Good evening, everybody,

What's up? Not too much new with me...

Oh, pardon me... actually so much has changed since I last wrote !!

I moved apartments. So now I'm typing in a much larger room than I normally type. I wonder if my typing is echoing at all...

Anyway, there is a lot on my mind. But for now, this quiet Tuesday evening, I thought I'd pass along this reflection from last month. It came out of a workshop I did with students on the theme of love online.

Comments on YouTube videos that are uploaded solely for the music are some of my favorite writing on the internet.

Maybe it’s obvious to say, but let’s say it: Of the arts, music is on the most abstract mediums, allowing the right music to unite many different kinds of people. I think this is one of music’s many powers. Music is universal.

Recently I listened to a new song, one I hadn't heard before. My friend sent it to me one morning. I found myself absolutely “wrecked” (in a good way) in the middle of the day, a few tears streaming down my face, reflecting the afternoon light while I sat in my kitchen. “How could such a music gift exist on this planet?” I wondered to myself.

Others wondered, and voiced their observations, too. “It’s so beautiful I feel like I don’t deserve it…” said one user.

Indeed, the musicians’ voices *were* so soothing. They might be like the Gods speaking to us, telling us stories of long ago. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe the reason I love this song so much is because my dad used to play this song for me when I was a baby. Now whenever I hear it, I have this memory of feeling very content… Yes, this song is a wonderful “unknown” gem. The people who know and understand its true beauty are on a higher level.

Another user chimed in, “I just listened to this song for the first time and I cried. Not from sadness but for the immense gratitude of finding a piece of my soul I never knew existed.”

I’m thankful for these comments because they show me there are still places to find a glowing, lovely energy in “public” space online.

What I mean by “public” space online is: not locked behind logins and still index-able by search engines. There are growing theories that the internet at large has turned into a “dark forest” (as described by Yancey Strickler), where the more vulnerable and meaningful conversations happen behind closed doors, away from the mainstream.

Different people are deciding different ways to approach this “dark forest” online … some retreat into the forest (private DM’s, Slack or Discord groups, Darkweb, etc.) for self-protection and self-growth, while others realize we still need to be investing energy into the mainstream and public internet. And some oscillate between the two.

Where does love exist publicly online, anyway? I find it’s often underneath surfaces, in cracks and margins, in temporary spaces… beneath videos on YouTube in the comments, which you can only read when you’re on a Desktop computer (not easily on mobile or Roku).

Are YouTube comments kind of like puddles? It reminds me of Anny Liu’s writing, “How to Encounter a Puddle,” where she concludes:

What can be learned from the humble puddle? I wonder how they could present new models for publication. To this end I think too of Jack Halberstam’s “low theory” in The Queer Art of Failure, where he outlines inroads to non-dominant and resistant modes of being, knowing, and learning, recuperating failure as a practice and locating sites of “more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world.” Similarly, the puddle may lead a precarious existence, but it thrives in these very same in-between, overlooked spaces. A puddle infiltrates, interferes, and ultimately vanishes, only to replenish itself anew.

Maybe their temporal nature, or tendency to be overlooked, is why accounts like @DiscoComments exist. The account copies and pastes comments from YouTube videos uploaded for their disco music content and tweets selected comments frequently…

It’s so happy and beautiful and thoughtful and bittersweet *

A cute song from the mid 1980s that was arranged with the help of the classic synths and samplers of those times. *

Me too...its so amazing the 80s...im almost 48 and im still discovering 80s dance songs I've never heard and now I'm deep into synthwave and can barely keep up with it *

These hidden gems are portals into the lovely connective energy of the internet. I’m glad to have found them.

I’d like to expand on this more, but I think music and audio in general I think will be huge this next decade on the internet, especially as our eyesight deteriorates from too much screen time. We will also need more and more what the abstract power of music gives us: connection throughout all of humanity.

Speaking of, I just pre-ordered my Oda today. (My friend Dan Brewster worked on the project.) I'm excited and soothed by its potential.

Spinning away,

Laurel

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