effervescence.world seeks to elevate generative sense-making at a time when the forces of cynicism & efficiency are putting civic society at risk
The collective is hard at work. We are prototyping projects. And supporting change-makers and sense-makers within the fields of academia, journalism, and artistic practice—people who are trying, in their different ways, to help the world understand itself better. Some of what we are making we want to share in its early stages—there is something important now about work that shows imperfection, evidence it is still made by humans. Yet we also need to respect and protect because some work needs shelter while it is still becoming. So we are being thoughtful about what we share in digital spaces. If something below calls to you—if you are curious, or recognize yourself in it, or want to get involved—we would love to hear from you. Come find us.
Works in Progress
From Here
short-form audio
Everyone living in Maine at this moment is from here now. This ongoing storysharing project centers the people of Maine who were not born here. And it reminds us that those who are now from here bring us all manner of life lessons from away that contribute to our often beautiful, frequently messy, civic society in this place.
Classical Pharmacy
short-form audio
The pharmacist will see you now. That’s Dr Anastasia Antonacos: professor, pianist, performer, and now p-harmacist. She is ready to prescribe the right piece of music for whatever ails you and your community in these trying times.
Downeast Goldmine
true-crime podcast series
Notes from New Europe
newsletter
In 1978, off the Bold Coast of Cutler, Maine, international drug smugglers on an ocean-going tugboat tossed eight tons of Afghan hashish overboard to avoid capture by the authorities. Soon after, hard up fishermen dredged up this abandoned bounty, kicking off a sudden gold rush of the seas and with it, many unexpected and far-reaching ripple effects that took over this small, rural community. Audrey Ryan’s father was one of those fishermen, and she has been collecting stories and investigating what happened to and within Cutler after this unexpected treasure appeared.
GG, this effervescence collective’s listener in chief, splits time between Maine and Eastern Europe. In this occasional newsletter he shares lessons for Americans from Eastern Europeans with the lived experience of supporting and defending civic society on one of the most important front lines in the ongoing battle between the forces of cynicism and curiosity.
generative sense making: the slow, necessary work of making meaning together from our collective experiences.
forces of cynicism & efficiency: so many of the isms (authoritarianism, consumerism, racism…) depend on sanding down nuance, oversimplifying, othering, and prioritizing speed, output, and judgment over curiosity and understanding.
civic society: the practice of we—not the easy we, not the we that already agrees, but the hard-won we, the one that has to be made and remade, that requires someone to show up and someone else to show up after them, until showing up becomes a kind of faith.
collective effervescence: this is what happens when a group of people stop being separate individuals and become something more—a company, a current. it happens at funerals as much as celebrations, in protest and in prayer, in sports stadiums and dance halls and moments of serendipity and revelation. when it happens you know it not because someone told you but because you feel it: a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
effervescence.world: a gathering place. a public park in the digital age where making, testing, exploring, and developing together is the work, and the products are the tip of an iceberg of creative, curious collaboration.