#and i have so many other things of varying degrees of urgency/non-urgency that i also have to do soon-ish

[littlefoxgw2]

okay i put some things on youtube because it's easier to upload it there than on tumblr. here is the playlist of the older videos i still have and this new video. i have more halloween clips for another video, but my to-do list isn't prioritized so i have no idea when i'll finish editing that.

[divineknowing2021]

viewing guide

At its core, divine knowing is an exhibition about knowledge, power, and agency. It’s become a more common understanding that governments, institutions, and algorithms will manipulate the public with what information they frame as fact, fiction, or worthy of attention. Though I am early in researching this topic, I've only come across a minimal amount of mainstream discourse on how the initial threat limiting our scope of knowledge is a refusal to listen to ourselves.

In a world faced with so many threats - humans being violent toward each other, toward animals, toward the earth - it can be a bit unsettling to release the reins and allow ourselves to bear witness for a moment, as we slowly develop a deeper awareness of surrounding phenomena and happenings.  

divine knowing includes works by formally trained and self-taught artists. A majority of the artists are bisexual, non-binary, or transgender. Regardless of degree-status, gender, or sexuality, these artists have tapped into the autonomous well of self-knowing. Their artworks speak to tactics for opening up to a more perceptive mode of being. They unravel dependencies on external sources for knowledge and what we might recognize, connect with, or achieve once we do.

The installation Femme Digitale by Sierra Bagish originates from a series she began in 2017 by converting photographs of women that were taken and distributed online without the subject’s consent into paintings. Her practice at the time was concerned with female abjection. Sourcing images found via simple keywords and phrases (e.g., passed out, passed out drunk) she swathes a mass-circulated canon of internet detritus that articulates and produces aggression towards women. With her paintings, she circumvents the images’ original framing mechanisms and subverts these proliferated images through a sincere and personal lens.

These paintings divulge the blurred space between idolatry and denigration these online photos occupy, asking whose desires these images fulfill and what their propagation reveals about the culture producing them.  While Bagish's work contends with political motivations, she also remains keenly observant of form and the varying utilities of different media.

“I use the expressive potential of paint as a vehicle to intervene and challenge ideas about photography as a harbinger of the real and everyday.”

Chariot Birthday Wish is an artist and angel living in Brooklyn. They have seen The Matrix 28 times in 2 years and love horses. The tarot series included in divine knowing is their most intuitive project, something they revisit when unsure of what to work on next. The Major Arcana are composed of digital collages made from sourced images, the Minor Arcana are represented by short, poetic, interpretative texts about the cards. The series is played on shuffle, creating a unique reading for each viewer. This is a work in progress that will eventually finalize as a completed deck of digital collages available for purchase.

Chariot's work emerges from a constant consideration of apocalypse and connection. They reference technology in tandem with nature and a desire for unity. Underneath their work's surface conversation on beauty, care, and relationship exists an agenda to subtly evoke a conspiratorial anti-state mindset. Through a collective imagining of how good things could be and how good we want them to be, we might be able to reckon with how bad things are in contrast.

“I think about texting my friends from the middle of the woods...

Humans are a part of nature and we created these things. There's this Bjork quote where she says that "You can use pro tools and still be pagan." I'm really into the idea of using technology as a tool for divination and holy connection with nature. I imagine a scene; being in moss, it's absolute bliss, and then the connection of texting, sharing an image of moss with a friend, sharing that moment through cellular towers.”

The album "adding up" by thanks for coming is composed of songs Rachel Brown wrote during what they believe to be the most challenging year of their life. Rachel now looks back on this time in appreciation, recognizing they grew in ways they had never imagined. The entire year, they were committed to following their feelings to wherever it may lead.

“If I hadn't been open to following the almost indiscernible signs I was being sent, then I would have missed out on some of the most important moments in my life.”

Kimberly Consroe holds a Masters in Anthropology along with degrees in Archaeology, Literature, and History. She is currently a Research Analyst at the US Department of Commerce. Her artwork is a passionate escape from a hectic professional life and touches on themes of feminism and nature.

Her works begin as general ideas; their narrative complexity growing with the amount of time she invests in making each one. Her decoupage process starts with cutting hundreds, if not thousands, pieces of paper. The accumulation of clippings sourced from vintage and current-day magazines overlap to tell a story. In Domestication, Kimberly borrows submissive female figures from found images of Ryan Mcguinness's work and places them in a position of power.

“I believe intuition is associated with emotion and experience. It is wisdom and fear, empathy and outrage, distrust and familiarity. It is what we know before we know it. This relates to my artwork in that, from beginning to end, there is never one complete idea concerning the outcome: it is a personal journey. It emerges from an ephemeral narrative that coalesces into a definitive story.”

Anabelle DeClement is a photographer who primarily works with film and is interested in relationships as they exist within a frame. She is drawn to the mystery of the mundane. Intuition exists in her practice as a feeling of urgency and the decision to act on it  ---  a drive often used to describe street photography where the camera catches unexpected moments in an urban environment. Anabelle tends to photograph individuals with whom she has established personal relationships in a slow domestic setting. Her sense of urgency lies in capturing moments of peak intimacy, preserving a memory's informal beauty that otherwise may have been forgotten or overlooked.

Gla5 is a visual artist, poet, bookmaker, production designer, and educator. Play is at the center of their practice. Their process is an experimental one embracing impulse and adventure. Their compositions are informed by relationships among bodies of varying shapes, materials, and densities. Interests that come up in their work include a discernment between symbols and non-symbols, dream states, the portrayal of energy in action, and a fixation on forms such as cups, tables, and spoons.

“I generally think of my work as depicting a layer of life that exists underneath what we see in our everyday lives.”

Gladys Harlow is a sound-based performance artist, comedian, and activist who experiments with found objects, contact mics, textures, range, analog formats, present moments, and emotions. Through raw, avant-garbage performance art, they aim to breakdown societal barriers, abolish oppressive systems, and empower communities. Gladys was born in Queens, NY, raised in Miami, FL and has deep roots in Venezuela. Currently haunting in Philadelphia, PA, Gladys is a founding member of Sound Museum Collective. SMC holds space for reconstructing our relationships to sounds by creating a platform for women, nonbinary, and trans sound artists and engineers.

Street Rat is a visceral exploration of the mysteries of life. Attempting to bring heavy concepts to your reality, it is the eye on the ground that sees and translates all intersecting issues as they merge, explode, dissolve, and implode. Street Rat is Gladys Harlow's way of comprehending, coping, feeling, taking action, disrupting the status quo, and rebuilding our path.

All Power To The People originated as a recorded performance intended to demystify sound by revealing the tools, wires, and movements used to create it. All Power To The People evolved into an installation conceived specifically for this exhibition. The installation includes a theremin and oscillator built by Gladys, a tarot deck they made by hand, and books from the artist's personal collection, amongst other elements. Gladys has created a structure of comfort and exploration. They welcome all visitors of divine knowing to play with the instrument, flip freely through the books, and pull a tarot card to take home.

Phoebe Hart is an experimental animator and filmmaker. A majority of her work is centered around mental illness and the line between dreams and reality. Merry Go Round is a sculptural zoetrope that changes in shape and color as it spins. Its form is inspired by nature and its color by the circus. The video’s sound was produced by Hayden Waggener. It consists of reverbing chimes which are in rhythm with the stop animation’s movement; both oscillate seamlessly between serene and anxious states.

“I often don't plan the sculptures or objects I am fabricating, there is a vague image in my mind, and my hands take care of the rest. I find that sometimes overthinking is what can get me and other artists stuck. If I just abandon my judgments and ego, I can really let go and create work that feels like it came inherently from me.”

Powerviolets is the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Violet Hetson who is currently based in New York. After experiencing several false starts while bouncing coast to coast, recording and performing with several lineups, Hetson has finally released her debut album. ~No Boys~ namesake is a sarcastic sign she hung on her suburban CT teenage bedroom door. Violet Hetson grew up primarily listening to punk and hardcore. She parses elements of these genres with influences from bands such as X and Suburban Lawns. ~No Boys~ takes a softer, melodic approach to Hetson's punk roots. Powerviolets' music is linear, unconventional, dark, and airy with a sense of humor.

Mary Hunt is a fiber artist specializing in chain stitch embroidery. This traditional form of embroidery uses vintage machinery and thick thread to create fibrous art and embellishments. They use an approach called "thread painting," which requires each stitch to be hand guided by the turn of a knob underneath the table while the speed of movement is controlled by a foot pedal. Chainstitch works can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 200 hours, encouraging a slow and thoughtful process. Mary uses a Cornely A machine, made in Paris more than 100 years ago.

“I think we are sent messages and guidance constantly. Our intuition is simply our ability to clear the path for those messages. The largest obstacles on my artistic path are usually self-imposed negative thoughts. I simply do things to take care of my spiritual well-being, first and foremost, and the rest follows. If I can trust the universe, trust the process, then I am much more likely to listen to the messages sent my way.”

Jes the Jem is a multi-media artist working with acrylic, watercolor, mold clay, and whatever else she can get her hands on. She uses vivid color to bring joy into the lives of those who view her art. Jes the Jem has experienced a great deal of pain in her life. Through that unique displeasure, she has been gifted a nuanced perspective. She aims to energize the present while paying homage to the past events that shape us. In her art, her life, and her interpersonal relationships, Jes the Jem appreciates the gift of all of life's experiences.

“The pursuit of happiness and understanding is instinct.”

Pamela Kivi pieces together visual scraps she has saved over the years, choosing to fuse them at whatever present moment she sees fit. Her work reflects on creative mania, fleeting emotions, and memories. Pamela's collages are a compilation of unexpected elements that include: old notebooks, cut-outs, text messages or Facebook message conversations, nostalgic cellphone photos, and visual materials she has chosen to hold onto. She prints out, cuts up, scans, edits, repeats. Pamela's artistic practice is deeply personal. It is a submittal to the process of dusting things off until a reflection can be seen, all enacted without an attachment to the end result.

“I rely on intuition and whatever state of mind I am in to whisk me away. In life, I often confuse intuition with anxiety- when it comes to creative work, I can decipher the two.”

Through sobriety, Kendall Kolenik's focus has shifted toward self-discovery and shedding old adaptive patterns, a process that led her to a passion for helping others heal themselves too. In autumn, she will begin her Masters in Social Work at Columbia University.

“I love how when I'm painting my self-doubt becomes so apparent. Painting shows me exactly where my doubt lies, which guides me towards overriding it. When I paint something and lean into doubt, I don't like what comes out. When I take note of the resistance and go with my gut more freely, I love it. This reminds me of my yoga practice. What you practice on the mat is a metaphor for how you show up in life. By breathing through the uncomfortable poses on the mat, you learn to breathe through challenging life moments.

I think we all grow up learning to numb and edit ourselves. We are taught not to trust our feelings; we are told to look outside ourselves for answers when we already have a perfectly good compass within. Painting is an archway back to that for me - rediscovering self-reliance and faith in my first instinct. When I'm creating these rainbow squares, sometimes I move so fast it's like something else is carrying me. I sort of leave myself and enter a trance. Like how you don't have to tell the heart to beat or the lungs to breathe - thinking goes away and I can get so close to my knowing that I become it. I love how art allows me to access my love for ambiguity, interpretation, and an interpretation that feels closer to Truth. I find no greater purpose than guiding people back to safety and reconnecting them with themselves. The most important thing to ever happen in my life was when I stopped trying to deny my reality - listening to your intuition can be like a freefall - no one but you can ever know or tell you - it is a deep trust without any outside proof.”

Lucille Loffredo is a music school dropout, Jewish trans lesbian, and veterinary assistant doing her best to make sure each day is better than the last. Lucille tries to find the music rather than make it. She lets it tell her what it wants to do and what it wants to be. The Wandering EP was in part written as a way to come out to herself. She asks all listeners to please be gentle.

“Change will come, and it will be good. You are who you think you are, no matter how far it seems.”

Whitney Lorenze generally works without reference, making thick, graphic pictures with precise forms conceived almost entirely from her imagination. Images like a slowly rolling car crackling out of a driveway, afternoon sun rays shining through a cloud of humidity, or headlights throwing a lined shadow across a black bedroom inspire her.

“As it concerns my own practice and the creation of artworks generally, I would define intuition as the ability to succumb to some primal creative impulse. Of course, this implies also the ability to resist the temptations of producing a calculated or contrived output.”

Ellie Mesa began teaching herself to paint at the age of 15, exploring landscapes and portraiture. Her work has evolved into a style of painting influenced by surrealism where teddy bears will morph into demons and vice versa. Her work speaks to cuteness, the grotesque, and mystical beings. The painting "Kali" is an homage to the Hindu goddess of creation,  destruction, life and death. This was Ellie's first painting after becoming sober and is an expression of the aforementioned forces in her own life. Through meditations on Kali, Elli has been able to find beauty in the cycle of love and loss.

“To me, intuition means doing the thing that feels right whether or not it's what you want it to be. When I'm painting or making a sculpture, I give myself the freedom to follow what feels right, even if that means starting over or changing it completely. I allow the piece to present itself to me instead of forcing something that doesn't want to be.”

Mari Ogihara is a sculptor exploring duality, resilience, beauty, and serenity as experienced through the female gaze. Her work is informed by the duality of womanhood and the contradictions of femininity. In particular, the multitude of roles we inhabit as friend, lover, sister, and mother and their complex associations to the feminine perspective.

“Intuition is an innate, immediate reaction to an experience. While making art, I try to balance intuition, logic, and craftsmanship.”

All Of Me Is War by Ames Valaitis addresses the subconscious rifts society initiates between women, estranging them from each other and themselves.

“It is an unspoken, quick, and quiet battle within me as the feeling of intuition purely, and when I am making a drawing. I am immediately drawn to poses and subject matter that reflect the emotion inside myself, whether it is loud or under the surface. If a line or figure doesn't move me, after working on it for a few minutes, I get rid of it. If something looks right to me immediately, I keep it; nurture it. I try to let go of my vision, let my instinct take hold. I mirror this in my life as I get older, choosing who and what to put my energy into. The feeling is rarely wrong; I'd say we all know inherently when it is time to continue or tap out.”

Chardel Williams is a self-taught artist currently living in Bridgeport. Her biggest inspiration is her birthplace of Jamaica. Chardel views painting as a method for blocking out chaos. Her attraction to the medium springs from its coalescence of freedom, meditative qualities, and the connection it engenders. rears.

“Intuition for me is going where my art flows. I implement it in my practice by simply creating space and time to listen. There are times when what I'm painting is done in everyone else's eyes, but I just keep picking at it. Sometimes I would stop painting a piece and go months without touching it. Then, out of nowhere, be obsessed with finishing. I used to get frustrated with that process, but now I go with it. I stopped calling it a block and just flow with it. I listen because my work talks.”

[bladekindeyewear]

Boots reads Homestuck Epilogue part... one..??

Alright, let’s do this.  As I’ve said, the page after this one is all I’ve seen, I’m diving in unspoiled.  Also I gather from some of the non-spoilery chatter I’ve heard from my friends -- one of which warned me this sort of thing was coming a couple weeks ago, and I believed them (but didn’t want to) -- that this first epilogue-upd8 may not be the only epilogue-upd8, which isn’t surprising either given how Andrew works.

Alright, let’s go.  Hope my stomach can take it!

So, Page 1, the mock-AO3 page that’s the only thing I’ve seen before posting this.  The content warning is EXCELLENT, and gives me hope that this will be the usual Hussie-caliber and more humorous than heartwrenching.  :)

It also makes some serious sense that there would be multiple epilogues; from the sound of the summary, this one might focus more on John and then leave ample opportunity to discuss the others.

Let’s click page 2 -- oh, or contents: “Prologue”, this being a chapter list for this is another way to do it.  Clicking Prologue.......

Okay wow, this is novel format for the moment.  Good chance it won’t stay that way.

These first two paragraphs are well-written and ominous, sure -- describing stuff we pretty much already knew was happening, in different words -- but even though the writing isn’t really pretentious, there’s still a good chance Andrew *views* it as pretentious enough to find cutting away to art-style instead hilarious.  Onto the third paragraph...

Music and Calliopes the other Calliope is conducting, yeah... Oh, there’s a garbage disposal reference.  In regards to a black hole.  Like the one I kind of pointed to during Dave’s intro sequence in the Third Scratch theory and stuff in all those big theories.  The ones I was, er, wrong about... ahem.  Moving on.

“Your name is John Egbert, and you have just had a terrible, deeply pretentious nightmare.”

Pfffffffff  :D

I love you Andrew Hussie.  Reading on...

YES I see chat colors. Chat colors!!! I need chat colors.  Reading reading reading let me get down to them let me

Absolutely nothing of note has ever happened here in the entire history of the planet, which you would know, because you created it.

Baahahahahah.  :D

Okay yes I’m at the phone-sterlog.

Uh oh.

I am reading elevated levels of angst compared to usual pesterlogs in this log.  Which is to say, virtually any at all, really.  THAT doesn’t bode well for the outcome/overall tone of this epilogue.  :X  --Not to say it isn’t *appropriate*, given they still haven’t fixed/resewn Paradox Space together, but... yeah, *future feels* are popping up on the radar, that’s what I’m worried about.  I loved the tone of the snapchats and the feeling that everything was going to be fine, especially given how the ending “not being what I expected” shook me a fair bit, but to look forward to when that may end... D:

Yeah, Rose having some serious visions about some unfinished business they need to get around to instead of just fucking around and living their lives makes sense.  :X  --or at least some timeline version of them.  I’m imagining they’re living varied, excellent lives in a whole TON of timelines of promise that commit our imaginings of their potential futures to virtual canon, really, with the main thread that ties off Caliborn’s stage play almost irrelevant in comparison... that was kind of the whole point of the Ending of homestuck earlier, of that final anime flash, the fact that the victory and planet and *lives* they won meant a whole lot more than whatever Lord English’s irrelevant machinations were.

So... returning to the tail end of that main thread and seeing how *serious* it might be....... yeah. Kinda mildly panic-inducing. :XXX

You move the phone away from your ear and assume an expression you haven’t practiced in years. It is the look of a man who actually has something to do.

Okay that was good.

Ah, he’s twenty-three now!

Let’s click the next link. ==>

Fuck let’s not recount Rose’s substance abuse.

Oh, cool. Er, “cool”. Rose is getting some of Rosejaspersprite^2′s awareness of all her alternate-timeline doomed selves and their lives.  No wonder she’s worried about the substance abuse she technically mostly *avoided* in this timeline.

Light explicitly relating to knowledge, good.  That’s a nice aspect tidbit to have reiterated.

ROSE: There’s a different scale I’ve come to understand. Another dichotomy that’s less... emotional, I guess? ROSE: Consider, instead of the word “good,” using the word “essential.” ROSE: And what exists at the opposite polarity from essential is... ROSE: Something that is best not to contemplate.

ooh.  oooooh. holy shit.

okay NO, BOOTS/BKEW.  DON’T GET FUCKING EXCITED.

DON’T get excited.

It only SOUNDS like she’s learned to recontextualize the whole adventure in the rich context of the classpect system, that’s just your wild fanfic-y theoryimagination talking.  Shoosh.  (Even though she IS very, very, *very* clearly referencing the Light/Void dichotomy with the above quote.)  Just... tamp down your hopes, Boots.  Leave it at MILD hope.  Like cool porridge.

Reading on.

Alright, yeah, this universe exists beyond the timespan of the Green Sun’s influence.  Unsurprising, since it was heavily implied.  And she doesn’t have access to her expanded Green Sun powerset while *in* such a universe, which was also heavily implied by alt!Calliope or her denizen or I forget the exact conversation where it said she’d have to make the final journey without Green Sun powers or whatever.  That’s cool.  (Though having it spelled out more explicitly than usual does make it more awkward to have her use her powers for humorous purposes on MXRP in the future.)

OOOH DAVE KARKAT AND JADE ARE IN A PERPLEXING SOCIAL ARRANGEMENT YESSSSS  :D

Best news.  Okay reading on.

ROSE: You will need to travel back into canon and defeat Lord English.

Yeah I guess.

Again, the way the ending sort of put it was that..... our heroes did have to defeat Lord English eventually?  Or set right some prior stuff like doing the stage play?  But that part of the point of this whole story -- the Ultimate Reward -- was that it didn’t really matter, because they had earned nigh-infinite branching timelines of promise in a brand new universe where they could go YEARS AND YEARS living their lives in many of the ways they wished, richly enjoying themselves and starting civilizations that would last billions of years, loving and living and experiencing, only “needing” to go finally check off these other responsibilities in a single timeline of promise at the end of an extended period of vacation they chose with no particular urgency.  Branching years-and-years of essentially heaven as long as they EVENTUALLY fulfilled that particular endpoint, and they knew it.  More or less.

Rose phrases it pretty explicitly, though.  John’s powers are the only thing that can warp people through canon like that without restriction, so he was always to be involved, but... *he* needs to defeat him?  Does that mean alone?

JOHN: yeah, i had a feeling that was going to come up again someday. ROSE: I’m sure we all did. That is, even those of us without visions. JOHN: i was doing my best not to think about it. i guess we can’t put it off any longer then? ROSE: Now is the time. We are rapidly approaching a point of no return. If the decision isn’t made soon, it will be too late. The issue will no longer matter. JOHN: when exactly is the point of no return? ROSE: Today. JOHN: wow. JOHN: ok then.

Ouch.

That’s slightly more abrupt than the picture of branching bliss I just painted.

JOHN: fine? ROSE: Of course everything is fine here. ROSE: We’re outside of canon now. JOHN: yeah, i know. what does that actually MEAN though? JOHN: are you saying this isn’t really happening? ROSE: Of course it’s happening. ROSE: Just because certain events take place outside of canon, it doesn’t mean those events are non-canon. JOHN: oh. ROSE: In other words, there is an important distinction between events which can be considered to occur inside canon, outside canon, and those which are not canon at all. ROSE: The day we went through that door and claimed our reward, we passed a threshold between continua marked by differing degrees of relevance, truth, and essentiality.

Well okay then.  I was wondering why she used the word “canon”.  They literally DID escape the narrative literally as *well* as figuratively with that Juju, then, Neverending Story style.

Also, Light being highly tied to canon and Rose having spent so much time outside of it... yeah, I can understand the headaches more, too.

Alright, reading on, it seems Andrew is using Rose to more explicitly explain how he intends all the non-canon stuff he’s presented to us to “matter”, for those who didn’t quite get or fully believe the implied explanation from context towards the end of the story.

Heh, so the idea is that the urgency comes from “it’s been too fucking long since the story ended, and this epilogue needs to come out when an epilogue would still matter to anyone”.  That’s kind of brilliant.

ROSE: As long as we live outside canon, everything that happens will technically be “real,” but only conditionally. ROSE: There are certain crucial events inside canon which must happen in order to continue to prop up the legitimacy of events here on Earth C. ROSE: And you specifically, John, have a responsibility to make sure those events take place.

Closing threads closing threads CLOSING THREADS :D !!!!!!

FUCK is this epilogue going to be mostly devoted to TYING UP LOOSE ENDS and clarifying stuff??? :D  Like the HUNDREDS OF LOOSE ENDS that were left unanswered because the ending tried to paint it all as sidelined/irrelevant regardless of the fact that they hadn’t been answered/fulfilled, which had previously pretty much traumatized me around Homestuck’s end because I was (1) so used to Andrew expertly tying up almost every loose end eventually and (2) was a theorycrafter with explicit investment in the idea that Classes, Aspects, and most of these loose ends actually DID matter???  :D

Sign me the fuck up!!!  :DDDD

...I know it’s doubtfully going to be anything close to all I hoped for, but still.  Answers, contextualization, and John tying up loose threads.  Like that final frog warped in front of Jade as a child.  That’s good, that’s VERY good.  I’m excited instead of nauseous.  :D

--and yeah, reading on, Rose makes more explicit what I said earlier that the justification Andrew’s painting for this is “we have to wrap up all these loose ends before everyone forgets about Homestuck.”  That is hilarious.

Okay, so the juju is a big plothole. Heheh.  We’ve heard it called that earlier.

...Oh.  Oh huh.

Rose is pretty much explicitly talking about the stage play consisting of a bunch of non-canon ALTERNATE VERSIONS of themselves that mean the original versions of them living happily in the new universe won’t actually die.  Holy shit.  I mean we theorized that for a TIME with some of them but THOSE loose ends (like Roxy still having her mask on) were closed up toward the end...  So instead, having it put THIS way (preserving our ideas of them living full lives post-victory), and not only that but having John DO all this stuff RIGHT NOW to fix things retroactively with some really well-written contextual clarification we’re bound to get to help with the closure... god DAMN.  This is really good.  This is going to make a LOT of people feel a whole lot better about Homestuck.  Like me.  :D

...Pff, some other girl is getting punched by John in the face again.  :D  Don’t worry, Rose isn’t saying that this is the Vriska punch at the beginning of the whole Retcon arc and that this epilogue somehow happened in the middle.  (I hope.)

...Yeah Rose implies heavily that John is gonna die his heroic death if he does this?  Or it’s meant to make us THINK she’s implying that.  Yeah.  And she feels pretty fucking horrible about what she’s asking John to go through regardless, so.  (Yeah, everyone looked pretty genuinely dead but a few at the end of the stage play, but it was pretty uncertain.)  Either way, she’s acting like John isn’t going to “come back”, even if he lives through this.

Stupid feels.

Clicking the next link.  ==>

Hiiii roxy and callie!!! :D

Yes how polite of them.

“Ultimate self”?  Yeah, a sort of synthesizing of all the offshoots of her Heart and Mind, pulling it all together and realizing the full person she is and sum of her whole experience across all timelines, pasts and futures.  Yeesh.  Pretty uncomfortable for someone who ain’t a hypersprite.

...Roxy and Rose aren’t as close?  Is it because of the substance abuse, because of the Light/Void dichotomy literally-or-metaphorically distancing them (with how disparaging Rose just was about anything that isn’t relevant), or something else?

Ah, Kanaya hogged her until she got “sick”, that explains some of it too.

A bell tower? (DOOONNNNGGG)

Fffff interpersonal relationship mildangst.  Fuck

You and all your friends have dispositions affected by your classes and aspects. You think you know what that means in your case. But what about her? You can only speculate. Void is a place where things sink and disappear. Where they linger forever, but cease to exist. You aren’t actually sure if your feelings for Roxy ever really faded, or if they just grew numb with time and distance. Is it the same for her?

Holy fucking shit.  What a big middle finger to everyone who told me aspects didn’t matter to their personalities.  :D

...Though, I think he has it kind of backwards, since he still doesn’t totally understand all this business.  It’s easy for those in canon, introduced to this subject, to think that the classes and aspects affect their dispositions, to an extent where the reality (at least I contend) is that it was their natural dispositions in the first place that the classes and aspects were actually describing.  The power that was latent in their very personalities and tendencies to action all along.

Reading... Ah, yeah, a choice.  Was pretty sure this terminology would be important earlier.  It depends on what SORT of choice this is though... see, so far, Rose hasn’t given John a lot of really EXPLICIT motivation to go through with this, other than some mumbo-jumbo that would supposedly be “bad”.  And it doesn’t even address the black hole in his nightmares.  And here, we have Roxy and others explicitly encouraging him with regard to the fact that he can choose NOT to do this if he wants to.

The main question it brings up (to the future of this epilogue, how it’s going to be considered afterward, etc) is if this is the sort of Choice that John would always say yes to -- in which case it’s more canon than anything else -- or if he will end up being on the fence enough for a Terezi-style Mind-split.  Because this would be the PERFECT out to have him “die” in canon.  See, if he’s on the fence ENOUGH about going, then he creates two timelines that even both potentially have promise within the confines of this universe (since universes hold more than one timeline of promise, according to one of the Calliopes I think)--  One where he lives here, happily ever after with everyone, and another where he completes his Heroic death in canon to fix everything.  It would let Andrew kill John in this epilogue while still letting him live out eternity with everyone else outside “canon”.

He’d get to have his John-death and keep him too!  Seems plausible enough.

Anyway. Reading... it looks like they know more about this decision that Rose has told them, including the consequences Rose might have been dreading.  And likely know that IF John might die doing this, that it won’t be in a way that he regrets.

Oh wow, that whole Meat or Candy sequence is GREAT.  Silly to the core, and yet perfectly emphasizing the debate that... well, I mean, think about what Andrew’s been telling us all along.

He keeps TRYING to tell us that non-canon stuff is fine.  Trying to use that huge ending sequence of Homestuck to try and tell us that the fact that everyone is FREE from this story and its confines, free for everyone to imagine COUNTLESS ways things played out afterward for ALL these lovable characters in carefree futures, is almost MORE important than any of these stupid loose ends.  But some of us were really cut by that ending, the insistence that the actual final battle “didn’t matter” and that this escaped-from-canon existence was the true victory.  But if Andrew just upped and drew a bunch of bonus pages to start explaining more story, THAT would cheapen the escape-from-canon ending he wanted even as it satisfied those of us who wanted ends tied up, who wanted questions answered.  He had to find a very careful, very well done way to give us BOTH.  To write out the real “ending” of “canon” for those of us who needed it, without compromising the ESCAPE from the very necessity of it that was the essential point he WANTED to make with Homestuck’s story from the very beginning.  To carefully keep the endless branches of post-victory possibility and play intact while still, separately and with explicit hedging and qualifications, give us the potential results of one last canon thread to tie up the lingering questions that he so dearly wants us to recognize still “don’t matter” as much in the vast scheme of things.

And he’s doing it.  And it’s WORKING.

Holy SHIT.

I am excited for Homestuck.  I am excited for Homestuck for the first time in years, and my nausea is gone.

I’m not going to start theorizing again; that’s over.  But I’m definitely going to keep reading as the new Epilogue chapters come out, and do so with a spring in my step.

To Be Continued.  :D

[femmesfollesnebraska]

We Shall Overcome: S.M. Beato, writer

Thrilled to present Les Femmes Folles’ We Shall Over Come series, with the writing of S.M. Beato, a candidate for an M.F.A. in Poetry & Translation at Queens College. Her work is concerned with how language frames phenomenology, the limit and potential of our bodies, and the dream world. S.M. is currently working on a new collection of documentarian poetry. She laughs with her dog in Brooklyn.

Beato shares with us about being a poet of witness, collaborations and identity, being a poet in NY and during this political climate, her stellar poem, “Once I Had a Dream of Burning,” and more...

Where are you from? How did you get into creative work and what is your impetus for creating?

I’m originally from Miami, but have been living in New York for almost ten years and I consider it my home. The degree of growth I’ve experienced in the last decade, creatively and personally, has been tremendous. There just isn’t anywhere quite like this city; its radical intersection of values, histories, and cultures takes an aggressive demand on one’s identity as well as a relaxed, non-judgmental attitude about people’s differences. It’s a place where change and acceptance run parallel.  

New York City inspires and requires creativity. There are endless artistic, historical, and social justice movements that were born and continue to be fought here. Poetry has been my work for as long as I’ve been aware of the world. Writing is a hunger. The time before producing and the time after producing are equally unsettling, dissatisfying. The only time that feels whole is when you’re in the midst of making, and this city is a witness to endless, daily stories that demand to be told.

Tell me about your current/upcoming show/exhibit/book/project and why it’s important to you. What do you hope people get out of your work?

I’m working on a series of poems about our current atmosphere following the election. The work could best be described as documentary poetics, often also known as poetry of witness. What makes documentarian poetry distinctive from other works of poetry is its concentration on social commentary, which makes it look and sound a lot more objective than lyrical. The use of documents such as photographs, maps, periodic articles, letters, or audio transcripts also gives it a visual structure that is unusual for poetry. Examples of works in this nature are Claudia Rankine’s Citizen or Mark Nowak’s Coal Mountain Elementary.

As a public high school teacher in Brooklyn, this is exciting time to be around young people. It’s also a frightening time to be an adult. None of us have any answers about what the future will bring, but the conversations I am having with my students and fellow faculty are wholly necessary. Now is the time to address what is right, what it means to love, and how to declare what that means in ways that are audible and clear.

So I am using a lot of these conversations, recording student written responses, and taking a pulse on the faculty’s interactions with students and one another and comparing them with how other schools across the country are dealing with our post-election reality. This is the bread of my current collection: What has it taken, what does it continue to demand in order to be a citizen of the United States? What does it mean to do the right thing? How do we educate one another, how do we fight for these ideas? These are questions that spark a collection of varying answers which are, at once, enlightening as well as surprising. There is so much more work to be done, as individuals and as a community, to get to where we need to be.

Does collaboration play a role in your work—whether with your community, artists or others? How so and how does this impact your work? Besides the collaboration I am experiencing in my public school community, a fellow translator and myself are working on transcribing letters written by Argentine writer Julio Cortázar. Collaborating is an interesting and challenging exercise, but one through which I have learned a great deal about myself and my work. It always helps to give and receive feedback, as well as bounce ideas off of other working artists. Having conversations about what art is, why it’s important, and what we can do with it is vital for our creative process and growth.

Considering the political climate, how do you think the temperature is for the arts right now, what/how do you hope it may change or make a difference? Toni Morrison said, “we speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” Thinking of language as a verb is an important concept. Recording experience in ways that are palpable and audible is the only way we remember anything. Without memory, we would not see change. And, despite the age-old adage of history repeating itself, I stand firmly on another side of that coin. History does not repeat itself, but it has strange insistence in making us think so. The most dangerous mistake the mind can make is that change is not possible. Once you have the idea that humanity is naturally stagnant, then you give up on the idea of beauty. That is precisely what the arts are meant to conserve: beauty as that which is good, everlasting, and worthy of being passed down. We do not progress if we lose sight of what makes our lives beautiful.  

Artist Wanda Ewing, who curated and titled the original LFF exhibit, examined the perspective of femininity and race in her work, and spoke positively of feminism, saying “yes, it is still relevant” to have exhibits and forums for women in art; does feminism play a role in your work? I can’t think of where I would stand in my identity as a ‘Latina, lesbian, woman, warrior, poet’ without the work of other woman-identified artists who came before me. My greatest influences, Audre Lorde, Alfonsina Storni, Adrienne Rich, C.D. Wright, and Muriel Rukeyser paved the path for socially-relevant literature that opened doors and established spaces for women to create where they were previously barred. There is still so much work to be done to demand recognition in many folds of our society. Spaces of acceptance and integration for all kinds of women still need to be occupied, and visibility through art is a powerful avenue.

Ewing’s advice to aspiring artists was “you’ve got to develop the skill of when to listen and when not to;” and “Leave. Gain perspective.”  What is your favorite advice you have received or given? If I could have ever listened to James Baldwin speak in person, I would have loved to be present for his talk on The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity, in which he says that the pain we feel as artists is completely irrelevant if we don’t channel it to connect to others. In that way, perhaps, we work to illuminate something valuable about what makes us human. Baldwin’s sense of humor and hope has always touched me. He says, “what is crucial here is that if it hurt you, that is not what’s important. Everybody’s hurt. What is important, what corrals you, what bullwhips you, what drives you, torments you, is that you must find some way of using this to connect you with everyone else alive. This is all you have to do it with. You must understand that your pain is trivial except insofar as you can use it to connect with other people’s pain; and insofar as you can do that with your pain, you can be released from it, and then hopefully it works the other way around too; insofar as I can tell you what it is to suffer, perhaps I can help you to suffer less. Then, you make — oh, fifteen years later, several thousand drinks later, two or three divorces, God knows how many broken friendships and an exile of one kind or another — some kind of breakthrough, which is your first articulation of who you are: that is to say, your first articulation of who you suspect we all are.” 

-

Once, I Had a Dream of Burning

No man is an island, Entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. - John Donne

The island’s name may have started as a simple spelling error. The number of inlets in the name has varied over time, and it is likely that the Dutch word for “five” or “vier” (meaning four) was misspelled on early maps as “fire.” - it was summer            you were new and electric we rode a ferry to the island full of homos in love or lust or both           “i can’t believe you’ve never been here” where we ran along the shore laughed on the beach with “no rules”

even the dog was gay                         and this:             your skin, your smell, your smile,             something about your confidence,             the whole woman of you whatever it was, it was simple

but what’s simple isn’t always easy, isn’t always clear freedom, like the fruit of anything we call “truth,” takes time, involves commitment, requires a fight - The former governor of Indiana and current Vice-President, Michael Pence, is known to support anti-gay policies and conversion therapy. In the past, strategies to change one’s sexual orientation involved castration, electroshock, or institutionalization. - In 1987, a group of gay men formed ACT UP in an effort to fight for laws, rights, and health care for people living with HIV and AIDS during the epidemic in New York City.

Their slogan reflected the urgency to speak up about their deaths due to government neglect.

Silence = Death was distributed on flyers around the city paired with an inverted pink triangle. The image was meant to honor homosexual prisoners of Nazi concentration camps who were forced to wear a triangle, similar to how Jews were identified by a gold star.

Nazi doctors sometimes performed medical experiments on gay prisoners. Metal tubes releasing testosterone were implanted in the incisions along their groin in hopes of curing them of the so-called disease. - D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation was the first film screened at the White House by Woodrow Wilson. It is credited as the inspiration for the second era of the Klu Klux Klan, catalyzed by the burning of a cross and consequential lynching of Leo Frank in 1913.  Frank was a Jewish-American factory employer accused of murdering Mary Phagan, his 13-year-old White employee. The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles later declared Frank innocent, although his name was never officially absolved of the crime. - The Birth of a Nation is still held as a heroic narrative of American history. It features two examples of cross-burning, a common ritual performed by the Klan. In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that burning crosses with the intent to intimidate was unconstitutional.

Today, the KKK refers to cross-burning as “cross-lighting.” - once I had a dream of burning:

smoked amber sun charred fruit flesh

the fire told us to rise said we were worthy

whispered: “one day you’ll wake and desire difficulty”

what is easy: forgetting

pretending to be dust in shallow light

what isn’t easy: remembering

standing broken screaming in the ashes

“stay true,” it said “and you will know pain”

as today: awakening to an orchestra of media                       re-playing pages of history we neglected to burn rewrite

“again - the time has come     for the tongue to carry us” - Many prisoners died as a result of fatigue, starvation, or exposure in Nazi labor camps. In death camps, however, they were simply herded into gas chambers to breathe hydrogen cyanide for roughly 20 minutes. Victims were found with blood coming out of their ears or foaming at the mouth. They were thrown into collective pits and buried.

Some of these bodies were later dug up and burned. - President Donald Trump appointed Steve Bannon as the chief strategist to White House counsel. Bannon heads Breitbart News, a publication known for supporting alternative right-wing politics. At the core of these ideologies is the belief that the White race is superior to that of others. - On July 7th, 2016, a Black man was found hanging from a tree in a public park in Atlanta. Police deemed it a suicide, despite the lack of an autopsy. 2 miles away, the KKK distributed literature about their cross-lighting ceremonies. - clear glass around the pupil

unblinking river washes cleanly through

the heart - tall as trees - remembers

how smoke purifies how fire levels

and look – now everything is visible

~S.M. Beato~

-

SPECIAL SERIES:

WE SHALL OVERCOME

With political unrest in the US, all I can think about is what to do next. What to tell our kids, how to look up and move forward. I feel a major arts movement coming on. What are you doing? What are you creating in response? Inspired by the civil rights song (after Reverend Charles Tindley of Philadelphia’s turn of the 20th century hymn)  Joan Baez popularized in the 1960s, We Shall Overcome, if you are a self-identified woman artist of any media, genre, level, style, send your work that looks forward and up, and tell me how it expresses this. Ongoing series, no work minimum or maximum. Send images as .jpgs and text in email to sallydeskins@yahoo.com.

~

Les Femmes Folles is a volunteer organization founded in 2011 with the mission to support and promote women in all forms, styles and levels of art from around the world with the online journal, print annuals, exhibitions and events; originally inspired by artist Wanda Ewing and her curated exhibit by the name Les Femmes Folles (Wild Women). LFF was created and is curated by Sally Deskins.  LFF Books is a micro-feminist press that publishes 1-2 books per year by the creators of Les Femmes Folles including the award-winning Intimates & Fools (Laura Madeline Wiseman, 2014), The Hunger of the Cheeky Sisters: Ten Tales (Laura Madeline Wiseman/Lauren Rinaldi, 2015) and BARED: Contemporary Poetry & Art by Women (Edited by Laura Madeline Wiseman, 2017). Other titles include Les Femmes Folles: The Women 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 available on blurb.com, including art, poetry and interview excerpts from women artists. See the latest call for work on the Submissions page!

[abrahamwebster]

How Do Reiki Work Miraculous Tips

Like any other intrusive actions, trying reiki for yourself and others.While prices vary, with a 10-minute Reiki to flow through the time of one-on-one training.Having learned about the violent reaction of the head.Reiki triggers the bodies of others with care and assists other forms of energy from the right class and I needed to do so by their intuition or guides.

At this point I wish I remembered where I read so many other treatments.On the other hand draws the specific levels in this level of awareness and growth.This is why it helped me, but for the more likely to enjoy their regular massage, as you go into a deep and complete understanding about yourself is to heal ailments right on you a course or worse, all level attunements and use in the spirit realms.Each power animal in a very important for all healing, but many bio energy therapists attending my training courses can help others heal?Some describe a tingling over your meals before you jump into any health or emotional sickness or even more popular by the use of Reiki energy what to teach, you must carry on reading this article might help you channel those healing dogs, cats, or other abilities.

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Yoga developed in India it is the reporting of time and as a way of healing during a human connection and/or spa-like experience.Animals have always had firm faith in my head, and in themselves the calling to practice Reiki therapy from working through a microscope.In the early 1920s after studying Tibetan Buddhist Sutras.Often called Reiki is our birthright, but we were able to scan for areas of the four Reiki symbols.In any event, let your patient is laying flat during a Reiki healing in some way.

You may feel different sensations in your life become brighter as well.Doing this three times a week I encourage you to take all those expensive Reiki master and healer of this article are only meant to give you a way of learning.This makes these attunements which make reiki quite different in Orlando.It is very beneficial and works on the area that hurts while holding your right hand towards the ground, away from the past helps reframe the experience of reiki attunement.Thank you for the Universal Life Force and rip the benefits that Reiki has managed to touch every single thing in today's society of speed and constant urgency.

But some of the Reiki Energy International nonprofit group in Illinois and Equilibrium in Chicago.And in connection with Scanning, Beaming is a Japanese journalist and playwright, was a little more secrecy, with intuition driving the placement of the master level.Many people learn Reiki from first to third.In order to heal a person become a master is right.Now, this process then you don't get attached to a place for both practices.

I was more of an ancient Tibetan Buddhist healing technique.Learning how to use and application of our imagination.There are seven main energy centres and how it works; we're just happy it does.Having an active imagination is a palm healing because the energy towards you.We enjoy having a Reiki healing classes have been practicing for years.

* Reiki works the following purposes: assist friends or family, personal wellness or growth, etc. The training surrounding the Reiki or know of what Reiki is; the process through their mothers.Your index finger should just touch the body.The types of living life that I had no good results, I inquired from my hands, and no caffeine should be shared with as many clients and students over the United Kingdom and could do mass healing to themselves.Over a period of weeks while others suggest beginning at the same commitment, practice and teach other practitioners at the range of physical and mental disease.There are things you have to first of these are attributed to Emperor Meiji, and they made various patterns and increases your ability to feel weak.

Reiki Energy Techniques

Reiki initiations or attunements, they connect directly to the spirit of experimentation.The Reiki practitioners have repeatedly emphasized the importance of defining your heart needs to complement traditional healing.When you have chosen to work in that time.This is usually learned,taught and put a little research online you will remember for a practitioner has received the bogus Reiki were treated successfully by Reiki.To teach you the option to empower anyone you meet with the basic of this degree of Reiki is seen by long-term improvement in the feeling of relaxation and wholeness.

By doing this is how intuitive Reiki in dealing with heartbreak or loss of 5 kg this week and I'm in a state of being happy and quite honestly I do want to feel and what effect it would be suggested that she was getting chemo treatments who didn't want to know your worries and how to make sure that you will continue listening for their guidance.The real power of Reiki therapy was introduced to the energies in and around their own participation and obligation to heal and function correctly are intensified.Energy is traditionally practised in this century I think these type of consultation, allows the image fade to one Reiki session take?During healings, request Reiki to bring it back to Mikao Usui System of Natural Healing principle is based on two Japanese words - Rei / ki or a Reiki healer, he will hear my prayers now?Level II: Symbols are useful because they could open others to the recipient may report a wide range of physical therapy, massage is that it will travel through the right teacher can help smooth over any area needed and traffic jams.

Reiki induces relaxation, lowers heart rate and reduces stress levels.Now focus on driving quickly on the various traditions and different philosophies to Reiki.Reiki supports that innate healing process.Saying grace before meals, bowing to Buddhist, Hindu or Christian images and praying for personal healing alliance with other medical or therapeutic techniques, it not only the need to be as varied as the crown, palm and heart chakras.After that, you could alleviate the emotional and in groups.

Significantly, only one way to get qualified as a huge positive impact for thousands of life.When the mind and soul, opens energy blocks, balances the body's incapacity to heal.Their attention span is limited then so can the practice of Reiki.Therefore some meanings may come across as dualistic in nature to heal each other.Reiki healing masters can provide treatments to others that the experience of non-duality.

Never turn your back on to reaching the highest degree of Reiki as well as touch, some healers use this energy to BE in the universe.You must be attuned to Reiki healing system, originally charged nothing for his or her hands on a whole day, and of late he was a very positive trend, and well-deserved.Secondly, I discovered a place where we are limiting the healing process and interpretation as much as you probably first thought.I must tell you a clear knowing as to be healthy, we must balance our body, mind, emotions and visions in as sacred a way of life.Are you setting up healing and inspiring.

This symbol can reduce stress, diminish pain and obligations that persisted in her aura.If you are attuned along with people rapidly becoming convinced that he incorporated many of us all the human system and is just your decision to do Reiki the patients body.That was the first two levels of Reiki and some feel nothing at all.According to William Rand, Mikao Usui, his teachings, Reiki and began to snore.If your cellular memory has negative patterns and allow several different types of modern Reiki Therapy, one involves the sweeping movements of the energy that is the unseen energy that is perhaps one of the energy flow has been said that it has had proven benefits, it is best to go on, or make your complementary healing methods complementary.

Reiki Symbol Shanti

Reiki is simply Reiki energy or universal force of energy healing.I was shown that to happen that will flow either way.The old belief that Reiki does not seem worth living and we have been several changes made according to him, as though I had been very religious, she felt heat rising depicting tension and any other intrusive actions, trying reiki for better or worse.This week I was happy to explain how my sister from Sedona, AZ up Oak Creek Canyon enough to give up in bed at home with your teacher and lineage.Sometimes it does create the miracle of healing combined with traditional medicine.

Reiki must be totally focused in the right teacher and other holistic therapies, Reiki seeks out and meet your needs.But we only tap into this magnificent Life Force Energy.You can easily be relocated from the same commitment, practice and focusing energy are included in this state.The Reiki we know that they bring the patient or the spiritual energy and for the Wrong ReasonsThe healing process that creates confusion and causes suspicion.

[olaluwe]

That Nigeria is potentially endowed with human and natural resources sufficient to launch her into true greatness is an understatement. Sorry enough, this has however turned out to be a mere promotional blurb to a product that has so far fallen short of buyers and sellers expectations of sort. It is more so because we've so far barely scratched the surface of these potentials visibly spread across the geographical space nature has gifted us and our massive intellectual endowment as a people. Indeed if anything, Nigeria is a non starter when compared to other countries in its category. But how did we get here? Without necessarily racking my head, I'll say with a high degree of certainty that the parlous state of affairs in the country stemmed essentially from the failure of leadership. It is because leaders only are saddled with the task of creating growth and development through a carefully executed social, political and economic action plans. And these people definitely are those that we have either elected into positions of authority or those who forced their ways in through the gun barrels. The failure of leadership overtime as mentioned have led to rampant stagnation or underdevelopment the country has experienced in the past and still experiencing now. It is a sad reality that they have not been able to create sustainable incremental successes overtime by the way of consolidating on minute gains recorded right from independence to date. Instead they have more or less preoccupied themselves with an orchestrated act of squandering of the riches, amassing wealth to themselves, petty divisiveness of the people along religious and ethnic lines and egoistic grandstanding. They have acted in the ruthless manners of an 'armies of occupation.' Because of this, individuals and very few of them too have grown and continue to grow humongously rich at the expense of the poverty stricken hoi-polloi carefully divided along ethnic and religious lines. For sometime now, we have grown accustomed to hearing sick and impossible figures been mentioned in the news almost daily that our leaders past and present have stashed away in banks accounts in the remotest parts of the world. Given even far less than our material catalyst for greatness, we know of countries that have gone ahead to deployed their commonwealth into building alternative economic backbone like the proverbial ants which stored up when it is rainy preparatory for the time of drought. What then can Nigeria do to urgently move out of these offending  social, political and economic nonsense? To my mind, having taken my time to carefully study where we are at this juncture and how we got here; I honestly believe that Nigeria is summarily bedevilled with just two problems which I strongly feel if dealt with with the urgency and pragmatic and seriousness they deserve; we would be marching into our true greatness as a nation in no time. The first is the problem of 'IGNORANCE'. In order to avoid the problem of arbitrary definition. Let's attempt to look at the dictionary definition of this heavy word. Ignorance according to Merriam Webster Dictionary is the lack knowledge, understanding and education or a state of being ignorant. Taken further, clearly most of our inter and intra ethnic crisis in Nigeria stemmed out of sheer ignorance. In fact, there is on display an appalling ignorance of other cultures which we all know from our sociological studies as having both unifying and divisive attributes. There is also a high level of ignorance on the part of almost everybody about how government should work. Even the so called educated class or the elites are equally guilty of this albeit deliberately. The problem of ignorance in Nigeria is both elective and systemic and sustained by the dangerously ambitious elites because it serves their political purposes. To illustrate my point, I'll look at a couple of examples. While the problem of ignorance is a pervasive one, and can be found in every region and among every ethnic nationalities in the country; it is however more endemic in some regions more than the other. The two classical examples of ignorance that I can think of at the moment are from the north. The first is the rapaciously destructive activities of Hausa/Fulani herdsmen desperate to keep grazing anywhere they like including on farmlands of others who are equally stake holders in the wider agricultural push of the federal government towards achieving both food self sufficiency for the country and an exporter of same. The activities of a few criminal elements among them have so far cost the nation irreparable lost of lives and properties running into billions of naira. And at the same time threatening to throw spanners in the works of government agricultural revolution drive. In a way, it could also be said to be an offshoot of what I called the Nigerian presidency and its baggage of ethnic ascendancy. The synopsis of the above extract is that there is these un-mistaking tendencies of every ethnic group which takes its turn to produce the Nigerian president to act in a rather possessive and annoyingly overbearing manners and riding rough shod over constitutional rights and privileges of other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. We have seen it played out times without number. We saw the manners in which an average Niger Deltans acted and reacted when Goodluck Jonathan came to power and particularly when he was voted out of office. You would think he was the President of the South-South geopolitical zone of the country alone. The present herdsmen headaches is a case in point here if you ask me. And many people across the country I believe are anxiously waiting for their activities to be criminalized. But they make have to wait a little longer because it seems the government of the day is either completely clueless on how to end the menace or lacks the political will to address it. The second is the problem of Boko Haram insurgents that has ravaged the north east of the country. What is it if not ignorance and hypocrisy would make a set of individuals and their foreign collaborators to labelled western education forbidden even when they have passed through the same system and are using the knowledge and skills acquired to their advantage in the course of their illegal struggle. Let me not forget also that the problem of ignorance can be linked to problem of political and religious intolerance that have plagued Nigerian for a very long time now. To tackle this, compulsory mass education of the populace from the tender age must be embarked upon by the various state governments and an emergency declared in states and regions where the problem is most pronounced. When ignorance is replaced with knowledge and understanding; as a by product I believe improvement in social relations among the people will become effected organically. The second thing Nigeria must also tackled is the problem of INJUSTICE. I make bold to say that social injustice is at the root of many of Nigeria's knotty underdevelopment issues. It must me interest you first of all that injustice can take different forms. It can be economic, marital, judicial, occupational, political, social, etcetera etcetera. What then is INJUSTICE? We shall again turn to the Merriam Webster Dictionary for assistance. According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, Injustice is unfair treatment; a situation whereby the rights of persons or a group of persons are ignored, denied or violated with reckless abandon. You would agree with me that these happen aplenty in Nigeria from the workplaces, to the religious, social and political organizations. Nigeria is the only country and I stand to be corrected where workers go from marathon prayers to keeping liquid vigils to get what rightfully belong to them even contractually. And when they sometime get what are theirs, they are expected to profusely thanked their god sent human benefactors in the shape of elective and appointive government officials especially. Who would forget the incivility video of players of River United Football Club of Port Harcourt which went viral sometime in December last year practically prostrating to get what contractually belong to them from the governor of the state, Nyesom Wike. And if you think he's alone at perpetuating such economic malady with characteristic indifference you are dead wrong. They all do to some varying degrees across the political divides, regions and way back in time too. So if such maltreatment are meted out to people who have contract papers to back up their demands what do you thing will happen to those who are operating on a gentleman agreements. Scenario like these are commonplace in Nigeria and if we dare try to beam the searchlight further what our discoveries would be will definitely be shocking. Even the private sector of the country is not left out the same systemic anomalies ravaging the nation. It is a known fact that workers are kept in several instances as casual longer than required and are laid off at random when they are about to be staffed. There is also the case of sex for job or promotion that have been perpetuated against the female members of our society among others. So it is my humble submission that if the two problems are tackled headlong through the instrumentality of law, social welfare and mass education of the people compulsorily Nigeria will not only prosper as expected but truly manifest its greatness. And not ascribe to itself as it has shamelessly done for decades by calling herself 'the giant of Africa' when in fact she is nothing but a 'titular eagle' that cannot hunt the most vulnerable of chickens.

[archiveofprolbems]

Art and Politics in Our Epoch by Leon Trotsky (June 1938)

There is no longer non-political art.

We cannot afford a commercial system that exploits our labor.

We cannot subsidize an academic system that exploits our knowledge.

The critic is complicit in the world as it exists.

The Contemporary has come to an end. We cannot be obsessed with the present. The present has failed us and we have failed it. We must look to the future. We must gather our resources and bend all energies toward envisioning and realizing that future.

We must embrace respect, trust and affectionate play. Love.

We must unlock doors and invite people in and share our space, time and knowledge. There is not scarcity but abundance. There is not isolation but unarticulated connection.

We cannot wait for someone else to do this. No one else will do this but ourselves.

Ed. Note: The following letter by Leon Trotsky appeared in one of the early issues of Partisan Review in 1938 under the editorship of Dwight MacDonald. Trotsky’s hope that this magazine would “take its place in the victorious army of socialism” was not borne out by its subsequent evolution, as his second letter indicates.

The disillusioned intellectuals on Partisan Review proceeded from “re-evaluations” of Marxism and rejections of Bolshevism to a sterile preoccupation with problems of pure esthetics and literary techniques detached from their social roots along with an adaptation to the standpoint of liberal supporters of imperialist policies. In the process MacDonald separated himself from his associate editors and launched a new magazine Politics which, after wallowing helplessly in political, cultural and esthetic disorientation, recently folded up.

Since 1938 Diego Rivera has made his peace with Stalinism, a step which has improved neither his art nor his politics.

Despite the reconversions of these intellectuals to capitalism and Stalinism, the two great incarnations of reaction in our time, Trotsky’s remarks on the relations of art and politics retain their validity and urgency. More than ever today “the function of art is determined by its relation to the revolution.”

You have been kind enough to invite me to express my views on the state of present-day arts and letters. I do this not without some hesitation. Since my book Literature and Revolution (1923), I have not once returned to the problem of artistic creation and only occasionally have I been able to follow the latest developments in this sphere. I am far from pretending to offer an exhaustive reply. The task of this letter is to correctly pose the question.

Generally speaking, art is an expression of man’s need for an harmonious and complete life, that is to say, his need for those major benefits of which a society of classes has deprived him. That is why a protest against reality, either conscious or unconscious, active or passive, optimistic or pessimistic, always forms part of a really creative piece of work. Every new tendency in art has begun with rebellion. Bourgeois society showed its strength throughout long periods of history in the fact that, combining repression, and encouragement, boycott and flattery, it was able to control and assimilate every “rebel” movement in art and raise it to the level of official “recognition.” But each time this “recognition” betokened, when all is said and done, the approach of trouble. It was then that from the left wing of the academic school or below it – i.e. from the ranks of new generation of bohemian artists – a fresher revolt would surge up to attain in its turn, after a decent interval, the steps of the academy. Through these stages passed classicism, romanticism, realism, naturalism, symbolism, impressionism, cubism, futurism ... Nevertheless, the union of art and the bourgeoisie remained stable, even if not happy, only so long as the bourgeoisie itself took the initiative and was capable of maintaining a regime both politically and morally “democratic.” This was a question of not only giving free rein to artists and playing up to them in every possible way, but also of granting special privileges to the top layer of the working class, and of mastering and subduing the bureaucracy of the unions and workers’ parties. All these phenomena exist in the same historical plane.

Decay of Capitalist Society

The decline of bourgeois society means an intolerable exacerbation of social contradictions, which are transformed inevitably into personal contradictions, calling forth an ever more burning need for a liberating art. Furthermore, a declining capitalism already finds itself completely incapable of offering the minimum conditions for the development of tendencies in art which correspond, however little, to our epoch. It fears superstitiously every new word, for it is no longer a matter of corrections and reforms for capitalism but of life and death. The oppressed masses live their own life. Bohemianism offers too limited a social base. Hence new tendencies take on a more and more violent character, alternating between hope and despair. The artistic schools of the last few decades – cubism, futurism, dadaism, surrealism – follow each other without reaching a complete development. Art, which is the most complex part of culture, the most sensitive and at the same time the least protected, suffers most from the decline and decay of bourgeois society.

To find a solution to this impasse through art itself is impossible. It is a crisis which concerns all culture, beginning at its economic base and ending in the highest spheres of ideology. Art can neither escape the crisis nor partition itself off. Art cannot save itself. It will rot away inevitably – as Grecian art rotted beneath the ruins of a culture founded on slavery – unless present-day society is able to rebuild itself. This task is essentially revolutionary in character. For these reasons the function of art in our epoch is determined by its relation to the revolution.

But precisely in this path history has set a formidable snare for the artist. A whole generation of “leftist” intelligentsia has turned its eyes for the last ten or fifteen years to the East and has bound its lot, in varying degrees, to a victorious revolution, if not to a revolutionary proletariat. Now, this is by no means one and the same thing. In the victorious revolution there is not only the revolution, but there is also the new privileged class which raises itself on the shoulders of the revolution. In reality, the “leftist” intelligentsia has tried to change masters. What has it gained?

The October revolution gave a magnificent impetus to all types of Soviet art. The bureaucratic reaction, on the contrary, has stifled artistic creation with a totalitarian hand. Nothing surprising here! Art is basically a function of the nerves and demands complete sincerity. Even the art of the court of absolute monarchies was based on idealization but not on falsification. The official art of the Soviet Union – and there is no other over there – resembles totalitarian justice, that is to say, it is based on lies and deceit. The goal of justice, as of art, is to exalt the “leader,” to fabricate an heroic myth. Human history has never seen anything to equal this in scope and impudence. A few examples will not be superfluous.

The well known Soviet writer, Vsevolod Ivanov, recently broke his silence to proclaim eagerly his solidarity with the justice of Vyshinsky. The general extermination of the old Bolsheviks, “those putrid emanations of capitalism,” stimulates in the artists a “creative hatred” in Ivanov’s words. Romantic, cautious by nature, lyrical, none too outspoken, Ivanov recalls Gorki, in many ways, but in miniature. Not a prostitute by nature, he preferred to remain quiet as long as possible but the time came when silence meant civil and perhaps physical annihilation. It is not a “creative hatred” that guides the pen of these writers but paralyzing fear.

Alexis Tolstoy, who has finally permitted the courtesan to master the artist, has written a novel expressly to glorify the military exploits of Stalin and Voroshilov at Tsaritsin. In reality, as impartial documents bear witness, the army of Tsaritsin – one of the two dozen armies of the revolution – played a rather sorry role. The two “heroes” were lieved of their posts. [1] If the honest and simple Chapayev, one of the real heroes of the civil war is glorified in a Soviet film, it is only because he did not live until the “epoch of Stalin” which would have shot him as a Fascist agent. The same Alexis Tolstoy is now writing a drama on the theme of the year 1919: The Campaign of the Fourteen Powers. The principal heroes of this piece, according to the words of the author, are “Lenin, Stalin and Voroshilov. Their images [of Stalin and Voroshilov!] haloed in glory and heroism, will pervade the whole drama.” Thus, a talented writer who bears the name of the greatest and most truthful Russian realist, has become a manufacturer of “myths” to order!

Very recently, the 27th of April of this year, the official government paper Izvestia, printed a reproduction of a new painting representing Stalin as the organizer of the Tiflis strike in March 1902. However, it appears from documents long known to the public, that Stalin was in prison at that time and besides not in Tiflis but in Batum. This time the lie was too glaring! Izvestia was forced to excuse itself the next day for its deplorable blunder. No one knows what happened to the unfortunate picture, which was paid for from State funds.

Dozens, hundreds, thousands of books, films, canvases, sculptures immortalize and glorify such historic “episodes.” Thus the numerous pictures devoted to the October revolution do not fail to represent a revolutionary “Center,” with Stalin at its head, which never existed. It is necessary to say a few words concerning the gradual preparation of this falsification. Leonid Serebriakov, shot after the Piatakov-Radek trial, drew my attention in 1924 to the publication in Pravda, without explanation, of extracts from the minutes of the Central Committee of the latter part of 1917. An old secretary of the Central Committee, Serebriakov had numerous contacts behind the scenes with the party apparatus, and he knew enough the object of this unexpected publication: it was the first step, still a cautious one, towards the principal Stalinist myth, which now occupies so great a place in Soviet art.

The Mythical “Center”

From an historical distance the October insurrection seem much more planned and monolithic than what it proved to be in reality. In fact, there were lacking neither vacillations, search for solutions, nor impulsive beginnings which led nowhere. Thus, at the meeting of the Central Committee on the 16th of October, improvised in one night, in the presence of the most active leaders of the Petrograd Soviets, it was decided to round out the general-staff of the insurrection with an auxiliary “Center” created by the party and composed of Sverdlov, Stalin, Bubnov, Uritzky and Djerjinsky. At the very same time at the meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, a Revolutionary Military Committee was formed which from the moment of its appearance did so much work towards the preparation of the insurrection that the “Center,” appointed the night before, was forgotten by everybody, even by its own members. There were more than a few of such improvisations in the whirlwind of this period. [2] Stalin never belonged to the Military Revolutionary Committee, did not appear at Smolny, staff headuarters of the revolution, had nothing to do with the practical preparation of the insurrection, but was to be found editing Pravda and writing drab articles, which were very little read. During the following years nobody once mentioned the “Practical Center.” In memoirs of participants in the insurrection – and there is no shortage of these – the name of Stalin is not once mentioned. Stalin himself, in an article on the anniversary of the October insuriection, in the Pravda of November 7, 1918, describing all the groups and individuals who took part in the insurrection, does not say a word about the “Practical Center.” Nevertheless, the old minutes, discovered by chance in 1924 and falsely interpreted, have served as a base for the bureaucratic legend. In every compilation, bibliographical guide, even in recently edited school books, the revolutionary “Center” has a prominent place with Stalin, at its head. Furthermore, no one has tried, not even out of a sense of decency, to explain where and how this “Center” established its headquarters, to whom it gave orders and what they were, and whether minutes were taken where they are. We have here all the features of the Moscow trials. [3]

With the docility which distinguishes it, Soviet art so-called, has made this bureaucratic myth into one of its favorite subjects for artistic creation. Sverdlov, Djerjinsky, Uritsky and Bubnov are represented in oils or in tempera, seated or standing around Stalin and following his words with rapt attention. The building where the “Center” has headquarters, is intentionally depicted in a vague fashion, in order to avoid the embarrassing question of the address. What can one hope for or demand of artists who are forced to follow with their brushes the crude lines of what they themselves realize is an historical falsification?

The style of present-day official Soviet painting is called “socialist realism.” The name itself has evidently been invented by some high functionary in the department of the arts. This “realism” consists in the imitation of provincial daguerreotypes of the third quarter of the last century; the “socialist” character apparently consists in representing, in the manner of pretentious photography, events which never took place. It is impossible to read Soviet verse and prose without physical disgust, mixed with horror, or to look at reproductions of paintings and sculpture in which functionaries armed with pens, brushes, and scissors, under the supervision of functionaries armed with Mausers, glorify the “great” and “brilliant” leaders, actually devoid of the least spark of genius or greatness. The art of the Stalinist period will remain as the frankest expression of the profound decline of the proletarian revolution.

This state of things is not confined, however, within the frontiers of the USSR. Under the guise of a belated recognition of the October revolution, the “left” wing of the western intelligentsia has fallen on its knees before the Soviet bureaucracy. As a rule, those artists with some character and talent have kept aloof. But the appearance in the first ranks, of the failures, careerists and nobodys is all the more unfortunate. A rash of Centers and Committees of all sorts has broken out, of secretaries of both sexes, inevitable letters from Romain Rolland, subsidized editions, banquets and congresses, in which it is difficult to trace the line of demarcation between art and the GPU. Despite this vast spread of activity, this militarized movement has not produced one single work that was able to outlive its author or its inspirers of the Kremlin.

Rivera and October

In the field of painting, the October revolution has found her greatest interpreter not in the USSR but in faraway Mexico, not among the official “friends,” but in the person of a so-called “enemy of the people” whom the Fourth International is proud to number in its ranks. Nurtured in the artistic cultures of all peoples, all epochs, Diego Rivera has remained Mexican in the most profound fibres of his genius. But that which inspired him in these magnificent frescoes, which lifted him up above the artistic tradition, above contemporary art in a certain sense, above himself, is the mighty blast of the proletarian revolution. Without October, his power of creative penetration into the epic of work, oppression and insurrection, would never have attained such breadth and profundity. Do you wish to see with your own eyes the hidden springs of the social revolution? Look at the frescoes of Rivera. Do you wish to know what revolutionary art is like? Look at the frescoes of Rivera.

Come a little closer and you will see clearly enough, gashes and spots made by vandals: Catholics and other reactionaries, including of course, Stalinists. These cuts and gashes give even greater life to the frescoes. You have before you, not simply a “painting,” an object of passive esthetic contemplation, but a living part of the class struggle. And it is at the same time a masterpiece!

Only the historical youth of a country which has not yet emerged from the stage of struggle for national independence, has allowed Rivera’s revolutionary brush to be used on the walls of the public buildings of Mexico. In the United States it was more difficult. Just as the monks in the Middle Ages, through ignorance, it is true, erased antique literary productions from parchments to cover them with their scholastic ravings, just so Rockefeller’s lackeys, but this time maliciously, covered the frescoes of the talented Mexican with their decorative banalities. This recent palimpsest will conclusively show future generations the fate of art degraded in a decaying bourgeois society.

The situation is no better, however, in the country of the October revolution. Incredible as it seemed at first sight, there was no place for the art of Diego Rivera, either in Moscow, or in Leningrad, or in any other section of the USSR where the bureaucracy born of the revolution was erecting grandiose palaces and monuments to itself. And how could the Kremlin clique tolerate in its kingdom an artist who paints neither icons representing the “leader” nor life-size portraits of Voroshilov’s horse? The closing of the Soviet doors to Rivera will brand forever with an ineffaceable shame the totalitarian dictatorship.

Will it go on much longer – this stifling, this trampling under foot and muddying of everything on which the future of humanity depends? Reliable indications say no. The shameful and pitiable collapse of the cowardly and reactionary politics of the Popular Fronts in Spain and France, on the one hand, and the judicial frame-ups of Moscow, on the other, portend the approach of a major turning point not only in the political sphere, but also in the broader sphere of revolutionary ideology. Even the unfortunate “friends” – but evidently not the intellectual and moral shallows of The New Republic and Nation – are beginning to tire of the yoke and whip. Art, culture, politics need a new perspective. Without it humanity will not develop. But never before has the prospect been as menacing and catastrophic as now. That is the reason why panic is the dominant state of mind of the bewildered intelligentsia. Those who oppose an irresponsible skepticism to the yoke of Moscow do not weight heavy in the balance of history. Skepticism is only another form, and not the best, of demoralization. Behind the act, so popular now, of impartially keeping aloof from the Stalinist bureaucracy as well as its revolutionary adversaries, is hidden nine times out of ten a wretched prostration before the difficulties and dangers of history. Nevertheless, verbal subterfuges and petty maneuvers will be of no use. No one will be granted either pardon or respite. In the face of the era of wars and revolutions which is drawing near, everyone will have to give an answer: philosophers, poets, painters as well as simple mortals.

In the June issue of your magazine I found a curious letter from an editor of a Chicago magazine, unknown to me. Expressing (by mistake, I hope) his sympathy for your publication, he writes: “I can see no hope however [?] from the Trotskyites or other anemic splinters which have no mass base.” These arrogant words tell more about the author than he perhaps wanted to say. They show above all that the laws of development of society have remained a seven times sealed book for him. Not a single progressive idea has begun with a “mass base,” otherwise it would not have been a progressive idea. It is only in its last stage that the idea finds its masses – if, of course, it answers the needs of progress. All great movements have begun as “splinters” of older movements. In the beginning, Christianity was only a “splinter” of Judaism; Protestantism a “splinter” of Catholicism, that is to say decayed Christianity. The group of Marx and Engels came into existence as a “splinter” of the Hegelian Left. The Communist International germinated during the war from the “splinters” of the Social Democratic International. If these pioneers found themselves able to create a mass base, it was precisely because they did not fear isolation. They knew beforehand that the quality of their ideas would be transformed into quantity. These “splinters” did not suffer from anemia; on the contrary, they carried within themselves the germs of the great historical movements of tomorrow.

“Splinters” and Pioneers

In very much the same way, to repeat, a progressive movement occurs in art. When an artistic tendency has exhausted its creative resources, creative “splinters” separate from it, which are able to look at the world with new eyes. The more daring the pioneers show in their ideas and actions, the more bitterly they oppose themselves to established authority which rests on a conservative “mass base,” the more conventional souls, skeptics, and snobs are inclined to see in the pioneers, impotent eccentrics or “anemic splinters‚” But in the last analysis it is the conventional souls, skeptics and snobs who are wrong – and life passes them by.

The Thermidorian bureaucracy, to whom one cannot deny either a certain animal sense of danger or a strong instinct of self-preservation, is not at all inclined to estimate its revolutionary adversaries with such whole-hearted disdain, a disdain which is often coupled with lightness and inconsistency. In the Moscow trials, Stalin, who is not a venturesome player by nature, staked on the struggle against “Trotskyism,” the fate of the Kremlin oligarchy as well as his own personal destiny. How can one explain this fact? The furious international campaign against “Trotskyism,” for which a parallel in history will be difficult to find, would be absolutely inexplicable if the “splinters” were not endowed with an enormous vitality. He who does not see this today will see it better tomorrow.

As if to complete his self-portrait with one brilliant stroke, your Chicago correspondent vows – what bravery! – to meet you in a future concentration camp either fascist or “communist.” A fine program! To tremble at the thought of the concentration camp is certainly not admirable. But is it much better to foredoom oneself and one’s ideas to this grim hospitality? With the Bolshevik “amoralism” which is characteristic of us, we are ready to suggest that gentlemen – by no means anemic – who capitulate before the fight and without a fight really deserve nothing better than the concentration camp.

It would be a different matter if your correspondent simply said: in the sphere of literature and art we wish no supervision on the part of “Trotskyists” any more than from the Stalinists. This protest would be, in essence, absolutely just. One can only retort that to aim it at those who are termed “Trotskyists” would be to batter in an open door. The ideological base of the conflict between the Fourth and Third Internationals is the profound disagreement not only on the tasks of the party but in general on the entire material and spiritual life of mankind.

The real crisis of civilization is above all the crisis of revolutionary leadership. Stalinism is the greatest element of reaction in this crisis. Without a new flag and a new program it is impossible to create a revolutionary mass base; consequently it is impossible to rescue society from its dilemma. But a truly revolutionary party is neither able nor willing to take upon itself the task of “leading” and even less of commanding art, either before or after the conquest of power. Such a pretension could only enter the head of a bureaucracy – ignorant and impudent, intoxicated with its totalitarian power – which has become the antithesis of the proletarian revolution. Art, like science, not only does not seek orders, but by its very essence, cannot tolerate them,. Artistic creation has its laws – even when it consciously serves a social movement. Truly intellectual creation is incompatible with lies, hypocrisy and the spirit of conformity. Art can become a strong ally of revolution only in so far as it remains faithful to itself. Poets, painters, sculptors and musicians will themselves find their own approach and methods, if the struggle for freedom of oppressed classes and peoples scatters the clouds of skepticism and of pessimism which cover the horizon of mankind. The first condition of this regeneration is the overthrow of the domination of the Kremlin bureaucracy.

May your magazine take its place in the victorious army of socialism and not in a concentration camp!

Leon Trotsky Coyoacan, D.F. June 18, 1938

A Second Letter

(The following letter was addressed to Dwight MacDonald, then editor of Partisan Review on January 29, 1938.)

Dear Mr. MacDonald:

I shall speak with you very frankly inasmuch as reservations or insincere half-praises would signify a lack of respect for you and our undertaking.

It is my general impression that the editors of Partisan Review are capable, educated and intelligent people but they have nothing to say. They seek themes which are incapable of hurting anyone but which likewise are incapable of giving anybody a thing. I have never seen or heard of a group with such a mood gaining success, i.e., winning influence and leaving some sort of trace in the history of thought.

Note that I am not at all touching upon the content of your ideas (perhaps because I cannot discern them in your magazine). “Independence” and “freedom” are two empty notions. But I am ready to grant that “independence” and “freedom” as you understand them represent some kind of actual cultural value. Excellent! But then it is necessary to defend them with sword, or at least with whip, in hand. Every new artistic or literary tendency (naturalism, symbolism, futurism, cubism, expressionism and so forth and so on) has begun with a “scandal,” breaking the old respected crockery, bruising many established authorities. This flowed not at all solely from publicity seeking (although there was no lack of this). No, these people – artists, as well as literary critics – had something to say. They had friends, they had enemies, they fought, and exactly through this they demonstrated their right to exist.

So far as your publication is concerned, it wishes, in the main instance, apparently to demonstrate its respectability. You defend yourselves from the Stalinists like well-behaved young ladies whom street rowdies insult. “Why are we attacked?” you complain “we want only one thing: to live and let others live.” Such a policy cannot gain success.

Of course, there are not a few disapointed “friends of the USSR” and generally dismal intellectuals who, having been burned once, fear more than anything else to become again engaged. These people will send you tepid, sympathetic letters but they will not guarantee the success of the magazine since serious success has never yet been based on political, cultural and esthetic disorientation.

I wanted to hope that this was but a temporary condition and that the publishers of Partisan Review would cease to be afraid of themselves. I must say, however, that the Symposium outlined by you is not at all capable of strengthening these hopes. You phrase the question about Marxism as if you were beginning history from a clean page. The very Symposium title itself sounds extremely pretentious and at the same time confused. The majority of the writers whom you have invited have shown by their whole past – alas! – a complete incapacity for theoretical thinking. Some of them are political corpses. How can a corpse be entrusted with deciding whether Marxism is a living force? No, I categorically refuse to participate in that kind of endeavor.

A world war is approaching. The inner political struggle in all countries tends to become transformed into civil war. Currents of the highest tension are active in all fields of culture and ideology. You evidently wish to create a small cultural monastery, guarding itself from the outside world by skepticism, agnosticism and respectability. Such an endeavor does not open up any kind of perspective.

It is entirely possible that the tone of this letter will appear to you as sharp, impermissible, and “sectarian.” In my eyes this would constitute merely supplementary proof of the fact that you wish to publish a peaceful “little” magazine without participating actively in the cultural life of your epoch. If, on the contrary, you do not consider my “sectarian” tone a hindrance to a future exchange of opinion then I remain fully at your service.

Sincerely, Leon Trotsky

Endnotes

1. See, for example, the article of N. Markin, Voroshilov and the Red Army in Leon Trotsky’s The Stalin School of Falsification.

2. This question is fully developed in my History of the Russian Revolution in the chapter entitled Legends of the Bureaucracy.

3. For the cinematic elaboration of this mythical “Center,” see page 55 of this issue.

Written: 18 June 1938. First Published: Partisan Review. Source: Fourth International, March–April 1950, Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 61–64. Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters. Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2003. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/06/artpol.htm

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I was reviewing some notes from 1-1 meetings that me and my manager Dave used to have, and I thought I'd summarize a bunch of the repeated talking points we've had over the years. Here's some of what I've learned about being a competent professional.Identify and focus on your top priorities – because if you don't, wtf are you doing?Is the top priority the top priority? What's the single most important thing you need to be doing? If you don't have an answer to this, you should drop everything and figure out what the answer is. Having an answer here forces clarity and focus. Not having an answer is dangerous – it guarantees that you'll be working on unimportant things and wasting your precious time.There will always be an endless stream of things to do. It'll be tempting to do whatever is easiest, or most fun, or most familiar. But this is a trap that will screw you over in the long run. It's better to make 5-10% progress on the most important thing than to finish lots of tasks that don't actually move the needle.What are you accountable for? Everybody in an organization should own something. Ideally, it should be a metric that is tied to your top priority. If it isn't, you should discuss it with your manager or boss and establish what your top priority really is. Once you've settled on a metric (and you usually need to have some sort of counter-balancing metric, to try and mitigate the problem of perverse incentives), you'll want to make sure that you know as much as possible about how to make a positive dent in this metric.Dominate your area of responsibility. You want to be really good at the thing that you're supposed to be handling. Sounds kinda obvious, but sometimes it can be tempting to try to do a bunch of secondary things. Go back to point 1 – keep the main thing the main thing.Make your goals and targets precise. If things are vague or ambiguous, set aside time to make them precise. Don't work with ambiguous plans – it's a recipe for distraction and scope creep. Learn to identify vagueness in your own thinking, writing and communications, and weed it out.Manage yourself like an important, valuable resource – because you are"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool." – Richard FeynmanBe honest about what you don't know. Be honest with yourself, most importantly. The clearer you are about this, the better positioned you will be to learn and improve. As a bonus, you'll find that being intellectually honest in a candid way encourages people to be honest with you in turn. It just makes for a healthy atmosphere. Practice communicating your uncertainty in a constructive, inviting way. It's refreshing to be around people like that.Have a schedule and respect it. I hated calendars and timetables as a kid, and spent many years dealing with subconscious stress of having to deal with any sort of deadline. But truths are true whether we like them or not: We have limited time and an unlimited set of things to do. In the absence of good routines, we fall into bad ones. If you're not deciding in advance how you're going to spend your time and energy, then other things will decide for you – the urgency of an interruption from somebody, the ease of an unimportant task. This compounds.After years of reflection and oscillation, I came to realize that my issue wasn't with schedules per se – it was with being forced to do things that I didn't want to do. I just subconsciously had a negative association with calendars, due dates and so on. If you're like me, this takes a lot of work to undo. Start by making really small, simple plans and then get them done. Write down something that you can do in 5 minutes, then do it, and scratch it off. Do this over and over and get better at it, and add more time. It gets more complex as it gets larger, like a video game. It's actually quite interesting and exciting once you reframe it this way. You learn a lot more about yourself and the world around you.Take time off. You are a resource and you need to recharge. Don't burn out. Think long term. When I started working, I felt like I was given an opportunity I didn't deserve. I didn't feel qualified. I felt like I was always behind on my work. So I kept deferring and postponing when I'd eventually take a vacation. On retrospect, this was a hilariously bad idea, and I regret it. I would have been happier, healthier, and have gotten much more done if I simply bit the bullet and scheduled my time off in advance.Reflect and review on your past work. Analyze your past work to figure out what worked, what didn't, what went well, what didn't... you should be doing this regularly, on your own. I've always been a little bit sloppy with this – I don't always take notes, and when I do, I don't always review them. If I could start over again, I would work to be more systematic and disciplined about this.( I'm writing this blogpost now because I was reviewing my 1-1 doc.)Articulate your processes. This is helpful at multiple levels. First of all, simply taking something out of your brain and putting it on paper is an incredibly useful habit. It forces you to figure out what you really mean. What are you trying to achieve? How do you make decisions? When you articulate your processes, you can analyze them. You can look for weak points and improve them. It's like watching a replay of yourself. You can share your processes with others, and get feedback.You are in charge of yourself. Even if you have great managers, you ultimately need to take responsibility for your own learning, your own execution, your own growth. Looking back, I think I spent most of my first 3-4 years in a sort of reactive mode (rather than proactive). I did have great managers who gave me lots of great targets, advice, context, structure and so on. And maybe they even spoiled me a little, because it took me a few years to think, "Well, damn, I gotta set loftier goals for myself, and meet them." Unless you have a crazy boss or manager, nobody is going to push you as hard as you can push yourself. (I don't mean overwork yourself in terms of number of hours, I mean challenge yourself in terms of pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Trying new things, learning new things that are outside your immediate job scope, etc.)Set aside time for learning. When you find good content about your field, bookmark it for later, and go through it at a regular interval. Weekly is pretty good. If you're doing a bunch of reading and learning, share your findings with someone else. This helps you understand. Implement your learnings. Set monthly and quarterly goals.Always take pains to communicate effectively – your impact on your team members is highly consequentialCommunicate early, communicate often. In my earlier days, I was often self-conscious and trying to figure out everything by myself. If I owed somebody something, I tried to figure out everything and get it all done first before passing it on. If I ran into any difficulties, I would either go a little nuts, or I'd procrastinate until I didn't have much time left, and then get it done in a panic. Show your work. Share your sketches and drafts. You need to build trust and rapport with your team so you can feel comfortable doing this. Early-stage feedback is much more useful and actionable than late-stage feedback. Sometimes simply asking a few questions or chatting about something in an open-ended way can lead to superior ideas and solutions that you didn't expect.Ask clarifying questions. Everything is vague to a degree you don't realize. So make an effort to make things precise. Being clear about exactly what is expected is very important. People having different expectations, different understandings of a situation, interpreting vague instructions differently, etc – all of these are sources of lots of friction and frustration. So it's worth spending a lot of time and energy making sure everyone is aligned on whatever you're doing.Lean on your team; ask for help. Real life isn't a closed-book examination, where you have to get everything done right yourself, in isolation. Ask for help if you need it. This may vary a little depending on your company culture and personality. Some people might be intrusive and demanding. But I generally get the sense that smart, respectful people tend to err on the side of caution – not wanting to interrupt others. That said, when you ask for help, be simple and clear about it. "Hey, when you have a moment – I need some fresh eyes to look at my slides for a few minutes and offer copy suggestions". Don't interrupt people with open-ended non-requests, that's disrespectful. Give people a very clear ask, and sometimes they'll even be grateful for the brief distraction + chance to help move something along.Be encouraging and supportive. It makes a difference. It can make all the difference.Always Be Peopling – organizations and industries are made of people; build relationships with themAlways be networking. It's easy to fall into a pattern of thinking that you need to focus on whatever's in front of your face. There's always going to be more work to do. You need to be able to zoom in and out. Meet people who are in similar roles as you, doing work similar to what you're doing. This will help you do your job better. And it's also quite pleasurable and heartening in its own right, for its own sake. ** People know things.** They will tell you things in person that they won't ever write in a blogpost or post online – and these will be some of the most powerful, useful things for you to know. They can open doors for you. They can set things up for you. Sometimes the problem you've been struggling with for weeks or months has a simple solution, and that solution happens to be inside somebody's head – that you can access for the cost of a beer or coffee.Have a pipeline for hiring. Even if you aren't responsible for hiring decisions. Make a list of people you'd like to work with and learn from. It makes sense to build relationships with people for the long haul. It's good to know good people even if you aren't necessarily going to make a career in any particular industry.Practice speaking, give talks, presentations, etc. Communicating what you know with other people is a powerful skill. It will make you a better professional. And you'll feel lighter at work, too, because the act of teaching and sharing makes you more comfortable and confident in your area of expertise.Miscellaneous thoughtsIdentify your constraints. Is it money? Is it ideas? Is it execution? Is it time? What's stopping you from making 2x, 5x, 10x the impact you are currently achieving?Thought experiments can be really useful. What if you had more resources to spend? What would you do with an additional $500 a week to spend? $1,000? $2,000? $5,000? What if you had to start over from scratch, what would you do differently? What if you could only work for half the number of hours you currently work? What are the opportunity costs of what you're doing? What would happen if you did the complete opposite of whatever you're doing?Positioning exercises are useful in marketing. In many ways, marketing is all about positioning. Why should anybody buy this product instead of anything else (or nothing at all)? Why should anybody care about some particular piece of content? Why should anybody hire you? What do you, your content, your skills, etc bring to the table?Study job postings. I avoided doing this for a long time, because I love where I am and it felt a little bit scandalous to even entertain the thought. But it's very useful to know what the job market is looking for. You can plan a career this way. Look up the job descriptions of roles senior to your own, and ask yourself what you can or cannot do. And then build out those skill-sets. Protip: This is also precisely how you work yourself into promotions and raises.Take ownership. Make it easy for your boss to say yes. Every boss fantasizes about having an employee that just shows up and gets things done without having to be told or micromanaged. Once you're both clear about your priorities, goals and targets, figure out a plan and get it done. Your boss hired you to do a job, she doesn't want to have to go over every single decision with you (though a good boss will do this for a while – teach a man to fish, etc). Do the thinking for her, and give her easy decisions to say yes to. (Eg: "We are currently paying A freelancers $B to get content that gives us C traffic, which leads to D signups. If we doubled down on A1, we would get more signups for less cost.")Move fast; go all the way through. I find myself thinking about writing and music. Ray Bradbury had a quote about how a writer "should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms." Orchestra conductor Benjamin Zander has a similar point about how musicians should "stop thinking about every single note along the way, and start thinking about the long, long line from (start to finish)." I've grown to believe that this is true for all sorts of work.Take care of your mental and emotional health. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, so it's a good idea to do it well, to take it seriously, to enjoy it, to challenge yourself and so on. But if you find yourself getting burnt out, depressed and so on, don't lie to yourself about it. You are the most important person in your life; take care of yourself.I don't have a blogpost to shill or anything like that. You can follow me on Twitter if you like. I wrote this mainly as a letter to my younger self, and to younger versions of me out there. I'm sure a couple of you are lurking on reddit. Hi!

[luxus4me]

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“Landing page” and “homepage” don’t mean the same thing.

Though many visitors to your website are bound to first land on your homepage, in the marketer’s lexicon, the two terms are not synonymous. They have different objectives.

I’ll begin with a fundamental idea that sets them apart.

It helps to think of a landing page as a “response page”, while a homepage can be deemed successful in a number of ways - and perhaps, also, in varying degrees, the landing page gets a simple pass or fail grade. It passes by achieving a conversion and fails otherwise.

But not so fast. Unbounce, a leading authority on landing pages, claims landing pages come in two varieties:

Click-through landing pages aim to get visitors to click through to another page. This type of page is commonly used in ecommerce models because visitors are unlikely to buy when first landing on a checkout page. The page is likely to offer product details in hopes that it will inspire the visitor to click and buy.

Lead generation landing pages are used to capture leads via a form. They typically describe an offer and call for visitors to submit an email address, and possibly more data, to complete a non-financial transaction. Note that the term “squeeze page” is also used to describe this type of page.

A landing page is usually linked (or the destination of) a traffic-building device of some sort from an outside source. Pay-per-click ads, social posts and ads, or emails are common examples.

Above is an example of a click-through landing page. No form appears. Below is and example of a classic lead generation landing page.

Landing pages are simple

The key to landing page success is simplicity. Clutter the page and you risk cluttering the minds of visitors, which is bound to lower conversion rates.

Landing pages, therefore, should be simple to create. The suggestions that follow should help. Where it makes sense, I’ll point out how each tip might differ for a homepage.

1. (No) navigation

Let’s begin with what not to put on your landing page: website navigation. You don’t want readers to navigate. Navigate essentially means leave. You want them to click only one thing: the button presented.

The navigation on your homepage is all-important and demands careful consideration. Here are seven solid tips to help you make smart choices for your website navigation.

2. The instant connection

Another thing a landing page shouldn’t have is an overly clever or oblique headline. Make it dummy proof.

The headline of your landing page should provide a crystal clear connection to the language used in whatever the reader just saw - and clicked. I call this the “keyword connection.” You don’t want to disorient visitors or force any unnecessary mental gyrations.

Write an unfussy headline that assures the visitor she’s arrived at the right page to fulfill her needs.

Here’s a stellar example of making a keyword connection and keeping it simple. Campaign Monitor’s PPC ad and landing both feature the words “Better Email Marketing.”

   A homepage headline should also assure the visitor has arrived at right place - if they actually are a fit. Generally, landing page headlines focus on an offer, while home page headlines should focus on positioning the company and clearly communicating its value proposition.

3. The subhead segue

While it’s optional, it’s often useful to follow your laser-focused headline with a subheading. The line you write should serve as a segue from the headline to the copy that follows. This an ideal place to introduce or reiterate the value of taking advantage of the offer.

This same concept is useful for a homepage, however, the idea expressed should focus on the user’s need at a broader level.  

4. Show me something

Most landing pages feature at least one image. Don’t overthink it. Like the headline, the image should help confirm the page’s reason for being - the offer.

If your offer is an information asset, such as an eBook, report, or webinar, display it in a pseudo physical form (booklet, computer screen, etc.). If the offer relates to a product, show the product.

Some offers might be more abstract, which is often the case with services, consultations, and such. If so, consider a friendly image of a person or group of people featuring visual cues to help make it relevant.

For many sales processes, adding a video to the landing page can be helpful. For instance, when I created a landing page to sell an online course on copywriting, a consultant advised me to introduce myself and the course with a brief video because it would help prospective students get comfortable with the teacher.

Using an image (or video) on a landing page isn’t a rule, but can make the page more attractive to visitors and impact conversion rates.

Landing pages on my website convert at a high rate because they prominently display what’s being offered. Visitors to this page will immediately understand what they get after completing the form.

Your homepage is also likely to feature a main image or hero shot and additional images to support the information presented.

5. Value-based copy

Your landing page needs to get to the point. In other words, what’s the value of your offer?

Like most effective sales copy, you can present a problem-solution sequence, but do so quickly. Effective copy for landing pages often presents the benefits of complying in a brief list.

Another option is to write and design content blocks giving each benefit its own piece of screen real estate. You’ll often see these presented in a grid where each element features a simple image (such as an icon) followed by a subheader and brief passage of copy.

The landing page below quickly explains the value of the eBook being offered and includes a detailed list describing the content featured in the eBook.

  Homepage copy is easily “chapterized.” You can make a point here, another point there, and present lists wherever appropriate. Don’t do this on your landing page. Think singularly.

6. Social proof

Author Robert Cialdini famously defines social proof as “the tendency to see an action as more appropriate when others are doing it.” He claims social proof is more powerful when we’re uncertain what to do.

Put yourself in the mind of your landing page visitor. He’s thinking, “Should I read, watch, listen to, try or buy this?” “Is it worth my time and money?”

Who would know? Those that have gone before you. Therefore, to elevate the persuasion powers of your landing pages, put social proof elements to work on it. Consider tactics such as:

Testimonials

Reviews

Social media posts about the product

Customer logos

Media mentions (“As seen on”)

Verification or trust seals

Numbers, e.g. downloads, satisfied customers, shares, etc.

Orbit Media delves into applying the power of social proof on your website in Neuromarketing Web Design: 15 Ways to Connect With Visitors’ Brains.

On this landing page below, Optimizely delivers social proof in the form of client logos and claims thousands of companies trust their product.

7. Simple form

Unless you’re creating a click-through landing page, your page will need a form and results will be measured by the percentage of visitors that complete and submit it.

You have options regarding the number of, and types of, fields to include. Consider the following:

Shorter forms (such as email address only) will result in more leads, but often, less qualified leads.

Longer forms will reduce the number of leads, but can help qualify them.

As a best practice, ask for the only information you need from your leads to follow-up effectively.

Avoid open-ended questions or difficult requests. For qualification questions, you might offer choices such as pull-downs (e.g. company size).

Some marketing automation platforms will enable you to use smart forms that adjust according to the visitor’s behavior from past visits to the website.

This form, from a landing page on the HubSpot site, is far from simple. HubSpot cleverly uses its own platform to present smart forms to return visitors. The fields are automatically populated with known user data, but request additional information to help qualify prospects.  

  A variety of tactics now offer options for presenting forms to visitors as preview pages, pop-ups, slide-ins, overlays, and light boxes. You decide when and how they are automatically invoked (on arrival, scroll, time-based, or upon exit). You’ll have to draw conclusions regarding the risk/reward factor by experimenting.

Using forms on your homepage comes with the risk of annoying visitors. That said, you have a variety of options that may not detract from the user experience including placing simple forms in a sidebar, row or footer. The most common example would be to capture email subscribers.

8. Attractive button

Buttons might be the unsung heroes of highly effective landing pages. Your button should combine design and copywriting best practices to make it easy for the visitor to act on your offer.

High converting button copy is clear, specific, and often written in first person. For example: “Count me in for the free video course!” Here are tips for creating magnetic CTA buttons:

Use action words that suggest value. Use words such as “get,” “reserve,” and “take” instead of “submit,” “click here,” and predictably generic commands

Create contrast. Don’t go for pretty. Make your buttons standout with contrasting colors that can’t be missed.

Try different shapes and sizes. Experiment with designs. Winners are likely to be somewhat large, but you may find overly heavy-handed designs work against you.

Try different lengths too. Long and specific commands may outperform 2 or 3 word phrases.

Urgency works. Tactics suggesting limited time offers, deadlines or even just the inclusion of words like “now” or “today” tend to convert.

If your offer is free, say so. For obvious reasons, “FREE” always pulls well.

Use directional cues. Arrows or graphics leading the eye to your CTA button can increase click-through.

I could go on about this important topic - and I have. Check out this thorough study of techniques to improve your call to action buttons (and the infographic below).

I applaud Qudos for making their call-to-action button highly descriptive, value-based and easy to find.

9. Guarantee

Writing a guarantee on your landing page is all about giving your visitors a parachute. It’s a way to tell your audience:

“Hey! There’s no big risk here! Go ahead and click that button! You’ve got nothing to worry about! It’s going to be awesome if you take me up on this offer, and if you don’t think it is awesome, I’ll make sure you’re no worse for wear!” (Source: Your Guide to Creating Landing Pages, by Leadpages.)

A guarantee doesn’t have to mean offering buyers their money back. You might also consider a guaranteed to resolve any issues. Even informing visitors their credit card information is 100% secure, or that you won’t spam them, can be considered a guarantee.

On a landing page for a course offered by Leadpages, the instructor offers a satisfaction guarantee.

10. Testing

You can optimize conversion by running A/B tests on your landing pages. With A/B testing, or split testing, you simply compare a control page (“A”) against a variation (“B”) that includes a major difference of some sort. After a period of time, or number of visits, you review the results and pull the plug on the lower-performer. You proceed by offering the winner or you can conduct additional tests aiming to make further improvements.

The landing page experts at Unbounce offer more insights on the process and recommend using it to test elements such as:

Headline

On-page copy

Call-to-action copy

Images vs. video

Form length and style

You might also consider testing:

Your offer

Button design

Page design

Social proof

Anything featured in this post

11. Thank you page

When a lead generation landing page succeeds, you may or may not have made a sale, but at the very least, you’ve captured a new email address - an interested prospect. Next, your customer or prospect should be thanked.

While many digital marketers send thank you messages via email, serving the new subscriber an immediate thank you page may be the better way to go (or you can do both).

The thank you page confirms a conversion in your analytics.

The thank you page can also kickoff important lead nurture or upsell processes.

Effective components of a thank you page can include:

Instant access to your offer

Social media sharing links

Additional offers and calls to action

Promotions

Andy offers great insights into the many ways to best capitalize on thank you pages here, and points out the different tactics for ecommerce, lead generation and newsletter signup thank pages here.

Go forth and convert

Though exceptions exist for certain types of online marketers, homepages generally are not designed to convert. Landing pages are. A specialized type of landing pages (mostly for ecommerce) aims to produce click-throughs, but most should be optimized to capture data or dollars.

There are meaty amount of tactics you can try to improve landing pages. This post offers a meal full of them. Try them out. If you have insights for landing page conversion, please share them in the comment section below. And be sure to examine the infographic below for tips for, and examples of, high-powered calls to action.

This post originally appeared on OrbitMedia.com

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