Placebo

I found this in my vault of private stuff. It was written in May of 2013. There was a reason to keep it private back then, not anymore. Enjoy.

I always had a strange relationship with music. Unlike most people, I don't feel a need for music. I like it, but I don't care about it. Music feels a lot like watching football (soccer) to me: if there's a game going on and I'm watching it with friends, I'll watch it and enjoy it, but I wouldn't go out of my way to go watch a football match by myself. The main difference is that while I can share my non-interest in football with a lot of my friends, the same doesn't happen to music. I feel a lot of pressure from friends and society to like music, to pick my genre, to have my personality defined by the music I hear. I think I wouldn't hear music at all if I weren't being asked all the time what kind of music I like.

In the past months I listened to a lot of different genre radios and ultimately picked Alternative Rock as my genre. I think it suits me, it's innovative enough without entering metal region, and fits my preferences for strange, alternative movies, which are natural and not pressured, by the way. I found Foo Fighters and 30 Seconds to Mars out of the blue and became a fan, and that's how I found out I liked the genre. Of course, it helps that it's a good genre to tell people about, it's not completely shallow like pop, old-fashioned like rock, or way too specific like latin or country. When you tell people that you like alternative rock, you are pretty sure you're not making a fool out of yourself. It's a safe choice.

In spite of that, there's still a lot to learn about my music genre. And I feel compelled to learn about it. There's a lot of groups out there I never heard about, there's a lot of songs I heard in alt-rock radios without knowing whom they're from, there's a lot of songs which I like but to which I never really paid attention, and couldn't remember again even if my life depended on it. All the other alt-rock fans are much better informed than me, and that will definitely show when I talk to them about music. So I have to learn. When my best friend who I'm trying really hard not to see as more than just a friend asked me if I liked Placebo and subsequently invited me to one of their concerts, I immediately said yes. I know it's a good and talented band, alt-rock genre, it came very natural to me. I knew I liked it. I conveniently forgot to tell her that I really only knew and recognized one of Placebo's songs, Every You Every Me, which I knew by heart from the Cruel Intentions soundtrack to which I had listened to exhaustion in the past.

Does it make any sense to know you like a band even though you haven't listened to any of their songs except one? I don't know. I guess it made sense for me. And it's not like that I really don't know it, I was pretty sure I knew some of their songs but haven't realized they were theirs yet. So after I accepted that invitation, I knew what I had to do. I had to learn. I started today. Pulled up a group of Placebo songs and started listening. I felt relieved when I recognized another song, Special Needs. I later recognized three more songs of them from the group of songs that I liked. And I wasn't wrong. I liked them, for sure. It would take me a few more weeks of learning, but I knew I won't be disappointed when I go to the concert.

But as I listened to the previously unknown Song to Say Goodbye, I started to feel bad about myself. Placebo has a bit of a melancholic tone, as I gladly discovered then, and that also helped me set the mood. I felt the pressure of society, I felt used for listening to music not to enjoy it, but to be able to tell other people I know it. And then I looked at my past and asked myself what had I been doing with my life to reach this point without knowing this already. It's a lot like travelling. which is also not my biggest interest, but then makes me jealous of all the people that have already been everywhere in the world. The not being able to respond to people that say they will gladly live in a poor African country, despite every bad thing everyone else says about it. How could I have reached this point in my life and know so little about the world, the music, the life itself?

I don't know the answer to these questions, and probably never will. But at least I know I know Placebo now. I discovered it's actually a bit sadder, much more calm, introspective and melancholic that I expected. I like it.

At First Sight

Do you believe in love at first sight?

You've probably been asked this a lot in your life. I find it funny that for a lot of people it's a question of belief. They either believe that love at first sight exists, or they do not. Never mind the fact that you can easily find thousands of people for whom love at first sight actually happened, it's still kind of a religious thing: you either believe in it, or you won't believe it until you see it.

If you asked me, I'd totally say yes. I had a few love at first sights personally. Of course, you'll have to define first what does "at first sight" exactly means. Does it mean the exact moment you put your eyes on her for the first time? Do the first few minutes count? The first hours? The first day? I prefer to take the wider notion of the term and say that, if you fall in love in the first day you meet her, you can say it was at first sight.

So yes, people, love at first sight is real. Even more than that, not only it happens but it's more common than you think. And because of that, love at first sight is actually... a lie.

You see, love at first sight, the true love at first sight, only works as an afterthought. You met her, you like her at first sight, you ask her out, she says yes, you start dating, get married, have children, and when you tell your children the story of "how I met your mother" you say "The first time I saw her, I knew she was the one."

You got lucky.

What happens most of the times is: you meet her, you like her at first sight, you ask her out, she says yes, and on the first date one of you finds something weird or obnoxious in the other, so you never see each other again. Or, you meet her, you like her at first sight, you ask her out, she says no. Or, you meet her, you like her at first sight, her (ugly!) boyfriend shows up. Yes, in all these times it was still at first sight, but it was doomed to fail. It would never grow up to be love.

In fact, I've met so many girls in my life that I liked at first sight that any one of them could be my "the one" (at first sight). Suddenly, love at first sight is not so special anymore. Why would you want to tell people that you fell in love with your wife at first sight, if you did the same with almost every other girl you've met? Which makes you think: what's in the concept of love at first sight that attracts us so much? Why does it sound so magical and religious?

Like I said before, love at first sight is only real love when it's an afterthought. You got lucky, but you didn't get lucky because you fell in love at first sight. You got lucky because your love lasted. And when it does, when you get lucky, you like to go back to that defining moment of your life, to that moment where you met her and, by some random chance, liked her. But you don't want to think it was just random, you want to give meaning to it, so you will think it was destiny that brought you together, or that you have such a supernatural instinct that you instantly knew who your wife was going to be, the moment you saw her.

So yes, kids, love at first sight is real. But it's not magical or religious. It's just... natural selection.

On the Theory of Multi-Rebirth

My after-death theory of multi-rebirth was established in written form already two years ago, after being on my head for some time. For two years it was stuck on one of my super-private-for-one-specific-girl's-eyes-only blogs. From time to time I talk about my theory to people but I have never been able to show them the specifics and details of it. I wanted to move this article to a semi-public (or semi-private) blog for some time, and now, with Brain to Let, I can.

The Theory of Multi-Rebirth is a theory that attempts to explain the event of life after death, without the need for an idea of a God. It is not something I fully believe in, it's just a theory. I choose to believe in it because it is as valid as the next theory or religion.

The Dogmas

The multi-rebirth theory is based on two dogmas, two things that I cannot explain or otherwise prove to be true, but that I perceive (or sense) as true because I cannot imagine the world I live in without them. They are:

• The idea that the conscience persists after the person has died (conscience persistence);
• The idea that my conscience cannot inhabit just this body I live in (conscience transference).

The first idea is easy to explain, it comes from my difficulty to accept that it all ends when we die. Many people have this, so everybody knows what it is. The second idea is a little more complicated: I cannot understand exactly why, from all the people in the world, I ended up here where I am. Living in a small city in a small country, doing pretty much the same everyone else does, not having the slightest impact in the world. I mean, I gain conscience in this world to live a mundane if not miserable life and then I die and that's it? Where does my conscience go after I die? Do I just stop thinking? I can't imagine a time when I don't think.

I had another theory once, where the outside world was just a big dream I invented, and I was just living the dream; I would die and then wake up from the dream to another world, eventually to start dreaming again. I dismissed that theory a long time ago, not because I had any particular proof to refute it, I just thought it to be too elaborated and I sensed that other people should have consciences too.

Scraping Everything Else

These are the only two dogmas I need for my theory. I don't need a creator for the Universe and all living things - science shows they could very well be created by themselves. I don't need a perfect being that knows everything and can do everything - the world works perfectly fine without it. I don't need special places for afterlife - I mean, heaven and hell, really?! And I certainly don't need some being that supposedly does things for people who pray to it - that just doesn't happen, guys.

Descartes got it wrong

When it comes to this kind of stuff I like to resort to the good old Discourse on the Method by René Descartes. In his attempt to find the absolute truth, Descartes first started by assuming nothing around him was real, nothing that he saw really existed. Then he remembered that he was thinking, and that if he thought, then he surely existed. So far so good.

Then he realized he was an imperfect being, and if he was imperfect there should be a higher, more perfect being than him, and that's how he came to the idea of God. And finally he concluded that other people should exist too because God was perfect and good, and wouldn't let them not exist.

This is where I don't follow him anymore. Why do we need the idea of a perfect being, just because we are imperfect? The world will still work even if it works in an imperfect way. Everyone can achieve perfection in a specific area while being imperfect in all the other ones, and that's OK. Even if we had a God, it would be a God that doesn't do anything. He just sits and watches while events occur in the Universe by themselves, according to the well known laws of Physics.

So let's stick to the I in the Descartes method. I think, therefore I exist. You should probably be thinking the same, so you exist as well (because you think). God? I don't really have an evidence that God thinks...

The Fundamental Laws

So, this is the background for the fundamental laws of the multi-rebirth theory. There are only two fundamental laws, followed by a number of secondary laws. The first fundamental law is the obvious law to apply given the two already mentioned dogmas of conscience persistence and conscience transference:

• Law 1: When a conscious living being dies, he/she is reborn as another conscious living being.

The second law needs a little more explanation so I'm just going to say it beforehand:

• Law 2: Rebirths can go back and forth in time until all conscious living beings are accounted for.

Law 2 confers unity to the multi-birth theory, which means that there is only one conscience. The conscience is actually the same for all the people in the world, just in different "conscience time" states. This solves an important problem: if there actually were more than one conscience, we'd have to assume that conscience creation and, consequently, conscience destruction also existed. But conscience destruction violates the dogma of conscience persistence, and even conscience creation violates it at some point, and cannot be easily explained.

Law 2 also gives the comforting idea of infinity, meaning it's going to take a long time before we run out of all living beings in the Universe space-time.

This is the law that actually confuses people the most, especially when I tell them that either I was already born as them or I will be. It is an interesting observation that becomes more clear once we understand that there is only one conscience and it passes through everyone's minds.

Finally, there are some things that the theory doesn't explain, like the order of rebirths. I believe they are taken at random, without ever repeating the same living being. There are other valid explanations, though, like the chronological order of conception, for instance. I don't really find it important to determine that.

Another thing left unexplained is the definition of what constitutes a conscious living being. It should be every animal with a conscience, but one cannot know which animals have consciences and which don't. I guess cats and dogs might possibly have a conscience, insects not so much. Again, I don't find it an important issue.

The Secondary Laws

The secondary laws of the multi-rebirth theory are to ensure there are no other dogmas involved. They show that conscience persistence is possible without the idea of God or an afterlife.

• Law 3: Conscious living beings are completely independent of each other.

"Independent" means "unrelated" here, and these are very important words. Although each and every one of us shares the same conscience, the lives we live are completely independent of our previous and next lives. We have absolutely no memory of our previous lives, and our present lives do not depend on any of our past lives. This means that the idea of karma, where your acts in the present life either reward you or punish you in the next life, is wrong according to the multi-rebirth theory: your next life is chosen at random (presumably) and with no relationship with your present live whatsoever.

Things might get a little confused at this point, so I need to re-explain the definition of conscience. To be conscious is simply to be aware that you think, and therefore you exist. It is only this awareness that is transferred to other beings, not your thoughts or memories.

The third law also solves the important problem of predetermination: as it is possible that one (or more) of my past lives takes place in the future, one could argue that my whole life is already predetermined, that every arbitrary decision I make is actually "written in a script" that influenced some of my previous lives. Yes, this might be true at a higher level, maybe we could see the whole script if we joined all lives together, but since we are independent of each other, my decisions are still arbitrary. The future is only a paradox when we know what will happen then, and the third law ensures that that never happens.

• Law 4: Conscience transference occurs immediately after the being's death.

"Immediately" is not to be taken here in the sense of time (after all, the time is relative, and conscience moves freely in it), but in the sense of memory. Even if the conscience takes some time to travel to another being, your perception of that time is null: as far as you know, you are reborn (as another being) immediately after you die.

This means no afterlife, no purgatory, no judgement. There is no transition period between the death of one being and the birth of the next. And, consequently, there is no transition place as well: heaven and hell do not fit in the multi-rebirth theory. Everything happens in this universe, and in these four dimensions.

This is actually why this theory is called the Theory of Multi-Rebirth, and not the Theory of Multi-Reincarnation. Because reincarnation automatically assumes there is something other than flesh, something people call the soul. The soul would be the part of the person that remained after the person died. The conscience is not a soul, it is physically implanted in our brains. Our thoughts and memories do not remain after we die, only the awareness of ourselves remains by being reborn in another being, all beings living in this Universe.

In Conclusion

This is how these two dogmas and four laws constitute the Theory of Multi-Rebirth. It just makes it comforting to know that there is something else to ourselves after we die, without having to take on all that religion bullshit. If it is really true or not... I guess we'll never know.

Starting over

I usually say that if you want the full experience of something new, you have to try it at least three times. Let's start with a simple example: visiting a city. The first time you see a new city, it's overwhelming, everything is new, there's so much to see, you don't have time for everything and you don't know exactly what to pick, so you sort of go with the flow. When you go away and come back for a second time, the experience is different. You find not only new places but also familiar ones. You recognize some of the streets from the first time. You feel more comfortable. You know a bit of what went right and what went wrong in the first time, so now your will is different. You want to see the places you didn't get to see the first time, you will adventure yourself to know more of the city than the usual touristic route. But at the same time, you already know some of the places where you feel safe and comfortable, and are able to resort to them if you need or want to. When you go away and come back for the third time, then you have the expert's view. You know this city. You know exactly where to go and exactly what to do. You don't need to waste time on trial and error. You can start going to places where only native people go. You surely made already a couple of friends and the purpose of your visit changes a bit to make space to hang out with them. You start feeling a bit like a native yourself. After this, the experience doesn't change too much. If you come a forth time, a fifth time and so on, it's pretty much the same as the third time. After the third time, there's nothing really new to experience. This is my three-step experience theory. It works with several other things: having children is another great example. The first kid is a complete mistery, the second kid is different but you already know a bit of what to do, and the third kid is a walk in the park.

My personal example is moving to a different city. I'm on step two of my moving abroad experience. When I moved abroad to Frankfurt, changing my home for the first time, everything was new. I remember standing on the terrace of the Galeria shopping mall, where you have a nice view to the city, on my very first day in Frankfurt, and feeling a mix of excitement and sorrow. There I was, all alone with a whole new world to discover. The sense of loneliness brought a tear to the corner of my eye, but I felt this was a fantastic city and that I would be OK. But I didn't feel that when I moved to Cambridge last week. The loneliness is now easy to cope with, because I already know what happens next, I already know how it turns out: you start with your colleagues, then you wander around meeting lots of people, and you end up with a group of close friends that make you feel really good about living where you are and you won't ever lose for the rest of your life, no matter where you end up. If anything, I feel nostalgic about leaving a place and leaving nothing behind for the first time: no house, no furniture, not even a plate or a fork, nothing you can call yours. This leaving nothing behind experience is a step one tryout so everything about it is very new to me. The rest already looks familiar: wandering in the city alone in the first days, meeting the first people, learning where the stuff is in the supermarket.

Things look easier when you experience them for the second time, and that's why the experience is so different. I'm even starting to get used to cars driving on the left side, which surprised me because it's been just one week since I arrived. Today I found out I don't need Google Maps to know my way in the city center anymore. And meeting new people is a bit easier now that you know how it works. Yes, it's a fresh start in a new city, but I've done fresh starts before.

About this blog

This is not my first blog. Or my second, third, and so on and so on. I always had several different blogs for several different matters, from the completely public and funny blog to the more private, secret and one-specific-girl-oriented blog. This blog was created to fill a gap in my blogging cravings, to write my personal, random thoughts on life, without getting too personal. I actually already had a blog for that, but that blog had a couple of constraints which I now find a bit annoying and, most important than that, it was in Portuguese, so it didn't reach my non-Portuguese-speaking friends (if you want to adventure yourselves in Portuguese, go ahead, the blog is called Meia Hora de Escrita).

Like my previous Portuguese blog, this blog is what I call semi-public (or semi-private if you will). It is publicly available, but it won't be advertised anywhere: it's a blog that has to be found. I might give a clue here and there but I won't call too much attention to it. If you find it, and you like it, you're welcome to stay.

Now, finally, about the name. I'm starting this blog as I begin to settle in a new city, Cambridge. So I began thinking about the name and I thought of a perfect name for it: Thoughts and the City. It would be like Sex and the City, but without the sex :P Seriously now, the perfectness of it lied in the blog's intention which was not only to register my thoughts but also to comtemplate the city where they are based. Unfortunately, the blog's address was already taken. Brain to Let is a strong runner-up. The words "To Let" are the first words I remember from my first day in Cambridge, and are actually a big part of my first day experience. You see, the first day I set foot on Cambridge it was for a job interview. I had the interview in the morning, it was finished in about a hour and then I had the rest of the day to see the city. The city center was an hour walk from there, and I said "great!" I like to walk, and nowadays long walks don't frighten me at all. But when I left the company, I realized that I had forgotten one important rule of long walks: always visit the toilet before a long walk. After walking for half an hour I started seeing the first "TO LET" signs and I was already so desperate to find a toilet that I was seeing the missing "i" between the two letters in the signs, like a mirage. A mirage that, obviously, would vanish as soon as I got closer to the sign. It was also the first time I realized that the British use the verb "to let" to mean "to put a house to rent", something I never became aware of before. The blog's description is a memory of how hard was to find a house in Cambridge, especially one that accepts pets. Brain to Let, the blog, lets you access some of my thoughts, impressions and feelings, which are in a way a bit of furniture of my own brain. Rent is cheap, only a few minutes of your time. Feel free to stay and make yourself comfortable.