What does it mean to have a human brain?
I act on impulse most of the time, and otherwise do what I can to design a life that rewards my impulses with beautiful outcomes. I think designing games is like that: designing little spaces that reward my avatar’s impulses with beautiful outcomes. Only, when I make a game I can share the experience with you; you can inhabit the same space, embody the same avatar, perhaps act on the same impulses, and – if serendipity allows – behold the same beautiful outcomes.
Through making and playing with games and other art, I hope to come to some deeper understanding of not the science of my brain, but the experience and meaning of being some specific person.
-droqen.
Front Page (as of 2021, Sep 10)
Thought process
I keep changing the front page of this site, because I’m never sure how to summarize myself, or my work, or what I’m even summarizing; I had something more like a wordy “tour guide” up for a short time, but it was… uh… well, it was too wordy.
So now I have this weird little bit of prose, possibly poetry-adjacent (?), okay actually what is prose. Is all writing prose, or does it refer to a specific subsection of writing…
1. The ordinary language of men in speaking or writing; language not cast in poetical measure or rhythm; — contradistinguished from verse, or metrical composition.
2. Hence, language which evinces little imagination or animation; dull and commonplace discourse.
Webster’s 1913 (Prose)
I’m not sure. I’d like to think that my writing does not “evince” “little imagination or animation”, and that it is not “dull and commonplace discourse,” but at the same time it is “not cast in poetical measure or rhythm.” So, it is what it is. Language of some sort.
Oh, looking up poetry is probably better and clarifies:
1. The art of apprehending and interpreting ideas by the faculty of imagination; the art of idealizing in thought and in expression.
2. Imaginative language or composition, whether expressed rhythmically or in prose. [..]
Webster’s 1913 (Poetry)
Yeah, I want to write poetry. Thanks, Webster. The second definition even says poetry can be “expressed [..] in prose.” So I guess it’s prose, too. I like to imagine I write poetic prose.
Well, whatever it is, I’ve been pondering and re-reading my front page, and I like it for now.
Blog posting
Why blog post it? Because I keep changing my front page — I keep rewriting new ones as I move on from previous ones, but I think it’s worth keeping the old ones around.
My zine, “droqen was here,” shares the name with my old blog; I like the name because it indicates to me that any given posting, any given zine, any given statement represents a point in time — somewhere I once was, but am no longer.
Even if I move on from what my front page says now, I might like to record it for posterity. The difficulty that I have with the front page is that it seems to me that it ought to represent the present state of things. Having ‘my latest post’ be the front page means that if I leave it fallow for too long, someone who opens up my website — expecting, perhaps, a representation of me? — will only find a flicker of me from the past. If my most recent blog post becomes my front page, each blog post has the pressure of representing me until I make a new one. That’s too much pressure for blog posting, which I’d prefer to be a casual practice.
I think the poem above might have a chance at representing me for a long time.
See how I feel tomorrow. ; )