Loopy Longhand

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will and Joe on 12 March 2014.

I have also been thinking about the original reasons for this blog and whether those provide enough rationale to continue. I can always get the remaining few elements in and then "kill off" the blog, like they do characters in television series.

A few last "panicked" posts and then silence.

Here are some of the reasons for continuing:

1. To capitalize on this "goldmine" of discourse and artifacts that have been compiled over the last 24 months by repackaging it for the blog
2. To provide a clearinghouse of materials to facilitate the next performance (cf. the Dropbox folder and Bandcamp page for the May 30th show)
3. To allow fans to follow as we work our way toward one or more "finished" products

I have to say that doing this has given me a strange burst of creativity generally, not just with regard to the blog.  I am feeling a little better about continuing on for a while longer, but I want to focus a little more on items numbers 2 and 3.

I don't want to spell out everything at this point, but buried within this Dionysian swamp will be some very practical tools to use once the time comes to gather ourselves and move forward.  Using the "labels" feature, I want provide the following: (1) finished mock-ups of the songs and (2) videos demonstrating how to play the songs (cf. "Learn Guitar with David Brent").

The fact that this material will be buried but accessible seems better for a number of reasons.  One, I think it impresses on collaborators that we're not your "ordinary band" (for lack of a cooler sounding way of saying that).

Two, I do like an odd mix of obscurity and notoriety with this project in general; in some ways, the dissembling interface of the blog provides me with that comfort zone.  That said, I want certain chosen ones to be able to access the more pragmatic tools within the site.

As far as helping me, I would appreciate any "artifacts" you can provide.

Joe, it sounds like you are still caught up in the blessed busyness of your life!  I don't expect you will be able to provide much.  If you are able to send or upload anything--raw video, stills, photographs, etc.--it would help.  Will, same thing...a rough draft of the May 30th script with your scribbled notes comes to mind.

I may have shared with you that this project reminds me of how much I enjoyed those box sets that were coming out in droves in the 90s.

It really was an art form of its own packaging those things.  And I would go through them for hours.  I'm not sure what I liked better: listening to "Stone Free" on CD or seeing the lyrics of that song scribbled out in Jimi's loopy longhand on hotel stationary!  I agree that no one will want to necessarily see that stuff without at least one awesome finished product.

But I'm hoping we will have an awesome finished product.

As we get closer, the blog may be more a matter of recording practices, posting live versions of songs...heck, maybe someone could do an audio diary or something.  Certainly an upcoming Google hangouts meeting would be fair game.

Oh well, time to go to sleep.  But I'm having a brief uptick in my commitment.  I hope I've conveyed my reasons for feeling that the blog is still relevant at least somewhat clearly.