Well, I had planned on a whole series of posts talking about systems and… well, systemic anthropology and some other stuff, like ludus and paideia and how systems are incorporated into even things as seemingly organic and impulsive as “play” (in the sense of there being rule-based play but also more imaginative “free” play, each of which serves a developmental function for children, and both of which should be balanced to some degree in games and other interactive experiences).

I also spent portions of my last posts moping about how I couldn’t spend Christmas with those who I “most wanted to” on account of their demise.

And THEN I got a kidney stone, and spent the last several weeks in pretty intense pain.

So I spent Christmas laying around trying to hurt less, and didn’t actually see anyone but my wife.

I guess that’s what I get for not being grateful for the company I might have had. Though I AM grateful for the lovely company I DID have during my ailment.

I passed one stone, but there are others and I am still dealing with things so I guess it’s likely to be a little longer before I can return to my “systems” concepts, but I figured it was worth posting something, since I’d planned on posting more but was interrupted by my body’s sabotage.

I dunno, I may shelf this “systems” stuff for now, keep it on a back-burner. Been collaborating a bit more lately with an old writer-friend and it’s been making me itchy to work on an old story I’ve been tinkering with and fine-tuning–I think I’m overdue for getting it on the page.

There is that old saying, after all: “kill your darlings.” If I never commit this story to pages, then it can always live perfectly in this half-formed state in my mind. If I can’t see it on a page, I don’t have to confront the areas where it’s not finished, not perfect.

So, I need to allow it to be imperfect. If I can do that, I can identify where it needs to be fixed, improved, cured, whatever.

How long is it reasonable to spend on something without committing to it? Without REALLY committing to it? How many vignettes and snippets of dialogue and descriptions of random scenery can you produce before you work on the thing itself?

What value is there in keeping it perfect in my mind if I can’t ever share it with anyone or show it to anyone except in the obnoxious kind of way that people describe vague recollections of dreams they had?

“Well, it’s about [concept] and the character is like [description] but he interacts with this other character who is like [other description] and…” and usually by that point my non-writer friends’ eyes have begun glazing over (and even some of my writer friends have politely begun rolling their eyes because this is the 10th time I’ve talked about it but I’ve still got nothing tangible to show for it besides the various apocrypha that isn’t actually useful to include in the story itself). Turns out, it’s easier to READ stories than have them incoherently rambled at you out of sequence by an over-enthusiastic amateur, who would have thought?

I’ve concluded this needs to be a sort of screenplay, and that I think it’ll work best as a multi-season dark comedy/suspense thing.

I think I have three season’s worth of content to include, with the first season showing the main character gradually acclimating to their new circumstances, then things escalating to a point where he loses control, and finally a third portion of the whole arc where he attempts to regain control and set things “right” in some sense. Possibly formulaic, but all story-telling is formulaic to some degree, people like novelty and surprise but they also like the familiar and comfortable–story structures exist like they are for reasons. Audiences have expectations.

Worst-case scenario, I guess it could come off banal, but there’s so much banal shit out there these days, maybe that wouldn’t be the worst possible thing? Maybe the worst thing would just be me never actually working on it.

So as writing goes, I suppose I’m going to shift gears to work on this more dominantly, which will likely mean I’m not posting on here as much until I get to a good place with it.

All that crazy “systems” stuff is still going to be something I put thought into, but for now those connections are still forming and I’m not yet done working the ideas, but the actual writing parts will have to wait. The long-story short of it is that I think there are some flaws with the dominant approaches to systemic anthropology, but from the various disciplines I’ve been researching, I haven’t really found anything that takes the approach I am interested in. I don’t think it’s particularly valuable to reduce EVERYTHING to systems as though individuals cease to have a personal impact, and that feels a bit like what systemic anthropology seeks to do. Or I guess as a discipline they don’t “seek” to do anything, but it seems overly reductive to me.

I don’t know. I’m really interested in this intersectionality between individuality and systems and the ways in which the systems shape us and we, in turn, shape them. How these systems compete and even have unique life-cycles, almost like that of a larger organism, or like the relationships between parasites and hosts, and even symbiotic relationships that can be mutually beneficial. I mean, what is any corporation if not a system of individuals all working together to advance their personal interests? And if corporations have “personhood,” then in some sense these systems are functionally entities. A collective entity.

It’s… it’s sort of fractal, in a sense? It scales the same way up and down. We’re humans, but we are filled with bacteria and other organisms that help regulate our functions. We’re functionally a “corporation” of tiny organisms that reside within us, all working together toward the same end, and to some extent our cells function in a similar fashion. And then we zoom out and you have unions, gangs, brotherhoods, armies, corporations–humans banding together as a collective under a common purpose.

Well, I need to lay down, so I’m off. The throbbing in my flank has resumed.

Go make some stuff and WHATEVER YOU DO stay hydrated. Kidney stones are awful. Go make some stuff, or barring that, drink a big glass of water. You won’t regret either of those.

-E