New Escapologist : February 2024

Peace and love in all formats

Hello, everyone. Welcome to New Escapologist, the friendly newsletter from the magazine of the same name. And Happy Saint Skeletor’s Day!

Speaking of evil, we’re still on Substack. For now. The Substack bosses have at least booted out some of the worst offenders, which is a start. But really I just haven’t found a valid alternative yet. I’m trying a pretty good one with my Wringham list, but New Escapologist is bigger and the losses are greater if I make the wrong choice is all.

But enough of this crap. Let me tell you, briefly, about the digital editions of our magazine. They’re much better than they used to be. I’m taking them seriously because our new style of publishing (i.e. traditional, as opposed to print-on-demand) allows back issues to go out of print. As such, the digital versions will eventually be the only back issues available to buy and, as such, will be the official archive.

Issue 14 is now sold out in print. Issue 15 is running very low in our online shop. So, if you happen to be a reader of e-books, here’s where to get Issue 14 and Issue 15 as instant downloads.

When you buy one of these, you get an epub that should play nicely with e-readers and is findable in various online libraries. But you also get a PDF so you can see how it looked in print as God intended. Digital editions are also a quid cheaper than the print edition, which is nice for you.

The deeper archive of Issues 1-13 is also available in PDF. This comprises of hundreds of digital pages from 2007-2017.

But enough business. Would you like to hear some inspirational thoughts on the independent, vigorous, workshy, freewheeling, one-shot life? Me too. Let’s go!

Robert Wringham
Editor, New Escapologist

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A Little Freaked Out

According to his excellently-titled memoir Every Man For Himself and God Against All, Warner Herzog’s brother is of a different temperament to our rogue filmmaker.

At the age of nineteen, he was a little freaked out because he could see his business career so clearly mapped out ahead of him all the way to eventual retirement.

He was no stuffed shirt though. To have such insight is impressive and he even planned to act on it:

So he decided to quit and see the world instead. He had a VW Beetle and planned to drive to Turkey.

Werner’s advice to his brother?

I urged him to be more ambitious and range farther afield.

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“Prior to Getting Cancer, I Had Ambitions of Becoming a Managing Director.”

These past nine years have been really good, probably better than if I hadn’t had cancer. Different things became a priority: spending time together rather than worrying about having a good job or thinking you need a big house.

Here’s a long article in the Guardian about how the terminally ill spend their time. They’ve reassessed, retooled, changed their priorities.

I’ve got limited time, so I’d rather be doing things with family and friends, and having a positive impact on the world around me. I’m not in the office wearing a shirt and tie any more.

and

I wish I had gone out more with my friends. I wish I had gone to parties and stayed out late. Living life free-spirited is something I feel I missed out on, and I regret that I didn’t take advantage of that when I was younger. Life is short and you should live it how you want, regardless of what people think. Don’t hold back. Say what you want to say and do what you want to do.

and

Prior to getting cancer, I had ambitions of becoming a managing director or CEO; I wanted to achieve something in my career. Within hours of the diagnosis, that disappeared. I don’t care for work any more

When those close to the end tell us these things, what they’re really saying is: “don’t leave it too late. Think about what’s important and do it. Live while you still can.”

That’s why they write it down or say it out loud. They’re not navel gazing. They’re blowing the whistle. They’re bringing us a message from the future.

But people so rarely listen. Even these people, the dying, didn’t listen.

The truth is, you’re mortal. You don’t need a cancer diagnosis to tell you you’re dying. The cancer patients in the article might even outlive you: you could get hit by a drunk driver on your way to return an ill-fitting shirt to Primark. A piece of masonry might fall on your head.

As one future corpse to another, I’m telling you now: don’t wait. Fuck this crap! Work less, take it easy, see some of the world, be with your loved ones, look at art, help others, eat well, get laid, get off your computer, be grateful, forget about Elon Musk, ignore the crap that doesn’t matter. Take your socks off and feel the grass beneath your feet. Look at the moon and stars and think wow, we’re really on a planet. Marvel at your breath in the cold night air. Remember the faces of your grandparents.

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Weeping in the Parking Lot

It was still dark. I left home in blackness and I returned in blackness.

Maybe this is a tad bleak for New Escapologist but it’s certainly on theme.

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With Wings and Hands and Leaves

Thanks to Reader A for drawing our attention to Mandy Brown’s United Theory of Fucks.

Don’t give a fuck about your work. Give all your fucks to the living. Give a fuck about the people you work with, and the people who receive your work—the people who use the tools and products and systems or, more often than not, are used by them. Give a fuck about the land and the sea, all the living things that are used or used up by the work, that are abandoned or displaced by it, or—if we’re lucky, if we’re persistent and brave and willing—are cared for through the work. Give a fuck about yourself, about your own wild and tender spirit, about your peace and especially about your art. Give every last fuck you have to living things with beating hearts and breathing lungs and open eyes, with chloroplasts and mycelia and water-seeking roots, with wings and hands and leaves. Give like every fuck might be your last.

Nice.

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Prince Charles

Hey look, it’s Charles Bukowski:

How in the hell could [anyone] enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?

8:30?! It shows how little the onetime factotum knew about conventional day jobs. Isn’t it more like 6:30?

Either way, I want nothing to do with it and neither do you.

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Work vs. Work

I was trying to “work” the other day. My work is writing, though it is not particularly arduous writing.

Downstairs, my neighbour was playing his guitar and it was breaking my concentration. I’ve asked him before not to amplify his instrument at home (surely he could play acoustic only?) but he claims to not even be at home during the day.

The confrontation at least had the effect of him no longer playing at night, and I’m prepared to accept his lie about daytime hours: he’s a grown man who doesn’t enjoy being ticked off on his own doorstep, and he deserves to protect his dignity.

It occurs to me that it might not be right for me to complain at all though. I have, after all, turned my home into a place of work, which it was never intended to be. If I want silence perhaps I should rent a hot-desking booth in an office somewhere. Obviously I don’t want to do that because it costs money and I hate going to work, but my request that this neighbour knock it off might not be morally upheld. He should be able to play guitar at home if he wants to.

Maybe work shouldn’t be done at home at all.

Then again, my neighbour seems to be practicing for something. He probably sees his guitar practice as work too. So we have a situation of “work vs. work.”

When did creativity become work?

When did work invade the home?

I know the answers to these questions because for 16 years I’ve been promoting creativity as a way to escape drudgery and advocating for the sensible benefits of WFH as a way to escape the commute and the office environment.

Why do I feel like I’ve shot myself in the foot?

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Gone Fishin’

A character in Philip Roth’s The Anatomy Lesson says:

Maybe you are tired. Maybe you want to hang a sign on your door, Gone Fishin,’ and take off to Tahiti for a year.

I’d completely forgotten about Gone Fishin’.

It’s one of of those great Boomer phrases, up there with Keep on Truckin’ and Eat at Joe’s.

In all my time thinking about escape and mini-retirements and going valiantly AWOL, I don’t think I ever remembered Gone Fishin’.

Anyway, put that sign on your door. Go to Tahiti for a year. Like Werner Herzog’s brother did. It’s good advice for anyone.

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It’s This

You know when you stumble upon writers or bloggers who just seem to get the same issue that you’re turning over in your mind? And you read and then some of their suggestions make you go “Yes!” It’s this.

Whoa, this is a really lovely review of New Escapologist from blogger Alasdair Johnston. Thanks Alasdair!

The guy has a spare copy of Issue 15 to give away too. Read his post for instructions on how to get it. (This is extra valuable now that the magazine has almost sold out - did I mention that?).

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Xodus: Escaping Twitter At Last

Good news. You don’t need to be on Twitter anymore. The network effect is broken and you can finally escape its clutches. (And you should!)

If you’re a browser of Twitter, you probably see a lot of crap. It’s no longer about updates from your friends or even organisations you’re actually following anymore.

If you’re a creator who once used social networks to grow your audience, those followers aren’t seeing your tweets anymore. Here’s Cory Doctorow on the facts:

Six months ago, [Radio station and publisher] NPR lost all patience with Musk’s shenanigans, and quit the service. Half a year later, they’ve revealed how low the switching cost for a major news outlet that leaves Twitter really are: NPR’s traffic, post-Twitter, has declined by less than a single percentage point.

NPR’s Twitter accounts had 8.7 million followers, but even six months ago, Musk’s enshittification speedrun had drawn down NPR’s ability to reach those users to a negligible level. The 8.7 million number was an illusion […] On Twitter, the true number of followers you have is effectively zero […] because every post in their feeds that they want to see is a post that no one can be charged to show them.

Whenever I visited Twitter in my last days there, I’d usually be greeted by a single notification. The days of 20 or 40 ringing bells were long behind me. Worse, the notification was never a message or an RT or anything remotely useful. It’s inevitably a follow from a so-called sex bot, i.e. some sort of obvious moonshot phishing scam.

This daily non-experience, combined with how barely anyone saw my tweets anymore (either because they’ve sensibly left the platform or because I’m hidden by the algorithm) made me realise… I was free. Finally free! I could leave!

And so can you. Here are the instructions on how you too can leave Twitter.

It’s a shame really. Twitter was useful for contacting people and finding things out in about events as they unfold in realtime, but it just doesn’t work that way anymore. It’s a busted flush. I’ll probably lose touch with some people whose main point of contact is Twitter; I’ve contacted the ones I can think of to give them my email address.

The nightmare is over. No more Twitter.

In my case, it leaves me social media free for the first time in over 20 years! It was 2003 when I joined a platform called Friendster. I might eventually join Bluesky for fun, but for now I think I’ll enjoy the fresh air and the resounding lack of network effect in my life. I advise you all to do the same. Deactivate your accounts and be free.

To celebrate what I’m calling the Xodus, I recommend reading this potted history of social media in The Atlantic magazine. It charts the incremental changes that took Twitter and Facebook from a useful database of social connections to nightmare of conspiracy theories and nonsense content that is ruining the world.

Of course, I still have to deal with is the problem of Substack…

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That’s all for another month, my little pigeons. I’d like to think less about technology. Wouldn’t that be nice? Let’s see if I can get through to mid-March without mentioning platform capitalism at our independent free-standing blog again. It’s pollution really.

In the meantime, please buy and enjoy our digital editions or one of the last remaining Issue 15s in print from our online shop. You can also support the project by sending caffeine.

Peace and love in all formats,

Robert Wringham
New Escapologist