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radical acceptance...
Aunty Jools - the topic has come up a few times now, anxiety and depression and personality disorder and how there really isn't a cure for loneliness. how nobody sticks around long enough to show these people kindness, how they get tired and frustrated quickly of non-reciprocity - the self absorption - the vanity and despair and self pity. how they don't know how to be kind to themselves much less anyone else.
Theory of grace - HTB church - amazing grace, radical acceptance - a different interpretation. In order for a thing to be lovable it must first be loved. GK Chesterton. Grace is the combination that unlocks a broken heart. Bawling, sobbing throughout worship. Hardly even able to mouth the words - why? I can't explain it.
Forgiving yourself
accepting yourself
being friends w self / accepting shortcomings and finding them funny, being merciful to yourself - being able to forgive yourself for being annoying pretentious ignorant - being aware of your flaws, being aware of the need to improve - without condemning yourself. What does that look like? when you see it - it's irresistible, unmistakable - magnetic, beautiful. That kind of honesty, that kind of authenticity and groundedness, centredness, integrity.
And loving your friends the same way
Infectious - contagious
April radiated an indomitable self love
funny, fiercely intelligent, kind.
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Brightest star, blackest night
David foster wallace and loneliness in the 21st century - how he was hailed as a paragon of virtue, a beacon of light to so many others, but ended his own life. The end of the tour - how conversations can change people, can be worth repeating - can be instructive, entertaining, important. Sitting down to eat with sinners, spending a few days with friends, Jesus by the lake. Relationships change people. Not drugs, not diets or psychoanalysis and dissecting under a microscope - but allowing someone in, under your skin. A real connection....
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the history of illusion
exploration of internet, social media, age of unprecedented connectivity, everything transmits faster, propagates like wildfire, like a ripple, instantaneously, everywhere at once - phenomena spreads so quickly, where one person could only influence his small community of 100, 200 - it took time to reach others, now one person's words or actions could influence an entire continent, could spark change - one picture, inspire an entire movement - a revolution.
How our society deprives us of community and shared purpose
Our primitive brains created evolved for nomadic tribes, supporting others being supported - leaning on others, being close - being in a community to survive - our brains crave community - acceptance, validation, friendship, trust, respect. But how modern society now celebrates the individual - individual striving, achievement, independence, self sufficiency, creates systems that allow us to isolate ourselves and never rely on each other, never have to talk to your neighbours or help someone else get water or something from the store. Communal ideology importance increasingly lost. How some believed this was intentional to increase sales - the more miserable humans were in these cities the more they consumed goods such as sugary foods, expensive furniture and vehicles. Capital and investment and profit margins. The numbers were promising. Human loneliness it seemed was good for business.
How asmr becomes corporatised. [a cartel, consolidated, unionised in the name of sustainability, creators giving up their creative freedoms for security]
How asmr helps with anxiety and depression. How does a video actually effect real lasting emotional change - testimonies how it has made them feel less anxious, how people feel better and want to do the same for others, selfless proponents who aren't looking for fame.
the idea being that although asmr relies on reproduction of a physical sensation ie sound, touch, visual movement, senses kinesthetic stimuli, the physical world - somehow generates a sense of euphoria - the theory is that the common denominator is intimacy, attention and trust - things that are uncommon or in short supply, in a typical asmr video the asmrtist gives the viewer undivided attention, he is performing for the viewer the entire time, focused on the viewer's needs, sensations, emotions, affirmations what the viewer needs to hear not just wants to hear. Trust, only a few videos do this but implicitly listening to a stranger make noises is to let down your guard and suspend your judgements and give your attention and accept what they are offering - and the asmr artist chooses how vulnerable to be, by doing these strange actions, invite judgements - criticism, appearance critique - any act of broadcasting - of trying to effect change or affect another person is an act of trust and faith. A bid a proposal a risk of rejection.
Why these videos work is the same reason movies and books and music work, why they stir up our emotions and make us feel things - even though videos on the surface look like a person gazing at a camera and pretending to be caring, what the asmrtist is doing is seeing past the camera to the viewer on the other end and imagining themselves in their shoes, interacting genuinely w that fictional hypothetical theoretical person. What a book is isn't an actual recollection of events but marks of ink on paper that represent things that exist in the real world - done skillfully enough the markings contain truth, express convey communicate something real within the author - similarly, if the asmrtist wants to share something real, it comes through, it inspires something real in the viewer, even though the whole thing is an illusion, a fiction, seems a little silly. It sounds like a far fetched fantasy, a surrealist high concept high school short story conceit that a 20 minute video of a stranger whispering at a camera and brushing a mic can make somebody halfway across the world feel seen, valued, understood, comforted, less anxious, less depressed, less alone. And yet it happens. We sense that sense of community, mutual trust, vulnerability. Our brains are easily tricked, our brains want to believe.
How asmrtist lunardream / lunarstar / lunadream/ lunastar best of the best refused to be corporatised, the corporations play dirty underhanded - eventually she loses rights to her channel - or she sells out, which would be the greater tragedy - making videos but being drowned out by copycats, slick polished versions, the marketing department strategises ways to steal her audience - sex sells, inundating the market, half naked, copycats and pretenders. changing public perception of a good thing, making it into a synonym for perverse lonely outsiders, but a small select sect of devotees begin their own movement, tracing each other's faces. Whispering encouragements to each other, leaning on each other. Being there for each other.1
Her channel is lost - she withdraws, nobody knows what becomes of her - the original, drowned out - but her legacy lives on. People all over the world carrying on what she started. Wouldn't that be nice?
{professor of sapien studies
The story is an anthropology class essay for undergraduate assignment / thesis - nnotes annotations, citations - professor marking misquotes}
Backstory in footnote form
From San Diego father travelling professor, shy as a child - wanting to connect
Asmr videos, a distillation of intimacy
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'What's it called? ... all the broken souls unite?'
'I think that's a heavy metal band'
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Milk
face wash
pasta
pesto
chicken
soup
kitchen towel
pay driving fine
sell demarco tickets
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1. The idea that the person sitting next to you on the underground yesterday reflexively looking at their phone or reading their book could have been feeling the exact same way - this intense disconnect - and wished someone out there felt the same way, and maybe he or she stumbles across this tomorrow and feels less alone, and wishes they had turned round and smiled or talked to you for a few minutes
1b. Probably unwise to be this sincere on a public website's comment section but
3. The seemingly hokey idea that these connections exist, are waiting to be discovered all around us everyday, but require people to be brave, tenacious, vulnerable, honest and kind with themselves and others. To be prepared and willing to share real things and be shot down and dismissed as pretentious and grandiose
4. Thanks for making this. You can have and do have a massive impact on the people around you and I hope you know it
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Year of unprecedented change again
1. You will discover people like you, the people who feel things as acutely and as much as you; people you always hoped but never dared to dream would exist
2. They will show you a way to be, a way you didn't realise was possible
2b. A lot of them will be younger than you - like a lot younger
3. A way to be genuinely interested in others, caring about others, wanting the best for them and also being able to show it
4. A way to be genuine and authentic in an interaction that inspires authenticity in the other person
5. You will meet people who have been through stuff and learned some lessons you haven't but that would benefit you to learn and they will share what they've learned at it will change the way you think about and interact with the world and look at the world
6. And you begin to realise how much of a difference a kind or honest word at the right time can make, and you start looking for opportunities to speak growth or truth into people, you start getting better at recognising opportunities to connect on a deeper level, and you get better at capitalising on these opportunities
7. seeing the world as precious and mysterious again
8.
9.
10.
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Close enough to lean on
The idea of seeing the flaw in each other and accepting each other anyway that's grace right? that's forgiveness
that's the key to becoming close
sharing trusting
How to be close to God, trust His grace is enough for you
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J C____ creat 700 ?aki vasculitis screen biopsy
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Realisation: by running the donner looper signal separately through the zoom gt effects modules you can add and subtract effects to the loop in real time
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Post rock shoegaze band names
moso sanjurokkei
shameless plug
jim carrey
violent wonders
bonjiri ecstasy
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Healed and forgiven
look where my chains are now
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'why are personality disorder patients so exhausting?'
'It's tiring to love someone who doesn't love themselves.'
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24/11/19: Petting other people's dogs, taking photos of nature, watching old men dance to the fresh prince of bel air
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1 [ short story idea: the internet is helping us find each other // the rare ones, the isolated ones, the hidden ones, peeking out from our respective refuges our little boxes and being incredibly surprised to discover that there are others out there just like them [before the internet existed, you would have never met them, never known they existed now they seem to appear everywhere, in the millions. everywhere you look is a kindred spirit, a fellow admirer, survivor of the same trauma, mutual lover of some sacred unknown song] whereas before we had only books to store and record our deepest parts, and to set adrift across the ocean of time in the hopes it'll find someone, a little preserved, pickled, distillation of ourselves in a bottle // unprecedented age of seeking and actually finding // search hard enough and you can find pretty much anything nowadays // how the internet can make us unspeakably more lonely and also infinitely less alone ] ↩
