post 3/5: A POST FOR POSTERITY
a 5-post guide to Getting Started writing (hurdling the first “Post”, + then writing more, + posting more)
missed the beginning? see
post 1) POST SOMETHING.
post 2) POST AGAIN, QUICKLY.
post 3) A POST FOR POSTERITY, AKA POSTING LISTS TO JUMP-START YOUR FEAR-LOCKED FUTURE SELF.
Note the buckling knees above. After any dive into the deep end, regardless whether too late to return to the platform, there is the possibility of abject terror and questioning of sanity.
So be kind to your future fear. Take the moment now to document examples of those you admire who have tread their own writing paths before, and elaborate several examples of the ideas and topics that have captivated your reading and writing interest, which you hope to cultivate into public posts and conversations with a community larger than 1 or your dinner table.
You may not know what inspiration or anecdote shall calm an as-yet-adjunct terror or elicit a future project, nor which ideas may droop and collect the equivalent of internet dust on this lonely post in the vast, vast bits-and-bytes desert, so treasure this ambiguity as free license to explore and expound and make a big juicy list, as simply a draft, a starting moment, a skin which shall be shed in the very act of publishing.
{LIST OF prolifics, authors, bloggers: v 0.1 — many more coming later}
How to Talk about Art History by Ellen Orredson — this spunky lady drills right to the heart of the matter, with topics such as “Art History 101: the female nude” (nude or naked?) delivering fresh frames and insights into topics of art history with a contemporary invitation to come as you are and see and question what you see. Besides her invaluable assistance with an epic spray-painting session before my recent art show #SEXPOSURE in Hong Kong, we have shared thoughtful conversations on the structure of writing, and the paralysing as well as foundational effects of structure on content. She is the first person to which I ventured my “tree” writing framework, the soon-to-be underground roots through which you are now murking.
The LAW by Anahita Chouhan — that friend who shares her crayons and her closet with me, has always encouraged me to start, start, start writing and isn’t in the least precocious about blogging forth in the present, inherently-potentially-imperfect state. The spirit who dreamily responded to my fear of sharing, of speaking up, advising that it is in fact the opposite. The more she writes, the more she wants to write about, and the more she wants to write. Thank you.
Getting Started by Allison Baum — the fierce and intelligent go-getter who asks deep questions of others and herself, locks eyes, and expects real answers, whatever they may be. I was first taken aback by her (practiced) ease at swearing online, and a baffling admirer of her ability and quest to “put it all out there”. As colleagues and friends, her voice echoes in my mind, reminders to be thoughtful, accept the unknown and not knowing, the inevitability of stumbles in creating a future. Thank you for you: celebrating individuality and seeking authenticity.
“Slow days, fast company: the world, the flesh, and L.A.” by Eve Babitz—somewhere across the decades and 700 miles south of my birthplace, my spirit animal emerged and found me the year I turned 30 and somehow needed her words. Eve is the cool, taciturn, impossibly polished writer who manages to invisibly elude salacious details whilst breezily spelling out a life of allure. It strikes me, as it has others, the cautionary double standard to which females are regarded, the inability to extricate her life’s works and internal genius and combustion from her life’s circumstances and relationships. In fact her memoir of sorts “Eve’s Hollywood”, first published in 1974, was never critically reviewed by The New York Times until yesterday, the 4th of May 2017, a lapse which Dwight Garner’s review addresses directly “thus to right a historical wrong”.
Meanwhile, I present this paragraph for those who wonder how any ‘she’ writes:
“To imagine writing this vivid and alert could be tossed off, savant-like, by some hungover glamour queen still lolling on soiled sheets at the Chateau Marmont—even if, as the book itself practically suggests, this happens to have been the case—remains an insult to writing itself, let alone to the writer in question.” Matthew Specktor introducing “Slow days, fast company: the world, the flesh, and L.A.”
John Mcphee, who invented the genre of creative nonfiction and taught me so much. I spare words for him here which will shine better elsewhere.
Jeff Nunokawa, who has playfully elevated tangents, unseen or obfuscated connections and cultural cross-dress into a literary art form, a revival and pageant to what might otherwise be obscured or dismissed, on Facebook and in classrooms.
{LIST OF potential titles + topics…oh yes, even this universe plays jokes}
on Contemporary Art
long reads
learning by doing
on Fear + Creation
Getting Started ____
on Imposter Syndrome
the call of the nomad
the emperor without clothes
in my non-digital real life
controlling code
Welcome to my gallery…
the Collector’s dilemma
public art, public goods
oh hello, Valley of Silicon
#sexposure
stepping onSTAGE, and other startup stories
symbiotic humans
rad I/O waves
the future past-perfect
human rights, inalienable
the “third space” of learning language
festivals, fairs, fatigue
event-driven life
light and space
>>> the point is, this post is one mark in a point in time and 80% today is better than 90% tomorrow, and any action or inaction is but one version of infinite choices, and my version. Post 3's simple mantra is to keep going: I want to remind myself who has inspired me thus far, and what is it that I want to tell and explore.
So I will share something, anything, now.
