Field Note: Signal Seeds
A playlist. A log from Underground.
artwork by me
Business is an art form. A living thing. It’s just got capitalist belt buckles and a funny way of talking.
Creation follows patterns, but not always the ones we expect. Sometimes something collapses and from the debris, something new builds itself. Through you. Sometimes in spite of you. Messier than we’d like. Also — more generous.
Slack? Started as a company called Tiny Speck, building a video game Glitch. The chat was an internal tool the team used. Game company folds, Slack was born.
Instagram? At first, a location check point app. But people didn’t care. They just wanted to share photos.
Imagine: Maybe you don’t need to wrestle that future to the ground and pin it. Maybe you just need to go wrestle and meet an idea while you’re tying your shoes on the sidelines.
I’m thinking about discarded ideas, tarnished plans because, as ever, my eyes are on the horizon after a less than ideal dip. I was in a depression for most of March and April. Immunocompromised and super sick through December and January. I was upset — to say it small — and then upsetter still, because I was both genuinely unwell and spilling my blessings everywhere.
So I’m there, in the dark. Mouth full of soil, mineral quicksilver. A real change or I’ll kill you myself moment. Crawling out. And it’s like the ideas were talking while I was away. Whispered coffee sessions late at night. Sunday morning group squash.
The ideas circled back to Magdalene, this time armed with workshop feedback or forced distillation. It was a circle back delayed 5-7 weeks — because that’s my actual real delay atm.1 Also kinda a spiral-again on everything from five years ago, but with better info and stronger allies.
I popped back up — ok, crawled back up — out of the mess I made. Out of the mess I made, in earnest, best effort—but still: system failure(s).
System Failure Log (003): Affected Subroutines – Emotional Forecasting, Information Retention, Hope
Watched political news + podcasts for three weeks straight, trying to prep for imaginary future bonding. And to keep a promise. The result? Anger. Helplessness. Did you guys notice? Lol. I’m joking, you could tell. And I STILL couldn’t retain a single cabinet member’s name.
Except RFK Jr. Because of his wife — Cheryl Hines — who somehow played both Larry David’s wife (fun) and the complicated, married love interest to Shane on The L Word.
And, the press secretary. Because she radiates youth pastor’s wife energy like an envoy from my childhood. She feels more like an imprint than a person. I don’t like her but I can’t look away. In some alternate universe, I am her: trapped with a man 32 years older, defending hateful policies with a cross around my neck. I do support age gaps just only when both people are cool.
Now I’m seeing it as time spent, coined, assigned: Underground. It was useful nutritive, generative, dark time.
A DIY capstone for my five year research spiral.
A revenue strategy engineered with Magdalenian values.
All this, born from the dark.
For you: a playlist.
For perceived risk. For real risk.
No cliff to jump from. Just trying.
xx - H
On a random Tuesday a full memory and all the information that comes with it will populate from many weeks ago with photo clarity, and notes! Commentary. Otherwise: blank. Strange but interesting.