For the actual composition, click here.

recreating the layout of the original blog for the Website was tedious to get right, took me about two hours. but I remember it took a while to make it look like that on Blogger as well, back in 2016. I wanted to use, as the background, an existing art piece, as that's a thing fictional blogs often do (and I chose the God sculpture by Schamberg and Freytag-Loringhoven. why? because Dada art lends its own sort of statement to this work), and I made sure to off-set it, to give the appearance that the blog creator hadn't yet decided on an aesthetic.

the contents of the blog are mainly rooted in observations and ideas I was having while I had a job in Cornwall. the photograph of the cigarettes probably inspired my decision to use Dada art in the background, as that sculpture of cigarettes looks quite Dada itself. I was there for the photograph myself. my friends at RND Media were celebrating... something, I can't remember now, and they had bought about a dozen cartons of cigarettes and chose to pour them all in a bowl. much as the blog itself says, I can't remember the context as we didn't photograph it, we didn't "write it down."

looking back over this piece, I’m still thrilled with it. the conceit is the Unfinished Blog, so I remember putting thought into how to deliberately make it unfinished. and hitting on the subject matter was downright inspired. “if I don’t write it down, it will disappear.” that’s a whole theme in itself, one that threatens to take credit for the features of the blog that are “unfinished.” there’s a conflict between theme and subject, and it.. feels big in my brain. this feels like a whole novel in my brain.

it’s not surprising that I got a series out of this, but it’s a little more surprising that this one blog contains so much of what the series would become. even the title “composition no.” applies specifically to this piece, it wasn’t conceived as a series, it was just the title that fit this blog. it’s an anti-composition. not a composition yes but a composition no. and it leaves you feeling in your heart where it does not go.

in porting this over to the Website, I kept thinking “I should rework some of this, expand on it,” only to realize, “wait, no, that’s the point.”