i'm new here

on substack writers, being blank, someone weird, play, and defeat

I did not become someone different

That I did not want to be

But I'm new here

Will you show me around?

– Gil Scott Heron

I’ve encountered countless ethe in the Substack landscape that fall anywhere between Jeff Winger without the wit (self-satisfied public diary) and Sarah Kane without the skill (angst without insight). Some rare cases I’ve found incomparable, but don’t ask me to provide you with a link. At the end of the day, however, I just envy people who write. My opening snark is further negated by the fact that I’ve read everything I wrote, will continue to do so, and plan on writing a similarly semi-fictionalized public diary showcasing how fun it is in the void myself. Don’t you think that being blank is fascinating? Wouldn’t you say that one shudders in the infinite mystery of an unperson¹? I’ve tried approachable, sociable, intellectual, committed, saying-something-important, charming, inquisitive–in a word, I tried being a person. I’m now trying to live – a life of cobwebs, clanking metal, being stranded in the Styx, ghosts, all those monsters racing to annul your soul, and you might further supplement that with whatever psychologically distancing mythology there is to avoid saying you’re blank. I’m new here.

I’m trying out being other people, too, in fact. Lots of ways to be blank – two is closer to zero than one. Nothing is precisely, preciously nothing so it can be everything. For a change, I’m small and contain multitudes. Knowing who you are is not central to executing what seems to be the excruciating act of putting down a few words on the page. On the contrary, having a certain image in mind might obstruct you from picking up the pen, let alone get actively good at it. I’m sure plenty of liars will emerge, but they are outside of my control. For the moment, I’m okay being the shadows of what I could be, an echo of better writers, has-beens, to-be’s. I’m new here.

You know who never had an image issue, and when he did, it stopped him from dreaming up anything new to the point of having to take shrooms to write a one-to-one autobiographical YA novel²? I think he is the best to ever have done it, but that’s not why I’m copying him. Think of someone weird, and possibly, a weirdo. He needs no introduction as far as run-of-the-mill writers go.

Seriously, he is inspirational in terms of just running with it. I’m going to copy his deluge of a work ethic, his discipline that doesn’t look anything like it because Jughead, for the most part, is not a self-conscious writer. He gets the writer’s block perhaps twice in the entirety of the show, and he works around the block – by switching to comics, e.g. He is prolific, equally detached from and attached to his writing, and he can be a bit flowery and corny at times, I don’t honestly care. What is admirable, to me, is that the world will be falling apart – sometimes propelled by, indeed, what he is writing – and he will sit in Pop’s and punch away at the typewriter. It’s up to debate whether he is a literary giant, but he documents and he creates. Jughead does something in the here and now, and he has fun. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him be truly ambitious, and when he tries to be ambitious like when he’s trying to get the book deal in season 4, it’s one of the few times that his creative reserves dry up. He is oftentimes cynical, but never without heart, he can report objectively as well as color the narrative with personal biases, fictions, wishes. His crowning achievement is that he probably leaves Asimov³ in the dust on one of those days when he feels like writing self-insert self-indulgent pulp noir.

For my self-serious scholar to emerge elsewhere (and Jughead always has multiple projects!) I thought I first have to honor what, for me, has always been a prized attitude: play. Play is not something that is particularly planned – you can’t exactly prepare for play. Play demands you to use resources you have gathered up until that point. Play can be characterized as the activity of development par excellence because you’re exercising skills with stakes that are just high enough to keep playing the game, but you won’t get too dispirited if you are to lose the game or, somehow, fail at playing. Play is the postponeless experiment.

I remember when the simplest suggestion of a monster conjured up by my brother sprung an epic tale of heroics that was entirely lived out in a 5m² bedroom. It was more so emulating blockbuster action movie heroics rather than the Odyssey (but perhaps Nolan will void this statement), but regardless. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t particularly yearn for the oh-so-simpler times of childhood – childhood isn’t simple. I do think being a child was special, though, in that the realm of possibilities was conceptually limited, the world not yet completely abstracted. There was an urgency to explore immediate surroundings and nearby objects because you can't quite just dream it all yet. You need some intermediate form of concrete-to-imaginal in which you interact with the world before play peaks in the form of pretend, and then leaves the stage for daydreaming. Isn’t it lonely, not needing the world?

This project is the outcome of defeat, ironically, by the triumph of the mind. It is the mind that leads us to not need the world, in that you are shunned from interacting with it if you are able to represent it, and decide that it’s a good enough representation. You don’t play with it anymore, it’s done, done is perfect, and perfect is control. What might that look like?

I made up everyone in my head and I know exactly what they think. I prepared scripts and everyone will play into them. I wrote my heart out and it was met with utter indifference. I have it fully fleshed out.

If I could get it out, that is. If I could get out the people in my head to be by my side, we could be new here. Otherwise we’re all stuck in the void, my void, and it isn’t big enough for multiple people who carry multiple possibilities. Or don’t stand with me at all, lurk or fight. I just want to exist to you.

Is it a bit disingenuous to half-heartedly criticize the substack landscape, then concede to nullity which is your method of discarding ethos, then say you’re channeling Jughead, technically adorning a personality, then go off on a tangent about how we are going to play and have fun so that you might be a person elsewhere? I don’t know. Come find me out.

For this project, I will half-ass my research, perhaps do none at all, rely heavily on associative imagery, solipsisms, anecdotes, give myself plenty to go “Oh man, this is bad.” but then smile, big. Because I will have bitten down on something. The concept is to bite through it ‘til my teeth touch. Lots of teeth action in this paragraph. Also, don’t you like it when people exercise their freedom? It’s my favorite.

When it comes to content, what can I say? The moment I establish a theme, I will want to run in the other direction. There will be plenty of attempts made at dark grandeur and sun in Aries-fueled Dionysian self-indulgence – a gilded way of asserting that I will conduct nothing short of an abuse of autobiography.

Launched like a fucking comet that you will or maybe won’t see in two hundred years! I’m joking. You know I’m as constant as the north star. Peer-review my spirit!

İki

PS. I don’t use AI in any shape or form when it comes to my writing, and it shows.
PPS. Is this Jeff Winger or Sarah Kane? I feel that it started off as Sarah Kane, and then morphed into Jeff Winger.

It’s not İki if there’s not a list of recommendations! If you liked this post, you might like: “Diva” by Model/Actriz, “Peace & Quiet” by Kesha, “Don’t Like. 1” by Kanye West et al. (“My pen’s better, you don’t write!”), and the 14th episode of the third season of Community, “Pillows and Blankets”.

1. Tiqqun, “Theory of Bloom”. I tweaked the quote a bit. “ONE shudders in the infinite mystery of the common man.”

2. @slimereveler, Tumblr post. “jughead is such a bad fucking writer lmao. he had to take shrooms in order to get the inspiration to write a 1:1 autobiographical YA novel about the first 4 seasons of riverdale.”

3. Asimov wrote more than 500 books.