Hello friends. Whatever writing shows up here comes from a frenzy with a few quick edits after publishing. In a change of pace, spurred by the habits of others on neocities, perhaps it’d be worth writing and refining over a week. Or just a bit. Maybe a day or two. Maybe not!
Editing is the bulk of any serious writing – which was intentionally avoided here thus far. Since there’s no profits to be had nor legacies to maintain. And keeping it amateur absolves one of any serious inquiry. Who wants more responsibility? Nevertheless, editing’s been neglected, so may as well try.
One question worth addressing is whether there’ll be a set theme or topic over the course of a week. Or days. Day. Quite unlikely. These entries inevitably turn into series of loosely connected bullet points. A funny balancing act.
Which probably reduces the effectiveness of editing seeing as it’s about removing the unnecessary. When the topic has no restraints, then everything would be permitted, wouldn’t it? Well, as one writes in an amateur flavour so one may edit however amateur too, no?
For YouTube, the big channels have a semi-automatic endless checklist in their video-creation pipeline. Normalizing audio, overlapping cuts, eye-tracking, quality foliage sounds, color composition considerations, millisecond correct pacing and fiverr’d thumbnails – a small guess from the larger process.
To keep something amateur is to forgo such processes. Constraining to essentials – out of a necessity, driven by a passion. So the small YouTuber could just do a good thumbnail, good enough audio isolation, and basic cuts. In the same vein the amateur word-editor may whittle down toward a good enough flow and forgo everything else.
An irony of the over-edited is a “loss of authenticity” and thus dully distant in its manicured form. Editing this thus far meant cutting out the usual filter words, filler sentences. Yet those fillers may make the piece, and so even if staying amateur is, overall, less effort, it can in fact be more popular. More resonant. Something that people crave.
This isn’t to say all manicures are malevolent. People do crave the well executed too. It does work for profits! A rise to the professional summit. That distance between each video, project, thought process – due to the heavy editing, refinement – implicitly contours into a comfortable apartment view; a safe distance between one and those waiting, and a spectacle too.
Absence is what makes one fond after all. A moment to reflect upon the good and true if you still got the memory wheel spinning in you before the next one hits.
Absence also commands a respect implicit. When next will they hear from you? Better make the most of this moment before fading into the shadows once more.
By writing and publishing everyday you rob yourself and others those moments to fill silence with something else. It’s within the silence between productions which are the most fantastic and binding – the same as a guitar riff melding into the background for your imagination to take the stage.
YouTube metrics and marketers may disagree, seeing as it’s commonly recommended to upload each day for familiarity. And maybe one can capitalize on that, if it doesn’t drive you insane. Spectacle versus familiarity: do you know which one you’d choose? Making daily videos instead of letting the natural refining process take stead seems lackluster.
To be a perpetual sputter in the dam rather than the flood. Isn’t that the essence most would want anyway? River of smooth expression; letting art cleanse us, make one whole. Familiarity breeds contempt, and it breeds a lullness.
One thing I never understood in some shows was the brooding character who leaned toward a mild cruelty in interactions. No softness, warmth, nothing at all but a rigor needed to work through each situation. As though they’ve a metallic chest. One may imagine mechanical insides filled with a mint northern scent.
Nevertheless such characters were naturally admirable. As though looking at their back meant looking up toward the foreboding mountain slope. Wondering what holds deep within them as they scale through each situation effortlessly, ruthlessly. Wondering if they knew what it meant to hold some timid thoughts however long ago, though it seems to be a fairytale they ever had a childhood or tears.
There’s a couple of responses to such statures. Some could contort it all pitiful that Nature refined them this way. Others use them as the available scapegoat to get through their troubles. And some sit comfortable with their high expectations of them – expectations they’ll continuously fulfill without a word.
However the opinions roll, so as one progresses it’s slowly revealed: these characters are the most honest of them all.
Honest about the strength you’ll need to rise to if you want to keep moving forward.
Honest about the deceptive tactics many employ today to wear you down: seemingly innocuous statements as the trojan horse toward breakdowns.
Honest about what’s important: chase your objectives and so people will come along.
Do you wonder if you yourself would become such a character? Maybe you already are? Such characters don’t seem to think much of it in either case. Such characters know not to look back.
One can only take the lessons with each action they take toward the day ahead: staying silent, keeping that slow torch burning toward some finish line before the next. Enjoying the tea in a silent patio for one.
It’s hard to see how anyone would turn out any other way after enough suffering. Whatever drove one earlier will inevitably seem foreign in such comforts, however cold or austere. However the path unfolds and inevitably as one’s heroes grow old so you’ll take their mantle and raise it. Not out of a forced expression nor an imposition, but a natural progression. Not so serious neither!
Though pain is inevitable as the pendulum swings, may as well grow some armour with twigs to sturdy bark if you want to be the druid after all. As our bodies breaks down, and the connections flay, what only persists is the mechanical minted palace one could shield within. Maybe then the gods will deliver the message as to what’s one mission to be, however long you’ll be. Perhaps another son of Zeus.