the one-person gang fight

you know what i mean

I am currently at the starting line of Mind Noise Three. That could be exciting news depending on what you thought of the first two but I am not here to specifically talk about my projects but projects as a whole. With every project I do, I like to push the boundaries. I want to take something known and make it a stranger again. With zines, you add illustration and colour and some other cool elements and it is a good day’s work but books, books are different.

I am staring at the scraps of paper I have created and wondering how it all goes together. In a black-and-white world, how do you make something neon and infinite? Writing is still a challenge for me which is a good thing. I promised myself if it ever got easy I would close everything down and call it a day. If I am not challenging myself then I struggle to see the point in it.

I am also in a personal debate on how ‘complete’ I want to make this third one. We live in such a ‘pretty ribbon’ society. Pristine and perfect! Even if it is only an illusion (and quite often it is). I never want to give a false impression and I guess the honest impression is flawed and still trying to figure out what the hell life is and why fries are so goddamn delicious and why aren’t they healthy?!

Then comes the issue of putting out a flawed, incomplete book that is trying to figure out who it is but also making it feel complete. Releasing all of my work without professional proofreaders or editors is a somewhat rebellion towards the expectations of things. I want the typos in there. I want human error to exist in almost everything I do. I want human at the core of things, however, human loses the battle to expectation more often than it should.

And that is the part of this thing that isn’t exclusive to projects but everything around us. We all try and meet these invisible expectations and get mad when we fall under them but the expectations in this world are human-made but have lost the human at the core. I mean, we are all just making it up as we go along so there isn’t really a right answer. There isn’t a standard way to be or a standard way to think and if you follow it down the chain there isn’t a specific way to create anything.

I guess I am saying we need to be gentle. There are times when I think all of this technology designed to broaden our horizons has actually boxed us in. Escape those boxes and do something that follows no rules or guidance. Wildly follow your heart. Write a song that starts with the third verse. Bake a cake with bacon. Invent your own language and confuse baristas. Mind Noise Three will be different. I don’t know how yet but it will be. And for now, that is enough. Let me introduce you properly to the third instalment:

Mind Noise Three: Proof That I’m Human

Now I want to hand it over to you. Join me on the app and we can chat about it or leave a comment below for the following question. What concept would be interesting in a book or are there any elements you’d like to see in a book to make it different? I have a choose your own ending zine, I have a book in the style of an interview, I have done receipt poems etc. Is there anything you can think of that you would like to see, style or design wise too? Let me know.

Yes, you’re flawed

but holy heck

aren’t you beautiful!!

(Replace heck with any work that invokes the message you want at the time. Here is a dumb low quality audio of me explaining it a little more. I will find my microphone and do these more because they add another layer and I enjoy them)

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This here is a belter. Take off your worries. Strip off your concerns. Remove all your ability to dance and just throw your body around like you’re going in a one-person gang fight.

And here is a more chilled version of the same song