Spent all day at a 6 hour band practice today. First of the year, was nice to see the boys.

My band The Forest Bed will be back at Leo’s Cafe in Sydenham this Saturday. £10 for a ticket, the’ll be music and poets and you get food.

Leo’s is such a welcoming venue and the nights they put on are awesome.

If you are in South London why not grab a ticket and swing by?

Here’s us playing at Leo’s last October 23:

Experience.Computer

This months episode went out.
My interview with writer and social thinker Dougald Hine.

Dougald Hine – Experience.Computer

Jay Springett leads writer and social thinker Dougald Hine through a series of imaginative exercises.

Then they discuss:

• How the internet came in like a tide
• The importance of attention and presence
• The significance of writing by hand and its impact on self-expression and communication
• The power of conversation and its ability to shape and influence ideas and more

Read More

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Been working on the layout and design for a 60 page edition of my zine
• Wrote so many emails
• Had a call with Dougald Hine
• Had a call with Neilson
• Started writing a long thing. Not sure what its about or where its going.
• Trying to figure out my Q1
• Did some spreadsheet work for Novara, more to come

Terminal Access

Julian wrote a thing about the thing Matt made using the same thing Matt is using to write poems.

Dipping the Stacks

The moral imperative to learn from diverse phenomenal experiences | Aeon Essays

Most people report having an inner voice. For example, 83 per cent (3,445 out of 4,145 people in our sample) ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ with the statement ‘When I read I tend to hear a voice in my mind’s ear.’ A similar proportion – 80 per cent – ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ with the statement ‘I think about problems in my mind in the form of a conversation with myself.’ This proportion goes up even more when asked about social problems: 85 per cent ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’

How the internet became the modern purveyor of ancient magic | Aeon Essays

From the Renaissance humanists onwards, nearly every major proponent of what we might loosely call modern, liberal, democratic, technologically saturated life was involved with, or at least influenced by, intellectual and philosophical movements – from Hermeticism to Freemasonry

Earliest Carpenters – Archaeology Magazine

Rarely has a single find changed scholars’ views of the capabilities of people of the past as radically as the discovery of the world’s earliest known wooden architecture, which dates to nearly half a million years ago.

Software Is Beating The World

What I am saying is that Andreessen Horowitz isn’t a “media company that monetizes through VC,” but a form of financial cult.

The War on Informality – by Brett Scott

London is a city of endless helpful requests coldly delivered to sound like orders, alongside matey propaganda designed by M&C Saatchi to make corporate platforms look warm and cuddly.

Reading

I’ve cracked my head open this week listening to the audiobook of Martin Shaw’s Bardskull. The audio book is a totally different beast to the hardback. Bardskull-as-audiobook has to be one of the most important books I’ve read in recent years. It’s electric, like touching a live wire. The ‘uproar’ as Shaw calls it in the introduction is alive both in him, though him, and in me. I think I’m going to need a moment to recover once I’ve finished listening to it.

Bardskull is the record of three journeys made by Martin Shaw, the celebrated storyteller and interpreter of myth, in the year before he turned fifty. It is unlike anything he has written before. This is not a book about myth or narrative: rather, it is a sequence of incantations, a series of battles.

Also started reading A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders this week. I love the books format:

For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.

David Matthews & The First Calls – Speed Demon

First of all, THIS David Matthews isn’t the ‘Dave Matthews Band’ Jam band Dave Matthews. This is David Matthews, 1970 James Brown bandleader David Matthews. With that cleared up, this album is wall to wall mid 1980’s synth-funk. it RULES. Long protracted sax solos, guitar solos. Its funky as hell and full of great energy.

I’ve been listening to this album loads. On the plane to Thailand, in Thailand, on the way back from Thailand. Whilst washing up, or hanging up laundry. I think i’m going to pick up the LP on eBay if I see it at a good price with postage.

Double Bill this week!

Lambrini Girls – God Country

New Lambrini Girls single! (Previously on the blog)

Remember Kids: