so, this came to a head because of this series of bleets about Lupe Fiasco's The Cool, an album that contains a song i really liked, Dumb it Down:

QuoteLupe Fiasco's The Cool is always impressive, chained back entirely by the context it exists in. Every instrumental is incredible, the flow versatility is impressive, and the hook game is bananas.

The lyrical content is the deep cornball shit that plagued 2000's concious hip-hop.


If not for this one aspect of the record aging poorly, I would be giving my full-throated approval of the record.

The corniness of it all could be forgiven, novel even, if it wasn't littered with Lupe's insecurities over his "not being taken seriously" in the game.


Though don't mistake me: This is not every single bar on the record. There is still a lot of principled introspection about the world and Lupe has always stood on business. Dude criticized Obama's warmongering when that was unpopular to do.

Just this is the difference between a 9/10 and 10/10 here.

i don't suppose to know what sorryitsandy is talking about exactly, since i only know a couple of Lupe Fiasco's songs, and i never knew about conscious hip-hop. but it catalyzed something within me, and i found it important to record the catalyst and its effect.

i've been thinking about The End of Gameplay a bit over the past few days, navigating some dusty thoughts. it doesn't feel like a game i finished and put down nine months ago: it's a game that still resides within me, burning. what does that mean?

the most recent Steam review has this phrase that i can't quiite resolve my feelings about: "I'm looking for my art to not just be a communication of vulnerability, but to say something interesting." the implication then is that The End of Gameplay is either (or both) 'just . . a communication of vulnerability' and/or what it is saying is that games should be 'just . . a communication of vulnerability'.

blood.

what i return to time & again is that the vulnerability should not matter. but it does. people's unwillingness to be or appear vulnerable meets with people's unwillingness to engage with seeming or apparent vulnerability. a character's vulnerability is acceptable to engage with in a way that a real person's vulnerability is not. as i see it the importance of The End of Gameplay, the importance of blood, is not to be vulnerable, but to wield vulnerability without hesitation.

constellations.

there is a slim chance that such a hundredfold object could be said to have been born, grown.

without carving.

a new creative process which i would like to practice is inevitability, permanence, inescapable history. my soul is cleaned out, scraped raw. the next thing to do is be careful and meticulously organized.

practice holding on to a hundred mental objects of your desire.

allow them to remain disconnected for that entire time.

finally, imbue them with connective tissue, all at once.

i am carried by the wind, i spread my wings and allow my sense of authorship to be taken by chaos. more and more, experimentation and the results of those experiments steal away my life, my very life. i don't want to spend those days in hollow realms that as readily die as they were born, and i reject as i can even those born without life, without aliveness, without smoothly unfolding from the pre-existing life that there is...

i wondered earlier tonight how can i make a work without carving!

the creation of an n-dimensional primitive, raw material, thrills. one gives birth to vibrant new life. what follows is carving, carefully examining this rough stone and wondering what secrets it holds.

without carving...

what follows is a process of whittling, carving, searching for the rich veins in this newly-generated space.

i find the maximalist, voluminous nature of procedural art to be intoxicating. a few lines of code, and the process unfolds almost without effort, on my part. i use this term, "procedural art," to describe a larger category than the one it usually applies to. in particular, procedural art certainly contains almost all videogames.