An Ode to the Printed Dictionary 2023

In days of old, when words held sway,
Print dictionaries, our guiding ray,
Now mourn we must, their fading light,
As digital reigns, they take their flight.

Bound in leather, pages crisp and white,
Their presence graced the scholar's sight,
Thumbed through with care, each word explored,
In print dictionaries, knowledge poured.

A refuge found in a quiet nook,
To seek the meaning, to pore and look,
With finger tracing, we found the way,
To decipher words in the light of day.

But now, alas, their fate is sealed,
In the digital age, they must yield,
To algorithms and screens aglow,
Print dictionaries, we let you go.

No longer will we feel your weight,
Upon the desk, your fate's too late,
As bytes and codes, they take your place,
We bid farewell, a fond embrace.

Yet, in our hearts, your legacy lives,
The wisdom, knowledge, that you'd give,
Though print may fade, your words endure,
In our language's tapestry, ever pure.

On Faux-Spontaneity 2023

How To Watch Birds investigates the
faux-spontaneous form of the show
as a whole, which often presents
itself as very casual and off the cuff,

with John umming and ahhing while
narrating, despite the fact that his
dialogue is all clearly scripted and
planned to fit the narrative of the episode.

But How To Watch Birds takes on a more
complex fictional narrative (climaxing
with John’s car exploding), which reveals
to the viewer there was a large amount of

coordination and planning done, and helps
recontextualise other episodes of the show
by making us reconsider how planned they were.
Earlier in the episode John keeps the camera

running after an interview concludes, showing
himself giving an envelope of money to
the interviewee. The fact this is included
in the final edit shows that John Wilson

wants us to question the construction
of the entire series, to consider what is
real and what is not and how that
affects our perception of a scene.

Mine, Oh Mine! 2023

This made me think of both my work and
the way I discuss these topics, because
on the one hand I think the methods
of production (Risograph, HTML coding, etc.)

are generally quite evident in the form of
the outcome, but the conceptual elements
(gleaning, appropriation, disposability, etc.)
are less clear without my external explanation.

This is why I think the Positions Through
Essaying video essay is one of
the most important projects I’ve done
so far. Previously, I had thought of

it as separate to my publications.
Now I understand that it is not only
an explanation of my work up to that
point but also a creative output in

its own right. And in the future I’d like
to try and build on this further, to blur
this boundary between content and explanation,
emphasising the narrative of
production as a form of output.