Gears Turn

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6 minutes
thejaymo.net Blog header post 164

“What is it that brings me here to stand like a rock in this river of sound?”

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

My creative process currently feels like the frantic workings of a complicated watch mechanism.

The weekly podcast and writing this public weeknotes journal feel like the fast moving gears. Behind them are projects that slower spinning but have deadlines so you know at a glance when a complete revolution of the gear is going to take place – start to finish. Freelance projects also fall into this category. Behind them are the two books I’m writing on and off, and also more involved projects like the deep listening chapbook I want to make. Behind them are the ideas, general interests and pursuits that make up my all the influences that are me. Ideas in general I feel are like this. Spinning vortexes at different layers of levels below the surface.

This week I opened a document that hadn’t been touched since summer of 2018, and in one sitting put another 3k words into it on top of the 4.5k words it contained. In the 2 years since I last thought about it, the gear had kept on turning and the words needed to come tumbling out. Don’t know why I felt the need to mention any of this.

Turning back to (or rather concerning oneself with) the watch mechanism might seem self interested. But to be honest, right now, whats going on with me, my friends and family is far more interesting than anything else thats going on in the world ‘out there’.
The lantern is the light as it were.

Chilli Peppers turned this week. When they go they go! We also got a gardeners bounty of tomatoes this week too. The cherry tomatoes went in the roast pan, but I ate a lot of them before they even made it in. They were like 30 seconds old of the vine and just pure delicious.

Permanently Moved

Corporate Folklore

Strange idiosyncratic weirdness in organisations, database admins are worse than 40k Techpriests, Corporate Folklore, Narrative Strategy, FML Numbers, and more.

Update From The Island

I literally have only been logging in to bother Louie. Perhaps my lull in enthusiasm is just because I’m waiting for the next update. Having kinda done everything there is to do (well Eve has). Brewster’s Cafe is supposed to be coming soon though – which is nice.

Biceps
Eyeceps

I enjoyed reading this recent polygon piece on Nintendo’s email marketing guilt tripping people into heading back to their Islands. If you have ever quit Facebook, you’ll know that it tries to do the same thing but with your ‘real’ friends.

As virtual worlds become more and more entangled with our daily lives I wonder how this sort of thing is going to play out in terms of mores etc.

I had a really interesting convo with cade from New Design Congress recently about the coming metaverse. We diverged in our views around if it will be a clean break, or end up entangled with the hell web that we have today. I lean into the second camp tbh. I’m not that optimistic, but will keep my mind open to the idea.
I have a series i’m going to start on the blog entitled Dimensino where i’m just going to scrapbook things.

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

  • I have a piece on growing up a teenaged conspiracy theorist in the new Unsound 2020 book. Its up for pre-order now if you want to support the festival in these virus times.
  • Got both THIS IS IT, and Solarpunk: Life in the Future Beyond the Rusted Chrome of Yestermorrow online. So thats 16k words of content if you want to dive in there.
  • I finally put the scripts up online for the podcast episodes I’ve done on Organisations over the years. Thats 5k more words of content online this week.
  • Sent emails organising CIWM recordings.
  • Had 2 fantastic phone calls this week.
  • Watched the FutureCon panel (the best international sci-fi con/festival this year) and was honoured to find myself quoted during the panel. You can watch it here:

Feels good to put 21k of words on to the blog in one week. Not sure its going to happen every week. But there is A LOT of content in the backlog to still go up. I’m thinking of putting ‘collections’ online every week until I run out of steam.

Dipping the Stacks

Gene Weingarten: A neighbor asked for a tomato. This is where the story gets weird. – The Washington Post

Musician Sevdaliza on managing your time and energy – The Creative Independent

Roger Stone calls for Trump to seize total power if he loses the election | Media Matters for America

Reprogramming a Game By Playing It: an Unbelievable Super Mario Bros 3 Speedrun
Everyone should watch this if they are interested in the edges of the metaverse, virtual worlds.
Nothing is true; everything is permitted

Reading

For the first time in a while I haven’t had that much time to read this week. I put about 10% more in to Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses and the second half of the book is focused more on indigenous knowledge and moss. An editorial choice that was instead interwoven in every chapter of Braiding Sweetgrass.

I also fired up an old kindle 4 (2011) this week. I was pleasantly surprised that I could de-register Eve, and sign in synch and use the device like it came out yesterday. Truly remarkable and props to Amazon tbh. Can you imagine turning on a iphone 4S and expecting it to be happy to see you?

Music

French Electropop duo Yelle have a new album ‘L’ère du Verseau’ out after 6 years away from my ear holes.
Which translates as Age of Aquarius. Which if you are keeping up with the space weather and not popular culture is Dec when Jupiter and Saturn both enter Aquarius 5 days apart beginning a new 200 year cycle. Anyway, NEW YELLE, YAYLLE

Their 2007 debut Pop Up seems like (another) life time ago. I listened to that album to death and was utterly sick of it by summer 2008. I even gave the vinyl away. Tho many of the tracks have remained on the ‘house party’ playlist. Making a french friend very happy one new years eve a few years back. Age of Aquarius is more sonically interesting and darker in content and tone. A reflection of the times I suppose.

Remember Kids


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