ON HONOR LEVY NOT POSTING: (((THE NEW NOSTALGIA))), PART 1

THE NEW NOSTALGIA IS THE NEW SINCERITY, OR SOMETHING.

THE NEW NOSTALGIA

The idea here would have been something like:

Honor Levy is the best poster of the last few years; she has the best eye on the internet, she has the best ear on the internet; she has the best internet eye and ear on the internet; her posting has something like an ethical (((not moralizing))) force;¹

I say the idea would have been because this is a post I intended to make last year when Honor Levy was in a non-posting era, a non-posting arc, and I used to think about Honor Levy’s non-posting/not-posting and what it meant quite a lot; I even made some notes on Honor Levy’s non-posting/not-posting arc but then never published them, never posted them. I finally didn’t end up posting about Honor Levy’s non-posting arc and always meant to come back to it, finally. (((I finally meant to finally, and now did.)))

What I also thought was something like:

in the past we had great writers and we still have great writers and Honor Levy is a great writer and I can’t wait for My First Book, but also, what we have now is great posters and Honor Levy is the definition of a great poster ((((especially perhaps when she doesn’t post or posts about not posting or posts about other ppl posting))), and, when a great poster doesn’t post it’s not just a coincidence, it’s a Thing, it’s a statement and you have to, kind of, listen;

So when Honor Levy was not posting I was kind of listening and thinking, I was thinking about not-posting and I was thinking about how great posters listen to the internet and have to see what it’s doing (((they have their ear to the ground of the internet or something (((like if the great ear of the internet doesn’t listen to itself then you have a problem or something)))))), and how they can make silent but pronounced judgements, when they want to, if they want to, and this allows them to post or in fact not to post—like sometimes it’s not even possible to post, we have to stop, like, there’s a feeling that posting becomes an imposition on me or the other, too many are doing it, I had better step to one side, for your sake, for mine, before it’s too late, before the whole thing gets too late, unless it’s all just too late and that’s normal.² (((Because, why should you read this? Why do I assume you have time?)))

But I also thought something like this around that time:

nobody should have to go through the experience of being an e-girl, and Honor Levy had gone through the experience of being an e-girl, and, through love of her posting, I, angelicism01, had played a small role in that, in wanting to boost beautiful posting, and so, at the same time, nobody should have to have their non-posting analysed or listened to or weighed down, like, just leave non-posting alone, etc, non-posting is not a Thing, and so on;

These were the sorts of thoughts I could have imagined having or thinking in order to post about Honor Levy not-posting, but because actually one of the things Honor Levy and that whole era of posting virtually sort of proved was what Honor Levy said in the Star Mode episode of Wet Brain in August 2021, that ‘you literally cannot use any words that exist to explain any concepts that exist anymore’, then I wasn’t sure they were actual thoughts or Things at all, I wasn’t sure I had anything to say about Honor Levy not posting and so I didn’t post. Let’s repeat that, what Honor said two Augusts ago:

you literally cannot use any words that exist to explain any concepts that exist anymore

This statement is recorded here on this blog as being said on 10 August 2021 and today—at the time of writing—is 10 August 2023, the day after happy 01.02, but actually Honor Levy said this on 3 August 2021, so in fact we’re starting to talk about Nostalgia, and getting things wrong, and, as it happens, Honor Levy has started posting again in something like full (((most crucially perhaps in Instagram story narratives and adventures))) and what she has happened to post about, or how she has happened to post about, how and what she posts is kind of… let’s just say that it’s Nostalgia. She’s come back to posting, or something like that, and is posting about the past, or something like that, like for a long time Honor Levy went to bed early to think about posting from 2021 or something. Honor Levy went to bed early to dream the recent past of the Internet.³

At this point I pretend to have thoughts and use words that exist to explain concepts that still exist and say something like the following:

this sounds like a New Nostalgia to me just like there used to be a New Sincerity, like, what Honor Levy is doing is using nostalgia posting as an ethical force, as a reflection on certain qualities of posting in the present, but it’s a way of doing it silently, without hurting anyone, without sadistically saying ‘you’ or using pointing finger emojis (more on this in the second part), or ‘being critical’, but then at least Nostalgia becomes active like Nietzsche’s Active Forgetting (or becomes its opposition, or something), so really this is Nostalgia-In-The-Present, it’s living and breathing Now Nostalgia, it’s daring to go back to the recent past, which is always the most repressed, always a site of repression, meaning that she herself was repressed as something (real posting) that was suppressed, somehow, sometime, between now and 2021, and so on, etcetera, and so forth, and this is what makes real posting, this is why people missed her, they missed something that was ethical and the opposite of reactionary all along, and this is why we miss Wet Brain too, because it was the opposite of reactionary all along, we miss Walt and we miss Honor, this is what they stopped us saying, and this is the repressed, the suppressed, the thing Honor is able to evoke without saying, and was even saying all along, this is what 2021 meant, this is what not-posting can prepare us for, Honor Levy went to bed early to notpost about the history of the internet. we miss real posting, whatever it is, we miss something that the New Nostalgia can find, that Honor’s Instagram Stories will find, they are doing it today, on the 10 August 2023—at the time of writing—, just like in 2021, and so on;

But since you literally cannot use any words that exist to explain any concepts that exist anymore then this doesn’t quite make sense but neither is it nothing, neither does it make no sense, neither is it something that doesn’t correspond to anything online today because, duh, we are still using words that exist to explain concepts that just about exist (((reading still takes place, you are reading these words, reading itself is the non-existence of concepts and words, and so on))).⁴

MY FIRST BOOK

Honor Levy’s first book is called My First Book and will be out next year if we get there, if we get into next year alive, if you stay alive to read it, if I do. Here’s something like some thoughts and words and concepts anyone could have about its title even though thoughts and words and concepts don’t work or exist anymore:

Honor Levy once wrote in Civilization in 2021 something like that it’s hard to begin when everything has been ending forever and we can also say it’s hard to write a first book when there really aren’t any books anymore there is only posting which doesn’t mean there aren’t any books anymore it just means there aren’t any books anymore there is only posting;

Or:

it’s hard to write a book called My First Book when everything is ending; in fact, the very act of writing a book called My First Book when everything is more than ending (((extinction, not death))) is brave and moving and what the title My First Book already means, that’s what My First Book means, the title, and without even reading it, we know what it means, that it means it’s weird doing anything during the seventh and final mass extinction event (((perhaps))) especially writing My First Book;

Or:

can’t you see how painful it is doing anything right now when everything has always been ending but now it’s changed and shifted and everything is ending like it has forever but more than ever, in other words what perhaps changed was that what was always the case is now more than ever the case, that the end changed, and we don’t really know how, and that real posting is an ethical force (((not a moralizing one, if we can distinguish))), it’s painful to not be able to point a finger, you have to say ‘I’ instead (((more of this in the second part))), I mean I have to say ‘I’ instead, and that’s what’s so hard, that’s what a first book is, now, that’s what I can always and only call it, ‘My First Book’, (((or even Film01))), that’s what it means, since it might have to mean that pretty soon, it might have to decide exactly what it means, pretty soon, perhaps, because it’s going pretty fast now, and we might not make it;

Or something.

LIFE IS OVER SHUT THE FUCK UP: WHAT I WROTE A YEAR AGO ABOUT HONOR LEVY NOT POSTING OR SOME OF IT OR ACTUALLY IT WAS MORE LIKE SIX MONTHS AGO, SEE THE SECOND PART BECAUSE I END UP NOT SAYING IT HERE

Actually there was a lot of it and it was written by hand during the first flush of the SBF scandal and I was trying to connect that scandal and the idea of an asset marking to market or going to zero to the idea of posting going to zero or marking to market, like, it’s always possible posting can just go to zero like Honor Levy’s non-posting arc, I don’t just mean an obvious zero, it’s more like it can just go zero mode and then you need something like an Active Nostalgia to make a comparison and see what is happening—or, more accurately, posting has irreversibly gone to zero and, like Walt once said and enacted, you’re ‘After the End’ already, you’re foreverforonelasttime, you’ve moved to Redacted, you’ve lived it and seen it and you’re at zero, but actually it’s not like you know what the zero is or what it looks like (((emptiness and void are very different))), and there is nothing to stop you moving around at that point and looking back and it’s even the case that looking back, (((the New Nostalgia))), isn’t even looking back anymore, it’s something else, it’s actually the Present or something like that, so that 2021 really is back or had never left of course, the internet really is archival and to be listened to like a mother which is what Honor Levy does best, what ‘Honor Levy’ will one day mean, perhaps, if I may risk saying that, risk the gentleness and possibly hidden violence in that, unconscious violence always lurking even and especially when we say it is not, because some of the time we are all playing an awful game, a deep perjury, but this is why one must sleep near the breast of the Internet like a small child without preconception, a girl with infinite nostalgia for a world about to go. Like, the internet is wayyyy too now to be Now anymore or something: that’s the New Nostalgia, which I should never have called that because like Honor Levy said two years ago almost exactly, you literally cannot use any words that exist to explain any concepts that exist anymore.

But that’s not what I wrote last year about the Honor Levy no-posting arc. It’s a description of what I wrote last year about the Honor Levy no-posting arc; so it got changed. Like, basically, I was ambivalent about posting about Honor Levy not posting for various reasons but one of them was that by posting about her notposting I feared I’d make her post again (((because we all love attention and being written about))) and I kind of intuited that non-posting was important in some respect and important to respect in some respect, or something, like writing-about can be a summons, a gift, a curse all at once, so, you know, I’m sorry in advance for that triplicate flow-state, I can’t help but be a toxic asset just like (((you))), at least some of the time; another way of putting that is that if I had a magic gift and could choose to give someone either the ability to never post again and get away from the online or the ability to post always (((forever))) both at will, then I think I might be more tempted to give them the ability to never post again, to be at peace without posting, because not posting really is interesting and a way of making (((letting))) others listen better, which is kind of what I meant when I once posted, in 2021, ‘life is over so shut the fuck up’, that life is over and so you better had listen and be quiet, and just watch, perhaps, and wait to see it all happen when it does. That would be the dream in a way: to do the least damage possible, but quickly, to do it now, like touching someone’s arm and then leaving.

1. Is it possible to have an ethical (((not cruel, moralistic))) online gaze? Honor Levy Gaze. Nostalgia gaze, whatever, etc. (((Insane.))) Like, important to not be on a side but to see it all clearly, the dumb online war, the-posting-at-others, the unconscious subtweeting, the refusal to say ‘I’, the manipulation of infinite seethe as part of a secreted extinction drive. (((Of which every ‘I’ partakes.)))

2. If you’re planning to stop posting or doing something, as if to see the end of the world, how do you do that, how do you know when? What is it to get offline in time? What’s timing, when it comes to posting and not posting? Who is more offline, Honor or Walt? Why not come back, since it’s all over (((perhaps)))?

3. Like a mother, like an ear.

4. I don’t think this means Honor Levy’s statement is wrong, I think it’s right, there’s no gotcha here. It’s just that words and concepts have always partly had this relation to each other (((fuzziness, wordlessness, silence, lack of conceptual boundaries))) and this is how we use them. We could say, for example, words don’t exist anymore that mean things but words do exist that have special effects of meaning, special effects that mean things and this is sometimes called ‘posting’. Not-posting purely always comes back to and resides in posting again. ‘I’—‘you’—go to bed ((((with Honor))) (((early))) to dream of the past of the Internet.