“I’ve had my fun and now it’s time to serve your conscience overseas.”
—R.E.M. “Orange Crush”
Hey there, Earth-dwelling Space Cats, happy Sunday.
Here’s hoping this finds you well and happy. I am well, thank you, and grateful for it.
It’s been a productive past week; met with my artist friend Pat on Wednesday, who may be designing some merch for this site, particularly helping design the Dept. of Personal Archaeology feature launching this summer. DOPA will mostly focus on STUFF, because, seriously, you’re not an artist without carrying around tons of stuff—and what do you do with it? How do you find it, work with it, reference it, file it, understand and feel about it, best use it? DOPA wants to ask and answer these questions.
—which only deepened for me this week when my other artist friend Coleman loaned me his copy of Platt’s The Pushbutton Butterfly (don’t judge a book by its cover or its title, but you can judge it by its story and what that promises and perhaps fails to realize—which means I haven’t finished the book but I adore its title). You see, Coleman deconstructs books into tactile art—that is, he destroys them—something I approve of, since, well I love books but the destruction of one thing is not necessarily the destruction of all things, and breaking apart is, I think, as important as building up. …I think.
No, wait, yes. I agree.
As I’ve been drafting some longer form pieces, I’m not publishing an essay today. And I’ve been hoping to revive CITD, which I reluctantly did today.
Ugh, WordPress. We need to clean you up.
All these sort of long-haul pieces (mostly here on Substack since I’ve moved away from Medium) involve multiple drafts, research, interviews, fact-checking, image-gathering, rewrites, proofing—whew. It’s a lot.
But I love it. It’s what I’ve done all my life.
But you.
That doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. Oh no.
Nor me.
Since I’ve staked my claim here on Substack—and been at it for nearly five months—I’m inviting you—yes YOU—to ask the questions this week. I’ll leave the comments open for questions about StoryShed Learning & Media, anything I’ve published here, anything about me or myself—anything you have on your mind.
Seriously. ANYTHING.
So go at it, y’all. I’m still juiced you’re around.
Peace.