it's not there, i swear
i sent gameplay's knife
i buried its blade in my grave.
and when i die i'll die clutching
its hilt in my hands, i swear.

but the thing that i'm feeling most cleanly
is that murder's a bloody affair
   is that killing and closing
   my eyes to the bleeding
leaves the shooting and eating to those holding weapons
   as if equipment's distribution
   went through nothing unfair.

i'm after the end of gameplay
i'm singing the praises of death
   as though when it goes
   as if everyone knows
that love is that all we'll have left.

I think my focus will be on constructing little worlds to visit. Movement mechanics, scene switching, various audiovisual effects, and... yes, probably how to pace a world, how to think about a player's journey through it or within it, but no focus on other game mechanic like things.

Worlds don't have to be open, they can be linear, but... well, I guess I'll need to define it a bit better.

Planning a Godot workshop for later this summer. It will be online.

I decided yesterday that I was going to make & release a video for the full moon... so... here I am. I'm not sure on what, but I think I've got a lot of thoughts bottled up that I've been letting leak out into bluesky in a way I'm not happy with.

I'm writing the guide to a single card every day. I will be finished sometime in late September, although I'll still need to write supporting text (spreads, intro, etc).

Jul 5 - Sept 23-ish

when thinking, what do i get out of this project/collaboration? i drew the six of coins, which reflects how i felt. i didn't like this feeling -- i want to be a magician working with magicians, parallel creatives. whatever the project is or was, it felt more like a give and take... 'charity'. i don't know what card could capture that dynamic better.

anyway, the project is over. the friendship isn't (necessarily).

x

this has been droqen's close reading of Art & Fear. if i could summarize the book, allow me to corrupt its title and each of its chapter names out of frustration.


title: Art [is something we want to make, but we have] Fear [of not being a Great, like Mozart]

chapter 1: The Nature of the Problem [is: we have the desire to become Great too, but wanting to be Great doesn't result in Great work]

chapter 2: Art [is hard to make] & Fear [is a force that compels quitting, which is a shame, because for some reason we really want to make art, but we're not going to really get into that right now]

chapter 3: Fears About Yourself [for instance, you aren't Mozart]

chapter 4: Fears About Others [for instance, they might not like you as much as they like Mozart]

chapter 5: Finding Your Work [hint: it probably isn't Mozart]

alright that's it, it's out of my system lol. apologies to the authors. thank you for the book, for laying your fears bare, for sharing your wisdom and experience and experiences.

love, droqen

p114

QuoteQ: Will anyone ever match the genius of Mozart?
A: No.
Thank you -- now can we get on with our work?

i'm so mad! like get the fuck outta here with the Mozart shit! maybe this is how people feel when i write about kill gameplay. i'm reacting to something that not everyone is burdened by. these authors are burdened, somehow, by comparisons to 'The Greats'. i am not. i have never been.

i am presently reacting to gameplay, some dread god of culture. perhaps to Bayles and Orland their god, their great enemy, is Mozart. when they wrote in the introduction that their book is about "all art not made by Mozart" they showed their hand and i should have listened: this book, as all works and actions, is a reaction. in their case it is in part a reaction to a fear that they have, that the only art that matters is art made by Mozart and people like him. what, then, is their art? what is art in the shadow of The Greats? i have no use for this, unfortunately, but perhaps someone will. well, the book is quite old, so maybe i should say -- perhaps someone has.