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  • What is Marshall McLuhan Talking About?

    What is Marshall McLuhan Talking About?
    2024/10/01

    Is the Medium Really the Message? Notes and reflections on McLuhan For Beginners.

    📚 Buy this book: Marshall McLuhan for Beginners

    If you use my links to buy your books, I’ll get a kick back from Amazon, Jeff Bezos will make a little less money, and it won’t cost you a cent. 🤫

    ------------------------------

    This episode is available as podcast and video (on Substack & YouTube.)



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    1 時間 9 分
  • I Bought BOOKS

    I Bought BOOKS
    2024/09/18

    If you’re listening to this in the podcast feed, I recommend going to Substack and watching the video. Here are the books:

    * How the World Ran Out of Everything Peter S. Goodman

    * The Lost City of the Monkey God Douglas Preston

    * 1Q84 Haruki Murkami

    * Small Giants Bo Burlingham

    * The Smoking Diaries Simon Gray

    * Homogenic Emily Mackay

    * Pretty Hate Machine Daphne Carr

    * 69 Love Songs LD Beghtol

    * Swordfishtrombones David Smay

    * A System for Writing Bob Doto



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    23 分
  • (re) How to Be Great? Just Be Good, Repeatably

    (re) How to Be Great? Just Be Good, Repeatably
    2024/09/11

    My notes and reflections to “How to Be Great? Just Be Good, Repeatably with Steph Smith” on David Perrell’s How I Write Podcast.

    Source:

    Full notes and quotes available for paying supporters.



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    1 時間 3 分
  • My Delusion, Our Illusion

    My Delusion, Our Illusion
    2024/08/16
    Every month, my bank account sadly, whispers the same question: Is this the month your dreams drown?Refrigerator magnets and YouTube gurus will tell you to follow your passion and you'll never work a day in your life. But they fail to mention what it looks like when you don't get paid. That's the reality of pursuing creative endeavors: conflict. And conflict only increases each month driven by the same pressure that millions of people with "real jobs" feel, the pressure of financial stability.Can I make enough money to stay afloat?It’s a water level which consists of two invisibly thin lines: 1) having enough money to pay all that needs to be paid, and 2) receiving that money in time to pay what needs to be paid. I’ve been struggling with the second in secret for several years.There’s a certain level of performance involved in all creative online work. We generate holograms of our lives, digital myths spun from carefully curated moments. A girl transforms infrequent weekend getaways into the appearance of a jet-setting lifestyle, strategically dispensing travel photos throughout the year. Suddenly, her life looks like one continuous adventure. It’s almost an art—and, almost completely, bullshit. But aren't we all guilty of this kind of performance to some degree? We delete. We edit. We filter, and we present versions of our lives that look nothing like the messy, mundane realities of them. We become avatars of ourselves.For years, I've been a character in my own fictions, fictions I wasn't even aware I was writing. The life that I presented was a canvas of carefully chosen omissions; a mastered craft of the partial truth, letting others fill in gaps. The assumptions made about my life were far more flattering than the reality ever was. It was a fiction written by what I left unsaid.This is how writers perform. We edit out the reality that most of us are struggling just to pay our internet bill.Every time I think about this, I think about a real estate agent I knew. As far as I could tell, she wasn't a very successful real estate agent. She just didn't sell many houses. But you'd never guess it from looking at her car. Every year, without fail, she'd be driving a brand new model. Her logic? "Can't look broke in front of clients." And you know what? She had a point. If your agent's car is worth less than your TV...I think, for writers, the pressure to project success has a less obvious link to motivation. It’s not a one-to-one relationship. There’s some hazy psychology mixed in like: “If I admit that most months I'm panicking about the due-dates of my bills, would anyone take me seriously?”The connection between financial stability and credibility isn't as clear as a realtor's justification for a new car. But it's there, constantly pushing. Maybe the whole thing is as simple as this: worrying about money makes me feel like a failure, and feeling like a failure makes it hard to confidently put my thoughts out into the world. And admitting these things publicly ties me to them. The reality becomes unavoidable. So maybe I do like pretending I’m more successful than I am.But feeling like a phony isn't even the worst part. It's the conflict this creates within me.There’s one side of me that sees my actual skills, and my talents as a path forward. The more I write, the more I put myself out there, the closer I get to the possibility of that becoming my career, which is the promise of sites like Substack and Beehiiv (and even X), isn’t it? Stick around long enough, improve, develop an audience, and build yourself a sustainable income.Then there’s the other side of me that feels the pressure of impending collapse. I’m holding it together now, but for how long? And is it even really in my control? I can do everything right. I can show up. I can do my work. I can pay my bills. And yet one thing, one late payment, one client who decides they’ll pay me after they come back from vacation–one small thing can create a chain reaction that will crumble everything.Adding to this pressure is the weight of family perception and image. The people closest to me do not understand the world we live in, they don’t understand how it’s changed since the 1950s, and how it’s continuing to change right now. To them, all of this online creative work isn't work - it's something I need to 'grow up' from. They see me as a child who never matured, because for them maturing means giving up on what you want, getting a job with good benefits, and suffering through it until you retire. To them I'm a fool and a waste of potential. And their judgment becomes yet another voice ringing in my ear and rattling around in my chest.All of this pressure manifests as a need to hurry up; to get there faster. Build faster. Write faster. Edit faster. Start more projects. Dump more projects. Switch from one thing to another. Pivot. Change. Make short videos. Optimize. Move quickly. Because in this frantic world standing...
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    12 分
  • EX - The Creative Act (2023) Rick Rubin

    EX - The Creative Act (2023) Rick Rubin
    2023/12/21

    It's time to penetrate deep into the creative process. These are my extensive excavation notes on Rick Rubin's book, which is more meditative than instructive; more philosophic than analytic; more silent than deadly. It's the kind of book you pull off the shelf when you've hit a creative block so that Rick Rubin can whisper the names of his favorite fruit into your ear.

    The Creative Act

    Steven Pressfield on Tetragrammaton

    Tarot and the Law of Cycles by Mitch Horowitz

    Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

    The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

    Kevin Kelly on How I Write

    The Victorian Internet episode

    Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen

    Homicide: Life on the Street

    The Outsider by Colin Wilson

    The Dip episode

    Getting Things Done by David Allen

    Benjamin Franklin episode

    “When Dove Cry” by Prince

    The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

    Stripped documentary

    Checkout the full list of books so far.

    Don’t forget to go subscribe to my deconstructionist fiction project: The Thing That Devours Everything

    Go down the nerdy rabbit hole with Digital Disaster

    @curlygruene on X



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    2 時間 16 分
  • ST - How To Listen To Jazz (2016) Ted Gioia

    ST - How To Listen To Jazz (2016) Ted Gioia
    2023/12/14

    Punk rock was never as punk rock as jazz. It was a middle finger and a damn good time. But jazz is intimidating (and sometimes pretentious in modern times) we need bridge or maybe just a cracked window so we can here those sweet sweet horns. Jazz is cool, ya dig?

    How To Listen To Jazz

    The Honest Broker (Ted’s Substack)

    Don’t forget to go subscribe to my deconstructionist fiction project: The Thing That Devours Everything

    Go down the nerdy rabbit hole with Digital Disaster

    @curlygruene on X

    And if you’re just a little bit curious to see if my newsletter sucks ass or not…



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    26 分
  • ST - And Then There Were None (1939) Agatha Christie

    ST - And Then There Were None (1939) Agatha Christie
    2023/12/07

    It’s finally time for fiction, for murder, for mystery, for butler’s and brandy…and lots of dead bodies. I put my glasses on for this. Maybe afterwards you can tell me why the candlestick is in the conservatory. Why the hell there’s a noose in the dining room. I’m starting to think this isn’s a dinner party.

    And Then There Were None

    The Mysterious Case of Agatha Christie

    The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

    Dive into the archive by checking out the complete list of books I’ve discussed on the show.

    Don’t forget to go subscribe to my deconstructionist fiction project: The Thing That Devours Everything

    And if you’re just a little bit curious to see if my newsletter sucks ass or not…



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    25 分
  • ST - Benjamin Franklin (2003) Walter Isaacson

    ST - Benjamin Franklin (2003) Walter Isaacson
    2023/11/30

    The ladies loved Benjamin Franklin. Bet you didn't know that. I guess he didn't always look like the Quaker Oats mascot. He was a man who did more that one life should be able to hold. And he refused to be defined, and was often shit on for not being reactionary & quickly choosing sides. We could sure use more Ben Franklins today...can we at least...

    Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

    Dive into the archive by checking out the complete list of books I’ve discussed on the show.

    Don’t forget to go subscribe to my deconstructionist fiction project: The Thing That Devours Everything

    And if you’re just a little bit curious to see if my newsletter sucks ass or not…



    Get full access to Read or Die A Slave at readordieaslave.substack.com/subscribe
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    26 分