#1 In a dim room in Nashville TN

Things that have happened so far.

1) My feet were freezing cold by the fire in Philadelphia. I carried a case of beer down the tracks. Davey and Dori came. Matt Betz came and had his dog Blue running in and out of the firelight.

2) We played Risk to prepare for our first show. In the kitchen Muffy & I worked on our set by drawing a diagram of it. On the refrigerator was an old to do list I’d made with nothing on it other than #1. Make a Shopping List. Jeff Melkerson won the risk game

3) Felt terrible and insane in West Philly as I drove past 47th and Baltimore. We played a set in a basement. I saw many familiar faces. We got paid 46 dollars.

4) Baltimore noise set with the dudes, all painted up, slept with paint on my legs, washed it off in the tile bathroom Max made, Max talking about being young and jealous of success and then getting older and just not caring anymore and just doing what you want.

5) The baby, Coal, in Asheville NC, three years old with his little tigger hat on, carrying a huge bag of recycling down the dirt path, growing up in this crazy grapes of wrath free zone that his dad is squatting, and building these sprawling and wild slipstraw clay houses. His little bedroom has a tiny drum kit and is the only truly warm room in the complex, which is up a dirt road, in the woods behind a trailer park, near a power line cutaway in the hills, on the true edge of town. In the other room is a tiny piano and a desk with a block from which nails protrude. “Now that he can drive nails,” his dad says, “I can’t tell him he can’t play with them.” He will be very formidable when he turns 18, I say. Or, says Muffy, he’ll be totally incapable of communicating with anyone or living in the world.

6) White haired old men in the anarchist bookstore. The gay bongo dude sweating so hard and singing the worst, stupidest lyrics to an empty room. “On the A… train. (UHH) Thinking of you. … Afraid on the… plane. (UHH) Thinking of you.”

7) The switchbacks in Tennessee leading to the dead mountaintop covered in snow. “GPS is wrong. No way to TENN.”

8) Was totally naked at the show in the weird bar last night because whatever.

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#2 LA smog

In LA at night the palm trees snag the smog in their hard fronds, and the smog in turn tangles the light from the night street. The palms glow in this eerie way, filled with luminous, misty bundles, like glowing egg sacks maybe. The palm smog light like a pregnant sticky membrane. These light nests even appear to be physically heavy sometimes, as if from their constituent light and mist there might suddenly spill bile or amniotic fluid, and then some  hard thing that will land living and rush off into the night streets.

You can’t see LA from above. We drove up into the hills and past the hollywood sign and down below the city is invisible, smeared, as if drawn in colored charcoal and then wiped away. The tallest buildings downtown appear to stand on the smog. From above the strange cloud’s blanket weight and obvious toxicity are upsetting, and I wonder how there can be a city under there.

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#3 In Oakland

Last night we pulled in. The crackhead dude at the party got super upset at the end of the night when the super drunk bearded guy started baiting his “no homo” thing by insisting on a hug. “I shoots fags where I come from,” he says as he leaves. There’s a Swamp Donkey piece on the door next door.

The space is a fucking disaster of a mess but so perfect. There’s mud everywhere, the dog has three legs, I’m worried the entire night about my shit getting stolen, dog shit gets on my sleeping bag. But it’s also beautifully lit in the morning, and the trash even on an overcast and humid day – the fog is in the mountains just outside of the city, the low clouds, and it looks beautiful, tearfully beautiful to be lying in a sleeping bag, a fucking new total disaster, every single day – is a still and fine picture, as if the cigarette butts, empty bottles, ripped couch cushions, and scattered electronics were composed for the space; the shitty peeling posters and modified objects stapled up to the walls in the familiar anarchy house hard work with mixed results way are soft reminders that this is all a decision, that this is all a way to live, and even though it all looks like total hell, it’s a hell of totally impudent joy, and it feels so good and I feel so lucky and blessed to be here, hungover.

In the kitchen there’s a door that opens wider on the top half. The lintels rise, and then turn out another foot, and then rise to the ceiling. Watching the morning light in the mountains through this portal while the dog tears up the garbage behind me.

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#4 Good sets I saw

- Mark Lord in Columbus. Definitive.

- TJ Drinkwater in Iowa City.

- Moment Trigger in LA

- Human Hands in LA

- Aether Jag in Nashville

- Slime Queen in Oakland

- Sword Heaven in Columbus

- Lazy Magnet in Providence. Masterful.

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#5 Food of Band Tour

In re: walking knee deep into the pacific on Venice Beach with my pants on and the water being nice and then drying off and talking on the phone barefoot walking down the way, man, nothing beats artificial summer. Despite everything good/bad/ugly that’s happened on this trip of mine, it’s totally undeniable that leaving town in the middle of the new england winter crusher to put on shorts for five seconds and eat a slice of pizza and cruise around as if it weren’t January is completely regenerative and worth every weird eleven hour car drive and night sleeping in weird piles of mud and cat hair along the “american noise music trail.”

It’s totally stupid and basic, but I realized on this trip that the group experience of winter in Providence isn’t my only recourse to dealing with the cold and dark, and that if I want to, I can just go to California or Miami or something next time around, and that’s good to know.

No secret restaurants anywhere along the trail, but food/drink moments have been abundant.

Best (no order) =

1) PIG’S EYE BEER in Iowa City = $5 12 pack, tastes like Bodington’s

2) Delicious hemp beer in Topanga Canyon outside of LA at Froggy’s Topanga Fish Market = kind of expensive, but drank it with two excellent mahi mahi tacos and sat by a huge fire eating/drinking, and a guy started asking me what I do in life, and then talking to him it turns out he did “additional music” for Malik “Days of Heaven” and “Thin Blue Line” and sound effects for the first star trek movie?! I was sort of thinking like “Dude buy me a beer” but obviously he was pretty much only interested in me as a foothold for talking to haley and sasha.

3) All burritos in LA, oh my god.

4) House-smoked brisket sandwich at ANCIENT WAYS CAFE in way rural new mexico

5) Lamb shawarma sandwich at ALI BABA’S GRILL in knoxville = Got a speeding ticket at this exit, and feeling totally dejected pulled off to try to find food. Millions of miles of taco bell/kfc/home depot/target/walmart/car dealership anywhere USA braindeath, but then I noticed this joint Ali Baba’s right on the strip with the rest of it. Totally weird middle eastern dude hangout zone, complete with a guy who tried to upsell me many times to “the special” ($12), claiming to have the best hummus in the world, etc., etc. But I mean, the sandwich was totally good!

6) Ethiopian vegetarian and meat combo platters shared with my ancient best friend in Berkeley Tasneem and her new husband who I’d never hung out with before, and it turns out he’s pretty cool (then we went to a climbing wall gym, and after that played settlers of catan)

7) In LA at the liquor store = “Hey man what can I get for not a lot of money.” “Natural Ice.” “But that isn’t disgusting.” “You like wine?” “Yes.” “Charles Shaw mang. And you know, put a little liquor in it, that makes it nice, IT’LL GET YOU DRONNNNK”

8) Blue cheese / mixed greens / hummus on baguette sandwich in the car in Wyoming, would eat this every day

9) Beautiful spread of cheeses and olives at a super fancy party in Santa Fe that we somehow ended up going to. Drank bombay sapphire martinis and maker’s on the rocks. Everyone was dressed to the nines except for me and two skateboard dudes. A guy with white pants on kept smiling at me and taking my picture, and I never talked to him or questioned it.

10) Drinking a huge pitcher of the bar’s homebrew with Jeremy Harris in Nashville

Worst (no order) =

1) Two slices of sausage slime pizza and a Naked Juice from the Casey’s General Store rest stop on I-80 outside of chicago.

2) Oakland groceries getting kind of gnarly by the upper mid west; the mixed greens getting slimy, the yogurt thickening up, the bananas turning black and frozen.

3) Papa John’s Pizza with an egg fried on it in Oakland for breakfast, total mistake

4) All coffee at Flying J rest stops

5) Grocery store free sample pig out at 10pm outside of Oklahoma City, booo.

6) $5 for a scrambled egg and toast with butter in Santa Fe, should’ve just ordered breakfast. Skateboard dude from the party was at the restaurant. I talked to the waitress’s boyfriend at the party about circuit bending. At one point he said “Oh your band sounds like noise music, I have a noise band!”

7) Totally rank dumpstered sushi from The Bank in Baltimore = eating it thinking “well maybe I’ll get food poisoning from this” and then throwing it out without finishing it.

8) Drinking Ancient Age bourbon in Iowa City. Not that I would ever not drink it again given the opportunity (obv.), but fuck that shit.

9) Getting paid in methadone in Nashville (girl asked for it back, we gave it back); getting paid in weed brownie in Oakland

10) We fucking went to Taco John’s for some reason one day.

11) Wanting to cook so bad all month but not being able to

12) 51 Grill in Asheville NC, east coast hippie capital. Don’t put “greek salad with mixed greens” on your dumb menu if you mean “pile of iceberg lettuce with fake feta”

And I mean very little of this touches on actual adventures/occurrences, or the list of the best dogs of tour, or anything.

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#6 Boosh list excerpt Jan 21

Guys so much insane shit has happened since I last checked in, I’m sorry, my internet scene on this trip has been so terrible, now I have to drive to Chicago so I can’t check in, buuuuut here’s a possible parable/karmic anecdote for your faces:

So I quit smoking marijuana a while ago and that has been great so far, and I’ve been refusing it at every turn since, but I mean, I know my brain, and I know that occasional horrible slime experiences will happen despite the fact that I’m pretty much not at all behaving like it’s 2006 anymore.

In Oakland somebody paid us with a weed brownie that had an alien sticker on it, about the size of a free sample piece of bread at east side marketplace, not exactly looking like a stunner, but a handsome dude with long hair and eyeliner on was like “split that with someone man it will FUCK YOU UP!”. I decided I wanted to keep this pot brownie because A) I could trade it to someone for beer or B) being on band tour and feeling insane and exhausted all of the time alters my decision-making.

In Iowa City last night after drinking six PIG EYE beers (so good, $5/12 pack, tastes like bodington’s!) I decided, because I was drunk and in this crazy touring mind-state, to eat the pot brownie, which I’d been fingering in my pocket in the car for the 2500 miles of horrible salt/snow/gray sky since we left CA, and it was kind of warm and crumbly when I took the shitty drug cellophane off of it, and I ate it.

The dudes we’re staying with (#1 lifestyle band in america TJ DRINKWATER = Jeff / Si / Tater = excellent hosts, excellent dudes, total maniacs) were on mushrooms and at like 2am after throwing the pool balls all over the bar and smashing the cues and getting into weird fights, they were like, “Come on let’s go break into the new squat.” And normally in Providence or certainly in Philadelphia at 2am kind of drunk I would 100% definitely participate in entering a weird building, but because I was extremely, sickly stoned from having this total aberration of a decision to eat a brownie with an alien sticker on it, I was like “Buhhhhhhhh” and couldn’t get up from the couch when they left. The dudes got arrested by five cops (who they repeatedly hilariously kept calling “big daddies”) with guns with laser sights on them, spent the night in jail, and have $500 trespassing fines. But because I chose to do drugs, I just had a kind of bad night’s sleep and got sort of dehydrated.

The important post script is that this morning they skyped in their friend from England to play a set for us while we ate breakfast, and their attitudes/spirits weren’t broken at all by their night. (“Totally TJ.”)

Okay I’m going to a mud wrestling party or something with Aaron later, more soon, back in a fucking week, overheard just now, 5:56pm, Janaury 21st, 2,010: “We’ll smoke the hash and we’ll do it. No we gotta do something chill. Let’s get hashed out and do it. And then we’ll walk to starbucks.”

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#7 Boosh List excerpt February 6th

Well okay, I’ll weigh in on this email thread, which is surely already the definitive document of the 2010 “thank god we have each other, because the world is so weird” zeitgeist.

A little atmospheric context = I’m listening to reggae, it’s 45 degrees in my house, there are sheets covering the windows, I just ate the best oatmeal, I woke up at 2pm, the kitchen and the living room are clean and still, we’re out of toilet paper.

I know I’m the odd man out as the guy on boosh list who isn’t “excessively prone to feelings” but I think maybe it’s worth adding a couple recent winter occurrences that made me feel okay about everything =

1) Walker scampers up to the car in Pittsburgh and then makes a killer breakfast after we walk through the rainy winter night cemetery, climbing over the wet stone wall, considering holes in the ground where rabbits might fall into tombs and never escape (“it’s a long drop”), and the changing silhouettes of angels and saints and statuary as you move past them; how they turn to follow you, like standing, wriggling shadows, at night suggesting images much removed from what their sculptors intended, and where I see what I think at first behind my rainy glasses are flashlights, but what are actually white tail deer, bounding silently away.

2) Sitting at Katy’s table the night I got back on the opposite side I usually do, drinking beer from a glass, just looking around the warm room, looking out over the street. There was a thing when I used to travel pretty much always where when I’d get home to wherever I lived and I’d feel like “Ugh the kitchen and living room in Richmond are better than this.” Upon returning to Providence, even from a t-shirt in breezy LA and strange Santa Fe, I didn’t feel this at all. Incredibly I’ve been here for a year now, and this is now where I live, Providence is now where I’m home. And since I don’t think it’s super evident from the above, my saying the kitchens of Richmond were better than the kitchens of Philadelphia was an evaluation of personnel just as much of space. I would rather be back and bundled warm and looking at the familiar low ceilings with my people here, eating pizza with Jonathan at Summer St, my head steaming in the morning as I come out of my sleeping bag in freezing Lockwood and have the first thing that happens in the morning (morning: 1pm) be that Walker asks me some question about where something is or how we’re going to do something on Friday, hiking around the butterfly farm, listening to podcasts in the eternal February 1st foodstamps checkout line at Price Rite eagle square. The weird corners and secret warm rooms of Providence have the filthy mud floors of Oakland beat. They have the true life-hating murder spirit of Nashville, the jolly, ugly aggression of Free Philadelphia, the sunny, easy shrugging bullshit of LA, the crystal drop-out free zones of Santa Fe, and everything else on I-40 and I-80 all beat. I’d rather be shrugging and freezing and UGHing in Providence because it’s Providence and because this is where we all are, as demonstrated at Katy’s table in a glass of beer, January 31st, 2010.

3) Making eye contact with Andrew in the night as he came in and I was about to go to bed, and we both smiled and I crossed from behind the big table, and got the good huggy shit. Susan referred to Andrew as being the only guy in “our posse” with a beard yesterday. I don’t call it a posse, I call it a team!

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#8 Excerpt to Ben Feb 18th

In my world I’m still doing this vegan secret restaurant with my roommate. In re: things being logical, sustainable, scalable, & self-perpetuating, it’s all of these, and has made it possible to not have a day job, if not quite possible for us to turn on the heat.

In re: projects, I just did a full US tour and only played eight shows with a new band, I finished my 14th mini drawing book and have a “best of 2009″ book ready to go that I’m trying to figure out how to print for less than $100), I’m working on a video, I’m manifesting my reality day by day, pushing with arms outstretched against the rough bedroom walls of reality, like in time bandits, and they continue to give, revealing long dark hallways full of blowing trash, and I’m hoping these too will eventually with persistence and finesse drop away, opening a portal that leads somewhere good and weird and different.

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#9 Bioburden

On Feb 17, 2010, at 5:49 PM, Susy Jones wrote:

> Bioburden

>

> Send a sample to the Berkeley Labs because

> I have a heart murmur now, not to mention

> My lungs are filled with dark romantic dander

> From the double-pawed posse of calico cats

> Who warded off sea monsters on trips to New Bedford,

> In between sleeping and catching fish for snack.

> Had a hunch Melville was a Leo, too,

> And so he is according to the wiki.

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#10 Excerpt to Matt Feb 25th

Yeah okay I’ll send one more email today before I go to bed!

What’s in Rochester that you want to go there? This sick band PENGO was from there, might still be.

http://www.mimaroglumusicsales.com/artists/pengo.html

Jeremy Bailey went to grad school there too. Sort of useless except for bro hardcore though I always thought?

Joblessness = Insane life of leisure / life of worrying about everything falling apart in two months. I haven’t had a job in the normal sense for four months which is the longest I’ve ever been unemployed. But while it’s tough sometimes I feel like the stress of living at the far left of things and manifesting/sustaining my own reality instead of working in a super safe and riskless but kill-myself $10/h time render environment is a different and better kind of stress, and I’m actually pretty into having not left my house except when I want to for the past so long, and my “work” being listening to records, eating what I want, and cooking in my own kitchen. I think your actual objection is maybe Idleness is for the birds, or Being broke is for the birds (both true).

Melvins = First time I drank Patron was with Jello and the Melvins! I love LYSOL (download here = http://www.mediafire.com/?rpnxmn4k5sy) but that said, I’m not sure exactly if it’s a dichotomy or not, even though in my mind it is, but I’m more of an Earth dude than a Melvins dude. Put a beer in my 2006 hand and play LYSOL wherever whenever though.

OFFICE HOURS = I’m so bad at doing this but I know what you’re saying. Escaping the house/closed loop and getting into the world and being around other humans is mega important. Main thing I’m missing about “working” is not being in the public, good and bad parts of that equally.

Also = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD4EGN2MQjk

Tom Bubul

240 Lockwood St

Providence RI 02907

I’m going to send you more tomorrow. I feel like writing this now and sending it gets me started and it being out there will compel me to finish.

Earlier this week me and the crew were just about asleep on the roof across the way from Matthewson when I sort of sat up and started vibing a little and had to come back home “to do work”; not sure what exactly I had in mind, but when I got to the house and my teeth were brushed and I was watching the sunrise from my own personal zone, I it meant that I started writing this update for my internet blog.

“Blogs: Neither an Email nor a Zine”

I read Coetzee “Youth” (totally relatable self-repulsion as empowerment and encouragement), David Lodge “British Museum is Falling Down” (guhhh) and Calvino “Cosmicomics” (I can’t remember if there were actually any fart jokes in this or not) since last time.

Music and movies are harder to keep up on.

I contributed ten items to Walker’s 100 10 Second Stories event at Building 16 earlier this month. There’s going to be a book documenting that.

Ospreys #10 came out a few days ago and can be found in the usual places, in person, or by sending me email with your address. I have about thirty of the hundred copies left.

I started a band with Jolly (gutter), Adam (bass) and Chris (drums) in which I am the vocalist and in which I totally intend to take my shirt off. We have a practice space at Mars that me and Adam sometimes go to after work to “unwind” and play awful/occasionally ruling techno jams until 5am.

I’m helping Ben with a writing project that will hopefully come together before long.

I’m working on a story that will be out in the streets next month, wherever fine flyers for upcoming events are given away.

I’m working on a video called “Night of the Living Wage” that will probably never get done, and a video called “Most Days” that will probably never get done either. The former is an exhausting stop motion/claustrophobia project about going into the horror-zone at work. It looks kind of like hell and I totally regret starting it because I have at least five more horrendous nights of work on it before it gets done. The latter is a Flash-driven project with like nine or ten painted backgrounds and hand-rendered animated characters. It looks good but I am like 7% done with it after probably 15 hours of work and am not feeling particularly encouraged, particularly re: I feel like I should be writing or doing almost anything else instead, blah blah blah.

Finally I feel like this isn’t the first time I’ve put this feeler out there, but mainly if anyone knows where Jeremiah Golden is or how to reach him I would appreciate it; postal address preferably. I want to send him a copy of pretty much everything I’ve made over the last four years but have no idea how to do that.

Major life themes/thought-streams lately have been on dignity (since/re: Work/Death at Bldg 16 when Reber used the word; come talk to me about dignity at the cable car b/w 3-11pm Tues, Wens, Fri or Sat if you want to, or call on the phone, 411 can give you the number), listing instances of shifting perception (initially spurred by thinking about the temporal moment when food from the trash begins to appear to be food, and not trash), decision-making and lifestyle choices (mainly re: confidence in their being the most productive ways to pursue very certain futures and desires from within an equally uncertain/unstable/unknowable present), continual explorations of male energy, petting cutest dogs in town Saba (see above!!!!!!) and new little buddy Coda when possible.

Anyway tonight I am stoked to see Door play at Mars. I mailed out a bunch of things to a bunch of people this week. I bought groceries today and had the most delicious french toast for breakfast. I think my car is dead. I am going to New York this weekend. I intend to visit Philadelphia at the end of June and to go on a Men’s Vacation with Mike during that time, and then to go to camp. How many emails do you think I can possibly send in the mean time? How many times do you think I can listen to White Light/White Heat?

The short story is that I now live in Providence. The long story is written on all kinds of walls and surfaces between here and Philadelphia and as far up as Johnson VT; you can ask me about it if you run into me.

Readout of the basics follows.

WORK WORK I am presently unemployed during the day, and spend most of the morning working on this problem. I work two late shifts as the night janitor at the Cable Car cinema on the east side, where my roommate Adam works as a projectionist, and helped plug me in. If anyone needs anything done up here during the normal hours, I can be your man.

MEDIA Last week I read Harold Brodkey “First Love and Other Sorrows.” I recently finished “The Tin Drum.” I saw “Waltz with Bashir,” “The Watchmen,” “Over the Edge” (totally awesome and essential), “Fishing With John,” a night of short “private” film care of Magic Lantern at the Cable Car and a night of old film at AS220. I have seen the bands National Grid, Aids Wolf, Tinsel Teeth, US Girls (A+ and the only actually affecting live sound I’ve heard in a while – this is her on WFMU) and Chrome Jackson. I have heard six poets read at the book store and then helped at a reading of James Joyce’s The Dead which I enjoyed a lot more than when I first read it seven years ago. I have listened to about a billion new records.

FUN WORK I am learning to paint with gouache and am sketching several ideas on larger sheets of very nice paper that I will maybe paint if I get comfortable, ink otherwise.

I did a new sketchbook zine, Ospreys #9, see dogchirp.com; there’re still a few copies left in my coat pocket.

“Six Stories from Kokomo” which I wrote at VSC is going to be in the new issue of a magazine that Anna Wolfe works on, Untitled #4, coming out soonish. If my assumption is correct there will be more copies of that in existence than of all of the zines and newspapers and prints I’ve ever printed or photocopied combined, which rules in a hilarious man/mountain way.

I’m finishing a new fiction that I am going to release (aka photocopy) in rather small print on an 11×17 with a thing I was working on in January on the back; more on that as it develops.

WHAT ELSE My yard is huge, my house is drafty but beautiful, and I totally love living in PROVIDENCE and you should come and visit me if you want to, because I think you might like it here too.

Bonjour from inside of the holiday echo chamber, from which I wanted to post a short notice with December updates. If you live in Northeastern Pennsylvania and want to hang out, get at me, I usually get extremely bored around 10pm. If you don’t live here but might want to email with me for a day or two, my email address is still tom//at//dogchirp//com.

Work Work = I will work for you anywhere in the United States or abroad, get in touch if you have a full time salaried job.

Fun Work = I painted/embroidered two big clothing patches this month but forgot to photograph one of them (the other is above). I started brainstorming a new video yesterday that I may or may not decide to start working on next week, if for no other reason than to goof around animating and playing with the new Flash, which I haven’t used on any personal projects yet. I am in the middle stage of putting together a critical mass of text that I am going to edit into whatever I wind up using for January 15 application deadlines; this work will likely wind up abridged across Test Patterns #3 or No Such Thing as News #3, unless someone else winds up wanting to deal with it. I have a giant pile of sketches that are going to get scanned and may or may not appear on this blog, as well as in those aforementioned print projects, and I have a design for a painting that I’m hoping to do the week after christmas.

Schedule = Planning on going to Philly this weekend, but not totally sure what the deal with that will be, then back home. Will likely be around New England for New Years, and then hopefully moving soon after that pending work options.

Last week I was in New York. I stayed with Christi some nights and Leah others. I got to hang out with Kathryn, Aaron, Julio and Jeff, and I ran into Sarah. I rode my bike all over. I did some work with Emily and Corey and I had a great lunch with Dan. I got lost in the rain while I rode to Max’s house, where I watched Futurama and ate a burger. I ate delicious sweet potato quasadillas, but I didn’t sleep too well.

Arson in the new development

Patrick and Scout

I’m not numbering this one because I feel like the cycle of my leaving camp -> going to VSC -> trying to work there -> getting home and being like “????” is over. Now I have a whole new set of things to be like “????” about (strange fires in Providence, moving to New York very soon, new total life stupidity/fugues that weren’t visible or predictable when this past numbered set began in September), so once things stabilize enough that I have an okay idea of where I’ll be from week to week, I’ll restart the numbered entry system on a schedule again.

The short “Lately” recap —>New York = I got to hang out with Emily, babysit Pearl, rode over the Williamsburg bridge for the first time, played dominoes and ate burritos and watched Ruthless People with Leah, dinner/bar with Katie and Alex, meteor shower thing with camp team, wrote a lot of emails.

In Boston = I went to the Stairwell team’s show at BU, talked to Ben, watched the new Bond, ate Redbone’s, sushi and Girardelli squares, almost played Earthopoly with Sus, drove home with Patrick super late.

Home so far = Haven’t been in the basement yet, but today nearly finished a long-outstanding painting, did the firstish round of mailouts re: darcone triangle to stores, slept a ton, played chess in real life once, played chess on the computer a lot of times.

Current plan = Back in New York by next weekend. This morning I am going to the craft store with my dad for a black friday sale. More substantial update or whatever soon.

Past life

I added the Black Dove paintings to the site. Otherwise this is a boring blog marking time entry if there ever was one. Here’s what’s up.

Since last time: In Philly I went to Halloween and saw best band ANGELDUST, went to the World Series riot on Broad Street and saw many stupid and hilarious things, hung out in the dirt at FDR and near the oil cans, and saw cops disperse a crowd that gathered to watch a six story pinata get destroyed by a wrecking ball (actually true).

Where I am: I’m home now. Tomorrow I’m voting and then driving to VSC, where I’ll be until Saturday, and then heading to New York indefinitely with the next schedule consideration of any kind being Monday of Thanksgiving weekend, when my brother gets home, and thus the latest I plan to.

What I’m working on: A new blog, a complete overhaul of the Ospreys web documentation in which I plan to upload, catalogue, and explain everything I have pertaining to the band, and more ambiently (i.e. probably not much until next week), on Test Patterns #3 and my fake catalog with Bocksel. I’m also knee deep in mailout hell, the tormented place on earth where I have to organize and send out all of my Darcone-related packages to everywhere for eternity, while meanwhile I can’t find my stapler anywhere. I’m reading Toni Morrison “Jazz”.

I feel like I need to note before I close that I’m a little sick at being back on square one re: putting in serious hours writing, but that I don’t think I’m making excuses when I say that the total upheaval and temporariness of everything in my life has made it all but impossible to set specific times and places to go and make work. May I read this in January in Vermont and immediately turn to make what I need to.

Giant pinata

Some dog looking at Mikey

For the moment, this was an acceptable way to park

Totaled SEPTA stop, smashed out Robinson, riot cops

Click here to view the embedded video.

Kites INC 2006

The biggest update is that after like six years off I listen to dance music again!

Short news this time around =

I am in Gray House Philadelphia working on a pair of projects for Saturday’s <a href=”http://www.215festival.com”>215 Festival</a>. One is a two-sided 8.5×11 – the three-years-coming sequel to my fake newspaper, “There Is No Such Thing as News” that compiles the normal inside jokes and bullshit in a disposable three column format – while the other is way more involved. I decided to do a five page comic in an edition of 10 where every page is completely done by hand. Each page is 5×7 and fully watercolored and inked. I’m stoked on the results so far and am about 60% done. <a href=”http://www.markpriceisafactory.com”>Mark Price</a> is going to have Darcone Triangle printed by Friday so I’ll have that too.

We played Ospreys swoop maybe four times since I’ve been here. Jams have been excursions into new territory for sure. It’s fun and weird to rejoin after long periods of doing our own things into the old duo format and find as ever that there’s still so much ground left to cover. I’m hoping we get to play out before I leave but if not at least we’re recording.

I’ve been sleeping in my sleeping bag upstairs in the office. In the morning, Pumpkin comes up and licks my face. For the first few days Molly my favorite dog alive has been here too, and she was coming up and getting in my area too. Some mornings they’d both lay back down with me for an hour, one on each side. The bum deal is that I’ve been having horrendous stress nightmares (camp failure, haunted house, empty labyrinthine farm, overgrown everything), but I can only hope that has as much to do with all that’s on the actual up that I’m spending so much energy on as all that’s up in the air that I’m so actually worried about.

Mike and Allen and Justin and I went to the Y the other night and looked at the Tropicana Juice train as it rolled on by. Before that, Mike and I went to South Philly and looked at trash trains. $1 covers a lot of ground. Men’s Group. Sorry for being vague about this, because it’s really no big deal, but you don’t know who with how much time is googling what about whom.

Current plans are to stay here until Halloween because I am extremely stoked to see top five Philly band ever ANGELDUST, who so succinctly and horrendously conjure everything I love and hate about this place in the most perfect sweaty baby’s fist full of drugs and razorblades imaginable/possible.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Then I’m going home, vote, go to Vermont, and then either head to Salt Lake or lurk in the northeast for a while. As ever I’m open to suggestions.

I’m in West Pittston, I’m in my parents’ basement.

Trying to relate everything that happens day after day is like drinking, where you can drink a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth drink, a tenth, a twelfth, but then you begin to throw up, and you can’t relate anymore, and you can’t possibly explain what the hell you’ve been doing, or how you’ve got to where you are. I ate a giant meatball sub and watched some dudes eat cinnamon and laughed a ton. I trespassed in a hundred buildings. I watched Simon & Simon, got out of bed to build puzzles and play boggle, drank so much fucking whiskey, had work group, painted, drew, wrote, finished things.

I drove eight gray hours down from Johnson. I talked to Susy, I talked to Cassie, Patrick, everyone. I have a provisional studio setup in my dad’s gardening room. I’m painting, I’m writing, I’m sending out mail, I’m having very rich dreams.

I redesigned dogchirp.com while I was in Church Studio and posted a lot of stuff on there. The plan is to keep posting my blah blah blah projects on here and to post my more finished crap there in the official archive.

The next few days are pregnant with things to get done, pregnant like Sigourney Weaver in Alien, where I’m trying to keep all of the things I have to get done from exploding out of my guts and making a huge mess everywhere. More as I do them. I’ll be in New York on Friday or Saturday; holler if you want to hang out.

My time in Vermont was a massive success. I don’t want to write specifically about things I’m working on as a result for fear of jinxing them. More as the arrows start to come down.

I may have mentioned last time that I finished Cocomo Tales, or at least a working draft of it that I think is good enough to print out and read to everyone, and possibly good enough after one more round of revision to send out after that.

I’ve taken the last two days off from doing writing work and have mainly been painting and drawing. I listen to the Kites record. I started reading other people’s tarot cards. I sent Susy a letter. Leah and I stayed up until 5am doing work, and I freaked out and decided to try to cover the floor of Wolf Kahn in paper diamonds. Open studios happened and David’s art turned out to be awesome. Ricky left a note on my desk that reads “What’s a life when you look at it – what’s a hat if it doesn’t fit? – Robert Creely”. James and I had the fucking ridiculous/hilarious Cynthia incident and our brains exploded. We all went swimming in the hole yesterday. I laughed about the Dugdo thing for a while. I think I mentioned it already but I went to Rosemarie Fiore‘s lecture and her shit was the bomb; note especially the Looney Tunes jams and the floor waxer painting. I worked on my website a lot yesterday and am going to relaunch it with an indexhibit back-end probably this week so I can stop worrying about managing files and just post them.

I’m going to drink coffee and have brunch and then paint until my friends wake up. Then we’re going to the diner together. The weather is horrible. Life is exploding with immaculate potential. It is making my teeth taste like tequila. Everyone here, just like at camp, is trying to get me to move to New York.

1) I live in Art House Community Center, my studio space is in Maverick Building.
2) I can’t sleep in Art House Community Center because I can’t sleep in beds anymore re: gigantic mental block I developed at camp post break-up, where I would just straight up rather be on the ground in my sleeping bag.
3) I can’t work in Maverick Bulding because there isn’t enough space for me to spread out.
4) I am sleeping in Maverick Building in my sleeping bag in my studio, while showering and storing my things in Art House.
5) I am doing my work by squatting in Wolf Kahn in a painters’ studio nobody is using.

Meanwhile last night we had a grinder on iPod speakers at the fire, and I drank Maker’s and Heinekan from a minikeg. A lightning bolt struck the ground exactly after every step I took today. It was scary until it became calming; until I became okay with the fact that, yes, everywhere I stepped was going to be struck by lightning.

I drove into town. I drew for a long time.

The year was 2008. We had no hopes and no futures. We squatted Danny Kahn I mean Wolf Kahn. Our studio was blank but we worked in it. We wrote text that streamed like blood, we wrote text that streamed like chocolate syrup on fat ripe strawberries, we wrote text that streamed like black clouds on thin windy new england blue sky, we wrote text that streamed like every bad decision our guts have ever quietly held, we wrote text that zummed like a willing, tin guitar.

The year was 2008. Everything rules. Fuck everything.

Masonic temple

Normal bullshit for day three on this weird compound. What a sad and perfect life we lead.

I spent this morning corresponding with various real life team members. I’m working on my critical response to camp and my normal love poems to everything else. I dropped two and a half of the five pages I want to on a normal studio run. Up from yesterday, but still not yet at the point.

I do a work exchange in the development office. Today, I printed out a thousand color copies of an invitation to an opening in support of two Tibetan residents of the studio center, a show with work featuring 100 flags made by new yerk artists. During the painstaking print job I drew 40 copies of my moon lunger against a four color highlighter background with a reverse side reading “How can I hand you a diamond?” thinking that if there’s nothing here I can tag with paint markers, then at least I can literally hang tags on trees or hydrants or whatever. Eleven of the forty are up and I’ve already seen Joy say “Oh what is this a teabag in this tree? Wait it’s a note?” I’m hoping to bomb the rest in the morning and be done with it.

Zelda’s novel was looked at by a serious agent today. She’s been working on it for fifteen years. I felt like this was a good omen.

I swam in the creek with Jessica and then near the covered bridge with Leah and Cara too. The water was cool and the current fast. Twelve and thirteen year olds called each other douchebags in the warm September afternoon sun as we left the first spot. The clouds piled up and thunder rolled.

Five artists showed slides in the church. Camie’s sculpture and Don’s pencil work were both A+.

Magic Hat’s Jinx is in sesh and when I drink it I want to act like an idiot. It tastes like surfin USA. It tastes like I want to pick you up.

My room is third from the right

Tagged

Tagged

The red mill

I rode my bike to the top of the hill to Johnson State College yesterday afternoon and my ass was totally kicked. I walked back down with Genevieve; she was getting Haryette Mullen’s book Sleeping with the Dictionary from the library. I have it now and am going to read it when I get back tonight. I’m about to go to the bar with James.

Nothing terribly exciting to follow, just a quick recounting of the day’s grind.

This afternoon I slept on the floor in my studio for forty five minutes. The sound of the creek outside my window is a serious husher of a shh and I had to lay down and get into it. On a related note, I think I can’t listen to music while I work anymore, which is a 180 from having to listen to music while I draw or paint. Even Strumming Music or that Wada piece were too much for me, and I kept going on soulseek to try to find something calmer – lots of wasted time.

On a related-related note, it’s also been interesting to work on definitively realizing whether I work better at night or during the day. I’ve been doing my project work between 9am and noon and then for two more hours in the afternoon, and each time slot has its unique distractions and advantages, as does working at night. I’m hoping to have my schedule totally perfected by Friday.

Re: actual work/productivity, I put down something like two pages (target is five/day, aiming for about 45,000 words over the course of the month) and a lot of notes for a continuation of the piece I started in May for my application, and yesterday I put down two shorter things that I might continue with. I’m calling that latter project Tales from Cocomo re: my conversation with Allen earlier this summer; it’s a collection of dirt zone boring episodes from real life. I might post them here when I leave if I don’t do anything else with them.

I had a few interesting conversations with people about their processes and about their situations in real life, and how they relate their creative zones to the necessary moves they need to make to make a dollar bill materialize. I also had several good talks with staff people about how they wound up here. More on these things as they develop.

I watched slides with about ten sculptors and painters last night and drank wine and beer. It was a thrill to see that they all do good work, and some of them totally killer. Tomorrow is the first above-ground slide night, and I’m stoked for it. Tomorrow during the day, I’m going swimming in the creek at the spot they took me to after dinner just now, and trying harder at hitting the daily 1500 goal on the main project. It seems to be within reach.

My room

The creek from above

I’m in residency at Vermont Studio Center right now, where I’m going to try to complete a work I started in March, so that I might have a novel to sell as merch on our next band tour, per the joke I have with Mike about that. It is currently my intention to use this blog as a self-awareness check while I’m here, until the end of September.

I just got back from camp. My beautiful soul brother Travis Iurato and I made “Darcone Triangle” and “Forty Useless Prehistoric Computers,” books that are respectively CX #3 and CX #4, CX now being in my brain what my work with Travis is, though we haven’t discussed it. We intend to print Darcone in book format and I expect I’ll be posting Useless Computers here later this week. I also got CX Styles back from him and it has progressed incredibly. David Mahfouda and I wrote letters to each other, Jessica Findley and I made this one morning,

Click here to view the embedded video.

I helped her with this,

Click here to view the embedded video.

And my kids made this.

Click here to view the embedded video.

More video (including Allen’s tableaux vivant and yeti video) at youtube.com/beamcamp. My kids also screenprinted wallpaper, made fake bands and did exquisite sharpie tshirts.

Christi Byrd and I stayed in Brattleboro at Tinderbox and at Hawthorne Valley Farm on the way back down to the city. In Philadelphia I godstormed and watched the trains. Davey bought me a falafel, Ben and I ate crappy cheeseburgers, I bought Mike samosas and myself a tofu hoagie and some oranges, I talked to Blaine but didn’t get to see her, I drank a beer with Kendra and Shanta and high fived Laris, road bikes with Ellen. Amber and Mike hosted; Allen was present for much of it. Jen Rockwell and Bonsky and I hugged. Tony invited me to stay with him in Texas during my travels.

At home before I came here my grampa told me a funny story about a professor he once fired; “Fuckin guy,” he said, “He kept saying he believed in ‘freedom of the mind.’ ‘Freedom of the mind.’” Not much else happened. I slept in the dining room.

This morning at 8am I bought shaving cream, soap, shavers, shampoo and a bottle of wine from the grocery store. Cocomo was playing.

My street (7am)

My house

My street

The last few months of work-work have been extremely productive (re: especially a near-complete redo of the Mark Dion site, which I produced a ton of work for and did all of the building with Lord Whimsy art directing; a game I did some video work on for discoverychannel.com; a Flash project I produced with Hall Media crew), but as my two main, long term office projects both coincidentally end exactly as camp starts, and as our project management and workflow methods have evolved to the point that there isn’t even so much sidebar/cleanup work for me to do anymore anyway, the time to call it a wrap seemed perfect. I enjoy my final Beer Thursday at Lime Projects after the Dion install on the 20th, and what a mighty and beautiful two years it’s been. My infinite thanks and debt and permanent salutes to Laris and Kendra from every desk and city I work at from here out.

In conjunction with leaving my job, I decided it would be productive to move out of the random house and see what’s up in the world. I’ll be in Philadelphia until June 30th and then will be traveling and at camp until the end of August. After that is anyone’s guess. Feel free to contact me if you need work done; pretty much wherever you are I can come to you.

I haven’t worked on very much of public interest since band tour, other than a slow moving book/cd project that documents that move. If you want a copy of it, it’s still in development hell (which really just means done by mid-July), but you can have one for free if you get at me before I print them up. Otherwise, I’m in the middle of a fellowship application for a writing program in the fall (marking the first time I’ve drafted anything in probably four years), and am generally enjoying the early summer via bike/Men’s Group as much as possible before the hot street doldrums and mosquitos roll in and I head out.

In normal totally boring recounting of the week’s efforts news, I spent Wednesday with Lexie at the bar, Thursday in Newark airport with Susy, Friday at my old house on 43rd with Jon and the Team, Saturday with Ben and Mike at the Wiese / D. Charles Spear shows and eventually the train bridge (word to Chris Bee Mask who lives here now and gave me his new killah tape), today at the Magnet City thing downtown and then in my slippers and long weekend yawns. Tonight I’m going to see Matthew from Charlottesville’s band; I guess those kids all live up here or in Brooklyn now.

Horizon items =
- Ospreys / Robedoor / Pocahaunted / Natalie Wiseblood / Woods June 28th.
- Ospreys / Wilde Stallions C60 on wether’s new label
- New book in July before I go, as above
- I will be in New York June 11th-15th on camp/nonsense business
- One or two new website ideas, maybe for sooner, maybe for later

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So yeah. I’ve just been out cruising the old roads, rolling around in my 1995, cruising hard with my hair blowing in my 2003, overdriving a pitched up White Album through some kid’s Peavey in Savannah while my friends think it’s funny to pretend to open the jar they keep their pet Black Widow in. This is a long one with pictures.

Dali king, Tufts Library

Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday

Yesterday while I was driving to work, local public radio baroness Marty Maas had local public radio mutt Dan Gottlieb on her show and she kept asking him if he was ready to die.

There’ve been oceans of blank these past three or four weeks. I’ve been whiskey-washed and soaked in beer five times over, straight wilin’ my way through the March. I shot beams straight through daylight savings time, ruptured the Internet, rearranged entire houses full of furniture with my mind and pretty much didn’t document any of it. I’m doing a horrible job of keeping a blog, but that I do keep one at all speaks, I think, to a need for me to mark time in the gray waste when there’s nothing going on more than to an impulse to document, keep track of, or explain the actual retarded goings on of my mid-20s “wild years.” It’s not like I don’t remember everything that happens anyway. (And double-anyway, I don’t know, who is this for anyway? My kids when they finally get up the guts to look up their old man on the internet wayback machine in the year of our wishing we covered our tracks 2028?)

Mike and I went to the Wissahickon and we drove back listening to that George Thoroughgood song everyone knows. I tell everyone that when I heard it for the first time on public radio when I was in fourth grade that it made me want to immediately go out honkey tonkin. This remains the case even now.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We drank a case of Mexican beer that Amber bought, two cases of yuengling and a case of delicious Magic Hat HI.P.A. before the wells ran dry. We’ve been godstorming in a more quality, less quantity way = Davey plays with us now, and Mark Price came and hung out the other night too. Susy calls this phenomenon Men’s Group. Meanwhile, dozens of 11×17 sheets get covered, I go into and out of the office, and life grinds on.

–+–

I had a long reverie the other day about an early argument I got into with my dad. I feel like I can figure out when it was to the year based on family vacation memories (maybe my mom will leave a comment and let me know) – it was the year of Altered Beast, when we went to the arcade every month, put a collective dollar fifty up in that machine, and rose from the grave to save Zeus’s daughter in two player mode. (Non-losers should maybe note that $1.50 is not a lot of money for two people to spend on a complete trip to an arcade, a fact I took weird pride in. We’d spend the rest of the $5 he changed to quarters on the skeeball, and I would buy plastic ninjas with the tickets. In the story that I told with them at home the black ninja with the two swords was the hero. He hid and watched the infighting between the reds and whites from on top of the ottoman and he swooped down on his grappling hook to finish them off when they’d worn each other down.) One Sunday that year, my cousins and I were playing Altered Beast in my gramma’s basement, and mimicking the wolf beast’s power, I did a lot of diving into the couches. When I got home, I said I could fly, and my dad told me it was impossible for a man to fly. I told him I had been doing it earlier in the afternoon. He got out an encyclopedia that showed a picture of a fish with wings (and I remember laughing and saying “Look at that fish with wings, that’s crazy” and immediately realizing that what I was claiming was, to him, exactly the same thing) and the text read “Man cannot fly.” We went back and forth and he eventually agreed to disagree. I asked him if he would read to me (we were reading this killer pink book of Norse mythology, with fucking Odin losing his eye to Mimir so he could know everything happening the previous week) and he said he wouldn’t because we’d wasted all of our time arguing.

Should I just scan my entire journal from 4th-8th grade, annotate it, and post it here? I feel like I should.

My brother emailed me earlier this month to let me know he was doing jumps from Australian cliffs. I miss him dearly and my wish is that he will run and take a leap and be surprised to find that he can carry himself up and disappear into the sun.

–+–

Kurt Vile

I went to see Kurt Vile + xNoBBQx a while ago. NoBBQ was horrible, Vile ruled. Going to see him with Sunburned and Davey tonight. Tomorrow I am working on my video all day. I think I am going to Assateague Island this Friday and then to my parents house for easter.

Mostly sure I mentioned already that Ospreys is touring with Davey or Tenspeed from the end of April through the beginning of May, our first tour in eleven(!) months, re: I went to camp, Mike bought a house and went on poster tour, etc. Massively stoked to lay down all manner of styles in all manner of territories. Definitely sure I mentioned that I’m working on a video. I was going to post a part of it here but seriously why would I do that when it isn’t done.

Dali spade, Tufts Library

Massachusetts

Me and Suzanne

Advice column

Wissahickon

Working on a video

Everything you can learn from yourself is already inside of you