Category: thinking

  • Half-penny thoughts — 30nov25

    Sometimes dreams are just dreams. I get it — if all of our dreams were always meaningful, insightful and future-seeing, we’d put all of the oneiromancers out there out of business. Or give them panic attacks when we call them in to join us in the dreaming to help interpret and…

    Whatever.

    But there are dreams and the are Dreams. The proper noun versions demand you pay attention to their contents, which the other ones might linger on the fringes of memory until the morning fog burns off (if your lucky). And that’s only if they are particularly good or bad.

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  • idle thoughts

    I sometimes wish I could be the knight bewitched by La Belle Dame sans Merci. I might be doomed to an imminent grave, but at least I will enjoy heading to my doom.

    Or, perhaps, I feel more like hopping in my skiff and riding the stream after failing to keep my focus on the mirror, and looking at beauty riding on by as did The Lady of Shallot.

    Or give myself to the waters in a fit of madness, as poor Ophelia did.

    Who suffered more? Tristan or Isolde? Let me taste that joy in the time before they fell.

    This is all absurdity, and yet… and yet… At moments there was joy.

  • Half-penny thoughts — 27nov25

    Happy Thanksgiving, if you’re the kind of folks who celebrate such things. My mother didn’t give an option to decline the festivities and, having grown up in an environment where Catholic Guilt Syndrome was (and is still) employed as the weapon of choice, I’ll be heading out in a bit to do family things.

    But, as Arlo Guthrie sang, “Alice — remember Alice?”… [listening to Alice’s Restaurant Massacree on Thanksgiving is about the only personal tradition worth keeping in my mind, but—]… let’s get on with my weird, cheap thoughts for the day. But first:

    In my shower moments, maybe in those moments leading up to the shower as well, I was thinking (once again) about the nature of crushes.

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  • On Culture and Subculture

    …[R]eviving culture requires a new generation of outsiders willing to create their own movements from scratch.

    Unfortunately, the current media ecosystem discourages this. The major internet platforms encourage creators to chase virality rather than cultivate smaller, self-sustaining communities. Global brands tease lucrative deals to emerging artists and micro-influencers, reinforcing the idea that “getting the bag” is the ultimate goal. […] In an era when we live as personal brands, every decision is made to increase our own shareholder value.

    Making art with lasting meaning requires resisting the pull of instant exposure and early buyouts. We must think through ways to encourage artists to disappear into their own worlds for a while, developing ideas away from corporate influence and assimilation. Not everyone will have the discipline or capacity for this, but those who do or can will shape the future. And the least that critics and fans can do is give them esteem—when justified—for attempting to move culture forward, instead of ignoring them as marginal, castigating them as pretentious, or belittling their view counts. The past 25 years have taught us that the contemporary economy and media will not prioritize creative invention. The question is: Will you?

    — from W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century in Make Culture Weird Again, originally published at The Atlantic.

  • Half-penny thoughts — 24nov25

    Someone over the weekend asked me what I like to do for fun.

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