〰️〰️ IN 〰️

These are things I read, saw, ingested, ate, listened to, or just generally thought about in the last month that I want to share with you. It's an incomplete list (obviously) but it's the stuff I'm still thinking about.

This month's edition is shorter than most. It's been a challenging month of home repair, pet illness, computer malfunctions, and other frustrations.

crankie

As you all know, I'm a sucker for a workshop. And this month I took one at Shapeshifter Cinema on how to build a "crankie" — a form of storytelling that involves a scroll that is unfurled through little cranks. These used to be used in the pre-cinema era for backdrops, as well as the canvas for puppet shows or other community theater performances. (If you're interested in the history of these things, this site is a good starting point.)

I'll confess that I signed up for this without really realizing that I would have to actually DRAW the stuff on the crankie background. I was more interested in how they worked and how to build something like this for non-theatrical purposes. But when we got there, I realized that the vast majority of the time would be spent decorating these long scrolls.

And of course, everybody else who signed up for this class did so because they were exicted about making the actual scroll bit, so they were all incredible artists and illustrators. Many of them already had the story they wanted to tell in mind. Not me! And, I am quite terrible at drawing, actually.

So after a lot of stalling (measuring, remeasuring, etc) I went with a more abstract progression of little guys.

Here's my crankie:

sounds

A friend and I went to The San Francisco Tape Music Festival where we heard all kinds of sounds in complete darkness. It's one of my favorite events of the year in the Bay Area.

My favorite piece was this one, which was a lot of very gross sounds:

Nikos Stavropoulos
Par une belle fin d'apres-midi (2024)
8’20” Ambisonic
This work contrasts aural places of intimacy and enclosure with expansive spaces, propagating through their interaction. The title is borrowed from a painting by René Magritte, depicting two coffins seated in a mountainous landscape. The source materials for the work were recorded with 18-channel microphones arranged in a globe shape, encoded in Higher Order Ambisonics. Generous support lent by Musiques & Recherches at the Métamorhose d'Orphée Studio allowed completion of the work during the summer of 2024.

volleyball baby

The NCAA volleyball season is over but the two professional volleyball leagues have begun and so I am still watching an absurd amount of volleyball! If you ever want to talk volley please hit me up, mostly I just ramble at my partner about all my thoughts and he says "uh huh" because he is a hockey guy.

additional reading

• "He was withering. To wither is not the same as to break; to break is to have pieces to put back together, and to wither is to dry up, to wilt, to lose bone, to die, and death is the most boring. I needed to see pieces." 〰️ Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
• "Microscopic imaging and the distribution of these tattoos demonstrate a shift in tattoo practices during the Christian period, including tattooing on children under age three." 〰️ Revealing Tattoo Traditions in Ancient Nubia Through Multispectral Imaging
• "Others can, and should, live through being disappointed by you." 〰️ The Rare People Who Are Solid
• "Occasionally I’ll struggle to get an insect into the puppet’s bill and use my hand instead when the chicks aren’t looking." 〰️ I Live as a Crane
• "They stand a ways off, eyeing me as though I am preposterous and likely to do something dangerous and stupid at any time, and then once they have had their fill of me they look sidelong at one another and vanish as if due to some prearranged signal." 〰️ Letter From the Desert: Wild Eyes at La Contenta
• "Among the centuries’ worth of eggshells, prey remains, and natural nesting material, researchers identified 226 objects that were either made or altered by humans. These included weaponry like a crossbow bolt and wooden lance, decorated sheep leather, and parts of a slingshot." 〰️ Multi-Generational Vulture Nests Hold 700 Years of Human Artifacts
• "The way Faulkner treats his characters, I treat domain name projects. I buy them with an intention to develop. And I let them take the lead. They’re the inspiration for the business itself. They guide me towards what they need to become. I’m just the dude behind the keyboard (sorta)." 〰️ I Sell Onions on the Internet

〰️ OUT 〰️〰️

This is stuff I wrote, created, or published.

cubensis edit

The big project this month, creatively, was trying to tackle another pass through PROJECT CUBENSIS, my speculative historical novel. I got great notes from my agent on the last draft, and I wrote last month that I sat down and read the entire draft, start to finish, closely.

In doing that, and thinking harda bout the notes, I realized that I needed to break the book back up into parts and startegically (and brutally) rearrange. I work and write and edit in Obsidian, which has a really neat Canvas feature, and so I broke the book back down into scenes and laid them out.

There are, technically, spoilers in these maps if you really zoom in and decipher them, so if you're worried about that, I guess don't look too closely.

For each scene I wrote out what the point of the scene is, the key things that happen, and what has to change in this edit. Then I went through and rearranged, marking places where new scenes were necessary, killing my darlings, and building the book back up more strategically.

My goal was to get through this big edit and rearrange by the end of January (because I am going to be out of the country for most of February). I didn't manage that. This was a bigger lift than I predicted, and I had a harder month for focus than I had hoped. But I got 2/3 of the way done, and I've left myself detailed notes about what I need to do when I get back, and (most importantly) I think this edit is working!

Of course, we'll see when the whole thing is done and i read through it again whether that is actually true.

awooooo

At COYOTE, we did a lot of big structural work as a team to start the year off right. I continued to publish the Calendar every week. I also helped shepherd a really cool comic about mutual aid onto our site, and wrote myself about how to get plugged into local networks (and why you should do it now, before the fascist occupation comes to your city).

On a completely different note: I also went to a rave. I know, you're probably thinking "you? a rave? that doesn't sound right." But let me tell you that the rave was in a greenhouse, which explains why I went. Read my silly little report on the night here.

I also:

• Made the very challenging decision to step away from Unbreaking for a while. The work is so important, and also so hard and I couldn't find a way to balance the mental toll it took with the other projects on my plate. The team over there continues to do the work of documenting what this administration is destroying.
• Placed a short story! Lumina Journal will publish a story I wrote called "Sniff" that is about the horrors of medical care.
• Restarted my art practice, after letting it lay fallow for many months. Perhaps a bad idea, but my first project is a return to the weaving I abandoned last year.
• Went to the Oakland Museum White Elephant sale and got myself a tabletop bandsaw to repair, some pots, some prints, and some weird books.
• Played a lot of soccer (sometimes well, sometimes quite badly).
• Continued to be a gym bro.
• Nearly finished my office gallery wall.