… and newsletters and email blasts and pretty much anything resembling this thing I’m currently starting yet again with all of you, my readers. In my professional bio as a poet, writer, and interdisciplinary artist I love to say that my work is largely influenced by cycles of repetition and revision, among other things. It sounds sophisticated, I think. It’s also my fancy way of acknowledging that I fail a lot. On my way to revelation and growth and mastery, of course - which are all necessary parts of the writer/artist’s life. But still. I fail a lot.
Which is why it’s kind of wild to me that here I am starting another blog even though the last three and a half attempts have not fared well at all. Why now?
Starting and restarting an old blog in semi-new iterations feels to me like something akin to the documentary process, maybe even to “The Archive.” I’ve been thinking about my own documentary process and it’s relationship to journaling, in one sense, but also to the possibility of my future archives - thanks, in no small part, to the work of Sierra King and her Build Your Archive project. As it relates to the image above, Julie Mehretu’s Palimpsest (old gods), I know that a palimpsest is not exactly the same thing as a documentary being - in some respects it might be considered an act against hegemonic documentation or surveilance - but something else in its nature (perhaps the written or literary aspect?) still feels related to, akin, or maybe even play cousins with the ideas of repetition, revision, new approaches to the old, and, in some distant way, to this latest iteration of my attempts at blogging mastery.
In the spirit of the old layered among and beneath the new, I’ve decided to migrate some of my posts from previous blogs over to this one and label them under the subheading “from the Archives.” If you go to the post right before this one, you’ll see my October 2018 opening entry from the last time I tried to do this thing called routine communication. It seems fitting to have begun with my last beginning.
Aside from the aspirational palimsest of it all, though, part of this latest blogging effort also has to do with my desire to break (or at least slowly wean myself) away from a very time consuming social media dependency that often distracts me from more pressing artistic creation. It doesn’t help that Twitter is terminally ill and has been wasting away in front of an audience of millions for some time now. I’ve increasingly grown bored with the spectacle of it all - and my participation in it. Might as well try replacing one addiction with a slightly less exploitative other, right?
On the subject of more pressing artistic creation, there’s also the fact that I’ve lately been dipping my pen into more cultural criticism, arts writing, and creative nonfiction - while continuing to plug away at my first novel. I have a few published pieces here, here, and here. But the publishing industry is still a tough nut to crack - especially in the very hit and miss world of pitches, long waits, rejections, expectation for quick turnaround, and the 24-hour media cycle. I understand the demands of the industry, and will continue to throw my hat into the ring, but I’m much more of a slow burn kind of writer when given the chance. So here is, hopefully, a space where I can offer new life to those occasional missives that haven’t found a home elsewhere but still deserve an audience interested in rigorous culture writing.
And, finally, I can’t talk about rigorous engagement with the page and the written word - something I had started to give up on in blog form - without naming some of the other writer/artists who have inspired me with their online presence. This April ‘23 post from Ireashia Bennett on examples of the Black Fantastic in filmmaking and this one from Aerik Francis detailing the rigorous musical, political, collective, and anti/academic roots of their newest chapbook, MISEDUCATION, are two of my favorite things on the internet right now.
Many of the other folks mentioned below are also hosted on Substack, and I’ll of course be listing them on my Recommendations tab, but for the sake of double exposure ( and the fact that it might take me a few days to write a worthy blurb for each one) I’m listing them all here first. In the meantime, subscribe to my Substack and keep an eye out for future archival additions as well as an upcoming piece of art criticism that I’m really excited about!
Yours In Culture & The Arts,
Constance
RECOMMENDATIONS:
Ireashia Bennett - the z-axis shot
Aerik Francis - Phaentom’s Haunt
Allison Noelle Conner - Loose Pleasures
Ashia Ajani - ecotage echoes
Sierra King - Build Your Archive (newsletter)
Raina J. León - Friends of Raina
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