I wrote this piece with pen and paper before typing it up here. A deliberate rejection of digital interfaces (the same ones I interact with and post content from).

Anyway…

More than a year ago, I read a piece by Lawrence Yeo, and I thought I understood what it meant.

Long story short, I’d only began to understand.

The piece was called something like ‘My Content Ruined My Art’, and I sympathised.

I sympathised so much that I went and created a piece of content about it…

In those days, I thought that anything I wrote from a personal perspective (including my newsletter Fundamentalised) was special, was art.

More recently, I’ve realised how difficult true artistic creation is to come by.

My content stifles my art. Almost all the time.

But how do we define content?

Anything ‘created’, that one might call ‘art’, but was created with additional incentives and constraints. With a certain cadence, with a certain structure, created to make money, created to improve status, none of it is expression for expression’s sake.

My business content isn’t art - it’s designed to earn me an income. Not even my Instagram posts (at least not to an extent) - I share them to improve my relationships and status amongst my peers.

I’ve tried before to add rhythm and cadence to what should have been art. Creation free from such constraints.

Numbering newsletter issues, sharing them in a certain format, at a certain time of the week (the method I chose for sympathising with Lawrence back when I first read his piece).

Some of these issues were great, and would have better served as essays I simply published when they arose. A piece of art that I’d made for the sake nothing but expression.

But I didn’t, and I haven’t been…

Newsletter issues blocking real essays. Instagram-reel-progress-updates blocking personal vlogs and documentaries.

No longer. The line between content and art in my head is becoming bolder. I’ll create for myself (for the most part), around things I’m interested in, attracted by, proud of, without a certain structure or cadence. Whenever the inspiration strikes.

And that takes priority over content. Always.