on which my choo choo chugs

good morning ~

(click the link / vestigial outlet to listen)

My Big Breakon which my choo choo chugs

today’s track is an excerpt of a much larger piece - - - a collaboration between me and Thor Harris, devised as a never-repeating, four channel sound installation to accompany the sculptural work of Gracelee Lawrence that’s going on view at the Paggi House in Austin, Texas this weekend. Here’s the RSVP link if you wanna come to the opening on Saturday and here’s a flyer for the exhibition:

Thor and I are also going to play a show together on Monday night as part of Me Mer Mo Monday at Dada Lab - - we have never played this music live before and I think we’re gonna try and do a four channel thing, should be sick!

A warm wind kisses at the beads of sweat not sopped up by my camo/hi-vis trucker hat. I am once again wearing inappropriate shoes and have been spending the last couple of hours carting speakers from one building to another, kicking up dust. The breeze is strong enough in the last part of the day to buffet my ears - the whoosh of an unshielded microphone en plein air. There is the dust of a hundred chop saws and an indistinct black grime that coats the palms of my hand every time I'm here wrapping up the cables. Tomorrow there will be a show, on Saturday there will be a party, and for the second year in a row I find myself waking up in the middle of the night worrying about ticket sales.

This is the time of the birds. We're trying to avoid paying for air conditioning this year so instead we cultivate a cross breeze, windows and doors open, and, as long as the sun is up, there is nowhere quiet and away from their songs. It is the first sound I hear in the morning - I hear them before I hear myself. At work there are hundreds of them living in this overgrown bush right next to where I send my emails - it rattles with melody all day long. Birds, too, have aggressively moved into the big building and are living their lives out loud in the rafters. "We might have to shoot those fucking birds," I was surprised to hear a climate activist film festival organizer say out loud, but they sort of had a point.

It's big sky time, too, and especially down here by the river the brushstrokes are audacious and corny, the kind of thing that makes you go "c'mon now." Small feeling making. When the colors go deep I always have the urge to text someone about it, makes me want to apologize for any outstanding wrong. I have yet to get tired of driving over the rip van winkle, although I wish I could built a boat to row home on.

Last night Ged and I tried some new shit in his basement. He's been doing this thing with a sequencer that can generate different amounts of random patterns and a synth with a basic midi library - the result is surprisingly funky and I had a great time playing some very stupid guitar solos overtop. His friend said that it sounds like the theme song from a tv show about a computer who becomes a doctor and I just think that's beautiful.

The show tonight will be fine, at least, and maybe it will be fun. We'll plug everything in and haul in the stage decks and point the lights where we can and at a certain point it will go from bad feeling to good feeling, it clicks over like that. I'll hug some buddies. I might have to make some kind of announcement, I hope that Peter does not photograph me doing so. There will be songs and instagram stories, a pleasant mix of spilled beer, body odor, and talking over the music. Eventually it will quiet down. I will lock the doors and I will almost certainly be pulled over by a cop on my way home.

In the early morning I will tumble toward the Albany airport for a long flight to Austin. Texas is a place I'm always having to remind myself I've only been to like four times ever (getting thrown out of a strip club at age 18, first and second ever Barton Springs encounter at 22, Margaritas in Houston in 2016, my dad and I working out in a chain hotel fitness center, a surprisingly fun time in Dallas at 34). It feels like I have been there way more often, like I know it better than I actually do.

When we arrive it will be a new experience - staying in a fancy hotel, for once not crashing on a friend of a friend's floor. That's the thing about doing art shit: sometimes you are embarrassed and demeaned and sometimes you luck into a sweet deal. I hope to swim in the rooftop pool immediately upon arrival, maybe I can relax. A friend told me to read by the river, I hope crushing the two library books I picked up today on the plane count.

I feel often that I am building the track on which my choo choo chugs. There is force and locomotion and a forward churn but if I don't scramble to throw it down before me it will crash all down to hell. I am keeping up but just barely so and I am grinning that I am careening straight toward the gorge.

Tonight I will drive home with the windows down listening to whatever weird bullshit they play on the local community radio station (dead air often, which is actually sometimes the best fucking thing to listen to). A church bell clanging in the distance just now reminds me that I should leave here. I should shower. I should load my little MP3 players with the beautiful sounds that Thor gave me in preparation for a beautiful unfurling this weekend. I should pack. I should spend a little time quietly sitting in the sweet cross breeze that sweeps through our house, freight train hoots on the breeze. There are plants to water and leafy greens to gather. I have to prepare this email for you, the most prayer-like thing I do lately (I lapse and miss it like any good religious person). I am praying for you, I can feel you opening your laptop and receiving what I offer. In this way we are together, in this way we are hanging out. You carry me in your inbox and I count out the rosary for each syllable in your god-given name. The birds scream. The sweat dries. My hands are still filthy and yet I type.

But what about you? Are you reading by the river? What will you do this day? Will you answer the prayer?