#013 July 2024

at long last

Hello,

Now that the sun is out of Cancer I can write again. I think we hold ourselves to high standards because our understanding of what is actually in our power is warped by the powerlessness we so constantly experience. There is no guarantee for almost anything - apartment buildings get sold and bought, jobs disappear with no replacement, life moves on and all the sudden we lose track of what could have been common knowledge. We fall out of touch, the whirlpool of constant endeavor laps against us: half a massage, half a beating. Promises are still kept, threats maintained, but the due date is pushed back.

It’s true, I’ve been very gone the last few weeks. According to me, I’m supposed to update these at the beginning of the month, but at the beginning of this month I was driving back from Chicago to NYC in a day, failing at that, going to New Hampshire, getting sick, getting better, doing more and more relentlessly, unflaggingly, then flagging, then relenting. Been sick, been poisoned, got depressed, now almost better. Sadly, I missed my chance to post about earlier gigs this month (14 in NH, 18 x 19 in NYC), but of course - I recall - forget about it, it’s only Substack.

The big news, of course, is the new single: Lasik, from my record Viewfinder, out on American Dreams on September 13, 2024. You can preorder the record here. My dear collaborator Richard Lenz made an incredible music video for it, viewable below.

For the video, Richard used experimental lenseless recording processes to re-enact what it looks like to receive laser eye surgery. What’s so amazing about the surgery is that, since you stay awake for it, you can see the lasers affect your vision, refracting and dispelling the light in these hazy, circular colors as you are changed; an unrepeatable structural film just for you. It was sublime to witness something like that, a vision of such immense and abstract beauty, with the knowledge that you can never go back to it. It’s like moving. It’s like, moving. It moved me. With Richard’s perfect images, I can see a facsimile of it again, and it moves me.

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Gigs for the rest of this month:

Monday, July 22 at Nublu (tonight) I play with the More Eaze Ensemble, on a great bill with Otto Benson, Grant Chapman, Adum Brate. Eve Swords will be your DJ.

Saturday July 27 at Property is Theft, 5pm, solo, with Carmen Lienqueo and Zeke Healy.

much more in august. love you.

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On my stereo:

1. Junior Parker - Funny How Time Slips Away

2. Tomaž Pengov - Odpotovanja

3. The Byrds - Untitled/Unissued

4. Buffy Sainte-Marie - Illuminations

5. Jura - Formality Jerne-Site

On my bookshelf:

1. Nicholas Dawidoff - In The Country of Country

2. William Maxwell - So Long, See You Tomorrow

3. Serj Tankian - Down With The System

4. Byung-Chul Han- The Burnout Society

5. Susan Howe- My Emily Dickinson

On my Mind:

1. In an interview about The Pod, Dean Ween said, "We never have tried to do anything, ever. We didn't do anything to get signed. We've never even tried to get a gig, ever."

2. The other day Mari and I were discussing a phenomenon she’d noticed recently, about how most people in the indie-rock genre (or any adjacent) who are genuinely good/competent at what they do are considered “experimental,” simply because they can actually do what they’re conscripted by the market gods to do. It pains me to say she’s onto something here. Playing an instrument, singing, writing, etc - if you want to do these things, you probably want to see what they can do. And is that salable? To test the limits? No? Minorly? I am wrapped up rapt in a particular jealousy here, where I worry that my music is unlistenable because it wants to be as particular as it wants to be, that I am called experimental not because I am but because I am actually playing guitar, really playing it, as if that isn’t the most authentic and core thing I could do.

3. We were also talking about how sad it is that prog was so maligned in order to make way for punk as a trend, a trend that killed or threatened to, as if people were not going to continue to reach out, as if post-punk did not possess a very prog compositional ethos without the same resources for gear, as if it wasn’t oddly sexy in its hilarious way, as if it did not groove. Musicians want to extend themselves, they want to explore and spread out within and beyond the genres that first contextualized them. I really believe this, and my understanding of prog is that prog songwriters actually just wanted to be composers, even though they already were. Maybe the world external to those musicians just did not trust “composer” as an identity, thought it meant “holder of power.” I relate to that doubt, but am saddened by the strength it has to malign.

4. The bar hasn’t exactly lowered; it just became the floor.

5. Learning late at night about Olympic race walking, the oddest sport of all, where people sashay their hips so at least one foot stays on the ground, where they walk fast with wide steps. It become somehow metaphorical in the talismanic way of any worthy research fascination. I too desire one foot on the ground, moving fast with a wide expanse and remarkable step while still moving in my particular, singular lane.

Cover songs are still on my mind. I’ll be making a paid option in the next few months for you. You can choose if you’d like - I’m thinking Forget Me Not by Roy Harper, Winning by Emily Haines, or My Bird Performs by XTC. I also take requests.

That’s all. I’ll write to you in another week or so.

xo

W