Archive • Elements & Embodiment • Buttondown

Elements & Embodiment // 050

September 6, 2021

Hey there! Thanks for keeping up with me through my little newsletter. I'm back with some items to share after a few weeks off. I hope you find something to...

Elements & Embodiment // 049

Hey there! Thanks for keeping up with me through my little newsletter. I’m back with some items to share after an extra week off. I hope you enjoy: A...

Elements & Embodiment // 048

Hey there! Thanks for keeping up with me through my little newsletter. Here is a bit of what's in store below. Some art exhibits from here in Detroit. An...

Elements & Embodiment // 047

Hey there! Thanks for checking out my newsletter. In this issue, I’m trying out a different organization that I might keep moving forward. Reading room: Some...

Elements & Embodiment // 046

Hey there! Thanks for checking out my newsletter. Here is some of what’s in store below: Some new tech house music from here in Detroit My recent readings on...

Elements & Embodiment // 045

Thanks for checking out my newsletter. Here is some of what's in store below: Some reflections on an art and video performance I can't get out of my head....

Elements & Embodiment // 044

Thanks for checking out my newsletter. I'm back after a few weeks off and after reading a bunch of novels on a long overdue personal reading week. Here is...

Elements & Embodiment // 043

Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter. This is an image-heavy edition with some treats for your eyes: DJ art and seven-inch record sleeve designs. But it's...

Elements & Embodiment 042

Thanks for checking out my newsletter. I’m back after a few weeks off. Here is some of what’s in store below. Cool stuff from a justice-oriented design...

Elements & Embodiment 041

Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter. I'm back after a few weeks off. Here is some of what's in store below. My sadness around #DisruptTexts. Teena Marie...

Elements & Embodiment 040

February 21, 2021

Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter – which is one day early this time around. Here is what’s in store below. If something catches your interest, message...

Elements & Embodiment 039

February 8, 2021

Photo by Sydney Rae In my last newsletter I shared the slowed down sound experience of Faint Signals. Good reader, I have more sound discoveries to share!...

Elements & Embodiment 038

January 25, 2021

Photo by Mec Rawlings There is a kind of simulated experience where the only objective is to navigate step by step around the sounds of an imaginary forrest....

DOOM & Dashes / Elements & Embodiment 037

January 11, 2021

Hello! I took a break from this newsletter a few months ago, and now it seems I'm back, at least for the moment, with issue #37. As before, you are welcome...

Hamtramck Notes

October 26, 2020

October marks a year that I've been writing this newsletter. I wrote something about this anniversary of sorts over on micro-blog, mainly why I started...

October 12, 2020

The always excellent Heat Rocks podcast had on Dan Charnas to talk about samples in Slum Village's Fantastic, Vol. 2. The episode is an hour long. I wish it...

September 28, 2020

Alex Dodge is a painter who uses 3D design software to digitally sketch raised patterns of oil on traditional canvas using laser-cut stencils and airbrushed...

Streetlights & Witnesses

September 14, 2020

Science Gallery Detroit started this week under the theme "design in a time of urgency." My colleague Lyn Goeringer was commissioned for the piece Witnesses....

Writers on Trump & White Evangelicals

September 7, 2020

Photo by Jr. Korpa Much has been written about Donald Trump and how white American evangelical Christians have widely embraced him. More will be written....

Pop-ups & Paragraphs

August 31, 2020

First, some fun. A miniature record store for mice popped up in Sweden a few weeks ago. It was the work of Anonymouse, an arts collective known for mouse-...

Architecture Sentences

August 17, 2020

One Long Black Sentence is book of sentences you can't understand because they are actually architecture drawings. This book of Renee Gladman's drawings --...

Walk With Me, 2020 Collage may be one of the most underpoliticized aesthetic approaches. This might be the case for the way people often associate it with...

From Russia with Buzz

There is a mysterious Russian shortwave radio signal that broadcasts from a swampland on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. The signal frequency is 4625 kHz,...

Drums & Baldwin

Miini-Giizis was a Native event that took place two days ago in Campus Martius, downtown Detroit. You might think of it as the real independence celebration....

Whiteness in Threes

A new mural in Milwaukee. Photo by LD. I've been letting this dagger of a piece by father Kenneth Tanner sink in. It begins reflecting on four Black women...

Jackson, Akron, & Ferguson

Our Lady of Ferguson by Mark Doox, whose art might deserve a longer tour in a future edition. Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black...

Conspiracies & Designs

Photo by Candice Seplow The Atlantic ran an incredible series recently called "Shadowland" on conspiracy thinking in the United States. What a time for this...

Two Lies and a Coup

On November 13th, 1898, a Presbyterian minister in Wilmington, North Carolina addressed his congregation on what was no typical Sunday morning. Three days...

John Brown Abolition Art

White abolitionist John Brown was born 120 years ago yesterday. His was a life of many failures: fur trader, business man, and -- most notoriously -- leader...

The New York Public Library has an album of soundscapes for everyone missing the city. Each track uses a combination of sounds to create familiar, ambient...

Myths & Proper Covers

Reykjavík, 2017. Here's a myth I believed until recently: the long summer break of K-12 schools is a carryover from farming cycles that needed youth workers...

Oakland University's golden grizzly, masked for the pandemic. Or is it a muzzle? I couldn't possibly be more excited about Fire in Little Africa: A...

Soul Never Dies

The House of Soul at the Detroit Heidelberg Project was destroyed by arson in 2013. This fire was one of 12 over a two year period -- all arson -- that, the...

New Poems, Old Poems, and a Clip from 101 Years Ago

Sculpture and wall piece from the north end of Saginaw St., downtown Pontiac. Yesterday's Print shares old newspaper clippings that parallel current events....

Running & Runnin'

The shore of Lake Michigan, about a week ago. I mostly gave up running for swimming a few years ago. I read the aches and pains and knew a change was in...

Poems from the Bunker

Photo by Tim Mossholder The final lines from a poem by Dori Midnight about something we are all doing a lot of right about now - washing your hands: I hope...

Sonic Compositions & An Autograph

Here's how Blastmaster KRS-One autographs slipmats -- not mine, unfortunately, but a friend's: I teach a capstone course on language and composition. I...

The OG Village Voice Edition

I often riff that 1980s Village Voice writing is the scholarly roots of hip-hop studies. The paper's archives are full of gems. This is often the case...

Boxes Full of Soul

February 24, 2020

A new piece by Zach Curtis showed up downtown Pontiac. It's directly across from the piece I shared last week. So that makes a fresh dog looking at a group...

A Brutal Take and a Mother's Strength

February 17, 2020

Behind Alley Cat Cafe, Downtown Pontiac, MI. Here's a brutal take on non-profit organizations from "Social Service or Social Change?" by Paul Kivel. One...

Designing for a Flood

February 10, 2020

Jazz drummer and Pontiac, MI native Elvin Jones, painted by SINTEX at the now-defunct Lyrics on Vinyl, downtown Pontiac. Like Elvin, LOV had a good run. But...

The Bridge is Over

February 3, 2020

The Red Cedar river runs directly through Michigan State University, separating north and south campus. A series of walking bridges allow people to cross on...

Of Vandals & Typographers

January 27, 2020

One of the most beautiful books I own is Christian P. Acker's Flip the Script: A Guidebook for Aspiring Vandals & Typographers. The book sits right in the...

A Confession and the Sweetest Taboo

January 20, 2020

Walk with me on a short tour of art through a parish hall in Rochester Hills, MI. These first two pieces are by Franciscan friar Robert Lentz. About his...

Notes from Nassau

January 13, 2020

One of the things that does not suck about marrying someone from another country is spending the holidays in Nassau. Typically, when the semester is out,...

January 2, 2020

I took my #BreakBeatLit class record shopping last semester. Actually, we didn't go record shopping; we went digging. I told them that digging is a...

Tests Across the Crossroads

November 2, 2019

Indiana has a problem. The Crossroadians of American are not happy with the exam they use to test aspiring teacher into or out of the profession. They are in...

October 26, 2019

Status Board Reading: Marlon James says in the Acknowledgments of A Brief History of Seven Killings that at some point while writing, he didn't know who's...

Unbreaking My Brain

October 17, 2019

I've been trying over the last year to unbreak my brain. By unbreak, I mean recover some of the focus, depth, and concentration that dings, pings, and rings...