Sounds Coming Out of the Land #8: Dr. Judith Butler's Edward Said Memorial Lecture
Latest radio show & Echobox Radio fundraiser for Palestine this weekend & some good news about forthcoming retrograde tapes & my first collection of essays
A quick note—
Sounds Coming Out of the Land is still on hiatus in an attempt to force you to be present to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. This weekend Echobox Radio is raising awareness and funds for Palestine; if you appreciate the free programming from this collective of radio makers, please forward any donations to people fighting for their lives and the lives of others in Gaza. My latest show will air tomorrow at 10:00 Land Time and 16:00 ‘Dam Time, but you can listen to it here at your leisure anytime. This week I’m presenting the Edward Said Memorial Lecture given by Cleveland native Dr. Judith Butler at the Jerusalem Fund and Palestine Center in Washington, D.C in October of 2014. Yes, I’m going to keep playing lectures by Jewish American anti-Zionist leftist scholars for as long it remains necessary. And yes, I’m quite proud that one of the greatest is from the Land.
Today there was an incredible sale on beautiful paper and cardstock at Michael’s, just a day after I began thinking about my next Mercury retrograde mixtape series, which will begin next weekend—I have my first four recipients’ addresses written down and I’ve got a week to figure out what it’s called and what it’s about. I’ll be working out my winter 2024 mixtape for my best friend in these studies. If you want a tape this retrograde, let me know!
The mix of blues is for the retrograde tapes, but I also bought many bundles of brown, cream, and tan papers to use in the composition of my first collection of essays, which I will be self-publishing and making by hand this winter to help raise funds to pay my property taxes. It’s called The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Granola Butter Factory Worker (all my book titles are going to be jokes about other books) and it will feature my earliest essays that I still have the rights to, written between 2015 and 2023, as well as one new essay that I am writing for the end of the year on the topic of indie capitalism—a reflection on my time as a regular Bandcamp contributor in the exact space between Bandcamp’s rise as a seemingly progressive media organization during the pandemic lockdown through its purchase by Epic Games in spring of 2022 and the more recent unionbusting maneuvers that appear to be a main function behind the most recent sale to Songtradr. There’s going to be a lot of “hot goss” and even more deep reflections. I haven’t gotten to do a lot of writing this year due to relocating across the country by myself, buying a house, and having to rebuild basically every aspect of my life back in Cleveland, so I am excited to present something new and on my own terms and to put these words in print for the first time. More details to come!
I forgot that I wanted to share this picture that I took at Albert Ayler’s grave, where I went to listen to the live broadcast of Sounds Coming Out of the Land #6: The Blast Beat Belongs to Jazz. It was an overcast day at the cemetery in September, but the sun came out just to shine on Albert and I while we were playing the Velvets internationally. I also found his grave at the precise moment his music started playing on the show. Everything about it felt cosmically ordained, which is the way every aspect of my work on Sounds Coming Out of the Land has felt.
More soon,
EMD