Recollection of my Undergraduate Exhibition: free-writing 11/9/25

On November 7th, 2025, SAIC's Undergraduate Exhibition opened, in which I am a participant of. I recall imagining what sort of work I would make for it. I used to run off of a vision I saw in a previous SAIC show, which I now realize was mostly likely a Graduate exhibition, of a large, wide, long roll of paper beautifully running along some sort of contraption-like structure. It was a print, perhaps. Or at least could look like one. Or maybe I imagined mine being a print. I originally fantasized over this when I used to make ink paintings and pretend to be an abstract expressionist: black and white on paper, large, taking over. I fantasized about it again when I made a lithograph from one of our larger stones, printed on folded paper, chine-collé'd to itself: black and white on paper, large, taking over. I thought I had struck a new turn to follow on my 'art making practice,' one that visually expressed who I thought I was at the time, who I thought I was expressing at the time. I had my first non-positive, ambivalent critique over the print: "it wasn't large enough."

I went into the gallery on the 7th to take some iPhone photos of my work.

On November 8th, 2025, SAIC's Undergraduate Exhibition had its opening reception, which I went to. I figured it would be a lot of standing awkwardly and glancing around, recognizing faces that never quite form certainly in my memory, and not doing anything about this half-recognition. I recently had gone to my parent's house to bring my bicycle over after a decently hefty iMessage debate over whether or not I should be allowed to bring the bicycle over. I had felt myself form solidly once again in the cool November air that was approaching, and my all black-and-white Canondale gifted bicycle looked at me as a being somewhere between an extension of myself and a pet. I left with my backpack full, containing my Macbook, a spool of thick black thread, and any all-black gothic ouji lolita clothing I happened to own. It was encapsulated on the 4 mile bike ride to the commuter rail station, in which I rushed due to underestimating the effect of suburban infrastructure and a minor uphill course: I was my bike and I also was on my bike, and as much as I wanted to stop rushing, it made no difference if I did, because once I'd stop rushing, my bike would stop, and so I'd stop. I was threatened by something of an external force, but I was also able to recognize and identify my own self and the very extent into how far I exist. I needed those costume-like clothes as suits of armour.

When I came back from the gallery on the 7th, I spotted a black cat by the church and played with it until I realized it could be lost. I took a photo of its collar that had 2 phone numbers attached to it, a 773, and an area code I didn't recognize. I thought about calling it but got too nervous, but then I got nervous about getting nervous about not doing anything regarding the cat. So I texted them when I got home, and it seems that the cat had just escaped and the two owners lived nearby. I was thanked and that was that. I existed as an 847, how strange.

During the reception, everyone was holding flower bouquets and placing down flower bouquets, and I was very confused by this sight until I recalled watching my Godmother who isn't actually my Godmother's youngest daughter act in her high school play, and how at the end, everyone would deliver flower bouquets to the actors. I didn't think much of it, because to be a stage actor had this traditional 'fuck you it's old but it's real' revolutionary aspect to it, and I figured flowers were old and revolutionary or something, at least outside of Valentine's day when the bouquet's at the grocery store would dwindle in stock.

I walked around with my hands in my pockets looking at the work, focusing on ones I hadn't focused on prior. I was constantly moving back and forth, two-stepping out of the way for people to walk past, or walking around people who decided to be more stationary. There was a moment where I about to walk through a people-hole opening, almost in a queue of gallery-lookers, when someone from a less relevant angle stepped forward and looked at me with a face slightly crinkled, a face I recognize. Actually, this happened multiple times. I don't recall a single time I nodded with a silent smile or motioned with my hand like one does when letting those older than you board the train first, or like one does when those older than you let you board the train first. It happens in the art museum cafe I frequent by the power of a family membership. Never more am I so misaligned with someone's thought process, yet so grossly attached to the societal operations of a scene. No one is like-minded, at least between me and the other members. I cannot describe what happens in a way that properly ropes in its own context, but I can make an analogy: that morning, on the 8th, the L train passengers had formed an interior queue to exit upon approaching a station, myself included, as always, when a lady around my mother's age with a large luggage suitcase grabbed my arm almost intimately. She squeezed it and leaned forward into me. Although this could have been because of the train's movement, the extent of her movement seemed unnecessary. She looked at me in the face, face crinkled, and excused herself, and in the clear disparage between our thought processes, she declared that she was getting off at this station, alluding to an annoyance over me blocking her way. The train was stopping now and all I wanted to do was just face forward again to prepare for a 0 millisecond reaction of my feet taking a step forward and exiting. I told her that I too was exiting, but her disposition didn't change much.

I walked around swiftly and felt very short compared to the gallery walls and attendees. I wondered what it would feel like sensation-wise to see my work after walking through and familiarizing myself with the images of everyone else's stranger-work. I lowered my expectations and expected a similar operation to waking up and viewing a painting you had worked on at night, wondering why it seemed so fresh, why the tides you once swam in have now shifted into a picture of a beach. When I turned the corner to walk into my work, nothing happened.

I was dressed in one of the shirts I had taken from the house, ordinary slacks, and my black trench coat with leather gloves in its pockets which I had thought I lost but instead found them the morning of. Its pockets were perfectly positioned for putting your hands inside of. My visual memory was of my coat, as well as flashing instances of students' parents whom I had just finished describing as 'formal; like they raised their children on a diet of nuts and tofu; but work as lawyers.' There was a lot of celebratory moaning and joke-making all said in a finalizing tone. I suppose it was a tone of graduation, although plenty of them were not graduating this semester, myself included, and it was still only November.

I just now attempted to remember what a graduating tone felt like. I can force out a picture of me leaving my high school graduation in a hurry so that my parents and I were not stuck in the traffic of SUV's maneuvering out of the parking lot. But nothing in this memory scene is significant enough to repeat, I don't even want to share that this scene was something I had repeated in a hand-me-down fashion. I witnessed my own scene 3 years prior, watching my brother do the same. What I had actually recalled was a scene from my middle school graduation, as our class walked out from one area to the next, from the ceremony to some classroom-like space akin to an after party. Held in one of the high school's one-of-many gymnasiums, I recall the bright orange wooden floors and blue walls of its corridor, I recall walking down in a queue and I recall recalling the times I queued up as an elementary school student, and how my last name always placed me alphabetically in the 4th position, which I considered to be an ugly number compared to something like the beautiful, red colored '5'. Overtime, I started to understand the number as an extension of myself. As we turned one corner, the queue bunched up and stopped, and I recall the blue walls very vividly here, because a group of my classmates were in the corner crying with each other. I was confused why it was happening, and the circle of hugging students had expressed that these were joyful tears. That didn't help. I gazed out with a fuzzy vision at familiar faces doing unfamiliar things. I had taken what was left in a bottle of Tylenol, and I was thinking about a student I never knew who had a seizure during a school dance.

I'm not sure what I expected when I kept circling around my work, peeking at it while trying to hide the fact that I was peeking. Consciously, I went to peek to see if my book was okay, if it wasn't slanted or fallen over, but this quickly turned into a neurotic need to see if others were looking at my work. Each time I peeked, a large group would be socializing in the section so that no one had space to see the work on the walls. I walked past for a final time with intent to leave and saw someone taking photos of my work, and then saw a member of the large group step backwards and bump into her, in which she huddled into herself and briskly exited the scene.

That morning, on the 8th, when I started to participate in the operation of the train queue, someone sitting down who had been looking at me prior looked at me again. I recognized the look, located somewhere in the quivering of the eyes and the shaky, slow movements of the body. He motioned a tapping motion and I took out my earbud and bent down to hear him. I looked raw as fuck.

How to Make Use of Time: free-writing 12/15/2025

I have not been submitting applications to art shows because I didn't have the money and now that I do have some money I don't have the energy nor the care. I have come to terms with the slowness of life and the 'falling into place' that occurs. It seems that's how it all goes, for everyone. I do not want to force things; I say, I have always said, to myself.

I have not submitted to many shows in my lifetime because I eliminate unrealistic possibilities before there is a chance of exerting my time and energy towards unnecessary things: unrealistic possibilities are impossible, impossibility is the end sentence, the end punctuation. It is inherently unnecessary to chase after impossible things. I have declared impossibility and in doing so I have killed "it". What is "it"? Is it myself?

Is what you would like to hear. I am trying to describe something logical, I can picture it in my mind, it has a structure to it. It tastes good, and smells like a refrigerator. It's always tilted diagonally because I'm always staring at it with my head tilted curiously, and the closer I get to understanding the structure, the more it sucks me in. My neck twists and turns a bit more, my eyes are drawn in from my magnet pupils. It hurts but it feels so good. I think it's euphoria. I could get addicted to this, I say with my hand clamped over my mouth and my eyes darted to the side. I'm looking at you, blank computer monitor screen, my lovely. And as you look back at me, I appear like a demented being. I'm somewhere else. I mean, I literally am. I am in the fridge. My mind enters the structure and I interact with it directly: to interact with logic would be to interact in the mind. Holy fucking shit I am onto something crazy here that no one understands. Drooling a bit, probably, I stare out in a rare moment of absentmindedness. You don't see me on a phone call, talking to "the other end", eyes blank, distant, talking to someone who isn't there: dementia. But you see me in the fridge. That is the difference. That is why I do not submit to art shows.

I sit on the train and shake a bit every few seconds with my eyes staring out, open wide, bloodshot, and my hands cramped and closed-in on themselves, my knuckles protruding. I am worried because... I am... I am in the structure and I cannot bring you in. I can try to reconstruct the structure in words but that only works with certain individuals. If I exit the structure and attempt to retell my experience in it, my words fail me, and I construct false walls and angles that had not previously existed. Suddenly, I contradict myself, I realize faults, I realize flaws, but I know that these were never there in the first place, it is just that I have lost the original structure. It's agonizing. It's the only time I've ever grieved.

It goes around and around; the thoughts, I mean. I don't overthink, I'm not an "over-thinker." I don't ruminate. I don't have a "voice in the back of my head" telling me bad things about myself. I'm running marathons, motherfucker, and I am each and every voice out there. I'm every single one of them. Yours, hers, his. I'm running laps around you as you tinker with your marathon-signs and wonder which constructed phrase fits best with the sentiment you are attempting to express. I'm running laps away from something, and I don't know what, but the fact that the route is circular makes me question everything. The only thing we have in common is time.

Sit up, grab a drink, take a break. Relax. Relax time. There is relaxing time and there is working time. Is there thinking time? What happens to time when I talk to someone; stupid fucking question, it isn't real. I'm running laps and I hate running and I hate 'laps', I hate repetition, I hate unnecessary repetition, I've been clarifying that since I was twelve years old. I've been drilling into the same things for so long and nothing has come out of it, but I continue to do so because I believe in it. Woah, what? Never mind, it won't make sense. It won't make sense most of all because everyone is a believer with a phone-call tied to the side of their head, eyes glazed over during every conversation held, every conversation during held every second of every day, nonstop lap-running around and around. I can't keep up with my eyes. All we care about is the movement and the amount of times one's foot slaps against the ground, we are hysterical.

It's called making use of your time. You should submit each application with a foot slap and a punch to the face. You should do this before it's too late because we never know when it will be too late, that's the entire point. It's called university and working towards a career and then having a career. What entails having a career? Is it not surrounding yourself with people who understand what you do and therefore have constructed it into a job-action-object with enough false verification to pass under any lie detector? For instance, it's not easy to find someone who truly doesn't believe in medicine, to any extent. Or maybe lawyers are a better example... the paranoid are always afraid of lawyers.

The point is that when you tell me you are a curator I don't really have a clear idea in my head of what you do and how you do it because. My head just jerked around. Oh God, they're coming... I can't keep my eyes fixated on a certain point. I'm denying a false reality, which isn't triumphant in itself because a false reality is still a reality. And we still live it.

You should be making use of your time because we are united by time and all we have is time and, OK, sure, you in the corner, I will entertain the idea of non-linear time, but I will do so begrudgingly because it does not matter to my point in the slightest and I do not have enough energy to help you enter my logic-refrigerator, so you will just have to believe me on that reasoning. Grasp reality, grasp the air, grasp 'grounded-ness', grasp presence, grasp consciousness, grasp focus, grasp attention, grasp knowing, grasp confidence. It takes a quick motion but you really can grab at them and catch them in your little hands. And remember nothingness, remember nothing, remember loss, remember regret, remember worry, remember forgetting. Think about humanity in a selfish, humanistic manner, and get all sentimental about it. Think about humanity in awe, think about our cognitive capabilities. Then, get hit by a car: time. It's time to get hit by a car.

Time is things 'going on' or 'moving on' or maybe just 'moving,' you can cut the phrase off there and it still works. Moving does not mean that the things inside of the movement change or become this or that in any direction at all. Moving means moving. This time, we do not have the controls to it. We can measure it and understand it and use our own language for it, but there is something beyond that. The reason that 'beyond' thing is really there is because it permeates everything around us, in us, outside of us. I die, you live on. But I'm not so certain of that. I live, you die. Do you even know who I am?

Perhaps: to be successful is to make use of your time so that you may advance into a career that allows you to some day reach a point of finality, a point of rest. To make use of your time is to start—possibly even to have—a career while you are a student. To begin a career while already having one is to plunge into a deep, deep coma, a career-oriented stupor consisting of many smiles and slaps on the back. To win is to end, to kill is to make final. To be successful is to be not a student at all. And then: never consider this, ever.

Untitled 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. Do my schoolmates all 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 do 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.