Handicapped By Fractal Recording
This is an evolving post...
something about how obsessed i get with recording each detail of a creative/writing/journaling process. The way in which it can be crippling and demoralizing either while in one of those loops, or when thinking about some future endeavor that will likely bring about such a loop (SEE idea for how to add finished/draft bits to articles last part about updates).
It must have something to do with mortality as well as approval-seeking. I think I have some idea that all these thought processes are mildly impressive or at least autobiographical and if I dropped dead right now one could read them and learn that about me. (as if it would matter then).
it also just feels fun - as a type of art form on its own. it’s an interesting comment on the fractal nature of ideas and of self and it is deliciously paradoxical to read a bunch of sentences that hang on and reference each other (as well as reference this general idea itself which is key to the full self-referential spiral. I’ve commented on this exact thing before (duh duh) and I think maybe once entertained the idea of nicknaming
it so I could just plop that nickname
down (or a hyperlink to a repository of that idea’s evolution!) in the middle of one of these streams and capture the whole thing in a single tag like that.)
It occurs to me now that there’s a meta-connection between this creative-process looping and the way the brain creates memories and thoughts. (i’m-not-a-neuroscientist-caveat-ahead) By retracing the same paths in our brains we lay down (and rewrite) memories and create mental concepts and constructs. Each time we retread the path we enhance the chances of those paths solidifying and becoming permanent ideas or memories (shit, isn’t everything a memory?) as well as change them bit by bit.
As i loop through this process (yet again) in writing, in art objects I’m essentially doing - in the external world - what my brain would be doing in its own substrate. Including the change-by-retreading detail; case in point: I don’t believe I’ve ever had the this-conceptual-loop-is-like-brain-memory-creation
idea before today, but by travelling this path for the millionth time today, steeped in whatever context I’m currently steeped in, I’ve created a branch off the path that may or may not become a permanent road.
This is how ideas are created.