me back too. Maybe we need to be pro-active about it. Outward facing, Maybe like i dunno... a zine, here's what we have to offer everyone, join us!