slaude is an archetype of the southern gothic tradition: a manifesto

DUE TO A TYPOLOGICAL ERROR ON THE PART OF KATIE McLAUGHLIN, I am the cautious optimistic, the second half of a bizarre friendship that is as full of promise and opportunity as it is of uninhibited memories, laughter, music: the base elements of a complete life. I say 'bizarre' in the sense that it is rare, it is refreshing, it has a backstory a mile long. I say 'complete life' to denote our shared goal, the object of our unceasing study, the exigency for such a grand project to document our comings and goings in pursuit of God Or Woody Guthrie In The Grand Canyon At Sunset And Visiting Lowell, MA To Hang Out At Keroauc's Grave.

LONG-FORM WRITING AS AN ART IS DEAD, and I intend to resurrect it in the Grandest Style Possible. In all of our youth and Twitter accounts and texting inboxes, we have lost articulation in the face of rapid consumption. We process information too quickly and cheaply to fully digest it to flush out a deeper meaning. Our personalities are reduced to Facebook pages, the historians and anthropologists of the future will aggregate our existences into a gray mass of statistically likely tastes and labels. We will leave no record of our soul as our literary forebears would have it, beyond the 140 character limit. What stories will we point our grandchildren to, and what will they look like, the gory details of our debauched college years exposed, slowly oxidizing in the air of their exceedingly and morally decaying future? Who will think of the children?

FURTHERMORE, AND WITH APLOMB, I will be the cautious optimistic, a banner that will be carried with pride throughout this project, through all its pitfalls and moments of made-outside-of-TV, authentic joy. It is the kind of optimism that breeds energy that breeds fulfillment of our highest desires that are carefully measured and weighed upon the state of ourselves and the world around us that are really, really, absolutely, incredibly worth writing about and for you to enjoy and draw whatever overraching conclusion about.