truly a medium-sized rant about success
Preface: I am unsuccessful in every possible way. But. I am the huge rejectable thing, make of lots of time spent streaming little things into it. “What it is” isn’t what will be accepted yet; just because a thing is rejected doesn’t mean it isn’t good, it means it’s rejected by them. Every “them” has their standards. Respect the game of having standards and having to only be one thing! It’s a beautiful game we all play with our identities and our days, too. We can only say yes to displaying and including so much. The fact is, we can give our huge thing a home — the hard work is loving it enough to talk about it again, to share it again, to keep coming back to it, to being a person who sends what seem like cold emails to people you don’t expect to see or hear what you see and hear and feel…it’s humiliating, but humility is a good thing, remember. Humility is good, the best in any discipline (sports, music, business) never arrive and don’t take a whole day off to celebrate and rest on their laurels. Play the game you love, love the game you play, play for the long haul. Your short-term wins won’t do a damn thing, nobody cares.
the big is the small, the small is the big
i reject this distinction; all things are the same shape
you can zoom in and out and it’s the same size and shape: of one consciousness, one reader — oh, how could I communicate what I mean?! Any work is a conversation between a mind that doesn’t understand, and by this I mean include; by this I mean, the person reading is not yet familiar with the part of reality where the person saying something has said it; we are all updating our models in sequence, in sync…discrete brain cycles, 10,000 per day, days at a time, yet no one gets to tomorrow! no one’s ever been there!
yet we all write for tomorrow
satire is an important tool for changing things
saturn is an important image for us to keep perspective on our planet
🪐🌎
Measuring always implies comparing, difference.
This country depends on measuring and difference — oh, how sick I am of writing online trying to fundraise and bootstrap and INSPIRE in the time of coronavirus! I’m probably just mad I haven’t inspired yet—AND I HAVE! It happens in texts, relationships, conversations; the movements of the heart will not be writ where “the economy” counts; it feels very good to be on the side of the working class in the revolution, the tenants rather than landlords.
I’m having fun radicalizing my well-employed friends, making a point to make them notice they are the kind of person who has a $100,000 or above lifestyle — and I riff freely about what I think it costs the rest of the planet. What if we all got to $70k like the conventional wisdom says no one is happier above? Aren’t the best things in life free, and earned through courage and compassion and genuine interest?
She makes the sign of a teaspoon
He makes the sign of a wave
for some reason I thought it was “signpost” not teaspoon
I wonder if they’re related?
🌀
doubt is an endless thing to track — if you keep following it, year in year out, never breaking the chain…is it necessarily art?
“It is not only my dreams, my belief is that all these dreams are yours as well. The only distinction between me and you is that I can articulate them. And that is what poetry or painting or literature or filmmaking is about…and it is my duty because this might be the inner chronicle of what we are.”
— Werner Herzog
and we keep going
boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past
our own past, our personal heroes, where we come from
tapping into that energy we’ve always said
remembering everything always known
no great way to end any work of art except more praise,
stuff it tighter with possibility and celebration,
wind the spring tighter so when it may burst forth in someone else’s hands, all the ingredients are there — give them enough ingredients to cook a meal
and eat
eat
