Daytona Splendor - A Thesis (Part Six)
Listening to: Various Artists - The OC Mix 6: Covering Our TracksAhhh, well, we've reached the end of this glorious 6-part series. It's been swell, Internet.
If you've read the previous posts, you'll have a better understanding of where my head was at during that tumultuous Christmas of '04, and, hopefully, a better understanding of what I'm talking about. Now, what I'm currently talking about is the time in my life when I watched The OC and what it meant to me. The OC, during that time period, became something of an escape for me. It was a brutal time, mostly due to the job I hated more than anything, and The OC provided me with a place I could go to, people I could see and hear, and lives that, simply, were anything but mine. And I suppose I relished it. I have probably watched the first season of The OC half a dozen times (with various people and in various circumstances) since then, and everytime I do, I am completely engulfed by the warm, comfortable feelings that it lent me those two days and nights in my wee little bedroom in the cold basement of my parents house. And this is why The OC will always be important to me. This is why Phantom Planet will never really mean more to me than the band that had their single as the theme song for The OC. This is why, in all likelihood, Adam Brody will never reach the same level of success he experienced on The OC, because there are hundreds, thousands of people sort of like me, that see the importance of The OC in their own way, and everything that he (Brody) will pale significantly beside his onscreen portrayal of Seth Cohen. This, in a rather expansive and far too lengthy nutshell, is why I love The OC.
But, if you think back to the beginning of this whole experience, you'll recall that this wasn't my first point. For the next couple of years, The OC was where I took my cues. I became pedantically sarcastic, occasionally broody, occasionally witty, living my life and saying my lines through The OC. This became the person that people would interact with. Not me, but OCme. In much the same way as The Simpsons, The OC became the way I expressed myself, and that's how it went for a while. Eventually, like many things, this lessened, and Arrested Development took over. Combine that with Demetri Martin, Chuck Klosterman, and a few other sources, and you've got (pretty much) current me.
I guess it's unnerving, possibly scary, because I just wonder if I can find me under all the layers of fake selfs that live vicariously in the words and lives of other, fictional, people. Am I even writing this as me? I'm pretty sure I am, but that's the sort of thing, because I've been building such a repertoire of identities, that could be up in the air. I suppose right now, I just wonder who I'll be next, who I'm becoming, which is probably the most frightening thing, because what if I can't figure it out, and I just fade out of all my family pictures like the McFlys? That would suck.
D'oh.
Ok, so I may have lied in the second part of this series when I said the 2nd OC Mix was by far my favorite, because I think this mix is easily tied with that one. The covers of all these great songs are mostly well done (save a few), and a couple are downright fantastic. Give it a listen.
Various Artists - The OC Mix 6: Covering Our Tracks ★★★★★★★✩✩✩
Favorite Tracks: Can't Get it Out of My Head, Debaser, Smile Like You Mean It, The End's Not Near
Least Favorite Tracks: Pretty Vacant, Come Into Our Room
1. Float On
2. I Turn My Camera On
3. Pretty Vacant
4. California
5. Wasted
6. Can't Get It Out of My Head
7. Debaser
8. Hello Sunshine
9. Smile Like You Mean It
10. Come Into Our Room
11. The End's Not Near
12. Into Dust
4 things:
Well, according to David Hume, any notion that we have a Self deep down under all the layers of external appropriation is an illusion. He writes in A Treatise of Human Nature (which he published at the age of 26): "The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant notion of the place, where these scenes are represented, or of the materials, of which it is composed." For Hume, the point is that we can only operate fictionally, "sympathizing" and playing off of cultural and interpersonal cues in order to produce ourselves as a singular multitude in a way that we perceive to be "acceptable" to the larger social order. Of course, Hume's "observation" is also a pernicious consequence of the modern era. And we certainly don't have to believe Hume. What about those moments of encounter that exceed acceptable social bounds? Kierkegaard would have a lot to say about this hope to discover an identity that may still be a copy, but one which maintains a degree of the original's Life.
Ryan,
I've quite enjoyed gaining some background on your life, and seeing partly how it has unfolded. I hope this is not too weird, or creepy.
I suppose you are the one who has posted it to the in'ernets for all to see, so I can be relieved of, at least, some of my guilt.
I appreciated the honesty.
Really.
Krista
Re: Deleted comment
-I made a spelling error I couldn't stand to leave uncorrected. How embarrassing for me.
Jeff, as far as David Hume, I've always wanted to read his work, though I don't really know where to begin. Any suggestions? Or if it's even worthwhile?
And Krista, I'm glad you've enjoyed it, and no, it's not creepy or weird in the slightest. I suppose a part of the reason I put all of this on here is that I want people to know more about me. I admit I'm not necessarily the most open person in a lot of ways, and this is one way I can get things out, I suppose.
Thanks for the encouragement.
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