Flyering as a Spiritual Practice

A love letter to flyers and their public service

Flyering is a spiritual practice for me. Wandering around with a stack of paper and a staple gun connects me to the sublime. Spotting the perfect space on a pale wooden utility pole and slotting in your little flyer like Tetris. Returning to the same choice spots over and over (ie crosswalks with really long wait times). Replacing flyers that were taken down or waterlogged or blew away even though you know it will happen again. I love it all.

It’s an excuse to walk around your town. It’s a way to shape the visual landscape. It’s a public service announcement for whatever you want. It’s a great way to shrink the gap between the idea and the realization of the idea. It’s a freezeframe paused on whatever animates your local world right now, and that frame changes by neighborhood and by season. For some reason pop-up saunas are huge here right now.

And then there’s the flyers themselves! My favorite flyers go beyond the purely logistical (i.e. time and date and place) and offer something way more precious whether they know it or not.

Like flyers that save you from going on the internet because they include all the recurring dates of something or are a calendar themselves:

Or flyers that offer essential information, basically a public service announcement:

Or flyers that aren’t even paper (!) and thus are an even better medium for their message:

Or flyers that teach you about a local issue in a genius way without even going to a meeting or reading more but make you want to go to a meeting or read more:

Or flyers for the absurd that make the world feel gooeyer:

Or flyers that let you know your neighbor is single :) … and also moving :( :

And then there’s all the meta dynamics of flyers; what flyers communicate in aggregate or imply based on how they get used.

Like how a lot of flyers all together make you feel like a lot of stuff is happening where you live:

Or act as a live ticker of what is interesting to the people around you:

Or if an event passed, they become an artifact for other things you can still look into: local issues, venues, resources, other organizations (I mean get a load of that lower left corner!)

Or create new accidental phrases on their own due to perpetual collage:

I had 41 pictures of flyers in my camera roll from this year alone. Next year I hope it is 50! It can happen if we all make more flyers.

Tell me about the flyers in your life, but more importantly have a restful, safe, and fun end of your year. 💜

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