8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

3+1: James A. Reeves

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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:

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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.

Kosmiche Clicky Keyboard

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I’ve got a few quickies for you and then some music news. 

First, I’ve officially entered the clicky keyboard club. Mechanical keyboards have tempted me for years, and this Kickstarter campaign finally inspired me to take the plunge. My Keychron K8 arrived today, and this post is pretty much the first thing I’ve typed on it. I’m doing a lot of writing and thought a more physical keyboard — with clicks and noise! — would help inspire and lead me frequently into ‘the zone.’ It’s too early to say. I’ve heard some people can’t get used to these keyboards, and it is larger in height than I’m used to. I’m using a palm rest, which helps, but it’s still going to take effort to get acclimated. But so far, so good — the feel is impressively tactile, and I love the keys’ noise. The fancy backlighting makes typing feel special, too. I’ll report back once I get some serious use out of this thing.

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Here’s a fun piece about John Cage’s expertise with edible mushrooms. Well — he was an expert most of the time as there’s that dinner where he unintentionally poisoned his guests. If you know about Cage but didn’t know about his mushroom obsession, then you’ll find this paragraph fascinating:

In one particularly famous episode, in February 1959, Cage appeared on the Italian television program Lascia o Raddoppio (Double or Nothing) and won five million lire (something like eight thousand dollars) by being able to name 24 white-spored agarics — edible mushrooms — that were mentioned in the Studies of American Fungi field guide. Cage listed them in alphabetical order and then bought a Volkswagen bus for his partner, choreographer Merce Cunningham, and a piano for his home in Stony Point.  

There’s a new two-volume book — John Cage: A Mycological Foray — that details Cage’s mad mushroom skills though his writing and essays by others. It looks lovely.

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Speaking of lovely-looking books, Craig Mod — who might be responsible for my favorite email newsletter — has self-published a book based on his incredible Eater article, I Walked 600 Miles Across Japan for Pizza Toast. I know the title of that article is baffling but, seriously, give it a read if you haven’t. This new book is titled Kissa by Kissa, and it expands on the article with lots of new graphics, photographs, and text. It’s obviously a labor of love and looks fantastic. Even more fantastic, Craig coded his Kickstarter-style platform to raise money and sell it from (he jokingly calls it ‘Craigstarter’). It’s open-source and downloadable from Github. Labels and recording artists take note — you could use this to do a PledgeMusic (ugh) style fundraiser for your next album right from your site. (Update: I see the book sold out. Congratulations to Craig! I imagine it will be online in some form in the future, like his ‘digital book’ Ise-ji: Walk With Me.)

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Brian Eno. Laurie Anderson. Nitin Sawhney. Simon McBurney. These four brains got together (on Zoom) and had a conversation about listening. It’s terrific. And Eno’s lockdown beard is impressive.

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My bit of music news is about Gemini Revolution. The brothers Dedric and Delaney — from the cool Kansas City combo Monta At Odds — lead this project. We call Gemini Revolution their ‘alternate timeline band.’ I’ve just released their rad new album Supernova Remnant on the 8D Industries label. Earlier today, I described this album to a friend as “kosmiche-styled space jams, ambient builders, and textured dream-droppers.” I won’t back down from that description. Have a listen in the player below, and if it strikes your fancy — it should! — then please head down to Bandcamp where the album is downloadable at the special price of ‘name your price.’

Making the Case for Blogging

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I’ve had a few friends ask about blogging this week. They have the same questions: is blogging worthwhile in an age of social media? What if no one reads? Which platform is the best? Isn’t WordPress complicated? Well, I have opinions and answers and a desire to help out. This post might be a long one — hold on tight.

I’m hardly an expert at blogging, though I’ve been doing it in stops-and-starts and in various places since the early 2000s. I didn’t have a lot of help and learned as I went along. I stumbled a lot. And I’m still stumbling. It’s from this student perspective that I offer some advice.

Why blog? As I wrote here previously, blogging is “an exercise to notice more, to observe the day with intention, to create firmer opinions and ideas, and to cope with the fears of uncertainty and of time passing.” It doesn’t matter if no one is reading — the act of putting your thoughts down in a public arena is medicine for gathering ideas and inspiring confidence. Bonus: it will make you a better communicator, too.

Social media is a tempting place for posting your thoughts. But don’t give in to convenience. The content you post on, say, Facebook not only becomes corporate property, but you’re enhancing the social media product to appeal to its real audience: potential advertisers. When you post to Facebook, you become part of a product designed to collect advertising dollars and please shareholders. I find that troublesome.

Even more troublesome is how these social media companies operate and the damage they inflict in pursuit of profit. And they actively imply their necessity, giving rise to questions like, “Why should I blog outside of Facebook?” It’s the commercialization of our thought-space and precious attention, something Jenny Odell talks about extensively in her terrific book How To Do Nothing. Odell says, “I will participate, but not as asked,” framing the refusal to contribute to the corporate product as a form of #resistance. “I want this not only for artists and writers but for any person who perceives life to be more than instrument and therefore something that cannot be optimized.”

The other problem with a social media platform is that you lose control over what you’ve written. This dilemma is real in a legal sense — read those terms of service agreements — in that the platform can exploit what you post without your permission. But it also means that if you decide to move your content to another platform or even archive it for safe-keeping, you’re out of luck. Social media platforms make it nearly impossible to collect or move your content.

Here’s a confession: in the mid-2000s, I used MySpace as a blogging platform. Some of my favorite things I’d written were posted there, including diary-like tales of travel and the DJ life. When MySpace’s future looked shaky, I fruitlessly searched for a way to export the posts. And then I discovered older posts were deleted already. Now all of that writing is lost forever. Who’s to say something similar won’t happen with Facebook?

Now I use WordPress. I was hesitant at first, as I assumed there was a steep learning curve. I used the platform in the very early 2000s and found it frustrating at the time. But a couple of years back I decided to charge in head-first and was pleased with the improvements made to WordPress. It is now a cinch to set up, and the back-end is a breeze to navigate. I’m also a fan of the Gutenberg editor recently added to WordPress — posting and editing is as fun as it is on Squarespace.

I did use Squarespace for a while. It’s a good platform. After a few years, I found myself outgrowing its limitations, so I moved to the much more flexible WordPress. I was also taken aback by an announcement that CSS editing would soon only be allowed at a higher price level. Squarespace backed down on that, but it made me realize the platform could change its features and fees at any time. And, though you can export your content from Squarespace, it’s done in a way that’s not easy to move to other platforms. When I did this export a little over a year ago, images were not included, which was disappointing.

I enthusiastically recommend blogging, and I recommend WordPress. You’ll get a lot out of the writing practice — I honestly think it makes life better — and WordPress ensures the content is yours to keep. As for social media, the key is posting links to your blog posts (and you may have found this post via social media link). Sending people to your blog is like welcoming them to your home, rather than having them meet you in a rented hotel room.

Here are a few tips and recommendations about setting up a blog on WordPress:

  • Grab your domain/URL. Finding something unique and sticky isn’t as hard as you think. Be creative. I use Namecheap for my domains, and I’ve heard that Hover is good, too. A domain is around $10 a year. Before purchasing a domain, search for the company name (like “Namecheap”) and “coupon code.” These companies are always running promotions.
  • Next, find a hosting company. You could use the same company as your domain, but I think it’s good to keep the hosting separate. You could use wordpress.com for hosting, but explore other options for the best price and features. I use Hostinger and appreciate the customer service and bang-for-your-buck on the pricing, which is generally below $5 a month. Here’s a list of other recommended hosts.
  • Once you have all of that sorted, it’s super-easy to get WordPress active on your domain. All hosts will have instructions for how to do this — here’s Hostinger’s process to give an idea of how painless this is. If you’re still feeling gun-shy, many hosts will do this for you for a small fee or even no cost. But I recommend doing it yourself to learn a little about how WordPress works behind the curtain.
  • In my opinion, the toughest thing about WordPress is choosing a theme. There are so many out there. I’d suggest looking at other blogs and finding layouts you like. Then apply this tool, which will tell you what themes those blogs are using and where to find them.
  • There are many high-quality free themes out there (especially if you want a minimalist look), but you may find a paid theme has the best appearance and features. It’s often worth it to go for a paid theme for the support alone — most theme designers I’ve encountered are super-helpful with questions about setting up and customization. And, another good thing about any WordPress theme is if you grow tired of your current one, it’s easy to switch. For the most part, your content won’t be affected by a change in theme.

And here are a few things I’ve learned about blogging in general:

  • Don’t worry if your traffic is slow or non-existent. That’s not why you’re here. If you’re consistent and honest in your writing, you’ll gain an audience, especially as organic SEO kicks in after a few months. And regarding SEO, read my post on the subject from a few weeks ago.
  • For inspiration, carry around a small notebook and write down cues to remind you of thoughts that come up, things you see, conversations you have, and what you’re watching or listening to. Consult the notebook when you sit down to write. These cues will spawn writing topics.
  • Another way I get inspiration is to look at other blogs. I have a bookmark folder of blogs to look at if I lack motivation or am doubting the practice of blogging. Seeing others doing it well, and having fun with writing always sparks my motivation. A few of my ‘inspiration blogs’ belong to Austin Kleon, Warren Ellis, and John Gruber. These three blogs are entirely different from each other — which is the point — but all spot-on in approach. It’s inspiring to see how different bloggers individually tackle their platforms and make fine-tuned magic happen for their readers.

Let’s talk about Medium for a minute. I do like Medium — it’s a sharp and simple blogging platform with a strong sense of community. Though one of those pesky corporations (it was founded by Ev Williams, former CEO of Twitter), Medium doesn’t have a corporate vibe and lacks the vitriol and manipulation of the social networks. Its heart seems in the right place, as writers can get voluntarily paid through its partner program. It’s easy to export your content, too — you can download your articles as HTML documents collected in a ZIP file.

But it’s still someone else’s platform, with the impression that you’re writing for (and building) Medium rather than your own identity. Josh Pigford of Baremetrics summed it up nicely in his article Why We Transitioned from Medium Back to Our Own Blog:

I realized Medium is really great about surfacing content, but it removes the face of it. It neutralizes all content to basically be author-agnostic. It’s like Walmart or Amazon in that you can buy from thousands of different brands, but you rarely actually know what brand you’re buying…you just know “I got it from Amazon.”

Same with content on Medium. Sure, you can see who the author is or what publication it’s on, but ultimately your takeaway is “I read this article on Medium”, and that’s not what I wanted.

But I do use Medium. I crosspost the longer, more evergreen articles after posting on this blog. I use Medium’s import tool, which makes this seamless and also removes any SEO conflicts caused by identical articles. I do this because I’m reaching a different audience through Medium, one that might be interested in discovering and reading my blog.1The overwhelming majority of my post views are still directly on my blog, not on Medium. I’m also in the partner program, and a couple of articles have gone mildly viral, paying out about $50 each. Why not, right? But this blog is the focus, and I wouldn’t create exclusive content for Medium.

So there it is. I hope this post is helpful. Nothing would make me happier than inspiring you to start a blog. Seriously, give it a go. Write about what’s precious in your life, your obsessions, and what you’re trying to do better. It might be frustrating at first, but once you get in the writing rhythm, wonderful things will happen. Be consistent, be honest, have fun, and, to paraphrase Timothy Leary, “Let the others find you.”

Update: As I was writing this, I kept recalling an outstanding piece from a few months ago also on the subject of blogging. After racking my brain I finally remembered and located it. So if you’re still on the fence you should immediately read this post by Disquiet’s Marc Weidenbaum. Here’s an excerpt:

And don’t concern yourself with whether or not you “write.” Don’t leave writing to writers. Don’t delegate your area of interest and knowledge to people with stronger rhetorical resources. You’ll find your voice as you make your way. There is, however, one thing to learn from writers that non-writers don’t always understand. Most writers don’t write to express what they think. They write to figure out what they think. Writing is a process of discovery. Blogging is an essential tool toward meditating over an extended period of time on a subject you consider to be important.

Daily Blogging, Even on a Rainy Day

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Someone, somewhere out there, might be noticing that I’m blogging again. Yes, there are more than a few time gaps in entries if you go through the back posts. The quality varies, with quick ‘quotes from articles’ type posts rubbing shoulders with the less frequent meatier commentary. The majority of the posts are strictly music industry-oriented.

I’m not sure why I kept dropping off (and I’m not sure if I’ll drop off again tomorrow if I’m honest) but I may have been doing this for the wrong reasons, in turn putting some pressure on myself. The idea might have been to transmit some authority and knowledge on these subjects and to find a niche in the music industry pundit-sphere. With those goals, there’s only so much I can write, and just so much that indeed maintains my interest.

But writing is important to me, as is getting better at it. I want to be a writer, sure. Have you heard the advice for people searching for a calling, telling them to think back to what they wanted to do when they were little kids? I didn’t want to be a musician, or a label manager, or an industry pundit — those ambitions appeared later on. When I was in grade school, I wanted to be a writer, plain and simple. I was sort of obsessed about it if I remember correctly.

Seth Godin’s been doing the rounds. He’s got a new book, This Is Marketing (I’ve got it here and can’t wait to dive in). Seth’s appearing on tons of podcasts and, as I love hearing him talk, I’ve been listening to a bunch, one after the other. Binging Seth. And a natural question he’s asked repeatedly in these interviews is, “What’s the best advice you can give to our listeners?” His answer: blog every day.

You’re either thinking “that’s great for Seth” or “he must know what he’s talking about” as the guy has been blogging every day without fail for years — here’s post number 7,000.

Seth said this about daily blogging on the Unmistakable Creative podcast:

If you know you have to write a blog post tomorrow, something in writing, something that will be around six months from now, about something in the world, you will start looking for something in the world to write about. You will seek to notice something interesting and to say something creative about it. Well, isn’t that all we’re looking for? The best practice of generously sharing what you notice about the world is exactly the antidote for your fear.

I love this: daily blogging as an exercise to notice more, to observe the day with intention, to create firmer opinions and ideas, and to cope with the fears of uncertainty and of time passing. The idea of a daily blog seems challenging but, after only a week into it, I’m already remembering more about my days, and putting little mental placemarks on the moments I want to write about later.

I’ll still do the occasional meaty posts about subjects like why music streaming is the best/the worst, but most of what you’ll see here will be somewhat stream of consciousness — derived each day from what I read, what I watched, what I listened to, who I spoke with, what I’m thinking about, where my head’s at. I hope it will be at least mildly entertaining. If so, I’ll eventually launch a weekly (or every-other-weekly) newsletter compiling the best of my frantic observations and recommendations. At this point, I’m sure you can hardly contain yourself.

Will I keep it up? I think so. I bet I’ll miss a day or two occasionally. But I’d like to give this a go with the hope that eventually I’ll be writing without hesitation and acutely aware of what’s happening around me. I also want the discipline, as maintaining this practice should get me on track to schedule in other tasks that require discipline, like recording new music.

Apologies if this ends up a self-indulgent mess (possibly it already is). But I am doing this for myself after all. Another in a line of creative experiments, fuel for the creative life I’m aiming to lead. Game on.