Laundry – Lawn Feeling
Ryo Kawasaki & The Golden Dragon – You Are the Sunlight
Gigi Masin – Tears Of A Clown
Shira Small – Lights Gleam Lonely
Michael Mayer – The Problem
Larry Heard – One, Three, Five, Seven, Eight
Roberto Musci & Giovanni Venosta – El Lamento De Los Ayatollah
Alex Cortiz – Chambre 606
Uakti, Paulo Sergio dos Santos, Arthur Andres Ribeiro & Decio de Souza Ramos Filho – A Lenda

Fousheé - Wind
Inoue Shirabe - Function Spring
2Lanes, Jonah Baseball & Overtone Series - Honeycrisp
Move 78 & Aver - Pearls Before Swine
Can - Shikako Maru Ten
Wolfram Brunke - So Far
Cartola - O Mundo É um Moinho
The Vernon Spring - SK-1
Andris Mattson - Still
Misha Panfilov - Caipirinha
Cartola - Peito Vazio
Cousin - 88
Steve Spacek - Waiting 4 You
Angie Stone - Wish I Didn't Miss You
Don Cherry - Benoego
Forma Norte - Outro

Meaghan Garvey: There’s this feeling which I wrote about before, discussing United in Flames. But it’s like the music and images together express a kind of longing, a nostalgia... but for what?

Malibu: Probably unanswerable. But something I had written for the album (though it goes for everything) is “desiring desire.” It’s like... yearning for what? I don’t even know. I don’t know. Yearning for yearning. It’s really hard to tell in this day and age.

— interviewing Malibu, SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE 81

across artistic disciplines, including writing and music, the degree of specificity with which someone can describe vagueness generates acclaim. that line of thought is where this writing started for me, with garvey and malibu circling the idea of “desiring desire,” or yearning for yearning. it felt like a useful way to talk about the concept of vagueness, because a feeling can be very clear even when the object of the feeling is not. i was recently reading through a pitchfork review of jeff tweedy’s latest effort, twilight overdrive, which they described as “ambivalent and unknowable and funny and compelling”. that phrasing struck me because it performs the same trick: it makes the unclear feel intentionally observed. the appeal is not vagueness by itself, but the ability to frame vagueness without resolving it.

i see a version of this same impulse in acclaimed pop cultural pundits and writers i encounter, who often riff on the concept of vagueness even while appearing to do the opposite. these writers possess a level of specificity that allows them to describe the items and mechanisms of culture they focus on. this ability to locate cultural coordinates roughly corresponds with categories, allowing people, styles, and moods to be placed on a spectrum that is easier to define, like edgelord, incel, sad girl, etc. ironically the categories themselves are porous, slippery and sometimes a bit...vague. many songwriters carry that same quality: the feeling is legible, but the object remains unclear. not fully knowing what someone means can create its own halo. underneath all of it resides an honest attempt to pin down the nature of life and reality, both fleeting, ambiguous and subjective experiences.

none of this is especially new as a problem, even if the current aesthetic version feels new. philosophers have been trying to solve the slipperiness of vague categories for a very long time. for instance, the sorites paradox begins with a simple ancient dilemma. if one grain of sand does not make a heap, and adding one grain cannot suddenly transform non-heap into heap, at what point does the heap appear? the question feels almost childish, yet it exposes a serious instability in how language draws boundaries around reality. we rely on words like tall, rich, famous, relevant, authentic, or meaningful, as though they name precise states, when in fact their meanings dissolve at the edges.

the tone of this very essay is of relative certainty, sometimes without citations or qualifiers. if you find that to be interesting, i challenge you to consider if it’s because i’m being vague.

in earlier eras of western art and criticism, this instability was often resolved through clarity and definition, which allowed the audience to feel closer to the material. interestingly, our present comfort with vagueness runs counter to a lot of the popular culture of yesteryear, which valued specificity as a premium. the emphasis was on clarity, precision, and resolution across disciplines. in painting, renaissance artists perfected linear perspective, anatomy, and proportion to depict reality as exactly as possible, with the goal of creating clear, coherent images that resolved into definitive scenes. in music, tonal harmony and formal structures such as the sonata or fugue carried listeners toward resolution. ambiguity might appear along the way, but it always pointed back to cadential closure, a return to home.

similarly, philosophy and literature, even when grappling with abstractions, often prized distinctions, definitions, and explanatory order. from aristotle’s attempt to stabilize meaning through categories to the enlightenment’s encyclopedic ambition, these ideas centered on creating meaning, categorization, and definition, which are 3 antonyms for vague. classical thought is obsessed with the opposite of vagueness, which makes the modern turn toward vagueness feel like a reversal. what used to alienate people now seems to comfort them; the blur itself has become the site of meaning.

underneath this shift is a pronounced lack of moral and ethical certainty, which is the most tried and true grey area of existence. where earlier eras trusted shared narratives about truth, progress, or virtue, the present moment inherits their collapse. postmodernism did not simply introduce vagueness into art and culture, it made vagueness a survival strategy. when grand explanations lose credibility, ambiguity becomes a way to speak without pretending to possess authority. irony replaces declaration. mood replaces message. the refusal to fully define becomes a gesture of honesty. in a world where certainty has so often been used as a tool of control, vagueness offers a softer posture, one that admits complexity rather than conquering it.

the sorites paradox forces us to ask whether vagueness is a flaw in language, thought, or reality itself. the very vagueness that frustrates philosophers is also what allows words, art, and music to carry ambiguous, open-ended, romantic meanings, giving rise to its allure. the paradox is that precision now lives in describing vagueness: pinning down the blurry edges without ever hardening them. vagueness has gone from being a logical or philosophical puzzle to being one of the most seductive qualities in art.

if the sorites paradox reveals how impossible it is to draw a clean line, vagueness is what happens when we stop trying. it is the acceptance that most of the categories we live inside are provisional sketches rather than finished drawings. instead of treating blurry edges as a bug, vagueness reframes them as its primary feature. what began as a logical problem becomes an aesthetic strategy. rather than forcing the heap into existence, we linger in the moment before it forms, where meaning is suggestive, incomplete, and open to participation. the paradox exposes the instability and vagueness turns that instability into a home.

i’m not above employing vagueness as a stylistic choice. i can see now that i was dabbling in vagueness as a form of sport in i’ve been quiet, not idle. i was intentionally vague about the systems i was building, vague about what they were supposed to offer, and vague about the circumstances of my untimely departure. some of that was because the thing was still forming, but most of it was intentional. i was trying to let the shape of the thing appear without pretending the heap had already arrived.

there is probably another essay worth exploring the darker version of this instinct, where classification becomes a way to lay clean categories over things that may not want, need, or fit them. but maybe this is where vagueness becomes useful to me: not as evasion, exactly, but as a refusal to pretend the world has cleaner edges than it does.

the vagueness of the whole “thing” allows everyone to crowd under the big tent of interpretation. i believe vagueness somehow brought us closer to the essence of reality, which is fundamentally unknowable. perhaps this is why i keep arriving at the subject from different directions: philosophy, aesthetics, pop culture, criticism, music, and whatever is happening in my own life. i do not really trust one discipline to answer the question alone. if there is an answer, it probably lives at the intersection of things, where each discipline makes the others a little more legible. i can make the argument in good faith, but this is also where i step back into what i actually believe: how can anything be known with a level of certainty, honestly? ultimately, any attempt to “know” is futile, so i suggest these folks are on to “something”.

i hope that’s vague enough for you.

Jad Taleb – Je Suis Vous (feat. MAXXII)
Ulla – Foam Angel
Slow Attack Ensemble – Rivers Turn to Waterfalls
Woo – 1001 Decisions
Shabaka – Kiss Me Before I Forget (feat. Lianne La Havas)
African-American Sound Recordings – Run-A-Way
Gotan Project – Tríptico
Camiel – El Alba
Towa Tei, Pascale Borel – A RING
Axel Boman – Slave to the Vibe
Silvia Kastel – Target
Aksak Maboul – Silhouettes (feat. Veronique Vincent)

i’m guessing people probably have no idea what i have been doing. my social media has been dormant. the most honest answer is that i’ve been healing. it’s not the first time i’ve gotten quiet across social media. sometimes i go through periods of posting inconsistently.

truthfully, i have been going through a lot. when you start seeing the tarot girlies on your timeline on instagram, just know that you are down horrendous. bordering on religious psychosis. right now my entire feed is tarot. to borrow some of their themes and symbolism, i’ve been in something like a tower moment, or a dark night of the soul: a collapse of perceived meaning, deep feelings of emptiness, and the shedding of ego. don’t worry too much about me because this is not me living in a permanent state of despair. this is me taking stock of what’s working and what isn’t.

there were a lot of things going on in my personal life where i felt like i got the rug pulled out from under me, specifically between february and march. i spent my birthday completely alone, driving around in my hometown and thinking about what my next steps were. the compass i had been using appeared to be broken. it was pointing in a direction that wasn’t honest or rooted in reality. in other words: i was delusional.

when i set things down, i don’t usually set it and forget it. i work round robin. i work in cycles. rarely will i set something down and not pick it back up. it’s just a matter of when. this is me picking it back up again, not having forgotten about it at all.

around the holidays, i was very active on substack. i was away from los angeles and while the year was winding down, i found myself in an introspective and nostalgic place.

i read a great deal between november and february. i went through a rapid expansion in terms of the context i had to work from when i thought about making something. suddenly i’m seeing it through a literary lens. through internet critique. through what my youtube algorithm is bringing me. through ai and the way everything is shifting in the world at large. most importantly, as the artist, it’s my job to filter and react to those things, even if it’s not in real time.

when it comes down to it, much of what i do is rooted in escapism. the music i make is sort of an escapist fantasy, and running into the process of it has been an escape for me in the past. in an altruistic way, maybe my music helps other people escape too. but my art practice in general, it is a form of escapism.

reading and writing was presenting itself as another escape: self isolating while escaping behind letters, behind essays, behind critique, because there were a lot of things in my personal life that i was struggling to control. i wanted to escape into an entirely imagined world. a perceived lack of meaning coupled with an explosion of ideas and the desire to escape from my situation gave way to the first burst of substack inspiration.

when i started thinking critically, i could see pain points surfacing at two scales: the immediate issues in front of me and the longer-term patterns beneath the surface. little by little, i became more analytical about how to solve some of my problems. many were firmly within my control. some were financial while some were physical. i was feeling insecure about changes happening with my body and my health. i became really self-absorbed in a way that wasn’t totally unhealthy, but definitely created difficulty and conflict with the people around me. by the time the holidays had passed and my birthday had passed, i was essentially completely alone. my friendships had started to implode. relationships i had were breaking down. it got really bad for me.

by the end of the holidays, i started to staple a new work routine on top of myself, which included regularly writing, creating videos, and recording music. if you combine that layer on top of everything happening in my personal life, it created a situation that was untenable. by the time i got to los angeles, the staples had come undone. i wasn’t able to continue that flow.

when you make a wrong turn on google maps, it takes a second for the map to reconfigure your path. when i’m as lost as i’ve been, sometimes it requires all of my energy to reroute my gps. i decided to redirect my energy toward putting together a more solid plan and getting myself back to some kind of equilibrium.

this recent setback required me to be honest with myself about what was going on, and to start making decisions rooted in what i actually want, the problems i actually want to solve, and to take power back as the architect of my own life.

before i could start publishing again, i had to rebuild a personal routine that was centered less on output and more on input. the music i’m listening to. the things i’m reading. the people i’m surrounding myself with. the foods i’m eating. a consistent workout routine. all of those things had to come into alignment before i could think about doing anything, including publishing. i retreated into a state where i needed to nurse myself. it took all of winter. it took all of spring. it took the majority of the first part of summer. it really wasn’t until q3 that i felt healed enough to think: okay, how can i get back to work?

my relationship with making things has evolved since march. i have more energy now to devote to making things because i’ve started to develop systems. that process began in earnest in january, when i started getting into personal knowledge management, which i’ve talked about extensively here. personal knowledge management became the first system: a collective memory layer that allowed me to dump things into a second brain, organize my thoughts more strategically, and connect them through synthesis.

when i started introducing new spokes, my workflow became a robust wheel. an operating system laid on top of everything. music, videos, and personal knowledge management fit comfortably within an emerging scaffold. the input part was basically done. i spent may and june building the system. then a new question emerged: how do i redirect toward output? that is what got me here, with a living infrastructure underneath my work. i needed a better way to hold all the things i make. i’m still working on mastering my tools because the technologies underpinning the system are new to me, and there’s a learning curve. but everything feels more organized now. my thoughts feel more organized. the writing feels more organized. the music feels more organized. everything seems possible, as long as i’m incremental in the way i introduce it to the public. there has been a renaissance, or an explosion, of ideas, capabilities, and tools that have landed in my hands.

recently, , the founder of , did something with the app that felt unusual to me. (full disclosure, i’m sponsored by sublime, so this is also a shameless plug.) i’ve been using sublime since the top of the year to organize my visual references, do digital gardening, and mind map my ideas. i also have my kindle synced up with sublime for keeping snippets from literature and different quotes from authors.

sari hosts online meetups for going over product details, sometimes bringing in thought leaders, public speakers, and other interesting thinkers. recently, an invite materialized for a meeting called sublime 2.0: the curtain rises. i had it synced with my calendar, so periodically i would get email notifications indicating that the date was changing. i understood that it was a relaunch, but the date kept moving as time went on, which i thought was peculiar.

when the day of the presentation arrived, it turned out to be the exact opposite of a product launch. instead, sari presented a quirky one-act play about the process of creating sublime 2.0. it was a founder story, a love story, and a product story all in one. rather than getting too into the intricacies of the play, i would urge you to just go read the script.

it was messy, it was transparent, and it was inspiring. rather than coming with a complete narrative, “here’s what it was, here’s what it is now,” they presented what they were doing as a work in progress, which i thought was really weird and different, given their product offering as a tech company.

their core thesis seemed to be that people are more interested in seeing the process come together than being presented with the finished product. the presentation was technically a reveal, but the real point was watching the pieces come together in real time while forming a narrative around being creative, which is inherently a messy act. they resisted the urge to present a cut-and-dry narrative with all of the humanity squeezed out. it stood in direct opposition to every single rollout that i’ve seen recently.

all of this is what made this piece feel possible. there is a lot i’m not ready to explain yet because it is still coming to be. it’s all still amorphous. what i have now is not a finished picture. the canvas is stretched. the first sketches and line work have taken shape. i’m still selecting colors, and even when the painting begins, it will happen in layers. much like sari and sublime, this next phase is less about a big reveal. if this were a machine, each light is coming on in the system, but not all at the same time. i want the work to feel more connected without needing to explain the whole machine at once.

for peter, sorry to keep you waiting.

Ernest Hood – Noonday Yellows
Blackalicious – Make You Feel That Way
P. Morris – Daydream
Dam Funk – Inside Of U
Hiroshi Yoshimura – Satie On The Grass
Alessandro Alessandroni – Oceano
John Barry – Midnight Cowboy
Monster Rally – Capt. Koyake
Luke Vibert & B.J. Cole – Fly Hawaii
Fila Brazillia – Butter My Mask
P. Morris – Goomba Gardens
Hiroshi Okubo – Pearl Blue Soul
Belia Winnewisser – All Things Considered
Slow Attack Ensemble - Rivers Turn to Waterfalls
Woo – Which Ever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong
Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson & Sam Wilkes – The Fool on the Hill

greetings from morrisland. i’m so sorry for the delay, i’m here with my february recap and its damn near april. as you can see my period of being locked in on writing has come to an end. my interest has drifted from reading to writing, which has found me seemingly in a competition with myself to absorb the entire history of the printed word. time consuming stuff, but ultimately rewarding. i’ve also done a great deal of travel and needed a moment to recharge which has meant everything taking a backseat to recovery. i’m happy to say, i am here, i am alive and doing well back in Los Angeles, after a long period out of office. the field notes mixes will continue soon. that sentence should sound not merely like a promise, but a threat.

What I saw

i finally saw the end of my long stay in the midwest. when it was all said and done, i was home from thanksgiving until after my birthday, which worked out to roughly four months, a full quarter of a year. and honestly, i’m not complaining. it was a really good stretch for me on several different levels. i got back to LA at the top of march feeling creatively and personally rejuvenated, even with a few setbacks in my personal life trailing behind me. i had gotten deeply comfortable in kansas. cozy, even. i spent a lot of time around the people who know me best and love me most, and i got used to the feeling of being held by that. it made it hard to picture returning to the lonely, claustrophobic feeling that los angeles can sometimes have. but i resigned myself to locking in for another year and trying to get everything i can out of being here. i’m here for work, and work i will do.

What I watched

Love Story & The Beauty - FX Network

i, like everyone else, have been spending my time indulging in the works of ryan murphy and i guess by proxy only programming from FX. i’m watching both love story and the beauty basically simultaneously, since they’re airing at the same time. i didn’t have particularly high hopes for either series, considering how bad all’s fair was, but i’ve been pleasantly surprised by what ryan murphy can do even when he is spread so thin.

with love story, i feel that the series is mostly a triumph of style, both in music and fashion, whereas the dramatized plot leaves a lot to be desired for me. still, the images are dazzling. the beauty, on the other hand, has been giving me some of the creepy uncanniness that i felt while watching the substance, mixed with a little of the medical procedure queasiness of nip/tuck, another show ryan murphy made earlier in his career.

although i’ve been mostly amused and just happy to be part of the zeitgeist here in la, i’ve also been going to a wine bar on sunset boulevard called seco. it’s a nice feeling to sit on the patio and engage in conversation with random people about shows like love story, because we’re all tuned into the same programming. it’s actually comforting to march to the beat of the same drum for once, rather than existing on a little island surrounded by a moat of high taste.

Waiting to Exhale - Directed by Forrest Whittaker

in february, my friend malik, of susa fame, held a black film festival in honor of black history month. it was available to stream on discord, and i was lucky enough to watch a few films with him and the community there. i had honestly forgotten how much fun going to the movies with black folks can be because of the constant interjections and the need to talk during the film. it actually adds something to the experience. basically, if you know, you know. malik put together an amazing program of films.

i watched moonlight and atlantics, but the month began with a viewing of waiting to exhale, which i somehow got more from on this watch than ever before. that was probably because of the primarily black and brown queer audience i watched it with. we collectively gasped at the men and their shady manipulation tactics. we laughed and cried as the women laid out their struggles. we marveled at the actresses, their complexions and their presence on screen.

the music was a constant source of inspiration. how can there be so many bangers on a single soundtrack. in many ways, waiting to exhale is the kind of film that launches a thousand ships. and angela bassett was robbed of an academy award for a performance that is genre-defying, emotionally ferocious, and honestly a little frightening in its intensity.

What I bought

this month i bought a stainless steel lime and lemon juicer, the handheld press kind. since the beginning of 2026, i’ve been really locked in on health and fitness, operating in a pretty aggressive caloric deficit alongside weight training and running. i’m training for my first 5k, which i’ll be running in topeka on may 2. when a friend asked why i signed up for a 5k in topeka of all places, i told him i wanted to technically begin my running journey where my life began. he thought that was funny.

in keeping with the caloric deficit, i’ve stripped way back on processed foods, and especially on dressings, which have a habit of sneaking in hidden calories. a lot of the time i’ve just been eating arugula with lemon juice over the top. i was previously cutting lemons and squeezing them by hand, which was annoying for obvious reasons: seeds, mess, inefficiency. when you’re in a calorie deficit, you’re sometimes moving through the world just a little weak, which was definitely true for me. so i decided i needed to get more efficient with my calorie output. that decision led me to this juicer. and honestly, it really did spark joy. it’s been a great month with my stainless steel juicer.

What I read

this honestly deserves its own post. i’ve been debating doing a reading round up about all of the books that i’ve read over the last month or two. i’m proud to say that for the first time in years, i’ve read more than a book a month. according to storygraph, i have knocked down 12 titles this year. i set myself the lofty goal of 24 before the end of 2026, and it seems as though i am on path to almost quadruple that if i keep this up. while many are lookmaxxing, i am over here bookmaxing.

just in general, i’m more pleased with my desire and commitment to reading than any single title that i’ve read over the past few months, which honestly isn’t meant to detract from the books themselves, but more so a statement about not having truly found my stride in a genre that i care about, or finding myself in love with the work of any particular author.

i feel that my work as a reader is exploratory. it’s been years since i’ve dedicated a significant amount of time to reading books. typically, i’ll only read maybe one or two titles per year, and so i found myself sort of getting left behind by emerging authors. now i seem to be contending with the history of the entire printed word, since i’ve waited so long to get into reading in a serious way, but i’m happy about the challenge.

What I listened to

Lana Del Rey - white feather hawk tail deer hunter (Released Feb 17th, 2026)

in the month of february, lana del rey delivered a new single called white feather hawk tail deer hunter, and frankly, it had me in a headlock from the very first listen. the track pulls together a strange and compelling mix of elements, old world magic paired with new age tradwife imagery, with just a hint of mysticism running through it. white feather hawk tail deer hunter sounds like the soundtrack the witch in snow white would put on while getting ready to deliver poison apples. jack antonoff handled most of the production, and it feels completely unlike anything he has done before or since. for someone who works across such a wide spectrum, from sabrina carpenter to kendrick lamar, this track pulls something entirely different out of him.

on a sonic level, it hit a very specific nerve for me, especially given my own attraction to disney-coded musicality. this song doesn’t live in the past though. lurking just beneath the surface, there is a clear nod to the very current spike in conservatism that we are seeing play out daily, both in the news and across social media. lana’s lyrics seem to wink directly at that phenomenon, even mentioning instagram by name. one of the more interesting tensions in her work is how character-driven it tends to be. as a listener, it becomes difficult to pin down who she is within the music. is she a reliable narrator, are these imagined characters, or are they reflections of her own beliefs?

this song feels emblematic of a cultural shift that we are all watching in real time. i do not necessarily believe that lana sees herself as a trad wife, but the song places that figure under a kind of spotlight, or maybe even on a pedestal. it is hard to tell which. that ambiguity is part of what makes it so compelling. the collision between the music and the ideas underneath it left me genuinely entertained. i am especially curious about where this lands within her upcoming album, stove, which she has reportedly been reworking after initially planning to release it last year. this track feels too immediate, too current, not to be a later addition, something shaped directly by the present moment.

lana has always had a way of distilling complicated cultural signals into something consumable, sweet pop candy with an intellectual aspartame aftertaste. this song is a perfect example of that, immediate, strange, and wholely reflective of the world it arrived in.

h hunt - Playing Piano for Dad (Released May 20th, 2016)

Playing Piano for Dad landed on my radar as part of a larger batch of releases from the label tasty morsels. one thing i kept circling back to was how difficult it was to tell whether the artists on the label were actually distinct individuals or variations from the same person. there is a strong common thread running through the catalog. this particular release stood out because it feels like a clear distillation of the label’s sound, but delivered in a raw enough form that the purity of the ideas is allowed to come through. in looking into it further, it seems that h. hunt is likely a pseudonym connected to the label itself, with production credited to r. mccarthy, who appears to be its founder. the album was recorded in paris at studio ferber, which tracks with its slightly removed, almost placeless quality.

the record is described as a series of piano sketches, but that framing feels a bit too modest. the pieces sound fully formed, as if they have been ruminated on over long stretches of time. musically, there is a clear lineage that runs back to erik satie, but the work does not feel referential in a narrow sense. instead, it exists in a kind of nebulous space that makes it difficult to pin to any one influence. i also hear traces of duval timothy in the piano language, alongside something moodier and more textural that reminds me of gil evans, almost like a kaleidoscopic rendering of melancholy.

for the most part, the album stays true to its premise as a purely piano-driven work, but the arranger in me cannot help but hear these compositions expanding outward. the melodic foundations are strong enough to support full ensemble arrangements, and it is easy to imagine this music translated into a big band or orchestral setting. h. hunt’s playing has that rare quality where two hands can suggest the presence of an entire group.

the album is nearly a decade old, released in 2016, and i only came to it in 2026, but it does not feel dated. within the broader continuum of tasty morsels’ output, it occupies a very particular space, one that feels both foundational and strangely current at the same time.

What I did

in february, i played some of my last kansas city gigs of the winter. i’d been showing up there pretty consistently since thanksgiving, and with each event things kept getting a little better: more people, more interesting people, more of a sense that something was building. my second-to-last event was at xo hi-fi, and it brought out a really nice mix of strangers, people i’ve known for years, and people who knew me before i knew them. at one point, a guy walked up to me and simply said, your father’s a legend. over the next half hour, he proceeded to give me what was essentially a full rap sheet on my dad’s radio career. his father had also worked in radio, and the two of them had been at the same station in 1989. my dad was only there for about a year before landing his first major job in dallas, which took us to texas and, in a very real way, changed the entire course of my life. this guy had a front-row seat to all of that. he’d followed my father’s path from dallas to chicago to philadelphia to d.c., and he knew all kinds of personal and professional milestones along the way. it was surreal hearing all of this at my own dj gig, while i was playing vinyl, some of it pulled from my dad’s collection. he was saying things i don’t often hear, especially not in kansas city. it felt like a blast from the past, and it left me with a lot to think about.

later in the month, i played le lounge, and that ended up being really, really good too. by the end of the night, they told me it was one of the most successful evenings they’d had. i also, unfortunately, broke the speakers at the club. sorry to everyone over there if you’re reading this. i truly did not mean to. but the event itself was a success, and it clarified something for me. i think over the course of this year i want to shape that night into less of a dj event and more of a proper gathering, more in line with some of the things i’ve written about before. as much as i know i’m a great dj, i also think some of the real allure of being in the same room with me gets lost when i’m locked behind the equipment all night. my real strength may be less about standing guard over the aux and more about serving as a kind of maestro, or at the very least a connector. i think people would get more out of those nights, and i would too, if i could be a little more sociable and hands-on with the room. that feels especially true for le lounge, which isn’t really a dj venue so much as a gathering spot, a watering hole, a lounge. it feels aligned with where i want to go, and it helps that it’s run by really great people.

Best meal

technically this is supposed to be about my best meal, but this wasn’t really a meal so much as an event. for my birthday, i baked eleonore toulins’ layered tiramisu crepe cake, which was far too much cake for one person to reasonably eat alone. so i took it to my dj set at xo hi-fi, where i spent a good chunk of it force-feeding slices to people and demanding feedback. the consensus was that it was technically astonishing. it had real drama to it in terms of height and construction. visually, it absolutely delivered. taste-wise, though, i may have skimped on the sugar. i followed the recipe exactly, which is usually how i operate when i’m baking, but it just wasn’t sweet enough. it needed a heavier hand to really become pleasurable. still, toulin reposted it on her instagram, which was cool, and to be fair, it did look very good.

Quote of the month

“No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching” - Martha Graham

“I regret every word I’ve ever said out loud in public and even the words I’ve said to people I trust in private” - Cazzie David

Random thoughts of the week

i’m afraid of the novelist’s tendency to rearrange facts to reflect their own truth

in all repetitions there is a variation, a difference

Resavoir – Memories of Dreams
Ichiko Aoba – Parfum D'étoiles
Aphex Twin – Aisatsana
r mccarthy – Celeb
The Strokes – Call It Fate, Call It Karma
John Roseboro & Liana Flores – Crumb
infinite bisous – Today
Gavin Castleton – Taking Flight
Björk – Possibly Maybe
Psychic TV – Elipse Of Flowers
Andris Mattson – Still
Nala Sinephro – Continuum 3
Frank Ocean – Provider
Frank Ocean – Provider V2
Frank Ocean – Provider V3
Frank Ocean – Provider V4
Frank Ocean – Provider V5
Gruvis Malt – Stop and Go All Ye Faithful

Naran Ratan – Ouverture; Prologue
Fools – Dolpherde
Andris Mattson – ALA
h hunt – Wrong I
infinite bisous – Importance
The Crying Nudes – angel heart
Sven Wunder – Warmer Air
Phi-Psonics – First Step
Masahiro Takahashi – East Chinatown Stroller
Fuubutsushi – Bolted Orange
The Vernon Spring – Strength of a Young Man
h hunt – Having a Bath
P. Morris – mesto (from 12 Pieces for Piano & Strings)
P. Morris – next door
Persian Empire – Safe & Sound
Nick Hakim – Green Twins
Woo – It's Love
daste. – Telephone (What's Your Name?)
King Kooba – Fooling Myself (Easy Access Orchestra Mix - From Vol. 4)

god damn january was a slog, it felt like it drug on for a year. i’m still in kansas, which is probably part of the reason it’s felt SO freaking long. between the lack of sunlight, sharp temperature drops and, of course, snow, this has truly been an icy cocktail of a month and i’m sick and tired of pretending i’m not crashing out about it. i did find lots of time to read, write, and DJ from home which has meant i’ve been arriving in your email box pretty consistently for the entire month. i keep telling myself to push harder to remain consistent, this is the direction things need to head for me to change direction of the ship.

What I saw

i’ve been getting very very serious about personal knowledge management. over the last month, i’ve probably increased my brain weight by 11lbs from reading, taking lots of notes, and finally writing. its been a very gratifying experience and, at times, tough to pull myself away. i’ve done deep dives into digital gardens previously unseen. in my past few reading roundups, i’ve written about my journey extensively so i won’t bore you with the ins and outs of the process. however, i will say i’ve seen my attention span bouncing back and i feel good about how much i’ve managed to process, synthesize and publish in the last month alone. the feedback has also been great, which tells me i’m heading in the correct direction.

What I watched

No Other Choice - Directed by Park Chan-wook

for some reason, it took me a long time to finally watch no other choice. it had been sitting on my letterboxd watchlist for what felt like forever, but when conversation around the film began to resurface during awards season, i decided it was time. i was genuinely surprised by how strong the experience was. this is unmistakably the work of a master director, precise in its focus and confident in its execution. i found myself noticing shot compositions i had never seen before, moments where the camera seemed to invent new grammar altogether.

i had recently read an article arguing that realism has been eroded in contemporary film because directors are hesitant to put iphones on screen, worried that the devices themselves break the illusion. the tradeoff, of course, is authenticity, since real life is now inseparable from our phones. what struck me about this film is how inventively park chan-wook integrates technology into the frame. phones are not treated as interruptions but as expressive tools, enhancing tension and deepening the storytelling. i have never seen digital devices used this way before. chan-wook seems particularly adept at depicting technology, especially cell phones, in a manner that feels immersive rather than distracting.

beyond its formal achievements, the film’s narrative carries a quiet volatility, offering subtle commentary on american influence within global financial systems. i was also drawn to how it approaches employment and precarity from an unfamiliar angle, reframing labor not just as economics but as psychological terrain. taken together, the film feels both technically daring and thematically sharp. highly recommended.

Love After Lockup - We TV

i first fell into love after lockup during the pandemic, when i was under my own form of lockdown. the premise is deceptively simple. the show follows incarcerated people and the partners who (attempt to) love them from the outside. again and again, it returns to the same inflection point, the gap between who someone is while locked up and who they become the moment freedom is reintroduced. the results are reliably chaotic, often uncomfortable, and always entertaining.

what makes the show linger, though, is its obsession with desperation. there is a common assumption that the incarcerated partners are the ones seeking rescue, stability, or financial support. what the series illustrates far more convincingly is the opposite. the free people are often the truly desperate ones, unable to form or sustain healthy relationships outside of this dynamic, turning instead to partners whose circumstances guarantee imbalance. in its most functional moments, the relationship becomes symbiotic, one offering emotional or material support, the other offering devotion, structure, or fantasy.

control is the darker undercurrent. many of the free partners seem drawn to people who have been conditioned by confinement, accustomed to rules, surveillance, and limited autonomy. there is a subtle belief that these habits will translate into compliance once the relationship exists in the open world. but when incarceration has actually rehabilitated someone, freedom brings a hunger for agency. newly released partners often want to reclaim control over their lives, finances, and decisions, and that desire quickly clashes with the expectations of the person waiting for them on the outside.

that friction is where the show does its best work. it exposes how fragile these arrangements really are once fantasy gives way to reality. love after lockup is an easy watch, but it is also strangely affirming. there is comfort in seeing dysfunction laid bare, if only to remind yourself that no matter how messy your own life feels, there is always someone way more down bad.

What I listened to

Madison Beer - locket (Released January 17, 2026)

let me start by saying, miss madison did her biggest one with locket. i’ve been closely following her career since around 2022. i’ve read her amazing autobiography, i’ve bought tickets to her live shows hoping to get a better look at her metamorphosis. 2022 is when she seemed to turn a corner in her artistry. up until then, she had been experimenting primarily with pop candy-floss, with varying degrees of success. i got the sense that she was still searching for a clear identity, and that she was aware of others in her field who were further along artistically. this understanding has sent many artists spiraling, but it seemed to motivate madison to tinker with the rubiks cube until she came up with an interesting and unique combination. toward the end of 2022, she started rolling out singles for an album that would later become 2023’s silence between sounds. i greatly enjoyed that album, because i knew what i was watching: a world class talent finally coming into her own.

her latest album, locket, is a reward for those who have closely tracked madison beer’s rise. here, she arrives with a combination of elements that merit closer examination. through reading her book, i learned a lot about her struggles with fame and mental health. in her book, the half of it, she speaks publicly about living with borderline personality disorder, a condition often associated with emotional dysregulation and instability in self-image and relationships. bpd is generally characterized by unstable self-image, fear of abandonment, impulsivity, and fluctuating relationships, themes that appear as supporting characters throughout locket.

one of the most peculiar aspects of this album is her vocal approach. madison is a dynamo singer who emerged through a youtube cover, which justin bieber discovered and reposted, quickly launching her into superstardom. over time, her vocal style has developed into a hybrid of cursive phrasing and melismatic runs, clearly influenced by ariana grande. the law of transitivity holds that if a is related to b, and b is related to c, then a is related to c. early on, listeners drew a clear line between ariana grande and mariah carey. i extend that logic outward, placing madison’s voice within that lineage. the connection is real, but the distances are not equal. ariana and mariah occupy neighboring ground, their styles separated by refinement rather than direction. madison, by contrast, sits further away, connected through influence but operating at a different remove, where the resemblance is audible yet the lineage stretches thinner. even the title, locket, fits comfortably within the thematic world of mariah carey’s mid-90s run, alongside albums like music box, daydream, butterfly, and charmbracelet.

influence is easy to trace, but value is harder to define. technique and originality are often framed as complementary, but in pop they are more often in quiet competition. this raises a philosophical question about what we value. uniqueness, as in the case of tate mcrae, can feel immediately arresting, even when it arrives with technical limitations. singularity reads as truth, rough edges included. madison, by contrast, operates from the opposite direction. her voice is more formally accomplished than mcraes’, more controlled, more fluent in the language of pop technique, even if that fluency carries the weight of derivation. the tension, then, is not between originality and imitation, but between presence and polish. one voice insists on being unmistakable, the other on being refined. neither approach resolves the question entirely, but together they expose the uneasy tradeoff between sounding like no one else and sounding undeniably good. in the end, mariah carey stands largely alone in having achieved both true singularity and sustained technical proficiency at the highest level, even as madison’s latest album remains a rewarding listen in its own right.

Sault - Chapter 1 (Released January 9, 2026)

sault has always intrigued me precisely because of its refusal to settle. their arrival came as a loose constellation of ideas, sometimes instrumental, sometimes orchestral, sometimes loud, sometimes hushed, but consistently interesting. sault first drew me in not only through sound, but through anonymity. the project’s early opacity turned listening into a kind of who’s who game, rewarding close attention as familiar voices and fingerprints slowly revealed themselves. that mystery felt generous rather than evasive, inviting the listener to participate rather than simply consume. earlier projects often relied on a choral logic, with multiple lead voices rotating through songs, creating the sense of a collective speaking rather than a single perspective dominating the frame. that instability felt intentional, a way of keeping the project open-ended and resistant to easy definition. that configuration has since fractured. simz is no longer involved, and her contributions have reportedly become the subject of ongoing legal disputes, lending a retrospective tension to what once felt like a fluid and collective experiment.

with chapter 1, that openness seems to have narrowed into something more focused. the music now aligns tightly around cleo sol, whose presence has increasingly come to define the project’s emotional and thematic center. sol is a generational talent, capable of immense warmth and clarity, delivering what often feel like self-help mantras shaped by a christian-inflected theology of salvation, healing, and redemption. while that spiritual framing can begin to feel repetitive for me, there is no denying the conviction or control in her performances.

musically, chapter 1 finds its momentum in rhythm. the album leans into a propulsive, percussive approach that recalls the rhythm sections of early solo michael jackson records, particularly tracks like wanna be startin’ somethin’ and don’t stop ‘til you get enough. there is a famous home demo of the latter where michael enlists his siblings to form a makeshift, body-driven rhythm section, voices and hands working together to generate forward motion. much of sault’s recent output mirrors this instinct, prioritizing groove as structure, repetition as propulsion, and communal rhythm as the engine of the song.

the result is music that feels locked in, confident, and physically engaging, even if its spiritual messaging sometimes wears thin. chapter 1 may not surprise in the way sault once did, but it clarifies what the project has become, a tightly focused vehicle for rhythm, affirmation, and collective movement, anchored by one of the most compelling voices of its generation.

Jaga Jazzist - A Living Room Hush (Released November 25, 2002)

revisiting a living room hush feels less like rediscovery and more like checking in on something that never quite left. the album has stayed with me for over two decades now, resurfacing again and again since its release, each return confirming its durability. some records age by becoming dated, others by becoming canonical. this one has aged by remaining useful, a work i continue to reach for when i want to remember how expansive instrumental music can be.

jaga jazzist’s sound exists in clear conversation with the late-90s output of post-rock architects like tortoise, but where that lineage often leaned toward structural rigor, jaga pushes further into emotional legibility. they manage to draw out the lyrical possibilities embedded within instrumental music, giving melody a narrative function rather than treating it as ornament. the result is something richer and more expressive than mere atmosphere.

much of this clarity can be traced to their “front man” lars horntveth, whose compositional voice often treats instruments as stand-ins for the human voice. his approach resembles a smooth jazz instinct, one that transposes vocal melodies across instrumentation in the same way cover versions preserve a song’s most recognizable topline. even without lyrics, the melodies feel conversational, familiar, and deliberately communicative.

across its runtime, the album repeatedly makes good on the promise embedded in its title. a living room hush oscillates between explosive bursts of jazz-inflected momentum and moments of near silence, passages so restrained they compel you to turn the volume up and lean closer, uncertain whether the record has paused itself. this dynamic tension creates an intimacy that feels physical, as if the music is breathing in the same space as the listener.

in the broader context of indie music’s post-rock explosion, it is notable how often artists were praised for translating rock language into jazz forms, rather than attempting the inverse. jaga jazzist operates in the opposite direction, translating jazz into rock structures while simultaneously negotiating the emerging electronic textures of the time. that inversion is what gives the album its lasting charge. it does not merely hybridize genres, it reframes their hierarchy, offering a vision of instrumental music that is emotionally articulate, formally adventurous, and still startling all these years later.

What I had done

for months, i had been at a standstill with recording music. i think i quietly lost steam in 2025 as personal life began to pull focus away from the work. in 2023 and 2024, i planted a lot of musical seeds, committing myself to nurturing those ideas, but slowly i stopped showing up to water them. 2025 became the first year in which i created more videos than music, which felt revealing in retrospect.

there have been entire stretches of my life where i was focused almost exclusively on creation and neglectful of promotion. last year marked a reversal. i became more serious about promotion as a practice in itself. up until 2024, i had barely made any content at all, then that changed rapidly once i committed to morris tv. little by little, i became absorbed by the act of promotion and, without fully realizing it, turned my back on developing new work.

this month, something shifted. the pendulum swung back toward creation. the writing and reading i have been immersed in has reignited my interest in synthesis, in finding ways to fold those interior processes into music in a more cohesive way. i value interiority. my work begins with sustained self-examination, with sitting inside a question long enough to return with something observable.

at the same time, i am deeply committed to systems, particularly those that exist outside the body. i am drawn to systems of thought, to cybernetics, to feedback loops, and to the study of machines, even if i do not believe their relationship to humanity is perfectly analogous. there is a sharp intellectual underpinning to how i move through the world. i enrich myself through study, and in turn, my process is enriched by that commitment.

much of my current work lives at the intersections of these ideas. i have reached dead ends in my practice before, but right now the fertile ground is in examining where my wires cross and elaborating on those collision points. that might mean the intersection of writing and music, high and low culture, black men and white women, or science and philosophy. this is where i am at the moment, and it feels like an unusually generative place to be.

with all of that said, i will soon return with a new edition of maestro, titled mø, a project deeply indebted to the icy restraint of scandinavian influence. for now, please revisit the first edition of maestro, i’ll be back soon.

What I read

A Hunger Artist - by Franz Kafka

as i mentioned in last month’s update, i’m working my way through byung han chul’s book, the burnout society. its taken me a second to get through the book, partially because i’m taking notes through the entire thing, but also because chul speeds through the concepts. often times he throws out references to other writings and authors, totally assuming you’ve already read them. i’m familiar with a lot of the works, but theres been a few I haven’t read so I paused the burnout society and got acquainted with the titles he’s referencing. one of them is a short story by franz kafka called “a hunger artist”.

the unnamed hunger artist does not fast out of necessity. he fasts for the love of the game. he believes, with absolute conviction, that his capacity for abstention has no natural limit, and that the only thing restraining him is the arbitrary cap imposed on the duration of each performance. in his mind, these limits do not protect the audience, they cheat him out of recognition. if he can endure endlessly without food, why, he wonders, can the public not endure with sustained interest.

kafka lingers on the interior logic of the artist’s mindset. the hunger artist is certain that his labor is honest, even noble, and that the world, not he, is acting in bad faith by withholding its reward. but public attention is fickle. interest begins to drift. crowds thin. people walk past his cage in favor of whatever novelty has replaced him. he tours across europe in search of a new audience, only to discover that the appetite for his suffering has quietly vanished.

stripped of success, he makes a genuine attempt to understand what has changed, but the realization comes too late. age has set in, fortune has turned, and devotion has hardened into fixation. the hunger artist remains locked into his practice, unable or unwilling to adapt, committed to fasting not because it is rewarded, but because it is the only form of meaning he knows how to pursue.

underneath this story is a subtext about the nature of fame as an artist. it seems kafka is making statements about the fickle nature of popular demand while also highlighting the myopic and devoted nature of many artists. throughout the process, the artist seems to have lost touch with the reality of the situation. for han, the hunger artist ultimately embodies the modern subject who no longer needs to be dominated from outside, because he has absorbed the command to perform so completely that he can only exhaust himself from within. with no stopping condition, his self-denial continues endlessly, not toward a goal but as an automatic process of self-exploitation. needless to say i felt this.

What I did

i traveled to the east coast on business for about a week. what a cold week it was. being out in the field always throws me off my game a little, keeping me away from settling into a groove with my art practice and writing. when i booked my trip, there wasn’t a winter storm on the menu, but as i approached time to leave the weather report became even more ominous. i managed to get back to kansas just before the snowstorm hit. my plane was full of pro-life maga girlies and a random priest. apparently there had been a pro-life protest in DC during the time i was there. not a ton to report on the actual trip, i spent much of it working with my dad on his various projects. my sister also made her return to radio, which was very cool to watch in real time. at the end of my trip, we had a congratulatory dinner at ghanian fusion restaurant, elmina. it is telling that this expensive dinner is not about to be featured in my best meal section.

Best meal

Paris Bahn Mi - 1106 Westport Rd, Kansas City, MO 64111

i’ve had several bahn mi in kansas city but this one takes the pâté. i’ve gone back 2 times in the past month and each time has surpassed the last in terms of quality. each sandwich is well crafted with amazing ingredients and always very fresh. most importantly: the bahn mi is extremely cheap. i don’t think there’s one sandwich in there priced higher than $8, which is really all bahn mi should really cost. bahn mi is a recession proof food. plus according to recent findings, the ham is probably giving me cancer. i shouldn’t be paying a premium for my premature departure. for some context, there’s a bahn mi restaurant really close to my apartment in la and i think they are charging about $14 or $15 per sandwich. heaven forbid you want to add anything to it. paris bahm mi blows that place out of the water at a fraction of the price. i will say that they are a little lacking in the pho department. i’ve definitely had better pho in the kansas city area, but paris bahn mi’s sandwich is exemplary. i might also start a bahn mi series in kansas city, simply because there are so many quality bahn mi in the area. stay tuned.

Quote of the month

“knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. when we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.” - bell hooks

Random thoughts of the month

taste is unconscious competence

you are your screen time

i like the idea of real feel. it suggests that one data point is not, in and of itself, enough to describe the experience of being outside.

Tracklist:

Jupi/ter & Chihei Hatakeyama – Canopy
Cate Le Bon & Group Listening – The Light
Ezra Feinberg – Future Sand (feat. David Lackner)
Lynn Avery & Cole Pulice – Plantwood (Day)
Alice Coltrane – Going Home
Ana Mazzotti – Feel Like Making Love
Jennifer Lara – I Am in Love
Pete Jolly – Springs
Moodymann – Wednesday Night People
Axel Boman – New Krau Era
HNNY – Caypio
Dresvn – B1
Resavoir – Far Cry
Swarvy – Telephone
Sam Gendel – Uroko (鱗, fish scales)

this transmission drifts from jazz roots through indie songwriting and into left-field electronic space, featuring luiz bonfa, ahmad jamal, king krule, dean blunt, jaga jazzist, badbadnotgood, shinichi atobe, todd terje, little dragon, and more.

Tracklist:

Luiz Bonfa – Enchanted Mirror
Ahmad Jamal Trio – I Love Music
King Krule – Seagirl (feat. Raveena)
Misha Panfilov Sound Combo – Together
Magician – Drowned Village
You’ll Never Get to Heaven – Dust
Dean Blunt – Johnny Cash Hurt Type Beat
Little Dragon – After the Rain
Tenderlonious – Forty Nights
Todd Terje – Leisure Suit Preben
HOMESHAKE – Not U
Satoshi & Makoto – Tous Les Jours
Shinichi Atobe – Yes
Anatole Muster & Slowya.roll – Blue Macaw (feat. Hadrien Feraud)
Jaga Jazzist – Kitty Wu
BADBADNOTGOOD & Tim Bernardes – Poeira Cósmica
John Roseboro – Violent Crimes
Wilco – Spiders (Kidsmoke)

lately i’ve been getting a little high off my own supply, diving deeper into personal knowledge management, second brains, and obsessive note-taking rituals. the result is that my inner world of ideas is starting to feel more connected, more navigable, and frankly more urgent to share. not just through music, but through gatherings, conversations, and experiences shaped by the same evolving universe of thoughts.

this week’s roundup grew out of that process. i followed a thread that started with organizing my mind and ended with reimagining how i might bring people together in real life. along the way i found an eventbrite trend report diagnosing a shift in how people want to gather, maggie appleton quietly prototyping new community structures in the wild, and priya parker articulating the emotional architecture of meaningful events. what follows is my attempt to synthesize their work with my own thinking and sketch the beginnings of a new direction for my experiments in bringing people into the same room, for reasons that go beyond partying.

the death of the dance floor

eventbrite put together an interactive page talking about the types of events that are trending. in general, it seems like folks are looking to escape the present and trying to find increasingly creative ways to do it. gone are the days where you can just serve drinks, bring in a DJ and expect folks to be satisfied with the experience. the people want spontaneity and unpredictability.

this article is the first time i’ve heard the term “soft socializing”, a new piece of jargon apparently describing connecting with people and your surroundings on your own terms. i doubt people are actually using this word in the real world, it seems plucked directly from a marketing playbook. but the key takeaway seems valid: the vibes are shifting, we are actively redefining what we find gratifying at live experiences and events, and we want agency to decide how to connect and participate.

i had to look a little deeper within this report to find a true working definition for the term “soft socializing”. in a nutshell, it seems folks are starting to prioritize comfort and autonomy, letting connections form organically instead of pushing them, and socializing itself doesn’t have to be the whole point.

eyeballing the numbers, it seems that folks want events to feel singular, like something that could only exist in that one moment. at the same time, they’re gravitating towards happenings that feel less curated and more real, whatever that means. a key piece of this puzzle is feeling like they’re discovering something, which is not exactly a new social currency, moreso the rebirth of the hipster ethos of “i liked it first”.

the element of surprise ranks highly, with folks indicating they want secret lineups and locations. it seems that location is a big motivator as well, with folks praising forest clearings, lakeside screenings and sunrise soundbaths as well as rooftops and scenic overlooks. party goers are also taking a page plucked from the movie blade:

it would appear DJing and dancing are out, folks are uniting in droves to support weird things like flower arranging events, puzzle competitions, caffeine tastings, and music bingo. cause based events seem to also be a major motivator for folks, with 73% of people saying they’re more likely to attend an event tied to a cause they care about. at first i thought this meant anti ICE or pro gaza gatherings, but they apparently meant open mic nights, educational talks, sign making sessions, and tree planting events. some of these choices were surprising to me, but i guess the numbers don’t lie so go off.

underneath all of the numbers and jargon is a very real phenomena: the thirst for authenticity. gen z and millennials are defined by our ability to key in on performative behavior, we can immediately sense when something feels manufactured versus when it’s made with real care and purpose, which is why we’re gravitating towards experiences that are rough around the edges and slightly unpolished.

the pivot from parties

reading the eventbrite report about the types of different events that are possible lead me down a rabbit hole, trying to find some alternatives to the DJ dog and pony show. it’s very telling that i’m studying the ideas of thinkers searching for the next evolution of events, instead of scrolling instagram to copy what other DJs are doing. i’m thinking less boiler room more writers room.

researching what other people are doing really illuminates a world of possibility, but the real question is will people take the bait?

imitation as an event

my search for alternatives brought me to maggie appleton. from what i can tell, appleton is a designer and anthropologist who dabbles in community building. she also works full-time at github, so its safe to say she’s a very smart cookie. on her website, she’s essentially cultivated a public digital garden devoted to a wealth of topics including coding, parenting, and animation. her section devoted to community organizing is home to one sole article titled gathering structures. here, she basically says she didn’t want to be a community organizer but rather she was craving experiences, and you know what, i felt that. given her background as a developer, i view her to be a problem solver. echoing the open source ethos of her employer, she isolated an issue and started to develop a framework to solve it, not only for herself but for everyone. see, she’s all about community. appleton also attends events run by people who are more skilled at designing experiences than she is, studying their tactics and taking notes along the way.

she opens “gathering structures” by talking about how event organizing isn’t for the faint of heart, especially dealing with the types of entitled people these events can attract. in light of this, her answer for sustainability is setting up systems that help mitigate the BS. she suggests using a stack of digital tools to streamline communication, manage sign-ups, and keep the logistics running smoothly. she also recommends a very simple structure, as few people as possible and as simple concept as possible. appleton cautions against introducing complexity or overhead, if at all possible. in her view, she’s always trying to get fewer people to show up, its more about reaching the right people rather than the masses themselves. this is an interesting perspective for me: rather than trying to reach as many people as possible, focus on a time, a place, an intention and a very specific group of people.

after digging a little deeper on her actual events, i was fascinated by one specific group she founded: the echo and narcissus writing group. put simply, she created a group dedicated to plagiarism. in her words, “the echo and narcissus writing club is all about mimicking the work of exceptional writers in order to learn from them.” she says something interesting, as a reply to potential criticism: “everything is a remix.” i like this song. here, she makes a strong argument for copying as it can illuminate information about the construction of things, how things come together, and the process itself is encoded in the writing, waiting to reveal itself on the page in front of you. taking this one step further, she says all of the greats work like this, using foundational skills to build upon things and create from a wealth of cultural knowledge, before we eventually get bored with the structure of things, discard the rules and experiment with new forms.

i don’t see myself creating a reading or writing group anytime soon, but i am fascinated at the idea that she was able to create a gathering around the act of plagiarism. it seems there is a lot of leeway in the creation of community and hopefully she won’t mind if i rip off some of her ideas. i’m trying to remix her concepts.

priya parker really does this party thing

when i started doing more reading about creating good gatherings, many paths lead me to . priya has a very healthy substack following and has done a few tedtalks on the subject of gathering, which basically makes her an expert on the subject. she’s even written an acclaimed book on the subject titled, the art of gathering. she’s basically little miss life of the party. i haven’t had a chance to read her book yet (obviously) but her substack has some bite sized tidbits for the aspiring community builder. an early take away is that she suggests we should create events we would want to attend. starting with meeting your own demands is where things begin in her process. she makes a strong case for breaking tradition, things don’t have to be done that way just because its the way they’ve always been done. she says “the best gatherings don’t start with logistics; they start with a longing.”

in a recent post, she lays out 6 ways to host a good gathering:

• create your own reason (and try to make a funny title)

• lean on nostalgia and bring back something thats been missing from your life

• is there something you’ve been curious about? if so, there’s an opportunity to invite people into it

• reimagine gatherings to fit your current season of life, turning a stressful idea into a low-stakes, joyful community ritual that meets you where they are

• create a simple, recurring gathering for honest conversation and shared processing, showing up imperfectly but consistently to build a space people genuinely need

• start with your bucket list, create the gathering you’ve been waiting for

these are things i can do, and if this is where you’re at, so can you. i’m going to dig into her book soon and will follow up with more thoughts and strategies on the creating an alternative to partying because i’m committed to offering more as a creative.

the data, the theory, and the real-world experiments are all pointing in the same direction. the eventbrite report shows people craving gatherings that feel personal, participatory, and less manufactured. maggie appleton shows what it looks like to actually prototype that future in practice, treating community building like an open-source problem to be solved through simple structures, thoughtful constraints, and care for the right people not the biggest crowd. she’s essentially arguing that the future of events isn’t about scale or polish, but about designing with intention, starting from genuine desire rather than inherited formats. parker gives language to that desire, arguing that the future of events starts with longing and intention rather than inherited formats. beneath the trend reports, the jargon, and the statistics is the same core truth: people want spaces that feel singular, where they can show up as themselves and take part in something that feels real.

maybe the party isn’t dead after all.

in the context of what i do, this deep dive was an eye opener for me. i haven’t been able to put my finger on it but as the maestro it definitely does seem like the experience of DJing has become very flat and this report put me inside of the head of the audience. this feels like a problem worth solving, because it’s clear the audience is growing tired of the same old same old.

when looking at some of the elements that are driving attendance, i was a little surprised. people are gravitating overwhelmingly to exclusive movie screenings, pop up experiences and installations, and after hours museum nights. trailing this list at the very bottom are raves and pop up dj sets, which confirmed my suspicion that it’s time for me to evolve my offering.

this year i want everything i do to flow together in a kind of synchronicity, reorienting my entire platform around what i’m building here on substack. the goal is to create an enjoyable, entertaining thought bubble that leaves you inspired and curious while also just having a genuinely good time. do not be surprised when i announce my goat and sheep yoga event.

i’ve been really digging into the idea of the second brain and personal knowledge management, which provides an opportunity to connect all of the ideas, or at the least meticulously catalog them for further development in a strategic and methodical way. this is extremely important for me at this stage, I worry that my mind makes leaps that are not always logical and this will allow me to introduce a linearity that will make me more persuasive. moving forward, i think my writing will be a little more developed and thought out, RIP my word count. hopefully you enjoy deeper dives and more concrete opinions.

that being said, this weeks roundup is devoted to laying out what i’ve been seeing and how i’ve committed myself to develop a sustainable framework for writing and creating different types of content.

notes on the democratization of critique

the substack algorithm is spectacular. my experience in the app isn’t shaped by who i follow, but more what it can bring me. as i mentioned in my sit down with Aaron Rhodes, i believe the tiktok algorithm got neutered when it was sold and now substack has the most sophisticated algo on the blog. i’m not sure what signals i sent out, but suddenly my youtube feed filled with thought leaders i’d never encountered before. this article from writer nikita walia seemed to be a critique not just of my youtube algorithm but the culture that produced it.

preface: I highly suspect this article was written by AI, at least partially.

walia opens by describing a cultural economy dominated by fragmented media, political instability and economic shifts. under these conditions, we seem to be searching for meaning wherever we can find it, which has ushered in the age of internet thought leadership. very early in her argument she mentions there has been a shift from cultural critique as a playground for academia towards a world where it has been dominated essentially by influencer culture and folks trying to manufacture relevance with straw man arguments that are exercises in branding. intellectualism is taking a backseat to content creation, which means the arguments are driven by a need for engagement rather than trying to string together a cogent rationalization.

one of the biggest dangers, according to walia, is that thought leaders have to deal in absolutism in order to be persuasive. these are folks saying “this is truth”, because without certainty their arguments lack salience. some of these writers are dealing with extremely complex subject matter, so being certain is sometimes impossible which really illuminates the risk of oversimplifying for engagement.

she goes into how the algorithm rewards knee jerk emotional reactions (like ragebait) over any sort of intellectual depth, which creates an environment where performative critique can thrive. not only that, the only stuff that is allowed to gain traction in this environment is provocation and the algorithm rewards that type of content with engagement. walia makes an interesting point about oral vs written cultural traditions. she says that oral traditions rewards recall while written traditions allow for deeper reflection and reasoning. our social media platforms currently operate more like an oral tradition, which leads her to question whether meaningful thought leadership can even exist within this framework.

the article runs a little long, where she essentially qualifies her initial statement by backing up her arguments with evidence, mostly literary. i get the sense that she’s trying to make sure her message isn’t lost to the same forces she’s writing about, since it’s published on the internet. i’ve been accused of being anti-intellectual but i feel like theres a current flowing under this entire conversation about gatekeeping and certain folks feeling like everyone having access to the means of disseminating information is a bad thing, which i don’t agree with. it’s my suspicion that folks like this are coming from a place where they want to justify the time and money they spent in academic institutions and this entire of thought leadership framework is an affront to their carefully crafted academic identity.

lately though, the same algorithm walia warns us about has been surfacing a different reality in my feed. as substack’s recommendation engine has gotten sharper, it has increasingly brought me the writing of black femme thinkers, critics, and essayists who are operating completely outside the gravitational pull of traditional academic institutions. what i see there feels less like influencer thought leadership and more like a “for us by us” intellectual ecosystem, one that isn’t asking for permission, citation from the right gatekeepers, or validation from historically white academic spaces. if that kind of work can flourish in the very environment walia claims is hostile to depth, then her critique starts to feel slightly outdated. maybe the problem is not that the internet killed intellectualism, but that it redistributed it, and some people are still adjusting to not being the sole custodians of serious thought.

anna howard put me onto personal knowledge management

anna howard is one of the thought leaders who landed on my radar via youtube. i don’t know much about where she came from, her background, or anything about her actual work but after watching a few of her videos i found myself intrigued by her methods which his hinged upon the german concept of zettelkasten. zettelkasten began as a radically simple idea: a box of index cards where each thought lived on its own note and was linked to other thoughts through references. developed most famously by sociologist niklas luhmann, it wasn’t just a filing system but a thinking partner, a way to let ideas collide, recombine, and evolve over time. the power wasn’t in storing knowledge, but in creating a network that could generate new knowledge.

she has an ongoing series about her process, but in this particular video, howard traces her beginnings in mindful consumption to odysseas, who created a template for obsidian. obsidian fits into this tradition by turning the zettelkasten philosophy into a flexible digital environment. it keeps the core idea intact, that knowledge grows through connections, while removing the friction of physical storage. more importantly, obsidian encourages a personal knowledge practice that feels alive. your notes are not locked inside a platform or a feed. they live locally, evolve over time, and form a web of thought that reflects how your mind actually works. in that sense, obsidian is less a note app and more a modern thinking system.

today’s tools like obsidian (there are many) are the digital inheritors of the lineage of zettelkasten. backlinks, graph views, and atomic notes recreate the logic of the card box, but with search, media, and infinite scale. what was once a wooden box of paper slips has become a living, searchable mind garden, still guided by the same principle luhmann discovered: you don’t just write notes to remember things, you write notes to think with.

i recently adopted this method for notetaking. let anna howard and odysseas tell it, these can be life altering changes for processing and absorbing what we’re consuming. in her video, howard goes on to draw some valuable connections about anti-intellectualism, falling literacy rates, and the validity of creating rather than consuming. most importantly, she makes a strong case for note taking, building upon the notion that if you are not able to re-state what you learned in your own words, you probably do not have a good grasp over a concept. it probably goes without saying but writing notes allows you to parse through what is being said and develop connections in your brain that enhance understandings. lord, they done gentrified lecturing.

obsidian has a graph view allows you to see your thoughts connected in a way that can surprise you, because it highlights connections that might not ordinarily stand out when you’re thinking about things. a key ethos of the digital garden is topography over timeline, creating contextual relationships and associative links. this is counter to chronological order based on time like blogs or news. ultimately, this whole thing takes on a shape that is very similar to wikipedia but full of your own constantly evolving and growing thoughts and interests. nothing is static and there is no final version. perhaps most importantly, and much to nikita walia’s chagrin, this is not a framework for empirical truth, but more for learning. in the context of walia’s writing though, i believe when done correctly obsidian can allow you to cite sources and do deep research which might result in a more cohesive and knowledgable critique. this method is excellent for exploring complex ideas and creates an intersection between papers, tweets, sketches, code snippets, and even youtube videos.

needless to say, all of this was very fascinating. when i stepped into digital gardening, i saw a chance to bring my scattered ideas into relationship with one another, or at the very least to archive them carefully for future cultivation. at this stage in my art practice, that feels essential. my mind often jumps ahead faster than it explains itself, and i hope this practice will help introduce a sense of order and progression, allowing my thoughts to land more clearly and my arguments to unfold more persuasively. even this very writing was pruned directly from the notes i took during my deep dives and i hope that you, reader, can tell the difference between my approach even a week ago and now.

and this is where walia’s anxiety about the tiktok oracle starts to soften for me. if the algorithm is truly a machine that rewards shallow provocation, it is also, occasionally, a shepherd that nudges some of us toward deeper pastures. i did not arrive at zettelkasten, obsidian, or a renewed commitment to writing through a university seminar or an academic journal. i arrived there through the very ecosystem she critiques, following a breadcrumb trail of videos, essays, and recommendations that quietly redirected me from passive consumption toward active practice. so maybe the oracles of the feed are not purely charlatans or attention merchants. maybe, in some cases, they are entry points. and if even a fraction of us are being guided toward more critical self understanding, more deliberate learning, and more rigorous personal methods, then the story cannot be as simple as the internet killing intellectual life.

having now explored both the critique of this new attention driven format and some of the sharpest minds operating within it, i’ll leave you with a challenge: find the balance between the noise and the signal, between passive consumption and active practice, between the feed that distracts and the feed that teaches. it’s interesting watching the internet morph to fit the needs of society. guidance is needed, so we’re willing to hear someone present ideas and solutions, potentially even with zero expertise. we’ve arrived at a moment where turmoil is everywhere, both inside ourselves and in the world around us, and uncertainty feels like the only constant. so hey what the hell maybe this baddie in her room with a tiny microphone and secret digital garden has the answer. i believe she very well might.

press play and keep reading.

tracklist:

Morris – I Feel Like I Could Die
Malibu – A World Beyond Lashes
Morris – PIANOTRAX 2.1
Hans Philip – Transformer
Karin Krog – The Meaning of Love
Axel Boman – Grape
Jack J – Take It To The Edge
Kyle Hall – On Lock
Lindstrøm – These Are A Few Of My Favorite Strings
Loukeman – Walking u Home
NEW YORK – alone
múm – We Have a Map of the Piano
Dry Cleaning – Anna Calls From the Arctic (Explicit)
Wilson Tanner – Cherry
girlsweetvoiced – spearmint
willoh – NOSTRINGS
Paris Williams, The Human & Saving Miles Lemon – Alien Luv (Explicit)
Morris – Lost [Demo]
Frank Ocean – Chanel (Explicit)
Tara Clerkin Trio – Night Steps
Sam Gendel & Benny Bock – Everything Happens To Me

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if politics aren’t your thing, i invite you to read back on older editions and entertain yourself with my writings on pop culture. last week i promised i’d go back to talking about food and i’m here standing on business, bringing you another soup recipe. see, thats what we call balance!

how the west was weiss

i recently saw an interview with connie chung. while seated next to her husband maury povich, chung appeared deeply distressed with the state of things at CBS news. formerly a venerable journalist and frankly the face of the corporation nearly 30 years ago, she had nothing but bad things to say about the company and its current leadership, namely polarizing journalist bari weiss.

this recent NYMag profile on bari weiss is operating on several levels at once. in one sphere, it tells a time tested story of “coming out west to get your fortune”. five years ago weiss was exiled from NYC during a well publicized pandemic era shake up at the new york times, where she was the head of the NYT opinions department. bari weiss essentially pulled off a hollywood style reboot. instead of disappearing, she moved to los angeles and reinvented herself. in california, she was not the outcast she had been framed as in new york. she became a sought after conversation partner for smooth brained hollywood elites, executives, investors, and people who felt victimized by mainstream media culture.

the twist is simple. the same journalist once positioned as a rejected figure in new york media is now shaping one of the most powerful news institutions in the country. it is not just a comeback. it is a shift in who gets to define the center of american journalism.

the most interesting connection was between weiss and substack. her media company, the free press, was at one time the highest subscribed publication on the site. what started as a newsletter grew into a full media company that attracted tons of cash and elite corporate backing. that venture eventually sold for around 150 million dollars. weiss walked away not only wealthy, but holding more leverage than she ever had inside legacy newsrooms. the sale came with a major result: she is now editor in chief of cbs news.

the cost of free will

this piece starts with the everyday feeling we all know well. you chose to read this. that inner sense of agency feels obvious and yet a big chunk of modern science says that feeling is basically a hallucination. physicists and neuroscientists argue that we are simply matter following laws, particles bumping into one another, and our sense of choice is just a by product of physics running its course.

the article lays out the classic determinist position. everything is governed by physical laws. in this view we are not causes, we are effects. our lives are a long domino chain that started before we were born. neuroscience often doubles down on this by pointing to brain activity that seems to begin before conscious decision making. in other words, the brain acts, and the mind takes credit after the fact.

kevin mitchell shows up here and basically says, hold on. he argues that agency is real, not poetic language or wishful thinking. i won’t ruin the entire article for you but big brain behavior here.

can the democrats make AI a voter issue

currently and increasingly, the tech industry buoys the stagnating american economy so there is fear about upsetting our tech overlords. the argument from a growing crew inside the democratic party is pretty blunt. stop flirting with ai and just become the anti ai party. not mildly skeptical, not “we support innovation with guardrails,” but openly, proudly against what the industry is doing to jobs, to energy costs, and to the balance of power between regular people and a small group of billionaires. big majorities want it slowed and regulated, and only a tiny slice of americans think ai will be good for the country. strategists and pollsters look at those numbers and see a huge populist opening. they frame it as a simple story: on one side you have tech billionaires and data centers, on the other side you have everyone else stuck footing the bill and wondering if their jobs are next.

the resistance is coming from inside the house. pro business democrats and tech aligned groups warn that going full anti ai will alienate the industry, its donors, and its well paid workers, at a moment when ai related growth is propping up gdp. they think there is not even good data yet on what ai is doing to the job market, and turning it into a pure fear campaign is bad politics and bad policy. meanwhile, a few democrats are already testing an explicit anti ai line on the trail. across the country, communities near new data centers are protesting over energy use and costs, and organizers see those fights as the early front lines of a broader ai backlash.

the piece makes clear that this is not just a left wing thing or a deep blue city thing. white collar workers are suddenly as anxious as blue collar workers about automation, and everybody is mad about their power bill. consultants argue that ai could finally give democrats a way to do economic populism that actually unites their college educated base with the people they have been losing for years. if nafta pushed white working class voters away from democrats for a generation, mishandling ai could be nafta on steroids, or, if they lean into it, a chance to flip the script.

i’m not optimistic about the democrats getting it together.

frank sinatra has a cold and so do i

this is the legendary guy talese profile where frank sinatra literally has a cold and refuses to be interviewed, and that absence becomes the whole point. instead of quotes crafted by handlers or a neat press ready narrative, we see sinatra as a living ecosystem. the people around him, the hangers on, the women, the musicians, the body language, the moods. it shows a man who is powerful, petty, magnetic, insecure, funny, and sometimes cruel, all at once.

what makes this piece so iconic is that it does what most celebrity think pieces today cannot. it slips past the grip of pr. there is no brand voice smoothing the edges. no controlled access. talese gives us sinatra as he actually existed in the world so you finish it feeling like you have been in the smoke and noise of the room with him, which is about as close to the real thing as we are ever gonna get because unc been dead.

carolina gelen’s lazy day soup

soup season is upon us. for much of the last few weeks, i’ve been fighting a cold and basically turned into frank sinatra myself, a total terror. i made this soup, and for a time, nothing hurt and everything was okay. carolina gelen is by far one of my internet chefs and she like the others seem to possess a level of genetic dexterity that keeps her skinny despite the fact that she cooks for a living. it’s not a secret that i am very curious how these chefs do it, i’d look like emeril lagasse if i had to develop recipes for money.

this soup really has it all: it’s creamy, acidic, and a little spicy. you’ll notice the recipe doesn’t call for a bunch of salt, you get the sodium from copious amounts of miso which i found to be clever. i subbed the sour cream for creme fraiche which was kinda a flex, not gonna lie. carolina if you’re reading this, girl you did your big one with this soup!!

Ingredients

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

• 24 oz (650g) cherry tomatoes

• Extra-virgin olive oil

• Kosher salt

• 1/2 teaspoon red chili flakes

• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds

Creamy White Bean Miso Soup

• Extra-virgin olive oil

• 2 shallots, thinly sliced

• 3 to 4 garlic cloves, chopped

• 1/2 teaspoon red chili flakes

• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds

• 2 x 15-ounce (450g) cans butter beans, drained and rinsed

• 3 cups (700g) water

• 1 tablespoon cornstarch

• 1/2 cup (118g) heavy cream or full-fat canned coconut milk

• 2 to 4 tablespoons white miso

• Sour cream, optional, for serving

• Toast, for serving

• Black pepper, for serving

Instructions

Make the roasted cherry tomatoes:

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven. Heat the oven to 450°F.

2. To a medium baking sheet, add the tomatoes. Heavily drizzle with lots of olive oil. Season with salt, add the chili flakes, cumin and toss to combine. Cover with a sheet of aluminum foil and bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

3. Carefully remove the aluminum foil (as soon as you lift it it will steam, so watch your hands), and return to the oven. Broil for 3 to 4 minutes, until the cherry tomatoes have burst.

Make the creamy white bean miso soup:

1. In a medium pot over medium heat, add a glug of olive oil. Add the shallots and cook until softened and translucent, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the garlic, chili flakes, cumin and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute.

2. Add the drained beans, the water — don’t add any salt at this point — and bring to a boil. Crush some (about half) of the beans with a wooden spoon against the back of the pot, this will give more body to our soup. Reduce the heat to medium low, and simmer for 8 to 12 minutes.

3. In a tiny bowl, mix the cornstarch with a tablespoon or two of water, until smooth. Pour the mixture in the soup and watch it thicken slightly. For a stewy consistency, you can add more cornstarch. Pour in the heavy cream and stir to combine. Simmer for 2 to 3 more minutes.

4. Remove the soup off the heat. Add a tablespoon of miso at a time, stirring to incorporate. Since we didn’t season with salt, we’re counting on the miso paste to season the soup. Taste, and keep incorporating a tablespoon of miso at a time, until the soup reaches a pleasant salinity and miso flavor.

5. Divide the soup into bowls and top with a dollop of sour cream (if using) and the roasted cherry with all of their oils and juices. Serve with toast on the side and freshly cracked black pepper on top.

2026, how did you arrive so soon?

it seems like just yesterday i was driving myself insane trying to figure out how i was going to glow up and slay 2025. fast forward. now here i am in 2026 trying to figure out how i failed so miserably.

all jokes aside, 2025 was a rollercoaster, but i somehow managed to create some good habits and expanded my art practice to include writings. for the first time ever, i made more videos than music, which was a little disconcerting but definitely a sign of the times and, for me, a radical leap forward. i’ve done so much creation and relatively so little promotion, this year that changed.

as you can see, i’m still in a very contemplative, self aware place, which is probably good for...everyone. in between writing reading roundups, doing live appearances in Kansas City, and working my silly art projects, i managed to find time to recap the final month of 2025.

What I saw

as of christmas, i’ve spent 2 full months in the great wilderness of middle america. per usual it’s been a humbling experience. i’ve had moments of full clarity, partially enabled by little to no distraction and the fidgeting desire to return to a different LA than the one i left. i know that the change is within, not the city itself. changing my perspective, changing my method of working, and allowing myself to change as i move through my various projects. i saw myself and for the most part, i liked what i saw. i saw someone no longer struggling with where i am, but rather struggling to streamline folks’ understanding of who i am. with the addition of my writing and film projects, i saw myself dealing with enough tangible things to actually create a version of myself that is encompassing enough to justify putting all of my energy into developing a framework that will provide multiple opportunities to interface with my work. i’m devising concrete pathways into the world i’m building, which is much larger than music itself, but includes my videos and critiques & essays. this year i’ve devoted myself to working with more linearity so i can increase clarity for those peering into Morrisland.

What I watched

Marty Supreme - Directed by Josh Safdie

well its safe to say josh won this round of the brotherly duel. was this the best movie i saw all year? no, that’s probably sentimental value. was this a good use of my christmas eve? yes, i was one of 4 people in kansas city at the first showing the day before the official opening. there were times when i couldn’t tell where this movie was heading, which is basically the safdie MO at this point. there were times when i felt a little too seen, after all this is about a male manipulator who places his own goals above everyone in his entire life basically so he could go to japan. but did that white boy have motion? yes, he did. fantastic use of music throughout and i believe the costuming created an immersive experience.

my favorite aspect about this movie is they didn’t make too much of an attempt to change the dialogue to fit the period, instead speaking basically as we would now but with a slightly played up new york accent. the music operated in a similar way, where it bared no relation to the time period. if you watched this movie blindfolded and had to call it based on the dialogue and music alone, you might think it was from the 1980s. i liked all of that, and it allowed the actors to be a little more truthful in their portrayal of these characters since they weren’t bogged down with crafting phony accents.

all in all, i enjoyed this movie but probably wouldn’t watch it again. i found it curious that the marketing campaign seemed to evaporate almost immediately after the film was released. it truly went from everywhere to nowhere in the blink of an eye and that’s basically how the film itself unfurled.

A Man Escaped - Directed by Robert Bresson

probably close to 20 years ago, i did a self guided tour through french new wave cinema, while basically ignoring the films that led to the movement. after all, my entry to french new wave was MTV, with their juxtaposing jump cuts that assumed the audience was smart enough to follow a story without needing too much explaining between scenes or shots.

a man escaped landed on my radar via letterboxd, while doing some research into the foundation of the french new wave genre. come to find out, this movie is highly acclaimed within some circles. roger ebert was effusive, calling the film “a lesson in the cinema”. benny safdie said this is his favorite movie of all time, which made for an amazing segway from marty surpreme & smashing machine. in a man escaped, we are almost immediately plunged into a world of paranoia, anxiety and high stakes as we watch bro try to think his way out of lengthy jail sentence. apparently based on a true story, the film traces his escape from conception to execution with meticulous detail. much attention is paid to his hands, which seems to highlight a connection between our minds and what we are capable of within the limitations of our 4 limbs.

What I listened to

looking at this list, i’m realizing this month i’ve slowly slipped away from chasing down the latest releases. i’m guessing it’s because so little new music is released in Q4, so i drift towards catching up on things I may have missed in the last year or two. this particular winter has felt very spacey, i’ve had my head in a deeply contemplative place for weeks at a time and i’ve been soundtracking those moments with equally spaced out sounds from far flung corners of the world.

Axel Boman - Space Drag (Released September 20, 2024)

axel boman seems misunderstood. a cursory google will yield copy constantly riffing on the same observation: his music apparently hinged on being playful. boman is known primarily in the field of house and techno music, which can both be (inexplicably) self serious and no nonsense. by contrast, i can see how his music conjures a feeling of bouncy fun but i think what he’s doing is very serious. he only has a handful of releases, which i spent the majority of the holidays studying very closely. his song “barcelona” landed on my radar over a decade ago, via my then room mate, bryant. i’ve returned to this song time and time again. if you’re familiar with my own electronic music, especially around 2012-2016, you probably will hear a similarity in our approach. at some point in the last month or so, i decided to do a deep dive and see if i could pinpoint what i like about his music which required me to go through his releases one by one and let the music wash over me until i reached a conclusion. i still don’t have a concrete answer, but i am very intrigued by his sound and the work he releases via his record label, studio barnhus.

space drag is his latest release. weighing in at a lean 4 songs and 32 minute run time, boman leaves behind some of the expansive meander of his older releases, instead choosing to hone in succinctly on a neat and tidy vibe that encourages you to simply hit repeat. the music itself is buoyant and melodic, with a steady house back beat. i think he’s from sweden, which leaves an impression of shimmering snow blindness that envelopes the music itself. it really does feel like music best enjoyed in the cold darkness, considering stockholm may only experience mere minutes of sun during its long winter.

Greg Foat & Art Themen - Off-Piste (Released April 23, 2023)

i don’t know when greg foat finds time to sleep. i’ve been slowly working my way through his discography for the last few years. his music requires a high level of patience but the reward is oh so worth it. his output ranges from moody jazz, reminiscent of bill evans, to odd ball experimental electronics, with occasion detours into italian film soundtrack chic. falling into that third category, off piste is a slow, low burner of an album. it sounds like imaginary music for an italian film about vacationing in the alps.

the cover does much of the heavy lifting in terms of conjuring the correct imagery, but the sound meets the image nicely, with twinkling passages of jazz fusion, ornamented with vintage synth lines. right around christmas, this album was hitting like crazy.

Molly Lewis - On the Lips (Released February 24, 2024)

molly lewis is a world class whistler. yes, you read that correct. she’s made a career from whistling. i wonder how this conversation with her parents went over at home. make no bones about it though: lewis is the genuine article, managing to conjure a song bird vibrato with such startling control it would strike envy in the greatest singers and trumpet players. according to wikipedia, she’s performed alongside Dr. Dre, Karen O, and Jackson Browne amongst others. according to the new yorker, she’s also on the Barbie soundtrack, doing a version of “what was i made for”, but via whistle. the whistle is a notoriously unforgiving “instrument”. it is prone to pitchy shrillness that can rise above even the densest mix, but she has managed to seemingly do the impossible: control the tone.

much of the backing music is rooted in an old world exotica feel, think jessica pratt performing live at a tiki bar, with her whistle acting like a theremin. it’s a very compelling listen throughout, i recommend opening all your windows and blasting this to the neighborhood birds.

What I bought

i may be in kansas but tinned fish is a non negotiable cornerstone of my diet. theres only a few places around here where i can really get it, so i took my happy ass down to world market and stocked up on the finest tunas and sardines the city could provide and i was not disappointed. i bought Minerva tuna and Porthos sardines in a spicy olive oil. both are fished from the waters of portugal, both were bussin. yes, my hands are ashy in this photo. no, i do not care leave me alone.

What I read

recently, i spent some time trying to isolate what attracts me to post structural thinking. through the years, i’ve done a lot of reading within the genre, drudging through all the big dogs: foucault, deleuze, baudrillard. shit a few months ago i wrote about roland barthes and his takes rooted in linguistics. for those unacquainted, post-structuralism is basically what happens when you stop pretending there’s one clean, stable meaning hiding under everything and you start noticing how messy language actually is. it’s like, every time we try to pin something down, the words slide around, histories show up, power creeps in, and the “truth” keeps wobbling. instead of chasing some grand, fixed structure, post-structuralism is like: nah, meaning is made in motion, in context, in contradiction. it’s less “here is the answer” and more “look at how the answer keeps shifting depending on who’s talking, who’s listening, and what the stakes are.”

even when i’m out of my depths, the shit is fascinating to me. i appreciate how all of these guys come from a background that encouraged empirical thinking. they are sometimes painstaking in the way they will state a problem then elucidate on that issue from ever possible angle, until the horse is dead by way of bludgeon. i also appreciate how post structuralism seems to account for context, especially with regards to gender or race.

for years, i’ve heard about this nigga byung chul han, who seemingly marries poetics with philosophy with an extreme bend towards post structural thinking. this is in contrast to the big boys in the field who sometimes can be very...analytical in their approach, opting to speak in plain english and eschewing anything resembling prose. one of the sharp downsides to this book is that han assumes you’re already familiar with all of the names he casually drops throughout. i was tapped into many of the thinkers, including foucault and marx, but then he started talking about hannah arendt which forced me to pause and do more research so i could actually draw meaning from what is being said. should also be mentioned, han seems to engage deeply with heiddeger, is himself a german, and was hyper critical of arendt which really makes me wonder if he’s a nazi sympathizer. cringe.

either way, i’m currently drudging through his book “the burnout society” which honestly is a compelling read. i’ll follow up on this writing as a proper essay soon.

What I did

i’ve been trying to strengthen my connection with kansas city. over the summer i made the commitment to try and do as many events as i could and connect with the local community over the course of a year. luckily for me, KC is currently exploding with lots of new cute places to pop up and be a nuisance. one of the places at the top of my list is a japanese style jazz kissa hi fi bar called XO. similar to other places i frequent in LA like in sheeps clothing and gold line bar, XO features a fully analog soundsystem and vinyl only policy. my type of elitism! i reached out to them in september and secured a date for december. i flew back a ton of records and pulled from my uncles collection in topeka. the event went well...i think.

for those who were not lucky enough to attend i pulled together a playlist featuring selections from my set.

apple music: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/morris-xo-selections/pl.u-EdAVykdCaXggx2

What I had done

a week before x-mas, i had my shit rocked by an upper respiratory bug. the event at XO fell on december 18th, by which time i was literally coughing and sweating but forced make myself available to the public. you wouldn’t know it from watching the recap, but i was very under the weather. it took me about 10 days to fully kick it which put somewhat of a damper on my holiday but i was happy to have the alone time in bed to vibe out, write and think about what i’d like to do in 2026.

Best meal

Pizza Tascio - 1111 Burlington St, North Kansas City, MO

in late november, dave portnoy came to kansas city searching for the best pizza. i highlighted a few different spots, but he gave pizza tascio the crown. i intended to follow along and try them all, starting from the top. unfortunately tascio was so fucking good i haven’t been able to bring myself to check out the others. i’ve been back 3 times, sampling widely across the menu. i’m struggling to think of a pizza spot in LA that can even rival what they’re doing down at tascio. i won’t tell you what to order, but if you’re in the kansas city area, i highly recommend you go down there and tell em morris sent ya.

Worst meal

ProteinHouse - 1345 Main St, Kansas City, MO

this spot is across the street from B&B theater in power and light, my christmas eve plan was to get modern market before seeing marty supreme but when i got there, it was closed. bummer. proteinhouse is right next door, i’ve seen it many times, but finally went in so i wouldn’t go to the movies hungry and binge on bullshit. this was a mistake.

if you’ve been here a while, or know me irl, it’s no secret that i’m a bit of an ED girlie. there’s few things i enjoy more in life than depriving myself of calories, which has meant i’ve spent my time in the trenches of “clean eating”. from slop bowls to lean salads, i will plunge my fork with a level of discernment that would inspire even the most calorie deficient wrestler trying to make weight. the food at proteinhouse is a very particular brand of tasteless Goop Kitchen slop that makes it easy to choose starving over eating. its that bad. it works by eroding your desire to eat, since you can extract zero joy from the act itself. i got salmon over greens, which is something i make at home often, so i know how good it can be. the worst part is i was telling the girlie out the counter how much i liked modern market and she assured me that proteinhouse was better. her ass was lying.

and see here is my problem, look how much longer this review is than the one for pizza tascio. it’s so much easier to devote energy to hating than to what i enjoy. chat do this make me a hater? (don’t answer that)

Quote of the month

“trying to communicate through talking feels like trying to put the ocean through a straw”
- björk

Random thoughts of the week

this is just the new me

it’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting

i don’t need more things to look at from people I don’t know

this particular issue could’ve been entirely about the doings of american conservatives but i decided to set my sights across a broader spectrum of writing, basically not wanting to bum you out. it also occurred to me, somewhere along the way i lost the plot with the food, recipes, and gourmand baddies of editions past. this week that changes. we are so back.

maga: 0 - photography: 1

vanity fair did their big one with this epic two parter documenting the inner workings of the currrent trump adminstration, and it contains the stuff pulitzers are made of. it’s really all here: shady politicians, cheap shots and cheaper decor, power struggles, and a nation in peril as democracy is commandeered by the types of ghouls barely fit to run a bass pro shop let alone a country. the photography in this piece recalls those grotesque hyper close ups from spongebob and ren & stimpy. i’m not sure how this made it to print, frankly. you’d think the president’s people would try harder to press like this under wraps, the picture being painted here is extremely unsavory and only serves to highlight what we all know: everyone in the current presidential cabinet is involved in a strange power struggle and we’re all left dealing with the collateral damage.

notes on arthur jafa

arthur jafa is an interesting figure. his work is expansive, stretching into a few different disciplines and art practices. doing research on jafa’s work, which is expansive, important and ill defined sometimes all at once, i fell into a hole trying to learn about the difference between a Director of Photography and Cinematographer. at different times, jafa has been credited, confusingly, as both. in addition to his work as a DP, arthur has a very successful career as a fine artist, with an apparent focus on mixed media.

this holiday season, eyes wide shut was reissued by the criterion collection. as part of retrospective, criterion interviewed new york based photographer lisa leone. leone apparently assisted kubrick, who at that time was basd in london, in creating verisimilitude, he was mortally afraid of airplanes which created a challenge when working on this film, which was set in new york. leone worked with jafa and others to catalog the minutiae of the street - doing an amazing job in the 1:1 translation of the city that never sleeps.

above all, jafa reigns supreme as an orator. his various speeches and lectures, some available online, serve to elevate his work even further, placing his art practice in a very cerebral and reactive space. he really knows what he’s into and can speak on it with such conviction that you can’t help but try to follow along his train of thought. earlier this month, interview magazine ran an incredible piece where jafa managed to talk about DJs, plantations, and michael jackson in the context of aethestics of blackness, imagination and digital art. if you’re having a hard time following me, i understand and its fine, just read the article.

ahh another day, another litmus for being cooked. this story arrives at a time where all legacy media keeps getting rolled up in a blunt and smoked by big internet. while we were all still reeling from the recent announcement about netflix’s purchase of warner bros, here comes these mfs announcing they’ll be airing the oscars exclusively on youtube. the announcement rippled across the internet and everyone pulled out their laptops and started writing their little hot takes, basically in unison. i don’t have a lot to really contribute to the conversation, as i pirate basically all media but i did wonder: will this disqualify the oscars from emmy nominations? then in a moment of whiplash inducing clarity, i found myself wondering why i even care if these folks will still be able to pick up their gold gilded plaques.

notes on food & dining

in past editions of reading roundup, i tried to include a recipe or a least a focus on food. this week is a return to form, due partially in part to the fact i’ve actually been in one place long enough to cook myself a proper meal. we’re deep in the soup season, so accordingly i bring you my favorite recipes of the last week or so. i’ve been eating a lot of it and so should you.

gluttony is an underrated sin

america’s money is fucked up. basically anywhere you turn, theres a new development about how reliant the economy has become on spending binges by the richest Americans. increasingly the american economy is being buoyed by a handful of blue chip companies and the overlords who run them. i’m not telling you anything you don’t know, merely setting the stage. in this article, the NYT profiles the eating habits of the hyper wealthy. we often talk about getting a piece of the pie. these folks had dessert first, left nothing for the rest of us, and have now moved on to suckling pig, boeuf bourguignon, and crudo the size of the ocean. the times paints a portrait of gluttony in painstaking detail, as restaurants set their sights on increasing margins by creating extravagant shows of wealth in the form of plates stacked high with the most decadent foods they can find.

underneath this article is a subtext about how the rest of us are too poor to keep hospitality and restaurants afloat, so the industry has reacted by positioning itself in front of their richest clientele. in the context of the middle class, there is all this talk about the k shaped economy not enough talk about the k-shaped menu where prices rise while portions fall (ahem chipotle). i won’t ruin the laundry list of foods these rich folks are hogging but i am not gonna lie to you, but was taking notes so i could pull off the poor man’s version. i can make chicken nuggets with creme fraiche and some low level caviar, you know, as a treat. as easy as it is to be critical (and jealous), i prefer to contribute to the problem by echoing the doings of the wealthy as a form of aspiration. i might not be able to afford to do it every night, but i’ll be damned if i don’t play my part in the destruction of the middle class.

wishbone kitchen’s swamp soup

first off, i love meredith hayden. i’ve been following her and cooking her recipes for years. add her to the list of chefs who somehow remain snatched, i cannot figure it out. for the last few days, i’ve been under the weather with some mysterious upper respiratory bug. it’s not enough to lay me out but just enough to keep my energy low. the swamp soup has been getting me through this trying time. highly recommend topping this with creme fraiche!!

Ingredients

• 4 cups chicken broth

• 1 heaping cup cooked rice

• 1 cup cooked and pulled chicken

• 4 medium cloves of garlic

• 2 inches fresh ginger, peeled

• 2 stalks of green garlic, or scallions or green onions, white and green parts

• 2-3 jalapeños**, stems and seeds removed, plus more for garnish

• 1 cup parsley, packed plus more for garnish

• 4 cups baby spinach, packed

• Salt to taste

• Soy sauce to taste

• Top with creme fraiche

*add more or less depending on how spicy you want it!

Instructions

1. Bring bone broth to a boil and fold in the spinach. Cook the spinach until wilted and shrunken in size. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the spinach out of the broth and into your blender. Set aside to cool.

2. Add the rice into the broth, bring back to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Let the rice simmer in the broth until liquid has thickened and rice begins to break apart, about 10-15 minutes

3. Transfer garlic, ginger, scallion, jalapeño and parsley into the blender with the spinach. Add about 1/4 cup of water and 1 tsp salt. Blend until smooth, about 60 seconds. If the blender gets stuck, add more water. If your blender is too small, you can do this in batches or use a food processor. DO NOT PUT HOT SOUP IN YOUR BLENDER, IT WILL EXPLODE.

4. When broth is thickened, fold in the chicken. I recommend mixing in about half of your herb puree and giving it a taste before dumping it all in. The pungency of raw garlic can vary, and if you’re sensitive to garlic or are prone to acid reflux you might want to hold back a bit. Mix to combine, and taste for salt. Adjust as needed.

5. Turn off the heat and serve. Finish with soy sauce, more fresh parsley, thinly sliced jalapeño, a wedge of lemon or lime, and dollop of creme fraiche.

Today I’m excited to be sitting down with someone whose work I’ve followed for a long time. Aaron Rhodes is a journalist, a promoter, and the mind behind Shuttlecock, a project that has taken shape in many different forms. It was a zine. It was a website. It was a podcast, and now it’s a Substack. But it’s always been a real hub for the Kansas City music community. Along the way, Aaron has been supporting artists in a way that’s very thoughtful and grounded. I had the opportunity to appear on his podcast in 2021, so this feels like a much needed follow up.

How does it feel being a #9 rising in music on Substack?

I’m really on top of the world, like kind of euphoric. I haven’t even told my family yet. I don’t know what they’re going to say. I’m going to have to start paying everybody’s bills soon. I’m going to have cousins coming out of the woodwork that I never met. But I’m trying to keep a level head.

What do you think Substack says about where music journalism is headed?

In the last several years, both the readers and the employees of larger publications, whether online or in print, have been let down by legacy organizations, in terms of how much employees and freelancers are being paid, how much thought and effort is being put into the writing and the work that comes out of those publications, or who they choose to platform and which artists they decide to focus on. A lot of younger people see legacy media as a whole being out of touch with the wants and needs of people under forty. I think Substack and platforms like Patreon that allow you to publish your work independently are becoming more sought after due to the lack of trust in legacy institutions.

I just read a Substack essay from Brittany Spanos, one of the former pop writers over at Rolling Stone. She wrote well received pieces profiling Addison Rae, Tate McRae, Chappell Roan and others. Before the holidays, she got the call that she being laid off. That set the stage for her to launch a Substack.

By the time I had seen the article, there was already a chorus of support. People felt bad for her for having been let down by the institution itself, but also were excited she had figured out a way to repurpose what she was doing for a more internet savvy audience.

It was almost like she turned a negative into a positive thanks to Substack. It does seem like the legacy folks are fading out and the trust isn’t there, the money’s not there. People are all heading for different avenues to get their ideas out increasingly without an intermediary. You can go straight from an idea to printed word in the time it takes for you to type it out.

You are cutting out the middleman in a lot of ways. People who come from the legacy background might argue that it’s important to have an editor look over your work before you publish it. If I had an editor that I can afford and I trusted, I would indulge in that too. Large establishments have less power and less resources than they used to due to ad revenue and investors not being as interested. They have the most resources and yet the public’s opinion of the work is at an all time low.

For people who might be new to your work, how would you describe what Shuttlecock is right now?

The blog is the first thing that I ever launched. I called it Shuttlecock Music Magazine so I was more likely to sound official and important and get more press passes to go to concerts and take photos.

Which worked like a charm.

It did work pretty well. I had my little junior journalist, Almost Famous type setup. I started it the month I graduated high school. I was eighteen, and I had a lot of fun just hitting the pavement and doing standard music blogging for a few years straight, multiple shows a week. I was doing photo galleries, write ups, concert reviews, interviews with artists. That’s what the website began as. Currently it is mostly just where I keep my calendar of concert recommendations that I’ve never stopped updating, which has been the one constant part of a Shuttlecock, a weekly concert calendar that I curate. It’s really just anything I feel is worth checking out that week. Except no offense, no DJs and no cover bands.

Most DJs, myself included, are promoters first. DJs could sell ice cubes to Inuits. They ultimately are there to promote. Their whole profile or platform is just built for pushing themselves. Musicians, on the other hand, are often so focused on the music that the image, the marketing, and the promotion are totally secondary.

Speaking as a DJ, especially when you get booked, a lot of the time you’re expected to be the promoter. It’s given me a great deal of respect for traditional promoters, people who go out and spread the word organically. In a perfect world, in DJ culture, we would work more with classic promoters to create a balanced approach.

The term promoter in regards to booking and promoting live music, is a little bit of a misnomer if you’re not familiar with working in live music. When you have the title of promoter and you’re booking bands, when a show doesn’t go well, a band looks at you and says, “I thought you were the promoter”. And it’s like, yo, one chunk of the job is promoting. But then it’s also wrangling all the musicians together, putting the flyer together, setting up the set times, and if there’s a contract involved, setting up the contracts. Using the simple term of promoter for what the average promoter does is, I think, a bit of a misnomer.

It’s maybe a little reductive, right?

Yeah. It’s reductive.

Obviously Shuttlecock has taken many different forms, partially just to meet the ever changing demand of the community and the media landscape. But it’s been a blog, it’s been a podcast, it’s taken the form of live shows. What drew you to Substack specifically at this moment?

I have been following the Public Announcement newsletter for a couple years. They do a very tidy, text focused half dozen links to cool articles, music, and other fun things on the internet for anyone interested in culture, news, and thoughtful ideas.

I never stopped following local stuff in the last few years but I didn’t have a place where I could share those things in a succinct and direct manner where I knew it would reach people. When I was looking into Substack it seemed like a doable thing. I can make it three or four paragraphs long, once a week. I have the time to do that. It’s not so long that people will tune out halfway through, it has a high likelihood of reaching the people because it goes right to their email and it has a very easy way of being monetized. Those are all very positive factors for me.

Substack is a perfect container for bite sized chunks of information. You can get critique, short form, and long form just depending on where you’re at in your arc. Substack does a good job at spoon feeding that to you in a way that feels tolerable.

Because of everyone’s immersion in media, audiences are more sophisticated than ever before. For some, critique isn’t necessarily a draw. There was a time when people needed guidance in terms of molding the conversation around a particular piece of work. Now they just need to have someone who can highlight different things so that it can make it above the noise. Then they make their own value assessments about the work itself. As tastemakers, they are as just as competent or as you and I.

They only had so much money to spend on records or tapes or CDs. Now you can listen to unlimited music all day on YouTube, streaming or Bandcamp or whatever. It can be a little bit easier to immerse yourself in classics of every genre and get at least a basic education in any kind of style.

I have a conspiracy theory about TikTok. I believe it’s being neutered by it’s new tech overlords, which created an opportunity for Substack to rise to the occasion. Much like TikTok, Substack has a sophisticated algorithm which allows you to just log on to the Substack page, and within just a few clicks, it’s starting to bring you the things that it thinks you’re interested in. It’s scarily close to the mark, which is something that TikTok initially had over Instagram. The For You pulls on TikTok versus Instagram were a lot more attenuated and closer to your real taste. Substack has that too, but supercharged by the power of overachieving creative writing majors.

It’s easier on the eyes sometimes to look at some words and have them be the right words that connect with your brain and feel good.

When I’m with my girl, she’s on TikTok all the time scrolling. Her whole algorithm is wrapped up in KC Tok. Through her, I saw how much TikTok has been embraced in the Kansas City community. A lot of people with tiny microphones going to restaurants, highlighting different lounges and bars. I don’t think it’s to the detriment of the community. In fact, this grassroots approach to documenting what’s happening in nightlife and culture in Kansas City may be a good thing and it seems like it’s exploding on TikTok.

To me that means there’s a fighting chance for there to be a community of people who are writing about what’s happening on Substack, specifically in Kansas City, for people in Kansas City. The city’s profile has been risen dramatically thanks to the Chiefs and the Taylor Swift effect plus the World Cup. There’s all this money being sunk into infrastructure. They built the rail car. It almost seems like Kansas City is sort of coming of age in a way.

You’re hoping for those things to uplift native Kansas City businesses and artists and working class, middle class people. I’m a little pessimistic. I’ve seen so many cycles of that happen over the years, I’m not holding out a ton of hope for someone to swoop in and lift up artists and small businesses. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love it if it did have a big, positive impact on the area.

When I look at the effect that TikTok and stuff like that is having on Kansas City, it seems at this point to be mostly to the benefit of businesses. The places that are going viral are mostly restaurants. It’s not “I went out and saw a show and this artist blew me away.” It’s “hey, you can get these drinks at John’s Big Deck.”

I kind of wish I could force myself to make the jump. Maybe I’ll force myself to start talking into the front facing camera and doing a different version of my Substack. But at my big age of about to be 29, it’s a leap to start talking into a TikTok microphone.

You should lock in on Substack. It really is the perfect balance. There’s a reason why you’re #9 rising at this time. You’ve entered the conversation at a perfect moment in Kansas City’s history.

Maybe you and I are unlocking all of the keys for Kansas City artists right now. Except I don’t think they’re going to give us our flowers.

That’s not why we do it, right? If we did it for the flowers, we would have quit a long time ago.

That’s so true.

[Portions of this interview have been edited for clarity.]

Follow Shuttlecock on Instagram & Substack.