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

It doesn’t get any better than that, but if you want, you can continue on to read or sort of read about the following:

susy and hank

mike and carissa

dream house

jams

raekwon playing scrabble against mos def

At work between tasks Raekwon played “saviour” against Mos Def for like seventy points. I am updating my own blog right now, at 11:09pm, between tasks.

Semi non-story version of this weekend, more for my reference than for yours, o reader: Bus -> falafel -> bar with Allen and Mercury, the dude said to Sus re: ginger wine “Yeah it’s exceedingly sweet.” -> the dude cheers’d him with two beers and Allen thought #2 was for him but the dude said “No man I was just cheersing you.” -> saw kenzie, got Ryan’s phone number from one of his friends -> Mercury got flowers -> went back to the pod house -> late breakfast at the outpost avec Christi and Matt, the dude said to Suz re: iced tea latte “Yeah it’s exceedingly sweet.” -> everyone watched me eat oatmeal -> Dream House -> Panamanian festival -> bones and gristle in my soup, cops shut down the park -> Caribbean jawn at the Brooklyn Museum -> kid gets soaked in the fountain -> kid dribbles basketball the entire time we eat chocolate cake and lemon pie on Underhill -> pod palace night times with Christi -> long breakfast at outpost with Munira, three sides of cream cheese and tomato on everything -> Brian and everyone at the pod palace, Pearl flips off the swing -> Sus on the train -> Motion sick from the swing -> Nap -> Christi and Matt at Rob’s -> Three packs of fake burgers and one of fake dogs for the four of us -> Travis came over -> Played jams -> Rob gave me shoes -> Rob: “Burn some sage for me.” -> Travis put a tomato on a truck and me Matt and Christi all thought we were going to get in serious trouble with the bikers -> Late night at the pod with Jan and Prudence -> Early morning at Tom’s with the whole crew -> Mercury woke up singing “You say it’s your birthday” -> Got the kids with Matt -> Hilarity ensues -> Dropped the kids of with Jan -> Bus

It’s good to feel motivated to work and to feel motivated to work more when I get home. I finished the minibook with Travis and gave him an atlas with a hundred or so drawings on its first two hundred or so pages, the first in a tentative new no-deliberate-moves ouija-drawing styles jammer. He’s going to moderate that joint until January or so, and then we’ll see what’s up with it.

Movies I’ve seen since I started netflix: Down by Law / The Fast Runner / two thirds of freaks and geeks / Volver / 21 Up / El Topo / Happiness / Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The Fast Runner was the only ruler (didn’t really watch it but had it on while I drew for three hours = great sound, bizarro narrative, long, long, long shots and plot slow as snow, at least three scenes fucking shocking, intense and brutal as hell, tons of face tats = I will come over and draw with you if you rent this any day of the week), followed by the first hour or so of Dracula (all long reaching and shadows and sinister smiles; second hour or two is Hannibal Lector and Neo trying to save Lydia Deetz from Ivan Korshunov, except no cannibalism, slow motion bullet dodging, animated Saturnian worms or President Harrison Ford). Let the record reflect that I wasn’t into Happiness even though I laughed a couple times or El Topo which lost me after an hour.

The Random House Curse, in which I am unable to cook anything but burritos beneath this roof, continues.

Honorable mentions for this procrastinatin’ post: how Mike got back the other week and how we went big with Portnoy and Carissa, down to needing to call in the reserves to drink the extra drinks after hanging out on the pedestrian bridge by the trains; Robyn is moving out of Random so if you want to live here you should email me, the rent is cheap and there are only a few days left to act; my brother John made it to the top of the Ransom Waterfall with me.