Dionysus on a Bike

Dionysus, the god of wine, dance, intoxicated and feral wisdom, and Apollo, clear sited, wise, all-seeing, rational god of the sun. Living as though I am a devotee of these gods, their initiate, and their protege, this blog is a documentation of living under their signs. Part travel blog—I’ll record journeys by bike across continents in attempts to find temporary zones of autonomy and struggle to help sustain them. Part art blog—I’ll show you the images created while inspired by this tiny pantheon. Part writer’s blog—you’ll get to read excerpts of larger works and essays on life, philosophy, politics, food and drink, and exploration by bike and train.

A bit about me (and therefore a bit about this blog): I’m a philosopher by training who left academia a few years ago to find less restrictive modes of expression and more possibilities for creating art and a new world. Now I’m a wanderer who has traded scholarly philosophy for sophistry, poetry, fiction, and making the self a work of art. Founder of the currently embryonic Dionysian Socialist Collective, a society of artists and radicals who recognize that we live in a broken culture that has been tainted by capitalism’s scourge and bourgeois values and so attempts to live differently finding ways of living that are liberating and creatively expansive.

After quitting a job as a philosophy professor I left a rat race of a city for a town where I can live off bartending, leaving time for writing, art, bike rides, and exploration of the hidden and neglected spaces that still remain outside our social order of domination and control in and around my newly adopted city, Cincinnati where I’ll live until I complete my first novel and then it’s the road again and more wandering.

This blog represents attempts to live differently. Valuing the body and art more than career and wealth. Disdaining success for the open road and the shedding off of inhibition. Thinking community on different terms. Same with living arrangements, romantic partnerships, making a living, even movement from place to place. I’m a novice at all of these things—still learning, and I would welcome my readers’ input and feedback along the way. So while this blog is a place to publish various forms of creative expression, it is more about that quest to live better, which from where I sit means to live apart and even in opposition as much as possible.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far, and I have yet to fully live up to my best wisdom. Quit your job. Sell your car. And your house. Make art. Join the water protectors and join antifa (remembering that we are killing the planet and putting indigenous immigrants into concentration camps). Shout “I would prefer not to” at the empty and stultifying life propped up by Capital and its effects. Stop buying stuff except what you need to live with joy. Put wrenches in the works of Capital, remembering that if something is not accessible to the humble worker, the poor, the homeless, and the outcast, it is not revolutionary or liberating. These are among the themes explored here.

What will follow will be an eclectic mix of philosophy and art. Memoir and fiction. Essay and photography. Documenting places explored, the uncertain and variegated terrain of the unconscious and its desires and the ideas those encounters generate. Expect posts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Once I hit the road again, I’ll post more… or less… We will see.