Boards of Canada encey 10,000

Time to celebrate my (second) 10,000th post and I think my 10th year on the forum!

I started out as encephala. I was in college and was a smug twat who liked philosophy and other 'deep,' 'spiritual' stuff, but I came from an affinity toward math & science, so I basically did not know how to read, only play with concepts in an abstract manner that did not connect up with real life very closely. I dismissed all pop music as lowest common denominator slag for drunken idiots, didn't like beer but enjoyed psychedelics and long, monogamous relationships riddled with endless, hopeless and naive crushes. I was told about Fruity Loops and began making my first all-computer music and participated in the first (and only) official WATMM compilation, mailing a cd to Joyrex's house in a bubble wrap envelope. I wasn't satisfied with myself and took things seriously, for better and for worse. I liked to write a lot, most of which was vain drivel. I found Confield intolerable but I could listen to Webern and the most concrète Zappa endlessly. I was an idealist and an optimist, thinking I could do anything and everything I wanted to the maximum level of skill and quality, and wanted to be famous, recognized, center of attention. I was also driven and worked until I fell asleep, learning a ton of book learning in the process.

Later on, I was just (e). Still seeking attention and jumping from one manufactured 'counter-culture' to the next (metal, goth, rave, glam) I began actively embracing my feminine side, covering myself with makeup, bracelets, making my face beautiful even with the Amish-ass chinstrap of a beard I sported because I lacked a jawline. I wore skirts and huge Swear brand shoes, as well as those 64"-wide leg Jnco and Kikwear jeans. I was officially a '15f' on the board and enjoyed flirting with male and female members alike. I found the members of the band Orgy to be my view of male sexy -- yes, the members. I preened and talked with a slight lisp, which mortifies me now. I discovered the joys of longing for memories and emotions you never had, brought on by the likes of Boards of Canada, and the solemn serenity of Mira Calix's pure synth tracks. I started to enter into my fully-fledged Nintendo nostalgia trip and collected over 100 versions of the Legend of Zelda theme. I came up with an idea to make a CD based on people telling their dreams -- it took me like five years to actually finish it because I was too much of a perfectionist about things, or else I would make a loop and never turn it into anything else. The form was that awesome, dark gray background color, when the sense of community, inside jokes and MS Paintzerdry flourished most fully on the board. The EKT forum started up and I found a deepened respect for the talent level of our posters, collecting many users' tracks and albums and jealous of their accomplishments. I discovered that Wisp consistently brings me to 'that place,' where you can cry whilst masturbating in the shower. Autechre became my favorite band and I have sucked their dicks in 11/18 time ever since. These were some of my gayest times on the board, in every sense of the word. I signed all my posts with '(e),' or with 'en<3y,' and overused the :heart: smiley. I was unfailingly nice to everyone, even my bro Skytree, and felt loved in return.

Then, I started to get older, and jaded. My online outlandishness began to go to far when I posted as (^_^). (This was when WATMM let you change your name up to three times in a month or something crazy like that. Maybe one of Joyrex's biggest regrets.) My yearning for attention turned in on itself and began to implode, as I succumbed to a bout of full-on 'AIM-speak,' as it was called back then, peppering my posts with 'omgz'es and 'lolz0r's, 'u's and 'ur's. People fucking hated it, with reason. But I didn't give a shit. I started to see my username as a mask between me and everyone else on the board, instead of a hand extended from one man to the other (still crusty with day-old cum). I knew that I was changing inside, but didn't know why, or who I was to become, and so I stepped outside of my mind and watched it from afar, as it spun around uncontrolled like buffer override on a Squarepusher-circa-early-2000s drill-n-bass clusterfuck. I still didn't know how to drink, and began smoking because the cool people around me did it, it was cold and dark, and there was no one to stop me. Although I began to dissociate from my WATMM life, I continued, in direct contradiction to this, to take it seriously and actively cared what people thought of me, got a thrill when someone cool on the board lol'd at something I posted (my greatest moment -- writing a Seinfeld script, with transliterated slap-synth basslines) and grew churlish at the inanity of other posters, many of whom would end up impaled in the spike pit of my ignore list on later incarnations of the board. My favorite smiley became . I was lost, frustrated with myself, trying too hard and finally, painfully aware of it, and couldn't face myself on the board or the inexcusable amount of time I would spend there. So I played the 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen' card and froze my account for six months or so, into a Hans Solo O-face of terror.

(Sometime, either during or right after this phase, I took further advantage of the name-change privileges and posted for a few months as gollum, a method acting stint that I found hilarious and enlightening, but I think it irritated others. Just thinking of his little face in the avatar I used cracks me up.)

I came back to the board as encey, a person turned inside out. I was suckin on spliffs more and more, to the wake-and-bake extreme. I sometimes felt like an alien to myself when I would enter this alternate psychic dimension -- not paranoid or moronic, but totally inward, quiet, just watching and listening, rapt by the intricacies of Untittied or the Goldberg Variations radiating toward me in a dark room from the TRON-blue light of my new stereo system. I was social, but my world was that of a newborn stoner's, full of echoes and delays, no straight lines or static colors, no words possibly meaning what they seemed. I heard and read everything only as subtext, the routine of my day being a disguised commentary on the sacred writings of my own psychic integration, both in both its light and dark, male and female aspects. I was weird even to myself, but it seemed like the only way I could be. I loved Nutella and World of Warcraft, which meant I gained over 20 pounds, but at the same time I was more laid-back and carefree than ever, so I didn't give a shit. For the first time, I could stop worrying what others thought of me; because I no longer had any idea what I thought of myself, I had nothing to prove to anyone (or to hope they would prove to me, so as to vindicate a narcissistic fascination with myself). I broke the cardinal rule of the forum (before it was an official rule, punishable by the perma-ban) and expressed my feminine, mystical shadow side not as a candy-colored rainbow unicorn horn-fucking 15f, but as a dupe -- a dupe with a hot, candle-lit avator avatar that I would bring into the world of my fantasy life. She was the voice of feeling rather than thought, of silence and observation over rhetoric and performance, of appreciation instead of flattery. I may have been just as vain and pretentious as before, but I wasn't nearly as concerned that everyone else know, or care. I was putting my full efforts into the dream project, working intensely with my own dreams, prostate massaging with my bro Alcofribas C and recalling my barren, hoodie-clad soul shivering through lonely autumns of high school when I listened to the dulcet shorelines of The Campfire Headphase. I only bottomed out when this part of myself -- and many of the r/l friends and habits that supported that self at the time -- fizzled, left or otherwise died out. Then things in me were completely empty, like the rum-fueled flushing out of a deep dish pizza lodged five days too many in the bowels.

Now, I am still encey, but mainly in ribbing deference to all that I once was here and all that WATMM means to me. I am officially old, as attested by my contribution to, and mixing of, the WATMM Lifetime album. Like some of the other old dudes here, I have mellowed out in a non-spacey way. Like asymmetrical head, I lost those 30 pounds of stoner weight and feel the best I ever have. Through a shared love of food, I found a love of my soon-to-be wife and yearn for the birth of my first child, if for no other reason than to have something dear on which to Photoshop Richard D. James's face. I aspire to ultimate dad-ness, and sometimes wear all-white tennis shoes with white athletic socks pulled up to the bottom of my shorts -- the dad outfit. I finally finished the dream album, and it's the only real thing I have made as 'encephala,' but I am proud of it, and it encapsulates much of the experiences whose general shape is reflected in my usernames and rambling story above, so it serves as a time capsule of most of my WATMM days and will bring fond memories of everyone who helped me make it or get it up on the internets (especially you, Luke Fucking Hazard!). I still love WATMM even if I post less, and I still use it to procrastinate like no other, but I have (more or less) stopped dressing and acting like a gay idiot and am content with myself and my life. Where LSD or pot may have fueled my veins and brain, I now flush myself passionately with beer. So many things have changed, even though the new things play the same old roles for me. And though WATMM will never be what it once was to me -- because I will never be who I once was to myself -- it is still home. Which means I can take the longest, noisiest, most odoriferous shit in the middle stall of our public toilet as I please, if you'll excuse me.

I know this is endless and mostly boring, but I feel entitled to indulge myself a little on my 10,000th post. So I hope you will forgive me and go easy on the 'tl; dr's. Now let's do some Q&A! Ask me anything you want.

encey

Will you do a Remix for me?

  On 9/24/2010 at 6:37 PM, asymmetrical head said:

Will you do a Remix for me?

I think it would be awesome to remix your music, but I also haven't made a single tune or clip in at least two years, so if I do, it might take me a long time!

You Sir, are one of the pillars of WATMM.

Oh, God.

pillars of watmm subforum please

Hmmm, there's no mention of "i just sucked a dick" so this feels incomplete. Great read though encey. Really makes me need the toilet.

if the text was one sentence shorter, i would have read it.

just think of what you missed

  On 9/24/2010 at 7:11 PM, Rambo said:

Hmmm, there's no mention of "i just sucked a dick" so this feels incomplete. Great read though encey. Really makes me need the toilet.

Sorry, my lawyers have advised me against this. :(

*deletes sentence predicting ruiagnelo to be the next Fred McGriff*

  On 9/24/2010 at 7:11 PM, Rambo said:

Hmmm, there's no mention of "i just sucked a dick" so this feels incomplete. Great read though encey.

errmmm, that's a lorra'lorra words and sentances!! and not just here, but 10,000 posts, x 2 ?? and 10yrs membership. Holy Shit! LOl.

my question would be, why?

  On 9/24/2010 at 7:18 PM, lumpenprol said:

  On 9/24/2010 at 7:11 PM, Rambo said:

Hmmm, there's no mention of "i just sucked a dick" so this feels incomplete. Great read though encey.

oh that's right. Forgot about your colostomy bag.

  On 9/24/2010 at 7:14 PM, encey said:

 

*deletes sentence predicting ruiagnelo to be the next Fred McGriff*

i didn't read it all either. sorry. that'd have be several minutes of my life wasted that i'd never get back! :)

  On 9/24/2010 at 7:11 PM, Rambo said:

Hmmm, there's no mention of "i just sucked a dick" so this feels incomplete. Great read though encey. Really makes me need the toilet.

Beat me to it, my ripped, action hero friend.

Encey, it's the thread title that will stick with me forever. I remember browsing WATMM while my friend was over playing Xbox and I creased up, "there's a thread here called 'i just sucked a dick!'!" He laughed as much as I did.

Respect to that man Encey.

  On 9/24/2010 at 7:21 PM, sirch said:

errmmm, that's a lorra'lorra words and sentances!! and not just here, but 10,000 posts, x 2 ?? and 10yrs membership. Holy Shit! LOl.

 

my question would be, why?

Well, as I was trying to convey in my story, I started off joining mainly for the rush; then it kind of turned into an adaptation thing. Now I mainly do it for the backwardness of the act, if you know what I mean.

  On 9/24/2010 at 7:38 PM, Obel said:

  On 9/24/2010 at 7:11 PM, Rambo said:

Hmmm, there's no mention of "i just sucked a dick" so this feels incomplete. Great read though encey. Really makes me need the toilet.

 

Beat me to it, my ripped, action hero friend.

 

Encey, it's the thread title that will stick with me forever. I remember browsing WATMM while my friend was over playing Xbox and I creased up, "there's a thread here called 'i just sucked a dick!'!" He laughed as much as I did.

 

Respect to that man Encey.

*hi five*

although I will always favor Tarsier's magnum opus, "i just masturbated my penis"

enters thread to congratulate on whatever you're supposed to be digging on.

no questions from me, just

:D

  On 9/24/2010 at 6:30 PM, encey said:

Where LSD or pot may have fueled my veins and brain, I now flush myself passionately with beer.

well there goes your argument!

congrats on the wife/kid/family thing though.

anyways, what are your thoughts on anthony bourdain?

how is your career in academia going... well, i hope (and i've always <3'd you)

  On 9/24/2010 at 7:11 PM, Rambo said:

Hmmm, there's no mention of "i just sucked a dick" so this feels incomplete. Great read though encey. Really makes me need the toilet.

One of the best threads!

I read it while listening to my own album that took 5 years to finish. I think I also have been here about 10 years now. I don't have as interesting a life story though. Thanks for reviewing some of my songs in the past, I remember you gave a few really thorough and detailed reviews, they were good :)

  On 9/24/2010 at 6:30 PM, encey said:

Alcofribas C

tl;dr

  On 9/24/2010 at 10:30 PM, impotentwhitecapitalist said:

  On 9/24/2010 at 6:30 PM, encey said:

Where LSD or pot may have fueled my veins and brain, I now flush myself passionately with beer.

well there goes your argument!

lol!!

  Quote

congrats on the wife/kid/family thing though.

 

 

anyways, what are your thoughts on anthony bourdain?

Actually, I'm literally listening to his new book right now. I think that he is full of a lot of shit, but also a really cool guy. I love his lewdness, even when it's clearly for an easy shock, and I totally respect his respect for everyone who makes him food on his t.v. show. I would love to smoke & drink with the guy and am warmed by his expressions of love for his new baby girl. I also have no idea how he had any kind of palette when he smoked so much! I'm completely envious of the amazing life he's led and all he's gotten to experience. Finally, I pray to God to look that good at his age.

  On 9/24/2010 at 11:21 PM, tht tne said:

how is your career in academia going... well, i hope (and i've always <3'd you)

i <3 u 2!! It's almost begun! I have about a year left, if I keep my shit together and write until my fingers fall off. Then I will brave the ridiculously futile job market and see what happens. My fallback career would definitely be working at a brewery, but I do hope I can go on to teach at a nice, small liberal arts college.

  On 9/24/2010 at 11:57 PM, Springymajig said:

I read it while listening to my own album that took 5 years to finish. I think I also have been here about 10 years now. I don't have as interesting a life story though. Thanks for reviewing some of my songs in the past, I remember you gave a few really thorough and detailed reviews, they were good :)

I miss listening and giving EKT reviews; I used to love doing that. I should do that again! And I'm glad you can relate to the slow gestation of personal creation!

  On 9/25/2010 at 1:13 AM, encey said:

I'm glad you can relate to the slow gestation of personal creation!

Trust me, an animator understands this very very well :P

"I just" blew me away, and always will.