My decision to decline
There are periods in a creative life when the work no longer stands alone. When it becomes inseparable from the conditions that shape it. Thus, from the tensions it absorbs, and from the wider world that presses itself into every line, whether invited or not. These are busy times. Too busy. I’m immigrating to Cyprus, while I’m launching a novel.
What I’m preparing to release isn’t only a philosophical novel. Memos from the Edge has become, in ways I didn’t initially anticipate, a response to the present moment, including the ongoing realities in the Middle East, where questions of narrative, power, voice, and truth are no longer abstract but lived, contested, and often distorted beyond recognition. Writing within such a climate alters the responsibility of the author. It sharpens it.
At the same time, the circumstances surrounding the book’s creation have revealed a truth equally pressing; something less visible yet deeply structural. The mechanisms through which cultural value is assigned remain bound to a narrow set of signals. Institutional endorsement continues to function as a shortcut for credibility, while work that develops outside those channels is subjected to a form of scrutiny. One that rarely needs to articulate itself explicitly in order to be felt.
This arrangement of power plays persists because it is repeated, not because it is inherently sound. It privileges alignment over independence and proximity over substance, creating a feedback loop in which recognition circulates within the same enclosed systems. Stepping beyond that enclosure doesn’t simply redirect a career. It exposes the framework itself, making visible how easily amplification is mistaken for merit and how quickly absence of endorsement is interpreted as absence of value.
Over the past three years, I have worked toward a form that resists simplification. The philosophical novel Memos from the Edge unfolds in layers, beginning with an accessible narrative that carries a certain lightness. Thus, an ease of entry that invites the reader without resistance. Beneath that surface, a second dimension unfolds through suggestion rather than declaration. Through patterns that emerge gradually, requiring attention rather than demanding it. At its deepest level, the work engages philosophical and contemplative traditions as structures that shape the reader’s encounter with meaning itself.
Such a composition is the result of deliberate construction. It required sustained study, not as ornamentation but as necessity, and a prolonged engagement with language that involved dismantling as much as building. A full year was dedicated exclusively to writing and revision, without financial stability or external confirmation, guided by a standard that doesn’t depend on visibility to justify itself.
During that period, an alternative path opened, one that is widely perceived as the definitive route into legitimacy. Representation within established international networks was offered, accompanied by professional evaluation that affirmed the work’s potential and a framework that promised reach and recognition. My decision to decline that path wasn’t made lightly.
It’s often assumed that turning away from such structures signals a rejection of opportunity. In reality, it can also reflect an understanding of the conditions attached to that opportunity. Within publishing, as in many cultural and artistic industries, the relationship between creator and system is marked by a persistent imbalance. Transparency is inconsistent, frequently dependent on negotiation rather than principle. The movement of a work through production and distribution isn’t visible to its originator. Financial structures obscure more than they reveal, and contractual language, while precise, doesn’t always translate into clarity.
These dynamics aren’t isolated within the authors’ industry. They form part of a broader pattern that extends beyond literature into other artistic fields, where similar accounts continue to circulate, often privately, rarely with the force required to shift the public understanding of how these systems operate.
The Canadian thinker Harold Innis examined how communication systems embed biases that determine whose voice persists over time. When applied to contemporary cultural and artistic production, this insight reveals how power isn’t only exercised through content, but through the structures that govern its dissemination.
This is where the margins acquire significance. Jane Jacobs, writing about cities rather than art, observed that vitality depends on diversity and on small scale initiatives that operate beyond centralized control. When systems become too stable, they lose their capacity to adapt. When control becomes too complete, variation disappears.
The same dynamic unfolds within the arts. Work that remains within tightly regulated frameworks often reproduces existing forms, while work that develops independently carries a different kind of unpredictability, one that allows for movement rather than repetition.
Choosing independence in this context is the deliberate construction of structure. It means retaining visibility over every stage of the process. From the shaping of the text to the management of rights and the pathways through which the work reaches its readers. It requires a sustained level of engagement, as there is no intermediary to absorb uncertainty or to mediate consequence.
Yet it’s precisely this proximity that allows for coherence. The distance between intention and execution narrows, making it possible to maintain alignment between what is created and how it exists in the world. Lewis Mumford cautioned that large scale systems tend to favor efficiency over human proportion. Within a field that depends on nuance and depth, this tendency creates a friction that is rarely resolved from within those systems themselves.
Across artistic disciplines, similar patterns emerge. Creators who have reached significant levels of recognition often describe a gradual erosion of control, a fragmentation of ownership, and an increasing distance between themselves and their work. These accounts do not always enter the public record, yet they persist, shaping decisions that remain largely unseen.
Within such conditions, autonomy becomes less a symbolic stance and more a practical necessity. It enables a continuity between vision and realization, and between authorship and outcome. It doesn’t remove difficulty, but it renders it intelligible.
Memos from the Edge is situated within that orientation. Written in English and structured to move across languages without losing coherence (the e-book can be translated into all the languages of the world, while protecting copyright), it retains its rights at the point of origin. Its layered composition invites multiple modes of engagement, allowing the reader to navigate between narrative, reflection, and philosophical depth without hierarchy.
At its core lies a concept I describe as humanecy, an attempt to articulate a rebalancing of relationships that have become disproportionate. Between individual and system, between scale and meaning, and between the realities we inhabit and those we attempt to imagine beyond them. In theory, the Middle East would benefit tremendously from humanecy. In practice, it’s such an existential mess.
Serge Latouche argued that limits aren’t external constraints but conditions through which freedom becomes meaningful. Without proportion, expansion distorts. Without boundaries, growth loses coherence. This perspective reshapes the idea of progress. It shifts attention away from accumulation toward alignment, from scale toward integrity.
The decision to anchor the initial launch on April 9 within a local setting reflects this orientation. It acknowledges the practical realities of relocation while preserving the integrity of the process. The broader international trajectory will follow in the second half of this year, not as a delayed ambition, but as an extension that unfolds under conditions that allow it to do so with clarity.
To create at this moment is to work within intersecting pressures that extend far beyond the individual project. Cultural, political, and economic forces converge within the act of making, shaping not only what is produced but how it is received. These forces cannot be eliminated, yet they can be reconfigured through the choices that are made in response to them.
What emerges over time is a gradual reorientation. A pattern formed through decisions that accumulate until they begin to alter the field itself. It’s perhaps within that slow accumulation that something more enduring takes shape, a form of authorship that doesn’t seek permission from existing structures, but renders them less definitive with every step it takes.
You can join the digital book launch on April 9 via this link.
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