Misc. free-writing 11/8/25

    It was so quiet outside that the loudest noise was from my soft boot soles hitting the ground. It was so quiet that I'm now thinking. It's 4:16pm and I'm sitting at my kitchen table for the first time in weeks. When I look out, I can see a streetlamp light up the bottom of a tree, its leaves glowing a bright yellow. There is a darker yellow elsewhere, in the sky, on the ground, because the sun sets earlier now. It is November. And on this Saturday, I thought about an opinion I frequently hear from my schoolmates: that they do not like Chicago---No, more so that, actually, well, they like Chicago but they can't live here, they can't, because, like, momentary pause, eyes glance to the side, a laugh of a kind I never heard until I attended a private arts college, giggle, heheh,  they need their nature. 'I need my nature, my trees.' A catchphrase at this point. A time-marker. Sometimes they moan when they say it. I hear it less frequently as time goes on due to the increased interpersonal separation necessarily experienced when you work your way through those four private years, but I still hear it at least once a semester. That pause... my stomach always churns because I can tell it'll happen, and I hate predicting things non-intuitively. I could throw up.

    To this day, I still cannot tell whether an emphasis should be placed on 'nature' or 'my nature'. They would say the former, I would say the latter. A suburban Californian town that I only say is in California because I have a lot of classmates from California but really has the vibe of a highly-educated Connecticut town (which cannot be the case because so rarely do I have classmates from the Northeast, oh là là!). I mean, really, do I really believe there are more trees there (wherever 'there' is)? Tall trees line my streets up and down, so rarely am I ever out in the sun unless I'm waiting for the bus on one of those bus-waiting roads: if the wait time is long enough to write home about, it's a particular kind of road, pavement à la Devon. Sometimes the grass is shit but sometimes it's not and sometimes people grow butterfly gardens and sunflowers in their front yard, even in front of apartment buildings. Does everyone coincidentally live by a forest preserve? As in, these people cannot be rural mountaineers because they're graduating from a high school class of over 200 students. I graduated in a class of over 500, but I didn't live by a forest preserve, I lived by a prairie preserve that was nothing to write home about because the whole area was a wetland and so the difference didn't feel particularly strong. Well, my part of town at least. Or, because any undeveloped land was a natural prairie anyways, just without the designation of being 'protected.' FOR SALE! Call 847 something something. No trees though, get that. More pavement than Chicago all the way 30 miles out. All the way 30 miles out where you still find undeveloped land that has yet to be twisted and thrown up on by suburban developers. But I stop myself short here, because the architectural style I was about to criticize stopped existing in the 90's, and so I guess no one would be throwing up on the land because it was 2020 something and developers had their bad-architecture eyes elsewhere. More than 30 miles out now, beyond the prairie, enter the farm, here's the vision: mega town homes with front doors and garages so far apart they have nothing to do with each other, all so that you can forget your neighbor exists. Not like I like my neighbor, I've started stomping on the floor when he laughs too loudly. I say mega because they're huge looking and take up a lot of space, but the amount of square footage leaves a sour taste in your mouth. You realize it's not so large after all, it's just box-like, it just looks large. It's kind of fat with a swollen head, and it's kind of ugly when you think about it, when you see the aesthetic clash between the U2-listening generation's window placements and the plastic-baby box design. Goo goo ga ga. I can fit your family in a bungalow, motherfucker.

    I grew up by a forest preserve, there's pictures of me there to prove it. I have memories too. I was too scared to walk across a log to cross a stream. My defense at the time was that I was 4. My real defense is that I'm not a mountaineer, what do you people expect from me? I was so over it, I just wanted someone to take me to the Broadview Public Library. I mention that one because it was so small and therefore it's funny. I really did like it, though. The one time I became a mountaineer, at Starved Rock, because of course I went to Starved Rock, I watched my brother get stung by a wasp, which seemed like it hurt, and I thought about when I watched my brother have his first allergic reaction to tree nuts, but instead of throwing a side-eye and simply wishing to move on and get tucked into bed, I felt a bit of fear because I knew it could happen to me too, and I knew that someone was allergic to bees in the family, or maybe my mom was the one, just mildly allergic, I don't know, there was a beekeeper somewhere in the family. I've never been stung yet so I currently hate bees because I cannot be certain one won't kill me and god I never go to the doctor so I'd probably just lay down and die right there on the pavement: train station platform pavement, there are still trees around us, do not worry. The photos feature me standing and my brother striking some sort of pose. In another, my dad is carrying me over a stream. Bingo. That's the memory. Not that it matters, I mix up the photos from Starved Rock and the ones from the forest preserve because in every photo of me outside, I'm wearing some baseball hat with some red t-shirt and shorts and slip-on hand-me-down shoes, and I remember each and every one of these garments because they were all my favorite, but I can't differentiate them temporally because all I ever wore was a red t-shirt and a baseball hat and slip-on shoes. I was always concerned about how worn down the slip-on shoes got, because the sole of those sorts of shoes would separate easily, and you know, Razor scooters, as well as the fact that I would stop on my bike using my feet because I guess kid bikes don't have the same brakes as adult ones. Or maybe I just did that. I can't remember. Kill all nostalgia. Kill all nostalgia. End my suffering. Until 2022, Starved Rock was the farthest west I had ever gone. In 2022 I went to Minneapolis to visit a college. I learned that I became particularly overwhelmed at events, I was learning what events were, and so I was already entering a layer of hell after the college-tour and the whatever else admissions event that was going on. I remember almost everyone was from Minnesota. It was cute to be from Chicago. The school was too small, so I didn't end up attending. If I did, they would have given me a free Macbook. Maybe I'm scared of getting doted on.

    I will not talk about the Mall of America because I don't think anyone wants me to talk about the Mall of America and I only spent 10 minutes inside of there. Our hotel was by the Mall of America because it was the cheapest, and we drove anyways. I only say that to explain... What, the IHOP? That was a good IHOP. I don't remember any other IHOP, though. Never again will I sit in a car on the way to Minneapolis. I'll explain: I went to the art museum the day after the college event, but I slept with my mind buzzing and my stomach full of really good thai food from a place that was actually really modern so it was kind of fancy in a claiming-something-is-posh way but also in a Minneapolis way so it was fine and it tasted good. Actually I don't know when I went to the museum. The point is that I was very tired and hadn't yet recovered from the event being an event, and at a certain point I still had very much to see inside of the museum. I felt my legs crumbling, each step as if digging through mud. I had never felt that before. It's like going out without breakfast, refusing to eat lunch, and you're going out to some place like Wicker Park without even buying anything (and I allude towards Wicker Park negatively because it's so popular and I'm so insufferable so I can't enjoy it but, god, sometimes you just enter a store there and immediately remember why it's so popular in the first place: we are all a part of a mass human framework), but you have to walk fast to the train because the next one is in 20 minutes for some reason. Genuinely some reason. I will not criticize the CTA. I am talking about a time after they fixed the blue line tracks. Oh, there it is, the sound of crying. You don't understand who was at fault. It was IDOT. IT WAS IDOT. I'm crazy, and everyone else has their ears stuffed with cotton. And as you turn the corner and decide 'I will start jogging' you suddenly can't. And you get that realization of, oh, yes, perhaps we need to eat. Have you ever tried running into Union Station from Clinton? You cannot. You also haven't. Blue line this and that. Fuck, those Clinton stairs are brutal. Am, I, right? Ha, ha. Airline food. I kind of loved the airline food I ate. The second time it was kind of shit but they had problems heating them up so maybe that's why. Both times it was the United Airlines beef lasagna. I actually don't like meat in lasagna. No, not kind of, I really loved it.

    Turn the plane around, we are facing the wrong direction, we must get back to Minneapolis. Well, not on the plane, or, I guess you can fly to Minneapolis, but why would you? Land in the museum, exit, legs are jelly, you must continue on, for the sake of art, for the sake of art. A suffering falls upon you in a manner your 18 year old self hasn't yet felt because you are 18 years old. A throat that is kind of sore... hmmmnn... Hours later, sick in the car, sick in an overwhelmed way not in a nausea car-sick way: the flu if it wasn't a virus but instead was a piece of existentialist literature. Now I remembered: the museum was after the college event, then I ate the thai food, then I woke up and headed out onto the highway. That's why I slept so badly. Knew what was ahead: Wisconsin. I am shivering just thinking about the billboards and Culver's signs flashing before my feverish, non-fever-having eyes. I'd get sent home sick as a child even without a fever because I was a truth-teller and the nurse remembered me as a sick child who wouldn't have a fever until many days later. Hmm... I shall not think about it... 

The Repeating Anime Image

 Say if one were to incorporate anime, visually or stylistically, into a traditional printmaking image, e.g. in an etching or lithograph.

Immediately the conceptual critique starts with pointing out juxtapositions and the sort: digital-based image on physical medium, unserious image in a serious medium, etc. 

I am more curious as to what actually occurs in presenting this hypothetical print.

example: presenting the printed image (the edition) in a grid layout.

There is then a similarity, rather than a difference, that occurs: a resemblance between the internet's format for displaying images, particularly when it comes to anime, e.g. google images, image-gallery websites like Pinterest, web or application windows, etc. 

Yandex image search

sidenote: "image-gallery"

Contrast: if the same presentation were to be done with a famous fine-art painting.

The resemblance here sources more from a difference: we think about reproducing art as consumable products, of the gift shop in a museum, etc., things that are generally deemed "bad" or unlike the "proper" purpose of art.

The difference happens because an individualistic image is reproduced and displayed with its copies.

Each print or image is now a "fake" because "there shouldn't be" multiple of them.

Another option: if the same presentation were to be done with an original drawing, a typical printmaking image.

This just appears as a print qua multiples. When we see a print, we know there are (or there "should be") multiples. If we saw the entire edition laid out, this just reaffirms the same fact.

A source of tension here, in a manner like the reproduced painting example, would have to stem from thinking an image shouldn't exist as a multiple at all, e.g. someone who thinks lowly of printmaking.

I am not really interested in this pathway of accepted or not-accepted art mediums, but it does exist.

Also, more things happen in these acts, obviously. I am just sticking to what I find to be either the main one, or the most initial (perhaps simplest?) one.

No difference occurs in the first example; surface-level, it is because anime images "should" be displayed like that, or we expect them to be. The reason for this, which would be a truer reason for the lack of difference, is because of the anime style. It's not individualistic, it's a style, meant to be reused and reproduced as if a formula. The anime face has a structure so solid and self-referential, it operates like a rule we don't realize as one (I emphasize "like" because I do not want to say that it is a literal rule, or even a delusional convention). It's as if there are "anime physics", a fully functional world of its own; compare to the treatment of the internet as opposing real-life, in the terms online vs. "irl".

...and so on.

In a simple way, it is because anime is not individualistic.

Perhaps this is what people focus on when they have an aversion to anime in art, usually presenting as a worry that a style traps everything into a mass-producing formula. While the lack of individualism is true, it doesn't really occur as a negative when engaging in anime-things. For instance, on the flip side, this style produces individual characters, and I do not mean literal characters in media. I am talking about using the internet as a child circa 2010's, I am talking about "otaku culture" spaces (which is actually a really good example for abstract anime).

I am talking about indie music ("doujin music") that isn't anime music, i.e. not an anime opening or theme song, but always has something to do with anime in a more general way: the usage of anime drawings for its visuals, sometimes singers present as an anime character instead of showing their face, etc.

Taishi - The Personalizer

For better or for worse, this has been the internet I've been algorithmically granted since day one.

What I mean to say is that within anime, within the rules of the anime, some sort of visual-based individualism is created (bad phrasing, I do not know what to call it). In fact, such personality and character is created by these very tropes/rules: to those who understand, we know what sharp, upturned eyes mean as opposed to round, droopy ones.

Fujibayashi twins (Clannad) + Kagami twins (Lucky Star)

What of this combination of individualism and sameness? How does this differ than, say, placing a judgement/assumption on someone in real life based on their appearance (and being correct)? Perhaps in that the latter isn't expected to be true. By this I mean, it isn't as if in anime a character is guaranteed to follow a trope, same way no one in real life is guaranteed to follow their respective stereotype. But in anime, in its fiction, are there implications for following/breaking a trope? Is there a realness beneath the trope-surface? Is the care in our act of judging or realizing one's character placed elsewhere?

On the example of using the internet as a child, of typing in 'cool anime girl' into google images: a care is placed on the visual aesthetic, a product of understood trope and "rules", a product that is real/true within the context of fiction.

'cool anime girl' google images w/ date filter

Compare to being enthralled by the coolness of a real person, of someone in a similarly unreachable role, for instance, like a celebrity (idol). There is an urge to say "but there's a real person there, there's more to them than that!" based on the truth of the personal, based on an understanding of the delusion of all conventions and rules needed to elevate them so such a status of 'celebrity.' 

A fictional character's unreachable status is the truth; so is it that such an indulgent care and focus on aesthetic-based characteristics is okay, as it aligns with what is true (aligns with the operation of anime)?  

I find a strangeness located in the fact that such a deeply felt understanding of 'character' or 'personality' is  realized from a character's aesthetic tropes (as tropes/stereotypes are surface-level), e.g. the deeply personal commitment and love idol-game players have towards their favorite characters (there is no derogatory tone here, I mean the same love a normal, "normie", person holds for their favorite character of The Office). Is this act inherently aware of its own operation, i.e. the necessity of the personal/subjective in connecting with fiction, in reading "truths" in fiction, etc.?

Compare "knowing" a person with knowing a fictional character. The urge: 'can we truly know a person?' and etc. Can we truly know a character? Perhaps not as a created artform of its author, but as a character? Yes. There is nothing real beneath our forever surface-level understanding and judgement.

Perhaps we are solely dealing with the surface, with the fantasy of fiction, and therefore such equally surface-level actions (judgement, assumption, idolizing) become true or work.

In other words: The subjective surface is what there is, we reach the surface subjectively, we know it.

This is part of why the concern of an anime style in art is misplaced (I am not saying the sense of the opinion cannot be had, but that the critique looks at the wrong area). Anime in this view is viewed as a style, as its surface rules and tropes themselves, minus any meaning or implication or any connection: big eyes, sharp chin, girly face—End the sentence! End the thought! It's getting angry at the very physics of something and nothing else.

***

So back to the original premise (as this has gone wildly off-track): to repeat the anime image does not threaten it, because we understand its own repetitive, fake physics. At the same time, the implications of what goes on in this image (the same area our assumptions of personality play in) is not lost either. Besides losing the allure that comes with singular images, it's quite indestructible. 

Compare to the example of reproducing a fine-art image, or to repeat an image of a real(istic) person. Their individuality (the implications of the image, the personality understanding) is killed off. Its own physics and validity of existence are cut through: you are not supposed to exist as a copy, you are now fake, fake is not real. 

***

As always, I have no idea what any of this writing implies or leads towards.

I have left out analysis of printmaking as an art medium, because this turned into a different topic. 

Quote from 'The Hidden Order of Art'

"Gombrich's great achievement to have finally broken the 'externality' illusion that had invested the conventional schemata of Western realism with objective reality. (One wonders whether Wittgenstein would have tried to give objective validity to the logical structure of language had he not-- somewhat naïvely-- accepted that the elements of a picture had the desired objective structure, which, of course, they had not.) According to Gombrich the coherence of a picture rests on entirely conventional schemata which the artist has learned to read as though they were as objective and real (realistic) as reality itself. The rules of realistic picture making were the rules of a game played according to certain conventions that were constantly modified like the rules of a game. Had Wittgenstein known Gombrich's ideas he would have been able to synthesize his older 'picture theory' of logical language with his final 'game theory' of language. Understanding the flexible rules of learning to play the game accordingly is all there is to the objectivity of images both in the visual arts and in language."

-- The Hidden Order of Art; Ehrenzweig; pg. 111

Sometimes I think about exactly what a book will eventually say or reference, at least vaguely, and when I see it all connected out of nowhere in a manner far better than any inkling I had prior, and I throw my hands up in the air. Or, which is the same thing I am describing actually, I hope to find something relevant in an unplanned location (e.g. a random book) and it ends up being far too relevant. Same reaction. Thank you Burren College library.

On immersion vs. belief

From last post:

"I have been recently thinking about what having a strong conviction about something means, or questioning why that is so significant, which more or less is the same thing as having a belief."

"I'm not sure what made me focus on 'belief' first rather than immersion"

So belief and conviction is what is similar. But I also alluded to immersion being similar, which is actually wrong. I think they have similarities and might even appear the same at first glance/surface-level (though the latter doesn't matter), maybe a similarity in its style of operation or the location of something or another, etc. etc. etc.

What I mean is that immersion is the suspension of self-awareness or self-consciousness; it lacks the third-person, stepping-back motion of "let me think about what I'm doing for a second here", it is tunnel-vision, it enters a smooth and fast propelling motion... Immersion is also what occurs when someone believes the sun will set tonight and rise again tomorrow morning, and so it is a suspension of doubt, of being skeptical; it is going along with things, hence the propelling motion. Examples would range from going along with the laws of physics, to going along with the man-made conventions of the business world. All are possible to doubt and go against, all are possible to go along with. None are possible to not doubt. This isn't to say that all are "fake" and there is some higher truth out there we can reach regarding sunsets and suit-and-tie handshakes, it is how everyday life occurs and continues on. But this isn't to say that one example of immersion cannot be "better" or "worse" than another. It is not stupid to assume the sun will set, it might be stupid to think LinkedIn is a necessary force for history of the universe.

But at the end of the day, LinkedIn is used. If someone were to sigh a "well, you just have to use it, don't you?" this would not be immersion, he is self-aware. The same man can, however, lose this awareness and operate as if he believes LinkedIn is as necessary as the sun, perhaps with enough time, or with enough usages of the site, etc. This is him becoming immersed. It is why I have always used the word "delusion" to stand for the things people believe in when immersed.

A clearer example is the capitalistic belief in the supply-demand model. I have seen many times an internet user state with full conviction: if we just stopped making our demands seen on affordable apartments, then rent would stop going up; or, 'the reason rent goes up is because you people buy at this price'. We see people and governments (or more so figures in governments) claim that the best way to run a non-business service is to run it like a business, and we can see when it fails (a $2 train ticket cannot fund a transit system, but we lose our business sensibilities when we realize you cannot just raise the price of a train ticket any higher-- or I suppose NYC can, but it still is cheap compared to what that city will make you fork over for a sandwich). 

So now belief pops up. But I don't mean that belief is just part of immersion, it is not like how 'delusion' is the object of focus within the immersion system/model and doesn't really appear or exist elsewhere.

***

What matters in discussion of belief is not the object being believed in, but the fact that one believes, belief itself. Does this work across the board for all sorts of beliefs? A belief in God is difficult to wrap one's head around not because of God's nature, not because God is an unbelievable being (I am not saying a god is nor isn't believable, because I do not have an answer, and any answer isn't relevant here) but because someone is seriously believing in a god. It sounds the same, so perhaps it should be worded as: (1) God is a type of object that, due to its qualities and characteristics, is/isn't realistic, (2) The act in certainly believing God, particularly because this object sparks no universal conclusions (not everyone agrees God exists, many types of gods, etc.), is/isn't strange. The topic of this is the same: believing in something. Within it are the things of the topic: the object of belief, the act of believing itself, and the characteristics of both the object of belief and the believers' acts in regards to how "believable" something is. Number 1 focuses on the object of belief, God, and Number 2 focuses on the act of believing in its specific context.

So in an art context, belief is found in someone believing in their own practice, believing in what they are doing, believing in its importance, for instance. "Belief" is actually a poor word in certain contexts because it has a habit of constantly pointing at its object, so much so that if we call back attention to it ("the act of believing"), it sounds as if we are criticizing all acts of believing overall. It is belief itself in the specific situation/context outlined, because of its object. We should imagine the grammar to be switched around in order to express where our attention should lie: the object is not certainly believable, therefore the belief is strange-- No! Do not look back, you must stop looking at the object! The sentence should be verbalized out loud, a clear "belief in the specific situation we outlined" followed by a pause, a glance to the side, lean back, sigh, and in an overtly lazy and unserious tone, "well... because of [the object] obviously..."

The phrasing is doomed to fail.

A specific case: a painting student paints, and when asked why he paints the specific things he does, he answers "Well, I enjoy where I grew up, which is by the ocean, so the marine themes and sensibilities are from that". But why does he paint the ocean, why choose to paint it, why not write about it, why not become a scientist and study the ocean, a sociologist of ocean-side locations? "I think art brings out a different part of the ocean, or any topic really; it expresses more. And, I don't know, I like that. I want to both overtly depict things visually, and sneak in sensibilities underneath, like the memories and feelings I have," and he can run on and on about why painting as an art, due to whatever theory here and there, is able to complete this and that. But that is all practical. No, why does he paint and make art in general, and specifically why does he feel the need to put his memories and feelings into art and express this and that, etc. etc. And now the painting student stands quietly, he cannot think. You must guide him to a clearer question and a clearer topic. If one questions, critically or not (it usually comes off roughly the same, a passive critical or back-handed tone), why he chooses to do any of this, why he presents the work, why he studies it, why he feels the need to show people and attempt to sell this art for real money, and so on... Now he will answer, now he will light up in passion and defend himself. Of course, one can fall back to practical, externally-held statements, of the importance of art in the world and so on. But his true answer is that he just feels/thinks/believes that he must.

That is what I am talking about, that is the object of our focus here. Seriously, what is up with that sort of believing? In this case, it is better worded as conviction (and I will just keep belief and conviction interchangeable, even though they aren't the most similar words otherwise).

And it is moments like these, the existence of someone holding a strong conviction in what they do, that makes everything seem special, better, higher quality, more gripping, more striking, more stable, and so on and so forth. It is the power of belief, and this can be compared to confidence.

***

So why did belief pop up previously, or more so, what is similar in immersion and belief/conviction that merged the two worlds? It is the suspension of disbelief and doubt, it is confidence and certainty. It's what holds it all together.

I read a book and believe the author to be a real person (if the case is made that they are a real person), I believe the name on the cover to be theirs, I believe the name to be consistent in identity with the other books that adorn it, etc. I do not pause and doubt this and think 'what if it is multiple people?' 'what if this is a pseudonym of the last author I just read the other day?' Some questions are easier to think about than others (very well someone could be a pseudonym). So to specify: this author has a personal biography, a description of them and their work in the back cover, a photo of their face, and international recognition as being the author, they go to book signing events, everyone who knows them in their personal life saw them study to be a writer and eventually publish the book. It is still possible to doubt that whichever human we are watching is the author, but it is a level of absurdity that becomes mental.

Because it is still possible to doubt, all it means is that one will just choose to believe to continue on, and if everything is possible to doubt (ignoring the topic of the self because I do not want to get Cartesian here), then one just chooses to believe in everything to continue on.

Within immersion, this is what holds the tunnel-vision together, the glue of the tunnel. Something like capitalistic theories are easier to critique and doubt in a serious manner, and those same theories are ones where the belief in them seems significantly less necessary. Who says this results in that and all of these actions must be upheld in societies, the government? Bah! Easy to doubt, isn't it? Something like the sunset is harder to doubt, because it one of the examples that becomes mental to doubt due to its absurdity (I should also say that how long or how many people uphold a belief also affects its supposed validity). When we do not doubt, it is an act of moving on, whether consciously (not very immersed) or unconsciously (highly immersed). What allows this continuing-on is belief. We believe the sun will set, so we time our evening around it. If we did not believe the sun would set, any amount of doubt, little or large, would linger on, and it would both become difficult to time our evening (we now don't really know when it'll get dark, because perhaps it will never) and pointless (if the sun won't set, why plan our evening arounds things at all). So the belief is necessary. This is why I do not ever wish to indicate that believing in something means the thing is bollocks; similarly, I do not think we should stop using numbers just because someone made up their vocabulary and system, it isn't like there necessarily is some greater truth out there behind made-up believed-in lies.

In our examples of belief in general, like the art student, one's conviction is what powers on further action, it is again for the sake of allowing things to continue on. This then brings up an interesting note, whether or not it is possible to do something without a belief in it. I think it is, because in this operation, belief is the mental process, similar to a reasoning, while the act of doing is the physical/external/real/produced thing, similar to a result or the thing at hand. This is not to say one is before the other, it is to say that they are two different kinds of things, located elsewhere yet within the same context/situation. The difference (a difference in kind?) is what allows this example: an artist doesn't believe in his own art and therefore feels like he is creating pointless work, or becomes confused, feels lost, or shuts off all of his feeling and thinking. He is still making artworks and having an art practice, just without belief in it. Now, is it possible to do such a thing with confidence, seeming as confident as our special artist with his high convictions? Perhaps, I do not know.

I once again haven't really reached any conclusion or real question in this post.

Thought on immersion in art

A thought I wrote earlier that I never finished:

I wonder if the most typical "real" appearing artists, those who are so immersed in their own art-making, who seem to have such a high level of love for the game, are this way because of (or partially) a belief in what they do. They 'feel" strongly about it, in a "there is something to this" sort of way. They do not need to be conscious or unconscious of any of this (I always assume most I observe are unconscious, but who knows).

It would be entirely possible to be assigned to make an artwork and provide it with a highly complex and substantial conceptual existence, one that elevates that artwork to a truly respectable and "real" level. Repeating an artwork, or a manner of art-making, without any real thoughts behind it may operate in a similar way.

But isn't there something different, something special in those who believe in their art so strongly? Not that they need to have a sense of importance or find their art to be special, or find their art to be art at all... It may be similar to when you meet someone overflowing with genuine confidence. There just is something different about them, not that they have a certain personality or behavior, but they just do things that are genuine, feel so attached to themselves; when you know that someone has a strong sense of self, for instance.

I wanted to expand on how I observe others to be more immersed in their art, which then speaks to a more general concept of immersion. I'm not sure what made me focus on 'belief' first rather than immersion; I have been recently thinking about what having a strong conviction about something means, or questioning why that is so significant, which more or less is the same thing as having a belief.

Questioning image-making

For a while now I have been wondering how people go about making art, specifically in coming up with imagery. I would say I have lost track of how to make art, although I cannot remember when (if at all) I did know. I do know, though, that I was never unconscious about this topic.

What I mean is that when observing others, which of course operates by assumption, people seem very immersed in their image-making. A lot of people come up with something immediately and on-the-spot, although not everyone does this. I have always been impressed with those who can doodle something when told to. I cannot do this and have never been able to do this.

But I realize that when going about my projects in art school so far, I haven't really "waited until inspiration struck" either. I wait, I just don't remember inspiration. I sit down, I think by way of writing some things down, and the planning stage comes about in the form of a line-by-line succession of notes, bullet points, or statements. This leads to this, to that, and that explains that part, which means its this... and then I stumble into an image somehow.

The reasoning for the art is realized prior to making it (although the more "psychoanalytic" facts and reasonings about the art still come later, if that matters). I create the art's logic before the art is crafted.

I think the image exists as only a sense, though. I never picture something clearly in my head, even though I would be entirely able to. I know I purposefully leave things open, I enjoy generating the image while drawing it. I need to decide on things only after observing instances within the process. Plus, I think openness has its advantages.

the architectural structures depended on
which marks where already made

It is the way of the stereotypical painter that fascinates me because I am not one. I have an easier time coming up with architectural imagery. It's not that I don't know how to draw anything else, I just struggle to make anything else into an image-scene (an architectural drawing becomes an interactive 3D model/space in my head). If I set about drawing a person, I draw a person, and then it ends quite quickly. I don't know how to merge the object or person into a space. I only know space itself.

Or, it isn't about what I know/don't know, but that anything else results in something different. I fear I have a tendency to become illustrative far too quickly, which is why I don't consider myself as sophisticated or fine-artsy as most people (and I don't want to make illustrations, so I think this is a flaw of mine). I can merge space with object/person, but it becomes illustration. That is why I am constantly asking how to be a painter.

Painters I've observed just get "so into" their process and image, with such a level of certainty, but appear pretty unaware of what's going on. I mean that they are unconscious in a good way. Immersion surrenders the act of stepping-back and viewing something objectively or critically. I suppose this is why people can overwork an image, or get too stuck on one part, or not see something others can.

If we treat overworking or lack-of-seeing as symptoms, then it becomes strange, because I have memories of doing those things prior to college. Back in high school, when no one properly took art seriously, but we all believed we were doing something vaguely serious, and everyone worried about "same face syndrome" and made jokes about the "pain" of learning anatomy because we thought those were the things you were supposed to worry about. However, if I think about the very few art assignments I made in high school, I was distinctly not immersed in them, save for the moments where I got lost in the process of repetitive crosshatching (is this the only time I was immersed? Where I remember the "symptoms"?).

And I think I should make a quick confession about the fact that I would draw anime art starting at age 10, and just about any drawing in this I was extremely immersed in, particularly in digital art. But this is shameful, and it actually goes nowhere, so I'm scrapping it aside (although the topic of the digital work field/space is interesting and I would like to get to that sometime).

I must go farther back and think about childhood. I remember the first time I decided to draw from life; I think I had seen some still-life in the museum and developed an inkling on how it was made (I had no idea what art terms meant). Before then, I had been pausing the television and copying it. While watching television, I would watch the outline of each cartoon character, and I would envision curving one of those rubber dividers used in landscaping (I saw my neighbors redo theirs and was fascinated by them, for some reason) to make the outlines.

This became an obsession as strong as my hobby of clenching my feet when the car passed over the white dashes that divided street lanes. I attribute my natural tendency to be good at rhythm games (specifically ones that have linear notes landing on a horizontal hitbox) to this. Similarly, when I went about drawing from the cartoons, I was really good at copying the outlines.

And after this saga, I lost the desire to ever draw something made up without knowing why (in hindsight, it was traded for making my own anime drawings).

Prior to it, like any kid, I did make imaginative drawings. I remember the process for these well: I had an idea and thought I should draw it, and so I drew whichever "thing" was in my head, and the more narrative the idea was, the more I developed a scenery around it. I often made stories along with my drawings and made my mom write them down on the backside. In particular, because they were the drawings I liked making the most, I drew a lot of robots, though none of them were ever placed in a space. My mom assumed there was a story to these too, so there is a page somewhere where I claim a robot's ability was to clean the house and take out the trash (I like to think I said this to amuse my mom, which worked), but I remember this being very forced, and the robots held a special place in my mind in some manner.

Basically the process is as follows: some pre-held sense or idea; depiction of the main subject or an outline of the scene; development of subjects; determining interaction between subjects; depiction and development of these interactions; continue until a completed scene.

When I force myself to sit down and draw, which was an exercise of sorts in response to my lack of imaginative image-making, I struggle to have any idea at all of what to draw. But when I begin on this process, it goes quite quickly, and the result always surprises me. When I look at the image, I can see how I created its own space/world and where everything falls into place within it, even if it's just a simple sketch. 

the left hand (the pointed finger touching the palm) is the
most visceral to me, because it was the most visceral to make

The only thing I know that happens when I drew this, was "this hand goes here, and it touches this (draws 2nd hand), and it's part of the body so..." It's a lot of 'this and so' instead of 'this means that because.' So I wouldn't say it's the subconscious taking over or anything because I am aware of something and using some sort of logic while making it; I'm just not aware from a third-person or twice-detached perspective. Logic is possible in immersion. It's the logic of the image. Immersion lacks critical logic? It's similar to tunnel vision, isn't it?

***

Of the older painters: how does one go about making up a portrait or landscape? Where and what is the difference in process between making up a portrait/landscape from life, and making up depictions of myths, religious scenes, or just scenes that don't exactly exist in real life? And if it is a more straightforward process (painting a portrait of someone and depicting them as they are), is this less substantial or interesting? I am hinting that people do not find this less substantial, so I am asking why so, and where is the substantialness located.

And then I go right back to thinking about art school. Assuming we have gone over the serious of questions about if this or that kind of art is better, and landing on the easy answer that 'no, nothing is better or worse, at least inherently', but then adding a footnote of 'the more revolutionary or innovative are more interesting, yes', I have to ask what art students are doing (because that is my world; you could ask of professional artists, but that's not my world, and sometimes they get into such a rhythm of making their signature art that you need to observe them in a different manner).

Why do my painting classmates make the paintings they make? What do they think about? How do they come up with these images? I have never asked directly because it doesn't ever come up; I did attempt to ask a classmates who is actually part of visual communications why she made her project, how she went about the idea, what interested her, etc. (it was a book containing anonymous replies to a question about their first love experiences). She didn't really answer. Anytime this sort of question is asked in a class, people are a bit baffled, as if they were asked something they thought was common sense.

Of course I can say that this means I'm not a real artist, and it's probably true. But I still want to have an answer. This also doesn't mean that I think people should explain everything, or have their art be explainable. I have had classmates who make such strange art in such strange, immediate, spontaneous ways, that no one questions them because this strangeness becomes its own explanation.

The closest I've gotten to the location of this question/topic is when people explain the emotion behind their art, or the emotion they put into it. I mean that quite frequently people explain the reasoning behind repetitive motifs in their art, for instance, in terms of concept (no surprise in a conceptual school), but this is a step that occurs after the art. It is located in the after, even if its contents take place elsewhere (the motif occurs during the art, the reasoning before and outside of the art), it is an analysis. I am asking about what occurs in the before (and inside, not outside).

This question is especially true for those who feel so strongly about their artmaking and do things with such a high level of confidence or belief (not that they cannot be self-conscious or doubtful at the same time). I want to see what they are seeing, or see what they are thinking (or think what they are thinking? think in the manner of how they are thinking?)

I haven't really reached any conclusion or real question in this post.

Analysis of a small example in my writing

There is something I often do when I write (and I rarely ever write), and that is repeat a word. Truthfully, this is because of my poor vocabulary. My lack of knowledge in higher quality words, as well as my extremely small closet of words (more accurately, my vision in finding words is just extremely far-sighted), causes me to latch onto one for longer than I should.

I start off a paragraph with this sentence:

I gaze at myself often now as I have never seen a more unfamiliar figure. I am trying to figure it out.

I repeat 'figure' which adds a particular rhythm to the text, and I do enjoy the rhythm of texts (I have learned that I mainly focus on movement or rhythm in things, such as music, visual art, etc.) so this isn't entirely accidental. What really happens as I wrote this is that my mental picture was of me looking in the mirror at myself, but specifically viewing myself as some form of a human: a form of a human is a figure. I write the word figure because it matches the concept I was aiming for and affirms a sense or tone I was meaning to construe. Then I must describe why I will look in the mirror at myself, which is to understand what I'm looking at. My poor vocabulary and tendency towards casual language closes down all walls, leaving only the phrase 'figure it out' left to choose. I cannot see past any of these walls because I had just chosen the word 'figure' for the previous sentence and it is now stuck in my head.

I allow this repetition to occur because there is a sharp difference between the two sentences. 'Figure' was chosen in the 1st due to its representative connection for the object of 'myself as a human thing', so it is already slightly abstracted, slightly metaphorical, and in a way formal: the word 'figure' elicits thoughts of figure painting, the "nice" formal word for body. 

I have always felt an unreasonable disgust at the word body, similar to looking at raw meat in a deli. This disgust was at such a level to where my mother would allow me to run off to a different section of the grocery store. I now have fond memories of this moment for it was the rare chance for me to be alone in a public setting, without any responsibility for watching the shopping cart or hunting down an item. And so body becomes the deli meat which stands in the way from my peaceful solitude.

The 1st sentence is also lengthy in its route of description. I often write sentences like these, especially when I'm desperately trying to describe something, both ignoring any enjoyable rhythm of text, while also keeping my attention on not using too many words: the result is a choppy, weirdly accurate, 'I can't cut this down or rearrange this anymore' type of sentence.

I gaze at myself often: a striking-down motion, grounding with the descriptor of 'often'... as I have never seen a more unfamiliar figure: a rocky upwards motion, the steps of 'as I', 'have', 'never' acting as mini strike-downs (thus they became the flat steps of a stairway)...

A choppier sentence usually will have a lot of "that" words in it, as if the sentence throws a handful of words at you and points at each one, like a child reciting reading a book, not yet away of how a sentence should flow. This is a mixture of the two, a stairway.

The 2nd sentence is informal, short, and straightforward not by way of a striking-down motion, but a toss. It tosses itself at you, and says 'there.' That's all there is to it. It uses the phrase 'figure it out' and elicits a casual tone, and so the toss motion is more so represented by a shrug. A friendly toss from a stranger, but he wears no expression on his face.

By opposing the two in succession, especially when the 1st sentence starts the paragraph, makes the reader (and me as the writer) jump from one world to the next: dualisms of formal/casual, choppy/smooth, descriptive/expressionless. And so the repetition of one word, especially when it occurs at the end of the first sentence, makes an ostensive connection between the two worlds. It doesn't connect them actively, it actually separates them further. The word 'figure' makes an appearance in a formal and luxurious manner, it bows and leaves, but then we see 'figure' again, this time as a stranger. 'Well I'm not the first figure because just look at me...' it shrugs. But as a reader of words, the repetition of a word is so loud and obnoxious that it seems wild two figures managed to appear before us as two different identities: a revolving door of words and their refusal of identity theft.

There are more examples of this, but I am not going to go search for them. From my memory, I am thinking of times the repetition of a word occurs starting at the last sentence of a paragraph, and then again at the first sentence of the next paragraph. This should take on a different motion from a revolving door, something like jumping out of a window and landing on the grass, where we as the reader become confused about if we were watching someone through a window from our 2nd floor apartment and suddenly ended up on the grass with them, or if we never left our location at all.

Note: I have always hated the first sentence in my example! Even in my analysis I became under the influence of my writer-self and did not look closely enough at the words. I often read it as if it is 'I gaze at myself as never seeing a more unfamiliar figure', a usage of as to mean doing something simultaneously. Then I correct myself and reread it as "I gaze at myself often as I have never seen a more unfamiliar figure", and picture myself in awe of my own image, as this sentence is similar in wording to the phrase 'I have never seen a more beautiful...' But both are wrong! The 'now' always escapes! I must read it slowly, climb the stairs much slower: I have been looking at myself a lot, recently, because I look unfamiliar, so much so to where I haven't seen a more unfamiliar figure than myself. This is what I am trying to say. But I refuse to say it in such a manner, it's too casual. I must act proper and run away from the meat deli, only to chop my fleeing in half with the butcher's knife out of nowhere.

I also enjoy creating a metaphor, and then turning that metaphor into a world to continuously revisit.