Cranology is a writing project that began in 1997 after several failed attempts to begin a journal writing practice. After continually ripping pages out of fancy leather-bound journals, I came to recognize that I was giving the materiality of the “book” a status over the writing: “This writing sucks; it’s not worthy of this fancy book,” was the phrase that I would use to hijack my attempt to pursue a writing practice. At the time, my high school English Language Arts teacher, Ms. Bartkow (later Ms. Dorsey) would carve out class time, for “free-writes.” Through these in-class stream-of-conscious spells of writing, my writing muscles began to develop. But still, the status of the book was holding me back; each time I started a journal, I ended it just a few pages in. I had a number of these decorative books of various sizes that lay on my shelf, empty, baring the torn remnants of a writing that was ‘not worthy.’
Somewhere along the way I decided that I would instead use cheap marble notebooks, with the promise to myself, that I would never rip a page out. I began to journal in order to develop my writing muscles, and more importantly, as a way to move forward. The 1997-me named the journal Cranology; the 2016 me has continued on, edging towards twenty years, currently writing Book 73.
Across these 73 books, the writing takes on many forms of writing from the stream-of-conscious into prose, poetry, letters, lists, rants, and personal accounts of my day-to-day experiences. As I began to develop my craft as a playwright and theatre-maker, the journal witnesses plot outlines, fragments of dialogue, character descriptions, and rough drafts of plays, as well as production notes and theoretical meanderings on theatre, writing, performance and politics.
Upon moving to the UK in 2011, I created a digital archive of each book so that I could access these writings without having the physical books with me. The archival process followed a ridiculously ambitious failed attempt to type each book. While various fragments of select books have been typed up, every page of every book is now photographed for my personal reference. Here, I will begin to share selections, fragments portions, and perhaps one day, the entire work, with (YOU). Click around, you might land on some pieces of writing...
