Elements & Embodiment // 043
Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter. This is an image-heavy edition with some treats for your eyes: DJ art and seven-inch record sleeve designs.
But it's not all images. I also connect some dots from a recent interview with Black Thought about his writing process, plus my usual status board about what I'm reading, writing, teaching, and listening to. Enjoy. And thanks to those readers who have been responding and reciprocating with interesting things in your life.
Quick from the archives: Last year at this time I sent out issue #23, Fun with Sound. Check it out here.
Seven-Inch Record Sleeves
I don't know how, but I came upon this defunct design blog with pictures of 7-inch record sleeves. I like 7-inch records. I like their sleeves too. Here are three of them on the site.
DJ Art
The artist PROP4G4ND4 has this really neat vector style aesthetic he's applied to flyers for legendary DJs. This one of Detroit DJ, music educator, and producer Mike Huckaby caught my eye recently, right around the one year anniversary of his passing. Mike passed away early in the pandemic, right when -- I think -- we were all starting to realize how serious this thing really is. Here is the last mix uploaded to his SoundCloud. It's deep and soulful, like everything he did.
The whole site from PROP4G4ND4 is definitely worth a scroll. Here are some of my other favorites.
Reading Habits, Reading Plans
A friend on Twitter asked me:
Do you have a reading practice and a time and place you do it in?? Gathering data. Need to reinvent my approach. Seems like you pick books to read in advance.
I had a hard time coming up with a short answer, so I wrote something well beyond 240 characters. I called it Reading Habits, Reading Plans.
Black Thought on Writing
I enjoyed this interview with Black Thought from The Paris Review because it touched on his writing process. I was frustrated halfway through when David Ma asked only a few questions about writing, and the title of the interview is "Everything Writes Itself." But I was glad later when he pulled the conversation back to writing. Here's my favorite part where Thought talks about close reading, listening, and conversation:
I’m always searching for that one word or one sentence or one remark, and I’ll let it sit with me, I’ll think on it, and I’ll later use it as a springboard for a verse. If I’m at an art exhibition, I’m closely reading the little description that accompanies a sculpture or painting. It just needs to be fly and maybe I’ll use it in a song somehow. I listen loosely to conversations, too. There’s something to be said about the conversational tone of a rhyme and how that can be the most accessible. That’s something I always strive for. Sometimes it’s more easily achieved than others. I’m always searching for what doesn’t sound contrived, something that feels like an organic conversation.
What I like about Thought's approach, too, is how similar it is to the DJ sensibility of digging for a granular, irreducible segment as the creative foundation for something else. For Thought, it's "one sentence or one remark" to sit with. For DJs and producers, it's the one break, the one sample, the one loop, etc.
Thought's comment about conversational tones reminds me of what sound engineer Ricky Reed said about facilitating the creative process among artists. I mentioned this in a previous issue of this newsletter, but it's worth bringing back here. Reed talks about needing to spend time talking and hanging out casually to get the artist in the mood to create. Like Thought said, listening to people talk is part of this, too.
I like to listen to artists talk; listen to their language and word choices. A lot of times I’ll remember – or discretely write down – three or four sentences that an artist says while we’re hanging out. Then later I’ll say, “That thing you said about that person we’ve been talking about, that’s interesting to me, and you said it in this way that was so poetic.” Most artists speak in lyric and don’t realize it. We’ll try to get the DNA for a concept or a track from hanging out. Then making it tends to be the easier part. But it’s those first few hours where we learn what we’re going to do for the rest of the day.
At first I figured all of this was really different from how MF DOOM had described his writing process. But then I took a look back at his 2009 interview and realized he, too, referenced listening to other voices.
When I’m doing a DOOM record, I’m arranging it, I’m finding the voices. . . . All I have to do is listen to it and think, Oh shit, that will be funny. I write down whatever would be funny, and get as many ‘whatever would’ funnies in a row and find a way to make them all fit. There’s a certain science to it. In a relatively small period of time, you want it to be, That’s funny, that’s funny, that’s funny, that’s funny. I liken it to comedy standup.
Status Board
Reading
I started reading Claudia Rankine's newest work Just Us: An American Conversation, the center of which seems to be an essay of sorts about whiteness and critical whiteness studies. I'm tying to decide what are fair expectations to put on a book like this, or maybe I'm just hesitating to say that I don't like it so far because it seems to be her deciding what she thinks of critical whiteness studies and letting us in on the entry level thought exercise. But I'm sticking with it.
Writing
More work on my reflective essay for promotion to full professor. I like this part I wrote. We'll see if it makes the final cut:
My work in this area has provided a third avenue through a topic divided by research methods and conflicting epistemologies. On one side: scholars who advocate for the use of these exams by using mostly quantitative research methods. On the other side: scholars who critique the exams as culturally-biased instruments that discriminate against teachers of color. In my work, I maintain the critical stance of the latter group but have a different epistemological starting point. My starting point is the subjective experiences of students -- mostly students of color -- who take the exams. I argue scholars, teacher educators, and policymakers have the most to learn from them.
Listening
-
This album Play With The Changes by Rochelle Jordan just came out. It's got UK house and garage, a few slower soul joints, and her super dope singing.
-
All of the music by Ester Rada, an Ethiopian soul-jazz singer born in Israel. I learned of her while watching a lecture by legendary music engineer Bob Power. Her unique cover album of Nina Simone songs might have gotten her the most attention, but her other albums — including the ones she sings in Amharic — are just as good.
Teaching
How the semester started:
How it finished: