I think about paper
I've been thinking about physical distribution. Not just zines, but magazines. I've got a stack of zines on my bookshelf, on the smaller side compared to the people I know, and I think often about magazines as a format. I think about how zines are usually built for artistic expression or an event rather than wide circulation. I think about the magazines the libraries had when I was a kid and how influential they were for me. Gloss, art, photography, painting, miniatures, games, events, words I'd usually ignore cos the visuals are all that got me at that point in time.
I think about the ways the words-in-physical-form around me have a weight to them. I think about how I can pick up one of those documents and reminisce on it, think about what it said again. I think about how digital spaces are built for productivity-of-a-kind and focus-of-a-kind.
I think about the price of a cheap, second hand laser printer. I think about how the objects around me live in my mind. I think about ease of re-encountering texts. I think about sharing that ability to easily re-encounter. Information-as-decoration-as-information. I think about manifestos, local papers, pamphlets. I think about open discussions in coffee shops.
I think about how I get a lot of my information about what's happening locally on instagram, or by word of mouth. I think about how the instagram posts don't live in my mind but the events I go to because of them do. I think about the posts that do live on in my mind, why they still do. I think about my pivot to oil paintings, after doing exclusively digital art for so long.
I think about printing out things on my mind, things like this, binding them with string, staples, or glue. I think about handing these things to the people close to me. I think about handing tens, hundreds of copies of them to the people close to me. Burdening others with monoliths of paper. Up to them what happens to them.
I think about rot. I think about how most websites I've ever been on, most posts I've ever made, are gone for good. I think about how most data on most hard drives I've had are lost. I think about paper, I think about how the infrastructure of a paper page is itself. I think about how the upkeep cost of a piece of paper is entropy. I think about the security implications of a password stored on a folded piece of paper vs a password manager. I think about how digitalocean doesn't take a monthly sum out of me for the words I write down in my journal, my project books. I think about how my notebooks won't survive a flood, a fire, a war. I think about how the books, the papers, will all rot away too. The oil and acid decaying them all.
I think about websites going away. I think about wellness coaches telling you that you're toxified by a single chemical, and by removing it you'll finally be okay. And how if that doesn't work, maybe the next one. No, the next one. No, the next one. I think about how no solution works best for everyone.
I think about what I took away from a creative writing class, that it's not individual characters that are the fundamental components of story, change, but the relationships between them. I think about networks, graphs.
I think about paper, and I think about how I've lent people books. I think about paper and I think about annotating the margins just for me. I think about the annotations in that paper, and how embarrassed I have been when I pass on an annotated book to someone I know. I think about reading the annotations from strangers I've seen in my books, seeing a moment of their life as miniature street art defacing a venerable Printed Word. I think about how words are physical, how even digital words are physical, they occupy physical space. I think about spaces and networks.