Please liberate yourself from the need — or even the desire — to make sense. Stop producing sense. We have enough sense. There is a surplus of sense and you’re adding to it. Cease and desist! This is an order. Furthermore, we resent the implication that we’re begging you to obey. “Passionately requesting” is a better way to phrase it.
Artists propose more compelling futures than venture capitalists. However, like venture capitalists, artists are not good at actualizing their ideas (and many artists would cringe, rightly, to see their fantasies made flesh). Once again resembling venture capitalists, artists provide accelerant rather than fuel. They need an enterprising individual or organization to carry out the doing, to build the fire. George Orwell couldn’t have orchestrated the collapse of the Soviet Union or the rise of today’s surveillance state, but he provided a way for us to process both political turmoil and SIGINT.
Artwork by Marc-Anthony Macon.
You’ll notice that my logic in that example is circumspect. Aren’t “accelerate” and “process” different verbs? It doesn’t matter, because I’ve released myself from sense-making tonight. I’m making something else, hopefully something more necessary.
“The gameworld is too complex and multi-dimensional to ensure every contingency is managed.” — The Tao of D&D
Of course I know that my free-form musing is self-indulgent. Reason is the hard thing, the valuable thing. But it’s difficult to maintain without an equal dose of nonsense. Material needs material. Analysis never exists without data, and I don’t think it can exist without randomness and play either. Our brains need a chance to seize on unexpected adjacencies.
Yet another reason to love Twitter bots 😉
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