Peaceful pendulum

Went for a walk this evening, to gather thoughts on a talk I am giving on Friday. Listened to Slipping Away, by Brian Eno and John Cale like 5 or 6 times. It’s one of those songs that I’m stuck to in such a way that when it gets near the end I quickly rewind it so that I can feel the peaking of it again, to create the illusion that it is infinitely playing. I find it so beautiful, especially when the three harmonized voices come at the end. They are computerized, but with 80’s computers, so there’s an analog feel to it–like the voices were cut and assembled with scissors.

I am giving a talk on Friday about you, Coolguy, and making web pages in general. It’ll be to some art students that I don’t believe have any web design or html experience. I am excited to speak about this thing that I love to people for whom it is all new. I remember one of my early influences for you was a newsletter from Zak Sally talking about how he started taking HTML classes at some Minneapolis community center and how cool it felt, that everyone should make a website. It was a small press publisher and cartoonist advocating for HTML, which was a series of letters I knew but in this untouchable way, this monumental language. I wonder why it always feels so astounding to remember that you can just write it, that you can make a webpage so easily.

I want to remember, and lean into, the fact that they want me there–they invited me to speak on the subject I love. I get embarassed talking about it in mixed company, that I go too woo-woo or nerdy or go on for too long, so I quickly switch the subject, apologize for having a verbal rave-up. I feel like it is a pendulum swing: when i first got into html and esoteric internet history I was truly annoying about it, and would shoehorn it into conversations, and spent too much time in the weird tunnels of my computer. So I corrected, brought it up less. I also, healthily, remembered that I liked physical things too: liked making people laugh on stage, liked writing in notebooks, liked being outside. The web was something I tried to avoid outside of work, and wouldn’t bring it up with friends. But I was up in Auckland this weekend, on the patio of Basement theatre, talking to Jak after their show, and mentioned this guest lecture off-hand which led to a convo about the internet, and my site, and this whole other world that I’d never really shared with this set of friends. There’s no good in hiding parts of yourself. It felt nice to have this mix, to be in the warm night air having a riff with comic friends while talking excitedly about HTML. I like this site and the history we have together. I want to talk my weird shit more. I am disillusioned with computer technology because it is so englamouring, a false solution to a problem it created. But it is also sincerely mystifying and special. I want to find the balance, to make a home here again without getting lost in the code sauce. I want some web version of Slipping Away, a technologically boosted song about how pretty the night sky is.