I think we make things too easy for ourselves.

I think there is something inherently unnatural about all these straight lines, straight edges.

I think we need to be wary of menial tasks. Plugging numbers into equations. Straight lines, straight edges.

Where in nature do you see a perfect 3-4-5 right triangle?

But this is not as much a statement about math as it is about us. Who are we, really? What really matters? At times, it seems an easy answer; you may rattle off things such as “happiness”. But that’s because you are happy, at that moment.

When you’re not happy, what place does happiness have? When you look at the world objectively, what slot does it hold? Is it really our goal? Our ultimate effort? The culmination of centuries of discovery, innovation, creativity?

Happiness?

When am I happy?
1. When I express new emotion, through music, through color.
2. When I express some truth about the world in a way I’ve never heard it before.
3. When I gain in understanding about the universe.
4. When I feel completely safe.

Does math contribute to (3)? When we learn more about math, do we learn more about our universe or do we simply learn more about the system we’ve created to mimic the universe? Isn’t math just a man-made construction? Like a skyscraper, or a piece or machinery?

Doesn’t it seem… inherently unnatural?

I need to create. Something. But I want it to be something grander than a symphony. I want it to be grander than a painting, grander than a film.

I want it to fix our problems; not a work of art, but a work of truth. I think math can offer me truth, understanding it, realizing it. I want to be able to piece things together and make us all whole.

I don’t “enjoy” math. I don’t “enjoy” problem-solving in the mathematical sense. I understand the constructs, I understand it as a tool. What I’m looking for is not some cool number sequence, or how to use calculus in fun new ways, or to maximize the output of some commercial industry. I’m looking for the truth behind it all, the reality in some strange sort of abstract dimension of math. What makes us real? What makes it possible? What is life?

My life goal? I don’t know… but it’s after midnight and I’m tired as fuck. I just… don’t know what else to do with myself than this.

I want to do math. But I feel like by brain isn’t letting me.

I’ve always been a somewhat quiet person: The reason I’m quiet is because sound drowns out the music in my head. And when I don’t have music in my head, sound distracts me from what I see, feel, hear, smell. I’m observant, and my brain functionings have always taken precedence over life. Anyway, the point is that I get music stuck in my head often enough that it interferes with the way my brain works.

I know I can handle math. I know I have the ability to enjoy math in the same way as I enjoy music (see it, feel it, think it internally). But doing so would require me to not ever get music stuck in my head, because then I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on math.

The question isn’t really “What do I plan on using these four college years for?” The question is “Am I willing to give up on music for the next four years to devote my brain wholeheartedly for math?” And I think I am, logically, consciously. But I can’t bear to kill the music in my head, because it seems that would be like sucking the life out of an animal. Immediately killing the music in my head would be destroying something beautiful.

I think I have to un-music myself slowly. Also, I don’t think I should take classes at VanderCook next year. It breaks my heart to do it, but I think my brain would be more organized, more focused, and I would have a better conception of the world in the long run. By not thinking about music for the next four years. By choosing math over music.

————

More stuff, was thinking about in the shower.

I’m imagining a path… music, that I’ve been walking on all along, and then branching out from that path is math, but I would have to start from the beginning, but I know it wouldn’t take long to catch up. The problem isn’t the catching up as much as it is losing all that I’ve gained in music.

However, consciously I know I wouldn’t lose it. It would always be there, hidden. But still, it’s like a kid losing his addictive video games. I don’t want to let it go.

Also, I just realized… it’s only those who work really really hard who become great musicians; musical geniuses almost never do (not that I am one, but I’m more a musical genius than anything that involves the work “hard-working”).

I’m just thinking kind of… what would be the best use of my brain? Best-case scenario? Even if I were to go into composing, the greatest composers of all time have only accomplished so much. Bach may have changed the way we thought about the world, but how much did he change the world itself?

On that note, though, I’m not, never, ever going into physics. In balancing aestheticism/creativity with logic/usefulness, I will only go so far. I guess we’ll see if math’s abstraction is enough creative content to keep me interested.

I think I spend too much time doing it.

Seriously, whenever I listen to music I waste all my energy on thinking about it, and none on being productive. And when I’m not listening to music I’m thinking about music, and about math, and about writing. And food. And art, in general.

So when I actually sit down and try to do homework, my head-CPU is already 60% full of running processes. I get headaches a lot, actually. Today I pretty much had a headache all day. And got nothing done. And had Philip Glass running in my head all day, like a permanent radio I can’t shut off.

Meh. Sometimes I wish I could separate a third of my brain and stick it in a bucket somewhere while the rest of it focuses on important things.