James Proctor > Recent Status Updates

'Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.'

'...No wonder you have the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last night, I thought unaccountably of fairy tales and had half a mind to demand whether you had bewitched my horse. I am not sure yet....'

I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neither had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should have shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that is bright but antipathetic.

It was a chilly night; I covered my shoulders with a shawl, and then I proceeded to think again with all my might.

Mrs Reed might be at that time some six or seven and thirty...

'Because misery, and death, and nothing that God or satan could inflict would have parted us, you of your own will did it. I have not broken your heart - you have broken it - and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me, that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - oh God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?'

'Tell her what Heathcliff is - an unreclaimed creature, without refinement - without cultivation; an arid wilderness of furze and whinstone. I'd as soon put the little canary into the park on a winter's day as recommend you to bestow your heart on him!'

'I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.'

...imma skip the repulsive ending tho

'I hardly spoke a word, Ellen, and there he has gone out twice, crying. Well, say I promise I won't speak; but that does not bind me not to laugh at him!'

'Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves'

Lockwood's a doof haha

'Here is the consequence of being buried alive: she has thrown herself away upon that boor, from sheer ignorance that better individuals existed! A sad pity - I must beware how I cause her to regret her choice.'

I have a problem believing myself.
I am no different now
than I was in the tiny rooms of
starvation and madness.
the only difference
is that I am
older.
and I drink better
wine.
all the rest is
nonsense,
the luck of the
draw.

a life can change in a tenth of
a second.
or sometimes it can take
70
years.

It appears now that the already-richest forces within music are set on exploiting DIY artists in new ways, whether through artificially deflating the value of their streams or outright buying the aggregators they rely on; on consolidating solo direct-uploading musicians' catalogs, converting them en masse into a type of asset class for the rich to trade in.

When the recommendation systems are optimizing for extended listening sessions, when music that sounds like other music is what's most data-blessed, the reality of what we're hearing on playlists and AI DJ streams isn't music culture, it's Spotify culture. It's a weird data-refracted version of music culture. It's a top-down version of culture branding itself as a bottom-up version of culture.

Pesky protests for higher royalties aren't an issue when your playlists are filled with artists who don't exist. The relentless promotion of anonymous producers seems part of a larger effort to disconnect listeners from the makers of the music they're consuming, laying groundwork for users to accept the hypernormalization of music made using generative AI software.

"Losing the physical object of the record, and instead leaning on monetization based on plays, really upends the transaction of music between songwriter and listener. It is a very politically astute maneuver that favors a narcotic relationship to music over a complex, meditative relationship to music."

"I honestly think that the core of Spotify's success was recognizing that they're not selling music. They're not providing music. They're filling people's time. And the founder said at a company meeting, I remember he was like, 'Apple Music, Amazon, these aren't our competitors. Our only competitor is silence."

this childhood on the
hunt,
this late starter,
this slugger, this drunkard
is still on the
look-out
and I know it's there,
unfound,
waiting,
centuries late,
boiling,
swirling,
I've got the fix on
it,
it's coming into
focus,
don't you almost feel it
now?
I do.

He had no desire for possessions, trinkets, travel. One thing he liked was solitude and another thing was the absence of trouble of any kind. Harry had had more than his fill of trouble. At times, when he looked back, it was amazing to him he was still alive. But there were many lives such as his, he was sure of that.

the flashing lightning
of the
word,
beating life at life,
and death too late to
truly win
against
you.

writing

often it is the only
thing
between you and
impossibility.

The Were-Wolf by Clemence Housman is the best horror story I've read

Hank hits different when you've lived a little and aren't reading him as a scruffy green postgrad

a wail of martyrdom to an
always
incomplete
self

There are things you should learn. Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you, and your future is a skeleton walking one step in front of you. Maybe you don't wear a watch, but your skeletons do, and they always know what time it is. Now, these skeletons are made of memories, dreams, and voices. And they can trap you in the in-between, but they're not necessarily evil, unless you let them be.