Damn, Michelle. Could you write at least *one* essay for us that's not a banger? Seriously, though, thank you for this rhythm of gifts. :) I often hesitate to comment because I want to share every moment that I loved, but then I just realize I'd need write something longer than the essay itself.
I see Substack massaging you, too: when was the last time your desire to really *serve* the art week after week found a medium where it felt both necessary & rewarded? I love your consistency!
I'm actually reading "The Medium is the Massage" right now (I got it cuz it's like mostly pictures, yay!) One of the interesting points our boy Marshall makes is that all media are extensions of human faculties: the wheel extends the foot, radio the ear, clothes => skin, electrical circuitry the human nervous system. (Globally, he claims, digital media is an extension of being a part of a village.)
I like this idea: the world reaching into us, & us out into it, through some technological extension. It changes, we change in response, & we change it. I feel like it redeems this narrative of "oh, you know, our sucky evolutionary hard-wiring sabotaging us again, ho hum, here we go..." As if humans ourselves were defined, stuck, set. I think there are so many ways we can be shaped, expressed, entire ways of being shut down or lit up -- & I think new media help us see that.
The way you talk about the importance of *tiny* feelings & tendencies that media produce resonates with this. We're feeling the world in a new way, & it doesn't always scream out to us. We're invited to listen, notice what feels different, notice how we act different.
I love this line: "We cannot merely read a medium the way we read a letter. Instead, we have to let it happen to us." ... ie like a massage (I see you! ;)
I admit I was just like, "Substack: ok another blog site with some slightly different monetizing gimmick." This essay made me consider how in many ways that *is* what Substack wants to present as. They want us to just slip in frictionlessly to something easy & good.
I love the idea of a medium being like, "Bro, we have no idea what this is. It feels weird, & it's morphing. Come shape it. Come be a part of the unfolding chaos. Come let it change you." We'll have to start a new medium together someday, Michelle. I propose we call it something like, "Mind Masseuse" :)
David, I'm going to see you in 20 minutes for a Zoom call, so this seems silly, but I wanted to reply ;)
YES -- yes. Substack has been enormously helpful for me. I don't know if it was you I was telling about this, but it always reminds me of Thelonious Monk's advice for a drummer who was reluctant to solo; he was basically like "It's your solo time. Get up, do a dance, whatever, but it's your time." And that's how I feel every Wednesday. It's taken me many years to get a point where I understand that my own output doesn't feel linearly correlated to... anything, really. Rather, if I push the right buttons in myself, I can be extraordinarily prolific. If those buttons aren't pushed, there's nothing. I've never read a writing advice book that covered that 🤷
Oooooo! I want to hear more about your reading of McLuhan -- either on our call or some other time. I wonder what part of me is being extended by Substack's rhythms?
Mind Masseuse! I love it!
Yes one thing I "miss" -- I put it in scare quotes because I was not BORN then -- about California in the 60's and onwards is all of these movements about new media, ways of experiencing things, education... the Human Potential Movement, the Eames. Buckminster Fuller... and the DOMES! The Eames built this dome too for IBM at the World Fair in 1964: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l04spbcRwq0
Can you imagine today, a media company being like, "OK yes, we have a film, but, we are building a completely different movie theatre in order to show it"?!? 🙈
I feel like today media designers are like: one set of eyes processes one screen. But while linguistics taught us to process the world in linear, sequential ways (another idea from "The Medium is the Massage"), these whole-system-y views from IBM let you *feel* the fact that everything touches everything, & happens all at once (MacLuhan calls this sort of thing "acoustic" media, meaning coming from all directions, rather than localized)
Damn, Michelle. Could you write at least *one* essay for us that's not a banger? Seriously, though, thank you for this rhythm of gifts. :) I often hesitate to comment because I want to share every moment that I loved, but then I just realize I'd need write something longer than the essay itself.
I see Substack massaging you, too: when was the last time your desire to really *serve* the art week after week found a medium where it felt both necessary & rewarded? I love your consistency!
I'm actually reading "The Medium is the Massage" right now (I got it cuz it's like mostly pictures, yay!) One of the interesting points our boy Marshall makes is that all media are extensions of human faculties: the wheel extends the foot, radio the ear, clothes => skin, electrical circuitry the human nervous system. (Globally, he claims, digital media is an extension of being a part of a village.)
I like this idea: the world reaching into us, & us out into it, through some technological extension. It changes, we change in response, & we change it. I feel like it redeems this narrative of "oh, you know, our sucky evolutionary hard-wiring sabotaging us again, ho hum, here we go..." As if humans ourselves were defined, stuck, set. I think there are so many ways we can be shaped, expressed, entire ways of being shut down or lit up -- & I think new media help us see that.
The way you talk about the importance of *tiny* feelings & tendencies that media produce resonates with this. We're feeling the world in a new way, & it doesn't always scream out to us. We're invited to listen, notice what feels different, notice how we act different.
I love this line: "We cannot merely read a medium the way we read a letter. Instead, we have to let it happen to us." ... ie like a massage (I see you! ;)
I admit I was just like, "Substack: ok another blog site with some slightly different monetizing gimmick." This essay made me consider how in many ways that *is* what Substack wants to present as. They want us to just slip in frictionlessly to something easy & good.
I love the idea of a medium being like, "Bro, we have no idea what this is. It feels weird, & it's morphing. Come shape it. Come be a part of the unfolding chaos. Come let it change you." We'll have to start a new medium together someday, Michelle. I propose we call it something like, "Mind Masseuse" :)
David, I'm going to see you in 20 minutes for a Zoom call, so this seems silly, but I wanted to reply ;)
YES -- yes. Substack has been enormously helpful for me. I don't know if it was you I was telling about this, but it always reminds me of Thelonious Monk's advice for a drummer who was reluctant to solo; he was basically like "It's your solo time. Get up, do a dance, whatever, but it's your time." And that's how I feel every Wednesday. It's taken me many years to get a point where I understand that my own output doesn't feel linearly correlated to... anything, really. Rather, if I push the right buttons in myself, I can be extraordinarily prolific. If those buttons aren't pushed, there's nothing. I've never read a writing advice book that covered that 🤷
Oooooo! I want to hear more about your reading of McLuhan -- either on our call or some other time. I wonder what part of me is being extended by Substack's rhythms?
Mind Masseuse! I love it!
Yes one thing I "miss" -- I put it in scare quotes because I was not BORN then -- about California in the 60's and onwards is all of these movements about new media, ways of experiencing things, education... the Human Potential Movement, the Eames. Buckminster Fuller... and the DOMES! The Eames built this dome too for IBM at the World Fair in 1964: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l04spbcRwq0
Can you imagine today, a media company being like, "OK yes, we have a film, but, we are building a completely different movie theatre in order to show it"?!? 🙈
I guess on one level, VR and AR *are* that, but... more thoughts on that another time. You know I'm not that stoked
AR & VR WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING, YOU LUDDITE
Oooh, yes I remember this other work by The Eames you shared with me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6BA4baRcVo
I feel like today media designers are like: one set of eyes processes one screen. But while linguistics taught us to process the world in linear, sequential ways (another idea from "The Medium is the Massage"), these whole-system-y views from IBM let you *feel* the fact that everything touches everything, & happens all at once (MacLuhan calls this sort of thing "acoustic" media, meaning coming from all directions, rather than localized)