All signs point to North
How to find your direction.
Don’t like reading? Allow me to read it to you 👈
Welcome to North.
Not THE NORTH. Just North. Your North. The glimpsed-at horizon of that place you’re s’posed to be, doing that thing you want to do, at the behest of lifelong yearning. Born to do it, born to go there, born to be true to true North. Make haste! Propel yourself toward the inheritance of your inhabitance of the decadence of your dreams. Step this way to find your soul as it sleeps at the feet of your own belief—in yourself, in your flesh, in your bone.
Be glad you found North.
East is for schemers.
West is for screamers.
You must try both East and West, of course. The accumulations of The Lessons can come only from the exploration of all directions on this map, your life. Wrong ways and dead ends. The packing in of supplies for the beating of your heart is found in the sunups and sundowns of Easts and Wests. Love and lost wandering will tumbleweed across great prairies, burn hot upon unswept forest floors, and unearth humility in the folds of unpredictable humidities. Don’t sour your soul on the promise of a three-car garage. Don’t scream your way to a one-way death on the stolen lands of a stranger’s biography. Turn your vehicle around.
Find North.
Don’t fret if you go South for a spell. Things will go South too. Many times. The big S of suffering will fill the screen of your wayfinding machine, leading you towards trouble and heartache and a big ol’ floe of cold hatred. It’ll BEEP BEEP BEEP you there with the sonar of sedition in the timeline of your reign. The easy way of down South and frozen will entertain your court. Dormant dreams in your dungeons, decay rioting in the halls. South, with its stabs and scratches of beastly bracken, its itching rash of emotion, and its flesh-eating ways gone feral. Fall down South with a flop for sure, but leave your eyes facing starwards.
Now get up, Galileo!
Find North!
Fingers, move fast upon your frets. Burn the ears of unbelievers with your blistering licks. Your troubles, your woes—let them slide off your scale.
Come North!
North is the pull of a thousand racing hearts packed tightly in the chest of imagination. It is the fulfillment of a sleep promise made in the dark twitch of unencumbered REM. North is screaming at you from the stands, waving your RAH-RAH sign, locking eyes in that flash of your hesitation. As if to say: I know you. You are with me. I am North, and you are welcome here.
Wrong roads and bent-tined forks are in your rearview at North, but there can be no look back until you look ahead—to find North. You must find North for the grounding to commence. For the attachment of your fearful feet to the concrete of your purpose. The nails, the glue, the blood on the bandages. Adhere to the North of your body, the North of your spirit, and the North of your very existence.
North. The promise of a run-on sentence finding its punctuation.
North. A dog’s blissful expression caught in head-out-car-window revelry.
North. The sweet punch of a fist in dough, connecting with the future you will create for yourself.
North. North. North. The lip and the breath on the edge of Fear’s bottle. Whoot! Whoot! Whoot!
Do you feel the insatiable pull of it? Does the mist of its moors seep into your pores to tickle at your inner compass, compelling it to spin, spin, spin in the wild ecstasy of magnetic energy? Can you hear its call? Come to me. Come now and come swiftly.
Answer it.
Go North!
Rub the smudge from the lenses of your traveling glasses and sight the direction clearly, even if the goal is still cloudy. Just know the go of it. And go you will. And go you do. And here you are.
Welcome to North.
Now get to work. The WiFi password is SEDULOUS.
This week’s amends…
“The reader walks away from real art heavier than she came to it. Fuller. All the attention and engagement and work you need to get from the reader can’t be for your benefit; it’s got to be for hers. What’s poisonous about the cultural environment today is that it makes this so scary to try to carry out. Really good work probably comes out of a willingness to disclose yourself, open yourself up in spiritual and emotional ways that risk making you look banal or melodramatic or naive or unhip or sappy, and to ask the reader really to feel something. To be willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I’m scared about how sappy this’ll look in print, saying this. And the effort actually to do it, not just talk about it, requires a kind of courage I don’t seem to have yet. … Maybe it’s as simple as trying to make the writing more generous and less ego-driven.”- David Foster Wallace
Via… I can’t remember where I got this from, but I think it’s from this “Conversations with Dave Foster Wallace” book.
On Rotation: “Les Fleur” by Ramsey Lewis
Reminder: You can follow The Stream On Rotation playlist and toil away at your magic desk with my soundtrack in your brain.
Michael Heizer’s “City” in the Nevada desert is finally finished. I want to go there SOOO badly. Sounds like it’s going to be a bit impossible. I’d pay $150, no drama, but the six people a day limit, and only certain times of the year will make this a tough one to get into.
Fifty years to finish?—talk about commitment to a vision. My favorite quote from Michael Heizer about it: “When they come out here to fuck my City sculpture up, they’ll realize it takes more energy to wreck it than it’s worth.”
PS: If you can’t see the NYT site linked above (paywall), here’s another piece with pics.
So how to get tickets? From the site:
Visitation for 2022 has officially closed, but we encourage you to reapply next year. The Triple Aught Foundation will begin to accept reservations for the 2023 season on January 2, 2023, at 12:01am PST. Reservations will be accepted through the Triple Aught Foundation website at that time. Visitors will be accommodated on a first come, first serve basis. Only short day-trips will be possible for a maximum of six visitors ages 16 and over, with prior reservations only, and only in favorable weather.
Via NYT
This is crazy good. This guy is crazy skilled.
Did any of this spark a tiny thought of your own?