but havent figured out how to establish it as a int/variable that can change when included in IF statements (like I attempted at the bottom of the code). As it stands, the brightness of the LED Strip is established in the beginning of the code and doesnt change during the IF statements..
The brightness of the strip is not bound to the value in proxcont. Changing the value in proxcont doesn't affect the brightness unless you call
FastLED.setBrightness(proxcont);
again.