Diane Cluck Lifetime Achievement Piece & Spring 2021 Mixtape
Recent Offerings From Your Cultural Mechanic, Queen of Birds, Mad Mad Daddy of Music Journalism, and Condenser of Mysteries
Hello!
A quick note on three things:
1) My Lifetime Achievement feature on Diane Cluck is up! She has been my favorite contemporary songwriter for half of my life now and a massive influence on the healing I have done and the human being I have become. I hope you find both her music and the story of her life helpful, compelling, and endlessly inspiring. It is an honor to be able to create something which honors her.
2) I also finished my Spring Mixtape! It has a very good bang to rip, bounce to roll ratio, which is always my goal. Thematically, it is concerned with the springtime, knocking on doors, becoming more determined in pursuit of my dreams and desires, getting sober, mysticism, the passing of time, THE FUTURE, moving from blindness and confusion to clarity and vision, taking responsibility for ourselves, and the condensing of mysteries, which is a new honorific title that was recently bestowed upon me: “Condenser of Mysteries” is a reference to Lorine Niedecker, and it would be difficult to flatter or please me more deeply. As a result, I have added it to my extremely long list of honorific titles!
3) A lot of issues relating to Substack have emerged and I have been figuring out how to navigate them as a user. I do not use this to make money as a writer, but rather as a free way of sending updates on my work to people who may not spend a lot of time on social media. Nevertheless, I would prefer to not be associated with the platform or lend it legitimacy through my own creative work. I tried switching to TinyLetter, but I just really do not like it aesthetically. I also went to a FEMA camp in Gary, Indiana, where I got my first Covid-19 vaccination Monday night and I have just been a bit zonked since, so please know that I am looking for an alternate platform, but for the time being and the purpose of getting this information to you while it is hot, I am still utilizing this one.
My next article is a guide to one of my favorite labels, which just happens to be located here in Chicago with me, Trouble in Mind! I am really excited to actually sit down with Bill and Lisa Roe in person and finally get to use my audio recorder I bought for doing interviews just before Covid hit!!! At long last, I will get to describe what my interview subjects were doing when they said something, communicating their live energy and presence! It pleases me very much—as does the actual experience of being there with them in real life, generally. More of that to come soon, hopefully.
In closing, please enjoy this alternative album art for Oh Vanille/ova nil by Diane Cluck that I had tattooed on my thigh in 2016.
More soon,
EMD