Writing Change
So I've been thinking about how I perceive my own blog, and how that stops me from writing a certain way on it. For about three or four months now I've considered writing a more journalish, separate blog because on some level I feel constrained by opinion in terms of what I can express. Truthfully, I'd like to write long entries that don't necessarily have any punch, could be wholly observational, and not written with an audience in mind beyond myself, in the future. But the more I think about it that way, the more I want to do it here.
I've always wanted this to be a place where our group wrote what they were thinking and feeling about whatever. And I feel like that's rarely (if ever) accomplished. The majority of the writing I do here, I do with the concept of a discussion in mind - that almost never happens. In the case of the artwork posts, it seems to be because no one outside of me tends to have an interest in what I posted, or if they do, I certainly don't hear about it. Other times, I post things that are prohibitive of discussion anyway, like videos, or OnA bits, or things like that, for the sake of making people laugh. I guess what I'm saying is I've always subconsciously tried to make this an interactive experience with a perceived audience. But it doesn't take a genius to note there's hardly an audience at all, and little or no impetus to interact.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not satisfied with my own site, and by extension my own life and self too. But the former was originally intended to be a window to the latter, and I don't know if it's ever meaningfully accomplished that. In the beginning, when I was writing about more personal shit, I was also lying about a lot of things, because I wanted everyone to be "on my side." That's ALWAYS been my problem. And I still want that, and obviously this isn't helpful. Certainly not for telling the truth. This sentiment bends the presentation of information in illusive and immeasurable ways, which is makes it an enormous problem. Truthfulness is not always zero sum, and the fact that it has levels at all opens it to always be vulnerable to the influence of dishonesty, even when that dishonesty is borne of a self-preservational self-esteem. Five years later and I'm not lying directly anymore but there are still lies of omission, lies of limited presentation, that are generated on a regular basis. I lie now but not in writing blatant untruths, but writing from an intentionally limited perspective.
If I'm telling you a story and I don't feel like you're sympathizing with me, I will remove or alter information to try to win you back over. Everyone to some extent does this, but I feel I do it extensively. I don't like that. And I think the reason that it's always been stuck at that level is because telling the truth is terrifying when it's confessional, to people you've known for a long time. Terrifying for many reasons, but one primary one being because it's like a 2-way mirror; when I'm contemplating some of the things I've sort of written about and most of the things I've never written about, it's knowing that this level of exposure is not reciprocated. It's also terrifying because sometimes in truth, I just suck as a person, and acknowledging that, amongst peers who observe and retain that moment, is brutal. You can't control how you feel about yourself when you look in a mirror, but words are something that can be manipulated by tone alone. It's so easy to lie to yourself about yourself, and you have every reason to do it, self-preservationally speaking. The only legitimate reason you have to acknowledge your own failings and flaws and flubs is central to the struggle everyone deals with: is it better to feel and be safe or to grow? When you're always right in your own mind, you're essentially five years old. And sometimes realizing that is difficult, because language and self-esteem are subtle and intertwine in ways that are difficult to perceive or define.
The thing is, if you read this blog from beginning to end, you wouldn't really have an accurate picture of my life or who I am as a person. You wouldn't understand me in the way that I understand myself. You would see varying degrees of intellectual and social maneuvering, and without the cipher of my own personal understanding of context and history, which over time fades from me too. Take every bad dating story I've ever told for example. I tell you the actions, and to a very limited extent the emotional process involved. But you're never getting the full story, of the range of emotions I went through, the subtext of why I've allowed and even encouraged these situations to happen to me. And understandably so, because that kind of thing is counterproductive to good story telling. I understand this, and this is why when I tell you a story from my personal life, it is abridged, for the purpose of entertaining you, the listener. And that's how real life goes, I have no problems with that. But this is a site that's ostensibly about my life. And in that regard, this site really has always been an abject failure. And as an artist, the inability to make myself understood is unacceptable, and the excuse is fear of consequences, which in the long run is meaningless. I've tried for years now to be as real as I could be, in terms of honest expression. I want to be a person who for better or for worse, you know where you stand with at a glance. When I tell someone something, I want them to hear it and not question its authenticity. And even though I've made great strides to do so, I think it's fair to say you don't have to be in my head to know that I have not accomplished that. Not consistently, and not comprehensively.
I know these things about myself: I have a quick wit, I can be extremely expressive with language, I am terribly loyal, and I love my friends. These are things that anyone who's known me for a few weeks would know. Then there are the things that I know, that people either don't or possibly only suspect. I'm terrified that people don't like me, that where I think I stand with people is not accurate. If I'm hanging out with you, and I'm leaving, I guarantee you a part of me is worried that you're talking about me negatively, that I've had an impact that I can't control that makes me the shitheel or the weirdo or the one not to take seriously or be trusted.
Every single time.
I'm also a terribly lonesome human being, and I mean that on both sides of the equation. I'm simultaneously lonely and utterly exclusionary. I want to be your friend, but not right now. I have meaningful relationships in short bursts. If we hang out today, we could have a great time, but if we're doing something tomorrow morning I might "miss" your call, or sabotage it by staying up too late so that I am too sleepy, or something like that. And it's never you. There's just some kind of coiled spring in my head that pings and says, "you aren't socializing now, under any circumstances." Sometimes it's passive and I'm just too lazy to do something, which describes just about everyone, sometimes it's active and my mind actually wills me into not doing things adamantly. I think the reason I've failed so often in intimate relationships is because I'm so distant as a person generally and so reflexively intense emotionally. I have long blocks of time where I just don't even know how to interface with another person on that level emotionally. What are we supposed to do together, just hang out? I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. And then I get times where I'm way too fucking intense and I scare people off, either with positive idealist romance energy or with extremely negative "you are literally nothing to me" toxic energy, depending on the person and the situation. The truth is I want people close to me, but I also resent them for failing or not trying hard enough, which sounds as childish as it is. But I don't know how to fix feelings, I don't know how to alter that attitude. I've honestly never been in a relationship where I felt like the person was trying as hard to understand me and fit me as I was trying to understand them, or how to fit them in my life.
This new girl that I've spent a couple days with, I really like her, but already I can see how I've made it artificially more difficult to connect with me through unnecessary passivity. When I'm around her I'm stuck in a weird moment of hesitation energy, and it only subsides when I'm away and texting her, which is the definition of passive aggressive. Why should she break her back trying to figure me out? I've given her almost nothing to work with. And I know the exact reason why: I have no idea where I stand with her, good or bad, and that traps me at an emotional intersection. I am a champion when it comes to elucidating exactly what I feel in a moment, or what I think I want, or where my mind is at on a particular subject. And that strength is borne from an almost total inability to read a girl's physical romantic and nonromantic emoting. I cannot read how effective or ineffective I am with a girl. I'm great at talking out what I feel and what I'd like to happen, but who wants that at this goddamn age? I'm like a 45 year old who just wants concrete terms, except I'm only 23. It's all about picking up physical cues and taking chances at this age (in my experience), and I am not good at either. The only time I'm remotely good is when I've had alcohol and I don't give a fuck, and exactly for that reason: I don't give a fuck. That's no way to make a meaningful connection, and I have no idea of how to improve. These paragraphs doesn't come close to summing me up, nor are they trying to. They're pointing out where multiple paragraphs of multiple posts over (hopefully) multiple years could do.
I'm kind of rambling now but this is sort of the point. I have a lot of garbage in my mind, and I'm trying to sort it. I want Inferno Cafe to be a log of many things: a log of what I was feeling in these moments, of what I was thinking. Of what my opinions of my situation or just situations in general was. I want to be able to read this entry, and know exactly where I was as a human being, exactly who I was. But more than that, I want other people to as well. This struck me with real specificity when I went through what I call my "About a Son" phase: you may or may not know that I recently really plunged into Kurt Cobain's whole suicide crash, because I'm terrified that I'll do the same thing. Terrified because I can see myself in 4 or 5 years being in the same weird, solitary rut. Of course the situations are totally different, I'm not a fucking rock star but hopefully you know what I mean. This toxic isolation of the self is eroding every facet of my life. MAAAAAAAAN. I wanted to write that sarcastically because I know how melodramatic it sounds, but I mean it. But I don't mean it in the huge teenage way, like everything in my life is falling apart, MAAAAAN. I hope you're reading this in the douchebag teenager voice I hear in my head as I'm writing it. I mean it in a really small, adult way. Every day is exactly like every other day. I go to work, I go home, I play video games, I go to sleep. All this time in my dumb little bubble and no one knows shit about what's happening in my head. I don't want my experiences in life to become irrelevant through anonymity. I don't want to die and have left no trace of my character behind to be viewed or understood. And I don't say that as a means to say that people need to know my experience or appreciate it, or that I'm like the monoliths from 2001 and am open to multiple interpretations, some sexy enigma. I mean I don't want to have lived a life that is ultimately worthless to the people who were in or near it.
This all sounds a little more dark than I intend it to. I'm not scratching my chin with the barrel of a shotgun as I write this. Far from it - I'm trying to find a way to break out of this mess. I'm trying to find some kind of ground where I can feel satisfied about something in my damn life for once. I have nothing to be satisfied with. I have nothing, save for a few articles, to be proud of. If you had a box that was full of my life, you'd have a half-written book, a couple of video game reviews, and a whole lot of empty space. If driving home today I get smashed by oncoming traffic and die, then I will leave a behind world full of people who never got me in the way I wanted them to. If you are reading this, there's a good chance you know a large facet of who I am. A select few would even be able to paint a pretty decent picture of me. I'm sure Travis in particular is not surprised by any of what I'm saying here, beyond maybe the volume of it. But everyone I know combined couldn't complete an entire picture or even get close, and that makes me feel like as an intellectual human being, as an artist, I'm not doing the right thing. Boy, that sounds really douchey, but I still agree with the sentiment at least. Maybe that makes me a douche! Maybe that's the point of this whole thing.
So consider this a statement of intent: as of this post, the tone of this site changes dramatically. Will I still try to make you and myself laugh? Sure will. But I'm also going to get real, even if there are consequences. Because the consequences of doing what I've been doing have driven me into a hole that I need to get out of. I invite you to do the same. But I certainly don't expect you to. Truthfully, I've not expected you to view this as a community site for a while now. That's not an accusation, it's just the truth. I know in the world out there, that there's at least one person who's exactly like me in every way. And if I can't explore something within myself for that person's benefit or interest, then what do I have to give, to myself or anyone else?
I've always wanted this to be a place where our group wrote what they were thinking and feeling about whatever. And I feel like that's rarely (if ever) accomplished. The majority of the writing I do here, I do with the concept of a discussion in mind - that almost never happens. In the case of the artwork posts, it seems to be because no one outside of me tends to have an interest in what I posted, or if they do, I certainly don't hear about it. Other times, I post things that are prohibitive of discussion anyway, like videos, or OnA bits, or things like that, for the sake of making people laugh. I guess what I'm saying is I've always subconsciously tried to make this an interactive experience with a perceived audience. But it doesn't take a genius to note there's hardly an audience at all, and little or no impetus to interact.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not satisfied with my own site, and by extension my own life and self too. But the former was originally intended to be a window to the latter, and I don't know if it's ever meaningfully accomplished that. In the beginning, when I was writing about more personal shit, I was also lying about a lot of things, because I wanted everyone to be "on my side." That's ALWAYS been my problem. And I still want that, and obviously this isn't helpful. Certainly not for telling the truth. This sentiment bends the presentation of information in illusive and immeasurable ways, which is makes it an enormous problem. Truthfulness is not always zero sum, and the fact that it has levels at all opens it to always be vulnerable to the influence of dishonesty, even when that dishonesty is borne of a self-preservational self-esteem. Five years later and I'm not lying directly anymore but there are still lies of omission, lies of limited presentation, that are generated on a regular basis. I lie now but not in writing blatant untruths, but writing from an intentionally limited perspective.
If I'm telling you a story and I don't feel like you're sympathizing with me, I will remove or alter information to try to win you back over. Everyone to some extent does this, but I feel I do it extensively. I don't like that. And I think the reason that it's always been stuck at that level is because telling the truth is terrifying when it's confessional, to people you've known for a long time. Terrifying for many reasons, but one primary one being because it's like a 2-way mirror; when I'm contemplating some of the things I've sort of written about and most of the things I've never written about, it's knowing that this level of exposure is not reciprocated. It's also terrifying because sometimes in truth, I just suck as a person, and acknowledging that, amongst peers who observe and retain that moment, is brutal. You can't control how you feel about yourself when you look in a mirror, but words are something that can be manipulated by tone alone. It's so easy to lie to yourself about yourself, and you have every reason to do it, self-preservationally speaking. The only legitimate reason you have to acknowledge your own failings and flaws and flubs is central to the struggle everyone deals with: is it better to feel and be safe or to grow? When you're always right in your own mind, you're essentially five years old. And sometimes realizing that is difficult, because language and self-esteem are subtle and intertwine in ways that are difficult to perceive or define.
The thing is, if you read this blog from beginning to end, you wouldn't really have an accurate picture of my life or who I am as a person. You wouldn't understand me in the way that I understand myself. You would see varying degrees of intellectual and social maneuvering, and without the cipher of my own personal understanding of context and history, which over time fades from me too. Take every bad dating story I've ever told for example. I tell you the actions, and to a very limited extent the emotional process involved. But you're never getting the full story, of the range of emotions I went through, the subtext of why I've allowed and even encouraged these situations to happen to me. And understandably so, because that kind of thing is counterproductive to good story telling. I understand this, and this is why when I tell you a story from my personal life, it is abridged, for the purpose of entertaining you, the listener. And that's how real life goes, I have no problems with that. But this is a site that's ostensibly about my life. And in that regard, this site really has always been an abject failure. And as an artist, the inability to make myself understood is unacceptable, and the excuse is fear of consequences, which in the long run is meaningless. I've tried for years now to be as real as I could be, in terms of honest expression. I want to be a person who for better or for worse, you know where you stand with at a glance. When I tell someone something, I want them to hear it and not question its authenticity. And even though I've made great strides to do so, I think it's fair to say you don't have to be in my head to know that I have not accomplished that. Not consistently, and not comprehensively.
I know these things about myself: I have a quick wit, I can be extremely expressive with language, I am terribly loyal, and I love my friends. These are things that anyone who's known me for a few weeks would know. Then there are the things that I know, that people either don't or possibly only suspect. I'm terrified that people don't like me, that where I think I stand with people is not accurate. If I'm hanging out with you, and I'm leaving, I guarantee you a part of me is worried that you're talking about me negatively, that I've had an impact that I can't control that makes me the shitheel or the weirdo or the one not to take seriously or be trusted.
Every single time.
I'm also a terribly lonesome human being, and I mean that on both sides of the equation. I'm simultaneously lonely and utterly exclusionary. I want to be your friend, but not right now. I have meaningful relationships in short bursts. If we hang out today, we could have a great time, but if we're doing something tomorrow morning I might "miss" your call, or sabotage it by staying up too late so that I am too sleepy, or something like that. And it's never you. There's just some kind of coiled spring in my head that pings and says, "you aren't socializing now, under any circumstances." Sometimes it's passive and I'm just too lazy to do something, which describes just about everyone, sometimes it's active and my mind actually wills me into not doing things adamantly. I think the reason I've failed so often in intimate relationships is because I'm so distant as a person generally and so reflexively intense emotionally. I have long blocks of time where I just don't even know how to interface with another person on that level emotionally. What are we supposed to do together, just hang out? I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. And then I get times where I'm way too fucking intense and I scare people off, either with positive idealist romance energy or with extremely negative "you are literally nothing to me" toxic energy, depending on the person and the situation. The truth is I want people close to me, but I also resent them for failing or not trying hard enough, which sounds as childish as it is. But I don't know how to fix feelings, I don't know how to alter that attitude. I've honestly never been in a relationship where I felt like the person was trying as hard to understand me and fit me as I was trying to understand them, or how to fit them in my life.
This new girl that I've spent a couple days with, I really like her, but already I can see how I've made it artificially more difficult to connect with me through unnecessary passivity. When I'm around her I'm stuck in a weird moment of hesitation energy, and it only subsides when I'm away and texting her, which is the definition of passive aggressive. Why should she break her back trying to figure me out? I've given her almost nothing to work with. And I know the exact reason why: I have no idea where I stand with her, good or bad, and that traps me at an emotional intersection. I am a champion when it comes to elucidating exactly what I feel in a moment, or what I think I want, or where my mind is at on a particular subject. And that strength is borne from an almost total inability to read a girl's physical romantic and nonromantic emoting. I cannot read how effective or ineffective I am with a girl. I'm great at talking out what I feel and what I'd like to happen, but who wants that at this goddamn age? I'm like a 45 year old who just wants concrete terms, except I'm only 23. It's all about picking up physical cues and taking chances at this age (in my experience), and I am not good at either. The only time I'm remotely good is when I've had alcohol and I don't give a fuck, and exactly for that reason: I don't give a fuck. That's no way to make a meaningful connection, and I have no idea of how to improve. These paragraphs doesn't come close to summing me up, nor are they trying to. They're pointing out where multiple paragraphs of multiple posts over (hopefully) multiple years could do.
I'm kind of rambling now but this is sort of the point. I have a lot of garbage in my mind, and I'm trying to sort it. I want Inferno Cafe to be a log of many things: a log of what I was feeling in these moments, of what I was thinking. Of what my opinions of my situation or just situations in general was. I want to be able to read this entry, and know exactly where I was as a human being, exactly who I was. But more than that, I want other people to as well. This struck me with real specificity when I went through what I call my "About a Son" phase: you may or may not know that I recently really plunged into Kurt Cobain's whole suicide crash, because I'm terrified that I'll do the same thing. Terrified because I can see myself in 4 or 5 years being in the same weird, solitary rut. Of course the situations are totally different, I'm not a fucking rock star but hopefully you know what I mean. This toxic isolation of the self is eroding every facet of my life. MAAAAAAAAN. I wanted to write that sarcastically because I know how melodramatic it sounds, but I mean it. But I don't mean it in the huge teenage way, like everything in my life is falling apart, MAAAAAN. I hope you're reading this in the douchebag teenager voice I hear in my head as I'm writing it. I mean it in a really small, adult way. Every day is exactly like every other day. I go to work, I go home, I play video games, I go to sleep. All this time in my dumb little bubble and no one knows shit about what's happening in my head. I don't want my experiences in life to become irrelevant through anonymity. I don't want to die and have left no trace of my character behind to be viewed or understood. And I don't say that as a means to say that people need to know my experience or appreciate it, or that I'm like the monoliths from 2001 and am open to multiple interpretations, some sexy enigma. I mean I don't want to have lived a life that is ultimately worthless to the people who were in or near it.
This all sounds a little more dark than I intend it to. I'm not scratching my chin with the barrel of a shotgun as I write this. Far from it - I'm trying to find a way to break out of this mess. I'm trying to find some kind of ground where I can feel satisfied about something in my damn life for once. I have nothing to be satisfied with. I have nothing, save for a few articles, to be proud of. If you had a box that was full of my life, you'd have a half-written book, a couple of video game reviews, and a whole lot of empty space. If driving home today I get smashed by oncoming traffic and die, then I will leave a behind world full of people who never got me in the way I wanted them to. If you are reading this, there's a good chance you know a large facet of who I am. A select few would even be able to paint a pretty decent picture of me. I'm sure Travis in particular is not surprised by any of what I'm saying here, beyond maybe the volume of it. But everyone I know combined couldn't complete an entire picture or even get close, and that makes me feel like as an intellectual human being, as an artist, I'm not doing the right thing. Boy, that sounds really douchey, but I still agree with the sentiment at least. Maybe that makes me a douche! Maybe that's the point of this whole thing.
So consider this a statement of intent: as of this post, the tone of this site changes dramatically. Will I still try to make you and myself laugh? Sure will. But I'm also going to get real, even if there are consequences. Because the consequences of doing what I've been doing have driven me into a hole that I need to get out of. I invite you to do the same. But I certainly don't expect you to. Truthfully, I've not expected you to view this as a community site for a while now. That's not an accusation, it's just the truth. I know in the world out there, that there's at least one person who's exactly like me in every way. And if I can't explore something within myself for that person's benefit or interest, then what do I have to give, to myself or anyone else?
Comments
As I watched you develop into the person you currently are, I noticed that you and Travis could relate to each other on a level I couldn't. Watching how well you two connected, I actually began to think that perhaps being my friend was becoming a burden for you. Hence, I sort of backed off and stopped trying to hang out, thinking that being with my might be more annoying than fun for you. Then I remembered that you once commented that your biggest problem with my lack of a love life and sexual escapades and other stuff wasn't necessarily that I didn't have them, but that we were growing apart in terms of shared experiences. The fact that our conversations and interactions were growing more and more limiting bothered you, and only recently (having begun to experience them myself) did I begin to understand where you were coming from: we've always been close, and will always be loyal friends, but the way in which we understood one another was becoming diminished.
At any rate, I feel I should tell you that I miss you, especially now. L4D2 has been great, especially since it's given us a chance to begin interacting again. You can decide whether that's a beautiful or pathetic thing, I suppose, but being a nerd, I prefer to think it's the former. My mind has been all over the place for obvious reasons, but now I'm wanting to bring myself back into the world, as it were.
Other than what I've just read, I don't know what you specifically have in mind for the site, but I can tell you right now (for what it's worth) that I am now very willing to use the site for what you had originally intended. I really really really need to be writing right now, even if it's something trivial and especially if it's something important. Everyone knows I've pretty much been an internet bastard when it comes to responding and interacting, but if you don't mind, I'd like to begin contributing here again. I think a place for dialogue is good right now, especially since you're at work most of the time and we can at least interact in this way.
Also, we should hang out when you're not at work.
I love you, Sir Griswald.
This is the post I have been waiting years for. Seriously, I check this site nearly everyday and I know I don't often comment but what you mentioned is pretty much true, I don't have much to say on paintings nor ridiculous videos (although I enjoy watching them usually.)
What I always loved about Inferno Cafe was that it it seemed like an open journal for the group, a place where we could all come and express how we felt, another medium for us to communicate and support each other.
I've really missed what this site used to be. Going through the really old posts makes me feel nostalgic, in both senses of the word. I love remembering the times that would surely have slipped my mind if they weren't written on this site...but it also saddens me because I feel like there are so sooo many things that aren't being chronicled.
If this site can go back to what it used to be...or better yet, pick up where it was left off, I would be so happy. I want to see IC become a blog of all of us again, I want to feel like I know what is going on in your guys' life even though I'm across the fucking ocean.
I'll do my best to contribute and I hope that everyone does too.
Also, your post does not come as a surprise to me either...I've known these things about you just as I'm sure the other boys have too. But I hope I can hear it all from you instead of getting it 2nd hand.