I’m back.
I think I am anyway. There was no reason for my absence. I just didn’t feel like adding anything else to this project. It felt like it had run its course and I wasn’t too keen on beating a dead horse. Maybe this is a rebirth, or a death knell, or a whimper while I move on. Time will tell.
I do intend to issue one final printed volume. An homage to the original concept issued as a coda. After that I’m sure that piece of the project will be done and dusted at a nice even number of thirty issues. It feels like a solid number. I wanted people to pick up a physical piece and have to contend with it outside of a digital device. I still think there is some value in that tactile experience. Something now nearly lost to all of us, unless we go out of our way and insist on such things.
I can sense from the responses I’ve received over time that the engagement with the printed volumes has ebbed into nothing. It’s been an interesting experience to see the final thrashing and ultimate unceremonial death of a medium. I have a deep nostalgia for colorful coffee shop literature produced by the daring, slightly mad, anonymous, cloying, boring, sometimes trivial, and yes, at times even profound and inspiring basement poets and nascent greek chorus members. I hoped to capture some of that mystery and impart the experience of finding something out by chance and not by algorithm. I wanted to create something organic and singular. A volley of half-formed ideas thrown into the world in search of a pulse of activity somewhere out there that could make its way back. I was hoping for a conversation and found a void. Anyway, it was a romantic idea and I’ve come to grips with its failure.
So I’m moving on, back, but changed.
