Journal

18th OCtober

17th October

Oops I did it again. It all got a little much that last week, with lots of social stuff becuase of my sister being back! I've become accustomed to a fairly hermity existence and it was a lot of talking and not a lot of thinking, which was a little tough. Sadly she's headed back now, but I also have time to type again. The DSO shows were meant to mark a period of intense writing that infact I guess shall begin now. I did get a decent chunk done well she was here but not an entire chapter as I'd planned. I don't currently have any fun blog ideas, maybe a close reading of My Alice off Highway Prayers. Who knows. Today is about emails, making a new to do list, and getting some words down. Peace!

11th October

Lol typed a whole entry yesterday, put it into html here and didn't save the document. I'm counting it. Today wasn't as productive as hoped, but I've got a lot to do over the weekend as well and my sister goes back to australia early next week so I'm not in a great hurry. I got a free week on nugs and I'm so tempted to pay for a month that I can't super afford solely for the Billy SBDs. He's on fire this year. I'm listing to 27th July 24 now; There's a mind blowing "Black Mountain Rag" second song first set, and "West Dakota Rose" is blowing my mind. I've wheeled up the mandolin solo like three times now. I'm slowly reading the book, and I have been annotating it, I think that seems the most direct. Later I'm gonna watch The Boy and the Heron, I forgot to buy a ticket when it showed at the LFF like a doughnut and it's been a long year waiting. I'm doing a loose horror movie a day for October and wondered if a movie review page was a good idea for the blog. I'm not sure I'm that commited, I also don't super see movies in that way. Maybe I'll just link my low effort letterboxd. Could I embed it? I can! Wild. I dunno if the code I've found will work though. Let's see I guess.

10th October 2024

I've just got back from seeing The Shining at the cinema, on 35mm, which was a lot of fun. I hadn't realised the power of the sound watching the movie on TV's and laptops. It really puts you on edge. A remarkable film. I got home to my copy of The Silver Snarling Trumpet having arrived, which I hope to power through in the next 24 hours so I can carry on writing. I imagine this book will get pretty written up! I always write on my books but with getting this being so new it feels a bit of a shame. I'm sure I'll get over it. I think books should be able to withstand that. I'll write a little review of the book when I've finished it!

9th October 2024

I've been thinking a lot about Karl Marx's working habits, which were supremely disordered: "long days and nights of frenzied reading and writing, followed by collapses into exhaustion; a total inability to meet deadlines, even when his family's wellbeing depended on it; the 'impenetrable chaos of books and papers… that was his study'; an obsession with completeness, combined with an inability to resist plunging off into new projects before finishing others"

I never really struggle to meet deadlines but my working habits certainly approach his levels of chaos, with a fortnight of 16 hour days followed by three of nothing but distraction. I can't work out which was I should go, because this chaos is getting the work done faster than anyone is expecting, but I feel like I could acheive even more if I had a sense of consistency, or at least not a chronic aversion to it. Then again, maybe the chaos works. I always feel stifled by routine after a week or so. I don't know. Either way I think we're entering a period of work, which is a fun place to be. I've got a week free trial of nugs to catch up on some Billy SBDs, and a desire to type as fat as he picks, so it's not worth worrying about for now.

I've been thinking about getting some readings of Strings out, maybe My Alice, which has a real cool speaker and narrative. Let's see what happens!

7th & 8th October 2024

I even got as far as typing half an entry in the html for this page, but I got distracted and forgot to finish it. Swing and a miss. That's okay I feel though, I got a lot of writing done yesterday which is surely more important. We've found a way into the next chapter and it should be pretty easy from here on out, fingers crossed. I also need to be way more regular posting on instagram becuase the algorithm doesn't really seem to notice me atm. What a dystopia!

6th October 2024

5th October 2024

Look Guys, No Hands! My routine balance is not good. I kinda thrive on chaos. Another attempt at regularity incoming anyway. After the DSO shows last week my sister suprised us by showing up at the wedding of our cousin from Australia, which all proved too much and I was taken down by a mean cold for the best part of the week. I'm returning to a sense of personhood now and coming into a period of writing on Chapter 3. As I write this I'm listening to 1978/04/22 after the new Duke release and it's a crazy show. I think I'm gonna have to do a deep dive in the month.

I managed three days on the trot last time, let's see if I can't do better this time. Maybe I should make a virtual to-do list...I rejigged the site a bit at the cost of much fiddling, I needed individual pages for each blog post so it didn't just sprawl into the void over time. Maybe a more general sense of ease will help me maintain this a little better.

19th September 2024

Little progress on any code, but I did write a blog post about Courtney Barnett and her Confessional mode, so check that out if you're that way inclined. I also got in contect with a friend of mine about writing some guest posts for the blog. He's a storied psychedelic explorer who has used mushrooms to explore and overcome past trauma and mental health struggles. We exchanged letters for a while this year, and both mean to strat again, so I'm looking forward to helping share some of his unqiue and important thought.

18th September 2024

I tried to set up a contact form this morning but it seemed more complicated than I was ready to commit to, I will instead just link my instagram for now I guess. I still haven't worked out the best things to post there, I'd love to just share all my research but it's not wise, so for now it's mostly historical stuff. Hopefully these two avenues can work in tandem to supplement each other, I find Instagram fairly souless so maybe this can embody it with some of that.

I should make a longer to do to list, sorting out the layout should surely be a priority. I think I'll look into it now!

17th September 2024

It's been a fun 24 hours that has largely been dedicated to getting this website up to a point where I can write on it. We're just about there now and I figured it was a good time to do the first Journal. I've been thinking about the way that Hunter used his Journal and how frank and honest he was. I'm sure there's some golden quotes in there that I don't really have the time to find. He journalled online for nearly a decade with varying regualirty, and they are viewable in their totality at the Grateful Dead archives in Santa Cruz. I haven't checked out the Wayback Machine but that could be a valid route too.

I'd like to get some way for people to interact with the page, Hunter defnitely got a lot of communication and discourse, building a kind of community around his commitment to exploring the use cases for a poet on the internet. That would be cool. As it stands, I guess you can message me on Instagram, where my username is the same as here for branding.

Let's see if we can do this every day like Hunter sometimes managed to. Peace!