"That may sound all drippy-hippie, getting in touch with inner feelings and all that business. But based on my experience during that time, most people are always feeling something or adopting some attitude or choosing to pay attention to one thing or one part of something without even knowing that we are doing it. We do it automatically, like a heartbeat. Sometimes I would be sitting there in a room and become aware of how much effort it was to pay attention to just your heartbeat for more than a minute or so---it's almost as though your heartbeat wants to stay out of your awareness, like a rock star wanting avoiding the limelight. But it's there if you can double up and make yourself pay attention. Same with music, too, the doubling was being able to both listen very closely and also to feel whatever emotions the music evoked---because obviously that is why we are into music, that it makes us feel certain things, otherwise it would would be just noise--and not only have them, listening but be able to be aware of them..."
-David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, page 183
This was a very interesting quote to me. It does contain some of the qualities from the "This is Water Commencement Speech" that Wallace gave at Kenyon College. Although this section of the book is describing the effects of the character on Obetrol. I still think that it is a telling example on what it feels like to be alive. How hard it is to focus on certain things and how it is nice to be medicated...more to come
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