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Hello. I missed my self-imposed deadline and didn't send anything in April. I thought about it a couple times, but didn't follow through. Does that mean there will be two of these missives in May? Unknown. I wouldn't count on it.

I just started reading Duchamp Is My Lawyer by Kenneth Goldsmith. Among lots of other things, he is the founder and primary driver behind UbuWeb (https://ubu.com/) - which is a massive open archive of art from the fringes (and not so fringe). It exists on the margins of copyright/IP legality and permission. Everything is free and there are no restrictions on any of the content.

I'm only in the second chapter, but the first chapter already was supremely inspirational to me. It basically laid out the manifesto for UbuWeb and all of it aligned with my way of thinking about all this stuff. The netlabel I've run since 2008 or so, pan y rosas discos, has a similar philosophy - although everything on the pyr label is with the artist's explicit permission. The thing that impacted me immediately in the short term is Kenneth's requirement that UbuWeb be coded in simple html to prevent it from becoming dependent on new platforms that will inevitably be obsolete and fall apart at some point. When I started pyr I did everything with html in a text editor, which got kind of tedious after a few years and I migrated to wordpress and continue to use to this day. However, that commitment to basic html resilience and access jumped out at me when I read it. So, now I'm attempting to build a text only version of the pyr site with the least amount of code that I can. Boring you say? Fun, I say! For now.

April things. We went to Delaware and New Jersey for CPS' spring break and visited family, ate Wawa hoagies and Rita's water ice. We also went to Assateague Island National Seashore. We've been there a couple times years ago, but since we almost always go to Delaware in the summer it is oppressively hot to be out on the sand/dunes for a nature walk. So this was the first time we've gone and actually gotten to walk around for a decent amount of time. Did we see horses? Yes! Lots of them. They all came out to say hello to us. Did I take pictures of them? No! That is too trite.

Hi, I'm dusting off this newsletter in an attempt to work on reducing the severe levels of inhibition I have about sharing my creative things with others. I feel uncomfortable even writing that sentence. I have now deleted a few other sentences. I have a hard time writing about "creativity" and my relationship with it. It feels weird. But, it's prolly related to some of my other internal issues/dramas and is thus an important thing to work on.

I just finished a second round of bookbinding classes. It's something I've been cautiously interested in for the past twenty years or so, but never really did anything about. I think part of what motivated me is my current lack of desire for making a new zine. I haven't been writing for while now, but I started to feel like I still wanted to make something so I signed up for some classes. Part of the "cautious" interest is that a lot of books that I've seen are fiddly, fussy and excruciatingly detail oriented - all things that I'm not into. So much so that I hate decorating cookies. I appreciate looking at the work of other people who focus on such skill and detail, but if I have to do it I just quit.

Some of the bindings in my class were definitely in that category and I will never, ever do them again - case-bound books can fuck right the fuck off. There were a few others that were cool and felt good to work on, with names such as Belgian Secret and French Link, and I can see working with these in the future. I'm currently working on a zine/book hybrid which is typography collages with the names of guitar players who have directly influenced my own guitar playing. I'm almost done with the collages and then I'll print them out and use a stab stitch to bind them together. Neat.

People like pictures, check out this bullshit:

Hello subscribers!

Lots has happened since I sent the last one of these back in February. We are now in full on Chicago spring. Which meant a fluctuating 40-50 degrees rain and overcast skies for two months, followed by a week of 90 degrees and sun and then a delightful weekend of 70 degrees and sun. Nice! Bugs are back and bunnies are eating plants in the yard. And there are lots of birds. I'm super into the crows lately.

We visited my partner's sister in Santa Fe for the first time since the pandemic began which was fabulous. I am so grateful that we have the opportunity to visit that particular part of the world every so often. It is such a radically different environment/landscape than the great lakes region that I'm so familiar with and, really, anywhere else I've been. I remember getting out of the airport in Albuquerque the first time we went and it felt like reality rippled as my brain struggled to process what it was experiencing. In short, New Mexico is crazy beautiful. (see inadequate photo evidence from Bandelier National Monument below)

Hello subscribers!

Here it is February and there's snow on the ground. Melting though cuz today it's 40 degrees out. I think I'm deeply into mid winter hole up and shut in malaise mode. I'm finding it challenging to motivate myself to do much of anything. A lot of blanking out and staring into space. Even now while I write this. Yesterday I had something important, or that felt super important to write about here. But now I can't remember what it was. I have very little to share, but decided it was best to do one of these things just to attempt to make it a habit or something.

In general, daily staggered by:

the ideological selfishness that is foundational to us as a society. Our refusal to act out of care for anyone who is not us. Our completely twisted idea of the concept of freedom. The idea that any aspect of participating in society that is the slightest inconvenience to us is an infringement on our freedom to live. Freedom is only me being free to do what I want. If any of you do what you want that I don't like, that's an infringement on my freedom. If anyone asks me to act in ways that benefit society or the earth or nature, you are standing in the way of my freedom. FREEDOM.

Hello subscribers!

Here we are in November. It is rapidly getting colder. I think I've come to accept that I am only truly happy with Chicago weather for about four months out of the year. Mid-April through Mid-June and Mid-September through Mid-November. I'm alright with it for a large amount of the other times, but those are the sweet spots. Halloween weekend was the most social I've been in a long time, activities Friday-Sunday. I'm kind of good with not seeing anyone for a while now. But that's my introvert nature.

I've been mostly working on music stuff for the past couple of months. In the course of living I use my phone to record any guitar riff that I stumble upon. I have accumulated a lot of them over the past two years and I want to delete them from my phone and not think about them anymore. So, I spent some time appraising them and recording the ones that I felt were actually interesting. That took most of August. Then I added drum parts to them throughout September. Bass parts were added in October and now I'm adding keyboard parts with a midi keyboard and an approximation of a farfisa that I tweaked from a preset on a software synth. The guitar is the easiest part of this process for me, followed by the bass - although that is physically more challenging. Keyboard parts are okay, but drums are the biggest challenge by far. My least favorite is the vocals. But once I'm done with the keyboards I will start mixing everything to as close to final as I can before adding vocals. My goal is to be done with all of this in the spring. We shall see.

Hello subscribers! Thank you for subscribing to this emaily newsletter update dealy bob, I appreciate it!

The snapshot of my life right now is my mid-back is killing me. I suspect it has to do with my lack of core strength. My son is two weeks into in-person school at Chicago Public Schools and every day I expect to get some sort of note home telling us that they will be returning to remote school. The endless unstable gauzy fabric of pandemic living. Also we are at the sweet spot for cicadas, crickets, and katydids. Also, also - I am in constant anxiety and anger about global warming and environmental breakdown.

I have two things to share with you: