Get off my lawn! A libretto

Flat-footed overture with thesis

I recently posted a new drawing on the Patreon page. Before announcing it here, I pivoted to a different project already underway. This marks the second time in a row I’ve forgotten to blog after adding to the visual narrative. At least this time I remembered before the post grew too stale.

The silence was especially loud since I have also dropped the ball on email correspondence. Actually, I have dropped the ball on almost everything that involves being on the internet. Apart from lightning visits to Inst*gr*m and Kofi.com to share photos of origami, my internet presence has contracted. I hardly see anything at all on F@ceb00k. A nauseating platform. If only more loved ones would abandon it.

Bass and continuo (sic)

But, really, “noisome” best describes the state of the entire internet. Browsers, websites, etc. have lurched so far into anticipatory help that the whole enterprise approaches uselessness. Get that trash out of the way. When software aims to mimic content that a statistically typical “user” has consumed before, essential sameness is inevitable. Cosmetic variation and an “Oooh, shiny!” aesthetic cannot disguise it. Recall the phrase, “one dead level”?

Yeah, yeah, I know. Familiarity privileged over creativity has a long history as a default — in publishing, in cinema, in music, in policy-making…. A ready nipple for those huddled to the bell curve. And so here we are, with a half-baked, profit-driven, clever yet stupid idea difficult to avoid and impossible to disable. Maneuvering around ogres in the operating system gets harder and harder.

Tap dance of the chorus

Less wiggle room for deviation from the mean saps robustness from society and its discourse. That’s a wordy way of saying it saps robustness from our species. As if a general caution about collapsing frontiers of virtuality were not reason enough to flee into 360°/four-dimensional tangibility, problems with my eyes make looking at direct-illumination screens strenuous, sometimes painful. Aversion, native inclination and a probable dose of character flaw pave the way to an off-line bias.

Baritone’s aside

I really miss IBM Selectric II typewriters. I miss piloting those machines, the closest approach to a perfect writing instrument yet produced. I was a high-speed humdinger on a Selectric II, earning my way in offices by day and learning basics of craft after dark. A mastery to count among my early obsolescences. Luckily, even on today’s devolutionary keyboards, I remain an able touch typist. No peeking necessary.

Tenor for the finish

Enough on that. The pivot project mentioned in the first paragraph is a prose piece in Spanish about origami cranes — their recent history, symbolism and what they mean to me. Part essay, part memoir and part je ne sais quoi, once polished the as yet raw text will accompany my hand-drawn diagrams of steps to fold a crane.

I’ve sketched all the steps in order to figure out how to represent them. Executing the finished images is exactly the kind of quiet, precise activity that releases this hobbled mind to fly free without taxing an off-and-on ailing body. What form the ultimate combination of text and diagrams will take, I do not yet know. Everything in its time.

Any way, I ask indulgence, not pardon, for silence and withdrawal. Drawing #8 occupies the “most recent” spot on the Stikmanz Patreon. The sequence and the Patreon page are still free to view, and there are options to become either a free or paid follower. Material support is always a surprise, always welcome, and always deeply appreciated. Spiritual support flows through either option. Text in Spanish and crane diagrams are on the front burners right now, but a composition for Patreon drawing #9 simmers in the back. More than one idea stirs in a poly-conscious stew.

Management regrets to report that the Rhine maidens are stuck in traffic

Stay tuned for further developments.