One theme I’ve always had and believed in is the power of emotional energy.
If you believe in and appreciate evolution, you should be quick to love any and every fucking feature you have. You should be slow to throw anything away. Everything from the crook of your pinky finger to the shittiness of your left toe to the septum of your nose to the blink of your eyeball took millenia to get the way they did. If you don’t like something about yourself you’re probably being neurotic. This isn’t to say we’re perfect, but it is a feat, a goddamn feat, that humans finally made a camera that’s better than the eye.
And the ability to make that camera took a lot of evolution.
And I’ll wager my life that a LOT of evolution went into the urge to have and create a camera.
So that’s one example why it’s not so easy for me to disregard emotions. A lot of people do, because positive things are unpleasant and often inconvenient, but the truth is, everything from jealousy to rage can be seen as having a functional purpose. I don’t like anger, but I don’t loathe it either. Righteousness of convinctions has to be singly responsible for the defense of good, more often than it is responsible for the triumph of evil.
So things like, swallow it, or appreciating drugs that destroy emotions, I’m hesitant. There’s a time and a place, but it’s usually a best last-resort.
Another theme I’ve been big on, is young people feel harder. It’s a super power. The formative brain releases dopamine and adrenaline way more easily than the adult one. I think one reasons is that the adult brain past its formative years has become crystalized — it’s looking for patterns. We do this in looking for patterns of personality in people more frequently as we age, for example. A younger brain is more apt to perceive novelty. Novelty induces glutimate and adrenaline, which create real fun memories.
(I remember being young and finally going outside and feeling anxious, probably for these reasons. Fortunately, as the dude I was raised, I wasn’t allowed to just act on that.)
Well, think about emotion as a driving force for creativity. Think about how if you allow yourself to age into complacency (not saying we all get complacent, just some of us start to drive ourselves that way) that complacency leads to indifference. Indifference is a state of don’t care enough to be creative.
I’m learning that these days, my feels are getting kind of cannoned. I appreciate that younger me was up till 6am thinking and feeling. I’m not doing this as much, in fact I’m feeling the urge for siestas. I’m not sure I’m capable of a 12 hour gaming session. It happened all the time as a young guy. In turn, I have to question how my future works will come out,
and find I’m not worried. Because I still get goosebumps from songs (there’s some really cool research indicating how it’s a superpower, how about 8% of the population can do it, and how it’s theorized right now to be an extra brain function from the anterior cingulate cortex to temporal lobes that are linking emotional patterns with temporal processing and leading to sympathetic nervous arousal. I have a hard time remembering my goddamn flight time without checking my email, but factoids like that stick with me after run reading because I just goddamn care.)
And while those music goose’s will happen less and less, I still feel my potential for imagination, and I know enough to not dull it too hard. There’s a reason I never loved the drink as much as loved dabbling. There’s a reason I’m driven to engage and KEEP some very strange habits. I’d like to believe that a lot of old creatives are neurotic because they’ve matured in ways which has kept them young.
They’re not man-children. They’re children of men.
Anyway, here’s a good song.
I’m on a good spurt of energy fill today, I’ve got queries ready to dispatch, and I’m stoked. I might fail, and this part’s scary
but the feel being real, means I might drive myself towards good deals.
I just don’t feel that way with other work. I’ll do it, oh I’ll do it if I have to, but it’s not nearly the same. It’s someone else’s taxi, not my car.
Eric is the Best 