No. 95
No. 95 • 1/26/2024
Over the past few months, I've gotten some very sweet and inquisitive emails from people asking about the status of the newsletter, making sure I'm alright, etc. I'm always grateful to receive these. So, thank you to everyone who checked in. I'm not sure I'm still going to be able to keep it up as regularly as before, but will do my best to send things as they arise.
Just for the record, I'm not only OK, I'm self-actualizing my dreams of becoming a muddy mess in the mountains. Basically, I needed to take a break last year to spend time working on our new property, getting it to a place where we could live on it comfortably, have a roof over our head (and equipment), cutting firewood to burn, making paths through the forest that aren't literal tick farms, etc. It would take me weeks to get you up to speed on all we've been working on, but here's what I'm up to as of yesterday:
- Finishing up a book on writing with a zettelkasten
- Planning cohort 5 of "Writing With a Zettelkasten" (registration will go live in the upcoming weeks)
- Finishing up the big ol' barn re-build on the property
- Considering restarting the "Spiritual Reading Club," where a group of us met twice a month to read a short piece of my choosing. Only this time I'm thinking of running it as a monthly spiritual discussion group using the anarcho-mystical / witchy / Biblical / feral-Christianity tradition as our guide. We would be using "reader-response" theory, a highly-subject approach to meaning-making, as our guide to Biblical readings. This has been my primary context for spiritual inquiry for the last 10–15 years. Would love to share it with you.
Beyond that, here's a newsletter for ya!
Knowledge Is No Longer a Social Indicator
Knowing who your people were in "alternative" music scenes in the late-80s / early 90s was easy: Just look at someone's shoes. If they wore Converse All-Stars or Doc Marten's, chances are you could be friends. Maybe not best friends. But, you were definitely members of the same scene, and in suburban towns, that's pretty much all you needed.
Whether or not you were going to be true allies in the scene had to do with what you knew and, even more so, who you knew about. The things you knew about—the bands, the books, the writers, the artists—these were indicators as to where you fit in within larger society. Due to a general lack of access to coveted underground intel, if you knew about Glenn Branca, it meant you had put in the good work. And, that meant something. There was no social media (no real internet even), no Spotify, no "democratization" of the "master's tools." If you knew about the band Slint, then you either had an older sister or brother who told you about them, or you had to first dig long and hard through the muck of mainstream BS to find a subterranean layer of chatter and mixtapes to find them.
Over the last two decades I've seen a steady (and increasing) decline in the power of both visual and knowledge-based social markers and cues. I'm not really bemoaning this. I like being able to talk about Fugazi with people who would never have been into Fugazi in 1991. What I do miss is the ability to talk with people about Fugazi all night. Cursury interest and passing curiosity, satiated by "You Might Like" prompts on Spotify does not a late-night deep dive make.
Also, no one wants to just listen to records anymore.
Spazzo Noise Garage Remains Dominant
There are still bands that, although popular, remain non-normie faves. Best video of late 2023:
Pixel Minimalism
I'm obsessed with Susan Kare's iconic designs for 1-gen Macs.
"Grift" Has Some Nuance
Grift is defined as the acquiring of money nefariously. But, there’s a nuance to it. As this Byrne Hobart article states:
"The heart of a grift is that you get something that, in a technical sense, is what you paid for, but that is also not worth what you paid for it."
This Women's Soccer Ad from 2023 Still Hits Hawd
Does the Language You Speak Inform Your Worldview?
Read a really interesting Aeon piece the other day.
"A long-held assumption in Western philosophy...maintains that words are mere labels we apply to existing ideas in order to share those ideas with others. But linguistic relativity makes language an active force in shaping our thoughts."
The question being asked:
"Does each language really embody a different worldview, or even dictate specific patterns of thought to its speakers?"
Here's the part I found most interesting:
"[R]esearchers have shown that certain languages may allow their speakers to unlock senses that are the common possession of all humans but remain unutilised by most people. In English and many other languages, spatial location is usually described in egocentric terms. If a fly were to land on my leg, I might say: ‘A fly has landed on the right side of my leg.’ Right is an egocentric spatial term that orients objects in the world according to an imaginary left-right axis projected from my body. However, this is not the only way we can conceptualise space.
"In the Gurindji language, spoken in northern Australia—as in many other languages of the world—locations are usually described using the cardinal directions north, south, east and west. Assuming that I am sitting so my right leg is oriented towards the west, the equivalent sentence in Gurindji would be: ‘Karlarnimpalnginyi nyawama wurturrjima, walngin ngayinyja wurturrjila.’ Literally: ‘This is the outer upper west of (my) leg. The fly landed here on my leg.’ If I were to turn around and face the opposite direction, the fly would still—in egocentric terms—be on the right side of my leg, but a Gurindji speaker would point out that—in cardinal terms—the fly is now on the eastern part of my leg. While my private left-right axis might follow me around dutifully, the earth will always stand still.
Obsessed with this.
Justin Adams Surf Video Surfaces
Even though I know that the number of readers I have who also surf probably hovers around the .001 percentile, I post these videos in the hopes that A. they will help educate the masses on this oft misrepresented practice, and B. they will help you non-surfers appreciate ??? Here's the latest in rare Justin Adams surfing videos. Note min 1:30 for the "cheater five" (aka hanging five toes off the nose with all your weight toward the back of the board. Essentially "cheating" a "hang ten." After thirty years of surfing this is still my favorite "move." Probably because it's the only one I can do.):
Why I like Justin Adams:
- He's willing to surf even the most crumbly of mush (min 0:19)
- He barrels his head even when ne'er a barrel to be found (min 0:50)
Bonus Pone
And, that's that! See ya next week.
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