Boat or No Boat, Natalie Maines Can't Time Travel

Feednet is a quarterly-ish news roundup on technology, community organizing.

Notes on Feednet: Natalie Maines is not a time traveler

hello,  here are some facts I learned from the Chicks album Gaslighter.  1. Natalie Maines has a boat, 2. Her husband cheated on her on that boat, 3. HIstory, even personal history, is cyclical,   For years, my friend Zoe and I had a joke that Natalie Maines was a time travelling narcissist.  This was partially because of the weird jump cut editing in The Chicks documentary, and partially because her intense laughter during full Chicks trio interviews were a marked contrast to the subdued smiles of the other two Chicks.  I have zero basis through which to determine if Natalie Maines is in fact a narcissist.  Unfortunately, after listening to Gaslight I know for sure she is no time traveler.  Boat or no boat, she is is stuck in linear time just like the rest of us. --  Some days it’s really hard to focus on anything except the hidden power differentials in our world.  Our entire country is founded on stolen land, empire, and anti-Blackness.  (Your husband can cheat on you in your own boat without your family liking him any less.)  But in some ways, COVID and the many uprisings over the last few months yanked the flimsy tablecloth of ‘normal’ off of those power differentials for many people.  For some of those people, that tablecloth came off the table for the first time.  On the days when I can’t focus, that is what I try to remember -- the change that has already happened. the times the tablecloth has already been removed, and what happened then, looking at the long game of change like statisticians look at trends.  That takes me back to cycles.  The last time I was really despairing, it was because I forgot about cycles.  I couldn't see how much the power difference had changed before the moment I was in.  I only saw how far there was to go (boat or no boat).   --  Probably the most famous narrative cycle is from Joseph Campbell, a folklore researcher whose Hero's Journey is best highlighted (intentionally) in Star Wars movie.  The end of the Hero's Journey is the beginning -- a return to the normal, that no longer exists.   In Emergent Strategy, Arienne Maree Brown proposes new examples of organizing and story structures based on i, chaos theory +patterns in nature including fractals, orange or wedge shaped storytelling patterns.  They're all cyclical, or occurring outside of time.   The Chicks changed their name because the cycle of uprising recurring over and over again hit a scale that made it more profitable (or more in line with their values) for them to change it.   Natalie Maines has made 4 hit albums and she's still writing about new, fresh heartbreak.   The tablecloth will always come off the table again.  Boat or no boat.

• H   PS -- Working 2050 is coming back soon, with better audio quality. In the meantime, I tried something a little different.   What do you think the beach will sound like in 2050?