Loose Leaves

Wow, look at him go

Playing: American Truck Simulator while listening to Beck’s Midnite Vultures. “Peaches and Cream” sure hits the spot while long-hauling imaginary freight from Seattle to Bakersfield. 🎵🎮

Watching Orlando (1993). 📽️

Reading: The Once and Future King. 📚

2024 is off to a promising start.

Reading My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones. Only about 125 pages in, but Jones’s prose is fantastic. 📚

Watching Rosemary’s Baby. 📽️

Making a character in Shadowdark, which is a tabletop roleplaying game resembling what D&D used to be: a survival horror dungeon crawl. 🕯️

Listening to Sofia Rei’s “De Tierra y Oro” 🎵

Good morning! I’m listening to The Gnostic Preludes: Music of Splendor.

It’s mystical, lyrical music for harp, vibraphone, and guitar performed by some legendary figures from NYC’s downtown experimental music scene.

You’ve gotta hear “La Araña” by punk legend Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds! www.youtube.com/watch 🎵

Learning about how pelvic floor muscles play into singing. Wild. How’d I never notice that?

Listening to Patchouli Blue by Bohren & Der Club of Gore while reading My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones. 🎵📚

“The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift… but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.”

—The Country of the Pointed Firs by Maine legend Sarah Orne Jewett

Bub looks like a teddy bear who lost a button. 🐈

On to Gnostic Trio’s In Lambeth: Visions from the Walled Garden of William Blake.

What a fun surprise to hear Ikue Mori’s distinct electronics work on track “The Minotaur” 🎵

Listening to In Search of the Miraculous, an album of mystical-sounding music by John Zorn’s Alhambra Trio joined by guests Kenny Wollesen on vibraphone, Carol Emanuel on harp, and Shanir Blumenkranz on electric bass. 🎵

Listening to: Derek Bailey’s Pieces for Guitar 1966–67 🎵🎸

Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality wins the “most eye-catching book title” contest that I didn’t know I was judging. 📚

Mr. Business says “daylight savings time” is a bullshit human construct. Lunchtime is now 11:00 sharp.

Listening to legendary downtown NYC musician Ikue Mori’s One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, a collection of her compositions performed by a chamber ensemble and released in 2000.

The album’s inspired by (and named for) Yoshitoshi’s collection of 100 woodblock prints. 🎵

Tzadik Records’s catalogue is now on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. What! 🎵