My Red and Yours — mnchrm vol. xxxiv

Hello friends —
I'm a day late on this! Whoops! Hope I didn't goof up your schedule; don't fret, dear friends, I didn't forget any of you.

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I finished 'Meander, Spiral, Explode', which overall I would say was less revolutionary than I wanted it to be, but like all great writing offered a new perspective I probably wouldn't have synthesized on my own. One of the points Ms. Alison made that I found most interesting was the focus on the double-edged nature of structure.

In one sense, there's structure for the writer, to help organize and focus the act of writing. Then, by extension, there's structure for the reader, something to hold onto, to make the act of reading more accessible, give the reader a reference point.

There's a focus in writing on writing for the sake of writing. Writing as an exercise for the writer, reader or not. Of course, I think there's something seductive there, and use writing for myself as a means of inquiry into my own ideas as well as to convey emotion, story, etc. However, sometimes I see this taken to the far edge, that writing for writing sake is the only sort of writing that has value; reader be damned! 

I don't think that's necessarily such a fringe position. Of course, you don't want to be writing with such a specific view of your reader in mind to shape the work; that's just advertising. It's difficult for me to totally forgo the reader, though. To me, reading and writing are like two sides of the same coin. In a work without an intended audience, the writer becomes the reader, in some sense. I've got a lot of thoughts on this.

Writing is, to me, the act of recording something either physically or digitally with the ability to be read / recalled at a later date. I can't think of a reason to record something as writing does without implying the ability to read it, otherwise that's just thinking. 

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This line of inquiry got me thinking more about what the act of reading is like for most people. In a perfectly scientifically accurate Twitter poll, I asked whether or not while reading, you "heard" the words in your head. The answers surprised me! 

This may be something you've never considered. I place it alongside those experiences that are so close to the way we interact with the world, that the alternative perspective isn't really imaginable to us. Like, I can't conceive of what non-existence is like, given that it's only possible for me to experience existence. 

Most of you agreed with me, that you "heard" words while reading, though there were more of you than I expected to answer no. Here's the interesting part to me: of those who answered yes, many of you said the voice was not your own. Spooky! Anecdotally, many of those who said so are British. Perhaps this is a cultural thing? Either way, it always fascinates me how differently our brains perceive the world.

I love learning about these sorts of alternative perspectives I can't possibly imagine on my own.

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I read an interesting article today from Alex Madrigal in The Atlantic on how smartphone cameras are processing photos, especially selfies, in a different, more aesthetically focused way that many view as unreal. This is certainly true. Digital cameras, especially smartphone cameras which rely more on processing than on the limited hardware capabilities, change and refine their algorithms all the time, resulting in different photos.

However, it seems like a fallacy to expect "reality" out of your photographs. 

I don't at all doubt the iPhone's default selfie camera is processing in a way to smooth skin, remove "imperfections" etc. That's definitely weird. The specific sort of skin processing discussed in the article definitely makes me feel uncomfortable, but I think the premise is a little flawed. 

In a minor nit-pick, the example photos pulled from an "Unbox Therapy" video seem to me to be slightly differently framed and posed, changing ever-so-slightly the angle his head is at and camera in relation to his chin, which I would definitely expect to have an effect on the overall image.

Even more-so, I just don't expect photos to be a representation of reality. To me, photography is not about trying to perfectly capture something; it's about making an image to convey something understandable and hopefully empathetic to others. 

For one, as mentioned in the reading example, there's no objective view of our own reality. Our senses work differently, our brains process differently, etc etc ad infinitum; my red might not be your red. 

It's also a misunderstanding to think the camera sees what you do. For one, a lens is not an eye. You can expand or shrink the field of view in a way that's unrealistic to vision. And the sensor or film is not the same as our perception. As Alexis touches on in the article, our eyes and brains are capable of perceiving (or really, synthesizing) a much wider depth of field (how much is in focus), dynamic range (the difference between the brightest and darkest points of an image) and various other values of a given scene than any photographic medium. 

Even just in camera operation, from the very beginning, the process is fundamentally different than vision. When you press the shutter on a camera, while looking through a viewfinder, everything goes dark for a moment as the light is routed to the imaging plane and out of view. Inherently, the photo is not the moment you see; it's the one you don't. And never can! The moment of taking a photo is a moment of willfully sacrificing the view we have for the camera's view in the future.

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I'm not much of a concert-goer. I get somewhat overwhelmed in crowds, generally uncomfortable in the moment even if I like the artist. So it's somewhat uncharacteristic of me to have gone to a handful of them over the past month.

Just this weekend I went to see one of my favorite bands, SUNN O))). If you're unfamiliar, Sunn is what you would consider a drone band, as in, droning. The main act consists of two guys, Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson, who wear robes like Gregorian monks and play electric guitar as distorted, slowly, and loud as they can. They are known for potentially being among the loudest shows you can attend.

They have been on the top of my "to see" list for a long time, so when I saw they were playing a church (perfect venue for their act) in Chicago, I knew I would be there. 

It's certainly not for everyone. I would say their music is an acquired taste, like doom metal but even slower. It's funny then, that their concert is perhaps the most accessible act I've ever been to. 

The church is lit up, inside and out. 10 minutes before they were set to go on, they began fogging the interior of the church heavily, another staple for their performances. Different lights corresponded to different fog machines, creating a swirling primordial soup of colors. The lights went down, they walked up, robes on, guitars in hand. Everything collapsed into this moment of silence.

Then, the first guitar chord rings out, from both of them in harmony. I swear, I felt it before I truly heard it. It shook my whole body. This is a concert a deaf person could easily enjoy. Afterwards, I described it as "visceral", which I still think rings true. 

In that moment, when the first chord begins, there is such an immediate level of understanding unlike anything I've seen in art before, regardless of the medium. I think different mediums have different base layers of accessibility, what the barrier to entry is, the distance from you to full immersion. Music seems to have one of the lowest, and of that, Sunn has to be near the top. 

There is an immediate understanding, especially live, exactly what they mean, what they are trying to accomplish, and whether or not that works for you.

In writing, I've been trying to find ways to minimize that as much as possible. There's a few easy steps, like eliminating exposition for more sensory actions, but as I wrote last week, that's a somewhat perilous journey. Even beyond that, I think reducing down to sensory descriptions in writing lends itself to a sort of filmification of storytelling that stands at odds with the writing I want to do. 

It's not very literary. A lot of the novels I read, especially from the West, feel like the author was thinking about what a great HBO miniseries their story would make as much as they're thinking about writing the book itself. Just as important as accessibility to me, is the ability to utilize the medium you're working with, and that means writing in a way that only the novel can support.

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Thanks for your time again, everyone. As always, if you have a comment or want to discuss what I've written, just hit reply and let's talk about it. 

Have a good week!

Your faithful commander,
— I

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