After nearly ten months of (typically sporadic) publication here, I feel it is manifesto time at Egg Yolks. At the very least I am due for some sort of mission statement for this site. What am I doing here? What am I trying to do? What is the point?
Looking back over my meteoric (or mediocre) career in desktop publishing, there is no concealing the many disheartening gap, particularly this latest one. I published the (thus far) final issue of The Floating Egg in October 2004, after an intermittent run of nearly five years. Thanks to my friend Chad, a handful of the essays remain available online, but despite grand intentions on my part and the well-wishing of more than a few faithful friends and (former) readers, their number has not been augmented, not even with fluff from my (not insignificant) ‘archives’. I have made many fitful flinching attempts to put out ‘the next’ issue, but they have been in vain. The Egg seemed certain to float no more.
When I first set up this blog, it was vaguely connected in my mind to ‘The Floating Egg project’, though the nature of the relationship was very unclear to me. Initially I thought of this as an interim stage, something to prop up my flagging ego until I got back on my feet as a writer and could return to my own brand of ambitious and vainglorious desktop publishing. Then, as I grew more comfortable with this new medium, I thought maybe this could be a supplemental organ, a venue for pieces of a slightly different tone or stature than had historically found a place in the printed pages of TFE. Always, though, I have assumed the eventual return of TFE to circulation. Until that day, Egg Yolks would have to do.
And it has done. I am still unreliable as a producer of prose, prone as I am to long dry stretches and often paralysed by perfectionism, but I am writing again. And the mechanics of web publishing have made it a far simpler (and far less expensive) undertaking to get my words to my readers.
Finally the other day it occurred to me: Egg Yolks is not a side project or a space-filler while The Floating Egg is on hiatus; it is The Floating Egg, the next step in its evolution. It has taken these several months to reach this point, but I can see now that the thrust of my writing is settling down into a range with which I can be very comfortable, and while things are definitely different than vintage TFE, there is, from my side of the screen at least, an unmistakable feel and flavour that I have deeply missed.
Make no mistake, things have changed. I am more serious than I once was; the constant self-aggrandising patter that was such a hallmark of my college writings has little place in my output anymore. My immature and almost-universally awful attempts at ‘social commentary’ are behind me. I now feel that I can say what I want to say without resorting to contrived interviews with an invented self-serving alter ego. I feel increasingly comfortable searching my own soul and finding what I truly feel and believe, and then putting that personal truth into words that I can share with the world. The Egg floats on, and I with it.
Next time we turn our gaze inward: An Egg Manifesto, Part 2: Introspection
