Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)

Install instructions

Created for the class Digital Storytelling and Resistance at Carnegie Mellon University, Fall 2019

This work was loosely inspired by the following manifesto:

Doomer Manifesto
Find here a document that needs no writing, signed by no one, for these
words do not come from a person fitting any metric of humanity. A document
signed by Apathy. Written for no other reason than for an excuse to keep a
screen emanating the only light into a dead room.
The Brain that absorbs these words may yet produce currents powerful
enough to flow into the components that produce any detectable pleasure, any
emotion at all. This Brain would do well to leave now, swiftly, and stay away.
The Brain that has not seen its reflection in the void, crazed, cackling and terrifying, may hope to never see that damning sight. The Brain that has seen
everything at its right time and no more is a tender blossom, with sufficient
vigor and life to shake Frost’s tepid cling. But if the hubs of light in this Brain
have all blinked away, has had its power lines cut down and its copper wiring
scrapped for pennies, if the inside of this Brain is as suffocatingly dark as the
abyss it floats in, then the words below will serve as no more than a succinct
synthesis of what this Brain already accepts.
Fear is the name that the road into abyss calls itself, for Fear leads this Brain
here. But Fear is an exhausting emotion, and through fatigue the Brain forgets
this name. In spite of itself the Brain forgets Fear, as a fish in the crushing
depths forgets water. The Brain encaged in your structure has brought you
here.
On thinly carpeted floorboards you lie, your vertebrae flattening in resignation. All you feel is exhaustion, the exhaustion of Fear. Fear flays your skin,
incinerates your endo-skeleton, until all that remains is scar tissue and dead
nerve endings. The time of your impotent body and the Brain encaged inside
is bleeding out fast. You attempt to project astrally, looking down at the body
you left below and see a stranger. As you descend to the stranger, should you
find yourself grasping for ways to dull the oncoming incineration, the axioms
proposed here will serve you no worse than any others you may choose to abide.

Presented here is a call to inaction:

ISOLATION 

Dispel the hope that you will ever stop being utterly alone. No matter the
people you surround yourself with, the elaborate lies you construct, the act
you play so dutifully, no one can truly know the twisted machinery that
turns within you, to risk being cut by the hundred jagged teeth of septic
gears. For the sake of yourself and others, allow for as much isolation as
you can in your time here.

NEURO-CHEMISTRY

 If possible, try to secure a steady access to a select few mind-altering
drugs if possible. You have already or most likely will lose the ability to
feel anything, desensitized by the world around you and its vices that you
do not possess the willpower to avert. At the very least, pick a reasonably
effective agent amongst both stimulants and depressants, so you may at
least simulate a flux between relaxation and arousal.
ART Immerse yourself into art, literature and film that speaks to your sensibilities. Your time in the flesh is thankfully fleeting, and there are a plethora
of doomed literature and films to fill these wasted hours with, created
perhaps by people with Brains such as yours. Music in particular, may
speak to you when no voice does. An exquisite numbness is to be found in
blaring distortion, indistinguishable melody and searing volume blissfully
pinning you down like a weighted blanket.

PERSONA 

Adopt an ideology that minimizes friction with your surroundings; to
blend in is to go unseen. See Isolation. The machinery of the forces
that govern you are ridiculously out of control, reducing your principles
to yet another prop to convincingly sell the act of your life.

ANGER 

Find outlets for your anger, the last emotion you can still feel after waves
of anxiety and apathy crash upon your psyche and erode it all away. Anger
is a form of hope, a sense that you possess any shred of agency to affect
change. Allow this to dissipate in some physical exertion, masturbation,
weight-lifting or walking are valid options. Rest assured, like all others,
anger too will pass, leaving only void.