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My short thoughts and reviews of each of the 9 stories in J.D. Salinger's "Nine Stories"

My Re

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ACT 1 - CONTEXTUALIZATION

ACT 2 - i could never

ACT 3 - The Lake

ACT 4 - Knife

ACT 5 - Glitzy Translucent Pink

ACT 6 - Shower

ACT 7 - Publisher

ACT 8 - What’s left?

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TEXT RENDITION OF THE MAR 9, 2021 LETTER

Currently, I am working on writing a screenplay that is nearing completion. The screenplay explores youthful existentialism and one’s search to answer the question of what they want to do with the rest of their life. I am currently sharing copies of the document script and revising as needed.

Here is a preface and a small sample:

PREFACE: THIS IS A SCREENPLAY I WROTE IN THE FIRST HALF OF 2021. THE WRITING PROCESS FORMALLY BEGAN ON (2-22-2021). ALL CHARACTERS IN THIS STORY ARE FICTIONAL AND NOT BASED OFF OF ANYONE I KNOW IN MY OWN LIFE, ALTHOUGH CERTAIN ASPECTS OF CHARACTERS AND SPOKEN EXCERPTS MAY BE PULLED FROM ENCOUNTERS AND INTERACTIONS I HAVE HAD WITH OTHERS. ONE OF THE CHARACTERS OF THE SCREENPLAY IS ALSO NAMED CODY AS A REFERENCE TO THE IDEA THAT MY WRITING IS IMBUED WITH SOME SENSE OF MYSELF. IT IS A CONSTANT DEBATE WHETHER TO SEPARATE THE ART FROM THE ARTIST, AND I AM HERE TO TELL YOU THAT YOU CAN MAKE WHATEVER CHOICE OR DECISION YOU PLEASE. I AM NOT WHO I WRITE ABOUT, BUT ASPECTS OF WHO I WRITE ABOUT ARE PULLED FROM MYSELF AND MY OWN EXPERIENCES. THERE IS A DISCONNECT BETWEEN THE FICTION AND REALITY-YOU MAY COME TO YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS ON HOW VAST THIS DISCONNECT IS. THE READER IS FREE TO MAKE THEIR OWN INFERENCES ON THE ULTERIOR AND UNDERLYING MEANING BEHIND THE TEXT, AND SO, I HAVE NO POWER OVER YOU AND NO OBLIGATION TO SPOON-FEED YOU ANY IDEA OR IDEOLOGY I MAY HAVE. INSTEAD, MAKE YOUR OWN DECISIONS AND CHOICES BASED ON YOUR OWN MORAL CODE, THAT IS HOW EXPERIENCING THE STORY IS RECOMMENDED. YOUR OWN AUTHENTIC INDIVIDUALISM SHOULD BE WHAT SHAPES THE STORY. YOU MAY FIND MEANING WHEREVER AND HOWEVER YOU WOULD LIKE AS I AM IN NO PLACE TO TELL YOU HOW OR WHAT TO FEEL. THAT IS WHAT I BELIEVE A WRITER’S JOB IS, TO SUGGEST AND TO PRESENT TO A READER WHO HAS THE FREEDOM TO INTERPRET. THAT IS ALL.

“Now, more than ever I have some grounded idea of what I want to do. It’s a loose attachment, the same way I would grab handfuls of sand at the beach and would watch each grain seep out between my fingers, but it’s an attachment nonetheless. I think that from all of the undirected conversation, I got an idea of who everyone is. It’s this loose idea of what everyone wants to do, their fears, their aspirations, and what makes everyone who they are.”

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On Corbusier (From Mar 11, 2021)

One of the most important architects of the 20th century, Swiss idealist Le Corbusier remains influential to the far corners of modern contemporary art. Guided by totalitarian ideology, his plans of communal areas and humanist ideas of improved apartment buildings were eccentrically modern and paved the way for future organized housing. The beauty of modern engineering lies in its removal from all previous ways of thought. As Corbusier put it, "A house is a machine for living in." Le Corbusier's 1952 building titled Unité d'Habitation is well known as one of his most famous works Contemporary, a piece often cited for inspiring brutalism. Contemporary artist Tom Sachs recreated this building as a way to further comment on consumerist culture and the accessibility of both luxury and necessity. Kanye West cites a lamp by Corbusier as one of the inspirations behind his 2013 Yeezus album. Corbusier's lamps were designed to perform a function, the function held the beauty of the item-design based on usage first.

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Schroeder (FROM DEC 22, 2020)

Schroeder is a character in pop-culture unlike any other. A character more "real" because of his realistic portrayal of someone with a real passion. Schroeder's most signature trait is his deep love, moreover an obsession with his craft, and the perfection of. He shows compassion towards others, especially his friends, yet shows no interest to the strings and relationship drama that may come with a Lucy. When the Peanuts gang play baseball, what more fitting a position would Schroeder play other than catcher? A reliable director to the chaos of the field, a stoic target at the end of a pitcher's line of fire. He is the catcher that a Holden Caulfield would aspire to be yet he needs no backwards cap, instead, he champions a symbol of his true passion. A Beethoven bust sits atop his piano. His art speaks for him grins, he grins through the teeth-like keys on his piano. Schroeder is much a virtuous ideal in this sense, someone with their head on straight, focused on what truly permeates their life with meaning, completely undistracted.

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NEON GENESIS EVANGELION

Neon Genesis Evangelion: A Religious and Philosophical deep-dive into humanity.

NGE as I will henceforth call the mid 90s Pseudo-mecha anime, is set after a worldwide cataclysm and following the “ending” of the natural world and the beginning of a world existing in one's subconscious.

The storyline follows 14-year-old Shinji Ikari's work piloting a large mech called an Eva in a fight against the Angels, a collective of colonial aliens . This essay will be divided into 3 parts exploring what I deem to be the core of the show: The Psychology, The Philosophy, and The Religious Imagery.

The Subconscious:

NGE takes a deep-dive into the psychological motivations and subconscious urges behind many of its characters’ behaviours, most importantly, the three teenaged pilots of the supremely powerful mechs, Shinji’s father, and Shinji’s mother. After mentioning the subconscious, Sigmund Freud’s work in psycho-analytics should come to mind. If you aren’t immediately familiar, Freud was neurologist who pioneered psychoanalysis, the study on one’s subconscious urges, most notably in Freud’s view, Sex and Aggression. These two themes hold a presence in the mind’s of each character, as each has a distorted view on reality under the lens of unresolved childhood trauma. Shinji is driven by an Oedipus complex as a result of childhood abandonment, a complex from Freud characterized by a lust towards one’s own mother and desire to kill one’s father. Miss Misato, fills the mother-like role in Shinji’s life and thus, he is compelled in her direction. Misato feels trauma from the second impact and her father’s death, an incident leaving a gap of male presence in her life which she fills with casual hook-ups with a man named Kaji. Misato’s view of herself is impacted because of not only in comparison to who she wants to be but the ideal imposed onto her by the conservative and often authoritarian society she lives in, and so she is crippled with self-doubt and criticism. Asuka is one of Shinji’s teenaged peers and someone substantially more sexually aggressive than all others in EVA, stemming from the suicide of her mother. Asuka develops a resistance to truly confronting this in her subconscious so instead she occupies her thoughts with a race or competitive streak to become the best at all she does. Her competitiveness leads her to suffer from a borderline bipolar disorder characterized by bouts of mania and depressions which eventually lead to self harm. Rei is the final character in Eva I will discuss. She is another teen Eva pilot but with one major difference between her and her peers, she is a clone. Rei is fully aware of the ephemeral and fleeting of her existence and so she views herself from a purely objectivist point of view. If Rei is a clone that will die at some point, she must maximize her time as a tool, and means to get to an ends; in this sense, Rei mirrors the nature of strong high level artificial intelligence. Eventually, through her interactions with Shinji, she develops a love for humanity, and her desire towards objectivity begins to mirror the self-destructive tendencies of those around her as it is her work that puts such immense stress on her body, blurring the lines between objectivism and humanism.

The Philosophy:

After the Eva mechs defeat the last Angel, NGE ends with the success of the Human Instrumentality Project. A forced evolution of humanity in which, connectivity accelerates infinitely. As humanity is united, it becomes a singular collective conscious or “soul”. This project is achieved in benevolence for the purpose of ending all suffering and lonliness and alienation that has plagued mankind, most evident in the trauma in NGE’s main characters. Shinji’s soul or character reaches an epiphany in this collective unconscious and grapples with needing interaction and interpersonal relationships and embraces the others around him. Depending on which ending the viewer believes as cannon, the viewer has the choice of believing that Shinji accepts the project and lives in the collective or the alternative which sees him rejecting the collective, reverting the Instrumentality project, and embracing loneliness. This embrace of the Human Instrumentality project mirrors the beliefs of Carl Jung and his theory on the Collective Unconscious, the idea that one has intrinsic universal heritable elements, common to all, that exist in all people’s unconscious mind. The idea of loneliness mirrors Fredrich Nietzsche’s contributions to Existentialism, the idea that men must accept that there is nothing else beyond life and that a failure to live and take risks is a failure to realize human potential. Jean-Paul Sartre was another philosopher who added to this existentialist philosophy that humanity will live in constant anguish not because life is miserable, but because we are ‘condemned to be free’.

The Religion:

Upon first viewing of NGE, the show’s obsession with religion and religious imagery will become evident quick. Fredrich Nietzsche, the existentialist philosopher in which much of Evangelion’s themes are based from, rejects the Christian god, in reaction giving authority to community-created ethos, and the morals of individuals. As Nietzsche puts it, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” Yet this simple thesis is unsatisfying, NGE revels in the thought of higher power and higher power. The Angels of the show are in reference from characters of the Old Testament who bear the same names; the first angel is named Adam and the second, Lilith. Kaworu, one of the angels, sees humanity as beings of Lilith, and in one of the climaxes of the series, Lilith is crucified. Even the organization working on the Human Instrumentality Project use of Hebrew inscriptions and titles as a way to tie the collective unconscious to some heaven or godly universality. Mick Broderick, Associate Professor of Media Analysis at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, writes, "Anno's project is a postmodernist retelling of the Genesis myth, as his series title implies—Neon Genesis Evangelion. It is a new myth of origin, complete with its own deluge, Armageddon, apocalypse and transcendence." I personally appreciate and agree with this conclusion. I believe NGE to be one of the most important worKS of media and art of all time, in the way it tells the age old tale of religion and Genesis in the lens of contemporality and in the age of higher level AI. Because of this, I deem it as the most important explorations of human nature, and a work of art that should be seen by all.

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HustleBones-Death Grips Akira Visualizer

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Xerox Of A Xerox

I have a grip now;

I felt like I knew you once.

It was on and off,

Like the bobbing of ducks,

The ones at the fair.

Sometimes their heads went under,

But they stayed afloat.

It’s crystal clear like water,

The strings between us,

Were too few yet I hung on.

Retrospectively,

I don’t regret it at all.

I did learn something.

People are ever-changing,

And I truly love that.

I miss you less than before,

But some nonetheless.

Maybe it's the memory,

That which I love so.

You’re too far for me to tell.

There’s no difference.

A Xerox Of A Xerox.

-Cody Skinner 2/17/2021

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September 23rd, 2020

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Painting by Me -2021

Inspired by The Graduate (1967)

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The Campsite from a hike I took on Feb 5th 2021