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collections/_posts/2025-01-29-dream-math.md

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+---
+author: brandon-walsh
+date: 2025-01-29
+layout: post
+slug: dream-math
+title: Dream Math
+categories:
+- Digital Humanities
+tags:
+- Digital humanities
+crosspost:
+  - title: Brandon's blog
+    url: https://walshbr.com/blog/dream-math
+---
+Amanda Visconti and I are starting a series of process experiments with public writing, where the goal is to experiment with format and mode while still attempting to get a public piece done in a single hour. For this first session we sat together, read some intentions and affirmations to set the tone, and then pulled from the [Oblique Strategies](https://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html) card deck to get a prompt for us each to write on. The card Amanda chose hit me in the gut:
+
+What mistakes did you make last time?
+
+Given everything going on in the news right now, it's impossible not to read this in light of the new presidential administration, which has just released a flurry of executive actions and destabilizing edicts designed to harm, divide, and panic. It feels like history rhyming, this time with capital letters. The first Trump administration felt excruciating and devastating in all sorts of ways, and this one already feels worse. I have been thinking endlessly about the memory of the last time, whether or not the work that we do in digital humanities matters in this context, and how we might make it matter more. It's easy to despair. 
+
+What mistakes did you make last time?
+
+In some ways, the quote rings to me of the cruelty of living in the past—exactly the sort of thing my therapist tells me not to do. "Don't ruminate," she would say, warning me against endlessly turning over in my mind the mistakes I made, the alternate timelines that didn't manifest. It's not enough to just warn oneself against worrying about past mistakes, though, and my therapist always goes on: "instead lean into your toolkit and all the work you have done to prepare yourself to deal with these challenging situations." You are prepared for this. It is not the same, because you are not the same.
+
+What mistakes did you make last time?
+
+This is not business as usual, but the business of the usual carries on. The sun still rises. Care still must be given to those who need it. Work must still be done. There is an absurdity to this disconnect while the world increasingly aches with fire, death, and pain. I see in the card an invitation to the future, to dream of a better world than the one we have, to think beyond mistakes and towards rewriting the equation by different rules. We all have levers to pull to work against these forces each day. Last time was different because I was different. This difference can multiply. The math of dreamers, creating a world beyond the present crisis through the mundane work of small, everyday acts.
+
+Who were you last time? Who are you now? Who will you be tomorrow? 
+
+Dream math. Pencils ready.