Hello! I haven’t written a lot for public consumption in the past two months. So in the interest of greasing the wheel, and (softly) applying a little extra motivation to myself by publicizing some of what I’ve been thinking, I wanted to provide a little snapshot. I expect my next few installments will be more focused.
Beyond miscellaneous note-taking, and much rearranging of physical and digital files lately, I have in fact drafted some things that I just haven’t felt satisfied enough with to send out. So for example there are unfinished pieces on
“the take,” considered as an aesthetic object;
reaction videos as an Internet genre;
what I’d call “vulgar McLuhanism” and vernacular media skepticism;
moral panics as a problem of naming and status;
cosmopolitanism and arts festivals.
Some of these may yet see the light of day. They might bleed into one another, as some common ideas run through a lot of them. But if any of these issues seem interesting to you, or strike some thoughts of your own, as always, don’t hesitate reach out. I often work best when I’m in conversation with somebody, or something. Maybe my stagnation and dissatisfaction with where I am on these particular topics above has stemmed from the fact that I haven’t been tossing them around with people.
And then there are a handful endeavors I have been working on concretely, still, and which I have been talking to some people about—but these are still in the early stages. This includes a few collaborative projects, and I hope that these in particular will come to fruition because I’m excited about them.
Largest of all, I’m researching and digging into a lot of interrelated questions about education and what I think of as “the life of the mind in community.” I don’t think this is necessarily going to be a writing project per se, but I don’t know what it will be yet, and anyway it will likely have some written components as I work out ideas. This is something I definitely want to talk about with people more, as the gears are turning.
So that’s a partial picture of what I have simmering in my head and on my pages.
What else? Well, as usual, work and domestic things take up a lot of my time. I fit in what I can where I can. If you’re interested, here are some favorite books from my summer reading so far: Anita Brookner’s Dolly (that’s the US title; it goes by A Family Romance in the UK), Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower, Helen DeWitt’s Some Trick, and Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs (what a wonderful book and I could suggest it with JL Carr’s astounding A Month in the Country, which I also read earlier this year, also about someone visiting a rural community for the summer season). I’ll return soon enough. Thanks for reading.
"“the take,” considered as an aesthetic object" has me very excited.
I'm very interested in hearing more about "vulgar McLuhanism."