Writing
Below is a list of different pieces of writing. Some of them are quite short, because they are snippets of ideas or quick associations. With time, hopefully, some of them will grow, developing as the ideas they are trying to depict, refine, or experiment with become deeper, broader, and more layered. I list them here together as I hope that seeing them together will aid finding connections between them, rather than segmenting them as separate thoughts. They are listed in chronological order, most recently altered first.
Project Review: Future Stories
If Ahab Was Chill
‘Hey man did you see that whale?’
Ahab turned around.
The sea was blue, bluer than the bluest blueberry, deep as a hole.
‘No’, said Captain Ahab
‘It was magisterial, like nothing you ever seen. It had a peculiar snow-white wrinkled forehead, and a high, pyramidical white hump. It must’ve been 90ft long!’ his crewmember Ishmael exclaimed.
‘Huh’, said Ahab.
He looked back out to sea, and reached down to scratch his knee, just above his prosthetic leg made of a bone.
‘Wasn’t it a whale just like that that took your leg?’ Pondered Ishmael.
‘Probably’ said Ahab.
‘Well don’t you fancy some revenge, seeing as we’re a whaling ship and all?’ Proposed Ishmael.
‘Nah’ said Ahab, who promptly turned around and hobbled back into his cabin.
The boat rocked and groaned in unison, just before it rocked back the other direction. It did this several more times. But Ahab was used to that, as an experienced seadog. He was in his cabin, doing map calculations. He was plotting a course back to Nantucket, trying to find the quickest way possible, seeing as they had already caught multiple whales and were set to make a tidy profit.
All he really cared about was getting home to his wife and child. But even that he wasn’t overly fussed by, having chosen the wrong profession if spending time with them was his primary concern. No, he was just enjoying the moment, living in the now, taking each day as it came. He saw no reason to set his sights on too lofty a goal, and was never compelled strongly by much of anything. He was a cool customer, always had been, always would be.
And, if one thing was absolutely certain, he wasn’t about to get all het up about some whale. As if the prey were hunting the predator. Quite the morbid thought for, of all people, a whaler.
Web Log 251123
Love Sonnet for my Phone / Web Log Audit #1
I take my phone, my love, from out my hole,
Betwixt my cheeks do I store it, so safe.
These eyes, near closed, try read the screen, like mole
I love you phone, please care for me, your waif.
With you I could never be bored, for sure
To hold, to kiss, to lick, to tap, all day
You stay with me, pocket bound evermore
Mine own, my phone, without compare, for play
You take me in to your wide web, endless
Phone world is where I wish to stay, secure
My mind at rest, tucked up inside your nest
The outside world, when I compare , so poor
I love you dear, I must be near my phone
You open up a world for us, alone
Web Log Audit #1
I think it would be a helpful process to perform a monthly audit of the the WebLogs. A little catch up over a cup of tea, to see what’s been going on. Collect the ducks, place them in a row. Say ‘hmmmm, what kind of ducks do we have here? A mallard and an alabio, how interesting...’
To see, mainly, what kind of connections can be made between the pieces of writing, so they are less discrete but rather working together as the beginnings of a wider body of work.
There were 4 pieces from the last batch (not including the wee poem posted with this audit):
1. Participating in Material Culture, an essay about material culture and it’s political utility as a term
2. Wise Guys at the Docks, fiction about a ex-dock worker explaining containerisation to two Mafia thugs
3. Boots, an essay about Vimes boots theory, and the affordability of craft goods
4. Gnome Autofiction, fiction about a life as a plastic gnome in a garden
These are a set of writings about, firstly, Objects. Initially, as a totality, the entire gamut of human-made stuff. Then, through the history of globalised trade that expanded with the invention of the multimodal container. Thirdly, a soft economic assessment of a theory of the ratio of cost to durability of consumer objects. Finally, imagining a life from the perspective of an object.
The politics of objects, then the infrastructure of objects, then the economics of objects, then the ontology and semiotics of objects.
I will often be writing about objects in the WebLogs. Stuff is what interests me most.
These are also about cultures of objects. Firstly, defining the term that describes analysing matter through culture, and culture through matter. Then, about two subcultures and labour organisations (dockworkers and Mafia members) and their relationships to objects. Then, the beliefs we hold on the value of possessions, and what we are willing to pay for them, which are cultural considerations, not just economic. Finally, the Gnome as a cultural archetype is something I have been fixated on for a little while (primarily because of its relation to time and labour), but in this story I look at it through its lens as an object, and how that materiality might inform the Gnome as a mythological figure.
The world is so full of stuff. That means that there are an infinite combination of objects to analyse through a large number of interesting lens’. Infinity x large = A large infinity. But this is a good start, beginning with some of the lens’ that are most interesting to me: politics, infrastructures, economics, and semiotics. Perhaps further variations on these themes to come, or perhaps different topics and themes, we shall see.
Web Log 251116
Gnome Autofiction
I am a Gnome. I live in the bottom of a back garden. It might in fact be your garden. I can’t say. I don’t really know who lives here anymore. Sometimes, I do see people in the garden, through the leaves of the bush I’m in. I catch glimpses of faces, but I never seem to really remember any of them.
I do remember the people who put me here. They picked me up from a Dunelm in 2009. I remember the amusement on their faces when they saw me on my shelf with the other gnomes. They were a couple, middle aged. One of them, the man, must’ve been a fisher, like me, because his wife made a joke about his inability to grow a beard, like mine, or we might’ve been mistaken for each other. They brought me to the till, paid for me, put me in their car, drove me to my new home, put me in their well manicured garden, by a bed of chrysanthemums, and since then that is where I have stayed.
That wasn’t my first memory though, of course. My first memory was a sense of gradually dissipating warmth. This was the heat used to turn my constitutive material (polypropylene) molten, so it could be injected into a cast, that I then cooled in, becoming solid in my new gnome body. The more solid I became in this form, the more my consciousness came into focus, as I turned from inert material into a sentient archetype.
After this, I went through the finer details of my manufacturing process. My broad areas of colour were airbrushed, like my red hat and my blue overalls. My finer details, such as my eyes and shoe laces, were tampo printed. Different workers passed me along the production line until eventually I was packaged in polystyrene, along with thousands of other identical gnomes, packed and wrapped on a pallet, and stacked into a 40 foot container on a HGV. I assume that was what had happened at least, the polystyrene blocked my view.
It took a long time until I next saw something. Light surged through a seam in the packaging as it was finally opened on the shop floor of a Dunelm. My strange sensorily-deprived adolescence. It was the first stretch of time I spent stuck in stasis, but not the last. I rested on the shelf for a while, until I was taken to the couple’s home.
And that is where you’d find me now. In this resting place that has been mine for so long. Ostensibly, I have been fishing for the entire time. That’s the activity I convey sculpturally. But fishing is dynamic and probabilistic - you never know when you’re going to catch one. I have always caught one, in the past tense. I have never in fact, experienced catching one. In theory, it’s my only hobby, but I’ve never actually done it. I don’t think I would want to. The only experience of mine that brings me peace is rest. Leisure activities to me seem exhausting. Whether I have acclimatised to my stillness or I was created for it, I don’t know.
I do witness lots of change. Motion and energy is constantly shifting through the garden. I have seen so many plants establish themselves, grow and thrive, sometimes crowding out other plants or being strangled themselves. The people who come through the garden have been even more transitory, since the couple left. If I happen to recognise them, it’s rare that I see them again, and definitely never the next year. They move manically, and have little sense of place or home, it seems.
I have sat through a lot of seasons now, and seen a lot of change. I have changed lots too. I have weathered badly. Discoloured, stained, mottled by algae. I look older, less human, less like the folkish creature I resemble. I feel further from a gnome each day. I am disgusting and frozen. I will always exist and I know that. I have so much time. I just don’t know what to do with it all.
Web Log 251109
Boots
I have been put on a permanent contract at work. One of the terms of this contract is I get a £150 budget for boots. Expensive boots, free to me! How exciting. I am currently deciding which ones I should purchase, which ones would be best and most durable.
The boots I currently wear were bought for me by a previous work place. They are Chelsea boots that cost about £23 new from an eBay ‘Buy it Now’ listing. I have had them for almost exactly a year. I have semi-regularly shampooed and conditioned the leather upper, which is in quite good condition. The lining however has aged poorly, and has worn away entirely at the heel. They are also splattered with green and yellow metallic paint. They smell bad.
These two boots, the current and future pair, are perhaps an example of 'Vimes’ Boots Theory'. This originates from a book written by British author Terry Pratchett, 15th in his Discworld series, called ‘Men At Arms’. It supposes that people with less money spend more money on consumer goods over time than rich people. This is because they cannot afford consumer goods that are durable, and so they regularly need to replace their cheap items.
The titular character is Colonel Vimes, commander of the City Watch. He is describing his fiance, who is an aristocratic lady of leisure with an old house full of expensive things. She lives cheaply due to the quality of these antique possessions, and instead spends all of her money on her dragon care business.
There is something to this theory, I think. But I don't know, if tested, whether the maths involved would hold it true for most items. Nice stuff is very expensive. Cheap stuff is very very cheap. The increase in price of expensive stuff as compared to cheap stuff is often by a factor of tens or hundreds, which is not an increase mirrored in its durability (in most cases).
There are different variables at play, such as quantity of use, the quality of maintenance, and the line at which someone determines a thing as no longer fit for use. My current boots for instance, while much more worn than more expensive boots might’ve been after the same workload, are still usable. Also, the promise of durability from expensive items is not always fulfilled. They may in fact be fragile, or have been overpriced through clever marketing that disguises at best average construction.
When I worked in the garden centre at a B&Q, I had a colleague called Sol. He was advising me on what kind of headphones to illicitly use while on shift, suggesting £5 Bluetooth earphones, with the warning that they would break every 3 months. When I followed this advice, it turned out that the earphones I’d bought didn’t really work at all. They were so frustrating I soon replaced them with £18 ones from a reputable brand. There is a price at which objects cease to provide their intended use value at all, and become a complete waste of money.
The main reason why both of these two different earphones were that cheap is how low the wages that would’ve been paid to the people that produced their components and assembled them. While Western craft production often doesn’t take advantage of the economies of scale that mass produced goods do, the biggest difference in the final price is more likely the amount of compensation the workers involved received.
Sebastian Cox, maker of expensive wooden furniture, when asked about his prices, stated that in order to purchase from sustainable craft makers, people will have to become accustomed to spending more on possessions, and owning them for life. This is made possible by the longevity a craftsperson can imbue into an object, and enables him to pay his employees a fair wage. Again, I think there is something to this theory. But £3,000 tables are out of the question for most people. To have that amount of cash on hand, and then direct it towards an object with the same use value as an IKEA dining table, ignoring everything else that imminently needs paying for, is not how budgeting works for most people. The Cox’s studio ethos rooted in the work of William Morris, Victorian proponent of craft production and detractor of mass production, who famously primarily produced expensive wallpaper that only the rich of his time could afford.
Ideally, everyone would consume less things, because that requires less extractive resource gathering and energy use, and less potentially dangerous or tedious work being done to create those things. But, if Vimes boots theory doesn’t hold, and it isn’t cheaper to buy something expensive and buy it once, then the argument made by craftspeople and degrowthers cannot come from a structure of rationalised consumer economics - instead as an argument of morality, aesthetics, or sentimentality. Unpacking the class implications to this is vital for those interested in the development of a sustainable material culture.
Web Log 251102
Wise Guys at the Docks
A Dock Worker (DW) is walking around the docks, which are quiet.
‘Hey you!’
‘Yeh you!’
DW turns around. He sees the faces of a Burly Mafioso (BM) and a Slight But Wiry With A Menacing Disposition Mafioso (SBWWAMDM). They are crouched low, their heads poking out, side by side of each other, out from behind the corner of a brick wall.
‘Uuuuuuuuuyyuhhhhhh, what do you want?’ Says DW
‘Give us some of that stuff from the docks, please!’ Said SBWWAMDM, threateningly.
‘And do it quick, or you’ll feel the wrath of the long arm of my long arms!’ growled BM.
DW looked around, bemused and affronted. ‘Guys, are you sure you’re in the right place? Take a look around...’, his arms point out to both sides.
The Mafiosos look around for a moment and scowl. ‘Of course there’s stuff we can have, we are the docks you fool, that’s where everything comes into the city! Cigarettes, food, consumer durables, don’t kid me, kid, my Family have been pulling stunts like this for years, it’s the bread and butter of our criminal enterprise.’ Said SBWWAMDM, in one really long run on sentence.
‘Yeh exactly, now get the stuff!’ BM growled.
‘Unnmmmmmmmmmm Hello! Have you not followed *any* of the logistical innovations of the late 20th century! Ports have worked completely differently ever since Malcolm McLean invented the shipping container in 1956.’ scoffed DW.
SBWWAMDM and BM glared in tandem, knitting their eyebrows so that they formed a thick black zigzag across their two heads.
DW had one hand on his hip now. ‘This port isn’t even operational anymore. I don’t even work here anymore! I was laid off 26 years ago - it’s just force of habit that keeps me coming down here twice a day to look for dealporter work. The actual port is across the bay, at the smaller city with less urban sprawl, which better supports a variety of transport links, like rail & road, to take away the multimodal containers. This helps to move sea cargo into the wider transport system with less delay. Not to mention the price per m2 of inner city land, and the growth in size of container ports to accomodate the cranes and the increased size of boats. A modern container port could never fit here!’
SBWWAMDM and BM heavy and hairy jaws fell open, revealing knubby teeth and pointy, hairy tongues.
DW’s smirk was emphatic and oozed confidence, in the form of drool. ‘Even if there was a port here, no one would be able to get you any stuff. It’s not like the old days, when all the cargo was handballed on and off of the ship in their individual packaging, which allowed ample opportunity for foul play. They’re all contained now in 20 or 40 foot long locked steel containers, moved only by cranes, only touched by humans to lash or unlash them to the ship or their ongoing vehicle. As well as making loading and unloading en mass more efficient, it became more resistant to crime as well.’
SBWWAMDM and BM’s knees began to knock, to the rhythm Tony Allen laid down on Fela Kuti & Africa 70’s 1975 single ‘Expensive Shit’.
DW by now was doing The Worm with such gusto that the concrete quayside was beginning to crumble, cracks spidering out from the spot directly under his erect penis, which was acting as the drill tip to his fleshy pneumatic jackhammer action. ‘Have I even mentioned the extensive system of tracking, surveillance, and labelling, made possible initially by the invention of the barcode in 1949, and continued forth into fully numerised organisation of containers, all processed through computerised systems in which cargo is expected, signed off, and accounted for at every part of its journey? It’s watertight, boys, there’s no way in’ he spluttered.
SBWWAMDM and BM had devolved back into a nutrient rich primordial soup, surrounded by their leather jackets, which stubbornly refusing to melt like the rest of their clothes due to its vinyl coating. They were so thoroughly embarrassed by missing so much of the developments in the operations of material flows, so behind the times on the workings of capital - which their whole culture and way of life was organised to intersect, using carefully chosen displays of violence and secret bribery in order to skim cash from other processes of wealth accumulation - that they had seen no option but to liquidate their corporeal bodies entirely. Returning to a base material, totally unstructured molecules, gave them the possibility to be an entirely new form of life, since they had so clearly failed at every aspect of the role their previous consciousness and physical frame was oriented to fulfil.
DW had thoroughly exorcised the demons of his own cultural and working history, the pain caused by his own obsolescence, by translating it into incredibly virile smarm. The ecstasy this caused in him could not be born by the watery human body, and he became chemically unstable, bonding with the concrete dock and reaching a state of post-sentient crystalline enlightenment that even Graham Harman and the Buddha couldn’t have speculated. He was later dug up in the construction of a mix-used apartment development, to be replaced by the foundations for a Black Sheep Coffee location. But he didn’t mind that too much.
Web Log 251026
Participating in Material Culture
That is a term I will often return to in my Web Logs: Material culture.
It is first and foremost, all the stuff that surrounds us. But crucially also, the second word ‘culture’ means it encompasses the uses, intentions, ethics, legalities, associations, and the societal structures of production that are not purely material,
In Marxist terms, this can be defined as the Base (the material terms of reproduction) and the Superstructure (the sociological entities constructed upon the Base). This dichotomy, it’s argued, is what societies are composed of and reproduced by.
The term ‘material culture’ allows me to understand an object as a component within the wider base/superstructure framework. As an artefact of material culture, an object becomes a subject worthy of cultural, historical, and material analysis, in a way it might not be as just another thing in the enormous set of things that exist. It becomes really valuable then, to follow the paths of objects, as they travel then from the factories in which they’re produced, into how they shape the superstructure, and then also the reverse of that process, how social relations effect the ever-continuing production of stuff. Through the lens of material culture, objects continually turn up in places that seem only social, or financial, or even mythical, but are in fact at least partly grounded in stuff. There were a lot of physical houses constructed in the lead up to the 2008 financial crisis.
The point of say that is to say, the anchoring point for my analysis and interpretation of history and politics (how I would like the world to change) is for the way stuff is made and used to be changed. This encompasses consumer goods, infrastructure, waste, and all the infinite other categorisations you could make from the scope of our global material culture. I have yet to find that lensing my politics in this way - observing the interrelations of people and stuff - has led to a lack of ethical scope, some dark spot I can’t account for by proposing changes to the dynamics of interrelations.
Making maps of stuff, making maps of cultures, making maps of politics (power). Making meaning that helps change making. I hope to be writing web logs weekly, and the prior two sentences could be used as the premise for these writings.
I had hoped that by training in making, I would feel some element of a vindication of praxis - the sense that by carefully choosing which medium to acquire skills in, I could help to make the world differently. But that doesn’t work, because I make within and beholden to the wider structure of economic relations of our world. So instead, my praxis must be found for now in directly political and cultural mediums. Even if, one day, in a material culture that operates differently to now, I think making can be wholeheartedly useful.
Web Log 251019
Geology Poster
Lots of things have happened. Lots of things are going to happen. Somewhere, in between those two lines that stretch out in their respective directions, an event occurred. That event could only be titled accurately as: ‘Teaching German Children about Geology’. One of the objects that was created and used during that event was a big wall hanging. I think you’re meant to write the answers in chalk into the boxes.
After a further series of events subsequent to that, or at least subsequent to its production, this wall hanging found itself in Nunhead, at the top of Vesta Road just off the roundabout. It was there that I found it. That was probably two years ago. The hanging string had come off at one end.
I recently hung it for the first time at the exhibition called ‘Torpor’ that me and my housemates put on at home. To do this I had to epoxy glue the broken string back on, and drill two holes into the brickwork of my rented bedroom to put wall plugs and long screws into. Now it hangs.
I’m glad it hangs. It calms me down. It’s quite visually appealing, which helps. I like that it’s trying to teach me something, even if I can’t understand very much German. Most crucially, it’s always nice to think about time as a monumental, inexhaustible body or substance, rather than a series of sequential moments. Fourthly, it’s all blue on the other side, which looks nice too.
We’re currently in the ‘Erdneuzeit’, or Cenozoic geological era. ‘It is characterized by the dominance of mammals, insects, birds and angiosperms’ says Wikipedia. That’s good to know. Those are some of my favourite sorts.
K&T Tilts 2024 Diary
I got this diary from my last job. K&T Tilts were in a neighbouring unit in the industrial park. A tilt is a tarpaulin, the sort you would use for a haulage truck, or apparently for circus tents. They were getting rid of these diaries, and I nabbed one.
It captivated me on two levels. Firstly, there’s an incredible amount of information in its first 30 or so pages. Unit conversions, time zones, travel times between locations, an assortment of facts one might want close to hand. Secondly, frankly, I was baffled by it as a viable business expense. I don’t know if the photo quite communicates how fancy this diary is. It’s an elegant and functional object from a bygone era, and yet there it is, emblazoned on the front, in gold; ‘2024’.
Diaries are where you keep a record of what stuff will happen. It’s sort of a written premonition.
I used this diary to tell a story about a company, one that opens at the beginning of the year, but has fallen apart by the end. There are some ups; they book clients, film social media content, and hire an employee called Juniper. They even get to go on QVC. But ultimately things go wrong quite quickly, because people stop paying for their product or service. But before that, lots of events do take place, and they are listed here in this peculiar object that I got before a job I had went wrong too.
Begun: 2nd March 2025
Updated: 2nd March 2025
Wooden Boat
Boats float. Humans sort of float, but only for a bit. That’s why we make boats.
I made a boat. Sort of. I don’t think it would float. It’s too small for me to get in too, of course.
But I did make it out of wood. Western Red Cedar, to be precise. They make boats out of it in America, sometimes. It doesn’t rot (handy). I’ve been learning to make things better out of wood recently. It’s good, is wood.
I want to float. I’m not in the sea, but it seems mighty close. If it gets to where I am, I’ll want a boat. Maybe one a little like this one.
It’s not on an even keel. I’ll admit, I did cut it to look like that. That was a sculptural illusion. The good thing about boats is that they will rock in rough seas, but they won’t sink, not always, not straight away.
I’m looking at a book right now called the ‘Physics of Sailing Explained’. It used to be my Granddad’s, he liked sailing and that sort of thing. There’s a chapter on keels. Apparently, the keel is the pointy flat bit that pokes downwards out the bottom of the hull. Its purpose is to ‘prevent side-slipping when the wind is from the side... [and] to provide a counterbalance to help reduce heeling’. I don’t quite know what those things mean, but it sounds like it might mean ‘get chucked about less, and don’t flip over’. They can sit at funny angles, given no choice but to be at that angle, pushed to them by weather conditions, but they’ve got their heels dug in and they won’t go any further. They’ll just float like that if they need to.
You can also get lift from a keel. Not just float, lift! That’s quite clever. I’ll have to save that one for the next boat though. For now I just want to stay the right way up, and out of the drink.
Begun: 22nd February 2025
Updated: 22nd February 2025
Gnomes
I am disgusted by gnomes. I am also jealous. My disgust might in fact just be jealousy. But for now, I shall read it as disgust.
The gnomes are men of leisure. They are comfortably dressed, comfortably seated often. They usually reside in gardens. They often have a hobby, say, fishing, or smoking a pipe.
Because of the altered system of priorities and responsibilities in the magical plane of reality upon and within which gnomes live, they don’t work. Simply by being gnomes, they survive. They endure. While their paint scratches and flakes off, they watch everything around them rot and die, without ever having to move off of their perch to battle for sustenance in the mud with the other creatures.
This makes them cheery, it seems. At least from afar. But perhaps, when approached, we can see more clearly how this idle state has taken a toll on them. They seem wonderfully at peace from the kitchen window, but a closer look shows them to be worse for wear, and their state of (non)affairs less desirable. It’s less certain they’re really enjoying themselves.
Maybe comfort is disgusting. And yet I am still jealous of them. Maybe I want to be disgusting.
Pictured are 6 drawings of gnomes I have made, with a fine-liner and a red crayon, on brown paper. Also, a small sculpture, made with a gnome I found in the big Tesco in Surrey Quays Shopping Centre, an offcut of wood, and two screws.
When I saw the gnome in big Tesco, I hatched a nasty plan. I wanted to get that gnome off his ass. Now, because I am cruel to him, he is stood up, bearing the log he used to lay against.
P.S... I will happily accept allegations of ageism in this mythological analysis of mine. Those concerns are not unfounded and I share them too. I can only plead that my feelings on the humble (or smug??) gnome are very conflicted and still a work in progress
Begun: 20th February 2025
Updated: 20th February 2025
Supply Chain Realism
Our stuff, which we need, is made by capitalists. Our stuff is commodities. In our homes, we are surrounded by possessions. Outside the house, particularly in urban environments, we are surrounded by objects. All of these objects, whether they’re ours or not, form our material culture1. And our material culture, the products of human creation, is almost entirely manufactured capitalist structures and incentives.
We intensely understand this. We can intuit how the processes that have brought an item into our immediate vicinity were driven and altered by profit motives. The logic of why a producer would produce a profitable product is completely obvious to us, and the inverse mostly unthinkable. These logics are inextricably mineralised into the object’s bodies, when we look at them or touch them we can feel the crust it forms.
As well as this imminent tangibility, there is also a deep abstraction in our understanding of capitalist material culture. Complex and globalised supply chains have, especially for those in the West, further veiled the origins of any one product. We know our things come from somewhere, most likely China, but where and how exactly is an intractable mish mash of actions and interactions, whose elucidation reveals little to us anyway. We are comfortable leaving this gap unbroached.
Most crucially perhaps, we need these things. Our lives are sustained and benefitted by these commodities. For many examples, we cannot imagine going without them.
This combination - the materialised yet abstracted understanding of capitalisms effect on the objects around us, and their necessity to us - evokes capitalist production as indomitable. It structures our material surroundings so totally that imagining material surroundings built on other economics principles has become impossible. The material world and the structures it results from is far more imminent to us than any idea we might have of an alternate societal form.
Begun: 5th March 2024
Last Updated: 17th June 2024
Timeboat
I take time
I am time
Time holds me, like a boat
The things I care about take time
The things I care about are time, made of it
I will make a boat, to hold me
Begun: 17th June 2024
Last Updated: 17th June 2024
Peace Meeting
A bird from the sky right through the eye.
The bird had, for a brief moment, blocked the sun. In that instant, light flickered through as a splash, and coating and warming every feather on its body.
But its momentum carried it forward. Beak outstretched, it plummeted towards the heart of my pupil.
I closed my lids before we made our deep embrace. Feathers warm from its flight. Sky grounded, air becomes full, sun meets the earth.
Begun: 21st March 2024
Last Updated: 21st March 2024
Why I Want To Be A Carpenter
I want to train to be a carpenter, because I think the world is going to really change a lot in the coming years, but I think making things with wood will remain useful.
I like wood. It feels nice. I’ve spent a lot of time touching it, picking it up, moving it, and most importantly, chopping it up into smaller pieces. I spent a lot of time in my adolescence in a small wood with my Dad and some of his friends processing fallen trees into firewood. Despite my enjoyment of this activity and the tactile quality of the material at its centre, it didn’t occur to me until later in life that it might be fun to make things with wood, rather than just chop it up.
Why I Don’t Want To Make Speculative Design
I think about the future a lot. For this reason, when I heard about speculative design, I was quite enamoured by it, as a medium, movement, or method that investigates the future. That is, designs from a possible future. You might call these objects a guess, but they’re less sincere than that implies. It most often takes the form of a provocation about contemporary behaviour, topic, or system, attempting to materialise some of its potential repercussions ahead of schedule.
But I don’t think I want to do that any more, for two reasons:
1. I am absolutely bricking it about what the future holds, and any speculations I might make about it would be filled with enough virulent pessimism and fear to make them useless as experiments (but I at least might learn a little about what it is that I am fearful of).
2. I want to make things with clear and present needs in mind, because I think that is going to be an important skill to practise.
Begun: 5th March 2024
Updated: 5th March 2024