September 19 2025
Is what I am writing an essay? I would like to arrive at an understanding of the genre that I am writing in. This is also an attempt in identifying the genre that I am in fact writing in (and thinking about). I might next want to ask if genre is even important, but let’s go with yes.
Well, let’s break this down: what do I want to write? I want to try and think through thoughts by articulating them in words. There are concepts and ideas that, once in a while, seem incomprehensible to me, almost as though they have been problematised or “made weird” as Douglas Rushkoff says in his interview on ‘The Gray Area’ podcast. Or, as I might have done by repeating a word multiple times, hyperfocusing on my tongue's movement, rendering it weird. Rushkoff said something along the lines of: “make an idea weird, let it stop making sense, and then start from (near) the bottom in redefining it so that it fits better with this weird world you are in.” Thinking through this question now, I can identify, in this description, some part of what I want to do when I write.
As an example, I have been bothered—let’s say it like that—by the concept of information recently. Somewhere along the way, my [Bayesian] prior understanding of the world has taken on a meaning of information over time with which I/we have become complacent. Until, a sudden moment when I realised at that I don’t really know what ‘information’ is even though it is a concept that is referenced around me all the time and which I also use. Information may become weird in my mind. However, in trying to figure out how I can (approach/address/answer) resolve this weirdness through writing, I feel I need to go on a tangent and understand the kind of writing I will be doing. On second tangent, that understanding will carry with it another feeling for me: an soft obligation to use the structures provided by that genre, but I don’t have the motivation to ensure that I do that. The latent information from years of reading and writing throughout my life ought to have instilled in me at least a basic intuition for how to reasonably introduce, build, and conclude a text. I just simply have to assume.
Writing this confusion is a first step, and I feel that I could (should!) seek other ways of expressing this confusion. Let’s see it this way: writing my confusion down will make me have to articulate into non-fungible words: the crux of my thought—or at least my best attempt at it—and then when I have imposed order on it, I can translate it into other output.
That’s what an essay is! A means of narrative/prose data storage in this latent middle-space between the thought, and my ability to express this thought later. I mean, for me, right now, in what I am trying to achieve, I think this is the definition of ‘essay’ that I want to go with. To justify this abrupt resolution, let me recap my thoughts in the empty space betwen the previous paragraph and this one. Let’s assume I’m suddenly finding myself confused by a mundane concept like “information” then I need a way to understand my confusion, build an understanding, and express this understanding (whether on a random piece of paper for my eyes only, or on the internet for my eyes only, or also for others’ eyes). Articulation is a fundamental tool for me to overcome “do i know that i know that or do i not know or” nonsense, and so to know I understand—for that moment—I find it useful to articulate, in an essay. This may or may not be the final product of what I am investigating in my mind, but it is an essay.