For the actual composition, click here.
what does this one mean?
uh. well it isn’t as easy to be sure with this one. I don’t actually remember what was going through my head when I made it. I know, to a degree, my priority was on the visual. I liked how much the first blog had this visual element to it, like a work of art, and I wanted to do a blog that was even more visual. and composition no. 2 absolutely is visual.
the sketch in the background is, obviously, the centerpiece.
titled myornas krig, which literally means “war of the ants” but it’s the swedish for TV static. I like to use TV static as a symbol in my works, I’ve been using it as an EAT thing ever since 2011. it’s this idea of actually seeing something in it. maybe something is actually there and it shouldn’t be, or maybe your brain is seeing something where there’s nothing and this would be a clear way to know you’re losing your mind. truthfully, nobody can know what you’re seeing in TV static. and, what I find even weirder, to my knowledge TV static is the randomness of electrons made visual. it is something real that we’re able to see, in between our man-made programming. a whole world beyond us, a language and a motion that’s beyond us. it might not amount to anything meaningful, but that’s not the point.
but then the subject of the sketch is that rag doll. she’s kinda supposed to be me. if I wore dresses, yeah I’d like to wear big polka-dots. if I wore leggings, yeah I’d like to wear stripes. if I had long hair, I’d like it to be really long. but only the aesthetic of the dress was based on that kinda thing. the actual figure there, I don’t think she’s comfortable. I don’t think we’re seeing her as she wants to be seen. I think she’s caught in a web of forces that have placed her there. her mouth is taped up or something, she can’t speak. her every movement is tangled up in themes of DNA, arteries, eyeballs, chromosomes, and Noise. her feet make Noise. and that’s why she’s standing still. she’s afraid of being seen right now.
obviously there’s an elephant in the room with this. this blog was made in a period of my life where I considered if I might be trans. ultimately I concluded that I’m not, that I’m comfortably cis; I just like a number of girl things and would love to wear a dress on some occasion (though it’d have to be within a narrow aesthetic I Really Like!).
but that doesn’t make this blog transitory or obsolete. questioning my gender isn’t one-and-done, it’s a question, it’s in fact a theme. and if it’s not strictly me, then it’s the overall question of gender, and that’s always relevant!
…so, okay, what about the text on this blog. what is this blog about, textually?
there’s motifs of fire, abstract shapes, a pretty fierce self-anger. a few references to misdirection, including the pun on “burying the lede.” the narrator tries to realize something, but the attempt doesn’t last as fatigue sets in.
there is a very easy interpretation to make, that this is a story about a car crash. “hands on the wheel,” “hand on the unbroken seal of a bottle,” “abdicate [responsibility],” then “Fire.” honestly it makes sense with that in mind.
but, uh!
I distinctly remember only noticing this after the blog was posted.
so it’s a valid reading. and it’s also what I tend to go with when I reread it.
but I have no clue what my original interpretation was!
anyway yeah. that’s a lot of words for you. composition no. 2 contains ideas in it that act maybe as a collage; I don’t know if they form anything coherent. but then, maybe the intention was the incoherence of self-doubt, the existential expanse of possibility. this is a sequel to a piece about being Unfinished, after all. and there is something to, like, saying 2 is about “the unfinished gender.”
I dunno. some vibes. the blog feels complete to me, it feels like going to sleep after a bad night of bad thoughts.