Whenever I listen to jazz I get these visions of fall leaves, of the front of one of those street side yardless houses, which I can’t remember the term for. I picture it as a sort of illustration in a children’s book. I think I remember it vaguely from an old Amelia Bedelia book, or something like that. I think of winter and ice and cities. All very stereotypical jazz imagery. But, this isn’t truly “whenever” I listen to jazz - isn’t that annoying how common phrases spring up in our internal thoughts and then we fool ourselves? I felt some frustration at myself for always having these associations to jazz. But then I realized I don’t always have these associations. It’s just sometimes. I was briefly frustrated with myself over something I don’t actually do, that I only thought I do because of the common phrase that came to mind to express my thinking internally. It’s very unnerving.

I lately have wondered if I’m feeling very sad all the time. But then I also feel very happy sometimes, too. I feel this deep omnipresent sadness in the back of my head at all times, with the world, with my upcoming death and the death of everyone and everything I love. It’s not reasonable to think that means it’s all for nothing, but it’s the gut feeling I have in reaction. But I also feel this omnipresent peace and joy in the back of my head at all times, at the beauty of the world and all the art humans have created. If it wasn’t for music, art, etc. I’m not sure I’d feel that way. This is why I think art is so important. I think what isn’t art is important too. But mostly only as a means to the end: art.

Art isn’t the only end though. Human connection is too. I am so thirsty for more human connection. The modern day euphemism of thirst is not entirely out of place here, but I mean more than sexually, and in fact primarily not sexually. But so much of human connection is through art, and so much art is for the sake of human connection. It’s very interesting, and beautiful, but at the same time feels so animal. I’ve never liked the notion that humans are some kind of special elevated being fundamentally different from animals. To me we are very much the same as animals. Arguably what makes us human is that we’re the best at being animals.

And sometimes I want to be so alone, so unbelievably alone. Sometimes I want to be in deep space with my jazz playing, with no human able to reach me. Interestingly, online games where you also have a sort of offline room, like LittleBigPlanet’s Pod, manage to show us what this is like. If you don’t invite anyone to your game, you are absolutely alone and unreachable. It’s lovely that even by creating a fictional scenario, the real experience of it is enough to give us the true sensation of what that would be like, were it real. This, to me, makes it effectively real in that regard. I really do basically know what it would be like to be in deep space with a portal back to Earth that only I can go through. Imagination is the greatest thing about being human, maybe.

That is my “happy place”. I’ve often thought about 3D modeling it. It’s a little space pod, only just about big enough for me to cozy up in and float around in. It’s got a little bed, a little machine that somehow produces endless food from the space dust, it’s got a computer loaded with basically all the music ever recorded, all the games, art, etc. Like a download of the internet. And it’s hurtling away from Earth at a tremendous speed. Completely unreachable. All those art products of those humans, as if by the sheer distance between me and Earth, cease to seem like works of humans, but rather as if cosmic rays had just so happened to flip the bits of my hard drives and produce that data, it becomes a naturally occuring structure in the same way as the stars and nebulae. It’s historical and social context becomes optional, the authors are all dead, and so none of the content needs to upset me anymore. It can all be seen from a distance. No foolishness or wrongness or anything else in the data that may have frustrated me on Earth has any reason to bother me now. The fact that something exemplifies a form of human ignorance detrimental to my wishes is nullified - nothing about humans can change my situation anymore. I am on my course, my pod provides everything I need, forever, as long as I live and longer.

I feel so many thoughts that I want to express and have understood though. As long as I’m on Earth, this desire seems very strong. I feel it the most when I’m tired. Which makes me think it’s nothing but delusion. The brain always feels so full of deep insights when it is too incapacitated to express them. It’s like some sort of intellectual rainbow, convincingly and undeniably there, but its very essence is formed by it being out of reach, it is intrinsically unreachable. And so it does not really exist in the way we think it does. But I can’t stop myself from grasping at it.

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