More from Naz Hamid ā Journal + Links
Tagged by Scott and Luke and in thoughtful return, Iām answering the Blog Questions Challenge here. Some of these answers may overlap with the answers I gave Manu for his People & Blogs series, so Iāll do my best to do something a bit different. Please visit Manuās P&B site though, and read through many of the excellent interviews there. Much credit to Bear Blog for these questions. Why did you start blogging in the first place? I noted how I appreciated the early bloggers, in particular from the Pyra Labs/Blogger crew, but to go back even further, I was fond of journaling early. Much of that was in the form of drawings as a child, then coupled with text. It wasnāt until I read about how musicians like Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam would keep copious journals, and in particular, Henry Rollinsā Get In The Van, showed me that documenting your life was important as a record of a lived person. Rollins would later read from these journals early in his transition from full-time musician to spoken word artist, and the storytelling inspired me. Since I was online, and web design had captivated me, it all came together. What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Iām currently using the lovely static site generator, Eleventy (11ty). It pushes to a GitHub repository, which triggers a deploy to Netlify. After using so many different platforms over the decades, with my posts and data semi-locked in MySQL databases, the idea of a fast, file-first, SSG was the way I absolutely wanted to go when I started blogging at this domain. Steph Angoās File Over App is a thoughtful read on data portability. Have you blogged on other platforms before? As mentioned just before this, yes. I started with Geocities, Livejournal, tried Greymatter, then Movable Type was the first to make it all click. I got really comfortable and pushed that system far āĀ Gapers Block was the most involved version that I had done with multiple blogs running under one instance with different layouts and sections and includes all over the place. Dean Allenās (RIP) Textpattern stole my heart away for many years after MT got acquired, and then I stopped blogging when Weightshift became my focus, and social media started to bloom. Weightshift used various CMSs for clients: MT, TXP, ExpressionEngine, CraftCMS, Wordpress, etc. I toyed with Tumblr, and other things, but eventually restarted with Jekyll, but quickly switched to 11ty. How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard thatās part of your blog? Most everything starts in Bear. I have a master note of ideas, that links out to other notes and I keep adding new ones, revisit others, and check off published ones. When do you feel most inspired to write? Whenever an idea strikes. This can happen at any time and drafts are started anywhere. I generally publish in the evening though. Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft? I used to be more immediate with my publishing decades ago, adhering to a near daily schedule. These days, some thought and care goes into each post, and if possible, I like to add a touch of flavor to a post, like the rotated album covers for the Music in 2024 post. What are you generally interested in writing about? How we as humans live in a world ever-changing because of technological influence and societyās adoption and adaptation to it. I love travel so posts about cultures and countries, as well as overlanding and camping domestically. And personal things that are more feeling the feels. Who are you writing for? Myself first, but through a lens of, āthis information or thought could help someone else, and/or Iād love to share a different perspective thatās unique to me.ā Whatās your favorite post on your blog? 2023 in the Rearview is a big one, and I worked on that for a while. Taken for a Ride is a good one I think about taking a Waymo autonomous vehicle for the first time, but I like the sort of pieces that come from a more emotional and resilient place, like Let This Be a Moment, that allow me to work through things. Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature? Iām very content with 11ty. Iām constantly evolving and refactoring the design and code where I can see improvement. This is a lovely mode to be in: itās iterative like software development than constantly new like marketing. As for features: a work section (underway), and better ways to showcase my photography, which is a longtime interest and activity for me. Tag āem. Iām going to tag Bix, Ethan, Gosha, Grant, Matt, Piper, Rachel, Simon, Susan, Thu, and Winnie. Read on nazhamid.com or Reply via email
We are tenants with landlords who want to make sure that we canāt leave the building or go hang out with friends elsewhere, all while showing us how happy we should be with the limitations imposed on us. ā Den Delimarsky A long, weighty one, but very worth the read. Visit original link ā or View on nazhamid.com ā
01/05 PREDATORS, AMERICAN GREED ā Steven Soderbergh Director Steven Soderbergh's media recap of 2024. It's fascinating to see how many movies he watched multiple times, and the reverse watch of the original Star Wars trilogy. Phantom of the Menace twice too? Visit original link ā or View on nazhamid.com ā
Iām including the most memorable, impactful, or beloved works ofācreative genius, or something, that Iāve encountered this year. Iām not a critic; I am mostly just talking about things I liked. These are tremendous to me. I hope they can be tremendous to you, too. ā Anh The list is great, but this one is also visually gorgeous. Best experienced in a browser near you. Visit original link ā or View on nazhamid.com ā
Itās idealistic and very millennial of me to reminiscence the early days of Web innocence, unbound creativity it hosted and wonderful lack of monetisation of virtually every aspect of being online. We canāt turn back time. But, individually and collectively, we can strive for better as the Web evolves as a home for work, knowledge, community, and love. We can resist the ongoing enshittification and corporate capitalism. So I jotted down an non-exhaustive list of what Iād love the future Web to be. ā Karolina Szczur A great list. Visit original link ā or View on nazhamid.com ā
More in literature
R.L. Barth has been translating the epigrams of Marcus Valerius Martialis ā the first-century Roman poet Martial, as we know him ā for more than forty years and now has self-published a collection of 104 of his translations (of the 1,561 Latin originals extant): Pleasing the Diners: Translations from the Latin of Martial. Bob and Martial share similar sensibilities. Both are tough-minded, skeptical of authority figures and human duplicity, not even remotely āpoetic,ā and they value concision in their poems perhaps more than any other quality. Their epigrams are pithy and barbed, and thereās nothing stuffy or academic about Bobās translations. The poems are classical, the translations are contemporary, all-American and never genteel. Here is II.83:Ā āCatching the cuckhold, you unsheathed your knife And went to work on him who screwed your wife, Lopping his nose and ears. Pure vengeance gained? No, one of his appendages remained.ā Ā As an epigraph to the collection, Barth takes a line from āThe Undeceived,ā an essay on Martial by his late friend Turner Cassity published in the Winter 1990 issue of Chicago Review: āIf Martial is minor we had better re-define major . . .ā The passage continues: Ā ā . . . and I for one am perfectly willing to. Martial offers no vision, advances no program, embodies no archetype. He hoots at philosophy, is too uninterested in religion even to mock it, mocks at love, enjoys violence, ignores landscape, refuses to sentimentalize sex. He flatters the Emperor Domitian in the exact spirit and in the exact degree of honesty with which present day academics fill out grant applications. He understands the social and behavioral dimensions of money better than any writer before Edith Wharton, his fellow in pornography; he penetrates further into the mystery of death than anyone before or since, stripping away veil after veil to reveal it as, finally, the handmaiden of inheritance. What he gives us, stunningly undiminished across nineteen hundred years and the barriers of a language embalmed, is self-recognition. The Romans were not like us: they were us. Now that our own era, so far out of the closet and so close to Elagabalus, can no longer plead his obscenity, we shall have to come to terms with him.ā Ā For Barth and Cassity, Martial is a poetic precursor, a sort of unholy father figure and unwelcome guest at the party. The two dozen Martial epigrams cited by Cassity in his essay were translated by Bob, who includes a poem of his own, āTo Martial,ā in the new collection: Ā āAfter your death, Pliny wrote praising you For genius, satire, wit, and candor too. Now, take this note across the centuries: Tribute from one of your lesser legatees Who, Pliny-like, would also recommend Your poems, youāgood company, good friend.āĀ Ā Bob takes the title of his collection from Martialās IX.81: Ā "Readers and listeners praise my books: You swear theyāre worse than a beginnerās. Who cares? I always plan my dinners To please the diners, not the cooks.ā Ā The collection concludes with āMartial in Bilbilis to Juvenal in Rome.ā Martial was born in Bilbilis, located in what is now Spain. Bob appends a note to the poem: āI would say of my use of Martial XII.18 what Samuel Johnson said of his two great versions of Juvenal [āThe Vanity of Human Wishes,ā āLondonā]: āa kind of middle composition between translation and original design, which pleases when the thoughts are unexpectedly applicable, and the parallels lucky.ā Or simply call it riffing on Martial XII.18.ā I think itās one of Bobās finest poems: Ā āKnow what, dear Juvenal? While you are slogging Across the racket of Suburra or dogging Dianaās hill, jostled by pimps and whores, Catamites, muggers, thugs in darkened doors, Property speculators, politicians And lawyers, Romans without inhibitionsā All those types who activate your spleenā Your good friend Martialās nowhere to be seen. My friend, stand in your toga drenched with sweat (However much you flap it, it stays wet) Waiting at thresholds of your high-powered friends. Iām back in Bilbilis, making amends For all the sleep lost. Iām a gentleman; After the long years gone, my city can, And does, take to her bosom her lost son. I have no clients here nor anyone Disturbing peaceful sleep, at least till nine! I wear no toga, any old clothes of mine Suffice when I awake. Thereās a fire burning In the hearth, laid by my steward, and my yearning For a good breakfastās quickly satisfied By his wifeās breakfast, almost countrified. A little later comes my housemaid, whoād Have you, friend, drooling to end her maidenhood As she cleans up the bowls and sweeps the floors. My young attendants start their daily chores. Thus home, city of iron and gorgeous gold! (You know, if you will let me be so bold, Iād say that epithet describes my epigrams.) I hear you snarling a long string of damns! Iām sorry, Juvenal, but this is why Delight crowns all my days, and here Iāll die.ā Ā Cassity writes in his essay: āAs the entire tradition of English poetry runs directly counter to the characteristics I have enumerated, he is very difficult to translate, though he is frequently honored by plagiarism. There is no Martial famous as Popeās or Chapmanās Homer is famous. The translations I shall quote here have been newly done by R.L. Barth, aiming for both the precision of thought and utterance, and the absolute freedom of expression. Martialās concision has been a brake on his reputation as on his translators. Criticism tends to equate brevity with triviality, and in nine out of ten literary eras it is flatulence that carries the day. Epigrams will never have the attention epics have, inflating the racial consciousness being outside their scope.ā
It must be encoded there, in the childhood memories of our synapses and our cells ā how we came out of the ocean 35 trillion yesterdays ago, small and slippery, gills trembling with the shock of air, fins budding feet, limbs growing sinewy and furred, then unfurred, spine unfurling beneath the bone cave housing three pounds of pink flesh laced with one hundred trillion synapses that still sing with pleasure and awe when touched by the wildness of the world. Even as the merchants of silicon and code try to render us disembodied intellects caged behind screens, something in ourā¦Ā readĀ article
Iāve learned with time that my mind has periods of attentiveness followed by drifts into passive, relaxed states of consciousness. Iām awake but almost empty. I might be taking a shower or staring out the window at nothing. Thatās when I occasionally find myself in an old song or childhood memory or, more mysteriously, inhabiting a character from fiction, taking on his values. When I become conscious of this channeling, it disappears leaving a faint, lingering impression, like the afterimages left by bright lights.Ā Recently I found myself in Austin King, the Illinois lawyer, father and put-upon husband at the center of William Maxwellās 1948 novel, Time Will Darken It. Itās the opening scene. King is in his bedroom getting dressed for a party for relatives visiting from Mississippi. His wife, pregnant with their second child, is not speaking to him. She resents the party and the presence of outsiders. Ā I wasnāt recalling the words but the setting, emotional and physical, which I had abstracted from the text. Iāve read Maxwellās novel three or four times, starting in the late seventies. I know it well. Unintentionally, I had projected myself into King because his emotional state was familiar ā conflicted, guilty, wanting to satisfy contradictory wishes and please everyone. I didnāt have to go looking for it. I carry it as a latent memory. Ā Thereās a semi-popular theory floating around out there that we read fiction to boost our empathy quotient. In short, we read to learn to be better human beings, to feel the pain of others. Thatās silly but also kind of obnoxious. How self-centered. Willa Cather would have snorted. My flashing onto the bedroom of Austin and Martha King lasted seconds. I enjoyed the sensation but made no effort to hang on to it. It was a fairly primitive mental event, not freighted with philosophical baggage. A handful of other fiction writers have done this for me, all in my private pantheon ā Chekhov, James, Proust, among others. Part of the reason I value them is that they leave these phantom scenes in my subconscious mind, through no effort of my own. Ā Time Will Darken It, along with So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980), is Maxwellās finest novel. Ā In 1955, Maxwell delivered a speech at Smith College, āThe Writer as Illusionistā (collected in the 2024 volume of the same title, published by Godine). He likens a novelist to a dog who dreams of chasing a rabbit. He writes: Ā āThe novelistās rabbit is the truthāabout life, about human character, about himself and therefore by extensionh, it is to be hoped, about other people. He is convinced that this is all knowable, can be described, can be recorded, by a person sufficiently dedicated to describing and recording, can be caught is a net of narration. . . . . But what, seriously, was accomplished by these writers [Maxwell has just mentioned Turgenev, Lawrence, Woolf and Forster] or can the abstract dummy novelist I have been describing hope to accomplish? Not life, of course; not the real thing; not children and roses; but only a facsimile that is called literature.ā Ā Ā The finest writers of fiction, those we treasure most highly, work simultaneously in two mediums ā words and human beings. William Maxwell died twenty-five years ago today, on July 31, 2ooo, at age ninety-one.
And create an interspecies future that benefits humans and ecologies alike.