#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.

….

#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.

…

#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.

Muffy Brandt (Dreamhouse, Ergot Rot, Jazz Hand Job, Attitude Problem, R. Tsarcasm, Daily Life): Drum, tapes, microphone.

Tom Bubul (Ospreys, Distortion Phaser Diary, Hallucinating Fruit Jar Drinkers): Guitar, electronics, microphone.

Enacting the live transformation of our bodies and spirits.
“Conjure something else.”
On tour January 2010 across the USA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84RWoupBLoU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUjhQLB0hXY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB7skYEv_EM

Sun 3rd = Philadelphia at Int’l Waters w/ Nervous Sex, Drums Like Machine Guns, Awesome Omen
Mon 4th = Baltimore at Zodiac w/ Twig Harper, Lexie Mountain, DJ Dog Dick
Tues 5th = Asheville house show w/ tba
Wed 6th = Nashville at Betty’s Bar w/ Lazy Magnet, Diary of Lisa Frank, My Left Uterus
Thr 7th = tba (Memphis, Little Rock, St Louis)
Fri 8th = tba (Little Rock, St Louis, OK City)
Sat 9th = tba (OK City or Santa Fe)
Sun 10th = Taos at kate’s wolf sanctuary
Mon 11th = Santa Fe at annabeth’s house
Tue 12th = Camping in Flagstaff
Wed 13th = tba (LA)
Thr 14th = tba (LA)
Fri 15th = San Francisco on the bus
Sat 16th = Oakland at revolution cafe w/ Moment Trigger
Sun 17th = tba (SLC)
Mon 18th = tba (Denver)
Tues 19th = tba (Kansas City)
Wed 20th = Iowa City
Thrs 21st = tba (Chicago)
Fri 22nd = tba (Chicago)
Sat 23rd = Columbus at Skylab w/ R. Tsarlag, PAK, Mark Lord
Sun 24th = tba (Pittsburgh)
Tues 26th = New York at Kathryn’s house
Wed 26th = Providence

This is the post I will add/edit info into about my very imminent story tour with Walker and Andrew. Here’s the press release and the dates. If I email you or text you about this you should write back to me. If you live in one of these places you should come and hang out with us!

The Gazillion Stories of Il Magnifico
“Italy’s Greatest and Most Famous Bad and Unknown Magician”

A collaborative storytelling event in which the works and life of the aging Il Magnifico - gifted with sleight hands and handsome eyebrows - are unpacked and made to dance in shadow, video, story and song. Each night features a new selection of creative and performative planned and improvised vignettes describing the best, worst scenes from an increasingly fraying, dying mind.

Developed in Providence, Rhode Island and presented by Walker Mettling, Tom Bubul, and Andrew Oesch as Il Mignifico.

OCTOBER
8th Thurs DC
9th Fri Philly
10th Sat PGH
11th Sun off
12th Mon Chi
13th Tues Bloomington
14th Wed Columbia MO
15th Thurs Kansas City/Lawrence
16th Fri Off
17th Sat Denver
18th Sun SLC
19th Mon Off
20th Tues Bay

Gary Numan “Radio One Sessions”

Somehow nobody told me to check out Gary Numan until Adam played this in the car while he and I and Elaine were on the way to the last day of HBML and to see Ariel Pink in Boston. We listened to this almost every day at work in April.

Harry Pussy “You’ll Never Play This Town Again”

Gangbuster compilation of live/stray living-in-the-red tunes from the ultimate in hectic crews. I listen to this in the morning on my days off.

Olodum “Egito Madagascar”

Mike played this for me in Philly in early February. FMU posted it a while back with the plug “Listen with your sternum.” Totally. We listened to this on the way back after the first time we went to the Trader Joe’s in Warwick with Mikey and Walker, and then almost every day for two weeks while Adam cooked me omelette after omelette, morning after morning.

Peaking Lights “Imaginary Falcons”

Top honors to this one - I listened to it cooking dinner during the first few freezing cold weeks in Providence when I paced between rooms, cleaned, and spent all day looking for jobs on the Internet, and then on repeat the first four or five times I swept and mopped the Cable Car.

Cluster “Rosa” meditations via carpeted basement and wood paneling and drop-ceiling-staring/stars through a barn roof/blueberry picking on the night lakes played mainly (I think) on electronics/guitar/voice. This is the celebratory music that plays as I put a diamond ring on anarchy’s finger and then draw and do whatever I want from 1am until dawn on a Wednesday.

Rangers “Cassette Collages II”

Listened to this for the first time while me and Adam and Colleen cooked dinner in early March. We played scrabble and Adam won. I was digging on this super hard but I don’t think they were!

The sound is a novice in the Ferraro school doing his best to bust pop songs in the master’s all middles, all spliced together, tons of repetition, reverb, and shitty tape sound style. I’m down with the chorus of Osaka (with the AOL IM sound that plays at 1:45 and comes back in at 12:29) and all of Street Smell but especially with the lean-back moment at 12:44 where it plays what will be my ringtone in the afterlife where I get free text messages that can be up to 10,000 characters long. Best played loud on a stereo and listened to while in the other room.

If you’re reading this, and I know you are an internet guy, keep up the good work dude! I play your tunes at my coffee shop at least once a week, and at least one insane old lady who dumps coffee into the plants loves it!

Brainbombs “Burning Hell”

Evil fucking rock music like a Ren and Stimpy episode where all of the gross-out close-ups are of horrendous acts of deliberate violence perpetrated not with malice but with goofy cackling offhandedness. First time I felt sickened by music in years was listening to “Tired and Bloody” in the car this past weekend. Heaviest band and 100% favorite for getting stoked when I’m home from work to do something else.

US Girls “Live on WFMU”, “Me and Yoko” 7”

I’d been sort of feeling this for a while but it finally clicked for me after I saw her play at AS220 shortly after I got here. Swooning girl group desperation sound blasted through cracked boombox, sounds like sitting in a dirty house filled with garbage, surrounded by bugs and mice and vampire roommates, with all kinds of insane neighbors and drug zombies in the streets, but still trying to express living horror/ecstasy out a small window to a crawling night/glaring moon. “Me + Yoko” from the same 7” is probably the apex of this; “Bits and Pieces” and “Don’t Understand That Man” from the record/live set are right there too.

Sun Ra “Universe in Blue”

Big Saturn’s return (pun so stupid that yeah, I am totally intending it) on the Sun Ra records in April care of this totally insane blog (find the link for the download there) that maintains links to uploads of most of his discography. Groovy/soft synth and band tunes bookend a slayer of a June Tyson track where it feels like a lion is going to come right out of her mouth.

Kurt Vile “Live on WFMU”

The #1 Philadelphia song man playing raw. Honorable mentions to the Hunchback 12” and the new solo record but of the new crop this has had the most play so far.

Oneohtrix Point Never “A Pact Between Strangers”, “Transmat Memories”
Infinity Window “Artificial Midnight”

#1 chillers in the neo-new age synth category all come from Daniel Lopatin’s projects OPN and IW. Insanely he seems to be the only dude yet capable of taking the Boards of Canada acid streaked summer sky/1970 warm winds/looking at and then going inside of a Polaroid with your old friends vibe that’s been around at least since ‘98 and doing something fresh and good with it. Really re: the BOC model, his mode is easy: he strips the beats, stretches the vibe way out, and there you go. Walk around an 80 degree afternoon in full midnight. Drink a cheap beer and become a god. Second track on Artificial Midnight playing at max volume while I mop at 4am, both OPN tapes on repeat for an age.

Honorable mentions so far to Group Bombino “Guitars from Agadaz, Vol 2″, the Fantastic Magic untitled tape I downloaded from a blog that is neither the CD-R or the 7”, the Sun Watcher tape, and Sun City Girls “Torch of the Mystics,” which I listened to as I drove into Providence on Day One.

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.

Here are some things for you to click on.

#1: It was the Year of The Skaters

The Skaters - Dark Rye Bread
The Skaters - Physicalities of the Sensibilities of Ingrediential Stairways
Pacific Rat Temple Band - Tan Kim (Boa Paradise)
90210 - s/t
James Ferraro - Marble Surf
Vodka Soap - Un Chand Pyramidelier
Nirvana - Body of Consciousness/Uguiya to Jeep by Iguana Greenwave
Teotihuacan - Live Smokeshows from Inside the Ciguri Cave Hazed Diamonds with Windswept Hair

After three or four years of ambivalence toward the Skaters family, something severe ticked over in my mind sometime in February and I fell for them bigtime. The eight releases listed above constituted a basement work/neighborhood walk/long drive/crushing dawn routine that I probably ran almost a hundred times last year. The Pacific Rat Temple Band (vivid slow-marching torchlit underground worship sessions) and the 90210 (E.L.P. hanging out and playing toy instruments over an episode of Night Rider on the other side of the wall and KILLING IT) discs both easily saw three times more play than anything else during this horrendous year, a year in my many basements that very definitively belonged to James Ferraro.

#2: Utopia - Disco Jets

This came to me by way of Susy by way of Ben. In January I wrote this about it =

“This is the confusing and brilliant 70s VHS disco document from Rundgren’s band Utopia, that as the story goes, Rundgren found too embarrassing to release at the time. It’s filled with way, way over-saturated bulging-crotch leotard guitars and iron-pumping thumbs-up synths on top of ridiculously busy, crazily synched background racket. The compositions, mostly all driving and super bright (there’re covers of the national anthem and the Trek theme), are simultaneously nostalgic and futuristic - a confusing combination in the first place, but listening to them thirty years after the record’s recording in the actual future makes the effect downright weird. The particular 70s nostalgia documented here is no longer even vaguely relatable, and the 70s future vision put forth never came to pass. They wanted space travel in golden ships and they got Youtube. Who wins?”

#3: Kurt Vile - Constant Hitmaker

Killer Philadelphia space music. Favorite “songs” record of the year.

#4: Kites - Hallucination Guillotine/Final Worship

I listened to this almost every day from August through October. Perfect vision and portrait of working alone in the dark. I will someday write 15,000 words about Kites and post it on a blog that is only readable deep, deep underground.

#5: Horacio Vaggione - La Maquina de Cantar

(No A-side on the upload above but whatever.) Allen came through town and played me this in January; it saw regular play in my second room at Random House through maybe March. When I heard it I posted it elsewhere online and blurbed it with this:

“The A-side and title track is a jerky electronics frowner that never hits it, but the B-side, “Ending,” is a solid night out. Too dense and endless to call prog and with way too much movement to call drone, I rock hard and completely sink into it whenever it comes on. The first eleven minutes play out a wall of endless toppling synthesizers warping urgently in on themselves. As they approach the event horizon and nearly invert completely, the fever suddenly lifts, and in the goofiest change in tone I’ve heard since Arthur Brown “Fire,” they begin to play 1970s public television fundraiser bumper music. Then that, in turn, begins to warp, decay, and zoom endlessly in on itself, like a newspaper cartoon pressed into Silly Putty and stretched into oblivion. Simultaneously heavy, cheesy, meditative and disorienting.”

#6: Michael Hurley - Live 7/17/76

I listened to this for the first time on the drive up to VSC in September and then played it pretty regularly through Thanksgiving. Lonely road folk. “Break up music.”

#7: Bone Awl - Meaningless Leaning Mess

Relentless evil on smudgy disintegrating film.

#8: Fantastic Magic - Witch Choir

Loved this especially around when we went on band tour. Lysergic and dizzying/swooping island neon folk that’s somehow still precious/tacky and weirdly grounded - like The Tower Recordings’ lost Cancun record.

#9: Blues Control - Snowday b/w Paul’s Winter Solstice

The best band of 2006 and still the best band in New York’s Christmas record. I listened to this thirteen times in a row when I got it.

#10: Kylie Manogue - Fever

I painted a lot listening to this on repeat in March, and then listened to it at Work Group in September.

Honorable mentions =

ANGELDUST / M Ax Noi Mach / Big Ocean live in Philly
ANGELDUST when Kites played at PIFAS, M Ax Noi Mach at Bobo’s and Big Ocean at INC Philly = live horrors that loudly exclaimed what it is to live in that city.  AHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHH!

Ashtray Navigations - In Liquido Bravo
Ashtray Navigations - Srpls Provncl Hrbs
Generally I wasn’t too stoked on most of the stuff that came from UK drone teams this year, but these two Ashtray Nav releases hit it. In Liquido Bravo’s first track is an excellent spaghetti western slow jam and Srpls Provncl Hrbs finishes with Croak Song, which is like a tuned up version of the phase/flutter of How Can I Hand You a Diamond from Monument to British Rock, which I liked so much last year that I made a video for it.

Animal Collective/Black Dice - Wastered 12″
Man do I wish AC would go back to making slow, long metal bowl loop music with fried vocals instead of making songs.

Arthur Russell - Calling Out of Context
Played dominoes in New York with Julio and Leah listening to this. Haunting and shit-sweat karaoke vocals over sometimes groovy sometimes confusing beats.

Fennesz - Black Sea
Excellent record from my #1 of the year 2002. I haven’t spent a lot of time with it yet and don’t “love” it, but I did write this ridiculous/ecstatic thing to my brother when I first heard it: “It is like staring sunblind into a cold landscape through an elaborately frosted window, while a fire is burning behind you, someone is washing dishes in the other room, and you slowly fall asleep after eating an awesome dinner, and your mind moves through the frosted glass and explores the secret white worlds way down beneath distant frozen lakes.”

Ghostface Killah - Ironman
Ludacris - Red Light District
Most played rap records of the year.

Birchville Cat Motel - Seventh Ruined Hex
Natural Snow Buildings - Song for Laurie Bird
Pocahaunted and Robedoor - Mouth of Prayer
Honorable mention to these three high-flying repetitive guitar droners, all of which I listened to numerous times as I drove back and forth between Philly and Boston last January through March or April.

Portishead - Third
Things might have been different if this came out five years ago. Even so, I listened to it many, many times, notably with Davey and Mike on the way to Tallahassee on tour in April or May or whenever.

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.

Ultimate slow/fast week. I’ll post my good Obama being president joke later. As of right now, it sure looks like I’m moving to New York. If you have a job lead for me, get in touch.

Let the eternal record of my blog reflect that there was a time when Sierra and Zelda and I went to the Lincoln Inn in Essex Vermont, where Sierra showed me how to box step while grizzled country/rockabilly dudes played hard and whiskey sweaty, and middle aged guys with tucked in shirts and blonde girlfriends much taller whisked briskly around the floor. I ate a burger and we talked about 2nd Life and whether Barack Obama puts his hand on his heart when he pledges allegience for the entire night. Zelda said, “George, this is Melinda.” “I’m Tom,” I said. “I’m Rachel,” she said. Later, I walked around the mountain in Johnson, the sun set black-eye blue on the mountains, and we trekked past lit trailers, through the mud of vinegar and shit-smelling cow pastures, and back down across the dilapidated bridge. At a bonfire I took off my sweaters and sat in my tshirt with dry lips and the rims of my glasses getting hot. The smoke blew up and high away from stacked palettes to fierce orange black, and beyond the streetlights on School Ave was the silver sky. On Saturday morning Leah and I left and we stopped at Father’s Restaurant, where I ate delicious fried fish and mixed berry pie in Norman Rockwell desolate green interior/gray deathmask belltoll drizzle outside, old couple sitting in another booth and not talking, and I chewed with the full, terrible awareness that I am not going to drive back up I-89 for a long time.

Now I’m in Brooklyn, where it looks like I’ll live. I watched Hackers with Cory, went for drinks with Katie and Alex, ate burgers and played dominos with Julio and his totally good men’s group, partied with Allen, Kathryn and that extended team, went to Dinner Group where I talked to Justin bald and bearded about the trains and had a staring contest with Alfe and team, and pursued employment and made burritos and yucked it up with Leah almost full time since we got here. I’ve moved my car at least four or five times. In all, it’s been such a fun and fast-moving time that I got over feeling disappointed and insane by the time I had even officially heard the status of my work in Vermont.

They’re hard steps out of the gray area and they ring out loud across many months. BOOM here’s the job I wind up with, BOOM here’s the house I live in, BOOM, it’s 2009, where am I, who am I, what am I doing, BOOM, life sucks, but amazingly, resiliently, it still somehow rules way more.

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

Technically this has been true since 2005, but you can now do it in considerably less steps. There’s now a paypal store on this website right here.

Darcone Triangle

Black dove paintings

There is No Such Thing as News #2

Okay so the obvious major work update is that I finished all three projects I said I was going to finish for the thing on Saturday. Below are more camera phone pics from the black dove paintings, a project that consumed me pretty much completely for about seven full days. I’m going to do scans of them and put them in the parent directory when I get back to West Pittston.

The weather has been miserable and I have been in the zone. I left the house maybe five or six times the whole time I’ve been here in Philly, otherwise I’ve been working. I got to hang out with Davey and Brian Morsberger at Davey’s house for World Series Game 5, and then I got to ride my bike back to Grays Ferry in the horrendous freezing rain once the game was called.

When I was at VSC Todd told me that in the winter the snow rolls off the Schultz sculpture studio roof in a clean incline out and over the bonfire spot, burying it seven or eight feet under, and that an intrepid sculpture resident will often take up the task each month of digging out a path and a circle. The bonfire, he said, surrounded by a tall bank of snow, then gets burned as high as possible. I’m excited to go back up there next week and am hoping x 1000 that the prospect of my employment there is resolved by the time I leave.

Current projects = General website upkeep/bugfixing/indexhibit play (not 100% satisfied with the provisional setup I got to a working point last month, and my dad reports weirdness on PCs with IE), super overdue job of putting together a paypal store for all of my stuff, Fake Catalogue with Jon Bocksel, hopefully this group paintings thing with J Roc if I can get her to come down to the Grays Ferry spot, and finally resuming serious like top-priority work on the naked indian project. Web junk and hopefully at least a few things for Jon will be done by the time I go to VSC next week, we’ll see after that.

Current schedule = Here until Sunday, home until Tuesday, VSC until the 8th/9th, New York until maybe the 15th, back home indefinitely re: my employment status developing or not.

This is just a note in case I want to elaborate more next time or whenever -

Floors I’ve Slept On 6/8-10/8

The Provisional.
Domain pod.
Art Barn.
Tinderbox.
Maverick 2-4.
Wolf Kahn #1
Wolf Kahn #2
Church Studios 2-1.
Parents’ dining room.
Mike’s living room.
Mike’s office.

Okay and here are photos from black dove: