Day 0020

I have listened to Hamlet and started James Joyce's Ulysses since my last update. I still don't understand Shakespeare properly, and have never been able to enjoy it as much as I should. Perhaps you need to see it performed, I just don't know. Ulysses is like being given a live-feed directly into someone's brain, and its fairly disorienting as a result. It feels like a second consciousness chattering away.

I must try and remember in the future that arguing / debating big topics (religion, politics, the future) is a waste of time. I don't think I've ever changed anyone's mind who didn't already want to have their mind changed, and it's just a fundamentally disheartening experience to see how difficult it is to communicate, to talk on the same point and not at cross-purposes, to understand what each person is thinking and trying to say. Half the time I don't even say things that I believe, but I say words to fill the air anyhow and find myself taking a position that on reflection I could just as easily have opposed. That's the problem with conversation, it's supposed to be in real-time so you don't have any chance to consider what on earth you are saying.

I didn't leave long to do my art today. I erased the right eye and repositioned it to make it truer to the original. Still evidently too rushed and sloppy. Might have another go at it tomorrow or I'll move on to something new.