John Menick Blog

When I started writing Hearsay, I decided I would use my own hearsay. Given the simultaneously personal and impersonal nature of the pseudo-knowledge, I realized that anyone could make his or her own version of what I was doing.  So here are some guidelines, which I hesitate to call “rules”:

1) Use only your own hearsay. No fair padding your list with your friends’ factoids.
2) It’s preferable that you don’t remember who told you the story.
3) If you do remember who told you, then it’s preferable that it was related to you verbally.
4) If you read the hearsay, the story should be secondhand (e.g. a quote in a paper).
5) Stories from experts or source publications are discouraged.
6) None of the hearsay should be personal.
7) Knowingly passing on disinformation is not allowed.

See the work for examples.

Some advice: don’t try writing all the pieces of hearsay at once. These things have to be collected over several weeks or months. Don’t commit to producing it in any kind of time frame. Hearsay has a speed of its own.

PS. Hearsay has also worked it’s way over to YouTube.