aworkinglibrary-com-nhumyz.txt (16918B)
1 [1]Practice the future → 2 3 • [2]Reading 4 • [3]Writing 5 • [4]Thinking 6 • [5]About 7 • [6]Subscribe 8 9 [7] 10 11 A working library is a blog about work, reading & technology by Mandy Brown 12 13 2024-09-19 14 15 [8]Coming home 16 17 What do they do, 18 the singers, tale-writers, dancers, painters, shapers, makers? 19 They go there with empty hands, 20 into the gap between. 21 They come back with things in their hands. 22 23 [9]Le Guin, Always Coming Home, page 74 24 25 I’ve [10]written before about the restlessness inherent to screens, the 26 inability to ever linger or pause or catch your breath. It’s a strangely 27 disembodied experience, a sense of ceaseless, rustling motion when nothing is 28 moving at all: electrical pulses flash and gasp beneath the oceans, your mind 29 strains to catch up, your body remains still save for a few twitching digits, 30 the shell that’s left behind when your spirit evacuates for the mirage of 31 higher ground. We become as smooth and reflective as the screen itself, all 32 glassy surfaces and metallic edges obscuring the hollowness within. No need to 33 fantasize about what it might be like to upload your consciousness to the 34 machine—most of us are already there. 35 36 It’s curious, the way we refer to media that comes at us as a stream, whether 37 of moving pictures or sentence fragments, as if it were the mere flow of cool, 38 fresh water running smoothly and gently at our feet. But all it takes is one 39 big storm, and your friendly little stream becomes a gushing torrent of mud and 40 debris, strong enough to fling cars and houses out of its path, to smash your 41 own fragile body—itself mostly water and so perhaps sympathetic to the display 42 of power—against the rocks. 43 44 One meaning of the verb “distract” is to separate, to draw apart. To separate 45 the body from the spirit. To draw apart, or perhaps to draw out, as of a small 46 animal lured from its den by the smell of fresh grass, only to be met by dust 47 and talons. Another meaning is madness. 48 49 To step into the stream of any social network, to become immersed in the news, 50 reactions, rage and hopes, the marketing and psyops, the funny jokes and clever 51 memes, the earnest requests for mutual aid, for sign ups, for jobs, the clap 52 backs and the call outs, the warnings and invitations—it can feel like a kind 53 of madness. It’s unsettling, in the way that sediment is unsettled by water, 54 lifted up and tossed around, scattered about. A pebble goes wherever the river 55 sends it, worn down and smoothed day after day until all that’s left is sand. 56 57 At some point I became acutely aware of a sense of scattering or separation 58 whenever I glanced at the socials. As if some part of me, or some pattern or 59 vision that I cupped tenderly in my hands, was washed away, wrenched from my 60 grasp before I quite realized what it was. I think of the orb spiders I often 61 glimpse in my tiny city backyard, delicate webs balanced on two leaves of the 62 rhododendron and the stem of a laurel. In my own work, I’m weaving ideas, 63 stories, prophesies, metaphors, dreams by the shore of this great, inconstant 64 stream, and every so often a wave rises up and swallows the whole affair. I 65 can’t predict when a wave will come; I can, at this point, count on it coming. 66 67 A wise spider would move a little ways away. But not too far, because this is 68 where the life is. And so I find myself thinking about how I might get some 69 distance, what it means to move uphill a ways, to weave my web safe from the 70 spray. To get out of the flood zone. To come home. 71 72 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 73 74 Some weeks ago, I quietly shipped a new content type on A Working Library, such 75 that I am now writing [11]short, [12]social-[13]shaped posts on my site and 76 then sending them off to the various platforms. This is not a novel mode of 77 publishing, but rather one borrowed and adapted from the [14]POSSE model 78 (“publish on your site, syndicate elsewhere”) developed by the IndieWeb 79 community. While one of the reasons oft declared for using POSSE is the ability 80 to own your content, I’m less interested in ownership than I am in context. 81 Writing on my own site has very different affordances: I’m not typing into a 82 little box, but writing in a text file. I’m not surrounded by other people’s 83 thinking, but located within my own body of work. As I played with setting this 84 up, I could immediately feel how that would change the kinds of things I would 85 say, and it felt good. Really good. Like putting on a favorite t-shirt, or 86 coming home to my solid, quiet house after a long time away. 87 88 A website is, among other things, a container. The shape of that container both 89 constrains and makes possible what goes within it. This is, I think, one of the 90 primary justifications for having your own website. Not just so you can own 91 your stuff (for some meaning of “ownership,” in a culture in which any 92 billionaire can scrape your work without permission and copyright only protects 93 the rich). Not just so you have a home base among the shifting winds of the 94 various platforms, which rise and fall like brush before the fire. Not just so 95 you can avoid setting up camp in a Nazi bar. But also so that you can shape the 96 work—so that you can give shape to it, and in that shaping make possible work 97 that couldn’t arise elsewhere. 98 99 I made a decision many years ago to shape my work around the books I read. If 100 I’m being completely honest, I don’t recall spending a lot of time thinking 101 about that decision or contemplating the consequences of it. It seemed right 102 and so I ran with it. But it has since given rise to a kind of scholarship and 103 writing that I’m not sure I would have landed on were I writing on some 104 all-purpose platform, or fitting my work into someone else’s box. It’s allowed 105 me to cultivate the soil to suit my purposes—rather than having to adapt my 106 garden to the soil I was given. Not every seed I’ve planted has thrived, of 107 course. But after all these years, some are quite hardy, while others have made 108 some very rich compost. And I find myself often amazed by what emerges: not 109 only the seeds I planted but a great many I never anticipated, connections and 110 stories I didn’t see until I was right on top of them, until they were tangled 111 at my feet. Dark velvety leaves amid glossy blooms, thorns and small sour 112 fruits, vines that weave and climb and show me the way. 113 114 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 115 116 This is, objectively, a difficult way to publish. There’s a great deal of 117 friction between an idea or phrase coming to mind and the words making it out 118 into the world. And I don’t mean the writing itself (which, as every writer 119 will tell you, is dreadful), but the actual mechanics of sharing that writing. 120 I mean, I am the fool who opens their damn terminal every time they want to 121 publish; in recent weeks, I have spent a not insignificant number of hours 122 writing some absolutely criminal CSS. I cannot, in good conscience, advise this 123 path for anyone with sense. But the choice to do so suits my own proclivities: 124 a desire to tinker not only with the words but with the strata underneath them, 125 and a long-running interest in the material reality of publishing. And more 126 often than not, I find that what I need is some friction, some labor, the 127 effort to work things out. Efficiency is an anti-goal; it is at odds with the 128 work, which requires resistance and tension in order to come into being. 129 130 This is one of the many reasons why I find the current conversation about [15] 131 so-called generative AI so immensely frustrating: there’s all this hype about 132 making everything easier and faster, about how we can eliminate all the work 133 involved in the making of words and images. But no one arguing for this seems 134 to have asked what’s left when the work is gone. What is the experience of 135 asking for something to appear and then instantly receiving it? What changes 136 between the thought and the manifestation? I fear that nothing changes, that 137 nothing is changed in such a making, least of all ourselves. But then, what 138 does it mean to be unchanged, for your feet to pass so lightly over the ground 139 they don’t so much as disturb the sand? Even the dead make change in the world, 140 as their bodies decay and and are transformed into food for beasts and bugs and 141 trees. But in eliminating the effort, in refusing the temporality of making, 142 the outcome of an “AI”-driven creative process is a phantasm, an 143 unsubstantiality, something that passes through the world without leaving any 144 trace. A root that twists back upon itself and tries to suck the water from its 145 own desiccated veins. 146 147 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 148 149 There was a time when I felt some resonance between spending time in the social 150 stream and doing my own work. As if the movement of the water imparted some 151 energy or power I could make use of, and then return. But it’s been a long time 152 since I’ve felt that way. I grieve that loss: a great number of my closest 153 friends are people I met in the halcyon days of Twitter, and I find I still 154 often long for that kind of connection, the ambient awareness of people in 155 whose company I felt at home. But I know that longing to be a kind of [16] 156 nostalgia, an unrealizable wish to return to a past that never was quite as I 157 remember it. I do not want those memories to be a burden, like stones weighing 158 down my pockets. I want, instead, to carry them lightly and tenderly, to have 159 the fortitude to accept the grief that comes with leaving the past where it 160 belongs. 161 162 A word about the Fediverse is warranted here. I believe that we desperately 163 need to be experimenting and developing methods of communication that aren’t 164 beholden to either the advertising industry or the brittle egos of 165 billionaires. Hitching our means of finding each other and forging 166 relationships to those insatiable appetites is to invite scarcity and fear into 167 our most intimate alliances. We need room to talk and to take up space, to 168 listen and to be heard, to organize ourselves, absent that exponential scale of 169 manipulation. And I think that something like the Fediverse, which seeks to 170 locate power in small communities, and functions at the level of a protocol 171 rather than a company, moves us in the right direction. 172 173 And yet: as much as the Fediverse is different (the governing structures, the 174 incentives, the moderation, the absence of ads and engagement tricks), so much 175 of it is also unsettlingly familiar—the same small boxes, the same few buttons, 176 the same mechanics of following and being followed. The same babbling, 177 tumbling, rushing stream of thoughts. I can’t tell if we’re stuck with this 178 design because it’s familiar, or if it’s familiar because we’re stuck. Very 179 likely it’s me that’s stuck, fixed in place while everything rushes around me, 180 hoping for a gap, a break, a warm rock to rest awhile on. Longing for a mode of 181 communication that lifts me up instead of wiping me out. 182 183 And so I remain at an unresolvable juncture: the intersection of the very 184 strong belief that we must experiment with new modes and systems of 185 communication, and the certain knowledge that every time I so much as glance at 186 anything shaped like a social feed, my brain smoothes out, the web of 187 connections and ideas I’m weaving is washed away, and I tumble downstream, only 188 to have to pick myself up and trudge heavily through the mud back to where I 189 belong. 190 191 It’s exhausting. It is, at this point in my life, unsustainable. I cannot dip 192 into the stream, even briefly, and also maintain the awareness and focus needed 193 to do my own work, the work that is uniquely mine. I cannot wade through the 194 water and still protect this fragile thing in my hands. And perhaps I owe to my 195 continued senescence the knowledge that I do not have time for this anymore. 196 Perhaps it’s age that grants the wisdom to know where my attention belongs and 197 the discipline to be able to direct it. The great power of a middle-aged woman 198 is that she knows where to [17]give her fucks. 199 200 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 201 202 Will it be weird, to write this way? Probably. I’m tossing the same words into 203 (currently) three totally different networks, each with their own affect and 204 moods and characters of the day. I’m keeping my distance, such that I likely 205 won’t hear the replies (at least, not with any timeliness) or see the ripples 206 my words make, should they make any at all. But maybe we need more weird—not in 207 the very recent sense of the word, but in the sense of prophesy or potential, a 208 spell or charm, the magic, the wild, the wyrd—that which is becoming, rather 209 than that which has already passed us by. 210 211 In Madeline Miller’s beautiful retelling, the Greek witch-goddess Circe comes 212 to understand the difference between her own magic and the greater gods’ 213 divinity: 214 215 Let me say what sorcery is not: it is not divining power, which comes with 216 a thought and a blink. It must be made and worked, planned and searched 217 out, dug up, dried, chipped and ground, cooked, spoken over, and sung. 218 219 [18]Miller, Circe, page 83 220 221 Circe is surprised to learn that she loves the work of magic, loves it even 222 when it’s infuriating and frustrating, when it’s filthy and exhausting. (The 223 reader is not, I think, surprised.) But she doesn’t learn that love until she 224 is exiled, left alone on an island, her only companions the birds and lions and 225 wild boars. There she comes to see what her sorcery really is. There she goes 226 into the gap, and discovers that magic is dirt and muscle, work and will, 227 effort and choice. 228 229 Later, she returns to the world. Not to the world of the gods—which she comes 230 to realize is a lifeless place—but to the mortal world, carrying her small 231 herbs and potions, her wisdom. But as far as she travels, the island remains 232 her home, the place she always comes back to. 233 234 My own magic is a small one: to write in order to uncover what I think; to 235 prefigure a future of work that serves the living; to listen intently as people 236 speak aloud a story of themselves that is, in the speaking, being rewritten. 237 But it is mine. For too long I have tried to make space for it along the banks, 238 to keep one foot in the water, to speak my incantations into the wind while the 239 river slips the sediment out from under me and pulls me ever deeper. 240 241 No longer.* 242 243 Related books 244 245 [19]Always Coming Home 246 247 Ursula K. Le Guin 248 249 [20][le-guin-al] 250 251 An archeology of the future. 252 253 [21]Circe 254 255 Madeline Miller 256 257 [22][miller-cir] 258 259 This is a subversive and triumphant retelling of the story of Circe, daughter 260 of the sun-god Helios. 261 262 Newsletter 263 264 Occasional reading notes delivered to your inbox 265 266 Email address [23][ ] [25][subscribe] 267 • [26]RSS 268 • [27]Colophon 269 • [28]Copyright © 2008-2024 Mandy Brown 270 • [29][email protected] 271 • [30]@aworkinglibrary 272 273 274 References: 275 276 [1] https://everythingchanges.us/ 277 [2] https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading 278 [3] https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing 279 [4] https://aworkinglibrary.com/thinking 280 [5] https://aworkinglibrary.com/about 281 [6] https://aworkinglibrary.com/subscribe 282 [7] https://aworkinglibrary.com/ 283 [8] https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/coming-home 284 [9] https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/always-coming-home 285 [10] https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/out-of-time 286 [11] https://aworkinglibrary.com/thinking/202408071000 287 [12] https://aworkinglibrary.com/thinking/202408301732 288 [13] https://aworkinglibrary.com/thinking/202409090848 289 [14] https://indieweb.org/POSSE 290 [15] https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/smoke-screen 291 [16] https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/who-we-wish-to-become 292 [17] https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/unified-theory-of------ 293 [18] https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/circe 294 [19] https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/always-coming-home 295 [20] https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/always-coming-home 296 [21] https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/circe 297 [22] https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/circe 298 [26] https://aworkinglibrary.com/feed/index.xml 299 [27] https://aworkinglibrary.com/colophon/ 300 [28] https://aworkinglibrary.com/copyright/ 301 [29] mailto:[email protected] 302 [30] https://mstdn.social/@aworkinglibrary