[2025 Reflection 2 (of 8?)]: this website will never be done (or, yet another addendum to the colophon)
Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We recite Bismillah to initiate an act, acknowledging the intention and ethics that follow.
☺️ Hello!
To get me back into the habit of newslettering, for the next eight (or nine?) days of 2025, daily, I will share a 2025 reflection.
Second up: this website will never be done (or, yet another addendum to the colophon)
I got to the end of the day and said, “Dang, I don’t have any writing for these people, and I just promised them yesterday.” Then I realized I had spent the better part of the year building this website, specifically the artist statement. So, I will share that as the first part of this reflection:
I decided I was “finished” with the writerly undertaking of building a digital personal archive after six consecutive hours at my computer without a break. The city is tranquil during the Christmas holiday, and time has flown by. I broke the coding hyperfixation by eating a gluten-free chocolate muffin made with carrots and zucchini. (I didn’t bake them!) As of 9:30 pm EST on Christmas Eve, this is what the website looks like:
The effort began with trying to squeeze an “artist statement” from pages of notes and voice memos. Compression and linearity have been kicking my butt since the 1980s. I don’t know how to write without switching between applications, spaces, fonts, writing utensils, or colors: each sentence doesn’t require the same gesture. How disrespectful to punch keys, type a sentence that needed the breaching gesture of a pen tip tearing through paper fibers? A little hyperbolic, yes. But sometimes the cadence of a phrase requires a typed sentence. Other times, the weight of the sentence needs to be levied by my hand alone. There are times when written communication isn’t sufficient, and I need to add a voice note.
I endure as a writer, even though I am insecure about the title; I feel like I am fumbling over and into words. Some of them survive the collision, and what shows up here, I guess, is whatever remains. I have taken to saying “I am good at language, but bad at writing.” Here, the bad is not the pejorative. Writing assignments confound me; a single tangent obliterates the possibility of “staying on task.” (Heck, there were about five splinter essays that started in the one newsletter alone!) Writing requires a steadfast faith in protocol that I cannot guarantee. I am bad at what I have been conditioned to call writing. I like noise — the stuff over in the corner of your eye.
Writing a coherent artist statement for an application is one thing, but writing for a digital context means designing it to be read as a digital object. I decided to write an artist statement. Then I decided the website could serve as the artist statement, sort of. Rebuilding this website brought me back to my love of early-90s personal websites — a nostalgia for websites that invite user activity beyond scrolling. I know how to build a capital-W website, but I prefer lowercase website design. I want a website that is also an art object, or experience? And an art object that, like me, is always under construction:
An Addendum to the Colophon
There are a few chance-based navigation modes, as well as opportunities for user input and compilation. I would like to include a few more tiny quests across the website. In particular, I want to play more with pop-up windows and canvases. I am also interested in more choose-your-own-adventure and user submissions. This website has a long way to go, but she is still cute. If you have website suggestions, email me here: studio@kameelahr.com
Dispersed throughout the website are pockets, cavities, and folds a reader can tumble into; the work statement is not contained to the pages labelled “Work Statement.” You’ll find bits and pieces as headers, footnotes, images, etc.
There are several baby sites on the mother site. Explore those as well. I like nesting things and burying trinkets. Next week, I will release a new plaything in January, and it may involve finding a deeply nested website.
I do not enjoy building sites for others, but I enjoy talking with them about their websites. I think every person should develop their first website independently. I think it is a good exercise in exploring the varied “purposes” of a website. The struggle can be generative.
Thank you for reading. All the best, always,
Kameelah 👽
Finally, while I do not organize my finances around paid newsletter subscriptions, wouldn’t it be cool if this little newsletter could allow me to take quarterly self-imposed writing retreats? Consider getting a one-year membership at USD 70 :)
How to cite this newsletter: Rasheed, K. (Year, Month Day). Newsletter Title. I Will (?) Figure This All Out Later. URL
I’ve been working on building a website for two years now and feel you on the stop-start process. Reading your thoughts on your own process is very affirming and inspiring!