Going From Strange To Stranger

my head feels numb and heavy and confused and i've been exercising to keep the black cloud off. it works most of the time. it doesn't help that i am constantly staring at the computer screen watching films and wasting time. i haven't written a whole story yet, i am still brainstorming: that exciting time when the idea is fresh and you think of what you could do, the time that ends when it comes to putting finger to keyboard, pen to paper. i am going to the library to research my newest idea for a story - actually it's based on a poem i almost-wrote (naturally) a few years ago - about strength and blindness and mythology and how there is always a man of enormous strength in each culture's mythology and this man has the most insignificant achilles' foot (haha). but then i'm also writing a somewhat absurdist story about a girl that likes to but plasters (band-aids for the americans) on herself. if only i wrote these stories the way i imagined them, i would love myself more.

and why do people run from the mainstream? it baffles me. people fight so hard to be alternative and indie and consume things they don't perceive as commercial. i understand it, but it's somewhat anachronistic. mainstream used to mean (and still mostly means) that a product is created for a sole reason and that reason is to make money. tv shows, bands, writers want to maximize consumers. they "sell out" by creating the kind of art that is accessible, blended, easier on the stomach. therefore alternative meant the opposite, creating art to create art, to express, regardless of the consumer. however, we live in an age when the alternative is mainstream and the underground is barely alternative. not such a bad thing. people write songs and write novels and paint paintings so that people will listen, no? it's true. artists want people to listen & not just to make money, but to be heard, to give an opinion that could change the world. the mainstream is becoming such that artists can have control of their product and still reach a large audience. it seems stupid and hypocritical to me that people fight to keep their art suppressed so that it will not be mainstream. of course, i'm not blind to the fact that a majority of the mainstream is there for one reason: money-making. but people need to take hold of the mainstream and make it worth consuming. after all, bergman is mainstream, kushner is mainstream, miranda july is mainstream, no?

i am going to the library to do some research.