ridethedarkerwave

[ridethedarkerwave]

It’s the blue flower that I’m dying to discover.

My mind is an underground dance club in 1983.

[ridethedarkerwave]

I never felt what you felt.

Is that what you wanted to hear?

[ridethedarkerwave]

I want jewelry made from your hair.

me: will it be weird having a really long hug when we first meet? is that something that needs to be built up to in person?

shoegazer: i'd probably be pretty nervous the first five minutes in your presence, so best to just hug each other

me: you think you'd be nervous huh?

shoegazer: i get anxious over lots of things

me: yeah, i'm sure i'd be a little anxious

shoegazer: yeah just a little

me: it's a big deal!

shoegazer: i have to warm up

shoegazer: then i'm warm

me: yeah, i think the hug would be even better once we'd gotten comfortable with each other in person and we were having a great day together.

shoegazer: true

shoegazer: maybe we should sing first

me: so....don't touch me when we meet.

shoegazer: and skip through the airport

shoegazer: okay i won't

me: noooo, please do

shoegazer: nope

me: shit

shoegazer: a hi-five, maybe

me: a wink

shoegazer: i don't wink

shoegazer: that's your thing

me: fuck that. the meeting is off.

shoegazer: which is adorable

me: i don't usually wink. i did it spontaneously for you.

me: you physically can't wink?

shoegazer: no i can

shoegazer: i just look stupid

me: you will wink for me one day

shoegazer: probably

me: we could arm wrestle

shoegazer: thumb war

me: three legged race

shoegazer: on ice skates

me: oh shit

shoegazer: that would add a new element

me: we'd crack our skulls open

shoegazer: yeah

me: then my blood would mix with yours on the ice and we'd be one.

shoegazer: so emo

shoegazer: and we could spell out our initials in blood

shoegazer: and then we could pierce each other's eyebrows

me: with the ice skates

shoegazer: totally

shoegazer: or slice up our arms

shoegazer: okay - too far?

me: not far enough

shoegazer: cut off each other's big toe

me: almost busting a gut

shoegazer: and wear it around our necks

shoegazer: bff

shoegazer: i want to wear your toe!

me: i want jewelry made from your hair

me: a bracelet and necklace

me: with your toe on the necklace. and some of your teeth on the bracelet.

shoegazer: oh god my bladder is exploding

me: don't wet the bed

shoegazer: i won't

shoegazer: but holy fuck i haven't laughed this hard in awhile

[ridethedarkerwave]

Nothing’s wrong.

I miss that song, the one that hurts like something’s wrong.

[ridethedarkerwave]

Freedom and the creative life.

Sometimes I don’t understand how people can have regular jobs, the kind of jobs you work 9 to 5 or whatever, Monday through Friday, not doing something you love, looking forward each year to a couple weeks of vacation. At this point in my life, I don’t think I could do it (unless of course I really had to).

I am spoiled. As a professor, I can schedule my classes not to begin until 11:30am or later. I stay up until absurd hours most nights, going to bed anytime from 2am to 5am. Every winter, between fall and spring semesters, I get a full month off from teaching. Time to recuperate. After the spring semester ends at the start of May, I get almost four months of freedom to do whatever I want. Typically I stay home during the summer months to make progress on research and writing, but in the past I’ve also done traveling + summer hiking and camping. Summer is my time to really be creative. The past couple summers, I’ve made significant progress on my book writing project.

My job is not all butterflies and flowers. I work my ass off during the school year, preparing for lectures, grading far too many papers (I often have 90 to 100 students per semester). It can be stressful. As an introvert, I sometimes don’t want to try to be engaging in front of a classroom. I want to just sit in my office or at home, reading a book or working on my computer. But no matter how challenging it can become, I have a difficult time imagining myself doing anything else for a living. I would hate to give up this freedom that I have.

In addition to the freedom of time, I also get to choose which courses I will teach each semester and design their content based on my own interests and what I think the students might find engaging.

At nearly 2am right now, I’ve been finishing an iced coffee while looking over some research notes for the book I’m writing. I sit in my kitchen at the large table with minimal lights on, the windows open, the peaceful quiet and sounds of insects outside. Often I listen to music for hours, or Twitch Hearthstone streamers in the background, the ones who talk to their chat. (I think it makes me feel a little less alone.) Now that classes have started again, I sometimes have to set my alarm, at least on the days when I teach at 11:30. Tomorrow I just have one class at 4pm, so I can sleep as late as I’d like.

I remember once reading a quote about Madonna, something about how she is up late at night, doing creative work while much of the world around her is asleep. I feel similarly about my life, and I don’t think I’d want to have it any other way.

[ridethedarkerwave]

Wave after wave, threatening to break the surface.

Good living is coming for you. Yes, you.

[ridethedarkerwave]

Obscene dreams in rusty beds.

Every day I die.

[ridethedarkerwave]

The art of philosophical dialogue.

For the past two years, the thing in life that I have been the most excited about is my current philosophical writing project. For many years now, I have sought to write a book, my first book, on ethics and animals. This project grew out of my dissertation work, but it has changed shape in significant ways twice now. Around 2013 or so, I realized that I wanted to make the emotion and virtue of compassion much more central to the overall book. More specifically, I am interested in examining the importance of compassion and how compassionate treatment of animals is most compatible with a deontological (non-utilitarian) ethic that extends a fairly strong form of respect to animals, akin to rights but not necessarily reducible always to rights. I don’t think this is something that has been done before.

Then, in fall 2021, I had a major epiphany. Instead of writing another dry philosophical treatise that only a handful of academics will read and will ultimately just collect dust on some library bookshelves, forgotten into history, as so many academic books today will, why not write something more creative, engaging, and memorable? Why not write a philosophical dialogue on compassion and animals — and not just a dialogue, but one that occurs within a fun, creative story, with interesting characters — something that people outside of academia will enjoy reading, including some of my students? And so began my story, Elea. (Elea is one of the main characters, named after the Ancient Greek goddess of compassion.)

Historically, Plato is the philosopher most known for writing philosophy in the form of a dialogue. I’ve always enjoyed reading Plato, partly for that reason, and I sense that some of my students tend to be more engaged when reading philosophy in the form of a conversation occurring within some sort of narrative. For Plato, the narratives are based on real life stories, including the life and death of his teacher, Socrates. Whenever I have taught the Apology or (parts of) the Phaedo, many of my students become curious about this peculiar character, Socrates, and his peculiar ideas. I have also used John Perry’s Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality on several occasions, which is in the form of a fictional scenario involving three made-up characters. But the art of writing philosophical dialogues has largely disappeared, with occasional exceptions.

My move towards writing philosophy in the form of a creative dialogue and story has also been inspired by my pandemic experience and, in general, my love of fantasy and science fiction. Throughout the summer of 2020, I spent countless hours, every day, getting lost in the sci-fi video game, No Man’s Sky. As the real world around me seemed more and more like a terrible place, I became deeply invested in creating a new life and new world within this beautiful, open-world, sandbox game in which you can explore countless alien planets while trying to just survive. It made me realize that I want to build interesting worlds in my writing, and combine that somehow with an examination of the philosophical ideas that seem important to me. Now, whenever I feel jaded and estranged from “the real world” (which is quite often), I find joy and new energy in the story and characters I’m creating. I can envision doing this for the rest of my life.

[ridethedarkerwave]

The sound of all things.

I wish this song would go on for another twenty minutes.

[ridethedarkerwave]

A boy who was tangled in his bike forever.

At age 47, I had an epiphany the other day while reading about the life of Carl Jung. Could I be schizoid? I’ve never been married. I’ve dated a lot but never been in a relationship longer than two years. I have not had close friends since probably age 22. I have friends (from past and present) but outside of work, I spend 99% of my time completely alone. There is loneliness and longing, but in some ways, it is okay. I like my freedom and solitude. I don’t have a strong interest in sex. I have occasional desires, but I’ve never viewed sex as a form of meaningful connection with others. I view it like I view eating: a biological urge that sometimes I seek to fulfill. If I could live my life without needing to eat, I would do so.

I do have a rich emotional life. I love music and movies that really make me feel, make me cry even. The film Arrival makes me bawl my eyes out every time I watch it. I’ve always adored melancholy, dark music. I often feel deep compassion for other people and animals. But in other ways, I am Camus’ stranger, indifferent, aloof, emotionally detached from the world. There have been a few people during my life that I’ve deeply bonded with and wanted to be very close with: a couple of romantic pen/email pals who lived in other locations (one whom I never met in person, the other whom I met once after many years), and a friend or two in college. But largely those things never work out in the end, especially when there is geographical distance between us. I still think about those people on a weekly basis even though I haven’t communicated with some of them in years or even decades.

Supposedly schizoid personality disorder is not well-understood because most people who have it do not seek out help because they don’t believe they need help. And maybe they don’t. I’m not sure that I do. I don’t really view my way of being in the world as a disorder or illness. To some extent, my behaviors are the product of my philosophical belief system about the world. Despite dealing with melancholia throughout my adult life, I’ve never felt compelled to seek out help from a psychiatrist or therapist. I think suffering and beauty are deeply intertwined. The best music, film, and art is rooted in pain. Sometimes the suffering is more than I’d like, but I don’t really see how a professional or drugs could conceivably help me. I think this is just who I am, and how my life is going to be, for both good and bad.