Forgive my messy words…

Dear Mariah,

I fell sleep afrer writing that letter to Sarah and just woke up: I don’t know how much time has passed but the parts of my inner psychological-political constitution have apparently come to a kind of peace  treaty inside of themselves and have come to the conclusion that we regret posting that entry but I am not going to delete it for some reason: because I worked too hard on it, because a part of me actually takes perverse pleasure in being a misunderstood Enneagram 4 so I’m going to post things that make me feel misunderstood? I was trying to demonstrate through a process of writing how *conflict* happens within a person and hopefully to explore how thinking of the different parts of me that were fighting like different parts of Plato’s Republic was both helpful and fascinating.

I was trying to demonstrate something while I was realizing at the same time that Plato’s psychology is actually deeply relevant because these factions are fighting in me like parts of acwaering state and I felt sooo many different conflicting parts within me as I wrote, all with seemingly conflicting interests, all because I started writing a letter, one, when I didn’t really want to byt was so afraid of forgetting what I wanted to write the next day. The slowness on this phone meant that another conflict arose about how slow this was and I needed to be able to type faster to say anything at all. I wanted to say something to Sarah about being fascinated to MODEL the linguistic synchronicity that might hapoen when you hear a song on the radio and think it was somehow out there for you in some sense… I wanted to GET TO THE POINT but another part of me didn’t want to be writing at all and yet I wrote for soooo long and wore myself out never even getting to the point at all…

I was fascinated with the experience I had with this song which basically told me how to change my song to make it better: take Calica’s name out of that line and make it a much more powerful grab: a wicked witch stole all my money.

Anyway, hearing this Elton and Britney song when I got into the car, I thought, this feels soooo much like a HUMAN *response* to the song I just wrote that hearing this song on the radio now fannot be a coincidence… and I want to figure out how to explore that theoretically and philosophically. For various reasons, I feel justified in believing that: the fact that it was on the radio just then means I am *justified* in thinking someone somewhere somehow read the lyrics of my song. That is my thesis, how do I justify that belief? I got excited about *epistemology* of all things: ooh only Sarah could understand but she could help me do what I have been fascinated to do fir years: find dome way to model the probability that a song that begins like Tiny Dancer should come on the radio after I post those lyrics with all the meaning they contain…

It is a fascinating example of what I want to explore: I feel justified in believing that this song would not have appeared in the radio at that moment if soneone, sonewhere, had not read my song. The meaning it conveyed was just too specific to be a coincidence and it is fascinating philosophically to me… I could write a thesis about why I believe I am justified in thinking that this song, coning on as a response to my lyrics, was, somehow, not by chance. This happens all the time but it felt like a perfect chance to explore the phenonemon, the perfect textbook example of it, and I have been seeing a lot of these textbook examples of things lately.

Suppose I have a feiend at the radio station who reads my diary. Perhaps that friend is a songwriter and musician. When I write a song they might find the ‘perfect song’ in response to it and put it in the radio. The truth is hearing this song, though at first it seemed totally irrelevant, felt like it could not have been there by *chance* and the urgent issue I wanted to share with Sarah has sonething to do with… I want to create framework and model for exploring how linguistic and musical meaning are conveyed and… I feel like if Sarah were the writer of the song I wrote, putting meaning together in the way I did, and then heard this song on the radio, she would not stir up internal conflict and strife and recommend cow sellers to herself for thinking a song on the radio was MEANT for her. Because she would be very justified in her belief that it WAS meant for her even by just the first couple of lines. But how would she defend that knowing to anyone else?

I want to explore: how is this knowing possible? How would you demonstrate to someone who did not write the song or have that experience of meaning that you are justified in coming to this conclusion?

My experience was: at first, thinking the song on the radio had nothing to do with my song, but being more convinced, the more I thought about it, that it meant someone was listening and likely, either directly or indirectly, that song ending up on the radio is *connected* in some way to me writing this song. Can I please philosophize with someone about this: there is a connection between the songs that makes me feel JUSTIFIED in believing that this song being on the radio is connected to the lyrics I posted but how can we theorize about what is likely to be actually going on?

I wonder if either you or Sarah can see what I am talking about, can sense the way the song felt more like a conversation and a highly *relevant* response to my song. I am fascinated: how would we model and quantify this ‘relevance’ of one song to another? How could we model a way of looking at how the meaning of a song coming on the radio is CONNECTED to the meaning if a song I just wrote such that I can be justified in having this very basic simple belief: someone somewhere read my song.

I believe I am justified JUST from hearing this song on the radio that soneone read it and a question is, how could we conceptualize how I could be justified? How can I be justified in noticing how meaning carries over from one song to the other in such a way that one song appearing in my life after writing the other cannot be a coincidence. Now, trying to tell most people about this would get you recommended cow sellers, so how can I quantify and mathematicslly model the likelihood that a song with certain meaning in it was somehow inspired by another song?

I need to talk about it with someone who can look at lyrics and songs and think philosophically and who has an expertise in linguistics like Sarah. I can’t find the words to say what I want to say but I know there is a way! Blue jean baby, seamstress, and indeed hearing this song was like a songwriting *collaboration* with someone, sonehow: I wrote that I wanted soneone other than me to have fun singing it, and this song feels lime the response that told me, oooh, yeah, take Calica’s name out of the first line and change it to a wicked witch stole all my money! Much more powerful, and somehow the meaning that came to me when that Elton Britney song came on helped me rewrite those first two lines… but philosophy is so much about asking, how is it possible, am so curious how it is possible that a song on the radio, that appears random to pretty much everybody, could carry meaning, connected to other meaning (the song I just wrote) that could mot possibly be by chance? Is there a way to model how meaning connects between the two songs and then model and quantify the likelihood, say, that a song on the radio is NOT there by chance, but is there as the result of a human being responding to meaning in another song? How can that meaning that gets carried from song to song be studied and analyzed?

It is near impossibke to write a song and have someone see that another song written by someone else inspired it, if they did not know that this meaning sharing was happening. Soooo much meaning might be shared but it is so hard for the uninitiated who are not sharing MEANING to see that one song is a conversation with another and not just by chance. Do you see the exciting philosophical and scientific issues I am trying so hard and failing so miserably to present here? I think we can mathematically model the probability of meanings in songs like this being connected by some kind of actual shared meaning and not just random councidence but how are you justified in believing that a song on the radio is connected to your song in SUCH a deep but not quite quantifiable way that you feel justified in a belief that, to put it most simply: so eone read my song.

Put simply: I wrote and posted this song. Then I heard this song on the radio that I KNOW is connected to what I write by more shared meaning than I can actually express, like hearing the song on the radio like this would make TOTAL sense if I had a friend at the radio station who was a songwriter too who liked to help me with ny own songs. Coukd I explain to Sarah how this song on the radio is RELEVANT to what I just wrote? Maybe, because a friend is tgere at the radio station helping me. But is there a way we could study the meaning in the songs *themselves* and come to the conclusion, through some kind of quantitative mathematical linguistic study of probability and synchronicity, that even if we did not know my friend was helping me in this song by putting the perfect song on the radio meaningfully connected to mine, we could, through a study of words and meaning and how the songs relate to each other on some level of meaning, considering things like radio song play frequency and such, quantify in sone way a likelihood of a connection between these two songs? If there were some science for exploring meaning in language and how one person responds to another’s meaning linguistically snd musically we could somehow show quantitatively that I am justified in believing, through the synchronous unlikelihood of this song coming on by chance, that indeed what I know to be true is true: that I gave a friend ag the radio starion helping me. I think there is a way to quantify invisible connections between things and invisible conversations and collaborations by studying meaning in songs, and this feels like it has so much to do with two songs sharing in tbe same Form of something… form feels crucial but I am so frustrated with how little of what I want to say is coning across.

I don’t have a feiend at the radio starion (that I know of) but I am having the same experience: the CONNECTION between these two songs cannot be a coincidence and I think I could demonstrate that to Sarah… or if she were really paying attention maybe hopefully it would be just as obvious to her as it is to me. So then: we both know, and maybe you get what I am saying too, Mariah, that there is a connection, but how can we articulate a way if speaking about how we are justified in knowing what we know? How do you articulate and quantify connections in meaning between songs that are either played together at random ir by a conscious sentient being choosing to play the PERFECT song to come after it? I know there is a way to think about how to… be more likely to get a computer model to guess right, for example, that one song coning in after another was due to SOME kind of human influence, sone kind if shared meaning, some kind of interaction  with my song in some level.

I cannot be highly justified in a belief that I have a friend at the radio station because I have no evidence supporting it but I feel I am justified that this, or some kind of as yet unexplained human influence, is going on. If I had not written that song, I feel sure that song would not have been on the radio then: who read it, and how things connect, I have no idea, but how am I justified, through hearing a song like this on the radio, in my belief that a real human presence read my song and somehow, for reasons we have not yet explored, there is some as yet unknown relationship between this reading and the radio playlist.

The least thing I feel I can be justified in in hearing this song in the way I did is simply this: that some human read my song, and there is a connevtion between that, and how this song on thevradio, which at first I dismissed as totally unrelated to my song but more and more all the reasons the song couldn’t ve in radio by random chance kept emerging and then it was like Sarah help philosophical crisis I need to philosophize about what is going on help but I was way too tired to write and I coyldn’t type fast enough and all these parts of me came up fighting over what they wanted to say.

I never even got around to writing anything about this last night because as I was writing I ended up fascinated by how I had so many conflicting needs and desires inside myself and how much what was going on inside of me reminded me of Plato talking about justice as harmony of different parts and I could really feel these different parts of me like political entiries within mysrlf so at the same time I was trying to be like OMG Sarah Plato was right I am feeling his insights inside me and nothing I am WANTING to say is coming out but I keep saying it anyway, a part of me I don’t WANT to be in control of my executive functions took OVER the writing process and different parts of me kept taking political control, parts I didn’t want in control, and I was trying to be FUNNY about articulating my experience as it was happening but I think it was as frustrating as trying to write that letter to B. and I realized I needed POLITICAL HARMONY and JUSTICE in the parts of myself and I was like ooooh okay I am stuck writing when I don’t want to because some tyrant *I* don’t want has taken over this letter. But who would I be happy with being in control of myself? So many questions!

Then all sorts of other parts if me would come in and try to talk about things I didn’t even want to talk about which was so frustrating when I just wanted to get to the point so I could finish writing when I didn’t want to write at all. Part of necwas including all thise spelling errors as a joke because I wanted to explore finding Form in a lot of misspelled words, and was there any form or meaning Sarah and I might actually connect in in that letter? Did I say anything relevant to anything at all? Who WAS it who even  WROTE those words? It felt like a million different parts wanting to say different things all at once while really I wanted to say nothing at all and I thought I could demonstrate how to use Plato to come to harmony with kyself again hut I surrendered before I git to any satisfying place.

I was like Plato is so relevant, I am having an immediate experience of him as psychologist: I didn’t want to write at all but the part that did just wanted to write about these questions but that conflicted with other parts that wantedvto ne writing about something else. I kept proceastinating and never getting to them at all for some reason, another part of me not doing what another part wanted me to do and… how can I find harmony with the whole?

I was having an experience that wow Plato is relevant but whatever parts took over me seemed to have wreaked destruction on the finished letter and mere spelling errors look like things I meant to say hut I did not! I reread right after I wrote it and was horrified like OMG I am trying sooo hard to urgently say something but I am not getting around toit and now there us another competing part of me that suddenly wants this letter I am writing ti Sarah to be some world famous text demonstrating sooo many things and I felt that but I don’t think the supposed brilliance and genius that some part of me thought that letter was came through at all. I MEANT to say something but the FORM the words took did NOT satisfy me that I had done anything but totally ruin ny reputation and give everybody the wrong impression of me. Woe to the Republic 

More warring parts in me as I reread: OMG ONE OF MY MISSPELLINGS was the word GIN which I never meant to say and thanks to ONE word I fear everyone will think my misspellings are due to a drinking problem and that my reflexes are horrible and I am reminded if Rebecca… didn’t want to write at all but look at the damage this discord inside of me has done! Now people think I am admitting a drinking problem instead of having a philosophical discussion and do you see the philosophical dilemmas here? So many parts that want to protect my ‘reputation’ have now joined this inner war and how would I ever ever resolve this without awareness of FORMS?

I try to be funny and one part of me thinks this is the best satire ever but even I am mot saying the words I mean to say, how could Sarah ever get my meaning. Some parts thought Sarah had maybe been reading deeply and seeing similar forms all this time, others felt like she couldn’t hear a thing ever and it was hilarious in a way I tried but think I failed to show in words. I kept writing sooo much that I didn’t really want to partly becausecI felt likkevI had to write q thesis to explain 2 plus 2 to Sarah or something before gettingbto the pointbwnd I start d laughingbqt this part of me that took over that did not trust Sarah to be able to understand *anything* to such ridiculous extents. But I would not have written to her if i did not trust her to understand something so it is really weird and funny to watch the different factions within myself which… well, part of why it was so hard to say what I wanted to say is a part of me came up that didn’t trust Sarah to hear me and it became cery humouroys though I don’t know if that came through in words and there are all sorts of ways Sarah could take that letter than I don’t intend.

A part of me that doesn’t think Sarah can hear me about even tbe simplezt things like how DAIRY and DIARY rhyme came out if me and that was kind if hilarious. Another part was trying to be a satirist and demonstrate the relevance of Plato to Zegg Forum and inner harmony and community harmony and justice at the same time! I would never have written like that if the part in control trusted that this was something I could write to Sarah about tomorrow but it could not wait and then I kept writing but never got around to saying what I meant to say (but who is I anymore, too many conflicting parts in me wanting different things, and I was resisting what I needed which was rest!!!)

I wanted to explain this quantitative linguistic meaning synchronicity stuff but with all that came up when I started writing with all these conflicting needs and parts in disharmony, forget it, and… yeah, I started doubting that IF Sarah was listening she could follow anything at all while at the same time ANOTHER part if me feels she is maybe more capable of reading tbe meaning of this journal in that way than anyone… but would  she get anything out if that letter that would make it worth the fact that I wrote it and incriminated myself in so many ways?

Mariah, it was not a Freudian slip when I wrote those words that actually read like Lily is not hot!!!! I promise I never meant to even being up that CONCEPT, consciously or otherwise, it is just that by some horrible coincidence the one part of the letter that looks like it was spelled right was ACTUALLY a typo where I never on ANY level with ANY part of me meant to say anything whatsoever like that! But what are the CHANCES such a horrible misstatement would appear in my journal RIGHT after writing this song that makes the concept of hotness explicit? No one would believe I mwant to type sonething conceptuslly unrelated and my typos ended up looking like perfectly spelled words with that particular meaning!

So another philosophical  dilemma! I was tired and moving my hand in ways that made so many spelling errors and the most significant one was, whatever I was actually trying to say, the word ‘hot’ which no part of me was thinking about or meant to write about Lily in any way at all! And tet after rewriting I was horrified like I would never say that!!!I KNEW I was making a joke while I was weiting about forgetting about Lily but that was a JOKE like I meant to say all these warring parts of me are showing up and it is a fascinating demonstration of how RELEVANT Plato’s psychology still is for social change. I was noticing that when certain parts take over my executive function (my writing) like a tyrant certain parts of my identity get held histage by those invading parts: for example, to resolve the inner conflict I was having, it occurred to me that I didn’t think to think about the connection if Plato to Buddhism, because some part that had taken over in that moment (and while I wrote it was an ever different array if different leaders taking over the show), had some issue with Buddhism or something, so it would mot let me use it to solve tbe problem until I consciously realized, ah, yes, this is also a part if me, and owned itvagain. I am just trying to notice how psychological processes in me relate to Plato but nothing I am saying comes across and I wonder if Sarah could make any meaningful meaning in my words at all or if, as I am not happy that my words expressed my meaning, coukld she see through the shadow of all the misspelling and bad writing and conflicts going on in me to something good and meaningful and relevant and worth saying behind the words?

Would she find the form beyond the shadow, I wondered: how well can I expect Sarah to be able to see the Form of what I am actually trying to say when my words do not in any way at all satisfactorily point to the form I intended to point to myself. SOME of my misspellings were certainly Freudian slips but using the word hot at all in an entry in relation to Lily? I know it sounds unlikely considering all I have said and that this was a very theme in the song I had just written but that was a pure misspelling of who knows what I actually meant to say. I have NO MEMORY of any part of me taking over at that moment that would have such a thing for any reason even as a joke. I feel justified and I want you to believe me, that wasn’t even a Freudian slip. Lily wasn’t necessarily comfortable being called beautiful so certainly no part of me would write in a letter to Sarah or to anyone  about anything to do with ‘hotness’ connected to Lily: I don’t know if Lily feels comfortable being seen that way so certainly I wouldn’t have written it that way!

And yet I have gone and let an actual cat out of the bag which I did not mean to release! It was a TYPO I promise but it looks sooo incriminating because it might be the only part of the whole letter where the words were actually spelled right! This is the philosophical conundrum of a lifetime! Did some part of ME or something out there  in the UNIVERSE lead my fingers to press these letters in my phone for some non-coincidental reason and if so how would I philosophise about how that is possible?

I do not know but I was so horrified to reread and discover: 1) it looks like I said I was drunking GIN which was also a typo and if THAT was a point if meaning Sarah latched into she might thinknIvwas DRUNK which would lead her to take everything else I hoped to convey but did so badly and see it ENTIRELY in the wrong light. 2) there is a comment about when will I be famous, so now I’m like, oh mo, now thecwhole world is going to misunderstand me! I don’t want to be famous at all, except in the pure Form of it without all the baggage which Plato hinself kind of represents!!! I sm an Enneagram 4 and JUST by writing a letter when there was CONFLICT inside ife about doing it look what hapoened: discord! Trying sooo hard to ve understood by Sarah I went and said ‘when will I be famous’ so now these guardian warriors show up who want to protect me feom tbe perceptions of others around me dur e to all these misunderstandings and more conflicts break out inside if me. A part of me took control that reeeeally wanted the paper I was writing I mean tbe letter to Sarah to demonstrate sonethibg important philosophically and to be a text to ve considered long in the future but now that I have slept in it and the parts of myself are more in harmony and I do not know if my words conveyed any helpful thing ir just confused others’ inage of me. The most confusing thing I have ever written with so msny misspellings and yet another part of me cones uo that wants this letter to be textbook famous for all the philosophical conundrums that come up in it and ibdeed that could be explored forever but now that more reasonable parts if me are in control I am afraid to read the lettercagain forvfear if embarrassment.

Oh, when I reread and read that supposed matter of fact words I never meant to say on ANY level about Lily somehow mot being hot were right there in the text… well, I had to immediately post an edit saying I didn’t mean to say Lily is mot hot OMG because that is not what I would ever say because she is and I am an enneagram 4 aaaah I am making myself so misunderstood!!! I was too tired to edit the piece — the option to unpublish it or delete it was there and I could have just deleted those words where it says that but I didn’t! If other parts of me had been in political control of my organism, I might have simply removed the things that could incriminate me, but the executive decision was made somehow or other NOT to delete a piece of writing that on some level I fear may lead to my being less rather than more understood.

And I wonder how well Sarah or anyone can see through the shadows of the words I never meant to say, sometimes words I never meant to say i. ANY way at all no mayter ehich tyrant was in that moment trying to dictate my words. Can you see beyond the messiness if my words to some kind of form, some kind of truth that takes a shape and sound that we can both participate in? Anyway, I went and defended thse words that slipped into my letter by defending myself: I could NEVER say or even think Lily is not hot, ahhhh help enneagram 4 need to correct perceptions this is too painful!!! So I am like OMG OF COURSE LILY IS HOT!!! But oops I never meant to bring up the issue at all and now I have hone and matbe kade everything even worse by publicly saying Lily is hot just because the universe really seems to have made me misspell whtever I was actually trying to say in anway that looked clear as day like ‘Liky is mot hot’ and the only way to respond to that, without just deleting it, and it had been SAID and I didn’t feel GUILTY for it because it did not come from my mind but by an accidental fluke… yet since the universe brought up that elephant in the room, I had to refute it, and admitting that Lily is hot was the only way to do it.. I am do frustrated because I think a philosopher who sees ALL the philosophical puzzles and paradoxes that come up in the texts that are these last couple entries is goIng to ever understand what I am saying and it is so comedic but who but an philosopher would get the comedy? Reading Plato, conflicting needs show up, stRt writing ehen I don’t want to, war happens insixe, the spoils of war are theae wirds I never meant to and never would say eczcept as a joke and now iI havr gone and connected the category ‘Lily’ to the category ‘hot’ which I have never done before except in my own mind and it is a curse of the wirst kind for an enneagram 4 like me.

Even I don’t know what I have been trying to say in this mess of words to you and earlier to Sarah so it is hard ti imagine either of you or anyone having any idea whT I am trying to say with any if this at all but it is obviously really important to some part if me or I wouldn’t have taken so much time to try to express something and then share in anyway despite the total mess that my attempt at communicating seems to have turned into… infinite ways I could be misread and misi terpreted, and I so wonder i. a mess if wirds like tbis how do two ir mire people get in the same wavelenth, see/hear/smell/experience/i tuit the same form? Is anything I am saying relevant to anything?

Love,

Williw