some questions

how I had created a survey and how the results were incredibly encouraging

Substack has been a really fascinating set of tools for me. It feels like a smart notebook with weird pages in different colours and then there are so many notes from others and some really good and sometimes quite slow thinking. Which often happens to be the best thinking of them all.

sake cup, by witold riedel

So while the platform feels nimble it also does not feel particularly efficient or trying to be. And that’s just lovely. Like having different handwriting on many pages or paper with various tooth.

And I also like that it is even called tooth. And most digital media has no tooth.

A lot is too easy. Substack appears to have tooth.

I discovered that I can create surveys here! I mean anyone can create subscriber surveys, apparently. I now know that these surveys are sent to subscribers. So the next one will be different and more thoughtful.

In this one I basically asked everyone if they knew that paying subscribers get artwork. (And I am only slowly sending it out, sorry). And I keep repeating it because obviously it’s quite a big deal to ask anyone to pay for what… reading things they are already reading? Reading things they have missed?

I moved the time after which the access to posts expires far back. So, hope no-one encounters a pay wall. Getting an artwork via the Substack subscription here is the probably funniest way to get my work.

The responses to the survey were quite wonderful, positive and encouraging. I asked what I should do more of or stop doing, and it looks like those who read my little notes are reading them because they want to. Not because they want them to be something else.

sake cup by Witold Riedel

It makes perfect sense, really. What was I thinking?

Out of 88 subscribers, about 10% responded. But that’s probably the nature of the medium too. It’s all the way the world has always worked really. Except that maybe we had no way to create surveys and look at friends and family and people in general as numbers or data or anonymised anything. Technology has turned us all into Emperors and Empresses of liquid pretend empires.

Having 88 followers or subscribers does not mean that they can’t be also the readers, followers, subscribers or lovers of another 1000 publications.

Except only I give out my original artwork. I will stop talking about that now. sorry.

A book on my shelf could be frustrated with me because I have not taken it into my hand for years. But it is being widely read somewhere else. Maybe in another language. Or maybe it is just changing someone’s life. And I also have more than one book. And I cannot read them all at a time, but I often look at several in parallel, or create connections never intended for them.

Sake Cup by Witold Riedel

And images from the books plant themselves in the little box from which then the filters emerge through which I end up creating whatever happens to be available as creativity on a specific day. It is all like a completely insane dance of information and particles and pictures and moods and temperature and sleep deprivation or music too and memories and hopes and observations. And the touch of material in my hand or on the table, the softness or rigidity of everything being everything everywhere all at once.

I just saw a really well put together AI film yesterday and the characters in the film were paid in pictures. They were creatures that were devout of original memories, an idea already touched in Blade Runner many years ago. And so receiving little hints of moments of what might have happened in their past was an incredible reward. Truly valuable. And the punishment would be the erasure of those same images.

A very fitting concept for a film that had been entirely generated from prompts.

I love that Lisbon makes the feeling of being the others stronger. I understand that it is not good for business to feel the pain or joy of others. (Unless it is somehow good for extracting profit from them, I guess). But recognising that the other person is you is not something useful in the world of greed.

Here in Lisbon I feel like every person I encounter is somehow a little bit of the larger living organism I am part of. And not just that, the person I encounter is the piece I was missing. I am not quite sure what makes this happen, but it is quite a marvellous experience actually.

Many years ago I asked myself what it would be like if every person we encountered on the street were as familiar to us as a long lost friend. It seems like an outrageous idea maybe but indeed every human on earth is actually someone’s child and also someone’s friend and so they somehow deserve to be seen as a long lost friend. We just have not recognised this yet.

And so in Lisbon, the bus driver listening to music and singing, feels like the man who is my friend. The father who gets punched in the face by his four year old son on that very same bus is a version of me and a friend. But so is the little boy who is not yet aware that punching one’s father is an action that causes pain and more.

I am the old lady who walks up the hill in Boa Hora, dressed completely in black. Or also that other lady who prayed next to me at the chapel up the hill from the studio. And then only when she started gathering her shopping bags to leave did I notice that she had no hands. She was me. Except I do not appreciate my hands enough. Even the broken finger from the break in is confusing. But no hands at all? We were praying at the same time though.

I am also like that dog that seems to live around here and is actually friends with the bearded man who stands outside of the supermarket around noon to get his lunch money together. And I am like him too and the guy at the restaurant with no name who is a bit grumpy bus somehow always happy to see us.

And even when driving a car—and I have written about it before—it seems like the flow of the cars in traffic is much more important in Lisbon than the adherence to the rules. And it makes such perfect sense. It is so much better to stop three cars to let one car pass, so 20 can then continue their journey, than to be so strict and not look at anything but the internal rule book.

Oh, the survey. I forgot that I was writing about the survey. I probably should ask myself what it is that I need to write. And I think the answer would be that I am already writing it. My meandering walking towards the very beginning of the piece is what I need and what is needed to open the windows of creativity anyway.

I can’t think of a target audience when I am writing this here, because then it would be something that an artificial language model could probably do much better anyway.

I am a small language model. I am in a country where I am a tiny language model. At 55 I have the vocabulary of a two year old. At that same age I am an artist who is making work that is both innocent and curious and also based on all the crazy experiences and explorations and journeys I have been on in my lifetime.

And things are probably about to get much weirder still.

All I can do is make and do and write about the little bits that then explain why on earth some of my work looks the way it does.

I am going to make some more objects now. Will write into the book here later.

How do I not send this to my 88 subscribers? I do not want to upset anyone by writing too much. Though if I am a long lost friend to some of them then maybe it is okay.

Having many free conversations about many free topics is probably the most wonderful thing we can have in these efficiently effectively frightening times.

Thank you so much for all of the participants of the survey.

You have truly made my day.

I will keep going. Thank you for ALL encouraging me to do so.