Category: life

techade

Exactly ten years ago, I quit my first office job. I was a sys admin (the IT guy) for this hilariously dysfunctional company – the sort of business that stayed afloat only because it had cornered the market on an obscure machine that big manufacturers were willing to pay silly piles of cash for.

I found the job on craigslist. My interview was to get their emails working again because they’d gotten a virus that was sending out ads for homeopathic pills from their servers, so they’d been blacklisted as spam by Microsoft. I didn’t know what I was doing but I wore a belt clip for my blackberry and that meant something in those days, dammit.

Everything about it was comically toxic. The lead engineer left in the middle of a Tuesday and sent an email a week later to let everyone that he was kayaking for a month. The secretary was desperate to get fired; she would intentionally fuck up in the most obvious ways possible, but the CEO refused to give her the satisfaction of receiving unemployment checks. He was a shrill, anxiety-inducing person by default. He relished in the chance to berate his underlings, and his shrieking carried through the whole building. It was the kind of office where you’d walk in and hear someone crying, and you knew he was in today.

One day the internet cut out in the conference rooms. To find out where the cables had been run, I met with the architect of the building. His office was in the loading bay, where he could chain smoke through 3 packs a day. While we pored over blueprints of the building he told me how the magic of marriage died after the first time he saw his wife taking a shit.

My boss had a remarkable ability not to absorb the chaos around him. In his little bits of free time, he’d teach me how to run scripts or crimp cables. He ate pasta salad for lunch every day while he watched Greek, a show about frat culture. He told me he used to compete in professional beer pong competitions.

I lasted about 4 months. It was Christmas Eve and I was on the phone with our internet provider trying to restore service (again). The CEO rushed up to me in a panic, demanding that I show him how to delete voice mails on his new iPhone so that his inbox wasn’t full any more. I tried explaining I was fixing the company-wide internet outage, but he was uninterested. Something about juggling those two tasks broke my brain, and I never showed up again. I told my boss I was going back to school. I didn’t, but I wanted to, because I was terrified of falling into a future where I’m stuck. Cornered into eating shit from bad people.

Work is a lot better, these days. But I’ve been reflecting a lot on what it means to work in technology this last year. And I’m not happy with it. This is the first in a series of meanderings on that.

calling

around 7am i sat down for a rest. a stranger turned around and started chatting me up as we shared a cigarette. then they launched into a fifteen-minute monologue.

about me.

they said that they saw me everywhere this year and that i was usually alone. they could never imagine going out without their friends, but it gave them hope just knowing that i could do it. they said they saw a passion so strong it made them want to find something in life they loved as much as i loved dancing. they said whenever they saw me on the dance floor, they saw the party.

i hesitate to share this because i’m not trying to flaunt anything. the dance floor is not about ego.

but encouragement like this tells me that what i’m trying to do matters to at least a few people out there. that my efforts are not in vain. because i don’t just dance for myself. i’ve done that a hundred times over already. often, now, i’m dancing for the party, to loosen up the crowd and set the vibe. for the local DJ that needs to know they’re worthy even if they didn’t pack the house tonight. for my friends, to keep their energy up and make them feel safe.

i just passed two years since my first rave in Brooklyn (Black Hole’s 1-year anniversary). i remember the fear and anticipation of going out in those days – not knowing what to expect, being completely alone thirty, forty, fifty nights over. but i knew i loved the music, and i knew i wanted to be a part of these experiences. i let my ears guide me.

i still feel like a loner sometimes. i wish i were better at making conversation; i kick myself at all the missed opportunities where i can’t think of something to say and miss out on a chance to get to know an acquaintance better.

the more i learn about our community, the more i see its imperfections and injustices. but my love for this continues to grow. i feel more strongly than ever that this is where most of my energy in life is going to be spent. i love this music. i love the people. i love these environments. i’ve never felt more fulfilled and more alive than on the dance floor at sunrise.

if there’s such a thing as a calling in life, this is it.

sketchbook

Filled up my second sketchbook (ever), which seems as good a time as any to reflect on my relationship to art.

Image may contain: 1 person

1. Art is fundamentally performative for me. My dancing is my writing is my photography is my sketching, and all of these are done in the context of an audience, of being seen. There is a reason all of my sketching happens on the subway. Something about the mere possibility of being observed adds fuel to my creative fires.

2. In all of my creations, I’m looking for novel patterns, shapes, lines, and textures. My sketches are all guided by a gradually overlaid series of rules. Visual interest emerges when these rules conflict or the patterns can permutate in unexpected ways. This also describes my dancing, where my movement is built on a simple foundation of matching my body to the beat, but delight is found in breaking the patterns in ways that still conform to the aural structure.

3. I can call myself an artist in the presence of full-time artists and not feel like a phoney because I don’t live from my creations.

polyamory

There’s a line from Her that has stuck with me over the years.

“The heart is not like a box that gets filled up; it expands in size the more you love.”

I don’t know if Spike Jonze intended this as a reflection on polyamory, but that’s how I’ve come to interpret it.

I used to dismiss the idea that it was feasible to love more than one person at a time, that people were just fooling themselves, settling for less, diluting their experience of any single connection. That may actually be true for some people; I’ve come to recognize that there are a lot of people being poly for the wrong reasons. Talking about polyamory can be difficult because of this – everyone comes into the conversation with their own associations and preconceptions. Most of us have witnessed (or at least heard recounted through the gossip chain) some ill-conceived attempt at being poly where every party ended up hurt and miserable. Further complicating things is the fact that there are vastly different ways to be polyamorous.

My interest in this started with one realization: I’ve never really fallen out of love. I’ve had a lot of amazing relationships full of beautiful moments and memories. I learned so much and grew immensely as a person with each person I was with. I spent so much time with them. As I entered new relationships, I found myself wrestling with these feelings. I felt like I ought to let go of these memories, bury them deep and hope they wouldn’t resurface again. Am I really supposed to just dump those connections and feelings into the abyss and start over again?

That felt so incongruent, yet ironically I found myself stupidly jealous of people in someone else’s past. I wanted to feel special, like I was the only person they had ever dated, and this becomes wildly unrealistic as I approach the age of 30. Some of us have been around the block…a couple times. Part of my interest in this has been out of frustration with my own hypocrisy.

For me, this starts with being honest – with myself and with others – about what I’m actually feeling, rather than endlessly trying to tamp down thoughts that I’m afraid for someone else to hear. I don’t have to pretend that I’m not attracted to other people, or that I don’t have feelings squirreled away somewhere for someone besides the person right in front of me.

I once thought I couldn’t be poly because I never had interest in hookups or one-night stands. My heart just doesn’t work that way; I get attached, and I like getting attached. There’s so much joy in getting to know someone. My first night with someone has never been anywhere near as good as the tenth, and it (generally) only gets better from there. Intimacy fucking rules.

Yet I also don’t have the capacity or energy to maintain multiple relationships simultaneously. I can’t divide my attention or affection in that way. When I’m with someone, they have my undivided attention and energy. That’s how I want it to be. So where I’ve landed is probably better described as non-monogamy.

There are still rules. Being poly doesn’t mean you can do what you want – which is definitely a perception I’ve seen. Jealousy doesn’t cease to be a problem. But as someone who self-describes as being fairly jealous – I’ve found it a lot easier to manage these feelings than I expected because of how much more open and honest the communication becomes. Since there’s no need to pretend or pressure to uphold a fiction of permanent cognitive monogamy, trust can flow effortlessly.

It means there is flexibility and understanding. It’s okay for someone to feel attraction or love for another person besides me, that this doesn’t mean I am devalued as a partner or as a human. Because people are different. We each offer unique perspectives and attitudes, our own sets of experiences and expertise.

Increasingly I find it hard to imagine how one person could fulfill everything I might hope for in a partner. I have so many goddamn interests and passions. That’s so much pressure to place on someone, to hope that they would share in all the things I hope to enjoy with a partner. Conversely, I will probably never be the guy that knows anything about cool cocktail lounges or fancy restaurants to go to. I’m gonna have a hard time getting into sports and I probably won’t be an enriching conversation partner on the topic of gardening. There are other people out there that can provide that way better than I can. I feel no desire to compete.

One final thought: another trend I’ve noticed in conversations about this is that people often seem to interpret this as prescriptive, that because I’m doing this and talking about it, that I think it’s a better way of doing things for everybody. It’s CLEARLY not. It might not even be the right choice for me long-term, I genuinely don’t know. I have little experience here; I’ve just been thinking about it a lot this last year or two, trying out some of the concepts.

pink hair

Identity and aesthetics have been on my mind lately, largely because of dancing. A lot of my dance is wrapped up in imagining how I’m perceived, finding ways to experience the music through movement in a way that emits my personality. As I’ve explored, I find this ends up being inseparable from choices in clothing, hairstyle, jewelry.

I keep seeing people that have really mastered their presentation. Not specifically in terms of fashion per se – though for some people being dressed sharply and creatively is a core part of their aesthetic. But I’m more fascinated by people that have one style, one presentation that perfectly fits their body and accurately represents their identity.

I watched this bio on Hieroglyphic Being a while back, and besides having an incredible story of surviving abject poverty and homelessness, this dude just has the coolest aesthetic. He could wear that same outfit – all black, loose-fitting, sleeveless hoodie/cloak, wristbands, chains – and I don’t think it would ever look boring or uncreative. Because it’s just such an excellent composition of the identity that he wants to emit that matches his body and stature perfectly.

To this end, having dyed hair has really been a huge leap forward in this direction for me. I actually like what I see when I look in the mirror. The person I see looks more like me than ever before. There’s so much less disconnect. I feel more complete.

It’s also been such a joy to see how much it’s altered my interactions with everyone I encounter. I look and feel friendlier, so people are way more willing to spontaneously engage and interact. I’ve had more positive, random encounters with strangers in the last 3 weeks than in the last year combined. I feel less forgettable, less anonymous. That feels wonderful.

I’m certain there’s still much more to do before I’ve found the rest of my aesthetic. But this is definitely progress.

single

You don’t see people express much about being single in public spaces.

There’s a fear, I think. Expressing that kind of vulnerability carries unattractive connotations. Nobody wants to look desperate or needy.

Yet the overwhelming ubiquity of tinder and okcupid speaks to a desire we all share. Nobody wants to be alone. But the game, it seems, is to pretend it doesn’t bother you. Grin and bear it until you strike gold. Suddenly people who previously never post a damn thing are spamming kissing booth collages and tagging each other in dumpster-tier memes about babies and wedding planning.

But this isn’t a rant about romantic exhibitionism in the age of social media.

Ever since the first time I woke up in the morning next to a wonderful person I was excited to spend the day with, I knew I never wanted to go back. Genuine, loving romantic companionship is one of the handful of experiences that make our time on this mortal coil worth it.

The word “loneliness” doesn’t really capture the absence of this, for me. I am a pretty solitary creature for the most part; I need a lot of space in my day-to-day, and I don’t mind being by myself or being left alone with my thoughts.

The frustration of being single is in not having outlets for a huge fraction of my identity. Sexuality is a big part of it, of course, but it’s far more than just that. For me, one feature of a good relationship is a constant flow of affection, interest, and support. It feels great to be there for someone, to be trusted enough to share in their darkness and vulnerability. It’s exciting to have unmitigated permission to dole out compliments and smiles and appreciation. The filters are turned off. The inhibitions are unnecessary. Be as you are.

Yeah, these things are sorta possible outside of romantic relationships. But it’s not the same. I have some orthogonal thoughts on polyamory I want to explore related to this at some point, but I’m still chewing on that concept. Another time.

Point being: I see a lot of unhelpful advice for coping with being single. A lot of it is predicated on the idea that there is something wrong with the single person that is making them unattractive to others. Or that the primary goal should be to accept the status and learn to be okay with it. That seems to work for some people. But for some of us, no amount of self-love or fulfilling hobbies or interesting lifestyles will ever change that. Being single is just a lesser plane of existence.

It is what it is.

holding pattern

I feel like I’ve been in a political holding pattern lately.

Since the brief glimpse of hope offered by the November elections, there’ve been a huge number of setbacks:

– the tax bill, which is a huge leap towards modern class warfare
– the outright give-away of 2 million acres of public parks
– the supreme court temporarily upholding the 3rd travel ban
– net neutrality’s looking mighty grim
– Puerto Rico never really got any (federal) help
– ??? take your pick, there’s so much

Most of this is basically out of reach. These are all decisions made by people who have absolutely zero incentive to heed my concerns.

Traditional political activism feels useless by nature of the fact that I live in Brooklyn. I have literally never met a Trump supporter here. My representatives are already among the most liberal in Congress. That isn’t saying much, of course, but they’re not bad, overall.

Further radicalization seemed like the obvious next step, but as I’ve written previously, I’ve been turned off by what I see from the DSA. I love Jacobin’s insight and rigorous exploration of socialist policy, but then I see platitudes like “eat the rich” touted as a legitimate platform. I don’t begrudge the sentiment, but it’s just such a laughably short-sighted perspective on the problem.

I don’t see any major political actors making strides in the problem of how we dig ourselves out of the situation we presently find ourselves in. What do you do about a constitution that gives the state of Wyoming the same political weight as New York? How can an activist in California have any relevance to the problem of voter suppression in Alabama?

Absent any movement I strongly identify with or find convincing in its short-term proposals for change, I find myself just silently observing, taking notes.

I’ve been a lot more focused on the somehow herculean act of making friends, because I think it might be the case that creating real relationships with other human beings matters way more than keeping track of every ounce of Trump’s bullshit. Or maybe this is a roundabout way of justifying a measure of apathy. I genuinely don’t know.

What I do know is that I’ve been absurdly happy the last 2 months. This might be the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. That probably has had a lot to do with finding a community in Bushwick that I adore, and pulling back the throttle a bit on how much energy I devote to the news.

d-a-n-c-e

Unsorted thoughts on dancing:

I remember when i turned 21, i was so desperate for a place to dance. I think the first time i danced at a bar (the Haunt) I was out with some coworkers, and that song with the apple-bottom jeans came on and i got up on this stage by myself to shake my ass. Then I went to this one place up the street from my house (Level B) a dozen times because that was the only place to go. It was terrible and the music sucked but at least they had a spot that was meant for dancing.

The first real taste i got was an Infected Mushroom concert. I never broke it down so hard in my life, there was this trance opener that i couldn’t get enough of, i sweat straight through all my clothes by the end.

I sweat a lot. It’s just a thing i have. When i dance it’s absurd, i have no idea why it’s so excessive, but i will admit i get embarrassed about it. There are these moments where some cute lady smiles at me and then does this weird look of confused horror when she notices i’m sweating like nuts. I have come to accept it…mostly.

I love watching how the crowd relates to the music. There’s an ephemeral but totally real relationship between the DJ and the crowd. A great DJ has immense control; they can make the crowd bust it out at a moment’s notice and it’s a beautiful thing.

The scene is getting more progressive, and it’s awesome. The good places are banning phones, getting tough on harassment, seeking out ways to make it safe and comfortable for everyone. It makes a world of difference.

When you get to the end of the night – 4, 5, 7am – it’s amazing. Everyone is just exhausted and ecstatic. The whole thing is a series of pure moments; great music, the satisfaction of moving your body to the beat, the glee of seeing nothing but happy faces around you. The trip home makes for great moments of reflection and synthesis.

It’s hard to put these things into writing; it’s all nebulous stuff. But i’m so excited to be diving deeper into the dance community the last year.

community

When I was 7, I remember faking sick to stay home so I could play word games on AOL all day. I loathed school, so it was a win-win for me. After winning rounds of off-brand Boggle and Scrabble, I would brag to the other players about how young I was, and then be disappointed when no one was impressed.

I would hop on my brother’s IM accounts and talk to literally any of their friends that would respond. I would go into all sorts of chat rooms and try to understand what was going on. I remember emailing a pen-pal through Juno a few times a week, then later learning that she was schizophrenic and thought that the government watched people through their TVs. (sidenote: it amuses me that this is probably among the more plausible and less offensive methods of surveillance available in 2017)

There was so much raw curiosity, no inhibitions whatsoever. I didn’t care what was being talked about, it was all interesting and I just wanted to talk to anyone and everyone about anything. I liked the challenge of being interesting enough to much older people that they wouldn’t mind talking to a small child.

Later, when I was 12, I was homeschooled. I would spend entire days in my bedroom, alternating between reading textbooks and timing myself to see how quickly I could rebuild my Star Wars Lego sets. At that point I was already obsessed with computers, but we only had the one family PC, so my time was always limited, and I usually spent that time on games.

Once we got a second computer that I could hoard for myself, I explored further. The first forum I ever got invested in was on a site called YouThink. It was a place for debate, where people would submit questions and polls that you could vote on, ranging from opinions about the best action movie to whether abortion should be legal. I had hundreds of lengthy posts where I defended my nascent concepts of fundamentalism.

In high school, I got into blogging, and I delighted in building up a blogroll and a readership. I was super invested in the off-topic forums for the games that I played, and made lasting friendships through those engagements. I had half a dozen different chat clients – ICQ, YIM, AIM, gChat, IRC, each connecting me to a different set of people.

In the past, I had lots of people to talk to from around the world. A diverse network of friends I could hit up at any moment, ask for advice, shoot the shit. If I was up at 4 am wrestling with anxiety again, my friends in Greece would be probably be awake, or maybe my friends in Australia. I didn’t worry about whether I was boring people with my petty problems, whether I was interesting enough to hold their attention.

There were multiple spaces online where I felt at home. Fluent, comfortable, in my element. I no longer have that. Facebook is not, and has never been that place for me.

Objectively speaking, I have spent the majority of my life in solitude, what with spending easily 10+ hours every single day on a computer since I was a child. But it hasn’t been until the last 6 or 7 years that this solitude meant isolation.

Some of it is just the facts of growing up. Children aren’t burdened with stereotypes and presumption. They can freely engage and connect because they’re blissfully ignorant. Adults have motives, schemes, scars, and responsibilities.

I know that some of this shift is from my end. Events in my life lead to me become more aloof. I started worrying a lot more about what other people think, because I knew some people were thinking very poorly of me. I crave respect almost as much as I enjoy attention, and I have often remained silent when previously I might have reached out.

There’s also the premise of connection. Games are no longer my primary hobby. They’re a frequent curiosity, a point of interest to me as a designer and an artist, but my brain can no longer justify the absurd waste of time that’s baked into most online games. But shared interest and experience is the foundation for most relationships in our lives.

I live now in the heart of Brooklyn. I can go out onto my roof at any point in the day and see a hundred other human beings out on the sidewalks. But I have no connection to these people. I have never met my neighbors, and likely never will. This does not bother me, but I acknowledge the irony of it.

I yearn to be a part of an online community again.

de-termination

Up til this point, I have felt okay with my level of participation in the political process. I spend at least an hour or two every day reading the news, trying to learn stuff. I post links. I write my little essays. I vote. I try to stay informed on the issues that matter and share that information with my friends and family. What else is there to do?

But this election has changed the way that I think about the future. I already knew that progress was not guaranteed. But I still figured it was likely. There might be setbacks, but they would be temporary.

I no longer feel this way. There is no hard floor to this descent. There is no inevitable march forward. It will be far easier for this administration to burn bridges than it will be for us to rebuild them. It may take decades to rip down the walls that he builds in a few years.

The point of this being, I think you are going to see me getting a lot more political in the coming months and years. My now perpetual state of anxiety dictates that I take action and do whatever I can to subvert the incoming tidal wave of xenophobia and racism. I cannot abide my own existence if I am not actively working towards a future that doesn’t suck.

I am going to keep pondering what, exactly, this looks like. I know relatively little about law and have a lot of reading to do before I can hope to meaningfully change a system I do not understand.

I will be looking for ways to get involved with my local government so that I can see how the system works at the lowest level. I will be sketching out ideas of tools to build that can alleviate the major pain points in our system. I will be searching for ideas and inspiration wherever I can find them.

And, of course, I will keep writing, trying to improve my grasp on the slippery eel of social media that I have never felt comfortable with. But it is clearly a necessary tool of the trade, now, and I will learn whatever necessary to be an effective actor in this system.

purityrannosaurus

Most people know that I grew up very religious.

(here, I take a deep breath and type very slowly)

In person I’m happy to bring this up and talk about it, because it’s so much easier to gauge the other person’s feelings on the topic. I usually know when to back off or shut up, when someone wants to hear more, and how I should phrase my experiences so that I’m not transmitting any judgment or disrespect. Hopefully, anyways.

Writing about this is far more difficult. Being honest while still showing love and respect is hard enough in most areas of life, and this is people’s raison d’etre. All that’s to say: I dearly hope I can manage to explore this topic with the utmost respect and sincerity, whatever beliefs you (you!) might have.

My religious past is something that strongly informs my worldview. I know what it’s like on both sides of the fence. Usually, that means reading any mainstream (secular) writing about religion is purely obnoxious. The people who feel most compelled to spout are usually those that have no real familiarity with what being part of a church community is actually like. So, it was with a little bit of surprise that I encountered this very decent article on Joshua Harris and the purity movement of the late 90’s early 2000’s.

This was quite the read for me.

As a teenager, I went to multiple purity seminars where I signed my name on a heart to give to God. I went to a bible camp every summer where there were 2-3 sermons every day, half of which were about sex and lust. Joshua Harris was frequently mentioned by folks in these circles and at church – the article does not exaggerate his prevalence in this movement.

One of the core tenets of this ideology of purity is that by having any kind of lustful thought or desire, you are sinning against God. For me, this meant I was in a constant, unending state of sin.

Have you ever wronged someone you love – intentionally or not – so badly that there is no amount of apologizing that would make a difference? The kind of harm that you can only hope that the other person will forgive you for…eventually? You know the way that guilt hangs so heavily from your heart, makes you want to sink to the bottom of the ocean? That is what my guilt over my sin felt like.

It was relentless, inescapable, and all-consuming. For years, I prayed regularly and earnestly for God to take away my lustful thoughts and dreams. I wrote about it in my journals, on my blog, and took up hours and hours of my mentors’ time to anguish about it. And this is as someone who didn’t start having sex until 19 (right around the time I left the church). I barely dated in high school.

—

Hopefully now you can imagine the strength of my feelings on this topic, having gone and done all of the things I swore not to do, to find that very little of what I was told turned out to be true:

You really can fall in love more than once. There is more than one possible companion out there.

It is possible, and often necessary, to talk openly, without shame or judgment, about past relationships with someone you’re dating.

Sex can be safe. Birth control works. STD tests are accurate. It’s possible to fully trust someone on these issues without being married.

People have wildly different desires and expectations from relationships. Not everyone needs the same thing. For most people, your virginity is not important.

There is no platonic ideal of sex. Sex can be a lot more different than you might imagine and still be perfect.

If you’re with a good person, you will not be loved less for your past mistakes.

Sex is not inherently ethereal, transcendent, or magical in any way. It is made fabulous by passion and creativity.

You might indeed lose parts of yourself through some of your relationships. But this will not dilute you. You will also walk away with a piece of them, too. What they leave with you will make you a far better person than you were before.

These are a few of the things I wish i’d heard as a teenager. What the purity movement gave me was the exact opposite.

I hope that Christianity can embrace sex-positivity, some day. But I’m not holding my breath.

complicated sharing

Vulnerability and sharing are tricky things with social media.

It’s been oft-observed that most people choose to share the positive, exciting parts of their lives here. Vacations, weddings, births, and all the various accomplishments we encounter in life are the meat and potatoes of what people reveal online. They’re safe, they make us look good, they give off the impression that we’re living happy and fulfilled lives.

Certainly, not all negative things get hidden. I see a lot of people sharing their grief over death, especially over time. I remember it being less common in the past, but perhaps we’re getting comfortable as facebook becomes more of a fact of life, in combination with its slow support for varied reactions (until recently, I never felt comfortable liking an announcement of a death).

But there’s so many things that never show up here. It’s not very often you’ll see someone announce that they’re suffering from crippling depression. People generally don’t feel comfortable saying they lost their job, dropped out of school, or failed to achieve one of their dreams. But if you pay attention, you can often tell when something’s up.

We’ve probably all had those moments where you stumble across someone you haven’t kept up with for a while, and the tone of everything they share has changed. They moved. They’re alone in all their pictures. Wait, weren’t they married — oh my god they got a divorce. It’s these moments that remind us how much of our lives remain obscured from most of the world.

Of all the aspects of life that are shared asymmetrically on social media, relationships are probably at the top of that list. It’s universally cool to express your love and affection here. No birthday, anniversary, or wedding dare go unannounced. Even the saltiest cynics will gleefully post every picture with their loved one. But you never see the other side.

It often seems that no one wants to hear about how painful it is to go through a break-up. You won’t find nearly as much support if you want to talk about how much it sucks to be single, how lonely the world can feel without a companion, the emptiness that comes with parting from someone who fundamentally understood you, or the way that memories of past relationships can haunt you at random moments throughout your day.

Admittedly, it’s tricky stuff. Assuming you care about the people in your life – past and present – you have to take so much caution with what you let slip out. Oversharing can damage more lives than just your own. The safest option is often to say nothing at all, to grit your teeth and bear it.

But for myself – and I have to assume for many others – so much of my life experience is wrapped up in my past relationships. I learned so much. There are beautiful memories. intense pain, embarrassment, frustration, lessons learned, time lost, and wisdom gained.

It feels like such a dishonesty to say nothing about these things, but I lack any notion of a healthy way to broach these topics through this medium. I don’t know what the solution is, or if one exists at all. Perhaps facebook will never be a place where that kind of honesty is truly safe.

It seems a grave tragedy that the parts of our lives that would benefit the most from community support, open communication, and honest discussion, are ostensibly the most taboo. How many marriages would benefit if we were more willing to discuss the thorny, complicated realities of long-term relationships? Could we not all learn from each other’s mistakes? Don’t we all have lessons that we wish someone had shared with us earlier in our lives, that might have made us better partners, better human beings?

awarewolf

One of my ponderances of late has been how our exposure to the news shapes our perception of the world.

I read at least 100 headlines a day, knowingly or otherwise. I scroll through facebook, reddit, twitter, and my RSS feeds a few times a day. It’s all filtered through the people and organizations I like or trust, building into some vague sense of what the state of the world is, what the nearest possible futures look like. But that whole sensation of knowing what really goes on in the world is just a complicated lie, a house of cards built from countless availability heuristics.

I try to counter that by searching for data and statistics, but this is just a fart in the hurricane. For instance, there’s no way to test the idea that global xenophobia is actually getting worse; I can only make a guess based on the number of bigoted statements that make it into the headlines over the last month. And the certainty of that guess is always haunted by the very plausible notion that the world is the same as it has always been, and I just happen to hear about more of the awful things that occur.

What is the true value in this increased awareness? There’s so much anxiety to be found in keeping up with the goings-on of humanity, but I feel a responsibility to keep trying, lest I unknowingly perpetuate the sins of my ancestors or participate in the errors of my own generation through my ignorance.

Some of these matters, I tacitly know that I lack the discipline to contribute to the solution. Knowing full well the horrors of industrial farming, I really do just love beef, even the stuff they dole out at Taco Bell. Meanwhile, my outrage over racial injustice seems to be limitless. My heart ached in very literal pain and anger as I read of the latest shootings last week, even though these incidents are total deja vu.

There is a temptation towards nihilism as I add all of the latest crises together. There are so many, and none of them can be considered unimportant or irrelevant. Is it possible to care about everything that much? Can our hearts stretch infinitely so that we become capable of empathizing with all the important goings-on of the world? Or are we forced to pick our battles and hope that, between the lot of us, someone else cares enough about the other problems – climate change, education, sexism, poverty, health care – to take care of them? Don’t most of these problems require effort and attention from everyone to truly solve? Is humanity really capable of solving its own problems, or have we built a society more complicated than our meager brains can manage?

Happy Monday, friends.

art_work

They say that writing about art is like dancing about architecture.

Just kidding, I’ve never heard anyone say that. But I wanted to record a little formal history of how I started making artwork, explain some of the different kinds of pieces I make, talk a bit about process and such. There will be a smattering of personal details and hopefully very little philosophy about the meaning of art or its practice. There are few questions less interesting than “what is art?” and I do not intend to indulge the inquiry here.

Without further ado, a brief history of my journey with art.

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chronistic

Here we are, once more.  Familiar ground.  Another long period of neglect and zero writing.  Another blog redesign complete.  Another chance to reflect on this thing which is now legitimately one of the oldest active (ish) blogs on the internet.  I thought it might be fun to do a quick little jaunt across time to see how the design has evolved.

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Time Will Tell

I

One of the most consistent features of getting older has been the changing nature of my relationship with time. It’s not just, as the cliche goes, that it flies by, but the passing of days takes on a very different tone and architecture. I remember how agonizingly slow the world felt as a child. I remember staring helplessly at the clock in school, knowing that the very act of watching the hands tick was increasing my agony.

Tick. Fuck. Tick. Fuck. Tick. Fuck. Tick.

But lately, days blur seamlessly into weeks and months. Some of this is circumstantial; I now work entirely from home, and it is not uncommon that I go weeks without prolonged human interaction, even while I live in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. I have no commute. No morning or evening routine. I have virtually no interruptions during my day. I work. I read. I might play some games for an hour or two. I watch some lectures or a movie. I sleep.

When I look at the clock, there is no anticipation, nor any dread. Time is just a number to make sure I don’t forget my appointments. Once in a while, it’s a pressure, a deadline, a countdown — but I love my work, so I have no resentment for this aspect.

Memories begin to slip through my fingers more and more as there are fewer landmarks to orient my internal narrative. For perhaps a brief moment recent experiences stay near to me, but it’s not long before they disperse into a vast ocean of thoughts, or become lost inside the dense forest of my subconscious. Though I know these experiences are still a part of me, floating somewhere in the expanse of my cognition, many are no longer retrievable as distinct events.

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fantasybook

After 8 years on Facebook, I deactivated my account this weekend for the first time. I can’t quite say it’s the last time, as it’s turned out that third-party applications are able to reactivate your account (I’m glaring at you, Spotify) – but the idea is to be done with Facebook for all personal matters. It’s still a necessary broadcast node, so I’ve converted to a fan page, but it’s nonetheless on its way out as a core website in my internet experience.

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parentstroika

If I said that I’ve had enough controversy in the last year to last for the remainder of my life, it would be an understatement and a lie. At this point, I’ve come to accept that for whatever reason, my actions frequently generate drama at a rate that greatly surpasses the national average. I don’t see myself as a dramatic person, but my personality, values, choices, preferences, and circumstances seem to combine with one another in such a way that results in situations where emotions run high, sides are formed, and battles ensue.

This blog has been the platform for more minor battles in the past. This time, however, the myriad details of the catalogue of nonsense that my life has become are not suitable for a blog post. As much as I would love the convenience of updating everyone on all the specifics in one place, there are too many friends I prefer to hold on to, or in some cases, keep a minimum of respect intact. It’s not just about pissing people off, either, but about respecting the privacy of others. No one should have to force me to sign an NDA before being honest with me.

There’s also the problem of objectivity. It’s easy to remain fair when describing simpler situations, but as more players are added to the game, it becomes much more difficult to give appropriate consideration to all relevant perspectives. Sports fans have argued passionately for weeks over who was to blame for the outcome of a single game and yet never reach a definitive conclusion; there is no reason to believe I would have any more success in trying to analyze this debacle. The best I can do is describe a few of the precipitating factors and then provide some illumination on my current course of action.

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control

Recently, John Campbell, the author of my most favorite webcomic, pictures for sad children, wrote a series of articles (for lack of a better word) that have generated some interesting controversy that’s relevant to my previous post about trolls.  Although they’re an interesting read, the titles alone rather succinctly describe the content.  The only background you need here is that John Campbell’s comics and street art are nothing if not compulsively melancholic, but never, ever serious.

His entire confession and apology was fake.  A lot of his readers and fellow artists were pretty offended, and not unfairly – but one line in particular got me thinking.

I regret the borderline people, those who could identify the problems in their life, face them, and allow themselves to be changed, but instead found it necessary to conceive of themselves as “struggling with depression” rather than being genuinely held back emotionally by some nasty and real situation. Any work participating in the “culture of depression” has probably contributed to these sad and unnecessary cases.

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electrophoria

I went to my first electronica concert a few weeks ago – but to describe it properly, I have to start from the beginning.  The beginning of my love for electronic music, that is.

The first time I put a track on repeat was when I was 10 years-old.  My dad had bought an album after hearing a song in a commercial; the album was from the electric quarter Bond, the album was their first – Born – and the track was Alexander the Great.  It was arguably the closest thing to electronic music that I’d yet encountered, and it promptly crawled through my ears and into my soul.  I was utterly smitten.  I loved the whole album, actually, but I played that one track well beyond 10,000 times over the course of the following years.  It had certain features that, as it turns out, are hallmarks of the music I love most today:

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Discussion: Terraria & Minecraft

And Lo, the Bloglomerate did descend upon Terraria, consuming it with fervor in the fallout of the catastrophe known as Diablo the Third. Verily, Terraria did provide a unique and thrilling video game experience that the blogging conglomerate thoroughly enjoyed, and experimentation began with creating PvP arenas to siphon further joy from the game – but disagreement lurked on the horizon.

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quibble

A foray onto the topic of gay marriage, inspired by the book of faces.  I’d like to take a look at a few ideas that seem to fuel much of the opposition to homosexuality.

  • Strictly defined gender roles

I watched a great Norwegian documentary a few months back that investigated some of the dominant theory in psychology and sociology in Norway, where most explanations tend to favor nurture over nature in the development of the human psyche and society.  Over the course of the series, he demonstrates how the desire to create total equality leads to dogma which rejects the possibility that people aren’t just blank slates.  To the point: as much of the anecdotal evidence suggests, men and women are fundamentally different from one another in certain ways.  This observation forms much of the basis for “ought” statements concerning the genders, but to stop here is to use incomplete evidence.

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identiclasm

There’s a lot of work yet left to do, but so far I’m pleased with how things are coming along.  From the design side of things, I want to convert the background to SVG so that I can take it to the next step, that being a dynamic and potentially interactive scene.  I’ve had musings of changing it based on the tags within a given post, or perhaps animating the birds, waves, the sun, and so on.  It’ll be a while before I get around to that, but I’m already getting a bit tired of the existing scene, so the clock is ticking.  Moving on: thoughts after reading my entire blog from start to finish – the first time I’ve ever done so.

Memories are recorded very differently in words than in photos.  I go through all of my pictures on facebook once a year or so –  not as a ritual, but at some point I just find myself scanning through them, revisiting the progress of my life, trying to see what the pictures say about the names and faces contained therein.  Photos capture moments, but they don’t immerse you into the time and place.  They make that moment easier to access, but the only story they tell is the one you already know.  Writing, on the other hand, is quite like a short film of thoughts and feelings, available to be re-experienced an infinite number of times.  In this sense, I relived the last nine years of my life through the lens of my writing.  It was more intense than I had expected it to be.

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