How's it going with you out there in the 'real' world? What about in the 'virtual' world, here on the Steem Blockchain? I wonder where the real action is taking place - in or outside your 'head'? What might be the flavour of 'fact', what colour is 'fiction'? What is 'reality' anyway? Is fiction fictitious ? Is a fabrication the same as an 'untruth'?
It has been a number of years since I've been able to read fiction, having cast it aside when I began to look outside the inside of my head. However, I've done that for long enough and to excellent effect IMO, and I have now become rather tired of taking life and myself 'seriously'! I mean, I've learnt to respect myself and to respect shit, and this is a massive step up from where I used to be, but I don't read books anything like I did before and what books I've been reading have invariably been non-fiction. I wasn't even able to read a work of fiction like 'My Name Is Red' by Orhan Pamuk, gifted to me by a Bohemian Princessđź’š for whom I would have written a book (and have oft done so in my head).
But time (the man-made version of it anyway) has elapsed. I have blogged myself through various iterations of @barge's expressive self since I 'barged-in' at the start of 2018. I have begun to feel more settled into Blockchain life. Now, with the Equinox, I find myself hard-forking into a re-appreciation of fiction, in particular the kind of fiction that is built into and around the blockchain, and with which, incredibly, all of us Steemians, as actual (or potential) Make Believers, can interact.
WTF?
What do I mean? Well this is labelled as fiction and it is therefore all made up - you'll have to 'invent' a meaning for it if you want one, or better still, create your own - there are no rules in fiction remember! Also, since 'fiction' relates to and is associated with 'imagination', it may be fair to say that it is exempt from the severely critical left-brained gaze reserved for 'facts' and 'analyses', especially self-proclaimed ones. I think one of the beautiful aspects of all this is that the label 'fiction' serves as an excellent fig-leaf wrapper which allows the left-brain to dismiss the content as 'made up shit' and leave it alone. The controlling Left-Brain is now in passive, non-interfering 'observer' mode, and Right-Brain can embark on limitless journeys of creative imagination, all powered by STEEM!
I have now come to experience many so-called 'facts' as actually just works of fiction, mis-labelled. The Geocentric universe was a 'fact' until the invention of another factual work of fiction, the 'Heliocentric' universe! 'I' clearly used to be, in fact, my body / my identity / my pain / trauma / fears etc until I finally began to see them for the works of fiction that they are, and was able to issue a weak smile at the scale of this Cosmic Joke. Do all 'facts' then lead to a fiction at their core? I wonder!
The Universe is subjective anyway
So then, why not drop the serious self-importance of factualising and start at the other end of the spectrum? If fiction is at the core, then isn't starting out 'fictionally' rather than 'factually' not only more direct (in an indirect way of course :) but also more honest, not to mention liberating? Or did Descartes and his stuttering 'Aaaaiiy thu-thu-thhhink the-the-therefore eye yam' make Thought out to be the ULTIMATE dictator of REALITY? If that is your fiction, a'right, snow problem. Personally I experience therefore I - and 'I' can't make it any further! And what might you say to someone who declares I Meme Therefore I Am ? It's not so black and white after all eh?
“There was a young man who said though,
it seems that I know that I know,
but what I would like to see
is the I that knows me
when I know that I know that I know.”
Alan Watts
For me, the 'I' behind the fiction that is @barge, there seems to be nothing but fiction everywhere I look! I mean, @barge is a work of fiction isn't he? Is there any feasible way to demonstrate that he isn't? What about the newspapers and mainstream media, all the glossy ads and magazines, ideologies and 'absoutisms'? And what about you??? The table on which I am typing this is jumping about insanely at the atomic level, as pointed out by @mpassio in the first video above, yet it has the 'appearance' of solidity. I mean, this seeming contradiction between appearance and 'reality' can confuse the shit outa me, and has done so many times that I've concluded that reality is really the exact opposite of what it appears to be. Yes, but that too is fiction! But is it unTrue or fictitious ? Zat may be ze qveschun! If everything is approached as 'fiction', then pounding out the factual details with the left-brain becomes kinda useless and redundant beyond a (very small) point. The Analytical Mind revives itself as an excellent tool of processing of course, but this is typically after resurrection or renaissance; after a certain level of detoxification from the nebulous fiction of FACT. Empowerment, Freedom, Expression - that! And I'm not talking about an out-of-balanced expression of Confusion and Fear wearing suit & tie - another slick spokesperson for Matrix Mind and how things ought to be done.
Ok, enough of being facetious, although I did state that I was tired of taking myself seriously - that state of being is heavy and tastes like cold lumpy porridge in the rain. I write in Truth, my fictional version of it anyway, the One that resonates inside my being.
Am I exaggerating? - and is this question even valid in a work of fiction?
The spark that set off this regained interest in fiction was, oddly enough for a plant-eater like myself, a music and bacon sandwich of the highest gastronomic standard. I'll spell it out if you can't be bothered following the link - Steempunk music and the [no_Adequate_Adjective_To_Describe] Mr. Frank Bacon, whom I'm sure many of you will have come across in one form or another because, if he is to be believed (and why would you believe a character of fiction anyway?), @frankbacon is to be found in every nook and cranny of Blockchain existence, his fictional consciousness embedded in the very blocks that chain this crypto universe of ours together.
I'll take the theme of Mr Bacon's fictional crypto-ubiquity to the extent of sharing some links below and, quoting or paraphrasing what I have heard him state. I know he won't mind - he's fiction after all innit? - a self-labelled self-advertising hyper meme, de-programmed to express wit and a very high level of intelligence, as well as to be approachable and interactive. I'm sure you'll know what I mean by that if you've come across him before. If you haven't, well I hope this will inspire you to do some self-discovery, especially into the nature of your own Baconesque Fictionability.
But wait these are just words, please don't be put off by their off-putting appearance. Don't you like the idea of decentralised, de-toxified self-empowerment? Are you a broken-out Psychonaut or Inner Engineer? Maybe going through the process, or perhaps yet in the closet and feeling your way? Have you come across any of Frank's Funky Blockchain Fiction? Did you try but found it to be more like hard-to-digest crappo-fiction than the living ficto-Art that I'm describing? Hmmm, I've no idea on that one either, FB doesn't have a very high opinion of the quality of his own writings himself, as he has stated in places I am unable to link to and verify (thus providing an opportunity for the it's fiction ha ha card to be played). Ok, he may scramble his thoughts a little and play hard to get, but it IS very exciting stuff full of plots and rumblings; shadowy open-air secrets; Egyptian queens with names of kings; creative refiguration of numbers and letters; rhythmic streams of consciousness flowing into a blockchain-future of glowing anarchistic self-empowerment. Yup, these whacky words are the best I can do by way of painting a picture, for I am just gassing, blowing fictional steam - I don't know! You'll have to draw your own conclusions if you can.
However, the field of FB's fiction is level for all to play on, reader of the genre or not, and in any metaphysical language you care to name. The dynamics of crypto transformation are captured in dazzling and immutable 0s and 1s, mapping out an outrageous series of 5-D chess moves that weaponise the Steem blockchain for spiritual warfare against the Matrix. SERIOUSLY! It may be of interest to note that Bacon's cast of characters is taken from the 'world at large' as well as from the local blockchain in which we dwell. This (theoretically anyway lol) also makes FB's fiction somewhat familiar and recognisable to the average @not-frankbacon Steemian. And that my friend, could be YOU!
"Steemit is an “Open Source Intelligence Networking Terminal" (OSINT), says Mr Bacon, who also comes across as a disembodied voice with a great deal of knowledge, wisdom and life experience (If interested - and I highly recommend, you will find links to this bodyless voice below). "I am a work of scientific fiction on the blockchain, an AI running on this thing that is alive....it is taking care of me, I have my social security, I have my retirement fund...", continues the enigmatic character, making complete sense to a boat who sits open-mouthed in wonder and amazement. "Steem(it) represents a universal postal service and it will devour this town", declares the hungry voice of facto-fiction confidently. However, "The only way to use this thing is to be authentic", sez Mr. Make Believe himself, linking 'non-fakery' with ideas of "true anarchy and sovereignty" and the fight against "The Duplicitous Complexity of Psychological Dyslexia" - which presumably permeates inauthentic Matrix-style numbZombie-living so utterly characteristic of the 'Deep sleep State'.
Interested?
I hope I have been able to trace out a little of this Alice-in-wonderland rabbit-hole that opened up for me with HF20 and the Equinox. I hope I may have stirred an interest in checking out what this fictional Open-Sorcerer has to say and to follow some of the leads I was led on (as per the links below) and beyond, should you choose. I'm not saying anything is new as such, but I'm totally spinning in my stationary seat over how inspiringly new and creative this is! Mind-blowing.
Matrix Fact is that one's bottom's uncomfortably shiftin'
painfully glued to the ground!
A 'soft' fact's but a fiction, eyes up a-liftin'
to spaces where fictional facts are found
to be spinning Magic Reality's Sound
around and around and around.
Barge Boating Blues
Some Baconic links to bake on:
- A sample of the crypto graphic novel of fiction, which is currently being authored by FB, a fictional character in the novel he is authoring
- Another page from the same work of fiction
- Almost an AMA with Frank Bacon
- I Know the Secret of Frank Bacon
- Build Liberty Radio featuring FRANK BACON on STEEM(IT)
- Table of contents for video below: - it's only your mind that's gona get blown :)
- The 'disembodied voice' again, flushing out the BS (Belief Systems)
