principles - updated

Principles, now numbering eight, with 05:

PUBLISH SOMETHING EVERY DAY - AKA the whole point of this space over the years: the daily posts are my warm-ups, my sketches – now including actual sketches – hurled into the world simply for the sake of hurling them into the world. I don’t anticipate that anyone will read them let alone enjoy them: they exist solely because I want them to exist and find the daily ritual of their composition in the spaces between the main work to be the most enjoyable method by which traverse the route between brain and publishing. Also a useful means by which to eradicate the need for external validation.

The complete living, breathing list lives and breathes here.

this would be a title if i could come up with one right now

Inverse proportionality's vanishing act continues: whereas once fewer words in the Main Work meant more words here, they are – as with yesterday's more with more – few with few (though there are, as I let this flow, more here than on the main work so perhaps it's a return to SOP?)

What I can tell you is that Kirby has been demanding to sit in my lap – while I'm sitting in the office chair - all morning: growing up with The Morkie and The Jorkie, he's yet to understand how massive he is; three more months of velociraptor age-range that could last three years or his entire life. Whatever works: he is, utterly, Derbz.

Also: go read THE MEMORY POLICE now. It’s a fucking masterpiece.

Bivalent stabjab this afternoon; die COVID die.

(back in the) grooves(?)

Banner day yesterday of site transformation, rebalancing: added pages for Attendance Cards, for VIOLENTLY ADORABLE, and Frequencies and "latest" (back) to the About page LINKS. Hoping that Squarespace adds a Mastodon social link icon soon but I suspect it will fall under their "such and such takes awhile to implement so please be patient (while we try to add stuff and break everything)" canned response.

Also nifty: the inspirations behind my new Principles page dug my efforts.

In word-land: banner morning this morning of getting back into the fiction groove – one of those rare mornings when I have a lot to write here but also managed to get a lot done in The Work: usually the amount of writing in this space is in inverse proportion to the amount of writing in The Work – of finding what wasn't working (efforts to combine – didn't need to combine stories, only to switch the medium of one) and how to – possibly – make it work for me again; also set a goal of releasing a new Etude by year's end.

I have now listened to Mr Leonard Cohen on vinyl for the first time and it was like listening to him for the first time ever – and this coming from someone who has a piece of his wisdom tattooed on his arm, "(if your life is burning well), poetry is just the ash."

Related: this was also my first time listening to music via physical media in years and I seem to have forgotten how, the patience, the focus it deserves. Efforts underway to return to that sort of patience from streaming befitting the investment in aural physicality. As I replied to K when she asked, "Why vinyl?": streaming is an e book, cd a paperback, vinyl the hardcover.

If you haven't checked it out, that Amazon Prime documentary on the music of Bond, featuring Billie Eilish and a ton of others, is fantastic. Helped to crystalize an unrealized goal I had as a music student: to have written a song as beautiful (and tragic) as "We Have All The Time In The World" and a score as rousing and exciting as ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (still my favorite Bond film).

Today's (and all moving forward) Attendance Card drawn in 4'33": Barry said she had her students draw for the duration of a song, so I decided to draw for the duration of John Cage's 4'33". Initially conceived card as a shrug but turned into what I can only approximate as a "Hallelujah" response to Mr Cohen on vinyl.

principles

Spent the morning putting the finish touches on my principles page: seven guiding bedrocks – or at least as close as I can come to disseminating them – in an ever-updating (concrete yet maleable) list. Added it to the navigation bar. And with that, I don't think I have anything else to add. At least for now. But here they are, if you want to have a look.

(Those are supposed to be birds in the drawing below. I drew a blank.)

instance / workrhythm

Successfully moved Mastodon instances from the catchall Mastodon.social to writing.exchange – I'm now at @twweaver@writing.exchange – and, in so doing, learned the value of the local timeline: what a delightful group of creative and generous people. Further, set a donation of $100/yr to the admins to keep the server lights on – which is what I probably would have paid by self-hosting my own – with the value of a new community. Worth it, I think – this co-op model is wonderful.

Accepted, somewhat, that I've slid into something of a natural workrhythm in which I work on stuff for this space / newsletter on weekends (makes me a little more elastic in terms of work/life etc etc). The two projects/day thing isn't going to work: my brain was too muddled and I spent much of the day yesterday in a jittery, button-pressing mess.

Looks like my Principles page will be going live tomorrow, maybe – eight of them in an ever-updating document.

shorn / split

Sheared my hair yesterday for two, maybe three reasons: one, I was sick of having it and needed a change, especially since I popped into this world with a head full of black hair; two, I like wearing hats and my hair looks like shit every time I take one off; and three, I don't have to draw my hair on these cards anymore. At least for awhile anyhow. This is a victory.

Finding that doing two projects a day and splitting them into different workblocks, starting the second project in block two and continuing in block one of the next day and repeating with a different project – prose->comics is usually the switch – is helpful. Means I don't have to continue in block two, when I'm tired and hungry and can do so instead when I'm more alert in the 0500-0700 workblock.

It seems that that's all I have for you this morning, site. Here’s a cartoon.

muskville->mastodon: week two or maybe three IDK all the days merge together anyhow

Remain content with my shift from Muskville to Mastodon (@twweaver@mastodon.social): still in the process of deciding value of having my own, single-user instance when I have this space. In truth, however, my shift is more than a purely "fuck Elon" move but rather a happy confluence of a long-standing desire to exit Twitter cold turkey for different social pastures and the dumpster fire that is Twitter's descent into Muskville. Amazing how a 14-year addiction vanishes when the supplier becomes tainted and (more evidently at least) corrupted.

Current thinking for how a single-user instance would function/interact here: this space would move to once-daily while all whenever/whatevers would move to Mastodon (EarBliss, dogpictures, etc.) That being said, I like the way this site is set up, with the zuihitsu combinations of things all on a single page – hence my present reticence to rock the boat.

But who knows. Maybe the mood will strike me and I'll go for it (when host sites open back up after the present diaspora) and then change it (my new 404 page is nothing if not the entire mission statement / creative statement of this space). Who knows. So long as I avoid redundancy (I've set Mastodon to delete all posts older than a month, so this space is currently essential as a living, breathing document of myself) and being redundant I'm good.

In other: I am stuck in ZELDA – stupid strength/battle tests. But hey, if nothing else, I was right about needing to combine things (in The Work, not ZELDA) - had to see it to believe it or believe it to see it maybe one maybe the other, IDK.