Better Than Friday - 101 (Patreon)

Good afternoon everyone, hope you're well.

1. Coming soon - Ben Lerner's 'Leaving the Atocha Station' 

Personally, I didn't care at all for Lerner's 10:04. 

This, on the other hand, is a solid read so far, if you're into the whole neurotically self-obsessed/critical DFW/Jonathan Franzen/Ellis type of protagonist. 

I found the premise fascinating: Poetry's (or maybe Art in general) inability to be moving in the modern world. 

Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and his relationship to art. What is actual when our experiences are mediated by language, technology, medication, and the arts? Is poetry an essential art form, or merely a screen for the reader's projections? Instead of following the dictates of his fellowship, Adam’s "research" becomes a meditation on the possibility of the genuine in the arts and beyond: are his relationships with the people he meets in Spain as fraudulent as he fears his poems are? A witness to the 2004 Madrid train bombings and their aftermath, does he participate in historic events or merely watch them pass him by?In prose that veers between the comic and tragic, the self-contemptuous and the inspired, Leaving the Atocha Station is a portrait of the artist as a young man in an age of Google searches, pharmaceuticals, and spectacle. 

- Goodreads

2. Sherd now has a Youtube Channel 

I've been listening to this fellow's podcast now and then for a while. He now has a youtube channel, and I suspect we'll be seeing some fantastic content and books pop up on there. 

3. I'd like to start a business in an Italian village.  

There are all sorts of logistical problems between here and there, but hey...One can dream.

4. Some Good Tunes 

Big sound from Big Brave. 

Like Sunn O))) with female vocals. 

Love that intro. 

5. To combat distraction, turn your device displays black and white 

It's the only tip I found useful from the video above, but woah - It seems that it's surprisingly effective, at least for now.  

Amazing how distracting color can be. 

Cherry season. Delicious, but kind of a horror show.