Stunning meditation on how culture smoothly naturalizes the artificial. That line about symbols reminding us to treat borders as sacred really hit hard, especially paired with Borges' map covering the territory. I've been reading Baudrillard lately and this felt like a more accessable take on hyperreality without losing the density. The Dante framing gives it enough grouding to avoid drifting into pure abstraction.
Thanks for the kind words. Both Borges and Baudrillard are huge influences of course, plus others, more covert ones like Eco, Foucault, and Deleuze & Guattari. I think accessibility is indeed key here, as well as trying to get out of the way, as a writer, to remove the writerly instinct/ego as much as possible in order to produce a clear, straightforward piece. It's already an extremely tough sell, as the truth has always been a hard pill to swallow.
Stunning meditation on how culture smoothly naturalizes the artificial. That line about symbols reminding us to treat borders as sacred really hit hard, especially paired with Borges' map covering the territory. I've been reading Baudrillard lately and this felt like a more accessable take on hyperreality without losing the density. The Dante framing gives it enough grouding to avoid drifting into pure abstraction.
Thanks for the kind words. Both Borges and Baudrillard are huge influences of course, plus others, more covert ones like Eco, Foucault, and Deleuze & Guattari. I think accessibility is indeed key here, as well as trying to get out of the way, as a writer, to remove the writerly instinct/ego as much as possible in order to produce a clear, straightforward piece. It's already an extremely tough sell, as the truth has always been a hard pill to swallow.