I’m in my apartment right now, enjoying a nice breeze through my window and recovering (emotionally, spiritually, chemically) from a week spent with mb and cv, with guest appearances from some other friends in my circles and theirs. The circles overlap, really; they’re our circles. I joked once that I’ve somehow become the handpoked tattoo artist of record for a weird nationwide t4t polycule but now I can’t really count myself out of it. Indeed I tattooed mb (fig. A) on this trip as well as her lover, Bea (fig. B), and began making plans to precisely mirror a tattoo I did on cv months ago onto mb, when the time is right.

There’s so much story implied here that I’m not telling, because it’s too big: who all of these people are to me, what’s happening in their lives, how it feels to know that they’re living their lives day by day with my ink under their skin. I’m so glad to be an amateur tattooist, to allow each tattoo I give to be rare and personal. It’s an act of love, and the fact that I’ve had a prolific week is proof of how much love I have in my life.

I’ve been having a lot of Big Thoughts™ about love and relationships and the delicate art of being a person that might end up being a zine one day down the line. I’m restraining myself from spending a few paragraphs trying to lay my thesis out right here; to paraphrase David Lynch: the zines is the talking!

i thought you were a musician???

You can see my electic alt-rock shoegaze band The Lighting Section this Friday, 3/27 at Stay Gold Deli. We’re debuting the first original song of ours that I sing lead vocals on!

My other band, Dirty Twenties, is playing 3/28 at venerable and doomed punk club Thee Parkside. It’s the last Saturday show the venue will ever put on. This might sell out, so commit now!

Also! I have a very spare cover of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” on this compilation. I recorded it with two mics on a rainy night, with very little post-processing and a head cold. You may recognize some names in the dedication.

I am once again thinking deep thoughts about recording solo material. There are several interlocking schemes taking shape. Please stay tuned.

anything else???

The Lighting Section’s gonna put out some singles soon, and I got to design the cover art (not for the album though, that’s in the capable hands of Alex Phelps). The two guitarists (my absolute boys) had picked up some really interesting looking decorative bootjacks somewhere in the southwest that were weirdly thematic for two of the songs on the album (you’ll see), and so we did a photo shoot a few weeks ago to get shots of ‘em and see if we could use them somehow. I printed some shots of the boys holding the bootjacks on my Risograph, scanned the resulting prints, and recolored each layer digitally. The results look pretty cool:

With any luck, we’ll have a single out in just a few days and you’ll see these on Bandcamp or your bullshit streaming platform of choice! While I’m at it, I should not downplay this: I’m really excited for you to hear our new recordings! I’ll have more to say about them once they’re out.

finally:

The other day at a party we were arguing about whether you’d rather give up either A. kissing or B. sauces. I chose instead to C. kill myself. Which would you choose? Reply to this email and let me know.