Don't join me on Notes

Really

Greetings from sunny central Pennsylvania!

The writer’s window

As many of you already know, Substack recently rolled out a new feature, Notes, which I’ve heard referred to as a Twitter clone. I have a Twitter account, and although I use it sparingly, I believe the comparison is fair. I like Twitter. It’s a cesspool of hurt and anger, an insatiable black hole hell-bent on sucking up all of our attention, and a shameful black mark on the dignity of man, of course, but I’m the kind of person that enjoys that sort of thing. I’ll own that’s a failing on my part, though one I’d like to overcome. Notes is not a cesspool, at least not yet. I’m just skeptical it can keep its current air of civility for very long.

I want Substack to succeed and if the new Notes feature helps with that, then fine. The party line is that Notes will help readers find quality writers, which may be true. However, after playing around with it for a few days now, I’ve decided I’ll be using it in a limited capacity. Paul Kingsnorth, whose writing I recommend, sums up my thinking on this development:

Built into Notes is the assumption that making it easier to find quality writers is an unqualified good. Discovery, one of the great joys of human experience, must be made as seamless and satisfactory as possible.

I haven’t written about my goals for Silver Door much yet. For now, I’ll say that one aspect of what I’d like to accomplish is furthering the idea and practice of digital discipline, how one interacts with the increasingly powerful new technologies that continue to find their way into the most mundane and intimate aspects of our lives.

I want to write more on this but today is Holy Saturday in the Eastern Orthodox Church, of which I am a member, so for now I will wish you blessing and good strength in the days and weeks ahead and discourage you, for your own sake, from using Substack Notes outside of promoting your work, or mine, of course.

Next Saturday we’ll pick up with W.J. Bate’s third lecture in his book The Burden of The Past and The English Poet.

Ciao.