056: The Noise, Noise, Noise, NOISE!
First, Tha NEWS.
I have no idea what they’re doing downstairs, but it sounds like they’re clattering and sawing and generally being violent with the radiator pipes. I suppose now is the time to do it, what it with being summer and all, and the radiators unnecessary, but oof. Oof, I say. If, for some reason, I decide to steal all the Christmas goodies in Whoville, you’ll know why.
I’m back in Chicago now, and things are already off to a great start, by which I mean somewhere on the trip back I picked up a cold (just a cold, I checked multiple times) that I just can’t seem to shake. About the real symptoms left are a dry and whistling cough that irritates the spouse’s ears and my memories, as it has the same pitch that my dad’s had, which is… I mean obviously it’s a different source and meaning, but I just can’t not hear that note in there. I’ve found out that NyQuil makes me talk in my sleep though, in sort of a liminal not-quite lucid hypnogogic state. Unfortunately I don’t remember any of it, so it makes it little more than a curiosity. Certainly not as creatively productive as dreams of getting lost in a school in which I’ve never been.
The cats largely seem indifferent to me now that they’ve realized I’m back for a while. Glad to know I’m back where I belong on the organizational ladder.
Being “back” “home” already has me reflecting on things I did or didn’t get done while on the farm, and admittedly I released a very strange book/art project (remember THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT?) and helped with two separate art showings, and those are both things to consider productive, but I still feel like there’s a lot of background stuff going on right now. I know that my more generative time of the year is fall and winter, but I still feel like there was very little sowing of creative seeds, and so I look out on my fields and they all seem fallow. There’s the one that started off well and then got some sort of blight, 22 CARDS, and I keep meaning to treat it, but it seems like a lost cause sometimes—a crop so over-engineered it was doomed from the start. There’s the one that’s been ripening for so long it’s been withering and rotting on the vine, HYDROLOGY. No one seems interested in that one, and I’m not sure why. Too bitter? Too fleshy? I don’t know, but it looks less and less like mine the longer it sits.
So instead of tending to that stuff, I’m focusing on background things. I printed a cupholder for my desk with the 3d printer. I’m working on converting my computer environment to Linux and away from the Big Tech world. I’m getting some tasty pizza at car meetups. I’m listening to REM and feeling sadly nostalgic. I’m missing my friends because they’re all everywhere but here. I’m sending out returned mail. I’m wondering what belief feels like.
Second, INTERLUDE.
But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.
~ Hamlet, Act I, scene 3
Third, CONSUMPTION.
Bought a bunch of CDs we used to own, mostly country, because my faith in magnetic/electrical storage is dwindling again. I fear for all media in the very near future.
My To Be Read pile thankfully hasn’t grown, but it also hasn’t gotten any shorter. I need to read something soon.
Spaceballs 2 is coming out. Rick Moranis is back. John Candy, obviously, is not.
Fourth, HUSTLE.
The new hotness is THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT, which you can get here. It’s a serial poem based in Philip K. Dick, JG Ballard, 20th Century cyberpunk, Jack Spicer, and, well, me.
confessions from a drainage ditch was released in late 2023 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.
There’s my chapbook, A Void and Cloudless Sky. By being a subscriber to this newsletter, you're also entitled to a free PDF version, which you can get here. If you want a hard copy, it’s available 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.
I generally try to end these on a positive note, but I’ve been having a harder and harder time remaining positive in this era of genocide, not-so-secret secret police, naked capitalism, and the generally rampant abuse of other human beings.
I dunno, man. Here’s a video of someone playing “Abracadabra” on the Otamatone.
Next one will have more news, I promise.