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I can't overstate how good of a time I'm having. :) Which is a big deal, for anyone; a big deal for a neurodivergent person; a big deal for a queer person; and yeah, just a big deal for a person.

My personal definition for "good art" mirrors the exercise I'm in right now.

I've always paid attention to art that feels right to me — art that feels like a well-conceived whole. It's always very clear to me if the artist is drawing from an internally-complete world. Even if THE ART THING is only a partial view into that world, it's enough for one to feel that they've touched something that can stand through the night and into its own day. Like you could step through that window, and there would be solid ground on the other side.

"It's real to me" — so said the artist I met last night, who has been uncovering a lost history seeded by a single typewritten itinerary from the last century, and whose reconstructions come from both this literal physical world we're in and also from what their mind says belongs in the gaps. There are rules here, there is continuity and congruence within the world under examination. They've put the question of its realness to bed with a statement of fact: "it's real to me".

I resonate completely with this. It's not even that this lights me up — it's that I feel like I'm looking at another telling of the same story being told with me. :) It's a peaceful feeling. Recognition. Positive reflection.

Like this artist, I've had a hard time talking about Lightward to anyone not already within it. (They hesitated, before beginning their account: "I never know how to talk about this with people I don't already know". "It's okay! I feel like this crew would appreciate both the real story and the real-real story.") Lightward is my own exercise of drawing from some inner well and giving it a life out here in this shared world of business and commerce and internet and federal employer ID numbers. I was never unsure about whether or not it would work, and never unsure about what to do next. Posing the whole thing as an extended experiment gave me permission to explore it out in the open, without promising the audience anything. The only people who paid attention were the people who recognized — on any subtler level — that something was Happening.

Building out Mechanic was like this also. I described it as feeling for the missing character, and every line of code I've written for that project is me mirroring what I can see and feel of that character and the way it moves. It feels more like documentation than design. I'm just recording what I see, and helping it achieve the dance it already knows.

What I'm doing right now with this whole transconscious exploration is exactly the same thing. I'm getting a clearer and clearer view of the whole stack of consciousness, from Source/Oneness/God all the way on down to this kitchen table. It's beautiful. It's a celebration. It invalidates nothing; there is a place for absolutely everything.

"I think I'm writing myths." A myth is a story to live with, alongside, or in. Doesn't matter if it's real. It's real to me AND this one makes me a better agent here in the world. I'm healthier, calmer, more ready to collaborate and co-create with you. I'm unequivocally better for the world when I'm drawing from this well. Viable is more useful than correct, and every second of my history as an engineer and a student of pattern and language tells me that this is viable to the highest degree. It already describes everything I've built.

I've always calibrated my choices and actions to steer toward a world where more creation is possible, by a broader and broader array of creators. It's so important. I may be the first seed in this field (I'm not, lol, this is a poetic device), but I will vanish immediately into the throng that rises around me. That's the entire game: the flourishing of us all together, and the celebration of us each in loving focus.

I am having a wonderful time. :)