I wrote 3 blog entries in Dec 2019 and never published them....UNTIL NOW
what if, just once, the whole world won the lottery?
Hello and welcome to all the new people! Last I checked with my contacts at Substack Inc, there are 4.6 twenty thousand of you!! WOW. Amazing and frankly? Regressive.
Let’s see, what else - this week we had an awesome interview with New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly and that was about it! We also have this, the thing you’re reading now. (figure out how to link an article to itself like a snake would his/her/their/its own tail).
Introduction to this piece:
There was a brief period between Dec 3rd and Dec 15th in the two thousand and nineteenth year of our lord Jinco Cheans
that I did some writing. A lot, in fact. “He’s in a feast stage” people all around were saying, some also following it up with “so different from his normal famine vibe.”During that period aka the boon years aka the bulls rush in era aka the salad days aka the soup and salad nights, I wrote three (3) blog entries. I know this because I tagged them each of them as #blog.
I owe it to that Alex of Dec 2019, young and blissfully unawares of the virus about to run amok through lungs across the globe, to publish these entries that I just found and am in no way posting because I didn’t have time and/or energy to post anything else.
But I’m not just doing this for the handsome, buoyant 2019 Alex, nay. This is also for the archivists who I know are watching this newsletter LIKE HAWKS given that everyone from Malcome Gladswell
to Stephon Kingley have said verbatim and word for word that I am "The next writer.”So without any further Adeles, here we go:
Note that I have not edited these at all so as to preserve the Raw Genius displayed between those magical days of 12/3/19 -- 12/15/19.
Ursula Le Guin is a prophet
I mean this quote is blowing my mind:
"We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words"
I love Ursula's message above because it connects powerfully to something I have been feeling for some time: why are we not going back to kings having total rule? That seemed like a better time, all in all, for a whole lot of people. Here's a few examples.
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I love her books, here are a bunch of affiliate links which I need you to click on if you want to learn more about her which you genuinely should:
LINK LINK LINK LINK LINK
THE REAL POST ABOUT HER:
Honestly, I don't know a ton about her, which is the tone I was going for in the goof post here (link). I am, however, genuinely excited to read some of her stuff as I really dig her whole thing, and I
#blog
Brand exercise
I have been held back in starting to writing in a way that I share with the public because of a lack of my 'angle', my 'niche', my dare I say 'brand'. But I am not Macy's, nor have I ever wanted to be, even in my wildest of sexual fantasies. Note to self: research if there's something called "Brand RolePlay" where people pretend to be brands. If not, trademark and sell to the highest bidder.
There it is again, that incessant desire to monetize, a practice that's become the norm in film and tech, the two industries I straddle. It was not always this way, right? I've heard stories of a time, not too long ago, when people were people and that was that. Though I'm sure, even then, there was some bit of this, as there has been since the beginning of the world.
The difference between all of that and the now of today is simple - the global, instant reach anyone with a meme and some money can have. Sacha Baron Cohen put this all better than I could in his talk:
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He said that if Gerbel had Facebook, the Nazis would have won the war. And he wasn't wrong.
It feels good to write, great even. And perhaps, for right now, that can be enough. I'd stay and pontificate but I've got work to do for people that pay me to do it, which, Although far less fun, is a necessary evil of the days we live in.
I'll leave you with this. Why did I use the word straddle up there? I don't know, but it's one hell of a word. Here's a deep dive:
#blog
On writing
The best part is the idea, the beginning, the pure something or other that squirts dopamine into the parts of you that need squirting (a technical term), and you’re off.
From there, its a a swift and thorough descent into your own personal hell that involves doing everything possible to delay the process of actually writing. For me, this always, and I mean always, involves finding the perfect application on my computer to write in.
Spoiler - none. No applications will work because that is the very design of the distraction or procrastination or whatever you want to call it.
Let’s take this very essay, for example. I wrote a sentence, just one, and immediately thought - can I tag this? As in, can I add tags to the file so that I can find it later? You know, because that’s what surely what Fitzgerald thought after writing a single line to one of his books.
#blog
Wow. I mean simply wow. The writing was on the wall and that writing said ‘wow is Alex doing okay?’
But hey, think about this - I’ve come pretty far! I write about my messy ass space
, the real meaning of the pina colada song, and even vulnerable little yarns like the time I got my head stuck in a balcony.And I actually publish them!
All in just three (3) years. Think what I could do in another three (3) or four (4) ? Wanna sign up to get these Barn Burners in your email backyard? Do it:
Want to get in on ground floor of the next Big Writer that people are calling “Who?” - you can support the work with a monthly contribution:
praying god sees this and deletes this before it hits print
full name is Malcomehereyou Gladwellbutrin
More messy ass spaces coming SOON - stay TOONed
I wrote 3 blog entries in Dec 2019 and never published them....UNTIL NOW
#OnWriting #MetaMetaMeta
I love that it felt good for you to write!