You DJ With My Music

Music can be a weird thing. Everybody has different tastes. They love different songs and artists, and they irrationally hate different songs and artists. Some genres will speak to them, across a wide array, and no other term can describe it better than "eclectic".

Suffice it to say, it can be difficult doing a road trip with somebody if they hate your music. Fortunately, I have discovered the best way to make people happy. If I'm driving, I connect my music player to the speakers, hand it to my friend, and say, "you DJ with my music."

Basically, what happens is my friend will go through my music player and find whatever songs they enjoy and play them. Since my music player exclusively has music I enjoy listening to, then we will always agree. They won't pick anything they don't like, and they can't pick anything I don't like.

This technique has uses beyond road trips, of course. I am starting a collaborative project with a fellow writer, and the first question is, "what should we write about?" I draw a blank, but my friend is bursting with ideas. So naturally, I let him take the lead. He writes down all his thoughts for interesting subjects and sends them to me. I peruse the list, pick the ones from it that I find equally appealing, and say that any of them would be fine. (Alternatively, I could have just picked one and ended it there.)

It's the exact same technique. I DJ with his music. We can't lose and there's no argument.

Admittedly, this system is not infallible. If I come into the arrangement with an idea I really like, the process can be drawn out. If we cannot agree on a subject, then we're at an impasse (and you should consider it a sign that the collaboration may not be the best idea). I also recognize that having more than two people adds to the complexity of it (though you can turn it into a multi-step project where two people agree on a list, then the third one further narrows it, and so on).

Still, compared to all the other ideas I've come across, I believe it's the best.

Silent Films

I've been thinking about silent films lately. They are an interesting format to me, and I wonder if they can still be relevant.

I don't think I would want to do it in the older style of characters talking and then showing the text on screen. What I'm interested in is the power of a story where characters are not speaking.

I heard a discussion of the movie Rocky V, where it was said that the street fight at the end of the movie was more story being told than the entire rest of the movie. The action and the music told everything.

I'm not sure if scenes like this could tell a story on their own, or if they can only be used as a poignant scene which requires dialogue to set up.

On Mechanical Life

So, I know that I said how organic life is awesome, but mechanical life is also totally awesome! I am not surprised that so many people dream of humanoid machines with the cognitive power of humans (or beyond). I am also not surprised that so many people have put in so much of their lives toward creating them.

For as remarkable as the human body is, it is far from perfect. We may be able to heal broken bones and rebuild blood vessels, but we can't regenerate lost limbs. And when we repair large cuts, it comes with scarring. Ultimately, the body gives out and we perish, and there is nothing we can do about it.

With machines, any damaged components can be repaired. If it gets bad enough, just replace the broken parts. Sure, a mechanical body would slowly decay, not unlike the human body's, but by being able to replace parts, it becomes a non-issue.

You could argue that eventually the mechanical brain would burn out, and this is true, but digital technology can be copied. If you can copy your brain and put it into a new hard drive (or whatever technology we're using), then you can do a transplant and keep living forever (or at least until you forget to back up.

Of course, there become ethical and existential issues with the ability to copy yourself while you're still alive, potentially creating unlimited clones of yourself. It would also be bad if you never updated your backup and reanimated yourself from 10 years ago. (Truly, this is the fodder of our science fiction.)

Ethical and existential issues aside, mechanical life is an exciting prospect, which can remarkably parallel organic life. If it's up your alley, explore the similarities and differences between them, maybe by having two such characters meet up and have a conversation. (Would it be over drinks?)

On Organic Life

The human body is a truly remarkable system. It begins from two half-cells which merge and replicate over and over and over again. They develop several complex systems to maintain its continued growth and health. When damaged, the human body can repair itself. When attacked by foreign organisms, it fights them off. And it powers all of its processes by consuming materials around it and then chemically breaking them down into their base components to restructure as needed.

Organic life of any kind is truly remarkable for the same reasons. I also am mesmerized at how many ways of sensing the environment there are. Humans have their five senses, but there is so much more. Pit vipers have a sense that "sees" heat. Sharks feel electric waves emitted by any living creature. Many birds navigate by sensing the the earth's electromagnetic field. In fact, basically any measurable thing can be used as a potential sense.

Knowing as much as we do about how organic systems work, the possibilities for story ideas are nearly endless, and so many of them can even seem plausible. I definitely recommend learning about all the cool stuff we can do, and let it inspire you to explore it in your writing.

Be Aware Of Your Time

Today, I am reminded why I have still never completed a collaborative project. In short, productive people are too busy, and people with free time are too lazy.

My friend and I have several collaborative projects in mind, basically none of them having any work put in them. That's because he's in grad school and has a job, and what free time he does have is often accounted for.

It's not that I fault people for having lives. I just feel like it's really important to be aware of your time. Plan your projects accordingly. Don't take on more than you can handle. When you have so many projects that you really want to work on, you often end up making progress on none of them. But if you are working on only one project, then it's a lot easier to do bits and pieces when you have the time available.

System Shock

The human mind is amazing. It is constantly active. Even when you're asleep, it's working hard. When you're not thinking about anything, it's thinking. And even when you are contemplating as much as you can, it's doing that work, plus regulating your entire body to keep functioning.

We so often think of our heroes as having exceptional mental fortitude. And really, most heroes do have that. But all humans have a limit. And when that limit is exceeded, we suffer system shock.

When the mind is overloaded, so many things can happen. It can short out and fall unconscious. It can create any number of mental disorders. It can misfire and cause physical damage to the body. Severe system shocks can cause death.

It is not always easy to tell what can cause such a shock to a person; it's unique to the individual. Some common things like thinking you're about to die or being surrounded by something you are irrationally afraid of (like spiders or clowns) could trigger a system shock.

I find it an interesting subject to explore, seeing all the ways the brain can be broken, and all the things a broken brain can do. It also requires a deep understanding of a person to be able to portray it accurately, which should definitely be considered a point of pride.

Minor Differences

The most remarkable thing I've found in all my years studying humanity is how remarkably similar we all are. Men and women. Adults and children. Theists and atheists. No matter what dichotomy (or trichotomy or any other dividing mechanic) you use, you will find more similarities amongst people than differences.

It can be a strange thing seeing people vehemently fighting each other, and knowing that they have so much in common that they could spend their days sharing good times with each other.

By the same token, it also seems silly that I have spent so much of my own life trying to understand people who seemed so alien to me, only to find out that only minor differences separated us.

In our stories, characters are either going to be divisive or cohesive - destructive or constructive. The determining factor is whether that person spends more time looking at the differences or the similarities between people.