LastThursday

I have a soft spot for street art, especially graffiti. It can be clever and ephemeral. Why should art just be confined to galleries and stately homes? Where I used to live in Brighton seems to be a kind of epicentre for it, or at least it's well tolerated there. Anyway, here's a scenic walkthrough of some of the stuff I've taken pictures of over time. Brighton: John Peel (Brighton) I think the kissing policemen is a Banksy and had to be protected from vandalism: A recurring character: Pisa or Florence (can't remember which): Vienna: This one had a mirror in it! New Zealand: London: Belgium: Devon: Spain: Someone felt the need to show their undying love, it's sweet: Some picture keep duplicating don't know why...

Mixing relationships and physics. When a new person enters our spacetime there is a kind of gravitational pull. The pull can be weak and far away or strong and close. This is not necessarily sexual but just a kind of resonance between people. You both begin to enter into a kind of gravitational embrace circling each other for a while. The revolutions can be slow and weakly felt; that acquaintance you see every six months, other times it's a wild merry-go-round exciting or nauseating. Everyone is affected by each other's gravity, spacetime is warped, we inevitably warp and change each other. But gravity can be unstable and chaotic, it's equations tell us that much, and our closest planets get flung out far into the void. We feel the loss and readjust our web of gravity, but their perturbations have already changed us and we are imprinted with them and them us - no one is ever truly lost or completely forgotten.

I've never really had much of a sense of shame or regret for my actions. I think it comes from not having engaged with myself much emotionally in the past, it just never really made much sense to me. I've taken a more utilitarian view of my mistakes: I made them, I apologised where I needed to, I put things right where I could, and then I moved on. This feels like enough for me. The idea of ongoing self-flagellation or deep shame for my actions never fully connected. Is this a failing of mine? I don't know. I do know that I'm not a psychopath and completely lacking in empathy. In fact my empathy muscle has got stronger over the years both in terms of feeling other's plight and also expressing empathy, it comes more naturally nowadays. I think when I was younger I was far more dismissive of people's emotions and what I saw as emotional hangups. I just couldn't understand why holding a grudge or unresolved emotion for any length of time was actually productive in any sense. On the whole I took people at face value and expected the same from others, most people seemed to understand I was this way, but I also put many people's noses out of joint - some people really didn't click with me at all. Again, I just didn't care if someone didn't like me, it made no difference to me. This kind of binary hot/cold response from people dogged me most of my life. Particularly in a work setting I didn't suffer fools or pander to people's emotional reactions, this even got me effectively fired from one job, because the big cheese just didn't click with me in any way, I just wasn't interested in playing to his tune. To layer on top of that, I had a certain amount of social anxiety which made me socially awkward at times. If I connected with someone, then I could be fluid and relaxed with them, but a lot of the time there was awkwardness on my part and I was always very aware of it. The awkwardness in my case was a symptom of hyper-awareness, I would pick up on someone's body language or tone and I wouldn't know what to do with it, and then that would make me behave awkwardly. This ongoing social awkwardness eventually came to head, I simply got fed up with it. I regularly wondered if I was autistic (I still do sometimes) and that I would never be comfortable socially which depressed me. The equation was simple: lack of empathy plus social awkwardness equals autism (although I have other tell-tale traits). In the end I broke down, I simply had to change myself or off myself, I couldn't continue the way I had. What I've learned is that I can be more empathetic if not more emotional with it. The realisation is that empathy is not emotion, it's just that most people connect the two as some sort of natural law. Empathy is really understanding, and understanding comes either from your own experience or by having enough interest to learn what's going on with the other person. Paradoxically having had a kind of breakdown, I'm a lot more empathetic towards people and particularly with bad mental health, I now have a deep understanding of how helpless and confusing it can be. I also know that it's possible to navigate through it and come out of the other side. Also, I have learned to connect with my emotions more deeply and listen to what they have to say. I'm a lot less socially awkward than I was. I was always and still am interested in people; I've learned to tone down my hyper-awareness in social situations and just "go with the flow" and "be present", it's the moments when I'm not in flow that I become awkward and it still happens sometimes. I think that hyper-awareness of body language came from being very visual with my mum, as she was congenitally deaf and I had to have a highly refined feel for eye contact and facial expression. I eventually realised that I did have social nous and I wasn't autistic, or if I was it was possible to overcome it, largely, in my case. I still struggle with some social aspects, but I'm more rounded now: I opened the door to my prison. There are still things in my past which I feel regret or cringe about, I know I behaved in a hurtful unempathetic manner at times. I suppose this is me confessing to strangers, but that's fine, it's only ever our own conscience we have to make peace with. Some damage can't be undone not really, the past is immutable, I can only try and be a more loving person now.

I suspect we all have parts that are embarrassing that we wish we didn't have or would just go away. Maybe it's less to do with blind acceptance and more to do with giving those parts love and positivity, acknowledging them for what they are. For some recontextualisation: I would say tarot and astrology work by giving you a way to tap into your intuition in a concrete way. And fantasising gives you mental rehearsal for the real thing, so you can have more solid relationships. Seems positive to me?

At least you know you're not your mind, as you don't exist. If you are your mind, then clearly you still exist.

I've always had a healthy relationship towards sleep (and food). With sleep I pay attention to my body, and if I don't it punishes me. I've never been able to function properly on too little sleep. By function I mean able to go to work and think about complex things, and that's been the number one driver for me getting enough sleep in my adult years. Sitting at a computer yawning for over eight hours and not being able to concentrate is literal torture. Unfortunately, the world of work and presenteeism has never meshed too well with my sleep tendencies. I'm an owl not a lark, I've always found it a drag to get up in the morning and it was especially acute in my late teens and early twenties. I was known for my epic sleeps at university often sleeping for twelve hours (especially after a night of drinking and clubbing). I always shrugged my shoulders and just told everyone I needed the sleep, I was unapologetic. I definitely know if I've woken up too early as I feel like I've been drugged. Left to my own devices I will just come out of sleep feeling refreshed and not like a zombie. My sleep pattern nowadays is definitely shorter, 8.5 hours seems just about right. But I'm usually under this in the week at around eight hours. I force myself to go to bed at midnight most nights - although that can slip sometimes. My waking up is slightly erratic and it can vary by up to an hour, even with an alarm! I don't see a pattern to this yo-yoing at all, but I definitely notice as winter draws in I get up later. This morning was a case in point as I was still struggling to wake up at 9am when I should have started work (at home). This definitely has to a be a morning light level kind of thing. And I still, even now, on occasion sleep ten hours or so especially on weekends. I've found myself napping more as I've got older, a stereotype that I never thought I would take on when I was younger. I think this is less to do with being older and more to do with being able to go to sleep more efficiently. I've always struggled to actually get to sleep, my mind was always hyperactive (can't you tell?) most of my life and being an owl, especially at nights. But around 15 years ago I took the bull by the horns and trained myself to be able to go to sleep better, mostly by distracting my racing thoughts with hypnosis of sorts, and it worked eventually (I'm sure I've written about it previously). Nowadays my mind is a lot calmer and less anxious, and I find I can switch off and sleep when I need to - it's a relief. I'm not sure what caused the hyperactivity in the first place, but it could have been a combination of genetics, possible ADHD, caffeine consumption, or any number of other things. But I will say cutting out caffeine, and wearing blue light blocking glasses in the evening have helped me tremendously. I notice that there's definitely a slight stigma against getting proper sleep. Some people just require more sleep biologically than others, regardless of whether they're owls or larks. Society wants you to burn the candle at both ends, by getting into work on time, but also by indulging in leisure late into the night, and sleep mostly gives way to this sort of stupidity, as if sleep were optional. There's periodic wails from the media of an epidemic of lack of sleep, but I'm not so sure about it. The fact is most of us can function just ok on slightly less sleep than we should be getting, and unless you're a parent you catch up on the weekend in any case. There's a definite strong link between not getting proper sleep and some forms of bad mental health. Some go so far as to say that some mental health problems are actually sleep disorders in disguise. My suspicion is that it goes both ways and possibly training people to get proper sleep may go some way to improving their lives. Sleep! It's the best.

The person and your mind are created at the same time, they both have the same source. The nature of the mind is to project outward from itself and to claim ownership of everything it thinks.

Yup I'm practising procrastination today. A bit soundbighty but it resonates with me:

I'm on a roll. I just had the strangest thought about what I'm doing in this journal. It's completely like I'm casting a shadow. You can see me but only by the shadow I'm casting into this journal. You then reconstruct me from my ramblings. It's like I'm giving you the mould of me and you're pouring your interpretation into it. But isn't this exactly what we do IRL? You can never know "me" only what I present to you. Is that sad? Nah. It's glorious, because I have infinite depth and have an infinite number of facets to show you.

More random ramblings. I was thinking about some comments made about Leo's latest video on how to get laid. I haven't seen the video, I don't feel invested enough to watch it at the moment (which is no particular comment on its subject). Maybe I find people's reaction to it more interesting than actually watching it? Anyway, the primary thought I had was that there is a certain ickiness around these sorts of subjects. Why's that? Some of that ickiness I think revolves around the idea of "gaming" people. This is the sort of thing at the heart of capitalism, the idea that it's perfectly ok to use any technique at your disposal in order to sell things to people, or more subtly to get what you want from people. For capitalism the currency is money, for getting laid the currency is sex. There is definitely a quagmire to navigate here, because it's not so clear cut that all forms of manipulation are asymmetrical or necessarily bad per se. What is probably bad is the attitude of active manipulation, and having that attitude permeate society. What's the difference between active and passive manipulation? That's tricky to define. We all need to survive and have our needs met. Largely, having our needs met involve other people at all levels. In turn those other people also need to survive. It works like a balance sheet, having your needs catered to by others goes in the plus column, having to use your resources to help others goes in the minus column. Naturally the exception is where mutual helping helps both sides survive: this results in trade and capitalism eventually. So passive manipulation is at baseline to do with surviving and having your needs met, asking for food and shelter is passive. Active manipulation on the other hand is where you consciously use all the techniques at your disposal to corral people into doing what you want: gaming them. By gaming people you are using an understanding of psychology and human behaviour to manipulate them in an ways that they're not aware of. That there is exactly where the problem lies with gaming. It's that lack of consent and awareness from the person being gamed. Surely that's ok though? If someone is stupid enough to fall for your tricks that's their fault? No. There is a big difference between being open about your intentions: hey I'm selling you this product because it may help you and it will help me also, and, I'm going to trick you into thinking you need this product, even though I know you probably don't. It's not possible for people to be so switched on at all times that they know they're being manipulated and somehow just laugh it off as harmless. And so it is with gaming your way into having sex with a stranger. Is it being done with clear intention in a mutually beneficial environment? Should you feel good about winning at sex by gaming people? Probably not. Saying that I'm not completely naive, to a degree biology dictates that men "prove" themselves to women, and women get to do the choosing. But that is passive manipulation: ultimately survival. In other words e.g., men and women openly flirt with each other and the intention is obvious (flirting is of course passive manipulation and dependent on orientation too). With flirting the manipulation is in both directions for mutual benefit. I think the correct way out of this mindset of gaming others, is to reflect it back on yourself, game yourself. In a way gaming yourself stops being gaming and turns into self-development: you can't pull the wool over your own eyes (mostly). Learn to game yourself for your own benefit, and then let that be a springboard for getting what you want through more natural means. From having read comments on the forum, I think that's ultimately what Leo is pointing out in his video: work on yourself, game yourself not others. -- For something completely different, I stumbled across this artist I suspect I'm completely the wrong demographic, but I really like her voice, and the blatantly Scouse (Liverpool) accent, it's refreshing to hear. And another for good luck:

How could I forget this classic?

It's not for everyone, but one of the main points of a marriage ceremony is the spectacle. It cements the marriage in everyone's mind, there's buy in from all vested interests. Everyone contributes to the commitment and helps it along.

I can neither confirm or deny I may or may not have bumped and grinded to this And some songs are clearly meant for certain activities:

Commitment is an art that's been lost. Marriage gives you a good grounding in the process of commitment. Because it makes it difficult to get out of, marriage forces you to face problems head on and to learn acceptance and even gratitude - it stops you running at every sign of trouble. Yes, a lot of marriages painfully fail, but so do relationships outside of marriage. Commitment is certainty and most people function better with certainty in their lives. Obviously, there are other reasons for marriage: love, family and religion.

The decline of everything. Whenever I go around different towns for whatever reasons, I notice a lot of boarded up places where shops used to be. They generally fall into several types of ex-establishments: shops, pubs, post offices and bank branches. Certainly where I live it seems like once a shop or chain goes under nobody else takes up the empty space. It gives high streets a kind of run down quality which is unattractive and probably goes some way to putting people off from going there in the first place - it's a downward spiral - it's also economics. It can be easy to be doom and gloom about it if you care about it to any degree (I mostly don't). What's mostly killed off the high street as far as I can see is the internet. That's because of several reasons but the main one being that's it's far cheaper for a business to run a website than it is to run a physical space populated with employees. This is what's happened to banking, physical branches just don't make sense economically when most money transactions are virtual. For any banking services that require a human, then you either chat online or on the phone. Bank branches were also not a social hub, but just a means to an end. The same can't be said for pubs and post offices. It's the same story with pubs, for areas with less footfall, it seems like once a pub closes it stays boarded up indefinitely. I find it hard to understand why pubs are closing at such a rate, but really it must just be changing cultural standards. The pub historically is a social hub, and a place for entertainment. But I think the nature of that entertainment has changed and there are different ways to be social nowadays, either online or through different activities. I think also the way people drink here has changed with supermarket alcohol being relatively cheap, and so people drink at each other's homes before going out (not to pub though!); preloading I think the youth call it. Post offices are an odd case. In major towns it's more like a place to get stuff done, but in rural areas it's a social hub often incorporating a shop. There's a lot of lamentation in the media about the demise of post offices especially in rural areas. But they're fighting an impossible battle, it's super easy to exchange messages nowadays, who needs to write letters, there's a million better ways of doing that. Even with the other mainstay of post offices sending and receiving parcels, there are other competing services. I would say it's days are numbered, society has moved on. I would say that the biggest problem is not that these kind of places are closing down, but purely lack of imagination. If your social hub in the village was either the pub or post office, then it would seem grim for you, but in reality all it needs is some imagination and initiative for getting people together regularly. It requires a certain amount of cohesiveness in the first place, in that you have a desire to get together with your neighbours. In bigger towns this doesn't happen anyway, and people get by in other ways. Similarly for unused ex-shop space in town centres, what's lacking is imagination. Instead landlords are simply holding out for the high rents they've been used to, after all an empty property whilst not bringing in cash, also is very cheap to maintain - to a degree they can afford to just sit on it and wait, most landlords own several properties in any case. Local councils and government should be encouraged to buy out these spaces and do something with them. Even converting usage to flats to live in, or offices would be preferable. Why shouldn't people live in town centres again? I'm not so pesimistic about all this. It's the growing pains of rapidly changing culture and economics. A new normal is being established which may or may not be "better" than the old normal. What really matters is that the new normal is given enough space to unfold at its own pace, because really at the heart of it is people, and they can be surprisingly resistant to change. But I suspect technology won't be so accommodating and change will continue to disrupt our lives in difficult ways, but there will also be amazing opportunities to build a better society.

Just for the animation

Just kept pressing F5 until the forum worked. When it did, I didn't know what to write. My finger hurt. What craving have I burnt through, the forum. Yeah right...

@Thought Art you are many people rolled into one with different wants and desires. If you really think about it, how many people have you already influenced - even in minor ways - in your life? Hundreds perhaps. And your influence was spread further by them. Whatever calling you decide to place emphasis on, your reach will be great.

@Myioko absolutely! And why don't more folks wear sky blue dresses with yellow boots eh? -- Some of the things which make life joyful are the small activities you love to do. Here's a few mine: At university there was an overgrown grassy area round the back of the halls of residence. On clear nights I used to go and lay there and be subsumed by the tall grass, then I would stare up and look at the stars and planets. After a while I would see shooting stars. Once my eyes adjusted even more, I could watch the pinpricks of light of satellites zooming about in straight lines all over the sky. It was magical. I really love restaurants and cafe culture. I really enjoy eating novel food, especially sea food of all types. Ideally eating outside in the sunshine on a warm day chatting with friends and watching the world do its thing. On holiday it's even better, there's no rush and everyone is relaxed. Even just sitting by myself outside having a strong coffee is wonderful, and if someone strikes up conversation it's even better. If it was warm enough - it never is here, I would sit outside every morning at the local cafe and have coffee for breakfast (my DNA is continental!). Night clubs. I just enjoy having my senses assaulted. The loud bass vibrating in my chest, the crowds of people dressed up to impress, dancing like an idiot, chatting to beautiful strangers, the dim ethereal lighting, smoke, the dreamlike state of being slightly drunk. It's like a mini-world unto itself. There's something about looking at art. The idea that a painting you're staring at was executed by someone uber-famous like Picasso or Michelangelo, and it was done decades or even hundreds of years ago. Some art is so well executed that it makes you wonder how it could have even been done. I absolutely love renaissance art for its realism. I like Warhol's art and own a Marylin print. But art isn't just painting, modern art installations can be clever or confounding. Canova's sculptures are breathtaking and sensual. I also enjoy Pre-Raphaelite art, for all those posed, long haired women in flowing dresses, and just their emotive composition. There's nothing more pleasurable than riffling through an art gallery or exhibition. I often wish I had talent enough myself to be a proper artist. What can I say about music? I just about love all forms and styles of music. There's just something transcendental about it. I even occasionally like metal or guitar heavy rock music (which is normally so vanilla). There's strong cultural connections too with music, and just getting a different cultural vibe can knock me out of myself. I think that's the point, it occupies my mind and transports me somewhere else. I'm more into the texture of music than it's lyrics though - most lyrics are mumbled anyway! A good syncopated rhythm, chilled voice, modulation, some amount of repetition. For me it's all about the "feel" of the music rather than the technical mastery. Music combined with artistic video is great, but a good song should be able to stand up by itself. I listen to music every single day it's so joyful. Exploration. There's something entrancing about discovering new places. My favourite way of discovery is just to walk, I just enjoy the simplicity and pace of it - everything new can be taken in and appreciated properly. It's always cool to go down that street or path you've been past hundreds of times, but never thought of walking down. Last week I discovered the entire length of Shaftsbury Avenue in London. I had never mentally joined up the two ends, even though I have frequented both Piccadilly and China Town many many times. There's a joy in things clicking together and places being joined up together. People. Man this is a huge subject in itself. But I love people. For sure they can make your life hell, but I find people to be magical. There isn't a day that goes by when I don't have to interact with a person and there's constant pleasure and surprise. People can be so ordinary and yet so amazing at the same time. Some people are even beautiful in the conventional sense, and if it was socially acceptable I would just sit and stare like looking at fine art (the crossover is interesting eh?), but I'll take just a glance instead. But the real beauty of people is that they show you that there's a million different ways to be and if I wanted to I too could be like you. Some of my most joyful moments have been with other people in many different ways.

My lord I love this

How to break up poetically: Think you've had my number? Dial me again, see. Tap tap tap. I'm unapologetic even as the colour runs from my lips. My love fades from red to black and all you do is stare back. Those lips you once kissed are now whispering dismissal. Go. Take your mindless stare elsewhere, do I care? No. I'm unapologetic even as the colour runs from my lips.

NNN sounds completely nuts.

Just wait for the screaming baby nine months later. Sorry I'm trolling. It's like it's always effect without cause, splinters of the past embedded in the present.

It's ok, it will make you realise how pointless it is to be drunk and harden your resolve. That's what I keep telling myself ?