Every art form has a learning curve. When you see these clichés, you don’t have to look any further to know someone is an amateur.

Film & Photography

Performance

Typography & Layout

Writing

Music / Audio Recording

Of course, these can all be broken, but only on purpose. (And at the risk of looking like you made a mistake.)

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Religious fanatics and Atheists make the same mistake.

Creative inspiration, the paranormal, God — these things can’t be analyzed, systematized, controlled.

They’re faster than light, don’t like eye contact, and our logic is the fence than keeps them safe from us.

(Ah, see what I just did?)

So put away your Monster Manual. Let the mystical be what it is. A collection of experiences beyond our understanding.

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I wish this was a typo by a web designer.

Since it’s not, here are the problems I have with it:

1.) Introversion is already a term widely (often loosely) used for something else, and has been for almost a hundred years. It’s not a Disorder. And it has nothing to do with how “socially-aggressive and indiscriminately friendly” you appear to be in public.

2.) The criteria listed are an extreme generalization for something that doesn’t really exist, like the “War On Terror.” This text is turning people who are dominantly Introspective into The Boogeyman. Who wrote this stuff? I feel like I’m back in high school, being mocked by athletes.

3.) Agenda? This is probably motivated by a pharmaceutical company that will soon announce a Wonder Drug that will “cure your Introverted child.” Taking the conspiracy theory one step further, this plan clearly targets people who are capable of divergent thought — so they can be wrangled up and fed to Sarlacc. Think I’m crazy? Andrew E. Skodol, the man behind this nonsense, has disclosed “significant interests“, specifically “Stock or other financial options” in Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Eli Lilly. (You’d think that since he received his psychiatric training at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine he may have realized that Albert Einstein was an Introvert.)

4.) If you’re going to include Introverts, then include Homosexuals, Bodybuilders, Monks, Police Officers, and Celebrities — anyone with less-common social roles and lifestyles. If 70% of the population aren’t exactly like you, watch out!

5.) If Introversion is measured on a spectrum, why is there no entry for Extraversion? I could certainly write an equally colorful set of criteria (for a share of the profits, of course).

The fact that this is even open to debate, that it even made its way onto the ballot, that it is seriously being considered by experts (38,000 physician leaders in mental health?), is solid proof that Idiocracy is a documentary.

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There’s sometimes a town.

In that town, there is a correlation between wealth, altitude, and the direction of psychic energy.

The Upper Class live in the mountains, where it’s clean and quiet. Many of the houses are concealed by complex landscape. No straight roads, lots of contour and curves. Unusual architecture. Surprises around every turn. Exotic trees and plants. A view of the town and ocean below. The only cars are the expensive ones parked in driveways. Obviously, the inhabitants like to be left alone. They plan their time and energy years in advance.

On the way back down to Earth, things get more depressing and mundane.

Halfway between the Mountains and Beach are the Middle Class. Their world is flat. The places they live in are smaller, cramped together, and surrounded by activity. Traffic on the streets. Less plant life. Competition for space. Noise. They are cyclical consumers. Most of the money they make is spent at Best Buy and Restaurants on the illusion of abundance. They see about a week or sometimes a month into the future.

The Lower Class congregate at sea level, around The Beach. Beggars, derelicts, punk rockers, street musicians, drug addicts, criminals. Graffiti and trash everywhere. Loud music from every direction. Those who have a home will refuse to stay inside — and will even leave their front door wide open. They never stop talking, yelling, and banging on things. The conflicts they focus on will never improve their lives, even if they win. They see about an hour into the future, if that.

Stop for a little second and think about it. Can you do that for me?

Common sense would say that all of the money, power, and freedom is up by the Rich Introverts living in the Mountains. Let’s just say that if you want to improve your situation, go towards them.

Now you will see me one more time if you do good. You’ll see me two more times, if you do bad. Goodnight.

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I didn’t have time to write one of my brilliant blog posts this morning.

I was busy getting married to a beautiful Argentinian female named Belén. She does complicated things with computers, is an excellent vegan cook, and actually likes my music.

No kidding.

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I have a poor short-term memory.

Tell me a phone number and it’s wiped from existence by the time you reach the last digit. Concepts are my life raft in a sea of splashy facts. I don’t remember names, birthdays, or what I was doing ten minutes ago.

Unless I intentionally commit something to memory, chances are, it’s gone. I never even learned the entire multiplication table or the names of the notes on the guitar neck. I don’t even know the names of the streets in my neighborhood where I’ve lived for 2 years, and only last month I found out the name of the city I was born in. When someone asks me details about my life during small-talk, I usually go blank. It takes some mental hunting to remember where I went to college, what my dog’s name is, and much less what I do for a living.

Most of the time, it’s because I don’t care.

(NOTE: I’ve never used drugs. I’ve been this way since I was a kid.)

I daydream like crazy. My internal world is so abstract and philosophical that I’d be a wandering, homeless nut if it weren’t for my ability to micromanage and control my own habits.

I’ve designed strict systems for keeping track of things that matter. For my freelance business, everything goes through Gmail. If I don’t have to respond, it gets Archived and disappears. If it’s not there, it officially doesn’t exist. It’s why I don’t answer my phone. It’s just better for everyone, when the specifics of the discussion (instructions, agreements) are literally literal.

But The Game of Telephone is very real, and it even happens in email. As concise and clear as my writing is, people still see what they want to see. It takes one to know one, and I have no tolerance for people who haven’t overcome memory deficiencies by getting their shit together with all of the available tools.

Of course, I don’t hoard data, either. (The thirteen external hard drives on my desk are all work-related, I swear). I don’t have much interest in old stuff unless it serves a purpose. Sentimentality is for teenagers who are afraid their identities will disappear if they don’t cover their walls with everything they like.

Computers have made it possible to document your entire life in multimedia — and to a narcissist, it’s tempting to live in The Truman Show. What’s the next step, recording yourself looking through the junk, so you can again look back at that later?

If you’re not The Weatherman, obsessive documentation is pointless.

Last year I went through a Myspace account from 2003 and couldn’t believe the stupid stuff I had done and said. I may as well have been reading someone else’s secret repository of petty drama and personal problems. It was as boring and unproductive as watching people on television.

So unless I’m working or attending a seminar, I don’t document. I’d rather be in the moment, experiencing life as it happens. I think people who spend more time aiming their camera than their eyeballs are crazy.

Lesson: forgetting is a gift.

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Standard Definition is no longer Standard. And we’ve already outgrown High Definition. EP is supposed to mean Extended Play. When are we going to stop using relative names for technology?

We only end up looking stupid.

Progressive Rock now means music from the ’70s. In the ’90s, Alternative became more popular than Pop. MTV Unplugged wasn’t unplugged, or we wouldn’t have been able to watch it. Jimmy Kimmel Live isn’t live — it’s shot in segments during the day in a studio.

Why are they called Conservatives if they waste resources? Why do Liberals want more laws and controls?

And if you’re a Vegetarian, that means you eat cheese? Galaxy Foods sells a line of products… Veggie Slices, Veggie Shreds, Veggie Topping. Someone in their marketing department obviously made a mistake. If I want a vegetable-based alternative to cheese slices, why would I buy a product made of milk?

“Wait a minute! How did this happen? We’re smarter than this.” -Obi-Wan Kenobi

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[Photo from some Russian Website.]

When we are born, each of us is given one, single job on this earth.

At the center of our souls we all have a tiny candle. Becoming an adult is taking over the responsibility for keeping that candle lit. Like a pilot light, it’s the source that all self-esteem, truth, and creativity ignite from.

It has a lot of names in mythology:

• Light Without Heat
• The All Spark
• The Blue Fairy
• Birdhouse In Your Soul
• The Heart of the Island

That little spark is powerful enough to compose a magnificent film score, produce a bland TV show, and maybe even destroy the world several times over. What you do with it is up to you (unless someone stops you, whether physically or financially).

One thing is for sure: you can drive yourself insane trying to keep someone else’s candle lit.

(And I’m not talking about helpless people who live under the oppression of a totalitarian state or have no access to food and clean water. I’m talking about people who simply don’t care. Why should you?)

In this society… unless they’re a child, the elderly, or mentally-handicapped, maybe it’s best to let the candle go out.

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That’s because it is.

If you look closely enough, everything sucks.

Analogies fail. Equal temperament is inherently dissonant. Rebecca Romijn wears makeup.

Congratulations! Your keen observational skills have made it impossible to enjoy anything.

Here’s a shocker: Art isn’t How To Tell The Truth Through Mathematics.

Why treat it that way? It’s selected, edited, trimmed, tweaked, re-contextualized. Artists are liars. If you focus on the materials the fantasy is made of, you’ve missed the point.

Don’t stand so close to that painting. Stop being so analytical. Get out of the way and let your subconscious (probably the larger part of yourself) enjoy the show.

“When you’re a child, something as simple as a tree doesn’t make sense. You see it in the distance and it looks small, but as you go closer, it seems to grow — you haven’t got a handle on the rules when you’re a child. We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experienced is a narrowing of the imagination.” -David Lynch

Remember how great movies were when you were eight?

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Photo by Sanvean.

When you’re learning how things are made, it’s easy to get caught up in reverse engineering.

A songwriting book can tell you:

• The chorus should start on a note that is higher than the last note of the verse, preferably a major third above it.
• Your song title should be no more than seven syllables in length, and should appear in the chorus.
• The first chorus should occur within 30 seconds.

These are aspects of musical architecture. Tools for the construction process. But they don’t tell you why the house was built on the edge of a waterfall.

Sure, you can replace the heart of music, inspiration, with a mathematical formula. Get out your ruler and copy the patterns. You’ll fool a lot of people. (It worked for Rivers Cuomo.)

But without that Eureka Moment, all you’ve got is a Frankenstein Monster. It’s not actually alive.

Those who think they can outsmart the system will make post-modern, ironic arguments for the validity of disposable pop trash. What they won’t admit to themselves is that they still can’t pull it off themselves.

Unimaginative pot-boilers want the magic so badly, that they forget it’s something that just happens.

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