MORE NOT TERRIBLE THINGS

The whole stated goal of this newsletter was to a) find a better/ more human way of communicating/ get off social media, and b) be able to share things that are keeping me sane, in the hopes that it'll do the same for people that are not me.

I went to a thing a few nights ago; no huge deal. But I came home feeling really good. And that's nothing to scoff at; so I wondered– Why, exactly?

Here's the basic rundown: my old friend Shawn popped into the print shop to pick up his print* (He also subscribes to this newsletter. HEY, SIR!!). Aside from just being a pal since 1990, he was the drummer in my band The Hand for a number of years, and a great sounding board for when I was thinking of starting the print shop (he's a screen printer too, and has also helped me out with some technical advice along the way). Also he's just a great dude.

In the course of shooting shit, he mentioned he'd just done some shirts for this thing our mutual pal Jeff Mooridian (who was the drummer in Hammerhead, one of the all-time great Minneapolis bands) was doing in a few weeks: playing a live drum "soundtrack" to a 15 minute film about Greg LeMond coming back and winning the Tour De France in 1989.

I have little to no knowledge about (and only the vaguest interest in) the Tour De France, but it immediately struck me as all kinds of awesome.

A week later I ran into the Jeff in question at a birthday (houseboat!!) party for another old pal, and Jeff said "yeah, it's completely nuts but I've been thinking about doing it for 10 years, so what the hell"; he's huge into Cycling and this (apparently momentous) LeMond comeback is a big deal for him.

Unbelievably, I remembered to mark JULY 20 on my calendar (which, by the way, is made of paper), and since I'm almost entirely off social media these days, told folks about it when I ran into them, with my mouth hole, out in the real world.

It happened, and it was so damn great.

I have to admit, it was initially pretty god damned weird walking into Grumpy's, the neighborhood bar I used to routinely get way too shit faced at, way too often, before I quit drinking in '04. I don't even think about booze anymore, but it all came back. Not necessarily in a bad way, but strange. It faded quickly, as I realized I was surrounded by people I've known in various capacities for 20 years or more. It ran the entire spectrum: long-standing acquaintances, friends I hadn't seen in a while (some I've been in bands/ done projects with, or watched their bands). And some people I love very, very dearly. The best humans I know. The whole gamut, just....hanging out.

And not only that: looking around and seeing all these folks from various points on my personal venn diagram doing the same thing with other people– those 2 over there catching up, and I didn't even know they knew each other, but then realizing– of course they do. That's how this works.

Then the "event" fired up. A bit of stand-up comedy (first-time, but she was funny) beforehand, then Jeff read a short intro about the race, cycling, LeMond as a human and the dude's sincerity and integrity. Then he (and another old pal, Adam, who was doing some drone accompaniment) fired up the film on a screen behind them, and went ape shit on it for the entire 15-minute run of this documentary about the race.

10 minutes in, smoke bombs were lit. Red and blue. And there was a nice sunset behind them.

Again, no big thing, by any metric. Went and saw a pal make some music. Ran into some friends. Hung out. Came home. Something I've done thousands of times in my life. Ostensibly nothing to write home (or a newsletter) about.

Only, it is. Very much so. It took me a minute to consciously figure out why.

It means more now. It's no longer a given, and I think the reasons people show up have shifted; it sure has for me.

I ran it down in my head: I'd heard about this entirely in person, one friend to another. No social media or website involved, at all. Just people talking to people, in the real actual world.

Nobody in this little hang-out session was pretending "everything's fine" or "we're avoiding the very harsh reality we currently live in". In fact, that came up in just about every conversation I had, and the "stand-up" set right before Jeff played was, to a certain extent, all about that. Funny (and sometimes less funny) riffs on to fucking live in this moment.

From marginally different circles, somehow gathering in this spot for this "pointless" thing (see, because things being done not for money or success or "getting ahead" aren't really worth anyone's time, right?).

In this bar where I used to get wasted really often. Owned by the dude whose record label meant a hell of a lot to me in my youth (they put out the Hammerhead records, you see, among many others), and 25 years later put out a 7" by MY band. With Shawn. Got handed a beautiful zine done by a guy I started a free Art School with. And looking around, I can tick off cool shit every individual I know in this crowd has done, or is doing. Sometimes together, sometimes solo. But here we all are.

You're looking for sanity, and community, and people gathering in real life to do cool things instead of shitty, horrible things?

This is it. It's not on your phone.

We always knew it. It's like coming out of a trance. Talked to another friend after— who has also been to countless "shows"– who seemed in the same kind of mild shock I was about how fucking great this goofy little thing felt. I heard words coming out of her mouth that rattle around in my skull (and sometimes in this newsletter) all day.

She said "It's all we've got, now."

I have said those exact words. Fact is, it's probably all we ever had, things have just gone so sideways– in such small, invisible, incremental (but also sometimes huge and glaring) ways, over many decades– that we forgot. I get isolated and hopeless, depressed, and laid out flat like everyone else. Sometimes I feel like I'm beating a dead horse with this newsletter. But other times I feel like I'm trying to feed apples to the only horse left standing.

And I'm hearing a lot of that these days, when I talk to people in real life.

No one knows what to do. But this is what to do. What the fuck else CAN you do? Where does any decent thing start?

And of course I'm not talking about "going to a bar and watching someone drum along to the '89 Tour De France".

I wrote some time ago about "PUNK". The "punk" I came up in, which generally went unnoticed, a mostly invisible cultural blip, outside of the people who were there (Strange that that crew, the "cynical", "outsider" "fuck-ups" have by and large become the most stand-up, ethical, sane group of people I know. The ones still alive and functional, anyways). There were networks (not "networking", damn it); just organic, autonomous means of connecting, and getting shit done. It wasn't big and sprawling, on purpose, and it sure as hell wasn't about making money. I don't give a solid fuck about "punk" (in the way most people think about it), and probably I never did. The times are different. The tools are different.

But yeah, without (whatever you want to call it), we've got nothing.

I don't like nothing.

And, 10 minutes before I hit "publish"– this guy too. Thank you SO MUCH, sir.

So, I turn 54 today. There's a piece I'm planning to write about that: getting old. Older. It's strange. But "a piece I'm planning to write" is getting out of hand, and I'm growing increasingly behind on posts.

After 6+ months of doing this newsletter, I'm discovering some things. You might notice I changed the header from "every wednesday" to "every week (or so)"– the reasons for this are obvious, but my plan with this thing was never to write a 2000 word piece every week. That's a lot to ask. It was– some longer things, some short things, etc.

What I've found though, is that it's not going that way. I'll sit down with every intention to write a short little thing and then finding that I need to a) complete the thought and b) try to made it a decent, cogent piece worth reading. And inevitably, despite my intention otherwise, it ends up being 2000 words (actually i've got 2 or 3 in "drafts" that are 2000 words and only half done, for cripes sakes), with numerous hours of writing, and then more hours of editing, tweaking, to get it to feel finished and worth throwing into this newsletter.

So: I don't have any answers for that, necessarily, just copping to the fact and saying I'm trying to get a handle on it. And thanks for sticking with me/ it, and I truly appreciate you choosing to be here.

*and yes, behind. Some of you have recieved your prints, some not yet. BUT YOU WILL, VERY SOON.