#consuming art

The first tag I drop on the entry is of-course Kentucky Route Zero.

I forget whether I’ve talked about this before so here we are talking about it again some more. While I was playing KRZ and occasionally posting about it on social media, among others, two particular friends responded to me about it and we engaged, having some good discussions on and off. I suggested that playing the game might be highly mood dependent, but that for me engaging in most art is mood dependent, the only thing that varies is to what degree. If I was still more of a wanker, I might suggest that the more artsy-fartsy a product is, the more mood dependent it is but that’s not the case. I very much have to be in the right frame of mind to engage with Marvel or Bravest Warriors as much as Gaspar Noé, it really does depend on the individual and what mood they’re most frequently in or find themselves in at the time.

I find it affects more than the consumption of and engagement with art, tho. I don’t know if it’s a bipolar thing or a human thing and I say that a lot; it affects my ability to write, create, engage with people - enact actions in the world. The only thing I have to brute-force my way thru is of-course my employment which raises particularly interesting capitalistic questions of societal structure. I’m not entirely here to smash the establishment tho - there are times where discipline is useful; on a base level, discipline and the ability to overcome how we feel assists us with survival and sure it’s disgusting to apply that to the nth degree entirely in the ultimate capitalist sense, but again on a base level, being able to hold down a job in an of itself isn’t necessarily evil. Before we go Burning Down The Corporations, I need to make careful distinctions between my mental states and my physical states, as a first example. Minds and bodies are complex systems and understanding them is my responsibility.

Nevertheless I can never stray too far from my iconoclastic nature and Art-capital-A is one of my most primary motivators. There is definitely plenty wrong in the world at large we have created over generations and the societal structures therein regarding how we understand people and psychology and I’m fairly certain we will never address it to our ultimate destruction, that is fairly observable, mundane, and an immense tragedy for literally billions of people who will luck out in the birth lottery or have already done so. Art is the only thing that from a pragmatic perspective is both meaningless and unnecessary and so becomes the most essential and important thing for humanity. We must inject the most meaning and emotion into it possible. It becomes charged with the most powerful intangible things we have; our emotions. This is why bad art must be celebrated and documented. Anger, frustration, humour is just as valuable as everything we think is noble.

It’s also why the struggle to create is very real and perhaps one of the greatest challenges. It’s probably why I pushed myself to write today. Usually I’m cautious about pushing myself to produce, and I want to again be very careful with the language I use being so capitalist, even if only by stating it. It’s hazardous discussing everything in terms of product - I know I mentioned in a previous entry and Capitalism tries to convince you that everything you create is a product and it has no value unless someone is buying it, so a reminder to myself and to you that it’s not what’s happening here. I could frame it as exercise, and I’m now thinking (typing? lol) aloud in that an exercise is effectively an investment - a preparation for ability, capability for the future and again it all sounds quite capitalist, doesn’t it? Do we always do things only with the hope of some kind of profit? A return on investment? Do we evaluate everything only if and when there is a return, at the valuation point, like a board game about speculative stocks? If the board game never concludes because of an unforeseen interruption, do we not name a winner and so the game and the stocks - the product and our labour - never had any value?

Do I write this to answer these questions, or only to ask them, and which has value?

All the philosophy majors will have a lot of angles on what has value or whether there’s any point to value at all as a frame which is great. Value as a phenomena is a whole Thing - we can discuss whether or not I have any intent to create or suggest Value capital V (that’s getting annoying, I know, so that will be the last time) but that will be fairly pointless.

(I made that; you can steal it).

Over the last few entries, I’ve not directly talked about the one monumental current event that’s dominated the attention of world at large. If you note the dates on these entries and you’re visiting from the future, you may have to look up what was happening around now if I haven’t mentioned it explicitly anywhere as I likely won’t. There was one vague reference to it in the Kaossilator post which is as close as I care to get. There are so many other things happening in our lives (J and mine) that I’d say were interruptions, but they’re not really - they’re just life, but they’re the daily challenges that make creating difficult.

It means coming here and writing weekly or bi-weekly, as is my intention, is a challenge. It means turning on all my gear and working on music is a huge challenge. It means watching films and sometimes even YouTube is a challenge. A lot of it it energy dependent, heaps of it is naturally time dependent, but for me a significant portion is mood dependent and my understanding of that is it’s more dimensional than just not feeling like it.

Over dinner a while ago, our family were discussing films released in 2019 and which was my favourite and honestly I think I got around to seeing one. I think the next most recent film I saw in the last 12 months was Hereditary which I enjoyed most, so if I see a film within 24 months of its release these days, I’m doing well. Mostly this is due to time and opportunity, but it’s mostly due to mood; I just don’t want to watch most films, even ones I’m interested in seeing and want to watch. 

Our hosts also asked us what we thought of the place as they’d just recently moved in and were still in the process of moving things around and my perspective was and is that I like subtle - and often not so subtle suggestions of separations of space for application. When I read, I read in specific places. When I create music, I only do it in the studio, tho there are exceptions when I take one or two smaller pieces of gear out of the room as that’s a ton of fun for a refreshing change. When I play games, it’s on the consoles down at the television, the same goes for when I watch films or shows - we don’t have more than one room with TVs in them, and while J can and does watch shows on her iPad in bed, it’s not something I can do. For me, I want a dedicated space in which I focus on film to engage with it.

This applies to the times when I create and engage with art, too, and I’ve mentioned before that there are even times when I do and don’t listen to certain albums or pieces of music. In this post-KRZ life I’m in, (need to change the name of this journal to Art Worth Dying For: or Life Post-Kentucky Route Zero), I’m trying to write these longer posts every Friday night after work, but it’s turning out to be either Saturday during the day, Saturday evening or on the Sunday. During the week I try to add something shorter, but I do want to maintain some semblance of regular discipline because writing is good for me, in particular in lieu of ceasing other online activities. I’ve found that engagement in general is low on other platforms, and while it does occur rarely and at a moderate level, it isn’t regular enough for my liking. Like many, I’ve taken a somewhat passive role on Instagram where the Stories are utilised to post temporary activity and engagement is higher, and on Facebook I respond to posts in the Akai Force group where necessary but only when relevant which isn’t often.

I’d rather come here and write endlessly and be orderly, in short and long-format text, and as expressed in my Instagram stories; even post images in a more static format that invites slower digestion and contemplation with a view to better interpolation of text and context of that text in relation to the images.