Can I say I called it? ContraPoints released her three-hour long video essay on Twilight about a week ago (lol). It's not actually about Twilight really, it's about desire and fantasy and the predator-prey dynamic and all that. And I talked about a lot of this in my blog post “Desire” — I even quoted her at the end of it. Granted I don't touch on everything she says in her video since her video is three hours long and my blog post is less than a thousand words, but I touched on it before her so ha. I also touched on the more internal mental aspects rather than the political tangible implications of desire.

I would recommend you watch the video, but if you haven't watched ContraPoints before, it's a lot. I highly recommend that you watch “Justice”, which made me completely rethink the concept of fairness. It's only (only lol) 40 minutes.

I'm at home for Spring Break and I hope to film a video while I'm here. I have a new camera and a script ready to go, but I don't know where to film. Big problem, I know. In my video about the Left and the Right, the audio was absolutely fucked by filming outside, plus it was really awkward because my neighbors could hear me doing a bunch of takes. Standing in front of a wall for Patriotism was also awkward, and sitting in my old chair at that like 45 degree angle in The OK Sign was even worse. So I don't know what to do. It would be cool if I had a set or something but I don't for obvious reasons. (expensive, I only film once every four years, etc.)

I feel similarly about my music. I need to record somewhere, and my microphones are at home so I need to do it while I'm home. But during the day, there are the sounds of cars in the background that I can't get rid of, and during the night, people are trying to sleep in my house. WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!! I also don't like recording my guitar because it's a big hassle and a bigger pain in the ass and it doesn't sound super good. So less of the guitar for these songs. My voice is less of a pain in the ass, but I need to have a good voice day and I've been eating a lot of dairy which is not good for your voice.

I have been trying to develop a visual aesthetic for this new music project. I think the best album covers are not just cool in themselves but also they fit the music they represent. So I have a visual aesthetic that I'm trying to make the music sound like, which is a really weird thing. But I'm making some breakthroughs in producing Summer's Out, which I debuted in an Instagram Live in November.

I'm trying to make music that's like shoegaze but also singer-songwriter but also electronic but also like 1950s pop standards. That's difficult because just combining them sounds like shit. Well it can sound “good” but no one would want to listen to it. I'm approaching this album like it's my Kid A sort of, where I go completely off the rails. So the actual music will not be shoegaze meets singer-songwriter meets whatever the fuck else I said. I have this fear of saying like “I think my music is XXX cool genre” and people are like “bitch this is the most basic song I have ever heard in my life”. But it's important to keep your songs simple and actually like catchy otherwise they are so fucking boring to listen to.

I need to write more lyrics. But those are hard and music is easy actually just kidding that's also hard. I have two songs complete and just needing voice recording and finishing production. I have some other ideas that I need to write lyrics for, but I also don't know if they will all make the cut.

It's difficult to do everything. You can only do so much because it is impossible to be perfect. I used to think that just meant that perfection is just really difficult and it's practically impossible to put in the time necessary to do it. No. Actually life is just annoying in that sometimes the best way to do something still sucks.

Like no matter how I try, this repository will be organized weirdly. What do I include? Just the important stuff or the junk too? What junk do I include? The important junk or the junk junk? Where do I put the junk? Do I separate the junk from the non-junk? What is junk vs non-junk? Ultimately these are binaries that attempt to split spectra, and you can't organize by spectrum — you can only organize by category. Granted you could plot everything in a 3D lattice but even that is only three dimensions, and it's three dimensions projected on a 2D screen. Maybe I could have everything on a Time - Quality grid, but even that doesn't work. Do you do it by when it was released or when it was made? What does “released” mean? What does “quality” mean? There are multiple kinds of quality. So I think about this shit all the time. And no matter what I do, there are just physical constraints that mean that it will be at least a bit inconvenient to search for something. Oh shit wouldn't it be cool to include a search engine in this repository? I wonder how you do that. Maybe you can't do that.

So I'm trying to make peace with the fact that shit just sucks sometimes. But how do you make peace with stuff and also try to fix it? Maybe a certain amount of suffering is just innate to a good life. Fucking hell now I'm getting into philosophy. Honestly, how can you not get into philosophy? If you don't get into philosophy sometimes, you're missing out on a full life me thinks.

I want to make my room nice, but I've been unhappy with it for as long as I can remember. I repainted my room to be a darker green and I actually like it on its own, but now my wooden furniture looks orange. And I can't stain it or anything because 1) that's difficult and 2) my floor is also the same color of wooden so having two colors of wood will look weird me thinks. Me thinks sounds so fucking millennial I'll stop I'm sorry. But also, I have this eternal conflict between the modern and the vintage/classic/whatever. I want the classic, but I have the modern. And I can't get rid of the modern because that would require getting rid of a LOT. Basically everything.

And whenever I try to make things better, I make it worse. I feel like this a lot. I try to take a risk and it sounds worse than if I just had played it safe. Everyone talks about taking risks and “going for it” but they don't talk about what actually happens most of the time: you fucking fail. You do worse. You abandon the safety of just going along with the beliefs of what your community tells you? Now you are the outsider. You take a risk and paint your room a darker color? Now your furniture is fucking orange. You try to have more traditional room decor? Now you're midway through that awkward transition and you need a mousepad — how do you keep your vintage aesthetic from Pinterest when you need a mousepad? You try to be artistically daring? It's a lot more difficult and your music still sounds like shit and so you wasted two years of your life. You allow yourself to ask for presents? You get the guilt of not using them because you only have limited time and you can't do everything you want to do in your fantasies. You ask someone out? They not only reject you but they do it over the process of two months and in the process they tell you some of the most saddening things you've heard said to you and you can't even get the satisfaction of being mad at them because you would rather them tell you than not and the things they tell you are completely valid to feel and you can't even tell people because you need to respect their privacy and you can't act sad about it because then it will make them sad and there's no reason to make them sad. FUCK

Fuck this shit honestly. Sometimes I wonder if I should go like the Buddha and just simply not give a shit about anything. I think the Buddha said that once “Buddhism is when you don't give a shit”. But I think there's something beautiful about caring about things. Once when I was little, I was so upset because my grandparents were leaving our house after a short visit. I really missed them, and not just in the polite way you tell people. Like heart-wrenching missing. And I just couldn't get over it. But my dad (or my mom, but I think it was my dad) told me that although it sucked, my pain was good because it showed that I love them. There's something good in the chase of it all. It's funny how people always wish for their childhood, but in their childhood they probably felt the saddest they've ever felt. But they miss it because the feelings are intense, not despite it.

Of course some asshole is going to be like “aschutally 🤓☝️ I suffered extreme trauma in my childhood and I don't miss that” and OBVIOUSLY I'm not talking about that. Trust me, I was once so depressed I wanted to kill myself, I obviously don't want that back. Like not in any way. I love and miss being able to cry at a movie. I don't love or miss being able to want to kill myself. There's a clear difference here I feel like.

But the uncomfortable inability to make things perfect or keep things neat reflects I think my real passions. I run into a lot of problems when I try to make playlists of my “favorite” songs or modern songs that I think are/ will be classics. I hate that it's difficult if not impossible to make a comprehensive playlist. But I remind myself that I don't really crave the playlist; I just love the songs.

There is no way I am going to be able to communicate all my love for certain songs to the world. But I don't need to. What's more important is that I focus on the love. I will die someday, and there will be things that will be lost when that happens. I will not be able to offload all of the joy and interest and insight and whatever out of my body and to my loved ones or to society at large. That is just impossible. So why be upset about it? I'll share when I want to, I'll improve when I want to, and I'll just enjoy when I don't. Just enjoying is underrated anyway.