🌌🧠Action Potential (from Galaxy Brain) #7
Hello! This is the email newsletter for Galaxy Brain, a creative studio, small press, and Risograph printer in the San Francisco Bay Area. Action Potential tends to contain a lot of “here’s what it’s like to run a tiny artistic business” along with a touch of “here’s what we’ve done lately”. It’s published whenever we have something to say, at most biweekly. If that sounds good, then wonderful, because you’re already subscribed.
Once upon a time there were such people as acquaintances, and in our day-to-day lives we'd run into people who we knew and liked, but had not seen in weeks, months, entire seasons. We'd stop to chat and try to catch up, asking, "what have you been up to?"
This was a bad question, and we knew it. Every time its business end was pointed at us, we'd find ourselves mentally rolling backwards through our recollections of ourselves—what had we been up to? A routine, largely. Maybe that routine had changed since the last time we saw that particular acquaintance. Could we tell? How can you give somebody the changelog on your personality in the time it takes to pass one another in (let us say) the narrow aisles at Trader Joe's?
When we were younger, it felt like we could be anybody we wanted so long as we could access the willpower to tear ourselves away from our habits all at once. It mostly did not work; the habits form the routine, and people run on routine. Most of our lives happen accidentally. It is very difficult to do something on purpose, right up until it becomes routine and is suddenly an unobtrusive part of you that goes unnoticed until somebody asks what it is you've been doing.
With this in mind, let us deconstruct the dreaded "what have you been up to" into two more interesting parts:
- What are you doing on purpose?
- What are you doing on accident?
If you can find the answer to those two questions, you're a long way towards describing yourself as you are right now. Perhaps this year you will start meeting acquaintances again, and perhaps this formulation will help you describe the person you have become before your acquaintance must take their shopping cart and go.
What We've Been Up To
These two projects of ours have become things we do on accident:
- Our fortnightly podcast, Thought & A Chaser, is taping its 26th episode tonight, completing our first season. We described this show as "irregular" for a long time to preemptively excuse ourselves when we inevitably did not keep a schedule. But this past year, it was the anchor of our work. We're getting good at it, too. Have a listen. đź’ś
- We've been helping artist Oliver Blank with his show The One Who Got Away for many months now, and we've begun to help edit the live shows into a podcast. It's a tremendously cathartic experience that we can confidently say is unlike any podcast you have listened to. New episodes come out every two weeks.
Meanwhile, we're doing a couple things on purpose:
- On the evening of Friday, January 22nd, we're celebrating Burns Night and we want you to come get acquainted with us. Burns Night is traditionally a feast celebrating the life and work of poet Robert Burns with haggis, scotch, and poetry. The first two are fine, the last one is key. Our Burns Night is a celebration of poetry especially—come prepared to read some poetry and make some toasts. The night will be a spark in the long dark winter that's just begun to end.
- Our audio work became central to us last year because we had very limited access to our Risograph for months. In the fall we moved studios, and now we're finally set up to print again. The tough part, as always, is bringing it back into a routine.
As you can see, we have some projects in the works, but we're also always on the lookout for people to help. If you have ideas, please respond to this email with your harebrained schemes. We'd love to help you make art something you do accidentally; let's begin by doing it on purpose.
– 🌌đź§