Atomic Notes
AI-generated illustration, ChatGPT. Prompt: illustrate this text with an ASCII poster, black background.
My notes are incomplete, written for myself, slowly accumulating over time. In the style of Andrew Matushak. But mine are in transition.
I borrow Andrew Matushak’s atomic note method, who is borrowing software engineering notions. My notes are structurally different. They travel and transform between levels of analysis, they don't operate as atomic unit.
The atomicity constraint is useful for me to integrate knowledge: if a note shifts too much, it stops being a unit of thought, becomes many things at once and can't be reusable. But this method do not fit. So what is my origin, the writing unit I could work with? Plural. In movement. The relation, not the object. The real-time line in motion. The living-dead drawing. I spent hours building compositions to freely decompose them. Not interested in the object. Excited by the change between states.
The difference comes from a poetic refusal: a con-tra-cal-cul reasoning technique. A non-normative rigorous process. My voice is multiple by default, divisible. Cut open.
Surgery in two days. I observe a pattern: high anxiety goes with increased creativity. I tend to read a causal relation. Maybe to make the anxiety feel useful, regulate or justify. This belief is self-reinforcing and consistent with the “tortured artist” narrative. Ready to let go both the belief and my boobs.
Sur ce, je me barre écrire cette nodte ailleurs.