Other Acts

5 minutes

My band played its first gig on Friday at one of Leo Food’s Supper Clubs. I had a great time, all the other acts on the night were amazing too. The evening had poets, singer songwriters, a jazz band, and stand up comedians.

In a weird twist of fate, we were playing along side Esther aka Quiet Choir. We used to work together about 10 years ago and haven’t seen each other in about as long! Apparently she also lives with another colleague from back then too. LOL. It was really great to catch up and get to play alongside each other. Esther plays queer Ani DiFranco shoegaze on an acoustic guitar. Check her work out if that sounds up your street.

Leo also fed us all too, which was … amazing!

If you live local to Crystal Palace or near enough, keep an eye on Leo Food’s mailing list!

In other Forest Bed related news, we should be playing a bunch of shows in May and June, I’ll post about them obviously. Our 4 track demo/EP is still coming along. Mixing is in progress, second vocals still need recording but things are in progress.


Photo 365

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Permanently Moved

Speed Barbie, Racer Knight

The New Barbie Movie, Cultural Fracking, my aphantasia and why Speed Racer is a much better movie than The Dark Knight

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

  • Built some spreadsheets for Novara Media
  • Planning meetings about my New Centre Course later this year
  • Met up with Xin and had drinks along south bank. Super nice evening!
  • A huge burst of productive writing that needs breaking up and ‘doing something with’
  • Finished my next zine
  • Lovely long chat with Sarah from Ignota
  • Still seeking confidence 🙁

Dipping the Stacks

What does your narrative system need to do?

This is a question that comes up very frequently in the narrative design conversations. This post is a tour of some possible answers.

The Avery Review | Forest Governmentality and the Struggle for More-Than-Human Sovereignty

This essay explores three legal instruments of forest governmentality—the Charter, the Constitution, and the Contract—that offer an updated imaginary for the rights of nature and more-than-human sovereignty beyond property.

WATCHTOWER: a short story by Warren Ellis – WARREN ELLIS LTD

I crested the plateau and stopped for a moment, wondering if I were the first person to breathe the air out here….

Infinite Game Storytelling — simondlr.com

Conflict narratives hijack our brains to simulate conflict, and teaches us how to overcome change. This is evident from the absurd to everyday: lightsaber space wizards in a battle of good vs evil to class struggle in modern day South Korea.

Do The Thing! | Musings of an Aspie

Maybe my bullshit detection program wasn’t running in high gear. I’m usually pretty good at detecting when someone is trying to put one over on me. And at pushing back. Hard if necessary. This was a low stakes situation, though. Spending an additional hour doing something isn’t a very high cost.

Reading

Still reading Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age its fantastic. I’ve already recommended it to 2 people IRL. About half way through now. Really enjoying it.

I finished Scott Westerfeld’s Youngbloods a fitting end to an 8 part saga. I’ve seen grumbling on goodreads reviews about the ending but I thought it was … fine.

James Bridle’s Ways of Being is fantastic. I finished it this week. I recommend reading it back to back with Gordons Ani.Mystic for where we need to be heading in 2020’s. Plus it settles in nicely with the much wider ‘reading list’ like Thus Spoke The Plant, Sand Talk, Braiding Sweetgrass, Apocalyptic Witchcraft and a whole host of other books i’m forgetting off the top of my head.

Dougald Hine was kind enough to send me the draft 0/first draft of his first book. He talked about writing it briefly on season 4 of The Great Humbling podcast recently. Last time we spoke earlier in the year he was just winding up to write the thing. As of writing this I’m about 1 evening away from finishing it. I think it’ll be a book that sits alongside the previously mentioned reading list upon release.

I picked up the audio book for the new 40k Dawn of Fire series book Throne Of Light yesterday. Havn’t started it yet, but John Banks is narrating, so it’ll feel like good company.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Music For 18 Musicians (Steve Reich) by Erik Hall

Released in 2020, Erik Hall performed every part himself, using instruments he had on hand. He recorded one section a day, one layer at a time in live, single takes, painstakingly cobbling together a loving interpretation of Reich’s 1976 masterpiece of minimalism.

This trailer for the album gives a taste of the the experience is like:

I actually performed part of this Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians whilst at university. Section I has always been my favourite chord in suite of 11 sonic/tonal explorations, and remains so with Hall’s s rendition.

I’ve listened to this album 3/4 times this week, in diffrent contexts and states of mind. Whilst we might now be in the era of post-post modernism, Reich remains one of the most influential artists in my life, ever since a 6th former named Tom gave me a mix tape that contained Music For 6 Marimba’s when I was about 15 and changed my life forever.

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One response to “Other Acts”

  1. […] convinced I picked up Covid again at the gig(?) last Friday? I had all the symptoms; cough, temperature, days of shivering and shaking, basically Monday though […]

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