#10: hello

to old friends and those i’ve yet to make

the letter by anna-laura

hello friends,

last year i told myself i would write 100 posts and at a certain point realized that even if i wrote one every single day until the end of the year, i wouldn’t be able to finish, and i didn’t really feel motivated to. substack is a weird place where i know that some eyes (and those eyes have names! i’ve since disabled the stats page) will end up on my words, where experimental form does not have room to breathe, and there is an underlying pressure for consistency. it was good when for when i needed a place to start but i’ve found myself writing anonymously again. i’ve also begun to write shorter notes to myself. the new goal is  100 posts of some type of writing (count is at 17 now), which feels much more doable and fun. 

i’d love to use this as a place to keep track of me, to use this blog as that last box when you’re packing up a room. the one you throw leftover possessions into and slap with the label “miscellaneous”. last year i applied to phd programs that start in the fall and two weeks ago i withdrew from my master’s program to focus on personal art/research in what could be my last funemployment-able few months. it’s a little scary and intensely thrilling to think of. sadly, time has not multiplied with my excitement so i’m making a little syllabus for myself and in the process wondering how to grab the tendrils of curiosity and make them work together in a more focused direction. 

i’m also really late on resolutions and goals:  the new year came around when i was at home in the suburbs, an admittedly already reality-bending place any way you look at it. there was an immense feeling of grief for the past year, for the pieces of me that i felt i had lost, a new retroactive loneliness. i used to say i would love to go off into the woods or some small town beach city and just create art by myself, painting and writing my days away. prolific only for myself. i don’t think that’s true anymore — although i still believe that long bouts alone are incredibly conducive to creative productivity, i have a desire to be around people now. to rub ideas and witness and be witnessed. it’s impossible to create art and poetry for the web without feeling drawn into the connections they create. 

in my phd interviews, after hearing my interests one professor asked why not be an artist instead? which is a good question. a really great question actually, and one that i’m hoping to investigate thoroughly these next few months. art is being specific and hoping that others find in it the universal. in my research i want to create tools that allow others do that in new ways, to contemplate the role of technology in the space, and overall exist a little more universally. there’s always been this tension i’ve felt as an artist whose research works with generative models. in many ways it feels like pandora’s box has been opened and we are working towards hope, to make it something good. 

resolutions: for these next few months, i’m specifically trying to bring my art more into the real world. I want to create physical installations, learning all of the hardware/making/hammering that goes with it and find new collaborators, communities, and conspirators. in this next year i want to be formless. genreless. casually shameless and intensely present.

- a