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[oslo-snowball]

post #8 - i was doing fine without you... [1/8/24]

spent most of today sleeping, thinking abt prioritization, and trying not to think abt the nicotine i am in the process of quitting. enrolled in the PCB design class after talking to a friend (who is also president of the club that puts on that class lol). thinking abt quitting everything (that's dramatic, i basically mean my research and club, which i've been thinking abt quitting for a bit now) so i have time to focus on classes and stuff. don't know how things will work out. watched sisters with transistors which was much more interesting and well-produced than i dream of wires. i think it was good that i watched i dream of wires first, though. kinda like how the nin book was definitely much better written than the radiohead book, although i don't think it would've mattered much the order in which i read those. did some max stuff. going to sleep soon. interesting to see how my workflow evolves/changes every day. started off very concerned with reading and writing but that's not so much my focus right now. funny to read my first post on here, which was so self-critical, in contrast w the way i'm writing now. i mean, i'm writing with a very different goal right now (really just a blog/kind of public diary, not like a piece of writing for writing's sake/with a kind of message/statement/authorial goal). again, just sort of reflects how my workflow and focus is changing.

very much interested in the work of laurie spiegel, daphne oram, pauline oliveros, maryanne amacher.... basically everyone mentioned in sisters w transistors lol. loooooots to think abt and explore. rlly wish i had more time!!!

rosie evidently likes the smell of jack in the box (ft. a rogue fry poking out of the bag...). *sniff sniff*

[oslo-snowball]

post #7 - and you don't seem to understand [1/7/24]

i'm too drunk to really write a coherent post, how embarrassing. when will i get over these addictive tendencies? anyway all this talk abt substances and character flaws is boring. i find it kind of cringy when people talk at length abt the edgy/tortured aspect of NIN's music bc there's so much more depth sonically, and the sound is what really drew me to NIN... like obviously you'd be remiss to ignore the lyrical themes (and the way the sound fits in/expands upon the lyrical themes) but it feels so superficial to me to only focus on the raw emotion. i understand that the raw emotion is very in-your-face so it's easy to make that the focus but c'mon let's go deeper/get past that level. maybe i've just always been sort of weirdly desensitized to the lyrical content so i'm naturally drawn to focus more on all the layers of the sound. i listen to others bands lumped into the same categories and they feel kind of superficial and amateurish, just not as rich/interesting as NIN. i've been misunderstood by ppl a lot for liking NIN, and it's especially interesting when it comes from other NIN fans who like it for quite different reasons than me. there is definitely an incel-y archetype drawn to NIN as well but that feels to me like the same archetype who doesn't understand that fight club and american psycho are satirical. i'm drunkenly ranting abt NIN, what am i doing. i should log off. i just didn't want to leave this empty. kind of an ugly post tho, not my best look

actually quite an embarrassing/juvenile post

anyway see ya

P.S. oh shit i forgot to attach a photo. here's a video of the water at the pier we went to today

[oslo-snowball]

post #6 - neuwwwwneuwneuw neuwneuwneuw x2.5 [1/6/24]

really surprisingly good day!! don't want to write abt it too much bc it's still incubating and i don't want to break anything, feels very fragile. suffice it to say that i have a lot more clarity on what my next directions might be going forward. watched some really fun stuff bc my brain hurt from reading so much, got hit w surprise trent cameos!! also love pinterest as usual.

i don't really listen to mbv lyrics lol, i just like the sound so the title of this post is just my terrible attempt at writing out the intro to i only said. originally chose when you sleep but this felt more right.

see you tmrw <3

P.S. forgot to attach photo bc i didn't really do anything that i took photos of but here is a picture of my cat ^.^

[oslo-snowball]

post #5 - reach out and touch faith!

[1/5/24]

soooo tired today but in a good way. spent like 5hrs on BART today so that's probably why. absolutely do not have the energy to write out a long post (also, i just feel that these diary-type posts will be getting shorter -- i think that's a good sign, though...). a few things:

I suddenly am getting cold feet about posting the essay-thing i wrote up -- quite vulnerable, and also i have like two versions of it and don't know which is better.

went to envelop SF today with my friend (same friend as before, i keep a small circle...) to listen to Kid A in 32-speaker surround sound. really nice. i liked hearing the title track (i normally skip it while listening, honestly), idioteque (my current obsession from that album), and motion picture soundtrack. also How to Disappear Completely quite literally gave me chills. EIIRP was honestly a little bit underwhelming, i feel like it would need to be re-mixed/mastered to optimally suit that space. i still don't really love The National Anthem lol, definitely my least favorite on the album but perhaps i'm being too negative. overall, a nice finale to my winter break fixation on Kid A + reading the book abt it. also loved the space and seeing the people who came. some funny moments happened too. i did wish there were more bass and that it were a little louder "but maybe that's just because i have hearing damage," as my friend concurred.

(me and my friend accidentally wore complementary converse and tote bags. also the tote bags were both music-related.)

i did finish the czikszentmihalyi book and started a NIN/TDS book (along with the like 10 other books i'm reading right now). i literally cannot put that book down. totally obsessed. very much validating and intelligently explicating+expanding upon everything i've felt abt that album since i was 13.

(note: i originally chose morning bell for this post, which perhaps fits my mood better but i got tired of how much radiohead i was posting lol.)

going to read a bit and then pass out. i wish i weren't so physically pooped bc i felt very re-energized to work on things after the show, but my eyes are basically closing so i'll have to table it for tmrw. :)

P.S. bonus photo

[oslo-snowball]

post #4 [1/4/24]

depressed today; nothing to write about. be back tomorrow.

[edit 1/6/24 - started compiling a playlist of these songs, hated how there was nothing for this day so i just put 4'33" since it's just like. silence. anyway lol. i'll leave it out of the post though since that seems more fitting]

[oslo-snowball]

post #3 - nasty/filthy/movingyourbody [1/3/24]

not much to write about again, but for a different reason this time -- wrote the beginnings of a "real" post/essay today, not just a diary entry. so it seems that i used all my energy on those words, and there's not much left for this progress-log-type thing.

went to some home decor stores with my family today. shopping for curtains and such for the new-ish home. didn't used to enjoy home decor, but have been finding myself increasingly drawn to interior design in the past year or so. i'm a college student, so not too much i can do right now in the way of interior design for my home in berkeley, but i do what i can.

there's a glass of lemon water with ice to my right and a can of angry orchard hard fruit cider to my left. thinking about "my stupid nicotine addiction" as i put it in a text to a friend back in may. received leslie jamison's "The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath" today. thicker than i thought. i was exceptionally cranky today, which i later realized was likely due to nicotine withdrawal. i'm not proud of that at all. i love my family and i hate to think that even nicotine, which seems so innocuous relative to the long drawn-out highs of weed and the sharp edgy high of amphetamines (both still innocuous in their own rights, i suppose), could come between me and them. i've tried so hard to prevent substances from doing that again. i don't normally write about addiction unless in my private diary. probably feeling looser from being a bit tipsy. don't like nicotine withdrawal. feels like headaches and annoyance.

thinking about the anterior cingulate cortex and doing hard things.

can't really write much more. took a nap when i got home since i've been so intolerably tired. i seem to be in a complainy mood right now so i'll just stop here. will hopefully upload the essay tomorrow.

bye for now, again.

[oslo-snowball]

post #2 - yesterday i woke up sucking a lemon [1/2/24]

hello, not much to write about today -- spent today largely in the company of others, without much time allotted for the mind space of focused work. i'm getting a little bit anxious about the time running out but i still think today was good. i find myself returning to the idea of setting aside dedicated weekly time for artistic exploration/enrichment that i read about a few months ago in the first few pages of The Artist's Way, which i later threw out for reasons unrelated to the book's integrity/validity (although i instinctively doubted that as well). not sure why my gut felt so distrustful of that book, but it's probably because i first heard about it on TikTok and something felt quite gimmicky/commercial/disingenuous about it upon actually cracking upon the pages. but i am quite open to giving it another chance later on.

went to berkeley for a little day trip with my friend who just returned from her hometown. we went to a little crystal/occult shop that i'd been to once before and enjoyed, and then to the Guitar Center in emeryville. i got some various trinkets and gifts for my family, and a couple music books; she finally got a dj kit, which we'd been talking about for ages, and i'm very excited for her. we also found ourselves lost under a random overpass, getting pulled over by the cops for an illegal turn (immediately following me exclaiming "right next to the police station, too"), getting called by an ex, and driving through solidly "dreadful" (as my friend put it) weather: rainy, cold, and dark, complete with a flock of tritely ominous birds. overall, a very strange and liminal vibe. i instinctively enjoy experiences like that, though. makes me feel very aware of the unpredictability of everything. comforting, in a way, because it means that anything can happen. you never know what the universe will bring you next (although that's a very cliché/uninteresting way of putting it -- i think there's definitely more complexity there that i'm not interested in attempting to develop further right now). i think i've always been drawn to fear in some way, for that reason...

not much in the way of work, except that i finished the radiohead book yesterday and made some good progress on the czikszentmihalyi book today (will likely finish it tomorrow), and also learned the piano parts for EIIRP (hence today's choice of song) and pyramid song, and the beginning of Lake Shore Drive/Coming Back. have been compulsively playing EIIRP and pyramid song since learning the parts last night, and played around a bit with garageband on my ipad last night. still in an exploratory phase. waiting for my midi controller to come in on friday... i know i will need to just face things and start at some point. constantly caught between the tension of allowing for creative percolation/a productive patience with myself after the literal years of stagnancy and the very real challenges i faced (which took me a long time to even acknowledge), vs. the knowledge that there will never be a perfect time and things will always feel hard at points. very much attempting to maintain that dialectic and navigate it in a way that productively and intelligently balances logic, emotion, intuition, etc....

i always enjoy the BART ride as optimal reading/thinking time. so much so that i ended up immersed in my book and doing an accidental loop that cost me an hour and $17 in a last-minute necessary uber trip the last time i went to berkeley. ordered another book on the BART ride back that should be coming tomorrow -- leslie jamison, whose work i've enjoyed since randomly coming across her essay, Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain, sometime in the second half of high school. this essay resonated so much with my little angsty teenage self that i incorporated it into a capstone piece i really enjoyed working on for my senior year english class. i'm not sure how i discovered leslie’s work -- maybe through her aunt, Kay Jamison, who i became aware of around 10th grade. i know i already have much more reading material to get through, but i can't seem to help myself from compulsively buying more and more. in any case, i do think i'll actually finish the works that i care most about this time (as i have been doing), which is a very very comforting respite from the years of not even being able to read, let alone write. i have been focusing on leaning into doing what feels good, thinking about what i truly want to read and what i enjoy reading and just allowing myself to pursue that feeling. it also helps that i finally stopped deluding myself that i could read ebooks. nope. i am a massive lover of physical books, which seem to be the only medium through which i can actually *finish* a book, and now that i'm no longer in denial about that, reading's been an absolute joy.

i also feel some anxiety over the implications of reading while not really writing (another iteration of the consuming vs. creating problem that's been nagging me), but felt some comfort/reassurance in Czikszentmihalyi's remark that all the writers he interviewed were also compulsive readers/that reading was an essential component of the writing process. i know that intuitively and logically but i still worry that i'm not doing enough. maybe this is all just an exercise in getting out of my head. banishing the worry. idk. i am getting self-indulgent again. i don't really have much to say today. still wanted to get something onto the (virtual) page. there's also definitely more i could've said about today's choice of song, as i have a long history with this song, and the lyrics of today's title are also somewhat topical, but to write all that out doesn't feel quite right at the moment.

i may continue reading, i may continue working on the course i started/exploring with the tools i've been working on, i may just go to sleep and call it an early night, i may do some random internet wandering. i have been extremely tired to the point where i texted two friends that "i think i have narcolepsy" (only somewhat facetiously) and fell asleep on BART. i suppose that means that i should take care of myself and go to sleep earlier, but willfulness has always been one of my character flaws. welp.

thinking vaguely about love, generosity, dependability, and the best ways to show up for those you care about.

bye for now.

[oslo-snowball]

post #1 - not living, just killing time [1/1/24]

well -- it's a new year again. hello 2024...

i texted someone today "carpet diem" (thank you, autocorrect), and i think that's a good reflection of the feelings i'm having about this new year: a little irreverent, definitely off-kilter, but earnest nonetheless...

anyway. i made this blog a bit spastically just now, seized by an impulse, dropping my book, leaping off my bed. listening to thom yorke's voice on repeat.

i've been attempting, as hard as i can, for the past few weeks, to recover the spark of creativity that i buried some 8-odd years ago -- it's winter break for me right now, the winter break of my senior year of college at UC Berkeley where I study cognitive science and computer science. i've been keeping a private log of what i've been doing over break, and flirted with the idea of launching a personal website/eventual portfolio, but realized that that will have to be an endeavor for another time, once i'm not so frustratingly, paralyzingly perfectionistic. for now, i feel better sharing these things back within the comfort of tumblr (my old middle school hunting grounds). semi-private, weirdly niche, shamelessly cringe, acceptably rambly and solipsistic. this blog is for me, primarily: half-diary/progress-log, half personal exercise in beginning to rescue things from my often-suffocating inner world, and in doing so, to let them breathe and begin to develop a life of their own. [edit from 1/2/24 - also to allow space for the next ideas/creations to come.] i hold the simultaneous hopes that no one will ever see this, and that maybe someone will. i need these things out of me, even if i don’t know where to put them or where they’ll go.

i dislike the word creativity in this context because it feels so trite and imprecise. i don't think that's really what i mean -- maybe something more along the lines of Freud's eros, and what Czikszentmihalyi gestured at as the evolutionary drive to discover novel things (in direct opposition to what he calls "the forces of entropy" à la Freud's thanatos). not just creativity in the sense of art, but something more basic and vital, spanning across fields. without lingering in self-pity too much, i feel the need to give some context; after compulsively writing, drawing, and playing music ever since i could pick up a pencil or strike a piano key, i largely stopped making art around 7 years ago and became basically unable to work altogether about 1.5 years ago. the creative block that occurred 7 years ago seemed to slowly develop out of nowhere, whereas the terrifyingly all-paralyzing block that occurred 1.5 years ago had a much more discrete and distinct cause (that i will not go into here). anyway, i have been slowly recovering and beginning to poke my head into new spaces over the past year, and i feel that perhaps the incubation period is ready to transform into something new. (although that description seems too passive, because my attempts to begin to work and create again have felt enormously difficult. sisyphus pushing his rock, etc. i throw everything i can possibly think of at the problem and am met with nothing but the resistance of a concrete wall. but i'm just complaining now.)

while i have not really *made* anything that i can point to as a finished work in these past few weeks, i have been furiously throwing myself into any avenue of inspiration or introspection i can find. part of me screams that this is just another form of procrastination, but something about it feels different from the hoard of spotify playlists that i made for years as my only outlet and sense of connection to the art that felt like such a core sense of my identity. i am not curating just for curation's sake, i think. besides, i am the type of person who needs a great deal of context before jumping straight into something. or maybe i'm just deluding myself. anyway, i am okay with living in the creativity meta-space for now, and the bits and bobs of unfinished pieces of actual work i've started have been developing faster and going deeper, so it seems like something is working.

"When I say 'painful,' that's probably too grandiose a term for the petty frustration one feels. But if it goes on, and on, and you develop what people call a writer's block, it's painful, because your identity's at stake. If you're not writing, and you're a writer and known as a writer, what are you?" (from an interview with Mark Strand in Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi's 1996 book, Creativity.)

i've been thoroughly enjoying reading a shit-ton of assorted books, hunting for new music (well, new to me), listening to the samples behind many of the songs i love, watching videos and listening to podcasts about the art i love, hearing the artists who inspire me talk about their creations and creative process, learning more about the meta-process of how the work i love was created. i also re-discovered some of the old journalism articles and personal diary entries i've written, which was a weird experience for sure. i don't really know how to or feel like going into that right now, so i won't... i've also been cultivating my spiritual practice, which has been fun.

i think i'll cut this post off here, but i'll just mention a few random/miscellaneous things: first, that i've been really liking Steven Hyden's "This Isn't Happening: Radiohead's 'Kid A' and the Beginning of the 21st Century," and second, that i absolutely feel like i'm floundering while writing this and that every word and phrase i've written is plain-as-day shit, unedited drivel dripping with narcissistic self-importance, that i haven't earned the right to write about so shamelessly egotistic a subject as my own creative block, like i just don't know how to write anymore (if i ever did); i'm prone to self-criticism and rumination (a therapist once told me "Well, you're certainly a thinker") and I also know that this is one of the biggest sources of my creative block. while i don't want to feed into the self-criticism more than is productive, and i find it supremely annoying when people can't share anything without a preface about how much it sucks, i felt a greater sense of resistance in refusing to acknowledge my preemptive shame than in just letting myself do the stupid preface. so yes, everything i'm writing here and doing here might suck, and i know that seems so fucking annoying and like i'm just throwing any responsibility over what i've created to the wind, and that no one cares anyway, but that's how i feel right now, and i think that's okay.

i would like to acknowledge this and move forward so i can be less shit in the future. hopefully i won't feel so controlled by the need to criticize myself before anyone else can, now that i've said it. Something something, Brené Brown, shame healing in the face of vulnerability and sharing, that whole gist...

anyway. bye for now, and hopefully i'll see you later...