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  • Music Crisis: Low Roar

    June 24th, 2022

    Music crisis is all about exploration friends, it’s all about expanding to unknown horizons and the discovery of this band was exactly that for me. I can’t remember how I came to find it, I believe this was after my first music crisis where I found a lot of atmospheric stuff, which often presents visuals related to the forests and cold landscapes, actually, the previous article in this category deals with that music in depth.

    It’s fun how naturally resistant to change a person may be; let me elaborate, I was in a music crisis: yes, I needed something new: yes, I looked for something similar to the latest thing I discovered when I felt this way: also yes, xD. I’ve been listening to some psychology lectures about behavior and well, it seems humans tend to construct models of success based on experience, so I guess this is not completely illogical yet it’s a bit of a paradox when the subject is an exploration of the unknown!

    So what does it have to do with “Low Roar”? Yeah, good question. Well again, I thought it maybe was some atmospheric metal thing, probably because the first record (which was the only one available at that time) displayed a moose and what seems to be a sound (roar?) coming out of its muzzle in the form of birds. So, quite a poetic and compelling illustration (that’s the image on top of this post in case you haven’t noticed yet).

    Nothing further from metal, LOL. I was deceived by my genre bias, deceived but by no means disappointed! Once I started listening I couldn’t stop, and this doesn’t happen often with me, my attention span is let’s say, a struggle.

    First Impressions

    Ryan Karazija – Composer

    I’ve always been into guitar, I like the inviting sound of an acoustic guitar playing arpeggios and emotional tunes; this is exactly what I had at the very beginning with the song “Give Up” from the first record which is by the way entitled: Low Roar. Damn, it was like, straight to the heart! It’s beautiful and nostalgic and his voice is… like calming, not sure how else to describe it, calming and sweet. But there’s something else, what he was feeling, what he expresses in that song, even before learning the lyrics I knew we had something in common and it was an instant connection, this made his music super special to me up to this day.

    Now, if I’m to describe the feelings and thoughts I get when I listen to any Low Roar song, this would become a really weird book that probably only makes sense to me, so I wanted to just focus on that first impression of the first song that pretty much won me as a life-long fan. The cool thing about this whole musical accident is that to me it was a treasure from there onwards, something very exclusive and something not a lot of people knew; also given my experience with absolutely beautiful musical projects that only launch one record, I was seriously hoping that didn’t happen with this one. Fortunately, it didn’t!

    Ryan’s Story: The Source of the Connection

    Northern Lights in Iceland

    As I said before, the connection I made with this music was very immediate and also very emotional; so it was also a simple connection, facilitated by the magic and emotion of the music. This means it didn’t require a lot of research about this guy’s life or point of view, except for what he wrote in the YouTube video where I found his record, and unfortunately, I don’t have a way to retrieve that, since that old video probably disappeared long ago but he was basically explaining that he’d recently moved to Iceland, that it was a big life change for him and a struggle to get adapted, to begin a new life in a foreign country.

    I thought about the situation he had at that time and how it’s represented beautifully in the music he composed; yeah maybe this wasn’t a tragedy, maybe this was just a decision with unforeseen consequences (I don’t know the details), but the feeling of being absolutely lost in life, the pain of caring deeply for things that others don’t seem to even contemplate as important, the fear, and pressure of not achieving success, the anxiety concerning relationships and the absolute uncertainty when most of your life is in uncharted territory. All of this may potentially be right in front of an immigrant in a new country, and even if I haven’t experienced it fully myself (I’ve been away for prolonged seasons but not permanently), I can definitely empathize and relate to all of these feelings, through other types of experiences I’ve had.

    So glad to see you again!

    What’s Norman Reedus doing here?

    So yeah, what’s a digital Norman Reedus doing in this article? Well, you may know the answer depends on how much you are into gaming; this is a scene from Death Stranding, a Kojima game that has a unique story and luxury cast. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but hey, that happens with excellent stuff I’m still playing it and enjoy it quite a bit. Now, part of the difficulty in the game is related to walking: the main character is a delivery guy, in a post-apocalyptic dystopia where being the delivery guy is pretty much as badass as it gets since it’s just too dangerous to be out of shelters (it’s a long story).

    OK, so what about Low Roar? Well you know, if you’re always into music, sometimes you stop listening to artists you like for periods of time, as you’re discovering new stuff. I kept listening to Low Roar for quite a while, when the “0” record came out I was thrilled but I didn’t keep up to date with much else (I was just glad Ryan kept publishing music). To my absolute surprise, my first long walk playing Death Stranding which included a soundtrack was… guess what? Low Roar! Oh my God I couldn’t believe it, this was so exciting! And for various reasons:

    1. I love the game
    2. I love the music
    3. I feel like I knew this guy since he was in a moment of so much uncertainty, and seeing him in a deal this size is just fulfilling!

    I don’t know what the impact of this collab has been for Low Roar, but I mean this is a game with a large budget and I’m guessing it was a pretty good deal. Regardless of the details, I love it that it seems we will have Low Roar for a while, I’ve been visiting the website and see a lot of concerts in a lot of cities and the whole presence of the artist on the Internet is way different to what it used to be; and even with all of this, it seems the indie essence of the project remains.

    I’m happy with this review time to say goodbye for now.

    J.V

  • Composition 1

    June 24th, 2022

    Tonight I chose to publish a poem, with no words on it.

    Enjoy it and let me know your thoughts.

    J.V

  • Carnival Of Souls – Video Tribute

    June 23rd, 2022

    A while back, I started assembling video tributes and one of them “Carnival of Souls”. As you can see this is a very old movie, honestly it’s very low budget but it manages to be captivating and frightening as it’s a clever story with a psychological thrill factor.

    This is not a full critique, for the time being I just want to share the video with you and later I will do a full-blown post about the movie, since I believe it’s worth the effort!

    Here it goes! Enjoy.

  • Fight Club in 3-D: The Mental Dimension – Part 2

    June 22nd, 2022

    If you recall, the last article ended with a semi-conclusion, so no harm in picking it up right where we left it! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please read this first.

    Enter: “The Liberator”

    How the rupture of a single mind into personalities came to happen or even how realistic the phenomenon that created Tyler Durden is in a real-life pathology, is really beside the point, and let’s be honest, going that route can probably spoil the magic. But regardless of what a psychiatrist could say about it (I would be very interested in hearing the opinion of such a professional by the way), I believe that the creation of an alter ego, and a very strong one at it is more common than we may want to acknowledge.

    Tyler was really the last resort; I actually think very positively that the narrator created this character to help him, it’s tough though to think someone could be this lonely, and in this despair to be understood, that he had to break his consciousness into two.

    Remember this is not entirely a chronological analysis, not a re-telling of the story, so I’m analyzing Tyler for what he is, not what he seemed to be when we first watched the movie.

    Tyler is an emanation of a soul craving for power, the power to change its own situation, to understand a reality that was, for the most part, distressing and unbearable, and to take an active part in rewriting such a reality into something more meaningful. And that’s why Tyler is almost ideally strong, bold, rebellious, and even good-looking, precisely because he is that: an ideal; Tyler himself says it right in the narrator’s face:

    Tyler: “All the ways you wish you could be, that’s me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not.”

    That’s quite a confrontation! How many of us have at a certain stage of our life, been working on a Tyler of our own?

    This is interesting to think about:

    • Ever had imaginary rewrites of past conversations? Like answering back to your boss, spouse, or parents (someone with power in your life), real upset, real powerful instead of shutting up the way you did, or even worst, saying something weak?
    • Have you ever gotten lost in fantasies where you look much better, or simply act like a true badass and awaken the admiration of everyone?
    • Ever fantasized to be someone so important that anyone who despised you would be ashamed and have no option but to feel powerless that they can’t stop your success?

    Maybe you haven’t been in this situation, but then again, life is not equal for everyone. I have definitively been in such situations, and I do believe our mind is able to use resources such as fantasy to help us deal with otherwise unbearable situations. But then again, Tyler Durden is the extreme of this situation, he’s a fantasy to extensively desired, and worked in such detail by the frustration of our narrator, that it had to materialize, it had to become a savior and liberator.

    Once again, nearing the end, Tyler’s defense is: “hey! you created me! I didn’t create some loser alter ego to make myself feel better”, oh dear, the genius of this writer.

    Now, there’s a catch to it all, Tyler is so strong that he doesn’t just want to takeover occasionally, Tyler wants to become the materialized potential of the narrator and this causes a conflict because what he’s capable of, goes beyond what his weaker brother is able to accept. So the interesting thing is, that Tyler’s ultimate accomplishment is to bring back a narrator who’s no longer a weakling, but a challenger who can prove to be stronger than the alter ego. Now, this is almost a conclusion, but there’s more to see so let me backtrack a little and end this section with a contrast between these two characters:

    • Tyler is detached from material requirements; he ridicules the narrator’s “tragedy” of losing “a lot of versatile solutions for modern life”.
    • Tyler smokes, he offers the narrator a smoke and he says he doesn’t. How is this even relevant? Well, maybe our narrator had a “Marlboro-like” concept that tough men, real alpha cowboys smoke.
    • Tyler has no restrictions, he can insert pornography in family films, or urinate in the soup of bigwigs and get away with it.
    • Tyler uses pain as a tool, which makes him badass as no one; at the very core of self-preservation is not being physically destroyed, but this guy takes a brutal beating by “Lou” the tavern-owner, and still laughs at his face, or is able to cause himself a chemical burn just to get liberated from fear and the restrictions of the possibility of pain. How many of us could have experienced more freedom if we were more welcoming of pain?
    Tyler: “you don’t know where I’ve been Lou, you don’t know where I’ve been, hahahaaha!”
    • Tyler despises the modern system and way of living, and is able to start disrupting it greatly; this means Tyler is not only a spectator, but he’s also the bringer of change, through chaos. He’s above the System that oppresses the weak, common men.
    • Tyler is straightforward, not shy, there’s no need to be shy when you’re someone like Tyler, you really say what you want and have everyone else fuck themselves.

    Conflict

    Tyler: “This is it, the beginning, ground zero…”

    What is it with anti-heroes that after a while, you don’t really want them to “come around”? But everything has an end, I mean, after all, in real life ideals are not historically proven to prevail, and Tyler was an ideal.

    There’s a conflict between the narrator and his savior, it’s a conflict that comes from the expanding chaotic nature of Tyler; it starts with a private street fight, becomes an underground club in a bar basement, branches out throughout the city and later throughout the country, start assigning tasks which as illegal, punishable activities, becomes project mayhem, targets the entire financial system as a first step to the attainment of Tyler’s ideal society, and in Tyler’s plans, it won’t stop until such a society is achieved. What does that society look like? Well, let’s allow him to describe it to us:

    “In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rock feller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighways.”

    So Tyler’s ideal is the destruction of what most people would call modern civilization, something like how the world in “The Walking Dead” looks like, minus the zombies. Tyler here seems to hint us to what some authors would call the neo-Luddite movement, you know who else thought similarly to Tyler?

    Theodore Kaczynski a.k.a “Unabomber”

    So give or take, the differences in style and execution, this is similar to Tyler’s profile, although Tyler being way more charismatic and having an army of angry men from all walks of life available to him, would have been infinitely more dangerous than the loner “Unabomber” who still manages to do enough harm to guarantee him life in prison.

    Now, I don’t want to get into judgemental arguments here (courts have taken care of these matters already), I’m not a zealot, nor an apologist, but I’m also open enough to try to understand where these people are coming from, I feel they’re a big, red alarm about things in our society we should be paying more attention to. But, after the self-inflicted car accident, this is really what everything points to and Bob’s death is a big wake-up call to our narrator; he seems to be more absent than ever, Tyler’s gone, and he’s abandoned once more by his father figure of sorts. He feels something’s wrong and starts taking matters into his own hands until he’s confronted with the truth.

    Showdown: “This Head Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us”

    Well, when it comes to the story as presented by the movie, there is a huge crescendo from the point where the narrator is confronted by Tyler in the hotel concerning both of them being the same person; obviously, this triggers a frantic succession of events culminating in the final showdown at 1888 Franklin St.

    Badass as Tyler is, and even with the relief he’s brought to the narrator’s life, it’s time to make a choice: become the “leader of a terrorist organization” as he attempted to tell the police and go with it until the last consequences, or somehow fight Tyler to become the personality in control of his mind. Tough call, yet as we know he chooses the second.

    It seems our narrator has more respect for life than he’s been willing to show through the frustration of his discourse. Tyler has stepped on two boundaries:

    • Bob is dead: Bob’s death was a big shock, he realized the difference between his point of view where he saw people as people (recall the “his name is Robert Paulson” creepiness), whereas Tyler was growing an army of anonymous men, expendable and willing to die for a common goal.
    • Marla should die: “She knows too much”. Tyler had warned the narrator that he should not discuss his existence with Marla, after this actually happened Tyler’s mind is set on “tying up loose ends”. This is the final trigger that causes the narrator to desperately begin to attempt with all his might to destroy the upcoming Project Mayhem operation. More on this on the “Relational Dimension” part of the series, coming soon…

    So yeah, there’s really a point of no return, and the movie begins by telling us so, repeated again at the end on the top floor of the 1888 Franklin St. building: “ground zero”.

    Now, the epiphany concerning the narrator actually being in control is pretty much the point where Tyler is lost forever; I will not question the artistic decision of Mr. Palahniuk concerning suicide, let’s face it, the movie wouldn’t be the same with that extra weird sauce added at the very end with the guy having a fatal shot in his face telling Marla “everything is gonna be OK” and sending one of his minions to “find some gauze” for his wound. It’s weird and cool. But again, to me, Tyler is lost as soon as the gun moves to the narrator’s hand and he takes control over his renegade alter ego.

    “Not my head Tyler, OUR head”

    Fight Club is a weird story, it’s an amazing story and it’s written with unique style and genius, and equally brought to the big screen with excellence. And the funny part is, it’s not exempted from some degree of idealism, I mean, at the end of the day the financial credit records are destroyed, no one else dies, Tyler is defeated, and the narrator is a far stronger man than before (we could say he was able to integrate Tyler into his own personality while keeping it on check with his rationality), oh yeah and he keeps the chick (or so it seems).

    So Tyler and Marla are triggers of a big conflict, and this radical conflict which is absolutely real and raw (almost lethal), ends up bringing up the man to his potential. Excuse me hardcore fans if I’m too optimistic but in the end, there’s a bit of self-improvement in Fight Club, “hitting rock bottom” seemed to have more bugs than expected but without it our narrator would have never come to know himself truly, and be at peace with his perception of life (or at least in better shape than he started).

    -BIG PENIS-. (Sorry, needed to do this at some point). xD

  • Late Night Journal – 06/20/2022

    June 20th, 2022

    I’m back! Yeah, I haven’t been writing every night, but I do as much as I can folks, these last weeks have been quite a turmoil in my life, but I’m way too experienced in storms to fail to realize that they always hide great opportunities!

    So in case, you’re wondering, today’s “night picture” is just an homage to the band of my teenage years: Iron Maiden; I just came back from the gym and I always take my music with me cause 90% of the time, the music they play at the gym sucks, so I started playing one of those custom Spotify mixes and it just reminded me of the good old times. So this record, in particular, isn’t one of the all-time favorites for most people, but I really like it nonetheless, call it nostalgia; by the way, I read in the news that Bruce Dickinson wants the band to appoint a new singer when he’s no longer able to keep performing well, what a vision! This is the kind of thing I would dream of as a kid, to audition for Iron Maiden! But yeah, Bruce is basically irreplaceable and I’m a baritone 😦 so not in my wildest dreams; maybe later I’ll write some music of my own, it’s a wish that has been blocked for years, but when there’s a will there’s a way!

    So I’m working very hard to quit smoking; yeah I hadn’t written about that cause it’s a super sensitive topic for me; for those who don’t smoke it’s just stupid and for me, who smoke it’s stupid to poison myself gradually with that shit, but also I have huge anxiety that’s very hard to deal with and it’s what pushes me to addictions. I’ve told you before about my losing weight, that’s going well so far but then again, I’m not a fan of dying young if I can avoid it so smoking is what’s next. Wish me luck fellows, I’ve tried quitting too many times, but I will keep fighting until it’s over.

    It’s time to let this go 😦

    I’ve published the second post in the “Fight Club in 3-D” series, you can read it here, go ahead, give it a go and let me know what you think.

    I’ll go grab a bite, and possibly do some more work a bit later, so bye for now!

    J.V

  • Fight Club in 3-D: The Mental Dimension – Part 1

    June 19th, 2022

    Yes, yes it is that time my friends, “ground-zero”! Time to fulfill the promise I made in “Welcome to Fight Club” and start my 3-layered analysis of this mind-blowing movie. I know, I know I’m overly excited, so what!

    So today, I will present to you what’s probably the most obvious dimension of the movie and that is, the mental state of our friend “narrator” around which the whole movie gravitates. I feel it has to come first because it impacts and links to any other commentary on culture, or society and definitely shapes the nature of the relationships between the characters.

    So if you’re a hardcore fan like me, you know saying “narrator” is just an unstable guy having an episode is a seriously simplistic understatement to the wealth and depth of the content presented to us in this story. But before you judge too hard someone who does, let me just say in their defense that the “narrator” himself defines it similarly at the end of the movie, as he attempts to explain the current situation to Marla: “You met me at a very strange time of my life…”

    So what’s up with this whole “narrator” thing?

    –“Sure, why don’t we start at the very core? It’s not like it’ll end the charm too soon, will it?” LOL.

    There’s an artistic reason and a psychological reason, why not only me, but a lot of fans of the movie call Edward Norton’s character “narrator”; now I’m writing this to whoever’s interested this is not segmented for-fans-only, after all, Tyler is a “man of the common folk”, the “all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world” a bucket in which it seems most of us (fans ar not fans) fit equally, in his vision of things.

    But, I’m getting carried away here, the more obvious reason is that the movie is narrated by the protagonist, who would occasionally address the audience directly and explain things that are happening; the other reason which I find very eccentric is that throughout the movie, this character is never actually named; moreover, there are very intentional moments in which providing the name is avoided as if Palahniuk is mocking us in our own faces, I already spoke about examples of this in the first article, but indulge me with another one I noticed recently: Narrator’s condo just burst in flames, he picks up the phone and calls Tyler, Tyler asks “who is this?” do you recall narrator’s answer?

    “…we met on the airplane, we had the same suitcase? the clever guy…”

    I love it, the story author’s genius allows such a transgression to conventions to carry on all throughout the story, and you don’t even care and perhaps didn’t notice it the first time. I’m mentioning Chuck Palahniuk even when I mentioned this posts will take the movie as their only foundation, because of two reasons:

    1. It’s his mind that brought us this masterpiece
    2. I came to understand while preparing these articles, that the movie respects a lot of the original lines as they appear in the book

    Having made that meaningless clarification, I come back to the original point, besides the artistic eccentricity this entails, there’s a deeper sense to the narrator’s anonymity, it’s precisely the quality of being anonymous and seemingly devoid of an identity that triggers the whole chain of events. So keeping this guy unnamed is a perfect homage to his struggle.

    “You wanna see pain?”

    So what’s his struggle you ask? Well, I’m glad you ask, this is why I’m writing this entire piece, to answer that very question; in short, our beloved narrator is suffering from a severe philosophical void in his life, he’s nothing, no one, his life is meaningless and the whole world around him is soaked in the same banality, life doesn’t make any sense at all and he’s just too aware of it for his own benefit. But here’s the worst part of the curse: while he’s aware of the condition and suffering from it intensely, he’s powerless, there’s nothing he can do to change the condition of his own life, and don’t even think the world around him.

    Now, this manifests in different, more visible symptoms we learn about throughout the movie, insomnia being the key problem in the opening act, yet obviously surrounded by a deep dark depression appropriate to his existential suffering.

    “everything is a copy, of a copy, of a copy…”, – is this a wink to the NIN song?

    As it usually happens, he’s annoyed by the symptom and he’s not fully aware of the dimension of what’s going on inside his mind and soul (can’t really judge him, it’s so hard sometimes, isn’t it?), so he goes and sees the doctor about insomnia. And here’s where the title of this section gets his name, the doctor really reacts with the apathy and mockery ordinary people of our society usually reacts to mental and emotional suffering: “that’s nothing, you need to do some exercise and sleep better”; as narrator replies “I’m in pain”, the good doctor replies:

    “”You wanna see pain? Swing by First Methodist Tuesday night. See guys with testicular cancer. That’s pain…”

    As an omen of what’s being triggered here, we see the first “subliminal” apparition of Tyler behind the doctor in a glimpse of a second, right in this scene. Now the big turning point here is, where most people would have taken the doctor’s suggestion for what it was: a rhetorical mockery of his patient’s complaint, our narrator actually decides to go to the testicular cancer group. A fateful decision.

    Losing All Hope Was Freedom

    You think you’ve seen it all in movies until you find yourself watching a guy becoming addicted to support groups, how crazier does it get? – A lot more.

    But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, let me ask you, dear reader, have you ever been in a real-life support group? Lucky you, who can answer without anyone else knowing, I can tell you that I have. Support groups can be a true blessing, and I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending them to people who are struggling with addiction, disease, and other conditions; now, they do have their quirks of course, like anything, and such quirks make them a fertile ground for humor.

    Now back to our character here, support groups aren’t necessarily anyone’s first choice for relief or socializing, they’re meant to help people undergoing very specific and tough situations. And so we can tell from the whole catalog Marla and the narrator start arguing about, negotiating which one each of them will keep.

    Narrator: “What do you want?”
    Marla: “I’ll take the parasites”
    Narrator: “You can’t have both parasites, but why don’t you take the blood parasites?”

    So how is it that our tormented friend is able to recover his ability to sleep and enter a place of “peace” while engaging in these activities? Well, he explains it to us rather philosophically: “losing all hope was freedom”.

    I find it very concerning, and very telling of the deficiencies in our society to address mental health properly, that a person with a clear pathology needs to find shelter among people with unrelated terminal illnesses or irreversible conditions. His expanded explanation could be: “by surrounding myself with people coping with loss, people who are hopeless about their condition I also feel like I can let go of any need to find a meaning, a reason, a motivation, an expectation from life; I can imitate that state of hopelessness and thus, let go of my anxiety and find it easier to live”.

    That’s a primary, very compelling reason for him to become addicted to support groups; and isn’t just a few steps away from suicide? Think about it, when the proximity of death, and the thought process to accept it seems preferable to the anguish of dealing with life, I’d say we’re talking about rather deep depression. Now, interestingly enough, he’s not hopeless regardless of how he’d like to think he is, if he was hopeless he wouldn’t be in such a conflict, he wouldn’t be seeking to feel free, alive, and listened-to among the people in support groups. So there’s also that tension and contradiction, which is very natural and which leads to the next stages of his crisis.

    But then, when relief seemed to be at hand:

    “Slide…”

    Why? Why is Marla such a terrible presence in the support groups? It doesn’t have anything to do with being exposed, she’s also a tourist and doesn’t want to be exposed either; no, the problem is that she’s a mirror to him, she’s another desperate, sunk-in-darkness no one who’s constantly reminding him that he’s not really terminally ill, he’s not in acceptance of death, he’s a faker who’s borrowing from other’s the relief he can’t permanently find for his own condition. This sweet relief is now exposed as fake and temporary, doomed to fail.

    In spite of the efforts to negotiate a way out, by getting rid of Marla and distributing attendance to support groups between each other, insomnia returns, and his small existential oasis is now invaded and ruined, by someone perhaps too similar to himself (which is something he would deny and despise, of course). There’s yet another subliminal omen of how Tyler’s appearance is close, right after confronting Marla for the first time (found this cool gif version of subliminal Tylers, the last one is the one I’m referring to here):

    Tyler’s subliminal appearances are an amazing symbol of the disturbance in our narrator’s mind and how throughout the beginning of his crisis, an alter ego is taking shape.

    A semi-conclusion

    Honestly, it’s just that this post is getting way too long, and I will need to split it into parts. But I think this is a great moment to stop, because Tyler’s official introduction into the story is what’s next, and this is really the turning point; so thanks for reading me, and stay tuned for part 2 of “Fight Club in 3-D: The Mental Dimension”.

  • Thinking things thinkers think

    June 18th, 2022

    How often do you think you think?

    Don’t worry, the whole article is not gonna be some stupid tongue twister, my aim is, as a matter of fact, that the article won’t be stupid at all, but all the opposite.

    So it’s a serious question, I’d like to invite you to stop for a moment and let it sink in, try to come up with an answer.

    Now, perhaps this is not you, but I wouldn’t be surprised if 90% of people presented with this question wouldn’t hesitate much in saying: “well, every day, I think every day at every hour, it’s just something I have to do”, and I believe 90% of the people would be wrong.

    Yes, it is true, that human beings are conscious and self-aware; moreover, we’re capable of abstraction and pondering ideas and concepts that don’t necessarily have an immediate material manifestation. By exercising these capabilities daily, we’re able to work, obtain what we need, and make decisions; but this is not the kind of “thinking” I’m asking about.

    Since I wouldn’t like to start a language controversy over the semantics of the word “thought”, I will define what it is for me, and let’s just use it as a convention throughout the articles in this new section so that we avoid getting into the weeds with petty discussions. To think is to intentionally engage in the construction of an idea or concept, through the resolution of one or several problems or inquiries.

    Now the word “construction” is key here because thinking is not the same as learning and not the same as deciding or acting. Thinking is creative, it deals with asking questions and seeking to resolve the problems posed by those questions, thus creating something new; that something new could range from something like forming a personal opinion about a subject, or resolving a lack of understanding you had concerning a specific topic by arriving at your own conclusions (not merely adopting those of others as communicated through books or media), up to actually creating a more complex project, idea or invention as the result of the consecutive resolution of problems or inquiries.

    Why is this important?

    I hope you’re asking yourself this question, it means you’re thinking. So to avoid taking that privilege away from you, I will not answer this question for you, rather, I will tell you some of my own thoughts about the subject:

    • Kids are more likely to think frequently than adults: There’s a quality in kids which naturally makes them think frequently, a rather incomplete picture of life and the world. We’ve all been kids and we’ve all been exposed to the fact others are making decisions for us, telling us what’s right and wrong; when we’re little kids that typically leads to that annoying “why” stage where we need an explanation for everything, and once given, the new statement just leads to more questions and the cycle repeats. When we’re growing up and are pre-teens or teens that leads to what adults typically call “rebellion”; so it’s a deeper questioning of our surroundings, of our parents who become the cause of much distress and disagreement, yet remain to be the people providing stability and opportunity (terrible exceptions exist, I’m talking about how things should be); teens feel frustrated and sometimes deceived, the world is not as they parents told them and their body chemistry push them to discover it by themselves. Both kids and teens have in common that they’re aware they don’t have the full picture, they haven’t experienced living by their own means and fully being responsible for their needs and actions and they have the figure of adults who somehow seem to shelter them and provide them the knowledge they need (kids) or hide things from them and limit their wild exploration (teens), I believe teens from healthy families can actually experience a blend of the two since I’m not implying a teen would always hate their parents, they’re just naturally inclined to defy and question what’s established.
    • Why are adults gradually losing their habit of thinking?: I’m formulating this as a question on purpose, I don’t claim to have the full answer, but I do believe this to be true, and increasingly in this day and age. It’s difficult not to incur in “common places” while analyzing this, and summon concepts such as “the system” but take it with a grain of salt if you must; I do believe much of the industrial and technological age mankind is living in detachment from the natural challenges of our species. We’re educated to be a part of an order that’s externally imposed, somehow already figured out by our ancestors and illuminated bringers of civilization, people who evolved from tribal and barbaric times of unheard cruelty, health issues, lack of opportunity, and hardships unthinkable to the typical smartphone-bearer of our time, to bring forth a brave new world of cities, electricity, medicine, transportation, human rights and a life which, while not without its own challenges, can be demonstrated to be more comfortable and welcoming to the human race than in previous centuries. If you think this is sarcasm, you’re wrong, it’s not (ok some parts are just mocking the idealistic depiction presented in the mainstream, but for the most part there’s data that demonstrates the average human is doing a lot better!). That’s the interesting part, if I take a look at the historical account of what previous centuries looked like for humans, I’m grateful to be born in 1986 from a working-class family, in most past ages that condition would have doomed me to early death or having to take a way more violent path to achieve something in my life.
    • But you’re not answering the previous bullet point!: I told you I don’t claim to have the full answer, but here’s an attempt: if we enter adulthood with a relatively decent job, or career and are able to make a relatively decent standard of living by ourselves it’s indeed possible that a false realization of “completeness” or at least being close to getting the “full picture” of things will come rather early to us. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m talking about a “Maslow pyramid” having its foundations prebuilt for a lot of people, and by no means am I saying this will be enough, as a matter of fact, the price to pay for this is an unnatural void and anxiety that begins to cause social phenomena unseen before the advent of this more comfortable age of mankind. The fact that there are places in the world in which people still gather and hunt their food, don’t have access to what we consider “basic utilities” and that the degree of “civilization” we’re talking about here is not entirely universal yet, allows for contrasting and deriving certain concepts; like that of a system. We tend to judge such populations and villages and societies as primitive, disorganized, and backward, and if we look at it through the lens of what our education programs teach us, they are. But each of these individuals in a village is key to the survival of the group and they know themselves to be; failure to spot a predator, to remove poisonous elements from the food or crops will do huge damage to the whole group. The same cannot be said in the huge city, where adding or removing an individual seems of no consequence, pointless.
    • You’re still not answering and now started talking about civilization: I’m sorry, bear with me and it will come together. Back to losing the habit of thinking and its relationship to adulthood: once you feel you got the basics right, you’re able to provide for yourself and maybe even a family, you’re safe in your job, have a place to rest and no immediate threats to your life (that you’re aware of), it’s easy to let your guard down; it seems that somehow this is life and it’s kind of OK no need to further complicate things. And by the way, I think this can happen in our industrial/technological society as much as in the primitive one, let’s not idealize either!

      Whereas we may have a false feeling of:

      “I figured it out: study, get a job, advance in the job to get more shiny things, shiny things get me perks others don’t have “hurray me!”, maybe built a family (dogs possibly nowadays), maybe build a business (entrepreneurial types), maybe grow old and retire in comfort, maybe I don’t even think that much in any of this shit and just follow the script…”

      Maybe in the village, they have something like:

      “It is the way the elders taught us: nature will provide the hints and opportunities, we need to seize them. We need to read the rain, the sky, and the forest and we will be prepared, we need to respect the forces of nature, the prey and predator equally and be like the tree that takes from the earth what it needs and provides fruit and shelter to the other beings in exchange. This is what I need to teach my children, we need to breed children who understand these things, and the people will continue to inhabit this land that should be our blanket when we join our ancestors”.

      But the truth is, neither the city person nor the village person is entirely right; there are more things, and when you prioritize your anxiety for understanding and completing the picture, over that inner feeling screaming at you that there are missing parts of the puzzle, that’s where you begin to think less and less frequently.

    An artificial conclusion

    I must, at this stage finish this post, simply because I’m tired and need to refresh before continuing with this topic. So this is an artificial conclusion for the time being, but I want to leave you with an idea: “the more is resolved on our behalf, the less we’re challenged with immediate, tangible problems, and the more our problems and concerns become of a cultural nature (borrowing from Maslow, at the top of the pyramid are aesthetic needs, self-image needs, transcendence needs and those needs that are more concerned with meaning other than with survival, security or quality of life), the less we individually develop our own ideas”.

    Now, as I said before, I think this age of advancement and wider access to basic services and solving basic needs is a great place to be, but I don’t see that most humans who are in this position are living up to the possibilities that such a privilege should provide. Why is this? Why is it that instead of becoming more advanced thinkers, we’re neglecting thought and replacing it with something else?

    I’ll leave this for you to think about, if you do, I would have accomplished a lot today and I will be very comfortable in my current pyramid position.

  • Late Night Journal – 06/15/2022

    June 15th, 2022

    Hello once again, it’s me and it’s night so you know what’s in store 😀

    Today has actually been a pleasant day (kinda opposite from yesterday, which is why it’s better not to make dramas when things are shitty, they get better eventually). I’m adapting better to my new job (also to it being the only job) and I’m keeping my workouts which is something I’m proud of since until now I wasn’t at all disciplined when it comes to exercise. So I’m dropping weight, I can tell by the clothes and I feel more flexible and move with more ease, but man I hate it so much that the last thing going away is that freaking belly 😦 . That thing is like a blob-alien-parasite just hanging in there to make me feel miserable and remind me to take care of myself and be vigilant of food until the day I kick the bucket. Fucking obesity is the worst, it really messes up self-esteem and all that good stuff.

    In any case, that’s a lot of ranting for a very nice day, so I digress: I’m dropping weight and I love that. Also, today I succumbed to a very old need of mine, one that I typically suppress for “seasons” and then allow myself to dive into: video games. I was a kid of the 90’s so: NES, SNES, PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4 I’ve had them all (no PS5 yet, but I bought myself a kickass gaming PC so not even sure I want to invest in a console any longer). Now, there’s a reason why I suppress the need voluntarily and it’s honesty time once again: I get easily addicted to things, and video games are a big one; there was a time when I had to quit StarCraft because I was neglecting work way too off the reasonable boundaries; also I like reading, writing and like doing things in life and if I get sucked too hard by VGs I can easily give up real life in favor of “game life”. So, haters will hate, I’m pretty sure it may sound ridiculous to some gamers, but as usual, I don’t give a fuck, this is how I manage my life.

    In any case, I decided to start a new controlled “gaming season” and I chose such a badass classic to do so! (drums please):

    Devil May Cry

    aaaaaand…..

    Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes

    Oh man, I’m so thrilled!

    OK I had a lot more stuff to write, but I like to keep these short and sweet (or only short, depending on the night, LOL) but I have one more thing to say and I swear I’ll shut up and play MGS-V: have you wondered why the usual “night” picture I put in these posts has a special guest tonight? That’s because I found an armadillo in my back yard soooooooo damn cute! Super fat as well and that’s the reason why my Shih-Tzu keeps barking and staring at the terrace floor, I kept super quiet and was able to see it feed for a long time.

    OK now, cheers, have a great night!

    J.V

  • Late Night Journal – 06/14/2022

    June 14th, 2022

    Hi! I hope you had a great day, I’m afraid this will be a rather short entry as I’m super tired, and it’s been one of those days that aren’t nice or pleasant in any form, and still, you feel there’s been a lot of growth and important things, so allow me to mention them:

    • I started writing a novel: Yes, yes I know, I know I should be super thrilled and ecstatic (and deep inside I am!). This is a project I’ve attempted once or twice before and never managed to finish but this is a different time in my life and I will finish it.
    • But… my novel is quite scary: He, he that’s the heavy part and part of why I’m so tired. I won’t provide a lot of spoilers because I’d love it if you read it once it’s published, but it’s a very dark thriller about a rather disturbed individual who has an “animal” alter ego and beings hunting people and doing very nasty things to them. Of course, the bottom of the matter is a lot deeper than that, but I’m describing why I got so tired; it’s tough to imagine these violent things and it’s even tougher to understand you’re able to create such pictures out of your own will and even through the manipulation and amplification of some of your own emotions. If I’m to be super honest, it all started with writing a poem, but it came out so vicious and dark that I felt it needed to be inserted into a larger, violent plot.
    • So is this about being a new writer?: Well, yes in part. Everything is new to me as a writer (and I mean writer after my office job ends, of course), so feeling drawn into the actions of your character, giving them macabre dialogues and deranged scenarios starts affecting you after a while (is this only me? I’m interested in hearing from other authors who’ve written about killers, horror, etc). And I guess the other part is, that I’ve always been dark in my artistic taste (exceptions certainly exist, I enjoy a Vivaldi concert and a beautiful Japanese print or an impressionist painting of a sunny garden); and as I’m getting older, I’m getting bolder. I feel there’s no time to lose, no holding back on energy, and no insecurity; so if I’m to write something gruesome I won’t soften it to be “reasonable” or “tolerable”: it’s going to be raw and hard to endure.
    • Life after COVID and traveling to work: It’s not as bad as it sounds, the only reason I’ve been traveling to the office is that we had two directors visiting my country, but neither I nor my colleagues have the intention to start commuting to the office frequently, and thankfully it’s largely up to us. That said, every trip to the office is long, tiring and I’m just not used to it any longer. Also, soccer is big here, and people today were all over the streets celebrating classification to the World Cup, which I couldn’t give more fucks about, and it annoys me how it changes the whole pattern of traffic and forced me to make long detours. Fuck soccer!
    • The effort of socializing: You probably have an idea about my personality by now, but yeah, social skills are not my most developed skills, just to use a euphemism. But it’s weird, it’s not like I’m completely shut down, as a matter of fact, people often find me charismatic; the thing is, I use this only when I have no option; typically, if I have an option will be by myself. But I’m a big guy now, I understand how important people are in my life and how important it is for me to build relationships; it’s easy to be resentful and blame others when later I dislike their attitude towards me, but then again I never really made an effort to show interest. I don’t want to act like this any longer, it’s a struggle. So I decided to go out for a couple beers after work with some of my colleagues, and every time I started feeling weird and paralyzed, I just came up with a conversation topic, just small talk. The result was impressive, people really seem to appreciate these little things, that seem silly but actually show you have an interest in sharing with them; I really liked it. But, it was also very demanding because it’s not natural for me.

    OK, that’s why I’m tired but had a day full of growth and good things that felt like shit most of the time, but that the future Josué will appreciate.

    Big hug fellows, need to sleep like a log.

    J.V

  • Late Night Journal – 06/13/2022

    June 13th, 2022

    Monday evenings are so tiring! I mean, it’s 8:27 pm where I live, and I feel like I just want to hop into bed. Well since I’m back to one job that’s something I can do, so that’s why I’m writing this early, so I can read 1984 in my bed and fall asleep like an elderly man (which I am, internally, an old soul). It’s been raining non-stop so that’s like, the best plan 🙂

    I’m back at the gym and that’s quite a challenge for me; since you don’t know me physically I got to confess I’m a heavy guy, I used to be very slim and when I started taking a certain medication I gained weight like a motherfucker and ever since I’ve been a fat-ass dude. I’ve always hated it and recently I came to accept that I will always hate it and therefore the best course of action is to lose that weight rather than complain while eating a fried chicken bucket (that’s obviously a cliche joke). So I’ve been eating really healthy and working out violently and I’m super happy about that, I feel like I’m moving in the right direction and have already lost about 10 pounds in less than one month; at least for me, that’s a big deal.

    Now, one thing that I find very interesting is that when I’m working out intensely and right after my session I feel plugged into a primal version of myself, like VIP access to the amygdala / reptilian brain. I start thinking of working out earlier, getting into martial arts, taking cold showers, and becoming a weird kind of urban warrior, with no one to fight 😦 but a lot of testosterone and determination! LOL.

    And well, since I’m on that subject, I’ve kept working on my content related to Fight Club (I think it’s getting under my skin now after writing that last paragraph), and although I haven’t written the second piece yet, I did finish a video tribute I’ve been working on and I hope you enjoy viewing it as much as I enjoyed building it! (although that probably makes no sense :/). Anyhow, hope you like it!

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