Somewhere in the Silence

October 24, 2009 - Reading time: 2 minutes

Clouds of another life
Wash across the sunlight
Changing shape as they go by
Thought I saw your face there
But like them you just—

—disappear
Disappear into empty sky
Quietly
So removed from reason
Hey
Have you ever had to reason?
Hey

The eagle comes and goes
To somewhere much higher
When the silence grows
Can you hear it, sniper?

Visions and memories
Where some one once laid flowers
For the past and things to come
Thought you were gone
But I can feel you
So I—

—turn around
Turn around, yes, and there you are
Here again
Can you give it some meaning?
Hey
ask again, but you say nothing
Hey

Motion without sound
Ice inside the fire
The stillness in the storm
Silence hides the sniper

Eagles come and go
To someplace much higher
When the silence grows
Can you hear it, sniper?

What goes through your sniper’s mind?...

—"Somewhere in the Silence (Sniper's Theme)",
Yoko Kanno, Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society


The definition of a truly beautiful doll

October 15, 2009 - Reading time: ~1 minute

is a living, breathing body devoid of a soul. [...] The human is no match for a doll, in its form, its elegance in motion, its very being. The inadequacies of human awareness become the inadequacies of life's reality. Perfection is possible only for those without consciousness, or perhaps endowed with infinite consciousness. In other words, for dolls and for gods. [...]

The doubt is whether a creature that certainly appears to be alive, really is. Alternatively, the doubt that a lifeless object might actually live. That's why dolls haunt us. They are modelled on humans. They are, in fact, nothing but human. They make us face the terror of being reduced to simple mechanisms and matter. In other words, the fear that, fundamentally, all humans belong to the void.

—Kim,
Ghost in the Shell: Innocence


Humans are different from robots.

October 14, 2009 - Reading time: ~1 minute

That's an article of faith, like black isn't white. It's no more helpful than the basic fact that humans aren't machines. [...]

Unlike industrial robots, the androids and gynoids designed as "pets" weren't designed along utilitarian or practical models. Istead, we model them on a human image, an idealized one at that. Why are humans so obsessed with recreating themselves? [...]

Children have been excluded from the customary standards of human behaviour, if you define humans as beings who possess a conventional identity and act out of free will. Then what are children in the chaos preceding maturity? They differ profoundly from "humans", but they obviously have human form. The dolls that little girls mother are not surrogates for real babies. Little girls aren't so much imitating child rearing, as they are experiencing something deeply akin to child rearing. [...] Raising children is the simplest way to achieve the ancient dream of artificial life.

—Haraway,
Ghost in the Shell: Innocence


October 13, 2009 - Reading time: ~1 minute

If the essence of life is informational carried in DNA, the society and civilization are just colossal memory systems, and a metropolis like this one, simply a sprawling memory.

—Batou,
Ghost in the Shell: Innocence


October 11, 2009 - Reading time: ~1 minute

生死去来
棚[頭*]傀儡
一[缐**]断時
落落磊磊

from Ghost in the Shell: Innocence;
unknown origin

* [头]
** [线]


Player

August 1, 2009 - Reading time: ~1 minute

Quietly swimming in the stardust
The celestial searchlights
Shattering my wings
The steel blade of a knife

How many times has died in an attack
And was once again reborn
My imperishable soul

I play again without the rules
And call upon myself
The fire, the fire

And that is all I know
I do not seek another role

Today I am just a player
I do not regret anything

Quietly swimming in the stardust
The celestial searchlights...

—Yoko Kanno, Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society