Please, give me my brakes back!

Carl Rivera43 said:So, what does life actually mean? I mean, seriously. What happens if someone's heart just can't beat naturally under these kinds of conditions?

If it can't, it stops beating. One way or another.
So, regardless of whether everything is dependent on it or not, does that "mean" anything to them?

Isn't that just a sanctuary from fate?

Is "destiny" just life? Or is life destiny? Honestly, who cares...
How, where, or even why would you try to run from what you are? From the thing you're stuck in?

Life is just one big part of destiny... because let's face it, destiny includes death too, doesn't it?

What does it even mean to "embrace fate"? What’s the deal with "embracing" anything at all? I mean, is there any living person out there—on a real, personal, intimate level—who hasn't actually faced or understood death? If someone was, say, clinically dead or whatever, and they actually made it back into the "sphere of life," then everything they ramble about regarding death or being inside it... that's just part of being alive. Does anyone actually alive have a clue what death is? Just like nobody knows what really happens in dreams. When you flip from "dream state" to "waking state," the brain can't decode the weirdness, so it turns that unrecognizable content into some broken version of a memory...

ironrider11 said:+1

Experimenting can get so damn fun that later, when your "lucid mind" hits during some hysterical high, you're left screaming in the dark because you realize you're trapped in your own head. You won't even be able to grasp—or maybe question—the idea that the Gordian knot doesn't actually need untying or cutting. It isn't even there. Is the fun gonna kill you, artist? The whole point of an experiment is to learn something. And wouldn't realizing self-annihilation be the ultimate confirmation of the theory?

People who are afraid to take risks often get this advice: "Just imagine the worst-case scenario, and you'll see it isn't that bad." Sure. Maybe if you don't have much of an imagination. 😵

Once those kinds of silly suggestions are handed out to aspiring Artists, the circus really begins. 😈

And after everything you've been through, it becomes a little harder to admit that all your suffering was essentially virtual—that you were actually the ringmaster of your own circus. It makes you look foolish, and people generally seem to prefer tragedies over comedies anyway. 😬

Joseph Bailey41 said:People who are afraid to take risks often get this advice: "Just imagine the worst-case scenario, and you'll see it isn't that bad." Sure. Maybe if you don't have much of an imagination. 😵

Once those kinds of silly suggestions are handed out to aspiring Artists, the circus really begins. 😈

And after everything you've been through, it becomes a little harder to admit that all your suffering was essentially virtual—that you were actually the ringmaster of your own circus. It makes you look foolish, and people generally seem to prefer tragedies over comedies anyway. 😬

Most people just don't have an imagination. Or they suppress it so hard they accidentally end up "becoming" fully imaginative. In ways and intensities they could never possibly conceive or suspect from outside examples that might actually be part of their own reality or core. A result that might actually be decent. Living an entire life without a serious intravenous dose of creativity would be... honestly, just thinking about the concept makes me want to gag.

Time passes, deadlines hit. Does a person keep clinging to tragedy, no matter how sweet or endless it seems? They get tired, eventually. If the Artist is young, it's obvious that from exhaustion, burnout, or just needing a break... nothing else is happening for a while. If they're restrained—which seems to be the case—avoiding the big displays when diving into the weird parts of themselves while testing their limits... it's just stupid and pointless to try being gentle, saying stuff like "well, maybe you won't even like it." Just try it and see. That's the only way to know. Unless you die before or during the process. Anything else is just... not it.

This tech era of swapping info, ideas, and experiences... feels like it leaves people, especially creative souls, partially crippled. Every experience is "available" to read somewhere. An instant result of gathered topics. When it comes to pop culture, or subculture (does that even exist anymore?)... it's just a loud, marketed product that isn't even real, just some digital pile of text, images, and video... a "window to the world"... it’s not surprising that people are starting to look like cloned shells, surrounded by brand ideas and brand matter.

A worn-out, wannabe retro Artist surviving the circus can watch it all with fear, or passively, dying of laughter. All you can tell a young Artist is, whisper it quietly: "take the highway, kid, not the side streets... don't be a clone..." No bad intentions, obviously. Not really any intention at all. Like everyone else, most people are just mentally shitting into the "digital" (or "real") without any clue about responsibility. Anyway, those who can laugh, will laugh; those who get paid, will cry; those who feel like cutting, will cut; those who need to vent... will vent. Those who actually live, and live well, will try. Regardless of how futile it all seems (always, forever, virtually).

Oooo, how great it is to be....

Emily Rivera45 said:Maybe... you might be right. I'm bored because I'm not doing the things I actually want to do, but that's only because every attempt to start feels like a risk of disappointing myself or others, which leads back to feeling depressed and suicidal. When I think about it, this inactivity is just another defense mechanism; my mind protects itself from getting hurt by isolating me from the very activities that would fulfill me. I don't even know how to begin fixing any of this or how to break the cycle... I feel like I need someone to guide me, but no one has been able to help so far...
I wonder if some people are just too difficult to recover... though I'm sure certain people will just claim I'm looking for attention or being dramatic... ☕

Yes, exactly that. There's a huge part of me that doesn't want to die, but this small part takes over completely quite often...

And if you drop the generalizations, where did you even get all this from?

That is exactly how my head works. I'm glad to see someone can actually understand me... thank you for that!

Artist, if you really are who you claim to be, why not channel all that destructive, anxious energy? Treat it like a wild stallion with a broken, distorted libido—just trick it into focusing on paper, or whatever medium you use, by forcing out the ideas trapped in that tortured brain of yours. 😁 Countless prolific authors were driven precisely by Thanatos, pulling their visions straight from its depths. Sure, Hemingway ended his own life, but only after he lived life at full throttle, despite depression nipping at his heels the entire time and after he had given everything he had.

An idle mind is the devil's playground (I hate folk sayings, but this one fits), but instead of viewing that beast as a persecutor, try seeing it as an assistant, a guide, or a guru. It can help you unlock your subconscious and find a lush orchard hidden among the predators and locusts. 🤣

When I get hit by waves of obsessive suicidal thoughts—which are much more benign and feathered now than they used to be when they were covered in jagged scales—what helps me is just vomiting out random ideas and smashing incompatible concepts together. I craft a journal from that mess, structure it later, extract the brilliance, and then pour it into poems. Sometimes the results are pathetic and gross, but mostly they end up as surprisingly effective combinations, because a chaotic mind gives birth to fantastic things that a controlled mind would never even conceive.

How exactly does this "failure" of yours manifest? Is it through whistling and throwing rotten tomatoes at a stage? Or is it through those mocking, critical avalanches of insults from uneducated, insensitive, and narrow-minded people who lack the capacity to understand what you do—people who are, frankly, unworthy of your attention? Or is it those monstrous, haunting apparitions in your head, representing a self-destructive super-ego formed by swallowing external poison?

Here is a little something for you:

https://carljungdepthpsychologysite....w#.XDiS-817mUk

ironrider11 said:Most people just don't have an imagination. Or they suppress it so hard they accidentally end up "becoming" fully imaginative. In ways and intensities they could never possibly conceive or suspect from outside examples that might actually be part of their own reality or core. A result that might actually be decent. Living an entire life without a serious intravenous dose of creativity would be... honestly, just thinking about the concept makes me want to gag.

Time passes, deadlines hit. Does a person keep clinging to tragedy, no matter how sweet or endless it seems? They get tired, eventually. If the Artist is young, it's obvious that from exhaustion, burnout, or just needing a break... nothing else is happening for a while. If they're restrained—which seems to be the case—avoiding the big displays when diving into the weird parts of themselves while testing their limits... it's just stupid and pointless to try being gentle, saying stuff like "well, maybe you won't even like it." Just try it and see. That's the only way to know. Unless you die before or during the process. Anything else is just... not it.

This tech era of swapping info, ideas, and experiences... feels like it leaves people, especially creative souls, partially crippled. Every experience is "available" to read somewhere. An instant result of gathered topics. When it comes to pop culture, or subculture (does that even exist anymore?)... it's just a loud, marketed product that isn't even real, just some digital pile of text, images, and video... a "window to the world"... it’s not surprising that people are starting to look like cloned shells, surrounded by brand ideas and brand matter.

A worn-out, wannabe retro Artist surviving the circus can watch it all with fear, or passively, dying of laughter. All you can tell a young Artist is, whisper it quietly: "take the highway, kid, not the side streets... don't be a clone..." No bad intentions, obviously. Not really any intention at all. Like everyone else, most people are just mentally shitting into the "digital" (or "real") without any clue about responsibility. Anyway, those who can laugh, will laugh; those who get paid, will cry; those who feel like cutting, will cut; those who need to vent... will vent. Those who actually live, and live well, will try. Regardless of how futile it all seems (always, forever, virtually).

Oooo, how great it is to be....

No. Absolutely not. The highway is nothing more than a digital shortcut for cheap, instant pop ideas and shallow gratification. It’s useful only if you want to rush headlong into the first tacky resort filled with neon pools, fuchsia bikinis, oiled-up bodies twerking, coconut cosmos, and designer drugs—all while beautiful, naked, unreachable mountains roll past like a cheap movie set. A winding, shadowed backroad hides far more unmapped brush and archaeological treasure within its damp, fertile soil. That ground is much richer for sparking true inspiration and finding those non-Gordian secrets of the self, far away from the suffocating petroleum dust of Formula777 that chokes out countless clones already racing down the same automated track.

Alexander Murphy96 said:No. Absolutely not. The highway is nothing more than a digital shortcut for cheap, instant pop ideas and shallow gratification. It’s useful only if you want to rush headlong into the first tacky resort filled with neon pools, fuchsia bikinis, oiled-up bodies twerking, coconut cosmos, and designer drugs—all while beautiful, naked, unreachable mountains roll past like a cheap movie set. A winding, shadowed backroad hides far more unmapped brush and archaeological treasure within its damp, fertile soil. That ground is much richer for sparking true inspiration and finding those non-Gordian secrets of the self, far away from the suffocating petroleum dust of Formula777 that chokes out countless clones already racing down the same automated track.

I could definitely use a little (maybe even a lot) more of what you're... .. ..

ironrider11 said:I could definitely use a little (maybe even a lot) more of what you're... .. ..

🤣

Don't sweat it. Judging by how much you write, you've got enough material for at least three lifetimes. Besides, this forum is just for creative rambling anyway—nothing more than a rough draft for some actual serious project.

Alexander Murphy96 said:🤣

Don't sweat it. Judging by how much you write, you've got enough material for at least three lifetimes. Besides, this forum is just for creative rambling anyway—nothing more than a rough draft for some actual serious project.

It doesn't matter how much I have. It's about having variety.
A "serious personal project"? Sure it does...

Honestly, we’re all just at the mercy of these self-proclaimed artists. Their logic is always the same: first, I'll act eccentric and unhinged, and then the actual skill will just magically manifest itself. It’s a pattern. These young artists... maybe once they realize this is actually a job—once they realize you have to bleed for it to gain any real education or relevance in any field—and once they stop looking at death and madness through such a romanticized lens, then perhaps things might actually change.

Alexander Williams512 said:Honestly, we’re all just at the mercy of these self-proclaimed artists. Their logic is always the same: first, I'll act eccentric and unhinged, and then the actual skill will just magically manifest itself. It’s a pattern. These young artists... maybe once they realize this is actually a job—once they realize you have to bleed for it to gain any real education or relevance in any field—and once they stop looking at death and madness through such a romanticized lens, then perhaps things might actually change.

So an Artist has to be "highly educated" and "relevant" just to be taken seriously? Or accepted by the academy? I know this guy who's a total wreck, maybe maxed out at a high school diploma. Not even trying to hide it, sometimes he's got it, sometimes he doesn't. Who knows. But one thing's for sure—when he's dialed in and focused on his glasswork, it’s breathtaking. Meanwhile, the masses of "educated" and "relevant" snobs mostly just talk a big game about their "artistic passion," which tells us absolutely nothing. History is full of screw-ups who left behind incredible work despite being complete messes... Don't be so judgmental, Alexander Williams512...

Family history shapes the wisdom of a great-grandchild

ironrider11 said:So an Artist has to be "highly educated" and "relevant" just to be taken seriously? Or accepted by the academy? I know this guy who's a total wreck, maybe maxed out at a high school diploma. Not even trying to hide it, sometimes he's got it, sometimes he doesn't. Who knows. But one thing's for sure—when he's dialed in and focused on his glasswork, it’s breathtaking. Meanwhile, the masses of "educated" and "relevant" snobs mostly just talk a big game about their "artistic passion," which tells us absolutely nothing. History is full of screw-ups who left behind incredible work despite being complete messes... Don't be so judgmental, Alexander Williams512...

Well, I’d actually love to hear more about his creative process. I'll admit, I wrote him off pretty quickly, but he reminds me far too much of those self-proclaimed artists. Art is a craft; you do it, and you learn it.
Your take on art is also a bit romanticized, if you ask me. To put it bluntly, your random string of words is nonsense. If Slamnig had written the same thing, people would call it postmodern poetry with layers of influence and endless interpretations. That’s only because he was an established poet with a degree in literature, whereas you aren't (I assume 🤣)

The descent into chaos? It’s a process without boundaries.

Emily Rivera45 said:I’m reading everything you all write and soaking it all in, so thank you for trying to help!

Regarding psychiatrists, I tried seeking help back in the States and just had terrible experiences... lots of guilt. During psychotherapy, when I mentioned suicidal thoughts and how much I struggle to value life, the woman asked me what I expected from her sessions, which felt incredibly rude. She even implied that others come to her to actually get better, whereas I was just bothering her with my "nonsense." Not exactly those words, but that was the point. I felt like total garbage, like someone who didn't deserve any help at all.
Of course I want help, it's just that how the body acts is one thing, and how the mind wants it to act is another...
I think one of my subconscious fears is that nobody will actually know how to help me, and everyone will eventually just give up on me.

With another psychologist, it was just as awful. I didn't open up about suicide at first, but once I did, it was a disaster. She told me a person is either suicidal or they aren't, and told me to just decide, essentially pushing the idea that if I am, she'd just have me committed for observation. I wasn't in that state that day, but afterward, there was just more guilt-tripping—being told I was bothering people for no reason, that I couldn't act like this, that I had to be either constantly suicidal or perfectly fine, otherwise it would just be seen as drama.
Ever since then, I haven't told anyone anything about my suicidal thoughts or my reflections on them.
The only place is here on this forum, which is why I wrote on the front page that I can't handle hateful comments accusing me of just seeking attention... because those bring back those bad memories with doctors, and that feeling that I don't even have the right to ask for help regarding this.

Now I'm living in a different part of the country and I see a counselor a few times a month, but because of other issues, I don't dare mention the dark stuff. I'm afraid that if things escalate, I won't be able to talk to her the same way and she might become more aggressive toward me. So, I guess something is better than nothing, since she helps with some things.

Anyway, I've rambled quite a bit...

The truth is, you’re actually having a blast being alone with your self, yet your biggest fear is losing your audience. Oh, right... the massive ego inherent in every artist.
Honestly, maybe everyone *should* give up on you; otherwise, you’ll never learn to clean up your own mess.
It isn't some dramatic curtain call where you’re left standing alone on a Broadway stage, playing out some theatrical fantasy. It’s about cleaning up your own shit.
Damn, it really makes a person want to throw in the towel when they realize their suffering isn't being recognized as some profound, original artistic expression.
I'm not surprised you're depressed.
Being alone is perfect. That’s when it becomes a binary: you either exist, or you don't. If you can't impress your own self, you aren't impressing anyone.
That seems to be the core of it.
Is that what you're actually terrified of?

Fears have this incredible tendency to manifest. And honestly, being terrified isn't a bad thing. It can be a healing experience, truly. Because that's when, and only then, all the masks finally fall away.

So, what's gotten into you lately with all this aggressive labeling?

Alexander Williams512 said:Well, I’d actually love to hear more about his creative process. I'll admit, I wrote him off pretty quickly, but he reminds me far too much of those self-proclaimed artists. Art is a craft; you do it, and you learn it.
Your take on art is also a bit romanticized, if you ask me. To put it bluntly, your random string of words is nonsense. If Slamnig had written the same thing, people would call it postmodern poetry with layers of influence and endless interpretations. That’s only because he was an established poet with a degree in literature, whereas you aren't (I assume 🤣)

So, why aren't you asking him? You're using this fancy, hollow way of talking that could be a whole essay, but you're dodging the point. If you really wanted to know... if something or someone reminds you of that, or those, or... it doesn't make it true. It’s lazy to just pigeonhole people like that. You think you've got them figured out, but you're probably just projecting. It's nothing more than some mental masturbation to feed your own ego while you sit up there in your little ivory tower. Shitting on everything from a height doesn't make you smart, it just makes you a loser living in a fantasy you built yourself. Maybe not every "quality" thing is actually high quality...

What does my random rambling have to do with some "established artist"? Did I ever claim to be an artist with a degree or whatever? If I don't have the credentials, am I supposed to just shut up, stay humble, and be grateful that some jerk sitting in a high position is deigning to grace me with his bullshit? Waving a diploma around like it makes him authentic. Or maybe it's just a signal that he's done talking crap and is moving on to wiping his ass. With that paper. Waste of good wood. Too much drama, even for me...

Is that freaking Pedobear on your avatar?