>And strangely enough, people are in spite of all of that anonymity usually open to more interesting conversations here than I often find in real life, where there is all kind of real-world contingency, buzzing phones and whatnot...I prefer being a disembodied mind.
You need to find the right kind of people. I only have one friend I hang out with consistently, and we do nothing more or less than talk. I mean, this past weekend we talked for almost ten hours straight, not resorting to alcohol until the last three. Watched Network (1976) for the first time, it was quite enjoyable, especially when one of us would start talking over the film and we'd pause it to have a mini-conversation on criticism. Nothing beats connecting with a real human.
>I still think about screenwriting but I feel as though a little too spooked after all this reading to be able to believe in the illusions and psychic manipulations anymore
I'm actually working on a screenplay right now, at least, helping with the rewrite which is going to be significant. Honestly (I'll probably get accused of memery for this) Stirner helped me understand the "only" story: every narrative is about the varying degrees of egoism (in the sense of "only-one-ness") in people. I find that the trick to crafting an appealing narrative is to end in a way that's concrete but doesn't prescribe an -- ideology. I like the example set by David Lynch, e.g. at the end of Twin Peaks. While he had to wrap up most of the side stories in a rather abrupt fashion, the main narrative ended the only way it could have, and the only thing it admonished against was, in my view, half-egoism. It didn't even do that strongly, i.e. it didn't say "half-egoism is always bad," but the ending was still incredibly forceful because it showed what happened to someone who defined himself by his profession and lost it. It was a wonderful tragedy.
I agree that Adorno and the like are much too derisive of the "culture industry." Whether or not jazz is less "complex" than "classical" music, it is a valid springboard for at least criticism. I'm also piecing together a lengthy criticism of the Canadian show Heartland that boils its premise down to "only a maiden who is pure of heart can safely tame all beasts" and linking it through cinematography to art from the Middle Ages depicting unicorns. Though I struggle to find merit in many tent-pole pictures (capeshit in particular). There's nothing to criticize when the dialogue is just banter framed around the tired old "Support your country/species/family" shtick.
