This is essentially a blog about place or, put another way, how bodies exist spatially in their immediate contexts (physical, psychological, spiritual, social, cultural, etc.) and how we, in return, imprint ourselves on those places. Perhaps a few assumptions should be named so that we are all on the same page:
- I am and am not a materialist.
- I am not an expert.
- I have grown to dislike the mass exodus of humanity towards online communities at the expense of local communities.
This needs some explanation. I am a materialist in that I believe the places, communities, and skin we inhabit matter (and matter eternally) and there have been many perspectives that have tried to negate their importance. However, I am not a materialist in the sense that our current economically-enchanted world would declare it. I, too, appreciate science as a tool for discovering that which is contingent (i.e. factual) and consistent (those “truths" that have proven to remain viable over time, like gravity), but it is not my guiding light. I believe there is more to our existence beyond this materiality and that immaterial forces do affect how we live and treat one another. More succinctly, this place is a safe haven for that which is weird and eerie.
I might have been an expert on a specific breed of Anglican missionary sharing the gospel in East Africa between 1850 and 1950 about 20+ years ago. However, I haven’t touched the proceeding scholarship since and I am sure much more has been uncovered since then. I don’t claim to be a trained professional in psychology, philosophy or theology, to name a few. This place is simply a local exhibit of one person’s observation and thought on a myriad of subjects while attempting to understand their spatiality. I don’t expect to be right all the time. I am just calling my shots as I see them in the ever-temporal present.
This is something I had to learn over the last couple of years as I slowly bled out all of my social media—and consequently buried a predecessor to this site due to Substack’s continual move towards being a more social media-informed platform. I have met a lot of great people through social media, so I regret none of that. I do, however, regret the lack of attention I paid to my physical neighbors and communities as I put so much time and energy into those online relationships. This, I think, is a central issue with social media. It is making it harder than ever before to get to know our neighbors outside of some kind of polarized and gamified platform structure that abstracts flesh and blood into virtual avatars. I’m not saying it was necessarily perfect in the past, but before the collapsing of worlds due to the internet, at least you had to go outside and talk to people to "connect."
All that to say, I appreciate you all as readers, but this is not and will not be an online community. You already have a community. Go outside and meet them. Pay attention to your local politics instead of getting bent out of shape due to the troubling trends in the national news. If you want to send me complaints, comments or anything else, then you can email me. I’d love to hear from you, but you have a community already and it ain’t here.
I am being serious.
In your email, let me know if you want it to stay between you and I or if I can publish it—completely anonymously unless you want to be known—and then respond on my site. (Yes, I am stealing this from Nick Cave. All great ideas come, in part, from those who go before us.)Also, if you want to listen to a low effort film field recording, then check out Fly By Films.
You can also find my past writing elsewhere.
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