I was the only person in the theater when I saw Phenomenon, 30 years ago. I’m sure the movie business isn’t a healthy ecosystem right now, but the existence of empty showings isn’t new.
Phenomenon was meant to be a propaganda film for Scientology, which claims that it's adherents can unlock latent mental capacity. That the main character dies in the end is supposed to represent persecution of their "religion" by the establishment.
This scenario is mostly the plot of the movie Phenomenon. It doesn't end well for the main character (played by John Travolta) so you might want to get checked out.
Maybe more boring, when trying to create I find I spend lots of time in a miserable morass where I feel like my "normal" brain is trying to solve creativity like it's a hard procedural problem, and progress is slow and the result is always uninspired. If I keep at it I eventually "punch through" and it's like an avalanche of sudden ideas and mental connections flow through and out of me and I get into a zone of unreal hyper productivity for a while.
Later on when reviewing what I did during those moments while in a normal brain state, I find I can't replicate, edit, or really do much to alter what I created until I can punch through again -- I have basically no ability to replicate what I just made. The level of detail, the inspiration, the raw creativity is just not my normal mode. It's just not on tap.
It also leaves me really hungry after a couple hours of doing it. I suspect there's some kind of interesting energy recruitment my body is doing in my brain, sensing it's working hard, and trying to support the emergency with sugars, or oxygen or something.
This is obviously a very personal topic, but I can't help but ask whether medecine benefits from people undergoing "futile care"? Are some diseases only treatable today because 20 years ago someone went through all the crap?
The whole thing reminds me of the average mid-90s movie Phenomenon. I could always understand Travolta's character's reasoning, but I still thought it was selfish.
Hacker Cinema
4 comments on Hacker News
I was the only person in the theater when I saw Phenomenon, 30 years ago. I’m sure the movie business isn’t a healthy ecosystem right now, but the existence of empty showings isn’t new.
Phenomenon was meant to be a propaganda film for Scientology, which claims that it's adherents can unlock latent mental capacity. That the main character dies in the end is supposed to represent persecution of their "religion" by the establishment.
This scenario is mostly the plot of the movie Phenomenon. It doesn't end well for the main character (played by John Travolta) so you might want to get checked out.
Maybe more boring, when trying to create I find I spend lots of time in a miserable morass where I feel like my "normal" brain is trying to solve creativity like it's a hard procedural problem, and progress is slow and the result is always uninspired. If I keep at it I eventually "punch through" and it's like an avalanche of sudden ideas and mental connections flow through and out of me and I get into a zone of unreal hyper productivity for a while.
Later on when reviewing what I did during those moments while in a normal brain state, I find I can't replicate, edit, or really do much to alter what I created until I can punch through again -- I have basically no ability to replicate what I just made. The level of detail, the inspiration, the raw creativity is just not my normal mode. It's just not on tap.
It also leaves me really hungry after a couple hours of doing it. I suspect there's some kind of interesting energy recruitment my body is doing in my brain, sensing it's working hard, and trying to support the emergency with sugars, or oxygen or something.
This is obviously a very personal topic, but I can't help but ask whether medecine benefits from people undergoing "futile care"? Are some diseases only treatable today because 20 years ago someone went through all the crap?
The whole thing reminds me of the average mid-90s movie Phenomenon. I could always understand Travolta's character's reasoning, but I still thought it was selfish.