A Collection Of Curiosities
About À BRIC ET À BRAC
Á BRIC ET Á BRAC started as a zine-style in-periodical that was free of charge. It contained various stories and other interesting items, such as meditations, recipes, wellbeing, music, and other bits and pieces.
My life changed considerably in 2018. I closed my business, ceased practising Chinese Medicine and running Qigong classes, and shut down all social media accounts. I went into hibernation.
I spent six months in deep reflection and contemplation. The result saw me spend most of my time writing various stories, essays, and articles. These eventually were published on my new blog, Pandora’s Lost Gift.
The stories covered several topics, from why I decided to stop practising TCM and the subsequent uncertainty from dissociating from my professional identity to my reflections on being invisible and slowing life down.
During my time offline, I realised that my passion is for writing and sharing ideas; part of removing myself from the social media landscape was the dismay at the boorish manner conversation had devolved. Thus Pandora’s Lost Gift was born from my desire to allow my creative expression to flourish somewhere unhindered by the pressures of ‘likes’ and ‘followers’.
It was also a space where I could curate random cultural offerings. My influences are eclectic and span many fields: Science Fiction, Rock music, Anthropology, video games, ancient Chinese philosophy, Pop-psychology, New Age mysticism, TV programs, comedy, comic books, history, and world mythology, to name a few.
I call this project “Metametheus”, and you can read more about its unifying theme here.
À BRIC ET À BRAC was part of this project.
It started as an Email Periodical, which I sent to my existing subscribers. The idea was that I gave these select people exclusive content that was not available on Pandora’s Lost Gift.
However, I soon understood that having our inboxes bombarded with material has become the new junk mail. Indeed, email newsletters and blogs are making somewhat of a comeback as people begin to turn away from the big social media platforms.
And so it has become what I call an “Inperiodical” — a publication that is released sporadically and organically. This was inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s idea that a hen lays just one egg, while the rest of the time, she goes around and feeds on things that provide the next egg.
Then I thought, “why should it only go out to a select few?” The purpose of my writing (other than to please my whims and desires) is to be read by anyone who finds it attractive. Subscriber lists are a product of thinking that sees readers as a ‘market’, a collection of ‘rubes’ and ‘easy marks’, who are continually sold to. I wanted this project to be vastly different from the market/sales-driven mentality that has unfortunately infected the world of writing and ideas.
So here, I endeavour to create a space to collect bits and pieces of writing as they happen. It’s starting with the migration of my content from Pandora’s Lost Gift to this blog. I’ll also publish my translations and exegesis on ancient Chinese philosophical works in this space. Because why not. It will be a blog about a bit of this and a bit of that.
Why should we care?
Well, in the grand scheme of things, we don’t need to. However, there is a point where there is value in pausing to consider our intentions for what we write and create and ask ourselves what we value.
Not that there is anything inherently wrong with creating content to sell a product, service, or idea — but what happened to creating for creativity’s sake? The great writers who’ve produced the works we’ve all read and remember didn’t do so with ‘the market’ in mind. Hell, consider the work of JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings took something close to 50 years to write, and the vast bulk of what was written didn’t even make the book (albeit subsequently published as a series of other books that detail the mythological and historical underpinnings of that trilogy).
But the act of curation is also something that has gone largely undervalued, and yet it’s something we all do and have done for centuries. Each of us is informed, inspired, turned on, and by people, places, stories, and works of creative expression we come across daily. Our Unconscious Mind takes our perception and experience of these, and it shapes our brains to think, act, and feel in the world in a certain way.
Creating a ‘curation’ is like producing an annotated bibliography of our lives.
My purpose for this project is two-fold: I get to share what has entered into my field and inspired and fascinated me, hoping it will also be for you.
Enjoy the journey.
😊🙏🏽☯️
