castlesartmagic

A slave does things by fearing the punishment of its master. A free man does things by anticipating the disgust he will feel in the future for not doing it. That is nature's punishment.

Procrastination is refusing to admit that you don't really want to do what you tell yourself you want to do. That's as simple as it gets but in the flux of time, procrastination gets a bit more complicated. In the moment, you can be perfectly correct in admitting that you don't want to do what you have a tendency to believe you really want to do. It would be great if this simple admission was enough to extinguish the nasty habit of telling yourself that you have ambitions but it merely provides a small handle on the real problem. Naturally, the ego won't back down so easily. It will still want to build itself up on the belief that all the things you say you want to do, you really want to do despite the fact that you are not now doing them or making any preparations for finally doing them. It is too painful for the ego to admit that what you are really doing is avoiding the things that you are convinced will make you feel great if you ever got around to doing them. This way, the ego is free to dream about a hypothetical future where you have accomplished all your goals and have reaped all the pleasurable emotional benefits.

Most people, those who have no knowledge of psychology, will say that your avoidance is based on a fear of not being good enough to accomplish what you believe you want to accomplish, and in most cases they could be right. But there is a greater fear that most aren't aware of and this is the unconscious fear (anxiety) that even doing the things you want to do will bring you only a fleeting and ultimately hollow happiness. This is a more fundamental fear which we have been programmed to ignore throughout our whole lives, after all any kind of happiness is ultimately hollow and fleeting, we see this every day in our own lives and in the lives of others but we run away from this fact so forcefully that when we are forced to think about it, it appears bizarre and too negative to have any truth to it. Yet, nevertheless it is true and there really is no point in running away from it. It will always be there.

Once you have acclimated yourself to this truth, it's really no big deal and becomes as natural as anything else. You may even laugh at yourself for having dealt with it in such a pathetic way before. A simple way to confront this nagging weakness is to simply do the things you've been avoiding knowing full well that they won't bring you any permanent happiness that will permanently change your life and the way you experience reality. It can be as simple as not waiting until four in the morning to take out the garbage or it can be that artistic career you know is dumb yet secretly dream about anyway. This is the only way to discard such things from your mind and leave yourself more open to other possibilities in life.

For a Genius, trying to make art is like setting the world on fire and expecting to end up with a sellable commodity. The true nature of art-making is compromise. You have to speak down to the people in order to get their attention while making sure that they don't feel like they're being talked-down to. They need to feel entertained without suspecting that what they are engaging in is mere entertainment. They need to be stimulated without the stimulation hinting at unpleasant things they'd rather avoid and which unconsciously led the to the circumstance of wanting to be entertained in the first place.

For people without Genius, people who are barely more conscious than dogs or cats, it's easy to make art. They have all the confidence of oblivious morons. They don't see nor do they care what their activity is leading them to, only that it feels good and it gets the attention of other people who, for the most part, are more timid when it comes to attention whoring themselves through art. They do have some consciousness and the essence of Genius is nothing but consciousness. They are connected to what they fear (Truth) but for this very reason, do not dare to get too close to it. Their fearful, expectant nature keeps them delighted at the periphery. Every so often, one of their type will inch a fraction of an inch closer to the center, which has been obscured by fear and the slight disturbance this causes will be a cause for celebration as long as any significant implications are conveniently ignored and forgotten.

Had another sleepover with Sunny after Victor's show. Don't really feel like writing about it, maybe later. Spend most of the day with her after waking up, watching her pack and talking about ourselves. Got home at around 9PM.

The show was pretty lame. Ed got very drunk.

Ed called me yesterday morning. I didn't check my phone until 12 hours later. He wanted to know if I was going to the show, forgetting that I told him I would when I spoke to him by the park. He couldn't even recall meeting me and asked what time it happened and whether it was snowing. What a lush.

He did remember me e-mail of last week when I told him I might not show up. So he made some sad excuse about needing someone to keep a close eye on his sculptures in case things got too wild at the opening.

Then there was some gossip about Cassandra's boyfriend being a bisexual, blah blah blah....

I just noticed how I used the word "ran" in the title. It's funny because it's not literally true but just a thing people have grown accustomed to saying. People do "run" around and into each other like chickens with the heads cut off.

Anyway, I was headed to the SVA alumni sketch and saw Ed waiting for the bus by Madison Sq. Park. He had what looked like wine boxes in a luggage carrier. He smelled of booze. We talked about the art opening on Friday and how he'd just come from Victor's (the guy who's hosting the opening in his Soho loft). Apparently, Victor was showing him videos of all his past shows and they were pretty amusing. Ed also let me know that some French people who've bought his sculptures in the past offered him a place to stay just outside Paris so he could work on more stuff. He joked about taking Evelyn with him but I nixed that and suggested he take Cassandra instead. For some reason, he got very excited about that idea. I don't think he would have shown nearly as much enthusiasm had he not been drinking. He also suggested that I visit him. But why the hell would I want to go to France? I let him know how ridiculous the thought of me going to France was and as usual, he didn't know how to react.

I had plenty of time to chat but decided that I'd better leave. Ed seemed surprised that I was leaving so soon. Again, he probably wouldn't have revealed as much surprise had he not been drinking. I noticed a slight slur in his speech. He probably drinks everyday. When he brags about not drinking as much lately, it's probably because he skipped a day or two. He also seemed to be looking forward to leaving NYC. Who knows if it will happen. I'm sure he'll get sick of France pretty quickly. I can't imagine him learning French. Who would he talk to? How would he combat his loneliness? He's not the type who can get lost in his work. He needs approval too much.

http://rk-log.net/

Haven't listened to most of it yet.

Ponderous.

This post isn't about moral psychology. That would be a dull thing to write about. This post is about the inevitable conversation I had with Angelica at Spring street last week. I know it's stupid but it feels like some "unfinished business" finally got dealt with. Ever since I first met her and found out she's getting a PhD in psychology I felt that it was inevitable we'd butt heads on it. Since leaving the League, I had forgotten all about it but she turns up again and we finally had our discussion---

It suddenly feels like such a chore to bother typing this out....

Well, anyway, the most interesting detail I noticed about the whole (predictable) discussion is that she switched topics on me when it looked like our conversation had to end. She acted like the focus of our talk was her research paper when in fact it started out with her rejecting my claim that a person can deprogram themselves from things like falling in love and, ideally, from having any emotions at all. Her confusion was obvious when she brought up her research as proof that people will always have emotional responses to things no matter how hard they try to control themselves. Her research only shows that a person's sense of morality can be thrown off by outside stimulation, such as annoying music. I have no problem with that because I know, through my own personal "research" that people are hardly ever truly moral, so it's no surprise that something as trivial as loud, jarring noises will influence a person's sense of justice.

Maybe I'll write more about this later. I can't be bothered at the moment.

She also brought up psychopaths. Again, predictably, she said that anyone who has no emotional reactions can only be a psychopath.

*yawn*

Ed is in denial of his loneliness. He claims to be numb to all suffering, which might be true to an extent but he definitely still feels lonely. Why would he spend so much time with those losers from the League and damaged people like A.M.O. and empty-headed chicks like Cassandra and Evelyn if he wasn't lonely? The fact that he often complains about these same people despite spending so much time with them makes him sound like a woman with battered wife syndrome. It's pretty pathetic.

He invited me to his show on Friday. A.M.O., Cassandra, and fuck knows who else will be there. I thought about staying away but will probably show up. There might be decent food. Definitely not drinking, there are 74 days left before I can do that again. I definitely will be bringing a trash bag, in case I leave early enough to pick up some bottles and cans.