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P S Y C H O ! (a mixtape)
This mix began as a Halloween party mix (complete with “Monster Mash”) and then morphed into something weirder and scarier, I think: a mix of songs (mostly) about being crazy — maybe even psychotically! — in love. (The more you listen to love songs the more you realize, “Man, this person is not well!”)
These mixes usually begin with what I call “seed songs” — a song that you kind of want to build a whole mix around. In this case it was the Sonics’ “Psycho” and Girls’ “Lust for Life,” which I couldn’t get out of my head for weeks. I also found that picture of Frankenstein’s monster with the little girl by the lake and these lyrics became more relevant: “I wish I had a father / And maybe then I would’ve turned out right / But now I’m just crazy / I’m totally mad…”
Another thing I learned from this mix: I really build theses mixes based on vibe, so if I have a band that captures the vibe I’m going for, I can use their influences to build up variety in the mix. For example, The Cramps’ “psychobilly” thing is what I wanted for the first side, so I simply searched “cramps influences” and got this Apple playlist that had more of the sort of stuff I was going for. Having the original versions of songs the Cramps covered (like Charlie Feathers’ “Can’t Hardly Stand It”) just thickens the stew, so to speak. (Same for searching for “Creedence covers” — this playlist popped up.)
I filled the tiny gaps on each side with Uncle Monty’s “I mean to have you, even if it must be burglary!” monologue from Withnail & I and a snippet of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Love is Not All.”
You can listen to the mix on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.
Filed under: mixtapes
On nemeses
I used this poem at the top of my letter, “Everything you can see.”
See also: “Do you have a nemesis?”
Typewriter interview with Lisa Hanawalt
The latest typewriter interview is with artist Lisa Hanawalt.
On baseball
I love to (mostly) ignore baseball all year and then follow the playoffs religiously. A few weeks ago I wrote a whole newsletter about the game called “Baseball on the brain.” It begins:
“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.” That’s the opening of “The Green Fields of the Mind,” collected in the slim, wonderful volume A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti. Highly recommended if you like thinking about America, baseball, and The Odyssey.
Read the rest here.
Archival issues
I have been writing a special Tuesday newsletter for paid subscribers for five years now, which means there’s a bunch of really good stuff just kind of hiding in the archives over there. I’ve tagged a lot of of it on the newsletter homepage in categories like “notebooks,” “mixtapes,” “tutorials,” “zines,” “typewriter interviews,” etc.
But it’s hard to know how to point people back at stuff.
A few weeks ago I had a sale on paid subscriptions, so I used it as an excuse to gather some of the more popular letters, like:
a look inside of my notebooks, a tour of my studio, my guide to block printing, how I make color brush pens, motivational posters for your studio, and the 7 questions I ask myself when I don’t know what to do next. Get it!
The week after that, I gathered up the letters regarding what I know about writing books:
All good things must begin, there’s an abyss between researching and writing and a gulp between when you finish and publish, coming up with a good title matters, there are many tricks for self-editing and the best is “just cut stuff,” you have to love your work long enough to see it through, and it often helps to think of your book (and everything else you write) as a letter to a friend.
I need to spend more time in the newsletter archives doing this kind of work: figuring out what I have and how I can bundle it together. Because honestly, that’s how most of the books were written!
But then again, I’d rather, you know, actually be writing.
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