Ideas, Science, Pain, Ideas, Words, Who's Really Right?, Ideas, and Time

Yeah, so clearly I have a lot of ideas. And just saying, those things aren't in any particular order.

Too many sometimes, it feels like. Although I know that's really a gift, to have so many ideas. It's better than having a disease, or having sorrow, or having depression..or NOT having love, or a home, or food, or...sleep. But when you're in a place where people are constantly trying to show what's better or best about themselves - through their words, their clothes, shoes, faces, lunches, comebacks - there isn't enough time or space to record them all. I began thinking about this - well, really consciously thinking about this - while I was writing my NaNo novel (which I finished by the way, pas the 50,000 word count...did I mention that?): what if there was a way for each person to constantly record ideas so that they were never lost? A sort of net that catches them before they leave, and a Pandora's box to keep them stored until they could be released? (And this time, hopefully, most of the things would be positive.)

I try to write things down. Lately I've come to making sloppy recordings on my iPhone voice memos of spontaneous said-in-the-shower slam poetry, or of conversations between character slivers (usually with accents, after I've just finished watching a movie set in Britain), or even songs (like, suckish ones that are either completely pointless unless I explain it or really absolutely meaningless). But the poems are NEVER as good as they were in the shower, when the words were newly born. And sometimes your hand just can't MOVE fast enough to write them down.

Over the last week, as my shoulder pain has been unbearable and overtaking and frustrating, I've been watching the Harry Potter movies before I go to sleep. Since I know the layout of every scene and the motive of every character at this point, so the events of the story are no longer of central concern, I've come to notice a great deal more of symbolism in the story. Not that I could go back and recite to you everything now - but just little images, little gems, stick out, and I get it.

Now, if I could always have a small, portable version of Dumbledore's Pensieve (a device that stores and recount memories) with me, everything would be just right. If I could have some little box that resides beside my brain, picking up the ideas and the words and the pictures, so that they can be preserved there like frozen bananas until I need them...things would be just right. Unfortunately, the thought of having some sort of recording device constantly with us is a little too reminiscent of Orwell's Big Brother, and it's hard to say whether that would or would not be taken advantage of beyond the realm of private, personal endeavors.

Sometimes the world gets so stuck on politics, money, eating right, exercising enough, having enough stuff but not too much, getting good grades, having nice clothes, blah de blah de blah...that it forgets the importance, the value, of pure ideas. Ideas are the stuff of dreams coming true. Ideas are the seeds, and the roots, and the leaves - because they never stop, not really. You can start with one, and then that one sprouts more, and then you have an entire idea TREE, and it's super-duper strong.

I watched a documentary last night with my parents about the 2006 TED conference, where a bunch of people from all over the world got together to share their ideas, their achievements, their songs and their poetry. And out of those ideas were born projects that really help people.

Too often, I think, ideas are squandered for the convenience of time or physical barriers, or because someone just doesn't care enough or value anything enough to stop and look for a moment. Just a moment.

We also watched a short program done by Stephen Hawking on Discovery Channel about time travel. One of the things he said was that wormholes - little holes in the 4th dimension of time - were way too small to travel through, meaning they would have to be enlarged and then would be destroyed by their own radiation. Now here's an idea: what if WE could become smaller?

I know it sounds unrealistic, but plenty of other things do too. In fact, in the TED video, a man demonstrated a screen on which images could be controlled by multiple fingers and hands at once. You could hear overwhelming oooh's and aah's from the audience, but this was a presentation which didn't impress me compared to the others... Why? Because I've used an iPod and have an iPhone, so I do that everyday. What was a new idea then - what seemed so amazing and unthinkable - is just normal now.

That's not even getting into TVs or telephones or microwaves.

So yeah, I'm really interested in science. But I'm also really interested in words. And I'm interested in being something big, something remembered. But most of all, I'm interested in ideas - and ideas are involved in all of those things.

I just don't know which one to choose. I wish I was an inventor, like Violet Baudelaire, and I could come up with clever contraptions for getting things my way. But I can only do that with words and thoughts. I'm not so good with manipulating material things, unfortunately.

Yesterday, I experienced some rather brutal slandering of a piece of writing. I saw the credibility of the slanderer's statements - and I also tried not to dwell on it, seeing as this person was particularly well-known for her brutality. But I could also defend them - I could also say, as an artist, that what I did was perfectly fine, perfectly right, because that's how I meant it to be, in the interest of art.

Yes, one of the ideas which I definitely plan to implement - if only I had the time - is to create real pieces of art with my writing, 3D art so that people understand it's not supposed to be a story for entertainment. It's supposed to be for the appreciation you experience by seeing good art. (Not to say my writing is "good art" - I won't be nearly that precocious - but that's the intent. Everyone needs intentions.) So then I wonder - who's really right? Regarding art, I meant. There have been plenty of famous artists whose work people hated while they were alive. And I don't intend to be like that (once again, precociousness not intended). I'm just saying - in art, there's no right or wrong. I think, when it comes down to it, there's nothing more right than the piece of art itself - and therefore the artist can claim some correctness themselves. Yeah, an adverb can be taken out and a pronoun can be changed to make the piece better - but it wasn't wrong. I don't need to get myself down about it thinking that I'm wrong because someone didn't like it. She was only a kid. She wasn't necessarily totally right.

So here's an idea: a Pandora's Pensieve box to keep and record ideas, so that they aren't lost to a void of lost time and restlessness.

Oh..and first post of 2012!

Circular Conversations

I'm tired of conversations that circle around themselves like a lost Hansel and Gretel with no more bread crumbs.  I find that sometimes, sitting at the living room table, I feel myself transported back to some dusty memory in which the same words twist through the air in similar patterns. The same questions repeating themselves, the same daily actions replaying endlessly like the hands of a clock. And these fill our conversations, infiltrating them at every possible moment.

The circles are inescapable. 

I'm getting tired of it. I'm ready for something that goes ON, beyond those circles, that brings in new shapes and colors and words to create something entirely new, so that we can escape from the infinite loop. 

It's That Time of Year for...Noveling!

It is with much pride and disbelief that I announce (a few days late) the one-year anniversary of you, blog! It seems like it's been so much longer than a year, seeing as the world of words has really always been with me, but since it's only been one year with you, that just means there is so much more time left to spend with you!

There's a lot to catch up on, and so many things I could talk about that center around events. But I think I'd rather focus on ideas, because my appreciation for ideas pretty much surpasses that of anything else.

It's November. It's NaNoWriMo time. I knew, without a doubt, that I would participate in it again this year, and had been mulling over my idea for a couple of months; because this time, I am determined to actually finish a novel, something I did not accomplish last year. That was due to the fact that the idea I came up with was so complex and intriguing that I couldn't limit it to only one plot thread. NaNo became more of a novel-starter rather than something that actually made me finish one. Anyway, back to this year - I came up with an idea while at the zoo in Shanghai, China this summer. I made extensive character outlines, plot outlines, and developed a theme. I couldn't wait to start writing, and especially to see where my characters took me.

Yet on November 1st - the morning of which I forced myself to pull away from my computer and not start on my novel so that I could focus on my English and Biology Honors exam that day (!) - I walked out of my first exam at 12:00 a.m. and an entirely different idea hit me. I walked out of the doors to the gym, and saw the late morning sunlight streaming in through the windows, and I saw dust floating in it, and I heard the silence of an empty hallway, and I felt the release of all those thoughts and facts I'd just dealt with on the test from my brain. And I wondered...what if dust could take you to another time? Dust is, after all, the remains of something that existed in the past.

More later. I'll provide you with a full description. Right now, my novel is calling out to me, tugging at my heart and my fingers and my mind, but I've got to work on my English essay. Because I, unlike Ella (the main character) cannot let dust take me back in time. I have to deal with the present, where every second something changes, and if you don't grab onto that second with all your passion, it could be lost.