July 18, 2024
Who am I?
I’m an American werewolf in Thailand. Sometimes I write. For well over a decade, I did so far more than sometimes. But these days, I mostly only write online when I can't help myself. And even then, I mostly only do so (1) after I’ve tried to wait it out and (2) if I feel I have something considered to say that cuts through our collective noise rather than adds to it. I otherwise prefer to lead a private and contemplative life. “Speak only if it improves upon the silence," Gandhi said. And, well, it would seem that there is no silence anymore but for that which we create. Maybe it’s always been that way. I don’t know. In any case, as I write this, in the third decade of the third millennium AD, I think making more silence is one of the most radical, righteous, and merciful things a person can do. My default position to writing online moving forward will therefore be one of resistance, one of tension between two opposing forces: making silence and making sound. Whatever else you read from me in this internet abyss will arrive only after having passed through that fortifying barrier.
What is this?
Symbols & Rituals is a running meditation on life in a mind and society. Here you will find writings that traverse spirituality; metaphysics; human nature; our relationship with technology; the relationship between the individual and the group; music, film, literature, and comedy; mental and physical health; the symbols and rituals we use to imbue meaning and structure in our lives; and whatever else attracts and animates me enough to want to capture it in these vital but inadequate words and strings. I aim to write with as much sincerity and nuance as I can. But the writing is the boss, and it is transgressive by nature and sometimes wants to run wild and without reverence. So if it asks me to transmute into my fictional half mid-essay, or to construct a fiction that could just as well be an essay, or to tell a dick joke amid a dirge on modern man's spiritual indigence, I will humbly oblige. But as I noted above, I won’t involve you in any of this unless I feel that it would be better to make a sound than to make more silence.
Likes and comments are turned off, but you can email me at sirbrianleli@gmail.com.
