torridly

Infectious.

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:37:08 -0500

Every once in a great while, I have a need to achieve TOTAL SOCIAL MEDIA SATURATION with something because it is that awesome. Friends and assorted Tumblr-knowers, an event tomorrow is just that awesome thing. It is Ag47’s annual showcase, 7-10 pm, at the Hairpin Arts Center (2800 N Milwaukee). There will be live poetry and artmaking and performance. There will be some weird blobs that look really cool. There will be PBR. Most importantly, there will be an opportunity to show some fantastic teenage girls that their community values their creative expression. If there is ever a thing that deserves TOTAL SOCIAL MEDIA SATURATION, that should be it.

whatmountains: LOVE SYMBOL PRESS PRESENTSPOETRY IN A BOOK STORE...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 20:45:53 -0500

whatmountains:

LOVE SYMBOL PRESS PRESENTS
POETRY IN A BOOK STORE FOR
YOU DIAMONDS. THIS PARTICU
LAR READING IS HOSTED IN CA
HOOTS WITH CURBSIDE SPLEN
DOR AND CHICAGO WRITERS
HOUSE, WHO HAVE TEAMED UP
TO BRING YOU A WHOLE WEEKE
ND OF LITERARY EVENTS SUCH
AS THE BELOW FRESHNESS:

Friday Chicago Writers House Publisher’s Reading

Sunday Curbside Splendor Pop-Up Book Fair at the Empty Bottle

FOR APRIL WE ARE MADE OF METEORS A
ND METEOR POETS ARE FALLING FROM T
HE SKY LATELY. I MEAN CHECK OUT THIS
LINEUP: Kathleen Rooney + Dylan York +
James Tadd Adcox + Daniela Olszewska
+ Cassandra Troyan + METEORSHOWER
+ POEM + POEM + POEM + POEM + POEM

I read at this reading series last month and it was rad, plus I just read James Tadd Adcox’s book “The Map of the System of Human Knowledge” and it was rad, so I am pleased to recommend some rad stuff here in Chicago to you!

My friend Eli who works on Cards Against Humanity had this game...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 21:51:00 -0500

My friend Eli who works on Cards Against Humanity had this game from the 1890s, “Peter Coddle’s Trip to New York.” It’s basically Mad Libs with predetermined phrases. I made some poems from it.

empathy champion

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 23:37:14 -0500

empathy champion

a thought on rereading Achewood

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 14:35:09 -0600

The alt text on this comic pretty much describes how I ever write anything: first I do something meandering and strange, hoping to get to something even stranger. (And I’m kind of bad at both editing and managing time, so sometimes I only get around to the first thing.)

I told you that story so I could tell you this one. Although I can only aspire ever to make something as wholly bizarre and fully realized as that pair of Achewood storylines. Anyway, it sticks in my head.

old souls and in-between souls

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 14:33:49 -0600

old souls and in-between souls

writing housekeeping

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 12:00:15 -0600

I never actually mentioned this here, but: I had enough Weird Emotions About Tumblr that I decided to move all my longish writing over to my own actual website that I pay money to have. It all comes up here as link posts via fancy IFTTT magic, but if you’re like me and prefer to pile everything you might want to read into Google Reader, writing.torridly.org is the site to follow. The latest thing I posted there is about finding time to be bad at something. I recommend it if you like being bad at things, or doing things, or overwrought metaphors about gemstones.

bad vocation

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 17:40:07 -0600

bad vocation

impossibleyear: Nick and Erin’s Collards Party Polaroid SLR...

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 21:24:54 -0600

impossibleyear:

Nick and Erin’s Collards Party

Polaroid SLR 680SE / Impossible PX-680 Color Protection 11*12

This lovely couple graciously hosted a new years party where they prepared homemade collards for good luck.

A bunch of people who were in my house yesterday are going to have good luck this year due to consumption of collards and hoppin’ john. The collards party is my favorite tradition I have ever started out of Southern-food-homesick necessity. The best part of the collards party is everything. The other best part is that I pass around a jar for donations to the Greater Chicago Food Depository. This year, we’re giving them $200. I have generous friends. I am always already lucky.

people we know who died

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 21:28:02 -0600

people we know who died

failure journal

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 20:58:33 -0600

failure journal

kevinclarkcomposer: These are photos of the scores to three...

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 07:55:20 -0500

kevinclarkcomposer:

These are photos of the scores to three duets for soprano and baritone (and one keychain) setting poems by Erin Watson, which she wrote in collaboration with @horse_ebooks - I wrote them yesterday and today while on vacation, and can’t be bothered to do the Finale entry just now. Maybe later.

What I do need is a soprano and a baritone willing to make me three videos really fast. So… yeah, I think I can swing that….

Here are the three poems:

http://noexperiences.com/post/30527157011/16

http://noexperiences.com/post/31206789823/23

http://noexperiences.com/post/29375320193/2

amazing things are afoot! someone get Kevin a soprano and a baritone so that I can know what this sounds like; I don’t think I’ve ever regretted so deeply that I’m unable to read music.

internetpoetry: screenshot by torridly self-rebloggin’...

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 17:39:18 -0500

internetpoetry:

screenshot by torridly

self-rebloggin’ up in here again; found poetry is so much fun. this is from twitter trending topics like a million Internet Years ago (so probably like six months or something, I dunno).

internetpoetry: screenshot by torridly hey, it’s...

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 12:52:21 -0500

internetpoetry:

screenshot by torridly

hey, it’s something I found on the internet once that was a poem!

discontent; slow webs

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 22:19:22 -0500

Something I’m wondering: why do we call everything we put online “content” just because we’re putting it online? The act I’m doing when I make this thing that I’m going to post on a website is writing; it doesn’t feel cognitively different from trying to make anything else out of words. So why not call it a piece of writing?

Possibly this seems like a facetious and silly question, but I didn’t grow up reading absolutely everything in the English language within comprehending distance of my eyeballs without coming to a belief that language matters. What we call things is important. I worry that “content” is dulling the edge of a thing made of stories, of texts. Writing with hyperlinks or pictures in it is still a text, it’s just a text that behaves in those ways for the reader. Internet Poetry is still poetry, it’s just poetry on a glowing screen.

And maybe this is just another way of saying something I already said, but it’s an angle. And it leads to a theory: we’re calling things a different word because we want to believe that what we’re doing is different, just because we can do it faster and put it in front of more people. We’re not that different just because we have different tools; the tools don’t make us better at being human to each other. (Here is a really pithy and smart view on this, c/o Maura a while ago.)

There’s a thing (or a fragmented set of things) called the slow web. Pretty much immediately after reading that post, I did just what Jack mentioned having done: I assigned my own meaning to “the slow web.” Because when I think of that term I don’t think of apps or startups or software. I think of a way of thinking: viewing things I find online as texts, and texts as valuable, not as infinitely rotating “content.” There are definitely ways to enable this through better software; Instapaper’s one I use often. But unless we’re creating texts that reward slow and careful reading/viewing, there’s nothing there to enable.

The web at its loveliest is a storytelling medium. (The argument that it’s a customer service one is compelling; I think/hope they can coexist without one getting totally bogged down in the other). I value lots and lots of different stories, told well; I value communities that can help me find them. And I value my own time spent writing, and I have a not-very-well-hidden secret fear of not being taken seriously, in a swarm of interchangeable content-writing spewing forth from faceless people.

(A contextualizing footnote: this riff on “content” started with me waking up in the middle of the night, sleepless-scrolling through Twitter, finding a link to a Hipster Runoff post and reading it even though I have complicated ambivalence about HRO and definitely should not read it in the middle of the night in an attempt to fall back asleep. That whole idea of art/integrity vs. commodification/content as it applies to music isn’t new, but it’s nervous-making. And music is really viscerally valuable and important to me in much the same way that writing and reading is— remind me sometime to talk about seeing Mike Watt and the Missingmen that same day that I woke up at 5 am and read a big ol’ Carles rant! it basically fixed everything!)

verybusyandimportant: lucyhewett: Esther Garcia -...

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 11:02:22 -0500

verybusyandimportant:

lucyhewett:

Esther Garcia - butterfatstudios.com

My heart sings when my most best ladies work together on a project.

truly there are some amazing ladies in this world. here is a picture of one, taken by another.

Top 3 Mountain Goats Lyrics That Have Something To Do With Language's Relationship To Reality And The Inadequacy Of Metaphor &Shit

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 18:52:14 -0500

lindsayzoladz:

3. “Sleep like dead men, wake up like dead men.”

2. “Woke up afraid of my own shadow, like genuinely afraid!”

1. “The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it’s you, and that you’re standing in the doorway.”

As someone who is currently re-reading Wittgenstein’s Mistress, a beautiful novel which is pretty much entirely about language’s relationship to reality or some shit, this whole category resonates a lot. Also the Mountain Goats are one of my favorite bands (for this sort of language play and for many other reasons), and their new record is now in the mail to me from my old Merge Records-adjacent NC stomping grounds. I had an email conversation with the guy who mailed my Mountain Goats record today, because of course we went to college together and see each other at Pitchfork Fest every year; of course the world is tiny like this and connected with art.

verybusyandimportant: alecshao: Tim Hawkinson - Mobius Ship...

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 17:40:00 -0500

verybusyandimportant:

alecshao:

Tim Hawkinson - Mobius Ship (2011)
Last week I described the way I was feeling as “a möbius strip of stress-barf.” A friend Googled the phrase and somehow arrived at this same piece of art. I’m happy it’s sailed back to me in a different context.

on xoxo

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 22:36:48 -0500

I attended my first-ever tech/design/nerd conference this weekend in Portland. I’m writing this on the plane home, while it’s still fresh in my exhausted mind (and while I am still on vacation).

Whenever I told people that it was my first conference, they’d say that most of them aren’t like this, that it was all downhill from here (should I choose to go to other tech/design/nerd conferences, which, who knows whether I will). I heard the word “magical” bandied about a lot, and it was: there’s always some alchemy to putting a bunch of sincere and smart and caring people in a room together with free rein to enthuse about what they love. I had a huge grin on my face the whole time from talking to strangers, which is usually such a hard thing for me. Andy and Andy deserve so much credit for organizing a place where that happened in such full force. I felt welcome, despite having decidedly sparse nerd credentials (by which I mean: I don’t make internet for a living). Life felt intensely charmed. It was tremendous.

But even when you’re in a room with a bunch of people you admire and like, you’re also always in your own head, and my own head is always a place of complicated philosophical internet problems and powerful feminist opinions. One of the best things that I took with me from XOXO was a new conviction that it’s valuable for me to say so. (Which, jeez, talk about the magic being inside you all along. It was. I’m making time for it.)

XOXO was billed as a festival of disruptive creativity. In the opening talk, Andy Baio acknowledged that “disruption” is kind of a bogus buzzword, that “disintermediation” would be more appropriate for the type of creative work under consideration: artists finding their audience with only websites as mediators. The tone the Andys set about all this was powerfully hopeful and uncynical; I really hope I can apply it liberally with a big sloppy brush to my internet life. And I hope everything I say about the conference is taken in that spirit.

And so, about disruption: even to get to a point where you’re disrupting something, you have to have some level of privilege. You have to know you’ll be able to eat and not die. You have to have the time to work towards whatever you’re making. To be in that room, I had to have the eating and not-dying covered, along with disposable income and vacation days to get to Portland. (Because yes, some of us still rock the cubicle lifestyle as we wend our way up the Maslow’s pyramid of self-actualizing on our creative projects.)

It’s not particularly fun to meditate on your privilege. If we’re trying to make creative communities online and in the world without keeping privilege in check, though, we are going to be totally screwed, and we’re going to bring those communities crashing down with us in flames. We have great tools, but they’re not going to fix our instincts to be afraid of differences. I wrote a tweet to this effect after Dan Harmon made a couple throwaway jokes that contradicted the spirit of his otherwise fantastic keynote. His thesis was: don’t take the internet seriously, take people seriously; the internet is a people-connector. Great, yes, and well-stated, and funny, and maybe don’t make jokes about babes in the audience, because you are telling the babe contingent that we’re welcome there for our babe status and not the things that make us fully people. (Also, these sorts of jokes are way lazy.)

Even if you’re taking people seriously rather than the internet itself, it’s still dangerously tempting to think that people who aren’t like you (trolls, Tea Partiers, haters of all stripes) are less human: you aren’t really seeing them, after all, and they aren’t seeing you. And that’s when the internet gets cynical and shitty. I’d argue– I have argued– that this alienation is maybe built into the platform. Let’s all please disrupt the hell out of that.

The talk that sold me on going to XOXO in the first place was Maggie Vail and Jesse von Doom’s, about CASH Music. Jesse said the thing that summed up a lot: Disrupting things is easy. Fixing them is hard. If we really want to use all our cool disruptive internet power to fix the world (which hopefully is the thrust of all that happy sincerity), it’s gotta be an internet that learns from the world’s mistakes, that doesn’t silence women and people of color, that makes space for difficult art and complicated conversations.

I think the XOXO co-organizers know this, because I spent a while talking to Andy Baio in the middle of the crowded street outside the afterparty last night. I wanted him to know some of this stuff in person before I said it to the internet, and he was already hyperaware of it. That’s the best place to start. I’m interested to see how next year looks: maybe scholarships for more artists and makers of all genders and races to come? Maybe more small talks and conversations? More women and people of color is a major given that everybody knows, but that doesn’t happen without a welcoming space. This was the beta test space for the conference’s future, I think. I hope everyone feels as welcome next year as I did.

I left feeling mostly encouraged that we can work on these things together, we people who write the internet and people who make it work. I made new and wonderful friends; I put faces with names and Twitter handles. I ranted at length about books and poems to lots of folks (which is my ideal thing to do). But still, our time and attention is all we have, and it’s only as good as what we do with it. I want to find more time to figure all this out. That would really be magical: disrupting time to have more of it, to have these conversations more.

the medium and the messages

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 14:54:05 -0500

Astute friend Gordon said something that’s stuck in my head for weeks about the pitfalls of web presences: how they rewire some bits of our brains we might most want to use to have creative ideas. The lab-rat-like endorphin hit I get when I refresh Twitter and Tumblr (and I do it more than I’d like) is a different thing from the much more difficult work of being alone with my thoughts and writing. It’s more certain, for one: there will always be some new GIF or witticism online to entertain me; there won’t always be a new poem or whatever poking itself through into my consciousness. But it’s treacherous if it’s making it harder for me to entertain myself, to imagine, to get bored and get curious and explore and play. It’s so much easier to be complacent with being liked, even a little, by other people online than it is to find nuanced things to say about being in the world.

And I think liking is often ignored as a potent part of this mix: I find myself tailoring my thoughts to a certain Twitter house style, a way of expressing a thought that makes it more likable, or not writing if it can’t be written that way. I narrate my experiences to myself, tweet-sized, and then opt out of sharing them most times.

That’s the treachery: as we write to be liked and shared and reblogged, we’re writing less to figure out each other in all our contradictions. We’re shifting ourselves to fit the form. And when we’re narrating ourselves to ourselves, we’re becoming less aware of who we really are in relation to everything else that is or could be. Or it feels that way to me.

When I read Infinite Jest for the first time I remember writing down a line that now seems like a bit of a platitude (as I’m sure it was sincerely meant) but was fresh and necessary to me like a decade ago. It was something along the lines of: you’ll stop worrying about what others think of you when you realize how little they do. Writing online makes it really easy to hold two competing and contrary illusions: that you’re an invisible drop in a big crappy ocean, or that your following is constantly attentive, keen to engage with your personal brand. (Which is a whole other set of things that sort of disgust me, the way that the medium makes people behave more like businesses, selling ways to spend your time.)

The medium we’re using to communicate is never neutral. This isn’t always a flaw (it’s obviously not lost on me that I’m publishing this using popular social media website and terrible longform reading experience platform Tumblr), but it’s a difficult, sometimes paralyzing, thing to stay aware of in the stream.

For me, if it’s hard to choose how and where to write, and who to be when I’m writing (because holy cow are we ever all playacting some personas when we are our online selves), it’s harder to write to begin with. It’s harder to know what there is to say, and why. And that is why I’m largely quiet here, and why I’m torn about it.

And I know I’m likely speaking to all kinds of choirs, but those are things I’ve been considering lately.