I don't use my personal YouTube account on my work-assigned computer. This has its drawbacks: nothing gets preserved, nothing gets saved, I’m the mercy of what the algorithm wants to throw my way. One odd advantage to this friction: when my browser decides it’s time for an IT-mandated upgrade or a surprise cookie deletion, my YouTube front page becomes a clean slate. This is when I do what I call “goosing the algorithm,” where I run as many videos I like in as many tabs as my poor work laptop can handle at one time (with the sound muted, obviously). The idea is that it keeps the recommendation engine on its toes; what will the oracle offer me after a steady diet of Jon Bois videos, live Ween bootlegs, stationary hauls, guitar rig rundowns, Criterion Closet videos, videos about spelling and fonts and decentralizing the role of your phone in your creative life? There are worse ways to pan for gold.

One of the nuggets this method has yielded is the channel of Evan Monsma, a young Midwestern maker with a flair for the junky, the janky, and the jury-rigged. He builds shelves out of scrap wood, camera rigs out of spare parts, and injection molders from drill presses. He’s also a videographer and scores his own videos. His mix of rolled-sleeve creativity, broad interests, and unpretentiousness reminds me of Wade Nixon aka Dankpods, the similarly down-to-earth Australian drummer/torturer of automobiles/chronicler of obsolete tech.

A week ago, Evan posted a video challenging his just-south-of-30,000 followers to do something creative every day in October. Hardly a novel idea (Kleon has also championed doing something to this effect several times), but something about the way Evan frames it—“nothing complex, nothing super high-pressure,” just something to keep the creative muscles loose—makes it approachable. Don’t drive yourself up the wall making a perfect thing; just make a thing. One small thing a day for a month.

It doesn’t even have to be thirty-one of the same thing. On the 1st, I wrote two verses of a song about the seasons going out of phase; it still sounds like three Mountain Goats songs spot-welded together. Yesterday, I wrote this very post. Today? Who knows. I don’t want to fence myself in. Like Wade and Evan, I have a few different things I’d like to do (though mine involve about 100% fewer sawblades and oil changes). I’ll try blogging a bit more. I want to restring my crappy beginner guitar and learn Leonard Cohen’s not-so-secret six chords. I want to take the Polaroid I got at Value Village for ten bucks out for a spin. I made a zine for a friend recently and was amazed at how invigorating it was to do. There’s a stack of postcards next to my desk begging to be sent. Scrabble, like every Scrabble player will tell you, can be as creative and beautiful as chess, but this specific kind of creativity and beauty falls outside the parameters of “something small every day.”

What I really want to work on is that long-gestating sci-fi poetry manuscript that I’ve been putting together piecemeal for the last few years. But I fear I’ve stalled out because I may have set the bar too high for myself in terms of emotional ambition; I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen that I think I’ve written myself into a corner I don’t have the skill or heart to escape.

Maybe I’ll feel more up to the task by the time Halloween comes around.

#blog

All right, time to clear the decks.

The arc of life bends long, but I don't know that holding my own writing hostage because I'm not thinking about Mixtape Forensics or Ten Things or (this one is for the real heads) the Ebert Cup is a good or productive idea. Sometimes you just want to write a short missive about what you've been up to.

For good or ill, I often think that I'm pissing my days away doing dumb shit. Then I get in my head about what not pissing my days away might look like. Everyone has their own version of the proverbial “good day”; some of us write legendary rap hits about them. Sooner or later, I start thinking about a post Austin Kleon¹ made in 2017 called “A checklist for every day.” In it, Kleon traces the origin of Goethe's good day—”one ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words”—and emphasizes that liking stuff is the first step towards making stuff. But also, doesn't just sound like a nice way to spend your time? Music, poetry, art: what day isn't at least improved by experiencing them?

So how have I been completing the Goethe Haul² lately?

For reasons that can be traced back to the Midnight Special YouTube page, I've had Slade's glam-rock stomper “Gudbuy T'Jane” stuck in my head for most of the last month. Roy Peter Clark's How to Write Short inspired me to keep a book of little poems in my bag. I got reacquainted with the graphic design work of the great Aaron Draplin, a man who loves Dinosaur Jr. and painted signage on corrugated steel in equal measure; as good as his work is (and it is good, peep the archives, read the book), what I admire about him most is his blue-collar Our Band Could Be Your Life approach to working and lecturing. I'm knee-deep in words, reasonable and otherwise: books, podcasts, press releases, Scrabble³, correspondence with friends.

Most of my days are good using the rubric, and that's good enough.

¹ The decks may have been cleared, but one thing that will never change here at Ahead on Differential is most of my good ideas can be traced back to either Kleon or Kottke.

² A “haul” is what soccer fans call a four-goal hat trick, or so Reddit tells me.

³ Not only is Scrabble still an ongoing concern, but I am paying someone to teach me to get better at playing it.

#blog