Greetings, everyone,

Happy 2021 to you all.

Now that it has been approximately a year of intermittent letters…

I thought I would reflect on these reflections... in a let's-tease-out-some-themes, meta sort of way, if you catch my drift. That is Part 1. I'm sending this part today.

Tomorrow, I will send Part 2 which is a more personal and holistic 2020 reflection from me, aside from this newsletter.

I know everyone reads newsletters in different ways, so I have a few ways for you to experience this. You can read it right here, or you can open it in a new tab if that’s better for you. I also recorded this newsletter with my voice… so if you’d like to listen instead, or listen while you read along...

( listen to me reading this aloud ) ... 13 min, 15 seconds

Part 1. Reflecting on Reflections

I began this newsletter as a way to reflect on things in the world.

You might know I use the emoji 🎐 to refer to this newsletter. It’s a wind chime emoji. Maybe you can hear it twinkling softly in the wind now…

By using this emoji, maybe the idea here is… by writing this newsletter, I’m picking up the wind. When I feel it… I ring the bell… I write.

With this newsletter, I was interested in things often overlooked, maybe because they’re subtle or invisible (like the wind)… places, things, or vibes that most people think are boring, but I think are interesting… subtle things that have their own life…

🎐

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Just for fun, I’m going to try to summarize each newsletter...

before pandemic

1. place-making ambient works
mysterious but specific design of underground train stations helps me be curious about the specific place above-ground. i wonder how these mysterious symbols work with memory.

2. favorite place ⭐
i have a favorite spot in nyc that’s something most people overlook. it’s actually an instrument. i’m often overwhelmed by the abundance of new york, so i try to have a “let’s play” attitude towards it.

early quarantine

3. midnight walk ⭐
the pandemic happened. it’s a portal. i went on a walk at midnight with a group of people and felt transported to a new zone. i wonder what it would be like to go blind / to lose my vision.

4. oracle blossoms
the pandemic plus the springtime has made me noticing mourning dove sounds outside my window more. i used a mourning dove as the visual mascot of an alarm clock app i collaborated on that uses a neural network to compose a completely new melody every time it's set to go off.

5. ambient cemeteries 🌟
i took a walk to green-wood cemetery. people are lounging there. it seems useful to weave death into everyday life more. names are important memory triggers that are also everyday. maybe names of the dead are the true ambient cemeteries.

middle (?) quarantine

6. public memory
i saw google’s kiosks in nyc public space displaying the names of the dead… those black people tragically killed by police brutality. i wonder how to remember these names and bring them into everyday life and ritual.

7. ambient friendship
here’s an essay i wrote, called “green light goes,” about what love means to me, and a proposal for a networked device to help us feel closer to our friends. also it’s part of something larger about intimacy and the internet which i’ll tell you more about next time.

8. a flower is not a flower
the essay from last time is part of the “internet onion.” it’s this writing anthology i orchestrated with my old class that you can visit online. here is taichi’s excerpt from it, which i think is really beautiful. also i like when my parents talk about outer space.

9. music on youtube ⭐
youtube comments on videos uploaded only for their music are some of the best, most loving writing publicly available on the internet. i think audio will be huge on the internet in the next decade, especially as our eyesight deteriorates from too much screen time.

10. what effect does wallpaper have on a lifetime?
i like looking at my ceiling before bed. its texture calms me. also here’s a picture of the wallpaper in my grandparents’ old home. it’s generic but mysterious at the same time, and i love it because i see a duck that other people don’t see.

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So, what do I notice about all these together?

My favorite newsletters (marked with star) seemed to start with an exploration in physical space… often a walk somewhere. Or, it started by taking a “walk on the internet” in an internet flâneur fashion, with the sole purpose of observing what is interesting and not having a pre-destined path.

An important thing to note is that I started most of these reflections on a special device, my Pomera DM30.

I began my first newsletter saying,

I want to write in a way… in which I don’t know exactly what I’ll write before I write...

I'm not saying this device (the Pomera DM30) is the only solution, the only way to enter this state. But as you can see, I am interested in environments and how the affordances of those environments affect us, so of course I am interested in changing my writing environment to encourage this state...

I’m not sure how well I actually adhered to this constraint, as sometimes I typed my newsletter entirely on the computer.

In my fourth newsletter, I changed the visual style to be more Pomera-like, with a monospace font and brown-gray background. I went back to my default style the next newsletter because it felt too forced.

And in my fifth newsletter, I included an image of my Pomera at the end… to prove I started it that way, at least.

This fifth newsletter (“ambient cemeteries”) was probably my 🌟 favorite of all ten. I started it on the Pomera and later did a couple drafts using Dropbox Paper. I spent the most time on this newsletter out of all others; I also got the most help on it. (Thanks to Meg Miller for reading a previous draft!)

It started by me literally walking to the cemetery and observing people lounging there and being curious about that. The lounging next to graves felt so #pandemiccore. I was inspired, wondering how to weave death more into my life ambiently as a way to actually feel more alive. I excerpted a large part of Maya Lin reflecting on her work on the Vietnam Memorial and the power of names. And I ended by saying:

Maybe names of the dead are the true ambient cemeteries. And their power to be interacted with by the embodied living—touched by hand, like those engraved in stone, or spoken aloud with the voice, by those remembering, is the true portal from our earthly realm to the one beyond.

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I wrote ten newsletters. Maybe you noticed this is how they shook out throughout the year:

1 & 2 = before pandemic

3, 4, 5 = early quarantine

6, 7, 8, 9, 10 = middle (?) quarantine

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I consider newsletter number six the beginning of middle quarantine because that’s when the coronavirus became not the top story but more the setting, the mood, the environment. This happened because the tragic killing of George Floyd came center stage.

This sixth newsletter (“public memory”) was about the public displays of names of those black people killed by police brutality. It was a strange coincidence I wrote about names of the dead in the newsletter prior (“ambient cemeteries”).

It's another strange coincidence my newsletter began before COVID, as my second newsletter (“favorite place”) involved me reflecting on what would soon be mostly unreachable. One of my favorite places was the “golden DDR pad” (my name for this often overlooked interactive musical instrument in the LES). My other favorite place in NYC was my bedroom. This was partially a joke, but also somewhat serious. Who knew that I would be spending a lot more time than I imagined in my second favorite place this year!

A few years ago I wrote about how both artists and wild animals are considered sentinel species … acting as forecasting systems to social, cultural, and political shifts of the world. They are sensitive to environmental shifts, making them sometimes good indicators of what's to come.

Relatedly, choosing to write this newsletter made me more sensitive, and therefore more aware. I'm sure lots of creative people feel this... Maybe we can feel the invisible energies (like wind) more intuitively. By choosing to write (or create generally), we have more probes out in the world, figuring out what topic is most palpable right now.

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Anyways, stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow. Till then...

~

Peas on Earth,

Laurel