Why the fuck is it that people think it’s cool to assemble classical playlists and associate them with ordinary activities?
Beethoven For Studying
Working Day with Vivaldi
Mozart for BBQ (What the ACTUAL FUCK?)
Dude, these people were locked down in their studies for weeks to present a complete set of works just to be enjoyed, to actually get the fuck out of ordinary life concerns and enter the realm of the sublime, what’s the difference between Mozart for Babies and for BBQs? xD
Alright, that’s it, I needed to say it.
On an unrelated topic, I just killed this ugly motherfucker in DMC (Devil May Cry) video game, and it felt so good! I really needed to hurt something today, something evil (at least virtually). Extra points for being gross.
It’s been a horrible day folks, I can’t lie. Some days it’s too tough to be me and that’s it; when the highlight of your day is gutting out imaginary entities from Hell, then there’s something really fucked up with you. But it’s just a day, a week, a month… I no longer know; some days I feel all of my projects were thought and started by someone else, someone who’s bright and capable and who could actually bring these things to realization. And some days like today, I feel like I’m the empty, untalented version of that guy who’s ready to sabotage everything he’s working for, and it’s just about to crumble apart.
The thing is, I’m both.
I’m a sort of Jekyll and Hyde dual monster, who’s just not hurting anyone (hopefully) and so I get to keep existing somehow in a world completely incompatible with the creature I am.
Yeah, this is just probably me being a drama bitch tonight. Oh well…
The thing is, with all of the above, I still believe in the enormous potential that lies dormant in me, and in you who are reading this as well, no matter how dark, this too shall pass.
The first title that was given to this piece was “Love and Pain” which can clearly be related to what we see here, however, the final title is “Vampire”, giving a bit of a surprising twist, as I don’t quite see the all the supernatural elements I would expect from such a motif.
However you choose to view it, it’s a beautiful piece, she seems to be comforting him and he seems lost in her embrace; not only her arms, but her hair surrounds him, intense red hair and above them, a large shadow covering them which I believe adds a bit of the ominous vampiric element; there’s something else behind this beauty, there’s a hidden motive behind the romantic scene.
Part of why I chose to publish this one today, is because I happen to be reading Dracula by Bram Stoker currently, and just last night I was horrified by the scene where the vampire ladies start harassing Jonathan Harker.
But even if you remove the supernatural element, there are complex relationships where the attachment is a source of comfort and pain, they may not suck your blood out literally but could quite take the life out of your soul. Beware of those, my friends!
(Don’t judge me, I’m excited about gothic literature rn xD)
Good evening, I’m listening to an instrumental version of “Lacrimosa” from Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor, and I’m very moved by it. Today’s been a challenging day when it comes to organizing ideas and managing emotions that are linked to voluntarily seeking opposite ideas to your own; probably I will write more about it later, but it’s a tough experiment, one thing is to listen to a diversity of people, but a completely different one is to seek the ones you know you don’t like, and listening to them with respect. I’m telling you, emotions are a bitch and they can easily betray you if you don’t find a way to intentionally exercise control over them.
The bright part, is you actually find that even in those people your subconscious labels as “enemies”, “dangerous”, or “threatening” you will often find valuable things if you’re willing and open to it. I’m undergoing these voluntary experiments because I’m very interested in developing my own thought with a lot more emphasis lately, and being narrow-minded directly opposes the idea to become a thinker. By the way I published the second part of “Thinking Things Thinkers Thing” and I believe it’s quite a heavy read and one where I put a lot of effort in being upfront and clear, but as a side effect it may be a bit shocking. But hey, comfort never took anyone to a new place.
Now I’m listening to some Phonk music; man I got addicted to it, I’ll probably have to write about it in my “Music Crisis” section since I’m listening so much of it lately. So the origins of this genre are a little diffuse and it seems it’s the blend of DJs mainly from Eastern Europe with old Memphis rap tapes; the music’s mostly dark and kinda violent, so yeah of course I’d find it appealing.
I’ve been making an effort to comment on the communities of writers I subscribed to (actually to one of them, to begin somewhere); I really want to commit to exploring and building these relationships with other authors, it’s not natural in me, so that’s also emotionally tiring.
My kid (7 y/o) was accepted in a much better school than the one he’s at, he applied for admission tests a couple weeks back to third grade and we received today the news that he’s been accepted. It’s gonna cost me a kidney and I recently lost my second job, but both my wife and I are willing to make it work, it’s a good problem to have. 🙂
Hello, I’m picking this up after quite a few days from the first publication, and I’ve been wondering what exactly I’d like to communicate in this article, if don’t give it a scope it may extend forever because the very nature of its subject is infinite; so I believe the first part of this post introduces quite well my concern about the activity of thinking, and how important it is that we engage in creating new ideas and concepts intentionally.
The motivation behind writing about this is really simple: I’d like to be the person who starts conversations, who asks questions, and proposes topics that will stimulate others to think. Now, this might actually sound easier than it is; if you read my last article, you will find that my point of view is that most people believe they’re thinking, while they’re really just reacting, and there’s a world of difference between the two.
A lot of what we do on a daily basis is the product of learning, a blend of experience and knowledge, both imposed on us by the official education programs and also chosen willingly according to our circumstances and interests. I don’t believe that choosing between “A” or “B” by digging into our memory or past experience is equal to thinking, countless experiments on conditioning show rats also do this, and you haven’t seen a rat write a book or create a new non-fossil fuel, just to provide a bit of a hyperbolic contrast.
The Age of Data
What, you thought your thoughts were yours somehow? Think again, but this time for real.
I said at the end of my previous article that I believe conditions for humans are way better in this day and age in general than in those of past centuries, but somehow that doesn’t seem to reflect in the average individual’s potential. This is something that haunts me as I’m a strong believer and promoter of the liberation of human potential; but the thing is, what makes the individual stronger, tends to make the externally-imposed organization unreliable and unpredictable. This is to say, individuals concerned with developing their capabilities consistently are a threat to Status Quo; if you just think about how we’re currently organized as a system, people who spend the most part of their lives working, sleeping, and consuming data in a monitor for fun/entertainment are a sort of “gloomy ideal” of a human being, as they keep the machine in motion.
And don’t get me wrong, tour my blog and see that I’m a consumer of such goodies myself, I love playing games, I use my cell phone to search for art, I read other bloggers from time to time, and so on. If there’s the capability of accessing this wealth of information and having a good time with your digital gadgets, why not?
But let me ask you something: is this a part of your life that you enjoy daily, or is this basically your entire life?
If the honest answer is the second one and it causes you discomfort, I want to say it without any type of judgment, I want you to keep reading this section of my blog, I want you to be on my team because you’ve been held captive and you have enough guts to acknowledge it and seek freedom. See, people are meant for so much more; even if you’re consuming this content, this is raw, difficult-to-digest stuff; this is not meant to be viral, what I write is for people who are looking for more from this life than just cheap crap served to the masses by media, like feeding pigs. I’m not talking about funny memes and nice stuff that makes us laugh, those are part of keeping things human, keeping sanity, I’m talking about toxic ideology, propaganda, and artificial needs imposed on us.
I’m not mad at consumers, I’m mad at very smart and arrogant people who feel they get to idiotize a whole generation and get away with it, and this is something I aim to fight.
A Historic Tension for Compliance
Manipulation can’t be avoided, but it can be weakened and exposed.
I gave up the idea of making these couple of articles a perfect “manifesto” of my own posture concerning society because there are too many black holes, and knowledge gaps and simply because I believe shaping our own worldview is a constant effort that requires openness to change and, of course, to admit your own ignorance and mistakes.
But that doesn’t subtract from the effort, as a matter of fact, I believe it dignifies it. You see, I will not comply with the twisted “new-internet-ethics” of “cancellation” and people who think they have the right to crucify you by finding that little post, tweet, interview, etc in which you said “x” and “y” and that makes you worthy of punishment. This is immature bullshit, and I believe is just another emanation of a society that’s descending more and more rapidly into a collection of angry mobs and mindless collectives. Individuals change, we all change, individuals think, individuals learn things, experience new things, and then based on that, they add to their understanding of things around them. Do not submit yourself to that type of bullshit.
What does it all have to do with thinking? Why so emotional, man?
Because everything that I am antagonizes the modern-day deception and massification of “thought”. And this is not new, manipulation of masses is probably as old as the first civilizations that attained some sort of “modern central government”, I mean think about it, how do you achieve real population control? How do you take over 5000 individuals (thinking about a hypothetical, very small, ancient society), manage to put them to work on the same objective, and embrace a set of beliefs? You really need to work on it, need to work on a set of ideas that by observation of the culture surrounding you, you understand can potentially provide a common framework that’s relatively easy to adopt by a large number of people. It doesn’t matter not that all of them are on board, once the largest part is brought to compliance, most of the non-convinced ones will simply follow because taking their stance now is going against the flow, and that doesn’t typically end up well; in previous ages, those “deviants” from generally accepted culture ended up as outcasts of some type if they were not strong to cause trouble, and executed if they were actually capable to bring others along with them against the prevailing order.
Welcome to “Humanity Organized to Accomplish Civilization – 101”. It’s been, of course, a lot better in some stages of history than in others; the more authoritarian the leaders and the more compliant the masses, the worse it gets. It’s not the same to be, for example, a hippie in the U.S 70’s rebelling against war in Vietnam as being a Cathar in medieval France; two types of rebels with significantly disparate amounts of risk both in quantity and quality.
And, this is where I’m trying to get at: I’m old enough to understand certain things won’t really change, and work with them (this is the type of thing that make you lose followers, f.y.i):
Percentually, there are a lot more compliant, than non-compliant people in any human system that’s relatively stable. This should be obvious.
A lot of these compliant people are not very smart, while fewer others are.
The non-smart ones, behave most of the time as animals would: stimuli – response. They won’t even entertain thoughts that question their reality, the adequateness of the system or set of principles they live by, etc. This is your core mass.
The smarter ones may have their doubts, and their moments of questioning, but by all means, they also have a desire to function within society and end up adopting culture out of necessity and sometimes out of fear.
Then we have the deviants (hi I’m Josué, nice to meet you): The deviants are interesting because they end up leading others or being eliminated/neutralized.
A deviant analyzes a lot, and is far more conscious of their identity, individuality, and expectations.
A deviant is also very analytical of the society and culture surrounding them.
They will take actions based on these analyses, as their very nature doesn’t allow them to become a compliant person, at least not for long.
The actions they chose to deal with their nonconformity, will determine the impact and fate of this person in their culture. There are many variants and I will not dare try to explore them all, but let me mention some I believe are interesting:
They’re shunned by those immediately around them, and, not able to withstand it, seek comfort in self-destruction, they blame themselves for not being acceptable.
They engage in a form of resistance, whether that be membership in a countercultural group or militancy in such a movement ranging from expressing themselves through the arts to vandalism or terrorism (using these words as per our mainstream interpretation of them).
They engage in an extremely hard personal crusade to be the one who calls the shots and end up becoming the oppressor. Yes, deviants are the ones that end up subduing people, because that’s where their quest for power takes them. That doesn’t mean everyone in power has these attributes, some have inherited privileges and are educated by their deviant parents to be the continuation of the story, no way around it; and this is as shitty as it gets, I do believe it’s better to be ruled by a natural deviant than by a weak successor who’s really just a weak compliant sheep holding power by inheritance; this is a major flaw and modern leaders should avoid it, it’s far too primitive and eventually clouds the achievements of the deviant who attained power by merit.
Some, get to infiltrate the smart people (mainly deviants, but also smart-compliant people) through the dissemination of their thoughts and become thinkers and thought leaders; many of these have been persecuted, incarcerated, and put to death (we call them “intellectuals”), depending on a mixture of their circumstances, their decisions and I guess, chance. There’s a random element to things, as hard as it is to admit it.
Do you think this is grim and negative? Read Machiavelli.
No matter how charismatic, no matter how loved, no matter the image of justice they may show you, leaders are deviants. Compliant mass follows deviants, and deviants are people capable of taking the hard decisions, sometimes for the greater good but most of the time for their own continuation in power or benefit. I don’t think there’s a way around it, there’s a subtle difference between a psychopath and a natural leader, and some of the worst things in human history happen when both these traits are developed in a single person with a lot of supporters.
Kinda Political, isn’t it?
Achieving a better society depends heavily on deviants, intellectual deviants who understand the dangers of indoctrination.
It is.
But even if you swear you’ll never get yourself into a political discussion or even less, a political occupation this concerns you, and it’s highly related to the amount of thinking you do versus the amount of ideological vomit you spit out given an opportunity to engage in discussion.
See, here comes my positive thinking in the midst of these harsh realities expressed: I do believe even the people in the core mass are capable of choosing well, given the right leader with the right narrative effectively engages them, I believe people can follow a course of action that can bring about a more peaceful, relatively just society. But this depends largely, on whether or not the smart people (deviants first, and pulled by them, the smart-compliant) are willing to step up and develop their role in their own time and culture.
If you feel this sounds like a conclusion, it is, unfortunately. It also means there will be a part 3 of this article, and this time I promise this will be the last one, or at least it will be the last publication of the same title, the topic will always be around this section of the blog, evidently. The last part will deal with what I believe can be done by deviants to help shape a society that’s the most balanced and acceptable for the most people; beware of utopias, it will always be unjust, masses will always be more in number and will be easy to fool, real leaders will always be narcissistic, some will be better narcissists than others and only people who are capable to think outside their own culture can effectively influence that these forces remain in check. Don’t despise the masses, they’re the very object of dispute between thoughtful, positive leaders and psychopathic megalomaniacs.
The implications are huge, whether you care about power dynamics or not, since being a free thinker in a culture that’s extremely homogeneous and effectively indoctrinated can be a living hell.
Hi! I’ve been looking to post more of the colorful, lovely things although you know I love the dark and ghostly, hehe. I think I need some color these days 🙂
This one caught my attention because of certain unique traits:
It comes from a painter who pioneered modernism in Australia
Derived from the above, this is also the first Australian cubist landscape ever painter
This is Australian Art and the artist is a woman who’s innovating at many aspects simultaneously.
And on the subjective side, it’s a joyful piece, makes me want to be there and go for a kayak ride 🙂
Have a great Tuesday!
If you’d like to check amazing daily art stories, follow me on IG
Good evening! Tonight I’m writing an early night journal, actually, but I need to honor the section name. I’m quite tired and I’m not sure why; it may be cause my wife and kid have been sick, and I’m probably getting sick as well 😦
It’s been a while since I don’t write one of these, and I will keep doing it, it’s just since I’m always exploring things, it’s hard to keep a discipline or habit like writing an entry daily. I need to improve on that.
There has been a lot going on ever since my last entry, new posts in different sections of this blog, I’ve also joined several online writer communities in an expectation of learning more about this life, things like:
Plotting stories
Literature critique
Publishing and others
My aim is to publish some of my work as books eventually. So I guess that’s another update (not sure if I mentioned it before), I’m working on two book projects:
One is a poem compilation, very personal and deep
The other is a psychological horror-thriller (novel)
So yeah, it’s not easy to get started with these, or even worst, maybe getting started is not the real issue, but taking them to completion is. And, the more I read from others and meet people with similar interests, the less unique I feel and the more lost in an ocean of ideas, styles, stories, and thousands of people who want the same things as I do (or similar).
Now, I guess that sounded a bit grumpy or negative, but it’s not. I’m looking for this exactly, a more objective perspective on what’s the amount of effort it will take me to write a book, publish it and make it successful. It’s hard, but also I believe you need to seek trouble, struggle, be hurt, feel discouraged, and then find meaning in continuing that road that’s required so much from you. Who knows, maybe I end up enjoying it, maybe I will meet people whom I’d really like and acquire a lot of collateral benefits as it happens often. I’m feeling a bit down about all this tonight, I tried to write something I really wanted to complete and my mind just wouldn’t react, blocked. It felt like crap. Sorry fellows, sometimes you just need to let it out 😦
Writer’s block, it happens.
OK I seriously need to change subjects to something more lightweight, you know a little drama and a little entertainment. So I’m excited because I discovered Twitch, yes believe it or not, and for a kid raised in the 90’s, when Super Nintendo was cutting edge technology, being able to play extremely realistic games and also comment on them and show them to the world, it’s simply amazing. Initially, I was resistant to change and I kept playing “nostalgia” games from the past, but come on, that’s nonsense! I mean, I still love those little games, but the people developing them were dreaming on being able to create what we play nowadays and didn’t have the technology to do so; it’s like people who insist on driving manual cars because that’s somehow more badass, nah, things change and if we don’t, then we’re just left behind.
So I’ll leave you with a very tough mission I passed during the weekend (commented as I play it, of course), the game is Death Stranding, and I will write about it in a later article, I decided to create a new section on Video Games. You know, it’s my blog, my kingdom, my will be done ;D
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:
I love the game
I love the music
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.
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!
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
jjosuminded 