Maybe let’s do a quick roundup update of how this substack has been coming along so far. I started out with the generic name “visakanv’s essays”, temporarily switched to something like “visakanv’s switchboard” before I eventually got inspired to go with “visa’s voltaic verses”.
Here’s a question for you Visa. What is your substack about? What’s the point? There are many different ways of trying to answer this question. Most recently I was feeling inspired by the Federalist Papers, written by Hamilton, Madison and Jay, to promote the US Constitution. I wanna say, even to just contextualize it, to describe it. I would like the Voltaic Verses to be a kind of Federalist Papers. To describe what? The easy cached answer is something like “friendly ambitious nerdism”. A way of seeing and being that leads to human flourishing. I believe I have my answer, or a partial answer, something that is useful, something that has resonated with some people, and I know in my heart that I am committed to the long haul. Wrote a thread about that.
eviscerate me
I often think something like, if I told the full truth of what I think I know, what I believe, I will be eviscerated for it. Writing it out, it seems rather dramatic. And… why not just get it out? Why am I holding it in? Eviscerate me, fuck it.
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In recent years (since 2020) I’ve built up a bit of a reputation as Mr. Friendly Ambitious Nerd on the internet, and part of the “Friendly” bit suggests that I’m going to be a nice guy. And for the most part I think I do try to be kind, thoughtful, considerate. This didn’t come super naturally for me growing up, it’s something I consciously cultivated after bungling a series of social interactions as a teenager. I used to be disagreeable, combative, critical, nitpicky, that sort of thing. An “argument bro”. I like to think that I always had a good heart underneath it all, I never wanted to really hurt anybody. I just wanted to participate, to be constructive, to learn, to share.
Still, the interesting thing is, while people did often describe me as friendly, kind, thoughtful, constructive etc from say 2015-2020, there’s something about publishing FAN that seemed to have led to me “walling off” thoughts and utterances that might be perceived as uncharitable, mean, caustic, etc. I’m always preaching “focus on what you want to see more of”. I do believe it. I do stand by it. I do try to live it. But I do also want to be an honest human being, and sometimes being overly selective ends up being a kind of dishonest.
Thinking now about Hasan/Barack, emotionally dishonest?
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the thing is that it’s so obvious to me from people’s utterances how they’re likely “going to do”. and maybe you could say, that’s bullshit, how do you know? or “what do you mean by ‘going to do’”? good questions. I don’t know for absolute certain, sometimes I get it wrong, and more often than not it’s something else that interferes.
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VISA, EXPLAIN VOLTAIC VERSES RIGHT FUCKING NOW, IN ONE BREATH, STANDING ON ONE FOOT.
- The tricky thing about talking about voltaic verses is that I don’t want to explicitly describe how I think about it. The whole thing is a kind of seduction where I don’t want to begin with “this is a seduction”. Which isn’t to say that you can’t begin a seduction with “this is a seduction”, but that’s just not what I want to do. I have some internal notes for how I think about it, that would spoil the magic if I shared it up front. I want to create some suspense. There’s a bit of a mystery story that I want to bring people along on. And I’m kind of writing-it-as-I-go, so it’s partially a mystery even to me. But I’ve written enough over the years and spoken with enough people to believe that it’s possible to do what I’m trying to do.
- Still, there are some words I could use to create a “vibe map”. Voltaic Verses is about resonance, it’s about aliveness, it’s about Christopher Alexander’s “Quality without a name”. It’s about creativity, it’s about struggle, it’s about syncretism, multiplicity of perspectives. It’s about fresh vocabulary, new ways of seeing.
- So far there have been about a dozen posts, and many of them have circled around a ‘local cluster’ in ideaspace. It’s about resonance, courage, motivation, managing your psychology, attending to your desires and feelings, etc. I’m happy to write and publish these, but I don’t intend the entire substack to be about only this for 100 posts. Rather, I want to depart from this ‘local cluster’ and visit a different cluster entirely. As I write this I’m thinking about video games like FF7 or Horizon Zero Dawn, where you start in one area (Midgard, the Nora’s sacred lands), and then you expand into a wider universe. I suppose you could also say “Iron Man → MCU”.
- Off the top of my head, I also want to write about information architecture… and I want to write histories of internet culture(s), and oral histories of recent decades, and i want to talk about southeast asia, I want to do some autobiographical stuff but not “too much”, I want to do some media theory, book reviews. I have some big “theory of culture” type content that I’m still trying to chunk down into bite-sized pieces that make sense. I also want to evaluate a bunch of pop culture through my lens. At this point “Visa’s take on X” is itself an evocative and meaningful concept to a bunch of people, the way you might say “in the style of Seinfeld”, or “in the style of The Beatles”, and so on. Which is… itself interesting and maybe a potential essay in the making.
behind the scenes of my essays
i’m never quite sure what i want to reveal about my creative process
i suppose i can work backwards and write it first and then decide not to post it
i want there to be poetry in my titles.
we were voyagers / the essays i have not published / a parliament of hallucinations / the messes i inhabit / make yourself comfortable / humility and arrogance / translucent beliefs / thingification / obsolete with grace / family drama / polite fictions / honesty can get you labelled untrustworthy / thinking in dominos / consecration / ads / the hypocrisy of trad / tired and wired / American cringe / Advanced Stupid / Bollywood steamroller / Public commons / gradient of intimacy / Desire paths / Frames / What does my gut want? / The tyranny of structure
The nuance of irl / Demonstrate that you are Serious / Primal eye contact
I want to quote loads of my favourite authors in all my essays
I want the pictures I choose to be a beautiful collage
I want the essays to reference each other
I want each essay to have something of a thesis of sorts
define the problem gently and curiously: what do you want your essay to be? I want it to have lovely vibes, to feel like flowers and music, expansive, drenched with possibility. I want there to be forgiveness and redemption, lightness and joy, a sense that no matter how difficult or painful things are, there is still a light in the darkness, we can still find our way back to the deep relaxation that home is supposed to feel like.
I want to embody curiosity, to ask questions, to be led on interesting adventures.
I’m tired of preaching and sermonising and telling people how they should act. I want to be a little baby.
Nerdposting
I feel like I’ve spent most of the first 12 posts on my substack writing about motivation and creativity and I’m kind of done with that for now. I know from experience that this won’t mean I’m done with it forever– it’s a cyclical concern and I will likely need to think and talk about it again, just as how we’re full after eating a hearty meal but hungry again the next day.
Right now what I really want to do is some nerdposting. I define a nerd as someone who is driven by their curiosity, and for me nerdposting is a delightful kind of exploratory writing that’s doing research in real time. Some of my favorite twitter threads fit this category. But I’m not sure I’ve particularly tried doing it with essays. So this is a bit of an experiment. How do I start? I start with some questions. I hinted at one in the conclusion of the previous post: I’m curious about how people’s concept of personal identity has evolved over the centuries, particularly before and after the rise of the nation-state.
But that feels like a topic for another day, it’s more of a fun diversion from my primary interests. I’ll look into it when I don’t wanna do my main thing. My main thing is… pamphlets. I want to understand the history of the dissemination of ideas. I’ve spent a few years tweeting a lot and I want to know more about my historical predecessors.
According to Wikipedia, Thomas Paine was an influential pamphleteer, as were John Milton and John Calvin
The University Wits- group of late 1500s English playwrights and pamphleteers
I’m currently having lunch at Komala Vilas and I can hear a Tamil movie being played over… the radio? I can hear the audio but I can’t see it. But I recognise the voice of one of the characters – it’s Vadivelu. I was thinking about how tamil cinema must have shaped the modern tamil language.
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my unstated essay writing strategy is to stew around in notes about all sorts of things that i have strong feelings about but feel underqualified to say. and then when some bull-headed clown comes along and boldly makes wrong assertions, I can be like “OH NO YOU DONT” and release