You Just Go On Your Nerve

Figuring out a new name for my new blog was agonizing. It wasn’t the only thing I thought about, but it was a constant undercurrent. As I did when trying to figure out what to call Unbeige, I read a bunch of Tibor stuff for inspiration. There was lots of potential, but nothing clicked for me. I was sure I’d hit upon my title when I discovered that a little fucked up.com was available. I reserved it, but upon reflection, (and the advice of some of my blog heros) maybe not such a great name.

For a variety of reasons, I needed to find a new angle. New Modernist was the lead for a while, Opinionomatic, Predux: All of them had their moments. Then I decided to look to a different reliable inspirational source, Frank O’Hara. Et voila! Personism was born. Personism: a Manifesto was written by O’Hara in 1959 and it’s a tongue-in-cheek declaration of a new movement:

Personism, a movement which I recently founded and which nobody knows about, interests me a great deal… It’s a very exciting movement which will undoubtedly have lots of adherents.

Personism is about poetry, but I like the idea of it as a way to approach the writing I’m doing online: I’m just me, saying what’s on my mind, having my opinions, trying to soak up as much as I can from living. I’m not out to proselytize - I’m writing about what I notice and why it matters to me, and even though I’m passioniate about a million different things, but hopefully I’m not taking myself too seriously all that often. If you don’t like what I write, no sweat, move on. O’Hara says it better:

I’m not saying that I don’t have practically the most lofty ideas of anyone writing today, but what difference does that make? They’re just ideas. The only good thing about it is that when I get lofty enough I’ve stopped thinking and that’s when refreshment arrives.

But how then can you really care if anybody gets it, or gets what it means, or if it improves them. Improves them for what? For death? Why hurry them along? Nobody should experience anything they don’t need to.

I’m not sure what I’ll be up to here, but it’s likely to be along the lines of what I was doing over at Unbeige, which was a personal project for me in a lot of ways, and always was my voice unfiltered.