I started a Substack for 2024 titled “1st Responder.”
It is free and provides more timely updates if you’re curious what I’m up to in San Francisco.
From the Substack description:
“Eric Raymond's San Francisco notebook. Found under Sutro Tower for the city beneath the bridge. Ghost sightings, graffiti, familiars & emergencies.”
https://substack.com/@ericraymond
My essay “Revisions” will be published in Issue 45 of the Bellevue Literary Review. I originally worked on this essay in the Tin House Summer Workshop in 2022 as well as a Vermont Studio Center residency in Spring 2023. Danielle Ofri and Scott Oglesby co-edited the version of the essay set for publication.
In conjunction with the issue launch, I am part of an online reading scheduled for Thursday, October 5th at 7PM ET. The event is free on YouTube and a reminder/registration page appears here:
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/bellevueliteraryreview/1007532?
I will read a brief excerpt from the essay followed by a short interview with BLR editor Ronna Wineberg.
“Revsions” is from my memoir-in-progress, RATE OF CHANGE. The memoir engages with my experience as a full- time caregiver in a marriage, and recounts my journey navigating my partner’s progressive disability and death from a rare neurological disease at an early age.
It is intended to help current caregivers feel less isolated by engaging with the many unsayable aspects of providing for their partners and themselves, including infidelity, addiction and co-dependency, suicidal ideation, the right-to-die and medical aid-in-dying, and perhaps most importantly, the unclear path back to life when the caregiving ends, including the emergence of new love. In particular, the manuscript focuses on the heightened complexities of these experiences in the ongoing reality and wake of a global pandemic.
For millions of caregivers, anxiety, depression, and burnout are common side effects of living in what storyteller and hospice-contrarian Stephen Jenkinson calls the “death-phobic and grief illiterate” context of globalized capitalism. RATE OF CHANGE aspires to be a lifeline to those dutifully love-bound to the dying of another.
For inquiries about the memoir, please contact me directly.
Update: The recording of the event is now available on YouTube.
Two pieces, both make more sense to me than anything else I’ve read online in a long time:
Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid by Jonathan Haidt.
and:
Living Past the End of What Exactly by Ken Baumann.
On September 1st, 2021, I deleted my remaining social media accounts. This included Twitter and Instagram. I quit Facebook a long time ago, and I’ve never used other platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, etc.
After reflection, I came to the conclusion no benefit derived from social media justified its misalignment with my values and the negative impact it has on my life. As they exist today, social media platforms are unworthy of my attention, and I will not use them again.
If you’ve followed me on Twitter or Instagram and wonder where I’ve gone, this is my explanation.
I am tired of:
the fractured attention and habitual self-interruption;
the expectation I be reachable via DMs;
the interface’s continual erosion of my ability to control content I do not want to see;
the elevation of the trivial to the urgent-and-vital;
how the marginal joys of serendipitous discovery are grossly outweighed by the torrent of noise, advertising, and poisonous discourse;
the degree to which people hooked on the platforms seem more prone to depression, anxiety, self-righteous outrage, bitterness, addiction to catastrophe, diminished self-esteem, and creative paralysis;
the illusion of intimacy ambient information fosters without building real relationships;
the fact that social media manipulates and exploits us to enrich companies and shareholders without regard for the toxic consequences of their decisions; and
the myth that real-time consumption of online information, disinformation, and misinformation means one is a well-informed citizen and meaningfully engaged with society.
My reasons are by no means universal. Others seem to feel social media enriches their lives, and there are plenty of writers, artists, and academics who have come to depend on social media for their careers. There are also many who do not.
If need to get in touch, please email, call, or text me.
If you feel defeated or paralyzed, these reminders may help you redeem your creative practice. I came to these conclusions when—after ten years of disciplined writing—I lost my way and needed to relearn how to sustain my artistic interests. Given that all creative processes are personal and the definition of art remains subjective, I report to you from within my experience without intending to invalidate other perspectives. These truths are personal.
Do not be seduced by the idea that you can or should earn a living from your art. Odds are, your money-making life has never substantively or sustainably resulted from your artistic practice. It may have even forced you to broaden your definition of what your “art” consists of, (though you know better, don’t you?) The fairy-tale marriage of your art and your money is a scheme to claim a public identity as an artist within a capitalist culture. When you need money, look elsewhere for sources. Consider the pursuit of money as an endeavor discrete from your art. Money buys time to make art, but relying on your art for money corrupts your ideas and your process. It makes you chase ideas which seem profitable and coerces you to create in a way which pleases the people or organizations paying for your art. Yes, it is possible your art will make money, but this will always be accidental and can never be relied upon.
You do not need to rely on external, commercial validation in order to create art. The ego is insatiable, and when you chase publishing you are attempting to satisfy the ego. The ego tells you that publishing legitimizes you as a real writer. (If you doubt this, take measure of your emotional response to self-publishing.) The ego tells you that the product resulting from your process is the ultimate goal and reward. These are lies. There are other ways to share your art with people, ways which build more profound connections. Collaboration, correspondence, and performance are a few superior alternatives. Through these means you may even be approached by publishers (though harboring this as a secret desire is similarly toxic to your process). If you are approached, be discerning. Maintain the integrity of your decisions on the page. If you don’t, you will feel betrayed by your compromises. The ego is a seasoned addict and will always crave greater doses of reassurance.
The process of making art gives you a sense of purpose and enriches time with meaning. Hours spent negotiating your creative interests and ideas are the highest reward. The memory of life lived while making art will satisfy you in unexpected ways. If you resist this and fail to write, be warned: the absence of your expression is not benign. With shame, you will recollect times when you denied your own best instincts and desires. Shame over squandered time is far more painful than failure in the pursuit of art. Time cannot be reclaimed, so in the absence of creating art, you manufacture regret. Choose one or the other.
If you are interested in an idea, it is interesting. Your desire to pursue an idea is all the validation required. The style in which you pursue what interests you is solely your decision. It doesn’t matter if there’s a market. It doesn’t matter if you have an audience, either in real life or in mind. You are the audience which most matters in the making. Conversely, your lack of continued interest is all the permission you need to abandon an idea or revise it.
Update: The event went-off, and a good time was had by all. Photos courtesy Stephen F. Trull, Jr., and Hae Min Cho. Scott Feeney won the swag pack full of books with a score ~400k.
Saturday, 7/21, I'm throwing a party for Mark Leidner to celebrate the publication of his collection of short stories, UNDER THE SEA, edited by Giancarlo DiTrapano and published by Tyrant Books. Joining Mark will be the poet Amanda Nadelberg and the sci-fi/dystopian/anthologist writer Nick Mamatas.
I've thrown a few events in the past with writers such as Matt Bell, Lisa Ciccarello, Ruth Galm, Tracey Knapp, Matthew Siegel, Michelle Adelman, Alicia Jo Rabins, and Siamak Vossoughi. Typically I've hosted at Alley Cat Books in the Mission, which has a really beautiful space in the back for events. It's always been a good time.
This time, though, I'm bringing it a little closer to home. FREE GOLD WATCH is a pinball arcade and screen printing shop here in the Upper Haight. I've been kicking around the idea of running a periodic series called FREE GOLD LIT. Tonight's the demo run of that idea. Bookstores in SF do a great job of throwing events. Particularly Green Apple Books on the Park and The Booksmith/Bindery, but I wonder if there might be more of an opportunity for writers to connect and form community over, say, large quantities of booze and pinball. (Just a theory.)
There will be some books for sale, and we'll also be giving away a swag pack of books for the high score of the night on the pinball machine FATHOM.
If you're in the Upper Haight on Saturday night, swing through. We'll be there from 7PM until 10PM.
Through 2015 - 2017 I finished a novel (working title: Golden Gate) which dealt in part with graffiti and street art in the Bay Area. While following a number of artists on Instagram, I happened to catch an invite from Bad Habits Lab to a private warehouse show in SOMA. Inside, a number of O.G. legends in the scene painted original pieces specifically for the event.
Sadly, the show was shut down after one night. Below are some shots from walls:
(The next to last image in the gallery is a "FLOODED" highway sign painted by Eye Spy. I was lucky enough to take that piece home with me.)
In my novel Golden Gate, an alcoholic EMT who loses his job after failing to stop a teenage girl from committing suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge gets busted down to street cleaning. Not long after he begins removing graffiti, someone stencils the face of the doomed girl all over San Francisco. He is both haunted and hunting for the ghost. The novel circles surveillance, apparent and hidden cultures, disparity, and the wondrous, ever-screwing vice anyone who's lived in San Francisco or the Bay Area understands.
If you move on the level of the street, you cannot help but begin to pay attention to the evolution of the living texture. What at first seems visual noise becomes a hidden text. From the vandal's tag to the sanctioned mural, the signs and symbols grow to be companions in otherwise lonely or hostile environments. They stand against every surface being auctioned and monetized.
A little cut from the novel:
“Who knew who had collected their face. One day they would all only be known by their faces. They would never be able to escape them. The graffiti writers understood this from the start. Ninja masks wrapped from t-shirts, respirators, black hats, sunglasses before dawn. The future beyond names was fast approaching. If you hadn’t learned to live in the sixty-first minute of the twenty-fifth hour, you would be branded.”
I hope to have more news to share soon. Gratitude to all the artists who have taken the risks and shared their talent in San Francisco.
