Et tu, Brute
Welcome to the first weeks of cremation season, not summer, but cremation season. When I lived in New Orleans we used cremation jokes this time of year and variations of the joke eventually found their way as tweets from Breaux Mart and local bars. The vaults of the graveyard cities Nola is famous for will cremate the bodies due to high summer temperatures. My tenure working in a New Orleans history museum informed volumes of morbid trivia. The summer will pummel the recently deceased to ash. The knowledge of this phenomenon I find oddly comforting. Eventually, everything burns.
Honestly, 2024 kind of sucks. It’s been a year filled with loved ones with cancer, disappointments, friends ghosting, friends dying, casualties of partying, heroes dying, the slow environmental trainwreck stupidity of AI, and the absolute clown world of social media. If you raised your hand and said “I can’t wait for everyone to shut their mouths and stop whining”, slap that high five over here. Let me say this: you’re allowed to dip out and you’re allowed to say no. Place those boundaries like you’re putting on pool floaties in the brutal heat and swim on. The outside world is challenging so feel free to turn it off. Life’s too short to listen to noise unless it’s Merzbow. If that’s the case, go right ahead and get weird.
I’ve had friends pass on this year but the silver lining is I’ve reconnected with people after years of performing my one-act interpretive play of “Man’s Search For Meaning”. I spent some time in the Urban American wilderness and eventually returned home. I needed to let go of the past and admit the folly of my location choices as potential spiritual centers. I won't explicitly name former cities but I’m happy living in Denton. In my lifetime, certain cities resemble velvet coffins lowered slowly while others use Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a staging area for cataclysm. You leave a place for a reason and rarely do you ever return. Denton is pretty cool, take a day and visit if you find yourself in the area.
Music News:
A new Justin Sweatt tape, North Texas Electric, is scheduled for release sometime in August via Austin label Aural Canyon. I’m proud of this release and I hope the songs connect. The material is a 21st-century exploration of Cluster and Harmonia with a few thrown-in contemporary ambient influences. Here is a preview.
Friday, I released a new Xander Harris single, “Edgelords of Acid” which you can listen to here.
Speaking of Xander Harris, the masters for a new release reside with a favorite North Texas label now waiting in the vinyl queue. I’ll provide an update regarding the release as we get closer to the actual pressing. This part of the equation makes me queasy, pressing vinyl isn’t as easy as it used to be. I have a different release on hold and the holding pattern is reaching two years which is frustrating and likely to be sadly shelved. I’m working on part two but my days of release on physical media could be spotty.
The rest of the summer will see me focus on writing on the return of Slow Pulse.
Listening To:
Terry Riley & Don Cherry - Koln 1975
Miles Davis - He Loved Him Madly
Xeno & Oaklander
Don Caballero
Reading:
SPQR - Mary Beard
Watching:
House of the Dragon