Fornicating Fowl.

Oh, Fukaduk.

Writing a blog for a living, or for part of a living, or as a contributor to one's living is a strange, almost devotional thing. I feel at times almost like Simon of the Stylus, Simeon Stylites, a Syrian ascetic from 1600 years ago who lived for 36 years perched atop a pillar near Aleppo, Syria as a sign of his faith.

Writing is a testament of faith.

Putting it out there.

Practicing often.

Working at it.

And working some more.

As Beckett said, 

Strange and wonderful things happen when you put yourself out there. When you try something new. When you stick to your knitting when everyone else is telling you to buy a sewing machine.

Strange and wonderful things happen when you stay true to you. 

You might even exhort, fukaduk.

Here's what I mean.

Along the way you meet strangers.

I meet strangers.

I meet strangers, some of whom stay strangers.

Some of whom become, oddly, friends. 

Even if we've never bent an elbow or broken bread or even had a phone conniption.

If you are the writer, the spreader of words, if not the word, they find you, they come to you, they become your followers. 

We, as a culture, have watered down and co-opted the word follower. It no longer means what it's always meant. Once it was tinged with holy.

It now means someone, who, probably accidentally, pressed a button. In many worlds, in mine, it means more. At least at times.

It means learning from people you admire, and love. Whose words and thinking you hang on and learn from. Today the word follower is as casual as a gumball down a dirty slot.

Last week from out of the now-superheated formerly-blue, I got a note from a reader. A reader I never even knew I had.

The reader, I'll call him "Doc," wrote:

It took me some time, but I wrote and pasted back.

This is not all of the serendipity that comes from putting yourself out into the world. 

Something to think about as more and more people like myself must reckon with the isolation that comes from aging and suburban living in nearly equal parts.

Last night I was sent a link by a long-time reader and some time correspondent I'll call Benny. Benny sent me a link from The New York Review of Books. It brought me a poem from 1975 by the poet Kenneth Koch, called "Some General Instructions." You can find it easily. Here are two excerpts.

...

Some months ago, and for no particular reason, Benny sent me a package in the mail along with a hand-written note. The package included this photo with no explanation except that Benny is aware that I like a well-turned ankle, though none are in this photograph, I can conjure ankles with my mind.

I think there might be an advertising lesson in all this if you're willing to think about advertising in ways they don't think about advertising in books about advertising.

These interactions of late, and maybe thousands more through the years, are the result of a conscious effort on the part of my "brand" to be on brand. Better, on the part of my self to be my self.

The writing and the "putting it out there" that I do with near-religious regularity and fervor are evidence of my belief that brands must be active, interesting, present, surprising and in the world. As I've finger-blurted so many times, people like brands that act like people they like.

That's what this is about, really.

Not pretending to have all the answers.

But to be available for the questions.

I think that might be the best branding advice I've ever writ.

Or the worst.

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BTW,

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hock—an old British term for German white wine, especially Rhine wine—mixed with carbonated water. In modern terms, it is essentially a white-wine spritzer.

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