47: Trade-Off
If this newsletter is my "good" notebook, Twitter has always been my scrap paper -- torn envelopes and kitchen roll left all over the place that lay out terrifyingly truthful recollections of my life experiences and reveal more about me than I ever expected them to.
Social media helps me to generate ideas, but it whisks them away from me too soon. I can visit them, but when they are out, they aren't mine to mould anymore. These instant, unstudied, still-forming thoughts belong to the commenters, who frame them with their own points of views and experiences, and draw meanings that I had not thought of, and add quips or edits I had chosen not to include in the first place. This is writing -- I understand that. Words are taken in by readers in their own personal ways. That's how it works. But Twitter has taught me, over time, that I have no control over what I create there. I have been feeding it with my raw, uncompromised self for over a decade, and it has given me career and comfort in return. It's also taken thousands of ideas from me. It has been a part of my life for so long that I have trained my thoughts to form in attention-grabbing sentences, like a pointed foot used to uncomfortable shoes. Hundreds of stories are unwritten because I didn't have the patience to do more than outline a base synopsis of them and send it out into my small corner of the world for instant gratification. That gratification makes me lazy. Why spend energy nurturing a crop when I could just eat the seeds?
I've been thinking a lot about what I say I use Twitter for (jobs, friendship) and what I am increasingly using it for instead (vanity, distraction, comparing myself to others). It has been a constant in my life for so long that I find it hard to imagine living without it. What I have worked out though, is that I can't use it the way I have been and do the work I want to do at the same time. So I've chosen the work. I'm not quitting Twitter altogether, but I'm using it less. I'm weaning myself off it. Twitter was the creative outlet I needed when I had nothing else. But you have to know when something good has become bad for you. I don't know if the trade-off is in my favour anymore.
Other Stuff
The Washington Post begin this piece on the names of all the streets in every state of America with a two-pronged pre-empting of the critiques they expect people to have about the article. The article itself is pretty cool and has a great map infographic, but I found that aspect just as interesting.
Out of nowhere I remembered that the first long feature I can ever remember thinking "wow, I didn't even care about the topic but that was super interesting" about was a Kings Of Leon article in Rolling Stone. I found the piece after some Googling (it's from 2005.) I still really enjoyed it!
The New York Public Library has released an album of ambient sounds called "Missing Sounds Of New York". You can take a cab to 110th and 3rd, go to a busy bar, hang out in a park with real New Yorkers, or sit on a stoop and people watch as skaters fly past in front of an impromptu parade. It feels like an important document of our time and I'm expecting some great sampling to be taken from it. (Find it on Spotify. -- and please listen out for the guy in the library that says "patience and fortitude" because that's my favourite bit.)
Rebecca Solnit talks about how fairytales have given her context to live in during this weird, unrealistic time.
This BBC documentary on colours in art is some excellent brain-burnout salve.
Lots to share from Pellicle this week: A great playlist from cidermaker Tom Oliver who seems to be the coolest man in the world, Lily Waite's wonderful profile on Ross On Wye and Eoghan Walsh's story on Antidoot, all of which are perfect for a touch of escapism. Even though Eoghan's reminded me that we were meant to have drank some of that Antidoot together by now. That virus has a lot to answer for.
It was meant to be Eurovision this weekend. I love Eurovision. There will be a weird celebration stand-in show on Saturday instead that is meant to include, among other things, "crowdsourced karaoke" which I can't wait for because I can't imagine it's going to be anything other than terrible. Here's a run-down of what this years' artists are doing instead of performing in Rotterdam via The Guardian.
I bought Rutger Bregman's Humankind last week and in it is the story of a "real life Lord Of The Flies" -- only in this version the boys worked together and survived. One of the boys, Mano, is now 73 and sharing his story with more people than he ever expected to.
Big thanks to Rachel for introducing me to Alicia Kennedy's insightful, excellent, excellent, excellent newsletter on food, food politics, the food industry, eating, and everything else that overlaps the complex world which we either work in or are in some part exposed to at all times.
This new track by Booka Shade has repeatedly destroyed me this week. If you're allergic to earnest people saying positive things over prog house music, please don't bother listening to it because you'll hate it and feel compelled to tell me about it and I couldn't care less.
Look at these Big, big waves by ocean photographer and super positive guy Ray Collins.
Oil by Ray Collins