Dispatch #3: throw myself into your inbox
Hope your creative journey is going well on this fine Sunday.
Before we get to the good stuff: I put out a single last week! It's called "please please please listen to me I'm begging". This is an older song of mine — it dates back to 2012 or so, and was intended as the lead single for a previous solo project of mine. An even earlier version of it was something I explored for the original concept album project that evolved over the years into my last album RUINED CASTLE. Needless to say this one has a place in my brain/heart.
You can check it out on Bandcamp or any of the streaming services. The Bandcamp version includes 2 extras: the originally intended intro to the song (“rant”), and an excellent house remix from the producer BP dating back to 2014.
I spent a lot of this past 2 weeks thinking about the plan for this newsletter and how artists can better utilize their newsletter in a more ethical manner. I think newsletters are important, especially now in the context of social media and...politics I guess. But as I dug into it more, I found myself getting stressed out by the idea of having to consistently send a newsletter every week or two. Something about the schedule filled me with dread – like I have to do this for the rest of my life or I've failed my audience.
Okay, a bit overblown. But I wonder a lot about how we got here with newsletters – specifically the rigid schedule, which likely comes from the need to consistently be in someone's inbox with the hope of them paying you a monthly subscription. I don't necessarily need the money from this newsletter, so I have options (which is why it's completely optional to support this newsletter with a one-off or recurring donation!).
The cool thing about the Internet in 2025 is that technologies from the Internet in 2004 is still around, and arguably thriving more than ever: blogging and RSS. So I wrote two things this week – one for those really keen to keep a traditional newsletter but looking for alternatives to the Substacks and Mailchimps of the world, and another in which I throw all that out the window and try to make a "newsletter" that fits my old-school blogging mold.
Read 'em (and hopefully don't weep):
Hope you enjoy and/or find useful.