community > conflict

a few intentions for another voyage around the sun

Augusta’s Snapshot of the Second Paris Substack Meetup, June, 2023

What a pleasure it was to spend a few weeks off the page during my month back in the US of A.

Those of you who’ve known if not, Paris since the beginning know that I rarely discuss politics or contemporary culture on this space. I believe those conversations are best left for having in person, because most of us would never say half of the things we write online if we had to say it to an interlocutor face-to-face.

But alas, last week, upon my return to Substack, there was a whole lot of anger, fear, and confusion about the alleged “Nazi problem” on Substack,¹ and I felt it my duty to offer my own perspective.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, I went through a master’s studying the psychology of genocide, and since I just recently published (four weeks ago) The Requisitions, my second novel about history, memory, and World War Two (you can read an excerpt on the humanness of cruelty over at the

Inner Life

), I felt it my responsibility to provide my own perspective on the subject.

While I’m deeply grateful for the engaged response to that piece, and to the edifying conversations we had in the comment section, I’m not a political writer (I do write about history, however, and I intend to share more essays/excerpts from The Requisitions this year).

The thing is, I didn’t start if not, Paris to peddle my philosophies or prove why I am “right” and why other people are “wrong,” and I certainly don’t believe it’s possible to build a literary community if I put my energy towards bringing other folks down, however much conviction I might feel about a given subject.

Writing, for me, is nothing more and nothing less than cultivating the conversation that exists within the latent space between writer and reader. I sometimes draw to represent this, and it looks like this:

With that being said, I return to Paris with renewed focus on building an engaged, respectful, and diverse community of thinkers² where we can discuss our disagreements without resorting to self-congratulatory "burns” or ideological shaming.

And now, onto the words I intended to share before I got side-tracked by all the noise.

intentions > resolutions

Since about 2012, every year on December 31st at around 11pm, I find a small piece of paper, grab myself a pen, describe the situation in which I find myself, and write down my intentions for the upcoming year in question.

After the clock strikes midnight, I light a match and take a flame to the previous year’s intentions before placing my new intentions in my wallet or in the protective case of my cell phone (the point is to carry them with me every day).

Anyone familiar with psychedelic experiences (like the trip I had in England in 2022) knows how important intentionality is when beginning a journey. My yearly intentions aren’t about “manifesting anything,” which is a self-aggrandizing phrase I don’t care for, nor are they resolutions, which tend to be associated with personal restriction instead of expansion (“resolution” comes from the Latin resolvere, which means to loosen / release … so why are NYE resolutions so often about control?)

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my intentions before writing them down; the exercise is in the act, and in any case, whatever I write without overthinking is usually linked to my intuition, to acknowledging where I see myself psychologically philosophically in the moment before a new year begins.

My annual intentions are nothing more than guideposts, reminders to trust in the path I find myself on. The way I see it, if I physically write down my intentions (like I’m doing right now), I can be more in tune with what works and doesn’t work for me as I move through the world—which in turn allows the world to move more easily through me.

And now, as a reminder to myself, and a willingness to share a more personal side with all of you, here are three years of intentions as we begin 2024:

Dec. 31, 2021 - The Night of the Wistful Parisian Plague

December 31, 2021: all of us either had Covid or had just had it. It was a quiet New Year’s Eve. Walked to the river at midnight, glimpsed the fireworks, and went to bed early.

Make the inner self proud: if not, Paris began in 2022. Whilst The Requisitions teetered between something worthwhile and something worth forgetting, I committed myself to sharing a more authentic version of myself every. single. week. on Substack.

Move onwards: my former band, Slim and The Beast, had great successes between 2015-2022, but Covid changed my professional ambitions as a musician, and our music label did what music labels do (destroyed the artistic fire), and following other complications, we played our last gig as a band on August 27, 2022, at a festival in a castle somewhere in Germany.

Mind the body: I started to stretch more at random times throughout the day. Most importantly, thanks to the wisdom of

Augusta Sagnelli

, my thirtysomething self began to use a foam roller.

Finish “Between the Lines”: this has been an idea for a linked collection of one-sided dialogues for a while now, but this “intention” smacks of a resolution. I didn’t by any means finish a linked collection of stories, but I am publishing one of those stories in Vermont College of Fine Art’s Hunger Mountain Review.

Create a community: In 2022, I started writing on Substack. Lo and behold, a community was born (there’s over 1,000 of us now).

2023 - The Night of the Blue Eyed Spirit Disco Guide

December 31, 2022: Augusta and I threw an epic dance party for our Paris-based family, complete with a colorful galaxy projected on the ceiling.

Expansion of the interior: This meant music for me. In 2023, I began writing music for myself again, like this piano piece which feels like a prélude to something. For the first time in my life, I performed a solo piano/vocal set, at a bar named after Nina Simone, no less.

Respect the routine: I can honestly say I had no sense of routine in 2023; the only routine I kept was that of constant traveling, as this video + an improvisation on John Mayer’s “Stop This Train” illustrates.

I want to astound my *fucking* self: this is a quote from the visual artist Laurie Lipton, whose work astounded me when I saw it at a small museum in Montmartre. I’m proud to say that I did astound my *fucking* self last year by finally publishing The Requisitions just last month—a book at multiple times I barely believed I could finish.³

Venture into quietness: like respecting the routine in 2022, this was an intention in 2023 I had trouble acknowledging. Here’s to remembering to venture into quietness whenever I can.

Stay hungry, eat well: I live next to one of the best open-air markets in Paris, so this one wasn’t hard to do. But I do mean the first part of the intention literally—I find that when I’m actually hungry for my next meal, I’m also hungrier for life. Hemingway insisted that being hungry was valuable fuel for his writing, and while I don’t know if this is true, I do feel more attuned to the goings-on of life when I’m literally a bit hungry versus always sated.

2024 - The Night of the Homely Bonfire

December 31, 2023: We sat by a bonfire in Connecticut with glasses of whiskey, made homemade sushi and fried wantons, and exchanged stories.

As for my 2024 intentions, I’m keeping them for me for now. If you’re curious, leave a comment and we can have an exchange.

1. I, too, have a "Nazi Problem"

2.

3. This is not a synopsis about a novel about WWII