I really want to say that everything I do is intentional. That you can look infinitely into my creations and understand my decisions at every level. But alas, that is not true.
What the fuck is the word “alas”. Google/Oxford defines it as “an expression of grief, pity, or concern” so when I die, I want every speaker to end their speech with “alas”.
That's not to say that I don't put a lot of thought into my creations that will inevitably go unnoticed; I do. But I also make a shitton of mistakes that I don't realize. I would say that when I make art, I make a conscious, intentional decision about every aspect of the creation that I am aware of. Like in this blog, I often make meta-references that you probably will never notice. But it's fun for me to pack in a hidden lore.
For example, these few paragraphs from “Honesty” were a stroke of genius to me
First, I only sorta stand by the stuff I say. A lot of what I post on this blog is written in a late-night haze. These ideas are, more often than not, very undeveloped. I'm not rereading this shit more than like once. There is no other person catching what might be misconstrued. I try to write things clearly but sometimes that doesn't happen. I think this is a sacrifice I need to make if I want to combat my perfectionism. So it's not that I don't stand by what I write, I do, but what I write might not be what I mean, if you know what I mean.
Also I realized that I haven't been putting in my commas where they should be. I think I started doing this to portray that this writing is not polished, but I think I'll try to incorporate them now. I love commas so much, I don't want to leave them behind.
Also, I love putting in various fun writing quirks that I sometimes have to take out of my writing when I revise. Like “what I write might not be what I mean, if you know what I mean” is genius to me. I like to make use of repetition in fun ways, or various stylistic changes to mean certain things. So keep on the lookout, I guess?
I love reiterating certain themes over and over again, or using choices of syntax to reference a point I'm making. Or I'll make something intentionally be a double entendre or be ambiguous. I don't revise these things so it's not super polished, and honestly some of these things might be really obvious and I just think that they're super hidden and it comes across as a “im 14 and this is deep” but FUCK OFF i don't find anything else enjoyable anymore so let me live in this one delusion for once.
But I make a lot of mistakes too. Like in “Take a Seat”, I sing “But what still remains / Is the memories that I've kept” which is just grammatically incorrect, and I missed it because it's split up across two lines. It should be “But what still remain / Are the memories that I've kept” which to be fair doesn't sound as good to me but I do care about grammar more than I care about life so I don't know.
I've also mistakenly lost the plot of the blog. I've gotten a whole lot more serious on here. I used to be silly and goofy. But the blog is my dumping ground, and sometimes there's more serious stuff to dump. So sorry.
I recently found this AI “Songtell” that analyzed the meanings of my songs and it was crazy how accurate it was. It was able to get that in “I Saw You” I'm not actually talking about physical sight. It understood the metaphor of “underneath your skin”, although it didn't get that it was supposed to be intentionally a bit disturbing of a metaphor.
I've talked about artistic intent before in my piece, “AI art isn't exploitative — and that's the problem,” for my college newspaper. I wasn't trying to say that intent is what brings an artwork value, because you can get plenty of insight and value from unintentional things that people put in. Rather, art is a unique way to cross the void, a way that traditional language just can't. We learn more about each other and about ourselves. And sure, you might be able to learn about yourself from an AI, but I think there is something more powerful about a human–human connection, at least at this moment. And if a human has consciousness and an AI can't (for the sake of argument), the human–human connection is uniquely valuable.
I'm being more intentional with my music this time around. I have more experience and so I know what I wasn't intentional about last time around. I genuinely think that I might be making something good this time. Ironically, despite being intentional about these things, I still can't control everything. I have limitations. I knew that the guitar sounds sounded kinda shitty in Evening Rumination song x, but I couldn't fix them. That might have been the part of the process I focused on the most, and yet, not super “intentional” at the end.
I think the moral of the story is that if it's good, I did it intentionally at every level of detail. If it's bad, it's simply my human/physical limitations, and you need to cut me some slack. Anthony Fantano gives this one a 10/10