03/04/2002

beautiful minds

This is really addicting. I like it better than writing out by hand. And TextPad completely rocks, I don't think I could go back to Notepad after this. So nice to be able to switch btween Windows and Unix without hassle, to be able to do print preview, word expansion, have codes change color, etc etc etc.

So listening to all of this music (along with the stuff by Jess Klein there's a CD I borrowed from SS the SS's folks of Rachel Garlin - someone I went to elementary school with who has a couple of great songs) has totally made me miss creating.... I don't have time (nor, I'm entirely sure, the talent) to learn an instrument, but then just writing for me or a web site seems like not enough. What is a girl wrote and wrote and no one showed up? Makes me think of that bit from Michelle Serros where she said that she went after getting published because when she died she didn't want anyone saying she wasn't a real writer. I don't know if I want to be a writer... something about it doesn't feel quite right to me. Doing it well requires such discipline... its easy to spew out words when I'm not editing but the difference between something like this and stuff I submit as finished work is miles miles. But I want to do something.

Am reading "A Beautiful Mind", god I love science adventure stories. Brilliant young men (need to read something abut a brilliant young woman... there just seem to be more about men), amazing ideas, transcendent greatness. Am still in the pre-illness stage of his life, and thinking about the story san-starry-eyes if I had met him I probably would have thought him a terrible geek. I can remember guys in High School, college who seemed pretty smart but defintely awkward, I don't think any of them are doing anything noteworthily extraordinary. The idea that greatness is somehow liked to mental illness or at least eccentricity is a strong one, that somehow to be a well adjusted artist or intellectual is wrong wierd. I got tired early on of people using creativity as an excuse for all kinds of chaotic disruptive behavior. (God, I sound about a million years old there.)

I joke that I want to become a famous academic so I can listen to people around the country around the world mispronounce my name (instead of just listen to people here in Berkeley do it... professors at school are divided on how to say it and I'm horrible about correcting people - I'm so used to mispronunciations that I don't even care anymore).