Coming Home

I can’t tell if we’re stuck with this design because it’s familiar, or if it’s familiar because we’re stuck.

And more often than not, I find that what I need is some friction, some labor , the effort to work things out. Efficiency is an anti-goal; it is at odds with the work, which requires resistance and tension in order to come into being.

I made a decision many years ago to shape my work around the books I read. If I’m being completely honest, I don’t recall spending a lot of time thinking about that decision or contemplating the consequences of it. It seemed right and so I ran with it. But it has since given rise to a kind of scholarship and writing that I’m not sure I would have l... See more

What do they do,

the singers, tale-writers, dancers, painters, shapers, makers?

They go there with empty hands,

into the gap between.

They come back with things in their hands.

Will it be weird, to write this way? Probably. I’m tossing the same words into (currently) three totally different networks, each with their own affect and moods and characters of the day. I’m keeping my distance, such that I likely won’t hear the replies (at least, not with any timeliness) or see the ripples my words make, should they make any at ... See more

And so I remain at an unresolvable juncture: the intersection of the very strong belief that we must experiment with new modes and systems of communication, and the certain knowledge that every time I so much as glance at anything shaped like a social feed, my brain smoothes out, the web of connections and ideas I’m weaving is washed away, and I tu... See more

I believe that we desperately need to be experimenting and developing methods of communication that aren’t beholden to either the advertising industry or the brittle egos of billionaires.

It’s allowed me to cultivate the soil to suit my purposes—rather than having to adapt my garden to the soil I was given.

And yet: as much as the Fediverse is different (the governing structures, the incentives, the moderation, the absence of ads and engagement tricks), so much of it is also unsettlingly familiar—the same small boxes, the same few buttons, the same mechanics of following and being followed. The same babbling, tumbling, rushing stream of thoughts. I ca... See more