Exaggerated Eyes

The typical big eyes of anime characters could be described as part of the feature set of a cultural emotional mask. (In big eyes = an emotionalism. Spock: “Emotion is exaggeration.”)

There is no naming of blanks

It is important that I should be able to put a name to a face.

The Face of Things

Part of me wants to admit that I ‘cannot recognise the face of things’ sometimes; so that despite being alive I do not see (or feel) that I am; such that there is no face to life, you could say.  Or perhaps what I mean is that I cannot recognise my own face despite its clarity before me – since I can only see it through others … where I know myself in others in the sense that they dictate who I am, my mood and so on.  So that I am mechanically alive, just like a puppet: alive but not in me.

(Sometimes I chide or encourage myself with the thought: for heaven’s sake why don’t you use some of your inner resources?  You should have a few of them by now!)

The Unfeatured Face

A film tells the story of a sentient computer: it takes on its own life. Here one doesn’t imagine a face. Or any face would do. Malicious or kind looking (for example), either would perform the same service in the expression of its machine mind. (Imagine a kind-looking face overseeing some sort of cruel act.  Like locking the automatic doors of a burning building.)

From Feet to Face

My eyes travel from feet to face.

Like a movie camera taking in a statuesque blond.

Magazine Robots

Suppose, I flip through a magazine: there is a photo of someone’s shoe clad feet. “Whose feet are those?” I ask myself. On the next page is the answer: the photo of someone – of their face. That is who the feet belong to. Imagine the same thing occuring with a pair of robot feet … Next page I see a metal visage. Is this the same sort of thing?

Or am I inclined to ask who the robot belongs to?

The American Dream

It is what American’s have: emotional simplicity.

Boo Boo

Emotionally we aspire to the condition of children.

Emotional Simplicity

As adults we may be complicated, emotionally, but … all the same (‘deep inside’) we aspire to the condition of children.  Whether or not we can admit to this, the aspiration is for a simplicity.  In fact isn’t that what sentimentalist’s show us? (Even if the emotion they indulge in is divorced from any actual situation.)  Art too requires simplicity – and in art this can reveal a more generous impulse.  In any case I have noticed with their recent albums how some bands seem to fare better than others musically in instinctively lacking any interest in emotional sophistication.  Simple polarities are kept to: good versus bad for example.  Us against them.  Maybe this is part of the recipe for happiness, this ability to be simple? Perhaps emotion wont be intellectualised, whatever we might say. So for example, I think of intellectuals who I know who (sometimes) for all their mental alertness can get wrapped up into a grey rag: into an energy-starved state of frustration, not because life dictates this but because they can’t be simple enough to themselves. Muse’s strategy works better, in The Resistance; or again with The Killer’s album Day and Age; both are poppy emotionally simple records; whereas Franz Ferdinand’s Tonight tries for something more sophisticated and Radiohead’s In Rainbows aims for even higher ground. Neither of of the second two albums can be rated bad records but it may be that they both show signs of getting a bit ‘thin’ musically. Back to the emotional ground!  Where the energy is.

I slept

and dreamed of a face made from personality marmalade.