Reading, riding and writing towards an imprecise aesthetic

Question the methods you've adopted from others. To believe a specific method is responsible for the quality of a work is misleading. We live in a mysterious world full of uncertainties, and we can never know with certainty the individual elements that create a work of art...

- Rick Rubin

Exploring Blacks Creek on the Surly Krampus. July 11, 2025.

Howdy!

How are things going for you for me there’s so much reading about making art out of photographs of how light falls in color and patterns all around us even when those are monochrome and printed from pigments foraged from the mountains so I built up a mountain touring bike to get out into Idaho to make more of these poems that look like photographs and so I’m reading and riding and reading and riding and along the way decided to ride the Smoke and Fire 400 in September and it’s bringing me into intimate contact with some beautiful places and time to think through aesthetics and philosophical approaches to objective reality which the camera does well well from a limited perspective anyway and really questioning that if a tool is only precise in a world of media all around us — and by all around us I mean on devices that only want our full attention — how can I bring beauty through the imprecision of my limited perspective? So I’m pedaling through this these days.

These things recently inspired me…

The Harvard-Educated Linguist Breaking Down ‘Skibidi’ and ‘Rizz’ - Callie Holtermann, NYT - It’s called “algospeak”—a coded language used by young people to have real conversations online about serious topics that subverts the filtering algorithms that would prevent these conversations. Fascinating. I mean, if you’re a language nerd.

Is protein powder a scam? - Alice Callahan, NYT. It’s what we imagine and isn’t everything about reading the small print? I’ve been eating differently with all the riding this summer and so this one caught my eye.

How ‘y’all’ took over modern English: Y’all, we need to talk about ‘Y’all’ - NPR.org - Ok y’all, I grew up Southern (not Confederate) in the great American South so it’s nice to see the country catching up with the equanimity of “Southern Charm” as I experienced it. I will say having unlearned “y’all” in California years ago it’s now a little like there was somebody else’s tongue in my mouth.

Isotopes, Vikings, Mars - Maria Popova, The Marginalian - A poetic read on radiocarbon dating. Popova has a brilliant book written in short vignettes (easy evening reading) on the how poetry and science influence and inspire one another, focusing on the many contributions of women in science, and it’s just beautiful so I highly recommend “The Universe in Verse: 15 Portals to Wonder through Science & Poetry.”

I’ve been listening to…

“Hydroplane” by Hydroplane. Cool shoegazy with vocals set way back in the mix like a memory taking place now.

“A Rainbow in Curved Air” by Terry Riley. So many of his recordings are improvised performances and I think I feel that creative energy in these.

And a lot of Terry Riley.

Whoa! That’s a lot. Thanks for hanging out with me.