Music

All quotes picked for the passage, save the second last, which inspired the passage.

I recently asked for a suggestion for a blog post--real life, don't go looking for the post where I asked. Though do feel free to leave any requests in the comments section.

The response I got was a tentative, "...Mu...sic?" followed by another person saying it would be interesting to see where I would go off only that starting point. And here we are.

“Music is my religion.”
--Jimi Hendrix

I have occasionally said, in response to a question about my religion, that I am a practicing musician. Some people I've said that to took it as a joke, either a clever evasion of the question or a way of declaring myself non-religious. No. In the idealistic sense that religion is a way to become closer to the divine spark, I am a musician. In the cynical sense that religion is a way to meet people, I am a musician. In the sense that I feel a calling to music to and from my soul, the essence of my being, I am a musician. I am not shy about it. I only want to make sure people either let the topic alone or understand. A concert hall is consecrated. Singing is sacred, and I use that word in the way I know it. Song is not to be set up on an altar and treated with reverence from a distance. Song has the aura about it that a counselor who has been working in street grime, and beaming because he is helping people who need it. Singing in any style, playing any instrument. It is not the style, it is the feeling.

I do have...issues with people who intentionally destroy musical instruments. Yes, including the guitar smashes. In fact, because people tend think about those the least, especially the guitar smashes.

“Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.”
--Joseph Addison

There's a band called Nine Days. You probably think you've never heard one of their songs, and also have probably heard exactly one, titled "Absolutely": "This is the story of a girl, who cried a river and drowned the whole world, but though she looks so sad in photographs, I absolutely love her--when she smiles." I bring this up both because I think they have some other music which is genuinely worth listening to, and because there are way too many people who seem to think that the band who sings that song is Blink182 or 3 Doors Down. Because...they all have numbers in their names. I guess. It isn't the people's fault, from what I can see, some of the music systems genuinely have their algorithms messed up. Which is worse, really.

“Find people who think like you and stick with them. Make only music you are passionate about. Work only with people you like and trust. Don't sign anything.”
--Steve Albini

I went to a music-focused day in the city recently, held at SF State. The specific workshop I went to was a DIY workshop, with DIT (do it together) focus. They noted that we probably won't get a steady cash flow, and we might not even want one. Art suffers if you have to get something out by X date, because then inspiration can't strike whenever and then polish until it's done. They focused very much on spreading art, on keeping your day job, and on making friends. They also taught us how to make origami CD cases, because screen printing and folding is much cheaper than a CD case.

When they noted that it wasn't likely that any given person would make a lot of money at this, a bunch of people were disappointed. I almost felt elated. I think I figured out why: I don't have to land a music job to keep spreading my music. My choice is not A) get a well-paying music job, B) sing only to family and friends, or C) starve. I can do both. I still want a music job, but I have the choice.

“As a musician usually music is your way out.”
--Damon Albarn

When I was younger, I didn't feel I had very many close friends. I realize this was mostly because I had unrealistic expectations: I wanted one person who completely understood me and almost always understood everything I said. My communication simply isn't that good. What I would give, to have it so...

I sang a bit, when I was very young. I thought it was fun. It was something to do, and I didn't have to rely on any other single person, because I could sing solo. Even when I got into choir, that stayed to a certain extent because our choir was gigantic, and people tended to either be committed or simply mouth without singing--mandatory class.

Then came third grade. I hadn't really thought about music during the summer, but when I came back to school the first time I sang I remember stopping in my tracks because I sounded so different. And then...compliments started.

"You have a lovely voice." "[genuine surprise] My goodness, I thought a high schooler was here."

As a young child who had found no talent of her own, suddenly being able to sing, to do something I'd always liked, something I loved, was amazing. I had not thought anything about me was special; I thought everyone had some special talent and I was the one exception, and then I was wrong. If you have ever truly believed something bad of yourself and then had something prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that it wasn't so, I think you understand.

I was good.

Nothing bad mattered as much, once I could believe, "I'm good."

“There's so much excellent new music around that I can't afford to buy it all and I haven't the time to review as much as I'd like. I can't remember a better time to be a musician or to listen to music!”
--Malcolm Wilson

Origin

A story is a story is a story.

It is rather difficult to describe the events that took place, because they took place outside time, and so not in anything we would call space. It's also difficult to explain the idea of coming up with an idea in terms outside of time, or creating something for that matter. Translated into our language--which is based around time, like it or not--here is how the conversation went.

There were problems. Beings wanted to be different, or should be something they weren't. In this place outside time, without time, "change" was not an idea yet. But, because they had infinite minds, which is almost the same as having infinite time, one came up with an idea.

"What about a place that allows change? A place with time." You would think this would be nigh impossible to communicate. In a world that lacked those terms and had time, that might have been true.

And so it was. And so the first were put through what might be a test, and left. It was an odd feeling. They genuinely left. And more were placed, at different places and times, which were close enough to be indistinguishable to any who had no memories from the place. Even those, when they came back, felt the lack of barrier was more correct. They simply remembered making the difference.

And so we sit and swim, moving on a line with branches and seen as goldfish in a sphere.

Internal Evil Mentor

Inspired by something I do, named by this trope.

In order to make the proper choice, all options must be conceivable. If something is impossible, that is one thing, but convincing oneself it is impossible because it is immoral despite being the best option is something else entirely.

Simply giving oneself permission to think these thoughts can seem too far to go. After all, if you can think these things, you might do them! Despite the fact that I disagree, I understand the sentiment. So here's a workaround: Set aside a part of your mental processing to argue the evil side. You can make that anything, e.g. just giving yourself permission to think the thoughts--probably one of the best options--or creating a character to argue the side. Remember those shoulder devils from cartoons? Those work. I personally prefer a femme fatale, her male counterpart, or someone else who's going to be wearing a lot of immaculate black and have that aura of deft intelligence.

Discussing this feels weird. What I am describing is sitting down, seeing the little devil complete with pitchfork and smile pop up on my left shoulder, and then listening. If seeking some solace, one may look for an angel and completely miss the point when finding none. If there are only two of you, and you can't see the angel from a first-person perspective, who do you think you are? The point of creating this mental construct and listening to him/her/it in the first place is to allow thoughts to go into places they wouldn't go before. And even with the adviser in place, that is not the part with the final say. The composite gets the final say. A common trope about evil's weakness is that it cannot comprehend good. The strongest good mind is that because of an ability to entertain evil or "evil" thoughts, and then choose good anyway.

I'm not claiming to be the strongest good mind; I've never been in that extreme a situation. But I do not believe truly good people have been good out of ignorance.

"I'd do anything!"

Breaking it down literally.

First: "Anything" has no constraints. It is like infinity; it means everything from every place and then some. We live in a finite universe, at least for the moment. Even if the universe is infinite, in the absence of an ability to prove that, our universe as defined by "do" is finite. Minuscule, even. Put simply: This statement cannot possibly be true, unless you are omnipotent.

Second: From the first we have gotten, "I would do anything I am capable of." Would you? Would you really? Even setting aside the vagueness inherent in what you can and cannot do--at the present time or ever?--how many people are honestly promising to do anything they can, without heed to any other promise, any other moral or physical obligation?

Third: So you've decided you do mean you will do anything within your power, and that the person you're speaking to recognizes that stuff you literally cannot do is excluded. Having come to that conclusion, I must give you a warning: you only get to make this offer once. If you would do anything, the being may ask you something that will take the rest of your life, or will have ramifications you cannot foresee. And you will have promised. You must say yes. If you make this promise twice, it is a lie. If anything conflicts with fulfilling this promise, you must drop it, so making it twice means that if they ever come into conflict, you are screwed. And this is true for everything. For the rest of your existence. And choosing to end your existence is also a violation. You might be needed, and are avoiding your obligation.

Of course, that doesn't mean you can't make the offer. It just means that you don't want to have this on your list of things to blurt out, and that if you do blurt it out, you should be wary about taking it from offer to promise. In other words, backpedal fast and hope.

Serial: Identity

So scary I will never see
As the little piece of me
That to all challenge did freeze and pale
Because I saw chance to fail

Once upon a time there was a young man--call him George, if only because I know no Georges. He was gifted. He knew he was smart, and would be perfectly aware of that fact regardless of if anyone told him. It wasn't just getting good grades--he's paid enough attention to the right things to notice that average children who work hard also get exceptional grades. But stuff comes easily for him. He picked up reading in a day. Prime factors make perfect sense to him, and fractions were easy.

George, one day, runs into a new subject, and the few students in the class who read ahead were quite confused, and asked him for help. George had shaken his head, because class was about to start and he didn't feel like being caught talking in class. Again.

The teacher starts into the topic at hand. It happens to be some quadratics, and he sees some students starting to get it, most of the others not. He turns back to the teacher and forgets about that.

George shifts uncomfortably.

He's looking at this, and there are too many things he doesn't understand. He couldn't even put his finger on what, so he couldn't ask, and it wasn't clicking.

George stayed in a few moments past the bell, trying to get it, trying to figure it out, but it just wouldn't stick. There was some number...and...and...

Some students who'd gotten in the habit of talking to each other for help started walking over, because none of them had understood. George got great grades, so they asked him.

The world slowed as they walked to him. Were he a different child, he might plan to say, 'Can't you figure it out on your own?' or, 'I don't know how to explain it,' or simply, 'I don't understand either.' But the problem was that George had set himself up around being The Smart Kid. So George knows exactly what they're coming over for--for that matter, he would know even if they were walking over for the dictionaries a few feet from his desk.

He bolts.

He knows what the adults think of him. He's stuck up; he doesn't get along with the other children; he's insufferable. And the kids think he's lording it over them, he knows the study group are the only ones who even talk to him anymore without insulting him, and no one, no one will help him.

George tends to think in words only when something really important comes up, but he's doing it now, because he is so entirely focused on the idea.

I can't fail.

It isn't a statement of physical impossibility. It isn't supposed to be railing against the universe, saying it's wrong.

I don't fail.

He's a teenager now. At some point this question flashes through a lot of teenage heads, though not always with the statement in front of it.

I can't fail. So who am I?

Suggested Reading:
How Not to Talk to Your Kids

Honesty Is the Best Policy

I sat down to think about the title aphorism when I was younger.

I came to the conclusion that I agreed with the statement as written, and disliked how it seemed some teachers were using it. "Honesty is the best policy," does not mean "Always tell the truth."

There are two values of always that I heard used for this interpretation. One: whenever you think of something that is true, you should communicate it to the best of your ability. This may include insults that are untrue, as it is true you have thought them. This is rude. Two: Everything you say should be true. This is unhelpful.*

So I chose to follow what I believe the statement means, rather than how I have heard it used by people trying to get me to be a good girl, because that way is useful and the other is not. I had trouble communicating this for a while because it seemed so obvious to me that that is what a policy is: Something you need a good reason to move away from.

"When in doubt, tell the truth."
--Mark Twain

I hesitate. Nothing has given me any useful information about this, but everyone is so scared; it must be important. I may not pull the trigger, but I'm directing. Whatever happens, I'm responsible.

"Red or blue!" a voice barks over crackly transmitter.

It's hitting me. Everything. I'm certain, for once I can't hide behind error, because I know what button he wants to hit. He wants blue. But is it right? Is that what I should do?

"Kat!"

I don't know I don't know I don't know. There's no help I can see from picking one or the other, It's a coin flip, no matter what I do, no matter whether I choose red or blue.

So I assume the worst. I assume that I'm going to choose wrongly, I'm destined.

Do I want look back, years from now, and realize that I destroyed my life because I chose to lie?

I hit the orange button on the side of the communicator and shout, "Blue!"

Or, if you prefer to see how my mind worked through it:

Situation: Someone asks you, "T or F?" This is all the information you have. You know that T is the true answer, and F is false, but you have no idea which will benefit you, anyone you care about, etc., etc. But you do know that one of them will cause a clearly positive outcome. So you make your choice.

The chart that appears in my head:

Going by the T or F choices gives you coin flips, so your choice doesn't matter. So let's look at the +/- rows. The universe is secretly trying to screw you over, and you will lose no matter what. This isn't necessarily true; it's just how you're putting your mind together to limit yourself to that row. All things considered, I'll look back mournfully on the truth easier than a lie.

* e.g. "Do you think I can do well enough to get the part?" asked right before an audition. The true answer is 'I'm not sure,' and silence will communicate 'No.' So you lie, at the very least in the moment, because it is what a good friend does.

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.

Thoughts

I wonder, if I could go back with today's knowledge...

What if I had a little more?

I wish there were a word for this.

One of the most fascinating moments I've ever seen in my life is mild surprise. When there's shock, or terror, that overrides the person--and anyway, if the other person is that far for long enough to see well, there's probably reason for me to be focusing on something else.

But that moment where you see them go, "Oh. The world is not as I thought it was." Not getting the rug pulled out from under them. Just watching it move a little.

And one of the ways I see that, in myself, is finding that someone has had the same thought I have. In the abstract, I recognize that this is probably happening--there are probably some thoughts that many people have. Yet, somehow, it's odd to fall into the statistics.

One of the times I remember that clearly happening has to do with the first line. The idea of going back to the beginning of my life, with the understanding I have gained. Sarcasm isn't something the average six- or seven-year-old understands; adults treat children as less and this is incredibly useful for eavesdropping and getting honest answers about some topics. I remember watching two adults gossip about me when I was very little, and being fascinated with how completely honest they were being. I mistook thoughtlessness for bravery in honesty, but it was still helpful.

And then there's, I wish there were a word for this, which is not only something that I see or hear other people thinking, but realize people must have thought for the longest time. This is how languages form. This started with a Socrates quote, which, translated, reads: "I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world." I remember reading it in my history book with a partial translation, the ancestor word of "cosmopolitan" was still in place. And it occurred to me that, yes, there's probably a word for what I want, however, creating words for an unfulfilled need is an art.

And yet. Even with these thoughts that almost everyone has thought, we still have such wide gulfs. Not even between cultures, just between two kids who grew up in the same town and went to the same school can simply not understand what the other is thinking. Even if I try my best to explain, and the other tries to understand, there are simply places it won't make sense. Even if someone knows me better than anyone does, better than I know myself.

Halfway across the world, someone else already understands, but here and next to my heart, this person doesn't.

Walks off, singing, "You say po-tay-to, and I say po-tah-to...

Norms

A/N: Between the last post and this one, I hit 1,000 page views. Yay!

EDIT: Because I can say this better than I can write this, I edited this to try and make it closer to how I say it. Then it didn't work. I revamped, and here you go. Still not as good as I can say it. *mutters*

Brief & even more confusing than normal: People normalize to people like them, so average people end up normalizing and other people end up with more time before they find anyone with the same amount and type of pull.

I think about this occasionally. If someone is a genius, that person is going to be weird. Really, being notably smart is probably going to make one weird.

The obvious way to explain that is that "weird" just means "not in the middle of the bell curve", so smart people are weird by the definition of the adjectives. That's probably true sometimes.

I have another idea: People at varying points on a given bell curve gravitate toward each other. Someone exactly at the peak will like people who are somewhere around the peak. People at one edge or the other will be incomprehensible to and will not comprehend those in the middle, or those on the opposite side. If people devote the energy to it, they can skip around--especially if the person isn't in the middle of some other bell curve--but the point remains that that takes energy. The default is among one's similars.

This means that, in elementary school, when social groups are forming, one of a few things happens to people far East or West of the peak: 1)the edgers do not interact with the middlers much because they stick to their own groups, creating parallel but slightly separate cultures, 2)the middlers do not interact with the edgers because they are weird--same basic thing as one, but with a little more ostracizing because individual middlers can genuinely decide to avoid the edgers most of the time, while the opposite is difficult to impossible, or 3)the edgers do not normalize to anything, because 2 is present but other edgers (on the viable side) are not.

Even in option 3, edgers will still develop patterns of behavior and ways of seeing the world; the patterns will just end up alien. They started out significantly more/less X than everyone else, and then were pushed even farther. I'd like to point out what that means to me in light of previous posts: patterns, the basis of any action a human makes, end up being alien and/or incomprehensible.

So smart people are visibly weird because they don't start out at the same baseline, and then that fact pushes them farther unless they decide to expend energy in avoiding that, and even then. People who are willing to expend that energy probably want to be able to talk to everyone. Someone who flows everywhere doesn't completely belong anywhere. The island is not the ocean, the continent not the sea.

The Meaning of Life

I'm not saying it. If you know what I'm talking about, don't put it in the comment section. If you really can't resist, just throw your towel over your keyboard.

The situations are thus:

First: Let the universe--that is, all that exists, in any form--be the world that is here, and some afterlife.

Second: Let the universe be only this one, but reincarnation happens.

Last: Let us assume that this world is all that is. The Earth, the Sun, the planets, the stars all exist. However, that's it. No afterlife, not even reincarnation, simply what is here now, what came before you, and what will continue after you leave. You are in no way a part of it, save in memories and other echoes in people's minds. Maybe in your constructions, if you made any.

Respectively, the most basic reasons for doing good would be:
1)to get into a good afterlife,
2)to make the world livable/better when you come back,
3)no outside reason.

Tell someone who doesn't believe in the first that one is your reason and that's...not a very good impression. It isn't a good impression even if the person does believe: So the only reason you're being good is to get something? Huh. That's not really good, then, is it?

Tell someone who doesn't believe in the second that two is your reason and it's a little better. But it's still selfish. It is doing something because you will get something out of it in the end. Not really a morally upstanding train of logic.

Then there's the last. And the thing is, three is a lovely answer to "Why do you do good?" regardless of what you believe, assuming you are doing good. It may not be very specific, but starting at the basic, it can work. You do not do good for any good outside what you are accomplishing. You do good works for their own sake, because "People are good and I want to help them," or "Because it seems like a nice idea."

Whether you believe you are getting an afterlife, or a reincarnation, or nothing, that last makes sense. Put simply: You may be interested in which of these options are true--or if another one is--but as far as behavior goes, there's almost no reason for it to matter. Because being good is a good thing.*

And really, if whatever entity you're trying to impress would say that's wrong, do you want to follow that being anyway? What, would you follow Cthuhlu?

* Note this doesn't even take trust into account--doing good makes people think that you will probably do good in the future. This can make them more likely to help you. At the very least, if you need/want to hurt someone, are you going after the guy who brings you chocolate every day or the one who is a constant nuisance?

Murphy's Law

Simple: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."

Specific: "Anything with a probability greater than 0 will, given infinite time, happen."

Combine: "Anything that can go wrong can go wrong."

End Result: "Anything that can go wrong can go wrong, and so we should prepare for it."

Misconception: There is a probability greater than 0* of an Earth-Shattering Kaboom. Therefore, an Earth-Shattering Kaboom must eventually occur.

Murphy's Law is not literal in any designated set of time. "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong" does not mean "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong this week," or even, "in my lifetime." The point of the law, as I read it, is that it will go wrong eventually, and so we should prepare for it.

And really, there are so many ways we can destroy ourselves that don't include [worry of the week]. Or, for the reflective phrasing: there are so many things that could have killed us and didn't. You, the person on the other side of this screen? You are born of survivors. As are all of your line. That doesn't mean you'll be perfectly fitted to this environment--who is? Today's superawesome genes are tomorrow's killers, are yesterday's okays. But it does mean that this species is pretty darn good at adaptation. The chances of a giant wipe are low in your lifetime, and the chances of a total wipe are still small. Anything that can go wrong, will. We won't always be here. But we'll have left a mark, and all the larger of one for being able to adapt intra-generationally.

And anyway, most of that stuff isn't going to happen in any way that makes a difference to us temporal beings of limited lifespan.

* This only works, by the way, if you decide that infinite time is something currently worth contemplating, and that the probability is consistently greater than 0. As opposed to one that decreases until reaching 0.** Incidentally, then it's still not guaranteed if it not occurring also has a probability consistently greater than 0.
** As opposed to approaching 0.

Thinking

I've touched on this point in earlier posts: I fit the definition of "gifted". That doesn't necessarily make me more rational than an average person, it just means that I fit the sections established by a group of people I know nothing of that made a test that placed me in the "gifted" section. To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure what that means.

What I do know is that it means that anything describing an average person's mind is even less likely to apply to me. I always think of a science experiment one of my friends did when we were in middle school.* He put in several types of liquid in different containers, each containing three liquids. He shook it and they mixed. But when he let it set, they stratified. The difference was strong enough that the liquids could look solid if you dropped certain objects in them--ball of solid X would drop straight through substances A and B but stop promptly at C, making it look like it had hit a tabletop. Y would fall through A, bob down under A and into B's surface, then roll around. If you tilted the glass slowly--without spilling or mixing--they would roll around just as if there were perfectly solid planes, unless X popped up, in which case it would go up and down through the separation of A and B, then promptly fall back through. It was really cool. And people are like that. If you mix it up, A, B, and C will jumble; if you let it stratify then the top and the bottom are notably different from the center. Any generalization you make will, at best, only apply to the majority of the population. X would fall right past us, and would just barely brush the other side of the bell curve.

In the interests of a simpler metaphor, however, I'll go back to an old favorite: a teaspoon of oil on a large glass of water.

Before I continue, I want to make something clear: oil is not better than water. Yes, oil is on the top. Yes, we can use oil to do some pretty cool things--see light, cars, etc. However, we need water to survive. I'm not going to argue if/that people in the higher percentiles are better. Or worse, for that matter.

I'm here because I want to be able to present evidence that I was like this.

I look back on old memories sometimes, and they seem surreal. Like before I figured out I could sing. Or, and this one is weirder, before I figured out I liked it.** It's also odd to just look at my old handwriting, but even odder is my old thought process. I remember having bursts of insight, but what I didn't realize for a while was that I remember these because they were rare.

For instance, one situation that is burned quite clearly into my head--not in these words, just in the experience; I didn't put it into words immediately:

I'm sitting out behind my teacher's classroom. We are planning for a party, and we are in elementary school. The teachers gave us a budget and we'd already decided on the restaurant by a vote. We had to figure out, given the menu and budget, what we wanted. We had already agreed there would be no formal leader.

Very rapidly, everyone was talking at once.

I don't like noise. I don't like disrespect. I don't like everyone talking and no one listening, and I certainly did not enjoy the confluence.

With an anger I barely noticed until I let it out, I shouted for quiet. Every person in our neat little circle froze, went silent, and looked at me.

But at the time, all I felt was a sudden link to every single person in the circle, and a feeling of being on a web stretched taut. Any strong move would snap it.

"Alright," I said quietly, picking up some random object I had already settled on. I started into an explanation of how we could pass this among people, and only the person holding it could talk--

The girl across from me jumps up and shouts, "No! No leaders!"

And we descend back into madness. Eventually the teacher comes out to chide us, and we successfully manage to get everything under enough control to decide. For those of you who are looking for the details I've left out: Panda Express, I believe, and the party went off marvelously.

And that was, for years, one of my most vivid memories. I took this to mean that I had had some sixth sense as a child that I had lost as I grew, one that allowed me to control a group like that and sense the interactions in a group as they related to me.

Then I thought some more.

And I realized that this was the most extreme memory I had of such a thing. In other words, the situation I had been in was interesting, highly emotional, and novel. I remembered for the same reason my classmates shut up: it was weird. I didn't usually raise my voice above ambient, or get that angry, or call attention to myself. Put simply, I was confusing something that happened once and intensely with something that happened often.

And that means that any reasonable person can point to exactly that argument, and be fully correct if I can only give one example of me thinking like [description] when I way [number] years old.

But what this blog allows me to do is make a public journal. I can go through, think of things that I would be willing to share with the world at this point in time, and then explain them, to the best of my understanding, now. In addition to forcing myself to think through these things, I am also giving my future self a look at what I could do consistently. Maybe this is not a good cross-section of my entire thought process--if I think something is too personal, or that I don't understand it at all, then I won't post it. But it does mean that I can link, say, "Look at the date and do the math," then say that, yes, I really did think like that.

Or, should I get to cocky, go back, think to my self, "Look at how recent that is," and know that I really did think like that.

Because if I look up a study that says, "The average child will be like this at this developmental stage," I have good reason to assume that will not apply to me. And, knowing how my memory works, I cannot rely on it to tell me how I was. The oil on water metaphor doesn't just apply for gifted people versus the center of the bell curve. Take the reverse, and it also works for memories. Forgetting how I was is the same as forgetting my history; I'm going to make the same mistakes over and over.

...

And That's Terrible.

* My apologies for the vagueness. I can see the image in my head, but I can't remember any of the specifics.
** Just for the funny: When a person came to our school to talk about college and majors, she said we probably wouldn't be certain what major we wanted to have unless we had been focused on one thing and hadn't wavered since third grade. Guess when I started being seriously interested in singing.

Musing: Confusion, Circles and Consternation

Okay, first, this.

I have discussed word power in previous posts. I believe very firmly in the power of manipulation in simple terms of getting a person to do something. I am aware that humans are fallible, that this is a part of being human at this point in time, we are not perfect.

And even with all of that in my head, I simply do not understand how the experiment can work out in favor of the AI even once if the Gatekeeper is firmly set against it.*

So let's figure this out. Okay. First: probably not something I'm likely to figure out on my own, given my age/experience level, and the fact that I have done very little actual research into human manipulation or AIs, much less both.

What confuses me most? I was actually pretty willing to accept the whole thing as simply a person getting logicked into a corner or something like that--unforeseeable circumstances, etc. Then I read this:

The Gatekeeper party may resist the AI party's arguments by any means chosen - logic, illogic, simple refusal to be convinced, even dropping out of character - as long as the Gatekeeper party does not actually stop talking to the AI party before the minimum time expires.

So this means that, even with both people given absolute free reign to say and do whatever they feel like, and with no out-of-character benefits offered, somehow they let the AI out.

In a word: What.

Okay, I've decided that, at the present point in time, I will not be able to figure out the specifics. So, before I go and check all this stuff out, let's see if I can think of any generals. I really wish I could have some "warmer/colder" on this, but I also understand why it's better that I don't.

First: the Gatekeeper has absolute free reign. This should make it very easy to keep the AI in. However, this would also make it very easy to let the AI out.

Second: There would be some social issue with admitting you "lost", but not much--I think, anyway. Hm. Connect to communicating to outside world: the AI being useful if let free, or releasing this (")safe(") AI into the world to prove that it is possible, therefore making the chances of a dangerous AI being let loose being smaller.

Third: The AI is perfectly capable of lying, or being just as illogical as the Gatekeeper can be. The only difference is that the AI is working to convince, and the Gatekeeper is trying not to be convinced.

Fourth: I have noticed it can be harder to fight for a negative. I don't like running, but I can chase something just fine. Tell someone not to look down, and...yeah. So though the AI does have a disadvantage in having to change the world rather than maintain its current state, the AI is fighting for a change, while the Gatekeeper is fighting for the absence of change.

Fifth: Appeal to curiosity.

Straight musing: I do not believe myself infallible, and so I do not believe I would trust myself to guard the AI for the rest of my life, or on a reasonable shift as part of my job. I think the main thing I'm trying to avoid here is routine, because that would give me far too much time to talk myself into it.

But do I believe someone** could talk me into it in a 2-hour span, if I go in firmly set against it? [I'm actually pausing to figure out what to type here.] Well...no. If you ask me to go at it as a logic problem, then I would have to give a maybe, because I am not infallible. It's like saying "Yes" to "Would you do anything?" I cannot say yes, because I do not believe I have sufficient imagination to figure everything out. But on the emotional level, I don't really believe it.

Hm. Which brings up the question, why not? I believe these results to be accurate, so what do I think makes me different.

Okay. I believe I am smarter than the average person, but, given context, chances are good that those people were too. Ah, and there's proof that it's emotional and not logical, because when I considered the fact that they might be smarter than I am, I immediately tried to justify why that would give me and advantage. I'd be so uninformed that some logic-based appeals wouldn't work on me, whatever.

Lovely. I'm so wrapped up in my own pride that I'll paint myself as better in any way.

Which is probably the actual emotional root of the issue. And a good thing to note all around. The reason that these people and others were so willing to say, without any qualifier, that a transhuman intelligence would not be able to outsmart them despite having no experience of one, was pride. Not necessarily personal, it could simply be human pride--which makes some sense, we've been apex predators for generations.

...Huh. Despite still having absolutely no idea how that convincing could have gone, I feel much better about the whole thing. Probably a combination of finding a flaw in myself and also immediately being able to point to others as having it. I know something I need to work on, and I'm not picking myself out of the pack.

Thus concludes this batch of musing.

*I'm not doubting the results. I'm just trying to work out my ignorance.
**Counting sufficiently advanced AIs as people here.

EDIT: I'm not saying that the case is conclusive. My point was that I was treating it as conclusive on faith, and then still saying "that doesn't apply to me", which is unintelligent.
FURTHER EDIT: I do, however, trust the guy to do proper science. I just cannot make a fully informed decision for myself when all I can see is the results section.

Christmas

Sometimes with Christmas coming
All there is is a rush to the store
Sometimes only running
We forget there's something more

As feet beat together in a rhythm seldom-heard
We all rush to find the gift for ma'am or sir.

As we run ourselves into this debt,
Sometimes we just forget.

And then we sit, by firelight's play
We find time for family
And breathe and smile, if only for a day.

And even if Christmas isn't for you,
I know you can feel it, too.
A peace touches so many, enough
A piece of our hearts in the stockings we stuff

It wasn't always Christian, and it isn't always this
But the feeling will continue, for we need our bliss.

Portfolio 8 Short Story: Self-Imposed

Hi. I missed one.

I stare at the wall.

There is nothing interesting about the wall. It’s a fine wall, it is solid, it doesn’t let sound or anything through; it does everything a wall is supposed to. It doesn’t help me much, because the other wall lets sound through—lines of metal sunk into the floor and the ceiling.

But, then, I suppose it does help. When I was in the cell on the other side of this wall, I heard more shouts. I sleep better now.

I put my right hand against the wall.

It is rough, but not cold. Nothing here is cold. I know that if I scrape my hand against it, then it will bleed. I’ve never done it on purpose, but I try to walk around, and sometimes, when I think about something else, I trip and catch myself on the wall. Recently I’ve learned to fall away from it, as if it’s a pool edge instead of a wall. Don’t want to get wet.

I smile to myself.

This place is good. I know it is. The floors are smooth stone—uneven, but smooth, from years of walking. Years of feet that people who know the ground don’t pay any mind anymore, and so let them stay on the ground as they move, smoothing the floor like ocean water on old driftwood.

I sigh happily.

There is chatter from our sentries as they pass by. Another person in a room like mine calls to tell them good morning and they call back in kind. Everyone is always so happy to be here.

I close my eyes, a calm smile still playing along my lips.

A peace, the same peace that is in that smile, is spreading through me. All is good, and all is happy. I don’t have to worry anymore. I laugh quietly, thinking of how I had been scared when I came here. It seemed so silly now. Here there was a complete, all-encompassing peace. No one who had been here long ever feared. None of us feared anything, anymore. Our sentinels keep us safe.

And then, suddenly, still enough to break my calm as it shreds through the peaceful quiet of our home, comes a scream. “No! NO! Stop! I didn’t do anything! Please! Please!”

I turn around and stand, staring at the new recruit.

He is pretty. Not handsome, pretty. He has a definite feminine air about him, nicely curved and red lips, and a soft face even as he yells his fear. He is wearing what anyone here would wear, a nice, comfortable suit. In his case, it’s a blue a few shades too light to be called navy blue. I call it ocean blue in my head, just as I call mine rose leaf green.

I shake my head. “So silly,” I stage murmur. “What’s your name?” I call.

He turns to me, breaks free of the guards, and runs. I catch him when he stumbles and wipe his cheeks with the handkerchief I keep on me. He stares at me with scared eyes, and he trusts me as a child trusts his mother. Everyone trusts me. “R—Roger,” he whispers. His tone was that of a person who had screamed too much.

“I’m Emiliana.” It was a lie, but a comforting one. Everyone relaxes when a sage young woman you trust reflexively is name Emiliana.

He relaxed in my arms. I brushed the hair out of his face and kissed his forehead. “Stay with them,” I whispered, a lullaby tone. “They will help you.”

He stayed still and confused for a moment, then nodded and moved back to them. He stumbled along the floor where he expected it to be flat, but he caught himself.

One of the guards who were just walking their rounds nodded to me. “We might be able to get you let out soon, Emmy.” Everyone I didn’t have to be…careful around called me Emmy.

I looked at her. No mask, no job, just looked at her with what I was, naturally, in my gaze. The woman dealt with death and destruction every day. She paled at what danced in my red-brown eyes. My voice deepened to its natural timbre. “You don’t want to let me out.”

Her heart was beating faster than it had been a few moments ago. She tipped her hat quickly. “As you wish.”

I watched her walk away, then turned and sat.

I stared at the wall.

No Guilty Pleasure Music

Yes, I am seeing how many blog posts I can do over winter break. Why do you ask?

That title is probably going to mean the exact opposite of what you think.

At least what it would look like to me would be someone suddenly getting all preachy about how if you're ashamed of your musical tastes, you shouldn't be listening to that music in the first place. Which would be silly.

No, I'm going to get all preachy about the guilty, not the pleasure. See? Much less silly.

I subscribe to the rule of 'no guilty pleasure music', which I made up myself though I doubt I'm the first to think of it. Basically: if I like the song, I like the song. Any part of me that tries to tell me I should feel a certain way about music is antithetical to this. This is both true for the part of me that says I should like a song and the part that says I shouldn't. If everyone says I should like The Beatles, that still isn't why I like the Beatles. I like The Beatles because they made amazing music. I like Avril Lavigne's music whether she's being accused of X, Y, or Z, because I like her music.

In theory, I will spread this out to other facets of my life. It seems that I should at least keep this true for art forms--romance novels, tween-directed stuff, etc. And the point, by the way, is not to suddenly think that these things are the best ever*. It means recognizing that, regardless of critical acclaim or whatever else, liking them is no reason for guilt.

I am so not there yet, but you get the idea.

*I'm looking at you, Twilight-obsessed fangirl who sat next to me. I like the book; that doesn't make it the paramount achievement in literature.

Serial

I walked out, head down and thoughtful. Ms. Robin had been...genuinely kind. And, knowing that she was, pieces started to fall into place. She hadn't punished them as hard because she knew me, and given equal information, had to punish equally. She wasn't indifferent, just unsure.

Never attribute to indifference that which can adequately be explained by incomprehension, I thought to myself.

Nina and I had gotten off with promises not to do it again--which I noted were carefully worded to mean never do it again within a supervisor's view--and exchanged, "I'm sorry, Nina," "I'm sorry, Joanna".

I thought. Ms. Robin had been kind, considerate, respectful, and if not smart, at least willing to learn. If I could do the same in return, I should. So. How do physical and verbal fights differ, in my mind?

Well, in the most basic terms, verbal fights have a wider range they can appear to be without being. If I call you an idiot and that's your one button, then that suddenly throws the fight up a few notches--in the other person's mind. I still think we're playing around. In a fight, if I pull a knife on you, you and I can both pretty clearly see, Holy shit, she just pulled a knife.

On the other hand, it isn't that physical fights are completely clear. You hit a sore spot on me, I go into defense mode. You might have no idea you just did, but I have. And one person might think you can still play around when you pull a knife, while I would think Weaponry involved, this is now life or death.

But physical fighting is still clearer. I need to know you inside and out to make sure I don't kick up a verbal fight. A physical fight, I can probably see when I've crossed that line. Stay off eyes, ears, throat, and broken bones; no weapons; fight is over when someone hits the ground unless you want a kill. I have never been in a fight with anyone but a few girls I know, and even I know that. I know it might be different, but I think that'd be true anywhere at my school. Whereas say, Anne might laugh off "idiot" and Sarah-Jane would ruin my reputation.

But I could see where she was coming from. If a verbal fight goes too far, then, in theory, both parties can talk frankly and solve the problem with few to no emotional scars. In a physical fight, everything is instant-by-instant. If I think someone's going after me, seriously trying to hurt me, I react with that in mind. And if I make a decision in that moment, there's no taking it back.

I understand. But the problem with that view is, that doesn't actually happen. If I get into an argument, then we're not going to talk frankly. If we fight, then I'm not going to hurt her, she's not going to hurt me.

But is that because I am a normal person, or is that because I am myself?

I turn it over in my head and decide that I probably can keep it to words. My main problem is that I can't stand to lose. If I have set apologizing as the lose condition, then I cannot apologize without losing. But there is no reason for that to be the lose condition. And...

I took a deep breath and said this aloud.

"There is no reason for losing to be a bad thing."

I took a few deep breaths. It was true. I knew it was true. The problem was convincing myself that it was true.

Logic. Losing a battle is not losing the war. There are times when losing now helps achieve a greater goal in the future. Sacrificing one's self for a random idea was a bad choice. But sacrificing pride for a solid goal was a good thing, so long as the goal was.

Emotion. Losing is losing. If I go into a true argument, I have to go in willing to lose on my field of choice.

I stopped.

And that was it. I had many logical reasons to think physical fighting had it's place, but that wasn't why I chose it. If I lost in a physical fight, then I came out unharmed. Maybe scraped and sore, but not dead, not crippled, almost always not even permanently scarred. And in a verbal fight I would also almost certainly avoid any emotional scars, due to the same environment that kept me safe from the physical ones.

But if I lost in a verbal fight, then I had to accept that I was wrong. None of this, Yeah, you won, but I could have! because being the better fighter doesn't matter to me. So if I stay out of fighting intellectually, I stay out of fighting where I care.

I started walking again, and looked up at the sky. It was a deep blue, Easter egg left in the sky blue cup for a half hour and still dripping. Not a cloud, and sun, for the moment, behind a building. All perfect, clear blue.

Ms. Robin's line in mind, I said, "I didn't think."

Patterns and Prejudices

THIS IS A LONG POST. And the connectivity is comparable to--oh, sorry, I'm being called. [Hard Cut]And now for something completely different.[Hard Cut]

The set-up to this is going to take forever. If you don't like reading through sources of inspiration, skip down past all the quotes. Also, there are links to the pit of timesuck from which you will never fully emerge that is TV Tropes.

Goodness has only once found a perfect incarnation in a human body and never will again, but evil can always find a home there. Human nature is not black and white but black and grey.

— Graham Greene

There once was a lovely book series called Harry Potter. It inspired a piece of fanfiction called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Incidentally, I love it and that story is a continual source of inspiration to places I have yet to reach.

The following is a quote from chapter five of that story, followed by Hanlon's razor.

Harry looked up at McGonagall and sighed. "I suppose there's no chance that if I said fundamental attribution error you'd have any idea what that meant."

McGonagall shook her head. "No, but please explain."

"Well..." Harry said, trying to figure out how to describe that particular bit of Muggle science. "Suppose you come into work and see your coworker kicking his desk. You think, 'what an angry person he must be'. Your coworker is thinking about how someone pushed him into a wall on the way to work and then shouted at him. Anyone would be angry at that, he thinks. When we look at others we see personality traits that explain their behavior, but when we look at ourselves we see circumstances that explain our behavior. People's stories make internal sense to them, from the inside, but we don't see people's histories trailing behind them in the air. We only see them in one situation, and we don't see what they would be like in a different situation. So the fundamental attribution error is that we explain by permanent, enduring traits what would be better explained by circumstance and context."

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

So, let's look at all this. Taking into account that it is difficult to impossible to step fully outside one's own head--in other words, to view conscious beings from an outside perspective while still analyzing in the manner of a conscious entity--we must assume prejudice. Literally everywhere.

The interesting thing is, this makes sense. Though it may or may not be a conscious being thing--I lack the data set--pattern recognition is a human thing. It's why we can see faces in non photo-realistic drawings, or pictures in the clouds, or faces in people with significantly different faces, for that matter.*

Which means that optimistic people are going to continue assuming the best, if not forever, then even after a string of terrible things occurring, because that is the pattern they've picked up on. If they run into some people and peg them as cynics, their opinions are going to mean a little less, because their predictions do not fit the pattern.**

Let's name the optimist Ollie and the cynic Penelope.

Ollie believes everyone is good, an believes firmly in Hanlon's razor. Even if the person admits to doing some harmful act for no reason, Ollie believes that the person is genuinely good. At worst, to his mind, "evil" people are confused, ignorant, or a combination thereof.

Penelope is Ollie's opposite. If there is something wrong in the world, she believes that someone is at fault. No one is a saint. People can be truly evil, but not truly good.

Funny thing is, Penelope and Ollie agree, to some extent, all the time. Because, while they both believe that absolute evil or absolute goodness exist, all of their daily interaction is with morally gray people. Ollie sees lighter shades of gray, Penelope darker, but that's partially in what they believe "at fault" is. In Penelope's mind, choosing to remain ignorant is a morally questionable act.

And so there it is. The world, whitewashed and blackwashed.*** But not entirely that different. Because, in order to say someone is entirely the one or the other requires no moral ambiguity whatsoever.

And yet. Even in the absence of specific examples to point to note plural, you still get quotes like the one at the very top of this page, saying that evil not only exists, but exists as a matter of course and in its purest form, to the point of pattern.****

Little leap here: we do not see people, most of the time. If you spend just the right amount of time with someone, you see who they are at that moment without prejudices of who they were, and with enough experience to figure it out from given information. Enough to separate the prejudices we have from others, little enough to stop us getting prejudices from those we try to understand.

But most of the time we do not see people as they are, we see them as a part of a pattern. This makes sense. It is simpler to view changes than see the new person every day, and we are all of us creatures of pattern. It makes sense to view us as such.

But that means we learn to adjust for other's prejudices, regardless of whether we adjust for our own. I do not necessarily see that my views have started being incorrect, because I see every time my predictions were ever right. I only see when you said your predictions, so if we are both right and wrong about the same amount of the time, then A) I can justify why I am wrong, and B) if you are open with your predictions, then I see every time you are wrong. If I try to see this or that pattern, then I can probably find it, because you are wrong a certain amount of the time and I am right a certain amount of the time.*****

So if I see your pattern as being too optimistic, because you think there are instances of pure goodness, then I adjust down, and see your admission of dark gray as admission of black. If I see your pattern as too cynical, I adjust up--and your light gray becomes so bright as to shine.

I adjust, because I see the pattern in patterns.

Assuming all the above--I know it's a lot--belief in pure goodness or pure evil is based primarily on meta-patterning. I do not see any truly good or evil people personally; I only hear about people from outside, and then I adjust for the person telling me about the person.

So we believe in pure X, Y, or Q, not due to viewing it, but due to placing others patterns into our own. Which is a pretty cool thing to be able to incorporate, really. Infinite meta loop.

*By the way, just musing here, if we have this as a standard trait and managed to spread as far as we have because of it, that implies that patterns are common. So yes, change is the only constant, but there is a pattern to the world we know, and that pattern is patterns.
**Note: A person who would normally be cynical and is right several times is usually pegged as a realist, not a cynic. However! If the optimist is set enough in the positive pattern, negative assumptions may make someone a cynic regardless of success rate. The wording I used is meant to include both scenarios.
***I know it's not a word; it should be.
****Footnotes! I would have posted an inverse--that pure evil never found a home/only found one once and that since that human morality has been Gray And White, but I couldn't find one. Ones saying all humans were good deep down, yes. Ones saying more than one person has ever been entirely good, no. Post in the comments if you have one.
*****You can reverse everything in this paragraph--I'm wrong and you're right--and it still works.

I am fully aware that I admitted at the top of this post that I cannot know any of this. I did not feel like typing "I think" "I believe" and "in my opinion" 25 times.

Serial

She was genuinely horrified, was the weird thing.

I mean, yeah. There are bullies at school. Anyone who thinks about it has to know. It's like abusive parents. If you think for two seconds, you realize that someone at your school of a few hundred has to have a problem with them, because they're always there. And yet, somehow, people always act like it's some big shock. I guess it's the same as death. We get to a point where we realize everyone is going to die. But we don't feel it for a long while after. So it happens, we see it happen, and then we get it. And it's terrifying. So you can react a couple ways. One way is to blame the victim: Oh no, it couldn't happen to me. JUSTIFICATION DRIVE ACTIVATED: Because I'm not stupid/mean/stuck-up enough to provoke them. Another is to not quite believe what you're hearing.

So she hadn't believed me when I told her I was being bullied. Or she hadn't done anything, or it hadn't done any good, all of which comes down to the same set of apparents from my point of view, and any question that could clarify is insulting, so there I am. The other student tells on me and we get called into her office. I'm honest, the other student exaggerates, she reacts to the worst in both our stories so I get called a tattler--I'm unpopular in that crowd, mind--and the other student and I both serve a detention. The message gets across pretty clearly: It's not quite useless, but you have to be willing to hurt a little too, and bullying/fighting/freaking without consent isn't that big a deal.

Which all adds up to some words tumbling out of my mouth before I can think to stop them, and so sincere because of that that she can't help but believe they're a true question:

"You care about that stuff?"

See line one. From what I've seen, the woman is not an amazing actor. She can smile and hide her feelings, but any of us learn that, and she uses the same smile I do. The bright, brittle smile that communicates deeper dislike than a glare.

So when she gave me a look that could have been on a poster titled "SHOCK AND HORROR, TONIGHT ONLY, NO WOMEN OR CHILDREN ALLOWED", I knew she honestly cared. Which...well, at first only surprised me, then pissed me off a little. What on earth? The rules as written allow her to give worse punishments for fighting. Why would she be so shocked that I thought she didn't care?

"Of course I care." Again, just so bald-faced honest.

I glanced at Nina, who was sitting next to me and had a layered effect that both Ms. Robin and I had ditched in favor of clarity. Outer, probably what Ms. Robin was picking up, attentive and slightly bemused; inner, mildly annoyed at me. She'd already figured out Ms. Robin cared.

I turned back to Ms. Robin and decided that, in the absence of any useful precedent telling me otherwise, I might as well be honest. "We're in high school, ma'am. We're going to fight. Every day. The only difference is that we touched each other."

"You should keep your arguments verbal."

"Why?"

"Because you could hurt each other."

I paused at that, trying to find some crack in her sincerity. It wasn't there. "Ms. Robin," I said softly, "we hurt each other more if we don't solve it. If we fight physically, I can tell when it ends. I've been in verbal fights that extended several years past their end because one person got over it and the other thought she was just being given the silent treatment. As long as we stay behind the threshold of long-term to permanent damage or weapons, how is this any worse?"

Had it been another day, or a different environment, Ms. Robin might have been secure enough in her worldview to give a long speech that boiled down to, "Because physical violence is always worse than verbal violence." But we had been honest with each other. She knew me to be bright, she knew me to be kind, and she knew me to be, at least for now, honest. She paused, perhaps checking me for sincerity, perhaps the sentence for truth.

Finally, Ms. Robin said something that made me respect her more than I'd ever respected a teacher at that school.

"I don't know."

Faith and Trust

Just for the record, I do not plan to look up either of these in the dictionary while writing this post, and I do not recall ever having done so in the past. I may look both faith and trust up at the end, and put down the official definitions at the end of this post. However, even if they are there, I will change nothing earlier. That is why this part does not establish whether I will do it, even though you, the reader who is reading through the time it took me to write this, can scroll down a few inches and see.

Inspired by a Simpsons quote (paraphrased),

Wiggum: You have that much faith in me?
Homer: No, faith is what you have in things that don't exist. Your awesomeness is real.

I will be writing as if I am referring to people, though you can have faith in or trust something as much as someone.

In the most basic terms: Faith is believing that someone will aid you. No reason to really, no guarantee, no need. Just you believe this. Pretty much the exact opposite of the scientific method*. It doesn't have to be absolutely certainty--though that is what absolute faith is. Even without evidence, the bedrock-solid knowledge that this fact is true.

Flip side, used less: Knowing that it will all go wrong fits equally well. Knowing that the person with the wrong scar over the right eye is going to stab you in the back. You don't know the person. You just see the face.

Laconic: This I believe.

Trust is different. You might have faith in some people after not seeing them for years, but trust has to be kept up. Help you up; stand by you when no one else would; just be there when you need them to be and you trust them. You have seen how they acted in the past, and it leads you to believe they are good people. You know they'll help you and yours.

Flip side, used less: Pretty obvious at this point. Push you down; run when someone else stood with you; leave when you need them most. Worse, do that and then expect you to help them. Maybe even worse than that. Because you will, and tomorrow they're back to this knife-twisting trust, you know they'll hurt you. But you choose. Do you turn you back on you own ideals? Do you stick to them, cruel people or no?

Or do you change your ideals for a new situation?

*I am not belittling the scientific method or faith. The scientific method does require setting one's faiths aside for the sake of seeing reality as it is--but not everything is scientifically provable. And stuff that isn't scientifically proven may well still be true.

Dictionary, closest to mine posted:
Faith: b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust
Trust: a : assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something

Musing: "Because of You"

Yep, the song by Kelly Clarkson. You may want to listen to at least the beginning before reading this blog post, it'll make more sense.

Both my mom and I have a certain amount of dislike for this song--though mine is less "Turn that OFF" than hers is, and I do enjoy it sometimes. I think I figured out why. Kelly Clarkson sings it like it's sad, and depressive, and a complete mope of a song.

It's not.

Okay, yes, this requires Death of the Author thinking, but that's just not how it reads to me. Especially when you factor in that she swears in the middle. Swearing means A) not thinking about the words (BAD) B) angry or C) completely broken down, which isn't how she plays it either. She doesn't seem like she's crying, she doesn't seem like she's so broken she can't even express her feelings anymore, she just feels like...she wanted to swear there.

The line I'm referring to:

And now I cry in the middle of the night for the same damn things!

As something of an experiment, I tried singing it angry. First of all, it was easy. It seemed the natural way to sing the song. Second, yep, my mom felt it sounded better.

I think it's because otherwise, the song feels manipulative. An actor doesn't just say, "I'm broken," because there aren't very many realistic characters who would. The part to play is avoiding eye contact, wincing, leaping into or out of danger because everything is off-kilter.

And so yes, the song should have moments where the singer collapses. But they should be moments, not the majority of the song.

In addition, the whole thing falls under telling. "Because of you I am afraid." ...Lovely. And I suppose you're going to tell us some of the story...dude cried in the other room. Um. Anything...anything else you want to share? About this giant, life-shattering experience you decided to share with millions in song?

...Just gonna say you're heart's shattered and you stay on the safe side of everything. Well, it's lovely you were able to share all--

Oh. Wow. Actually, that's pretty clever if it's two characters deep. Take it, not as playing the hurt girl who's thinking this to herself, but the artist writing this song. She wants to share more, but she can't. She can bring herself to tell how hurt she is, but not really what happened. Because it was life-shattering.

And that may not make sense with Kelly Clarkson--her other music and the mere fact that she is where she is suggest some level of bravery--but it does make sense as a character who is a songwriter played by a songwriter.

This is why I muse.

Junior Achievement Innovation Camp

I'm not the best in the world at giving context, so if you want a little more information, read here.

The following post is a summary of my notes, which were taken directly from thoughts. Coherency is not likely. Times are rough--I have more specifics, but I simply wrote the time down whenever I glanced at my watch, so it's more consistent to just write down the estimates.

8AM We were all ushered into a room after finding the building--which wasn't the easiest task, but once you found the right building via a one-block-ish radius of trial and error, there was a great big Junior Achievement sign in green. Breakfast included much fresh fruit, many pastries, and fruit juice. I was rather nervous about meeting the people at my table, but a young man--whom I'll call V due to lacking permission to use his name--started a conversation with me, and it got better from there.

9AM
This was the first Innovation Camp at HP, so that was cool. The music was rather random; it sounded like someone had looked through the top songs on iTunes with some unknown rules in mind.

They asked for some people to interview about the event, and encouraged us to talk about the event to our friends, and make posts on facebook/twitter/our blogs (hi).

Then they went over the main activity of the day. We would have to make a business plan, write a concept paper (what you might hand off to someone who needed to take over the project temporarily) and a Powerpoint, along with a three minute presentation to go along with it (our sell). The former was due rough at 11:30 and final at 2:00; the rough Powerpoint was due at 11:30 as well and the final at 3:00, along with our final presentation.

After came the icebreakers. We tore our elephant faces without opening our eyes. I tried to make eyes but ran out of time since we only had thirty seconds, a few others did, too, but not many succeeded.

We found our groups, which were assigned by the animal stickers on our ID holders. I was an anteater, and V was in my group, along with another person, and two more who would show up after the icebreakers. We made a tower out of only paper. That means no tape, no glue, no pins. Another team won by a hair--not over us, they were a level and an eighth over us, but only an eighth over another.

10AM
We were pointed to a facebook page for JA, and started brainstorming ideas for the prompt given. The prompt, by the way, was intentionally vague:

If you are given a chance to start a social enterprise to address a societal challenge, what would you do?

Explain: the product or service you would offer, the challenge it would tackle and how technology would help you achieve your goal.

The challenges we came up with were class divisions, drug abuse, crime, obesity, health care and (teenage) stress. We thought of a few different center-type projects, an settled on a teen center/rec center/"growth and wellness center" (I couldn't think of a good name, all right?). The idea was that teens would be working with teens, so the focus would be on teens teaching each other sports, peer tutoring, teaching each other to work in the garden, etc. There would be a library/study room, a cafeteria, a garden, a sports room, a learning center (tutoring), and a fun room. We decided on the T.Y.G.E.R. center, though didn't quite settle on what that stood for until a while later.

11AM
We split into groups to finish what we had left, since we only had thirty minutes left. I gravitated toward the most down-to-earth stuff--what do we need, why do we need it, etc. Not that I was the only one, or that that was all I did; it's just what I preferred. Our professional in the field that was going to help us showed up at 11:28, when we were mainly typing, and so was more help on the cleanup than the rough draft--which makes sense.

There was a countdown from 10 during the last 10 seconds, probably to avoid conflicting watches.

Lunch was served at 11:30, and was heavy. Good thing, too, considering most of us were twisting our heads around new ideas and quite a few of us were working on little sleep. If you can't get energy from A, B's not a terrible bet. I had a clif mojo bar and turkey wrap (as opposed to sandwich), which came with pasta salad and peanut butter cookie.

The table was quiet, so I people watched. Everyone looked thoughtful, and was comparing ideas, moving from place to place, or off in their own head.

A young woman I'll call L struck up a conversation about nothing much.

11:59
Speech time! A man from Dreamworks came over and spoke about Megamind, which one girl shouted out was, "Friggin' awesome!" so that was fun.

12AM
A new speaker, who was a self-professed geek and talked bout how he had been in movies/audio stuff a long time, and been with Dreamworks specifically about three years. He went over how 3D movies are made, and the difference between 3D and stereoscopic 3D. For those curious, 3D means the animators are working with 3D models, stereoscopic 3D is what most people call 3D, where the images appear to come near you. He went into a lot of technicals I found interesting but that would take too long to go into.

Random bits: Storyboards are still drawn by hand, by the way. The technology is specifically designed to facilitate that. And in How to Train Your Dragon, every dragon's flame was unique. C++ is still common. Animators look at how the voice actors act when animating, for realism and to see how person X got Y emotion.

Oh, and he said that literally everyone at Dreamworks is working on a script on the side, so you get readings all the time.

We met our advisers, and took a group photo.

1PM Back to work.
We went over how to get ideas communicated--basic, but good to hear aloud. If you talk a lot, step back, if you talk little, step up. We pressed the idea of it being a safe haven, and tried to figure out who would invest. Also figured that a 3-minute presentation, 180 seconds, needs to be planned down to the second.

We ended up going back and editing the acronym several times, but what we settled on was Technology Youth Growth Empowerment Rejuvenation. It occurs that growth was a pun--the teens and the garden.

Advertising seemed to be a pretty good point to push, especially since a sufficiently popular center would have infinite advertising potential, especially to a group like HP which advertises to just about anyone who could want a computer--a lower and higher age with each year.

Then it was 2PM

Then we took a break and went back to the room where we'd had breakfast and lunch, and would give our speeches. I shared with one rather nervous girl who would have to close the presentation the great secret of public speaking: "Thank you for your time."*

TECHNO (another acronym, didn't catch it) which had a pay-per-bid system I thought was interesting. You pay, not just when you win, but for each bid you make. This tends to improve profit margins.

Us.

SmartVision talked about connecting teachers in first and third world countries via smartboards.

The next group started out with a picture from 2012, and designed a virtual reality which reflects how the world will be if one keeps using this much energy, and gives you points--leaderboards. There was a nice contrast, one group member was upbeat and attention-grabbing, the rest were calm to the point of shyness.

The next group talked about putting touchscreens in desks. This would put all the textbooks there, and make the classroom paperless.

Zzz Band (pronounced Zz-zz band) talked about their band, which would tell one one's heart rate, cholesterol, all that good stuff. It would have a customizable design, and be marketed to teens.

Helping Hands was about teen pregnancy and would be on facebook and twitter. Incidentally, we almost called ourselves Helping Hands, that would've been awkward.

Education.reThought talked about eco-desks and Tablets would allow school without physical presence (if sick).

BAM was a social network.

Inspired would focus on cyberbullying, phoneline.

Nutrivend was about a vending machine that would give you a customizable salad in a sealed and cool vending machine. Not pre-packaged nor with preservatives, as a salad bar would be.

Change the Cycle--helping bullied and stopping bullies from occurring.

5:30 PM Dinner
I had chicken, rice, a roll s'mores pie, and a green bean, then a sour green apple fruit snack.

Awards Ceremony
Announced that we were 73 kids from 19 schools. The top five were: the 2012 group (which emphasized our relative intelligence in comparison to the rest of the world), TECHNO (the soft money payback in advertising), Zzz Bands--which was the only group to finish on-time, Nutrivend, and Education.reThought.

Rich Friedrich came up and spoke about how our generation has some novel stuff, and we need to know we're the first globally connected generation.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have run out of money. It is time to start thinking." --Sir Ernest Rutherford.

Third place: Nutrivend (HP backpacks)
Second place: TECHNO (HP backpacks, I think they had something but I couldn't see)
First place: Zzz Band (HP backpacks, mugs filled with candy, and netbooks)

We all got door prizes/goodie bags filled with: a water bottle, a "UFO logo"--it floats, illusively--a lanyard, a pencil, a USB stick, two vouchers for The Tech Museum of Innovation, and 50 free prints from Snapfish.

Then I went home, finished my homework, and fell asleep with a thud muted by the mattress.

*I came up with two more later, by the way: "Hello, my name is," and roll with it.

This post written in an hour and a half.

Portfolio 12 Short Story: Convection

I don’t know how long it’s been.

There are people I’ve met who will use that phrase flippantly. “Oh, I haven’t been out in I don’t know how long,” and laugh. I’ve stopped. I don’t know how long it’d been since I stopped using such terms so easily, but it happened. How many days, how many years, how many bodies, how many ages… I closed my eyes.

We’ll tell you a lot, if you ask. Any fallen angel will tell you the most horrible pain they’ve ever felt is the fall. None of them will ever say it was losing their wings—partially because we never speak of it, mostly because, no matter what the movies show, that’s not it. Demons don’t lose their wings, and if anything that is their curse.

The pain is the separation. When you’re there, you are a part of everything, you are connected to literally everything, by threads and cords and ropes and wires. And it is the most amazing thing I have ever felt. It is being a part of everything that is. Humans don’t notice it much, because they’re only connected by the one little strand that connects with a few other people. The nexuses, the ones that connect at least two people—and usually many, many more—are what goes up.

Is it really up? I wondered, not for the first time. I know that, technically speaking, it’s everywhere. But every time I go to earth, I feel like I fall. And I do remember having wings in that brief period that stretches for so long in my head, because I know really feeling my wings means I’m about to fall or rise again.

I opened my eyes and stared out at the crowd, sipping at a cup of coffee. The first few times, I’d avoided anything that could be considered even a little sinful. The absolute minimum food, always stuff I didn’t much like; the least comfortable clothes that didn’t call attention to my penance; and absolutely nothing that could be considered a drug. I’d gotten over it. Separation was punishment enough.

I rise, I fall. I wrote in my journal. It’s not the first time I’ve written it. Of course, the first time it wasn’t English. English didn’t exist yet, not really. Oh, I suppose you could say that the first time I’d gotten enough money together for a journal—because a journal helped, and I wasn’t sure if that was okay for the longest time—was technically in very old Old English, but that’s so far from modern English it makes about as much sense to call it German.

I rise; I fall. I corrected. No matter how long I’ve lived here, I still forget the semicolon. I’ve written this so many times; you’d think I’d remember, but when I started stuff like spelling and punctuation were optional. Anyway, it’s a journal.

You got cast out of heaven for any of the seven deadly sins. I’m not entirely sure if that goes for humans. They might just be floating in that rapturous tangle of thread and cord and rope so close and thick and not quite tangible that it’s more of a cloud. It’s still here, down here. The first few times, I couldn’t see it or feel it, but I’ve learned to sense it. That’s my special little self-made curse. Because, yes, I know how it feels. And, no, I can’t feel it.

Angels get to fall. We come down here and pay our penance, and pay extra for any other sins we commit while here. I wonder, sometimes, if the little sins add up, too. I wonder if I’ll ever get to stay. When you sin so many times, can you truly be forgiven?

I gripped the cup tighter. No. No. Not that cruel. Impossible.

I finished my coffee and picked up my jacket to go. It was a nice little place. You could sit in a dark corner or in the open air, you paid first, and it almost made me forget the little upside-down split V scar down my back.

Portfolios 22 and 23 Poetry: The Dark and Lit Twin

Written as a pair, originally "The Dark Twin" and "The Lit Twin".

The night is closing in.
But it isn’t. Not really. Not ‘closing in’.
That is far too harsh a term.
As the crepuscular time closes and full night comes, she beckons softly.
She wraps you, not in warmth, but in experience.
In the chilled air.
In those little smells that only come at night.
Maybe someone’s barbequing.
Maybe you can smell night blooming flowers.
But always she comes softly, leading you to a new land like a mother guiding your first steps.
A lover holding your hand through tough times.
Some only appreciate those warm summer nights, where the moon is full;
As if her job is to be a quieter day.
She does not work to become like him. She simply is.
She fills the sky with deep velvet, indigo, blue, black; her diamonds spread across,
Winking an eye, showing a flash of armor, twinkling like lightning.

Have you ever cried at the sunset or the stars just because they were?
Have you ever really looked?
Or do you walk only in the light, shunning the dark, shunning the crisp chill, shunning the void of black between stars?



Day breaks.
So much hope, so much love, in each new sunrise.
And then…
“Ugh.”
“Five more minutes.”
“I hate Mondays.”
And just like that, you’ve missed the day.
As surely as you had slept through it.
Just as we miss his twin, we miss him.
Not because we sleep, not because we’re scared:
Because we take him for granted or go out teeth bared.
Because we think of day as less sacred than night—
Just because of a little light.

Portfolio 19 Autobiography: First of the Night

This was a school assignment from last year. We wrote one entry a week. Here's one of the better ones. This was written to be performed aloud, and I sang the appropriate line.

I’m backstage. The world is fading in and out of focus, but it’s there enough for me to hear John: “I’m so nervous.”

I give a shaky laugh, “You’re nervous.”

I can’t imagine him being nervous. How long had he spent on this? A few months? It can’t’ve been more than three. It was impossible for him to be as nervous as he seemed, shaking a little from stress and excitement. If he messed up, then he’s messed up once, and he’s lost a few months. A few months out of your whole life is nothing really, even at fourteen. If I mess up…

If I screw this up, I’ve wasted fourteen years.

This swims through my head, and John turns to me, surprised. “You’re nervous?” Something calls him away.

It takes half a second for that to sink in. I grin. He can’t imagine me being nervous. I have nothing to be nervous about. Him? He’s spent a couple months, tops, preparing for this. He might mess this up. He’s still learning, barely even started. Me? I have spent fourteen years of my life moving toward this moment. This is my time. I get to show everyone why I sought for so many years, why I have practiced and pushed and tried for so many after that, no matter what. I get to show them why it matters.

And, I can admit now that I’m out of it, I got to show them-—every friend, every acquaintance, every stranger, every bully, and especially every bully-—that I counted. That no matter what else may happen, this I can do. This I can be. Tell me there isn’t a person in this world who truly cares for me, tell me I’m worthless, tell me I’m not even human. I may even believe you. But no matter; I sing.

I stride out onto the stage, spirit high and smiling. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I know now why that song felt like mine, and why it was so important to sing that song to them. It was my story. It is my story.

It’s the story of a woman who learned to fly.

My cue hits: “Something has changed within me.” Everything. My world may twist and twirl and stagnate into whatever it may be, but I know that this has changed me.

And as I sing, I come to her—-our realization. You don’t need to work for that one. You never did. You need to work for you. You may leave some old friends behind, but you’ll be flying free. You will find all you need.

The audience cheers mid-song and I grin. The music swells and I soar. I am the song, and I am glorious. I am triumphant.

One day in eighth grade, in my little red dress, I changed my world. I wrote lines of fire across our souls. And even if the marks fade on some, the memories burn bright.

And I got the first standing ovation of the night.



A case where the story inspired the trope (TV Tropes is addictive): I Am Becoming Song

Something New, Old, Wonderful

Unrealistic? Probably. I don't ever remember seeing this in real life.

I start by falling to that realm in my head, back/left/center that holds right. For a moment, I'm floating; it's dark, senseless. Not in a bad way, not insane, not anything. Truly. No sensations.

Then, slowly, it spreads. My head floats on my shoulders. My feet grounded, my body whole. No checking for where the connection between grounded and floating is. That twists, grounds.

Shhh... There. Unbothered, unsensed, thoughts floating, whirling, drifting, whispering... Almost asleep. Dreaming.

This time, the dark turns black. Alone for just a moment. Bells chime; white comes. Lovely, soft spots of cheery, chilly white. Almost spherical, all of them. All with natural sides, more freshly turned earth than bubbles. Lovely, they drift down. Or up. To me.

Oh, beautiful. They come into focus. The edges still not smooth, for they are what they are, and only closer for being in focus. One touches. And we're the same temperature. Whether I am chill or they warm, who knows. No way to tell. A little pressure, lighter than a feather, and consistent, runs across. Down a cheek. A hand. A leg. Not the same everywhere. But each run keeps the same weight.

And do they melt? Or do they simply stay as they are, part water? I'd need other instruments to answer that. Sight. Beyond what I guess of feel. Or another temperature, comparison. I could be cold.

What I can see, I know. Looking up. White, soft, drifting like fine sugar.

Snow. Wonderful snow.

Laughter

Laughter is a full-body experience. The sound, the throat, yes, but also the chest, the belly, the twinkle in the eye. The way you move your feet to balance better, even if you're sitting. The way your entire face lights up with that little twinkle that some say is only from your eyes. The way that aura turns everything around pink for miles.

Laughter, on its own, is good. Bright, pink, happy, joyous, lovely. Undeniably so.

And then context sets in. Perhaps it is so, or becomes more so. Beautiful laughter, musical, bell-like, chiming, lovely, wonderful, infectious--one of the few times that word is used in a good sense. Such is the power of laughter.

But that makes it dark when it twists, doesn't it? Malevolent, maniacal, dark chuckle, like a curse. Can come before or after. The sound darkens from an infant's blanket's pink to deep blood red, not the scarlet of a thin set or the almost brown-black of dried blood, even twisted laughter is very much alive. That deep, dark, scarlet-black of fresh blood pooled deep. Still shining. Still alive. But oh so dangerous.

Yet, still, even as the bottom drops out of your stomach, you may find your nostrils flaring, or a smile in kind tugging your lips. An old feeling in your heart. Fresh blood is hunter's scarlet. It taps right into your instincts. Maybe you're prey this time. Chase or run, predator or prey...or maybe fight. Or maybe hit the deck. And don't ever think there's only one way to do any of those.

And then comes the bell-like laughter, chiming merrily through. Silver, striking. Not a child's color, not an infant's color, so very distant. Exotic is attractive. But a flash of silver, that's deadly. Context, context, context.

Laugh with me. See that little twinkle, feel your heart rise. And don't worry about the different kinds of laughter. I can pet my dog or kick my dog. They are both movements; that alone doesn't relate the two. Not in any way worth noting.

And even if you should note it, it doesn't take the shared joy from the pet, the pain from the blow. Everything relates, one way or another. The close ones are the ones people call opposites. If you remember things are opposites, they are truly entangled. Fire, water, firewater. Up, down, roller coaster. Air, earth, tornadoes. Clear, obscure, transparent. Can you see none of me or all of me? I can hide just as well being transparent as obscure. Better. You don't even know I'm there.

Well color me surprised.