Issue #201 - The Spaces in Between
Snow Glow
Hello, happy new year to you, welcome to 2025. I hope that you’re well.
It’s been a fun couple of weeks, we wish we had a little longer, but I think we’re all relatively rested, and feel good.
We managed a few days away, a trip to Nashville, Tennessee, where we stayed in an apartment just by Vanderbilt University, a short walk from The Parthenon, which is a crazy concrete replica of the one in Greece. We took a taxi to Broadway to see the lights, and checked out the bars and clubs playing country music, and we dined on fried chicken, and tacos. We visited Hatch Show Print who have printed posters on the same letterpress machines since the 1900’s. It was great to see those Elvis and Johnny Cash show prints, but also election flyers and political posters.
Despite the long drive via Columbus and Cincinnati, we had enough time there to relax as a family, we played some board games, watched a movie, read books and napped. On Christmas day we found a friendly Indian restaurant and enjoyed an entirely vegan buffet, with crispy pakora, aloo gobi, hot lentils, and spicy dal. It was delicious, and made for a lovely change. The restaurant was packed with families, an obvious local favorite.
We visited a few interesting places, took in a bluegrass show at Robert’s Western World, and later that day met a friend of friend at Hatty B’s Hot Chicken for a slap up meal, I was impressed by how hot I actually managed, but it was tasty and succulent, I can’t wait to go back. In the afternoon we dropped by MacKay’s Nashville, an absolutely enormous warehouse full of second hand books, records, musical instruments, figures, toys, and board games. Needless to say I got a few bits, a Wings album, to add to my McCartney collection, and Neil Young’s Hitchhiker, which is scratchy AF but sounds amazing, bright guitar, thumping drums and delicate harmonies, like breaking the crust of a creme caramel to the gooey vanilla custard underneath, sort of thing.
We also dropped by Third Man Records, which is owned by Jack White of the White Stripes, and has studios where he records sessions with visiting musicians. We went to the Detroit store a few years back, but it was fun visiting this one, the original, tiny but with lots of great records.
Now that we’re back, I’m in a tidying mood, and just trying to get rid of some of the clutter, and make sure I have a nice space to work in, even though I’ll be back in the classroom and spending most of my week on campus. I will try and give myself Mondays and possibly Fridays to be at home, answer emails and write a few. I have some big projects on the horizon, including SONA Immersive Storytelling Festival, three courses to teach, preparations for Nantes in the summer, and hopefully another trip to Hong Kong, and even possibly Doha. We’ll have to see, I do want some quality time in the summer to spend with family, and I know I’ll have to pace myself. I also want to invite a few people to come and talk at CMU, some of the artists, filmmakers and creators that I’ve met, who I think will be well-received.
I’m not making too many predictions or resolutions, I just want to do more as I mentioned in the last issue. I know that it’s going to be challenging year for many, and I’m not the only one bracing myself for political upheaval. I hope that we see unrest of the best type, that people will face up with steely resolve, that each of us, in our own way will try to fight for what’s important. Those small actions, not accepting things as they are (or will be), showing our opposition in any way that we can. It’s different for each of us, how we choose to make a stand. We make more art, we support community, we seek out ways to help those who are vulnerable and under attack. How we chose to live our lives, is a form of resistance.
Lost and Found
I don’t have too much, but wanted to include a couple of things I found recently, including leaflet.pub which you’ll find incredibly useful. It’s a quick-create web page that you can customize and share. There isn’t much to it, which is part of its charm, and I can see it being really great for announcements, quick guides, reading lists, and summaries, like this one of Pittsburgh’s coffee shops, or the travel suggestions I made for my friends’ trip to London.
I read a couple more pottery books, including Listening to Clay - Conversations With Contemporary Japanese Ceramic Artists that I found at the library, which is just beautiful and lovely companion to the Florian Gadsby book that I finished. It’s interesting because some of the insights are just small things, habits and ways of working, and others more profound, into process and inspiration. I’ve started drawing more forms in my sketchbook and starting to list some of the work that I’m hoping to create over the next couple of months.
I enjoyed some great VR experiences this year, the winner of the hardware wars for good or bad is Meta with the Quest 3, this is hands down the headset you can get, for the money, for the sheer number of apps, games and experiences available. The Apple Vision Pro has potential, but I’d really like to see more competition from Vive, they also make great headsets, but it’s a struggle to gain more than a foothold in this market. I do predict a return to VR, behind the scenes there are more commercial and training uses, and it is getting easier to develop games and apps with Unity and Unreal. There, that’s all the shop talk you’ll get from me.
I’ve wanted to add this video to the newsletter for years, but never had an excuse, so just to tie it in, we drove through Louisville, Kentucky on our way home, stopping at Logan Street Market for food. I wish we’d have stayed for a little longer, and maybe I’ll go back to explore, because it has a rich musical heritage of an alternative kind, notably with the band Slint, and it’s most popular resident Will Oldham, aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. This video from this Coney Island show, is just one of the most wonderful performances ever captured.
Thank you
We spent New Year’s eve with a few friends, hanging out in the vast screen printing warehouse that they own, enjoying drinks around the fire stove, playing a few games of table football, and chancing my hand at shuffleboard, more complicated that I first thought. I thought it was a bit more like tabletop curling, but there’s scoring and its more tactical, at least how these folks played it.
It’s cold outside and it’s been snowing all day, but not enough to trouble the school board, so everyone is back. It was a bit rough getting up and out of the door, but to their credit they did it without too much fuss. I’ll make a bit of food for them tonight.
I hope all is good with you, and that you managed to enjoy the break and put a bit of time aside to reflect and think on the things that are important, and where you want your energy to go in this coming year. Let me know if there’s anything you want to hear more about, or things you would like me to talk about, I’m happy to do so. Take care.
Funny you should mention Louisville: it's two hours from Bloomington, and Doris (my wife, visiting here from CU-Boulder) almost went there last week, but we ended up sticking around...but I've also become friends in recent months with a lovely couple who are from there, and I've been there a couple of times and enjoyed. Thats a rambling way of saying, our paths almost crossed again....happy new year to you.