Category - commentary

Acerbic observations on the state of the world, art, politics, and culture.

Hello…. What’s This?

And…. who are all you people?

For the past ten years or so, I have been using  MailChimp to send out an automated “Weekly Digest” of things I posted to my personal (i.e. vanity) website/blog, CohesionArts.com.

When I looked my MailChimp account recently, there were ~500 subscribers to the list.  I found about 150 obvious ‘bot’ subscribers.  After purging those I still have about 350 names on the list.

When I look through that list… I have no idea who most of the subscribers are.  And I suspect a lot of them are still bots.

I mention this for a couple of reasons.  First, I got off Facebook last year, and now I am making a genuine effort to find my tribe outside the feudal (and futile?) estates of ‘social’ media.

Hence the question… who are you people??

If you’re real, this might be a good time to identify yourself somehow.  Try sending message to this email address and I’ll make sure you’re added to the ‘Dunbar List‘ (no need to resubscribe if you’re already getting the automated emails).

The other thing that’s going on here is a rebranding.

I’ve dropped the “Cohesion Arts” domain and now everything has been relocated to IncorrigibleArts.com.

“CohesionArts” was something I came up with when I thought my then-future-ex-wife and I  were going to do photography projects together. Well, that never happened, and the marriage itself went the way of 50% of all marriages three years ago.

Besides, I’ve never been entirely coherent or cohesive (if you doubt that, read my second book).

But I’ve always been incorrigible.

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Signs of the Season

Looks like we’ve survived another winter.  It’s not entirely over yet, there is still a week until the Equinox and there is even snow in the forecast for the coming weekend, but one day it’s just buds, and the next day it’s leaves.  So something is still right in the universe, even if everything is going off the rails here on Earth.

Look Up Ahead…

…there’s a hole in the clouds!

I think this has been the coldest winter I can remember since moving to Nashville… ohmigod, 28 years ago.

There hasn’t been much snow to speak of.  We had our one annual ‘winter precipitation’ event back in January, a few inches of snow that stayed on the ground for a couple of days until the sun came out.

What’s notable about this winter is just the daily temperatures seem lower than I recall.  I’m sorta thinking daily temps during these months are in the 30s and 40s.  This year it seems like the 20s and 30s, and often in the teens when I go out for my 2-3 miles ‘morning constitutional.

And this past week has been just one cold, grey day after another.  And that’s just when it wasn’t raining buckets.

I guess the good news is it has stayed warm enough that there hasn’t been any snow.  I know a lot of people like it when it snows.  I like it too… until I have to go somewhere.  It’s the mix of snow and travel that I find un-tempting. Of course that hasn’t been much of a problem over the past month, since I haven’t really had any place to go

Anyway… I went out this morning around 7:30 for a three-miler, and as I was walking across Lone Oak Drive about a half mile from my house, I saw the strangest damn thing: an actual patch of blue in the sky!

And whenever that happens, I immediately start thinking of this song by John Smith:

Look up ahead… there’s hole in the clouds.

And, hallelujah, it looks like we’ve got some sunshine to look forward to in the week ahead.

I hope I can find some place to go, it’s been too long since I’ve had the top down…

 

Next?

This has been my mantra over the past week or so, re: my dismissal from Apple (email me if you need the password) on Jan 20 after five years of seemingly meritorious service :

  1.  If they hadn’t pushed me, I don’t know if I ever would have jumped.
  2. I don’t know what’s next, but I am intrigued that there is a ‘next’.

I’m in good shape, at least for the time being, even without the bit of income I received from Apple that helped make my ends meet (or, as I half-joked on occasion, because I am old and have other means, “I could actually afford to work for Apple…”).

As the photo above illustrates, I’m floating free, and looking for a soft place to land.

(Incidentally, when I went a-Googling for a picture of a wing suit and first saw these images, my first response was “oooh… that looks like fun!  I quickly came to my senses 😱)

Over the past decade, I dissipated a lot of creative instinct,s impulses and energies into social media… but I’ve been off of Facebook (and Instagram) since June of last year… and now I will attempt to focus that energy here.

Right now I’m just fondling the focus ring, thinking about which way to twist it.

Stay tuned, more to come.

 

Recycle #1: Begin At The Beginning

This is a test.

I am experimenting with a slide-show plugin for WordPress.

These are photos from the 1970s…

My Fruit Stand Termination

Above: a portrait of the Silicon Slinger in Happier Times – ca. February, 2017

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Long story short:  on January 20, 2022, I was “terminated” from my job as a part-time product specialist for Apple, Inc. – after working for more than five years at their retail outlet in the Green Hills Mall in Nashville, TN. 

As the story that follows details, I was fired for the grievous, cardinal sin of… asking a customer for her phone number.  

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After 70+ Years…

… I’m finally owning it.

This is who/what I have been since the first time I got sent to the principal’s office.

For drawing a ‘naked stick figure’ of my third grade teacher, Miss Gaul.

Who, in hindsight, probably had no business being protrayed as naked in any context.

But what did I know, I was only 8 years old.

And already incorrigible.