"Obviously, I do not mean that when I choose between a cream pastry and a chocolate éclair, I am choosing in anguish." Jean-Paul Sartre
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Phenomenally Bored: The Role and Contents of Moods in Ergo Proxy
There are times when the total subjective experiences of our lives are sharply focused, especially when they are under the influence of a plenary mood. Consider for a moment what it's like to be in a jovial mood. It's like some benevolent force has decided to play favorites, and you are now the chosen one. The sun shines for you and the birds sing for you. The coffee you are drinking tastes as if the beans were grown on the finest mountainside. Indeed, those very coffee beans seem to have been ground by the mountain's sage themselves. The taste of some specific cookies you are eating brings back old-world memories, even if you happen to be a teenager. You may also notice the unusually appealing blueness of the sky. The mood may even have subtle effects of a different kind, other than influencing how you sense things. You may be presented with an epiphany of sorts, large or small or anywhere in between: "I never realized I'm that generous and talkative when I'm quite happy" or "Being in this mood these past few days has revealed to me subtler layers of social interactions in specific contexts." You might also realize, however, that you cannot brighten and lighten the mood of a certain friend who is in a bad mood. What does this person experience? Well, to her that coffee may seem old and burned, even if it was brewed just ten minutes ago. Those cookies may taste either too sweet or too bland; furthermore, they seem hard. Those birds make too much noise; they are irritating. The sun is too bright and hot; it just burns the concrete and sky. The world does not care for you or anyone--neither do I. Even this person, nevertheless, when focusing on her experiences, is capable of seeing something new: "Until now, I never noticed how much my friend tries to help me when I'm in one of my bad moods" or "This 'lived experience' is exactly what I need to communicate in my writings on Angst." With moods, there is always something distinct about whichever one has grasped us, filled us. It spills over all of our experiences; either they are lightened (e.g. good moods) or burdened (e.g. bad moods). And how these moods affect our experiences is worth considering in detail. As a particularly noteworthy example, we find an appropriate study in the anime referred to in the title.
I propose that being in certain states of mind can reveal or highlight details of our experiences, thus allowing us to reconsider and learn from those states that take hold of us. These states of mind have the ability to shift our attention to both the total experiences and the elements of those experiences, thus allowing us to see how each dynamically interacts with the other. Furthermore, by concentrating on whatever is immediately before us while we are in that state, we can classify or re-sort those particular elements within that experience. Think of it as a kind of reordering of priorities to match the present situation. The total experience itself then takes on a different "feel" after such recategorizations. However, this reordering does not always result in an agreeable state of things. Furthermore, it might even occur without our complete, conscious awareness or assent. It just happens. The difficult task to manage when we are in this condition is to think, act, and react in such a way that, despite the circumstances, we can still gain an insight regarding our conditions. We shall explore such an example of this in the following essay, centered on a specific episode and character. In episode 16, "Busy Doing Nothing (Dead Calm)", of the anime Ergo Proxy, we are presented with a fitting situation to closely explore: the phenomenal character of being bored, and how it affects a certain individual. We will also be examining what we take to be important facets of Re-l's environment and character. By doing so, we will grasp the vast scope of what is involved in a given mood. In the situation we will presently study, we will often ponder a question that shall greatly assist us in our aims: what is it like to be in a certain mood, viz. to be bored? By asking this question and studying it, we hope reveal some of the features involved in being in a given mood, and what this could mean to us.
The anime Ergo Proxy, whose setting is located on an environmentally devastated Earth in a very distant future from now, deals with the physical, intellectual, and emotional journey of the character Vincent Law. He is a man with no memory of his past, or so it seems to him. After certain events occur within the domed city of Romdo, Vincent comes to question exactly who and what he is. Does he really want to be a "fellow citizen" of Romdo, or is he really meant to be something else? Finding herself mysteriously involved in Vincent's life is Re-l Mayer, a member of Romdo's Intelligence Bureau and the granddaughter of Romdo's Regent Donov Mayer. Another character finding herself connected to Vincent's unfolding fate is the childlike AutoReiv Pino. (AutoReivs are robotic beings designed to serve various needs of humans.) After certain crucial events are set in motion within Romdo--Re-l being confronted by an entity known as a Proxy (ep.01); Pino getting infected with the cogito virus, endowing her with sentience (ep.02); and Vincent himself encountering a Proxy, a fateful meeting which eventually forces him to take drastic actions. (ep.02)--the three eventually find themselves together, after approximately a dozen episodes, on a journey to Vincent's professed birthplace Mosk. It's in this domed city where Vincent hopes to find answers to his missing past and to reawaken his memories.
The distance, however, between Romdo and Mosk is fairly great. Consequently, their chosen means of travel determines the length of time it takes to reach Mosk. In this case, it takes roughly over a month to reach it with their craft. They travel aboard a sailboat-type craft called the Centzon Totochtin, "The Four Hundred Rabbits." Wind provides the craft with its propulsion like a regular sailboat, except that the Rabbit can travel over sea and land. It's kept aloft by an energy beam emitted from its belly to the surface of the earth, thus allowing it to hover. It can also carry a small supply of food and water sufficient for the appropriate number of crew. As can be expected, too many passengers on such a long journey is not an ideal situation for anyone aboard the Rabbit. The original passengers on the craft consisted of Vincent, Pino, and several settlers who lived outside Romdo in the harsh climate. One by one the settlers succumb to various events, leaving only Vincent and Pino as the remaining crew. Meanwhile, events in Romdo unfold such that Re-l and her own AutoReiv Iggy are compelled to leave the city. With their own craft they set out after Vincent. After a pivotal event in episode 13, Re-l is eventually separated from her own craft and Iggy. She now finds herself aboard the Rabbit along with Vincent and Pino. Thus, they all find themselves aboard the Rabbit, as a crew of three. United by Vincent's hazy past, represented by the fragmented memories which now haunt him, their uncertain journey and fates unfold on the long pilgrimage to Mosk.
It's in episode 16 that we find that their journey has been temporarily put on hold, leaving them entirely at the mercy of the weather. As noted earlier, the Rabbit is a wind powered craft, i.e. it moves by being pushed by the wind. Unfortunately for the crew, the wind has now stopped blowing, so they have no choice but to wait until it picks up once more. Stocked with limited supplies, they are forced to ration their food, water, and power (Only Re-l and Vincent eat, since Pino is a robot. However, as a robot she does need to be charged). The opening scenes start with outside shots of the craft. Its sails are hanging lifelessly in the absence of wind. We also see that the landscape is barren: there is no visible wildlife or vegetation, and the sky is blackened by dense layers of clouds, allowing very little sunlight to shine through. With most of the Earth's water frozen, the weather has all the conditions of being in perpetual winter. Furthermore, it's been like this for hundreds of years. All of this had been caused by a massive environmental disaster which occurred approximately one-thousand years before the present setting. This disaster affected the entire planet, forcing humanity to seek alternative means for survival. The surface is barely habitable, thus forcing the humans we see now to live in domed cities such as Romdo and Mosk. These domes allow the cities to sustain an artificial environment sufficient for life. Faced with such an hostile environment and dire circumstances, the three do their best to cope with the unwelcome yet unavoidable situation: life outside of Romdo's protective dome. It's here in this episode that we vicariously experience the situation from Re-l's point of view--how she sees things.
The episode in question centers on Re-l Mayer's subjective experiences--viz. how things appear to her. As an effective method for communicating such experiences, the episode includes her inner dialogue, presenting her thoughts on how things are or how they seem to her. Toward the beginning of the episode, we begin to apprehend Re-l's immediate character under the aspect of boredom. As her boredom begins to set in and alter her conscious states, we see the early state of her mind. To fully comprehend what follows from this, we must consider Re-l's personality so that we may see how outside influences interact with her thoughts and feelings, and how her inner character changes under these influences.
For our present purposes we can classify Re-l as the analytical-type, meaning that she often thinks very carefully about what this or that means. Often circumspect, she is quick to look for evidence of patterns and correlations in whatever facts are at hand. She is meticulous in her planning, carrying it at times when needed to a highly systematic level. Of course, all of this can be expected of her, considering that she is a member of Romdo's Intelligence Bureau. Nonetheless, it's her personality itself which often displays the effects of being highly studious in her actions and thoughts, making her somewhat detached from Romdo. She can appear to be emotionally "cold", thus distancing herself from most people. (In the early episodes, we rarely see her with anyone for long periods of time, other than her AutoReiv Iggy.) It would not be entirely unfair to say that she is usually stern and indifferent. Consider this her default position. As her own AutoReiv opines in one unsettling episode (ep.13), Re-l is somewhat of a "career woman", which clearly suggests that she cares only for the betterment of her career and self. We must state, however, that Re-l is not exactly the completely selfish individual she seems to be. She has an ambiguous relationship with her grandfather Donov Mayer, Romdo's Regent. Their meetings, always taking place in a cavernous and darkly lit room, are like intelligence debriefings, never expressing kinship. Though she never expresses her personal feelings aloud to him, she does care very much for him. Even Iggy, though being a robot, figures prominently in her life. His vocal patterns were customized by Re-l, thus subtly expressing her consideration for Iggy. Nevertheless, she tends to keep certain emotions in check, while letting others--the analytical ones--have priority in her life. (We will mention below how she was, in a sense, "a product of" Romdo's society, governed by rules and criteria.) With this predisposition guiding her actions and thoughts, we now have a fairly good understanding of her general character. In fact, we will venture further by exploring what may have gone into constituting this predisposition of hers. To this, we must return to Romdo with its very own "dispositions."
After leaving Romdo, Re-l often finds herself compelled to re-think how things are, especially since this is the first time she has been outside the dome. As she quickly learns, living within the dome is far different than living outside it. Life outside the domed cities is difficult because of the harsh climate. It's like an exercise in one's will to live. Most humans, therefore, live in cities enclosed by domes, making life much easier. Very few remain outside of them, and even less manage to survive because of the combination of grim weather and airborne viruses. In stark contrast, everyday life within the domes, especially Romdo, is routine: people have jobs, they shop, they eat and sleep. There are plenty of places to shop for the usual needs and commodities that one often enjoys--even the latest fashions (Iggy, a robot apparently with an artificial eye for fashion, can hardly contain his enthusiasm when telling Re-l of the latest styles). All the basic needs for survival, and then some, are met. Basically, life within the domes is "life as normal." Unfortunately for Re-l, this life-as-normal routine in Romdo is a toneless bore. She considers Romdo to be a dull paradise. Everything seems to be a bit too efficient and polished. Romdo itself is a technocracy carried to its logical outcome and perfection. There is even an omnipresent P.A. system with giant screens always ready to issue advice for the betterment of society. Added to this is the pervasiveness of security cameras and personnel. Perfect order comes with a price, it seems. Naturally, we can surmise that it's order and control with which Re-l is familiar. In fact, being a member of Romdo's intelligence agency she would be expected to accommodate and adapt to this regimented lifestyle. (She is to embody a set of Romdo-rules, as all citizens of Romdo are to do, but not exactly consciously. These are extremely abstract sorts of rules that seem to be everywhere and nowhere in a society. We could refer to them as socially normative rules, but they seem to be deeper than what normativity suggests; furthermore, they seem to be even deeper than what the word "rule" suggests. In any case, we use the term "rule" in a broad sense, with the hope of not distorting and straining it too much. Concerning these "social-rules", it should not take any great insight to see what effects the P.A. system and security measures are meant to produce in Romdo's citizens. Good fellow citizens do x, y, and z, but never b. If you do b, you will be punished with a, c, or d. We should also point out that these social-rules--i.e. foundational rules--often have the strange character of seeming to be wholly external and eternal, as if they were given to a society from "outside." They can be mystifying--and possibly alienating--if one becomes vaguely aware of them, so it's perhaps best not to consciously grasp these rules if one is to function smoothly in a society like Romdo. Nagging intuitions about how things are often bother some citizens of Romdo, usually leading to undesirable consequences.) She does, however, have some non-conformist leanings: she is often willing to bend the rules to carry out her duties. This natural individuality of hers often troubles both Iggy and the highest beings within Romdo. We may note that this unpredictable element within her personality is one of the causes which "starts things in motion" in Romdo, eventually expanding beyond it. This refusal to completely and blindly accept such rigid systems is the chaotic element within Re-l, thus allowing life in Romdo to be somewhat bearable. She does, however, keep this random element in control, never allowing it to undermine what Romdo had inculcated in her. It's more of a regulative element which purges a mind overabundant with a deep sense of boredom. In any event, she is fairly accustomed to Romdo's way of life, its general worldview. For the most part, Romdo is inconspicuous and transparent to her; therefore, its total generality is more background than foreground in her mind. As long as things function properly, it's business as usual.
The general monotony that she experiences daily in Romdo, however, is somewhat different than the one she comes to experience in episode 16: the repetitious experience of a life in pause. Even though the sense of unnatural uniformity is everywhere in Romdo, it does not stop Re-l from carrying on with her professional duties and personal life. In episode 16, now finding herself surrounded by a host of seemingly hopeless situations--rationed food, harsh climate, close quarters, and forced idleness--the sense of boredom is focused. It's like when one takes a magnifying glass to concentrate the sunlight as a narrow point of light. Such a focused point of light burns and destroys whatever it falls upon. Unfortunately for a certain member of the Rabbit, this point of negative energy is seemingly focused on her experiences alone. It's in everything that she experiences. It's in her hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and seeing. Furthermore, it's in her thinking.
As it dwells in her mind, it creates what appears to be problems revealed to her alone. Perhaps subconsciously acting to counter its effects (the Romdo-rules at work), Re-l begins her days with a specific routine: wake up at a specific time; get prepared in a specific time; survey the situation and landscape; check the supplies, and so on. For several days, this is her routine. Notice that this is a routine, something that should come naturally to her. We should expect carry-over from her Romdo-life to her present situation. This carry-over, we surmise, transferred the set of Romdo-rules which had previously guided and determined her life in the dome. She inevitably embodies Romdo's rules. It could not be otherwise. With this Romdo influenced lifestyle--governed by a host of rules--she is able to manage the circumstances for a brief period of time. It gives her a way of (strictly) ordering her actions and experiences. Thus, her Romdo-life still exerts an influence on her, having embedded a sort of pattern within her. Unfortunately, this preset routine-building seems to make things worse, as we shall see. This Romdo set of rules no longer works as neatly as it used to, considering that she is no longer a part of Romdo's highly organized social system. What served as a background in Romdo became forced to the foreground.
As mentioned earlier, we had sketched Re-l's general framework of personality. We noticed her analytical nature, her reflective side. We also noticed her systematizing nature: how she orders and controls whatever she feels needs to be examined better, a natural offshoot from her Romdo-life. Here we have an individual whose main strategy in dealing with almost anything is demanding and regimented. Now imagine placing this highly ordered mindset, which worked reasonably well in a much larger environment like Romdo, in a somewhat different situation where the smallest of things can be amplified. Furthermore, in this situation only Re-l is following a given set of rules. What would be cycling within such a mind when it starts its daily analysis?
We can assume that her first task aboard the now idle Rabbit was the formulation of a routine, as mentioned earlier. Now imagine going over the same routine day after day, without experiencing the desired results or insights. Imagine acquiring, instead, the seemingly negative results, ideas, and insights as the days pass. When Re-l's dispositions go to work in this situation, she has to focus on virtually the same things as they reappear in their daily cycle. One of the noticeable changes, however, is the diminishing supplies, which definitely is not a good thing. As a result, the food supply eventually whittles down to a small daily ration of beans and sauce--now becoming a constant feature. Another constant is the weather. There is ice and snow, heavy clouds, and no wind. The weather itself becomes vividly trapped in her daily cycle. With no changes in the weather, save for even more snow, this changeless state of weather greets her day after day, never giving her the desired result: wind. And let us not forget the other two passengers aboard the craft: Vincent and Pino. For the most part Re-l studies their respective behavior, which is seen as exhibiting various dispositions. She notes the subtle things about them, e.g. both Vincent and Pino are left-handed. Often jotting down her thoughts on this or that feature of their behavior, Re-l keeps a notepad by her side. However, there is only so much she can endure while being around them virtually all the time, never really having any to herself. Also, it does not help Re-l's mindset that Vincent and Pino react to the situation differently than she does. She notes roughly halfway through the episode that she can barely comprehend their deeper inexpressible qualities, as if there is a barrier preventing any further interaction and knowledge. They have their own seemingly private rules, which she is not allowed to access while she is in her own private mood. On their side of the barrier, both Vincent and Pino seem to take it all in stride, Vincent with his lax attitude and Pino with her childlike wonder and questioning. Indeed, three hours of idleness does not bother the two at all (To Re-l's sheer amazement and puzzlement, she witnesses them sitting down outside doing absolutely nothing. They stare forwards, gazing at nothing in particular. In fact, she interprets this inactivity as a decrease in their moral, unaware of their respective serene, meditative expressions). Their countering behavior, as well, falls under Re-l's system of interpretation and study. She is met with much of the same results when she decides to ponder them. If there are any changes, they only add frustrating mysteries rather than stimulating discoveries to her thoughts. She still has no solid ideas concerning Vincent's nature, the mysterious Proxies, or the cogito virus which infects AutoReivs. It's all one giant question mark that refuses to shed any light on any path towards an answer.
With a mind occupied with a series of thoughts, Re-l has to face the constant recurrence of the same food, the same weather, and the same behavior (perhaps her own as well). Within a larger environment--social and physical--someone can avoid the recurrence of the same things, since there is simply so much more to experience. Except that in this case, stuck in very close quarters, Re-l meets the same things which show very little variation each time they cycle around once more in her mind. It's like having "idea1" always in the mind, never transforming into a fresh insight. Instead, with each appearance in the mind the idea adds on a long tail of numerals, making it worse: idea1, idea1.1, idea1.11, idea1.111, etc. (Why oh why can we not have idea1.n transform into Insight1!?) The effects that all of this cognitive regurgitation and stagnation has on her personality are clearly negative. Whatever is acting upon her personality manifests its effects in her emotions. As a consequence, we notice that her boredom has the peculiar tendency to adjust the frequency of a particular emotion within it, viz. anger. When in the right mood, certain emotions tend to be volatile, set off by almost anything. As one noticeable result of being attuned in this way, Re-l's frustrations do not always remain hidden; they get focused or shifted onto other things. We often see her focusing most of her criticisms on Vincent, for example, even when some things are beyond his influence or control: while eating--beans again--Re-l openly chastises Vincent for his evident lack of planning, though knowing full well that neither of them can do anything about the lack of wind. But the sheer frustration she feels is somewhat understandable; these mood-heightened emotions can make any atmosphere absolutely palpable. Some people often speak of cutting the room-tension with a knife. Emotions and feelings demand to be written with a tensed authority when mood is doing the typing: Angry, Frustrated, and Tired. Perhaps, as graceless existentialists, we can poetically conclude this section by saying that Re-l's eternal recurrence is presently more aimless angst than joyful affirmation. Hell is others in repetition. Let's explore further this metaphorical landscape in which some poor souls are forced to dwell. We will extract the reality which is concealed in the metaphor and see what it too holds.
Often, when one considers the concept of a hell, the resulting image is rarely a bright and colorful one. When it is picturesque, the palette is usually visceral, not dreamy. When thinking of the usual concept, the colors are usually washed out, muted, stifled, dense, opaque, dark. Think of Gustav Dore's interpretation of the inferno. When we consider such a representation, the mental imagery that seems to naturally follow is itself shrouded in muted colors. Our thoughts asphyxiate; they are cloaked with the heaviest of materials, making it very difficult to think clearly anymore. What on this or any other planet could have such an effect on our minds? At this point, we must consider a not entirely obvious candidate: the weather. There are times when the entire weather seems to weigh down on us, like it exerts an extra sort of gravity--felt only as an emotional experience. In fact, some people are often subjected to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which is partially due to minimum exposure to daylight and warmth, i.e. life in winter. Let us take this concept further. What would it be like to experience permanent winter for the very first time? How would things eventually seem to us as we first experience such conditions? We can get an idea of what it would be like when we examine Re-l's situation from another aspect. This time, we approach the questions as metaphysical meteorologists.
It appeared to us that life in Romdo is life as normal, or close enough when you are living in a gigantic dome. Perhaps even in these domes, taxes are inevitable as well. There is plenty of artificial light simulating day and night, so sleeping patterns are kept steady. No need for the citizens to worry about vitamin-D deficiency. There is also a controlled climate in Romdo, so the physical environment's temperature stays at a nice constant. Consequently, the conditions in the dome resemble summer. Life in Romdo, it seems, is not too different than living in a major city located close enough to the equator to experience steady summer. The biggest difference is the presence of the dome which separates the outside environmental elements from the inside ones (remember that the outside world's climate is permanently winter). Growing up in Romdo, it seems, would not be that different than growing up in a large city with a fairly stable climate. It's not hard to imagine that such an environment would be deeply ingrained in any given citizen of Romdo, so much so that any significant variance in it would entail a significant change in those citizens as well. And this brings us directly back to Re-l's displaced life on the Rabbit, with two companions getting on her nerves, food that progressively tastes worse, and weather that never changes for the better.
The outside weather in the world of Ergo Proxy is indeed frightful. So terrible, in fact, that almost nothing can survive in the climate. Whatever does manage to endure the weather, usually dies from some airborne virus. As can be expected from such harsh conditions, very few humans survive outside the domes. While not exactly "lucky ones", Re-l and Vincent find ways to live through whatever they find themselves against, in this case, the weather. (Pino, being an AutoReiv, does not have to worry about cold weather or virus-induced illnesses that infect mainly humans.) Once it was just a worry for outsiders, but now the weather, too, is an immediate problem: now they have no choice but to live amongst the various elements, since their venture to Mosk from Romdo. As Re-l's opening dialogue tells us, her first experience of the morning for that day consists of seeing dense pre-dawn fog. After it lifts, there is still not much to see: a perpetually cloudy sky making everything dark and cold. The clouds never go away; they are always there. They do not hang in the sky; they smother it like how a neglected masterpiece becomes covered in years of grime and soot. When we look to the earth, our gaze is met with ice, snow drifts, and barren landscapes of rock. If the sky is a ruined masterpiece, the land is an empty and tattered canvas, discarded by its creator. And the one crucial element they depend on--the wind--is nowhere to be found. It's a conspicuous absence that Re-l never fails to notice as she plans her day.
Here we have it: the weather being another influence on her experiences of things. Alongside her routine-behavior and inculcated dispositions as mentioned above, she also has the weather itself flowing into her mood, heightening the elements within her experiences. In some experiential elements, the effect is like listening to aggravating feedback in an auditory system, always giving unwanted extra sounds. In one scene, as Re-l is trying to sleep she hears the sound of ice falling on the roof of the craft. If one were to suddenly stir a bag of dry bones, the sound, we imagine, would be similar--and it may well produce the same feelings within us, as well. Trying to put the distracting sound out of her mind, she tosses over in bed. The sound, we speculate, creates in her mind a paradoxically unheard mental noise, an extra tone, scraping against the edges of her conscious mind. When Re-l awakes once more, she cannot even force herself to get out of bed and maintain her routine. (Another strongly felt effect of the mood: the loss of energy.) We have to admit, however, that few weather related events can cause such a mindset. A week of cold weather usually does not affect us so greatly; most of us shrug it off and get on with our days. Yet, could we easily shrug off bad weather that has lasted for hundreds of years? What if we were compelled to live in confined quarters as well? And what if we kept a diary consisting of systematic notes of how things became progressively worse, thus preserving specific memories of the past days? Are we finally beginning to have an understanding for what Re-l is experiencing? For an analytical mind that naturally tends to focus on certain relations, objects, or qualities in her experiences, it would be safe to say that Re-l gradually learns her limits--her breaking point. We say this because repetition of certain things is always a fine way to test someone's limits. By now having gained an idea of what has been contributing to Re-l's worsening state of mind, perhaps we should begin our study of moods. For it's through a mood that these elements are filtered and thus experienced.
As we can see, we need to obtain a general sense of moods. Of course, the sense we are after, since it will be general, will undoubtedly leave out some elements; but we will fill them in as we go forth. For now, we just want to secure the overall "feel" as our starting point. As such, it's necessary for us to grasp an intuitive feel of moods if we are to make any advance in our study. We must also have an appropriate scheme that makes conspicuous whatever is not; it's one of the goals of this essay to make us understand what is involved in being in a mood, especially when we do not always notice our own interactions in the mood. How we are attempting to understand this necessarily depends on our using the appropriate scheme or working hypothesis, in conjunction with our intuitive feel for moods. With that in mind, we can now consider moods and the roles they play in our lives.
Consider the experience of being bored. What is it like to be bored, and how does it affect our daily experiences? Anyone who has been bored is fully aware of the qualities embedded within our experiences while we are in such a frustrating mood. Leaving nothing untouched by its light-extinguishing pall, boredom is like an immense shadow cast by a slowly passing cloud. You are caught in its lackluster shadow; the trees are snarled within it; your meals are tainted by it; your music is muffled by it; your senses themselves are dulled by it. It's everywhere you sense and think. As a result, boredom is strangely an external and internal experience. We will elaborate on this in more detail throughout the essay. Yet, we can briefly mention here that this incorporeal shadow blurs the distinction between the external and internal. Does the coffee actually taste that bland, or is it just an odd collateral effect of being bored? Does the weather seem to be cold or is it actually that way? Here we find the greatest blurring, to the point we may not be able to sensibly answer some of the questions. While you could easily make a new pot of coffee and check the temperature outside, there is no guarantee that these steps will dispel the shadow's effects. In other words, we cannot easily disentangle the subjective and objective while we are in such a mood. In fact, this entanglement is often a necessary part of certain qualities within some our experiences. For the most part, you need to drink real coffee if you are to have its vivid subjective qualities presented to you. This entanglement seemingly gives the mood's character phenomenally striking qualities, in that any given mood is experienced "as a whole."
An important thing to notice about moods is that they are total-state experiences. In less difficult and more personal words, moods are greedy and selfish; they like to have us all to themselves. Some of them are like metaphysical cloaks of lead or sentient shadows. For instance, when we are bored, nothing seems to shine as bright as it once did, and we no longer feel a certain lightness of being. The child riding his bike, for example, does not find it to be an enjoyable past-time, now that he is caught within the broad shadow of boredom. In a sense, it may feel more like work than play, having to pump the pedals and maneuver the handlebars around various obstacles. Some things no longer have the lively character they formerly had, as this child is now fully aware of the fact. Boredom, as personified, wants us to itself, and it will not share us with any other mood. While it has us, it forces us to look closer. Subsequently, bad moods, like any other mood, have a distinguishing trait of modifying whatever is at the center of our attention. Good moods make almost everything that we experience enjoyable: remember the rich smell of a warm summer evening when we feel content, the laziness in our muscles after spending a lively day working or playing, or the sight of that mellow sunset. There are few things that remain completely outside our good moods, if that is even possible. Nothing, it seems, transcends a mood. Even our biological functions, such as breathing, are entangled in a given mood. When we are in a good mood, we "breathe easily" and carelessly. When we are very bored, we struggle for simple breaths of air, often sighing aloud. Sometimes the tension is so bad it's like our lungs are filled with cotton balls. Our bodies may feel fatigued, as expressed by the child working the bike to move. These are just some of the elements that are located within the mood. Of all those things that fall under the mood's heaviest shadow, they have their qualities highly altered, transformed, or amplified so that one cannot miss noticing them as they are experienced. They are sensed far more easily as they are blackened out by the terrible mood. It's like a paradoxical light source that falls upon them: as the elements darken under the mood, they are further revealed to us. Even the emotions light up negatively. An emotional reaction becomes more volatile than usual when influenced by a mood, especially, in some dispositions, anger. Anger, as experienced in a bad mood, is like an unsatisfying eruption of energy; it does not have the emotionally gratifying effects of catharsis. Even when we are projecting calmness onto the world, we give the world this character only when we are subjected to an encompassing good mood filled with satisfaction. Whichever way we choose to look at the world and its elements, our outlook will always be illuminated by some mood or other. Any given mood is a total experience; its influence is seemingly boundless in our experiences. This influence never goes away. It's unobtrusive to us for most of the time. Notice, however, that moods never fully leave us. Important to our study is the idea that a mood is always replaced by another mood, even if the newly replacing one is nameless: our default mood, as it were. However, for this change or alteration to come about, there is usually some event that makes this process possible.
There are certain incidents that have the power to radically change one mood to another. Think of being depressed and lonely. There are seemingly few things that can help us shed the feelings that take hold of us. "Getting over it" is not as easy as changing our Joy Division t-shirt to our Hello Kitty t-shirt. It often takes either the gradual accumulation of certain small events, or the arrival of a fairly large startling event to shift ourselves away from loneliness. As an example, consider the following: from out of nowhere, a good friend you have not heard from in some time surprises you with a visit or phonecall. The sun now feels warmer and the heart lightens up. An occurrence such as this helps us far more than that trite remark quoted above. These surprises are like sudden shifts in the weather that transform one state into another. Moods can be thought of as similar to the weather in a way that is presently useful to us. The warm air, the cloudless sky, the gentle breeze--these are the elements of the weather. The weather itself is the totality of these things. Likewise, moods are the totality of the elements of our experiences that collect or accrue in the course of a day. The great taste of that coffee, the relaxing of the body, the feeling of satisfaction--these are the elements of the good mood. The mood is, like the weather, the complete whole. So when a sufficiently strong element such as a high pressure system forms in our daily lives, it may lead to our "emotional weather" being in a state of stagnation--a state of boredom where nothing happens. We find ourselves busy doing nothing. Just like when a meteorological element rolls into another weather pattern, the shift from one state to another may be either swift or gradual. In either case, we can be assured that a change is on the way.
As we now return to Re-l's experiences, we can comment further on them and combine them with more insights. With our understanding of moods, we will use it to see how Re-l herself reacts to such conditions as they fall under her boredom. As we had passed by Re-l's boredom-amplified anger (her scolding Vincent for him having a non-plan, as an example), we noted its volatile character and how even the weather can cause an outburst directed at whomever is present. (We will notice toward the end of this essay another significant outburst with a different character, however.) Whatever falls in its scope is subjectively tainted by the mood, e.g. when responding to Pino's questioning if the slice of bread tastes good, Re-l can only tersely comment on its flat, old taste. Her sense of taste picks out elements which appear most prominent to her. This bread is stale bread and these beans are--sigh--they just are, and nothing more. Since eating is something one has to do everyday, this too is located toward the center of the shadow. Thus, it too does not escape unscathed. Somehow, the seemingly essential qualities of our experiences of eating and drinking are never fully realized to us. Or if they are, which is more likely, they come with something else which seems to hover over and above the essential qualities. It's like the sweetness of cookies has another mysterious property that cannot be fully put into words. Nothing seems to taste right because something else is acting on them. Thus, it may appear that some things are blocked or muted by a bad mood, because something else is intervening on them. We notice that Re-l's intervening boredom has this power of selective concealment, covering certain things and not presenting others. Because of the nature of some debilitating states of mind, we too may not be entirely sure if some things are not presented to us. It could be that we just do not notice some things; in a way, we are blind to them. In any event, only some things are clearly revealed to her, and most of them are unexceptional or trite. This is especially true when Re-l does not attain any startling, new insights into Vincent's nature--only more frustrating, shadowy enigmas. There is something there, or so it seems, but it's too distant or hazy to make any sense of it. It remains at the edges, never coming close enough to Re-l's grasping intuitions. Her thoughts, instead, are filled and occupied by mundane experiences occurring day in and day out, like clockwork. For good or bad, they are immediately there for her. Yet, she cannot entirely help it if she experiences things in this way, for she herself is subject to this oppressive shadow. She is the one who has to experience the bland food, the terrible weather, the stifling ideas--they are her experiences of how things are. While we might question how we the viewers can know her subjective experiences--i.e. not ours--we can safely assume that there is an essential commonality we share: we actually know what boredom feels like, when someone says that she is bored. As such, we had taken it upon ourselves to appreciate what it would be like to be in her situation, to have her experiences. In fact, the entire episode does exactly that, and we are here examining what follows from it. We noticed, as did she, how some things manifest themselves differently under certain conditions. Whatever is located toward the center of someone's mood tends to be heightened whenever it's experienced. As the immediate object of attention, a certain sensation, feeling, or thought can display something which is noticed in one mood, but not in another. Having now seen how moods can affect almost anything that occurs within them, we are ready for the next crucial step: when a mood and its elements work in such a way that they reveal an opportunity for insight.
Re-l is very bored. That much is certain. Her boredom registers what is usually expected when one is in such a state. Here or there, nothing new is to be found. When there is even less to do, she often writes in her notebook as a way to pass the time. As her boredom persists and worsens, her writing eventually becomes little more than single phrases: as an example, a single page in her notebook consists of the two words "facial hair" surrounded by scribbles (Vincent tends to miss cutting off one strand of hair on his chin whenever he shaves. Re-l, ever the studious analyst, notices it sticking out and growing each day). She notices only the seemingly banal and uneventful elements in her experiences while she is bored. But what if this banality functions in an unexpected way for her? What do we make of those elements which unexpectedly shift one pattern into another? What we usually do not expect or notice, however, is when an element is dislodged, thus bringing about a larger shift: a change in mood, like the clearing of the weather. Because we do not expect them, the changes they bring about are so inexpressively disquieting that one often needs a moment to take it all in. --What just happened?-- What can cause these changes? When we said that there are some things which cannot be helped when we are in a bad mood, there are, nevertheless, some things that we can help. We see that this is something which Re-l intuitively grasps as well. Toward the end of the episode, Re-l is seen lying in bed, having written the scribbled phrase mentioned above. Rather than writing, she is chewing on the tip of her pen. Her face expresses her fitful state of mind. She cannot even focus her thoughts enough to write anything beyond that simple phrase. By inner dialogue, she speaks of reaching her breaking point, wondering what caused it (We claim it was a plurality of causes and events, as we mapped it out above). Yet, this last act of expressing the one thing that was immediately on her mind, though it may seem trivial, perhaps was the first unnoticed step towards dispelling the mood. She had intuitively grasped something that was indeed within her range, giving her a way out.
So, which of Re-l's actions causes such a shift in mood? Let us first set up the situation. It's now the day after she had written the single phrase expressing her inability to think clearly. The craft's power level has reached the point that they cannot use the lights, so they use candles to illuminate the interior of the craft. The candle light in such close quarters gives the cabin's atmosphere an air of tranquility. The shadows are soft, never becoming solid and sharp. It almost looks nostalgic, like how things are often imagined to be centuries ago when there was no electricity. Vincent and Pino are busy doing something, as is usually the case with them. Meanwhile, Re-l is once again writing in her notebook, except that this time she seems to be more productive than the previous night. The whole scene looks like an oil painting that suggests those dark nights of the soul where introspection pierces all barriers. As such, it necessarily suggests release or deliverance, which is why it's worth our attention. Returning to specifics once more, Re-l calls out to Vincent that she needs a new candle, her own having now melted down to a stump. Just as when Vincent is handing her a new candle, she quickly grabs his wrist and pulls him closer to her. She has her other hand gently grasping him under his chin, slowly drawing his face toward hers. If the tension was heavy when days ago she scolded him for having no sensible plan, the tension is now of a very different sort, still retaining a manifest quality. We still feel it, though it's now changed. In total serenity, it's the setup for a stolen kiss. We are about to see the moment when the mood shifts for the better, and we could not have expected it to happen in a better situation than now. Ready to commence the transition in her own unique way, Re-l does something else instead. Having Vincent immediately before her, she quickly transitions from seeming romance to apparent mischievousness. With one swift move, she plucks out the single irritating hair on his chin, instead of delivering the kiss we may have expected. Letting out a laugh for the first time, she tosses the vexing chin-hair aside. Vincent, having no idea why she did that, is clearly puzzled and startled by her confusing actions. And it's here we see her smile ever so slightly. It's her first genuine, yet understated, smile in the episode. She does not smile because she caused him brief pain; she smiles inwardly because she caused the start of a change in her mood. The writing of the phrase in the notebook was the element, and the removal of hair was the event.
This may sound slightly odd, but we can think of that single hair as a proxy for the totality of elements and occurrences that had been constantly cycling in her mind those past days. To simplify it further (while keeping in mind the risk of oversimplification) the hair stood for all the undesirable elements. All of those recursive experiences had finally been, in a sense, made concrete: they were collected and constituted as a complete whole and expressed in the two words "facial hair", as scribbled down on the night she pondered her limits. By having the total elements of everything that had been troubling her condensed in a single representable concept, Re-l's intuition was no longer grasping at things far too distant. Instead, it took hold of all what was presently available to it, giving her something to work with, something external and readily available. And by removing what corresponded to her external concept (i.e. the hair corresponding to the phrase in her notebook), it allowed for the conditions of the arrival of a different mood. Her boredom would soon wane, like how a stagnant area of weather transforms into new weather: dead calm and nothingness becoming a stirring something. We should note that while the same basic elements are involved, they are now moving in different patterns. Put in another way, the same air is involved in both a snowstorm and a calm day; it just adapts to the weather as environmental circumstances dictate. We now sense different things. Re-l still faces the same perpetual winter, the same food, and the same companions, but each of these now has the potential to "move" in refreshingly novel ways. For this was not entirely possible when they were strictly organized within one conceptual framework, allowing only certain patterns of thought. By removing the proxy, thus removing the recurring totality of experiences and events, Re-l had prepared the ground for experiencing and seeing things in a different light.
The last notable scene to briefly consider is the concluding scene which immediately follows from the one we considered. We will not spend much time on it because the crucial scene for our study had been examined above. Nevertheless, it's important in that it does indeed confirm our assertion that the right conditions for dispelling her mood have been met. Let us now see the first effects of the subtle mood-change, and to where it may lead.
Writing once more in her notebook, Re-l is standing outside on the deck of the Rabbit. Paying attention only to her notebook, she is looking downwards as she writes. As far as we can tell, only she is near the craft. Either the other two are in the craft, or they are exploring some distance away from it. In any case, we see Re-l alone on the craft's deck; this is her moment. With still no wind to be found, the atmosphere remains calm. In almost complete silence, she stands under the cloud filled sky. However, in one of those moments when something "tells" you to do this or that--like when you sense someone staring at you, and you turn around to find that you were correct--Re-l happens to look up towards the sky. As she looks to the sky, she is immediately greeted with the brilliant sight of an aurora. Despite the heavy layers of clouds that fill the sky, the aurora is strong and vibrant enough to be seen through them. They swirl and unfold, dancing across the sky, not the least bit impeded by the dense clouds. We can imagine that it must be a magnificent sight for Re-l to experience while in her shifting mood. When she looks up, we can hear her audibly gasp in surprise and awe. All she can do is watch the aurora unwind across the sky.
Imagine what it would be like to experience it, especially for the first time. The novel situation that she needed to experience is here and now, seemingly for her alone. Her previous act of eliminating her conceptualized distraction had prepared the fertile ground for making such an experience so vivid. It almost has a meditative effect on her, as she stands under the aurora filled sky. She smiles, but it's not the slight one she revealed earlier--it's an unconcealed serene smile directed at everything and nothing in particular. What things are like for her, we can imagine, are most likely now qualitatively different than before, as when she was in her perpetual state of boredom. The sky no longer looks oppressive and indifferent. The weather itself no longer seems to be an inanimate thing. It now seems responsive, ready to do something if the conditions are right. As Re-l herself can attest, the conditions are indeed ready for change. No longer seeming distant and inanimate, the weather waits for Re-l be a cause. Engaging in a little primal scream therapy, she yells out into the weather, commanding it to come for her. Only an intimate personification of the weather, a new way of looking at the same situation, allows her to fully cast off the oppressive shadow of the bad mood. The mind's lead cloak is now gone, replaced by the lightness of a new perspective. Her unsolvable problems and unanswerable questions dissolve and disperse, for they no longer hold in her mind as they once did. What was once a problem lost its claim to being one; with a change in the rules, the problem vanished, dispersed, thus preparing the ground for seeing novelty and change. And just like Re-l's mood transforming from one state to another, the weather itself changes for the better: the wind returns. The previous state of stagnation gives way to a gust of wind, changing one pattern to another. All that had been previously mired in one specific cycle of recurrence now moves in many rapid and unpredictable systems. Each system now affects the other, giving a host of fresh results not achievable until now. Remember: everything now moves in new and unpredictable ways, a welcome change for Re-l. With the proper conditions now in place, she and the others continue on with the journey, which offers to show her newly revealed possibilities and perspectives. What was once a private world belonging only to Vincent and Pino has now become open to Re-l.
Looking back on the ground covered, we sketched a general nature of boredom. We saw what was involved in being in specific moods: good and bad moods present us with an altered world where things can be experienced in contrasting ways. While we are in a good mood, this bread may be tasty. When we are in a bad mood, it seems to be tainted with something ineffable. Conversations may appear vapid or spirited, depending on the mood in which one finds oneself. The weather itself may seem invigorating to one and spiteful to another, even if they are walking together in the very same weather. Undoubtedly we are affected in some ways by how things seem to us. Thus, we were more concerned with the subjective observer-dependent features, rather than the objective observer-independent features of the world (Boredom, while a "real" thing, does not exist in the same sense of the word as a cloud does). Of course, we are not denying that the latter were somehow fundamentally unimportant to us--far from it, since we appealed to this world time and again--but for our purposes we were more interested in those former things as they inevitably fall under a highly subjective perspective as experienced by a subject. We wanted the "feel of things." And more importantly for this essay, as the elements and events fall under our subjective experiences, we may feel compelled at times to focus on whatever it is we are currently experiencing. Perhaps, by focusing on both the qualities of an experience and the total experience itself--i.e. the parts and the whole--we may discern something within our lives that we had never noticed before. By seeing the part as it appears under this aspect, we may possibly see the whole as something else. We see the novelty. The moods, whether they are good, bad, or nameless, have as their nature to disguise, exaggerate, falsify, distort, divulge, slant, strain, tint, bare, betray, communicate, disclose, enhance, and reveal many things to whomever find herself minding them.
End
