Thoughts - On Space and Community and Race

Thoughts - On Space and Community and Race

I was thinking about a conversation I had like two weeks ago.

With an old friend, I hadn't talked to in a month or two.

We were talking about the internet and space, and how people form communities and communicate.

It came from a conversation about d&d, having to learn the skills to communicate and express oneself online and to form communities with other people having those skills.

And how there are no hard rules around things like that, they are all learned social interactions.

And she said something about that, about how she doesn't like those spaces because she doesn't want to interact in them, and doesn't need to. So she doesn't have that skill set. She doesn't like communicating that way. She doesn't need to if it isn't part of work.

And I talked about how with a two-year pandemic if I didn't have them, these spaces, this way of communicating, I wouldn't have any friends or anyone to talk to.

And I think I just realized tonight how angry that made me.

Ukraine - Zelensky's Speech

Ukraine - Zelensky's Speech

President Zelensky's gave this speech tonight. Glory to Ukraine.

I am grateful to every Ukrainian who stays to defend our cities, even in the encirclement.

Our Freedom

But I also know that there are people who really need to get out.

Who cannot stay.

And we heard the promise that there would be humanitarian corridors.

But there are no humanitarian corridors.

Instead of humanitarian corridors, they can only make bloody ones.

A family was killed in Irpen today.

A man, a woman, and two children.

Right on the road.

As in the shooting club.

When they were just trying to get out of town. To escape.

The whole family.

How many such families have died in Ukraine!

We will not forgive.

We will not forget.

We will punish everyone who committed atrocities in this war.

On our land.

We will find every bastard.

Which shot at our cities, our people. Which bombed our land.

Which launched rockets.

Which gave the order and pressed "start".

There will be no quiet place on this earth for you.

Except for the grave.

Tragedy - Gaza

 Tragedy - Gaza

I will say that for days as the conflict has been unfolding this week. It is very difficult to feel equipped to comment in any meaningful or fair way. But it's also important to me at least that I say something, anything. And saying anything is to condemn the politics and policies of attacking civilians of Palestine. It is impossible to categorize the 'war' going on as anything other than aggression of a colonizing force, and possibly at worst, some form of ethnic cleansing.

Activism - Trans Day of Visibility

 Activism - Trans Day of Visibility

Being a good Ally is getting the FK out of the way and elevating the voices of those marginalized and oppressed. So here's Samantha St Cameron's post.

Theatre - World Theatre Day 2021

 Theatre - World Theatre Day 2021

What a strange time for theatre. In days a decade ago, colleagues of mine and I were actively trying to sort out live performance, online performance, distributed audiences, disassociative theatre that was still distinctive from broadcast or recorded mediums like television and film.

We were often laughed at by our contemporaries. "It'll never work, the magic is lost, you should just practice film, people will never watch theatre online."

How different the last year has been. Faced with a kind of cruel and casual extinction, the embrace of the medium has had to change. And no one has come to me in the last year saying "It will never work." It simply has to work, or it dies.

And lo has there been ground gained. Stories by people have taken on new mediums, imperfect in their art, but art nonetheless. A kind of rabid desire to express and be expressed to.

I have been 'practicing' roleplay games for years now, and to see the transformative medium change in these pandemic times has been exhilarating and heartbreaking. By almost equal measure.

At the same time, theatre is having this distributed awakening in the wake of Black Lives Matter. In the wake of a year of protests, long and difficult conversations are finally starting to take place. Will there be realized change? I don't know. We've been at this precipice so many times before, and I think of all the shattered lives that have vanished by the wayside in the wake, but a practitioner of theatre somehow must still hold onto a kind of hope.

That this time, things will be different.

Design - On Common

 Design - On Common

Common as a language system in d&d is a simplification in order to facilitate design around getting people moving forwards more quickly.

But you should also be adept enough to recognize that it is rooted in a deeply colonialist idea.

Life - Not Worth Celebrating

 Life - Not Worth Celebrating

I have been grappling of late with the feeling of being a friend in passing. Where people only message when they need something, or as a perfunctory thing in between actual events, with no stakes, and often only with responses of "Nice" and "Yeah".

And it makes me want to socially withdraw, which seems to compound the issue. It is this feeling of being socially outcast, where I have no one to discuss thoughts or emotions, even though I'm not actually 'down' or feeling negative, these connections are profoundly unsatisfying and commonly feel not worth the energy to develop further. I don't feel like the summation of human contact with others should be constantly through the lens of suffering or needing help.

Covid has emphasized this feeling of societal drift. I feel like I don't have anyone to celebrate with.

Maybe there's nothing worth celebrating.

Maybe I'm not worth celebrating.