Complex Praxis -- Todd McGowan & Reading Things on the Internet Early in the Morning
Friday, 5'th of June, 2020.
Dear Friends,
I used to write this newsletter during the week, and send it out on Sundays. Nowadays I’ve not been able to maintain that sort of rhythm. I’m not sure if that matters to anyone or not, but I’m 98% sure it does not mean a damn thing to anyone other than my own inner narcissist. Be that as it may, I like using things like this newsletter, my podcasts, my teaching schedule, etc. because they get me into a rhythm. I like being in a rhythm. Having different scheduled things allows me to have different rhythms.
For me, teaching is a rather fast passing rhythm. During my first year of teaching, it was like being a mosh-pit. There was a POUNDING beat, and I was just being thrown around as things happened. Now, going into my fifth year of full-time teaching, there is still the beat of the academic year… but I’ve got my way of dancing to that beat.
The newsletter has been a rhythm that changes up. Kind of like finding a new pop-song you can dance to. You dance to that song for a week (maybe two or three weeks) and then a new pop-song with a new rhythm has been found and you dance to that new song.
Anyway, all this is a kind of stream of consciousness. Let’s stop that and get into something else.
I’m editing episode #030 of the InForm:Podcast today and it will be up very soon, however, I want to call you attention to episode #029 which is the episode where Jared and I do an interview with Todd McGowan (of the Why Theory Podcast). Doing this episode was such a blast for me (I assume the same is true for Jared). We had planned to talk to Todd about the effects of going through a (psycho)analysis on his work as a theorist, and we did talk about that, but we also talked about other unrelated but interesting things as well.
This is my favorite episode of the podcast so far. Big thank you to Todd for taking the time to do the interview.
(As a total aside I reveal one of my heretofore unspoken about projects involving psychoanalysis and hard-boiled detective fiction on this episode. Perhaps I’ll write more about that here later.)
The internet early in the morning:
I woke up really early today, around 5:00 am. No one else was awake and even though I knew I was not going to get back to sleep I also was not in any shape to do any “real thinking” or “real work.” So I decided I’d just use the time to futz around on the internet, which is something I use to do way more before I had a kid.
I don’t use Facebook and only minimally use Twitter, social media is just not my jam. I do, however, read lots of email newsletters and subscribe to lots of blog RSS feeds (which I read in the Reeder app on my iPhone or MacBook Air). This represents my small resistance to the internet as it is now, and my attempts to render my experience of the internet in a way that is more similar to the way I remember it: lots of text on a screen, no ads, very personal.
Here are some of the voices who make great text on a regular basis:
Warren Ellis’s email newsletter: I know I’ve linked to this a lot, but that is because it is so good! Warren’s blog is also a daily read for me.
Anything at all by Craig Mod: He has two free email newsletters —Roden & Ridgelines— and one paid one.
Atlas Minor: This is the output of James A. Reeves and it is something I found via the above mentioned Warren Ellis’s blog. It’s so damn good on so many levels. During 2020 he is doing a post a day. The posts are short and thoughtful, they show just how much you can do with just a little bit of very well crafted sentences. The posts usually have a photo with them, and sometimes some music too. I savor them as I read them and then look forward to the next post. Here is an example of something you might find there.
The curfew has been moved to eight o’clock because some people looted Macy’s last night. Today I learned that curfew comes from an old French term to “cover fire.” Medieval towns would ring a bell each night as an order for citizens to extinguish their hearths and prepare for sleep.
Helicopters hover in the sky all day, waiting for something to happen. The streets smell like fresh plywood. Shops on the corner are boarding up their windows. I say hello to an old man with a power drill and a bucket of screws. Everything’s coming fast and ugly this year. (Source post: Curfew 6/2/20)
So good!
I have more things I could tell you about, but I’m going to save those for future editions of CP.
So, what do you all think of this very informal style of CP? Like it? Hate it? Let me know.