I’m reading and enjoying Thomas J. Bevan’s The Soaring Twenties and Other Essays. It’s a collection of his writing from 2021 and reflections on being an online person trying to do creative work.
I also borrowed his idea of the “Misery Tax” in my own book.
This is from one of the first essays:
In short, anyone who is uninterested in the current zeitgeist has moved to the catacombs- to the decentralised corners of the internet and even back to reality, to the place beyond computers.
You could call this surrender, but I think this is short sighted. The catacombs dwelling artist has not given in. Quite the opposite. They are merely taking shelter so that the flame that they carry is not blown out by the raging winds of the present moment.
And this, this very thing you are reading right now, is an artefact from my own personal catacomb. A small part of the new culture of independent art and thought that will be here for when the bloated empire of top down art has breathed its last breath.
Thomas is a delightful writer and I wish more internet writers would at minimum put together a collection of essays. I like picking up this book and reading an essay here or there. It is good writing!