I’m fairly sure I know how this new one stacks up with Unemotion, but I would probably have the same opinion of anything I managed to write in the immediate wake of that book. It’s hard for anything to compete with the first, especially one that I believe turned out as well as it possible could have. I’m not sure I could write a better book, no matter how hard I tried, and I’m sure that’s the case here.

As for when the book will manage to see the light of day, I haven’t decided that yet. It’s coming, but I still need to work through a few things first.

For instance; what’s the point?

Still, it’s something.

My second book has been written for quite a while, but I have now managed to finish the first round of editing on the manuscript. This new development puts me within sight of being able to completely finish the book sometime in the very near future, and will hopefully lead to a release soon thereafter.

Being that this new book is a sequel to my first book, and the complete lack of interest that one drew when it was coming out, I’m not even going to bother with the pretense of seeking a traditional publishing contract for it. The book is commercial suicide, and the months it would take to amass the rejection letters could be better spent focused on what comes next.

Instead, when I reach the point of being ready to put this book out into the world, it will be self-published. While less glamorous, it feels like the right thing to do for this particular book.

Hopefully I will have more to say about the project soon.

Until then, back to normal.

On the one hand, I’ve become increasingly convinced that I am not destined to spend my whole life trying to be a writer, and that my real passion lay with music. Of course, coming to a simple conclusion is not something I can do, and no sooner did I reach this end than I felt the desire to sit down and start writing prose again.

I didn’t actually get any words down on the page, since I am still without the next big idea I’ve been waiting for, and I’m not about to bend my own rules and write just for the sake of writing. Until I get an idea I find worthy of spending the time it will take to finish, I’m not going to allow myself to start down the rabbit hole of false promises.

What it does do, however, is plague me with a question I have yet to be able to answer. Why is it that the medium I feel more comfortable working in is the one I have a harder time putting on display, while the one I originally took up for the sake of shutting people up is the one I’m proud of and eager to share?

Something about that contradiction feels wrong to me, as though the answer should be easily seen, but I’m just too dumb to sort through the fog and find it. Whatever that truth might be, it now puts me in the awkward position of eagerly waiting for the next idea to come along, instead of putting it out of my mind until that day came.

Now I have something to be neurotic about. Oh joy.

“Comes a time for Christmas and I really have to ask; if this is feeling merry, how much longer must it last?”

So begins my favorite Christmas song, and I think it’s a good question. My attitude towards the holiday probably has more to do with the expectation of what I’m supposed to feel, rather than how I actually do. It’s the knowing that I’m not a character in a Christmas movie that makes me start to wonder, not the actual thoughts in my head.

But, it does mean one thing. After years of talking to myself about doing it, I finally managed to sit down and write my own Christmas song, even tough it doesn’t actually mention Christmas, or serve as being the least bit uplifting. I wouldn’t be me if it were any other way.

This time, someone was questioning the (excessive) use of metaphors and similes in a book they were reading. A sample was presented, and the ravenous maw jumped in and tore into the use of figurative language.

I gather from their statements that these people believe that a writer is nothing more than a journalist, there to report the facts of the story, while injecting nothing beyond the most bare bones of a narrative. No voice, no color, no wordplay. The story and nothing else.

It pains me a bit to call myself a writer when I read that sort of thing. I truly cannot understand the point of writing if my job is to be as invisible as possible, to blend into the story to the point where it’s impossible to tell that I, and not someone else, wrote the work. I’ve struggled with finding the energy and the passion to pick a project and get writing again, and when I see what my peers think of writing, whatever tatters I have collected slip through my hands.

If this is where we’re headed, I don’t know if it’s somewhere I want to go.

If there is one thing beyond the absolutism of the “rules” that bothers me about writers, it’s the almost reflexive antipathy many of them have for anyone who takes pleasure in showing their craft to the audience. It seems that the general opinion these days is that writers should be invisible, a conduit for the story no different than the fraudulent medium relating the thoughts of the dead. I’m sorry, but I can’t buy into this line of thinking, no matter how many times or how loudly it is repeated.

When I think about writing, there is one thing that sticks out to differentiate the best writers from those who aren’t as skilled; the ability to craft language into memorable art. It pains me to think we are training a generation of writers who think their most desirable skill is to disappear into the page, to be subservient to the God-like story.

Have we ever told a painter that their work is too skilled? Told them their subjects look too lifelike on the canvas?

It seems stupid to level such criticism, but that is where writing is headed. We lash out and denigrate anyone who attempts to showcase their craft with language. Taking pleasure in turning inventive phrases and showing the beauty in language is now a disease, not a talent. Adverbs are hunted down and burned at the stake, traitors to the cause of storytelling. Descriptions are pared down until the bone of the story juts through and exposes the cold whiteness reflected in readers’ engrossed eyes.

Perhaps it comes from a difference of terminology. Storytelling and writing have become conflated, when they are two distinct things. Stories are wonderful, they fuel all good writing, but they are not the only thing that matters when we put our words on the page. Anyone can tell a story. Nailing down the pieces of a plot to move the narrative along isn’t the most difficult of skills. Mastering the craft of wrapping that story in an inviting and memorable vessel is the art of writing. Writers use their words not just to tell the story of the plot, their words tell stories about themselves, about all of us.

Lest you think I’m trying to rationalize away my own offenses, I find it hard to believe I could be considered purple, although I’m sure there are those extremists who would compare me to a bruise upon the good name of writing. I certainly enjoy seeing words come together, using them to be something more than a deliberate recounting of a plot. We’re surrounded by stories all the time, from the most grandiose movie to the starkness of the newspaper.

I ask: what’s wrong with finding a balance?

Yesterday I tried to begin editing the sequel to my book, only to find that I lost interest by the time I hit the second page. It’s been this way for several months now, as I don’t know how to get myself in the right frame of mind to go through the process, when there are more immediately gratifying things I could be doing with my time.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I simply knew why I have such ambivalence towards the project. I have two competing theories, and neither one seems to be standing out above the other. It could be that, 1) In my mind I know this second book isn’t as good, and I’m trying to protect myself from realizing that fact, or 2) I know the book is a waste of time, given that practically no one I didn’t blackmail has ever read the first one.

Both ring true, but if I had to pick, I think the second is the weightier alternative. As gratifying as the process of writing and publishing a book was, as excited as I finally was over something I had done with myself, it was even more disappointing to see that so few people cared in the slightest about what I had accomplished. There are those who did, and I’m grateful for that, but so many other people who I thought would have been supportive of me have never said a word about it, and since I know the minute sales I had, I can say with certainty they never read the book.

That makes me wonder what the point is in trying again. If no one cared the first time, when I was flush with pride, there’s no reason for me to believe that anyone will care about the second one, especially if it requires the reading of the first to understand what’s going on. It’s an exercise in futility, something I specialize in.

One of these days I’ll write another book that isn’t connected, and when I do, the crushing of my dream by their apathy will get another chance to destroy whatever confidence I might have in myself. Until then, I get to do it myself.

That isn’t supposed to be impressive, merely a fact to place my conclusion in context. There is one thing I have come to realize more than anything else during this time, and it can be summed up succinctly:

People don’t care what I have to say.

It’s the truth. No matter what subject I’m talking about, it appears that I’m almost always talking to myself. That normally wouldn’t bother me, but it does make me wonder why I go through the trouble of posting anything if I don’t believe anyone is ever going to read it. Hubris? Boredom? Stupidity?

I think the answer is something less exciting, simply that I like having a record of some of the things I spend my time thinking about, because I’m sure I’ll forget somewhere down the line how much certain things affected me.

I bet you’re glad you missed out on the phase where I really did say things, aren’t you?

Even that isn’t quite fair. I still enjoy writing, just not the form of it that people think I should be focused on. I have not been in a period of creative fallow, but I will admit to making no progress whatsoever with further book projects. I don’t know if it’s related to the pathetic number of people who bothered to read my first book, but I feel little pulling me towards writing long-form works at the moment.

I have, however, been turning out shorter works with relative consistency. I suppose I always thought of myself more as a musician than an actual author, and spending the summer working on a project for someone else in this arena has more or less proven the point to me again. There’s something about the instant gratification that comes along with being able to have a roughly finished product in less than an hour that appeals to the impatience in me.

That’s not to say that I’m giving up, because I’m not. As fall approaches and the weather turns, I’m going to force myself to get the draft of the second book done and ready to put out (even if I have to do it myself), and I would like to spend the winter writing the only other idea I have in my head. It might take some encouragement to get myself in gear to actually do it, but I have enough time that I should be able to manage it.

On another note: the birthday that I was dreading was both better and worse than I expected it to be. It was good because nothing horrible happened, but it was bad because yet again this year the number of friends who remembered and said anything was less than it should have been, and less than it was last year.

I’ve said it before, but I think I need to find some new friends. Seriously.

In life, that’s something I have come to accept without much of a bother on my psyche.  I don’t need to be the center of attention, I don’t need to have people haranguing me day in and day out.  I’m fine without any of that, and in many ways, I prefer it to be like that.  I’m not all that adept when it comes to social interaction, nor can I bear such things for extended periods of time, so it works out better for everyone this way.  However, there are times when I could use a little bit of the ego boost that would come from not being invisible.

As a creator, I fall into the category of people who find it hard to put their work out into the world for other people to judge.  It’s not that I’m afraid of people hating the things that I’ve worked on, it’s that I’m afraid they won’t care enough to have an opinion, which sadly seems to be the case.

Going through the publishing process, I read Unemotion at least a dozen times, during which I came to love that book.  Becoming emotionally invested (in anything, or anyone…. apparently) isn’t something I have to worry about, so I feel as objective as I can be when I state that I think the book is not only the best thing I have ever put my name on, but good when judged outside of me.  Hearing from people that they don’t like it isn’t the sort of thing that would bother me, it would actually be a refreshing change of pace.

What does bother me is that I have only heard from a small handful of people anything at all about their reaction to my work, and only one of those was something more than a cursory “it was good”.  I have practically no reaction to the biggest thing I have ever done, and I suppose it shows me exactly what I mean to not only the world as a whole (from which I would expect such a reaction), but to the smaller world of people I know and (used to) respect.

Why do I bring this up now?  I’m in a position where I have several musical projects I’ve been sitting on, and I’m thinking of at least expanding their scope beyond myself.  I want to share some of it with a couple of people, but I have the nagging doubt in the back of my head (rightly so, mind you) that no one is going to care about what I have to offer, and will say whatever they have to in order to avoid wasting any time on me.

Combining this feeling with the usual dread of my birthday coming up the 15th, I’m starting to think that the best gift I could give myself might just be a hole to stick my head in.  At least that way I’ll have control over being ignored.

I’ve posted a yearly rewritten explanation of the events that came to constitute my dislike for what should be a happy event, but I think I might skip that this time. There are only so many times I can do it before it becomes a parody, and I’ve gotten close to that point, so I’m going to err on the safe side, unless there’s some sort of clamoring for me to explain yet again.

Suffice it to say, I’m not going to be in the best of moods for the next week and a half, so yippee for me. Maybe it’ll give me something to write about, maybe it won’t. I don’t know. I’ll just be happy to get through this without anything emotional scarring. Woo!

I wasn’t so much asking the question as I was demanding an explanation. If I thought physical violence would have been a threat, I wouldn’t have hesitated to use it, but that was irrelevant, considering where we were.

“You know, no one’s gonna not pray when they think they’re gonna die.”

I abhorred the cliche, ‘there are no atheists in foxholes’. Yet here I was, in such a place, and God was not speaking to me, nor I to him. If anything, listening to the sounds that blended into a sick fog of misery beyond my vision was more of a reason to curse the very existence of anything we would call a God than it was a reason to reach out and embrace it. It struck me as crazy to rely on the hand of fate when it was that very thing that put me where I found myself. There might not be any atheists in foxholes, but that was only because people preferred covering their asses in case they turned out to be wrong.

“I’m here, and I ain’t praying. So are you calling me a liar, or are you admitting you’re wrong?”

“Damn, you always have to be a prick, don’t you? It’s just a figure of speech.”

“It’s not a very good one. All it does is make us sound like cowards.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, that’s exactly what we are.”

The fact hadn’t escaped my mind, but I concentrated on keeping it out. Survival, it struck me, was no more cowardly than rushing headlong into the grip of death, even though it would be thought of that was if we managed to live through the onslaught.

“Being alive and a coward is better than being a dead hero. Besides, we aren’t cowards yet. The fight’s not over.”

“What an optimist.”

“Just follow me.”

“Whatever you say, boss.”

Sarcasm dripped from his voice, falling to the ground like the shrapnel of a firefight. I waded through, dragging him along as we left for safer ground. He was dead weight, though not yet dead. It might have been better off for me if he was, at least that way I could have had some relative quiet before the end came.

“Do you want to die today?”

“Of course not, but there’s no way we’re getting out of this alive.”

“So you’d rather die with people thinking you’re brave, instead of giving yourself a chance of surviving?”

“You do what you have to do, but I’m just saying, facts are facts.”

“You’re an idiot.”

Tired of fighting, I swallowed a deep breath, standing until the ground rose from the darkness. There was nothing to be seen, the smoke blinding everything into a soup of haze, masking the danger that lay beyond the gate. My feet slid as I returned to safety, my heart slowing as bits of doom clogged the pipes.

“I see you’re starting to come around.”

“I still think you’re an idiot.”

“Yeah, and I think you’re too stubborn to do what’s good for you. That’s why I’m here, to be your conscience.”

“I already have one.”

“It’s not good enough.”

I made the mistake of not looking, not searching for the fear in his eyes. I was broken, struggling to fight off the reality, unaware of what was happening around me. He raised his rifle, wiped a tear from his eye, and whispered the words.

“I’m sorry I have to do this, but it’s for your own good.”

The bullet buried itself in my chest, burning as fragments of lead melted into my blood, swirling through me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think, I could only listen.

“Now you can watch a hero die. And since you won’t say it, you’re welcome.”

He was an idiot, but not stupid. He did escape the fear of waiting, he ended the torture of the inevitable. He also missed out on victory, on salvation, on the rest of life.

I wouldn’t, of course, but it was an encouraging thought to believe that I might be special somehow. It was the only way I knew for such a thing to be possible. Little else worked to distinguish me from the maddening crowd, the feeling of absolute average growing the cracks that already threatened to shatter my heart. If these people were what average was, it was not something I wanted to partake in, not someone I wanted to be. I didn’t know what I wanted for myself, what I thought I could accomplish, but there was something stubborn within me that couldn’t accept the idea of being just like everyone else.

The flames ate away at the wood, the varnish bubbling, the honey-color tempering into a thick molasses on the surface. Metal glowed, snapping in tune as they gave way to the heat. My dreams were once contained within that ash, but no longer. She had never been given a name, because I refused to become so attached to something I knew I would one day grow to hate. It would have been unfair, mostly to myself, to allow such things to happen when there was no need to inflict even more pain upon my scars.

The faint ghost of the music filled my mind, and I could hear in that moment everything I once thought I was going to be. There was hope in each note, a dream on its way to becoming real. Scales rose, chords built themselves, and my voice found the strength I could never give it. The sound was beautiful, everything I could have hoped for, and entirely unreal. They were sounds that existed only in my mind, a fabrication of perfection I would never be able to replicate, no matter how much blood I spilled working to do so.

I had watched too many people toss away the gift I longed for with the effortless grace to make me feel as though I were a different species, somehow allergic to the beauty they could create. I watched them with awe, cursing myself for being who I was, for not possessing the gifts they were given. It wasn’t my fault, I knew, but knowledge does little to dissuade negative thinking when there are emotions involved. No, I was never going to amount to anything, not like they did. I was always going to languish somewhere behind, afraid to show the world the limits of my skill.

There comes a point when we have to make a decision, whether to give up or to soldier on. Both come with risks, and neither will bring anything more than numbness when all is said and done. Hope only means that things won’t get worse, which is usually the best outcome we can escape with. Standing there, watching the fire consume what was such a part of me for so long, I knew one thing.

I wanted my dream back.

I had one talent above all others that couldn’t be contained, the ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, no matter the situation.  I liked to think it meant something was special about me, but I couldn’t muster the ego to believe such nonsense.  All it meant was that I tread a dangerous path, I needed to watch every word that passed my lips, lest I tear down my life with an errant thought.  To many people, it would have sounded absurd, but to me, I knew it was merely the next step in the truth.

I listened to the voices in my head, replaying the scene endlessly, trying to pick out the curse I uttered.  My search turned over no gold, the answers I craved remaining hidden behind my own veil of ignorance.  So many times I had relied on that oblivion to carry me through another battle with myself, but in the times when I needed to turn to introspection, the hollow I found waiting for me could offer no comfort for the restless soul I carried.

“What did I say?”

I asked myself the question, the words blending together into a slurred mess of sound as it looped.  It couldn’t have been as bad as I thought, not without me being able to figure out where I went wrong.  An expert in the subject, thanks to the help of hundreds of repetitions, I could find the needle in the haystack, the spark set to ignite the fuse.  This time was different, no trigger showing itself as I dissected my words.  It was as though I were truly innocent, something I found impossible to believe.  It was always my fault, that much I knew, that much had to be the case.  If I wasn’t the one to blame, it meant I must have been dreaming.

It was a bleak assessment of the world, but an accurate one nonetheless.  Being hard on myself wasn’t at the top of my list of things to do, but someone had to sentence me for my sins, and I was the only one I trusted to make sure the job was done properly.  Some people have the misfortune of luck turning against them, I had the misfortune of not knowing what luck looked or felt like.  The only constant in my life was that I would inevitably find my way to the bottom, watching everyone else step over my corpse on their way to paradise.  I told myself this was where my tendency to ruin the moment came from, that my subconscious was determined to ruin little moments for them all, to give them a taste of what every day of my life was like.

“It’s not fair.”

Nothing is ever fair, something I knew all too well.  I didn’t want life to be fair, I didn’t care about evening the score over time.  The numbers were irrelevant as far as I was concerned, because when you’ve never had a single moment of true happiness, feeling short-changed when sorting through a pile isn’t an injustice that rises above the fray.

What does become cruel, what does tear at the sanity, is when the familiar black feeling is tied to the fleeting belief that this time, this one time, it isn’t deserved.  Shouldering the burden when you know what you’ve done isn’t torture, it’s a duty undertaken in an effort to make things right.  It isn’t pleasant, it isn’t something you wish for, but there does exist a certain amount of satisfaction in knowing you made an effort.  But all that is for naught when the catalyst remains hidden.  The burden becomes heavier yet, the atonement a spectacle more than a punishment, the prying eyes watching the struggle to connect the crime to the sentence the worst bit of it all.

“I don’t know.”

I don’t know what I did, what I said.  If I did, I would take it back so I didn’t have to live with the guilt of yet another episode of my ruination.  Hell, I may never know what set off the storm, but at least here, where I can lock myself away from the voices, the sneers, the judgments, here I am alone.  Here I am safe.

Sometimes that’s enough.

Instructions told me that the song was supposed to deal with the theme of being sorry while not actually being sorry, which was enough for my self-absorbed mind to delve back into the past for inspiration. As I was writing (with no intention of making it about myself), I couldn’t help but find myself transported back to a time when I was filled with a swirling mess of emotions, the kind I no longer seem to have. The song turned out fine, but that’s not the point I’m getting at.

Enough time has passed since the events I wrote about that I thought they were long over and done with. I’ve mined them for all the material I could, and didn’t see any new angles from which to attack them, not that I had any desire to stir it all up again. The directions I had gave me just enough of an opening to find a new way of looking back at the past, which only served to remind me of what has come and gone, and exactly what the nothingness of today is.

Those incidents weren’t something I enjoyed at the time, nor are they really something I enjoy thinking about now, but there was an element to it that I can’t help but miss. I tend to be rather numb when it comes to anything that should be emotional, and thinking back was able to show me that I wasn’t always that way. There was a time that I was closer to what I would call ‘normal’. I don’t know exactly what happened, but it seems a million miles away, and I don’t know how to get it back.

At least I remembered today that it is possible, even if it might take another million years to get back.

There are two reasons I haven’t done so already.

1) Me being me, I’m not all that enthused with the idea of putting myself out there like that. Bravado and attention seeking aren’t very high on my list of priorities, which makes such an undertaking a little bit hard to understand from my point of view.

2) I don’t think anyone would care. I know I tend to repeat this refrain all too often, but it’s the truth. People don’t care about what I have to say here, which has been proven over and over again. I’m not sure what the point of doing something like that would be if it would net me nothing in return. Pain for nothing? Doesn’t sound like a good plan to me.

So, I leave it up to you.

I just finished going through a spurt of writing where I managed to complete my end of what should be about a year’s worth of songs all within the span of two weeks. It was a nice little burst, and I think the stuff I managed to come up with is all among the better half of my catalog. Unfortunately for me, I don’t know how much, or what, he’s going to end up using. Since I wouldn’t want all those words to disappear into the ether, I started turning them into songs of my own, which leaves me in a position I know all too well: I don’t know what to do with them.

I enjoy writing songs, and I like to think of myself as a musician, but I’m not one in the sense that I would need to be to gain anything from my work. I’m far too shy and scared out of my mind to actually become a performer, and I’m too controlling and distrustful to start a band to put out the music I write. That leaves me in the position of having to be my own band, which wouldn’t be so bad if I had any sort of clue what to do with songs once I’ve finished them. I would like to make a record someday, and I can do all the work on it here by myself, but I don’t know what to do once I have something sitting here to listen to.

I’m not the kind of person who’s big on self-promotion, or anything that draws much attention to myself, so that seems to limit my options as far as making my music known. I’m not even sure if I want it to be, or if I just want the illusion of having given it as much of a try as I could. It would be nice to get something done and put out so maybe someone will one day listen to my work and tell me that I’m not nearly as bad as I believe in. A fan or two would be nice, but I’m not going to get ahead of myself.

I suppose my other option would be to just put the music online, hide behind a band name, and try to whore myself until someone listens to me. Then again, judging by the number of people who read this blog, I would be throwing my arms open to greet a whole lot of nothing.

In the end, yet again, I feel a bit lost. I should be used to it by now.

How can I say such a thing? Well, it’s actually far easier than I would like it to be, since there’s no doubt I’m right about this one. Yes, I do have a book you can buy, but that’s about the extent of my success. That book is something that will fade away into time, probably to be remembered only by me. I can almost figure out person by person who actually bothered to get a copy, let alone read it. So, while I can claim to be an author, I can’t claim to have a readership, even among the people I would call my friends. It sounds sad, but it doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it should. Writing had never been my dream, so my lack of breakout success isn’t going to keep me awake at night in a cold sweat.

Where I fall behind the curve is that I seem stuck exactly where I am. I wrote a draft of a sequel to the book no one wrote, but I can’t seem to bring myself to care enough about it to find out if it’s good enough to put out in the same way. Beyond that, I want to keep going, but I lack any ideas I think warrant being expanded into a full-blown book. I’m not going to write another one until I have an idea I love enough to spend that much time on, and as of yet, I have not managed to come up with one. I’ve had plenty of ideas for other forms of writing, and have indulged int hem, but books seem to be taking their sweet time coming back into focus.

But none of that is what really bothers me. I can deal with being behind the curve as a writer, since it’s a hobby. I cannot be as nonchalant about my position in the game of life. I’ve never been one of those people who can get the same happiness out of the good fortune of other people as I do from myself, and recent times have made it hard for me to shake the label I was given so long ago: bitter.

I don’t mean to be that way, but there isn’t much point in trying to deny that it isn’t always an inaccurate way of describing myself. As I watch my friends get married, have kids, and move away, I wonder what it says about me. I don’t begrudge anyone for what they’ve done, but it does raise questions I can’t readily answer. So many of them have taken these giant steps in the past year or so, while for me, everything is what it has always been. I’m not going to go into detail regarding exactly how far behind the curve I am, but let’s just say that I’m staying silent to salvage whatever bit of respect I might still be afforded. It’s tiresome, but hard to change.

And so, yet again, I see connections between life and writing that don’t inspire me the way I would like them to. It’ll change someday. It has to, right?

More than anything, the heat has sucked out all of my energy, which means there is very little chance of me accomplishing anything in the near future. I don’t have anything on deck, but if I did, it would be relegated to the bench for a little while. Instead, I’m going to try not to give myself heat stroke while biding my time for when working on a project doesn’t feel so much like punishment.

The break is well-timed, as I have been very productive in recent days. It seems that writing for my friend’s band has been a liberating experience, my words freed up slightly without the responsibility of turning them into a full-fledged creation all on my own. I’ve managed to produce what would otherwise be a year’s worth of material in the last month or so, which has me in a bit of a bind.

I’m going to have to continue producing work for the project, but my usual coffer of issues is running low. I’ve written so many things about those same few troubles that there is little left to say about them, meaning I either have to go back to inventing subjects to write about, or I’m going to have to subject myself to a bit of torture for the sake of art. Ok, maybe that’s a bit melodramatic, but the idea is what matters.