Sep 12 24
Yesterday I woke up at noon and continued casting from bed. I completely understand the Tim and Eric process and their impulses. Most of the submissions are just unremarkable actors. They seem like theyre pretending to be actors, saying lines in imitation of the way that actors do on screen. Sometimes it seems like they’re drawing from the incorrect emotional affects, or they’re not committing fully to them, or otherwise just aren’t Good. These people are a bit depressing. More compelling are the utterly strange people with indeterminate accents who have very strange instincts, vocal performances, physicality, and looks. Theyre so much more interesting by dint of being weird. It makes sense that Tim and Eric, especially living in LA, having just gotten out of film school, would try to utilize this resource. I’m trying to find a middle ground where someone is interesting and strange, but is in on the joke. I don’t want to try to cast someone ironically, or attempt to put up a freak to gawk at. Others have also suggested I look for referrals, or otherwise utilize my network of friends and acquaintances to find actors. This is probably what I should be doing in general, but I already fear what its like to tell my friends ‘no,’ and feel I would be more successful in maintaining an authoritarian disposition if I didn’t know the actors personally. Still, most of the actors I like are part of a union, and I don’t have the resources to make this a union shoot. I will be thinking about that for the future, as it seems to unlock a fair amount of skilled labor at the substantial sacrifice of some flexibility in hiring my friends or random people on the cheap to do various things on set. Also I think shooting films approved by the union is the big boy Real Cinema way to do it and that might make me feel good.
After the casting I went to my coworker’s event which was an art show thing and a fundraiser for a charity that provides free diapers which she’s involved with. More talent show type vibes, but pleasant enough. Not much to add about that, nor about my day today which I spent in my practice space trying to become good at singing and so on.
I do want to clarify that yesterday I brought up Matt (“quasimatt”) and his blog and how people on Twitter were angry about it but didn’t finish the thought I had which led me to bring it up
The thing I was trying to say was that I think he got his idea originally from a conversation we had when I had first started writing the diary. Therefore I take each insult to Matt’s blog as also applying to me, its progenitor. Additionally whenever anyone talks to me about this diary they like to bring up the extremely hated Crumpstack. I have no thoughts on the Crumpstack. I only read the really long one about how Dimes Square is fascist or whatever and I had a strong reaction to it, but I quickly let that dissipate and returned to blissfully Not Caring about it. I’ve read a handful of the introductions to his reports but I don’t pay for it so I haven’t read any article in its entirety. I’ve met Crumps a few times and he’s perfectly nice to me. I enjoy talking to him. I’m not particularly interested in the social conditions of NY artist types, despite being one myself, but it was obvious that someone was going to take it upon themselves to write the blog he’s writing, and it was always going to be someone with his politics, style, interests, disposition, family background, and so on. My friend Filipe1 compared the diary to his project directly, but noted that it was much more ambivalent about its (my) relationship to the social structure of NYC. Two days ago I saw my friend Nishan and he said something very similar. We also spoke about how we figured we would find ourselves, after moving to an urban area, getting involved in interesting and rarefied cultural production, find ourselves in a Balzac novel, or Paris in the 1920s, maybe Weimar Germany. Instead we see a bunch of stupid bullshit that is Too Online and is just infantile trolling or alcoholic slop.
I was at the project space I’ve become a project manager at, and my coworker and I were talking about the events that had transpired there and she described her perfunctory distaste for The Scene. I never really know how to talk about this thing, because I believe if such a thing exists it should just be merely ignored. She also spoke of her displeasure with autofiction, and I had to reveal the diary. I echoed her feelings about much of the literary style in downtown new york, specifically the plain confessional style about naughtiness which amounts to doing ketamine at the same rich kid bars you’ve been going to since moving here from Sarah Lawrence, but I like autofiction proper as a style. I did talk about my divorce from my mutually drug addicted wife, and I think those kind of details prop up my diary project as having at least a little life to it.
I’m trying to take my role as a person seriously, and to do what I can to make something better for people. I want to use the position I have at the event space to do so. I think part of that is to fully ignore all of the distractions which are pretenders to something Good and Interesting. I have mixed results in the ignoring. I also want to just make and make and make and see what happens. I like to make stuff.
Attempting to quickly cut down the applicants that have asked to audition. I’m trying to take every applicant into serious consideration. I’ve only ever been on the other side of this (not for acting, but in general) and it’s a bit revelatory. I feel bad for every person I throw in the ‘no’ column, but almost everyone will be rejected. Throwing out all the women (not sure why they applied for a male role) and everyone in Los Angeles (not sure why they applied for a two day shoot in NYC) was easy enough, but now I have to go through people’s acting reels. This is a very disturbing activity. I just now saw someone who had a scene of him playing a necrophiliac licking a woman playing a corpse segue directly into him doing some sort of upbeat modern interpretative dance.
Later, I am at work. My cousin tattled on me, as he has tattled on me before. The last time he tattled on me it was because he had seen something on my instagram that alarmed him. I don’t know what it was. I used to make fucked up posts on instagram and maybe I did something too edgy. Doesn’t matter. He told my sister that he had found my secret instagram and upon inspection, she found that it was my normal, public instagram that she already was aware of and followed. Today, I guess he texted my mom that he had seen something alarming on my blog2. I can’t be sure what he saw, but I can imagine there are many alarming things that I have written. My mom reached out and admittedly said that he maybe was being reactive, and apparently hadn’t read it. It makes me feel icky to imagime what my parents would think if they even casually perused the diary/blog. Its a definite possibility that I can’t discount, especially after I publish in less than a week. The more people react negatively to the diary the more I want to do it. Most people react neutrally or positively, at least to my face, but the few times people have had a problem with it its clarified that I have a preternatural impulse to write for no reason at all, and a formerly friendly music video director and my cousin who recently was involved in the largest lawsuit3 of history being unable to see the purity of my vision only makes it that much more pristine.
It’s been taking a very long time to finish the post, and more things keep coming up. I’ve been at work at two different weddings these two days and more and more stuff kept keeping me from finishing. Earlier today I did end up calling my mom because I didn’t want her to be worried. I have put my mother through much anxiety in my life, which I feel quite guilty about. I told her that I had been depressed and have been having a bad end of summer, but I didn’t get into any details. I basically just affirmed that I am ultimately fine and have a robust network of support and have learned personal tools from years and years of therapeutic and non-therapeutic interventions. In fact, I know that I sometimes write about how depression has become less pressing of a weight on my soul when it occurs. I’m striving also to limit my use of the word ‘depression.’ It doesn’t apply to times when I am merely sad or upset, especially when it is because of a time-bound event which occurred.
I can’t now go back and correct the record. She told me that my cousin said that I was talking about being depressed. I’m a bit confused why he wouldn’t reach out to me about this, but I can see why he thought my mother should be alerted. I feel foolish about the diary. I went briefly on Twitter and saw that a lot of people were criticizing this guy who runs his own little diary style blog off of his website. A hamburger restaurant said that his “writing was a cancer from which New York would never recover.” I feel a little jealous. I don’t know if anyone has had as strong a reaction to my writing as that ever. People were irritated with his ironic and direct tone, his reportage focused on minor internet personalities, the grating of self conscious pursuit of ‘clout’ plainly stated. Its all very silly, but made me self conscious of the diary. What would Twitter say about me if they saw all my furious writing about my little life and my petty neuroses. I guess it will be at least a little more exposed to the public in four days when the excerpts are published.
I also know that the diary is not what it could be, and that frustrates me. A million phenomena teeming with the lifelike logic of God’s world slip by my fingers every day, with barely a remark from me. The other day someone tried to convince me that surgeons in Berlin tried to convince her to get an unnecessary appendectomy, and suggested that there was a local conspiracy to remove as many appendices as possible which had been ongoing since the 80³’s. What a strange thing to hear! There is so much to say about the nature of urban legends, the bias created by anecdotes, the differences in medical and insurance systems, the appendix as an organ, the situation regarding truth value, belief, credulity. In fact perhaps each moment is filled to the bursting with an uncountable number of these points which spin out rhizomatically throughout the rest of the possible things I could write. Unfortunately that was many days ago, and I scarcely remember enough even to mention it just now. Perhaps the big problem I have is that I just can’t devote enough time to the diary to make it perfect. I am too insistent on other pursuits, not to mention I must expend labor to have an income.
Genevieve tells me that I must try to do one thing at a time. It’s good advice, and when I follow it I feel more sane as well as more productive. Genevieve is very supportive of the diary, despite the fact that it must be embarrassing to have me put my personal thoughts so accessibly out there. She is extremely supporting of all of the things I want to do, no matter how stupid. Her blind trust in the constantly changing interests and passions I have has been a godsend. I still often feel confused and torn in many directions, but the fact that Genevieve not only tolerates this, but takes it seriously has been a complete gift. I just saw her, she came to the hotel because she is going to meet friends nearby. I sat down with her and then skittishly ran away because I thought the owner was in front of us. I figured I couldn’t be sweet on a woman in front of the owner. Surely love is not allowed anywhere I am employed.
3
This is a bit of guesswork on my part, as her claims rested on the coincidence that the appendectomy was invented in Berlin, which I just now found out not to be true. In fact the first surgical removal of an appendix was performed in England in the 18th century. What was invented in Berlin was the laparoscopic appendectomy wherein much smaller incisions are used than was necessary before the adoption of cameras which could be snaked via fiber optic cables into the abdomen.
Excerpts of the diary have been published in Hobart. With the exception of a smattering of social media likes the consequences have been quite negative. I am in a bit of a predicament with this, because by describing the negative consequences I unfortunately4 run the risk of furthering them. I will do my best to talk around the issue in such a way as to not make it worse. There was someone who was mentioned in the diary who has become very upset about it. They are upset about the fact that they are mentioned despite the fact that they are absolutely unidentifiable. I hope also from this small bit of information you (the reader) also would not be able to know anything about who or what I’m speaking about. I make explicit this fact in the chance that the person in question reads this post and continues to be angry.
It is clear to me, due to the socially mild excerpts from the actual published piece, as well as the things they chose to say to me and to Genevieve that they are angry about the post they were first described in. This is fair- I was mean in that post. I don’t think I’m usually mean, but something about writing in the diary makes me negative. I mention this in the Hobart piece- the diary form brings out a lot of my negativity because theres something naturally excising about writing in a diary. I want to get rid of these negative thoughts- put them to paper and then forget about them. That’s exactly what I’m doing right now.
The main immediate consequence from being published is that this person in question began accusing me of harassing her and then demanded I take down the article. Both me and Genevieve have been receiving messages all day from this person as well as a number of recruited confederates who have started sending me messages after I blocked the person. Part of me feels guilty for describing someone negatively in the first place, but I also must mention that this was something I said possibly a year ago at this point. I can see why the fact that now something about it is published would make it seem like I was possibly fixated on this conflict, but in fact the excerpts which ended up in the Hobart piece are from a fairly wide timeframe. I really wish I could just not talk to or about this person ever again, but I feel that I am forced to. How can I not address this as the principle result of publishing the piece?
I also wish I had other things to talk about, but I generally just feel a sense of stress and discomfort in my body. I feel the same way I did when I used to get in trouble at school. It makes me want to put the diary on indefinite hiatus.
I also am cursed with that emotional deficit of white suburban kids where I am unable to handle conflict. I would like to get better at coping with it, but it makes me feel like my world is ending whenever someone is mad at me. I also did react a bit in anger. I tried to call this person when they mentioned their anger, and then had a text exchange. I was upset that they were reaching out to Genevieve and bothering her, and I felt a righteous sense of frustration. I didn’t say anything mean or hurtful, but I don’t think I was being as strategic or diplomatic as I would have liked. It became quite hard after they had texted me an acerbic paragraph disparaging me with a bellicose furosity. Despite lots of it not applying to me I was already in a bit of a jaundiced mood.
Maybe it’s good that the diary has an antagonist. Perhaps it needed more conflict. This is not exactly the thing I was hoping to write about.
They accused me of using them as a tool to make myself seem more ‘edgy’ and ‘ironic.’ I hope thats not true. They said that I in fact came across childish and pathetic, which I hope is also not true. I don’t strive to be edgy or ironic, especially in the diary. I know that I have a tendency towards irony, and it is a favored rhetorical technique. Nonetheless I strive to not be jaded or miserably detached. Part of what comes across as irony is my sincere belief that the world is very weird and funny, but also I hope, when looked at the right way, beautiful.
I don’t know what to do about this belligerence now that its started. I wish I had never insulted anyone. It’s not a good thing to do. It is not good to make people feel bad. Nonetheless I don’t know what the good, christian thing to do is. Maybe I should have turned the other cheek and taken it down. What does being published really do for me if I am harming someone? Still, this came at a time when I am experimenting with having a backbone, so I fear I would regret backing down because of what is essentially a threat.
I had hoped being published would lessen my feelings of worthlessness, but as a result of what happened I only feel worse. I hope that doesn’t last. I felt too bad to leave the house. More accurately, I let my ill feeling and the heat take away my motivation to leave the house. I hope next week is better. My therapist is returning and I need him to fix me.
I don’t know if September is any better. Nothing horrible has happened but I feel ambiently stressed out. I finally realized I had to block separately on the messages app on my computer. That should really improve things.
Last night I was texted me a picture of Brian’s sculpture which was planned to be installed that night for a show tomorrow. It had broken during transportation. Unfortunate. Brooke asked me if I would be able to possibly help them fix it, which I was happy5 to, though I wasn’t sure how. I offered my general help with the caveat that I don’t have a car, am obviously unfamiliar with the specifics of the project, and don’t know anything.
That night I had a dream that I was living on a ranch and lived in a van and was trying to fix a haunted multimeter. It was giving strange readings in the air, and the liquid crystal screen was morphing shapes into strange non-numbers and patterns.
This morning Brian and Brooke asked me if I could take a look at Brian’s other sculpture, which was not physically damaged, but was not working. Brian makes ornate sculptures out of circuits which also perform tasks. They asked me if I could take a look at a chandelier which had two circuit boards full of LED’s which weren’t working right. I wasn’t sure I could help at all, but I didn’t want to say no. I figured also if I went and had no idea what I was looking at I would just be downtown and go to the library or something. It turns out the primary problem wasn’t particularly complex- two wires had overheated and shorted, which wasn’t too hard to see. I cut out the shorted wires and tested the two malfunctioning circuit boards. They worked, but seemed to heat up the tester power supplies until they got so hot they fried. Clearly there was still some kind of short problem, which caused the wires to melt in the first place. I did all I could do and I can say I helped cut out the time that Brian would have had to use troubleshooting that he needed to repair the other sculpture.
I won’t pretend this was the most entertaining story, but I did have a premonitory dream about it, so maybe it’s important.
I don’t feel good, and its mainly for reasons I can’t even talk about. None of them are very entertaining or interesting. Actually they probably would be if I described them. I feel hamstrung diarywise in a way I never have been before. I fear I need to at least write an additional private diary to work through the emotional knots I have been mainly ignoring.
I’m holding fast to the hope that things will simply improve by dint of the progression of time. I wish I felt relaxed and calm and good and so on, but it might be a little bit until I can find that consistently. I just hope to be working hard enough again that I don’t think anymore. I hate thinking and I have never ever accomplished anything good by doing it. Therefore: why do it at all?
I don’t know if Filipe still reads, but I’ve been wanting to hang out with you, so if you see this reach out. If I don’t hear from you I will assume you didn’t see this message, and I will reach out myself.
This dovetails with the Bad Thing that happened earlier this month which I couldn’t go into detail about. It makes the whole project seem a bit puerile if I can’t go into all details, but the notion of going into every little detail with no regard for reality seems itself even more aesthetically infantile and unfortunate.
He was on the side of the liberal voting machines, fyi
I kind of hate when people call the diary a ‘blog,’ but I can’t justify my distaste for the term, as it is the correct one.
I was willing to, though I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do anything at 11pm that night. Luckily I did not.