“I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays
Mark my words here and less so Emerson’s Back East, for where the twain shall meet, midway across the continent, abides a connate sensibility, a quality bringing us all the way home, somewhere between big water and the wide river, to those we love.
Connate is the condition our condition is in.
Pretty much the inverse of the song, though, which funkily recognized the cognitive dissonance of its era; connate, on the other hand, signals a whole that submerges Weltanschauung, world and water–and me and you–without really ever having to say so.
Connate-the-website draws photography and prose from a series of watersheds flowing into Lake Superior, offering a platform or vessel for local self-expression to anyone finding it worthy, pleasing, or who are otherwise amenable to the concept and approach.
To that end, connate will eventually transition to a photographer-&-writer member-owned cooperative featuring and promoting local writers and artists alongside the core mission outlined above. Those who participate will end up owning and directing connate in proportion to their contributions. Assuming anyone’s innerested.
This project arose after going on the internet one too many times as if I was going down to The Shore . . . only to find yet another hit-n-run Buzzfeed listicle (’37 Reasons The Great Lakes are SO Amazing’) or one-too-many JSOnline articles adamantly insisting that water doesn’t flow downhill.
You know what I mean.
When hit-&-run journalism looks this much like George Weyerhauser’s cut-&-run forest management, it’s time to own the outlet, time to get in the vehicle and drive . If only to be heard.
Social media feels more rewarding, at first. You fire up the laptop, go down to the shore, and recognition lights up all those old familiar faces. But on Facebook, even amid the voices glancing off the water, the uneasy terminal understanding pops up now, and won’t go away: you don’t own the song and the story. Facebook does.
And it’s not even your Lake.
May connate serve you well, then, if found worthy, in showing and dispersing and disseminating what words and images you find good and well to share.
NOTE: This draft requires reworking, so expect sooner or later to find it rewritten in whole or in part.
But you get the gist.
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- Found reality, not contrived content. Connate was and will be; it’s right here and doesn’t need to be chased or striven for.
- Emerson glimpses the far shore, but cannot conceive the experience across the water. Even Thoreau realizes this.
