Welcome to Reasonable Things, an occasional newsletter about music, language, and meaning from Joel Heng Hartse.

Ahoy! I spent the weekend with my family at a place that is fast becoming one of my favorites - the Grünewald Guild in Plain, Washington. I was an “artist” (I use the term very loosely) in residence there last year, where I wrote several academic manuscripts and failed to write several book proposals. My spouse, who is an actual artist, is currently doing a residency there where she is making actual art, and I took my kids down for the long weekend.

Something about being there makes me feel like I have the space to think creatively, so I brought a blank notebook, and started writing notes about the book I had been hoping to start there a year ago. And while the boys were learning how to snowboard at Mission Ridge in Wenatchee, I sat in the car and feverishly drafted a table of contents for what I have been calling my “AI + writing” book. (There have been a number of working titles for this book in my head, including What Writing Is, AI Sucks and is Dumb, AI is Dumb and Sucks, The Content Machine, and Homo Scribens. Some of these are placeholders, some are jokes, and in one case there is a book title that already exists.)

I don’t want to say too much about it yet, in part because one of the central arguments of the book is that people who are serious about their creative work should probably keep it off the internet entirely. (This is, I’m sure, an extreme position, but I think it’s at least a compelling one.)

This is further complicated by the fact that I am heading back to another one of my favorite creative incubators, the Collegeville Institute, in a few months to participate in a workshop called “Publishing for the Public” which is going to focus on Substack and similar “platforms.” Even before I started writing a book in which I am planning to make some arguments about writing, “posting,” and “content,” I was skeptical of the idea that one ought to “build one's platform,” even though I like writing for an actual audience.

See, I stopped using most social media a few years ago, which has been great for my mental health, but I no longer have any idea what it would mean to "build" or "grow" an audience. I do have this newsletter, with around 50 subscribers, many of whom are people I know personally (thank you!). Part of me wants to somehow make that into 500 or 5,000 or 25,000; another part of me feels this is the worst kind of selfish ambition, and that "hustling" for more readers will be unsatisfying at best — “tiny and meaningless and sad-making,” as Franny Glass says — or destroy my soul at worst.

Still - for the first time in a while, I feel like I have something to say, and that it is worth sharing with a wide audience. I don’t know how I’m going to do that yet, but I’m excited to find out.

JHH
Vancouver, BC