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, and, according to my mother, focused on her pretty much straight away, prompting her to to turn to my father and say: “There’s something about this baby”. They 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. 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 splash 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 Kanye puts it so well:
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, and accuracy, and it was more that that got to me.
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:
And this struck me whilst reading a list of aphorisms on music:
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. - Gioia (2024) 3
I press my thumb upon my larynx, or ‘voice box’, the seat of it all—"Images transfix. Images anaesthetise" (Sontag, 1977, 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. Soon all these cords and wires will be gone, and we will be liberated.
The YouTube algorithm chucks up Chomsky as the w/m is entering its eternal cycle, doing the bedsheets, as he reminds us:
Almost everybody spends most of their life living in a totalitarian system, it’s called having a job. 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. The time people take to comment.
And I get the idea of sampling his line, C&P’ing 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
If you could only play a record once, imagine the intensity you’d have to bring into the listening. – Derek Bailey. 6
The 45rpm black heavyweight (how lovely!) single gatefold vinyl EP for Blackout Baby is being cut in a London workshop as we speak. I await an update on the despatch date. 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. A one off collector’s item, £300.00 (or pay more), exact contents revealed on purchase.
And so, 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, kind of merging the odd lyric with narrative.
Liner notes are, except in classical genres, a dying breed; yet, digital liner notes still proliferate. I created my own over 96-pages 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’re heading towards a “delusional” 7 music industry and ecosystem largely made up of bots listening to bots. I note down the word.
As American composer and guitarist, improviser and academic, David Grubbs, contends in the introduction to his book Records Ruin the Landscape (2014) 8: “[a]lbum’s are a general confrontation with the world.” Yet, DSP’s effectively remove that world from the equation, and thus, a level of confrontation.
As numerous influencers and industry experts tend to drive home: content first, then the music. No one comes for your music, they come to you for you, says Nic D, in words to that effect. And he should know.
I’m not saying music needs explaining, for, imo, words will never do. John Doran, however, editor of music magazine The Quietus, whilst lamenting the decline of music journalism in yesterday’s The Guardian, counters this viewpoint, in that: “…the best writing can actually transcend the music.” 9
Furthermore, in memory of the recently deceased ‘genius’ Music journalist, Neil Kilkarni (R.I.P), music magazine Drowned in Sound posted a link on their Instagram page to a now archived piece on their site, which perhaps demonstrates such transcending in action: ‘The Neil Kilkarni Guide to Being a Record Reviewer’ (2009).10
It might seem incongruous to consider this concerted piece in favour of record reviewing in a climate afflicted with the recent acquisitions and mergers of both Pitchfork and Bandcamp, amidst others, which is symptomatic of a climate in which listeners no longer feel the need to go to reviewers to find out what’s worth buying because it’s more or less all there for free, anyway. The stakes are low. I think, though, that the below quote taken from this piece goes for anything we can say about music that’s worth saying:
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. - Neil Kilkarni (2009)
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 couldn’t pull it at all, once it was out there, before moving on to cite his concerns about the rather worrying “Rise of the TikTok News Anchor”.12
I get back in. 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 subs could have a say in it. He is terming this real-time composition THE EXPERIMENT13, 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.14
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 traversed all the numerous platforms that cropped up over time. 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, citing 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.15
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 Curve16 . 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 Nebraska17 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 radical phenomenology of time I am alluding to has been defined as ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)18 in the field of positivist psychology—an autotelic and 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 is all well and good but it also 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 deadline and with each new deadline, comes a new project. (Such ideas on the performativity of art and labour are confronted head on in Bojana Kunst’s (2017) Artist at Work: Proximity of Art and Capitalism.)19
Write or die
Meanwhile, if you struggle with deadlines, or ‘writer’s block’, there’s an app enticingly called Write or Die20, which you can sign up for via a c/c link.
It operates on a punish/reward system, deleting words from your draft if you hesitate for too long; and rewarding you when you don’t.
You also have the option to customise your reward mode, reward images, curate your own playlist, and choose from various nature backdrops, to set the scene.
If you dig puppies, for example, you can opt them in, and they will appear when you reach your requisite w/c.
‘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.’
Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words, 2nd edn., M. Sbisà and J.O. Urmson (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.
West, K. (2018b) “Killing You”. Ye. [Vinyl CD] United States: Def Jam Records.
Gioia, T. (2024, January 27) ‘Healing with a tin whistle.’ The Honest Broker. Available at: https://www.honest-broker.com/p/healing-with-a-tin-whistle. Accessed 30 January, 2024.
Sontag, S. (1977). On photography. New York: Dell.
Primo Radical. 169. Noam Chomsky. March 16, 2019. Available at: https://youtu.be/_EdXNCI51yA. Accessed 29 January, 2024.
Bailey’s quote is cited in: Masters, M. (2013). ‘Records ruin the landscape.’ Pitchfork. Available at: https://pitchfork.com/features/paper-trail/9370-records-ruin-the-landscape/. Accessed 20 August, 2022.
This word “delusional” - used to describe the predicted landscape of DSP’s in line with developments in AI - was modelled in a lecture and demonstration given by DeForest Brown, Jr. on Monday, 22 Jan 2024 16:00 GMT at the Boyd Orr Building held at University of Glasgow.
Grubbs, D. Records ruin the landscape. John Cage, the sixties, and sound recording. Durham: Duke University Press.
The Guardian, John Doran. “From Pitchfork to Q, Music Criticism is Under Attack. We Must Fight for the Magic it Inspires.” Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/30/pitchfork-q-music-reviews-critics-songs. Accessed 30 January, 2024.
“The Neil Kulkarni guide to being a record-reviewer.” In Depth // Drowned In Sound. (2009) Available at: https://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4137350-the-neil-kulkarni-guide-to-being-a-record-reviewer. Accessed 29 January, 2024.
Mitchell, J. (1971) Blue. United States: Reprise Records.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/01/25/the-rise-of-the-tiktok-news-anchor.
THE EXPERIMENT. Chapter 1 - S J WATSON : COMPENDIA (substack.com).
“How We Lost the Ability to Listen”, The Honest Broker - by Ted Gioia (honest-broker.com). 29 January, 2024.
Emma Gannon, The Hyphen, “How I Run The Hyphen on Substack”. 30 January, 2024.
Tempest, K. (2022) “No Pressure” on The Line is a Curve. [LP, Album, Limited Edition, Picture Disc, Stereo, Zoetrope.] UK: Fiction Records.
Madden, C. (2022) The line is a curve. Kae Tempest. Pitchfork. Available at: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kae-tempest-the-line-is-a-curve/ April 13. (Accessed 2 February 2023).
Springsteen, B. (1982) Nebraska. United States: Colombia Records.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. NYC, NY: Harper & Row.
Kunst, B. (2015) Artist at work. Proxmity of art and capitalism. Hants, U.K.: Zero Books.
Write or Die 3 :: Updated! Available at: Writeordie.com.