Dear Lana,

I consider myself a fairly career-driven person. When I am working, I am fairly content with my life. When I am not working, my life seems a bit strange.

I started playing Among Us the other day. I say it’s for anthropological reasons, but realistically I just needed a new game to play when I am taking a shit. Chess has become so boring nowadays. It seems a bit dystopian — entertainment, or more sinisterly, the world at large where entertainment is a necessity to escape the world in which we live. It takes up time, allowing us to forget how bored we are on a regular basis. When we are entertained by media or music or whatever, it puts something into the otherwise empty container of our lives. For a time, we become more filled with substance, but that doesn’t strike down the fact that we were empty to begin with.

I’ve been pretty tired lately. I used to think that there was such thing called artistic value, that there was something in the world beyond the monotony of every day living. I’m not convinced of anything anymore — convincing myself allows me to justify whatever I want to myself, which is dangerous — and I am especially not convinced there is value to art outside of its entertainment value.

Do artists believe they are doing something meaningful? Well, everyone believes they are doing something meaningful; that’s how people get through the day. Everyone from every aspect of life has to be convinced they are doing something meaningful, or else the boredom of everyday living will come out from behind and pull you into your shadow.

Most people are against Noziak’s experience machine, but isn’t that the world in which we occupy already? We consume literature and movies and whatnot because we want to escape from the reality in which we occupy. Our current reality is dull, so we seek a better reality. But there isn’t a better reality. There are less real realities we can create in our own reality marbles, and then there is the world at large that is supreme.