gloamingdaydream

The rules are simple: I have to keep writing for one hour straight. I’ve just put a timer on my phone and it’s sat face down on the desk next to my laptop. I say face down because I don’t want to be distracted, but that’s stupid because there’s not really any difference between down and up, I can grab it just as easily either way. At first I wanted to do this project as an audio recording. I would take my tape recorder, go down to the park, and walk around for an hour, speaking whatever came to mind. Maybe I’ll do that later, who knows. But writing is better for me, it’s both more random and less random in a way. I need to give myself no time to think about the composition of this text, just write. In this way, the audio recording would be easier, because all you do is talk, there’s less action needed to transfer what you want onto the record, it’s also much easier to delete when you’re writing. I called the record an “object” and didn’t like it, so I erased it and replaced it with record instead. Even if I had been writing in a notebook, I could scratch it out. If I was recording, I wouldn’t be able to do that so easily, I’d either have to start from scratch or cut that part out on an editing software. I’m also not writing on a notebook because the palm of my hands start to hurt after about twenty minutes while also having written less. If I were using a notebook right now, I’d still be on the part about going down to the park and walking probably. There’s a metro strike in my city, my classes have all shifted online. Shades of covid. Technically, the classes are hybrid, but I’m too exhausted to go, I have too many other important things to do, more important than random classes, such as this thing I’m doing now. I’m actually in class right now, it’s on in the background. I have an irrational fear that I’ll accidentally unmute myself and uncover my camera and everyone will be able to tell what I’m doing, so I usually have to keep the window on the side and I glance at it every so often just to make sure. This time though, the window is completely minimized. There’s no way to tell if I accidentally do all that unless someone in the meeting informs me of it. I’m already out of things to say, that’s not good. I wonder if what I’m doing qualifies as art. I also considered having this as a conversation with a friend, I imagined myself starting off with “this conversation can and will be art as long as you desire it to be so” and then they’d disagree and then I’d disagree with their disagreement and claim that I’m the God of my own world and so what I say goes. I wonder what they’d say though, I most likely would end up saying stuff similar to here. Actually, probably not. The form I take when I write is completely different to the form I take when I speak. I feel more comfortable writing, even now, in a detached, raw state, I still feel like I’m keeping a semblance of something, I don’t know the word, or I knew and forgot it, and I don’t want to spend an hour thinking about it without typing anything. When I speak, I feel much more incomprehensible, my thoughts are all over the place. They’re also all over the place when I write, but in a good way. They aren’t as thin on the paper, there’s a bit of substance there, I’d say. I remember after I read Ducks Newburyport a few months ago I did a similar writing experiment where I copied the style of the novel and applied it to my own life. I haven’t gone back and reread it since, so I don’t remember how good it was exactly. One of my fatal flaws when it comes to writing is I barely ever reread and edit, I always leave the first thing that comes to me on the page, the thing is that always ends up being something like the base of good art rather than good art. The base itself isn’t good, you can’t make anything out of it. My hands already hurt and it’s only been fifteen minutes, weird. I’m typing too fast, that’s why. My typing speed is basically matching my thinking speed and that’s not good for my hands, I have to slow down a bit. But if I slow down, I’ll start thinking more, and overthinking. I’ll start deleting and rewriting things and that’s not the point of this. I’ve already erased like three things which goes against the spirit of the challenge, but that’s fine because they were just irrelevant things, like the record and the object thing I mentioned at the start. My class has already been going on for 45 minutes, it felt more like five. I spent the first 25 minutes of it reading, then while I was reading I suddenly had the idea to do this and immediately went for it because I knew that if I waited I wouldn’t have the patience or energy to do it later, so I had to do it now. The inconvenience of this stream of consciousness style is that my prose sucks. I stopped again, I shouldn’t stop. I only stopped for ten seconds, but that’s ten seconds I could have spent writing. Maybe if I hadn’t stopped, I would have taken this thing in an entirely different direction, but I will never know. I intended to talk (or write) about my life, but all I’ve been talking about is this project itself. It’s easier to do so because it’s what I’m doing in the moment and so it’s the first thing that comes to mind. I vow not to talk about the project anymore and write down the second thing that comes to mind instead. I was just about to talk about some of the other stuff I’m planning to do, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise so I’ll disqualify those as well. The other day, I was walking out of class and went to dollarama. There’s a dollarama two minutes away from my downtown campus, so in between classes I go there and buy Hersheys. Not always, just sometimes, when I’m a little hungry. The entrance to the dollarama is broken so you have to push it yourself, it’s a bit annoying. The other day I also bought takis. Last year I bought an Ocarina from comic con, I started learning to play the outer wilds theme on it but then after a month or two I forgot about it. It’s sitting on my desk right now, I just noticed it. Maybe I should pick it back up. I know I said I wasn’t going to talk about the project itself anymore but I’m now having doubts about whether or not I should even post it in the first place. It’s shaping up to be not as interesting as I hoped for it to be. I think I’ll finish it anyways, though, even if it ends up rotting away in my docs for all eternity. I’m looking around my room now for inspiration. My old camera is sitting on top of the Twin Peaks Z-A CD set. I still haven’t started that, I’ve been meaning to for months but always get distracted by other things. I vow to start it before the year ends though. I realized I’ve just said “vow” multiple times here, I don’t know why. I can’t remember the last time I used the word “vow”. Part of me was hoping the more I wrote this the more experimental I would get and expand into something way better, but no it’s still the same thing it was when it started. I’m not the same person I was when I started, I’m not the same person I used to be. Robert Ashley. Perfect Lives. Probably the greatest piece of music that has ever been created. If I post this, I suspect most people who read it will already be aware of that fact, but I still had to say it. Just unbelievable. I can’t explain why right now though because that would require me to stop writing and try to think about it, which I can’t do. Even if I did, it’s so dense that I would probably fail anyways. I got added to this group chat last week, it’s very cool but everyone in there thinks video games aren’t art, which is kinda lame. Other than that though, I really like everyone there, they always say interesting things even if I don’t always agree with their conclusions. They’re mostly music fans. I’ve coined the term “Birdians” for them, because they’re all friends of Bird. It feels a bit disrespectful though, throwing them all into that one aspect. They’re all their own persons. I won’t stop using it though cause it’s funny and as a revenge for them calling games not art. Wired headphones. I accidentally bought wired headphones after my wireless ones that I’d been using for over two years broke. It’s a little annoying, before I used to play music and then go lay on my bed, now I can’t unless I bring my entire laptop with me. It’s a hassle for sure, but that wired headphone cost me a decent amount of money so I can’t just not use it. It’s also pretty good quality, so not much to complain about there. I just heard my teacher say “most of you have not seen Gone with the wind” and remembered I have actually seen it last year in theatres. It sucks, it’s absolutely horrendous. The movie of all time. I don’t know why she’d bring it up right now, I have no context. I’ve been locked into this writing thing for half an hour now, absolutely huge. I don’t think I’ll be able to do it for the entire hour though, unfortunately. I’ll try to get to 50 minutes at the very least. I don’t think I’ve said anything yet, I’ve just been wasting time. I don’t know if I’ll reread this later, either. Bears, man. COMEDY, NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL PURE COMEDY. One of the best albums ever. Lukas said it’s the 2nd best last night, I vehemently disagree. It’s probably top 10 though. I don’t think it’s even FJM’s best album, Mahashamashna is, which is funny cause when it came out last year I didn’t even bother listening cause I suspected it was going to be bad with absolutely no evidence whatsoever to back my instincts up. I trust my instincts a lot, they’re spot on about 80% of the time. When they’re wrong though, they really miss. This was one of those times. I think I’ve written a decent amount, but I still have some time. Wait, I’m contradicting myself. I said a few sentences ago that I didn’t say anything, now I’m saying I have said something. Which one is it? The tape recorder I bought recently is good, but it’s too modern. I was looking for these old school ones but didn’t find any, so I got that one for cheap. It’s still good quality, though. I was sitting on the back of the shuttle bus of my university the other day, and I looked out the window and saw a ton of the city and the sky open up to me. It was a moment of pure beauty. It’s funny how beauty is literally everywhere, all the time, but I never notice because I’m too busy trying to attain/reach something else. You sacrifice beauty for more beauty, my room is beautiful but I can’t notice because I’m focused on creation. Whether my creation is beautiful or not doesn’t matter, but the act of creation is what I’m trying to do. The world is an ever ending temptation, built to stop me at every turn. The conditions of our current society are built to stop us from thinking and creating. Creating becomes too exhausting, so I just stay in a static state. Even staying in that state is exhausting, even more so than being active, but my mind always convinces me it’s not. I have to stop listening to my own lies. When I stop listening and just go for it, I create things like this. I have no clue if it’s good or not. I’ve decided, even if I do end up posting, I’ll make two other ones later. The second will be me walking around the park and recording myself talking, I want to see the differences in their totality. The third one will be me talking to a friend on a call. I don’t know what friend yet, and I don’t know how it will turn out. It could be an absolutely massive disaster and both of us might be awkward or something, but I wanna try it anyways. I still have nineteen minutes left of this, but I think I’ve accomplished what I set out to do at this point.