A few years ago, maybe in the very end of 2019 or very beginning of 2020 I got super excited about a tape by an artist named Gareth JS Thomas.
He plays in some aggressive post punk bands I like a lot but this tape is pretty, moody, atmospheric instrumental music and for some reason I got so into it and in the particular way that I hadn’t for ages, the way where it felt like a creative provocation, like it was urging me to make stuff too. So I made a bunch of weird noise and drone music on my computer. None of it’s any good musically but it was really fun to make, I’d definitely do that over again were I to live this version of my life over again.Tonight I found a recent-ish track from this fall and then some older ones from 2021 and 2022 that I’d forgotten about. That was fun to find, I might put it out just to draw a line under it and say it’s definitely done. Making stuff feels good, that’s all.
Today I worked and I have little to say about that. I was on a work call that went really well actually, we got a lot done in a short time and it was satisfying and we laughed a lot. I wish work stuff was like that more often. After work I drove up to Fleet Farm to get some feed corn to make heating pads with. I also got two fifty pound bags of gravel on the thought I can put them in a dufflebag and try to level up my dufflebag workout routine. Right now I have one with eighty pounds of wood pellets in it. That will be rewarding to make and having more gear is always fun. Of course it’d be good to use the gear more often! Cheap gear rarely used is only a mild problem though, much better problem than expensive gear rarely used.
It was nice to be in Fleet Farm. I have fond memories of feed stores like that from when I was a kid. I didn’t remember where the corn or the gravel were, I thought I did but I couldn’t find either and had to ask for help right at closing time. I felt self-conscious in my mask and also for asking for help right at close. To get the gravel I had to drive around to the side gate for pick ups then drive around the back of the building where a guy with a forklift had a big pallet of gravel and helped me load it into my car, and to leave the guy at the gate checked my receipt and made sure I’d taken only the two bags of gravel. That was fun and funny. Both those guys were really young and the gate guy was on his phone in the little booth when I pulled up, he jumped when he saw me, presumably because he’s not supposed to be on his phone, poor guy. Booth’s gotta be a boring job. We all live in a booth really, in a way, if you think about it! There’s three kinds of booths in this world, son: phone booth, toll booth, and diner booth. You gotta choose. That’s what young John Wilkes’s father said to him, to terrible effect.
