Meanderings at Christmas (long journal)
Thursday, December 23, 2004

The hour is late but tonight I feel an odd connection with language. It is as if words are pouring from my mouth and they must be written down somehow. I have a great admiration for the English language and its unbridled eloquence, although my love does not carry itself into the grammatical empire due to the short fallings of my literary construction skills. Words and sentences form in my head, yet once on screen they are long, disconnected and riddled with errors. Re-reading my passages I pick up on nuances that hint at a mere pseudo-intellect behind these meanderings. I wish for flowing and involving sentences; yet I conjure jerky and bitty connecting words and all possible beauty is gone.

I desire to be creative in my life. I have ideas, I am an ideas person - yet there is no great way of spreading the plans in my head. Common methodologies require skills and funding I do not possess - movie, music and literature. Sure, anyone can write a book but few can write a good one. A book would be the easiest of passages to go down as I am neither musical nor theatrical in the talent sense. I cannot command people, I can organize, but not command and hence direction is not my path. My mother can play piano yet I have never once successfully ventured into the musical limelight - I abandoned the trumpet when I was ten because my noises were pathetic, I played the triangle in the school orchestra - that is the extent of my accomplishments. This is not me being depressed, looking back at my life, this is me coming to terms with the skills I so dearly wish I had. It should be clear now, that the path I must take is that of literature. Yet I mourn at how bitty and nasty my previous works seems, maybe I am a perfectionist, maybe I just can't write expressively. Now I have written two full paragraphs, I will spend twenty minutes reading them over and trying to perfect them - never fully satisfied.

I find myself being a traditionalist. At nineteen (shortly twenty) and without stubble on my face this is a strange conclusion to draw. I am finding myself forever fearful at the route society and the world is taking, despite my optimistic outlook on life. Technology and science are driving us down roads with no signposts, we don't know where we are going and there's nobody to ask for directions at this speed. When will we run out of petrol? What will be at the end of the road? Maybe we should take our foot away from the accelerator and give our straining engine a rest. One hundred years ago stress was rare, these days it's almost mandatory. Technology with all its joys and wonders only brings us further stress; it seems some sort of twisted proportionality has formed. In choosing electronic engineering as a profession it seems ironic that I have this opinion.

I have run out of things to say for the moment and three paragraphs in a row have begun with the same word. I'm putting on some cogitative music to get the cogs rotating again; some slow experimental electronic drones should do the trick (Fennesz). The previous text-block was going somewhere that could lead to mixed and unstructured thoughts on paper, a short novel with the pages muddled if you will. If I present my opinions to someone I really want them to be in an understandable and likeable form. No one will ever think wise of someone who cannot form a decent argument. That's what I want, I want to be wise - I have knowledge, common sense, morals and I can spell a lot of words correctly, but does that make me wise? I'm unsure as to how you could define wise; most liken wise with the elderly and the cryptically spoken fictional characters such as Gandalf. They seem all knowing in their short yet heavily weighted words of comfort and knowledge. Does a knowledgeable person simply become wise at a certain age, or do they need to speak in a certain manner, reveal only that which is necessary and maintain a veil of mystery? I'm sure I'll learn with time. It seems the more elegantly spoken are greater revered within intellectual circles.

Interlude. My favourite novel is Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. My favourite song is Angelo Badalamenti's heartfelt orchestral "Lauren's Walking" from "The Straight Story" by David Lynch. My opinion on my favourite movie and that which I think is the best are of course different. The movie I enjoy most is "Ghost World" for reasons I do not hasten to add. I hope you have enjoyed this interlude, now it's time to raise the curtain again and return to the textual glories that are my Christmas meanderings.

My play list has reached Gas' fine "Pop" album - track two. The hour is now an hour later than when I did start this piece. Being an electronic engineer I rarely encounter an opportunity to evolve and deluge myself in literary ramblings. It is this blog and this internet that keep me writing, albeit rarely.

I no longer enjoy the conditionings society has burdened me with. I find myself desiring a 42" inch plasma TV - but what practical service can such a thing provide me when compared with a comfortable and purpose fulfilling SCART Roadster that can be bought for the same price. I do not want to be drawn towards the menacingly fanciful bodies of the thin and photoshopped when perfectly content and happy with my current relationship. I've reread that past sentence four times now. Society is feeding me dreams I do not want yet cannot deny. I guess it's time my ramblings should stop for now, I hope you have seen a little bit of me and I hope this practice adds to the potential within.

Ciao. Paul.

Labels: Life

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