the brave new editor goes to a workshop on collaborative editing

June 18 2010
11:31 am
Allied Media Conference, Wayne State University
Detroit

I'm trying to remember what the AMC was like a year ago when I went. Certain familiar elements: a generous spread of croissants and honeydew melon in the foyer of McGregor, faces I can connect to an organization or place but not a name. What stands out the most is where I was at that time: tired, stinky (I stayed in a crash space with no showers), consistently enthralled by the workshops and discussions, and - perhaps most notably - generally bored. This was before the book or grad school was a sure thing. Back when I was a thin wisp of a boy, pinching pennies at a nonprofit job. Back when I went to the beach on hot days and sunned for 3 or 5 hours straight - even on weekdays.

Now I'm in a room of 30 people chatting about collaborative editing, feeling some mix of wisdom, empathy, a strong sense of detachment, and the not-too-thinly-veiled-in-its-smugness sentiment that "My twin sis could drink you all under the table."

I don't know why I picked this workshop; I don't know how I'm going about picking any of these this time around. The first one I went to looked promising, done by the Prison Poster Project, but they didn't describe in any detail what their activities and processes are like, or with any great critical or theoretical lens, and unless you know next to nothing about the prison-industrial complex there was nothing so revealing about their presentation. I still learned some stuff. I can't say whether that's enough, tho. I mean, you can learn stuff from watching "Keeping up with the Kardashians." If you don't get at the questions of place, space, power, complexity, contradiction, theory, critical analysis, and desire, then there's just this wide maw where someone's raw material was supposed to be. I see the maw everywhere I go now.

My mind might also be distracted. There is a book coming out next week after all. And I am getting impatient to move to North Carolina before another person can tell me "You are going to be missed here so much" and make me feel even sadder about the whole business.

Exciting news: Asian folks can get fat. Witness Exhibit A. I don't think it's a weight thing, but my body is very obviously changing and building up a paunch that never used to be there. The fucken thing actually strains and groans against the button and zipper on my jeans after a hearty meal now. Possible reasons: 1) having no full-time job for five months, and thus no steady routine; 2) having once had a full-time job for over two years, which involved more sitting than any other work I've done previously; and 3) eating exceptionally well because I've been home with my parents more often. If this lasts the rest of the summer I'll really get worried.

The night before we road-tripped out here, Claudia and Linda and I went to a dinner on Summit Ave of this group of Asian folks who have been talking about forming some kind of thing - organization, activism hub, whatever it may be. It was one of the odder experiences in recent memory. Look: you try having a 2-hour conversation with 15 other people and none of them are speaking in a common language, and see how far you get - or whether you can even follow along at all. Also, count as a given that the group is getting impatient about meeting and talking and wants to start getting 'active.'

The drive here was smooth and uneventful, and we got to feast at Cafe Japon for Miki's last week there. I had me this sashimi dish that could make grown, jaded old men weep.

More to come. Hi Detroit.