A Muse on the First Few Hours of Christmas

Ah, it is but another serene and cool night. Sometimes I wonder, if all these were but a dream, the whole idea of me being in another country studying, meeting new people, and not forgetting the old; could it be that all of these are but a very elaborate dream of some sort?

Well, the last I checked, I'm still in the same place. So if it were truly a dream, then it is indeed a rather coherent and persistent one then, which is fairly rare if one thinks about it carefully. How can a dream be consistent? The very notion of what constitutes a dream doesn't seem to permit it being wholly consistent; for isn't it in our dreams that we learn of our inner-most desires, our wants, our needs in a way that reality has no way of fulfilling us? Don't we have that dream ever so often, about the material gain that we dream of, or even about the intangible gains that we might have in mind, that is potentially unrealisable in reality?

Already I digress. But, allow me to ramble on, for within these rahter incoherent murmurings one can truly discover the deep-most essence of what makes me me. While writing has always been a form of venting for me, lately I feel that perhaps I might have written a tad too much about myself, to the point that I have become yet another open book with which people can learn more about me.

Oh how paradoxical! On the one hand, I am such a private person, hardly whispering about the goings-on in my life, yet on the other hand here I am, blabbering away about the very things that I would not talk about in real life. So, am I an attention whore then? Am I just another of those hypocritical self-centred persons who are emotionally sensitive, despite the fact that I don't really associate myself with them much?

Nah, I'm not quite an attention whore, I think. Attention whores draw attention to themselves due to their appearance, and they publicise it rather ostentatiously so as to be able to draw even more attention to themselves. I don't really publicise my blog(s) that much; I just put them in places where people might find information about me, and let them figure out if it is worth it to check out some of the writing that I do.

Creative expression. That's right, that's the thing that I don't seem to be able to work on well lately. Could it be because of the amount of work that I need to do in order to satisfy my academic requirements? Could it be that the time has come where my creativity has dried up and I am all but an empty shell devoted to the skullduggery of the largely captitalistic world? Nay I say, nay. I feel the old creative juices flowing once more, but this time, they are not the same as the youthful indifference I had, nor are they based on the string of rather uncomfortable experiences that I had in the not-too-far-away past.

It is a different sort of creativity, the kind that is fueled by a rather tacit understanding that the world is not as it seems, and that there must be some balance between what is essentially there and what isn't. It is the kind of silent creative power that has lain dormant in my very soul during the time with which I was forced to tuck it away in safety, for fear of the potential repercussions for not conforming.

While I still do not give a rosy endorsement towards blind conformance of the social norm, I have more or less acknowledged that there is no way to live in this society without realising that as a whole there is a need for us to be like sheep in order to keep some semblence of a large working commune of people. Imagine the type and extent of chaos, if all the people are non-conformists—where will all the industries based on trends go? Where will our consumerism-based economical systems go? Where will mass-productoin go? And more importantly, where will our sense of community identity go?

No, I'm not a naysayer. I didn't say that being non-conforming is bad—being completely non-conforming (or conforming for that matter) is not quite a good idea. We are all humans for a reason; the reason being that of the individual. Yet, as humans we are also social, and we are social because it gives us the environment necessary for us to express our individualism. Imagine if society as we knew it broke down to the point where people no longer conform to social norms and laws; the world will be a more dangerous place as people try ways and means to secure their own future with little regard of those who are around them. Where in this case does one exhibit one's individuality then?

As usual, I digress too far from where I started. So, yes, my creativity is back, albeit in a rather changed state. But I'm not complaining; I'm glad that she's back. Creativity is like a sultry mistress who seduces with her sensuality; have too much of her and you'll lead a rather decadent lifestyle, and if you have too little, you will leave feeling somewhat deprived of something which you can't quite seem to put a finger to. That's what creativity is, that's why some folks are willing to sacrifice almost everything to be able to appear to be more creative.

Inspiration, the trigger to raw creativity. Oh, how often does one hear of the phrase uttered by many a student "I need more inspiration!". Where then does this whole inspiration thing come from? I'm not sure about other folks, but inspiration comes to me in the most strangest of times and places—I could be eating a meal when I have some idea on why certain biological constituents are the way they are, or I could be looking at the computer screen and think about some interesting riff that I can try to mimic on my musical instrument later. Different guises, different guises, but things are inspirations only if one knows that they are, or at least, acknowledge that there is the potential of a trigger there. More paradoxical statements? Perhaps, but honestly, I'm not uncomfortable with making statements like these.

Studying logic systems have formalised (and concretised) the concept that I have long suspected: there is a marked difference between the syntax and the semantics of any expressive language. At the abstract level, the syntax of an expressive langauge is just the typographical symbols that we manipulate around to form more strings of symbols; the semantics of the language is really an interpretation applied to the string of symbols that we are looking at.

Why bring up this whole hocus-pocus on expressive languages, one might ask? This relates to why I am not easily squeamish over some rather... graphic descriptions of things that most would find rather... disturbing.

You see, the problem is that I do not often interpret the words that are said directly. Think about it this way, if you see 1/0 as being "illegal" or "not allowed" or even "floating point error", then you have essentially interpreted what I just said directly. I don't do that, so I'm spared of all these potential bugaboos that might occur while manipulating the symbols. As such, overly graphic descriptions of really disturbing scenes do not affect me as much as other folks, simply because I do not immediately try to visualise the semantic meaning of the words that are just said, that does not mean that I do not understand what is being said.

Hmm... this seems to be rather hard to explain properly. I mean, I can hear/see the words being passed on to me, they register in my mind as words, yet I can understand what is being said without resorting to actually visualise what the words are describing. So put simply, the words themselves seem to have developed their own kind of semantic meaning. Notice that this is still consistent, since no one said that there can only be one interpretation of some string of symbols. Ever wondered where did puns/double entendres/innuendo come from?

And now, back to my original thread of thought. It is still a rather serene and cool night (well, it is December 25th now, except that it still isn't snowing...), and I'm sitting here wondering if this is all a dream. Or could it be a figment of my imagination wondering about me wondering if this were a dream.

Maybe I won't ever know if this is a dream or not. But one thing is for sure, I am still here, and not teleporting to somewhere else/getting everything that I want. So I guess I'll have to settle for this to be reality then.

And oh, have a merry Christmas.