The Proverbial Pebble

The following is an email sent from Art to the group on 19 December 2015.

Slender Man

I had a few statements and questions in these few moments watching the boulder roll down the hill.

Nick:

I just wanted to formally welcome you to the fold or family or friendship or whatever it is. Will shared your idea with me and I think it's a great one. I only hope we can give you enough raw material for you to move forward with. At any rate, please share any links to your alt-monthly column. And feel free to chime in as little or as much as you want. I'm wondering if I can use any of your past and future communications for the blog as well, inserting you into the collapsed feedback loop of the project as it were. I like your idea for a character—another character attempting to reframe or rationalize or represent the project. A New Journalism-style journalist might have more tools with which to do that. I'm thinking The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test might be the best model in that some subjective disorientation will be critical to the accuracy of your reports. I'd love to see what that looks like, but I assume you might be waiting on an actual recording. As you probably already know, though, one of the main motifs of the project are the empty frames within frames, that is, the idea of talking about something that may or may not even exist. I'd love for something to exist, but I'm no longer counting on that happening. Another interesting possibility is how talking about something actually brings it into existence, as in Slender Man. Regardless, it's not a great idea to wait for the proverbial pebble to drop.

Will:

I've been thinking that it might be nice for us to actually get together at some point prior to going to recording. I know we've accepted the swaddled/crucified existence of the distance between us, but could we start planning a "working weekend" of some kind? This may sound overbold, but I'm just going to put it out there: it'd be great to come up for 2-3 days and pound things out in your basement. You could even be gone if you have some kind of job in the summer, but I could work on stuff and we could run through it together at some point during the day or night, hammering out exactly what we're going to play. Some of these songs I'd like to workshop with you somewhat more, not just go back and forth like we have been. Ideally, I'd just like to hang out, work on stuff for the recording, and maybe do a few fun things at night. We could make it double duty and try to have a show during that same time. The problem with that is that it will probably take away from the recording work, which I consider to be the most important, most neglected aspect of our project (and I understand there are many neglected aspects of our project). We could alter things such that I camp out or sleep on a park bench at night. I'd like to come away from that trip with a solid spine of each song. Everyone would walk into the studio ready to play their exact part. Long story short, we could save a lot of money down the line with the coordination the aforementioned workdays would provide.