The 4 Relational Knots

Connection, aliveness, transition and stewardship: the tangles our founders are working loose.

Zine No. 01← All zines & dispatches

Four noodle-limbed characters work a giant loose knot of colored ribbon: one in a crown pulls an end through gritted teeth, one in a propeller cap leans back on the other end looking doubtful, one calmly holds a loop open, and one in a mushroom cap sits on top sipping a drink, unimpressed.

Think of headphones balled up in your pocket, or a kinked garden hose.

The wanting is all there: to be together, to make things, to matter to each other. It just can’t get through, because of how we’ve arranged our lives.

Our founders and artists don’t study these problems from a distance. Like artists always have, they feel a knot in their own lives first. When they work it loose for themselves, they open a path for the rest of us.

It might be a magazine, a gathering, a tool, or a weird experiment.

Four noodle-limbed characters around a small table with a candle: a wizard tells a story with arms up, one gasps, one thinks with chin on hand, one sips, deadpan.

Connection

We’re more connected than ever and lonelier than ever. Somewhere along the way we got out of practice: talking to strangers, gathering without an agenda, belonging to a place and the people in it.

Working this one loose

  • Jon’s Neighborhood ComputerA communal computer that brings neighbors together
  • Kyle’s Greenbelt JournalsA year of prompts written around a couple’s own story
A noodle-limbed band plays on a low pink stage: a guitarist lost in it, a singer reaching for a big note, a grinning drummer. Below, three listeners: one transfixed, one nodding along with eyes closed, one with arms crossed, tapping a foot.

Aliveness

We’ve been tuned like machines: optimized, productive, alone in a room making things for an algorithm. But people come alive in company, making something together, being seen, playing without a point. Without that, even good work goes flat.

Working this one loose

A host opens the red door of a soft purple house and waves two arriving guests in; one carries a pot. Inside is a warm glow and floor cushions.

Transition

The old scripts for work, career and identity are coming apart. When people step off the conveyor belt, there’s a gap before the next thing takes shape, and most of us cross it alone. We need new elders, new rites of passage, and real rooms to make the leap in.

Working this one loose

Three noodle-limbed characters tend a soft mound of soil: a mushroom kneels to tuck in a lime sprout, a wizard waters with a long stretchy arm, and one hauls a sack of colorful seeds, tired but content. Candy-colored sprouts grow from the ground.

Stewardship

Our technology and our money were built for efficiency, and they’re very good at it. But neither can see relationship, so they quietly spend it down. We need tools our kids can grow up with, and ways of circulating money and care that keep the relationships intact.

Working this one loose

And the only way through a knot like this is relationally.