Field Notes 10 // The small web, Cryogen, and artistry

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I’ve been less active than usual on X in recent weeks, which is because the way I use the internet on my smartphone has changed significantly.

When I stumbled upon Kagi – a paid search engine without advertising – I also downloaded the Kagi Small Web app. Reminiscent of Flipboard in some ways, it’s quite simple – a web browser that displays only posts from indie websites, with forward and back buttons to jump from one to the next.

It’s still essentially a slot machine. When you tap to the next post, it might be good or it might be bad, and the queue is endless. But the bad content on X often makes me despair about the state of the world. The bad stuff on the small web is usually just irrelevant, boring, or low-quality. I can tell within a few seconds if a post is interesting or not, and move on without the negative feelings that impression-chasing social media feeds so frequently evoke.

Am I missing anything by spending less time on social media? Maybe. Blog posts take longer to write than throwaway tweets, so the content isn’t quite as contemporaneous. But many bloggers turn pieces around within a couple of days, and the far lower rate of knee-jerk reactions and provocative content chasing virality is worth the slight delay. Most blog posts I read cover trends in a more considered way that avoids the X magpie effect, where users jump to the next shiny thing and forget what was so important mere hours ago.

The articles I read are often much more personal – few people are trying to please the algorithms here. It feels much more like the web of a couple of decades ago, when people simply wrote for the joy of it. I’ve seen everything from insider opinions on running start-ups and managing teams, to an in-depth technical breakdown of the PKPASS files used by Apple Wallet, to touching personal accounts of experiences with burnout and therapy.

I’ve written before about how hard it is to predict which of my own blog posts will do well. Those I’m proudest of sometimes get only a handful of views, while last-minute scribblings can take off. The detachment of that feedback loop could be what makes independent blogging so compelling. Without a guaranteed correlation between effort, quality, and reward, people mostly just post about the things that interest them in a very candid way. Small blogs are the most honest and genuine places on the internet.

Muse at Brixton Academy + Cryogen

Unfortunately my trip to see Muse at Brixton Academy was so dominated by Ticketmaster issues – somehow I’m still waiting for their promised refund – that I’ve barely written about the gig itself. The crowd were up for it and the band wheeled out a few older, rarer songs, but the highlight of the evening was probably the debut of Cryogen, a new song from their upcoming album.

Cryogen is unique in that it has a modern sound while still capturing what made early Muse special. This is something they’ve struggled to achieve in recent years. Even when they’ve released the heavy songs fans have been calling for, they’ve missed the mystique and little twists that made their earlier music so relistenable and those first few albums so beloved.

Even the studio version of Cryogen is unexpectedly raw and atmospheric. It begins with odd space sound effects. Matt Bellamy’s voice is distorted and raspy. It has the kind of outro that would only usually be played live, with a neat little bass solo. Between the tone and the screams and the little guitar fills, it feels much less controlled than any Muse song of the last decade.

The album, The Wow! Signal, comes out in June. I have high hopes. Two of the songs released so far – Cryogen and Unravelling – are heavy modern rock songs with nods to the band’s history. Be With You is poppier, but has a more interesting underlying chord progression than most of Muse’s lighter singles. If the rest of the record follows suit, it could be their best since at least 2012.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Why do you find yourself staring at a blank page when you sit down to do something important? For Steven Pressfield, the answer is Resistance – an internal force that attempts to hinder our efforts to produce great art.

“Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

Resistance is more than procrastination. It’s a deep-rooted fear of what the art represents for its creator. What if I discover something about myself that I don’t like? What if it’s not received well by the audience? What if it is well received, and my success alienates me from my family and friends?

Pressfield says Resistance increases as we approach the end of a project, and left to its own devices can drive our responses to external events. Unchecked Resistance is the reason why the knocks from the upstairs neighbour get to us, we feel as though we cannot focus because of the other things we need to do, or we second-guess the words we write for fear of judgement by others.

“The professional cannot let himself take humiliation personally. Humiliation, like rejection and criticism, is the external reflection of internal Resistance.”

The cure? There is none. Artists must work regardless of the Resistance they feel. The most important thing in producing art is to do, and to produce something true to the artist’s vision, regardless of external circumstances.

“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”

I picked up The War of Art because I’d heard certain writers and podcasters swear by it. My thoughts are mixed. It’s a short book – shorter than its page count would suggest, since the chapters themselves are often only a few pages long. It intertwines advice and tales from Pressfield’s own career, and attempts to instil in the reader the drive required to complete great work.

It did get the adrenaline going, at least in parts. The passages on Resistance, its effects, and how it is overcome resonated with me. I thought about all the times I’ve sat down to write and struggled to begin, and felt a determination to persevere. But its later chapters became very caught up with muses and gods, and were too abstract for me. Perhaps I just wasn’t in the right mood, and on a different day they could be inspirational. Your mileage may vary.

Things that left an impression

• Ed Zitron makes yet another appearance in this newsletter with a monologue titled AI Isn’t Too Big to Fail, which in large parts mirrors my own outlook on the future of AI as a sector, the necessity of price increases, and the challenges of long-term sustainability.

• I also enjoyed Jordan Lord’s blog post on the three constraints he applies to any product build. Subconsciously, I’ve always felt these in my work, so it’s useful to see them put into words so succinctly.

• And on my small web travels, I stumbled across Kirill Solovei’s deep dive into what’s actually inside the PKPASS files that deliver content to Apple Wallet. They’re more complex than you’d think.

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