Some people thrive on their grievances. Not me. I get plenty angry from time to time–more often these days, sadly–but anger, nursed too long, enervates and depresses me. I fear my grievances will consume me, will turn me into an embittered, curdled person.

So while I’m as sensitive as anyone to injustice and cruelty, I find myself turning outwards in response, and it makes me happy to dwell on how kind, loving, and creative people can be, especially in these times.

This brings me to a particular flavor of response to those who supported (and may still support) Trump, given all the harm he and his administration are causing: “fuck those people now and forever”, “FAFO”, “leopards eating faces”, that sort of thing. These responses are totally natural! Nevertheless, I think about what we’re fighting for in this fight, and what these responses reveal about us. What kind of society do we want, and what do we want from our leaders and from one another?

It’s one thing to allow ourselves to vent our anger, and to hold people accountable for the harm they cause. It’s quite another to revenge ourselves on ordinary people who didn’t make the same choices we made, and who didn’t see the same things we saw.

We are seeing, right now, what Rage as an Organizing Principle looks like. Let’s not make it ours.

This skeet amused and inspired me:

It reminded me of something I’d read by Ta Nehisi Coates, way back in 2011. It was about learning from people:

We don’t get to choose our teachers. If you’re going to be an artist, or a thinker, or even a full person, you better be able to make yourself into something more than the shadow of someone else’s bankrupt philosophies. You better be more than an obvious and predictable reaction.

(It took me a long time to find that exact quote. I finally remembered that I’d blogged it in my old Tumblr blog.)

Coates was reacting to a comment on an earlier post of his, about V.S. Naipaul’s misogyny. (The comments on that post have been swallowed by history, but I think it was by Professor Hilary Bok.) This part is a worthy ending to my post here:

I read my first Naipaul novel about six months after someone tried to rape me, and if I had known that the rape scene in that novel was part of the pattern mentioned above, I don’t know that I would have been able to get past it. But I’m really glad I was. I would have lost so much had I just thrown the book across the room and never looked at Naipaul again. And in saying this, I’m not being nice to him, or something; I’m being entirely selfish. He’s one of the writers I learned the most from, I think, and I would hate to have been deprived of that.

After a loooong hiatus, I’m back to posting here. In the interim, I’ve been busy!

I now have two other micro blogs that I use for different purposes. Reading Notes consists of posts noting my reactions to what I’m reading. And Pay It Forward consists of posts meant to support the folks I mentor, at Turing School and elsewhere.

From time to time I may post the same item in more than one place. That said, this blog is more for personal reflection than anything else.

If questions aren’t asked in art schools, away from the conservative heat of the art market, where then? If the political responsibility of a cultural reflexivity (why) is not taught along with a knowledge of the history of how artists have made meaning, then we are doomed to be oppressed by our traditions rather than informed by them. The teacher of art, as a teacher and an artist, can do no more than participate with the students in asking the questions. This, rather than attempting to provide the answers as art schools traditionally do, realigns the priorities from the beginning. The first lesson, taught by example, is that what is to he learned is a process of thinking and not a dogma in craft or theory.

Joseph Kosuth, “Teaching to Learn”

I take from this the importance of teaching students how to think, and teaching them not by handing down knowledge, but by asking questions with them.

(Via DesignOpenData, h/t @patrickrhone for linking to Robin Sloan.)

Escaped to Sacramento for the weekend:

A brief cityscape in Porto, Portugal, taken from the Porto train station.