Write, not to have written, but to be writing. Write because, inside the moment you are writing, you are in love with the moment of the act of writing. In fact, if you are a mathematician, approach your problems with the same desire. Love the moment of the complexity of the problem. Make the moment tremble with wanting. If you do this, you can never be disappointed, because you are writing out of a love for writing, not out of a desire to be seen as a writer.
Read moreThe Political Unconscious of Boredom (Part One)
"Look, Dad. This is not a pipe!"
Some people are so fearful of becoming bored that they “create” insurance policies against boredom. One such insurance policy is to have more than one window open on their computer while they are working. Such people do exist! They frighten me, but they are “real” actual people, and they live in America! and they move among us. These people work on a word document, perhaps writing a poem, while having two or three website tabs open and ready, in case they begin to drown in boredom. In case the poem fails to rhyme. In case they become bored with their own imagination.
Read moreSegregation Matters
The one thing I know (and I have known this since I was young and running around shooting hoops and other such things along Fifth Avenue in the Hill District of Pittsburgh and West North Avenue on the North Side of Pittsburgh) is that I am white, and being white, I will never know what it is like to wake up with black skin in America. I will never know that experience.
Read moreWim Wenders, William S. Burroughs, and Pokemon GO
My concern is how quickly this happens. How quickly Pokemon GO became a phenomenon. How quickly people started wearing these things on their wrists counting their steps, telling them if their sleep was restful. (Do you honestly not know if you slept well?) How did America so quickly convince everyone that they had to take their phone with them everywhere in case something happened to them?
Read moreAdjectives and Gentrification in Pittsburgh
On this day in Lawrenceville, the humidity was beating me up, so I went into the nearest bar for a beer. But there was no beer. Only adjectives. Empty signifiers floating everywhere. I thought at any moment Jean Baudrillard would walk through the door and order a simulacra or two, a Baudrillardian beer that only existed in adjectival form. A beer you could almost touch, but could never drink. Not really. You could only imagine the possibility of drinking it.
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