Within and Without

Dedicated to Akki and Kanu

Two projects stand out. I worked on a bunch of things over the course of 2022, but two projects stand out.

I spent most of my time and energy on my big project. A cozy puzzle game about helping pirate ships do pirate things. It is very mathematical in nature. You play the game by trying to understand the rules of the systems, and seeing how the different mechanics interact.

The other was a novel I worked on. More accurately, it was an attempt at a first draft of a novel, that has now been abandoned. If I had to put it in a genre, it would probably be Magical Realism. It started off being about an inventor and a monk from the Time temple trying to save Time from coming to an end.

Mathematics tends to behave in the most unexpected ways. Not unexpected as in inconsistent, just in ways that I had never expected. The same abstract concept can be perfectly modelled by two unrelated approaches, and both of them will teach you something new about the concept, in separate and non-contradiciting ways. Just something that happens to exist somewhere in the abstract realm that we give form to through mathematics.

Writing fiction, (or pursuing any other creative outlet), eventually takes a mind of its own. You can spend weeks detailing out every last plot point, and figuring out the perfect setting for every scene. But once it's time to sit down and write, all bets are off. The scene that was meant to have the old lady explain to our protagonists how they are supposed to save the world, ends up becoming a scene about her reminiscing about her youth and that time she was flirting in the library. And then you realise that you may be the author of this piece, but that doesn't mean that you have any control over it. It will go where it wants to.

Assume that you select a number. Since we're dealing with the abstract, let's make it a complex number. We can call it c. Take that c and square it. Then add c again, then square it again. Do that a bunch of times. The number you end up with will either converge towards zero, or diverge to infinity. Note down your result. Pick another c. Do it again. This seemingly arbitrary set of steps seems pointless. But if you visualise the result, you get the Mandelbrot Set.

Sitting down to write is the most intimidating process. Even when I have a scene or two all planned out, actually sitting down to write those out is something that I find really intimidating. I will literally pace around the house psyching myself up, abstractly dreaming up all the ways the scene could go. How the scene could make me feel, what the scene could convey, how the scene could make the story great. It tends to be a nice set of thoughts, but it doesn't makes it easier to actually sit down and write.

Mathematics sometimes seems to point at peculiarities in the Universe. Oddities that seem to defy logic. Instances where you get out far back more than you put in. Infinitely more at the most salient points. It is unclear how these come about. Whether it is something inherent in the way the universe functions, or whether it comes about when we use mathematics as a tool to observe the Universe. The lack of clarity of its origins do nothing to lessen the impact of the awe that these discoveries can inspire.

Once your butt is in the chair, getting started can still be really hard. But once you get started, there is something magical that happens. There is a sudden loss of consciousness. Or maybe a dip into subconsciousness. Or some other phenomenon that is not really easy to capture in words, but you know when it happens. A story that you are supposed to be inventing suddenly becomes an eventuality that you are now witnessing. Both the stories, the invented and the witnesssed, start off at the same point, but likely end up taking very different paths.

Creating a mathematical system can be done with code. You decide the interactions. You encode them into the program, and you're done. Except that's where the magic actually begins. I wrote a program for how ships would interact with each other. But once I started exploring the system, so many more things came out of it. There was the constant element of surprise. Even though I was the one who programmed every smallest detail of a system, I still end up finding things that I had never put in. Things that emerged from the interactions of the mechanics, and the inherent complexity that exists in the Universe.

Reading some of the things I wrote a while ago is a curious experience. I logically have reason to believe that I was the one who wrote them. They exist in my notebooks, in my handwriting or on my computer, which no one else really has access to. Yet when I read them, I have no memory of actually having written them. I might remember actually sitting down to write, having planned out a scene. But actually writing those words, those sentences, in that order, I don't remember doing that. Atleast I don't think so.

Creating a game involves constantly adding new mechanics and removing old ones. Over the course of developing my game, there must have been dozens of different things that I tried out. Over time, I developed an understanding of what would work and what wouldn't. Or more accurately, I understood that there was no way of knowing what would work and what wouldn't until I actually tried it. Ideas that I thought were rich with possibility showed no depth at all, and random ideas ended up having rich interactions with every other mechanic, and making the entire system, and thus the game, a true joy to explore.

After some time, I reached a point where there is a separation between me, and what I have written. People may call it trash, and that doesn't hurt my feelings. I can say that it's great without having to address any humility constraints. I know I wrote these things, but also it was a process. The art that resulted is mine only in the most literal sense. I have no great attachments, except to the extent that I hope to learn what I did right and wrong from feedback in all its forms. There is no ego, no pride and no humility. Just a detached familiarity.

The puzzles seemed to emerge from the system, given enough poking. Making the game wasn't creating levels as much as it was about discovering them. They all already exist there, hidden within that system, which in itself is one of those peculiar singularities in that abstract realm. If I should get any credit, it should be for discovering that system. Anyone who finds that system, would eventually find the same moments of emergence, and the levels are just a way of exploring that.

The characters within my stories really do exist somewhere in the ether. I feel I don't have sufficient understanding to point out where that may be, but they do certainly exist. Suspended in time somewhere. They come to life when I sit down to write. They slowly reveal themselves as the words and chapters pass. I just sit there, with my internal antenna pointed in their general direction, and they do the rest, relaying their stories through their own unknown mechanisms.

I have not yet read Gödel, Escher, Bach. From what I know it does explore ideas within this space. About, as Wikipedia puts it, "how systems can acquire meaningful context despite being made of meaningless" elements." That seems to be something that happened with me. With the game. The exploration of a system and how that gave it relevance, and created something meaningful.

I have read Thinking Fast and Slow, and Flow, and Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and Inner Game of Tennis, and others that revolve around the same central idea. They talk about the difference between the conscious and subconscious minds, or however they decide to refer to these things. It is supposed to explain that the stories indeed to come from me, just a part of me that I cannot consciously access. One part of me that shows up given the right circumstances. But explicit knowledge does not make the sensation any less magical.

The puzzles and systems all exist somewhere, in some theoretical realm. All I did was find the point of interest, and it all came pouring out. It lay there waiting to be found. If not me, then someone else would have chanced upon it. It exists completely independent of me. Outside me. Without me.

The stories and characters are ephemeral. If someone else were to point their antennas in the same direction, start off with the same prompt and character ideas, they would end up with a completely different product. This story existed because of me. It came from inside me. Within me.

The word Spirituality has some connotations that I am not too fond of, but I would still like to use it here. There was something truly spiritual about exploring the abstract interactions of systems, and the magic that can emerge from that. There was also something equally spiritual about allowing my mind to become an antenna for something greater than my conscious experience. And most of all, it was a spiritual experience to be in a spot where it felt like I was pushing myself towards two extremes, which both deepened my understanding of my place in the Universe. An understanding that whichever direction I decide to look, if I am patient, there is magic waiting to be observed.

Two projects stand out. I started off thinking that they were on two opposite ends of some spectrum between personal creativity, and mathematical exploration. Now, having had the opportunity to reflect on them, it seems that they may have been pointing in a similar direction, towards something greater than we are capable of understanding. Being a part of that has been magical, and I owe the Universe all the gratitude that I have.