Wednesday, February 7, 2007

I don't understand anything

Before I get into how little I understand, does your work have individual szie portions of Honey Nut Cheerios and Rice Krispies. If so, you should mix them. That's my offering. It's not much but...

I had a nonsense argument last night which spanned a lot of things I just don't get and, you know, quelle dommage. I still slept well. And dreamt I ran into John Lennon on a terrace and he was willing to talk to me and first he acted like no, he wasn't dead, but then it turned out he was. It was a trick.

There was an article in New York magazine, which is often a pretty reprehensible magazine, to me, becasue it's so into "style" by means of a lot a lot of money. But this article was about the kids coming up now and the blogging and social networking which has been something I've been noticing I don't understand for the longest time. I thought it was a really great article. The woman who wrote it noted that she used to lock her diary with a physical lock as a way of showing how she felt removed from her interviewees. What a great point. But basically her thesis was that everything's changing. And, also, people aren't going to be humiliated-feeling in the near-future. They're all going to feel like celebrities when they're humiliated and handle their scandal... or something. It's a new world.

Gwazdor and I are going to debate the merits of documenting every detail of your life for the internet.... such as screwing, eating, thinking, accumulation of acquaintances... in this space in the coming days/weeks. I'm still not clear on which side I'm taking but hopefully Gwazdor'll bully me onto one sooner than later.

Then I mentioned the New York article to someone else... who I kinda like... and got really angry because he already knew about it from Gawker. That website is awful. They made fun of this good article, too? Can anybody do anything for God's sake... see if everything's going to be on the internet now... and the internet has the right to publicly scorn anything put publicly on the internet because it's public...

I mean, it was a better article than I could have written about it all I think, and it made a lot of good points. How come anything done by anybody gets trashed on that site? It's kind of sad how nastiness pervades everything. I was reminded by boy-I-like that the site is not God. It's just a funny site. The issue was really less that I think the site is God than that I'm disturbed by how often this same person puts things & people down and how I formed some link-up between his persona and the Gawker website in my head for a minute. Fun to date me, no?

How many things I don't understand am I up to now?

The next one everyone already knew I don't understand but how do you go out with someone... because I completely don't get it? I thought I wanted to, but now I'm not sure, because before you even get to enjoy it, wait: I should say before I even get to enjoy it.... oh fuck it. I just freak out. In short: I want the person to think of me like Marshall or Randolf or Homer or Xena or Kelly thinks or thought of me... but they don't, because they think of me only as they've known me with them... which is like, dumb and insecure... becasue of the sex element.. or whatever other elements... and I can't figure out if I'm more true to myself alone or trying to get them to get me or not bothering trying to get them to get me. Oh hey-- I like the last one actually. So I'll work with that.

XOXOXOX
Alexis

4 comments:

Alexis said...

Oh and also I don't know what to do about eating meat when it's absolutely cruel, wrong, how pigs chickens cows are slaughtered, but are you kidding me? -- there's only about 2 soups at Hale and Hearty that are vegetarian but they taste the worst of all of them. I just really don't think I can do it. So I'm writing a play about killing your own food. Please don't steal my idea.

Eff Gwazdor said...

Well, sounds like you have already had it out with someone about this issue, so maybe you've already worked your way through whatever repressed fucked-up thing motivated your interest in the topic.

I don't know what side you are going to take, but I'm not going to talk about my sex life for the simple reason that I don't have one. It's actually pretty clear to me - you are a playwrite and an actor and therefore you are an exhibitionist, which means you must identify with those fucked-up kids who are obviously some kind of robotic proto-fascists.

I mean, I can't even say I don't like the food if I am sitting in a restaurant.

But then I was thinking about it - I don't think that these kids are really sharing that much. I mean, they model their behavior on reality shows and movies which are both cleaned-up to remove the truely personal. If real sex were like sex in the movies, oh man that would suck. Then, sex isn't actually that private - I mean, there is always at least one other person around. You know what's private? Masturbation. But when you search blogs on technorati for that particular term, I was kind of surprized to get a bunch of stupid fucked-up Christian bullshit about "resisting temptation" (mostly directed towards women) and not surprized to see a bunch of porn sites. But the porn sites are just like reality tv - it's fake, not really intimate. The people aren't sharing anything personal with you. And that's my point - that when you are an exhibitionist it changes your idea of privacy so that you don't really have any privacy at all. This is entirely different from a situation where someone who has drawn a line between what is private and public has something private revealed in public. It's a much more upetting situation. Much more candid, personal, psychedelic and sexy.

I am a person who loves looking into people's windows from my car - about the most intimate thing I've seen is a person picking up a dog... But even that was a pretty intense experience. You can't trick your brain - it know when things are faked, and it knows when you are doing something iffy. It seems like the things you catch people saying to themselves on the subway reveal much more about what is going on in other people's heads than the best drama. Even more than "House."

So, two conclusions.

Kids these days really aren't sharing stuff that is so private - perhaps if they did they would be able to do something amazing - understand each other more, communicate at a deeper level. But no.

The second thing is that these kids are a menace. If they change their behavior so that they act like they are in public all the time it will eliminate the kinds of self-discovery that can only happen in private and create a society of Paris Hiltons. And as a hermit and secret agent man, I think that would be tragic.

Eff Gwazdor said...

Wait, so did I win or lose?

Alexis said...

Eff,

So far you are winning.

That said, This should maybe be called "Won't get therapy. Will talk to Eff Gwazdor."

That said, am I perhaps operating, en general, from a position of open mindedness? Is that perhaps making battles harder to win? I'm tempted to say one picks the side one does, irregardless, based on what justifies how you already feel. You already know this. You said yourself that you like staring into people's windows, like the kid in American Beauty. But a lot less in-high-school.

The problem with this debate is that we agree. The only argument I have against the trend to devalue privacy is that I somewhat value privacy. You're saying the same. We represent fear of losing the old way. Representing anything bothers me. You rightly identify that I pick this topic, get bothered, because I identify a little with exhibitionist side too.

The last sentence of the article I read was something like "now there's just one thing you have to do: pick a side."

Now that's a philosophy I'd like to debate.