Writing
I am developing The Narrative Witness, a literary memoir project exploring adoption, relinquishment, identity, memory and authorship.
Writer · Photographer · Father · Maker
Jonathan Lyon
A few lives ago I was working in large advertising agencies in London and New York. Today, I live in Whangaripo Valley, where I am writing a book, building a cabin by hand, attempting to keep old machinery alive and trying to remain faithful to the life unfolding in front of me.
The current shape
I am interested in the lives we assemble after the original map stops being useful.
Writing, photography, fatherhood, land, bread, machinery, weather, memory and the slow construction of shelter. Not separate identities so much as different doors into the same attempt: to become more fully present for the life I have.
At present
The many hats, mostly literal.
Making
I am building a cabin by hand, learning from timber, water, mud, mistakes and the small honesty of work that leaves evidence.
Photography
I keep a black-and-white visual record of landscapes, thresholds, weather, traces and the quiet structures that seem to wait for us.
Ordinary Life
Walking with my daughter, baking bread, hauling water from the creek and trying, imperfectly and daily, to become more myself.
Photography
Looking is another way of writing things down.
Elsewhere
Three open doors.
The book The Narrative Witness
The focused pre-launch home for the adoption, relinquishment and literary memoir project.
The essays SubstackLonger public writing on adoption, identity, memory, authorship and the work of becoming.
The archive JournalThe future home for field notes, photographs, fragments, moments and ordinary dispatches from the cabin and beyond.