20/12 Anarchy on no sleep
It was nice to have a crazy weekend that included mediocrity, a visit with the author of the Hope Bloc, driving to and back from LA, the 1st annual Los Angeles Anarchist bookfair, a great LA party, and too little sleep. It was all a big pile of break out of daily life which was sorely needed and a tease of times ahead.Hope Bloc
Over the weekend I confronted three different people (or groups) about why they would sign the hope bloc, what were they thinking?, what was the point?, and I received widely different responses. I heard that the document was "written by committe", that "parts of it needed to be said", and that it was a proactive preventitive action against the possibility that the only @ representation at the election would be a black bloc. Sacre Bleu!
17/11 Against mass society
I recently returned from a whirlwind trip east of the Mississippi involving visits with good friends, burying relatives, and meeting with assorted publishers. It was too much, too fast but did remind me of quite a few things that are easy to forget when you are working the grind. It is not easy to make time for yourself, new things, writing, or anything but plodding through and watching your sharp edges dull.Some of the snapshots I took during that week
Singing - It is depressing that the only way most of us experience a singing voice is by watching someone else. By watching a performance. I wish I could participate in sing-a-longs where I didn't either feel like a heel or feel like the situation was embarrassingly contrived.
16/09 The death of print
This is not an announcement but I will use this opportunity to wax a little on the future of print and our little magazine in particular. When all the chits are tallied and the checks cashed we take in enough cash to pay for the printers and drop shipment (getting the magazine to the chain stores in your home town (TM)) but not enough to mail out the individual copies of the magazine. Call it about $1000 an issue, give or take. Double that and you have five more-or-less broke people covering a couple of thousand dollars to put out the most challenging, engaged, consistent, and hopeful anarchist periodical in the world. But is it worth it?Scratch that, is it possible, or reasonable, to maintain the project at this pace? If the writing is on the wall about the future of print are we (anarchists) just not paying attention? Is there something particularly magic about print, the medium, that keeps us coming back to it?
