Public Notebook

Lists and I

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the List

Some boats, listing.

Classical Music but it's lofi - HQ Compilation 2 by Classical Music But

He’s on one again. My dad is driving me back from the airport, and listing the best player of his lifetime for each NBA team…geographically from West to East, forgetting none of them. Years later on hearing of this, my friend exclaims: “that guy’s mind is ORGANIZED!”

I don’t catalogue my mind. It’s unhealthy.
– Adam from Girls

A note allegedly penned by Johnny Cash.

In my graduate-level David Bowie class, my favorite professor assigns “Notes on Camp.” It’s perhaps the greatest list of all time - and that’s coming from a born-’n-raised Lutheran! It’s so good, they made a Met gala out of it. The writing surprises; it delights. The form draws me to it, and into it, and all of a sudden, I’m inside. I become the list; I am home. Over the next two years, the lists proliferate, as a way of easing my fixations, organizing the mind - categorizing, prioritizing, integrating, separating, and analyzing my life. In list-town, I’ve set up camp.

Scrolling through my first intake note…things got out of hand.

A student makes hundreds of pages of photocopies and takes them home, and the manual labor [they exercise] in doing so gives [them] the impression that [they possess] the work. Owning the photocopies exempts the student from actually reading them. This sort of vertigo of accumulation, a neocapitalism of information, happens to many. […] There are many things I do not know because I photocopied a text and then relaxed as if I had read it.
– Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis (1977)

Two years later, the lists settle into their first pattern, and in a lightning talk I’m trying to explain it - and why I love lists so much - to my coworkers. There’s the to-do list, the intake list, and then every item gets categorized and filed into the proper permanent list, right? Eyes glaze over. To regain their attention, I make fun of myself and share (a list of) pithy quotations.

My lightning talk presentation.

The XRNYC Feedback Circle decides to explore more deeply how Extinction Rebellion is viewed in the media. Knowing little about media studies, I brute-force it: I proceed to collect and manually categorize every viewpoint expressed in more than a hundred negative articles from the alt-right to the radical left. Over time, and with each addition, a list of viewpoints becomes something more - a whole - a non-judgmental diorama of there American political landscape. The left and right overlap in interesting ways, though they conflict in more. No article is the same. And the power of a list emerges. A list is more than the sum of its parts. Without judgement, a list can thread many things together and help you to see the truth. It can even tell a story.

Protestors hold a banner with the Extinction Rebellion logo in Times Square which reads ACT NOW.

Nothing exists unless I maintain it (by my interest, or my potential interest). This is an ultimate, mostly subliminal anxiety. Hence, I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province.
– Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

During a presentation on digital security, it strikes me that a powerpoint is really just a list in a different form. And so is a paragraph - a list of ideas. And books, a list of chapters. And life - and the universe. Actually, no, that’s too much, right? I mean, if it is, the numbering system is totally fucked! But anyway, there is something specific about a list - the sequencing, the focus, the packaging - that makes it not just useful, but potentially inspiring. What is a poem, if not a list? (Rather than contemplating this further, I write my “Notes on Digital Security.”)

To make a list or not to make a list, that is the…

It’s my dad again. This time, I’m helping the former Jeopardy champ move his list of news articles and commentaries from one computer to another. Although I have never seen his list of lists before, it is remarkably similar to my own. This is obviously where I get it from - the archival instinct, the obsessive drive not just to learn, but to gather, to hoard. (I’m terrible at trivia though.)

What are we speeding towards? Are we saving time? Saving it up for what? […] How are you affected by a non-stop assault of symbolic communication — audio, visual, print, billboard, video, radio, robotic voices — as you wander through a forest of signs? What are they urging upon you? Do you ever need solitude, quiet, contemplation? Do you remember it? Thinking on your own, rather than reacting to stimuli? Is it hard to look away?
– Anonymous, The Contents of Your Daily Life

Sometimes, there just isn’t enough time.

In 2024, I have embraced the list. It’s an experiment in self-actualization. It’s a lot; maybe too much. We’re talking work shit, life shit. To-dos out to wazoo. Lists of plans for lists of plans. A list of plants. Scans. But there are nice things, too - convenient, helpful, and lovely things. Rarely do I forget something at the grocery store. I always know what I need to work on next. Friends thank me for keeping up with them over the years (they’re on a list, or two). A partner, learning of my list of facts and notes about them, feels loved and cared for. Lists let me let go; not only can I forgive, but I can forget for a while. They let me play, and be free. Through lists, I dream, and then put my dreams in a little box that I can open back up whenever I want. And because of this, I have many dreams. Only time will tell which ones become a reality.

everything you encounter becomes part of you
you become part everything you encounter
we gather and are gathered

the materials you collect
they follow you
daunt you
tease you
weigh you down
support you
and you follow them

– Excerpt, Hannah Perner-Wilson, every project begins with a walk in the woods (2019)

Twelve Goodbyes

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Announcing my new album, (Music for) Twelve Goodbyes.

I’m excited to share music with you today, out now on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, and everywhere else people listen to music.

Like my previous album, Music for Fifteen Emails, (Music for) Twelve Goodbyes maintains a measured pace, allowing the listener to focus on what is in front of them or to drift off along winding thought-ways. But at the same time, as background music, it doesn’t always sit so comfortably. An email is generally far less serious than a goodbye, and thusly, the new album carries a greater emotional heft. The performer is far more present, the melodies more intimate - and the themes, more interior to the soul than the home. My heart is in every note and every rest.

Sometimes, in order to say hello, we must first say goodbye. Over the last two years, I have said goodbye and goodbye and goodbye: the end of a long-term relationship, a symphony of traveling farewells, and the sad passing of both of my grandfathers. But so, too, have I said hello: to a new phase of life, many new friends, and a world of adventure. In Music for Twelve Goodbyes, I hope you hear it all: the melancholy, the joy, the fear, the reflection - and the peace found when we embrace the beautiful constant of change.

Here’s what my close friend C had to say about it when I offered them $50 to write something nice:

Ridgewood, Queens-based musician Nathan Hewitt has spent a lot of time in his bedroom. From the confines of stay at home orders and working from home, Hewitt garnered a fruitful output of home recordings including Music for Fifteen Emails Vol. I & II, a collection of fifteen peaceful themes and melodies inspired by 1980s Environmental Music by Japanese musicians like Hiroshi Yoshimura and Satoshi Ashikawa. Hewitt now offers up (Music for) Twelve Goodbyes, a natural segue and development of these earlier projects and his most refined musical offering to date with a dozen glowing laptop lullabies of ample emotional magnitude, thoughtful artistry, and musical impression.

The album opens with “Make yourself at home”, a nod that this music is not solely of goodbyes in a farewell sense but goodbyes the present verb– a process and patience, to make yourself while at home. Hewitt’s titles reassure himself, conjure grace, and spill over with enough to share with all of us. Coming out of years of great change, continued growth, and loss converging to now- a musical summation of solitary synthesis, rich with internal dialogue, seeking something beautiful from within the workings of four bedroom walls. Ripples come off the pier of the cover art as the context, memory, and solace of the album art maps resonate and inspire the mood and depth of this music.

Churning ostinatos of arpeggios provide a healthy soil, sprouting airy melodies in lush monochrome. There are developed musical themes, a fine-tuned technical prowess, and echoes of influences from aforementioned Yoshimura and other environmental music luminaries like Ryuichi Sakamoto or Beverly Glenn-Copeland. These songs sit patiently next to each other and we pass each one, overwhelmed with its hue, like fields of flowers. The scenery changes and in place of another swath of color there is a gnarled bramble giving way to a vacant lot. Pastoral scenes embellished and textured with jarring granular noise, trickles of delicately placed field recordings, and cheeky vocoder- a reminder that Hewitt’s sound palette includes a healthy dose of self-aware humor, emphasizing the importance of community and honesty in his music.

On (Music for) Twelve Goodbyes Hewitt invites us in with tender tones, warmth, and sincerity found across his music- a distinct blend of vulnerable themes, ongoing exploration, and a love for music and continued connection. We leave feeling soothed, having gotten to know Nathan and his music better, and inspired to make ourselves at home.

The tracks are as follows:

Make yourself at home

Sometimes a goodbye can be a (dramatic) hello

I’m glad you’re back

Moving through our lives full of goodbyes

For everything

For Grandpas Ron and Russell

Love ya

To all my friends and buds out there

Keep in touch

Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t

Someone will love you

As she walked out the door

Until next time

Bittersweet

See you in the morning

After the end of a perfect day

Goodbye snail

They take a long time to leave

Before you go

Sending them off on a journey

How do we do this

A playful departure

I’ll miss you

With all my heart

…I hope you enjoy.

Loving Ugly: Origins and Limitations

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“No reflection without art - no art without reflection.” - Seismograf

“No art without reflection without art without reflection.” - me

Assorted reflections on my own piece, “Loving Ugly.”

1. Origins

I’ve been thinking about art for a long time. I know I’m not unique in that, but - I just have not been able to kick this feeling that something is really, really wrong. Is it capitalism? Yes. Colonialism? Absolutely. Supremacism? Of course. But none of these isms fully address my unease. I mean, wtf even is art?¹ What is it for? Why is it a thing? (Why do I care?)

So, largely in private, for years I have continued to wrestle with these annoying questions, addicted to the puzzle, a bad habit, like what I imagine it’s like for people who chew their nails or watch One Piece.

Recently, I remembered that I have actually written publicly about art before, in a General Manager’s letter included in the Spring 2017 edition of college radio station WRFL’s zine, the RiFLe. At the time, in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election, I was preoccupied with “political” art, and its failures:

Many of us think about art as an object, a process, a performance. Others think of art as craft or decoration. […] But it is clear that even the most political objects and performances usually have little or no impact on the system, and sometimes even further the aims of the ruling class.

I quoted Hito Steyerl, who I was into of course:

“Contemporary art feeds on the crumbs of a massive and wide spread redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, conducted by means of an ongoing class struggle from above. It gives primordial accumulation a whiff of post-conceptual razzmatazz.”

…and Jonas Staal, too, who I had run into while researching micronations (a minor preoccupation of mine at the time):

[Staal] concurs, arguing that contemporary culture has “fallen prey to demagogues and populists, who utilize the spineless landscape of capitalist democracy and its art as an open field for ideas.” Today’s art is…too quickly absorbed by the capitalist machine and sold to the highest bidder.

I was coming to terms with the fact that the monetary value placed on art in the centuries-old, Western-led “art world”² comes from a market, from speculation, and it always has. At the lower price points, art objects compete with mass-produced home-goods, and rarely recuperate the real labor cost by the artist. In the art market proper, art objects serve as investments. To destroy the idea of art as an investment, we must abolish both the idea of investment and of art.

Even though I was skeptical of art at the time, and political art in particular, I still believed that, somehow, a collective political art was possible that could succeed in “changing the world”:

Staal calls for a fundamental change in artmaking: “We are in need of a proactive politics and a proactive art, which are to serve a truly ideological project.” I believe the art he speaks of, political art which seeks to imagine a new world, is well within our reach, but only if we do it together.

To think a single artist can change the world is a fantasy…In truth, none of us can do this alone. It is up to all of us, not just artists, to try and conceive of what this art might look like and to support each other, working together as we explore.

We need art that initiates real, tangible change: art which would have its origins in collective action.

It’s a little cute, looking back. I’m giving my past self a little pat on the head - “soon you’ll learn…” - but at the same time, I can see in these words the seeds of my present thinking.

By this time, I’ve already discarded the idea of genius. I’ve started, with the help of mentor Ben Allen, to recognize that everyone has their own genius within them, and through art history courses at the time with Anna Bryszki, to understand that we are part of a dense, interconnected system, constantly influencing one another. No one’s genius is solely their own.

You can also see the early tendrils of Loving Ugly’s liberatory aesthetics:

This art is open, DIY, “organic,”³ and social, reaching out - and not just through the echo chambers of social media.⁴ It leaves the glamour of galleries and concert halls behind, even transcending the reactive qualities of zines, house shows, and punk bands (though they may be elements of it).

And although I do not presently place much hope in collective political art, specifically, as I did then, I do still (naively, it feels at times) believe in conventional collective political power, broadly speaking. With some minor modifications, in brackets below, I still stand by the letter’s closing words:

As difficult as it is to imagine a world different from the world one in which we currently reside - or a truth which we do not already know - I still believe that [we]⁵ can, indeed change things. It is only through the process of experimenting with collective, ideological [action],⁶ and through the failure of these acts, that we may be able to someday construct something different and achieve radical change for our⁷ land.

In the following years, the question of what art can or should do was still at my heels. I wrote in a now-defunct blog in early 2019:

[…] in a world that cares only for appearances, rather than realities, [can] sound contribute to an authentic revolution, or is it forever to be a tool, unable to focus, its meaning lost in ambiguity?

Making apolitical ambient music at the time, I was dismayed at how little it had to say - politically, at least:

The reality is, sound does not speak. My sound says the same thing to both Antifa and Neonazis, and everyone in between: be calm, everything is everything, it’s going to be alright. In this Twitter-ridden world where every word has an impact, my music was hardly saying anything at all.

I still had not let go of the idea, absorbed in the academy, that art must be political - an idea that was less about political change and more about “taste” at the university and in NYC under the Trump administration. I latched on to the theory that music could be something more:

The ideas of G Douglas Barrett’s After Sound gave form to those that had been bouncing around in my head. In the book, Barrett envisions a critical musical practice unencumbered by the absolute music tradition, expanding far beyond the limits of sound. By re-embracing the premodern musical concept of logos in art and experimental music, I can create meaning within my work. Even more importantly, where I critique the medium of sound itself, I can incorporate contemporary strategies such as conceptualism and social practice to engage a far wider variety of political, cultural, and aesthetic subjects.

The difference in approach advocated by Barrett can be summed up in a new definition of composition, not tied to the page, but to the entirety of the work, and beyond. Music can “become untethered from sound as an autonomous medium” and even leave sound behind in order to prioritize “the wider methodological scope necessary to formulate music as a critical art practice.” These ideas refigure music as a “critically engaged art form in which sound appears as one resource among many.”

This shift in thinking can be seen in my work itself, both in music and in activism. I shifted from the electric drones of That Sacred, Electric Sound to the cold programatic fury of FM 3-24 MCWP 3-33.5, and from a focus of “changing the world” through nonprofit work to a focus on activism.

After my first forays into serious activism and political music, however, art started to separate from my politics. I released non-political ambient music, and let it have its own purpose. And the ideas found in “Loving Ugly” truly began to take shape.

So, there’s my journey. But the journey is not done. Just because I wrote a blog post doesn’t mean I completely believe in it! I mean, if I had to go into poetic form to get it out, can it really hold muster? I just wanted to get it out there, and now we can play with it.

There are plenty of things about this theory that don’t quite work…

2. Limitations

Here are some problems I can think of. I am sure there are more.

Loving ugly is impossible

We all stuck in our own brains, our own lives - our own taste. Despite my best efforts cultivate an open, liberated mind, I still often judge work harshly, and still have favorites; I still think that some art is good, and some art sucks. I still want to be seen as cool, sometimes, to be seen as higher on the social ladder, and to make friends with similar taste that affirm my sense of superiority.

Loving ugly does not help artists

While I have supported and will continue to support artists as described in the WAGE Wo/manifesto and elsewhere, I do believe that focusing on artist compensation in today’s world, without systemic change⁸, is a Sisyphean task, overlooking the core issues at play. Such efforts, as much as I love them, have limited effect on our winners-take-all world.

That said, “loving ugly” is not about systemic change either. It is just an idea, a thought experiment. It is not compatible with the labor movement, or with professional artistry, and only indirectly part of any political movement. It is not for the “now,” and although I can hold both the contradictory needs of the now and the future, I would not want to overstate its effectiveness. It cannot bring itself into being.

Art people aren’t evil

The people I demean in Loving Ugly are my friends. I do not dislike them! I dislike the system they are swimming in..there is not enough food in their tank. There aren’t even enough sharks for all the little passengers to mooch off of.

The world is ugly enough already

Some say that 90% of things are crap. I say it all is. We think we’re better than other people. Really, we’re all pretty average. (There is a a lot of art out there you haven’t seen.)

But actually, in my view, by loving ugly we are not doing away with the idea of beauty⁹, but remembering what anyone who goes to a museum is reminded of: art is in the eye of the beholder. You don’t always agree with curators and critics, so why is their taste elevated above yours?

All of us see beauty in different places, and in different ways. We can let all those little differences, the natural aesthetic likes and dislikes, just sit there untouched, without emphasis and without hierarchy - they aren’t worth worrying about - and celebrate that we all see beauty. Anywhere you look is beautiful to someone. And as soon as anyone says something is art, it is. What we have to do now is teach each other how to love the things we see as beautiful that others see as ugly.

Is art even a “thing” anymore?

I believe that there can be art in anything done with purpose and focus. In that way, art is knowing, art is understanding, art is being, art is breathing. The art of sweeping a floor, or shuffling a deck, or smiling at a stranger. Artistry resides in all of us. It is lived as much as it is made. This is cheesy, and totally overwrought…but still, I believe it. I have to.

(Historical preservation still has a role. But it, too, must change. An essay for another time, or another person.)

There will be no more “progress”

Loving ugly also means letting go of the over-importance of originality. And I think that is okay.

Folks following knitting patterns know what I’m talking about. And artists who are famous know that there are hidden patterns within artmaking, even at the highest levels. There are moments of novelty and originality, yes, but often, the art world chooses the winners and then pretends that they came up with things out of nowhere, all on their own, and as if there were not already patterns of some sort that they were using.

The art world sucks, but I love New York

How do we balance doing “art” for no reason with doing it for other people and doing it to feel good and doing it to be interesting and doing it to make a difference and doing it to earn a living and doing it to earn recognition and doing it to become famous and doing it to feel fulfilled? We can’t. We have to let go.

Cities, as nodes, form a center of “care” for artists - a place that provides a larger number of opportunities for them. This can be really fun, even if you are competing against your friends and lovers for table scraps and have to survive outside institutions. Loving ugly would do away with this - both the “hard” and the “fun” of places like New York.

The impact would not be limited to cities themselves. Rural communities also “rent” artists. Such rentals always create underwhelming experiences, as the real benefits of art come through prolonged contact, relationships within the community, and integration of local thought and action. People think the fix is more professional artists, but the real fix is loving ugly: allowing everyone to be an artist, in whatever way feels right to them.

Loving ugly isn’t actionable

Well, it is for the individual, as a practice. But how might it manifest collectively? Abundant arts education, detached from art history? Free improv music classes for the untrained? Finger paints for adults. Noncompetitive art spaces of all kinds. Prohibitions against sale - only trades. Organized resistance to the art world, and any attempt to eat “loving ugly” up. Let’s go wild.

Defining what art is is a futile effort in general. Endeavoring to exclude something from falling under the definition of art comes from competition, to further one’s own position by the denigration of another. ↩︎
Kendell Geers: “There is no such thing as an art world. There are many art worlds overlapping, and it has become a bad habit to imagine that the exclusive club of auction houses and investment art is anything but the folk art of a small but powerful economic and social elite club.” ↩︎
I appreciate that my past self decided to put this term in scare quotes, since it is close to meaningless tbh. ↩︎
My departure from Facebook and Instagram was always going to happen. ↩︎
I have replaced the word “art” with the word “we.” ↩︎
This used to read “art (action)”. ↩︎
I now have a deeper understanding of the fact that this is not “our” land. And land is not something to be ignored: look at “artwashing” and “creative placemaking” - those owning land control what is “tasteful” and use art to justify their landgrabs and greed. ↩︎
I don’t always believe a liberated world is possible. But I was formed by this one. Most of the time, I can barely see beyond my own nose. Octavia wrote that “the only lasting trust is change,” and it is up to us to shape it. ↩︎
Beauty exists whether we see it or not. (Yes, the tree makes a sound.) ↩︎

Venetian Coin

Tue, 07 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I was in Venice last month, early in the morning, no other tourists around in a more remote part of town, with an hour to kill and a great deal more loose change than I knew what to do with.

Then “Egyptian Fantasy” started playing in my earbuds…

Belle Époque by Vincent Peirani & Emile Parisien

…and suddenly I knew what to do.

I hope someone was able to put the money to good use. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

References XII

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Where I offer my best links and music recommendations on the September Equinox, 2023.

I post these lists alongside my equinoctial and solstitial personal newsletter.

Some good music I’ve listened to lately

Girl with Fish, by feeble little horse
After the Night, by Parannoul
Fountain Baby, by Amaarae
Noname, by Sundial
DREAMER, by Nabihah Iqbal

Links

(Know something I would like? Share with me!)

Loving Ugly: An Introduction

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Seeking liberation from the tyranny of “taste” (while being just as trapped as everyone else).

Long has it been true that taste descends from power, and the powerful - after writing the rules and tilting the field - accumulate now-and-henceforth-tasteful work to further increase their wealth.

Those who identify as “artists” are left with a troubling conundrum. Survival under capitalism requires that they also accumulate money.

Artists fight each other for the right to create tasteful work for the elite, which requires at least two of the following: 1) luck, 2) familial connections, 3) generational wealth, and 4) lots of student loan debt. Or, lacking those, they can toil away at their practice, in a major urban hub, trying (trying, trying again) and failing to be one of the few left in a game full of cheaters where the winners take all.

Artists that try and fail, or that have intermittent success, can engage with the system in other roles. Tastemakers, gatekeepers, dreamweavers, sharks. They fight for the leftover scraps, and feed on one another.

Some - the brave ones - just give up.

The only way forward is to love ugly. Not because things are truly ugly, but out of a recognition that our taste has been trained. Trained in schools after we recited the National Anthem, hands on our hearts. Trained in dark classrooms, modernist paintings putting us to sleep. Trained through competition, and expectations, and all our little games.

Loving ugly is not hating beauty. Loving ugly is an openness to the new, to the strange and alien. To what we fear, and to what we secretly love.

What “ugly” looks like depends on where you are. In a college radio station, it’s my friend Cam admitting how much he likes Drake. In a New York gallery, it’s admiring a discarded draft. At home, it is (actually) loving a niece’s latest crayon piece.

I’ll caution you: in the art world, loving ugly - the right ugly, soon to be declared beautiful - can be currency. (Yes, I really did see them before they got big. Oh yes, I met them at a party a few years ago in LA.) Tastemakers love “discovering” outsider art and music, wacko zines and “untrained” “savants.” But the goal, here, is not to be “hip.” We seek liberation - at least, what little is available to us. (When we love ugly, no one need know.)

Yes. Most of our “taste” comes from domination, from supremacy, from extraction - from “patronage.” Remove them, and what will we find?

In a liberated world, there are no professional artists.
The boundaries between art and life are blurry at best.
Art is equally in everything:
the ringing of a bell,
the sweeping of the floor,
the building of a home,
the arrangement of a dish,
the planning of a date,
the clipping of a toenail,
the painting on a wall.
The kindness of a friend.

In a liberated world, art cannot be “bad,” only different.
Liking and not-liking have no point.
Pieces, when recognized as such, are not “improved,”
but only touched, and changed.
And then they are different,
in a way that is pleasing for some,
and less pleasing for others.

Do we have our own, inherent sensibilities?
Of course.

Will “talent,” as we understand it, be unevenly distributed?
Certainly.

But remember:
art is in everything.

Each of us
has our own stories to tell,
in our own way,
and the space
and time
to do so.

In a liberated world,
everyone is an artist.

And no one is.

Yes, yes, okay whatever Nathan. But in the real world, there are many artists, tastemakers, teachers, art lovers. Liberation is quite far away, it feels. Where do we start?

We start,
I say,
by loving ugly,
in ways big
and small.

We start by loving each other.
By loving each other’s work.
We start by loving ourselves.
And most challenging,
most tenderly,
the ever-disappointing work
of our own hands.

But the wildest thing,
the craziest thing,
is that

Loving ugly
is
seeing beauty -
the
ugly beauty,
everywhere.

It is allllllllllll around us.

Give it a touch,
a touch of love -
and let’s see

how far we can go.

I wrote a response to this piece here.

References XI

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Where I offer my best links and music recommendations on the June Solstice, 2023.

I post these lists alongside my equinoctial and solstitial personal newsletter.

Music recommendations

My top five new-ish albums:

billy woods & Kenny Segal, Maps
Colin Stetson, When we were that what wept for the sea
Yaeji, With A Hammer (I got to see her live!)
Gia Margaret, Romantic Piano
Young Fathers, Heavy Heavy

Also nice: Ambient Time, Windows XP Original Soundtrack and Fred’s tiny desk

References X

Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Where I offer my best links and music recommendations on the March Equinox, 2023.

I post these lists alongside my equinoctial and solstitial personal newsletter.

Music recommendations

Favs: Actual Life 3 (January 1 - September 9 2022) by Fred again.. + All Fiction by Pile + Se Ve Desde Aquí by Mabe Fratti
Exploration: Blacklips Bar: Androgyns and Deviants — Industrial Romance for Bruised and Battered Angels, 1992–1995 by ANOHNI and friends + Oh Me Oh My by Lonnie Holley
Grit: Dogsbody by Model/Actriz + Minus 30°C by Zima Stulecia
Chill vibe: Raven by Kelela + Girl In The Half Pearl by Liv.e + Red Moon In Venus by Kali Uchis + Invisible People by Chicano Batman
Texture: Vakning by Francesco Fabris & Ben Frost + Ritual by Solo Andata + Back To The Body by Andrew Oda
Energy: Godcaster by Godcaster + Esto Frío No Vale Nada by NICO ROIG + Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) by Yves Tumor + Today My Friend You Drunk The Venom by The Drin
Calm: Black Coral Sprig by Talk West + Pigments by Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn + "(We’re) Two Lines, In The Open Sea" and “Como um Desejo” by Grotta Veterano + Ichiko Aoba with 12 Ensemble
Joy: “dickhead blues” by Kara Jackson + 10,000 gecs by 100 gecs + Cosmic Flute Rides Again by NTHNL + saysynth demos v1.0.0 by Brian Abelson
Nostalgia: B-Sides, Demos & Rarities by PJ Harvey + 100% GALCHER by Galcher Lustwerk

Links

The docs on ThoughtMaybe, and Adam Curtis’s work in general, but especially Can’t Get You Out of My Head
“Just sharing pics of anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian and anti-colonial graffiti, stickers and street art seen around the world”
We failed to properly mark the twentieth anniversary this September of one of the most important quotes ever: “There’s an old saying in Tennessee – I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.” (video, transcript)
“The Space Needle appears to be taking off from the fog in Seattle, Washington with Mt Rainier on the horizon”
My colleague and friend Mike, talking about timebanks, which force us to consider “value” in a new and important ways
“The Time I Spent On A Commercial Whaling Ship Totally Changed My Perspective On The World”
Explainers for things you didn’t realize you needed to know, such as Enyacore
You are worth so much more than your productivity, and also, I love espanso
The dream machine: leave a dream, take a dream (more bots here)
The sounds of CDMX (Mexico City)
WEIRD SKATEBOARDS + WILD BICYCLING
“Writers! Please Learn What a Rodent Is!”
A funny story by Ivor Cutler
The Redaction Machine
Animorphs

(Know something I would like? Share with me!)

Deep Sea Animal

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Sharing in case it speaks to you.

You were like a deep sea animal,
Waiting in the drink,
Your tentacles wide open,
Your heart miles deep.

When I saw your lantern floating there,
I couldn’t help but peek.
Caught up in each other’s wonders,
Our buffet was “all you can eat.”

We danced in the dark together,
Mem’ries I’ll always keep,
But the bond that held us together,
Made you want all the more to be free.

I cannot now help but wonder:
Was I too salty? Too sweet?
Did I proclaim my love too strongly?
The cost of a ring too steep?

I’ll never know the answer
To how you could be so cold.
But you are a deep sea animal -
I suppose I should have known.

References IX

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Where I offer my best links and music recommendations on the Winter Solstice, 2022.

I post these lists alongside my equinoctial and solstitial personal newsletter.

Music recommendations

Here are the five best albums I’ve listened to recently:

PAINLESS, by Nilufer Yanya
American Quartet, by Yonatan Gat
Here It Comes Again, by Cate Le Bon
BRAT, by MURDERPACT
Bolts, by Hagop Tchaparian

Honorary mentions:

I somehow missed Brutalism and Hillyh up to this point
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard remain prolific
New Björk, NNAMDÏ, SPRH, and Panda Bear always deserve a mention
Clipping’s tiny desk performance and Dijon’s Absolutely (ty Cody)
Music by Mejiwahn, Hainbach, Oneiric, Dumb, and The Samps.

(Know something I would like? Share with me!)

All Your Attentions

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Two years ago today, I left Facebook and Instagram. How do I feel about it? I wrote a poem to try and capture my feelings. I also recorded myself reading it, if you prefer audio.

Brrrring, brrrring.
The buzz, the rattle.
Notifications’
Inhuman arrival.
A close encounter,
Against your skin,
All your attentions,
Our arrival shall win.

ALL YOUR ATTENTIONS
ARE BELONGM TO US.
In us, in us,
You must place your trust.
An infinite supply
Of jpeg lives.
Feeding insecurities.
As ads fly by.

We believe in you,
And your boring life.
It’ll be fucking awesome,
If you buy this trike.
You’ll get that perfect day
In paradise.
And if you don’t buy.
You’ll pay the price.

Perfection so close,
Just a click away.
One more order,
Delivered next-day.
It’ll be so good.
We’ll pose you just so.
Are you ready? Are you ready?
Are you ready to go?

You see, a “like”
Is a smile,
And a smile
Is a like.
A comment,
A conversation;
A poke,
That ain’t right.

A profile,
A mirror;
A story,
A joke;
And the self,
A fiction,
A constructed narrative
That conveniently leaves out
The uncomfortable bits…
Bro.

We are shaped by how
We see others, seeing us.
It keeps us alert;
But always in the dust.
The self-construction
Can never-ever end,
Else this flimsy dog and pony show,
We could no longer defend.

But when you’ve lost all your mirrors.
When you don’t see the others,
Seeing you.
What happens
Next?

I, for one, feel

Shapeless,
Sorta.

I mean, am I corporeal, anymore?
I pat myself just to make sure
But it doesn’t help much
I feel like a ghost,
Maybe.
I’m on a different plane,
Maybe.
I’m out of touch,
Unreachable.
Out of line,
Unpredictable.
Out of sight,
Out of mind,
Inimitable.

I’m floating.
No, flying.
I’m feeling -
Wait - I’m feeling good?
I’m defying gravity:
Something has changed within me.
Vibes are rising,
Contentment increasing,
Mental health is going,
Up, up, up,

And all of a sudden,
I’m stuck.
I’m in the cloud.
Tangled in strings,
Imperceptibly pulled,
And pipes filled with something
Crimson,
Sanguine,
Bubbling
Up up up to the machines above
Performing an unnatural photosynthesis,
Their initial - and ongoing - public offering
Turning red,
To green.

Then, I look down.

Below, I see
The fabric of the world
Folding in on itself.
(Flat, if only in a philosophical sense.)
The faraway now close,
And the close now far away.
Brain-chemical reactions, as our thoughts intermix.
And then reactions to those reactions, and then again, in kind.
Trauma, then re-trauma, to the moon, to the max.
Content sparks, emotional restart.
Death, defibrillate, and no doulas in sight.
Content unending.
Content all-consuming.
Content, content, forevermore.
And then I hear.
A cheer rises from below.
ALL HAIL CONTENT.
ALL HAIL CONTENT.
ALL HAIL CONTENT.

And I get it - I fucking love content.
And I still read the news.
But what I see,
I get to choose.
My syndication is simple,
Their simplification, syndical.
My cynicism is casual,
Their cynicism - alternatively factual.

SICK.
BURN.

That’s right she’s sick,
And she’s burning.
Our dear Mother Earth
In her grave already turning.
Rising waters. Hurricane Ian.
Falling wages. I can’t even.
We bring the heat.
And cut off all feeling.
Our penchant for self-annihilation is sterling.
Disturbing.

Okay, okay,
I got off track,
Let’s stop. And breathe.
And bring it back.
I’ve checked out,
But I cannot leave.
There is no exit.
Not that I can see.
Despite my “courageous”
Decentralized defection,
I’m still out here
Farming career connections.
Social federation
Still got me seeking affection.
And the impact on my mental
Is hardly perfection.

Without Meta,
I’m still better off,
But I’ve a long, long way
‘Til my socials truly stop.
Yup, it’s weak ties, and TikTok dances.
Hell’s not other people
But it’s all around us.
We suffer in secret.
It’s the money, the greed.
It’s a system that drives people
To play games with our feed.

But don’t give up.
I believe.
That there’s another way.
That we can achieve.
Create strong ties,
Maintain connections.
Love ourselves.
And always offer the invitation:
Life is better,
Off their grid.
Come with us.
Don’t take their shit.

I hope you enjoyed my poem-rant!

There was only one moment when I almost went back. I was lonely, having recently gone through a big break-up and moved to a neighborhood where I knew hardly anyone. I had just gone skydiving, and created a secret Instagram account to keep track of local events and businesses. I got these awesome photos of me jumping out of a plane, and I drafted up a post. But I just couldn’t. All those feelings started to come back. It felt icky, tailoring my experience to farm likes and comments. The emojis, the hashtags. I deleted the drafted post, and never considered it again. I do not regret my decision. Not one bit.

I’m always down to talk about how great it was to leave Facebook and Instagram. Mastodon is having a bit of a moment, what with Hurricane Elon. If you’re interested in non-corporate social media, here’s a nice little intro.

This poem contains references to No Exit, RSS (aka really simple syndication), and the musical Wicked. You can dig into the No Exit references (Estelle = me), laugh at the RSS burn, and just roll with the Wicked one (oh, and “Hotel California”). I couldn’t help myself.

References VIII

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Where I offer my best links and music recommendations on the Autumn Equinox, 2022.

I post these lists alongside my equinoctial and solstitial personal newsletter.

Music recommendations

Natural Brown Prom Queen, by Sudan Archives (SO good)
Heaven Come Crashing, by Rachika Nayar
Aura, by Hatis Noit
Florist, by Florist
Aethiopes, by billy woods
Music for Living Spaces, by Green-House
God’s Country, by Chat Pile
No Rules Sandy, by Sylvan Esso
Myrtle Ave Wetlands EP, by John Barera & Brian Abelson
Listening Music / Anfang, by Marc Emory
Living Torch, by Kali Malone
EG2: Dowsing Voice, by Emma Ruth Rundle
CLBBNG, by clipping.
Organ Recital, by Bastien Keb
Also, the newest Beach House, which I somehow missed

(Know something I would like? Share with me!)

References VII

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Where I offer my best links and music recommendations on the Summer Solstice, 2022.

I post these lists alongside my equinoctial and solstitial personal newsletter.

Music recommendations

Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky, by Porridge Radio
Songs Known Together, Alone, by Pile
Famously Alive, by Guerilla Toss
Ugly Season, by Perfume Genius (I talked to them one time at Al’s in Lexington)
Neon Buddha, by Bolis Pupul
Unspoken Words, by Max Cooper
I’m the Sky: Studio and Demo Recordings, 1964–1971, by Norma Tanega
Architecture of Friendship, by Santiago Latorre
MOTOMAMI, by ROSALIA
Blade, by Mart Avi
Hypnos, by Ravyn Lenae (hipster moment: this is her debut album, but I’ve been listening to her since 2015)
Somebody Else’s Song, by Water From Your Eyes
Serotonin II, by yeule
GOLD – Go Forward in the Courage of Your Love, by Alabaster dePlume
An [80s Japanese city pop playlist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYHmDVYTaTw
Songs no one has ever heard

(Know something I would like? Share with me!)

References VI

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Where I offer my best links and music recommendations on the March Equinox, 2022.

I post these lists alongside my equinoctial and solstitial personal newsletter.

Music recommendations

Topical Dancer, by Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul
LIFE ON EARTH, by Hurray For The Riff Raff
talk soon, by hemlock
Joshua Tree & Other Desert Cities, by Dibson T Hoffweiler
“A Ghanaian highlife singer gone horribly right” (documentary)
“Clair de Lune,” by Kamasi Washington (Youtube comment: “Anybody that could play this would without a doubt be getting Debussy”)
Music and Poetry of the Kesh, by Ursula K. Le Guin & Todd Barton
Ants From Up There, by Black Country, New Road
everything from Felbm
Mia Gargaret, by Gia Margaret
Shunjing Is A Street, by Siyunge

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Wherever We Are

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A meditation where I take myself way too seriously and ruminate on change, travel, and community. For information on my US travels see also my tips for digital nomads and NA travel log, along with my newsletter.

Two friends walking toward a beach.

one

Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

– Rainer Maria Rilke, “Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower,” Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29

Twenty-twenty-one was a dynamic year for me. New job, new apartment, new life. There was a mix of fortune and misfortune. Everything was in flux.

So in early September, I packed away my life and set off on a trip of indefinite length.¹ I made no promises that I would return to New York - or anywhere, for that matter. My only promise was to myself: to let go of the past and step forward into a new phase of life.

A stranger I met on top of Half Dome walking toward the edge to show me a climbing route.

A few days after I set off, I came upon a newsletter from Rachel of the School of Machines, Making, & Make-Believe asking:

How can we start to introduce some positive changes into our lives to have some semblance of control and satisfy [a] growing need for change? I have some ideas which I’ll explore in future newsletters but am also curious: How are you doing it?

It just so happened that I had been thinking about change a great deal. I wrote her back:

You don’t know me! And that’s okay. But I really identify with what you are talking about - for me, the feeling is that change is in the air.

In my case, change came to me and flipped everything upside down […] but since then, I’ve been trying to embrace it. I gave up my lease, went skydiving, learned to sail, changed (virtual) jobs, and I’ve recently embarked on a US cross-country trip of indefinite length.

At the core, I’m asking that same question: where do I go from here? I don’t know the answer yet. But as I’ve healed, I’ve also become really quite okay with that uncertainty. My embrace of change is not about taking “some semblance of control,” but rather letting go, and accepting life as it comes. As Octavia wrote: “everything you change, changes you.”[^emails]

Reading this now, in addition to the direct quote, I can hear further resonances from Octavia’s Parable of the Sower:

The Self must create
Its own reasons for being.
To shape God,²
Shape Self.

– Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

My responses to Rachel were full of contradictions, of course. Did I see myself as the one in control, or not? Did I just flow like a leaf in the wind, or fight against the currents of life?

A blurry photo from when I was in Salem, MA.

I chose to sail and skydive.³ I chose to leave home. But not to defy change, or only to flow, but seeking, as Rachel said, “some semblance of control.” Not just to ride the rushing waters, moving back and forth, as Rilke wrote, but to shape them.

two

When I left home, then, I was filled with purpose. Rather than running from my past⁴ I ran toward my future. Sides of my personality I’d hidden away had a chance to breathe. Fragments of my past self (selves), uncovered by being with old friends, could be repurposed. New adventures, also, gestured toward a new chapter.

A friend standing amongst hundreds of antique doors for sale.

It was also just fun. The US trip I had wanted to take for years was warped beyond all recognition. A ten-day train trip became a five-month trek criss-crossing the country, using every conceivable travel method.

The first couple of months on the road were completely invigorating. I let my extroverted side truly bloom. Every night, I was with friends; there were many good times with some fantastic, generous individuals.⁵ I wasn’t even tired - until I finally took a break.

As the trip went on, and entered its third, fourth, fifth months, the tone and focus began to shift. Travel was no longer a novelty. It faded into the background and became a fact of life. The trip was no longer interested in itself. Instead, the feeling was one of placelessness. The feeling that I had no home, no community - that I was truly alone - began to dominate my thoughts.

It didn’t matter where I was anymore. One American mid-size city bled into the next, and the next. Sometimes, I felt lonely. At others, I was able to lean into the uncertainty and embrace a nomadic life, feeling only oneliness - that is, simply being alone.

The view of some hills from an Amtrak sightseeing car.

The American modernist composer Harry Partch once had an Japanese inscription on his wall that read:

Though homeless, you make a shrine wherever you are.

For me, that aphorism speaks to both my generation’s periodic wanderlust and humanity’s nomadic history. If you zoom out far enough, no home lasts forever, and that’s been the case since long before the days of cars, planes, or “digital nomads.”⁶

There are, however, new and unique ingredients in the contemporary nomadic cocktail. The pandemic disrupted fundamental aspects of daily life, leading to endemic loneliness and depression. Labor is more virtual and abstracted than ever; for the educated classes, wholly dissociated from any communal experience of daily life. And while I’m glad that so many of my generation have escaped the (harmful) traditions and (convenient) fictions of Western society, we are left with a void, adrift.

Hiking in the snow, a friend in front of me.

I often feel placeless, landless, and untethered. I’m not the only one.

I’m a drifter. With no profound connection to my land, my ancestors, my culture my community, my gender, or my race.
– Robert Moor

What can we do? Although America was never “great,” or at least, not for everyone, I still wonder: are there any scraps we might be able to salvage from it - or that I can salvage from my own past - that can help usher in a better future?

the Old Way wasn’t good
you can’t go back to it
but you lost crucial things when you left it
and now you have to find them again

– Tim

No matter where you go, or for how long, travel will change your perspective on life. It’s unavoidable. When you are away from “home,” you are forced see things just a little differently. With long-term travel, your perspective changes all the more, and with each nudge, you are farther and farther from where you began.

A small dose of digital nomadism was a healthy for me. But it also reminded me of what had been missing from my life, that can never be manufactured or replaced. Something that, perhaps, can be salvaged from the past - at least in my own life. Community.

A blurry photo from a party.

three

Growing up, my life was centered around religious community. As a pastor’s kid, family and church life were intertwined. Friends were like family. We cooked together, ate together, played together, grew up together. We faced great tragedies, and experienced great joy.

in grief
then in

economic spongecake

– Joseph Mosconi, Occupational Elegies

I also experienced a tight, high-functioning community when I did college radio for three years. It was a non-judgmental space of humility, education, and experimentation, where everyone contributed to the maintenance of shared resources. I treasure many of those relationships to this day.

When I departed New York six months ago, it was with those sorts of relationships in mind. At all but one of the twenty-eight places I visited,⁷ I visited with an old friend. With each, I had a shared history, a repository of memories, where could be found discarded fragments of who I used to be.⁸

The sun rising over Albuquerque.

The trip was a whirlwind of hellos and goodbyes. It was beautiful; it was hard. As a long-term traveler described via Kleroteria in November 2021:

The beautiful curse of living around the world is that you’re always missing someone.

Perpetuating an endless symphony of high tide hellos and ebbing goodbyes. Sea salt tears spray your face and then the sun burns off the fog and you’re free again.

Never standing still for too long.

I’m lucky to have so many amazing humans in my life. But time has passed. Life has pulled us apart. No collection of discrete individual relationships can replicate the belonging (and frustration) found in community. Now that my travel’s “endless symphony” has ended, I need to find community where I am.

Me walking around my grandpa’s pond.

The reason I had to come back to New York is simple: the people.⁹ I’m starting there; mix in some music, a weekly euchre meetup, a weekly game night, and a weekly community dinner, and we might just be getting somewhere. In the end, I hope to arrive at a place where, in the words of adrienne maree brown:

of the things I can change, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Onward, with love.

Here’s a short rundown of my trip, for those who want it: Brevard and Asheville, NC, for A+P’s wedding and kayaking and a sunrise in early September; NYC to pack everything up; Chicago to see M+B and the Cubbies and Pitchfork; SF for a night; Castro Valley, ramen+sake, and mini golf w/ S+A; Pacific vibes in Monterey w/ M+D; cali burritos and a SF show w/ D while in Oakland for a week; beaches + Thundercat/Herbie in Sonoma/Napa with C; #vanlife for a week; summiting Half Dome at Yosemite; more wine w/ C in Sonoma; liveaboard on Lumpy in Berkeley Marina; train to Portland, to see some fam, G+M, and D; train to Seattle to chill and see A+R and K; home for my dad’s bday and to see S; Cinci to see C; Lexington to see everyone, staying w/ M and S+K; Halloween in Salem thanks to A+N and M+T; partying in NYC w/ T+J; Evergreen and Denver w/ E+M, second fav doggo Trubbie, B, and my fav doggo Rudy; exploring TX and Austin; Thanksgiving back home; Grand Rapids w/ K; skiing and hiking in Traverse City, and Mackinac Island (lol) w/ B; the sky bridges and M in Twin Cities; holidays back home; a few days in NYC; hiking, hot air balloon, seeing M, and hiking in Albuquerque; train to LA to see fam, M, and B; and finally my return to NYC in late January. ↩︎
Elsewhere: “God is Change.” ↩︎
I had fun with this one: “The wind in my sails was not by chance; neither was my seven-second free fall. I had my hand on the tiller; I jumped from the plane.”" ↩︎
…walking south along Rockaway Beach, for example. ↩︎
Random notes: seeing the interior lives of others, like hearing someone play “here comes the sun” when they take a shower in the morning; multiple hole-in-ones in mini golf (East Bay), awakening via both a doggo squeaking a rooster toy (Lexington) and an actual rooster (Grand Rapids), sleeping on a sailboat named Lumpy, partying hard in NYC, Lyft driver inviting me to a backyard rock festival (Austin), hiking Half Dome, and braving a blizzard to visit an empty Mackinac Island. By the way, I only lost a single sock. ↩︎
Even “owning” the land you live on is no solution. It will outlive you, and all the systems of capital that have commoditized it. Eventually, those of your blood will leave your little plot, for good. ↩︎
Austin was the exception. ↩︎
I am soooooo grateful to everyone who hosted me. They have all received wildflower seed thank-you notes. It was also great to people at my virtual “bury the high” celebration. ↩︎
Well, that and the fact that on the very first night I was briefly back in November a car was blasting “All Star” by Smashmouth outside my window. ↩︎

A Decade with Erikson

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A love letter reflecting on 10 years with The Malazan Book of the Fallen.

The summer of 2012, having recently finished off the last (available) book of A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, I was looking for something new. Something similar - something epic and dramatic and imaginative. Two possibilities came up, neither of which had I heard of before: The Black Company and The Malazan Book of the Fallen.

We went to a bookstore (remember those?) and I found the first book of both series. I didn’t know which one to choose. But then I saw on the jacket of Gardens of the Moon, the first Malazan book, a testimonial from Glen Cook, author of The Black Company, the other series I was considering. It read:

I stand slack-jawed in awe of The Malazan Book of the Fallen. This masterwork of imagination may be the high water mark of epic fantasy. This marathon of ambition has a depth and breadth and sense of vast reaches of inimical time unlike anything else available today. The Black Company, Zelazny’s Amber, Vance’s Dying Earth, and other mighty drumbeats are but foreshadowings of this dark dragon’s hoard.

I figured if Glen Cook thought that his books weren’t as good as the Malazan ones, well… he’d know as well as anyone.¹ At that point, I had no idea where these books would take me, and how much they would come to mean.

Two weeks ago - nearly ten years later - I finished my second read-through² of Malazan’s main ten-book series. The series (including the 20+ additional books in the Malazan universe, all of which I have read) has been with me through moves, through relationships, through challenges - through it all. The books aren’t perfect,³ but I struggle to think of anything that has been as consistent - and consistently impactful over the last decade of my life.⁴

To honor my time (so far) with these ten monstrous books, here are ten reflections on the series, its themes, its marvelous characters, and its authors.

art by RoeeateR

Exquisite structure and care

One small thing that I greatly appreciate about Erikson is his consistency. One key difference between The Malazan Book of the Fallen and A Song of Ice and Fire is that Erikson is far more consistent. Frankly, he’s prolific. Erikson put out the main series comprising ten books (and 3.3 million words) in only 12 years.

And Erikson didn’t rush. The books are exquisitely constructed, with not a word out of place. Erikson credits his background in short stories:

A couple years back it occurred to me that I never really learned how to write a novel: I learned how to write short stories, and when I set to writing a novel I simply scaled up. So you can consider the ten book series as the longest short story ever written. […] I approached every line as if under the burden of carrying as much information as it could withstand, balanced against the elegance, rhythm, word-choice, of the sentence itself. Just like in a short story.

In all but the last book, the book’s part and chapter structure is exactly the same as well, even with wildly varying settings and storylines: 4 parts, 6 chapters each. Thus, the pacing is consistent - and it works. By the time Erikson really challenges you - spending the first quarter of the fourth book providing the origin story for an important character you have not even heard of before - you know you are in good hands.⁵

Do I intentionally set out to frustrate the reader? What an outrageous notion. Of course I do.

art from a limited edition book cover

A collaborative project

Another thing that makes Malazan special is that it is a collaboration between two friends. They started out building the world together as part of a GURPS role-playing game (think a custom version of Dungeons & Dragons).

As the game became a screenplay, and then a series, then a full-on fantasy universe, the collaboration didn’t stop. While Erikson wrote the main 10-book series, and is honestly the better writer, his friend and collaborator Esslemont has written plenty of great books. They read faster and easier, making for a nice counterpoint to the serious eloquence of Erikson.

In a world obsessed with the idea of the lone genius, this series is a reminder - like Inuit printmaking, theatre and film, and sport (among other things) - of the amazing things humans can do when working together.

Art imitating life

The American composer John Cage once said that there is no separation between art and life. He explored that notion through a variety of techniques, many of them aleatory - that is, having to do with chance. Recognizing the confounding chaos of the real world, he sought to imitate it through randomness.

Coming from the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, major characters dying at surprising moments was no surprise. But there is a subtle difference between the mortality of George R.R. Martin’s world and that of the Malazan one. While the drama of the former is contrived and melodramatic, the timing and circumstances of death in the latter, though shocking, are often more natural in their randomness: a true randomness that is only possible through the roll of a 20-sided die.

The aleatory aspects of Erikson and Esslemont’s world-building make truly epic, convergent moments all the more dramatic. When I learned that one of the most intense moments of the entire series, in Toll the Hounds, was rolled a “natural 20,” I couldn’t hold in the emotion. I broke into tears - the perfection of it all, and the unbelievable sacrifice of that moment, was simply too much to handle.

art by Squaffle

Histories

In the Malazan world, history is layered under characters’ feet, like sediment. And yet, it is also alive, walking beside them.

Many of Erikson’s chapters open with descriptions of the landscape - often ochre-colored - and the unseen layers underneath. He reveals the undercurrent (no pun intended), or perhaps the histories of a distant landscape, from agriculture and logging causing erosion to dried up seabeds, the dust of clay pots, and the bones of plains mammals long extinct. It isn’t surprising, then, to learn that he (and Esslemont?) was trained as an archeologist/anthropologist.

He is preoccupied, in particular, with the question of preservation?

The world, [he] knew, was indifferent to the necessity of preservation. Of histories, of stories layered with meaning and import. It cared nothing for what was forgotten, for memory and knowledge had never been able to halt the endless repetition of wilful stupidity that so bound peoples and civilizations.

In the main novels, the remnants of the past come back, sometimes at pivotal moments. Both a monkey-like precurser to humans and a nanderthal-like race appear from the ashes to make an impact on the world during a time of dramatic change. They are sometimes like (fallible Greek/Roman) gods,⁶ sometimes like zombies, and other times, just like us.

Some ancient races and characters are also representative of deeper ideas. As I wrote in the land acknowledgment for this website:

In my favorite book series, The Malazan Book of the Fallen, history is alive. It is personified by gods, ascendants, and other immortal beings, each with their own story. In some ways, they are more like impulses than characters - or ideas that just won’t die. They walk the earth, drifting from conflict to conflict, living myths long detached from the circumstances that forged them, seeking always an elusive sense of fulfillment that never comes.

Good lives on and adapts, but so too does evil. Like those ghoulish immortals of the Malazan world, some of our darkest ideas, as a species, never seem to go away. Supremacy. Scarcity. Materialism. Individualism. Some folks say that those who do not know the past are doomed to repeat it - and perhaps they are right. Today, however, it is as clear as ever that the past is not done with us, and knowing it is not enough. The evils of the past are not gone, and will not be going away anytime soon.

art by Shadaan

The waters are rising

It is not enought to wish for a better world for the children. It is not enough to shield them with ease and comfort. If we do not sacrifice our own ease, our own comfort, to make the future’s world a better one, then we curse our own children. We leave them a misery they do not deserve; we leave them a host of lessons unlearned.

Erikson’s fiction subtely - and sometimes not so subtely - comments upon a variety of contemporary issues⁷.

Every work of art is contextual, bound to its time of creation, and no matter how inventive a fantasy world, it can’t help but derive its inspiration from the real one. It doesn’t help that, these days more than ever, much of the (and here I’ll invent a word on the fly) ethosphere (as in, the ethos of the culture surrounding you, an alternative for Zeitgeist) is itself a fantasy, created by the incessant needs of market forces, consumerism, titillation and spectacle.

One area where this is particularly clear is his approach to climate change. In the Malazan world, the ice fields are menting, the oceans are rising, and there are alternating droughts, plagues, and floods, forcing migration and death. (Sound familiar?) The earth, embodied by a god, is itself ill, and in need of saving from the harmful extraction of humanity and the ancient races that have adopted our practices.

Themes of nature being in conflict with humanity are found throughout the stories. As a fictional poet says:

The shore does not dream of you.

Throughout the majority of the series, however, Erikson endeavors to dig deeper and connect the sociaetal problems we face today with the fundamental ones we find within ourselves.

We have a talent for disguising greed under the cloak of freedom. As for past acts of depravity, we prefer to ignore those. Progress, after all, means to look ever forward, and whatever we have trampled in our wake is best forgotten.

Humanity’s obsession with progress is a frequent target:

The notion of progress is an illusion.

For better or for worse, the Malazan books are not where to go for solutions to humanity’s problems. But Erikson’s strength is in creating deep, amazing characters that are easy to connect with, and through them, showing us, over and over again, all of our problems, yes - but also the amazing compassion that we can find within.

art by Dejan Delic

The common soldier

Thank not for a fair bargain; honour it.

In the series, the great majority of characters are the soldiers (or former soldiers) of an empire spreading across the world, bringing peace, capitalism, and all of the messy business that comes with it.

By the time we join the story, a lot of the conquering is done, and they are beginning to face a series of challenges to the world that make even the gods tremble, and for which the great skill of these warriors is required, naturally, to save humanity and/or the earth.

That sounds very epic and all, but it isn’t really what the books are about.

In many ways, these soliders are like all of us. Like most of us, the common soldier does not choose their circumstances. They need the coin, or their family does. All they can do is keep marching forward, step after step, taking on challenges as they arrive. Along the way, growing close with the people beside them, whether chosen or not.

As a fan of almost any long series would agree, over time, the characters can become your friends. You build a sort of parasocial - one-way - relationship with them. Re-reading the series was like checking in, just to see how their doing and reminisce about old times. There are all these little inside jokes that only a Malazan reader can pick up.⁸ And when you relive the sacrifice or loss of beloved characters, you cry anew,⁹ with the full knowledge of what their future holds.

Many of the characters are also old friends with one another. By the time you join up with the Bridgeburners in the first book, they’ve been on the road for years. They have long histories with one another, and like everything in these books, Erikson is not about to just tell it to you. You have to put it together, piece by piece, and when you see the full picture, it is really satisfying.

“Save your explanations, I got some questions for you first and you’d better answer them!”

“With what? Explanations?”

“No. Answers. There’s a difference -

“Really? How? What difference?”

“Explanations are what people use when they need to lie. Y’can always tell those, ‘cause those don’t explain nothing and then they look at you like they just cleared things up when really they did the opposite and they know it and you know it and they know you know and you know they know that you know and they know you and you know them and maybe you go out for a pitcher later but who picks up the tab? That’s what I want to know.”

“Right, and answers?”

“Answers is what I get when I ask questions. Answers is when you got no choice. I ask, you tell. I ask again, you tell some more. Then I break your fingers, ‘cause I don’t like what you’re telling me, because those answers don’t explain nothing!”

Although some relationships are already in place when you enter the Malazan world, there are plenty more that you get to see begin. All of these relationships between characters, evolving over years and years, are something to behold. Throughout the books, whether with that first troop, or amongst other characters, Erikson is exceptional at developing vivid, vivacious relationships between characters.

The books are full to the brim with gritty comraderie. Witty banter. Romance, often short-lived. Friendships hardened in battle, or in hunger, or simply tempered under the relentless march of time. The characters are so vivid, so relateable - you can’t help but be drawn in. Whether it is troops of soldiers, theives, mercenaries, mages, or dragons, these books are full of conversations where the reader feels lucky to be a fly on the wall.

Though common, and often hilarious, they are anything but simple. Many of them also speak with eloquence, and with percipience - in their own way.

‘Aye.’ It’s a good word, I think. More a whole attitude than a word, really. With lots of meaning in it, too. A bit of ‘yes’ and a bit of ‘well, fuck’ and maybe some ‘we’re all in this mess together’. So, a word to sum up the Malazans.

Tragedy is an unavoidable part of all of our lives. For many, like it has for me, tragedy has come in the form of unexpected death.

From these soldiers, I have learned about the inevitability of it all. About failure. About mortality. And how to continue on, even when it seems like it isn’t worth it any longer.

art by DarkHHHHHH

Subverting the archetypes

Erikson and Esslemont’s subversion of fantasy stereotypes is everywhere,¹⁰ and yet, they barely bring attention to it. Here are a few examples that come to mind:

Ogres are wizards, basically - living in tall towers, alone, and smarter and more powerful than most other races
Dinosaurs developed an apartheid technocratic society that was torn apart by a race war
The dark elves are noble, while the light elves are evil, and gray elves are tribal

None of these reversals are flippant, casual, or have the veneer of being contrarian just for the sake of it. Compared to other subversive series I’ve encountered, I really appreciate how these world-building choices do not become the focus of the story. Characters are complex, and regularly defy expectation, not because of what they are or where they come from, but because of who they are.

For example, one of the most prominent characters of the series - introduced during the first quarter of the fourth book - is a giant that is constantly exploring (at times subverting, at times deconstructing) the barbarian fantasy / noble savage archetype. This, along with the other ideas Erikson plays with, have a purpose beyond giving Tolkien the bird. They serve the story, thematically, and at times make the reader look in the mirror, and think about their own contradictions.

art by Tsabo6

A world in gray

In another departure from traditional fantasy stories, in the Malazan world, nothing is purely black or white. There is no perfect hero, no perfect villain. Characters’ lives do not have some divine purpose, beyond the purposes they find for themselves.

In Malazan, the reader is treated to an amazingly varied exploration of why people behave the way they do. And I love it. The dark humor, the bright heroism, the drama of light and dark, life and death, not-quite-good and and not-quite-evil - I love it all.

As a kid, I loved classic stories of good and evil. From Harry Potter to The Ranger’s Apprentice and The Lord of the Rings, I dove right into the perspective of the heroes, off to vanquish their “dark lord.” In many ways, the Book of the Fallen is tailor-made for the man that that little boy is becoming. As I’ve grown, I’ve come to realize that none of us are simply “good” or “bad.” But I still believe in heroes - and that all of us have the potential to change the world.

art by Michael Komarck

The true fantasy of the Malazan world

Fantasy literature is an escape. It is indulgent. ¹¹ It can be epic. It has magic, and heroes, and monsters. At the heart of traditional escapist literature, however, is a fundamental separation from our world: a world of clear good and evil. Without it, what is left?

The Book of the Fallen’s fantasy is simple: that anyone, no matter weak, no matter how small, can change the world.

If you know me, you know how tantalizing that is. Changing the world - fixing things - is my secret goal. Not that I think I can! Provided I ever even have a chance, I know I’m likely to fail. And that’s what so amazing about escaping from this effing planet into another alternative history, an alternate world, where for everyone, power lies within.

art by BlazeMalefica

Inspiration

I hadn’t written anything on this blog since May of last year. I have a list of excuses: a breakup, this unending pandemic, moving three times, and going on a five-month trek across the US. But the real reason was that I’ve been feeling like I have nothing to say. The guilt crept in, too, and froze me in place. I lost my flow.

He offers some words of wisdom to those, like me, who struggle with their own writing practice:

Writing and the need to keep doing it may seem like a curse at times, but it’s the opposite. It’s your weapon, and your armor. It’s the white hot core inside you that no heel can ever crush.

Writing, like all art, is (for me) an ongoing reconciliation with failure. And writing is keeping the negotiation alive: there’s no crawling out of, only crawling through, and guess what? It’s fine. It’s livable, when nothing else - for you and for me - is. So take a breath, make a fist, and set out to beat your demons to a pulp.

Well, that’s what I’ve tried to do, here. I’m pushing through, getting some proverbial ink on the page. And what better topic to start with than the work of Erikson himself?

As I try to continue to write, I’ll try to remember why it is important. In Erikson’s words:

We all need to argue against reality, to rail against it, in fact. For all the shit out there, all the fucked up idiocy of a culture and civilization bent on self-destruction, your only answer - your only riposte - is to face that blank screen or blank page, and to conjure up yet one more gesture of humanity. Really, what else can you do?

Cook was actually a big influence on Erikson and the Malazan books, and Erikson also has quotes on Black Company anthologies, fwiw. But I didn’t know that at the time. ↩︎
Re-reading this series is a must, assuming you liked it the first time. Here’s Erikson’s take: “Did I intentionally design the series for re-reads? A couple years back it occurred to me that I never really learned how to write a novel: I learned how to write short stories, and when I set to writing a novel I simply scaled up. So you can consider the ten book series as the longest short story ever written. I approached every line as if under the burden of carrying as much information as it could withstand, balanced against the elegance, rhythm, word-choice, of the sentence itself. Just like in a short story. It’s no wonder the books do well as re-reads, because let’s face it, who reads a novel as if it was short story? The text is packed. It’s bursting at the seams. I must have been insane.” ↩︎
Some people go so far as to say that this is the peak of fiction, period. I wouldn’t go quite that far, as much as I love it. On occasion, Erikson can be a bit long-winded and will get on a bit of a soapbox. The melodrama can also overflow on occasion. And when a minor character starts thinking about ther childhood and giving you their whole backstory, well, their fate is a bit obvious. They might as well put on a red shirt and explore an alien planet with Captain Kirk. But I am obviously in love with these books, despite their little faults. ↩︎
A few friends come to mind, and of course my family, but that’s about it. ↩︎
The farther you get into the series, and the more characters you know, the more time the books spend characterizing all of them. I think this is part of why the secind and third books are often the highest rated - once you start the fourth one, it isn’t about the individual book anymore. You’re in it for the long haul. ↩︎
The gods in this are fallible, much like the Greek or Roman ones of old. Actually, it strikes me that the epic poems of that period were likely a tremendous influence on Erikson. Every chapter of the series begins with a poem or historical excerpt, and many of them come from a bard and composer of epics reminiscent of The Iliad or The Odyssey. ↩︎
While Erikson is an outspoken supporter of the Movement for Black Lives, and he explores concepts of indigeneity (although often from a colonial perspective), the discussion in the “Malazan Empire” Facebook group (before I left that platform) was a reminder that his intended themes do not come across for everyone. ↩︎
“You wouldn’t get it. You had to be there. Well, you have to have read thousands of pages, I mean.” ↩︎
The series brings me to tears on a regular basis. ↩︎
On the series’ TVTropes.org page, there are obviously plenty of tropes (that site is incredibly comprehensive, and it’s still a fantasy series) but, by my count, 5 tropes are subverted, 6 are averted, 3 are deconstructed, 2 are played with, 1 is inverted, and 1 is parodied. ↩︎
Many other series would have limited the number of characters, killing off or sending away certian characters, for the efficiency of the novel. Erikson, instead, stuck to his guns, continuing the practices that make the series great, sometimes providing an emotional backdrop for 25 or more characters in a single chapter. ↩︎

References V

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Where I offer my best links and music recommendations on the December Solstice, 2021.

I post these lists alongside my equinoctial and solstitial personal newsletter.

Music recommendations

So Good, by Kidi Band (via my friend cody)
at dust, by matt robidoux (whom I met in California)
Piñata (Deluxe Edition), by Freddie Gibbs & Madlib (via my friend derek)
Sound Wonders (a compilation by touchtheplants)
Colourgrade, by Tirzah
Before I Die, by 박혜진 Park Hye Jin
“Sit Around The Fire,” from Music For Psychedelic Therapy, by Jon Hopkins, Ram Dass, and East Forest
CRAWLER, by IDLES
Space 1.8, by Nala Sinephro
“Nothing for No One,” by lazylazy (a guy I met at a party one time)

(Know something I would like? Share with me!)

References IV

Wed, 22 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Where I offer my best links and music recommendations on the September Equinox, 2021.

I post these lists alongside my equinoctial and solstitial personal newsletter.

Links

Werner Herzog on skateboarding
Short-haul flights should be banned
Applied Divinity Studies is my favorite new blog. For example: By writing off social media celebrities as non-interesting, we’re committing to the view that only private people can actually be interesting. But by definition, we can’t observe their lives, locking us into the uncertain view that there may or may not be super interesting millenials we simply don’t know about. Or we could just bite the bullet and accept that sure, Mr. Beast’s life is pretty cool.
A discussion of Bo Burnham’s Inside
My friend made this website about the filibuster
The trees of 40 fruit, which actually produce forty different kinds of fruit
Two bots: one that tweets whenever NYT uses a new word and another that makes 5-7-5 haiku from Wikipedia excerpts. Also, nonstandard mcdonald’s
Did you forget the Dog of Wisdom? I didn’t.
I cried watching the Malice in the Palace documentary - fellow Pacers fans will understand (also, here’s some more basketball content)

Music recommendations

BRAT by NNAMDÏ
Everything by Yaeji
I Could Be Your Dog (Prequel) by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Emile Mosseri
The Turning Wheel by SPELLLING
A Martyr’s Reward by Ka
Mood Valiant by Hiatus Kaiyote
Don’t Let Get You Down by Wajatta
Luxa by Harold Budd (RIP, 1936-2020)
I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age Music In America, 1950-1990
Poolsuite FM

(Know something I would like? Share with me!)

References III

Sun, 20 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Where I offer my best links and music recommendations on the June Solstice, 2021.

I post these lists alongside my equinoctial and solstitial personal newsletter.

Music recommendations

Yaeji & OHHYUK mix on NTS radio
Butterfly 3000 by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
Pineapples at Dawn by Mal Devisa, Sajo Jefferson, and the Radio on Mute
Earth Bow by Sarah Louise
GOLIATH by Jonas David
Vast Ovoid by Devendra Banhart
Heavy Electronic Pacific Rock by Valerio Cosi
Musique Nada by Saint Dismas (thanks to Nate C. for the rec)
Everything by Ichiko Aoba (thanks Cody for the rec)

(Know something I would like? Share with me!)

Mercy, Transformation, Abolition, Hope

Wed, 19 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Mercy

When recently asked about the utility of suffering, one-of-a-kind rock star and one-time prison-film actor¹ Nick Cave responded, “we either transform our suffering into something else, or we hold on to it, and eventually pass it on.” He continued:

In order to transform our pain, we must acknowledge that all people suffer. By understanding that suffering is the universal unifying force, we can see people more compassionately, and this goes some way toward helping us forgive the world and ourselves. By acting compassionately we reduce the world’s net suffering, and defiantly rehabilitate the world. It is an alchemical act that transforms pain into beauty. This is good. This is beautiful.

To not transform our suffering and instead transmit our pain to others, in the form of abuse, torture, hatred, misanthropy, cynicism, blaming and victimhood, compounds the world’s suffering. Most sin is simply one person’s suffering passed on to another. This is not good. This is not beautiful.

The utility of suffering, then, is the opportunity it affords us to become better human beings. It is the engine of our redemption.

Rikers Island prison complex from above.

Cave has also been asked² about mercy. He responded:

Mercy is a value that should be at the heart of any functioning and tolerant society. Mercy ultimately acknowledges that we are all imperfect and in doing so allows us the oxygen to breathe — to feel protected within a society, through our mutual fallibility. Without mercy a society loses its soul, and devours itself.

If suffering is an opportunity, and if “life is suffering”³ as the Buddha said, then we are all faced with constant opportunities to take that suffering and utilize it for transformation.

We also have those opportunities as a society. Conflict is inevitable, and when we hurt one another, we suffer collectively.

The United States criminal justice system⁴ falls squarely within the cynical and misanthropic camp⁵ of Cave’s dichotomy of suffering. Our punitive system, intended to disincentivize wrongdoing, in practice fails to stop harm, revealing instead our culture’s darker, more violent streak. Our insatiable thirst for retribution drives a racist, sexist, classist, ableist justice system that cares little for the truth or the reality of people’s circumstances.

Right now, there are occasions of mercy in our system, but they are skewed. Police officers are given the benefit of the doubt, for example. Young white men receive reduced sentences due to their “potential”. People with wealth who can pay for a high-powered defense greatly increase their chances of avoiding incarceration.

Where there is mercy in our system, it is often not just. And where there is supposed justice, there is no mercy.

What kind of justice do we want? What kind do we need? Beliefs are choices, and I choose to believe that a less punitive, more beautiful path is available to us. A path of transformation.

A barbed wire fence outside of a brick prison building.

Transformation

Many people make mistakes. But only some are criminalized. Google spies on billions of people? No problem. Wells Fargo defrauds people? The lawless opportunists of the 2008 recession? Government corruption and white collar crime? Despicable, maybe - but not criminal. The perpetrators continue to walk free.

Meanwhile, communities of color in the US are still dealing with White supremacy and the legacies of chattel slavery and settler colonialism. An interwoven trap of poverty, criminology, racism, incarceration, crony capitalism, poor education, and pseudo-oligarchical government (among other things) preys on young Black men, and people of color more broadly, in the United States. Going back centuries, Black and Indigenous people of color have had to consider how to deal with harms in their communities, since any encounter with the authorities, no matter how straightforward or nonviolent, can be deadly for them.

Transformative justice centers the community and seeks to respond to violence without creating more violence. Mia Mingus describes why this is important:

State responses to violence reproduce violence and often traumatize those who are exposed to them, especially oppressed communities who are already targeted by the state. It is important to remember that while many people choose not to call the police, many communities can’t call the police because of reasons such as fear of deportation, harassment, state sanctioned violence, sexual violence, previous convictions or inaccessibility.

Transformative justice responses do not involve the government - especially the police. This concept is foreign to many people, and White people especially.⁶

While it may sound like a fairy tale for folks from under-policed communities, for marginalized communities the transformative justice framework is an essential tool for keeping each other safe. As Mia continues, this approach “works to build alternatives to our current systems which often position themselves as protectors, while simultaneously enacting the very forms of violence they claim to condemn.”⁷

Transformative justice is an essential tool for marginalized communities today, but it can also be a guide for our future. As an abolitionist framework, transformative justice seeks to build new systems while dismantling the old.

Two people wearing masks with their fists in the air.

Abolition

When you talk to folks about prison abolition, a lot of the time it can sound really destructive. After all, abolish is a mid-15th century word descended from the Old French abolir and Latin abolere, which means “to destroy, efface, annihilate, cause to die out, or retard the growth of” something. It is the opposite of adolere - “to grow or magnify.” The Century Dictionary in 1900 said that abolish…

…is a strong word, and signifies a complete removal, generally but not always by a summary act. It is the word specially used in connection with things that have been long established or deeply rooted, as an institution or a custom : as to abolish slavery.

The focus of the definition on “complete removal” and on a “summary act” make abolitionary movements sound very dangerous and destructive. Abolitionists themselves, however, are very clear: building new systems is just as important as removing harmful ones. Abolitionists seek to cultivate new ways, new approaches, new models for justice. In fact, it is absolutely central to their work:

[Prison industrial complex] abolition is a vision of a restructured society in a world where we have everything we need: food, shelter, education, health, art, beauty, clean water, and more. Things that are foundational to our personal and community safety.
– Mariame Kaba

Abolitionists are builders. And what we’re building, as Max Mishler said, is “a society where incarceration would no longer even be possible” […] ‘abolition’ is a verb: it is the dual-pronged project of tearing down and building up, the dismantling of life-sucking systems alongside the construction of life-giving ones.
– Micah Herskind

What I love about abolition and now use in my own thinking - and when I identify myself as an abolitionist, this is what I have in mind - is the idea that you imagine a world without prisons, and then you work to try to build that world.
– James Forman, Jr., via Rachel Kushner

Abolition is about presence, not absence. It’s about building life-affirming institutions.
– Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Abolition goes beyond just ending modern slavery and the death penalty, encompassing not only the full system of prisons and jails, but also the concepts and realities of “justice,” law, and policing. Abolition goes even beyond those systems, to the beliefs that underpin our society, like White supremacy, caste, and other forms of injustice across the world.

In this highly polarized political environment in the US, it can feel like there are only two sides. But something I want to make clear: in a world where prisons are abolished, police officers like Derek Chauvin would experience the same merciful, rehabilitative, transformative system. I believe that all incarcerated people - even those that some anti-racist folk would define as guilty in our current system - deserve the chance to show that they can rejoin society. As Bryan Stevenson says, “each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

As Black Lives Matter has emphasized, putting Chauvin away does not solve the problem of police brutality. And it also does not actually solve the problem of Chauvin. Sure, he should never be a police officer again. But could he scan tickets at a ball game? Could he sell you a house someday? Could he cook at a local bar? Could he get a law degree or M.D., and save someone’s life? Absolutely, he could. I believe that with proper rehabilitation in a merciful, transformative society, he - and any “criminal” - could do so, and probably much, much more.

The sun setting over an ocean beach.

Hope

Abolition calls not for just a “negative” justice, but the germination of something new. The movement goes beyond destruction, to construction; beyond dismantlement, to cultivation; beyond justice, to liberation, and transformation toward a future where all can thrive.

Thus abolition, grounded in action, is a courageous and hopeful movement. Being part of such a movement can be amazing. Alice Walker writes about it beautifully in Anything We Love Can Be Saved:

There is always a moment in any kind of struggle when one feels in full bloom. Vivid. Alive. One might be blown to bits in such a moment and still be at peace. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the mountaintop. Gandhi dying with the name of God on his lips. Sojourner Truth baring her breasts at a women’s rights convention in 1851. Harriet Tubman exposing her revolver to some of the slaves she had freed, who, fearing an unknown freedom, looked longingly backward to their captivity, thereby endangering the freedom of all. To be such a person or to witness anyone at this moment of transcendent presence is to know that what is human is linked, by a daring compassion, to what is divine. During my years of being close to people engaged in changing the world I have seen fear turn into courage. Sorrow into joy. Funerals into celebrations. Because whatever the consequences, people, standing side by side, have expressed who they really are, and that ultimately they believe in the love of the world and each other enough to be that - which is the foundation of activism.

Just as importantly, we must remember that things will not always be easy. Mariame Kaba says that “hope is a discipline.” What does that mean? Her take:

It’s less about “how you feel,” and more about the practice of making a decision every day, that you’re still gonna put one foot in front of the other, that you’re still going to get up in the morning. And you’re still going to struggle […] It’s work to be hopeful. It’s not like a fuzzy feeling. Like, you have to actually put in energy, time, and you have to be clear-eyed, and you have to hold fast to having a vision. It’s a hard thing to maintain. But it matters to have it, to believe that it’s possible, to change the world.

I hope and believe a world without prisons and policing is not only possible but essential. Let’s get started.

I feel safe even in the midst of my enemies; for the truth is powerful and will prevail.
– Sojourner Truth

Not sure what to think? Let’s talk about it.

Want to learn more? I’ve barely scraped the surface. Here are some places to start:

“So You’re Thinking About Becoming an Abolitionist” by Mariame Kaba
“What Abolitionists Do” by Dan Berger, Mariame Kaba, and David Stein
Resources from Critical Resistance
“Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind” by Rachel Kushner
“What We Mean When We Say Abolish the Police” by K Agbebiyi
“Incarceration Is Always a Policy Failure” by Jonathan Ben-Menachem
Direct Action for Prison Abolition by Community Justice Exchange
Micah Herskind’s Prison Abolition Resource Guide

Addendum, Nov. 30, 2021:

Nick Cave has again written on this subject, in his own way, in a response to a poor fellow who feels they cannot forgive themself:

To forgive is perhaps the supreme human capacity, it can feel counter-intuitive yet it is wholly crucial to our survival, not just of our own selves, but also of our species in general. It is what Derrida calls, ‘a madness of the impossible’. In short, we must strive to forgive the unforgivable.
[…]
It is worth bearing in mind that we are mostly good people who do bad things — all of us — and forgiveness, as contrary to our instincts as it so often feels, is the crucial component that can usher us out of the darkness and back to the world.

Full letter here.

Back in the late eighties, Cave starred in the film Ghosts… of the Civil Dead, a thriller where a private prison manipulates both prisoners and guards, amplifying violence in order to convince the government that a new, more “secure” prison is required. ↩︎
The latter part of his response regards tolerance and cancel culture, which unfortunately was opportunistically covered by Fox News. ↩︎
Really, the Buddha said life is dukkha, which has a broader meaning, but I’ll keep the common English translation here since it is so convenient. ↩︎
In this piece, the justice system and prisons stand in for a variety of interrelated institutions including jails, detention centers, psychiatric institutions, policing, immigration restriction, and state surveillance. This is sometimes called the prison industrial complex (PIC). ↩︎
Some examples: after facing unjust cash bail systems and accepting garbage plea deals, individuals suffer in profit-driven corporate prisons and federally-subsidized state penitentiaries. Their sentences are way too long - mandated so through “tough on crime” policy - and sometimes many times longer than their life outside. Mental health and addiction issues are often overlooked. Children are put behind bars at an absurd rate via the school-to-prison pipeline. Mistreated by guards (especially by male guards in female prisons), they can face month after month of self-perpetuating, inescapable solitary confinement. They’re put to work - government slave labor. Their existence bolsters the political power and economies of rural White counties, but they no longer have the right to vote. They sit on death row, for decades, awaiting the chair to pay (with their life) for their actions ↩︎
I appreciate Mariame Kaba’s response to the question of whether or not to call call the cops if one’s life is in danger: “Abolition does not center that question. Abolition…pushes us to creatively consider how we can grow, build, and try other avenues to reduce harm.” ↩︎
I recommend reading Mia’s full description of TJ, along with the rest of her writing. She’s much more knowledgeable about this, as are plenty of other folks, like Mariame Kaba. ↩︎

References II

Sat, 20 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Where I offer my best links and music recommendations on the March Equinox, 2021.

I post these lists alongside my equinoctial and solstitial personal newsletter.

Music recommendations

This amazing video for “Romantic encounter” by Arabian Alien
The music of A Silver Mt. Zion, especially He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts Of Light Sometimes Grace The Corner Of Our Rooms
Conflict by John Carroll Kirby (thanks Cody for the rec)
The music of Lily and Horn Horse
Mixes by 20JFG

I’ve also gotten back into some international music, hearkening back to my Bazaar days on WRFL. Some recent favs are:

(Know something I would like? Share with me!)

Notes on Digital Security

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Surveillance is capitalism’s latest trend. It isn’t going anywhere. Start here to learn how to protect yourself.

Back in early 2021, I had just come off of a year and a half of learning about online security. My interest at the time was sparked by participation with a few different activist groups and the amazing courses put together by Tech Learning Collective, which in turn led to a pretty significant amount of independent research. There was also a blog post that got some promo and an introductory class for folks in independent radio. These notes, lightly updated in mid-2022, are still nowhere near an exhaustive list of what’s out there, but I wanted to share anyway.

An abstract video still projected onto my kitchen cabinets.

Notes for everyone

No app is perfect, and everyone’s individual situation is different. That’s where threat modeling comes in. Everyone will make different choices based on the threats they face.
For example, if I’m all about security and privacy, why I am I writing all about my life on a website? It has to do with my own personal situation. I’m not a core organizer. I do not hold sensitive information about activist activities at this point…but I do try and keep my data out of Meta’s hands.
A threat that all people in our interconnected global world face (pun not intended) is surveillance capitalism. Shoshana Zuboff’s interviews with The Guardian, The Markup and VPRO are a great place to start for information on the topic if you aren’t familiar. (Surveillance capitalism is nothing new.)
Surveillance capitalism not only undermines personal privacy, but challenges democratic government at its core, both by affecting democracy (in a variety of ways) and by providing whomever is in power with potentially enormous access to people’s data.

Data is content, and metadata is context. Metadata can be much more revealing than data, especially when collected in the aggregate.
– Bruce Schneier

Metadata is the “surplus” data that Google built itself upon and that fuels surveillance capitalism. The Markup’s Blacklight and EFF’s Cover Your Tracks can show you the alarming amount of data that companies are collecting about your online activity.
As a result, the fact that you might feel “anonymous” - perhaps you used a fake name when signing up for a forum - does not mean you your activities are private or secure.

The idea that there are tools that would always work for everyone, everywhere; require no extra knowledge and zero additional infrastructure; are fair and just, and protect users at all times, is a dream that has not yet come true.
– Tactical Tech

If you want to limit surveillance capitalists’ influence on your life, start by using Firefox (or if a novice Chrome user, Brave) rather than Google Chrome. Google was the original surveillance capitalist company. Then add in the uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, TOS;DR, and Decentraleyes browser add-ons/extensions. Make sure to also use DuckDuckGo rather than Google Search, and consider leaving corporate social media altogether, with ActivityPub projects like Mastodon as a social media alternative (I’m partway through my own journey, but there is still work (especially de-Googleing) to be done. Update 2022: still working on de-Googleing. Not convinced? Here’s a web comic about Chrome) and a privacy test breakdown for every browser.
Because of advanced fingerprinting techniques, there’s no real perfect system for avoiding trackers. Tor might be your best option if a stronger form of anonymity is required.
Here are a few resources I use to choose my apps and tools, for both secure and open source (so the code can be checked) alternatives:

When thinking about companies/apps themselves, the ideal of privacy is inverted - instead of privacy, we seek transparency. That’s why going with open-source, decentralized, and/or audited tools is recommended where possible.¹
Decentralization distributes power. Consequently, trust is distributed among multiple parties, allowing for less of a dependence on a central node but a larger number of potential fail points.
One of the challenges in talking about digital security broadly and to a variety of different people is that there are many different potential threats, and they do not affect all of us equally. The digital world is not always safe for overpoliced Black folks or non-cis-men, and sometimes makes stuff like racism and sexism and domestic violence even worse. White men like me need to remember that we do not face the same challenges as others.
At the same time, the truth is that everyone has something to hide.

Saying that you don’t need or want privacy because you have nothing to hide is to assume that no one should have, or could have, to hide anything - including their immigration status, unemployment history, financial history, and health records. You’re assuming that no one, including yourself, might object to revealing to anyone information about their religious beliefs, political affiliations, and sexual activities, as casually as some choose to reveal their movie and music tastes and reading preferences.
– Edward Snowden

Security is protection against threats. One way to talk about digital security is via the CIA triad: confidentiality (who has access, a.k.a. privacy), integrity (protecting data), and availability (the system still works for authorized users).
In most cases you probably don’t need to buy any anti-virus software. Just set up your system to be as safe as possible using the tools it provides.

Another abstract projection in my kitchen.

There is a lot for you to do, however, to keep yourself secure online. Firstly, use a password manager and enable two-factor authentication on your accounts. Make sure to vary both your usernames and passwords (if you need to remember a particular password, try using a passphrase. You can even draw the passphrase words out of a hat or something. You should also add HTTPS Everywhere to your browser to ensure your browsing activity is encrypted through HTTPS.
Mathematically scrambling data - encryption - is one of the most powerful tools we have for maintaining digital security. End-to-end (E2E) encrypted apps like Signal (and WhatsApp, but use Signal instead) are particularly important and useful. Most people don’t realize that they use encryption every day through HTTPS and core Internet protocols like TLS and S/MIME.

surveilled at home and school
I have this memory of basketball camp …
this morning I said writing is for the present
active in the lives of people
timelessness hates us
when I open my heart to experience , I feel the —
I just let it be in there and various
real private browser hours
I let it go completely and play !

– “i have too much to hide” by Benjamin Krusling

Make sure to encrypt your computer(s) and phone(s)² as well. If using cloud storage, like Dropbox (don’t use Google Drive for sensitive or personal things!), use Cryptomator to encrypt your files.
Using a VPN is not enough if you want to keep your activities secure and private - try Tor, and Signal instead (or in addition to a vetted VPN like ProtonVPN).

Notes for organizers and activists

You must also stay vigilant. Sophisticated phishing attacks are something that you - and anyone known to be associated with you - will need to be careful of. These aren’t your average spam messages. These are often meant specifically for you, replicating emails and websites that you might use in order to try to get your passwords or personal information. It could look like an email with a link from your bank, email, or social media account, for example - and the link will send you to a site run by the hacker(s). To defend yourself, first educate yourself on phishing techniques. Then turn on two-factor authentication for all of your accounts, preferably either through an authenticator app or even a physical security key.

In a world where millions of digital communications are silently intercepted, collected, and stored every day, how do activists effectively say ‘I do not consent to this search?’ As in a physical encounter with law enforcement, we must be proactive. Online, this means using encryption along with other privacy-protecting and autonomy-preserving tools.
– Civil Liberties Defense Center

Going to a protest? See the iPhone Security Guide I put together a few days ago. [EDIT: as of 2022 some of the iPhone guide is outdated.] If you choose to use a Faraday bag to limit tracking, or take other measures like using OpenStreetMap instead of Google or Apple maps, you should also use it when you are not going out, so that it does not show a pattern. One thing to note is that, if you have a smart phone, accelerometer data is currently available to all apps, as of this writing - this is one reason for highly sensitive situations to be very careful about smart phone use.
Organizers who seek to change the world face unique challenges that other folks do not need to deal with. Recent examples, like the doxing of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and revelations of private surveillance of animal rights groups and activists, not to mention movies like Judas and the Black Messiah, are reminders of the importance of OPSEC for activists when dealing with “assholes with resources” or even governmental entities.
Organizers are not only responsible for their personal security, but the security of their team and their activities. They also face greater risk and exposure due to their prominence within the group.
When it comes to setting standards for a small group or even an entire organization, we have to talk about security culture. This goes way beyond choosing the “right” tools like Jitsi, Signal, and EteSync (etc).

Security culture
Regardless of your personal risk level, defaulting to tools that are private and/or secure is the easiest way to maintain a culture that keeps its people safe from online surveillance. The focus on culture, rather than just implementing policy or focusing on individual actions, is something that - funnily enough - I have only run into in two places: the corporate world and the activist world.
At a company like AT&T, security culture is focused on employees shared attitudes and actions related to corporate security policy and the way that affects their overall success. In their own words, security culture requires an “investment” of time and energy.
For organizers, security culture is “a set of customs shared by a community whose members may be targeted, designed to minimize risk.” You should use secure practices from the beginning so that you don’t have to come up with security measures over and over again. It’s a form of collective care as well - a defense against racist tech, doxing, and the far-right. Limiting the amount people know to only what they need to know can also help address issues like undercover surveillance and badjacketing.
For both organizers and corporations, the focus is on culture, not protocol. The focus is on habits, not rules. They use different terms, but the core is the same: security culture is about making security the default - for everything. Security culture is a framework to center when working with others in an activist space. The best way to keep each other safe is to engage in secure practices at all times, not just by using particular tools, but by creating a culture of security.

One concern for organizers (along with journalists and politicians) is doxing. One preventative steps is to remove as much of your information from data brokers as possible. Here are a few useful guides, and I’ve personally followed the Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List. If you are doxed, see Equality Labs’ guide for next steps, and seek out help. Cyber Civil Rights Initiative also has an online removal guide. Another potential layer of protection is to use a post office box or service like VirtualPostMail so that you don’t have to include your residential address on public documents. (If you own real estate/property, however, there may be no way to avoid it.) [EDIT 2022: I do not have experience with this, but Google offers special advanced protection. I am wary of Google, of course, but I wanted to mention it as something that could be explored.]
One of the most useful tools for organizers is Tor. Tor harnesses decentralization and encryption to create anonymity. But make sure to sign into accounts you set up on Tor on Tor - never deanonymize yourself by logging in to an anonymous account through a regular browser. (Don’t F it up!) A reader of this article also suggests The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Online Anonymity (repo) as a resource for more info on how to stay anonymous.
Another useful tool built upon Tor is OnionShare, developed by Micah Lee of The Intercept, which can be used to share files and host .onion hidden services. Micah recently wrote up instructions for how to set up an anonymous dropbox on a Raspberry Pi. To share files without using Tor, BitWarden Send is an option.
Many people who use Signal all the time do not take advantage of all of its security features. Make sure to compare safety numbers with people you are in contact with to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks and other vulnerabilities - preferably in an audible manner, on video chat, or in some non-Signal, offline way.
To give out your Signal number without publicizing your personal number, see The Intercept’s guide to using a different phone number on Signal. Make sure to also add a carrier pin to your phone(s). And if you are prominent organizer, having burner phones is probably not a bad idea. Services like MySudo can be an option, but they will be tied to your payment method. (My protester iPhone guide is probably also relevant, although as of 2022 slightly outdated.)
A tool built upon Signal that will be useful to many organizers is Signalboost. Check it out. [EDIT 2022: this tool is unfortunately no longer available.]
If you need a “burner” email address, your best option is probably ProtonMail, since they don’t require you to connect an existing email address or phone number. Make sure to set it up through Tor and only access it through Tor. Be careful when using ProtonMail - just using the service is not enough to fully secure your communications with PGP encryption. You should also use .onion addresses wherever available. If you just need a disposable address, try Maildrop or 33mail. And if you are looking for something longer term, just a good email provider, Mailpile is another to consider.
PGP (a.k.a. GPG) is an important and widely-used encryption tool. But its issues are well-documented. Make sure you read up before using it, and remember, only the body of the message is encrypted. Mailvelope is the most user-friendly PGP client I’ve encountered. But skipping PGP and just using Signal is probably your best option.
When using Firefox, consider using an enhanced privacy configuration like the arkenfox user.js.
And even after all this, there are also physical-world threats that intersect with digital security that can allow bad actors to access local files.³ Some relevant tools include Haven and RF-shielded (a.k.a. Faraday) bags. There are also alternative operating systems appropriate for high-level security.

A third abstract video projected onto my kitchen wall.

Addenda, Autumn 2022:

Some additions via Caroline Sinders: falsify information when you can, when the info requested is not necessary, and log out (or even delete) apps like Facebook when crossing (state or national, depending on your threat model) borders.

Watch me in my hotel room
Watch my outline as I move from city to city
Watch me watching pornography
Watch me talking to my friends and my family

I know you love me (Daddy!)
‘Cause you’re always watching me (Daddy!)
I know you love me (Daddy!)
‘Cause you’re always watching me (Daddy!)

Protecting me from evil
Protecting me from terrorism
Protecting me from child molesters
Protecting me from evil

Watch me, watch me, watch me […]
Daddy! Daddy! […]

I know you love me
‘Cause you’re always watching me
I know you love me
‘Cause you’re always watching me

– “Watch Me” by ANOHNI

In the original version of this, I failed to mention SecureDrop, a tool for whistleblowers to submit information.
If you use Windows for sensitive activities, consider using privacy-enhancing apps such as HardenTools or Privacy.Sexy.
A few tips for using new apps: 1) do not share your contacts with apps and 2) do not use you Google/Apple/GitHub/Amazon account to log into other websites. You can also check on any app’s Internet usage with Little Snitch and similar apps.
I stopped using Keybase after it was acquired by Zoom. Perhaps that wasn’t necessary? Hard to say. But in any case, I recently learned there is an open source alternative called Keyoxide.
With the changing landscape and decrease in cookie usage, Google is testing out a tracking system called FLOC. See here if your Chrome installation is part of the trial. Then stop using Chrome (see #7 above).
Another way websites track you is through HTTP referrals. Use href.li to anonymize links and avoid this. They also do so by adding tracking elements to the end of URLs when you share them or access them from an email. I often remove the tracking information manually, when it is clear, but you can also use ClearURLs. Another advanced trick is to use User-Agent Switcher to appear as another browser.
Access social media from trackerless frontend versions where possible, such as Teddit (Reddit), Bibliogram (Instagram), ProxiTok (TikTok), a nitter instance (Twitter), an Invidious instance (Youtube), Scribe (Medium), Rimgo (Imgur), Quetre (Quora), LibreMDB (IMDB), or stream music using nuclear. There are a number of other useful frontends as well, including Whoogle and Lingva for Google Translate, and a browser add-on that helps with this. And if you must use Facebook, make sure to change your settings to the most private possible.
If you have a website, I ask that you add Permissions-Policy interest-cohort=() to your website header to opt out of the Google FLOC trial from the website side. Then also make sure that you have top-notch security headers (including removing the server header).
A thought: surveillance capitalism is domination, but not in the ways we are accustomed to. Its authority is ubiquitous and insidious. This power would never restrict access to certain books; it would far rather just know what you read (and how often, on what device, how many words per second, where you pause to stop reading and think or snack or use the bathroom, etc.) so it can sell you something.
A question: a lot of OSINT is enabled by the very same technologies that enable surveillance capitalism. Can we separate from it?
A feeling: it is discouraging to see all the ways that people accentuate this system. Driven by fear, we and our neighbors are putting cameras all over their homes, adding to an already out-of-control video surveillance network.
A perhaps-unnecessary qualification: I’m not a tech skeptic - I work at a tech company - but that doesn’t mean I have to love all the ways we use technology today.
Since I wrote this, nothing has gotten better in the area of surveillance. And the new laws and changes are not enough.
Thinking about community safety in a time of crisis, which is potentially related to this topic, a good practice would be to “set up phone trees to disseminate information widely using cascading phone calls (each person calls 10 people, they call 10 people, etc.),” as suggested by CLDC. Walkie talkies, Bridgefy, and sat phones are also part of that equation.

One of the challenges with digital security is that it is constantly shifting and changing as new apps are created, new threats are discovered, and they way we engage with technology and the Internet continues to evolve. But seeking to learn how the technological systems we rely on actually work, and taking control of the ways we engage with them, is a political act.

There is so much to say on this topic - I haven’t even scratched the surface. Here are a few more resources to dig into to learn more:

The End of Trust by McSweeney’s and the Electronic Frontier Foundation
RiseUp
AnarchoTechNYC
Tech Learning Collective
Decent Security
CryptoHarlem
Cyber Collective
Take Back the Tech
Afrofeminist Data Futures
Defend Our Movements
May First Movement Technology
Surveillance Self Defense
The Organiser’s Activity Book
Share Lab
DATACTIVE
Security in a Box
Team Community’s weekly Digital Rights newsletter

If we want to see change in our lives, we have to change things ourselves.
– Grace Lee Boggs

If you use Android, review εxodus’s app audits. ↩︎
Apple is gaining a reputation for providing the best privacy features. The fact that they are also premium devices is no coincidence. In addition to protecting the elite and others with proximity to power or privilege, Google will be quite happy to give you cheaper hardware as long as you (unknowingly) give them your behavioral surplus. ↩︎
I do love programs that operate locally, like Obsidian and Tape. ↩︎

Activist iPhone Security Guide

Sat, 13 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

When you attend a protest, particularly one which which might garner the attention of the authorities, it’s a good practice to limit the amount of data being sent out by your phone as much as possible.

Three protesters hold their phones up above a crowd.

To start, here are things you should have set up in your phone at all times (last updated for iOS 12):

Limit ad tracking: open the Settings app; Privacy; scroll down to the bottom of the Privacy settings; Advertising; toggle ON Limit Ad Tracking (you can also hit Reset Advertising Identifier every once in a while)
Block analytics tracking: Settings app; Privacy; scroll down to the bottom of the Privacy settings; Analytics & Improvements; toggle OFF Share iPhone Analytics,Improve Sire & Dictation, and Share iCloud Analytics
Block location-based analytics: Settings app; Privacy; Location Services; System Services; toggle OFF iPhone Analytics, Popular Near Me, and Routing & Traffic (also feel free to toggle OFF as many of the things in this list and the Location Services app list as you feel comfortable with)
Change your iPhone name: Settings app; General; About; Name; change to something that provides no identifying information (including names, iPhone model, phone number, etc.)
Use a strong passcode: Settings app; Touch ID & Passcode; Change Passcode (I recommend using a strong passphrase as your passcode to ensure that it is memorable but resistant to brute force attacks. You passcode should be alphanumeric at least 10 digits long)
Turn off Siri: Settings app; Siri & Search; toggle OFF all options
Turn off dictation: Settings app; General; Keyboards; toggle OFF Enable Dictation
Turn off background app refresh for most apps: Settings app; General; Background App Refresh; toggle OFF all apps that are not secure/necessary
Turn off Game Center’s location access: Settings app; Game Center; toggle OFF Game Center, or at least toggle OFF Nearby Players
Audit your apps’ access: Settings app; Privacy; check through this list and ensure that apps have no more access to your data than they need
Harden the default Safari browser: Settings app; Safari; set Search Engine to DuckDuckGo, toggle OFF Search Engine Suggestions, Safari Suggestions, Preload Top Hit, and Frequently Visited Sites; toggle ON Block Pop-ups, Prevent Cross-Site Tracking, Block All Cookies, and Fraudulent Website Warning; toggle OFF Camera & Microphone Access and Check for Apple Pay; select Advanced; toggle OFF Javascript
Limit your message storage to 30 days: Settings app; Messages; select Keep Messages and choose 30 Days

You should also keep your phone updated at all times (check in the Settings app; General; Software Update)

Before you head out to a protest, do the following:

Back up your phone: Settings app; your name at the top; iCloud; iCloud Backup; toggle it ON if not on already; select Back Up Now
Turn on Low Power Mode: Settings app; Battery; toggle ON Low Power Mode
Turn off Touch ID and access to phone functions while locked: Settings app; Touch ID & Passcode; type passcode; toggle iPhone Unlock to OFF (you can be coerced into putting your thumb on your phone); set Require Passcode to Immediately; toggle Voice Dial OFF; toggle all options under Allow access while locked to OFF; at the bottom, toggle ON wiping your phone after 10 failed attempts
Set a quicker auto-lock: Settings app; Display & Brightness; Auto-Lock; 30 seconds
Turn off methods for connecting to your device: open the Settings app; General; set Airdrop to Receiving off; set Handoff to OFF
Turn off Wi-Fi: Settings app; Wi-Fi; toggle OFF
Turn off your GPS: Settings app; Privacy; Location Services; toggle OFF at the top - if you cannot to this, then at least turn it off for most apps and toggle OFF Share My Location
Turn off fitness tracking: Settings app; Privacy; Motion & Fitness; toggle OFF Fitness Tracking
Turn off Bluetooth: Settings app; Bluetooth; set to OFF (unless you need it for what you are doing)
Turn off notification previews: Settings app; Notifications; Show Previews; select Never; then go through each app in the list and toggle OFF Show on Lock Screen
Turn off automatic (non-encrypted) SMS messages: Settings app; Messages; toggle Send as SMS OFF (note: this doesn’t completely turn off SMS, so you’ll still need to use Signal)

Keep in mind that turning off your phone is an option, as is turning it to airplane mode, or even leaving it at home - but communication is key when you are out on the streets, so I don’t recommend it.

While you are out and about, use Signal for your communications and Firefox Focus or Brave for browsing. I recommend using ProtonVPN on a regular basis. Another good idea is to download maps onto your phone ahead of time so that you don’t need to use location services on your GPS/maps app.

When livestreaming, avoid showing fellow protesters’ faces, particularly if they are doing something that would garner the authorities’ attention. If you post videos or photos afterward, make sure to blur out faces and potentially identifying details of fellow activists.

Missing something? Let me know. I’ll be following up soon with an article on digital security more generally.

Reflecting on 2020

Sun, 17 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Although the beginning and end of the Western calendar year are quite arbitrary, they have become integral to the way that our society thinks about time. For most of 2020, we were complaining about, well, 2020. Beginning with fears of WWIII and wildfires, then a global pandemic and US presidential election, the past year has thrown a lot at us. Somehow, however, there was an inkling of irrational hope that a new year would bring us a better world.

[Feel free to listen to my most recent mix while reading if you want some background music.]

Now we’re in 2021, and “2020” just keeps coming. Obviously, the pandemic is far from over. And politics in America, spurred on by social media radicalization, continues to deteriorate. Still, I thought it might be useful - to some degree for people in the present, and perhaps also for folks in the future - to reflect on the past calendar year.

A disposable mask with a broken ear string.

The world, through a screen

How do you even write about something like COVID - something that affects everyone? Whatever your experience has been, it cannot come anywhere close to capturing the full experience of humanity during this time. The experiences are so different, of course on an individual basis, but also along class and racial lines. I’m still employed full-time, while former coworkers and neighbors and friends are without work. I’ve not lost anyone I know to the disease, and yet thousands of people have died.

As different as all of our lives are, one shared experience for people in the US is an increased reliance on technology. In a recent newsletter, Tech Learning Collective wrote that, “2020 was, without a doubt, the most Cyberpunk-dystopic year in recorded history.” They continue:

This was the year of Zoom dinner parties, pandemic-fueled bot-powered Instacart panic-buying, and direct-to-streaming Hollywood releases. The Pirate Bay has never had high-quality TV and movie rips indexed so quickly. Installing a bot to snag grocery delivery slots has never been a mode of survival before. This was the year even the tech-averse were forced into cyberspace for virtual concerts, remote learning, an augmented-reality holiday parade, and contactless-everything.

Technology, already an enormous part of modern life, has become our way of engaging with everything during quarantine. And for a brief moment, when the pandemic first arrived in the US, it felt like we were united against something for once - the disease.

Some tea packets and tags.

That feeling did not last for long. After all, with 24/7 news cycles and social media, we experience life very differently from one another and from humans in times past. Now, far-away events can affect our emotions more than activities close to home. Political affiliation defines our identity; the global is personal. And as Internet use increased during lockdown, our slowly diverging realities pulled apart even further and at a greater rate.¹

During this year, I came to realize the degree to which we no longer have a shared reality. I’m not just talking about politics. We see different memes and content; we hear about different celebrities; we see different kinds of social media posts; we read different blogs. Sure, we’ve all always had our own lives and experiences. What is different is that, for many people, their reality is now organized for the profit of Silicon Valley venture capitalists and NYSE investors who profit from algorithmically cultivating these realities - competing visions for how the world actually works.²

At first, when the pandemic hit, I dove into Facebook, seeking socialization. I was particularly active after the killing of George Floyd in late May. But over time, as the intensity of these diverging realities started to grow - and my attempts to connect with other people saw little assistance from the algorithms - I realized that there wasn’t much for me to accomplish on the platform itself. Rather than socialization and connection, my social media experience was one of visceral and vicarious chaos.

Some banjo picks.

I shifted my attention toward the ways I, myself, was interacting with technology. Although I have always used the computer a lot, I was now at a desk more than ever before. I started to reconsider the way I approach the Internet³ and took on a number of related projects:

Building this low-energy, self-hosted website.
Attempting to solar-power it - but I didn’t quite get the right equipment, and our apartment doesn’t get enough sunlight anyway. I learned a lot, but eventually decided to give up for now.
Stopping using Facebook and Instagram - I hadn’t decided to leave yet.
Going through the many linked articles and content I had collected over the years. Some of it I threw away, and the rest I rearranged so that it would be more useful for me. (This is a work in progress. More on this in a future post.)
Cleaning out my Google Drive, moving a bunch of old stuff to offline storage.
Deciding to re-start my personal newsletter, this time having folks to opt in rather than importing an email list.⁴
Learning a bunch from Tech Learning Collective about technology and security.⁵
Starting to think a lot more about the ways that I keep in touch with people. Who facilitates my communications? Do I trust them with my personal information?
Committing to leaving Facebook and Instagram.

As I continue to engage with technology, using more open source tools, relying less on big business and more on myself and online communities, I hope I can also inspire others to do the same.

Technology is not going anywhere, and it is amazing how little most of us know about how the Internet, for instance, actually works. Not everyone needs to be a developer, but I believe that if we all had a better understanding of the apps and programs we use, we would be a lot better at fixing the broken systems we’re contending with right now. As we move into 2021, I’m feeling more confident, and more competent. I’m no code whiz, but I know my way around a bit better. I plan to continue to learn and grow in the new year.

Making music in the middle of all this

One of the tensions at the heart of my musicmaking practice has been the push and pull of professional and personal. My background in music in the classical world always emphasized the professional aspects of sound, but during college, studying free improvisation with Rui Li was an entry point into more intimate ways of engaging with my instruments. Since I graduated music school and started making electronic music, that push and pull has remained.

Music for Fifteen Emails

When the pandemic first shut things down in mid-March, I threw myself into the professional side of my work. I had been listening to a great deal of environmental music, especially the work of Hiroshi Yoshimura. I had also been recording a lot with one of the instruments Hiroshi used, the Yamaha FB-01. Without really thinking about it too much, I instinctively seized on the opportunity to work on something I had wanted to work on for a while: a new album.

My connection with environmental music only increased as it soothed me during a time of extreme change. I put in several hours per day after work, racing through it because I really felt it was the right music for the right time. (I have heard from friends that I was right - it did fit the time. And depending on how your life is now, it still might be.)

Music for Fifteen Emails (Part One) by Nathan Hewitt

With Music for Fifteen Emails, I chose to experiment in a lot of different ways - I had not done anything like it before, in terms of genre, in terms of making music on a grid (sort-of) in terms of getting serious about mixing, and mastering myself (paying monthly for a mastering suite via Splice) rather than paying someone else. The album burgeoned into a double-album and I released it in April, after about a month of quarantine-fueled labor.

I decided that this time I would spend more time exploring promotion and distribution. I switched from Distrokid to CDBaby since CDBaby is a single payment and allows multiple artists. I also used SubmitHub to try and bring attention to my music - a first for me. It resulted in a few playlistings and blog reviews - more attention than my releases usually get - but not as much as I had hoped. I also used my personal Instagram more than I ever had before, and even paid for an ad on that platform for the first time (this is before I decided to leave Instagram).

Music for Fifteen Emails (Part Two) by Nathan Hewitt

I don’t know if the promotional work can be characterized as a success, but it was a useful experiment. The feedback that brings me the most joy is that of my friends who have enjoyed it the most and shared with me how they continue to listen to it to this day: A.M., J.W., L.V., and L.R.

Music for self-reflection

I recognize now that putting all of that time into the album was a coping mechanism. After I released and promoted Music for Fifteen Emails, for a while, I didn’t work on music very much, and I started to get swept away by the news cycle and social media. After all, with the complete collapse of the performing arts, there weren’t really any opportunities to perform live, and I wasn’t sure that I really felt like it anyway.

Still, I continued to make music just for myself - the personal side of my music practice. At one point in late spring, my partner and I ran across a snail moving alongside the sidewalk in the park. I decided to play a little song to go along with the video footage we collected:

For a while in late spring, the social uprising and Black Lives Matter movement occupied my mind and time (well, it still does) to a degree that there was not space in my life for musicmaking. I also realized during that time that COVID was not ending anytime soon. The weight of that realization, combined with police brutality and the onset of the general election season in June/July, meant that I did not really feel musical. Instead, I distracted myself with basketball, and with cooking, and with building a home routine with my partner.

Eventually, however, I started to feel the need to make music again. Music helps me to process the world around me, and the emotions within me, and my relationships and experiences. I was overwhelmed, but as I adapted to the situation we were in in fall 2020 - as humans do - I started to try and process those experiences. Sometimes, I just improvised on my keyboard - letting it all out. Other times, I tried to approach the instrument with more intention.

More banjo picks.

As the year went on, I moved farther and farther into quiet. My recordings were peppered with longer tones and deconstructed melodies. Improvisations, rather than compositions - perhaps because my ability to create order felt like it was slipping away in all of the chaos surrounding us.

In September, I went on a walk to a nearby grocery store and pulled out my phone to record the trip. When I got back, I decided to record over it - a single long improvisation.

In the Middle of All This by Nathan Hewitt

Here is what I later wrote about the piece, entitled In the Middle of All This:

Popular music, especially in the age of the Digital Audio Workstation, is constructed almost 1 millisecond at a time. Every note, every harmony, every effect is dissected and reconstructed over and over again until is is absolutely perfect. Live performances are often filtered and shaped to resemble that magical “take.”

In the Middle of All This is a piece that rejects the impulse to finish. It rejects, even, the impulse to edit (beyond matching levels and removing loud pops). It consists of two field recordings, digitally scotch-taped together to resemble just one (they were separated in reality by a 20 minute grocery run), with a later improvisation recorded over the field recording(s). It is a simple diorama - nothing sophisticated.

The improvisations take the form of deconstructed musical ideas, sometimes taking cues from the field recording, sometimes coming from within the performer himself (a white dude sitting in his apartment in West Harlem in the middle of a pandemic). If you played them on top of one another, they could almost make a song. But they don’t.
The world feels just a little bit like it is coming apart. I’m not sure if “deconstructed” is the right word for the way I think about it - that feels somehow to purposeful. But as a musician, I didn’t feel like I would be reflecting the world I see by putting together a cohesive musical unit. I’m not sure if I had the emotional strength to offer one either. The best I could do was these almost-but-not-quite-hopeful motives.

(I’m super excited for this piece to be included in Jip Gallery’s next exhibition.)

A month later, I decided to sit down and record a drone EP, In those places, we are the ghosts.

In those places, we are the ghosts. by Nathan Hewitt

I’d been wanting to make some drone for a while, but I never felt fully inspired to do so until October 2020. Perhaps it had to do with the darkness of the year, or the spooky Halloween vibes that felt so right, but I wanted to make something a bit grungier, a bit darker, and a bit more indulgent.⁶

Music + tech

During the last couple months of the year, I have entered into another period of technical experimentation. I’m playing with beatmaking, various livecoding languages, Max MSP, 3D spatial audio, and video synthesis.

When you are put under stress, sometimes you find out what matters most to you. No matter what happens, or where my career takes me, or how much money I have, music will always be an important part of my life. It’s magic. Whether I am the listener, curator, or performer, active engagement with sound rarely fails to restore me.

Quarantine lifestyle log

Spring

I have been super fortunate: no deaths in my immediate extended family, not fired/furloughed/laid off, no COVID - or at least no symptoms and no positive tests. The reality is, the biggest impacts on me, personally, were on my lifestyle.

Although I’ve always been partial to just staying at home on the weekends, there were always things that drew me out of the apartment. Whether it was the 50th-anniversary gala I was working on at the time, museum ethics organizing, or climate activism,⁷ my life changed dramatically when the world ground to a halt - and I know I’m hardly unique in that.

My work life, however, continued on, at least initially unchanged. I already worked from home on the Fractured Atlas team. Eventually, Fractured Atlas would be affected greatly by COVID, due to layoffs and the great challenges that our member artists faced, but at first, I felt lucky that we didn’t have to changing our protocols very much.⁸

Early on, I began to engage in mutual aid where I could. I supported a few individuals directly and also started delivering groceries on a regular basis. As you may remember, the initial spike in NYC was intense, and groups like Invisible Hands mobilized to support at-risk folks in our communities. When we thought it was only going to last a short time, we also took on some classic stuck-at-home activities: puzzles and board games.

One time, when my partner and I were sitting around in quarantine, maybe a month-and-a-half in, we decided to make a zine as a way off remembering that strange time. We gathered various items from our pandemic experience - Cheddar Sour Cream Ruffles bags, Chinese take-out sauce packets, banjo picks, and, of course, disposable masks, and arranged them on my flatbed scanner.

A bunch of unused Chinese takeout sauce packets.

Naturally, that idea died away pretty quickly once we realized that the pandemic was not going to be over anytime soon. But that was my first realization that these times should be documented - the first, in a way, of many attempts to write about 2020. The scans from that evening are the images you see spread throughout this post.

Summer

While people on short-term leases and those with means left the city, we decided to stay. Eventually, my partner and I settled into a rhythm: working during the day, taking turns cooking⁹ and doing the dishes, daily walks, watching road cycling or maybe The Last Airbender, playing Overwatch, my partner playing banjo, weekly family chats, takeout once per week (occasionally cheating and picking up a pizza), and reading together in the evenings. We also started indoor composting, added some house plants, and did some virtual game nights. None of it particularly notable, except for how damn reliable it was.

When George Floyd was killed, like many others, we sprung into action and marched the streets, probably two out of every three days. We decided to chance the subways and, other than delivering groceries, it was probably the most we were outside the entire year. Once the uprising started to die down, things for us, strangely, got back to “normal.”

Journal, 08/19/2020, 1:36am

I have this nagging feeling that I am not doing something that I am supposed to be doing. But there isn’t anything. It’s strange. Hopefully, it’s just cabin fever. I guess I should just go to sleep.

Autumn

Looking back at the year, the autumn is almost a blank spot in my memory. To some degree, every day was the same. I went to the Socrates Sculpture Park for a masked and socially-distanced hang with a couple of friends, and was blown away by the simple pleasure of it all. There were a couple short trips upstate, and one longer one to the Adirondacks that helped my partner and I to recharge. I started to look for a new job, and in the process joined the team part-time at Open Collective. Eventually, at the end of the year, I left Fractured Atlas and joined Donorly.

A scan of a Cheddar Sour Cream Ruffles bag.

One of the most difficult parts of the lockdown for us was being away from our families for so long. With both of us having at-risk people in our family bubbles, we had to proceed with extreme care. We eventually decided to take a six-week trip at the end of the year to see our folks in the Midwest - three weeks each - and due to our precautions no one got sick.

The weird part about writing about pandemic life right now is that it hasn’t ended. We’re back in the city and have many of the same patterns. It seems like the vaccine will make 2021 a better year than 2020. But if this year has taught me anything, it’s to take nothing for granted. Come what may - after 2020, I’m ready for anything.

Feelings

The year 2020 was filled with emotions. Anger at injustices like police brutality, government mishandling of COVID, fellow citizens’ lack of care for the broader community, various politicians, and, you know, everything. Sadness for colleagues and friends whose lives were uprooted. Loneliness.

Sometimes I felt like I was floating through time - simultaneously untethered from reality and stuck in the same place. At other times, I was just bored. There were moments of fear as well, especially in the midst of great uncertainty. Fear of the future. Fear of death.

But there were also moments of great joy and brilliance. Though they were often overshadowed, those moments are the ones I cling to. I hope that you can do the same.

Yes, to some degree people have always chosen news based on their viewpoint. But the niche-enabling dynamics of cable TV made being different profitable. On the Internet, it’s cable times a million. ↩︎
Note: this is different from having conflicting opinions. We don’t even share the same basic facts about what IS on a basic level vs what IS NOT. Let alone what ought to be. ↩︎
One of the coolest groups I’ve started to follow in the tech world is Hundred Rabbits. They traverse the world on their sailboat, making amazing tools like ORCA and Left and just generally inspire people to engage with technology differently. ↩︎
A couple of years ago, I became impatient with social media, emailed a bunch of contacts, and accidentally broken some international data privacy laws in the process - whoops! I did a better job this time. ↩︎
I also taught a class on digital security basics for beginners in the audio production/journalism world. ↩︎
I mean, most people want a song with a beat that lasts no more than five minutes. ↩︎
Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 shutdown in New York, I was able to complete a few of my goals for the first half of 2020. For instance, in January, I created an overview of critical external feedback for Extinction Rebellion, which was distributed to members of the NYC group. I also made my own trail mix for the first time. ↩︎
By the end of 2020, the team was cut almost in half. ↩︎
One of my goals for the first half of 2020 was to cook at least four new types of fish or meat substitutes. I accomplished that and much more, including my pièce de résistance, a meatless edition of Scotch Eggs. ↩︎

References I

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Where I offer my best links and music recommendations on the December Solstice, 2020.

I post these lists alongside my equinoctial and solstitial personal newsletter.

Music recommendations

græ by Moses Sumney (also, this amazing live performance)
Breathing Instruments (compilation)
2020 by Richard Dawson (note: this came out in 2019)
Double Live by clipping. w/ Christopher Fleeger (a unique field-recorded live album)
Persona by Rival Consoles (for when I need to get some work done)
moodgrids by Lights in Private (a.k.a. Cody Putman)
Magic Ship by Mountain Man (for when I want to relax a bit)
24 Hours in December (really long collaborative playlist, still working through it)

(Know something I would like? Share with me!)

Music Studio (Nov. 2020)

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

My music studio (i.e., a little corner of our little office) is ever-changing. Instruments and gear come and go. Workflows ebb and…flow. This is the first post in a “music studio” series where we check in on what tools I’m currently using for my audio work.¹

Gear

Because of the limited space in my NYC apartment, my music studio is relatively small, occupying just 1/3 of the space in the “office” of our 2BR living space.

A photo of my music studio, described below.

Here’s a list of the gear in the set-up shown above:

Elektron Digitakt drum computer/sampler
DIY-built Monome Norns sound computer
Yamaha FB-01 half-rack 4-operator FM synth module
Arturia Keystep midi keyboard/sequencer
Focusrite Saffire 4i4 (3rd gen) audio interface/sound card
Mackie 1202-VLZ3 12-channel analog mixer
a pair of JBL LSR305 powered monitors (speakers)
Zoom H1n audio recorder
cheap Samson SR850 headphones
Laptop, monitor, laptop stand, milk crate, powered USB hub, keyboard, mouse
A bunch of audio cables

With the exception of the DIY Monome Norns, which I bought a kit for and assembled myself, and little things like the keyboard, mouse and USB hub, this equipment was bought used online. I’ve done a lot of buying and selling, going back to Spring 2017.² The FB-01, although it has some noise issues, has been a real treat, and it is currently the only vintage gear in my workflow. The Norns adds some flexibility/mystery/inspiration to the setup, since it can serve many different purposes depending on what program it is running. The laptop is the core of the setup, and rest of the equipment is mostly functional.

Routing

Audio

The center hub of audio routing is the 12-channel mixer (1202). The best thing about this particular mixer - other than the fact that it fits inside the milk crate perfectly - is its flexible routing features that allow me to route signals to multiple sources.

To start, the external sources, in this case the Norns and FB-01, send audio into the mixer. I can play them without my laptop by sending their audio into the main outs of the mixer, which in turn sends audio out to the monitors/speakers and Zoom audio recorder. The 1202’s mute buttons also allow me to send thse external signals to an alternate bus that goes through the audio interface to my computer/DAW. This allows for a pseudo cue system, of sorts. I then have the outputs running from my computer, through the interface, back into the main mixer.

Additionally, I can send audio out to the Norns (and other hardware effects I use from time to time) using the two FX sends on the mixer. Rather than using the mixer’s stereo returns, I prefer to use a regular input channel for each FX return, for maximum flexibility and control.

MIDI

My main MIDI controller is the Keystep. I usually have it running via USB into my computer. I also connect it via a standard 5-pin MIDI cable to the Yamaha FB-01. Occasionally, I will connect it to the Norns via USB instead.

The other important MIDI connection is the Sevilla host-to-host USB MIDI daptor, which allows me to send messages between the Norns (which is itself a computer/MIDI host) and my laptop. This is really useful for integrating the Norns into my setup.

The Digitakt can also do some MIDI stuff, but I am not currently using it in that capacity. Something to explore later!

Computer Programs

My Windows laptop is at the heart of the setup. At the moment, I am still most comfortable using audio, MIDI, and virtual instruments/plugins in my DAW, Ableton Live 10, but I recently took a class on 3D immersive sound design using Unity and FMod. I’m quite intrigued and will probably look more into this over the coming months as an interesting delivery method/venue for my music. I have also been learning the very basics of Max 8 and a little bit of SuperCollider. We will see where all this leads!

I’ve collected a lot of VSTs over the years, and it is not worth listing them all here. Instead, I’ll list some of the plugins and instruments I’ve been using the most lately:

Felt Instruments Lekko and Jasno
a PureData emulation of the Lyra-8
Valhalla plugins
Arturia V Collection 7
various Airwindows plugins
Full Bucket Korg emulation VSTs
Amazing Noises Granular Mirror Maze

Sample-wise, I think I’m most excited about a big library of Elektron Machinedrum samples I recently downloaded. I’m also looking forward to exploring some vintage MFB drum samples as well.

Disclaimer

I am well aware of the limitations of buying music gear, and suspicious of the online culture of “G.A.S.” (gear aquisition syndrome) that is encouraged by music tech manufacturers.³ It can be tempting to think that a piece of gear is the only thing that you need to have the “perfect sound.” Besides the fact that there is no such thing as perfect, it is also important to remember that no piece of gear will make your music “better.” It can make music sound professionally produced…but plenty of professionally-produced music is bad!

At the same time, “haptic feedback” - learning by touch/feel - can be a useful way to engage with music, especially when learning synthesis. There is nothing like turning the cutoff knob on an actual synthesizer. The physical exploration of the instrument can help you understand what is happening and allow for more natural exploration than what you experience on a computer.

After owning several analog synths and other hardware, I have come back around to primarily using software. This is partly because of a lack of space, but also it helps to save money - hardware is expensive!

From time to time, I run into folks who are purists about some sort of music format. Whether it is Eurorack, tabletop, vintage synths, pure DAW setups, rack gear, or whatever else they come up with, don’t follow a standard or format just “because.” Don’t think about how your desk is going to look. Follow the sound. Focus on the results rather than aesthetics. And please don’t be afraid to have a laptop on stage.

If you want to chat about music tech and gear, hit me up! I would love to talk about the highs and lows of building a productive music studio.

More interested in the results? Check out my Bandcamp page. ↩︎
At some point on this website I’ll have to reflect on some of my favorites that I had to let go, like the Behringer SH-101 clone and Korg MS-20 mini that I just simply do not have space for. The Behringer rack reverb I used to have was also great. These have been replaced by VSTs from folks like Valhalla and Full Bucket. ↩︎
It is for this reason that I do not link from this page to any stores or gear sites. ↩︎

Leaving Facebook

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Why

Although there have been plenty of fun moments on the platform, and meaningful, valuable interactions, the truth is that I’ve spent most of my time scrolling, searching, looking for something that was never there. When I look back, my memory of Facebook is primarily connected with a deep social anxiety. The attention-grabbing notifications. The rollercoaster of self-worth. Every minute without a “like” was a failure. Every comment was a triumph. And even as I matured, those core feelings have never really left me.

A photo of me at a bowling alley.

Like many people, it took me a while to realize that the News Feed was not really a “public square.” My engagement with friends on the platform was governed by the whims of an algorithm that cared little for my health or the health of my relationships. Notifications did not signal authentic interactions, but rather served to keep me on the website. Every day, without my knowing it, the technology took advantage of my underlying psychology, using sophisticated, calculated tricks to hold my attention and show me more ads.

A photo of someone throwing water at me with a bucket.

Many of you will be familiar with the saying that “If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product.” In The Social Dilemma,¹ a documentary film about social media, Jaron Lanier puts a finer point on it:

It’s the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception that is the product.

Who would I be if I had never joined Facebook? Would I be different? Definitely! But I don’t really know how, or in what way. So many of my deepest relationships have lived, at least in part, on a website whose goal is not to enrich my life, but rather to enrich itself. Every interaction I have had with friends and family on that platform is tainted by the fact that our connection was facilitated for the purpose of selling changes in our behavior to the highest bidder. For over a decade, almost all of my interpersonal communication was enabled and financed by persuasive technology and growth hacking. (This is surveillance capitalism, and it sucks.)

A group photo of me with five other people. Faces have been obscured.

Still, leaving isn’t easy. Even though my use of Facebook has waned in various ways over the years, it still functions as a sort of rolodex, and as an archive of good times. When I first started thinking about leaving, a few thoughts kept pulling me back:

What if I want to talk to [person I haven’t spoken to in 10 years]?
How will I share about my life?
How will I look back at all those good memories and photos that are only on Facebook?

…basically: “What if I need it later?”

Facebook is a pathway to my past, with an (honestly) pretty good user interface, and it is hard to give up on that. This isn’t my first time trying to leave. But making friends as an adult is hard enough as it is. I don’t need these companies to get involved in my social life by modifying my behavior - even modifying it by 0.01%. I’ll pass on leaving my self-esteem to the whims of their moneymaking algorithms. From here on, where I can, I want to engage as authentically as possible. I’m going to set my own boundaries. In so many ways, and for so many reasons, Facebook just isn’t cutting it. That’s it - I’m out.

How

Since Facebook is so ingrained in my life, even after months of declining use, extricating it has been no easy task. I could quit the platform with no notice or preparation - cold turkey, like a couple of my closest friends - but I still feared losing touch with people who I only am connected with on Facebook, or losing track of the photos and memories that made me love it so much in the first place. As such, my goal is to replace all of the tools Facebook provides with my own, piece by piece.

A photo of me with three other people. Inexplicably, I chose to face my chest away from the camera. Faces have been obscured.

Initially, when I was first thinking about the ways I engage with the platform, I ran into a post by my acquaintance (and Facebook friend) Sahar Massachi called How I use Facebook. Since Sahar used to be an engineer on Facebook’s Civic team, I was intrigued and I followed a few of his suggestions:

I told Facebook that I didn’t want to see ads anymore, over and over again, until I didn’t see as many ads²
I unliked all of my liked pages and only followed a few of them that were especially important to me
I left most of my groups

These changes were okay, but they didn’t release me from my core hang-ups with the platform. After another hour-long doom scroll on my phone, I deleted the mobile app. I had done this numerous times before, but it never stuck. I would be going to an event, or want to post a photo while out and about, and end up re-installing the app. Or I would just start opening up the mobile site in a browser.³

In the days of the pandemic, however, that was not a problem, and this time it worked. I’ve made it longer than ever before without using the mobile app, and I haven’t actually found that I need the platform at all. Now is my best chance to head off on my own - out into the unknown, a Facebook-less social world.

Here’s how I’ve replaced Facebook:

Facebook Feature	My Replacement
Profile page	This website
Sharing updates and opinions	Sending out a quarterly newletter and posting on this blog
Sharing memes	Check it out
Keeping up with the news	Using an RSS reader⁴ - just news, no comments section
Database of people	Making my own database on Airtable⁵
Sharing artistic photos, sometimes	(Outdated) VSCO
My personal photos⁶ with friends and family	I originally moved these to Google Photos and a good ‘ol SSD.⁷ But moving them to Google was a mistake - they are the original surveillance capitlist! They are now housed on private file storage.
Hosting Events⁸	Email invitations, using my new people database! And maybe an online form for RSVPs
Birthdays	Added the most important ones to my calendar, yearly recurring
Saved posts and links	I already tend to a vibrant lists ecosystem⁹
Groups	Most of these are dead, some are stupid meme groups, and while others have no replacement, it’s been a while since I had a meaningful exchange there.
My Dad’s Jeopardy Video	Don’t worry, I posted it to Youtube

Overall, I am finding so far that the sum of these parts is greater than Facebook’s whole, especially considering all of the contextual issues I discussed in the first part of this post. Once I had done all the prep, I also did one final download of all my information, just to be careful, and backed it up on my SSD.

A photo of me with two other people, with mountains visible in the distance. Faces have been obscured.

For another guide on leaving and/or limiting social media, check out this one from the Center for Humane Technology.¹⁰ I think it is also worth it to think about securing your Internet use more broadly, not just in terms of social media use. I wrote about secure tools on Fractured Atlas’s blog, and I will be writing more about digital security here on this blog as well.

What’s Next?

I recently told a close friend of mine (via SMS) that I am in the process of leaving Facebook for good. Their response? “This is such a good step.” I also know, however, that this might seem like a “lone-wolf” escape from the social obligations of the modern public square. Do I have a responsibility to shout my opinions - which are completely correct of course (lol) - into the social media void? No. Taking into account the ways my mental and emotional health are affected and the deep damage these systems have done to our society,¹¹ I see no way that Facebook should continue to be part of my life.

A photo of me sitting at a table with six other people. I am turning around to face the camera. Faces are obscured.

That said, I’m not interested in losing personal connections. In fact, thinking about this has highlighted their importance. I’ve never been more conscious of how valuable my real, direct relationships are - even those that have long been dormant. So my plan is to to reach out to each remaining Facebook friend one by one, via Messenger, and:

Let them know I am leaving the platform
Explain why I am leaving (with a link to this post and The Social Dilemma)
Exchange non-social-media contact information
Share a link to my quarterly newletter

(At some point I’ll set an official date for my Facebook shutdown, leaving plenty of time for folks to respond.)

Just because I am leaving a “social network” does not mean I am done with networks or socialization. And I’m definitely not done with the Internet. One network that I will be joining to start is a cool index of arts and open-source focused personal blogs called a webring. I’m looking forward to learning about other options, too. See you there!

The film is headlined by the creators of many of the tools we use every day, from Infinite Scroll to Google Drive to Facebook’s “Like” Button. They articulate many of the ways that these platforms, due to their drive to monetize users and make a profit, cause enormous problems from the individual level all the way up to the global scale. Some of the little dramatizations are over-the-top…you can skip them and still get a lot out of the film. ↩︎
For me, this was only on mobile, since I already had News Feed Eradicator running on my desktop. ↩︎
I was eventually able to stop the latter behavior after switching the majority of my mobile browsing activity over to Firefox Focus, which does not keep me logged in. ↩︎
RSS stands for RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. We all owe much to the late Aaron Swartz, who helped develop RSS, along with Markdown (the syntax I use to write articles for this site), Creative Commons (the license on which this website’s license is based), and Reddit (well, maybe we aren’t always thanking him for that…). My favorite reader is Feedly, which has a great iOS app, but there are also plenty of free and open-source options. (Apparently Microsoft Outlook also has an RSS reading feature.) You can also receive RSS alerts by email, through a tool like Distill, or set up more complicated stuff like a Zapier integration if you like. nother option is using a web monitoring app. I recommend Distill, which has a web app and browser extensions, and can do its check using your computer rather than on the cloud. One of the most popular apps for this is VisualPing, and it works well, but I prefer Distill’s apps. There are also self-hosted web monitoring solutions available, like Huginn. In any case, the app will email you whenever it detects changes. (Please set the time interval to at least a few days - don’t make a computer use a bunch of energy checking this website every hour when if posts are not so frequent.) ↩︎
Airtable provides a bunch of great features that Facebook does not, such as useful categorization and adding in people’s contact information. It is very flexible. I mixed the records I could download from Facebook with exports of my phone and email contacts. I merged them manually, which was the most time-intensive part of the process. I also categorized folks along the way by how I know them (WRFL, UK, NYC, KOG, Fishers, etc.). ↩︎
One thing to note is that downloading your data does not download other people’s photos that you are tagged in, and might not download photos that are in private events. Downloading public videos you are tagged in is easy, but private videos require a special technique. I went through and downloaded each one, one at a time! I’m a digital packrat, don’t @ me. ↩︎
The big-tech program, Data Transfer Project (which to some degree entrenches these companies, by the way), was very convenient. I was able to transfer photos directly from Facebook to Google. I am not sharing photos and tagging people on Facebook the way I used to, so Google Photos was sure to cover my needs. (I was not thinking, when I wrote this, about surveillance capitalism.) I keep them for myself, and back them up on the SSD, and I can share them with folks from my file storage if needed. ↩︎
For those of you who remember the old Housewarming parties, don’t worry, I screenshot all of those event pages for posterity. I also saved the full list of events that I attended or was “interested” in (yuck!) for my own records. ↩︎
There were quite a few old links and posts festering from years past. I went through them and saved anything I was still interested in. ↩︎
I have also made efforts to limit my use of other social media platforms including Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube, although my use of those platforms has always paled in comparison to my use of Facebook. Taking care of my Youtube use (mostly for video game videos and electronic music performances) is next on my list. ↩︎
Even though it may not be, technically, a monopoly, Facebook and other tech giants absolutely represent a concentration of power. Facebook also engages in practices that are bad for democracy. Certainly, fake news is enabled by these technologies. There have been plenty of controversies around their censorship of things, lack of censorship of other things, and generally a great deal of concern about their content moderation policies and practices. The list of societal issues is long, and I won’t go all the way into it here. ↩︎

On Memes

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This meme repository is presented by…

A meme is an idea. A trend. A “unit of cultural information.” Some of my favorite memes are tiny, but dense with content - a juxtaposition of surprising and hilarious images and sounds, crammed into just a short span of time and space.

Some were never meant to be funny.

…while others build upon found footage to take it to the next level.

Some of them ask questions:

(more than once)

Questions about reality:

…about time:

…and about existence itself:

Memes ask why

Although they may not have the answers, they still bring us joy, even in the small things:

Like dog ears:

Elephant shrews - singing:

Hilarious pranks:

And classics that make you crack up EVERY SINGLE TIME.

(Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. For more meme content, check out my friend Cody’s compilation. You’ll never know if you don’t go.)

Land Acknowledgment

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Land

One of the things I have been thinking about over the last few years is the politics of the land. I have learned a lot about the way that my society - American society - came to be. I have also started to learn more deeply about the concept of justice. In the history of my people, there is much injustice - and we are the ones who perpetrate it.

The land where I (and these website files) reside suffers under the weight of countless injustices - layers and layers of harm done by me, my people, and our ancestors. Today, I am starting by acknowledging my relationship with the very first: the theft of this continent.

The so-called “New World”¹ was stolen over the course of the last 600 years. Descendants of this land’s original inhabitants live here still - they are my friends and colleagues. The very least we can do is examine the generations of unimaginable pain our own ancestors may have caused them, and look within ourselves to connect those histories with our present reality.

A screenshot of North America from Native-Land.ca.

One of the first steps to showing solidarity with Indigenous peoples as a settler is to explore the histories of the land that you inhabit. Many organizations also choose to acknowledge those histories before public events and performances.

In a way, these blog posts are my “performances.” The website, the venue. If the Internet is not some other world, but rather Real Life - if things that are said and done here have an effect on the physical world, and they do - then we need to take our online activity as seriously as we would our daily physical lives. Thus, I begin this acknowledgment.

Mannahatta

The island on which I live, and where this website’s little server is found, is home to 1.6 million people. It is covered in massive buildings, crowded streets, and crisscrossed with thrumming subterranean transportation tunnels. In some ways, it is the most important city in the world. It is the seat of power for Western capitalism, and we call it Manhattan.

A screenshot of New York and the surrounding area from Native-Land.ca.

Before a convergence of circumstances led to this city’s international wealth and fame, and before my people came to these lands, it was also well known, but not for its commercial prowess. Then called Mannahatta, or “land of many hills,"² it was known for its natural beauty and was home to the Lenni Lenape people.

When my people arrived, they displaced the Lenni Lenape - and all Native people - from these lands. The act itself, and all of the murder, deception, war, and genocide that took place throughout this campaign of “discovery” and “destiny,” are probably unforgivable.

In Manhattan, the story was one of deceit - fitting, for a city known for its shady real estate. According to Western histories, my people “paid” the Canarsie tribe $24 for the whole island.³ Whether or not you can actually buy land from a people that do not believe in private land ownership was irrelevant. Manhattan’s origins lie in theft.

Update, 2022: I am now based in Queens, NY, on the ancestral lands of the Canarsee (Canarsie) of the Munsee Lenape people.

My People

For many White Americans, family history is mythical and vague. They are probably from Europe, but when their ancestors arrived here and where, specifically, they came from are lost to time. Not so for my family. My dad has taken the time to dig deep into our family history. Having done very little of the work, I benefit in knowing exactly where I come from. The first step of acknowledging my ancestors’ mistakes - knowing them - is already most of the way complete.

Before I lived in New York, I was in present-day Kentucky, Indiana,⁴ and Illinois. Those unceded lands were originally home to the Miami, Oceti Sakowin⁵, Shawnee, Osage, and Cherokee. For several generations before, my people lived in Illinois, farming the original lands of the Peoria, Neshnabe, Meshkwahkihaki, and Sauk.

A screenshot of the American Midwest from Native-Land.ca.

Some of my ancestors arrived to this continent as recently as 150 years ago, from Germany and Sweden. Other Western and Central European forebears came to these lands over the preceding centuries. The settling of my ancestors in lands formerly home to Native nations (in communities later known as “sundown towns”) was part of a centuries long campaign to destroy Native communities that continues to this day.

Perhaps most relevant among my ancestors was the Puritan missionary John Eliot, who sought to Westernize and “civilize” the Massachusett people, causing irreparable harm by forcing them to reject their culture and therefore their economy.

A Haudenosaunee writer wrote that missionaries “serve as lay ambassadors of their culture, splitting off individuals from families, families from villages, villages from nations, one by one.”⁶ This was absolutely the case with the “Praying Indians” of Massachusetts. Eliot’s ideas, while less violent than the colonial norms of the time, prefigured the deeply harmful policies of Americanization that would arise 150 years later.⁷

NOTE: Although I happen to know some of the specifics of my ancestry, when I say “my people,” I mean White people. I benefit not only from the terrible actions of my direct ancestors, but from actions of White society as well. It is our arrival, our culture, our actions that have driven this world to the brink.

Black Lives

When my people arrived on this land, they brought others with them. They brought enslaved African people - ancestors of my friends and colleagues - to run their extractive capitalist enterprises. The crimes done by my people to Black people are too many to name, both during slavery and since.⁸ The enslavement - kidnapping - of Black people is yet another of the original sins of my people on these lands.

Slave ship diagram, first printed as a broadside in England in 1789.

Some of my ancestors lived in the American South back before the Civil War. Various branches of that family “owned” a few enslaved African people, over the course of generations. Since they were not major slaveholders, there are few records to be found. When they moved to southern Illinois, a free state, they likely sold them or gave them away.⁹

It has been 400 years since kidnapped Black people were first brought here. Modern slavery lives on in our prison systems, and systemic injustice is baked into every aspect of modern American life. Police brutality, the most public and violent way in which Black communities are torn apart, is only the tip of the iceberg.

To all of these injustices, I say this:

Our ancestors made many mistakes.

Our people committed many crimes.

There is much work to be done.

History Is Alive

(shifting from acknowledgment to discussion)

In my favorite book series, The Malazan Book of the Fallen, history is alive. It is personified by gods, ascendants, and other immortal beings, each with their own story. In some ways, they are more like impulses than characters - or ideas that just won’t die. They walk the earth, drifting from conflict to conflict, living myths long detached from the circumstances that forged them, seeking always an elusive sense of fulfillment that never comes.

Good lives on and adapts, but so too does evil. Like those ghoulish immortals of the Malazan world, some of our darkest ideas, as a species, never seem to go away. Supremacy. Scarcity. Materialism. Individualism. Some folks say that those who do not know the past are doomed to repeat it - and perhaps they are right. Today, however, it is as clear as ever that the past is not done with us, and knowing it is not enough. The evils of the past are not gone, and will not be going away anytime soon.

The lie of my people - White Supremacy - lives on, adapting and thriving at every level of American society. The past, in our world, may not walk or talk as it does in the Malazan one, but that makes it all the more challenging to defeat. In those moments when we feel we may have finally vanquished it,¹⁰ we are at our weakest. Sometimes the resurgence of our most evil ideas is so overwhelming, and so entrenched, that it confounds even our greatest thinkers. White Supremacy’s roots run deep.

Actions

A member of the Haudenosaunee, known by my people as the Six Nations Iroquois, wrote a few decades ago that:

For over 300 years, our people have been under a virtual state of siege. During this entire time we have never once given up our struggle. Our strategies have, of necessity, changed. But the will and determination to continue on remains the same.¹¹

My ancestors were actively involved in this siege. Even as I seek justice in my work, and seek to support Native futures, I acknowledge that by remaining on this land I remain complicit in a crime that can never be undone.

Actions speak louder than words. I am on this journey, and would love for you to join me. I recommend that you start by reading Basic Call to Consciousness, the Haudenosaunee book from which I pulled the above quotations. If you want to explore the process of land acknowledgment, I recommend these resources:

The Native-Land website is also a great place to start when researching the original inhabitants of the land under your feet.

Change begins with acknowledgment, but it does not stop there. We must stand alongside Native and Black activists and support their movements. We must offer our time, skills, and resources to the Native and Black organizations in our communities. And we must always continue to learn.

If you aren’t sure where to start, start with money. Pay a land tax! Support Native and Black-owned businesses! Reparations are not the only answer, but they are a fine place to begin.

I would be happy to talk with you about the above acknowledgment and discussion - especially you, my fellow White people. We have a lot to learn. Feel free to reach out if you want to chat.

These lands are known to some Northeastern Native peoples as Turtle Island. ↩︎
To this day, the city sits high upon its magical hills. In Central Park you can see its beautiful schist dipping to the south, marking the passage of glaciers from thousands of years ago. ↩︎
source ↩︎
By the way, Indiana is the birthplace of the KKK. ↩︎
Pronounced Och-et-eeshak-oh-win. ↩︎
Basic Call to Consciousness ↩︎
John Eliot is still a celebrated ancestor among many members of my family, both as an missionary and as a linguist. I once shared my direct descendance from him as a “fun fact.” I now look back at his actions with shame. ↩︎
To be clear, I believe in the possibility of a world without prisons, jails, and police. I believe we must invest in over-policed communities. Black lives matter, full-stop. ↩︎
Of course I would like to think that they freed them, but there is no reason to think so. Some of their cousins continued to own slaves back in Virginia. ↩︎
E.g., the 2008 election. ↩︎
Basic Call to Consciousness ↩︎

This Website, and How To Build Your Own

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Origins

This website is just a bunch of little files living on a tiny computer that sits on my living room bookcase. It plugs into the wall and my router, and all it does all day is serve up these website files to whoever requests them. For most servers out there (shared hosting, virtual private servers, and the like), it is a thankless job. But I try to give my little Lime2 single-board computer some attention every so often. A little bit of gratitude can go a long way.

Note: due to a recent move, this website is currently hosted on a VPS rather than my little Lime computer. :(

Over the years, I’ve built a few different personal websites. First, there was the college résumé site, nathanhewitt.net. Then there were other short-lived iterations: the music-focused auohm.us (before I stopped using the moniker AUOHM), the simplistic nthnh.co, and the Web 1.0 omg.lol/nathan (I get a littleembarrassed by them, but I don’t mind if you take a look). On the backend, I tried Wordpress, Squarespace, Wix, and others. I also put together plenty of simple, WYSIWYG websites when I was doing freelance graphic design in college.

For this website, I originally wanted to self-host in order to learn how. As I built the site, however, I started to come up with other reasons. Over time, a constellation of motivations started to form:

My desire to learn basic Linux programming (bash) and related technology
Trying to get away from corporate-owned social media platforms
Finding my written voice again
Experimenting with solar power
Sharing what I have learned; sharing what I am learning
Having a home on the web

“Natehn” is a new online moniker that mixes three letters of my first and last names. I feel that, as my public engagement with the Internet begins to change, a new name will help to separate the new from the old. (The similarity to Brian Crabtree’s moniker is purely coincidental.)

Building Your Own

If you’re interested in building and hosting your own website the way I did, I would be happy to help. Some basic directions are below. As you go, be sure to also check in on the core documentation for Armbian and Hugo. You may also want to learn the basics of the command line and bash. Finally, I recommend checking out the guides at the homebrewserver.club.

I made a lot of mistakes along the way - mistakes that hopefully you can avoid. Because of various unforced errors, I ended up trying out three different web server programs (Nginx and Apache, before settling on Caddy) and three different static website builders (Pelican and Jekyll, settling on Hugo). When I was at my wit’s end, all I had to do was ask for help. (Thank you @randomsock!)

The Physical Server

Remember: there’s no such thing as “the cloud.” There are just a bunch of computers that someone else owns. This one, however, is owned by me. Following the lead of Low←Tech Magazine, I used an Olimex Lime2¹ running on a variant of Debian (itself a distribution of Linux) called Armbian. Following Armbian’s instructions, I used Balena Etcher to “flash” the image onto a MicroSD card.

My small Olimex server sits amidst my partner’s Buddha collection on a bookcase with a LiPo battery zip-tied to the top.

Insert the MicroSD card, plug in your power adapter, connect it your router with an ethernet cable, connect mouse, keyboard, and HDMI, and you’re up and running! After my initial configuration (see below) I always connected to the server via SSH, so there was no need to keep it connected to mouse, keyboard, or monitor.²

My basic configuration of the server included logging in as root (pw: 1234) and updating its password, creating a username and password for myself with sudo admin permissions, logging in, and then making sure everything was up to date via sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade. I then went ahead and set a Static IP (LAN) address for the Lime2’s ethernet port so that it would always be accessible at the same address. I also installed a firewall called UFW and configured it to allow SSH, HTTP, and HTTPS through (sudo ufw allow 22 80 443). We’ll get into more of the networking stuff a little bit later.

The Static Website

Setting up Hugo was simple as could be. I followed their directions to install (sudo apt-get install hugo). Then I used the Quick Start documentation, creating a directory for my site (mkdir), cd-ed into that directory, and created the site using hugo new site quickstart.

For a theme, I am using a lightly-modified version of Cactus. Hugo has plenty of themes available, as well as information on how to install them. All my modifications were done in true amateur fashion - trial and error.³

Hugo has plenty more information in their Quick Start guide. Once the site was ready, I ran hugo in the main directory to build the site in a directory called public. If you’ve been following along, your root directory will probably something like home/user/blogfolder/public. You’ll need that info when you set up your webserver.

Networking

To make sure that you are ready to receive external traffic, you will need to set up a DCHP reservation and port forwarding (ports 80 and 443) in your router. This basically ensures that folks who connect to your router for the purpose of getting to your website will be directed by the router to your server. The specific process for this will depend on your router and Internet Service Provider.

While doing this, go ahead and make a note of the WAN IP Address for your router. You will need this when pointing your domain name at your server. Be aware, unless you set a Static WAN IP address through your Internet Service Provider, it is possible for your WAN address to change. If your website goes down, that could be one of the first things to check.

Your Domain Name

First, of course, you should buy a domain name. Then with your domain name registrar, or wherever you manage the DNS records for your domain, make an A record (a.k.a. “address” record) pointing to the WAN IP address of your router. The process for doing this depends on your provider. If you are using the same configuration as me, you should also create a URL Redirect record with the hostname “www” redirecting to the non-www URL of your website (e.g., https://example.com). It can then take 24-48 hours for your new DNS settings to “propogate” and go into effect.

The Webserver

Caddy will be our webserver. To set up Caddy, we will follow the installation directions for Debian put together by TecMint.

Install Caddy:

echo "deb [trusted=yes] https://apt.fury.io/caddy/ /" \
    | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/caddy-fury.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install caddy

Start Caddy:

systemctl start caddy
systemctl enable caddy
systemctl status caddy

Configure Caddy:

Open up the configuration file at /etc/caddy/Caddyfile with your favorite text editor (e.g., vim, nano). Change :80 to your domain (natehn.com for example) and the root to the root of your public site, such as home/user/blogfolder/public.

Restart Caddy

Restart Caddy with this new configuration via systemctl reload caddy. Your website should be up and running!

Note Regarding SSL Certificates

Caddy should take care of your SSL certificate, which is used for HTTPS, automatically on your behalf. If you have trouble with it, check out these instructions from Certbot. (I did this out of order and got a certificate back when I was using Nginx as my webserver.)

Writing

For putting posts together, I recommend learning a simple plaintext syntax called Markdown. Hugo uses Markdown to turn plaintext into html.⁴ It makes writing up an article so much easier. Posts composed using Markdown’s easy syntax and dropped into blog’s directory will become low-weight html pages on your static website. Hugo also has a handy figure shortcode to help you insert images.

A beautiful sunrise at a campground near Abel Tasman National Park.

For focused writing, I use a lightweight plaintext editor called Left, by the awesome sailboatin’ folks at HundredRabbits. I also use FocusWriter on occasion. But any plaintext editor will do.

Once you have a website up and running, you’re at the last step: content. In our modern capitalist internet, the content mills never stop running. Blog posts of a certain length, with certain keywords (and questionable value), are used to optimize companies’ search engine position (the proverbial neverending scramble for “SEO”). And in this side-hustle culture, it sometimes feels like you have to compete to survive. (I’ve certainly felt the pressure before!)

It doesn’t have to be like this. This site is a start. It is a forum: not content, but discussion - even if it is one-way. A place that is open and honest, especially about imperfections and mistakes. Let’s see where it leads.

I chose this board based on the recommendation of Low←Tech Magazine and, as they mention, because of all the advantages related to how it is powered. It can provide additional information and can connect directly to a LiPo battery. Along with the board itself, I purchased the case they make for the board and the correct power supply. Separately, I also purchased a 3.7V 6600mAh Lithium Ion battery pack with a JST 2-pin cable attached. Although they say it is a genuine JST connector, I still have trouble disconnecting it sometimes. Not a big deal - I don’t plan to disconnect it often. ↩︎
On my Windows machine, I use Putty and WinSCP to connect to the Lime2 wirelessly from my computer. ↩︎
It is just simple stuff like changing the copyright line to allow for a Creative Commons license and changing the favicon and logo. ↩︎
Hugo Markdown Support ↩︎