I am bitterly disappointed with the direction this blog has taken. I haven't gotten to the stage where I post about what I ate for lunch (not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you), but I realize that part of the reason why I don't post here as often as I used to (such as during June-August, certainly the best period for this nearly one year old blog) is because the blog is losing focus. There was a time when it was run steadily by the seemingly never-ending pit of philosophy that I had discovered, with dilemmas posted every night (and very few of them solved, unfortunately).

The only good thing is that I have tried to pick out times when things "flow", and I try to write a story/poem them. The inferior quality isn't too much of a deterrent, because well, at least it's something. I'm glad that I have at least managed to keep alive the arcane art of writing, something which I would have surely stopped were it not for this blog. I remember what thrills I used to get from writing stories and poems all those years ago. The fire still burns I think, and while I may not have the talent, I think the passion is still there. Yes, I know I have said that I wish I could write a true epic, but the mere fact that I am writing semi-consistently is enough to make me happy - better to be happy with what you have to be happy with, as it were.

I talk a fair bit about things having to "flow", so much so that it sounds like some mystical, magical thing. But I don't think it is really, or at least, not to me. Sure, in some ways it is transcendental, and it is hard to give a proper description of it, but I think it fundamentally makes sense. In layman's terms, it might boil down to saying "you have to be in the mood". Now, naturally if I'm really nervous about having an exam I haven't studied for, I won't be in a suitable frame of mind to write a soothing romantic ballad.

But I don't think it's sufficient to be in the mood. It is certainly important to be in the right mood, but that's not the whole thing. There also has to be that extra element, that spark that somehow converts a wild jumble of ideas, images, phrases, and senses to words in a way that is meaningful and resonant. Of course, if you were to ask me to define these terms, you would have me on the back foot, so let's defer this matter for the moment. I mentioned this in the last comment on this story I posted earlier (incidentally, one of the few works that I'm proud of - I think everything really worked well there). The inspiration for that story was a seemingly tangential quote from Othello. But, at the time I wrote that story, there was some part of me that managed to take that quote and use it to draw together several ideas connected to it, but all the while maintaining the general feel of the quote.

I'd imagine by now you are well and truly flustered, and haven't the faintest clue what I am talking about. It's hard to explain, but essentially, it is that there was something about the quote that struck me when I read it. Here I am up against a brick wall, for I simply do not know how to explain what struck me, and what the general idea of the quote was. As I said in the comment, it was as if I was in a different world when I was writing that story. Anyway, the magic ingredient required for things to "flow" is that which manages to somehow grasp that "something" in its entirety, and use it to its full potential. That, I think, is the essence of the flow. Were the element of the flow not there, I doubt I would have managed to do anything at all, even if I were in the mood for writing.

Admittedly, I probably got a bit too spacey here, but this isn't something I find particularly easy to explain. I have a feeling that it is something that most people are innately familiar with, but it just doesn't seem to get enough recognition.

While I'm on the subject of writing, I remember an interview where Woody Allen talked about all his films over the course of a couple of hours. Then, at the end, as it was wrapping up, he interjected and said that he thought he ought to mention that he thought most of his films were failures, lest people get the wrong idea. For starters, it's nice to see someone with as low an opinion of themself..! He also said that he started off every one of his projects thinking it was going to be his best work - he would be sketching out the rough ideas in a notebook and think to himself "Oh man, this is going to be the best thing ever!". But, he said, as it turned out, with a lot of his films, the end result was quite far-off from the original ideas he had in his head, and these were the ones that he did not hold in high regard. The ones that he did like, however, were those were he managed to stay true to those original ideas. I am similar in that I usually start off a piece of writing thinking it is going to be my best one to date. What is also interesting is that in my experience it is true that my most successful pieces of writing (as in, the ones that don't embarass me two weeks on) are those which I can somehow relate to their inspirations and original ideas, which I can look at and get an immediate feel for the mood in which they were written in.

Perhaps this comes down to the metaphysics of quality. Is there an entity called quality detached from objectivity and subjectivity which we use for interpreting things? I think it's time to pore over Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance again.

It truly has been a while since I posed a philosophical question. So much so that a part of me just asked "Why bother asking that question, when one can't even understand just what is going on with life in general?". Like, for instance, what any of this means. Hmm I sense that I am travelling down familiar roads, with the details of my adventures stored on the archives of this blog. It's funny, I wanted to make this blog a "digital-me", with my thoughts, feelings, opinions and ramblings, but I seem to have stumbled a fair bit. I realize it is hard to be heard when there are a sea of other blogs out there, so many of them vastly superior to mine. Yet it would be disappointing if I didn't at least try to improve this one now, to push it back to the way it was heading (when I used to have an average of 50 posts a week..!).