I mentioned to a friend the other day that the more I learn about dreams, the more it feels like I’ve barely scratched the surface. It’s been so fulfilling to write about them, in ways that I can’t describe. Maybe I haven’t had that in writing before, where I hit a vein that really gets to my core. Writing is changing my relationship to dreams, and vice-versa; I have a series of dreams about twitter going back a year, it’s like my dreams are very gradually and gently tweet-mentoring me. I continue to be surprised, and it only gets better.

Tuesday night I attempted to begin a short chat about my recent work at NFTuesday, but there was a problem with the projector and my work was rendered invisible, so it was postponed for another time. It was awkward but I can’t even pretend to know what the right order of things is anymore, it seems the universe had better ideas than me about timing. I’ve been a bit awkward in general over the past couple months, what with sharing more digital work and putting out essays and trying to figure out how to do all that, plus the rest of my plate, but it’s growing and I’m very, very grateful.

No pampin’ last week, I was sick. Looks like this week’s essay will expand on a neighbor’s mysterious backyard sculpture.

Today I’m launching a Substack called The Pamplet. It’ll be a space for letters on art, mind, feels, tech takes, semi-ridiculous self-help, varieties of mystical experience, and whatever else strikes my enthusiasms.

Movable type debuted across Europe from ~1450 on, and in its wake a new form of cheap, mass-scale, short-form publication known loosely as pamphlets spread like wildfire. As we know, these innovations upset the information environment status quo, and it took a few centuries to jostle out a new balance of power. Our time has parallels, though perhaps we’re living it at 10-100x. We have type at the speed of light, with nigh-infinite recomposability—and the party’s just getting started.

Seems like a nice moment to get out on the dance floor. Browse and/or subscribe here. Hot topics for future pamplets:

Sasha was like, your prose is great, very beautiful and so forth, but could you also try being direct? Polemic? Disagreeable?

And I was like, that’s impossible. My subtleties have subtleties.

So, you know, I tried. Took about 10k words to figure out what really gets my disagreeability riled up. The short list is norms. And materialism. Once I started insulting Silicon Valley types it was hard to stop.

Sasha is pleased with my progress.

Side note, working with a killer coach is my happy place.

For reals, I’m surprised by this latest writing thing. I sidled into it with my signature blend of nonchalant obsessive necessity and no expectations. It’s a practice in art, to care as deeply as we do and be open, focusing on what is—and what is happens to routinely be more awesome than I could imagine. My trends usually begin in nocturnal dreams, and over the past few years my most consistent reaction while dreaming is surprise. First I was surprised by the good things coming to me, and I still am. Lately I’ve also been surprised by good things I somehow have the presence of mind to do. There’s new sauce on board; I get glimpses of marvelous new structures and begin to explore them; I keep meeting all sorts of new friends, then irrepressibly give them hugs. And who knows what else, I’ll be surprised.

As we know I love a consult, so I reached out to Sasha Chapin for writing coaching and he lit a fire under my atmospheric ramblings.

First, I had to throw open the doors and windows of sayability in the house of my own mind.

Second, I knew he was going to tell me so, and then he told me so—write a stupid amount very, very fast with absolutely zero regard for quality. Which I did. Turns out that’s liberating, even fun, who knew. Well, Sasha did.

All that’s gestating, work-in-progress, but it’s no doubt the speediest 20k words I ever did see.

Side note, I’ve always kind of idly wondered why I made a blog tag called “epigraphs.” I did it without much conscious intention, which is a feature, because in the creative process things shouldn’t make too much sense. I mean, if it makes sense at the start, you already get it, what’s to discover. Dig a little deeper. Anyway, while writing 20k words very fast, without adequate time to censor myself, after how many years I finally encountered my writing denial, shook its hand, thanked it for its service, and realized I really am supposed to write a bunch of stuff after the frontispiece, lol.

For reals, I had no idea how much I needed a tuned pro to read what I was up to and zoom-call-encourage more of it. Seeing the best in each other is a gift. I hope to be pretty good at doing that for others, steadily getting better. Though my biggest thanks are for all you, who day in and out do it too.