discursion

The new Bill Orcutt album Odds Against Tomorrow was released yesterday.

I’ve already purchased it, and will immerse shortly.

His last solo album got me a lot of places. The one with Chris Corsano also goes a hell of a lot of great places.

I can’t recommend them enough.

This’ll be unruly, but after reading the preceding David Graeber piece last night, I thought of the work of Timothy Morton and Derrick Jensen, and the thought occurred to me that these three are helping to articulate something like a practical philosophy well-suited towards creating a pro-humanity, pro-life, anti-capitalist, anti-growth future.

In trying to do a quick online search of something related, I landed on this page, devoted to what it positions as five essential texts on Radical Environmentalism and I’m absolutely delighted by the unexpected choices contained therein, most especially so by the inclusion of Ralph Ellison and Emily Dickinson.

Dickinson in particular I have adored most of my adult life, and celebrated as one of our most profound poets and thinkers–through her writing.

The Argonauts crossed my path just yesterday, in this interesting piece on Heteropessimism, by way of a friend. I must confess to not recalling or having been aware of Maggie Nelson’s book, but given Indiana Seresin’s description as “a book once so rabidly popular among women and queers that my first copy was swiped from my bag at a dyke bar in 2016,” I’m very interested.

Additionally, I admire the writing of Solnit, and anything thoughtful, theoretical, and useful on anarchism is 100% up my alley.

Freedom has become the right to share in the proceeds of one’s own permanent enslavement.

Graeber, nearly as always, speaks more closely to my core inclinations than just about any other public theorist and activist.

My FB comment in response to the friend who shared it:

Shatteringly correct.

I’ve read him as much as I can, and one evening had the pleasure of actually talking with him about exactly what he’s written about here.

So much that’s written here is what I struggle with on a nearly daily basis–how to actualize and disentangle myself/us as far as possible from capitalism and all of the insidious social structures he’s described.

Here is a fine, short appreciation by Richard Brody of the visionary Shirley Clarke, whose films I adore.

I’m thrilled that The Criterion Channel has uploaded much of her work, as its predecessor Filmstruck had before.

This is outstanding.

Here is a blazing live version of revered Fred McDowell’s version of “John Henry.”