Clean, Or: The Half-hidden Muse

There's a phrase-pattern I've heard from a few artists that interests me. It's...the worship of the untouched piece, I suppose. The chunk of marble for a sculptor, or the blank page for a writer, or a blank canvas for a painter. The first few times I heard it, it seemed like grandstanding. 'Anyone could do this, I just do it.'

But, having written with the idea in mind...I think I get it. I've gotten the advice, 'Start writing, then don't stop,' from a variety of reputable sources, and sometimes I even follow it. Often, this leaves me with a disorganized bundle of things that I can then sort out into a functioning piece because I've at least gotten them down.* The editing comes in, and then I understand my thoughts, so I can rewrite most of it and re-arrange what's salvageable.

And then I get these oddball things. Like, I was writing a paper in English class. It was on power, and I wrote a blog post on it before I even really knew how I was going to write the paper. The problem was, even after I figured out the basics of what I wanted to do, I didn't really have a starting point. I knew I wanted to make the point that power and choice were essentially synonymous, and I had some examples from Hamlet to back that up, but none were really worth starting the essay on.

Finally, I sat down. Step one: 'Start writing.'

Midas would work well here, said the blank computer screen. And I went, Oh, of course. Midas's turning-everything-to-gold thing seems like a blessing of power, and then he turns his daughter to gold and we realize that it's a weakness too, because he has no control over it.

Blank spaces are magic. Clear water, clear skies, random patterns in the clouds, bits of grain in the wood or lines in the stone. Something that is beautiful and inspires something by saying only, A thing could be here is magic, if anything ever was.

* I can also get it falling more or less into place, but if it falls that neatly, I probably didn't need someone to tell me to write.

In Order

My overarching goals are as follows: To learn everything, to teach it to everyone, and to be an inspiration throughout.

This is the first time I have expressed this in print. Just thought I'd mark that milestone.

Common issues presented:

"...Isn't that impossible?" These are overarching goals that I constantly reach toward. I do not have to be able to see their fruition clearly, in fact, if I could, I would say I had poor overarching goals. My overarching goals contain supergoals contain goals contain tasks. Tasks are the first point where I assign a specific timetable, though goals have a vague one, and supergoals usually are possible within a lifetime not extended by a leap in the science of keeping humans alive.

"What if you discover that the human brain has limited capacity?" Then I will keep notes.

"But sometimes it's impossible to teach people things. You can't teach derivatives to someone who doesn't know algebra!" Yes. So I will teach them algebra first.

"How are you going to know how to teach everyone?" First: See first goal. Second: My supergoal here is to become a polymath teacher, with my current goal being becoming a mathematics instructor. Why math first? Because the worst teachers I have ever had/seen/heard of have all been mathematics instructors. Good ones exist, but math is more dependent on past knowledge than any other subject I've seen. A bad mathematics instructor can destroy a student's chances for years, if not more.

Another one that I can't summarize in a sentence but is expressed fairly well here is that I don't want to teach evil people. In reaction, I would give rational reasons for being good. If people like you, this is good. If people hate you, this is bad. Therefore, spreading happiness helps achieve later goals. We're pack animals; we like nice Alphas. Benevolent dictators have an easier time staying in power.

These three all have one answer, in a way: rational ignorance.* It is rational to memorize my notes' placements rather than all the information contained within if my brain truly has a limited capacity. It is rational to leave someone ignorant of how to work derivatives--briefly--if they do not yet understand algebra, because most people cannot learn both from scratch in a day. It is rational to help evil people become good before teaching them biases or how to achieve goals. The existence of a helpful being who will not help evil is a push toward good, which means I would be a motivator for anyone seeking to learn from me in the first place.

"How will you distinguish between good people and evil people?" I could say see overarching goal one again, but I have already stated that I will begin teaching before I learn everything. The simple answer is that I have no way to distinguish for sure. However, as a human, I do have feelings on the matter. Aaaaand someone in the audience points out that feelings aren't always correct; I can be biased, etc. So I'll say: "My goal is to spread knowledge, inspiration, and happiness. As these are my goals, I will place people who aid those goals as good, those who harm as evil, and those who do neither as in need of inspiration." It is not perfect in defining 'good' and 'evil', but it meshes with my goals and so works. I'd call it a pragmatism expression of idealism.

I can still be incorrect. That makes the instance a learning experience, bringing me full circle to overarching goal one.

* Ignorance when the knowledge would give less than the energy you would expend gaining it.

Inspiration

These are the posts that make me wish for a larger reader base. In light of that--and I promise I will ask this very rarely, if ever again--if you could link this post, if it interests you, or you know some person/group it might interest.

Inspiration is a slippery thing. It appears to occur entirely within the mind, and at the same time comes from outside ideas bouncing onto and into us.

What I call the inspiration stage of art is where everything comes easily. I may not be able to write a passage perfectly the first time, but I write something, and what happens is what I want to happen. I have rarely had this continue for more than a few scenes. The time that works best for me is, annoyingly enough, also when people become the most concerned. Sometimes people stay still when they meditate, sometimes spar, and sometimes write. So that distant, "I am not connected to the world" look means I am where I want to be.

I, apparently, look depressed. Someone who doesn't know me well enough--or maybe doesn't know this sort of artist well enough--will peer and hover and ask, "Are you alright?" Others will pick up on what's happening and ask to see the work. I'm still meditating and the idea of saying "no" doesn't enter my thoughts. I want to say yes to my inspiration, and everything inspires. By the time I realize what I've done, something that can recognize it is there enough for me to feel more like I'm trying to meditate than meditating. For instance, right now, I'm trying to keep up the flow I had in the beginning of my post, but some distractions are settling in. There's a skype conversation with a friend, which can be helpful; I dive into this but I need air. It's more than an hour past normal dinner time. I'm not quite hungry, but my body is a focus; the first notes of wanting something in my stomach are there. There's homework I should be working on. There's always something.

There's a chart I saw a while back that put words to various actions along two axes. High skill had and high skill needed was flow. The moment when I need all I have, when my entire being is my work.

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Here, now. Don't go thinking it's all dandelion fluff and sunset roses. After the flow comes, I don't have the whole story. How'd I get here? Where was I going? Where am I going? How do I get there? Even the finished story isn't all. I'll go back and edit this post. There will be a certain amount of calculation there that the absolute golden flow of inspiration didn't have, just as the editing is not the story. And everything, every creation on this world as I know it, needs both.

I am a being of curves and artistry, and I love math. Those go together better than any who deny themselves the pleasure of both shall ever know. Look at yourself. You are made for distance running, but also swimming, also throwing, also thinking, also figuring out what you can do. We are tool-users, and everything can be a tool. Music inspires, a joke, an odd conversation. And odd state of mind. The Less Wrong blog got me thinking about this, but not because I read a post obviously similar to it. Because it wakes my brain up, in a way I still don't understand.

I'd like to emphasize that this is not a rhetorical question: What's in your toolbox? What inspires you? I've never found anything more interesting, yet all I can write on is what I found in myself.

Theft, Inspiration and Muses

The moon, a statuette, a loved one, sudden surge of hope, adrenaline rush, sunlight pattering on leaves, dappling, the sunset, fire.

Music. Amusing. Musings...there are doubtless more.

The fun bit in muses is half the effect they have here, now. Then the effect that work has. The Muses themselves inspire words, and the idea of them continues to inspire--is this the Muse yet speaking, or her echoes? Does it matter?

And there is that other piece, where it is no the work inspired that acts a a muse, a font of inspiration, not directly. Think of how often the sunrise or sunset has been described as fire. Who was the first? Who knows? But now it permeates, and describing it as another requires another step in thinking. The sun is fire, far away; the sun at the horizon is fire and fiery.

Some muse, some cue in our collective consciousness says that now. The sky is air; blue is water. Brown is earth, as surely as that warm, damp life with a sprig of green is. Wind whips through our hair, fire warms. Fire kills. Water refreshes; drowns. Earth is home, or have we moved past that?

That gives the tumbling, whirling, downright weird world of Muses, muses, inspiration. What would we be without them? We don't know. We can't, our language relies so thoroughly on being present in this culture that has had them for millenia, at least. Were there someone who could tell us, how would we even begin to communicate? Where did that idea come from?



And we're running into this issue, especially with the advent of the internet. Stealing another person's idea is wrong. But what constitutes stealing? For instance, we can no longer say that saying the sunset is like fire is stealing, because there is no one to steal the idea from. If anyone living tries to claim the idea, then there would be too many quotes to count that anyone could come up with--internet--that predate that author's line by at least a century. It would take a while to sift through all the not-quites, but it doesn't even take a handful to make one's point.

BUt copyright solves that, right? Well...legally, yes. But morally? Trot over to DeviantArt or YouTube. Are those things copyrighted, trademarked...? Well, no (not exclusive). Is it right to take them and claim them as one's own? Well, no.

That, we can probably agree upon. Of course, it is difficult to draw the line. Copying outright is wrong, I guess. But what if you use a similar juxtaposition of scenes to a video you saw? You're not copying, and it's not like this person drew the work in the first place--of course, if the creator did, that's just a whole 'nother can of worms. So, is using a similar way of putting clips together really wrong?

Nnnnno? Or does it depend on how long? Doing it for two minutes, thirty seconds of a three-minute video is probably wrong--it really depends on how similar 'similar' is. Doing it for five seconds is probably better, but what if the 2:30 is using similar clips in a completely different fashion, and the five seconds is outright copying?

That's the difference, to me, between inspiration and thievery. Granted, it's not clear cut in practice. But I'd say it's where someone takes the complete piece and steals part of it. This naturally gets difficult in the contexts of AMVs. After all, one is taking another's work. But it is no more stealing than a karaoke night is. Using another's work for profit, that's where it turns darker gray; claiming you made it is outright theft. These people have editing, acting, drawing, whichever, as a job.

ADDENDUM: For the record, I am not trying to imply that AMV-making is not a true art by comparing it to karaoke. This is so for two reasons: 1) I think the term 'true art' is so subjective as to be useless and 2) ...Wow that's a complex question.