Visibility · Errors

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Lately i find myself stamping my feet a lot. Its transparent externalising, i know, but still. Stamping, jumping up and down, unable to make anything more meaningful result from this incessant propulsion into madness or product.¹ This is me grinding my teeth in incoherent rage at my inability to convert my frustrations into words. They leave me terrifyingly, forcefully mute.

My head is driving me constantly to do something, anything, that i won't be embarrassed to relate to other people. I'm going insane with the knowledge that i don't do anything with my life. I live in terror of the question "what do you do?". Not for the usual cliched "i'm not defined by my work" interpretation. I can handle those and throw them back in the face of anyone so presumptive. No, i'm in terror of the deeper meaning. What do i do? I don't do anything. Past experience has found that a statement like that kills any conversation dead.

My ability to interact is foundering on my paranoia that nothing i have ever done is worthwhile, comparatively, or interesting. So what do I mean by worthwhile?

I already know that my value system is based on creativity. (Which writes off all corporate endeavours, of course.) My internal measure is rated on how interesting and new a thing created is to other people. If it doesnt astonish anyone else with how great it is, its worse than nothing. I think possibly, worse than not having anything to say to that dread question, would be to be forced to admit that i do something that ends badly.

There has to be, at the end, something to hold up and of which can be declared "i did this" without causing embarassment. I think, if I had that, I might not have so much difficulty talking to people.

This whole dilemma is compounded by the expectation that other people seem to have that I will do something amazing. I have trouble enough with my own disappointment with my ineptitude, and then I get everyone I meet expecting me to do things I haven't as well.

¹Admittedly, theres something kind of fun about stamping your feet. I suspect, if i got the chance, i'd be pounding fists and feet on the floor in full two year old tantrum glory.

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This morning i received the larger xd card for my camera. This will allow me to take many many photos at once, without needing to empty the memory all the time. By lots, i mean 340 at 3024x2016 pixels. In a classic packaging fiasco, the card turned up in a box 200x250x120mm (6000000mm3). Xd cards measure 20x24x1mm (480mm3). So only a factor of 12500 off.

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I'm doing something that is killing my ability to think clearly. Is it listening to music all the time? Surely i'd be even more distracted by the blur of annoying other people noise. But then, that's a distant noise, where music is right in my ears usually. Maybe. I'm not sure what there is in the way of research into how that sort of thing affects stuff, beyond the old arguments for and against music while doing homework that never really had anything factual behind them on either side.

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	For no more reason than is usually needed for dream content, as I approached consciousness this morning I was watching as a producer attempted to find the perfect lead instrument for an already-written piece of electronica. There were three contenders left in the running, and this was their chance to play what they thought the lead track on the final composition should be. I'm not sure what they were going for in particular, or for what purpose, but they seemed to be looking for an ambient, chilled sort of a sound as the lead. The first to perform was predominantly using the rattle-cage of his saxophone. Well, it was called something like that. Something bland and precisely descriptive. Basically, in this world, saxophones had a narrow keyhole slot in the side about halfway up. You could put a plain teaspoon head through this, sit it in the thinner base of the gap, and flick the protruding handle to tap out rhythms with the bowl on the inner chamber. This percussion was modulated in effect by playing of the sax in the real-world-approved way. I believe he was originally using a gold plated paella spoon, but it morphed halfway through his tune into the supermarket generic stainless teaspoon. Which is a shame, really, paella is everyone's favourite. What do ferraura do to a saxophone? I'd be disinclined to find out. The second performance, I can't for the life of me remember. I know it was just kind of fair-to-middling in every regard. The saxophonist was a very low key sort of tune. This guy was more obtrusive. Further detail escapes me. Let's just assume he had a beret and an expression of fierce determination as he stomped his way through a version of amazing grace that had cop-rumbling bass and a casiotone home organ. And the last, the last was using what I considered at the time to be a violin, although on (waking) further thought it was nothing like one. It may have had a body like a violin, but it had a matt of strings densely packed together, and a couple of inches across, made of something like string. Plain old cotton string. He played across all of these indiscriminately, and they were quite loosely strung, so shifted from side to side almost a foot away from the body in response to the pressure of his bow. The saxophonist, at this point, was assuming a pose of history-channel-documentarian-intentness. As if speaking to the camera, he mentioned in an undertone that this technique was known as a 'tirade'. Me, I thought it sounded not dissimilar to a particular silver mount zion track that I can't be sure of in the light of day. I did think that silver mount zion were just the sort to employ tirades at length. Regardless, it produced a particularly swooping, keening sound that fit perfectly with the backtrack as far as everyone there was concerned. This doesn't make any sense, really, as the backtrack bordered on musak, but that is unimportant I guess. The contest was pretty much considered to be over.

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