Tom Bubul .info
tombubul@gmail, @tombubul. Initial post 12/25/2020, last modified .
Reflections on 2021
Listened to a lot of music this year, watched a few movies, read some good stuff, had a ton of extremely nice hangouts... but mainly sat on the wheel of fortune and spun around. In lieu of trying to round up links & do shoutouts this year, here're some reflections:
President St elegy
Endless beautiful/social/family memories to fill endless emails & midnights for the rest of my life obviously, but the persistent echo I kept hearing this year was of sitting exhausted on the couch at President St in the dark looking into the kitchen at the oven clock, and it always being 10:22, always the low rush of the BQE at the top of the block, always 1 World Trade visible against a sky with no stars... I'd leave for Texas or wherever with the sense of waiting future 10:22s when I get back sitting on my chest like sleep paralysis...
And in total keeping with the way all of the funniest ordeals of my life are also my fondest memories, now I've got the heartache for just one more 10:22 on the stove clock after just one more grueling day at total war with reality, one more stupid private Tuesday wanting to turn away from it, watching one more low cloud roll past 1 World Trade, running one more bath... but that's it, now it's gone.
After we moved out I went back in once more a month later while in the city on errands to look at it in daylight, as I still had my keys and assumed correctly nobody had moved in yet... like looking at a fun wine empty in a recycle bin waiting to be taken to the street... a scraped palette... what was out there disappeared...
How unexpected to have ever had a home at all... before President St I would've figured it'd be low-rent roommates houses all the way down... but that's getting older, you really have no idea what's gonna happen, new stuff keeps pouring in, you keep getting proven wrong in fun new ways, you start off whacking a pile of bones with a bone, you end up in a luxurious bedroom on Jupiter.
And here I am now, again in a roommates house on the other side of this wormhole of a year, living in "a different time zone," aka "living in Central Time," weirdly finding myself both at the height of my powers and sent allllll the way back to start... sometimes like watching a little performance about my 20s played out by tardigrades on a microscope slide... other times like I'm having to live it all again in fast-motion with Game Genie codes activating all weapons unlocked... others like I'm gradually reconstituting from vapor form, trying to rip the pull starter on some new strange engine, but still just not quite solid enough to get a good grip...
Meanwhile the sensation of the keys in the locks at President St, every surface of those rooms, the tension and sound of every door and cupboard laser-etched on my mind... my deep and furious love for my home twinned with all the cage-shaking I did in it, the awareness that it was never really mine, that I was always just passing thru one rent check at a time, until the day I'd be banished to new rooms forever...
The feeling of driving out of a city and it collapsing onto a little pile on the horizon behind you, suddenly you can see in all directions for miles, as the conditions that seemed to endlessly surround you recede into some other unrecognizable shape, and you wonder, what even was it, and what is it becoming now?
Running guy
I started running in March, I'm a running guy now. It's obvious but surprise, athletics doesn't have to be about achievement or competition, it can also just be about developing a clearer understanding of and relationship with your own body, in alignment with other activities that give form to psychedelic sensibility, like painting and taking baths.
Bryan and Julia got married out here in Minneapolis in June. When I was heading back to Judy's from the wedding, nobody picked up my calls to pick me up from the airport, so I walked the 5 miles home down the desolate 2am town roads, kinda hobbling with my first dumb little running injury in my right knee... the feeling of the Judy's era ending. No prob getting to and from the airport in Minneapolis, though, friend rides were on deck... and the group levitation at the event was so fun, just like in 2018 when I was here making paintings, that I figured, fool me twice: I should come out and keep hanging.
I was alone at Judy's for about three months before doing the drive, a really nice micro-era, doing sweaty summer runs, hanging with my family, spending nights in the sitting room listening to NTS, Photoshopping, having cocktails with Nook, going for little walks out in the dark neighborhood. I put blue lightbulbs into all the lamps, put up a bunch of my own large paintings, and got into a rich summer psycho vibe my brother Pat called "aquademonic."
There were some lovely interludes at this time too, in the vaccinated summer pandemic lull: Visited Bela in Woodstock; Jacob and Sakiko in Rhode Island for triumphant return of clams night; Jeremy in Providence; the city for a long weekend to go on a blaster bike ride with Jeff, hang out at spots, see friends, and feel the grim reaper's cold finger on my neck; Vermont with Alex, Becca, and Oakley to see the rodeo and camp in the national forest.
Then Nook and I drove out here together in September, our last little adventure together before he returned to Shea's care at her new place. He rode in the car outside his carrier, big road movie vibe. I quit my job just beforehand, took a jump-up of a new one that I started when I landed. Pat, Rosie and I closed out the epoch with a mindmelter of a party at Judy's, and I left behind a couple large, unfinished paintings... they're waiting where I left them even now, silently passing the days waiting up there, influencing my dreams Cemetery of Splendor style.
Since getting here, Bry & Julia & I have hung out every single Thursday (and many weekend days etc.), as a sort of ritual sesh anchoring both the weeks and the broader transition to living here... some have been lush & high key, others more weeknight-minimal. These hangouts successfully sold the starting-point hypothesis that coming here was in fact the right idea, and in that are the clearest "best of 2021" I've got. Quality of life is a murky, moving equation but mine as ever weights for access to my own time, access to my friends irl, a sense of open possibility and adventure... I can feel all of this clearly in the ascendant right now, thanks to my friends.
Another President St thing I think about often is walking up the steps completely fried in 2013, thinking "well I guess this is just what my life is now," and that being true on some level for those years until ending completely, releasing me back into this entirely new period of frothing confusion, uncertainty, discovery... Last December feels further away than the other side of a dream... zero idea where I'll be next year at this time and how it'll look, but I love that. I find it fun and exciting to be back out here in the wind blowing around, even at its most sheering and inhospitable. My long run stabilized at about 7 miles before it got too cold out, effectively ending year one... looking forward to resuming in the spring.
A couple little projects
Not a terribly productive studio year given the unusually high level of demands on the ground, but here're some things I made:
- Got to show the Cousins in Jacob's castle, after many years of development - one of the 4th epoch's signature projects. I'm pleased with how this came together, and feel that Jacob did an incredible job supporting and producing it(!). Also I made a mixtape for this that I feel is pretty good too.
- Got to work on some records: A painting and design for one Chris has coming out on Unifactor; art/design for a split tape Becca and Alex released; some design and a portrait painting of Marcel for his record Vicious Kisses.
And from a public perspective, that's really about it. Tons of drawings and small paintings for no purpose too, was a good year for incubating & just not sharing. Cheers to a big giant one, looking forward to 2022. :)
This website is open daily from 8am-8pm in your local timezone. Top.