In addition to making DIY bath bombs,
and learning whether common household items are recyclable,
and, if so, how to recycle them, the Northfield Public Library’s upcoming programming includes live performance of songs new and kind-of-new, and maybe a cover, this Friday, Dec 2, at 4PM in the Atrium. The consequences of saying “fucking,” “fucked,” and, if I do the cover, “boner,” in a library, will be on full display so please do check it out if for no other reason.
Also:
Dears!
Good day.
[obligatory “it has been a long time,” whatever]
Were any of you in Vegas this weekend? I was, saw a fantastic thing that inspired the aforementioned maybe-cover, revisited policies on sleep, caffeine, alcohol, and obsessive self-regulation, ran on the strip which includes stairs among other things, and did lots of pseudoprogramming in my brain parts for an upcoming (other) thing that I am very excited to share with all of you.
Speaking of all of you, some of you are new. Welcome to this strange space. Bandcamp featured my new record (War Footing (<= click), Sept release) on their “something or other” roundup, and so some thousands of folks listened, which was a joy and a surprise, and some even signed up for this list, and are now wondering what they have gotten themselves into. Or, more likely, have not checked their “promotions” folder because that is where it lands (which is also the name of a song.) Regardless: if you have opened this and read this far, new person or long-time listener, welcome. I am glad that you are here, all cuteness and glib self-referentiality aside.
Speaking of self-referentiality, I told a story to my younger one last night called “Miles Cranberry and the Five Days of Thanksgiving,” in which my proudest improvisation was the moment the characters became self-aware, noting to the author (me) and listener (the child) that Miles Cranberry and the Five Days of Thanksgiving is actually the full name of the character, requiring us to rename the story “Miles Cranberry and The Five Days of Thanksgiving and the Five Days of Thanksgiving,” at which point the younger laughed and said “that’s going to be a big book cover,” which is his quintessential observation/articulation style. To wit: “In Vegas, outside looks like inside.”
He’s not wrong (in either case). Outside did look like inside. For me, too: internal monologues externalized and even let go, ruminative patterns on pause, ideas. I am making Las Vegas sound like a sanitarium. I more mean travel, and a specific sort of travel that takes you so far outside of your day-to-day life that you meet the hyperbizarre outer environment as a hyperconsolidated inner body. Because you have to, in a way, or because you are inspired to compare every other place and self you know to the version that is off the charts loud and bright and swaggering around like a drunk pirate or, as I had renamed myself one night which might have been Thanksgiving, “Professore Bourbollone.” The effect is that you kind of know yourself in a different way, and that is the joy of living near an airport and having family and friends and elaborate professional justifications far and wide.
Speaking of joys, one other one is playing music for some number of you greater than or equal to zero in the coming weeks and months. This Friday, here. Then Dec 13, Brooklyn. Then most of January, here. More on those soon. In the meantime: may your outsides look like your insides? I don’t think that lands properly. Figurative language is risky, but you never know til you try.
ExOh,
A