Yesterday we broadcast the ninth episode of the nascent “On Writing” series featuring the great Kate Bowles. When I reached out to Kate about discussing writing, she immediately suggested she’d be even more interested in talking about not writing, and thinking through what took our voices away over the last several years. The wish to “tell all the truth but to tell it slant —“ beautifully illustrates the poetic way Kate approaches the world. Any assumptions brought to topic are sure to be subverted with generous and generative language that can’t help but leave one inspired. During this conversation I found myself being taken on a journey both through and beyond topics like writing, edtech, or AI and right into the plane of existential wonder.
To steal from Kate’s description of her Federated Wiki experience, the conversation was the closest I’ve come to feeling ecstatic while talking about the power of writing (or not writing, as it were). The way in which Kate finds a deep sense of camaraderie in our shared moment on this mortal coil struck me deeply. After re-listening to the final 5 or 10 minutes of this episode as I was cleaning-up some substandard audio, I was reminded of a similar spirit of hope and togetherness in the opening pages of Melville’s Moby Dick: “the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content.” While I’m not always the most reliable narrator, this conversation is not to be missed if you’re looking to be filled with a sense of wonder about the act of writing that’s beautifully anchored in a searching sense of compassionate criticism.
