Information found on the Internet is overwhelming most of the time and I often find myself drowning in it with no possibility of escaping as I am sure a lot of you out there are. For some, having too many choices might be more frightening than exciting and adventurous, whilst others feel utterly inspired by the challenge.
But how far is too far? How much information is too much information? How do we separate the useful from the unuseful? Is too much curiosity harmful? Does the unending search bring anxiety, depression, the sense of uselessness and does it stop creativity? Does it make us oblivious to actual, immediate reality? Do the numerous tutorials and “how to’s” only give us a false sense of knowledge and learning? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I want to become a polymath as much as the next person, but in the process do we turn out to be terribly unfocused and impatient? What are we looking for and do we actually expect to find it out there? Is this just happening to us, millennials, or do other generations go through the same? And why oh why do we almost always find ourselves on the creepy side of the internet? (Ah, o.k., sorry. I guess it’s only me then) These are some of the questions I have been struggling with for some time now.
There are at least thirty tabs that have absolutely nothing in common with each other on random different topics such as bird skull jewelry and black magic, the 18 best things to do in New Orleans, Cyrano De Bergerac, Unobtainium and the description to Full metal alchemist anime pending on my poor, poor browser at any given moment. And their number is increasing, because there is always more and a deeper side of everything yet to be revealed. The process never stops and there is not enough time in the world to read and ruminate over everything at once, so I like to keep some for later. Then later turns to never as my laptop suddenly crashes so I need to start all over again from scratch. And don’t fool yourself: it doesn’t matter how much surfing you do, you are barely scratching the surface. (I am not even going to tackle deep web here, because that’s a whole different story)
My relationship with the internet has been a wild ride so far, full of curiosities and goosebumps, obsessions and crushes, world music and obscure sorrows explained, scams, paranoia and even a horror movie-like experience with the police knocking at our door at six o’clock in the morning (and did this leave us psychologically scarred for life? you betcha!) so why not keep a journal of some intense, heartbreaking, inspirational, extraordinary web surfing experiences? It was the beginning of an attempt to understand what they meant and how they ended up changing me. So I gave it two whole days which started with me asking Google for the worst albums in the world, which got me to Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, considered one of the most cacophonous sounding masterpieces of all time, a combination of rock, funk, jazz, folk, avant-garde, raw blues, surrealism and dadaism (and forgetting to add madness to the equation) and yes, it was excruciatingly painful to listen to a first, but then it got better and parts of it even started to get a little bit of Tom Waits vibe here and there.
(source: Pinterest)
(So I immediately looked up Tom Waits and found a hilarious excerpt from an interview where, when told “It’s kinda strange to have a guy sitting here with a bottle in front of him” he responds with the famous “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy”).
The next predictable step was to ask for more of the songs and albums considered to be the worst in the world and boy, did I find some! Vishnu Malleh’s “It’s my life whatever I wanna do” touched the more primitive side of me, which manifested itself through episodes of uncontrollable hysterical laughter during all kind of activities such as snack preparation, love making, shower taking, but also gave me an idea for one of my future projects.
I then somehow got to watching a bunch of interviews of people having left The Church of Scientology and more than a few documentaries on children trapped in bengali village brothels and Thalidomide’s side effects to the foetus, extreme poverty in China and a Tagalog family who recooks and resells leftover McDonald’s food “pagpag” for a few bucks.
When it all got unbearably painful to watch, I would turn to YouTube for some soothing background music to ruminate over the heaviness and unease. I randomly picked Chris Stapleton’s “Fire away” because I’m a fan of the guy and his music always takes me back to more familiar territories. I knew the song, I’ve just never watched the video. But then I did and it stroke a powerful chord, especially after reading the comments – and boy, were there comments! – stories written in blood and tears, lonely souls doomed to never finding peace wandering around, stories of wisdom and endurance, unlucky bastards and families torn apart and, above all, the constant presence of death (yes, that is exactly how powerful those comments were) And yes, there are real fights going on around us that we know nothing about, nor do we want to, too busy with our made-up, sorry excuses for problems we keep complaining about because, no matter how hard we have it, it’s still more easy than others’ existence.
I took it all in and went to bed with flashbacks and distorted images going on in my head, but the next day I decided to start a little lighter for a change. And this is how I discovered AntsCanada, just an everyday normal guy who raises colonies of different species of ants in vivariums in his house in the Philippines. My skin constantly itched while watching the episodes, but it was absolutely worth it. I now have a whole different kind of respect for this miniature world and all it’s magic.
Because of a conversation I had some time ago with my man, I soon found myself watching documentaries about carnivorous plants and even deciding upon getting a Venus fly trap of our own, then viewed a random Top 10 strangest plants in the world which took me on a trip down to memory lane, when I was a child and my dad brought home a Mimosa pudica, but then I came back to music and feasted my eyes on Aretha Franklyn’s live performance of “Natural woman” at the Kennedy Center where she absolutely owned the stage, the night, the room and absolutely every single individual in the audience.
But things escalated quickly (once more) and I don’t remember how I got into watching interviews with mentally ill patients in the 60’s (from depressive behaviour to obsessive compulsion, schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder, borderline personality disorder etc.) and the moment I thought I’d finally reached the epithome of human nature, that there was nothing else out there to top the images of people having been trapped inside their own minds with no possibility of ever escaping and visions of my own madness coming to life, taking over my functions and turning me into a steril, incomprehensible, broken creature, I gave up any sense of continuity, focus and logic and pressed play on a random Top 10 weirdest bands in history and I’m glad I did, because it introduced me to the most warm voiced steampunk robots I had ever seen or heard – Steam Powered Giraffe singing about a love that has come to an end in “Honeybee” and it was beautiful and a bit weird and I absolutely couldn’t get enough of anything about them.
The small details, their mouths moving a certain way, the sighs, the “humans acting like robots acting like humans” feeling about them, the simplicity of the video, the miming, the make-up – it was absolute perfection. I couldn’t believe this band has actually existed for so many years and I had no idea about it. And not only have I instantly developed crushes for all three members, but after a little research, I also learned some interesting things about their background story, how “Rabbit” the leader has later become Isabella “Bunny”, how the band has evolved since this song was released in 2012, how there are sometimes “malfunctions” during their live shows when the robots go wild for a moment and how The Spine’s voice takes me back to the 80’s, reminding me of Bradley Kenneth Robert’s deep, beautiful voice.
I needed to stop for awhile and breathe in this new thing I had found. I wanted to tell everyone I knew about these robots, I wanted to listen to “Honeybee” until my ears bled (although I knew this would never happen). So I retraced the steps that had led me to Steam Powered Giraffe – random, chaotic attempts to be left with something, anything, no matter how insignificant, through the avalanche of information I was caught underneath; small shelters where I would regroup myself among curiosities constantly asking to be fed, some unfamiliar, uncomfortable places that eventually transitioned to known, safe territories, glimpses of human nature at both it’s best and worst, creator and destroyer, pain inducer and art maker, primitive and spiritual being. At the end, I could almost feel a bittersweet taste in my mouth that lingered for some time, I was tired, confused, paradoxically optimistic and pessimistic and there was but one thought that prevailed over all other: my own insignificance in time and space. A two-day long journey among brave little girls, psychiatric patients, poets, scientists, activists, clowns, actors, martyrs, puzzle makers, musicians…robots that after awhile, started to appear to me in their true form: that of giants.
No matter where I turned, I was surrounded by giants I couldn’t keep up with.
GreenEyed Kisses,
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