THE SOCIALIZED RECLUSE returns with my conversation with director, game designer, and photographer Liam Wong (TO:KY:OO and AFTER DARK): I’ve long been a fan of his work – and getting the chance to talk with him about art, work, games, and inspirations, was one of those “this is why I wanted to do this show in the first place” moments. You can check out the whole conversation here.
My next SOCIALIZED RECLUSE episode, a conversation with Liam Wong, is intro'ed, outro’ed, edited, time-stamped, and ready to go. Have to write up the post and all the associated podcast things, but will launch late tomorrow morning.
Putting the finishing touches on my latest Socialized Recluse episode, a conversation with Liam Wong, and it got me to thinking about this passage from Václav Havel’s December 1976 essay, “Second Wind,” a passage which got me through my own period of silence – and is jumping to the forefront yet again – not only in my conversation with Liam, but in my work:
"Sooner or later, however, a writer (or at least a writer of my type) finds himself at a crossroads: he has exhausted his initial experience of the world and the ways of expressing it and he must decide how to proceed from there. He can, of course, seek ever more brilliant ways of saying the things he has already said; that is, he can essentially repeat himself. Or he can rest in the position he achieved in his first burst of creativity, subordinate everything he learned to the interests of consolidating that position, and thus assure himself a place on Parnassus."But he has a third option: he can abandon everything proven, step beyond his initial experience of the world, with which he is already by now all too familiar, liberate himself from what binds him to his own tradition, to public expectation and to his own established position, and try for a new and more mature self-definition, one that corresponds to his present and authentic experience of the world. In short, he can find his "second wind." Anyone who chooses this route – the only one (if one wishes to go on writing) that genuinely makes sense – will not, as a rule, have an easy time of it. At this stage in his life, a writer is no longer a blank sheet of paper, and some things are hard to part with. His original élan, self-confidence, and spontaneous openness have gone, but genuine maturity is not yet in sight; he must, in fact, start over again, but in essentially more difficult conditions."I found myself at this crossroads in the late 1960s and I'm afraid I'm still looking for my second wind..."
PS: The whole of OPEN LETTERS is essential reading for anyone possessed of humanity.
Fantastic chat with Liam: came away with a feeling of how photographs could be an extension of someone as essential to their being as their brain or heart. Letting the recording itself sit until first of next week then will turn into the episode: need a couple of days after a deep dive into the work of others to refocus on my writing (even though the current isn't speaking to me this morning – hence why I keep two WIPs going at once, two different tabs, the hopes that maybe one can unlock the other – or lead to utter fuckall). Full interview should be live sometime, Weds-> Fri.
Might be time to partake in a little side project, something totally different from the main WIPs. Hard and fast deadline – a week or a month or so. Asking self, What would be to me as photography is to Liam – maybe that's what sketchy me below is trying to figure out?
CGM switch day today, from the Libre to the Dexcom. First phase of my cyborg pancreas changeover. Bit of trepidation (at least part of aforementioned utter fuckall?), but the covering bandages arrived yesterday so if nothing else I don't have to worry about a boisterous German Shepherd tearing it off my arm; little victories.
25ºF, clouds: Spent the morning, thus far, collating notes and prepping questions for this evening's TSR interview with TO:KY:OO and AFTER DARK author/photographer Liam Wong and remembering that the second part of the collation process is paring my questions down so they can be asked conversationally: I do a lot of prep to make things sound spur of the moment; when my questions seem long winded, I consider it a failure... Basic interview process: collect, collate, conversate (for lack of a better term), then probably throw it all out in the interview itself – but the cheat sheet's there, a useful roadmap through to socialization.
TSR interview research; DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION plays in the background.
It has arrived: Liam Wong’s follow-up to his spectacular TO:KY:OO. First opening and salivating perusal demands a devouring in short order:
Magnificent: I love seeing the world through Liam’s eyes.