Whose Rough Beast Is This?
It’s Apocalypse Vibe Check, a bracing torrent of #content for our endless end times!
What is happening here?
Life. Chaos. An unfolding catastrophe some call progress, witnessed by a funny-looking angel. The dying of an old world, the struggling-to-be-born of a new one. A time of monsters, but also a moment of renewal, when forces start pulling from the center of earth again. Lightning crashes, an angel opens her eyes (it’s a different angel). Then, get this, there’s this placenta, and —
Shut the fuck up. Do not finish that. What is happening here, specifically.
It’s a Substack. By me. I’m Patrick. Or Pat. Either is fine.
OK. Why are you writing a Substack, Pat or Patrick?
Because it’s likely a matter of time before Twitter bellies up, becomes unusable, or I get impersonated (it’s happened before) or even straight-up banned. Because TinyLetter caps the amount of people I can stay in touch with. Because even if Twitter, like everything else, muddles along indefinitely, only shittier, I should really have done this years ago.
And what does “this” entail?
It’s going to be a place where I post writing, including things I might otherwise have put on Twitter, but better. Sometimes those things will be longer, and probably more unhinged. Other times they’ll be fairly short, but dynamic, rippling with power and taut energy, like a coiled king cobra rising to duel a lithe and possibly even erotic mongoose. You are welcome to identify with whichever of these animals you wish, or even with the totality of the scene of their dialectical struggle itself.
OK, thanks. But what does that mean, practically?
I’ll be writing about things in the news, media I consume, stuff I detect going on in the Zeitgeist, books and articles I read, etcetera. Topics will include: petulant neotenic billionaires, asshole pundits, the psychoanalysis of popular culture, tics of the Discourse (wherever that happens), and the like. Haunting this venture will be my longstanding fascination with our fantasies about the end of the world, the fact that the world never actually ends, and the sad truth that it ends for different people at different times constantly and also for each of us in the first person only ever once and then that’s it, baby. Which is to say this may sometimes go to a place where you can’t quite tell who’s being earnest and whether to laugh or cry or be angry or sad or if you just have existential indigestion. The proceedings will generally have a certain highbrow-lowbrow switcheroo kinda spirit, but I promise to be extremely clear and accessible about things that matter.
That’s still not actually so clear, though. Give me concrete deliverables.
The deal is at least one public post per month and then two if not more subscriber-only ones. It will never be less, but it quite possibly will sometimes be more, because that’s my deal.
Are you saying you’ll never stop posting?
Yes. That is exactly what I am saying. I will post through anything, even the end of the world. This is my commitment to you. Let’s see where this all goes.