It’s a known fact that the lack of inspiration to create is usually a sign to pick up a book. Or to go see that film or that artist’s work. Collect, collect, collect. I’m currently reading two books: Regarding the Pain of Others, by Susan Sontag, who points to whatever makes you queasy and offers both name and reason. In this book, she talks about war photography and whether it truly helps elicit an understanding of suffering and pain in war. Unrelated but I also recommend listening to her lecture, Illness as Metaphor ,where she talks about the romanticisation of TB and now mental health diseases, and the militarisation of the language around cancer, and how this has shaped the way people think about illness and unfairly stigmatise the sick. I also started reading Field Notes to Getting Lost, by Rebecca Solnit, because her name comes up often in things I’m otherwise exploring, for instance, this podcast on time. This particular collection of essays is too verbose for my liking. Sontag and Solnit are disparate in their style. To read them simultaneously, for me, is an interesting education in specificity of thought.
Whenever I’m feeling uninspired, there’s another place that never disappoints. Are.na. Someone had described it as a Pinterest for ideas, which is really how it’s best defined. You collect ideas, thematically arrange them, and discover new ideas through other people’s collections.
It’s a platform devoid of algorithmic mediation, though nothing UGC can be entirely independent of algorithmic influence. Even so, Are.na has original writing, thoughts, research papers, visual art, and graphic illustrations generated and authored by its users. It is also interesting to see how people juxtapose ideas and how they frame a point of view based on what they read. It is my go-to place to discover majorly off-the-grid, new (for me) literary inspiration.
Why I use Are.na?
1. For the first two years, I used it as a new place to read high-quality ideas and get smarter. Most interesting discoveries are housed in Ways of Seeing, Have You Thought of This, New Concepts, Online Self.
2. Only since last year have I been witnessing how much my reading here comes back to feed my poems and essays. For example, I discovered David Whyte's writing here, including this idea on friendship, from his book Consolations, which I included and responded to in my essay The Job of Friendship.
“The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”
Usually now, in the middle of a piece I’ll be working on, I’ll remember reading something on that subject on Are.na. My discoveries are labelled and organised under numerous thematic channels, so I don’t have trouble locating them. I tend to use these to sharpen the idea or converse with it in the piece. This process has made my use of Are.na more intentional, especially in subjects I might have a limited point of view or understanding on.
3. Because most of it is excerpt-driven in nature, it’s a great way to discover writers whose body of work you might want to dive in. I went on to read the works of Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Sontag, Twyla Tharp, David Whyte, Ruth Ozeki, from here.
As a writer, it’s part of my toolkit. As a person, it’s one of the few good places on the internet. Necessary to say, this post is not sponsored by Are.na. I do love it so much.
If you’re interested in using it, I’ve put down a little guide.