In Vance's picaresque tales, the villain, to the extent that there is one, is not integral to the tale: the real villain is the protagonist himself, who is usually not the winsome rogue the word "picaresque" sometimes evokes but rather a blowhard, a semi-competent or incompetent egotist with few or no morals; such protagonists--for his picaresque tales are all meant as savage humor--ultimately prevail (if they do indeed prevail) either by blind luck or by dint of their lying and cheating ways. To my own tastes, Vance's picaresque tales are his least successful (though still books by quality), owing to the protagonist's often failing the test I set out elsewhere on this site: "we can have no understandings with folk whose mental processes, intellectual or moral, are simply alien to us"--we cannot fathom them, we cannot empathize with them, we cannot enjoy them, save as we "enjoy" seeing someone slip on a banana peel. For myself, Vance's two "Cugel the Clever" novels are his least satisfactory mature work; but his novel Showboat World (the publisher's title--see the book list below) is much more enjoyable, perhaps because the protagonist, while another blowhard, at least has some scraps of wit and ethics and courage.
http://greatsfandf.com/AUTHORS/JackVance.php

I liked the Cugel stories best of all and have read everything Vance ever wrote. I find his "likable" heros (what the hell is the plural of hero...?) kind of boring. I find it a weakness in his writing that excepting his picaresque tales, all his protagonists are basically the exact same boring person with different names slapped on.

Although Cugel is a rogue... it touches on something in me... the idea of getting down into the dirt of life, really playing The Game. To actually find a way to identify with most of what life is, all the wisdomless striving, the backstabbing and so on; as opposed to mostly standing aside of it all and only acting to defend one's self from these endless rogues.

Earlier the person who wrote the above said though said:
A final thought on character: we must have for a protagonist at least one of two things--liking or respect. We can have both, but if we have neither the book means trees killed for naught. (Note that the lack of a quality does not necessarily imply the presence of its opposite: we may lack liking for persons without thereby needing to dislike them.)

(Based on some conversations since the paragraph above was written I think I had best point out that "respect" is a morally neutral term--it does not necessarily convey positive qualities, as we may well have respect for a rattlesnake owing to the danger it embodies; "respect" as I use it above signifies an appreciation of magnitude in a character, whatever that character's nature. Many great protagonists--in several senses of the word "great"--have been folk we would not by choice invite to our next dinner party.)
http://greatsfandf.com/apologia-1.php

Any dangerous human is worthy of "respect" I would think... Would 'interesting' be a better word?

Too general.

What is it about Cugel that makes him OK? I don't know exactly. Maybe just that it's funny while still being serious and dark. Funny in the sense of laughing at his stupidity. What better thing to laugh at then an evil person.

Yet at the same time he is sort of likable. He has such a positive attitude...

I have no idea really. I haven't been thinking very well lately. Probably because I've been relatively happy the last few weeks.

Listing the ways in which mankind is dysfunctional

blah, blah, blah!

1. Conformity
Like with the Soloman Asch experiment. But for a whole group to ever get to a point where individuals feel forced to conform (or too lazy to just think) there has to be other things going on.
http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/asch_conformity.html

2. Indifference
People don't hate chickens, they're just utterly indifferent to them. A person can even be a sadist, a serial murderer; and ultimately the essential reason is because of their indifference to the suffering of others.

3. Misperceiving indifference in others
This is also often called hate. People usually bring it down to hate and indifference. But I'll get to that in a second.
There was an old twilight zone episode that demonstarted it sort ot:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xIVIOPL1Vf4
If you just suspect that surely someone is actually "evil" (indifferent to the suffering they're causing) then that alone can ruin everything.

4. Force over Reason
When we perceive people as causing unnecessary harm and just not caring we think of them as being evil, and feel that it is useless to reason with them. When we think of them as "evil" we get angry, we feel hate and we turn to force.
We should try to stay with reason much more than we do instead of resorting to force, especially if we are actually misperceiving "evil" or indifference to suffering.

5. Too much faith/religion
I don't think having faith in a "god" has to be a bad thing. I don't think believing in a life after death has to be a bad thing at all. But people take it way too far and start having faith in all kinds of crap. They believe in heaven and wait for that instead of trying to make this world a good place. Most importantly they just in general get away from thinking and instead prefer to just believe whatever they happen to want to believe and this leads to believing all kinds of things which are harmful and also gets people away from even questioning if something they believe might be causing harm.
....

One can go inside the major reasons... So much can fit under conforming.....

6. The fear of being perceived as gay + hating gay people
Of course persecuting this minority sucks but it hurts the majority I think pretty majorly actually in that it keeps men cold. It keeps them afraid to express their emotions and have close relationships with other men, lest they be perceived as gay. It keeps people isolated ultimately. This is the result of conforming/religion and some indifference I suppose and if it's got conforming and religion it's using plenty of force over reason.

7. Monogamy/Jealousy?
Causes isolation. Less meaningful connections. Less love obviously.

8. Capitalism
Unregulated capitalism is insane. Communities have to care about the people in their communities. Otherwise they're not communities. People aren't allowed to go around beating the crap out of one another just because some people are stronger or because they may happen to get lucky in a fight. In the same way you can't have people getting economically destroyed just because they're not as smart or didn't get as lucky economically.

If people are free to beat the shit out of one another, it's not a community. And if people are living under the bridge, living without health care, etc it's not a community.

"Art"

Unrealistic and random... but not too random! And depending on the medium can't be too unrealistic either...

Simply pretending....

Waiting for Arturia's MinimoogV... Got a condenser mic. Maybe it's enough of an improvement to really begin... maybe.

Not good enough though. Will continue to experiment.



My music is really vocally driven which sucks considering the voice I'm stuck with.

For plugins I actually spent money on: Pentagon is good. ($125) Nice drums. Waldorf Attack seems pretty unimpressive... the Waldorf bundle seems awful ($85). VNV nation used Attack though... not that I've ever heard them. (retarded smiley here).

This is nice:
http://ann.sounds.free.fr/

I have the money to buy a bunch of hardware and stuff. But the socialist in me wants to see true equality. I want everyone to be able to write music and as such I want to get this Done as cheap as possible. The need for a computer can't be helped... Did I need East West Silver ($200)? Squidfont Orchestra (free) has a nice sound but just doesn't do enough. Arturia Minimoog is the most expensive thing I've bought at $280. :( Just sounded too good. (waiting to receive it in the mail). It really inspired me. By 'inspired' I mean the sounds hit my synethesia; they sounded like they were alive. IOW they sounded like they came from creatures actually living. They inspired me quite a bit more than all others. They say it's "warm" or "fat". As opposed to tinny, there's a fullness. Which is again like it's coming from something alive. And it reminded me of Skinny Puppy stuff.

So I've spent over $600 dollars on plugins that I think were probably actually worth it. Oh well. A few more years and if we all still have electricity to run computers maybe it will be all free.

I suspect though even now I could have managed it. SFZ (free sampler)... Oatmeal (free), Crystal (free), Synth1 (free), Helix (free), actually getting good at making sounds instead of just tweaking presets...

I have to completely not promote my music for a few years (while I write 50, 60 more songs). Otherwise perfectly good music is feeling like failure just because the chittering monkeys aren't impressed.

To write stories

So I must finish the majority of songs that I start. Even though they may not be all that special. I must finish them, lest failure takes over, and in general just get bored with any given song.

Eventually I hope to write stories and I guess the same idea will have to hold. It will have to hold even more so because otherwise I could just become paralyzed with the endless potential directions I could go in and the understanding that no matter what, I'm doing something less than perfection. But then the problem is that it's a lot worse to write bad stories than it is to write... "bad" music. I can write this so so music and still get enjoyment out of it. It can just be in the background; revisited on rare occasions. The stories have to be somewhat better. They can't be so random; full of nonessential stuff.

With my music it's not true that it's 100% selfish. It's not so black and white. But it is at least 90% just for me. To be 100% just for me would be too depressing. (A world of perfect isolation where creativity really has no value.) With writing it simply has to potentially be a lot more for other people.

It has to be pretty decent quality, yet I have to have the same mindset of finishing the majority of started stories.

So, this here, is something to try to help that; something to stop it from becoming just random and useless. But this has barely begun I think.

So I recorded that song I mentioned in the last post yesterday in about 20 minutes.

From one POV it sounds like crap. It's just straight up me playing the midi notes on a keyboard. Not playing very well. Especially my left hand. But the song sat in my head for 20 years. So what the hell, record the damm thing. Put it somewhere to sit, try to pretend there's magic. I don't feel any at the moment though.

Even played well Kundera would call it kitsch I think. Which is that so bad..? Don't know.

The good person tries being good to a group of monkey demons. This idealist, his mind full of good thoughts, reaches out with charity and good will and is taught not to act that way, his attempt at good met with derision, contempt, etc, if not much worse. This most generalized idea is implanted in my head and when real life events resemble it in one way or another it strikes a chord with me.

The beginner of Toxic Avenger was horrible but in such a fascinating way.
That character in the holy grail, the wimpy one who keeps trying to go off into song.
A song completed in my head which I'll record later today...

The way Mary
http://www.veganfitness.net/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=21
was treated on the veganfitness discussion board; ignored by the owner and his yes men for a few thousand posts then banned when she finally got angry, ultimately because she is the good person; not completely conformed to this sick society except for being vegan as is the case with that typical group. Even more so than usual as I suspect it's a part of the spirit of activism. IOW, see how perfectly normal we are? Veganism isn't extreme, we're perfectly, utterly normal. Fake smiles to the bone.

A story I kept trying to write about; a D&D setting/medieval setting; a boy in a village who thanks to not being properly assimilated to the high school zoo way; not being "tough/cold"; ... instead acting in a manner which if everyone followed would make this world a much better place, is attacked/treated in a horrible manner+with embarrassment, like in the Toxic Avenger.

He goes to that place where people never go as a result and... it's an old story.

A few are physically pushed in a battle there in a 100 year old story (The Hollow Land). In mine he goes there partly because he doesn't care... yet unlike to the typical drug user mentality which doesn't care for their life and goes there and dies a grisly death, it turns out his life matter to him A LOT. To the point that he will continue to exist no matter the circumstances, no matter what a monstrosity he turns into. No matter how far he goes beyond the point where life makes any sense............

Did Tesla destroy Tunguska?

I like writing music from an intellectual POV. Anyone can make a 20 second piece of music. What is interesting is finding a way to develop that into a "song". I had a period where I started worrying about not inundating the internet with more badly produced crap that no one will listen to anyway and thus I started making little bits that I quit bothering to try to finish. This became failure, again and again. And it took away the fun, the intellectual challenge (like Sudoku) of writing music. Also sitting on a song much longer to make it better... you get so sick of hearing the song... really takes away the enjoyment.

It's a matter of being selfish; just doing this for myself versus worrying about pleasing others. It's really dumb to worry about pleasing others anyway considering the state of music. And it's no fun in general.

Music

Every instrument within music represents a living creature. Every progression of notes represents the expression of some sort of feeling on the part of that creature. As these different creatures express their different feelings within a coherent interaction with one another, the listener gets a momentary wisdom which in effect is the ability to understand multiple different viewpoints simultaneously.

The thing is, virtually none of these instruments represent creatures that actually live in the real world. They represent magical creatures not of this world. They don't actually exist but to really enjoy the music you must pretend otherwise; you must act in an illogical way. You must be somewhat mystical and to the extent you can enjoy music you are a mystical person. When you like it so much you start writing your own, you're an especially mystical person. If you write a song repudiating mysticism, well that's kind of funny. Of course it's just art. I'd write a song myself screaming against god if I had the voice, even despite not actually really holding that opinion. But it's damm fine art.

It is funny these people who consider it only real music if synths haven't been used. An actual string vibrating is really only representing a mystical creature exactly the same as any synth vibration. It comes down to people complaining about seeing a zipper on a old Dr. Who monster. It comes down to a lack of imagination.

Anyway this mysticism within music is ultimately the same thing as believing in flying sky fairies and invisible pink unicorns. Although it's probably a lot less harmful than believing in any organized religion.

Sorry Kafka

I think this Kafka book--the trial--is probably not very special at all. Haphazard symbols thrown together as in dreams. I was thinking it's silly for me to bother trying to find meaning in it. Of course some think dreams have great meaning. I don't really think so. Occasionally though I do pretend.

One can make a huge amount of meaning out of tea leaves. One can make a huge amount of meaning out of Kafka's The Trial. One can make a huge amount of meaning out of the movie The Unbearable Lightness of Being. In truth it's a total crap movie; some high brow sex and anti-communism to ensure the funding to make it during the Reagen era.

Kundera was appalled. As a result of this movie, that had not really much of anything to do with his (rather subpar) book, he refused to ever allow any adaptation of anything he created ever again.

Still, it's perfectly valid to find worthwhile meanings in it. Same with Kafka's The Trial, which I suspect I'm giving much more attention than it deserves. Kafka said he only actually wrote three stories that were worth bothering. I don't remember if The Trial was one of them. I remember one was The Hunger Artist. Which I did like, but just for being so strange.

So what the hell I'll look at Kafka's tea leaves some more. It's completely inferior to say Flaubert, but strangely more interesting.

---

I love that James Bond movie where they're at the top of the (I think) Golden gate bridge and the bad guy loses his grip and as he's about to fall, starts laughing.

I find someone online who seems a really good person. I try to have an intelligent conversation with the person. I dare to give a nuanced political view of Cuba and the witchhunt begins.
I've seen it so many times before that I just find myself humming this:



I spent a week at a hospital for the truly too far gone (not as a patient). I talked for many hours to a manic-depressive who had a jacket with the name 'Gitler' written on it with masking tape. He was flying high, having a ball, going on about those wonderful nazis, etc. Very annoying to talk to as he was basically doing what I described above every 30 seconds or so. But then he came on back to reality one day and oh my is he better off elsewhere.

---

Although I say I don't believe in dreams, it's comical of me to say that. Because at times I've really loved to believe that the songs I made up in my sleep came from other worlds that really exist. For that matter while awake I've managed just a tiny bit to write music that I liked to think that of.... Although I find it really really hard at times to hold on to that "faith".

I love this song in that respect:

It's a song screaming there's no god while it's overflowing with mysticism itself. The singer might as well be standing on a mountain top screaming right at a huge god looming over him. It seems to me a perfect example of Logic butting it's head hard against Mysticism/Creativity/some other thing?.

Milan Kundera is comically obsessed with being misunderstood. He will not allow interviews unless they are by writing and he can dictate exactly what is included. Which is ridiculous.

It is not possible to do what he is doing and not be misunderstood. For that matter, it is not possible to write this little blog and (assuming anyone were reading) not be misunderstood. It's refreshing to for once not worry about such things; not let such things slow me down or distract me.

On the one hand this stuff here reduces human experience to something very cold and dead and I could logically speaking call myself an atheist. On the other I wrote over 40 songs last year and have so much mysticism in me it can get dangerous.

To breathe is to be misunderstood. I'd be shocked if I ever wasn't.