#neo fucking rambling/infodumping for 5 hours check

[neurotic--erotic]

rambling about stuff and things (hi again)

hi, it's neo!!! long time no see, i missed it here :D this is gonna be a long text post and i'm just going to be talking a lot and reflecting on this whole blog. it's just a lot of personal feelings and life and other boring stuff. not sure if it's going to reach anyone and it probably won't be interesting, i've just been feeling very sentimental recently and wanted to talk about shit.

i know i've kind of just abandoned this blog and im really sorry. everything on this blog is representative of a period of my life that i look back on with nothing but fondness and joy, and im genuinely kind of sad it has passed.

i think when i started this blog i must have been 15 or 16, im 18 now and im in college :D i haven't updated here since my junior year i believe, but i have logged in occasionally since then, whenever i remember to, and it really warms my heart to see people continuing to find my stuff buried in the recesses of 2021-22 - if a little guilty as well for not being around as much but really i'm just very grateful. i've always been really socially inhibited and afraid to insert myself into online circles. this silly little blog was honestly a step forward for me because i always keep my hyperfixations to myself for the most part. i never really engaged with this community on a deep level besides putting my silly posts out into the ether, but it was still a very new thing for me to make myself seen, especially to share things that i made, and it meant so much to me to receive such positive feedback on it once i did.

sometimes i really hate my hyperfixation style. i fall so hard in love with something, i center my whole life around it, it basically becomes a part of my identity, but all of a sudden it no longer brings me that same rapturous joy. it gets kind of awkward when i've centered my entire blog around one thing, i've made myself known for being solely dedicated to that thing, and i just don't know what to do once i lose interest. it's hard for me to fake that passion, but i have no idea how to shift gears at that point, so i just kind of disappear. i more recently made a new blog and this same pattern kinda happened again with a more recent media hyperfixation. i don't know what it is about that piece of media, because a few months ago i was completely enraptured in it but at this point it feels so strangely far away that the thought of it almost repulses me somehow? i can't figure out why i fell so hard out of love with it, but i guess that's not the point. i was just thinking about that because it's so different from my experience with this blog.

i still love will wood, probably always will, i still consider ww/wwatt to be my favorite artist of all time if not just really high up there. i don't believe any other singular artist has had so much of an impact on me, and i'm so grateful for everything. that's another reason why it's kinda sad that i don't have the same amount of hyperfixation energy about ww; back then i fully understood how masterful and special this music is and the amount of passion i had for it, to fully immersing myself and to understanding everything about it that i loved so much, reflected the level of awe and excitement i thought it deserved. part of me thinks the right way to experience and appreciate music should be just like that, at least for me, and i wish i had that much passion about things more often. this might just be my special interest bias but i think music-related hyperfixation is so amazing, because so much goes into music as an art form that deserves to be appreciated to the fullest extent. my expressions of love most often tended to center around lyrics and lyrical analysis, as i think you can see on this blog, but i was also passionate about things like the musical composition, instrumentation, and behind the scenes stuff, just absolutely everything that went into it. i've always loved music, but this hyperfixation really taught me to like, LOVE music for the first time. i really look at music in a whole different way because of ww. i have so much appreciation for musical artists and the art of creating music.

of course, a part of it was the parasociality as well, i've always thought it was important to be honest with myself about that aspect of musical hyperfixation and to be careful to handle it appropriately and respectfully. i relate it to musical hyperfixation in specific because for me a considerable amount of hyperfixating on music extends past the music itself and ends up including the artist. ww's music was utterly fascinating and i became fascinated by the mind and talent that created it. that's another way it's changed the way i look at music; artists are so often just as interesting as their art, often because of the way their ideas, values, experiences, and character translate into artistic expressions that seem so much grander in scale than just one person. i wanted to better understand the music because a big part of why it appealed to me was that i felt that it understood me. i think it's that i felt such a personal connection to the ideas being expressed and the way they were expressed, i wanted to be able to express myself similarly but i couldn't, so i settled for gathering an encyclopedic wealth of knowledge about every aspect that shaped the music into the form it was presented to me, and that included understanding the artist. i developed this fascination with the way that any piece of art that anyone creates is inherently affected by the person that makes it, the time and place they make it, the mindset of the person and the experiences that shaped their mindset. even unconsciously or abstractly, when we make art we answer to an internal need to say something or give something form. i have a very analytical brain and i feel i often need to fit things together like puzzle pieces so that they make logical sense in my brain, but that logical approach was a way i used to bring myself closer to the music.

i really did (obviously still do) have so much respect for will wood, i regarded him as extremely talented in so many ways that i wished i could be, and i felt deeply thankful that he exists and that he put his art into the world. (all of these r still true of course.) every time i made something to post on here or infodumped about his music or something, i was expressing my gratitude towards him but directed it elsewhere. i think i was interested and fascinated by him as a person but above all else i was grateful. and it was weird to feel that amount of gratefulness towards a human being that i had never met and did not know i exist. i mean i'd had short-term parasocial fixations on people before, including specific musical artists, but probably the reason my ww fixation lasted so long and had such an impact on me was because of the amount of connection i felt to the music, like it 'saved me' in a way (cliche i know), and like it was destiny that i found it.

i guess i'll talk about that too. i think i must have discovered will wood and the tapeworms in 2019 (i remember it was my freshman year of high school), when spotify randomly showed me self-ish as a recommended album. i'd never heard of it in my life. i listened to it for the album art alone, and whenever i tell this story i need to stress how rare that is for me to do. i've never been the type to jump into an album i've never heard anything about or to be instantly fascinated by an artist. again, if i had a stronger belief in the concept of destiny, i'd point to this instance, but although i say so in a generally playful way, i really can't express how happy i am that this happened. i became obsessed with the album. i found it during a transitionary period of my life that was chaotic and often very stressful, and i fell back very heavily on all sorts of music, among which i came to consider self-ish part of this heavy rotation.

from there i eventually listened to everything is a lot, probably around 2020, and the normal album later that year. i really cant remember precisely when it transformed from a favorite artist to an all-consuming hyperfixation, but it was definitely within The Timeframe. you know the one the 2020 one. i got more and more into analyzing his songs and concurrently started watching interviews and stuff and becoming fixated on his public persona as well. there was a good period of time i would talk about it nonstop, and i started this blog in the middle of that, which is definitely very evident. late 2020 through 2022 were the golden years so to speak, but especially 2021.

i shared his music with my dad. we bonded over it a lot. it was really meaningful to me because i don't typically share my interests with him, and there have been occasions where he has been unreceptive or critical of them, but often we connect over music. i was so happy that he understood how fascinating i considered it and engaged with me in conversation about it. i have such fond memories relating to this, especially when we were on car rides together and we'd end up blasting the song with five names on full volume (ow, but fun lol).

in november 2021 my dad and i got to see ww in concert. he was offering like a vip front row q&a thing for that concert and my dad got those for us, i still cant believe that it makes me so happy thinking about it. took some really awkward pictures standing like 2 feet away from will and looking like i was about to explode, got a cd signed, cried during most of the performance, ended up getting a migraine from the spotlights and having to go outside for some of it, and it was the best fucking night of my life. i'll never forget how kind he was as well, because i was so nervous and awkward and lowkey panicking the whole time, i hope it didn't make him uncomfortable but he was so respectful and sweet and it meant so much to me. it was such a great experience. will is such a great person and i love my dad so much.

i guess after in case i make it i ended up moving on to other things, but in all honesty by that point i had lost a little bit of the passion already. i was still hyperfixated but at certain points i felt like i was faking it a little just because i didn't want to lose the happiness it'd given me for years at that point. again that's kind of just the cyclical nature of my fixated interests, at a certain point the adrenaline hit sadly starts to wear off. but i think because of this waning hyperfixation i experienced the album slightly differently than the previous few. for starters, i cried a lot. i think i wasn't so hyperfocused on analyzing the lyrics and dissecting every element, which was also largely because of how intimately emotional that album is, and instead i experienced it in a very sentimental and emotional way for the most part. i've been revisiting it a lot lately, it really has a special place in my heart. maybe it's the transition i've made as i've entered college that drew me back to the bittersweetness of ww's indefinite signing off in the form of solo music; in opposition to the chaos and passion that led me to this point, i've found myself in a place where it's often lonesome, reflective, and internal. i sometimes feel like i don't have as much time to be swept up in the world outside of myself, because i've just been trying to find my own place in the world. i think a lot about the future and what kind of person i am going to become. at times i feel like i've been distracted from the value of the things around me and out of touch with myself. i don't know. it's something of a comfort album, but it puts me in a very sensitive mood.

anyway, yeah. all this to say that i'm not hyperfixated on will wood anymore but he, his music, and all the memories i have attached to them will always have a very special place in my heart. i know i was never a big part of this fan community but i really can't express how much fun i had being here. again, i don't know who will see this and i'm sorry i stopped checking in, but i'm just so happy i existed in this space for a little while.

actually, i found a little something in my drafts that i never ended up publishing so.. maybe.. maybe content? :] maybe? just a little thing because like making graphics and posting song lyrics was so much fun and i just don't have the motivation to anymore and i miss doing it </3

i feel like i've said this a million times but thank you. like if ur seeing this ur so cool, even if you didn't read any of this and just scrolled to the bottom i'm so happy you're here. i guess we'll see what the future holds for this blog, which is to say i have no idea if i'll ever get around to posting anything and if i do i'm not really sure what it would be. besides the one draft that i want to see if i can finish up for funsies so i hope i can post that at least!!!

alright i can't believe i sat down for like 4 hrs and banged this whole thing out i'm in such a silly goofy mood rn. thank you for the last time. love you

[neurotic--erotic]

infodump time //tw: themes of depersonalization possibly

today!!well tonight. well shut up, u know the verse from outliars that goes "too weird to love too scared to die too alien to take you home, so if you love me let me let you go my love, so i can be no one"

i might go jumping ahead of myself a lot here and probably wont be remotely clear but it fits this song and the album's theme of what is normal and healthy only being figments of human perception, but i also think of self-ish, i think its self- i associate most with the thing im thinking of, the line that says "they always ask you not to leave and i am as they remember me, so when all my friends forget my name i wont come back and be the same" wherein he shows at this point to directly associate himself with what others see/remember him as, or rather he is trying to use that perception and reflect it so that he meets their expectations (when in reality hes changed such that the image of him in others head feels like a different completely separate person as shown thruout other songs in the album for example mr capgras). because in this song he shows he is relying on other ppls memories to recreate himself as they remember him, when they forget him he wont exist.

this is a fundamental idea that reflects here as well, because in outliars its implying that severing interpersonal relationships will make him cease to be a person, because theres no one to perceive him, its like if you dont exist in someone elses head you dont rly exist at all,,if that makes sense?

also i could talk about the running theme within the normal album with how the human need to classify things creates incomplete versions of people so that they fit into boxes and by confining yourself to the caricature that classificatory systems and labels inherently create and trying to mirror the idea of what those systems say you are you kinda lose yourself and the power that comes with an identity- reading this over it makes no sense omg but like the example what with mental health issues being more known, i mean the field of medicine is just a method of classifying people and sorting them into groups right,, and and, sorting people into groups of similar people that creates a community, and within a community there comes a culture based around their unity and similarities, giving people the feeling of being understood but also encouraging them to limit themselves to the criteria they share in order to um. i just completely lost my train of thought its literally 3 am i totally forgot what im talking abt