{"id":873,"date":"2005-01-24T20:23:00","date_gmt":"2005-01-24T20:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeffreyatw.wordpress.com\/2005\/01\/24\/oh-right-i-remember-what-i-was-going-to-post-about\/"},"modified":"2005-01-24T20:23:00","modified_gmt":"2005-01-24T20:23:00","slug":"oh-right-i-remember-what-i-was-going-to-post-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/2005\/01\/oh-right-i-remember-what-i-was-going-to-post-about\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh right, I remember what I was going to post about…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stuff that can’t be defined intimidates me. I don’t believe in stuff that can’t be defined.
\nThe obvious idea here is deities: gods in certain religions (Buddhism, Judaism, Islam to a degree) cannot define God – it’s said throughout the teachings of these religions that even an attempt to describe God makes God lose all meaning. While lack of proof is also a factor that turns me off from any sort of belief in a God, lack of definition is something that I often don’t like to deal with.
\nI refuse to believe in something without proof. It’s why I’m atheist, not agnostic – according to these religions, there is no way to ever define God, to describe God, to put any constraints within which God must fall – so I completely discard this notion altogether and look instead to focus on matters that can actually one day be proven. There’s no belief or disbelief here at all – it’s simply a matter of given facts.
\nSo basically, I have no faith. No hope, no fear. I don’t really have the need, nor do I want to spend any of my time, thinking about what I’d like to have happen. Don’t worry, be happy, whatever will be will be, etc.
\nBut what I really wanted to talk about was stuff like the arts – art itself can be defined as anything that does not directly affect two of life’s goals: survival and reproduction (Outlook stolen from Scott McCloud’s works). But then when we get into subcategories, like music, visual art, and poetry, that’s where my insecurity about where lines should be drawn sets in. I read, I think in some high school English class’s poetry segment’s reader, that poetry “is.” That’s the definition. Poetry IS. So basically, anything you write down on a piece of paper can be poetry. Visual art is anything you can see. Music is anything you can hear.
\nMy thoughts on this matter are regressive – removing the boundaries on what poetry, visual art, or music can be is very unappealing and almost offensive to me. I’ve actually (intentionally) angered people with my thoughts on this with my Porter Core Final Project<\/a> from a year ago. Looking back it is<\/i> a weakness on my part, but something I want to have – the need to have social and historical standards determine what really is poetry, visual art, or music, and what is just… I dunno, wasted time. “Crap” art.
\nThere can always be half-assed explanations behind the sort of art that I find crappy, though. And to me, what’s most interesting of all is how viewers reply to these explanations. Really esoteric critics could even be swayed by such a nonchalant explanation such as “I dunno, I wrote the word ‘and’ on a piece of paper and I thought it was pretty deep.” Anyone ever seen that episode of Doug where Porkchop steps in paint and walks all over Doug’s canvas and then Doug’s hailed as a prodigy (and can’t even finish his works that follow because people misinterpret them before they’re even done)? That’s the sort of people I’m talking about. Even though people can bullshit a description about this sort of stuff, IN ALL SERIOUSNESS THE WORK CANNOT BE EXPLAINED. And I fucking hate that!
\nBut that’s really how most progress is. Someone’s always trying to one-up someone else. Someone realizes, hey, poems don’t have to rhyme. Someone else says, hey, poems don’t have to be comprised of verses. Someone else says, nor do they real words! Nor do they even have to have any words at all! And on and on! And I reiterate – my belief that this sort of stuff is wrong is REGRESSIVE. I simply don’t appreciate nu-nouveau-new-neo-futurist-modernism, because it’s ahead of my time. And it’ll only “progress” further. If you don’t feel it now, chances are you will when you’re older, when people intentionally listen to things that cause severe, irreversible damage to their eardrums on a daily basis, or people claim an already-made structure or lot of land and label it visual art, or take some old school paper and label it a poem and be done with it…
\n…oh wait, people are ALREADY DOING THIS… man, I’m getting too old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stuff that can’t be defined intimidates me. I don’t believe in stuff that can’t be defined. The obvious idea here is deities: gods in certain religions (Buddhism, Judaism, Islam to a degree) cannot define God – it’s said throughout the teachings of these religions that even an attempt to describe God makes God lose all… Continue reading Oh right, I remember what I was going to post about…<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyatw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}