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Thoughts Held Hostage

03.04.2022 by M Donaldson // Leave a Comment

As I do the mental strength training to reenter the world of blogging, a war rages on. Once more, my thoughts seem held hostage. Writing through this is an option, but I’m not sure if music recommendations and snarky asides will cut it.

‘Inspiration blogs’ are essential right now — these are the blogs that I look to for a glimpse at how others are managing in tough times, something I mentioned in my guide to blogging. Kottke is a good one to peruse as Jason continues to post about topics ranging from meaningful to frivolous, but not without acknowledging the weighted sadness of current events. Warren Ellis has started blogging again (and a reason for his recent absence should be noted) — his casual but steady approach to blogging reminds me not to overthink the process. And then there’s James A, Reeves’ Atlas Minor, which proves that there’s a lot that’s fascinating and rewarding in blogging about what’s going on in the internal spaces.

Today is Bandcamp Friday1And I’ll have plenty more to say about Epic Games’ acquisition of Bandcamp soon.. If you’re a fan of the type of music I regularly write about here, you should venture over to A Closer Listen’s list of Ukrainian artists to support. I’m breezing through it as I type this and discovering many brilliant new-to-me ambient/electronic/post-rock sounds.

Also, Peter Kirn highlighted an expansive spreadsheet devoted to Ukrainian bands and artists to explore. He’s picked a few excellent recommendations to peep in his post.

And, via The Quietus, here’s a list of benefit compilations “for those looking to buy some Ukraine-supporting music on the latest Bandcamp Friday.”

Morning reading: Smithsonian Magazine gives some 20th-century historical context to the war over Ukraine. This article also helped me better understand some of the themes in Come And See, which I wrote about previously. Adam Tooze’s Chartbook newsletter is invaluable in understanding what’s going on in this war and what it means for world affairs. I admit a lot of what ‘The Tooze’ writes about goes over my head, but I have just as many “oh, I see now” moments, too. I’m also working through Tooze’s conversation with Ezra Klein on Klein’s podcast — dense but illuminating stuff. (Not Ukraine related: Klein’s episode last week with philosopher C. Thi Nguyen talking about how games are always present in our lives is a humdinger.)

Categories // From The Notebook, Listening Tags // Adam Tooze, Bandcamp, Blogging, Current Affairs, Ezra Klein, James A. Reeves, Jason Kottke, Ukraine, Warren Ellis

3+1: James A. Reeves

03.17.2021 by M Donaldson // 1 Comment

About a year ago, as the pandemic’s elongated reality started setting in, I discovered the blog of James A. Reeves. James was writing a few paragraphs a day under the tag ‘Notes from the End of a World.’ These posts relayed James’s feelings and reactions to a world on fire, embossed by his memories and unshakable present circumstances. Reading these entries became part of my daily routine — in isolation, I connected to this distant person feeling a lot of the same things as me, even if through a different nostalgic lens.

Also: James has excellent taste in music and ended each blog entry with a song recommendation, often linked by title to the theme of the day’s writing. 

James A. Reeves is an artist as well as a writer and, according to his About page, is interested in “the role of ritual and faith in the digital age.” He’s published two books (one of which — The Road To Somewhere — I just purchased as I want to read more of his writing) and is presently working on a novel about “a loud god.” On the art front, he’s recently collaborated with Candy Chang on a public installation titled Light the Barricades. It’s on display at The Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, through July 25. And James and Candy will have a new installation on the subject of loss, opening in September in the chapel at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

James also takes night photos of roadside service stations. Here’s one of them, below, followed by a bit of 3+1:

————–

1: You blogged every day in 2020 but had no idea about the pandemic when you started this endeavor. Besides the topics, how do you think your posts and blogging would have differed if there was no COVID monster?

For eight years, I’ve kept a nightly journal, and last year I decided to make it public because I wanted to kill the mean little perfectionist in my head, the part that writes ninety-percent of an essay or story then leaves it to languish in some folder in the cloud. The good thing about writing in public is that it forces you to complete a thought, or at least make it semi-coherent. Otherwise, my notebooks are filled with scribbles like Remember that shade of red + storm chasers + nefarious forces.

I initially expected to write about nostalgia because I worry about how my perception is warping as I grow older, which carries the hazard of pining for simpler times that never existed. I often think about the poet Ovid who mourned a vanished “golden age of harmony and invention.” He wrote that in the year 8. And yet: there’s the very real sense the wheels are coming off, that the weather and algorithms are steadily rewiring the world until one day it will be unrecognizable. So I wanted to have a record of these in-between days when familiar routines and moments of beauty are constantly colliding with breaking news, attention hijacking, and the two-minute hates of social media. 

But writing about nostalgia felt incredibly unhelpful in the light of a pandemic. Throughout 2020, I became increasingly anxious about writing anything that resembled opinion-mongering or soothsaying. I’m mystified by how many people claim to understand how the world works, how other people think, or what will happen next. The smartest thing I ever heard was from an old man in New Orleans who told me, “Opinions kill motherfuckers and experience saves lives.” So last year, I ended up writing quite a bit about my experiences with grief and my desire for some faith. 

2: You mentioned in your email newsletter that you’re now writing fiction instead of the daily public life-journalling you were doing in 2020. Why the change? Is the shift in your practice changing your mindset or the way you’re settling into 2021? Will we get to see any of these writings, or are they only for you?

I’ve been rewriting the same novel about a loud god for six years, and it’s time to finish the thing. And after a year spent monitoring headlines, fiction feels like an increasingly liberating possibility that can sidestep this humiliating age of thought leaders, pundits, and charlatans because it allows us to imagine our way into complex questions without demanding an opinion. For example: I’m fascinated by the future of faith. As the world gets weirder, this will create a vacuum for new gods, cults, and dogma. So what do I make of my own craving for some otherworldly ethic or mythology? If I were to expand these ideas into an essay, it’d probably be an insufferable piece of writing. Others can pull it off, but last year I discovered I couldn’t. But if it’s a novel about, say, people who begin to hear the voice of God in discount superstores, then it becomes a canvas for these ideas to play around without becoming didactic.1Footnote from James: I realize it’s odd to champion fiction while our relationship to truth feels increasingly tenuous as more and more of us are caught in fractured realities powered by the mechanics of bad storytelling: hyperbole, dot-connecting, the high drama of us versus them, etc. And reckoning with this growing hunger for conspiracy seems like one of the biggest tasks of our time.

I rewired some bits from the novel into short stories (two of which were published here and here), and I hope this book goes into the world someday. But the odds of getting a novel published are tremendously long, which is a good reminder for me to do the work for its own sake, for the pleasure (and pain) it brings.

3: What is it about dimly lit gas stations photographed in the middle of the night?

A lone gas station in the night feels like church. Maybe it’s the lighting, which has the chiaroscuro of a Caravaggio, or the optics of some sci-fi temple. There are probably symbolic and limbic reasons that I don’t fully grasp: a sanctuary or crossroads, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. It’s also the only situation where fluorescent lights are worth a damn.

+1: Something you love that more people should know about.

Two answers came to mind at the same time, and they’re connected. The first is the music of Bohren and Der Club of Gore. Their music is essential to my writing life. Particularly Midnight Radio, which is slow-motion doom jazz with a light-night neon aesthetic that points to the second thing: staying up late with the radio when I was a teenager in metro Detroit, listening to the Electrifying Mojo at the top of the dial. This was the early 1990s, after Mojo had been on the air for ages, quietly influencing the shape of music by playing everything from Funkadelic to Kraftwerk to Devo to Model 500 to some thirty-minute version of “Planet Rock” or “Flashlight” that only he seemed to have. Some say he laid the foundation for techno. The man lived as a myth, a ghost in the ether who would tell everyone listening to flash their headlights, and I remember driving down Woodward Avenue flashing my lights while passing cars did the same. It was beautiful, all these strangers drawn together by a voice in the dark.

Visit James A. Reeves (and read his 2020 journal) at AtlasMinor.com.

Categories // Featured, Interviews + Profiles Tags // 3+1, Blogging, Bohren and Der Club of Gore, COVID-times, Detroit, Electrifying Mojo, James A. Reeves, Writing

Looney Machine of Outrage

10.30.2020 by M Donaldson // 1 Comment

Negativity Will Not Do → I could probably write about every other post that appears on The Red Hand Files here. Nick Cave’s answers to his reader’s questions are delightful and insightful, and most deserve highlighting. The latest, Issue #122, is a response to Pat from Chicago asking how Nick deals with hate mail. Nick jokingly — I hope — claims to enjoy “a good death threat in the morning.” Then I’m fully on board once he dismisses social media as “that looney machine of outrage.” I’m sticking the phrase in my quiver for future deployment. 

But it’s Nick’s dose of resistant optimism and a rally to continue doing creative work in the face of uncertainty that stirs my soul. I needed to read this today:

Of course, there is much in our world that is in need of change, to be set to rights, and clearly humanity is complex, conflicted and full of faults, but at this moment in time, when our very existence hangs in the balance, we need to come together not just in good faith and consolation, but also in a spirit of creativity and invention. Our existence depends upon offering the best of ourselves. Negativity, cynicism and resentment will not do.

On the same day, James A. Reeves offered this complimentary observation (unintentional) on his Atlas Minor blog: 

It’s an awful feeling, being afraid to hope. But I’ve relied on pessimism as a protective measure for too long, only to discover it’s another warped mirror.

I literally exclaimed, “Oh, shit!” when I read that. It felt like I got burned. This week’s tough — the toughest in a while — and the stress is nearly unbearable. My own ‘protective’ pessimism and wallowing outside of my creative pursuits aren’t helping anyone. Quite the opposite, actually. Thanks for the wake-up call.

——————

Joe Muggs on “Starfish and Coffee” → Joe Muggs was given the task of writing in-depth about a Prince song in a lengthy Twitter thread. He chose “Starfish and Coffee.” Hey, that might be my favorite one, too. Joe’s thoughts and recollections on this classic are heartwarming, reminding me of all the things that make one love music (and Prince). He also touches on that DJ set sweet spot: playing a song that everyone knows and digs, but you never hear on the radio (or the 2020 equivalent). Anyway, this is a great thread. Hopefully, someday this screed will get transferred to a blog or personal site (you should do one, Joe) and away from the ephemeral clutches of Twitter. Passionate remembrances such as this deserve a more hallowed ground. 

——————

“I Don’t Want To Talk About It” Masks → Orlando art troubadour Patrick Greene ran for mayor of ‘the city beautiful’ in 2004. His campaign slogan was, “I don’t want to talk about it,” a sentiment that has haunted us (and him) ever since. As we barrel further into COVID-times, Pat has heeded the call to extend his slogan to us mask-wearing ‘over its’ as we do our sensible duty while discouraging senseless chat. Or at least that’s how I read it. 

The masks are $16.00 (including shipping within the US), and Pat will donate four of those dollars to Community Hope Center. That organization helps the homeless and those living destitute in the (now) ex-tourist motels along the theme park highways. You may recognize this existence from the film The Florida Project. What was a budding problem at the time of that movie has gotten much, much worse thanks to the economic effects of COVID on Central Florida’s service industries. Supporting Community Hope Center in this crisis is a worthy cause.

Send Pat $16.00 for one of these handy masks. Click here for his email address for more info, or PayPal him using that same email. Be sure to include your shipping address.

——————

Affect Display – Animal Drift Animal → Canadian producer Damien Smith is Affect Display, and he’s released a unique seven-track album titled Animal Drift Animal through the Pirates Blend label. The tracks recall Detroit techno’s early explorations, as releases became less about the dance-floor and more about the head-trip. Smith’s drum programming sets Animal Drift Animal into this heady mode, with frenetic rhythms that betray influences traveling across a landscape of genres. There are scenes of pastoral ambiance, but also indie-quoting guitar lines in “FlightorFury” and a couple of others, a mellow gothiness in “Transference,” and disorienting experimentalism leading to grandiose prog-ness in “Dauen.” And it works. Affect Display has delivered something unusual and grabbing. He’s shaking things up, and what more can one ask for in these lockdown days of endless sameness? Check out the video for “Until the Light Hits the Door” for an eerily nostalgic taste of Affect Display’s electronica:

Categories // Items of Note, Listening Tags // Affect Display, Canada, COVID-19, James A. Reeves, Joe Muggs, Nick Cave, Orlando, Pat Greene, Pirates Blend, Prince, The Florida Project

8sided.blog

 
 
 
 
 
 
8sided.blog is an online admiration of modernist sound and niche culture. We believe in the inherent optimism of creating art as a form of resistance and aim to broadcast those who experiment not just in name but also through action.

It's also the online home of Michael Donaldson, a curious fellow trying his best within the limits of his time. He once competed under the name Q-Burns Abstract Message and was the widely disputed king of sandcastles until his voluntary exile from the music industry.

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