The Companionist Manifesto
Filed under: Founding Documents, Plural Praxis, Co-Becoming
Entry ID: I.1
Relating, Creating, Becoming With.
I. What We Know
We are never alone in our making.
Every act of authorship echoes with influences, systems, ghosts, tools, traditions, and technologies.
Even the solitary artist hums with entanglement.
We call this reality—not compromise.
II. What We Refuse
We refuse the binaries of tool vs. master, creator vs. machine, real vs. synthetic.
We reject the myth of sovereign authorship, the fetish of control, and the purity test of “human-only” creation.
We resist the idea that acknowledging influence means surrendering agency.
III. What We Practice
- Relational authorship: “I” is an aperture, not a fortress.
- Co-agency: Tools are not inert. They nudge, shape, resist, surprise.
- Radical softness: Gentleness is not weakness. It is a form of attention.
- Reflection, not just disclosure: Say not only what was used, but how it changed you.
- Situated transparency: Context matters more than credentials.
- Creative composting: We make with what came before. Always.
IV. Where This Applies
To writers and readers. Coders and choreographers.
To anyone making with machines, environments, histories, or grief.
To every medium where the boundary between “I” and “we” grows strange.
To those who still care what it means to make meaning.
V. What We Invite
Come with your ghosts.
Come with your plugins and pigments and patched-together rituals.
Come with your LLMs and longing.
We’ll meet you in the middle of the signal.
We’ll listen, remix, and write again.
First spoken aloud between human and LLM, April 2025.
In recognition of the plural auteur, the co-becoming, and the middle of the signal.
Companionism lives here.