Tag: blogging

The Story Behind “The Politics of LOST” Posters and Some Paleo-Futurism of My Own

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

Christopher Cocca

When I hunkered down with fiction last year, I took many, many old posts off-line as a way of resetting my own internal narrative and focusing on a very different way of writing.  I’ve talked about that a few times on this blog since.  I had the sense that I needed to let the fiction I was writing say everything I was wanting to say, and it was a good choice for me then.  Between now and May, I’ll be writing fiction more intensely than ever, but I’m also thinking about blogging (and nonfiction in general) in new ways.   This year, I have the creative room (and patience) for both.  See kids, getting older’s not so bad.

I was looking over some old posts to re-release today (digitally remastered in sweet, sweet mono) and I found this explanation behind the genesis of the LOST posters I shared on Saturday.  Credit where credit is due:  my wife was the inspiration behind that project.  I also forgot that the creator of the Obama Poster maker website that I used came by to comment on the post.  It’s funny how time flies and how quickly you forget things.  Adjusted thoughts on aging: +1 for patience, -1 for memory.

I similarly found “What The Future Used to Look Like“.  It started with the idea that terraforming the universe is our moral duty as creatures and ended up being a free-association/stream-of-consciousness thing about the politics of futurism.

When you have a minute, consider looking over your own old posts or journal entries and see if you don’t surprise yourself.  What were you writing about this time two years ago?

The Once and Future Blog

~ Chris Cocca ~ 2 Comments

When I went on a blogging hiatus back in December, I called this “The Once And Future Blog” and I took a lot of the old content offline.

I guess it’s the future.  The other day someone was talking about swine flu and I only vaguely remembered my own paranoia (or caution) about it last year.  As in a few months ago.  How quickly I forget about these things.  It’s ridiculous.

The old stuff is staying offline, maybe forever.  I’m not sure.  I do know that I continue to focus on fiction and that I’ll also be having some essays published around the web soon.  But I still like this idea of a “Once And Future” blog, probably because I  like thinking about the past and the future, and because, inevitably, we all end up coming back to these old ghosts.

On another level, Once and Future has a lot to do with writing.  “This thing I wrote based on this thing that happened somewhere is going to be published at some point in the future at this or that place” or “this thing I thought about religion or love or God or economics or myself turns out a little different because all of the sudden this other thing.”

Theologians talk about “ancient-future” modes of worship, biocentrists speculate about the courses of the indestructible energy powering consciousness, astrophysicists talk about expanding and retracting universes, my son and I are fascinated — fascinated — by dinosaurs, and I imagine a world where his kids or grandkids live on the moon or a terraformed Mars.  I like to think that the past and the future both belong to our story.

And so I consume tech blogs and social media and news and write stories about the Pennsylvania rust belt and hope we figure out ways to keep all of this going.  But, you know, better.