Luna is best princess

I wonder if My Little Pony captured the essence of the sun being a constant force and the moon being a dynamic slightly broken being by accident or if they had it all figured out before I even got to it.

When you realize you don't have rights to own a picture of your own face

You know how in school, every time they take your photo for the yearbook they send you this sample photo? I was practicing violin and getting distracted and I saw it laying in a corner of the room. You know how it has this watermark that says "copyright protected, DO NOT COPY?" I mean, why does this random company have a copyrighted photo of my face? What are they even going to do with it? I would think that I would have the right to decide whether my face is public domain or not, but nope, I can't copy this photo of myself because COPYRIGHT LAW. Instead I have to buy the photo, and even then, are they selling me the right, or the physical photo? If I buy the photo, am I allowed to make copies of it then? Or does the copyright still belong to "mylifetouch" photography? I don't remember agreeing to this. They still make us get our photo taken. Was this some sort of agreement my parents made for me when I was young? Like what? Now that I'm older can I technically go and refuse to get my photo taken? Now that I think of it, there are probably lots of copyrighted photos of people everywhere. I suppose newspapers and magazines have lots of copyrighted photos of people, and the people in them have no claim to them. We sign away rights to our own image. Actually sometimes we pay someone to take that right away from us. And then I think about the fact that, someone really famous could probably sell rights to take pictures of them, if they really wanted. Because profit! All people want is profit. Do people do that? This whole post might be completely bs because I don't actually know how these things work.

The difference

The sun is really really really really really really beautiful. But you can't look at her directly, because she'll blind you. The sun is dependable. She never goes away. She always shines. I imagine she's the image of perfection. If the sun was a person, she'd be the definition of moral correctness, justice. She'd be the type of person you can always depend on. She is perfect. She is beyond your comprehension. She's so good that she feels foreign and unrelatable. Emotionally, she is content, always.

The moon is also beautiful but you can look at her because her light won't blind you. She's dynamic and she changes. She goes through phases. She has happy times and sad times. She's kind of human just like us. She is a little bit broken just like all of us are. But that is what makes her beautiful. She's relatable. If she was a person she'd be a good person, but with flaws. Not like the sun.

Art as proof that our lives up until this point were not wasted

-we make art and keep records and do science as proof that we were here
-we were here, not only for others to see but to prove to ourselves what we once were
-we make art so that we don't look back at our pasts and think, what the heck was i even doing...
-because i do not know my past self as well as i know my present self because i forgot
-and without a record how do i even know that i was even a person that had complex thoughts and feelings?
-i can remember things about what i did, but i remember very little of what i thought or felt with exceptions
-the best i can do is read what i wrote and look at what i drew which are the only remnants of the intelligence i used to be

Art is *sometimes* selfish

It seems to me as someone who is surrounded by art a lot of the time that there are a lot of artists but not a lot of art appreciators. Often times an artist makes something as an attempt to be understood. When something becomes popular, it's because that thing is relatable, but then the consumer is not actually actively seeking to understand the artist, the consumer is using the art to understand him/herself. I mean no one listens to a song about heartbreak and goes like, "Wow, I totally get that heartbreak sucks. I can empathize. I will now participate in an act of mutual understanding with this creator that I don't know and find meaning and humanity in the fact that two people so far apart can achieve such an intimate understanding." It's more like "Yes, someone understands me! This song resounds very deeply with my experience. This song represents my pain. Heartbreak sucks. I will now go listen to this song on repeat forever and ever." Notice the first reaction "I understand them" and the second reaction "they understand me." You can also look at this from the perspective of the artist creating a song about heartbreak and publishing that song. The artist is most likely looking for someone to understand them, and probably is not seeking to empathize with others. A more relevant example of this though, when someone makes artwork that tries to communicate an idea (for example, criticize the state of government or something) the artwork very rarely finds an audience of people who are like, "Hmm, this makes sense, maybe I will re-evaluate my own stances." It is usually communicated to an audience of people who already hold the view that the artwork was trying to communicate, and then they use that art to validate their opinion. Lesson of the day, art is self-centered whether you're the creator or the consumer!!! woohoo
Actually I was probably being unfair by overgeneralizing the term "art" because art can also refer to things for entertainment purposes only, or purely nonfictional works (portraits etc) or the undramatic works of Debussy or something. So when I say art I don't mean all art. Probably only a small part of art. This is my attempt at trying to not overgeneralize while making my statements. It's really hard not to do and everyone does it. And also no one can get anywhere without overgeneralizing things because then there would be so many asterisks in life that no one would understand anything and everything would be chaos. Soo yeah.

People are more creative than persons

Anyways for the past few days I've been observing Vi Hart's increasing descent to insanity  (lol jk) thinking less for myself, and doing more observing. I notice that different people often are in thought trenches. Like the same people always think about the same things. You think you're being original but actually what you're thinking about is actually very normal/common for you. Jason Silva is always talking about the same things that are important to him. He's all about hacking consciousness, ontological engineering and flow state and also a bit of reflecting on the nature of romantic relationships. At first you watch it and you're like woaaaah but then it goes on for longer and it's kind of the same main idea but with different details and you're like k, what else? Other things, I just realized that I don't remember what Hank and John Green actually talk about these days. Well Pizzamas just started and the two videos so far have basically been talking about what's going on in their lives and then pizzamas advertising. But them two are all about understanding. That's kind of their thing. Vi Hart is like, idek. Sometimes I feel like she stopped trying. She just doesn't give a yay. Which is cool. She's cool and she's a frickin genius but she also feels, erm.... idk, I guess she sort of reminds me of myself in a lot of ways, except she's that much better. She seems to have that sort of bs-everything attitude and I'm not sure if I like that or not? In her, or in myself. I mean, it seems to work out for her, for me, idk.