Decorate

Sometimes, when I’m in the mood to blog but don’t have any ideas, I’ll pull from Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies deck. I’ve written before about how invigorating the deck can be for pushing through creative barriers. Nothing helps me when I’m feeling stuck quite like a cryptic saying. I found today’s oblique strategy especially provocative:

Decorate, decorate

Decoration is not something I usually pursue. In my personal life, I tend to leave picture frames leaning against the wall for months after moving. I envy people who populate their home with plants, but I’ve never been able to keep things alive long enough to cultivate a green space. I can’t imagine ever getting a tattoo, though I’m always fascinated by the choices of those who do. My professional life follows this same trend. My approach to web design tends to be minimal—with a better sense of what I don’t like than what I do, I typically strip as much away as I can. I am fascinated by minimalist pedagogy, where you try to teach digital humanities methods using as little as possible. And as an editor I tend to strip things away to find the kernel inside rather than add in more text.

But I’m also put in mind of recent social media trends featuring a video of a person indulging themselves alongside unapologetic captions like “just realized I am a full-ass adult and can have ice cream for dinner.” Part of the joy in such posts is the recognition that you don’t need to justify such actions. Indulgences aren’t exactly decorations, but there’s a similar spirit of fullness. I’m thinking of my colleague Amanda Visconti’s recent DH2025 poster, which they (in their own words) decorated as aggressively as possible. There’s a freedom in decoration, in deciding to take up space in a particular way, in making a space your own. Decoration can be a survival tactic. A thing to show that you were there.

This past year our lovely students wrote a series of suggestions on our white board for how to survive 2025. I’m going to add my own: decorate. No other justification needed. To that end, here’s a photo of our cat.