rambling – Metal Regression

33 in 2023

December 24, 2023 Jairo Comments 0 Comment

Usually I try to write these yearly reflection posts for my birthday. The better, and more accurately to coincide with my yearly dispositions. Yet I have felt that not much has changed since last year, which is reflected in the fact that it feels like the year has passed me by dizzyingly fast. Has it only been a year since I was holed up in the restroom of the Alamo experiencing a separation of mind, body and spirit? It feels like yesterday, or rather like one long unbroken and deterministic chain of events that hasn’t really stopped. Something has definitely changed though, my creative output on all fronts has slowed down. I write less, film less, produce less “content” for lack of a better word. Though to be clear none of this is ever meant to be marketable (because you would need a market) and in fact anything you ever read that is meant to be profitable should be looked at with suspicion. Not because of any ill intent on behalf of the author but they are now serving something outside of their authentic self, and despite claims to the contrary this master will creep into their process. Sorry, this could really be a post about the Hollywood studio system vs less profit driven world cinema but I wont digress.

Why has my output stopped? I think I’m victim of a pattern I fall into where I consume consume consume in an attempt to parse through and come up with some subjective view of an objective reality. To put forth an example, if I want to write about a movie I love it’s easy to watch the movie, then read everything written about it, then read about all the sources of the prior reading, then explore tangentially related topics all in a vain and desperate attempt to hold an opinion that is unimpeachable. Obviously I’m not the subject matter expert on anything because once I see the maw of knowledge open itself to me I recoil back and think “you know what I think I know enough”. Yet I don’t feel satisfied enough to ever really publicly say anything so I think “let me just sit on this for a while longer”. There’s a clip I’ve seen of Ethan Hawke stating how Leo Tolstoy thought his brother was the real genius, but he lacked the ego to put pen to paper so Leo was the one who was showered with accolades. Here we have a terrible shadow though for if those with egos are the ones who write then wisdom, or even competence, is not really a determining factor in success, and with success comes the further dissemination of ideas. Maybe this is best reflected in our political landscape where we have a bunch of Socratically deficient dummies that don’t understand that they know nothing. This is an oversimplification though because even the smarter politicians get consumed by the political game everyone plays to assure majority support but regardless being able to show your face in public and say “yeah I got the answers I can do that” is always a lie, regardless whether the person saying it disagrees or not. To break down that into its arguments though…I think the mere statement “I know” is false. The implications are thus:
If I have verified something as a fact then I know it.
I have verified it as a fact.
Therefore I know it.

The jungle cat lying in wait to eviscerate this argument is “I have verified”. When is the last time you verified something? a quick google search? A text? Asked Alexa or Siri? Academics all know to check sources when reading through others’ works. Yet how deep do we search through this tree of knowledge? Sources have sources, those sources have sources, even when it coms to raw data and numbers it is interpreted by someone or something. This is a pedantic view but my point is all our knowledge is built on others’ “knowledge”. So then when we say I know it is not the previous argument we are really saying it’s this:
If someone/something I trust has verified a fact then I know it’s true.
This fact has been verified by someone/something I trust.
I know it’s true.

Of course the second ticking time bomb here is the definition of verification. Scientifically we have errors of measurement but what of non-empirical matters? If I find a friend who looks down on there luck I may say something “I know you’re sad, but things will turn around”. Do I know they are sad? I am interpreting their emotion using body language. Or to remove doubt I ask them what’s wrong and they may answer “I am sad because my ice cream fell”. Ah there we a firsthand verified source. I know they are sad because I trust them to know they are sad. Later I may go and tell mutual friends that I know our friend is sad without any second thoughts. But does my friend know they are sad? Is sadness something we learn or is it something within us that carries a blueprint of what it means to be sad. Of course the final question is what is sadness? And do I really know that my friend’s definition of sadness is the same as my own? When I say “I know you are sad” what I’m really saying is “I think you are exhibiting signs that I identify as sad” or in the second scenario where I tell our mutual friend: “Our friend is feeling emotions he has defined as sad and I think it closely resembles my interpretation of sadness”. Our language is mutable enough that in both cases we understand what is being said and since “being sad” has no true objective definition we all have to accomodate various interpretations of sad into one term. I can never really know if my friend is sad just as they can never really know if they are sad because being sad is an external concept which we have continuously tried to define in the course of our lives. There are more accurate words you can use to be sure. My friend could say “I am unhappy” which relies upon both of us understanding what it means to be happy first. Or he could say “I feel upset that my ice cream fell because I wanted to eat it.” which is more precise language. Yet we had already no doubt assumed that was the case when they remarked that their ice cream fell. Even now do we know they are upset because of that or is there some deeper significance to the ice cream. So the margin of error lies in the abstraction of our language and thus in the abstraction of knowledge.

It is how we have advanced as a species to rely on secondhand information that we accept as true empirically or non-empirically. Yet it is the same reason that in the age of technology we have come to our reckoning. We have unlimited sources and virtually unlimited discourse. We can pick and choose trusted sources that say whatever we need them to say. It’s a relativist nightmare which we cannot wake up from, an unceasing churning of truth. Which is all to say that if nobody can know anything, then maybe it’s okay if I produce more dumb stuff next year. I know you’ll agree.

Dialectical Monism

July 28, 2022 Jairo Comments 0 Comment

I’ve talked on here about the concept of bad faith and the need for one to be authentic to ourselves. Half that battle is knowing who we are and what we want because those things are moving targets. The dissonance between those two realms of the inner and outer is what leads to unhappiness and un-fulfillment. Yet none of us are automatons with singular wants and needs, we are tapestries of desires and we twist and fold in on ourselves in a myriad of ways. Yet to simplify this paradox we abstract these internal battles into two opposing forces. All decisions can be broken down into a series of two choices: yes or no. This is at the heart of how we think, so it is no wonder that when creating computers we have embedded them with this sacred knowledge of yes or no, 1 or 0. Two opposing forces that build into a unified self.

Sometimes I feel my two selves at war, and the battlefield is my mind and body. Yet aren’t we always in constant battle with ourselves? There is the push and pull of time in every situation. If our decisions are the fundamental exercise of our existence and we cannot remain in a state of non-existence then time is both the cause of our existence and the measure against which we exist. The existential relief that comes from having chosen lasts only as long as the next choice remains looming in the distance. Putting off that next decision is at the heart of the human condition. It is the agony of consequence that keeps us in a state of complacency, an inactive participant in our daily lives. Yet if our biological imperative is to survive, then to live is to wage battle with ourselves over and over until we perish.

Under the tongue root
a fight most dread,
and another raging
behind in the head

These are the lyrics of Duel Of The Fates (before they got loosely translated into sanskrit), it’s a snippet from Cad Goddeu (The Battle of the Trees). The lines refer to the fight amongst a tree yet it applies to us as well. The roles we embody with our words may be in opposition to the self in our minds. The act of decision can sometimes feel like a violent rejection of one role or fate over the other. The song plays during a battle as the two greatest opposing forces in the Star Wars Universe battle to lay claim to Anakin’s future. Light vs Dark, Yin vs Yang, and yet ultimately unification through balance.

Last weekend I tried to do a bike ride that I objectively failed at. Having planned it very poorly I ran out of water on a hot day and turned back having done only about half of what I set out to do. The heat was exhausting and every second I was on the bike was a decision point to continue riding or to stop. The mounting pain, onset of heat exhaustion and mechanical troubles that I was facing were forcing me to keep deciding to continue as opposed to the state I wish to be in which is passive activity, the role of cycling. Yet is willpower more like a status check that may or may not fail you depending on the severity of the decision or like a reserve that whittles away little by little as you are forced to take action over and over? To be an athlete you must be able to tolerate pain, that is the nature of strength and growth. The athlete in me told me to keep pushing forward, yet the pragmatist repeatedly questioned why I was pushing to the brink of suffering. So who is my true self? In that moment the pain, doubt, and realization built to a crescendo and I knew then I was cycling in bad faith. Eventually I chose to stop and turn around. This is a microcosm of the decision points we face in life yet it illustrates the profound effects the simplest ones can have. To wit, having invested in my identity as a cyclist I feel like I have failed myself yet undoubtedly I made the right choice that day lest I ended up on the side of the road with heat stroke. Who we are is a conjunction of the forces that shape us and it’s important that our identity and our confidence must come from different sources.

There will always be me and the shadow of me, the me I aspire to be. There will be times when they are in opposition and times when they are in agreement, they both may grow or diminish but through constant reflection and interrogation they should always remain in balance.

You Suffer

May 28, 2022 Jairo Comments 2 comments

English philosophers, scholars, and musicians Napalm Death have continuously pushed forward the discourse surrounding the atrophy of the mind living in service of multinational corporations. Their debut album Scum harbors intense dissections of amoral corruption, guilt via complacency, mass media control, and the exchange and origin of power. I want to focus in on one song in particular though, the voluminous epic You Suffer.

Make sure you carve out a healthy amount of time for this one

Clocking in at 1.316 seconds, the song is pregnant with existential quandary. Let’s break the song apart into its different dimensions by starting with the lyrics:

You suffer, but why?

The first half of the song sets the stage and forcefully reminds the listener that they suffer. The key to interpreting this part is of course knowing of suffering. Napalm Death cleverly removes the glut of having to explain the concept by assuming the listener has indeed suffered and continues to suffer. This assumption condenses what would otherwise weigh down an already lengthy song into abstract layers that maximize the use of its time. The words have been carefully chosen to make their thesis clear. The listener is forced to either reject or accept the hypothesis that they suffer. If accepted then they will have fallen into the trap made clear in the second half of the song. If rejected then the listener has been at least forced to self-reflect on why they think they don’t suffer. The emphasis is because inevitably one comes to the conclusion that even if they are not currently in the throes of pain and hardship, they have known it in some form or the other. Again, because of the carefully chosen language, tense is irrelevant. In a general sense humans suffer, and being directly addressed by the song brings forth memories of personal suffering whether it be physical, mental, or existential.

The second half of the song presents the listener with the central dramatic question, “but why?“. The guerrilla transition from exposition to challenge only serves to increase the impact of the lyrics. The listener is indeed in the middle of recounting the times they have suffered, or accepting that they are currently suffering when they are sonically assaulted by the tour de force second half of the song. Napalm Death makes the listener reconcile their personal pain with causes of it. On the surface it’s a simple question but the effect is that it shifts the thoughts from external evaluation of the self into the inner evaluation of the self. The band knowingly posits the question that will lead the listener on a bread crumb trail to self realization. Whether the addressee wants to or not they will come out on the other side of this experience having gained knowledge of themselves positive or negative. Rather than providing an answer, the band provides fertile ground for self examination, especially via the instrumentation which I will cover next.

Through a clever grindcore vocal technique of combining words, Napalm Death manages to condense the exaggerated 5 syllables of the lyrics into a more respectable 4 syllables. In doing so they allow the rest of the band members ample time to explore the sonic dimensions of suffering. The drummer, bassist, and guitarist first choose to use their respective instruments to imbue the words of the vocalist with weight and gravity by timing their notes to the cadence of the lyrics. This extra punctuation disarms the listener having a counterintutive effect of narrowing their focus on the words by removing any nondiegetic noise. Finally near the end of the song as the final words have been spoken the guitarist performs a virtuoso solo that dovetails into a final sustained note. This note provides the listener with a sort of mutable vessel on which they can fill with the answer to the question asked by the song. This liminal space between the lyrics and the song’s conclusion is inhabited fully by the catharsis of the listener.

Like the philosophers of old Napalm Death have tricked their listeners into interrogating the nature of not only suffering but their own suffering. Furthermore by providing no answer but instead a space for a response they make sure the addressee takes ownership of it, there can be no deflection. So what is your answer? I think at the root of the matter there is but one: “because I choose to”. Yet reading or hearing these words is not enough for understanding, they must come from within, from your being. Then and only then will the journey to apotheosis start.

Roles And Bad Faith

April 18, 2022 Jairo Comments 2 comments

I watched Michael Mann’s Thief yesterday about, you guessed it, a thief. He’s the best thief, but he’s trying to get out of the business. You see this archetypal film a lot, “The best at x because it’s all they’ve ever known, but the consequences are catching up”. Compare this to another archetypal plot: “They’re the best at x but no one will give them a chance to prove themselves”. Of course there is the Hong Kong Kung Fu twist on this: “They have the potential to be the best at x but they need a master to help them achieve it”. It’s all influenced by the other now but this was a highlight between traditional Western and Eastern thought. Look at the cowboy films from the 60s, these badass men just drifted in from who knows where and they were masters of their art, fully formed from the womb no doubt. In the West we want to believe we can become masters using only extreme American gumption, and the tools at our disposal. In the East one can only achieve their true potential by acknowledging and listening to the wisdom of their elders. Like I mentioned though the two schools have mixed, at least in film (Think Kill Bill). James Caan’s thief did have a master in the form of a character played by Willie Nelson.

So what is it about these people that are the best at what they do that makes for a fascinating watch? All of our human existence is a struggle to learn and I think sometimes we want to fantasize about what happens when we get to the end. To use a concrete example, I’ve been cycling two years now and yeah I’d want to watch a film about the best cyclist (sit down Lance Fakestrong), what does that look like? What kind of super human feats could they accomplish? I know that objectively there is an actual best cyclist out there in the world since that’s how sports are structured, but give me a mythical, fictionalized one that I can aspire to, that will never break, disappoint or otherwise let me down. I think we all inhabit various roles every day of our lives, and there is satisfaction that comes from the being the best at it. Yet none of these roles are truly us.

To use an example from Jean-Paul Sartre that I just read about, say I am a waiter and I’m the best waiter gliding around a restaurant, taking orders, never forgetting a single item, never dropping a plate or delivering food late and charming all the patrons meanwhile. The totality of my being and energy in this moment is devoted to being an absolute badass waiter. Sartre describes this as living in bad faith with yourself because by inhabiting a role so perfectly you are undoubtedly pushing down the part of your consciousness that makes you a real person. So why do we do it? It feels good to perform. If we imagine an action as a series of miniature goals and targets then in a way every person on earth is an athlete and their sport is living. For example, as a waiter I know I have to take the orders of customers in the order that they arrived: that’s goal #1. I need to jot down or memorize the order correctly including customizations: goal #2. I need to deliver these orders to the kitchen on time: goal #3. These micro goals go on and on and achieving each one will produce some measure of satisfaction.

Another reason why we like to exist in bad faith is because it can be a form of meditation where we stop thinking of the pressures and anxieties that are outside of our control. It’s essentially a relief to inhabit some perfect (or perfect adjacent) version of ourselves that does not have to deal with pressures of true existence if even for a short while. It’s not a cure for our existentialist ailment of course, as our true authentic selves need to reassert eventually. Existing in a role for too long provides diminishing returns and if we lose sight of the compass that is our real being then we grow stale in the roles we have chosen for ourselves. This is the great wheel of life that capitalism (for one) has sunk its teeth into. Our jobs are defined by roles, and we are provided targets and goals for these roles. Corporations know that positive feedback titillates us, and providing a great amount of work for us to accomplish will keep us working by sheer force of existential dread. Yet even if we like our jobs, we are existing in bad faith because we ignore the multi-facetedness of our life. What’s more, existing in a role takes away our ability to choose, technically we are “deciding” to go to work every day, but ask yourself if you really are or if you feel forced to via the pressures surrounding you and then you’ll know that you’re living in bad faith. “But that’s what the weekend is for” I hear you corporate shills saying. Our lives should be lived in accomplishments, feats, decisions, and changes not in two days out of the week.

Fleeting

April 5, 2022 Jairo Comments 0 Comment

I feel like it was five weeks ago that I was graduating college, elated, thinking I had my whole life ahead of me to make my mark upon it. It’s been almost 10 years since that and life continues to evaporate on sight. Where does it all go? Is it pooled up somewhere beneath the floorboards of my home waiting to be discovered? It’s 80% air and 20% chips. The more life I try to have, the faster it goes. Time dilation is a hell of a drug. Yet my purse holds but a meager three decades of life whereas others have lost more than that on a bet.

At a child’s birthday party last weekend I was acutely aware of the whole spectrum of current human existence. I’ll chalk it up to the first big event of the kind that I’ve been to since the great stop-gap of covid 19 but I could see the generational lines in the sand. The baby boomers were sitting, observing, and vibing with the kids, generation x was taking a chill pill and laying back as their children took on the duties of the party, the millennials were hurriedly looking after their kids and frantically making sure the festivities took place as planned, generation z was talking about the latest music and sitting in a corner laughing at tik toks, and the children…running around with boundless energy, ready to replace all of us.

I was there with my baby brothers who my father decided to have later in life. So I got a taste of what some of my friends are going through right now having to manage two walking, talkings ids. There was an octogenarian acquaintance of mine who I touched base with briefly since we hadn’t spoken in a long time and as we watched my little brothers marvel at the animals in the petting zoo he wasted no time delivering straight cold hard truths to me in only the way a man whose shed all pretense can. He told me how all the friends he went to high school with were dying, “that’s just the age I’m at.” I thought how crazy and distant that sounds, all my high school friends are buying homes, getting married and having kids. Yet I remember how quickly the last 10 years have flown by. When I was 15 I thought living on my own seemed almost impossible and here I am in the third decade of life in the blink of an eye spinning the plates of self-sustenance. All of a sudden it seems like getting to 80 and watching the world crumble around me doesn’t seem so far away. What’s the lesson here? Be present, self-reflect as much as you can, the saying goes that you don’t know you’re living in the good times until they are over but that sounds to me like that person never stopped for a beat to evaluate their happiness. Better yet, assume it’s always the good times and don’t ever stop making them so.

100 Miles Through The Palm Desert

February 23, 2022 Jairo Comments 0 Comment

A Mostly Musical Journey

About to take off at the start line with RCC

Inspired by my triathlete friend Daniel’s Blog where he recounts his big events I’ve decided to write down significant rides on my own though not always through an athletic looking glass. The germination of this particular post stems from a conversation we had the night before the Tour De Palm Springs between Daniel, our friend Sergio (who we recently viciously kidnapped into the world of cycling) and I. The question of what we actually do for multiple hours on a bicycle on these 100 mile rides came up. Obviously we pedal, yes, but our minds are left trapped on this one way train for hours on end. If you stick with a group or are of a friendly disposition then conversations are easy enough to have and those are great to pass the time but if you have a hard time keeping up with groups…let’s say…particularly on climbs or long but gradual inclines like me or if you just prefer riding alone then what do you do?

Daniel and Sergio both agreed that listening to audio books and podcasts is the way to go. I agreed, that’s definitely a great way to live out your masochist fantasies on a bike. Okay I’m being sarcastic, they enjoy this and maybe consider it even more of a “productive” endeavor, a synergy between mind and body where the body is working and the mind is learning. I understand the impulse, it’s the same feeling I get when I used to drive across LA for work, may as well knock out a book or learn some new shit while stuck in traffic, right? May as well learn the secret art of the law of attraction while pedaling for 6 hours straight too then yeah? Hell nah.

I listen to music, it’s a ride enhancer for me. It scoops me out of the lows and it makes the highs higher. My bicycle ride becomes art, a film in my head. Oftentimes the combination of my struggle, the vistas, and the music combine together to form some sort of alchemical concoction greater than the sum of its parts and later on that’s what I remember the most, not the suffering but the grandiose canvas of emotions I felt. I tried to jot down some quick notes to prompt my recounting of the ride so get ready for a deep dive into the intersection between music scores, soundtracks and cycling that you never asked for.

…

Turning the inner eye

October 20, 2016 Jairo Comments 0 Comment

I already procrastinated over a month in getting my next post out which is a very poor rate of blogging as far as things go. But I told myself that I wouldn’t put pen to paper (ed note: fingers to keys) unless I had something churning around in my mind’s stomach and I needed to eject it. Yet, even now I’m not writing because I had an intense thought or emotion I’m just here hammering this out because I’m in a position where I’m just waiting for some things to finish, I’m in a foreign environment, I’m cut off from my usual means of entertainment and my internal bullshit meter has reached it’s fill. So don’t ever let yourself think that creativity comes from a place of routine, but I’m sitting here feeling uncomfortable as all get-out and decided it was a good time to take a stock of the state of Jairo 2016.

I was introduced to the concept of a mind palace by Sherlock on BBC. There was the one episode where it was used to great effect as a plot device. The concept is interesting, you correlate things you want to memorize to a spatial journey. This way you make a strong connection physically with what you try to remember rather than just abstractly trying to burn something into your mind. The way it was used in the show though was more like a sandbox for Sherlock to spend the time in between seconds pondering out possibilities while also using it for memory recall. I liked the idea of having an actual mind palace where your memories and life experiences are mapped to objects, rooms, or wings inside of it. This is probably the CS major in me trying to enforce order and relationships upon the abstract but wouldn’t it be cool to walk through time and memories as if you were taking a casual stroll in your mansion. So I know what you’re thinking, do I have a mind palace?

Alright it’s more like a mind shack. Sometimes stuff gets stolen, or the rain will seep in and make everything soggy, but the general ideas stay intact a little blurry around the edges. Bugs might creep in, and there’s no real plumbing and I can only have a finite amount of things stored in there before I have to throw other things out to make room. Right so you get the extended metaphor here, I’m pretty bad at memories. You could say it’s an early sign of onsetting dementia sure, or that I get such terrible sleep that I can’t process long term memories correctly, some people might even be inclined to think I’m so selfish I only remember things directly concerning me…that may be true as well. I think the real reason I have such a terrible memory though is because ain’t nobody got time for processing memories. Gotta live fast and loose with my limited RAM, can’t afford wasting those sweet, sweet cycles to write to disk.

The sleepier I get the faster the insanity sets in. I’ll stop writing now before I start jairucinating. What’s that? you thought this post was going somewhere? nope…just killing time. Jairo out!