I decided to take the old lists page and completely reimagine it so that (1) it incorporated other sorts of scattered thoughts, and (2) I could update it several times a day without triggering updates on my Neocities profile (via black magic I learned from suboptimalism).
As I thought about this, it kind of seemed like I was just making a micro-blog system for myself. This made me think of Twitter. I've tried to join Twitter a few times, but I've never really succeeded at being a fully contributing member of the website. During my first round of twitter, when real life friends followed me, I tried my hand at composing a few tweets, but I didn't really consider it an artform yet, and I certainly never tweeted anything interesting. Later on I'd encounter certain masters of tweeting and I'd feel something like admiration towards them, but by then I felt overcome with a sensation of rudely interupting any conversation I tried to contribute to -- tweeting was too much pressure for me.
About ten years ago, Tim Rogers wrote an essay which seems to have influenced me quite a bit, where he compared twitter (back when it had an extreme character limit) to text messages, and text messages to Heian era poetry. Long before that, I'd read Sarashina Nikki, the piece of Heian era literature that's influenced me most. In terms of form, it's a sequence of poems embedded in long prose sections explaining the contexts that inspired said poems. I've been rereading it lately, feeling sad I can't write poetry like that. But I might as well try.
So I've ended up with this diary that incorporates these three different artforms: lists, 160-character tweets, and little poems. It's certainly not the most cohesive idea I've ever had, but maybe these different formats will add some much needed variety to my writing, rather than just being overly-long overly-personal micro-saddles.
Maybe this is how I'll finally learn to be concise.
Original preface to my lists:
When I was in 9th grade, my brother told me “if you want to be smart, you need to start carrying a notebook around in your pocket and making lists all day”.
I related this story once on a forum I like. Someone had made a thread that served as a kind of ode to the joy of list-making. It had been years since I approached lists as a serious art-form. When I saw that thread, I thought for a few moments about once more trying my hand at some list compilation, but I was too lazy and undisciplined at the time. In the last few months though, I've found myself making lists without even realizing it. I figure I should have a place for them on my website.
Lists can be serious and objective. One can spend years compiling them together then eventually publishing them. Thesauruses, concordances, and phonebooks are all lists that aim at some level of exhaustiveness. That's where their value derives from. On the other hand, lists can also bask in subjectivity and temporality. Like haiku or jueju, their art can lie in their triviality. One doesn't aspire to write a single jueju that will be an everlasting representative work. Like jazz improvisation, the value of such momentary artforms comes from engaging in them again and again over the course of one's life.
As you probably guessed, most of the lists here are of the second type. These lists will constantly be updated — particularly the cross references and links. Maybe some of them will even turn into essays someday. A lot of essays are ultimately lists with the bullet points removed. One pads the items of the list with words in order to create a work of significant length, and thereby a sense of value. For now though, let's just stay in the world of bare lists.
Every one of these is a work in progress. If you feel a list is missing something important, please tell me. I'll be sure to credit you for your help.