Shop Visitor

Brooklyn, NY

Uniquely Designed

Sit down. Be yourself. Be prepared. Be attentive. Defy the voices. Be the thing you want to be. Write. Be playful. Be reckless. Remember that you are uniquely designed for the idea that is moving toward you. You are good enough. The idea is about to arrive.

Nick Cave

Pause for a Moment

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC

Cherish your old apartments and pause for a moment when you pass them. Pay tribute, for they are the caretakers of your reinventions.

Colson Whitehead

Truly Senseless and Preposterous

T.J. Clark · Frank Auerbach’s London: Frank Auerbach

This episode has stuck in my mind because it’s as close as I’ve ever come to what is supposed to be the primal scene of modern art: the experience of making (or if you’re a viewer, seeing) something that is truly senseless and preposterous as it comes into being, unknown and unidentifiable, and therefore, if you’re lucky, a glimpse of freedom, a unique particular, a way to slip off the mind-forg’d manacles.

Carrying On, Backing Out, Moving on

I’ve been thinking about backing out of my social media accounts again for some time. I’ve been here before. I’ve deleted, for instance, three or four Facebook accounts since 2008. I can’t remember when I stopped posting on Twitter but I deleted my account when Elon Musk bought it. And yet, I’ve always hung onto my Instagram accounts, not least because I signed up on launch day and felt, for many years — even after the Facebook/Meta acquisition — that it was somehow different from the other platforms. But it’s become clear that what distinguishes Instagram is that its users have been subjected to even greater manipulation than those of its related media.

I’ve always kept an eye out for the new thing: Facebook was new, Blogger before that, Friendster before that. MySpace was in there somewhere. There was Foursquare, With, Path, and no doubt several other VC-driven social networks I can’t remember, plus App.net and whatever other indies popped up. Glass is nice. More recently, there’s the crop of fediverse networks like Mastodon and Pixelfed; corporate-fediverse hybrids like Bluesky and Threads, nearly all of which function the same way. Corporate manipulation is only part of the problem. Dispensing with longer and deeper thought is another, joining a mob-minded culture is another, falling victim to political half-truths and outright lies is another.

Most social platforms eventually bring such detriment to their users. I believe this observation to be true, to be the rule in spite of its occasional exceptions, and if my belief is understood as little more than an informed hunch it is also described elsewhere in extensive study and reportage: we have in the course of the development of these platforms become, on the whole, lonelier, more despairing, more hopeless, more vain, poorer, less likely to receive adequate health care, more violent, less educated, more bigoted, and more prone to rash and destructive behavior. So much for connecting the whole world or whatever. The fact is, most of us were better off before all of this.

And yet it’s hard to deny the original intent of the web, of the internet, to connect people. Simple as that. It’s never been free of corporate investment and management but their presence was less prominent, less pervasive, less intrusive. Which might not matter to some people but it does to me.

As it happens, the two platforms I currently enjoy are Bluesky and Micro.blog. I enjoy them because they move at my pace, without algorithmic interference or exploit. I have no idea how Bluesky makes its money and assume it’s something I’ll find disagreeable at some point, but for now I’ve found people I want to follow so I’ll stay put. As for Micro.blog, its community pays to be on the platform. It’s a microblogging platform, mostly, and its founder wrote a book about what that means and why he believes in it. It connects to Threads and the other fediverse platforms, but it also functions as its own network. What I like about it is that its membership believes in the possibility of a different kind of social platform (no likes, no tally of followers), one that can, solely by virtue of its members, remain interesting, informative, and social.

But to my original remark, I’m backing out of Meta Corporation platforms. Maybe that’s all I mean. It’s the election, of course, and its campaigns. It’s the devolution of news and journalism and the rise of manipulative and untruthful media. It’s all kinds of things. Lies and propaganda leading to reprehensible and awful ends. Again and again, year after year, it’s one thing or another. Just a handful of examples might be Sandy Hook, Pulse, Parkland, Charlottesville, Tree of Life, George Floyd, Kenosha, January 6. All acts and incidents of delusion and hatred, all exacerbated by social media.

I’m not capable of or responsible for a broad and lasting solution but I don’t see how I can continue to be part of the problem and fail to acknowledge somewhere how dreadful and dangerous this culture has become.

Why Are We Here?

The U.S. will now be run by a white supremacist authoritarian President and a political party that has chosen to accept that brand as its identity.

Sherrilyn Ifill

Political Technology

There is no doubt that a key factor in voters’ swing to Trump is that they associated the inflation of the post-pandemic months with Biden and turned the incumbents out, a phenomenon seen all over the world.

There is also no doubt that both racism and sexism played an important role in Harris’s defeat.

But my own conclusion is that both of those things were amplified by the flood of disinformation that has plagued the U.S. for years now. Russian political theorists called the construction of a virtual political reality through modern media “political technology.” They developed several techniques in this approach to politics, but the key was creating a false narrative in order to control public debate. These techniques perverted democracy, turning it from the concept of voters choosing their leaders into the concept of voters rubber-stamping the leaders they had been manipulated into backing.

Heather Cox Richardson

Marshall

Brooklyn, NY

Tourists

Las Vegas, NV

En Route to the Strip

Las Vegas, NV

Likemindedness

If I know anyone at all who is not voting the Harris/Walz ticket:

1. I don’t know them well;
2. they are not saying so;
3. they are not voting.

Does this describe a bubble or a silo or an echochamber? I think these terms were invented to suit a very recent purpose, to explain unforeseen political outcomes in a time dominated by our infatuation with a contemporary version of the internet, not to describe likemindedness as they present it. By and large, likemindedness has always been attractive, for its affirmative powers, its inspiration, its support. Likemindedness is where we get our courage from, where we learn our strengths and weaknesses, where we learn to prosper.

I believe this idea has been corrupted by the fundamental achievements of current social practice. The platforms did it. The algorithms did it. The infinite scroll, the engagement economy, Surveillance Capitalism, these are the forces and corporations that have created the environment in which we live. Their aim is to know and isolate us in ever-expanding profit-extraction. We are not connected, we are separated. We do not learn, we forget. If we think about it at all, broadly speaking, we think the next post/video/story/dump will be the one that satisfies something in us that did not exist until we started scrolling.

The Atlas of Drowned Towns

These towns were not randomly submerged. Their disappearance was part of a broader narrative about communities in the American West displaced for—depending on location—hydroelectric power, irrigation, flood control, and a twentieth-century idea of progress. This trend began in the 1920s, accelerated through the go-go years post-World War II, and continued through the Cold War era. It lasted until the 1970s.

(via Alan Jacobs)

Punch Lines

Why Are We Humoring Them? | The Atlantic

The brand of politics that Musk and Carlson practice is swaggering and provocative and, as a result, entirely devoid of shame. And so the two men, wielding their mockery, make a show of each chortle and smirk. They may consider their delight to be defiant—a rebuke to the humorless masses who see the violence and not the lol—but it is not defiant. It is dull. This is the way of things now. The tragedy and the farce, the menace that winks, the joke that threatens, the emoji that cries with joy and the one that simply cries: They bleed together, all of them. Irony storms the Capitol.

Morning With Rita

It’s early in the morning in my Aunt Rita’s kitchen. In my family we pronounce it “ant,” not “awnt”. Rita and I are at her table, the room is lit by a circular fluorescent light, cool, bluer than I am used to. And is the decor blue and green? Wallpaper, maybe? I can’t remember. I can’t remember when this was, either, except that it must have been after my parent’s divorce, which means I was at least 9 or 10. I conflate it with another visit, years later, when my father, brother, and I were there to celebrate my father’s 50th birthday. I was 17 that year, not much after the earlier memory by the standards of middle age but a lifetime later from the vantage of being 10 or 17.

I’m sitting with my aunt Rita at her kitchen table. The overhead light, circular, fluorescent, is dimmer and cooler than I am used to. In that room that morning, the light has volume the way water does and everything feels isolated, discrete, yet retains its vividness. Now I remember: we’re drinking coffee, or she’s drinking coffee, and we’re talking about cigarettes which I smoke at that time and maybe just did prior to this meeting but definitely at the time. She hasn’t smoked in many years and is gently prodding me to think about quitting. Not to quit but just to think about it.

Don’t I get tired of it, she asks? Doesn’t it make me feel bad? I tell her no and I don’t know. She asks me if I know what she hated most about it and I say of course not and we laugh. Of course not, she says. What I hated most was always having to make sure I had them with me, that every time I left the room or the house, I had to make sure I had them with me. It used to drive me crazy, such a crazy thing to worry about. Don’t you worry about that? I tell her I don’t, that I always have them with me, and if I do forget them or run out, I just buy more. She smiles. Of course you do, she says.

View From the Grand Hotel and Casino

Las Vegas, NV

View From the Grand Hotel and Casino

“Las

An Attractive Overall Sensation of Wonder and Space

Ellen Reid ~ Big Majestic | A Closer Listen

I’ve been listening to Big Majestic quite a bit these last weeks and find that further listening yields further reward. Review and sample via the link above.

An Attractive Overall Sensation of Wonder and Space

Ellen Reid ~ Big Majestic | A Closer Listen

I’ve been listening to Big Majestic quite a bit these last weeks and find that further listening yields further reward. Review and sample via the link above.

The Time Is Now

Very excited about this new release from Isaiah Collier and the Chosen Few. The last couple of Collier releases weren’t to my taste and this one is more like it.

This track, the opener, is very much in the same McCoy Tyner vein as KAmasi Washington’s “Changing of the Guard.”

The rest of the album heads in more conventional spiritual jazz territory with dignity, skill, and conviction. Collier is the real deal and if I’m not always into his experiments, I always respect that he’s going for it.

Junked Cars, Planes, Trains

Artfully Arranged Junkyard Objects

In a continuation and tweak of his Coletivos project (which I posted about previously), Cássio Vasconcellos took aerial photos of scrapyards and arranged the junked cars, planes, trains, and other objects into dense photographic collages.

I can’t imagine how much Photoshop work these pieces require.

Ruby

Las Vegas, NV

Janet

Las Vegas, NV

Gavin

Las Vegas, NV

Katey

Las Vegas, NV

Jason

Las Vegas, NV

Chris

Las Vegas, NV

Claire

Las Vegas, NV

Brooks

Las Vegas, NV

Isis, when she offered the model of lamentation to the first Egyptians, said in her lamentation that when eyes do not see, eyes desire.

Pascal Quignard

Best Friends Forever Festival

Jamaica, NY

Currently posting from the air en route to play the first Best Friends Forever Festival in Las Vegas. We’re on tomorrow afternoon but the festivities start today. Looking forward to seeing friends and family performing and attending alike.

Vanessa

Lancaster, PA

Making a phenomenological speculation here that our valuation of information derives from a historical scarcity, relatively speaking, such that the abundance of information available to us currently is often overvalued, that in fact the very idea of information is overvalued without regard for what the information might be or whom or what it might serve.

Robert

Lancaster, PA

Pete

Lancaster, PA

Clemmie and Lyle

Baltimore, MD

I spoke with Brian Stout over at popMATTERS about New Freedom Sound.

One way to approach making music is to make a sound that’s reminiscent of something you love, trying to play in a genre. Another is to try to make music that sounds like what we aren’t yet able to hear, to be the guy who comes up with something we haven’t heard. New Freedom Sound is a chance to take what I’m listening to and make it into something I haven’t heard yet. I am confident that my playing in this group is the best I have ever been.

I spoke with Brian Stout over at popMATTERS about New Freedom Sound.

One way to approach making music is to make a sound that’s reminiscent of something you love, trying to play in a genre. Another is to try to make music that sounds like what we aren’t yet able to hear, to be the guy who comes up with something we haven’t heard. New Freedom Sound is a chance to take what I’m listening to and make it into something I haven’t heard yet. I am confident that my playing in this group is the best I have ever been.

Brooklyn, NY

My Aunt Rita died yesterday. This photo was taken on her 86th birthday back in 2013. Kimberley and I drove out to see her in New Jersey to deliver our best wishes in person. A few months before this, Chris Ernst, Kimberley, a handful of cousins, and I visited Rita to interview her about our family’s past, about growing up Sephardic in The Bronx during the Depression. We came away from that visit with something like 3 hours of footage I have yet to edit in any way, shape, or form. Shortly after her birthday that year, Rita suffered a partially-debilitating stroke that restricted her movement and speech if not her cognition for the rest of her life. I’ll say more about her later, no doubt, but am posting this, my favorite photo of the two of us, in her memory, which will surely be a blessing for us all.

Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY

Atwater Village, Los Angeles, 2017

Looking South from W 38 St, Manhattan, New York City

Brooklyn, New York

Brooklyn, New York

Matthew

Brooklyn, New York

…you would be unable to breathe or likely see at all from the sound pressure, glass would shatter, fog would be generated as the water in the air dropped out of suspension in the pressure waves, your house at this distance would have a roughly 50% chance of being torn apart from sound pressure alone.

The World’s Loudest Sound

Christine

Our City As Their Pretense

I grew increasingly protective and defensive about New York City, about what it means to those of us who live here, and to this day I have a white-hot resentment of how our town’s grief was used to justify hateful violence without our consent.

Anil Dash

Out of Frame: Suicide Doors

1965 Lincoln Continental convertible, Brooklyn, New York City

Good Luck Always

(Dr.) Steve Gadd inscription, 1990

Alissa

Brooklyn, New York

Expert Fitting

Glens Falls, NY

Adaptive Emergent Forms and Processes

All around us we can see parts self-assemble into dynamically alive, adaptive emergent forms and processes. Not only can we see it, but we are part of it, even though our day-to-day habits, our focus on things beyond our bodies, may give us the sense of being observers of objects, separate from what we observe. In fact, we are not walking through the world; we are interwoven with it.

Neil Theise, Notes on Complexity

Album Whale

I cam across Album Whale while looking into Good Enough’s blogging platform, Pika. It’s an easy and fun (?) way to make album lists instead of playlists. Although I was at one time an inveterate mixtape-maker, those days have long since disappeared from the rearview and these days I listen almost exclusively to albums. Album Whale is designed with this sort of listening in mind. I’ve made two lists so far, one of my own records (why not?) and one of albums I listen to when I write.

New Music From New Freedom Sound

Happy release day to our new album, “Two Freedoms!” Available for purchase via Bandcamp and streaming just about everywhere. Enjoy!

Our new album is previewed at BrooklynVegan today! Go get an earful before official release tomorrow. Enjoy!

www.brooklynvegan.com/stream-ja…

“In Jawbox, Barocas pioneered an influential drum-forward presence that carried through his later projects. In New Freedom Sound, those rhythmic sensibilities are still at the core of the compositions, but they make way for more experimental sounds, objectively drawing from myriad genres.”

www.daytondailynews.com/lifestyle…

Two Freedoms Pre-Order

New Freedom Sound, Two Freedoms

We’re now accepting pre-orders for a forthcoming vinyl and digital album entitled Two Freedoms, co-released by The Cultural Society and Sweet Cheetah Records. It’s composed of two works in my ongoing series of Freedoms, the Fourteenth and the Twelfth. These pieces will be available to stream where music streams but they’ll be on Bandcamp first, set for release on August 20.

Church Courtyard

Courtyard at Saint Paul’s Church

How the Political Wind Blows

The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie — a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days — but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.

Hannah Arendt

Martha’s

Martha’s Ice Cream

Queensbury, New York

Theo, Last March

Handsome Theo

Goodbye, Little King

Handsome Theo

RIP Lt. Theodopolous “Theo” Kojak,
our sweet, handsome Little Man,
aka The Little King,
2006(?) - 2024.

Good at Explaining Things

The knee-jerk reaction to my suggestion of picking Buttigieg or Whitmer is obvious: isn’t a black woman at the top of the ticket already asking a lot? Why go with two women, or a black woman and a gay man? Because they’re smart and they’re sharp and they’re good on TV. If you don’t like their message or platform, don’t vote for them. But if you don’t want to vote for a ticket with two women, or a ticket with gay man as VP, just because, then fuck you. Go vote for Trump, because you’re a bigot, and he’s the candidate for you. There are too many racists and sexists in America, but they’re not a majority.

Jon Gruber / Daring Fireball

Downtown Brooklyn

Corner of Jay Street and Tillary Street, Brooklyn, New York City

New Way Lunch

King of the Hotdogs, Glens Falls, New York

On Break