117am. I spent some time earlier rewatching a few Rick and Morty episodes. And I find it fascinating how “fresh” it felt – even though I had already watched the entire series before. It gets me thinking about what it means to revisit media of all kinds. What is the value of re-reading and re-watching things that you’ve read and watched before?
I remember that Tony Robbins has a bit in his TED talk where he asks “Have you ever rented a video or film that you’ve already seen? […] Get a fucking life. Why are you doing it? You’re certain it’s good because you read or saw it before, but you’re hoping it’s been long enough you’ve forgotten, and there’s variety.”
I think at some level I internalized a bit of that, and at the same time, I think there’s something not quite right about it. I’ve watched Into The Spider-Verse about 4 or 5 times now – I first watched it on the plane to San Francisco, and I watched it again on the plane back to Singapore 2 weeks later. Then I watched it on my TV with my wife, watched it again by myself, and have been watching bits and pieces from it periodically. And I feel like each watch has added something. I chew on it, I notice nuances that I missed on earlier watches. In the first time, I get hit with surprise after surprise, and am engrossed by the novelty of it all. In the subsequent watches, I get to anticipate the rhythm, the beat, the pulse. I appreciate the foreshadowing, the layers. And I get to focus on different characters each time, consider things from slightly different perspectives.
Robbins is right in a sense when he says “you’re hoping it’s been long enough you’ve forgotten” – but it’s not really about “forgetting” to me. It’s more like… I feel like I’ve lived enough life that I’m a different person than when I last watched or read the content. It’s like checking in on an old friend – partially to learn about what’s changed, what still matters, what doesn’t matter as much anymore and so on. And yeah, part of it is a sort of familiarity thing. But even that – is that so bad? So many pop songs follow the same chord progressions, use roughly the same melodies – and that’s the point. The familiarity is the point. We can’t live our lives in complete, chaotic randomness – we’re pattern-seeking creatures. When something feels fresh or novel, it’s in comparison to what we know.
So… what’s this vomit about? I’m thinking more broadly about how I make decisions, when I decide to do things. How I decide what to eat. I want some novelty, but seldom do I want too much out of the blue. How do I decide what to read? I have all these books around me right now as I write this. And I don’t really feel particularly drawn to any of them in this specific moment. And I think that’s okay. But also… if I go too long without reading anything, I start getting a little nutty and claustrophobic, without exactly realizing that that’s what I’m feeling.
Yeah, this is the right spot to be digging. I think Alan Watts has some riffs in this space (and if I knew which video/talk exactly had these, I would be listening to it right now! Haha.) – you can’t micromanage everything in your life. That’s a setting-sun way of living, you’ll always be a step behind. DT Suzuki – enlightenment is like everyday consciousness but two inches above the ground. That’s what I want. I want to be effortlessly flowing through everything. I know that it takes work to get to that point. I believe I am willing to do the work. As I sit here I find myself thinking, I want to play the guitar again. I want to know more about the Nine Inch Nails – I was listening to some of them again, but then I got “tired”, and am currently writing this to one of my familiar-ish playlists. And THAT makes me a little self-conscious, and I’ve switched playlists to something else that feels slightly less familiar, yet still somewhat familiar.
The above might sound slightly neurotic in writing, but in practice it feels somewhat effortless and natural – like micro-adjusting in a chair, or in bed, to get more comfortable so you can rest more. That’s what I’m trying to do in the broadest sense across all things. I’m proud of how, yesterday, after writing a word vomit, I didn’t force myself to write another – rather, I shifted to cleaning out my notes. And I got a lot of that done, and that felt great! And I stopped when it felt right to stop.
So… all of this is really about me trying to get better at discerning my own feelings, my own intentions, my own wants and goals, and not bullshit myself while I’m doing it, and not overthink it. Take it easy, but take it.
I find myself thinking about the aesthetic searching game I was playing on Twitter recently. Essentially, it was sort of about the art of “channel-surfing”, or “web-surfing”, really. That’s what I’m trying to do here. I’m already good at this, I want to get even better at it. I want to be one of the best in the world at it. It feels like play to me, not work. There’s a sort of musical discipline and focus element to it. Maybe I should look more into what Victor Wooten has said about practicing – I feel like he has the right sort of joyful attitude and approach to learning. I’d also like to revisit what that jazz pianist had to say. It’s something that bears revisiting. So. Doing this vomit has made it a little bit clearer, at least in this moment, that I can trust myself to figure out what’s next for me. I just need to take a bit of time to do it, and relax, and let it come to me.
Revisiting things is like revisiting a point on a map. And I’m trying to paint like Pollock here – look at how much his paint dances over previous points. The point isn’t to cover all of the canvas and never repeat yourself. The point is to dance, freely, from the heart.
