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Thinking about you — excerpt from Guy Williams’ “Poems For Painters” (San Diego, CA: Stooge, 1974)

The State of Things
On Blogging

To introduce myself to all of you amorphous internet people, I’ve decided to begin this blog journey with a brief summary of who I am. & yes, maybe this is all in vain and the principal function of this introduction is some autobiographical impulse towards the catharsis of seeing my life on the digital page. After all, why would I introduce myself as an “Author” when God is dead and so is the Author?¹ Before I even so much as tell you my own favorite Author, I must define the concept as it is forever in a state of tension and transition.
“The voice loses its origin, the author begins his own death, and writing begins”¹ asserts Barthes in his seminal work, La Mort de l’Auteur. And after reading Barthes, it’s pretty clear he has never read a blog in his life. In fact he died approximately 14 years before the “first blog” in 1994 (links.net), published by college student Justin Hall.

The blogger is nothing like the mother/writer conceptualized by Barthes, postpartum-depressed as she stares at her cold, alien writing as it emerges from her womb and cries out to the world.

Barthes descibes writing as entering into some nebulous realm of interpretation, and not to discredit his fabulous work here... but doesn’t La Mort de l’Auteur function more as a mirror to the capitalist, Western mode of production than as reflection of the evolving tensions of the author/work relationship? Barthes fails to take into account the global history of the collective voice, the chorus, the autonomous, the auditory, and practically all forms of authorship that dominated the world pre-Gutenburg.

A reminder as you read this piece... A selection from Lily Greenham’s “aphorisms for contemplation” (1980s) chosen by Alex Balgiu

It was Gutenburg and his press- the evolving medium that writing situated itself within- that hinged upon the emerging capitalist mode of production and invented our modern concept of the author. This definition continues to evolve as I write, today. (It’s 11:17 AM on a Saturday, I’m in an overpriced cafe in my neighborhood that sells plants and 500 dollar vintage Armani dresses)
In a totally bizzare way that most would view as outlandish, I’d like to credit Marshall McCluhan as one of the first American philosophers/theorists that noticed our changing mode of production, causing a morph in the definition of the author, whatever you’d like to call it.

Yup- I’m saying McCluhan was on to technofeudalism.

McCluhan opens The Medium is the Message in saying, “The medium, or process, of our time- electric technology- is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life.” ²While this can be applied and analyzed through the lens of most anything emerging in American society today (the broligarchy, AI, surveillance, mass deportation, climate change, etc.)- let’s apply this to “The Author” because unlike Barthes, maybe McCluhan has read a blog. (Sorry to admit but he actually died the same year as Barthes and therefore my guess here is total hogwash...)

A weird/maybe intentional typo I’m obsessed with. When The Medium is the Message was originally published, the book was “accidentally” called The Medium is the Massage...

Here’s an elaborate metaphor for you that could be straight up incorrect, I took AP Bio 5 years ago and since then my knowledge on the body has waned seriously. If the medium has become electric technology (or rather digital technology), authors are like hemoglobin. They flow from the lungs (whatever their source of knowledge is), carrying oxygen (ideas) into a wider system, regulated by the heart (CMS, web format, the medium, digital spaces, etc.) We are in a state post-Gutenburg, where our ideas are traced to us by more than our name printed on a cover. Instead of the mother/child, where the umbilical cord is cut and the baby goes off on its own, the hemogblobin/oxygen relationship is sustained in a closed system, where oxygen is constantly cycling, entering and exiting, reused by the hemoglobin proteins.

In this system, we are inextricably linked to our work by a trail of IP addresses, web viewing history, Instagram likes, and whatever the hell cookies are... How can the Author be dead when we are formed into a lasting public digital identity, created from every fingerprint we leave in the digital realm?

Maybe it’s AI that kills us- and that would provoke a longer essay from me that’s probabaly already been written. Let’s leave AI out of the metaphor for now.

After such a lengthy introduction in classic-me fashion, let’s finally get into my information (all in one place and chosen by me instead of some entropic diaspora of details about me that would emerge if you so much as googled my name).

Name

Age

Location

Occupation

Hobbies

Why writing?

Authors that inspire me

Favorite Book (s)

Current Stance on the World That You Hope Will Change

Current Life Situation

Strengths

Weaknesses

Goals of this Blog

Goals for the Moment

What subjects I plan to write about

ERIN SECOSKY

22

Los Angeles (for the time being)

Graphic Designer & Aspiring Writer

Singing, playing flute, reading, practicing my French, running, hiking, swimming in the ocean, and of course- writing

Well... about 3 or so months ago I began writing and liked it and started doing it for fun. Which was strangely surprising because I used to hate writing and found myself to be horrible at it. Now I’m trying to improve and seeing what comes of it. Can never have too many skills- right?

Walter Benjamin, Bell Hooks, Toni Morrison, Italo Calvino, Bohumil Hrabel, McKenzie Wark, Franz Fanon

Song of Solomon (Morrison), Too Loud A Solitude (Hrabel), The Master and Margarita (Bulgakov)

We are descending into entropy and fascism and live in an increasingly surveilled digital panopticon. Lighthearted, right!!

A recent college graduate who lived in Raleigh, NC her whole life and is now subjected to the most insane subsections of The American Culture in Los Angeles, California...

That being said I do really like California...I can go to the beach whenever I want! And even go hiking!

On the subject of California living----I’m not what you would call rich or comfortable or anything like that. I’m paying for my groceries with my savings from being a server and trying my hardest to give up my old lifestyle from when I was on my parents’ dollar. Living here is truly so difficult and expensive and the wealth disparity shocks me, daily.

I’m trying to make a name for myself and improve at everything that I do despite not having quite the best circumstances (some mental health things that I won’t delve into quite yet...) I want to become a truly amazing graphic designer, even if for now, I’m just an intern. I’m trying to have the most optimistic view on it all even though the world feels dark currently...

Ambition, passion, enthusiasm, creativity, boldness, and being a generally nice person (I hope)

Ambition, egotistical, volatile, poor craft, lack of organization, restless

To improve at writing, to find a space for my thoughts, to be politically active, to spark discussion, to find community, to have fun!!!

Translate a book (The Worker’s Condition by Simone Weil), write 10 articles on here by the end of the year, go to grad school in the next 3 years in either the US or France or in Prague, become a C1 in French, learn how to sit still

Art, design, literature, politics, Marxism, surveillance, AI, design education, maybe even some creative writing or small translation projects to practice

1.

Barthes, R. (n.d.). La Mort de l’auteur. Monoskop. https://monoskop.org/images/3/38/Barthes_Roland_1968_1984_La_mort_de_l_auteur.pdf

2.

McLuhan, M. (2005). The medium is the message Marshall McLuhan. Gingko Press.

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