Tess Lynch posted a very lovely piece this week about her Tumblr, and why she continues to write there: “I have been writing Wipe Your Feet since 2008. In the past few years, I’ve been writing for a few other places too, but this blog will always be my favorite because I can get as weird as I want.” It made me think about what I do here.
Something that has changed dramatically since I began writing on South 12th, also in 2008, is my overall professional situation. That has actually changed on two accounts. When I began posting here, I was working a desk job at the University of Minnesota that I had a very low level of investment in. It was very easy to spend 20 minutes typing up some thoughts on Philadelphia art kids, or conversations I’d heard on the bus, or whatever else, and then post it. That’s the first part that’s changed: since 2010, I have been working at an artists’ resources organization in St. Paul, and it’s work that I am completely invested in. In addition to that, more and more of the work I’ve been doing in the past year has taken me away from my desk, and has required a higher level of responsibility, timeliness, and attention. It’s work that I love doing.
Then, of course, I do write a column now, once a week, over at MinnPost. That’s an amazing thing to me, still. The blogger’s dream, right? You write for yourself long enough, and eventually, someone will pay you to do it. The stuff I post there is specific to the column, of course, but it’s very rooted in ideas I’ve worked with here since 2008. The Stroll could not have happened without South 12th.
But where does that leave South 12th?
I have been tempted to shut it down for good. There’s enough outlets for me to write now, and what’s the point of keeping something around where new material only turns up every few weeks? But I don’t want to do that. I’ve been doing this long enough that I know that there is a certain South 12th-iness to everything that goes here, a reliable, enjoyable (to me, anyway) formula that has been slowly developed over time. I like having a place to write about dumb, weird things that don’t fit anywhere else: stories of accidentally meeting ’70s doppelgangers and Ted Kennedy’s press secretaries, stories about the ’90s and the ’00s and my own unfocused youth, and stories about what it’s like to make artwork that involves a few dozen people sitting on a train listening to me give a lecture, and bad cellphone photos of blurry food. I love telling these stories. I love having an audience for them, too — I think there’s only about 30 or 40 people that really read what goes on here, but you all are so engaged in it. It’s fun to talk to you. I don’t want to let that go. As Tess said: “I don’t expect everyone to enjoy these brain souffles, but nobody really has to: they’re there if you want them, and they disappear after a five-minute lapse when you refresh your page.”
But the thing is, I also don’t want to — well, “betray” is too strong a word, but I don’t want to misuse that relationship by just keeping this as a space to plop down links to other stuff I’ve written, or events coming up. The only thing I want on South 12th is things that are purely South 12-y.
So here’s what’s happening.
I’ve set up the Sturdevant Municipal Link Dump & Recycling Center, located here. The only thing that will go on that tumblr is links to articles, upcoming events, Kickstarter campaigns, stuff like that. Purely self-promotional. I mean, not in an obnoxious way, but just a clearinghouse for that kind of information. If you’re interested in knowing about that aspect of my life and work, you’re welcome to follow along. And if not, because you don’t live in town or figure you’ll see it on Facebook, that’s good, too.
Also, I’m playing around with a monthly newsletter (I guess I am going to call it a Monthly Shareholder Report), which you can sign up for here. Writing a monthly email newsletter in the year 2012 is about two steps removed from sending a telegram to a zeppelin, but I thought this would be worthwhile for a few reasons. One reason, actually, is the fact that the monthly email newsletter is an increasingly obsolescent medium, and I enjoy working in obsolescent mediums. I also know my mom doesn’t use Facebook or read my Tumblr (I don’t think), and I would like her to know what I am doing along with everyone else. So you can sign up for that if you’d like. It’ll also include a new installment in a serial novel called Yacht Slob: A Tale of the Lakes.
In the meantime, the only posts that will appear here in the future will be purely in keeping with the best traditions of this tumblr. It may not happen very often. Maybe only once a week. But it will happen, and it will be exactly what you’d expect when it does. Every post will be a South 12th post, through and through. They will be, in the Lynchian (Tessian?) sense, real lava cakes.
For the most part, December’s never been a great month for writing or posting for me. Too much holiday distraction, on both my part and on yours. To that end, I am taking the rest of December off from new posts. Which really, I barely need to mention, because at this point I’m only doing like, what, three posts a week? On a particularly active week? Oh well.
Regardless, two things occurred to me this weekend.
The first is what a large backlog there is. Since late 2008 I have created almost 1,500 posts, which probably comes out to somewhere in the neighborhood of tens and tens of thousands of words. Some of the posts were actually pretty decent, too.
The second is that I’ve also had quite a few new readers since then.
So, to introduce some of these new readers to previous highwater marks in the South 12th canon, and to send some of those stories back into the forefront of human consciousness, every day this month I’ll repost a piece from (primarily) 2009 or (to a lesser extent) 2010. There won’t be much from 2008, as nothing from 2008 was salvageable. On all postings, I’ll add footnotes and post-scripts where needed.
At the end of the year, I will post a round-up of the best of South 12th from 2011. By then, having been brought up on the past and having had the previous year summarized, you will be able to see clearly what an important role South 12th has played in your life.
But by then, it will be too late. Because in January, I’ll finally join Twitter and never write another blog post again for the rest of my life. Instead, I will lob individual bon mots directly at @you, and just directly link you to Facebook events I want you to know about with bit.ly instead of writing about them. on.fb.me/u6GCKJ #catchyousuckersontheflipside
On Sunday, October 12, 2008, I was spending the evening reading other people’s blogs. I looked out my living room window onto 12th Avenue South and thought to myself, “Tumblr, huh? Well, if Georgia Hardstark can do it, then I can do it.” I created this account, named it for the street I was looking at, and posted the above photo of my uncle’s foyer in Cincinnati.
S. 12th’s late summer hiatus is over. I will soon issue a full report to shareholders on how my hiatus was spent.
On an unrelated note: while there are lots of movies about Harvard making the rounds this fall, there is only one movie about Harvard that S. 12th cares about. That said, would you send me some money to help fund a remake of Love Story starring the Winklevoss Brothers in the Ryan O’Neal role? Not the real ones; the CGI versions.
“I’m 6’5”, 220 pounds, and there are three of me.”
So as you know, S. 12th is on furlough for a bit, until its creator (me) feels sufficiently less harried, something I expect to happen in the fall.
Honestly, I don’t know how those of you who are professional writers also find the energy or desire to write on your blogs, as well. I have had some large writing projects this summer, and while I’ve enjoyed them immensely, they’ve also utterly crushed any desire to write for myself in this forum. This seems all the more insulting considering the stuff I post here doesn’t barely qualifies as, like, actual writing (this is really more of a notebook), and I still can’t really force myself to do it. If you have any dazzling insights into how this works for you, writer/readers, I’d welcome your email.
Since I won’t be using a computer any less, though, I thought I would try out some alternative methods of using this platform in the meanwhile. I like how Tumblr handles media, and I like the minimalism of many of the visual themes.
So to that end, above you will find a link to a new Tumblr, which will consist of three things and three things only:
A photo from my LG C2000 cameraphone, also sometimes referred to here as the Drug Phone.
A broadcast recorded from a “numbers station,” described by Wikipedia as “shortwave radio stations of uncertain origin [that] generally broadcast artificially generated voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters (sometimes using a spelling alphabet), tunes or Morse code.”
A MIDI arrangement of a pop song.
That’s it! Nothing else! I’m not sure what these three elements have in common, other than they’re all manifestations of outdated technology, often extremely eerie, and I like putting them together in mysterious little triads. I’ll put up three at a time in organized clusters every few days or so. I am looking forward to the rigidity and simplicity of the format. There are already a few sets posted for your inspection.
If this sounds like something you might enjoy, you are welcome to follow along. If this sounds like a ridiculous, pretentious waste of time, well, you may have a point, too.
This is my 999th post on S. 12th. What’s a good way to mark such an occasion?
Throwing up a placeholder, that’s what, so’s we can post the big one, #1,000, and do something really exciting.
So, to that end, here’s London’s own 999, performing “Emergency” in 1977. 999 were a good placeholder band. They had a cool name, and their songs were pretty good. They weren’t as good as the Boys or the Adverts or X-Ray Spex, but still quite enjoyable.
There are enormous, revolutionary, exciting changes afoot here in S. 12th World this week, so I will be stepping away for a bit to attend to them. In my absence, please accept this cover of the Carter Family’s “Wildwood Flower,” as performed by the Ventures, in the spirit of New Frontier-themed optimism, forward propulsion and questionable cross-genre meddling.
This could also be a cover of Woody Guthrie’s “Reuben James,” since it’s the exact same medley. Old Woody never heard a folk tune he didn’t like enough to repurpose as an Okie anthem.
(Also, an extra-special thanks to the dozens of readers that emailed me this week to alert me to the fact that one of the Russian figure-skating couples in Vancouver performed their routine to “Theme from Love Story.” Never let it be said that my readers don’t know my hot buttons.)
This has been http://southtwelfth.tumblr.com, South 12th, Minneapolis, concluding our broadcast day. South 12th is owned and operated by South Twelfth Productions, Incorporated, and is broadcast on a frequency of 24 megabytes per second, as assigned by the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, DC. South 12th studios and executive offices are located on 12th Avenue South in Midtown Minneapolis. Our transmitter is located high atop 419 Park Avenue South, Suite 807 in New York City.
Portions of today’s programming have been mechanically reproduced, and some programming has been pre-recorded on videotape. Viewer comments about our programming are invited by writing the office of our General Manager, Minneapolis, MN 55407.
On behalf of all the people that bring you the news, entertainment and public affairs programming of S. 12th, we invite you to join us again this morning at 6am, and wish you a good night.
(I think I’m going to start queuing these up to publish every single night at 2am. Even on days when I didn’t write anything, like today. Maybe throw in a little “High Flight.” Are you reading this in real-time, right now, at 2am? That’s excellent.)
