After ten years, this blog is shuttering, and will serve mainly as an archive. A semi-complete list of my writings as Suspended Reason can be found at suspendedreason.github.io.

To better contextualize the blog’s archive, a sketch of its principal eras:

• As Amateur Musicology (Prehistory, 2015)
  • In 2015, as an undergraduate, I posted several essays on performance, authenticity, and hybridity in the music of Christopher Owens, Lana del Rey, Jimmie Rodgers, and Bodega Bay.
  • Caveat emptor.
• As Aesthetics Blog (2016-2018)
  • Inspired by the postrationalist blogs of Gabriel Duquette and Haley Thurston—and by litblogs like HTMLGiant and Big Other—I opined, naively, on genre, intentionality, and narrative.
    • In 2018, I interviewed blogger-critic AD Jameson about the history of these litblogs, as well as Refn’s Drive, and Sianne Ngai.
    • My most popular post, from this period, “Generic Fit,” discusses genericism and pop art.
    • 2018’s “Oscillation / Fashion,” on trend cycles and innovation, receives occasional favorable reviews.
  • My interest, at the time, in literary theory led me to investigate the process of audience interpretation.
    • Eventually, my work began to focus on surprisal and avant aesthetics, particularly through the cognitive-aesthetic lens of predictive processing.
  • Caveat emptor.
• As Inexact Sciences Blog (2020-2023)
  • In the early 2020s, I participated in a group blogging experiment, TIS. Our primary output came in the form of daily short-form posts at tis.so.
    • A quasi-manifesto for the group can be found at Notes on the Inexact Sciences.
    • I concurrently published several long-form series discussing our collective’s major themes: communication and strategy.
  • My work at TIS culminated in this blog’s series All Communication Is Manipulation.
    • A later reframing, that all communication is coordination, proved more persuasive to audiences.

A few other highlights from the past decade:

• Scene & herd from the vibe shift years: On Worldbuilding, Nameless Faceless, Phillips as Poplit, Tropical Modernism.
• Writing on films: Gilroy’s Michael Clayton, Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, PTA’s Punch-Drunk Love.
• Writing on books: Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest & Relaxation, Wilk’s Oval, Dick’s Scanner Darkly.
• The incomplete Primitive Peacemakers series, on ecological models of truth.
• A post about basketball.
• A post about my cat, Ripple.

Above all else, I remain proud of the interviews. Many of this blog’s ideas I no longer endorse. Much of its writing is uneven, particularly in the early years. If nothing survives of this WordPress except my conversations with Peli Grietzer, Sarah Perry, and Cristóbal Sciutto, that will be alright.