AmusedRaccoon

Hi how're you doing tonight? :)

This is becoming a double post, isn't it? I keep a few artists and songs very close to myself and usually forget the rest of the clutter rather quickly. I'm afraid my favourite music will be lower quality or more mainstream than I want it to be, but whatever.

Best way I could organise the music I've currently kept is by artist. Tool is an old companion, as is A Perfect Circle which shares the lead vocalist. I prefer the albums Lateralus and Ænima by the same; they simply have more and superior tracks than the early releases. I believe I've mentioned Brian Eno, but his music I'm just discovering. I found the Blue Öyster Cult in my young adolescence (around the time Aftershock was being conceived) and preferred their early metal to their later almost-pop. Sigur Rós I've had for a good while, too. I listened to them when I was much beneath the idea of real music consumption and appreciation, so understanding the mechanics of what I'd basically assumed was magic is a task I've involved myself in these days. Radiohead is relatively recent. One classical composer I've looked into, and that is Beethoven. I have looked with some obsession, however. I try to fit my tiny brain around the late string quartets in my spare time sometimes. I have looked into anything from Dream Theater to Bjork to animé soundtracks in the past but nothing besides the ones I just mentioned really sits with me.

Video games? This list should be short. The World Ends with You, Braid, Psychonauts, what else. A million little internet indie 'artgames' (I know, redundant terminology) that I found once I discovered Auntie Pixelante. Ever heard from her? My exposure to real consoles and products has been painfully brief. Downloadable computer games comprise most of my conscious videogame consumption.

Movies: I'll ask you to offer your own first. I gave you two half-assed lists.

I thought this was meant to be idle chatter? I don't really mind the time gap.

Besides my lack of talent with composing music, the way I find new music fits yours to a T: maybe this is the only decent way for (semi-)intelligent people. Brian Eno is one pleasant exception; I recently found a random of his songs on Youtube and fell in love with it immediately. Then I went hunting for more and fell in love with all of them too. I looked for his music on my only decent music shop: sold out. Foiled, as I was always destined to be.

In the past years I've taken to getting music based on Wikipedia entries, which of course say nothing more than the relative popularity of the album/band. Basic details -- genre, mode, musical structure. I have the liberty to like it or hate it without bias.

Your forays into basically all media look to be much more intelligent and wide-scoped than mine (currently I can count the artists I've kept music by on a single hand), so I'll just leech off the lists you keep giving. Franny and Zooey is a certainty, as is Watership Down, and I must look at CS Lewis more carefully though a few of his opinions don't sit well with me. I will listen to all that music. Yes. All of it.

Arts, you say? There was some ragged reference to Fine Arts somewhere in the pre-11th subject choices; I have no idea where that went and drowned. Please don't make arts-courses allegations on my school. Decent institutions don't have those. And -- oh good god. I just considered what an arts elective would be like in this country's education system. I think my brain melted a little. I wouldn't know about colleges; maybe they're more liberal; who the hell knows.

(I can say nothing for how long this is getting. It reflects the muddle that is my brain right now. Sorry sorry sorry sorry.)

oh yes -- I love attaching meaning to conventionally meaningless components of music; it's essential for music that actually uses these components for fun and profit. My brain usually has a narrative unconsciously produced of the less melodic music I like: this whooshing sound represents this; this musical phrase here has this specific emotional content; this chaos is, of course, entirely deliberate.

Not to leave you hanging, I'll let go of the guess: I'm Indian by basic ancestry. Where my mind/mannerisms/loyalties/character came from, no one can say.

Bio then chemistry then physics? That is new to me. Until eleventh our science is mandatory and unified, with five chapters each of the three basic branches in the same course. There is no honours/credit within secondary school. Our educational system is frankly boring. There's a choice between two languages (our first and a third language) starting from ninth, and this choice is basically discarded for three major streams; one that makes you an engineer or a doctor, a second that makes you a Chartered Accountant, and a third that makes you a civil servant. Diversions from these three molds are probably impractical and viewed as indecent.

Heh, trust me not to have noticed the distinction between art and writing. Nothing my snobby intellectual mind makes could be described as visceral.

UK is a good guess, but not quite it. Make another try. I think science in your school became advanced earlier than mine: by ninth we'd learned the basics of 1-d motion, most of the fundamental measures (of work, force, electricity, and the rest), basic carbohydrate theory and a general idea of lie processes, but in tenth we advanced barely, if at all, from there. Where were you at that grade? Computer science interests me in a theoretical way because it has so much to do with hard, introspective information processing -- this is literally the single crutch that keeps us dominant as human beings, and it's our only hope for becoming more sustainable dominators in the future (besides being the only thing I can do properly). I don't know how that translates to practical computer programming, however; I will learn basic C++ this year.

At the same time, when art comes along -- screw everything else. Let us be useless and proud of it, you and I, like Oscar Wilde.

I hadn't realised how precise the idea of good art is in comparison to good writing, but it makes sense. An object can be defined and analyzed, but a concept: that lies in a range from infinity to infinity, where anything and everything can be originated, and which follows only the ideas of smoothness and clarity that we impose almost arbitrarily on the thing. I have tried systematically explaining the mechanics of good prose to myself. Tried many times; failed just as many.

I read too few children's books, i'z a pity. There really is nothing in my bookshelf for children besides the Hobbit; I never got around to figuring out Narnia; I had to read so much of other writers' interest in fairy tales before I developed my own interest. Generally though I'll pull up a misshapen list I gave to some community or the other. I include comics because they are excellent at being stories, which is the important thing.

"Anything and everything Dostoevsky, Oscar Wilde, or William Blake (and I haven't even read that last one). The Children's Book, AS Byatt. I like what I've read of Tolstoy. The Plague by Camus. Do I even need to put Shakespeare? Alan Moore's comics, Neil Gaiman's comic. The Discworld Series. 1984, Animal Farm, Faust (Goethe). Arthur Clarke's stories, the Foundation series. Tolkien's epics. Homer's epics. Oh, and Scott Pilgrim."

Overqualification? I sound too confident for my own good. I fear -- expect, really -- that I'll do the same under the pressure of an engineering course. The exact same. It's quite a coincidence. Which field are you studying in, anyway?

I haven't even started calculus yet, I'm in first year. (Or eleventh grade, whichever.) As early as this we're still hearkening to the wonders of vectors and set theory and, and atomic structure. The Bohr model is fun, even if it's so damn restrictive.

Writing has the strongest interest for me, as you may have guessed. I still understand how art would be play for you under all circumstances. My own attempts at it are pitifully juvenile, but even they feel borderline amazing. The contour of curves and the play of shadows and especially the media, washes and charcoal and brushes and pastels -- possibilities! I apologize for the incoherence. You must have much more worthy ways of loving art than I could possibly have.

Anyway, I only like writing the most because I can do the most interesting things with it (out of all other arts), on account of having done it so long. I could call it a labour, but it's more like flight. Joy with the added joy of exertion.

Training over self-education is a sensible idea. I want to evade it as far as I can; the only things I have yet learned from others about writing are the basic modes that I could begin with, and those I forgot quickly. Influences by long-dead authors don't count. Maybe they do. I just want to demonstrate that the human imagination is powerful enough to create a really decent basis of writing by itself, isolated from institutions.

Oh damn. Is this conversation going to escalate to long replies? My content/length ratio would probably be worse than yours.

Answers? Oh no. I'm decently awake right now for the only day in the week, on account of nobody being shameless enough to call the poor children to school on a Sunday. If my favourite colour can't be black it'll have to the one soon to appear in my sig. I, like, study maths and the hard sciences at high school right now, but something as banal as my future is not worth mentioning. Mostly I write. I think you're doing it right?

You mention the two sticking-points about growing up we all think of: art study and getting a job. I should like both, but... nah. If I even get through the murderous Physics exams of a few years hence, I'll probably be overqualified in the places I don't care that much about anyway.

I have no pets. I do want a cat. That would be nice.

I once held a conversation with another friend where each reply took up about five of these VMs. Maybe it's better not to repeat the experience.

Now that I've decided I'm officially On this forum, I can do things like talk to people. How is the world treating you? You're about the only fellow with a post on my page for miles around. How is the game? Other conversation starters. You should contribute something.

I will have to be more careful with fics I wrote when I was, what? Thirteen? (I think I was a year younger than Amaren when I started writing about him; yeah, thirteen.) There are decent people like you who think it's the best ever. *hangs head*

Hi! I'm pretty easy to get along with, I guess. xD
Thanks for leaving the first comment on my page.

i'm a raccoon ;)
do i turn you on?

Oh, hi there. Yeah, I remember your review. I was a bit incoherent at the time but I assume you got how much I liked the general thoughtfulness of it.

ROM-hacking, huh? I never quite understood code myself. How did your training exile in the Javascript woods work out?

Don't be too worried about inactivity. I only got back here after quite a few months, and Aftershock's declined. A lot. Thankfully I have all the chapters prepared so I can resume whenever I need to.

Yeah, I happened to see your name pop up in my recent visits list, so I was curious to know if I actually knew you.

Thanks for the compliment, by the way. =D I wish I could say I like your writing too, but I see you haven't posted much yet. ;_;

You're welcome! =D
~Sends da friend invite~

Happy birthday =D
(FILLERFILLERFILLERFILLER)