I’m not sure where to begin but I feel compelled to make myself and my reasoning clear here. For one thing it’s selfish. Writing helps to organize the thoughts; publishing them, as it were, makes them solid. Also if I disappear completely you, my readers, deserve to know exactly why. Lastly, and I know I will seem foolish for saying this, I believe my experiences are relevant to other creative louts trying to feel out the limits and boundaries of the blog form. I for one see no reason to simply accept that any endeavor in this sphere, by dint of being on the internet, is automatically beneath serious critical examination. I admit that ultimately it may be this outlook which causes me the most difficulty… but there it is.

So… If you’re not a regular, a fan, a family member, a friend, an N.S.A. agent, a stalker, or acutely interested in blogging as a creative pursuit, than my all means, high-tail it out of here. I’ll wait....

Alright by way of background information the most important thing you need to know to understand just exactly where I’m coming from going forward is this: Before I donned the diadem of “blogger” the one and only rank I might have claimed for myself, in accordance with my own self image and in good conscience, was “artist,” with all that the title implies. I went to art school, learned nothing useful, was instilled with an awe and respect for the old “weighty” and “serious” forms, painted, drew, doodled, and noodled constantly, took in the world with an eye colored by it all, and enjoyed many a short-lived delusion of grandeur while engaged in art making. The second most important thing to know is that I never found what it was I was looking for.

Armed with these two facts alone you ought to be able to extrapolate much of what is to come.

For instance: What do we know about most “artists?” Most artists do not make a living on their Art, that’s what. It’s damn near the only truth you can bank on in the maddeningly subjective world of Art. I am no exception. I am the Director of a graphics department within a fashion company. I am a pixel pusher, a graphic designer in league with the dark-side. It is a job which most people would categorize as “creative.” It does not, however, come anywhere near scratching the Art itch. Not for me.

When I use the term Art here understand I am not necessarily talking about a painting in a gilt frame or an 18 foot high pewter casting of a mosquito’s reproductive organs. I’m simply referring to that nebulous thing, whatever it is, which makes good use of the artist’s hands and satisfies the artist’s mind; That thing which, for a time, makes the artist feel like an artist. Art, as I am defining it here, might be, and often is, any damn thing. It might be 8 years of graphic design, printmaking, and branding for a fashion company. In my case, however, it is not. So like millions of other Art schnooks my life is necessarily schizophrenic. I must seek my satisfaction in the handful of days and hours when I’m not earning a living. 

All of which brings me, finally, to The Nonist.

I began The Nonist in 2003. At the time my usual modes just weren’t doing it for me. I was bored. I decided to create a website for two reasons. 1: to see if I could teach myself how to code and design a website. I’d never tried my hand at web design, never seen a line of html or css, and it seemed an interesting challenge. 2: I wanted to give myself a reason to write more. I’ve been a diligent journal keeper and letter writer since childhood and I knew having my words out there, where people might potentially see them, would begin a chain reaction of stubborn pridefulness which would keep me writing if only to avoid having my failure to do so on display. Beyond these I had no plan for The Nonist.

The undertaking succeeded not only in terms of the two goals mentioned above but also in terms of distraction quotient. It was new and compelling enough that my free time, my art-making time, was absorbed. The site made good use of my hands and satisfied my mind, and though I would never claim it was a piece of Art, it did serve many of the same needs.

That the site has been my main creative pursuit for a while now is undeniable. I’ve made very little physical work. This fact explains a lot about the site I would think- its eclecticism, its continual mutation, and its quality (such as it is) especially. What you have been seeing here all this time is someone following their (I can’t believe I am about to say this) muse, willy-nilly; Someone trying to elevate a commonplace, simplistic, trivial, and prodigiously widespread undertaking, into something rarified enough to feel an accomplishment. In short you’ve been watching what I’ve begun to suspect is the comically circuitous route of a fool’s errand. 

Were I truly successful in my career, which is to say, if my job satisfied my creative needs, I could simply blog as one ought- on a lark, for fun, as a more engaging evening option than hours of passive television watching. If I were a working author, a satisfied designer, or any other creative who drew a salary doing what he cared about, I could post an endless stream of easily digestible links, I could operate as a newsfilter excerpting stories day in and day out, I could write about how painful it is to watch the Knicks these last few years… as it stands, however, I need it to be more.

There are two obvious conclusions to be drawn- 1: my goals as a creator are not in line with the expectations of the consumer, so far as the blog form is concerned. 2: I ought to seek out more fulfilling employment. It would be the most direct way to make this all a moot point. I understand that. Really, I do.

In the meantime, however, I need to seek satisfaction wherever I can. I’m not sure where it’s to be found but I am fairly sure that it’s not to be found in a paragraph of outgoing links or in an unremarkable bit of off-the-cuff commentary on current events. One thing I am rock-solid 100% sure of is that in order to enjoy the warm satisfaction of being a creator one must actually create something; in order to feel the pride of accomplishment one need actually accomplish something.

Lest you think that I awoke one day with nothing but contempt for blogs and blogging I remind you of my little poll. I enjoy many aspects of blogging which is why the choices on that poll were all variations, to some degree, on the theme. Let me run down the options I offered and my thoughts about each.

• An only rarely updated blog of all original content.
This choice would in many ways be the simplest in that it would require no change. The architecture is already in place, as is the readership. I need only post when the urge strikes and I need not concern myself with filtering other people’s content and rehashing old news. But then, in that it requires no real change, why should I assume it would engender any change in my experience of creating it? The only benefit I can see for this choice is that it would free up time for other pursuits. But then I ask myself, “how could a blog which I attend to only while not attending to other interests be exceptional in any way?” I’m not sure it could be, and so why not just put all my focus on the “other interest”?

• A monthly or bimonthly web magazine covering eclectic subjects, possibly with multiple contributors.
This choice would seem to have many benefits. The first is that in reframing the content as a “magazine” or “journal” the perceived import can be rejiggered. (Though they are only words I believe calling the container for your content “magazine” or “journal” rather than “blog” can actually effect perception. Aren’t the expectations different? Might readers be more apt to actually read a longer piece? Might I not feel I were accomplishing more?) The second is the well known fact that scarcity adds value. The third is regularity. As opposed to the previous choice, this format would, at very least, offer the courtesy of regularity, which ought not be underestimated. Lastly, and potentially the most interesting benefit, would be collaboration. Working with others opens things up to unforeseen results, and there are unquestionably some talented people out there I’d enjoy working with.

The main problem with this avenue as I see it is that it would require a great deal of time and effort to do well. In many ways I’d be signing on to something very similar to what I have now, only more complex and time consuming and I simply can’t overlook the fact that true collaboration might be hard to find since it’s so easy to make your own site that most people, with something to say, already have an online undertaking of their very own. 

• A quarterly, printed on actual paper, which I would pay a few bucks for, could hold in my hand, and could read at my leisure.
Interestingly this choice is the one that appealed most to me when I wrote the poll. The act of doing something larger, longer gestated, better thought out, had something to do with the appeal but so too did my notions of value. I am a lover or printed matter and creating my own printed matter would certainly satisfy something within me. I could write long form fiction in its natural habitat. I could create artworks which existed outside of a server rack… Also, of course, there is the desire to measure yourself against the marketplace and try to earn some monetary reward for effort put in. As you can see from the results, however, this is the least attractive option to you, my readers. I can understand why and do not think any less of you for it. The result does, however, drive home just how divergent a creator’s and a consumer’s (no offense) goals can be.

• I’d be interested in any future projects...
This option was pretty much my escape pod. I figured if there were interest enough I could extend my status as absentee content-provider a while longer while I hashed this all out. You were very gracious in gassing up my pod and offering me a bagged lunch. So thanks.

• None of the above. I want frequent, short, easily digestible blog posts which I can skim on my lunch hour… and that’s pretty much it.
This choice was, in truth, not a choice at all. At least from my point of view. I put it into the poll as a control to see what percentage of readers would back-up the common wisdom about “successful” blogs that you see doled out everywhere. Seems that a solid quarter of all respondents do indeed want frequent, short, easily digestible blog posts for consumption on their lunch hour and the like. As I think this post has made sufficiently clear that aint gonna do it for me folks. With each new iteration of the site and each month I’ve moved further from that easily digestible ideal, trying to craft as much long form, original content as I could muster. Regardless of what happens a full-on link filter The Nonist will never again be.

Much of what I’ve learned about blogging, from the standpoint of a creative pursuit, reinforces my perception that the form, which includes as a subset all preconceptions and consumer habits, may be an artistic dead-end. (What people want from a blog may very well be exactly that which the form is best suited to anyway. Go figure.) There is the popularity contest aspect of it all, which, though it can be motivating and (when you’re on your game) gratifying, is ultimately a pretty flimsy reward. The strenuous act of clawing your way, through the hustling billions, toward the top, to the upper echelons, would be a whole lot more attractive a proposition, if there were anything at the top waiting for you. Even a cheap blinking sign saying, “you win!” From what I can tell though, here on my humble cliffside lean-to, there isn’t. There’s nothing up there. It’s a lot like life in that sense I guess.

I realize all too well that this whole thing may come across to many of you as either pompous and pretentious, since I’m taking the time to even write this many paragraphs on the subject of (pshaw!) blogging, or else damn near retarded, in that I ever entertained the idea that one could attain a modicum of artistic satisfaction in such a sphere. In any case, it’s my life so I have to care, and take it seriously. You, of course, have the luxury not to. Besides haven’t I always come across as pompous and retarded anyway? Why change now?

So good reader, if you’ve made it this far into this dry, meandering, intolerable mess of a post, let me at least offer you a compliment for your troubles. It is you who offer me the only semi-tangible artistic reward I have consistently gotten here: an audience (or dare I say it, a community?) So thanks. If I do indeed disappear off the monitor of the earth, I wanted to just say thanks for reading my years of drivel and looking at my digital noodlings. Thank you for commenting when you have, for discussing things with me, for emailing me your good wishes, and seeing fit to link me across the internet. It’s been a pleasure more often than not, and aside from the mere challenge of doing it well, you are the reason. A loving familial sort of kiss to you!

What does it all mean?

As it turns out I have not actually decided what to do yet, but I am also loathe to just pull the plug and set off in my escape pod. Separation anxiety I guess. In as much the plan as of now is to just say that I’ve chosen option #1 of the poll, “An only rarely updated blog” and go from there. I will be making back channel inquiries into both the idea of a web magazine (if your interested or have any ideas feel free to contact me), as well as feeling out my suicidal options for creating some printed matter of my very own. I’ll create new stuff for your reading and viewing pleasure when (if) inspiration hits and will certainly keep you posted on my next move.

Happy New Year!

Btw the title is taken from...

Click each for the full (front and back) “postcard” version.

With that I return. Not with a trumpet and throaty throng but quietly, as though by moonlight, avoiding the squeaky step.

“Is that you? (groggily) What time is it?”

“Go back to sleep honey.”

I’ve sprung the trap and survived, and escaped, and so here I am. Home again. The trap is obvious, and in plain sight, but I am forgetful. Each time I look at it I see the glint on the teeth but not the teeth themselves. The glint is bright and shiny and I am a dim, dumb animal.  Probability, or Nature, or Destiny, or whatever you’ve labeled the comically inadequate mason jar in which you hold this concept- things take their course.

What can I say?

You turn your head sometimes, as if hearing a coo or whisper, and looking toward the window, expecting to see some winged thing perched on your windowsill, you see instead your own reflection. You see your life and it startles you more than any winged thing would. It is not what you expected to see, but worse it’s not even what you’d expect a life to look like. Its proportions are all wrong, its color off, its shape odd; In truth it looks like nothing you’ve ever seen before. It looks foreign, and in as much, frightening. But it is your life still, and it’s as if in this unexpected moment you were glimpsing it for the first time.

Of course this is all Balderdash, or Poppycock, or Bullshit, or whatever you’ve labeled your most treasured mason jar- you’ve seen this ugly thing before.

I’m forgetful, as I’ve already mentioned. When I momentarily see past the well-tooled facade, past the fortification of amusements and distractions, over and beyond the ramparts of routine, I get spooked.

More often than not I react to this reoccurring revelation in a predictable way. I cycle through my mason jars, popping their lids in quick succession- Confusion, Annoyance, Anger, Regret, Longing, Sadness. Their smells waft through my rooms, swirling, blending into complex and potent combinations. What began as merely disturbing, through my panic, becomes overwhelming. Like the dim, dumb animal I am I seek a dark place, hidden from predatory eyes, where I can gather myself and think.

Q: “Ever wondered what turns straight-forward drama into melodrama?”

A: “It’s the attempt at spreading a small portion of honest pain over every banal nook and cranny of the proceedings, creating a thin smear, rather than letting it lay, as a thick dollop, just where it naturally landed. That and the bad metaphors of course!”

So where was I?

Oh yes, In my forgetfulness I’d sprung the trap.

There is an incorrect assumption I repeatedly make, which is that through sheer force of will, given enough time and space, I can understand, dismantle, and rebuild existence into something which more resembles the existence of my imagination. Because of this I abandon things in an attempt to carve out that space and create that time. I stop, turn off, take a step back, begin analyzing and over-analyzing. Like a cat with a ball of yarn I smack at my existence with my thumb-less paws and claws and unravel it, only to find finally that my ball is gone, I’m tangled in the yarn, and there is nothing at the center. This is folly but it’s not the trap I speak of, not really.

At the center of life is a terror, a mystery, a question, a void. It is huge, and it has a gravitational pull of sorts, and were you to face it and stare into it every day you would not be able to function. We build a barricade against it with whatever materials we can scrounge because were we faced with it continuously we would not be able to attain even the most paltry scrap of contentment. That’s what Happiness, or Peace, or whatever you label your half-full mason jar really is- moments of distraction strung successfully together. If you can string those moments together for an entire lifetime you are a genius, a giant, a lucky son of a bitch.

So the trap is simply this: forgetting the void. When you do that you are apt to start misinterpreting your own defenses against it as something holding you in rather than something keeping it out. Happiness is being successfully distracted from the void, by projects, jobs, entertainments, passions, dreams… the trap is forgetting the void exists.

I’ve spent many an hour in my life scrutinizing my defenses, becoming dissatisfied with their materials, and tearing them down, only to see the void rather than greener grass, and be reminded why I’d built them in the first place. I’ve spent many an hour rebuilding my defenses from the wreckage of older ones. A real time waster let me tell you.

So the lesson, which my forgetfulness forces me to re-learn continually, is this: defenses need only be judged by a single criteria- their effectiveness. No matter what they look like, no matter from what materials they are cobbled, no matter whether they are the shape and proportions you imagined them to be when you were a mere emotional zygote, they need only work. If they do, leave them alone and keep on keepin’ on.

With that I return. As a cobbler returns to his shop on a grey monday morning.

(The bell on the door jingles. In you step.)

“Hi there. What can I do for you?”

-

Related: Dissatisfaction, Dexterity Puzzle of the Mind.

Again, If you’d like any more information please feel free to contact me. Note that the image I used to begin the post is no longer available. 

You are descended from mortal men whose mortality can be glimpsed beneath all the fresh coats of enamel and giant pixelated printouts which seek to guide your purchases and reassure your mind. You are mortal as well. You know this. Walking the grid you can feel time as if it were a physical force, a gusting wind or a punishing wave. You look at the strange messages left by your ancestors, the ads, the architecture, the signs, the photos, the tints, the scrawl, the sum-partial of their choices, and you realize that though they are familiar they are at the same time foreign, and you, the modern mover-and-shaker, can never really understand their meaning.

The beauty of the eroding, the fading, the disappearing is that of reinvigoration. As counterintuitive as it sounds, things which are half-lost, torn from their original contexts are in a certain way given new life. Stripped as they are of their intended meaning and divorced from their real purpose they are open to interpretation. In reclaiming obscurity they reclaim mystery, and hence, beauty for those with eyes to see it.

In New York when something dies the corpse is often left out to rot, slowly and fragrantly, in the public eye and nostril. The American ideal of progress overrunning all sentiment. No time for mourning or last rights! A penny kept from an eyelid is a penny saved! Left out and ignored long enough these things become strangely vital again, moving in their death-throes, with none of the living remembering quite how they came to be, or why. 

If only my own remains could be left out on the street, to first bleach in the heat-wave sun, and then blacken in the taxi-exhaust. To be kicked into some corner and piled willy-nilly for passersby to wonder at; a hundred years from now becoming fodder for the imagination of observant romantics with an abundance of internal chop and too little weight to their anchors. I would smile at them and wink from a forgotten hollow, a ghost sign of bone, signifying nothing.

(The image for this post was adapted from the beautiful ghost signs flikr group.)