Week 1565

Have you heard about the short 20th century? The notion is that the 20th century didn't really go from 1900 to 2000. It went from 1914—the start of World War I—to 1991—the fall of the Soviet Union. Makes more sense, right? And its counterpart is the long 19th century, 1789 to 1914.

I've started to think of 2009 as "long 2009" in my personal history. It began in November 2008, when my co-conspirator Andrew Fitzgerald finished his first novel and I, in a fit of (let's be honest) jealousy, decided to recommit myself to writing. And now, "long 2009" ends this month, when I begin at Twitter.

Which is not to say that the writing ends! No: that course has been set. What I mean is that the fulcrum-power of the year is bounded by those dates. And "long 2009" was certainly the most important year for me since, say, 2004, when I co-produced EPIC 2014 and joined Current.

Mostly I just enjoy telling stories about time: marking out epochs and hinge-points. Maybe a bit of counterfactual thrown in there, too.

This week I saw Sep Kapmvar give a talk at Twitter. His project with Jonathan Harris—We Feel Fine—was one of the very first things I encountered that had been made with Processing, and one of the things that made me want to learn it for myself, which led to all sorts of other things. Something about seeing this old influence in this new context... it was a nice juxtaposition.

This was a very successful week for Pilgrim. I wrote a lot of material. Very rough, but all in sentences and paragraphs, committed to the screen, which is the essential thing. I'm mindful of my notion to have a barf-draft done by mid-March, with SXSW as my arbitrary deadline; I think it's quite possible, and hitting that deadline is my focus and my measure of success.

That's it! Short weeknote this time.

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