Meanwhile #215
No money, no virality, no response.
Yeah apparently I can’t even take a nice walk along a beach without taking a photograph to Stezaker across someone’s mug. Just out of shot: family patiently posing for a nice holiday snap.
I am trying to import the groove I have developed from my three-decade career. I have a lot of parts to me – sports fan, music fan, reader, writer in various forms, father of neurodivergent and neurotypical children, , blah blah – and I’m hoping that eventually my posts will mosaic into a whole person. That would do something for me, even if it doesn’t do anything for anyone else. Then there will be a groove of some kind.
I rather like Eleanor’s same questions, different person approach. Been thinking of doing something similar, but I’m going round in circles thinking of good questions. Watch this space … maybe.
The Verge’s excellent obituary of TinyLetter (former home of this very newsletter), via
:It was good to be reminded that there were things I would write even if nothing was necessarily going to happen with them. No money, no virality, sometimes even no response. … That is sort of the original spirit of the internet. What if we made no money? What if money wasn’t even something we were thinking about?
A fine selection of holographic stickers available from Luke Tonge’s shop, including one of my all-time favourite comic panels.
Jessica Drenk transforms thousands of pencils into organic vessels. As you do.
The blurb for the new I'm Not Okay (an Emo Retrospective) exhibition at Barbican Music Library:
With one foot IRL and the other in MySpace, Emo wasn’t just a scene — it was the only way of living, the only way we could envision our futures. The exhibition examines how this scene intertwined with internet fame and drama, with teens expressing their angst through confessional lyrics, tight jeans, and dyed black hair. 'I'm Not Okay' delves into how Emo became a positive force for acceptance, addressing issues of sexuality, mental health, gender, identity, and belonging. It was one of the first subcultures to bridge the physical and digital worlds, laying the groundwork for today’s digital youth quake.
Quantum physicists show that photons can seem to exit a material before entering it, demonstrating “negative time”. I think I had a burrito that did this once.
After having a stroke at 25, Eilish Briscoe created a typeface to show the process of learning to write again. As a way of grappling with the life-changing experience and raising awareness of strokes in young people, the London-based creative has created a series of typographic projects, all based on one specific realisation: “expression is a luxury”.
A rare look at iconic news photos along with original editors’ notes. Something weirdly appealing about these physical artefacts, covered with crop lines, grease pencil markings, date stamps and other notes.
Currently a little obsessed with Wim Wenders’ Written in the West, Revisited, a series of photographs taken in 1983 in preparation for what was to become Paris, Texas. Annoyingly the book is out of print, but this old Vogue post has a good selection.
Won’t somebody please take my Mad Men pitch?
That is all.
….the pencil sculptures!!!
„…to Stezaker across someone’s mug.“ I only learned about John Stezaker yesterday and promptly ordered two of his books from a used-book shop. I‘m really excited to spend time with them.
Very funny that had I read this post two days ago, the reference would have gone right over my head!