Welcome Distractions – April 21

Almost everything, or almost fine

Hey! You’re here! Thank you.

It was a long weekend and Easter Monday is a holiday or pseudo-holiday in a lot of places. Hopefully you have better things to do than read this. In my case, it’s a workday but the schools are closed.

As expected, last week was a melancholy week, starting with saying goodbye to the house where I grew up. That was much more difficult than I expected.

It was almost a nice weekend, but so far spring isn’t very convincing.

My #dutchindie thing didn’t work out (though I have hope for this week).

It’s an election where I live and the stakes are fairly high, especially for those of us with LGBTQ people we love.

All that to say: I’ve got a lot on my mind right now, but I guess that’s how the world works right now.

I’ve been thinking about something a lot lately though — since I finished Perfection recently, a line from it has been echoing around in my head. In the book it’s about ending a weekend of partying, but I think it works in a lot of contexts:

…take two aspirins before climbing into bed and by Monday morning everything would be fine, or almost everything, or almost fine.

An all-new feature starts this week: it’s called The Backstory. If it works out, I’ll be doing these things regularly, and hopefully with a lot of artists that have interests that are very different than mine.

In other news:

Journalism!

• This interactive NYT immigration piece is gorgeous and I found the animations soothing. I want to project them on my bedroom ceiling at night. The interactive map link at the end will consume your day
• What If David Mamet Was Always a MAGA Fanboy? I didn’t realize Mamet was a Trump guy, but Glengarry Glen Ross was always about glorifying Scam America.
• Five Minutes with Ringo Starr: Any piece that starts like this is a must read:

I don’t like checking email when I’m high, but sometimes I space out and compulsively refresh my iPhone, hoping for something new and shiny.

• The Toronto Accent is Real – not literary or music-related, but a fun read about the origin of the strangest accent you’ll hear.
• An entertaining story about math whizzes taking down a Texas lottery, and the inevitable lawsuit that follows
• The new Wet Leg song is growing on me. Here’s a good short set with a couple classics:

AI Stuff

These links are all about AI but are more interesting than usual. There’s nuance and hope here, but if you’re sick of the whole topic I get it, skip this section:

• How to Survive the AI Revolution: This reminded me a lot of Brian Merchant’s book Blood in the Machine, which you should absolutely read.
• Why AI will lead to more ‘proof of reality’ posts – I’ve been thinking about this since I read it last week, and in music specifically, imperfection is what often signals authenticity (the guitar crunch in “Creep”, the stutter in “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” or the botched rhyme in the Beasties’ “Pass the Mic”). When we use words like ‘raw’ and ‘alive’ to describe music, it’s the imperfections that we’re talking about.
• The AI Romance Factory – another dumbass tech bro that doesn’t understand why people like books. This is a better read than I expected.
• Following up from last week’s video, this one is a good discussion between RIck Beato and Anthony Fantano about lots of things – whether Stevie Wonder would be a success today, AI in music and lots more:

What got your attention this week? Got a hot take on something? Reach out.

On the blog

Reading:

• Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico is exactly that.
• Waiting on the Moon by Peter Wolf is a music memoir by a guy I didn’t know, that I absolutely loved
• Death of the Author is the last book by Nnedi Okorafor that I’ll read

The Shortlist: No shortlist last week. I ran out of time. I promise a bunch this week. Last week’s stories are still there waiting for you..

Read or write anything good lately? Wrote something you want to share? Let me know!

Listening:

What are you listening to this week? Share the love!

Comin’ up:

The new feature mentioned above should be out later this week, it’s shaping up to be pretty great. A short #dutchindie post today. A really great book about Albania that I learned a lot from. And the Kaput EP comes out this Friday.

What are you listening to these days? Send me your faves.