scraps of poetry and madness

In my last post here, I was so worried about the precedent numbered entries in a series would set, I didn't define the scope of the series itself well enough. Or if I did, I don't remember.

Isn't everything I write here a “process log”? This is a web log after all (since I am, for some reason, so set on using that particular antiquated phrase...)

So here I am! Making progress on my process and uh... logging it!

I've updated Homo Monstrosus, in both style and content. And the site has been on my mind more and more – as a tool, a project, a hobby, but also as a shelter, a record, a showcase. Creating and building in general has been on my mind more too, but the front, active part of it, rather than the back(burner), “sigh, one day...” part. I am almost building a creative practice. Or rather, I am building a creative practice, it's just wobbly like a baby deer. Spooks easily like one too.

I am still iterating over exactly how I want to exist on the web. Still trying to crystalize and differentiate the ways one can publish web content. I'm not talking on a global, capitalism scale, or about being a Content Creator on a social media website or anything like that. I'm talking about one person, making (mostly) words and publishing them using the networked tools they have access to.

I'm thinking about the difference between pages that are designed to be dynamic and updated, versus static and time-locked. The blogging revolution brought web publishing to the masses, but it also came with this subconscious implication that the only valid content on the web was the newest, most current, whatever was at the top of the blog. And with that came the idea that “old” content was somehow less-than. Or that unchanging content, whether by design or as an artifact didn't have a place on the web. Couldn't be trusted. Or maybe those are just implications I wrestled with.

What do I want to make? Why? Who is it for? When is it for?

These are much more potent and healthy questions than the ones I'd traditionally ask like, Can I even make anything? Who do I think I am? Why haven't I done more? Should I just stop kidding myself?

There's other stuff on my mind. World stuff, obviously. But World-level internet stuff too. It seems very popular these last few months to acknowledge that the web and capitalism appear to be inexorably linked, and that the coupling is killing us, leading us and the planet herself to doom. And that's not wrong, of course, but the situation was incredibly apparent well before Elon Musk said he wanted to buy Twitter (though that event, at least to me, seems to have kicked off the lastest wave of these kind of think pieces... and again, that's not an inappropriate response.)

But as much as I generally agree with the sentiment – that's not where I want to live right now. The internet hasn't been what I've wanted it to be in a long time, well before I realized it. I can't dismantle those systems.

I can chip away at my little site. Plod around this blog. Build my little chicken coop as the cathedrals fall to the shelling.

So that's what I'm going to do.