seventh pine

musician & writer | university student | insta+threads @seventh_pine

[seventhpine]

The problem with "appeasement when bad things happen" and "keep your head down and ride it out" is that the people doing the bad things see it as permission to do worse things and then you end up at a point where doing the bad things is "normal".

Not every slippery slope is fallacious.

[seventhpine]

Can true nothingness exist? I think: No, All that is, is evidence of it.

"Nothing" by its nature cannot be, A thing that is not is contradictory, This is affirmed definitionally.

Thus, if nothingness cannot exist, Then everything necessarily does insist, Referential, deferential to nothingness.

[Basically, this poem is articulating an argument. A true nothingness is the opposite of "everything" and thus holds no material qualities. As such, nothingness is synonymous with nonexistence. And if it is thus necessary that nothing cannot exist, then it follows the things must exist due to the un-quality of nothingness. It's an answer, perhaps, to "Can something come from nothing?" that asserts that something must exist should nothing (not) exist.]

[seventhpine]

Did you know that Pennsylvania is named after William Penn, not William Penn? It's a common misconception that it's named after William Penn, but people don't realize it's ACTUALLY named after William Penn, not William Penn.

[seventhpine]

The biggest take away from Genesis chapter 1 is not the creation of the universe and everything in it, nor is it the order in which it was created. It's that on the seventh day, God rested. Because if God is willing to take a day of rest with infinite power, you should definitely learn how to chill out and take a break, too.

[seventhpine]

the sky makes me angry to look up in the night and see it empty aggravates me where did the stars go?

[seventhpine]

From Ice Cream Man by W. Maxwell Prince, Martin Morazzo, and Chris O'Halloran #7

Was up late reading this at one in the morning and I started crying. One of the best comics I've ever read. It kinda scratches the same itch for me as Junji Ito's writings in terms of emotional poignancy and use of horror themes, but it stands out in that it's unique in narrative structure and style. The art is also excellent. Please read this comic if you have the ability to read comics.

It's also on GlobalComix, one of the best value subscription services in an era where it feels like all subscriptions suck and are horrible.

[seventhpine]

Why I Hate Dualism

It's wrong.

Thanks, bye!

[seventhpine]

Art Should Be Communicative(?)

For the purposes of accessibility, I’m committing myself to making at least semi-usable text versions of videos I record. This won’t simply be a transcript, because I think that text and video are two different mediums with their own conventions.

I think that art should be communicative. While it’s the case that many from a more artistically or philosophically-inclined background might disagree that art doesn’t necessarily have to be anything, I think that’s just plain wrong. While, yes, art doesn’t necessarily have to be anything in the purely ontological sense, it’s a human-made category, and human categories have concepts attached. You can argue that food doesn’t necessarily have to be nourishing or that beds don’t necessarily have to be slept on, but at that point you’re just rejecting the entire concept of categories. Insofar as there is a category of “art” within our society, there are relevant associated concepts that make the central conceit meaningful. To me, these associated concepts are rooted in the functions of communication and community. It’s a bit of a cliché, but I put a lot of stock in the idea that “humans are social creatures”.

Fully admitting right off the bat that I’m a fairly rigid person, so my perspectives on art may not align with other people and this specific idea of art being communicative is one that I view as more of a personal categorization than a socially prescriptive one. That being said, I don’t particularly want to see anything called “art” that doesn’t have any sort of human communicative value, nor would I call those creations by the word “art”. I bring this up as relevant to the case of generative AI. I completely stop caring and disengage with media as soon as I know that it’s (fully) AI-generated. The knowledge itself spoils it for me. This is because I don’t see an AI as a conscious enough entity to be able to communicate anything, so it ends up just feeling empty. It represents something vapid and pointless to me. There are plenty of great stories, songs, films, etc. made by real humans. If I stopped engaging with all art published after the year I was born, I would still have more than enough to entertain, engage, delight, and fulfill me for the rest of my life and possibly my reincarnation thereafter.

It’s not that I necessarily don’t see the use of AI in creativity to augment creativity. I think that there’s a lot of value. Music being my background, I’m perhaps more open to the use of automation than my contemporaries in visual arts, because a core foundation of the modern musical landscape is this sort of “cyborg reality” where generative and algorithmic technologies in music have been in use for decades to enhance or modify to create something that communicates aesthetic beyond what humans alone could communicate. There is a certain stylistic appeal to artificial generation when done with carefully curated attention, but the past few years I’ve been subject to a lot of “AI music” which can hardly be called art at all—evidently just a minimal amount of effort spent prompt engineering with a once-over for quality control. This is not communicating anything to me other than that the creator wanted to create a product.

Perhaps the commodification of art in this case is in part to blame. Within the current social landscape, art and media serves primarily as an escapist or palliative function to the woes of society. People “consume” media, because media is a product. I do my best to temper this in myself, but I can only do so much given the world I grew up in.

Given that my video was recorded late at night, I think there are quite a lot of flaws with my argumentation. I am already starting to see some issues right now. I really hope anyone reading this or having watched the video is able to provide feedback, because I feel like there’s something to the thoughts I’m thinking, but I’m not quite there yet. Truth is a vector, not a destination, I suppose.

Anyway, I think I’ll wrap it up here, for now. I’m experimenting with this one-part rant/blog post and one-part essay format. Let me know what you think!

[seventhpine]

Here's some advice for when you're struggling with writer's block:

1. Pretend you have no problems and tell all your friends, family, clients, and editors that the writing is going along great and you'll definitely meet whatever projected deadline you have.

2. Scream at yourself in the mirror, have a meltdown, blame your difficulty writing on your loved ones. It's their fault.

3. Try to incentivize yourself to write by offering yourself donuts as a treat for meeting a 50-word per day writing goal.

4. Curl up in your bed and become near catatonic due to your self-loathing. You've always thought of yourself as "a writer", and now your ego has shattered. You will never recover.

5. You have writer's block. You have resigned yourself to this fate. You'll never finish your project, will you?

[seventhpine]

Waking Up

Light peers in through the window, Hesitantly touching you, "Is this okay?" Your cheeks tinged yellow, Your eyes hooded, Your voice comes out mellow, "Yes," you say, It is, you think, It is okay.

[seventhpine]

About Me

Hey,

I'm seventhpine, seventh_pine, or seventh pine s.piney depending on how I feel like stylizing it.

I'm a writer and musician, though I mostly put writing on this blog.

I like writing about myself and my own fears, experiences, paranoia, and thoughts about life.

I'm the writer of a (currently on hiatus) webnovel as well as a few more projects that I'll update on shortly!

[seventhpine]

2024.08.04

She awakes Sheets damp Drenched in Stench of Fear

She looks Out at The door To her Room

Only to Find it Open

[seventhpine]

[IX] Whatever happened to The Author?

Important announcement: ISEKAI is going on hiatus! Whatever happened to the seventh pine?

The ninth chapter of ISEKAI; Or, The Adventures of an Unruly Man and His Family in Another World. A lady, skin glowing a faint golden hue, stares at the vast forest below her. The dense leaves moving gently with wind give the forest the appearance of breathing, pulsating. It gives the forest the unmistakable feeling of life. Of course, a forest is alive. It’s full of trees and other plants, not…

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[seventhpine]

[Interlude] On the nature of stories.

The third interlude of ISEKAI; Or, The Adventures of an Unruly Man and His Family in Another World. In prior explorations, the notion of a soul being a collection of stories has been brought up. However, one barrier to this particular conceptualization’s viability is that it hinges on a pre-existing suitable concept for a ‘story’. If a soul is a collection of stories, then what are stories? As…

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[seventhpine]

[VIII] Someone has requested to join your party. Will you accept?

The eighth chapter of ISEKAI; Or, The Adventures of an Unruly Man and His Family in Another World. Ela, myself, and the kid freeze for a moment and stare at each other. I ain’t usually one to make eye contact or pay much attention to others’ eyes, but what Ela said earlier’s got me curious, and I find my eyes drawn to the kid’s. They’re mine. The same eyes I’d see in the mirror every time I…

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[seventhpine]

[VII] Dear Diary,

The seventh chapter of ISEKAI; Or, The Adventures of an Unruly Man and His Family in Another World. Dear Diary, I’ve never really written a diary entry, before, but I’m pretty sure they start with you saying those words. That’s how it goes in all the books I’ve read. I read a lot of books. It’s a habit I get from my dad, I think. We don’t really stick around any one place for too long, so…

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[seventhpine]

[VI] Paradise Lost.

The sixth chapter of ISEKAI; Or, The Adventures of an Unruly Man and His Family in Another World. Deep within the forest, the earth rumbles, Soil, once wet and healthy, Now dry and desiccated. In the center of a meadow, Air sits perfectly still, silent, Grass turns gray.

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