About a month ago I was preparing a streaming video player for an event at work. During downtime, the player streams old content from Michigan Television (public TV at U of M that has now been closed). In a pleasant coincidence, I happened to see an interview with Thylias Moss, an English professor at U-M who teaches a class on “Limited Fork Theory” in the School of Art and Design.

I figure you’re asking, “But what’s ‘Limited Fork Theory’?” It starts as a class about digital composition, but then goes way past the limits of traditional college education. As the course synopsis explains,

The approach is thematic rather than monolithic allowing students to draw information from any and all areas of their experience toward investigations of their own devising within a thematic context, this semester: framing systems. Limited Fork Theory is the study of interacting language systems: any/all visual, sonic, olfactory, tactile systems/subsystems on any/all scales for some duration of time.

Then Moss’ website 4orked.com says it

is also a Theory of Everything that not only includes, but also appreciates: imagination, the fruitfulness of dead ends, the possibilities of error, the usefulness of failure, the beauty of the many configurations of the box the limited fork comes out of and goes into, forking, reconfiguring, shaping, folding, unfolding, and bifurcating all the way.

Many paths to many worlds: one limited fork.

I’m impressed that this development has come about at a public institution. Moss was an awarded poet before developing this theory and corresponding practice. But it seems she risked more than her reputation as a writer in pursuing her passion. She was already an English professor when it began, and as she says in the video below, she interrupted the schedule of a semester course to take this new direction!

As she relates, “When I went to class on Monday, I had my students throw out everything. I said to them, ‘I don’t believe what I said when class has started. I cannot continue.’”

Moss posts online under the pseudonym Forker Girl, which she calls “the embodiment of Limited Fork Theory.” I find it especially interesting that she’s not keeping it a secret, like most professionals did with their pseudonymous work in the past. However, I think Forker Girl might be more of an alternate personality than a pen name.

Moss implies that Forker Girl is more free to express “herself,” which brings to mind the way Tyler Durden empowered the narrator in Fight Club. It seems this transition will happen more frequently in the future, as people stop allowing themselves to be limited to one professional role, trying to adhere to an imaginary idea of what’s “normal” for adults.

From Moss’ viewpoint, anyone can partake in this sort of exercise. “Certainly in imagination if no other way, you can allow these things to converge – allow something to happen. And then the role of a person who would be a practitioner of Limited Fork Theory would be to somehow document what happens.”

In a second video Moss demonstrates how even taking an abstract photograph can fuel her inspiration. “…there is no rule to the orientation of [the photo.] You see, as we turn it, we get other ideas. Other possibilities emerge. From this we get to experience and understand and analyze those perspectives denied to us based upon the limits of human perception.”

There’s a synchronicity in this story as well. I discovered Limited Fork Theory about the same time I was reading Aldous Huxley’s Heaven and Hell, a survey of tools used to induce visionary experience throughout human history — everything from precious gems to religious fasting to mescalin. To Huxley, what makes an experience visionary is the extent to which it transports a person beyond those “limits of human perception” that Moss mentioned.

Just as nicotinic acid can stop the visions caused by lysergic acid or mescalin, according to Huxley, “another inhibitor of visionary experience is ordinary, everyday, perceptual experience.” (p. 87) A person’s visionary power is defined by his or her awareness of the experience, voluntary control over it, and ability to express it to others. “For most of us most of the time, the world of everyday experience seems rather dim and drab. But for a few people often, and for a fair number occasionally, some of the brightness of visionary experience spills over, as it were, into common seeing, and the everyday universe is transfigured.” (p. 93)

Huxley makes it pretty clear that psychedelic drugs are only one way of activating the visionary mind, and a very temporary and undependable way at that. It seems that an increasing number of people today are looking for a way into the mental netherworld without having to depend on chemicals. Or stated another way (by fellow blogger Kaliptus), drugs can guide and educate us, but they are misused if the only purpose is “to get fucked up.”

The underlying goal, as Huxley puts it, is to “become capable of experiencing consciously something of that which, unconsciously, is always with us.” (p. 106) And it should be noted that, while some people are more inclined towards visionary perception, the potential exists in the psychological make-up of all human beings. “At the antipodes of every mind lay the Other World of preternatural light and preternatural color, of ideal gems and visionary gold.” (pp. 114-115)

There’s still an air of impossibility when discussing this topic in the Western world, partly because, as Huxley points out, “familiarity breeds indifference.” We live in a flashy, distracting world, and what lies outside of physical perception is almost totally omitted from popular education (whether in school or at home). That’s why it’s so exciting to see someone like Moss at a public university. The students in the video seem absolutely enthralled by the class. I’m hoping this points to a coming trend.

LINKS:
4orked.com
4orkology.com
A Limited Forker Girl’s Tines
English 414 at U of M

Back in February when Kaliptus was planning the Tryptophantasia event, his friend Salma posted an interview with him on the site Evolver.net, a new social network with the slogan “It’s our world to change.” Naturally, I signed up for the site right away (here’s my profile).

I quickly learned that Evolver is connected with an online magazine called Reality Sandwich. Now the team behind the two websites are working on starting up the Evolver Social Movement, which is essentially their attempt to make the ventures financially sustainable (their primary investors bailed). Membership does require a monthly payment, but you get to choose the dollar amount (they’re asking for $10 per month, but it’s wide open).

At the end of March, Evolver/RS editorial director Daniel Pinchbeck published an essay explaining how these projects came to be and why they were now asking for money. Daniel has some very interesting views about the world in which we live (he has also authored three books), and some of his opinions on topics like literary hipsters are very close to my own (I posted a comment on his essay to let him know). With that said, I thought I would excerpt some parts of his essay that really grabbed me.

On what he did before Evolver/RS:

While my pool game improved, my life was stagnating. I was working on fiction but experiencing little success with it, while I wrote freelance magazine articles to make a sort of living. For various reasons I began to feel increasingly alienated and depressed – as I discuss in my books. Eventually I began to spiral deeper and deepr into a massive spiritual crisis and depression, often feeling I was on the verge of going crazy.

I simply couldn’t understand what the point of any of it was as it seemed we lived in a nihilistic universe, a secular materialist prison. In my social set at that time, to open up big philosophical questions about the nature of reality and the soul was only to invite sarcasm and hipster dismissal. My friends conceived literature as a way of seeking the proper pose or stance in relationship to a world that had no meaning outside of one’s personal style and ability to see through it with a perfectly jaundiced eye and finely-turned phrases pitched just right.

On straying from the world of hip lit:

I increasingly felt that literature as well as much contemporary art had become distraction mechanisms, ways of contemplating the degraded and fragmented state of our world from a safe distance instead of making active efforts to change anything in it.

On the immediate positive reaction to Reality Sandwich:

It was clear that there was something important happening here – some nexus between psychedelic and mainstream political and ecological thought that needed to happen. We also noticed that some articles got hundreds of comments, and that the commentators often wanted to find others in their area.

On our present moment and the role he sees RS playing:

My research for my last book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl convinced me that this is indeed a time of intense transition – that humanity has to either evolve its consciousness and take individual and eventually species-wide responsibility for its effects on the planet, or we won’t have a future here. Evolver – and now the Evolver Social Movement – are the best way I have been able to conceive to contribute to this transformative process, by helping to build a viable alternative culture in local communities, and by producing media that spreads the word.

In New York City, where I live, I find that most people are not able, at this point, to understand that the way of life to which they and the multitudes have become accustomed is soon going to end. This will come about through some combination of possibilities that include a much deeper crash of the economic system, shortages of fossil fuels and other necessities, an intensifying series of disasters like the earthquakes that recently wracked Haiti and Chile, or civil unrest and tax rebellion. I am pretty sure this will be the case at any rate – although, admittedly, I am not a fan of our current civilization, and look forward to seeing it give way, though I hope this happens through some process that doesn’t cause too much death or misery. People are so locked into the matrix, its narrow rewards system, that they are incapable of looking beyond it.

More on urban hipsters:

There is a tendency toward fatalism and almost a romanticization of our current society’s horrible state. I believe that this is due to a cultural indoctrination by a media that makes people feel passive, cynical, and alienated. The media has a large role in producing and framing the type of consciousness that can be expressed at the time. Therefore, I believe we have a real need for “interdependent media” that expresses a different viewpoint, recognizing that the fall we are already experiencing is necessary to bring about a shift into a different form of society.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, consider having a look at their operation.

I thought it sounded like a great idea, and I was totally willing to foot the $250 for the actual printing of the books. I even rushed to cut my essay down from almost 12,000 to just under 10,000 words, to stay within their submission guidelines. I printed and mailed the literary spawn, and I waited patiently. Then on Sunday night I got an email notification that my essay was rejected. They received 14 submissions and had picked three for publication.

Here’s their email:

Dear Nick,

Thank you for your submission to the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press. Our readers evaluated fourteen manuscripts for this round and chose three for publication. Although your manuscript was not selected, we cannot emphasize how much we appreciate your participation. Receiving so many quality submissions for this fifth year of our publishing project bodes well for the continued success of the Cooperative Press. We hope that you will try again.

Please check the website for further updates. Again, thank you for sharing your work with us.

Sincerely,
Marcy Branski,
Co-President
Michigan Writers, Inc.

Denise Baker
Co-President
Michigan Writers, Inc.

Michael Callaghan
Chair, Cooperative Press Committee
Michigan Writers, Inc.

The rejection itself doesn’t bother me so much as the the nature of the rejection. Here’s a group that charges $35 in membership fees and claims to exist in order to help budding writers. Yet because I my essay was turned away, I didn’t learn a thing about publishing — except what I already knew about it: it’s an extremely flawed process.

You may know that Supraterranean was founded in part to present an alternative to the current state of the publishing industry (more info on the About page). But what I soon realized is that letting anyone publish whatever they want isn’t the perfect solution. There is some kind of value in having to overcome obstacles, if it helps make someone a better writer. But there should be many more avenues to publication than there are currently. The literary world is way too stagnant and stale, partly due to the nature of writing (it’s a slower process than other creative work like music or painting), but partly due to the extreme level of control that currently exists in the industry.

In the coming months I will be thinking often about this topic, trying to identify ways to build upon the current model for Supraterranean. And I’ll be looking for other venues to publish my essay. For now, here’s my response to the Cooperative Press rejection. I’ll be sure to inform you if they write back.

Dear Marcy, Denise and Michael,

I would really appreciate further explanation. According to your website, the Cooperative Press is meant to “help emerging writers” and teach them about the publishing process, and the mission of Michigan Writers is to “[provide] opportunities for networking, publication, and education.” With that in mind, it would seem appropriate for you to provide some feedback to the writers whose submissions were not selected, including but not limited to:

- Suggestions for improving this specific piece
- Recommendations for building our craft in general (which could be as simple as pointing us to reading material)
- Connecting us with a writing mentor
- Pointing us to suitable publications where we could submit our work

I also have a proposition for you. We are at the dawn of a new age of publishing. Print is giving way to the e-reader and the computer screen. Perhaps Michigan Writers could help produce, offer, and/or distribute e-books. If you’re not willing or able to provide help with editing or creation of PDF files, you could at least create a “Self-Published” section on your website, assist us in submitting our work to Amazon’s Kindle store (and other such e-book stores), and offer some kind of promotion services.

Forgive me for being straightforward, but I was expecting Michigan Writers to be a sort of incubator, and not return a bloodstained 10,000-word essay with the same generic two-paragraph denial as any other publication.

Best,
Nick Meador

Part of my inactivity here has been due to broader activity on Supraterranean.com. After all, I did redesign the site in September. Then I went on a two-week cross-country road trip in October. And from mid-October almost until Thanksgiving, my work situation was consistently hectic. Now it’s December, and I’m just focusing on winding down and avoiding frostbite.

I’m also going through some personal creative transitions. I think it’s natural for a writer (or any kind of artist) to always be evaluating oneself, and asking what can be improved in method, style, and purpose. The purpose aspect is the most pressing right now. For those of you who have traced my activity on this blog, you know the general timeline of my reading and thinking process. The biggest milestone this year was Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus. The book felt like a climax for the journey into literature and philosophy that began for me around the fall of 2005. The premise of the book was that we live in a world defined at all levels by one concept: absurdity. Camus argued that, despite the lack of inherent meaning in life, one can develop meaning and purpose through an unending dedication to creative work. It seemed to take a step beyond the basic tenets of Existentialism, and at least in some ways, it felt like the answer I had been looking for.

Yet in reality it was only a theoretical “answer.” I knew from the moment I started writing four years ago that I was doing it for the sake of writing — because I would enjoy it regardless of what came out of it. It didn’t matter to me if people read it or if I was paid for it, so long as I felt fulfilled by the activity. However, I was still nursing the fantasy of one day becoming a published writer, even if one with only a modestly sized audience. In other words, I never wanted to be famous; I just wanted to be appreciated, and know that I affected someone’s life or made them think. Actually those two things — changing lives and inspiring thought — never changed. I still very much want to do that.

I won’t yet be able to accurately explain what has changed here. Part of it has to do with the way my blogging and web projects like Supraterranean had become a compulsive activity. I felt like I had to do them (for professional and/or personal reasons) — and anything you have to do soon becomes something you don’t want to do.

You may have also noticed that I haven’t posted much creative writing on Supraterranean.com this year. There are reasons for that as well. My life has undergone many changes in 2009. I was unemployed, then employed part-time, then in July I was boosted to full-time. I’ve lived in three different rentals, two in Ann Arbor and one in Ypsilanti. My girlfriend is about to move far away for vet school, at which time I’ll be caring for our two dogs by myself. And every month that goes by, I start to realize how absolutely different adult life is from what I had always imagined it to be. What I mean to say is, it sucks.

Okay, so maybe I overstated that. And of course that statement is tainted by the current state of things in Michigan. In fact, a lengthy essay about being a young adult in Michigan is what broke my drought of long-form writing. I just published the essay, entitled “Indecision Over Michigan,” on Supraterranean and Generation Y Michigan (a Michigan Radio site looking at why so many young adults leave Michigan).

The essay was over 11,000 words long — making it the longest thing I’ve ever written in that genre. It was so refreshing to think that I could have just kept pushing forward, and I might have eventually reached book length. I still don’t feel like I exhausted the topic, and I keep having further realizations as the days pass. For example, I didn’t mention in the essay that, while Ann Arbor consistently gets placed on lists of the best cities to live in the country, it might be one of the worst for young professionals. What I mean is, the population of people between the ages of 22 and 30 is minuscule. To be blunt, I feel really alone here. I feel like, for every month that passes, I have one less reason to stay in Michigan. After December there will be three: (1) my job, (2), my family (minus one of my brothers, who moved to L.A. in 2008, and who will be there at least until Michigan’s film industry can offer more work), and (3) northern Michigan.

It’s not just the economy, or having to drive everywhere, or the absence of recycling in my apartment complex. The whole state just feels really stifling right now, like the air itself is weighing down on me. Part of what I want to accomplish is to make people use their imagination, open their minds, and not let themselves become the walking dead zombie adults that most do turn into. But most people in Michigan would be content if they had a job, a place to sleep, and a TV to rot in front of.

That’s not enough for me (I don’t even have cable TV right now, by the way). I want to feed my craving for adventure and my sense of wonder. I think I’ll end on that note, and the only way to do that properly is to reference the most famous (and, sadly, the most overused) Jack Kerouac quote, from the book On The Road:

“…The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’” (pp. 5-6).

* * * * *

What’s more interesting to me is that most people leave out the sentence before that: “They rushed down the street together, digging everything in the early way they had, which later became so much sadder and perceptive and blank.”

I still feel like the inner adventure (into one’s own psyche) is the one to focus on, but we young adults are very set on action in the external realm (as I discuss in my essay).

Well, I was going to discuss M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, and then mention how I intend to write shorter posts here (shorter, as in 500-800 words, instead of 1,000 to 1,400) to afford myself time to work on more long-form writing projects. So much for that!