Hello and welcome.
Excerpts (in order of appearance):
Music:
I appreciate the storytelling of real human experience, truthfully expressing core feelings that are shared by people across cultures and time. Very generally, I tend to turn to Shakespeare for plays and poetry; and Dostoevsky for deep psychological novels. Some other great writers I like to read are: Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, and Victor Hugo.
Reading Hamlet.
It’s been done millions of times, but my instinctive interpretation of Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” soliloquy is a bit different from the many performances I have seen. In fact it may be unhelpful seeing other people’s performances because the blueprints distract from my own relationship with the words.
Every single person has both uniqueness and a shared oneness with everybody else. What is interesting is finding the individuality and playing with it, rather than blandly mimicking other people or current socialised expectations.
Iago is such a terrifying character because he revels in what he is doing. The motivating reasons can be analysed: broken pride, a sense of betrayal, jealousy, ambition, desire for power over others - or even unrequited love turned sour, if you want to read it that way. It’s true that villains often fool themselves into believing their actions are justified, or the fault of fate or caused by others; but the main factor with Iago is that he knows he is the villain and sadistically enjoys the suffering he causes. His motivation is the full embracing of enmity.
IAGO:
I hate the Moor:
And it is thought abroad, that ‘twixt my sheets
He has done my office: I know not if’t be true;
But I, for mere suspicion in that kind,
Will do as if for surety. He holds me well;
The better shall my purpose work on him.
Cassio’s a proper man: let me see now:
To get his place and to plume up my will
In double knavery—How, how? Let’s see:—
After some time, to abuse Othello’s ear
That he is too familiar with his wife.
He hath a person and a smooth dispose
To be suspected, framed to make women false.
The Moor is of a free and open nature,
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,
And will as tenderly be led by the nose
As asses are.
I have’t. It is engender’d. Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
The implied current direction for the future is that all the functions of your phone will be migrated directly into your brain. The “screen” will be projected into your vision and options chosen by thoughts.
All vision, sound, thoughts and feelings could be recorded. You could download and replay any recording from your experiences, or indeed from any experience of anyone else. Communication by mindscapes would replace the spoken and written word.
Invented experiences could be created for you to replay or interact with.
Your perception of reality could be changed and selected thought patterns switched off.
Pleasure and pain sensations could be activated on demand.
Your thoughts could interact with an artificial intelligence that calculates the most efficient algorithm for any process you wish to undertake. You could instantly download data and skills; and have immensely augmented cognitive processing speeds.
Your mind could operate any physical body, humanoid or not. As only the brain would need to be maintained, you would potentially have ultra long life.
Of course a totalitarian regime could easily control their population by these means; and an empowered sadist would run amok in all the enslaved minds. Philosophically it makes me wonder what it is to be a human being, but in the realm of practicalities it makes me certain: humans must become worthy of the knowledge we are gaining.
I think I will set-up my own green screen film studio and have some fun making videos. I want to shoot dramatic monologues and music performances - and also maybe some presentations if I’m feeling boring.
Wasn’t Shakespeare amazing. It would be so interesting to find out how his genius developed - what he saw and experienced in his life that helped him write such beautiful words and comprehend so deeply the human condition in all its different aspects. I can think of other notable geniuses in history - Mozart in music, Newton in science etc. - but Shakespeare is a sort of mythical other, shrouded in mystery, whose breadth of insight has the greatest impact on me.
I think I’ve found a new thing. I’m really enjoying putting a podcast together on drama - and am working out how best to film some of the recordings. It will include some of my music as well.
I’m interested in performing great monologues from literature - it seems easy to upload audio as a podcast and also filmed versions for a YouTube channel.
I’ve been looking for a podcast where I can listen to dramatic performances of literature, but am finding mostly dry monotone readings of poetry. Monologues on YouTube seem to be mostly non-realistic anger and angst.
I uploaded Alive today. The song took a while to finish, I needed to be in the mood.
Lots of other unfinished songs to pick up and play with, but they aren’t calling me at the moment. For another time…
There is a greater chance of releasing the magic if not consumed by self-aggrandisement or conforming to other people’s expectations, especially if the current norms are harmful and wrong. Success in transcendent goals is not the same as success in negotiating positions of status in the current society, which of course will change with the relentless passage of time. It just so happens, however, that those people who were motivated mainly by intrinsic value, rather than their individual psychological desires, produced the best long-lasting examples of beauty and creative human potential.
Reading about Dostoevsky. There is certainly a trend in history that the most interesting thinkers and artists tended to be outsiders for defining periods; and sometimes the untamed spark that made them great was dampened when invited in from the wilderness. Dostoevsky’s spark seemed to ignite after the more eventful stages of his life - in particular after a death sentence for sedition was commuted at the last minute to hard labour in a Siberian gulag, writing four classic novels after this period.
The internet and smartphones have been transformative for me.
I have instant access to knowledge in my pocket. At any time I can find brilliance and beauty at my fingertips. I can learn from top minds and see the most incredible examples of what humans can do.
If I am unfamiliar with a word, I look up its definition; if I don’t understand a reference, I read about it from credible sources. When I want to learn anything, all the instructions and guidance are there.
When I need to be inspired, I can find it there.
In computer programming, effort goes into creating reusable building blocks of code that can be implemented in multiple transferable processes. Much like the exponential growth of knowledge, the components can be included as foundations in larger and larger frameworks.
The Romans viewed the Colosseum as the zenith of civilisation, representing the natural order playing out, in tribute to the glory of the Gods. In the arena was unadulterated murder and torture for the entertainment of the baying crowds.
People two thousand years ago are us, just brought up differently with different beliefs and living under different conditions.
Humanity has now mostly progressed to recognise the depraved evils that were socially accepted in previous times - yet a person of the time would have gone along with the accepted behaviour, assuming it was right because everyone else said it was right. They were wrong.
Unless you think we are currently at the zenith of civilisation, what are the great injustices of our time that are socially conditioned and accepted as normal justifiable behaviour?
If humans are around for billions of years, then we are currently the early originals.
Maybe we are at the stage where we are just starting to recognise some shapes.
200,000 years ago, anatomically modern humans in the world.
5,500 years ago, the written word begins.
475 years ago, the Scientific Revolution.
250 years ago, the Industrial Revolution.
150 years ago, the Technological Revolution.
70 years ago, digital electronic computers.
29 years ago, the Internet.
13 years ago, smartphones & social media.
Another big changer due (or has already happened).
What will be the timeline in 1 billion years? The future could be completely incomprehensible from where we are now.
I couldn’t do as many lifting reps with less food - there may be a psychological factor involved, as this was what I had expected. Strength athletes tend to eat at regular short intervals, and deliberately overeat during the course of a day, to make sure that they have the optimum amount of calories and nutrients to build muscle - they later undertake a cutting phase to lose the fat.
Runners need to be sparrow-like, as light as possible to optimise the power-to-weight ratio. Carrying excess muscle around is not optimal.
I want to be both agile and strong, rather than ideally adapted for one function.
