A big brown spider has built a wonderful web over the top half of the entry to my trash and recycling shed. The doors on that shed been gone since before I moved here, so I usually just wander straight in and out, and got cobweb in my beard a couple of times with early evening drop-offs of shit out there. But eventually, I went out in the day, and saw what had been built, and ever since, I’ve been careful to duck up underneath it when coming or going. I couldn’t build anything that beautiful, so it’d be kinda fucked of me to just keep tearing it down. Spider seems to know what they’re doing pretty well… I studied it all a couple times, from the inside and out. Pretty sweet work.
As far as we know, humans are one of the few species that can have abstract thoughts, although I can’t emphasize the “as far as we know” part enough, because we’re using our brains to study all this shit, so there’s a natural bias involved. But I like to think creative abstractions to recreate the reality we see is the only touch of godliness humans have, albeit a minimal drip drop of it compared to the oceanic expanse of actual All Creation. Nonetheless, I like to think that when we are being creative, it’s weaving our own elaborate web of creation around us. I’ve always been drawn to the type of artists who didn’t necessarily even identify themselves as artists, and everything within their touch was bedazzled by their thinking. Whole home environments, the way things are put up on the walls, the writing they do, photography or painting, how they sow a garden, where the paths in the woods near their house lead to (or follow from)… all of these are pieces of the creative web we build. To my thinking, doing so gives our lives deeper substance, or at least joy, and honestly I can’t really imagine not tinkering with everything around me and everything I do in these ways. I don’t really understand folks who are able to narrow their focus and limit themselves to a singular practice which then becomes their occupation of time and for money. Seems stifling to me.
Regardless of all the art I make, and all the tinkering with my environment in creative ways I do, no matter how long I live, I’ll never weave something as beautiful and intricate and supremely mathematically universally magnetic as that fat brown spider’s giant ass web on the shed. It’s truly amazing. And I know spiders don’t normally live forever, so I guess the giant web on the trash and recycling shed is gonna come to an end at some point. So I’m trying to enjoy it as much as possible. It’s helped me keep the recycling from piling up on the front porch, because I get excited to take it out to the shed.
Anyways, I hadn’t been weaving anything on here for a while. Processes change and systems got broken. But I’ve decided to come back, for some of these songs of the days, but limit them to kudzu’d tracks where I rip the 45s at 33 speed. They get selected for here because I play them a lot on my old iphone that I use as an ipod in the car. Then when I have to write about them here, I make a video, usually downloading some footage from some weird ass source online, tweaking it to be pink/purple, and adding “SOUTHERN GOTHICC FUTURISM” to the screen. There’s actually almost 400 of these videos on my youtube page already, having added them slowly over the past couple years, one by one. That’s part of my web, and just one tiny piece of my full web, but one that takes a lot of sedimentary building of layers… playing the 45s, deciding which ones to rip to mp3, playing the mp3s, deciding which ones to put on here, finding video that may or may not match, editing it, tweaking whatever else. I don’t say all this to act like it’s hugely important, lol. To the contrary, it’s pure fuckin’ nonsense. But it gives my life joy, and adds to the building of the web of Southern Gothicc Futurism.
Of course, it’s online, so like me walking into the shed, it could all get knocked down and be gone one day, without notice. Just some big tech finger wiping the whole thing away. But I can’t live in fear of that. Nor can I slow my world down by backing up and storing and archiving every fuckin’ thing I think to do. Just gotta keep weaving, every day and every way. If somebody admires it, great; if not, no big deal, I had to do it anyways. I’m more like that spider than I realized I guess, alhamdulillah.
As far as we know, humans are one of the few species that can have abstract thoughts, although I can’t emphasize the “as far as we know” part enough, because we’re using our brains to study all this shit, so there’s a natural bias involved. But I like to think creative abstractions to recreate the reality we see is the only touch of godliness humans have, albeit a minimal drip drop of it compared to the oceanic expanse of actual All Creation. Nonetheless, I like to think that when we are being creative, it’s weaving our own elaborate web of creation around us. I’ve always been drawn to the type of artists who didn’t necessarily even identify themselves as artists, and everything within their touch was bedazzled by their thinking. Whole home environments, the way things are put up on the walls, the writing they do, photography or painting, how they sow a garden, where the paths in the woods near their house lead to (or follow from)… all of these are pieces of the creative web we build. To my thinking, doing so gives our lives deeper substance, or at least joy, and honestly I can’t really imagine not tinkering with everything around me and everything I do in these ways. I don’t really understand folks who are able to narrow their focus and limit themselves to a singular practice which then becomes their occupation of time and for money. Seems stifling to me.
Regardless of all the art I make, and all the tinkering with my environment in creative ways I do, no matter how long I live, I’ll never weave something as beautiful and intricate and supremely mathematically universally magnetic as that fat brown spider’s giant ass web on the shed. It’s truly amazing. And I know spiders don’t normally live forever, so I guess the giant web on the trash and recycling shed is gonna come to an end at some point. So I’m trying to enjoy it as much as possible. It’s helped me keep the recycling from piling up on the front porch, because I get excited to take it out to the shed.
Anyways, I hadn’t been weaving anything on here for a while. Processes change and systems got broken. But I’ve decided to come back, for some of these songs of the days, but limit them to kudzu’d tracks where I rip the 45s at 33 speed. They get selected for here because I play them a lot on my old iphone that I use as an ipod in the car. Then when I have to write about them here, I make a video, usually downloading some footage from some weird ass source online, tweaking it to be pink/purple, and adding “SOUTHERN GOTHICC FUTURISM” to the screen. There’s actually almost 400 of these videos on my youtube page already, having added them slowly over the past couple years, one by one. That’s part of my web, and just one tiny piece of my full web, but one that takes a lot of sedimentary building of layers… playing the 45s, deciding which ones to rip to mp3, playing the mp3s, deciding which ones to put on here, finding video that may or may not match, editing it, tweaking whatever else. I don’t say all this to act like it’s hugely important, lol. To the contrary, it’s pure fuckin’ nonsense. But it gives my life joy, and adds to the building of the web of Southern Gothicc Futurism.
Of course, it’s online, so like me walking into the shed, it could all get knocked down and be gone one day, without notice. Just some big tech finger wiping the whole thing away. But I can’t live in fear of that. Nor can I slow my world down by backing up and storing and archiving every fuckin’ thing I think to do. Just gotta keep weaving, every day and every way. If somebody admires it, great; if not, no big deal, I had to do it anyways. I’m more like that spider than I realized I guess, alhamdulillah.
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