(curiousity, design, ideas, inspiration, reading, tantalization — )
10 Jul. 2008
I love reading because of the ideas and insight it gives me, but for much the same reason I have little patience with pedantic, trivial, belabored, or non-insightful writing. I can think of nothing worse than reading something that has nothing new to say, or reading something painfully long and slow that spells everything out for me. Instead, I like to read short snippets that fire my imagination. Things that have something new to say, or that come at something from a surprising angle, or that expose me to a thought or tidbit I've never had before. I like playful writing that takes chances with language or ideas and puts things in a way no one else ever has. Writing that dares to fail.
It almost goes without saying that I rarely have the patience to read a full book - certainly not non-fiction, though I love it and buy it all the time. I do love learning and reading, yet I rarely have the staying power to see the author through to the end. My guilty secret is that I absolutely adore magazines, because they expose me to something new and then leave me with just enough info to tease me, to leave me thinking about the ideas, chewing them, worrying them, playing with them and turning them this way and that and coming up with my own. Just enough to whet my appetite but leave me hungry for more.
Okay, I'll admit it. I like to be teased more than anything in the world. There's something sumptuous about magazines that books don't necessarily have. If not just the fact that they are overflowing with different positions and perspectives - as if it weren't enough to have a hundred ideas in the course of 4 hours, or the serendipity of finding a new voice you'd have never found otherwise - magazines have a tactility that's oddly missing in books. I especially love magazines with matte paper that soaks up the ink. The images become super saturated and acheive a lushness and depth (god the depth, you feel like you could fall into the page) that books rarely have. Each page brings a new image, a new writer, a new idea, a new font and layout. All but the best books are ossified in their presentation, formulas, and ideas, and it's easy to put out a shit book. But putting out a magazine consistently is expensive and risky, which ends up meaning the signal to noise ratio in the magazine world is a lot more favorable. I have a small collection of magazines that I have bought simply because they are so damn beautiful I couldn't pass them up. I purchased them thinking that someday I might create my own magazine, and I keep them for inspiration.
Just a few fantastic magazines I have been drawn to, whether beautiful, insightful, novel, intriguing, brilliant, necessary, or just plain good:
Cabinet, Coupe, American Scholar, Gagarin, Canteen (beautiful but notably sorry reading), Foreign Affairs, Polar Inertia, Farimani, Dumbo Feather, The Economist, Texas Monthly, Brick, Leonardo
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(creativity, ghettos, ideas, stagnation — )
13 Feb. 2008
I find myself finally having to admit that I'm not a Democrat any more. I've been drifting away from the party for several years now, and a number of events that have taken place in the last few months have finally come to a head. I've broken with the party. It's over. Fuck you. I wish I could say it was good while it lasted, but I can't even do that. I'm still liberal. I still have tendencies. But I can't date you any more.
Will I still have friends after this admission? I'm still the same person you've always known and I'm sorry if I haven't treated you right during this whole thing. I'm sorry if I lashed out at you because of my own identity crisis. I mean it. It wasn't your fault. It was me. I hope you can understand.
I suddenly think I must know what it feels like to be a pedophile - I crave something impossible, and I wish I didn't. I wish I could just be happy with having what everyone else has, and with being content with comfortable, safe conversations, able to connect with ordinary people and have the same discussion again and again, stroking my ego with its familiarity, with its mirror reflection of myself, telling me, "Yes, you're right, you're brilliant, you're so smart, everyone agrees with you." But that conversation disgusts me. I want to have it, but when I do I find myself furious at its impotence, its uselessness, its inability to spark even the slightest arousal in me. It's boring. It's cold. It's like having sex the exact same way over and over and no matter what I do I can't force myself to enjoy it. I sneak out at night and I go to listen to conversations I've never had before with strangers I will never meet again, and it excites me. The not knowing excites me. The thrill of the chase excites me.
There. I admitted it. You've become boring. Tired. Slow and sloppy in your cyclical, smug self-satisfaction and I am nothing but a filthy dilettante. You will never satisfy me. You little insular communities are all the same. You blow your wad after five seconds. There's no finesse, no tease, no build up, no excitement. I'm not leaving you for another party. I'm leaving you for another game altogether.
All I want is to discuss possibilities. Ideas. I crave to hear new ways to do things. Is the system broken? Let's fix it. Let's come up with alternatives, options. Let's experiment and tweak and alter and play. Test, feint, parry, recoup, flex, adjust. Tinker. Tease. Explore. Let us explore. Please. I want to explore. I cannot be the only person who wants to explore. I want to taste new foods and see new places and meet new people and for the love of all that is holy in this world I want to hear a new idea that I have never heard and I want to hear the journey you took to get there, and then I want to take it all apart and put it back together again. I want you to ask me hard questions and let me ask them of you in return. And sometimes, I want you to leave me alone so I can ask them of myself. I want you to be unafraid of making mistakes, and in so doing stumble upon something phenomenal. I would like you to seduce me slowly with your thoughts, not fuck me in the ear with your tired quickie sound bytes.
I'm tired of you telling me what to think, what to wear, how to live or eat. I am not a baby bird. I do not want to eat my food prechewed. I do not need you to do it for me; I can and want to catch it myself. Because, quite frankly, prechewed food is vomit. You are throwing up on me and you think that I should be titillated or at the very least grateful that you've saved me all that hard work. "Hey, man, everyone else does this. Why can't you be normal? This way is easier. It's normal to want to do it the easy way." Well, guess what? I am not fucking normal - I actually like to work for what is mine. I like my knowledge hard-earned, thanks, and I'm tired of your regurgitations.
I'm tired.
I'm fucking tired. I have a headache. I'm on the rag. I'm not in the mood. I am not hungry for your leftovers. I can't be a Democrat any more. I can't call myself a feminist. I'm damn sure not going to call myself a Republican or a Libertarian or anything else you have a label for, because the instant I put any group's labels on myself, all their buddies come out of the woodwork and start gang banging me with their assumptions, nodding their heads and staring at me with glassy eyes and refusing to actually chew the meaty heart of a matter, while they assume I am doing the same. I feel dirty when I lie and pretend that I am one of you. I am tired of that feeling. I would like to feel alive and true again. I would like to live well on ideas, not eke out a meager existence on your safe platitudes.
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