jimmythehorn

I have nothing to contribute. All of my artistic endeavors suck. I become frustrated and abandon my efforts before I develop any real skill in the matter. Even by day, I can't seem to do anything creative. I shuffle papers, write documentation, and help make sure things conform to an artificial system of self-perpetuating nonsense. I am part of the self; I perpetuate the system.

Fuck.

Yesterday was an emotional rollercoaster full of rage; today was an existential crisis. What will tomorrow manage to bring to this house I games I laughingly call a mind?

All of a sudden, my head collapsed. It became an intellectual singularity of directionlessness. What do I want to do? I can float some ideas, but all get trampled on by the next question. Why do I want to do it? Two days ago, this didn't seem to be an issue; it wasn't even a question. Now, all of a sudden I have no answers anymore.

I'm trapped. By work, by money, by this financial slavery they call debt, I'm trapped by a mortgage's worth of student loan debt. What the fuck was I thinking when I signed up for that shit? I avoided things for a little while longer at the cost of a high five-figure price tag and my freedom.

And so, I do what I do. I make some money. I pay these fuckers back. These fuckers that profit off of my education. Who gave them the right?!? Who started the idea that I will learn and you will make money off of my learning? Trapped as I am by it, I perpetuate a system. I perpetuate a soul-crushing, mind-numbing catastrophe.

I'm not sure whether I want to break shit, or make shit. I'm good at former, and terrible at the latter. Aren't we all?

I make no claim to producing good visual art. I merely enjoy the production of mediocre works for my own benefit. I have only a slightly higher impression of my musical works. Sadly, what I'm really good at remains hidden, controlled as essentially work-for-hire.

I am really good at circuit design.

Form and function combine spectacularly and the output seems to almost evolve on its own from conception, through schematic, to populated circuit board, with all the wonderful steps in between.

While many will enjoy the function of the product, few have the opportunity to examine the form of it, at least beyond the most basic of gross form. Because of the nature of the work, that is the way it must be.

I sit at work and examine my art -- my best art. Proud of what I can accomplish but dismayed at the limited audience of coworkers who are able to even witness it. Once it is in final form, the creativity and the process are all masked from view.

The wider audience associated with the thousands of products to be sold each year will have no access to the result of my creative energies. That matters little, though, as most of them have no interest in or appreciation for the art I do best.

A fractal artist can at least produce visually stunning images, even if the wider audience can't appreciate the beauty of the mathematics at its foundation.

My art gets trapped inside a cheap plastic case, adorned with the admonition, "Do not open. No user serviceable parts."

Sight and sound. That's what we've got. A few creative devices can even do limited sensations of touch. Beyond that, though, there's no feasible way to transduce.

Sight and sound are easy. Both are limited to a single form of energy and transducing from electricity to sound or electricity to light is well developed as a technology. Further transducing information into energy is also doing pretty well for itself. A few motors in a few key spots and you've even got a bit of a touch sensation. All this can be transmitted.

Taste and smell present us with some problems. The transduction is chemical to electrical, and this we have not mastered so well, due to the varieties present in the chemistry among other things.

It's a shame, too. Otherwise, things like foods, beverages, incenses, &c. would be prime territory for a website like DA. You could post your latest oven concoction, or a new flavor of beer you've been fucking around with. How awesome would that be? Hell, I'm working on some wine right now. It'll probably be crunkjuice (first attempt), but I'd still love to share with everybody. Alas...

The trick, I think, will be in bypassing the electrochemical transduction however. The solution lies in putting a USB 2.0 port on the back of your noggin. A little mixed-signal controller can sit there, do some number chugging and run something out a DAC or two right into some key neurons. Signals can be retrieved the same way. You taste or smell something and download it from your head to your computer.

Hey! Taste this!
Hang on. Let me plug in my head.
** Bob's head now connected. **
** Alice requests transfer of cake.tst **
** Sending taste file. **
Wow! Delicious!

Nothing can go wrong with this plan. I shall get right to work.

BTW, thanks for all the welcome wishes. Admittedly not much here yet, and I've no idea what to really do with this space overall. We shall see what transpires.

Feeling this unsuitable for my main blog. I choose this text to inaugurate journaling here.

Staring out the window at the tarmac. The high-pitched whines are only slightly muffled by the clear panes in front of me. I am in Madison, waiting for my plane back to Cleveland. Returning to many wonderful things -- wonderful people, especially -- but still returning to Cleveland, though only to remain for a brief 48 hours until I'm off again. I do so enjoy traveling.

Here for work, but also here for joy. The pleasures of the traveling are just as great as the purpose and destination. Yet, the concept of "home" and of "work" wear on my soul. Both necessary evils, but both sometimes require some shaking up. I need to not live in Cleveland anymore. Low on the list of reasons are any related to the positives and negatives of actually living in Cleveland. Even lower still (nonexistent, in fact) is any desire to change activities, careers, paths, or whatnot; I enjoy very much what I'm doing, but I'm losing tolerance for where I'm doing it. At the very top is the simple fact that I've stayed put for too long. I can't even sit still at my desk for more than an hour. How have I stayed in Cleveland for seven years without having gone mad? Or am I mad? Don't answer that.

Insane as it may be, the conference I attend for work here in Madison has strongly reinforced the notion that I want to go back to school, pursue some more education, and end up with some more alphabet soup after my name. Or is the reflection of the grass too green, the memories too distant? Perhaps. Still, I think, I was happier with what I was doing when I was in school. I was more displaced. I was less comfortable. I can't stand being comfortable. It frightens me. I fear losing what needs to be lost in order to be comfortable. I will not have it.

I have no course charted, no plan of action to execute on this wanderlust, but perhaps it's time I had one.