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rambles and half-essays

Tag: blog

  • rage and trying our best

    KM Brunner

    Often I feel like I’m not doing enough. Enough work, enough connecting, enough good. There isn’t a cure for feeling this way; it’s a cyclical process, to feel content, discontented, angry, desperate, determined, and content again. It’s unrushable and right now, for me, only just bearable.

    Because I am so tired. It isn’t burnout – or it is, just not a kind I’m familiar with.

    A week ago, I was walking home from Davis Square when I started to notice that the sidewalk was filling with people. It got more packed until the crowd erupted into Tufts Park, along with metal barricades and yelling and two people being cuffed by the Boston Police Department.

    All that sounds very dramatic but it wasn’t. The yelling was from bullhorns – “go to Harvard Square!” – and the arresting of protesters seemed like an activity both parties (protester/cop) were submitting to, rather than relishing. A reporter and his cameraman sat on a curb smiling, sharing a cigarette or a sandwich (couldn’t see in the dusk), and I walked into the park and around the barricade without issue.

    Not even a sideways glance from a cop.

    I was carrying a bouquet of tulips. Someone complimented them (the flowers were gorgeous) and I said thank you, hoping they thought I was carting flowers around for a good cause. Really, the tulips were given to me for five years spent working at the university. A corporate gift.

    Part of me wanted to go to Harvard Square with the protesters, but mostly I wanted to go home. I had a long day, so I denied the part of me that wants to do good. I don’t know if I regret it.

    Rage is an emotion that exhausts; I feel a lot of it, which is why I’m so tired. It’s making me feel my age for the first time in my life, which is a weird symptom I didn’t expect.

    Like most of these entries, I don’t have a conclusion. There’s nothing for it, anyway; our rage is alive and almost creaturelike – autonomous. It’s all I can do to keep it leashed, you know?

    Recommendations:

    Music: Billie Eilish is growing into her voice. This live session blew me away.

    1. Over the weekend I went to the Power of Narrative Conference at Boston University and it was inspiring. Terrifying, but inspiring.
    2. Been bringing the books I don’t want in my library to a used bookstore for credit. It’s just a good thing to do! I don’t want them to get pulped, which is what I think happens to a lot of book donation places.
    3. A friend of mine started playing regularly at Café Zing in Porter Square! They’re very good and so is the café.

  • submitting and rejection

    KM Brunner

    I got my first rejection in years – not because I’m particularly good, but because I haven’t submitted in a long time. And forgot how it felt. I care again.

    Why do I care again? I can do music live in front of hundreds of people and not give a shit, but I God forbid I get a rejection for a couple pieces of flash fiction. It was the nicest rejection email of all time, honestly, but it’s got my feathers ruffled.

    It’s extremely hard to ruffle my feathers. That’s probably why I’m writing about it. I’m also writing about it because I’m starting to understand that it’s pretty brave not only to submit pieces, but to write about failures. Lots of authors write about their rejections, and because I always likened it to playing a bad set, I’d (ungenerously) think, “Just try again. Not a big deal.”

    But it’s not like a set, is it? The writing remains. You’ve still got the product, even after the rejection hits your inbox. It makes the piece feel like a limp, dead thing. Roadkill in the palm.

    You ever scrape up roadkill?

    And those pieces – I knew they weren’t great. I don’t know if even I would publish them, if I were an editor. Maybe I’ll put them up here once I can’t feel the sting. Where else are they gonna go?

    This would be much more painful if I submitted something I love.

    I know I’ll climb out of this funk by midday, go eat some noodles, and do my work, but for a moment I need to sit with my coffee and brood. So that’s what I’ll do, I guess.

    There’s nothing to be gained by continuing to indulge in self pity, so I’ll give you a list of other things to read, watch, listen to, and know about.

    • I’m relearning how to play the piano. I was bad before, I’m worse now, but I got out my keyboard and it’s been fun. I almost purchased a new one because I’m great at jumping the gun. This is that keyboard. Instead I’m going to stick with my 61-key midi controller to make sure I actually want to play the piano. Sometimes my ADHD will spark a manic drive to learn/do something, and then it’ll snuff it just as suddenly.

      Four years ago, these producers all flipped the same sample and it was a very cool thing. There are a bunch of videos like this but this one is my favorite. ABSRDST is very charming and is a great reminder that innovation can and will be born out of necessity. Also, I love to watch people lean into themselves and refuse rules. Diveo seems like the sweetest young man.

      – Comic – Once and Future by BOOM! Studios – a great characterization of a senior female character. I LOVE this series. It’s just so fun. No intense undertones or much to overthink, which is nice for me right now.

    1. interest or manipulation: how the algorithm fucks with us

      KM Brunner

      Hello! I talk a lot about creativity, art, etc. That said, I’m also a digital marketer. It’s my day job to be the villain of the internet, and though I do write about this – thematically – in almost every piece I work on, I try not to get into conversations about it in my real life.

      I am not exactly pro-internet. I’m certainly not anti-internet – it is a beautiful invention. What I do want us to acknowledge is that because the internet is made for the marketer, and not the consumer, you are being thrust into a power dynamic that will never, ever benefit you. As I’m sure you’ve heard, you’re the product. The platform sells you, and even if it’s not a typical data leak/sale, they’re still selling you.

      It’s worse than selling your information, I think. They’re not giving me your email, which you could theoretically ditch if you needed to; they’re giving me your eyes and your time.

      There’s a reason most tech employees with children don’t let their kids engage with the internet much – it’s the same reason I don’t use my phone very often. It is not made to make you feel good, it’s designed to hold you hostage by catching your attention, which means exposing you to extreme content. And so your echo chambers get more and more intense, prejudices get justified by outright misinformation, etc.

      The statement “the algorithm,” or “your algorithm,” is a horrifying one because it tells me how much the general public knows – but won’t acknowledge – about their online spaces. You know you’re being served content based on your interests…but that’s not quite it, is it? You’re being served content to pique your interest.

      That distinction is what’s radicalizing us.

      Oh, are you interested in getting a girlfriend? Having trouble? You could be too short. Do you have acne? Well, whatever – girls are mean anyway – I mean, obviously, because they don’t talk to anyone, especially not you. But maybe they’re not worth getting to know! They suck. Girls aren’t that smart, because God knows you’re a catch, even if you are short. But you can get taller – did you see that surgery? It’s expensive but you can get rich to get it, you just gotta grind. Then you might be able to compete. Because naturally tall guys are cool, sure…but they’re all such assholes, they don’t talk to you either! The popular people, those tall guys and their girlfriends, they’re why you don’t have friends. It sucks to spend all your time alone, huh? But there are tons of guys just like you, and they’re all so angry and lonely. It’s common to be so angry; everyone who’s interesting feels like that. Maybe normal people just aren’t worth it….at all?

      Do you know how to buy a gun?

      …

      The current internet leads us, it does not serve us. And if you don’t question the way it’s structured, maybe you will be influenced to buy that gun. Who knows? Radicalization can happen to anyone, especially to a vulnerable person.

      I have to stop writing about this or I’m going to cry. There are ways to use the internet that will hurt us less, but it requires willpower and reframing the way we see ourselves.

      In my opinion, there are two ways to remove oneself from this toxic digital landscape:

      1. Give up the internet. Leave. Make your art for yourself. Go to shows. Make friends, kiss those friends. Wake up to the sun and not the screen.
      2. Be painfully earnest and unflinchingly honest. Do not brand yourself – your personality will do it for you. Do away with shame, lean into being cringe. Make your art for twenty freaks at a time who you know will like it. Prioritize the art and not the sale. Free yourself and disobey the nature of the platform.

      I haven’t decided which approach I’m going to take, so stay tuned. Maybe me writing here – on the internet – is a tell, but that might change. This is not the first blog I’ve started.

      …

      I don’t even really smoke, and I need a cigarette.

      No recommendations today, but shout-out to the smoke shop around the corner whose door I’m going to darken in about ten minutes.