Reading/Books/Art check in, 2025

August 28, 2025

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This is a brief outline of some of what I’ve been up to since maybe May? The spring was a blur, to be honest. I’ve been very active in terms of reading/coding/drawing this summer, but almost none of it gets online, which sometimes makes it seem like I’m living inside a badger den. But initially the point of this blog was to fill in the gaps and keep a log of where my brain is at. So, this is an incomplete account of the past 9 months mental churn.

Dworkin: I read the majority of Dworkin’s work in 2024. I still have some more to go through. Finger to the wind, I’d say a revival is incoming, if it hasn’t already hit—I mean like a real mainstream revival. Partially due to the reprints, partially due to the Gender Wars laid out in the past election. I think understanding Dworkin requires actually *reading* her, because people IME tend to be extraordinarily suspicious of her at arms-length but fall in love once they open Right Wing Women. Particularly the passage about Monroe. It could be tricky to have such a nuanced writer re-emerge during a time when no one seems to be reading—much to think about.

I read two Victorians, Bronte and Woolf. The new adaptation of Wuthering Heights by Emerald Fennell is bound to make everyone deeply annoying about the Brontes for a while, so I’m bracing myself. Hoping to read Anne before the other shoe drops.

Re: To the Lighthouse, despite being such a short book, I found it so deeply deeply deeply sad that I struggled to finish it—but I did. I can’t even think about it without getting a knot in my chest. Julian thinks I’m crazy for this because he found it very life-affirming. I guess I agree, but it’s so affirming of all of life including death and the pointlessness of pursuing art, and I guess there’s still part of me that resists accepting those things.

I have a renewed interest in doing Master copies, possibly because of 9-5 induced depression—feels good to really *master* something. Ha ha. Increasingly, I struggle with interpretations of visual art made by people who don’t draw. I’ve always believed drawing is the root of all art but lately I’m starting to think there’s like a fundamental branch of reality that clarifies when you start to draw from life+from the imagination/third eye. You don’t even have to be particularly good at drawing to get access to this branch, it’s totally perceptual/psychological/whatever, but there you go. I copied a painting by Ingres using a pencil I bought from CVS + a 2H, a 6H, and a 4B, a few brushes+loose graphite powder, printer paper, and a kneaded eraser. It felt amaaazing.

Good book: “The Practice and Science of Drawing”, by Harold Speed. Best chapter so far was on Rhythm in drawing/composition.

I finished Normal People. Not having read anything else by Rooney, I took an interest now because of her being targeted as a terrorist by the Irish government for her support of Palestine/criticism of Israel. I had avoided her writing before because I had a hunch it wasn’t going to be particularly artful. And while I wasn’t proven wrong, I was happy to see Rooney touching on this cynical attitude towards Art in the final quarter of the book. She comes across as someone who basically wants to be a cultural critic but doesn’t trust the authorial voice of someone who has decided to make themselves a cultural critic. Can’t help but respect that. Her characters are sort of weak because they’re vessels for ideas, and when they’re not at the center of the text (as Connell and Marianne are), being a vessel for concepts/ideas makes Normal People’s villains into puppets/punching bags for the Thoughtful (Jamie, Peggy, Alan). I think Normal People is a book by someone who resents the pointlessness of art but chooses the artist life anyway because it’s the only thing that feels honest. E.g., Connell, the writer, looking into Marianne, the listless outcast, seeing an endless expanse of Void, and, despite every self-protective instinct, is unable to resist continually going all in on void. And Marianne, the cynical politics junkie, envies but is unable to resist the optimism and strength of Connell’s sincere attitude. I really don’t like the blasé way the Very Special Normal People articulate themselves so very precisely in every moment of intimacy, because it leaves little room for the reader to fantasize or have a real “role” as a reader. Like, college freshmen apologizing and maturely communicating their failures in the moment they experience them? As if. But it’s not really about the reader’s fantasy, it’s about Rooney’s fantasy of being able to lay everything out neatly. Honestly it barely felt like a romance between human beings or even analysis of social class as much as it seemed to be about loving art/ideas and hating yourself for it, and watching the graceful life of the mind you naively aspired to fall apart at your feet, which like, yeah. So true.

I’m a little over a hundred pages into The Golden Notebook. It’s sort of blandly written in comparison to the ecstatic prose of Woolf and CharBront, but that’s not a bad thing. And Rooney’s blunt, terse sentences makes Lessing’s descriptive capability look like Baudelaire. I think it’s a good read for me right now, politically speaking, like for my current place in life as I try to wash away the illusions from 7-8 years of Twitter brain.

I forgot The Golden Notebook on the train today actually so I keep telling myself I’ll use the time on the train to draw but today I scrolled Reddit instead. I gained nothing from doing this. I guess I learned about a new fragrance from r/fragrance. Lol.

Oh, also I read Junkie by William Burroughs this spring, and was going to read Queer, but I haven’t yet. In the introduction there was a passage about Burroughs as this caustic miserable brilliant 1950s gay who did yoga while smoking cigarettes during the summers at his parents’ old world St Louis mansion. Such a vibe.

I’m writing applications for various Art things, which means writing a bunch of different artist statements, and I don’t think this passage is going to make it in anywhere (not useful or functional for an application), but I still kind of like it so I guess I’ll include it here:

“Like seeing a raking light cast an oblique shadow, sometimes an encounter with an artwork is disorienting, yet the illusion can vitally change one’s perspective.” […] “I admire the scene in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive at Club Silencio, where each short moment of musical resonance is broken by a revelation that it was only ever an illusion. Each time we try to break out of our experience, we’re inevitably, pathetically limited. Yet, again and again, the audience submits themselves to the ecstatic disappointment of believing in art. I long to make paintings about this very leap of faith, to make something that could become that allegorical raking light for my own audience.”

Regarding artmaking, I still only draw on printer paper, and I’m struggling to either accept and commit to doing things that way, or else I must strive to overcome it and Work Big. I’d like to Work Big. But to be honest, it’s the budget thing that sort of freaks me out. I’m always finding reasons not to do it. But I’d spend $100 on other things that are certainly less important with much less nail-biting. Probably that means I need to get over it. I’d like to make a big painting to hang over my couch. Listing out motifs right now, like I usually do when trying to find a subject, things that come to mind are skyscrapers and like geometric layering with a lone figure striking out towards it from a flat surface in the foreground, looking up. That or something wearing a very elegant mask in a barn with no walls. Idk, something like that. Cool colors and muted earth tones with one very strong jewel tone, minimal/stylized nature imagery (like a zigzag line for grass, and smooth glossy surface with a few moments of texture in rocks or things.

I notice myself moving away from strict grid compositions in my art, which is great, feels like I’m growing.

I made my first project in Javascript and it (the project) sucks, but I found the process very addictive. I think my second one will be better. I also made a lot of site updates last week — not sure I’ll ever feel “finished” but things feel like they’re moving, which is nice.

At work, we are (of course) talking a lot about AI, but my boss is sort of turning a corner and embracing a lot more ethical and functional critiques, which is a good opportunity for me, who is very AI bearish. Although it’s silly, I do think UX people are in a good position to wrangle our clients away from smoke-and-mirrors AI “optimizations” that will hurt them long-term.

Good book (I’ve only read like 30 pages): Abelson’s “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs”.

Julian asked me what I want to do with my Javascript knowledge, and I don’t really know exactly beyond “make cool websites/games”, but I think it’ll really help my thinking. I admire Everest Pipkin’s game design work for instance. And when I work on websites, I know having a sense of Javascript will help with UX work because I’ll be able to build and implement the components I design, making Devs lives easier, which is an asset. Alsooo AI engines can’t really “read” Javascript when scraping a website because of privacy and bot permissions and things like that so it’ll get me get real with clients and articulate the limitations of something unfairly hyped.

I travelled to the upper peninsula with friends for the Hiawatha Folk Music festival, which was very special. Laura’s disposable camera pics came out so nice, which is inspiring me to take more of my own pictures, and to go hiking more and feel more ecologically attuned. I use one of those AI mushroom identification apps now which has been fun. I also bought two basil plants, and one died, but one lives, so I’m going to try harder to keep a little herb garden on my new porch.

Goals for the end of summer: go swimming more, finish the Golden Notebook, make a new oil painting, wrap up my case studies, get more art and projects online on my website, apply for a few more jobs/art things.

Summer, in images:

Arielle looking sweetly for tadpoles bathed in silver light.

Laura serenely gazing into the distance.

My drawing of frumpy fairy god creating society or something? Analyze this. I had William Blake on the brain and briefly glanced at this other abstract photography reference book for some reference but this was really stream of consciousness.

My Ingres copy

Spooky me lurking in shadow.

Corny stills I designed and drew for a corny agency project, which I actually think are super cute.