About The Nonist and its author:

Eschewing the third person what do you have to say for yourself?


My name is JMorrison. The J standing for Jaime not Jim. I live in Manhattan of my great and beloved city of New York. I'm a graphic designer by trade, but like so many others, my loves, interests, and goals wander much further afield.

I have, at different periods of my life, considered myself to be a painter, a photographer, and a writer. If you'd have enquired at a dive-bar over Bushmills in 1993 or at a cafe one afternoon in 1998 I might have answered with any of the three. I might have even admitted to being a designer. Depending on how you quantify such things these might all be accurate enough descriptions.

Today I tend to find these categorizations a bit embarrassing, cliches that they are, and though I might like to convey to you, for instance, that I love writing, I'd almost certainly not say the words "I'm a writer." Likewise the words, "I'm an artist" would not cross my lips except in an emergency. These summations of one's self fall hopelessly short on the one hand and cast disingenuously long shadows on the other. I am something different every day, possibly every minute, so I prefer not to perjure myself.

About the only thing I can tell you for sure is that I'm a human, more specifically, a male of the species, I'm probably at this moment closer to my death than my birth, and I prefer my own face with a mustache and beard. None of these things are likely to change so I'm comfortable saying them out loud.

If you'd like more specifics about all I can say is that for the last 4 years or so I've spent an inordinate amount of my free time right here adjusting the nuts and bolts of my own personal frankenstein monster- The Nonist.

So what is The Nonist all about?


By way of encapsulation there is not much I can say about The Nonist. It is what it is. A weblog, a continuously blank sheet of off-white paper begging to be marked, a soapbox, a travelogue, an as of yet unsealed time-capsule, a journal, a scrap-book, a chaotic jumble of html, css, and php which miraculously manage to coalesce into some intelligible form.

In short, it's a blog just like any other. All that exists to set it apart is the voice of its author and the skew of its content. Neither of which are guaranteed to do any such thing.

If cornered and under threat to sum up the site with a single word I'd have to drag out ol' faithful and blurt, "eclectic!" That would serve as well as any summation might. The Nonist is eclectic to the degree to which my own interests are eclectic. I realize that description does little to put a finer focus on things, but then I think that's totally appropriate in context, because it's also constantly mutating, in an infuriatingly opaque way, to the exact degree which its author is.

The site has undergone at least two major re-hauls since its birth in 2003. The ground you are now standing on, though not as weighty and dignified as an ancient Indian burial ground certainly, should none the less be properly identified as Version 3.0. Which is simply to say many 1's and 0's, many pixels and notions and conceits, have lived and died on this very spot in order to get us where we are now. All is flux, including The Nonist.

What is a nonist? / Where did the title come from?


The term "nonist" has its roots planted firmly in the visual arts, or rather my application of it does. During late night bullshit sessions with some buddies of mine the term came about as a reaction to the perceived prerequisite the art world places on its members to adhere to some marketable category or "ism."

It was my feeling that "isms" were extraneous bullshit, that the shadow of art history ought not dissuade one from exploring any avenue, even those well travelled, and that turning, stylistically, 180 degrees from one project to the next is an artist's prerogative.

Only later did it occur to me that in many ways the term "nonist" might apply outside of art, as a reflection of a world view.

Someone who is tired of the endless parade of opinions, beliefs, superstitions, and biases aggressively propped up as Truth might be a "nonist" for instance.

Someone who believed "isms" were simply too rigid to ever accommodate a constantly evolving human life, and thus, though interesting as intellectual exercise, proved totally useless in practice, well, they might be called a "nonist" as well.

Someone who found the tendency toward easily digestible categorization of the world around them, no matter how oversimplified or glaringly false, comically insufficient and more than a little annoying, might be called a "nonist."

It was with an eye toward these realizations I called this site The Nonist. Later a proper definition was offered by a friend. It lays out as follows:

Nonism
n. \'nä "ni-z&m\ An unwillingness to bind your world view to any ideology; to embody an objective view point, assuming little, guided by reason.

I still happen to find that definition applicable and pleasing. It's as good and cogent a definition as any so let's just leave it at that.

Are there any technical requirements to view the site?


There are very few. The main requirement is that you must have Javascript enabled in your browser to make use of the menu system, the footnotes, and the "read full text" features.

I have tested the site on Safari, Firefox, and an old version of Internet Explorer which I'd forgotten to send into the abyss where it should rightfully reside. In my opinion the site is best viewed in that same order. Anyone with issues is hereby encouraged to alert me.

The two main fonts used are Georgia and Verdana, both of which 98% of you will likely have installed already. The site was designed at a screen resolution of 1024x768. I believe the text ought to scale nicely if need be.

The Nonist is hosted by pmachine hosting, the same good people who created the software used to run the site, namely expression engine.

At present the Sociography Project page requires you have Flash installed, but I hope to remedy that soon. Otherwise everything should be fairly simple and user-friendly. Here's hoping that's the case!

So in closing oh long-winded-one?


In closing let me just say that my hope for this site is to create a place where I can exercise the muscles which daily life, on planet earth, in the year 2006, would gladly allow to atrophy.

I hope that readers with a hearty attention span, broad interests, and a healthy curiosity find some pleasure to be had here.

I hope kindred spirits will feel comfortable enough to comment freely.

And lastly I'd just like to thank you for stopping by. I do certainly appreciate your interest no matter how curmudgeonly, self-involved, or philosophically aloof I may seem on a day to day basis.

If you have more specific questions please feel free to ask. All the best- jmorrison

return to the front page