I appreciate the Close reading subforum I started for myself more than most of the other ones. Its format has even bled out into this post :)

I think the reason for that is because I've taken my memory into my own hands a bit more consciously -- I'm choosing to put effort into remembering certain things, and my thoughts regarding them, because of how much I value thoughtful attention and memory. When I make art, I hope that someone else (even if they don't record them or share them in the ways I value) pays thoughtful attention to it, and remembers it.

I value art that inspires me to do the same.

I don't want to live forever in a machine. Look at me, writing in this forum: it's public but only I can post here. It's not enough to know that my words are there in the system. I want to better remember my own thoughts, of course, but I'm hoping that someone else will bother to remember me, too.

Quote from: Marina (Immortal)I wanna mean something to somebody else
Feel a significance in the real world
It's not enough to live out a lucky life
[..]
No, I don't want to be afraid, afraid to die, (die, die)
I just wanna be able to say that I have lived my (life, life)
Oh, all these things that humans do
To leave behind a little proof
But the only thing that doesn't die is love, love, love, love, love

So, where does this desire for immortality come from in me? Do I want to mean something to somebody else? Feel a significance in the real world? I think these are interesting hypotheses. Poetic, beautiful. But they ring more hollow to me than the core message.

I can't help but wonder if it comes from somewhere dead simple: a person is only, can only ever be, the sum of their experiences.

The only things that a person is capable of valuing in the long run is the things that they remember.

The minimum requirement of being valued is being remembered.

I bury things in the garden of my mind.

I often leave them behind.

I forget.

Quote from: Marina (Immortal)There'll be just one survivor
The memories of our lifetime

The author of Bird by Bird says many things in ways I don't agree with, but I enjoy the look at how she thinks and feels about things. In particular, this specific quote helps me to accept that my most deeply held values and believes will "feel like givens".

Maybe it's arrogance, but at least it's something we have in common.

QuoteI've been thinking about my values lately [..] I'm obsessed with this quote I took from Bird by Bird: "If you find that....."

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Values

I've been thinking about my values lately, and recognizing that in a song like Immortal, the shift from "I" to "we" is a reflection of the speaker's, the artist's, values. CJ's 'desires' are reflections of value. I feel comfortable enough saying that on the whole people do have a desire to be valuable, to be valued, something which may appear objective to them, but which can only be judged according to subjective values. (I am a moral relativist. To be anything else is pure arrogance or ignorance. It doesn't make me particularly happy to think this way though, so I am often looking for ways to dispel myself of the notion.)

Anyway, I'm obsessed with this quote I took from Bird by Bird:

QuoteIf you find that you start a number of stories or pieces that you don't ever bother finishing, that you lose interest or faith in them along the way, it may be that there is nothing at their center about which you care passionately. [...The core, ethical concepts which you most passionately believe to be true or right] probably feel like givens, like no one ever had to make up, that have been true through all cultures and for all time.

Where do my values come from? I don't value money very well -- I do enjoy not living under fear of running out of it, but the numbers themselves always make me feel empty when I pay any significant attention to them. and when I don't, the numbers slip through the sieve of my mind. I don't really care.

In "The Kronk Effect", CJ the X suggests that we should discover and accept that which we really, truly want. I can do that, but I want to feel a larger pattern... not to say that what I want is what everybody wants.

Quote from: Marina, ImmortalI wanna be immortal // Like a god in the sky
I wanna be a silk flower // Like I'm never gonna die
[..]
That's what we do it for[..] it's just part of the human race

I'll often write things as if I'm speaking to everyone, for everyone, when all I can do is speak for myself and for those who happen to share my values (in a no true scotsman sort of way). In the above quote from Immortal Marina switches, as I do, between "I" and "we", almost as though they are interchangeable. I feel this way, therefore I've drawn a conclusion about all of us, about the human race.

When I hear her lyrics I feel more connected to people in general, but is it a false connectedness? Marina can't speak for the human race, and perhaps I'll never truly understand the human race. Hmm.

Quotea garden's paramount goal is to reward a curious fellow with new ideas, with life-changing ideas, with transformation, with beautifully sticky memories. If there is an evil system at the heart of a garden it is that it wants to live forever in your heart.

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if you write the best rhyme you'll ever write but it doesn't fit in with the work's meaning or larger theme, it's your responsibility as the artist to cut it. put it down. "kill," as they say, "your darlings."

game mechanics are mere devices -- though there is an artistry and a craft to their creation, they are not the emotional or creative core. look deeper. as an artist, those 'artist statements' and thematic overtones that might have once felt like justification to use devices in the first place... have always, actually, been the whole point. it's not there to lend context to cool devices; the devices serve the expression.

if not in service of some expression of a heartfelt truth, a device does not belong. if it was capable of standing alone, you would be happy to take it out and let it do just that. but if you let it stay it is a tumour, and its cancerous influence will steal coherency and energy from the entire work.

even your most darling devices are not worth it.

The only goals and rewards that a garden is allowed to have are exploration and discovery of art to appreciate, of new ideas (or old ones you want to touch again).

The only challenge a garden is allowed to present is overcoming your assumptions, reservations, misunderstandings, and self.

These are written wrong. Let's say that a garden's paramount goal is to reward a curious fellow with new ideas, with life-changing ideas, with transformation, with beautifully sticky memories. If there is an evil system at the heart of a garden it is that it wants to live forever in your heart.

Some of my favourite places in the world have been literal gardens.

Other times I have enjoyed sites of activity -- I love walking around the city. Archaeological dig sites, project sites... These places that I can see and explore, even if I am not part of them. Haven & Hearth. I feel like there are plenty of words that capture these "explorable places that someone tends" -- museum, gallery, home -- but "garden" may be the most beautiful.

I spent some time making oubliettes, but the word feels ready to be retired and left behind. The emotional range it suggests is so very limited. I think Zeigfreid's The Valley is a garden. Perhaps Tic-Tac-Crow is one too.

Gardens are not gardening games, nor are they open-world games. They have more in common with my playables than those other genres. Gardens are not about player expression or agency... The play is in exploring. I want to make open-source gardens so that if someone wants to express themselves or change the world, they are empowered to do so using real tools. Gardens cannot be venues designed to fractally contain the experience of self-expression. They are the end result.

In some ways, gardens might be walking simulators. But I think they're different.

Update: I've reclaimed failure. I think I'm more interested than before in the idea of pursuing something impossible.

I'm currently using Requestly to inject this nightmarishly inefficient script into all twitter pages:

setInterval(function(){
  switch (window.location.href) {
    case "https://twitter.com/explore":
    case "https://twitter.com/home": window.location.href = "https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=294.0";
  }
}, 1)

I want a browser extension that blocks all forms of algorithmic discovery so that when I discover things it is because I heard about it "on the grapevine" rather than enabling the sort of interconnected eternal click-click-click that the hyperlink-enabled web has created and which infinitely-scrolling websites such as Twitter and Facebook (i.e. most or all social media) have leaned harder into.