044: I'm at the Combination Pink Pony Club and Taco Bell
First, Tha NEWS.
On the FAILURE EXPERIMENT front, the cover art is done. If you want to see the cover before anyone else, support my Patreon, where I'll be posting it in the near future.
Relatedly, the Patrons-only chapbook that's supposed to be quarterly but is almost a year past due is laid out and now I'm percolating the cover for that. The hook to the chappies is that I usually do a hand-pulled linocut print for each edition, and so I'm working on what I'm going to do for that. I may try something new this time. We'll see. Every one I've tried something different, so maybe this one I'll see what the feasibility of a 3d-printed print plate is, and if I have the brain size to do it.
As for Patreon on the whole, man, they're just giving creators a hell of a time. You may have heard that they're forcing everyone to adopt a different pricing model: patrons are charged when they sign and then every month on the same day, rather than on the 1st of the month, as Patreon has traditionally operated. Supposedly they're doing this to align with Apple's App Store rules, but, like, not everyone who uses Patreon uses the app. I'd actually be curious to see what those numbers are. I personally have the app, but not to follow or pay people. In fact, I'm not even really sure why I have the Patreon app, because both the mobile and desktop interface are hilariously unintuitive and honestly I hate Patreon but it's at this point really the only name in the game outside Substack, and I'm not migrating everything over there. In any case, Patreon. Ugh. (I realize I just asked you earlier to maybe go support me on an unintuitive, kinda shitty platform, but... it is what it is (I say as a slip further into the Swamp of Sadness.))
I'm back in Chicago again, and already right in the middle of It All. The spouse has been toiling away with their band (Sparkling Urbana!) and so between gigs and recording and mixing and various other goings-on, it's been a time. The child has started their first year of college for film. I'm fighting with the state of Illinois about titling a car. Same ol'. This weekend is bustling. There's a NOUN show we may or may not go to, there's Vintage Computer Fest Midwest, there's KnobCon (not going to that one, too expensive), there's the junior roller derby end-of-year party, and there's a planned game night. I cannot fucking wait for real and actual fall.
Right in time for the podcast season to start up.
Second, INTERLUDE.
I know I've started to think
About leaving tonight
Although nothing seems right
~ Gary Numan, “Cars”
Third, CONSUMPTION.
Before I'd left Chicago, I started playing Pokemon Scarlet and for the most part I've finished it--I got through the main game, and I got through the first DLC, and now I'm into the second. I do like those little shits. Pokemon, I mean. Not DLC. Paying almost an entire game's amount of money for the rest of the game is more than a little annoying.
Currently reading I Didn't Do the Thing Today by Madeleine Dore. It's so nice to have a "productivity" book talk about how "productivity" is bullshit, by which I don't mean "nobody wants to work anymore" so much as "everything we do is part of a life that is inherently productive." (Yes. We live under capitalism and everyone needs money to live, but this is both encompassing that and talking about something so far outside the scope of wage labor. PS: Please buy my books.)
At one point while I was in North Dakota I thought to myself "I should check out this Chappell Roan gal" and texted the fam in Chicago to pick it up the next time they were at the record store, and the kiddo replies "Oh I already have it on vinyl" and so now I'm getting on the Chappell Roan train. (Incidentally, if you haven't read her takedown of weird parasocial celebrity culture, you absolutely should.) Something mildly hilarious to me is that I can't seem to find a version that has a parental advisory sticker because holy shit some of those songs are JUICY. Anyway, Chappell Roan. Good stuff.
Picked up Junji Ito's Black Paradox because literally all I did was read the back cover. I am a big fan of Ito, but the hook is what got me more than anything. Which, like, it's horrible, but also weirdly compelling, in a Benoit Blanc sort of way. "Hm. Let's see where this goes. (Probably nowhere happy!)" I haven't read it yet, but I'll get there. I still haven't managed to find a copy of his Frankenstein anywhere, and I'm thinking my October should be contrasting his with the original that I have.
Fourth, HUSTLE.
First and foremost is my most recent book, confessions from a drainage ditch, which was released on Sept 1st through Amazon, and is available in ebook and paperback formats. If you haven't picked it up, it's a great introduction to my more concrete and mainstream work.
If you're looking for something weirder, you can check out A Void and Cloudless Sky, a chapbook, which is also available from Amazon, as well as most other retailers. By being a subscriber to this newsletter, you're also entitled to a free PDF version, which you can get here.
If you're liking this whole project and want to support it directly, here is my Patreon. There are lots of little benefits you can get there, from poems written to your specifications to subscriber-only limited-edition chapbooks.
Finally, THE OUTRO.
It's been a neverending cascade of Suck in the vehicular department since the last time we chatted. The Subaru has needed its timing belt replaced as well as one fuel injector and a temperature sensor. The spouse's motorcycle keeps having problems. The Fiero is currently mired in a bureaucratic swamp.
I'm someone who absolutely wants the US car-dominant culture to get remolded into something more efficient and sustainable, with transit and bicycles and walkable cities and the end of sprawl. I don't even particularly like driving except in very specific circumstances. (Part of it has to do with my unease in liminal spaces, which a car absolutely is, yet it requires your full attention at all times.) Yet I love cars and motorized transport as a design, engineering, and art form. I bought the Subaru to get around and haul things. I bought the Fiero because it’s the car I always wanted and now I have it. (I rule!) I run into a similar problem with aircraft, since so many of them--especially the impressive and high-tech ones--are designed as killing machines. It's a difficult balance to strike, being impressed by the achievement of building and operating something like the F-18 Hornet, which the Blue Angels fly, and the reality of those F-18s being used to bomb the shit out of people in the Middle East (primarily.) A car is a tool. Like any tool, it can be elegant, well designed, even beautiful. I can hate using one example, while loving using another. Multiple truths can exist.
What I'm trying to do right now, in cars, in life, in general--and maybe I've been trying to do this since before I can remember--is trying to find that balance where everything comes as it is, and I treat it as it comes, where it's at. One of the books Spouse keeps recommending to me is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I understand is more about Zen than it is about motorcycles. But that's how I'm trying to be about this string of misfortune. There is no intent behind it, it just Is. There's nothing I've necessarily done to cause it, it is a consequence of having a car and time. Could I have made better decisions before this point? Sure. I could have bought a newer car. I could have not bought another car with known issues. But that doesn't change the fact that here, and now, I have a problem to solve, which is easily solvable with very little smarts and a little more physical work. Keep Calm and Wrench Cars, so to speak.
Now, apply that to everything in my life. Be okay with Not Doing It All. Be less In Control. Everything will be fine. Consider the lilies of the goddamn field.
The books, the writing, the cars, the work... it'll come. The long hours of winter will be here, and you've survived those. This? This is a piece of paperwork. It's a poem. It's feeding the cats. It’s butter and salt. These, too, are important and meaningless. We're all just hurtling through space, all of us.
Even me. Maybe especially me.
See you next time.