Journal writing

First off, "Journal Writing" is the name of a poem I wrote; you can read it on the online magazine Page & Spine.

The approach to journal writing it describes is the one I use myself, except with fewer pretenses of wringing liquid out of my heart or whatever. In a class I took during postgrad, I noticed something of my own journal writing in the approach to historiography known as the "history of mentalities." This sort of history isn't particularly concerned with looking at past events, considering events to be mere moments; it's more revealing to look at past ways of thinking, which lasted longer and would've surrounded the events.

A couple months before learning that, it was an interest in my own mentalities that led me to start a journal. I saw how my feelings about things in my life were changing with some rapidity and decided to record them. I occasionally write about events, but even then, I focus on how the event has embodied or affected my mentalities.

Combined with an evening walk near Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, particularly to this spot you see to the left with its tiny, shallow pool, the poem acquired the mountainous landscape imagery that it did.

Side-glances at simulation

When I was 12 or 13, I found one of the first chapters of Asimov's I, Robot disturbing, the one where the little girl has a robot as her only friend. That was my first introduction to the idea of technology threatening to replace the organic.

I think this is the exact version
we had— I guess the warning
must've been on the back or side

I think my discomfort with it had its roots some years before, being a young kid and feeling this sense of coldness while playing the Windows solitaire games. I was used to playing card and board games with my dad, and then here I was playing a game against a computer who had no emotional connection to playing together or to me.

We owned an Othello board game which had a warning on the box, something like "We strongly urge you to eat and sleep between games." As a little girl who had never heard of addiction, it made me sad to think a pair of people could be so crazy as to ruin themselves and each other by playing relentlessly, ignoring that they were hungry and tired. My dad would never let me do that even if I tried, because he cared about me, but that was not the case with the computer. I could destroy myself playing a hundred games in a row and it would make no difference to my computer.

That dismal child-thought was probably at least partly responsible for my years of discomfort with any suggestion that machines could ever in some way replace people. I didn't read Asimov's "Bicentennial Man" until a class in university, which put that chapter of I, Robot, or the whole book really, into a different perspective, since perhaps the robots were supposed to really have emotions? My distaste for the idea joined up with my distaste for overly positivistic sociology, which seemed to hurt from the opposite direction: reduce people to machines, suggesting emotions and motivations could come down to a bunch of mechanistic rules.

Now I'm fond of myNoise, a collection of online soundscape generators ranging from forest noises to musical instruments. What led me in particular to write this post is the recent addition of a generator that seems described by the artist as being something like computer-generated music. (Or, less recent now, because I'm lazy with finishing posts). It's precisely the sort of thing that would have made me uncomfortable—and I realize there are a number of examples of computer-generated arts out there—but I suppose there's little to be so uneasy about—

I'm sort of revisiting my old issues with this discomfort, which is why I'm reflecting on their origin. What am I worried about: that programmed music is cold in the same way that replacing my dad with a computer is cold? I certainly don't find playing games with a computer all that cold anymore, I

Despite being a bit rusty at FreeCell

suppose due to the internet rendering games a shared experience whether or not you're directly playing against a human, and due to knowing that programs are a creation, that even if they're not people, there are people right behind them. When I think about computer games now—well, even as a kid the feeling of coldness didn't keep me from playing—I don't think of the computer replacing a human at all. I don't know if that's just my own development or whether it's a change in how people as a whole are thinking about technology.

I wonder how many people now would think about robots becoming someone's only friend. I get the sense that would be seen these days as a sign of a deeply lonely person. It seems like now it's more a matter of simulations being extensions of people, not replacements for people. I've had a couple brushes with 'digital humanities' recently at university, and one of its great themes appears to be that computers change people's relationship with the humanities. When I learned about that, I didn't have a problem with it and it just seemed intuitive. Over time, it seems experience has quietly replaced the understanding I had that caused the discomfort in the first place. And I've only just noticed what it left in its place.

I will explore, not conquer

I will explore, not conquer!

I have some habits of thought I know really aren't good for me. Some months ago I managed to summarize for myself the nature of my ill thoughts: I am as a conqueror, or I feel pressured to be as a conqueror, when I would be happier, healthier, more curious, more truly loving and able to share with others, if I were as an explorer instead.

I don't remember where I saw the graffito
but here is another street of Edinburgh's
city center—also, there is something written
in chalk in runes somewhere around here! I
should try to decipher them sometime.

Recently I passed a mysterious graffito; couldn't tell what the drawing was supposed to represent. In a 'conquering' frame of mind, I entertained some insecurity, some feeling of isolation; I envied the people who were in on its meaning. I defensively jumped to a little comforting daydream about being in on some cool secret symbol myself.

But why should I do that? It would be nice if I could perceive strange things as curiosities, exciting things, not get scared of them and see competition in them, objects of conquest. What a nasty pattern I'd fallen into, where I'd fancy one-upping some weird graffiti instead of speculating about what it meant or something.

That is just the sort of situation I'd had in mind when I first came up with "exploring, not conquering," but now I've noticed just how much deeper the idea goes to explain where my defect is— Some days ago I came across the museum news website Culture24 and its children-aimed counterpart, Show Me. These websites feel nice. Instead of jealously guarding their elite knowledge, these scholarly people are trying to spread it to the general public. They want the general public to be educated and curious, leaving their figurative 'territory' for the enjoyment of all rather than claiming it for themselves, and I can feel comfortable and unintimidated by them. Show Me particularly reminds me of being a child and reading lots of kids' books about different things in the world, not worrying about claiming any topics for my identity, not breaking knowledge down into my official interests versus things I wasn't interested in, not expecting to gain anything from it but pleasure and a couple of facts to impress people with. These days I've bound pleasure and knowledge so tightly to ego and pride to the point I feel out of place and even very embarrassed in a social way trying to learn something I don't know much about, especially if there's someone in my life who has that topic in their own domain.

The problem I have with conquering does a little more than make me insecure, competitive, and envious, then. It also makes me less able to appreciate the world with sensitivity and curiosity. If I explore instead of conquer—if I can walk into new 'territories' without being preoccupied with whether they're mine or not and whether I belong—I will be able to appreciate many more new lands, and my focus will be not on myself, but on the fascinating things around me.

I've also been working on fiction writing more than usual recently. I've gotten in the habit of idly looking through potential places to submit my writing to procrastinate doing homework. In doing so, I started several stories, a greater rate than I'd started projects at for a long time, simply on whims, and of types and on topics sometimes quite distant from what I'd expect myself to write. It was the most free and pleasurable experience I'd had writing in a while. I attribute it to browsing those literary markets so extensively and finding standards so different in kind from my own restrictive tastes, and finding them a good 'excuse' for deviating from my usual. Or, my chosen writing style and sort of content will continue to be what I like best, but choosing them is not conquering them. There is more to see outside of my own territory, and even within what I consider my own territory, I am still an explorer.

I hope that makes sense.

A big flinch at names

I have such a discomfort with names. It's one of the few tendrils of shyness I started having in some form before I developed more 'actual' shyness in my late teens for whatever reason. Addressing people by name or otherwise using the name of a person who's in earshot feels like calling over the entire person, commanding their entire attention. You know the singular way you perk up when you hear your name—and, ooh, the feeling you get when someone mentions you while speaking a language you don't know. It just feels so in-your-face, so unsubtle; even whispering a name is as shouting. Similarly, I'm uncomfortable writing down certain names of people I know, and that's even if I don't plan for them to see it.

Online it's different, by the way. A username feels different as it's not a real name and was chosen by its bearer. In a group chat I feel as though I'm even speaking softer when I use someone's name since it communicates I'm speaking directly to another person, not loudly to everyone at once.

I gave this trait to the main character in a longer work of fiction I'm attempting to write. She isn't me, and the plot is in fact about struggling with a sort of shyness I lack. Still, I enjoyed incorporating a bit of my own experience in there.

But from the beginning, I, myself, have felt something similar to that name-discomfort when using that character's name. I've changed it several times already with the help of the Replace tool: it's gone from Anvorvei to Sanvorvei to Sanvorlei. They're all embarrassing names I've hacked together without etymology, merely obeying the naming and linguistic conventions of my own made-up society, since I didn't want to connect it to any real-world society. It has the side effect of making them feel baseless, like they shouldn't exist. It recalls the issue I have with writing down the names of real people: that sense that I don't really have the authority or the need or something to be doing so.

I thought changing the name would help, since my own discomfort with names in real life seems to vary partly depending on the feel of the name. I can't remember what felt so much better about putting an S in front of 'Anvorvei'—that one might simply have been to make the name more memorable—but the change from V to L was an attempt to render the name less heavy and plodding-sounding, which I thought would make it feel less consequential to say. However, now, about 13,000 very tentative rough-draft words in, I'm feeling like the 'orl' sound makes the name sound too squirmy, which seems awkward to me in a slightly different way. I actually think I'll change it back to the original 'Anvorvei,' made lighter by its vowel beginning and made less squirmy with the V.

I've heard other amateur writers mention the difficulty in choosing names for their characters, too, so that isn't just me. It goes back to that uncomfortable power of names: a single word used to apprehend an entire person. I can see why it is such a hefty decision for the author of a written work, since regardless of however much has been added to the character, they will largely always appear as their name.