GENERATION 2
ON LATENT ENERGY AND HAVING TO PEE
There is a latent energy that passes through people at large, though with a
specific fervor through makers. Some might call this energy inspiration, others
motivation; here it is called latent energy. It is latent because the body through
which the activity passes need not do anything physically for the power to exist and
pass through. This latent energy feels scratchy and often develops into a full itch.
There is a jittery potency there and it flows where it needn’t be. Bound by a person’s
extremities, the itch flies in all directions at once. Something like space, or infinite
planes of geometry. The physical attributes of latent energy are related to the
anxiety of overhydrating and finding oneself on a crowded Green E Line train,
stopped indefinitely to allow for the trolley to take a moment to rest, perhaps reflect
on itself, perhaps to simply remind passengers how to wait. Quite suddenly and for
no reason at all toes and fingers clench because inexplicably the outermost parts of
a body register urgency first. Urinating and latent energy are swift and high
intensity. Bursts and flashes are required, as is full attention, though there is no
satisfactory resolution promised, necessarily, in either scenario.
ON CLOUDING INTENTIONS AND UNWILLING REGRET
In the act of attempting there is a presupposed focus and presence required
in order to recognize, address, and classify the nature of the attempt. In the moment
of recognizing a phrase to remember for example, an attempt is released from below
the phrase that circles away from the participant before rounding into then out of
them again. The moment of initial divergence of the attempt is key to the panic that
initiates the participant to classify the attempt. Addressing first consists of the
participant noticing their process of attempting, in this case to remember.
Addressing often slips into classifying the nature of the attempt as one that was
futile, successful, or an agent of ceaseless future attempts. In attempting to
remember, the subject notes that they are attempting. In noticing, the strength of
memory is compromised because the energy that had previously supported
remembering has suddenly shifted to fuel noticing. This process happens so swiftly
that the participant has little control to pause and often lacks the presence to gain
such control so quickly. With regard to the attempt, such failures might cause
considerable regret. Furthermore, the participant might have the wherewithal to
note that their attempt was quite minor, and the subsequent regret with ensuing
failure is neither necessary nor productive. Here is where unwilling regret is born, a
product of unwilling attempts - both quite futile and fleeting in the face of overall
productivity.
ON APPROACH
A person, object, idea, or place can all be approached. Approaching may occur
consciously or unconsciously, while the nature of the approach may be conscious or
subconscious. Prior observation is often required in order for an approach to exist,
and this measuring nearly always defines the nature of the approach. Sight, sound,
and scent aid observation, while touch and taste require physical contact and
therefore do not play a role in observation, though they may exist within approach.
Observation is comprised of strata ranging from immediate reactions through
concise, critical conclusions. In observing and approaching there is often an
audience and a performer, singular or multiple where applicable. When observing,
the performer has the opportunity to choose an approach while they also have the
option of considering their audience in doing so. Often, observing the element to be
approached while simultaneously considering the audience leads to a tainted or
otherwise ill-fitting approach. This mismatch occurs because the approached and
the audience require opposing levels of presence and observation. While the
approached requires a quiet, personalized attention and connection to the
approaching, the audience loudly defines an expectation of the approaching which
overcomes the true nature of both the observation and initial choice of approach.
ON PRESSURE AND SELF-ASSIGNMENT
There is an inherent comfort in recognizing from the outset that the result of
an undertaking will not carry any weight unless it is assigned weight upon later
consideration. Said comfort has the possibility of increasing exponentially when the
undertaking is fabricated entirely by the same being who would complete the task.
In doing so the undertaking, successful or not, can be kept private or be erased
entirely. Herein lies the theme of pressure, its sources, and its effects. Pressure may
be transmitted from one to another, one to a group, a group to one, from group to
group, or from one to oneself. Depending upon the characteristics of any group or
being, the levels of anxiety associated with each system of relaying pressure reveal
massive disparities. When pressure comes from and is received within one being,
the effects can be considered though a bimodal distribution of sorts. Pressure may
be gentle to nonexistent or cripplingly compressing, though very rarely anywhere
between. The pressure levels between persons and groups, however, see much
variation. Statistical patterns in pressure levels exist because of preconceived
relationships between persons and groups rather than being an effect of the
expectation or undertaking assigned, and subsequently relate more closely to a
random distribution.
ON MINUTIAE AND SHUTTING THE FUCK UP
One can very rarely voice nor explain the endless consideration, adjustment,
and reconsideration of one’s own movement through space. Not for lack of language
but for fear of outwardly declaring one’s cacophonous attention to minutiae and
thus spurring concern among one’s peers. It is poor social form for example, to
express the ways in which minutiae such as the timing, placement, and transfer of
weight enveloped in the simple act of walking can encompass one’s thoughts for a
significant amount of time. In surface level interactions between persons, medium
and normal are key. In being medium, one is neither boring nor overwhelming to
their acquaintances and subsequently deemed more agreeable to engage with in
said baseline interactions. Moments in which persons glide to or fro on the
spectrum towards flat or severe have the immediate power of jolting the subject
back to medium by cause of outside reactions to such vagrancy being consistently
clear in their disapproval. In seldom cases the realignment can occur in time for the
interaction to continue at medium, though generally such slips become grounds for
a series of seesawing.
ON ACHIEVEMENT AND SELF WORTH
The ways in which human beings assign value to themselves, objects, places,
or others is based in part on a structural foundation of understanding effort and
results. Through observation and experiment, each person develops their own
system of scales that measure levels of effort ranging from none to too much, results
ranging from failure to success. Experience and the passing of time cause these
scales to be ever shifting, though most often these shifts are miniscule and generally
the system remains consistent. Measures for value of an object, for example, may
involve a scale of high effort and poor results. In such cases the object might be
considered valuable because the effort scale was sufficiently full, though
disappointing irony often taints such scenarios. The opposite case wherein effort
was quite low while results were highly successful on the scales of a particular
object, value may still abound by the sheer positivity of surprise and reward without
effort, though this case often hides footnotes of guilt or apprehension. When effort
and result levels match, for example no effort and failure or boundless effort and
massive success, there is not an emotional disparity in reacting and assigning value.
Failure is not devastating when effort has not been wasted, while success is ever more
satisfying when brought about by much work and intention.
ON PHYSICAL AND TEMPORAL CONFINEMENT
The initial reaction to physical and temporal confinement occurring
simultaneously is often one of worry or stress. The word confinement suggests a
strain, pressure, or aggressor. Similarly to the constraints of an art making process,
physical and temporal confinement offer a freer mental pathway than that which
occurs in an environment that is restrained by neither time nor space. In knowing
from the start that a subject will be in a set place for a set time, the pressure of
splitting energy between the task at hand and the task of remaining aware of time
and location is nullified. Focus is not drained from the process, be it physical or
mental, but rather is lifted out of auxiliary diversions into the lightness and purity of
productive working. From this so-called restricted place comes an immeasurable
freeness. The aforementioned productivity is not exclusive to such settings, though
there is much strain in achieving as rewarding a productivity in environments
physically and temporally open. It may be noted here that in comparing the products
themselves to the space and process through which they were created, the
products vary quite little. However, the exertion involved in one as compared to the
ease of the other places value on the latter.
ON COMPARTMENTALIZATION AND NOISE
Noise is distracting and impedimentary. Be it audible, mental, or visual, noise
creates clutter around an otherwise harmonious space. Unlike sight, which can be
temporarily negated by closing one’s eyes, audible noise can only be negated by
louder sounds. The trouble here is that when a noise has become problematic a
higher level of noise is rarely the solution to the need for quiet. Note that quiet is not
synonymous with silent. Audible and mental noise differ in this respect in that
mental noise can be blocked, albeit only briefly, by noisier thoughts. The duration of
effective distraction from the first generation of noise is highly variable and
inconsistent as it depends upon individual circumstances. Visual noise, otherwise
considered clutter, is very rarely corrected by an increase of mass because in such
cases the noise volume increases exponentially as physical space depreciates.
Increasing noise to overcome or block initial chatter very quickly becomes
intolerably loud. The much more effective though seemingly impossible solution to
decreasing noise is quieting it at its source. Finding the source is rarely the
challenge, whereas displacing the noise from the source is cumbersome. A possible
aid in this process is time, which has the power to diffuse and absorb noise over the
course of weeks, months, or years depending on the decibel. Compartmentalization
offers another opportunity for quiet in that separating noise into categories with
subheadings as necessary divides what was massive into smaller, if not manageable
portions. Noise might not ever disappear, but if it is deconstructed into enough
miniscule parts, it becomes ambient static.