Let's Talk About Context!
Greetings!
I want to use this space to explore creativity, art, storytelling, writing, design, tech and the intersections between them—whatever that means. I personally know those connections are what rev me up, and so, let's see what happens!
Context + the Written Word
Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.
— anne carson bot (@carsonbot) January 8, 2021
I love Anne Carson; she's one of my favorite writers. First, she's hard to classify. She is a scholar of the Greek classics, poet, essayist, critic, translator and professor. A reviewer says, "Anne Carson’s genius and weakness reside in her work’s incredible range of form and conception." Every work I read is different and how she plays with language and builds out thoughts always leaves me a bit breathless and jealous.
My favorite piece is the titular essay in her collection Decreation. It begins:
This is an essay about three women and will have three parts. Part One concerns Sappho, a Greek poet of the seventh century B.C., who lived on the island of Lesbos, wrote some famous poetry about love and is said to have organized her life around worship of the God Aphrodite. Part Two concerns Marguerite Porete, who was burned alive in the public square of Paris in 1310 because she had written a book about the love of God which the papal inquisitor deemed heretical. Part Three concerns Simone Weil, the twentieth-century French classicist and philosopher whom Camus called "the only great spirit of our time."
From there, she lays out a lot of concepts—God, women, history, culture, language, the world—in her three-part essay. Then she follows it with a spectacular spectacular written display. In this case, Carson writes an opera. I wish I had an excerpt to share, but I lent my copy to a friend and the Internet is not being helpful.
The Digital Word + Context?
Anyway, all this is to say, the Anne Carson Bot is my favorite Twitter to follow these days. I think it's because 2020 was such a hard year, but moreso that there's a lot of content, language and emotion thrown at us everyday because of technology. So in between the trolling, the cats, the headlines, the clickbaits, the ads, the marketing, the constant rage, and other harmful and harmless growth in our digitsphere, I found safety. I found space. I found perspective in the beauty, humor and contextual depth of Anne Carson on Twitter.
Perhaps the main reason I appreciate Anne Carson is how she constantly draws connections across time and space. The greek poet Sappho is to the Medieval heretic Marguerite Porete is to the young philosopher Simone Weil is to opera is to Canada is to me sitting here while writing to you. In a way, lots of her writing is like a Twitter thread in that she is backtracking you through centuries of thinking, perception, knowledge and feeling then cycling it all forward to the present. In helping us download all that information, Carson's work at least gives me a better understanding of the present and future. She does not rewrite anything; rather she helps frame it so I can look at all its vast complications, appreciate it and move on into the next moment of my personal and our collective future. Actually, it's more effective than a Twitter thread.
I'm thinking of all this because it is 2021. Just two days ago (even though I'm sending this newsletter in February) it was January 6th. On that day at least for me personally, I watched the insurrection in the US Capitol while relatives in Europe messaged us about almost daily earthquakes. It was a lot to bear, and I thought: It's only the beginning of this year. And who am I to bear these things? And how can I cope and hold them?
When we ask those questions, context plays an important grounding antidote. We can consider where we are against where we were and make strategic guesses about where we are going. However, in tech and product land, we are often only thinking of "what's next." This question never considers the spectrum, and I think that is one reason why we're in the context-less swamp in which we find ourselves.
Can We Create Contextual Experiences?
I've always appreciated that I began my UX education with context. Jaime Levy started her class telling us about how she lived through the Dotcom Crash in the 1990s. She described how she rose high then fell. And knowing that, I think, has helped keep me grounded as I move forward in projects and my professional career.
As an industry, we have created systems and realities. Now we must understand how and why we created them so we can reframe and evolve from the failures and the successes. It's only in this way that we will move forward and build the next generation of tech. It's not about burning it to the ground but contextualizing and building on what works and what doesn't.
All this is to say, that I'm thinking a lot about how I want to be professionally and personally in 2021. I think we're in for another rollercoaster ride. And rather than be someone who fuels their grief into rage, I'd rather build something that nurtures and connects. I think how we storytell and collect those pieces into a story and how we help our users do it through our designs will play a very large part in that evolution.
Reading, Watching, Listening
I read in an article by Stephen Nesbitt about how we must learn to "hold grief and joy" at the same time. So I suppose that's why I'm rewatching Steven Universe again. If you're a fan of any kind of animation, I highly recommend it. This is also probably why I'm rewatching the first few seasons of Grey's Anatomy.
These other articles about context really stuck with me, too:
This article by Haley Byrd Wilt about the distortion of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's account of January 6 is an excellent snapshot about how our digitsphere continually blurs context.
This is a beautiful mediation about the last two white rhinos in the world. Journalist Sam Anderson asks us to slow down and consider: What do we really lose when animals go extinct?
Stay safe! Stay sane! Tell me how you're doing it.
Sarah