A blog for writing and ideas from Iskra Johnson

Taos, 1990

Just four months into 2025 the United States – and much of the world within its sphere of influence – has been transformed beyond recognition. As my ability to focus on my own life has imploded under the barrage of political bedlam I have been struggling to find equilibrium. It is all too easy to begin my day lost in the news feed’s convulsions, my awareness derailed and monopolized by the attention economy. Before the internet gate-crashed life, I spent time very differently. My days were built on habits of immersion, attention and focus. When I read books it was a timeless dive of page turning, forwards and back, my scribbled notes in the margins the only resemblance to today’s blinking links to elsewhere – the notes, importantly, placed by me, the original search engine.

Creating a home for writing on this platform is a way of committing to that previous life, and to gathering like-minded tribe. I chose a blog rather than Substack because blogs still allow a writer to create a room of ones’ own, free of clutter and distractions, with some control over the placement of furniture. No screaming reels or videos or ads, and a curated space in which to read and think. Although the writing will sometimes address politics, and modern life – which is almost always touched by digital technology – its sensibility is of another time.