A photograph with a white border exists on an iPhone. It does so in a photograph of photographs all with white borders. I access this photograph of photographs all with white borders via my touch screen ID. When I upgrade which I will soon need to do, I will have no choice but to do so for a model with facial recognition at the mercy of delayed obsolescence. Meanwhile, the speaker on this iPhone I carry around with me is contaminated with iron filings fresh off the North Sea.
When I examine these photographs of photographs all with white borders which exist on an iPhone in need of an upgrade and at the mercy of delayed obsolescence with a speaker contaminated with iron filings fresh off the North Sea, I will be doing so with the same eyes that stare back at me in these very photographs.
These eyes were big and blue when I was born. According to my mother, they focused on her pretty much straight away, prompting her to to turn to my father.
“There’s something about this baby,” she said.
My eyes are now lined in a luxurious jet black kohl crayon which glides on—the application of which is almost a pleasure.
These photographs of photographs all with white borders which exist on an iPhone in need of an upgrade and at the mercy of delayed obsolescence with a speaker contaminated with iron filings fresh off the North Sea, and examined with the very same eyes staring back at me, were loosely assembled on a black sofa.
The black sofa which is not mine but my landlord’s resembles a pair of lips and is likely from Ikea. I utilise it as negative space, like a cut-out. I take another photo, add a ‘dram warm’ filter to it, save it and watch the Apple timer do a full circle before moving it to the album entitled ‘BB’.
In ‘BB’, can be seen my legs, tilted up towards the ceiling; and my left eye, luxuriously lined in kohl, dominating the frame.
The beauty spot above my lip is real; the moon on the wall, not.
The blushing effect - or orb - on the matte surface of the print and on the sofa itself exposes the glare of the angle poise lamp angled down upon it.
On handling things
I wanted to talk about the physicality of things. For example, sending something off knowing that it’s coming back to you in a physical form. Waiting upon delivery updates and ETAs you don’t automatically archive or leave unopened, kindly informing you that “your item has been dispatched” and to check for a follow-up email prior to making an unnecessary visit to the store. Or, that there’ll soon be a knock at the door, and the need to sign for something; an act which causes you, in situ, to recognise that the signature you used to practise over and over as a teenage girl (predicting what all the lines and curves and whoops that went way above and below the line had in store for you) has since morphed into an illegible squiggle that even you can’t decipher, perpetrated via an e-Pen on a grey, plastic screen.
On TLC
Regarding paper type, I chose matte, over gloss. Not only is it preferable for mono prints, but it deters glare, and fingerprints. What I didn’t account for, though, were my own fingerprints, or rather, my handprint, on the mirror of the wardrobe door which you can clearly see here:
Last night, I stood in Superdrug, painting my nails Midnight Black, with sparkles, floating down the aisles, caught on CCTV, just before closing, the scent of acrylic in my wake.
In the photographs, you won’t be able to make out the sparkles but they are there, I promise.
I want to let it all spill out in this draft zero; the bed, the body, my body, your body, my rear, your thighs, your cock. Are you familiar with Austin’s ‘speech acts’?1 They can really make things happen, you know. Imagine if we only spoke in imperatives? Where would we be? Can saying make it so?
As the rapper, Kanye West phrases it, in the lyrics to “Killing you” from the album Ye (2018b): “People say, ‘Don’t say this, don’t say that’ just say it out loud to see how it feels.”2
Lunar delights
A hand-drawn lunar calendar arrived in the post this morning. There was no postmark, and the stamp was left untouched (as is the case now with the re-vamped bar code system).
I had no idea who sent it, or whether it was a mistake, but hung it up on the wall anyway. Each pencilled in moon had been hand-painted accordingly, 365 times, with obvious devotion.
Apparently, 90 dB is the optimal level of noise to inculcate focus, which is about that of cafes, and which might explain why many of us tend to find working out and about productive. This Lynchian number, below, nearly put me in a trance earlier, though, tapping away. I caught the tail end of it for you:
This struck me whilst reading a list of aphorisms on music, Gioia (2024) cites:
Philosophers treat music as a kind of aesthetic experience, but it’s more a physiological force. Long before a song impacts our ideas, it has already changed out bodies.3
I press my thumb upon my larynx, or ‘voice box’, the seat of it all—"Images transfix. Images anaesthetise" (Sontag, 1977, p.20).4
All this I say and don’t say. All this I sing and don’t sing. All this I sound, and don’t sound.
The YouTube algorithm chucks up Chomsky as the w/m is entering its eternal cycle, doing the bedsheets, as he reminds us in an interview with Primo Radical (2019) that having a job equates to living in a totalitarian system.5
If we look at the comments, kind souls quote him, others ‘time-stamp’ him, and everyone’s in it together.
I spend far too much time reading comments on YouTube videos, in general, watching them cascade into a symphony of empathy, and sincerity; all these lonely bods the world over, caring to relate to a stranger who they will never meet, in a land they’ve probably never been to. On top of this, there’s the time people take to comment. I get the idea of sampling his line, copy and pasting it, splicing it, speeding it up, slowing it down, stretching it, distorting it willy-nilly, running it through amps, octaves, delay, robots, or putting it on helium.
The one cut
As Derek Bailey points out: “If you could only play a record once, imagine the intensity you’d have to bring into the listening (quoted in Masters, 2013). 6
The 45rpm black heavyweight EP Blackout Baby is being cut in a London workshop as we speak. I await an update on the despatch date. I drafted the liner notes up last week and will be writing them up by hand, to fold inside, alongside the prints—not wanting to bloat the cover art with words, or interpretation.
I spent last Friday hanging out in an art shop down the arcade handling Japanese samples for intaglio, calligraphy and printmaking, trying out suitable papers to write these notes upon.
Kitikata Green? Okawara or Bunkoshi Select? Gampi fiber? Subtle gloss? Warm-toned or greener?
The names alone had me drifting away somewhere exotic. We were matching samples to the cover art, checking tone and hue before I clocked I’d still got ‘red light’ mode on, the owner with his ruler to hand, ready to cut a sheet into four.
On general confrontations and setting people’s heads on fire
An ex-student of mine - Raghad - now a music journo living in London, brought me a vinyl copy of Dylan’s Desire as a parting gift, and I’ve carried this around with me ever since. On the back cover, the liner notes are a mixture of lyrics and stream-of-consciousness, rather oblique, and not technical in the least.
Liner notes are, except in classical genres, a dying breed; yet, digital liner notes still proliferate. I created my own for Space Junk. Our listening habits and streaming in general obviates the need for liner notes, context, biographical details, and/or production credits (although this isn’t the case with Bandcamp). In place of notes, for example, Spotify recently brought in visual canvases - up to 7 second video clips - or individual cover art for each song or single, in the name of expression, and maximising the capacity to market each song separately.
This bypassing of real-world context suits the algorithmic playlists taking over from editorials, the listeners of which don’t even know who they’re listening to much of the time, let alone care for the intentions behind the music. Moreover, with the acceleration of AI, it has been predicted in quantitative models that we are heading towards what the cultural theorist, DeForrest Brown Jr. relayed as a “delusional” 7 music industry and ecosystem, consisting of “bots listening to bots”.
As Grubbs argues in the introduction to Records Ruin the Landscape (2014) records as formats contend with the world8. Yet, digital service providers routinely remove that world from the equation, along with biographical information upon the artist, and back story, this is compounded by the proliferation of AI artists and artists who probably do not even exist despite the play counts. Ironically, though, as industry experts tend to drive home: content first, then the music. No one comes for your music, they come to you for you. This is no to say that music needs explaining, yet, as John Doran, the editor of music magazine The Quietus, points out whilst lamenting the decline of music journalism in The Guardian: “…the best writing can actually transcend the music.”9 The recently deceased Neil Kilkarni perhaps demonstrates such a notion in: ‘The Neil Kilkarni Guide to Being a Record Reviewer’ (2009) which Drowned in Sound have since made free to read:
Don’t just describe - but justify. Make sure the reader knows why the record exists whether the reasons are right or rascally. And always remember you’re not here to give consumer advice or help with people’s filing. You’re here to set people’s heads on fire.
Kilkarni (2009)10
On echoes and incandescence
I grew up in a house of wires and circuit boards, the patterns of which would get imprinted upon the soles of my feet, as I navigated desire lines through a garage chockablock with TV sets and blown inner tubes, all in for repair, setting up my easel and mixing my oils on a cracked plate with a J-cloth of turps, painting away to Joni Mitchell’s Blue (1971).11
Was this what love was going to do to me? This voice, and her melodies, come to warn me?
The composition echoes, like you echo.
The hardware (the camera, in this case) is exposed.
A newscaster is banging on about AI and deepfakes and Taylor Swift and the number of views they got in no time at all and how nothing can really be done about it but something needs to be done about it and how it spells the end of mainstream journalism and the estimated number of times it got shared before Meta even pulled it and the fact that they could not pull it at all once it was out there.
I arrive back.
The flat is flooded with a low sun, incandescent. Thought I must have left the light on. A moment later it was gone. Against the bed are anti-allergenic pillows propped up upon pewter Egyptian cotton sheets, 400 thread count, and soft to the touch. I up the contrast on my lips, accentuating their natural bow, and turn towards the mirror, with salty fingers.
I’m in a rowing boat, being cupped by serene waves, under a violet and distant sky, dressed in a full-length peach lace vintage gown, its straps caressing my clavicles; the moon—uncovering me.
Luminous.
“Your skin was white when you were born”, said my mother, “not like your sister, or brother.
The Experiment
The author S. J. Watson began writing his ‘novel in public’ on Substack using draft zero as a concept in which his subscribers could have a say in it. He is terming this real-time composition ‘The Experiment’ releasing a new chapter fortnightly with his readers voting on themes, locations and events.
Watson articulates draft zero as one which exists in a liminal state - somewhere between an outline and a first draft - likening it to a painter stretching his canvas and preparing his paints (which suggests he has never been a painter, and does not think like a painter). He then retracts all that and says it can be whatever you want it to be.
In a similar vein of exposure, the American music scholar, academic, and jazz/cultural critic, Ted Gioia, has just announced that he’s publishing his new book Music to Raise the Dead in installments, direct-to-reader, only on Substack, having recently and very successfully transitioned away from both mainstream and academic publishing.12
Likewise, Emma Gannon, author of The success myth. Letting go of having it all (2023) and the popular Substack newsletter, The Hyphen, is another six figure success story here. The author had gone years penning free newsletters, having . In her most recent post, on owning her career, she gets personal, sharing behind the scenes stuff, including the financial ins and outs of running a newsletter that will likely be of much interest to her readers. She cites Taylor Swift, re-recording and re-publishing her masters, and taking back creative control, as an extreme case in point: “An artist owning their work — it feels revolutionary in a world that wants you to feel grateful for crumbs.”13 I touched upon this in a previous post.
Less push, more flow
The above heading is taken from the song “No Pressure” on Kae Tempest’s latest album The Line is a Curve14 . It’s part and parcel of both draft zero and the one take in that both, but certainly the latter, require getting lost in the material in order to emerge through it. Yet, draft zero demands subsequent drafts and re-drafts; whereas the one-take might be all that it takes.
Bruce Springsteen’s incomparable solo album Nebraska15 is a superlative case in point, in which the demo ended up being the definitive version. The E-Street Band, (and not for trying), eventually gave up on summoning the magic of the original, which Springsteen recorded - off-the-cuff - with a four track on his own in a hotel room. Unrepeatable, and unbeatable.
A sailor doesn’t know which way North is, but his compass does.
The loaded event
The one-take takes commitment. You can’t stop, or start over, back out, or repair it half way through. There’s an ethics of performance about it; pressing record is a loaded event.
A title often reveals itself in the last line, or last few lines, to christen the song; or, conversely, the song might go out with a bang—a ‘sudden ending’.
Another common trait of both draft zero, (if done with appropriate abandonment), and the one take, as both methodologies and performative rituals, is the alteration, even transformation of time. This altered phenomenology of time I am alluding to has been defined as “flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)16 in the field of positivist psychology—as an optimal experience which is an end in itself.
Such flow states have since been appropriated in the workplace via workshops designed to get employees out of their ‘comfort zone’ and enhance productivity metrics. Skills and even personality traits, common to improvisers, such as taking the initiative, openness, play, risk-taking, and the capacity to enter into a sort of dismantling of self in the process, can be facilitated. This delimits the worker as a never enough, never-ending neoliberal project, subject to tick-box regimes, and an annual litany of self-improvement metrics. With each project comes a new deadline; and with each deadline, comes a new project. Such ideas on the performativity of art and labour are relayed in Kunst’s (2017) Artist at Work: Proximity of Art and Capitalism.17
‘Get your rocks off, get your rocks off, honey.’
‘Get your rocks off, get your rocks off, honey.’
‘Get your rocks off, get your rocks off, honey.’
‘Get your rocks off, get your rocks off, honey.’
‘Get your rocks off, get your rocks off, honey.’
‘Get your rocks off, get your rocks off, honey.’ 18
Austin, J.L. 1975. How to do things with words, 2nd ed. Sbisà, M. and Urmson, J.O. eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
West, K. 2018b. Killing you. Kanye West. Ye. [CD]. US: Def Jam Records.
Gioia, T. 2024a. Healing with a tin whistle. 27 January. The Honest Broker. [Online]. [Accessed 30 January 2024]. Available from: https://www.honest-broker.com/p/healing-with-a-tin-whistle
Sontag, S. 1977. On photography. New York: Dell.
Primo Radical. 2019. 169. Noam Chomsky. [Accessed 29 January, 2024]. Available from: https://youtu.be/_EdXNCI51yA
Masters, M. 2013. Records ruin the landscape. 03 April. Pitchfork. [Online]. [Accessed 20 August 2022]. Available from: https://pitchfork.com/features/paper-trail/9370-records-ruin-the-landscape
DeForrest Brown Jr. 2024. DeForrest Brown, Jr. Lecture and demonstration. 22 January. The Boyd Orr Building, the University of Glasgow.
Grubbs, D. Records ruin the landscape. John Cage, the sixties, and sound recording. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Doran, J. 2024. From Pitchfork to Q, music criticism is under attack. We must fight for the magic it inspires. The Guardian. [Online]. 30 January. [Accessed 30 January 2024]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/30/pitchfork-q-music-reviews-critics-songs
Kulkarni, N. 2009. The Neil Kulkarni guide to being a record-reviewer. Drowned In Sound. [Online]. 13 July. [Accessed 29 January 2024]. Available from: https://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4137350-the-neil-kulkarni-guide-to-being-a-record-reviewer
Joni Mitchell. 1971. Blue. [CD]. US: Reprise Records.
Gioia, T. 2024b. How we lost the ability to listen. 29 January. The Honest Broker. [Online]. [29 January 2024]. Available from: https://thehonest-broker.com/p/how-we-lost-the-ability-to-listen
Gannon, E. 2024. How I run The Hyphen on Substack. 30 January. The Hyphen. [Online]. [29 January 2024]. Available from: https://thehyphen.substack.com/p/how-i-run-the-hyphen-on-substack
Tempest, K. 2022. No pressure. Kate Tempest. The line is a curve. [CD]. UK: Fiction Records.
Madden, C. 2022. The line is a curve. Kae Tempest. April 13. Pitchfork. [Online]. [Accessed 2 February 2023]. Available from: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kae-tempest-the-line-is-a-curve/
Bruce Springsteen. 1982. Nebraska. [CD]. US: Colombia Records.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1990. Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper & Row.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. 2014. Flow and the foundations of positive psychology: the collected works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Berlin: Springer.
Kunst, B. 2015. Artist at work. Proximity of art and capitalism. Ropley, Hants: John Hunt Publishing Limited.
Jagger, M. 1972. Rocks off. The Rolling Stones. Exile on Main St. [CD]. US: Rolling Stones Records.