Meaning

2004-03-20 at 11:15 p.m.

I suppose what I am really searching for is a different life. I don't want to be rid of life altogether anymore, which comes as something of a surprise because I was beginning to feel like I'd be suicidal forever. But a different life, a different person. That would be good.

I think thats why I like reading so much, why I always have. Unless you're reading weird "literary fiction" you can end up becoming the main character, sharing their life - and unlike my real life, you can make it up as you go along. Thats what imagination, creativity, writing is all about.

Control.

And power. You can make your character - or a character in a book, do whatever you want them to do. No matter how weird, bizarre, soppy or sick it might be. They are yours to command - and no one can see inside your head. Well not unless we end up in an Orwellian state that is, but hopefully that won't happen.

I spend half my time now having an internal dialogue, an internal story unfolding. Its partly about me of course, but then it would be really, but on the other hand the characters are often the opposite of me - they have all the qualities I would like to possess and yet never quite seem to get a grip on. When I was little, that meant confidence and magical powers, in a sense, I suppose that is still what I would like. Well aside from the magical powers, which I've pretty much resigned myself to never having. Like flying - eventually you have to stop hoping. Which is a shame really.

What brought this on? I was sitting in the pub today and there was a rugby match on - Wales I think as everyone was singing Swing Low Sweet Chariot. And I just thought - what would it be like to be them? I always wanted to see what the world would look like through another person's eyes - in reality and not just in imagination. Is the colour I call blue the same in someone else's eyes? How do I know what that colour really is as I cannot see what other people think it is? We just agree to stick by one label for sights and sounds, tastes and smells, because we can't really know. I wish we could invent something so that we could know, so that we could get inside people's minds and experience the world as they do. Maybe even experience the world as they do. Experience their life and what it is like. We can know a certain amount about people's lives - like through these diaries, but its always filtered through what they would like to tell us, what they are comfortable revealing - even what they remember. But I want the minutae, the stuff that you don't remember or can't describe, like the sound of footsteps and what that means to you, smells and their connotations in your mind, that sort of thing.

Wouldn't it be nice to experience someone's life? To be someone else for a time, and return enriched to your own life. That is quite a dream and its not one I can achieve - well not unless I go bananas and believe I was in someone else's mind, but even then that would just be an illusion.

Speaking of illusions I suppose the best thing that such a mind-transfer would do is to convince me that other people do exist. I see people, hear them, smell them (in unfortunate cases), all the senses are involved - but I can't really persuade myself that they are there. After all, the senses can be deceived - one hallucination is enough to convince you of that. What if this life is just a prolonged dream? I would love to be 100% certain one way or another. I suppose I will find out eventually.

A bit pointless, this post, perhaps. But you see, my day is so boring, what else can I do? I can hardly sit here and lament for another boring post the fact that my life is somewhat empty, and that the only thing of note that happened today was that I burnt my finger, can I? That is interesting neither for anyone who might stumble upon this diary nor indeed is it interesting for me.

Meaning, and the lack thereof, that is the problem in my life, I think.

<< - >>
Notes | G-book