Synchronicity

IdleRich

IdleRich
This happens with new words. I'll see or hear a new word every few months or so and then all of a sudden its in conversations people are having nearby, in a podcast I'm listening to and even in forum convos. The last word like that was heel. As in wrestling or film character.
But couldn't that be that it's a new word that has suddenly become popular because something happened, I dunno, say someone famous used it on a podcast or something, and so more people are using it and you hear it and then again and again cos it is literally having a spike in usage, at least amongst the type of people you happen to speak with or listen to?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Some of this stuff can be dismissed as "you thought of the colour blue so you're more attuned to it" but that doesn't explain the stuff that pops up apropos of nothing. I started reading a book with Goya's Witches' Flight on the cover a few days ago then last night saw Christoph De Babalon had a new record out, clicked through and he'd used the same painting on the sleeve. It's a famous painting, but still. Why does it just happen to appear whilst I'm reading a book with it on the cover?

Last year there were three celebrities who died the day after I'd spoken to someone about them. I can't remember who the others were, but one of them was Toni Morrison. A mate and I randomly started talking about her then she died the next day. Once is whatever, but three times made me uneasy.

Anyone have any similar experiences? I reckon we've all had at least one.
I was actually just about to start a thread on this.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
it's night and day. the difference is enormous. we're still 'in it' but you can't sustain the levels we are at in the early days i don't think. there's been a huge slackening.

Yeah this is true. It's like a horror film when they build up a really tense moment, say they're exploring the haunted house or whatever, the tension has to be released, either there is a cat or something that makes everyone jump and they all laugh, or the monster attacks for real - or quite often the cat releases the tension and then the monster attacks while they are all relaxed. But the point is, the intense moment, the bits that really draw you into the film are those tense moments before the release, that's the experience that makes a horror film. And the bit afterwards, it may be a really cool killing or whatever, but it doesn't induce the same depth of feeling into the viewer.

My point is that pretty much everyone knows that those tense moments are the best bits, so why don't they make the whole film like that? I think that the answer is that they simply can't - they ratchet the tension up as much as they can, a skilled director can push it further than you might think, you believe that you're at your most extreme level of tautness and they manage another turn of the screw... but eventually even they reach a peak... and then? Well, it's either released or they hold it for a bit, but they can only hold it so long, I think that if there is no big release then bit by bit it dribbles away like a slow puncture. And I don't think anyone has found a way to just keep it at that tautness for the entire film (unless anyone can think of something?) and that's what you're saying here I think, it can't be sustained as it was, it has inevitably dribbled away to some extent.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Frequently since March. 'The Wasteland''s been cutting in and out of a few.

Having a bout right now: in the past 24 hours, I've had four separate, unrelated sources (2 books, 1 song, 1 YT video) reference the goddess Fortuna and/or the wheel of fortune. I wasn't seeking it out.

Then today I Soulseek'd the second Section 25 LP which I've never heard before, and thought I'd listen to it while doing an easy but boring task for a neighbour...and this fucker popped up four songs in:


Thing is...it's fine to get these coincidences, but what is Fortuna really trying to tell me? How can I turn these coincidences to my advantage? I mean, if it's just a hello from the underworld, that's skip dandy...but am I supposed to buy some XRP? Go to the bookies? Avoid leaving the flat for 72 hours? Take up online poker? Steal a car and drive to Barnard Castle? Now Fortuna's got my attention, I wish she'd give me a hint.

Yeah this is a question that no-one seems to ask but which is surely pretty important. I guess it never gets to that point cos someone always denies it means anything and then that argument takes over everything.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
But couldn't that be that it's a new word that has suddenly become popular because something happened, I dunno, say someone famous used it on a podcast or something, and so more people are using it and you hear it and then again and again cos it is literally having a spike in usage, at least amongst the type of people you happen to speak with or listen to?
The thing of words and concepts popping up in everyday life that have become contagious through online writing rather than in real life interactions is one of those micro things that's changing the texture of everyday life. Femboy, toxic masculinity are two examples that have come up for me in the last couple of weeks. Everyone is almost secretly inheriting this terminology from the hours we're all spending with words on the internet
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
And this is a noteworthy phenomenon in its own right but it's different from synchronicity. Although to the person experiencing it happening they look exactly the same, that is to say, if you've heard loads of people say "diiscombobulate" in the last 24 hours you can't tell if it's a true random synchronicity or if there is some reason for it. Maybe you can research afterwards and make an educated guess.
 

woops

is not like other people
Goetze. There's my philosopher in full flight to the regions of the sublime! Happily we have Science, which is a torch, dear mystic; we will analyse your sun, if the planet does not burn into pieces sooner than it has any right to!

Samuel. Science will not suffice. Sooner or later you will end by coming to your knees.

Goetze. Before what?

Samuel. Before the darkness!

Villiers de l'Isle-Adam​
 

catalog

Well-known member
on mushrooms the weekend before last with two pals i've not seen in a while. we are having a beer and one is discussing recent iboga experience where a lot of the trip involving walking through underground rooms and chambers, opening boxes, looking on shelves. the other then says that this is a recurring dream he has, where he's in an old house, wal;king through doors that reveal different rooms, there are boxes to look in, nooks and crannies to hide in. i then say it reminds me of childhood, wandering around the house when it felt very big, and discovering new areas with bits of furniture etc i've never seen before.

then few days later i'm reading this john higgs book, "watling street" and come across this passage:

"When I was a small boy, my dreams were always set in the same house. It was a huge, rambling collection of passages, doorways, nooks and stairwells that bore no relation to any house I had been in at that age. I remember it feeling incredibly old, with small windows and rough whitewashed walls. It was a house that had stood for a long time before I arrived and would be there a long time after I was gone. My dreaming hours were spent exploring that unending old house, climbing out of windows and over rooftops, discovering new passages and hidey-holes. Physically, the geography of the building made no sense at all, but in dreams that is not a concern...

...Those dreams stopped as I got older. Details were lost, or perhaps overwritten. But a memory lingered that was, like most dream memories, more a feeling than a concrete image. That house felt like a lazy Sunday afternoon in late spring...

...I’m not sure at what age I first read Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, but at some point my old dream house and Satis House, Miss Havisham’s rambling, decaying home in the book, became linked in my mind. Miss Havisham’s house, Dickens wrote, ‘was of old brick, and dismal, and had a great many iron bars to it. Some of the windows had been walled up; of those that remained, all the lower were rustily barred. There was a courtyard in front, and that was barred.’ Inside, the house was always dark. When Dickens’s hero Pip was first taken through those dark passages, he was guided by the light of a single candle. My dream house was not dark or foreboding like the one described by Dickens, so I wonder now why I ever connected the two...

...Perhaps I recognised that the house was not so much a real building but a physical extension of its owner’s mind..."
 

version

Well-known member
" ...Perhaps I recognised that the house was not so much a real building but a physical extension of its owner’s mind..."
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen

 
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