a writer's notebook
Music for Intersecting Planes by Leila Bordreuil + Kali Malone
Vision Transmissions by zakè, Christina Giannone, Tyresta
Racked up 580 release notifications in my Bandcamp folder while I wasn’t looking. I need to get two pieces of work out the door today, so there’s no time for anything but writing and listening.
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Another interesting night was had at Konsztrukting Soundz. Notably, Viv Corringham:
I’m poking around the garden, assessing the winter damage – a branch snapped off an apple tree, most of the bulbs coming up blind, soil issues here and there – and getting myself back into the outdoor headspace.
STATUS: Taking a decompression day. Got tickets to see PROJECT HAIL MARY later in the week. As I wrote in January:
I actually liked the book, but I’m going to be curious to see if Drew Goddard addressed the underlying autistic note in and the apparent asexuality of the protagonist.
READING: THE VISIONARIES, Wolfram Eilenberger (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: The New Music Show: Icelandic Chill
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
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It was 15C yesterday and 17C the day before that. My winter clothes hang unloved. I’m in a thin viscose base layer and a chambray snap-front in grey like it’s May.
TODAY:
New Stephen O’Malley record, not on CD ffs:
PREVIOUSLY:
New Jolanda Moletta record announced, also not on CD ffs:
PREVIOUSLY:
Accessions:
It was on sale for 99p, not certain how current it is but Jacobsen is a good writer.
PHENOMENA: US GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATIONS INTO ESP AND PSYCHOKINESIS, Annie Jacobsen (UK) (US+)
Previously: NUCLEAR WAR: A SCENARIO, Annie Jacobsen
OPERATIONS: scripting, newsletter, processed an option offer
STATUS: Frazzled by schedule but generally pretty good. Really wanted to move the office to the deli today but I have too much typing to do. Printing off visa shit for herself, for the grand trip I’m sending her on for her birthday. Inbox 116.
READING: THE BIG THREE: SOCRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE, Neel Burton (UK) (US+) and THE VISIONARIES, Wolfram Eilenberger (UK) (US+)
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
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Klaudia Schifferle, Poem (For a Song, 2021), 2024, via Something I Saw
Gorgeous day out there, and I’m stuck indoors waiting on several deliveries and trying to get my head around a project whose first-stage parameters shifted last night, while also trying to solve the prose serial project and talking through a possible new and odd thing with an artist acquaintance.
I skimmed the news and decided I couldn’t really be bothered. It’s all the bloody same again. I could ascribe ennui to trying to cut down on the cigarettes again and still having this mange in my system, but it seems today like everyone is reporting on the same five things and I couldn’t give a shit about any of them.
TRAGIC MAGIC by Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore arrived in the post yesterday:
“In 2016, there was no way any of us could have charged for a link round-up.”
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I saw one of these on Valeluminal‘s IG account last night, and went straight to Amazon to look it up. I remember the Kodak Fling disposable camera from the 80s, and it turns out this is an intentionally low-res digital camera styled in a similar way. Charges off USB and runs off a TF card. There are six or seven different styles, and you don’t know which one you’ve got until the box arrives. Mine showed up eight hours after I ordered it.
Not my favourite of the designs, sadly, but it’ll do.
It’s about as long as my little finger and it comes with a keychain. The battery, according to reviews, gives out about three hours of steady use.
I have always loved digital cameras, but, if I’m honest, the better the iPhone camera got, the less interested I got. I loved the old digital cameras, that were a bit fuzzy and weird. I even did a photography book with an EyeModule, which was a black and white digital camera that plugged into a Handspring Visor PDA.
The Charmera comes, of course, with absolutely no instructions.
This was taken by accident while figuring out the pre-loaded image filters. I’m not mad at it at all. In fact, that was very much what I was hoping for. It’s going to get clipped to my day bag and I’m going to have some fun with it.
TODAY:
New Christina Vantzou, sadly vinyl or digital only:
Previously: Christina Vantzou
OPERATIONS: Many Things suddenly started Happening last night, right in the middle of me trying to dig my way out of all the things I’m behind on. Every time I walked away from my phone for five or ten minutes yesterday, I’d come back to another half-dozen notifications. And I still have to do Sunday’s newsletter.
STATUS: I have had to put the Apple Watch back on, which displeases me but lots of Things have suddenly started Happening. Also had to fight a cat for access to my office today. Inbox 141 and climbing.
READING: THE BIG THREE: SOCRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE, Neel Burton (UK) (US+)
Empedocles himself claimed to have already been a bush, a bird, and ‘a mute fish in the sea’. But now, as a doctor, poet, seer, and leader of men, he had reached the highest rung in the cycle of incarnations—and could, just about, count himself among the immortal gods. In a story that is almost certainly false but too good not to tell, he killed himself by leaping into the flames of Mount Etna, either to prove that he was immortal or make people believe that he was.
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
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“Amphisbaena,” The Vatican Museum, Vatican City, Peter Li
So I got given these lovely A6 notebooks the other day:
Atoms To Astronauts make some gorgeous notebooks. However, they’re A6. Which means they don’t fit the Wanderings Passport notebook cover or the newestor Field Notes-sized cover, or the Field Notes-sized cover I’ve ordered from a maker on Etsy. So I had to order one of those randomly-generated-Chinese-company-name leather notebook covers in A6 (UK), because I got bought nine of these notebooks and I really want to get working in them.
That’s the third stage of the new notebook system, and I’ll write a separate post about that at some point. And when the other cover comes in from Etsy, that will be the fourth stage. Because I’ve decided that this year is all about going deep on working on paper and thinking on to paper.
TODAY:
Today I learned that Status Quo have their own beer.
Anyone for bagpipe metal?
I wanted to pre-order thar CD for herself, but Napalm Records’ shopping system is broken.
OPERATIONS: contracts processed, setting up another reprint project (fingers crossed), scripting and planning and printing off research notes to paste into one of the above notebooks
STATUS: wearing the field watch today. Email at a dreadful 154. Still not back at full power, but getting there.
READING: THE BIG THREE: SOCRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE, Neel Burton (UK) (US+)
Pythagoras had always been a paragon of humility, declining to be called a ‘wise man’ [sophos] and preferring instead to be called ‘a lover of wisdom’ [philosophos]—thereby coining the term ‘philosopher’.
LISTENING:
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
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From a new Leonora Carrington retrospective.
Getting out of bed apparently used up all the calories I had remaining in my body.
David Lynch’s estate is now eBaying some of his items.
New AAASMR music radio show from Angela Winter:
TODAY:
OPERATIONS: still zero energy, so today is for scriptment – that version of scripting where you just slap down dialogue and vague directions and then go back when you feel human to convert it up into full script.
STATUS: two steps from the boneyard
READING: A FIELD GUIDE TO REALITY, Joanna Kavenna (UK) (US+)
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
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Today I feel like I might have hit the midpoint of The Mange, as I feel a little stronger and clearer. Currently deleting some distraction apps and putting the AI devices in a drawer – the Bee can no longer access current information, it tells me, and the Rabbit can’t perform scheduled tasks without a reminder to perform them, which kind of defeats the purpose of scheduling tasks. Currently shopping for new notebook covers – I have a passport-sized Wanderings notebook cover and a newestor leather cover sized for Field Notes notebooks, of which I still have a ton from years of being on the Field Notes subscription service, and I have a feeling I need at least one more of the latter. Although this might also be the year I crack and get myself a Roterfaden. Scriptorium-monk mode!
Today’s newsletter went out at 10am UK time.
TODAY:
STATUS: it is time to blitz out my inbox, my RSS feed and my podcast queue. Having to clean-slate everything barely six weeks into the year is not where I thought I’d be.
READING: finished THE ART OF WAR, Sun Tzu (UK) (US+) last night. As previously noted, I tend to use winter to read the books I should have read/re-read years ago.
LISTENING: Oh my god, this. I discovered Barn Hoppit last night and this is extraordinary:
LAST WATCHED: FIRST BLOOD. There are, as far as I’m concerned, only two Rambo films: FIRST BLOOD and RAMBO.
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
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Day 6 of the death plague. Not remotely at even half-power.
TODAY:
There’s a new Shackleton record. I thought he’d retired.
OPERATIONS: managed to get a script out yesterday, need to get 8pp out today, but I suspect the day will get in the way. Had to process some foreign right and film-related stuff last night and follow up on some production schedules.
STATUS: apparently I am going out for lunch, presumably so I can infect the outside world with The Death. I’ve ordered a case of beer as therapy.
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+) (this book is going on forever)
LISTENING: Monument Waves 008 : Atomic Moog (live) podcast
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
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Still gripped by plague. The weather outside is dismal and has been for days – the garden has become an intractable bog and I have new plants sitting in buckets of water, waiting for the possibility of me having two days without rain and the ability to move without coughing or otherwise dripping.
TODAY:
I looked at my Instagram on desktop and saw they’ve finally wrestled the algo to the point where it didn’t show me anyone I’m actually following.
This is very Andy Goldsworthy:
New Kali Malone collaboration record:
(Previous Kali Malone notes)
OPERATIONS: work is for people not drowning in their own fluids
STATUS: ded. Less than 7hrs sleep. Inbox 150. Connecting the Retro Nano to the phone and doing podcasts all day.
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+)
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
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