Last night I went to a colleague’s house for drinks with some fellow Paul Smith’s people. Coming out of there I wasn’t sure whether there was anything I had in common with those people, but this morning I wrote:
“I think that our conversation was pretty amazing because we can go from RFID tags and Bruce Sterling to how to mine moss for water.”
I suppose it’s all constantly changing and the conversation you can have in an evening can go from one particular thing to a totally separate thing and that’s totally brilliant and amazing. I’ve never read Bruce Sterling, but he’s in the circle of influence of writers I do read, like William Gibson and Warren Ellis, so I just took out his book Ascendencies: The Best of Bruce Sterling. A reader, and naturally I circle back to the kinds of things that interest me, the late night things that I take in. I listened to Sterling’s 2012 SxSW talk and think that absolutely nothing on the web is going to stick around in the future and I consider what exactly am I doing with a blog and everything. What’s the point of any of that if it isn’t for pure interraction?
Was I a fool today? Was that essay I just finished totally scattered? Will it be in print or on the web? The story is a mish-mash: living at home and my dreams in graduate school and then changes to a political manifesto. I’m also writing a autobiographical comic book that might show up on the web first and then on comixology applications. Will any of it stick? Will any of my kids’ kids be able to read any of it in the future? I don’t suppose Mark Twain ever cared about that kind of thing. (Don’t misunderstand: I am in no way like Mark Twain and have no desire to be anything of the sort.) He probably wouldn’t give a damn about Kindles and iPads and whatever else and I suppose neither should I. Will my kids ever read that email I sent earlier today? I was being a total fool and being honest, poured my heart into it. I feel like they should read it someday, that way they know their Dad was not afraid to be totally ridiculous.
It’s all going to lie dead on the sidewalk at some point and really the only enduring thing is pen and paper and the leaves falling in October and being a fool on email. All of that will be happening a hundred years from now so whatever.
