But Dolly Parton was a pure product of America and she did not go crazy. In fact, she was an example of unconditional love, joy, and peace. Surely, trying to be those things would drive you crazy. Perhaps her strong faith was the big factor. Though, strong, misguided faith has made many go crazy. Perhaps it was her wig collection?

Appalachia, where Dolly hailed from, might not even count as America to some. In some circles it’s treated like another country within the country. It’s not South; it’s not North. It’s a tangled road in the valley. You can’t grow COTTON* in the mountains. I’ll let you figure out what that means.

Dolly passed away this week. It’s no pleasure to live in a world without Dolly, but here we are.

She started out on the Cas Walker Show. My grandmother would talk about it like it was just last week. I was 10 when “Cas Walker’s Farm and Home Hour” went off the air, so it’s likely that I heard it live, and so it was “just last week” in the scope of time. There is no doubt my grandmother and my aunts, who lived in the trailer where I would visit as a kid, listened to country radio. Back in the mountains down a gravel road, by tobacco barns and cows. They had been sharecroppers on the land where their trailer rusted in the shade.

If you grow up in East Tennessee, she’s a saint. She was a voice, a story that said, “Yes, you too could be somebody, even being from the mountains of East Tennessee.” My folks were both huge fans, though my dad more than my mother. He grew up deep in the mountains of Tennessee and felt a kinship with Dolly making it out of deep Appalachia.

I saw The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas in the theater. I was probably excited to see it because it had Burt Reynolds. He was in Cannonball Run, so he was like a god to me. I saw 9 to 5 in the theater. Dabney Coleman remains one of the funniest actors of all time to me. Besides these preteen cinematic trips, I saw Dolly live when I was a kid. I can remember red, gold, yellow lights, a dark theater, drums, and a satin dress.

Of course the records, always. My dad sang “Deportee” all the time. “Two Doors Down” played every day. “The Seeker” is probably my favorite Dolly song. “Jolene,” of course, we all know “Jolene.” It feels like an ancient English ballad. It feels like a mid-60s hit at the same time. And there are more. Lord have mercy, “It’s all I can do to keep from falling in love with you.” What a song! “Life is Like a Butterfly,” I don’t remember a time in my life not knowing that song. “In My Tennessee Mountain Home,” I could probably recite the lyrics to you right now, and I can’t remember the lyrics to most anything. I’m forgetting songs. It’s funny to me now that I grew up wanting to be a songwriter but never, ever would have considered Dolly an influence. But there’s no way she wasn’t. I feel like I listened to the record Trio a thousand times in 1987 because my parents played it all the time. It was amazing. So lush, so soulful, full of heartbreak nostalgia.

I took my dad sometime in 2002 or so to the Ryman to see Dolly, and afterwards I told friends, “I don’t feel cheated for never seeing Elvis.” I can’t think of anyone I’ve seen at that level of charisma and charm.

Here’s the part that isn’t the most favorable for me. I always was sort of turned off by how reverential people were to her and about her. The whole “What Would Dolly Do,” riffing off the What Would Jesus Do bumper sticker. Well, Dolly would donate 1 million dollars to COVID research. She would donate royalty earnings for “I Will Always Love You” to African American neighborhoods in Nashville. She would give books to children, as we will get into in more depth below. She loved everyone as God would have us do, as the kids say, “she got the assignment.” Today, looking at the world, knowing we could use a lot more people like that, I know I took that for granted.

As with most things with country singers, my cynicism stems from my journey. I grew up with the words constantly in my ear everywhere I turned: if you were a poet, you go to Nashville and become a songwriter. So, I tried and failed, beyond miserably. But the deal is, the world changed. The world of myth and country stars as saints did not exist when I got here. The internet, tastes, the world, everything! Honestly, I was too into so many kinds of music that would never be popular. It’s embarrassing, in a way, that I even tried. I often wish I had moved to Memphis and let my eccentricity fly. But growing up surrounded by her, and the promise that she seemed to make and not seeing an iota of it made me a little bitter about her.

But it wasn’t Dolly’s fault. She didn’t sell me a bill of goods. It was my own dang fault because in my 20s I was offering a middle finger from the stage about being from Appalachia. She was always offering a hug. That’s not hard math to figure out. Mercy, she had class.

But this Substack is about books. Man, Dolly had nice books. I feel like she would approve of that joke. To be fair, books did take me far from Appalachia, so perhaps she did carry me a ways.

If the world lasts another hundred years, she will be lore; she will be a mythic Appalachian Queen who gave books to the poor and built an industry in the mountains to give jobs and hope to the locals.

When my kids were little, we signed up for Dolly’s Imagination Library. We got the books for years. When she passed away, I went to our shelves and hunted for them. In my mind they would be saddle-stitched. Saddle stitching is when you bind a book together, essentially, using a stapler. I passed some by a few times on the shelf until I realized these books were perfect-bound. Quickly I gathered a few together and looked at them. The paper isn’t thin. The covers are solid 10 pt C1S. They have French flaps to give you more information. But I kept coming back to the fact that they were perfect-bound, which means they are glued together, but the selling point is they have a spine, which means you can see the title and the author’s name when they are on a shelf. Dignity seems like a funny word to apply to a book, but that’s just what having a spine does for a book. The spine is the second cover in many ways. It’s the sign that says, “I am here, yes, the book you are looking for.” Another thing is that the books come in different sizes. They are sized down by ratio from the original book’s size to be able to fit in a mailbox. They could have cropped art and moved text to have a uniform cookie-cutter — i.e., save money, same trim every time — but they didn’t. They resized each book, giving the art in each book its intended space.

I like to think Dolly made these choices about paper and binding. The interior paper easily could have been a low-poundage uncoated stock and been cheaper, but no, these books use a thick sheet. It might even be 157 gsm matte art, the industry standard for picture books. If nothing else, she hired people who were smart enough. You could make these books many times cheaper. No French flaps? Savings. No perfect binding? Savings. Uniform size? Optimize the print on the roll? Savings! Cheaper paper? Savings, easy. They made none of these choices; instead, they gave children books that would stand up to messy hands and to being strewn around the floor.

Full of rhinestones on her dresses but made of the best of humanity at her heart, may the Lord bless her memory. Thank you, Dolly.

I know the work of writing a song, of writing a book (I wrote one of those too), and from my day job I know the work of building out a multimillion-dollar product suite. I know of what I speak, as they say. I get the right and left brain. Shoot, I started school as an art major and have a stack of paintings in a box at my parent’s house.

Let’s grab some thoughts for this week on art and commerce, where that left and right collide.

I have a thought that, in my most optimistic moments about AI, is that we’ve always had AI. AI might stand for Average Intelligence. I’m sure someone has made that joke.

It was the writers that weren’t great. The musicians that didn’t push or pull in some intriguing way. How many bar bands have you heard play a stiff rendition of “Keep Your Hands to Yourself” or seen a stilted drawing with eyes that look like a fig cut in half?

From Fast Company,

“Fender CEO Edward “Bud” Cole argued that cover songs function as a kind of “analog AI,” allowing beginners to play music before they write their songs.”

He had to walk it back, but I remember in the ‘80s and ‘90s being in a cover band was a badge of shame. I think now it feeds so much nostalgia, and YouTube videos and music theory have given us a slew of kids that can play note-for-note perfect recreations of things that once were absolutely stupefying. You can watch a ten-year-old play Eruption on YouTube. In the 1980s, you had to be a god from another planet, the planet ROCK to be specific, to be able to do that.

How many movies have you seen when someone is about to kill someone and they say, “You don’t have to do this!” I feel like I see that line in every movie when an execution is afoot. Is it laziness? Is it AI? Is it bad writing? The first time someone said it, it was a good line! Of course there is the “Go ahead, get it over with crowd,” too.

But remember in Miller’s Crossing?

“Look in your heart.”

“What heart?”

Bang.

Ok, now we’re talking. It takes that extra something, that surprise, to give a product life.

Even before AI, I could often guess where a line in a song was going to go, or a line in a movie was going to come. Perhaps it’s not the same but it’s reminiscent.

A friend of mine and I were joking about someone making their wedding announcement on LinkedIn, and they asked ChatGPT for a wedding announcement, LinkedIn style.

It gave them this gem.

“I’m excited to announce a strategic long-term merger that has been in development for quite some time.

This partnership is built on shared values, complementary skill sets, mutual respect, and a commitment to continuous improvement. Together, we’ll be focused on driving sustainable growth, maximizing household efficiencies, and leveraging our combined strengths to navigate future market volatility.

Looking forward to this exciting new chapter and all the opportunities it brings.”

ChatGPT needs to book Comedy Central.

Picasso, or Stravinsky, said “The good ones borrow, the best ones steal.” But they were borrowing, or stealing from T.S. Eliot. There’s something about AI similar to just borrowing. That phrase always makes me think of “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,” which is from W.B. Yeats “The Second Coming.” So much AI writing is full of passionate intensity.

Less Is More, More or Less, Again

Remember talking about how fewer people are reading, but those that are, are reading more? Here’s a twist. Apparently, the box office is booming but fewer people are going to the movies.

From Reuters,

“The U.S. box office saw its biggest opening weekend in history thanks to the one-two punch of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and “The Odyssey.” But the industry’s rebound is increasingly being powered by higher ticket prices, premium-format screenings and a handful of blockbuster releases rather than a broad return of moviegoers.”

This is similar to Romance authors making high-end, sprayed-edge, foil, and specification-enhanced books with a higher MSRP. They might sell only 500 books, but they are able to get that higher margin because people that are into the genre are willing to pay more. I bet there is a little bit of the people that like movies are going to the movies more and more often, just like with book buyers.

Wired ran a similar article from another angle. Why Is It Absolute Hell to Buy a Movie Ticket Now?

Wired notes, “Overwhelmed theater apps and a scarcity mindset around exclusive big-screen formats for blockbusters like Dune: Part Three and The Odyssey have led to the “concertification” of movies.”

IMAX, man, that’s the way to go. Again, this gets back to the emotional P&L of things we are talking about. Is it cheaper to film a movie for IMAX? No. But is it more valuable to people who really dig movies? Resoundingly yes.

I saw a marketing advert the other day. It went something like this:

Sinatra: 1,200 songs with 209 hits (13% success rate)

Babe Ruth: 8,399 attempts with 714 home runs (8.5% success rate)

*Pablo Picasso: 150,000 pieces with 1,170 hits (0.7% success rate)

Every time I see this, I think this person doesn’t know anything about art. Every song you record, you don’t think it’s going to be a hit. That said, some songs that artists make that they think will never be hits become hits. Most famously, The Rolling Stones released Satisfaction initially was released as a B-side. “Louie Louie” was recorded as a soundcheck to test levels. Or more recently, Queens of the Stone Age’s “No One Knows.” QOTSA bassist Nick Oliveri himself found it an “unlikely single.” Louder’s retrospective specifically notes that “if you pay close attention to the song’s structure, it makes for an unlikely single.”

The list goes on and on, and what does it tell you? Bands are recording songs a fair amount of the time not thinking any of them will be hits. They are recording songs and just seeing what sticks. Sometimes they are literally filling out space on a record, especially in the ‘70s-’80s. Sometimes they are noodling, chasing something.

Now, sure, some artists out there approach everything like they are going to make a hit. Karl Martin Sandberg, he uses “Melodic Math.” This was a term popularized by Asaf Peres, and his website,Top40Theory. Fair enough, you can certainly use certian elementd to make a stab at making something popular. Anyone remember the IT Crowd’s Swimsuit issue episode? “It better sell!!”

Martin’s going out every time trying to write a hit. If you go from G to B flat, you probably aren’t writing a hit but don’t tell Nirvana that in 1992. But if you go from G to Em, you got a shot. There are parameters but then there aren’t. Creativity requires a lot of comfort with mystery.

Or Taylor Swift? Well, when she wants a hit she collabs with Karl Martin, but when she wants something more introspective, she works with Aaron Dessner (The National). Is she chasing the dance floor or the vibe? Well, it depends on the day.

How about Billie Eilish? So far, she only collaborates with her brother. As long as that part of the math holds, then her output will be the product of their collaboration. Nothing wrong with that, at all. Her songs are weird and bitchy, sexy and big time. But I get the feeling she did not write “Bad Guy” thinking it was a hit.

The Picasso stat is so eye-wateringly dumb I don’t know what to do. 150,000 pieces? Are they counting sketches? Are they counting sculpture and painting studies? And what is a hit for a painting? Selling at Sotheby’s for a certain amount? Not that Picasso doesn’t have a greatest hits per se. He definitely does. He’s got eras for sure. Blue, Rose, Cubist, on and on.

At any rate. Much of the art you make is building up to a singular piece. Much of the art you make is a chronicle of who you were that day or night. Sometimes, that chronicle will resonate with 100 people. Sometimes with a million people. But outside of using “Melodic Math” to try and game the system, it’s a lot of sketching and strumming and reading.

So, sketch on, strum on, you angels of analog.

If you need a creative coach or want to make a product or book, let me know!

*A friend let me know that Picasso’s output was likely around 50,000 pieces.

This Substack is made to give you entertaining articles on the creative process. I lean on books, writing them, editing, art direction, manufacturing, inventory, P&L, logistics because I’ve been fortunate enough to do a little bit and a whole lot of all of those things. I have been described as “a unicorn” with “a treasure trove of abilities,” because I’ve had roles in parts all along the process of book making. I’ll take it!

Besides that, I steer the conversation to sports, food, movies, art, travel because I think those experiences go hand in hand with books, there are metaphors to be mined, for the real life experience of making and reading books and the real life experiences of doing real life things.

It’s kind of like how in the 80’s a punk fan and a metal fan would not be caught dead together but now all things with guitars is one big bucket. So, those that want to make something really cool in book form? This is for you.

Those that dig the sights, sounds, smells, and taste of the world where we move around the planet? Dig in.

You might have found this from LinkedIn and if so you know I offer services right in line with these endeavors through my firm Why and How Book Consulting. If you are stuck with how to start, I can even help you there. For example, You want to write a memoir? What do you have written? Nothing? That’s ok! I’m your creative coach to get the ideas out of your head.

Time to make the book but you want it to look cooler than a paperback? “I got you,” in the parlance of our times. The IP to physical goods bridge is where I live.

“Enough of my yakkin’.” Which is a quote from Spinal Tap. You’re welcome.

I really enjoyed my last two posts, the Emotional P&L and Efficiency Backlash. Here are a few articles with quotes that I recently read that reinforced what I was saying.

From Stefan Kuzan at Zen Sounds. It’s a great example of how things don’t always go as planned and that can lead to a breakthrough. We are losing sight of that in our efficiency hungry

“In 2005, Noah Lennox alias Panda Bear of the experimental rock band Animal Collective moved to Lisbon, Portugal. When his guitar was held up in customs, he had just a Boss Dr.

Sample SP-303 at his disposal for a few months after the move overseas. He’d bought it because the hip-hop producer Madlib had reportedly used it on his classic Quasimoto album, The Unseen (2000).

Not having his guitar around, Lennox experimented with layering his characteristic, Brian Wilson-inspired vocal harmonies over sampled loops, edited and manipulated on the SP-303. The results of these experiments would inspire a whole generation of indie musicians and songwriters to try out working with samplers and electronics, essentially kickstarting the chillwave movement.”

From Paul Kingsnorth’s Substack, The Abbey of Misrule who wrote the book Against the Machine which I liked and didn’t like almost equally. Too much granola Paul!! But I dig what you are saying!! From his Substack.

“This autumn, my wife and I will be launching our own little publishing house. It will be a home for projects of mine which have less commercial appeal than my ‘big’ books. The books we make will be beautiful physical objects, put together by people we know. It will be a family operation, running from a cabin in our garden. There will be no AI involved, and we won’t be selling our books on Amazon. Everything will be personal and small. I’ll be signing every book and posting them out myself from the local post office. Perhaps we’ll end up producing paper newsletters too, or maybe we will publish selected brilliant works by other writers as well. We’ll see where it takes us. For now, we are working on a modest way of bringing writing back into the real world. A counter-Machine, small, local family operation, free to move anywhere it likes, free to follow the words where they lead. This is the vision, and you’ll be hearing more about it here in a few months if you stick around.”

I need a few clients like Paul! Come on Paul, hit me up for some manufacturing advice. Honestly, though, it sounds like you got it covered. The best advice is sometimes to bow out.

Michael Pina, writing at The Ringer about data analytics in an article called

How Did the NBA Analytics Discourse Get So Stupid?

I touched on the Jaylen Brown trade in a recent article, here is more on the rub between data and the gut. Like I said, data is great but we are living through a time where business devalues the gut and glue people. At their peril I would say.

“In other words, whether he’s the lead option in Boston or wriggling into a slimmer role with the Philadelphia 76ers, Brown’s nearly limitless intricacies help explain why it’s never analytics versus the eye test. The two methods of examination are inherently textured, and, while harboring dissent in their own camps, they should always, eventually, integrate to complete each other.”

I mean he’s preaching to the churro with me here. My computer changed choir to churro and I am totally down with that. Let’s keep going. Further in the article, he goes on to say

“Evidence, as it pertains to the hunt for unimpeachable clarity, is a dead end that’s incongruous in a sport that’s too noisy and fluid to be pinned down. The NBA’s popularity depends on the unrealized. Wonder, romanticism, mystery, and harmless skepticism. In that vein, analytics are an intruder.”

This reminded me of one of my all time favorite tirades. Nick Tosches writing about his fictional self in his book, In the Hand of Dante. His publisher is worried the title of his non-fiction book, Where Dead Voices Gather might be mistaken as fiction because the title is so dang evocative! Nick’s tirade is a few pages but here’s a key cookie.

The idea of confusion here is wrong, untenable, and idiotic. The title does not present confusion. Rather, it presents mystery, which attracts us all, even those too dumb to notice the big signs NEW NONFICTION and NEW FICTION that sadly demarcate every major bookstore in this sadly demarcated age.

Ok, next week, we will go with something more expansive, bring your seatbelt.

Perhaps proving the point they’re about to make, I digested this info by listening to a podcast. In my defense, the paywall was what stymied me. But that in itself is something to unpack.

screenshot of The Atlantic site.

I was already familiar with some of the ground they covered. My friend Joel Miller wrote an excellent take on it at his superlative Substack, Miller’s Book Review. In it, he argues that some of her data is cherry-picked. The past success of “high literature” (she points to Dr. Zhivago) had less to do with public taste and more to do with, as Joel writes, “Doctor Zhivago was a Cold War fluke. The book was banned in the Soviet Union, published abroad, and had CIA support because the agency thought Pasternak’s message could undermine the commies.”

Commie Poison by Boris!

One question Derek asked, one I’d asked myself, was if reading is dying, why are new bookstores opening?

“That on the one hand, reading according to surveys and according to professors and according to all sorts of anecdotal sources is in decline, but also book sales aren’t falling off a cliff and in fact, some bookstores seem to be or some bookstore categories seem to be growing.” — Derek Thompson

He’s right to ask. Barnes & Noble is opening 60 new locations in 2026. Who is this for if the end of reading is here? In Nashville, The Bookshop is busting at the seams and opening a new location later this year. We’ve also got two or three more new bookstores in town, not to mention Parnassus in Green Hills.

Ms. Horowitch notes that she touched on this question in the article, arguing that the people who do read are reading more, and more pointedly. If you look at that as a math problem, it leads to Derek asking if publishers will be making books for smaller and smaller audiences, with less and less diversity.

Less reading, alone, is a loss but the comprehension drop-off is the real cost. Surveys of students suggest reading builds abilities that other formats don’t. And if reading is such a chore, so much harder than the ways we can now get information, is this an uphill battle we’re even going to win?

Ms. Horowitch recounts teachers talking about their students’ interaction with dense literature. “They would say it was written in old English or it just seemed so unfamiliar and so old-fashioned to them to read the text that people had written even a half century ago. So it is a real changed relationship to text and to reading.” To this, Derek adds, “Some of this has to do clearly with technology. The television, the smartphone, this enormous set of entertainment devices that compete for our attention and are sometimes, let’s be honest, a little bit more tasty in the short-term than working your way through.”

I hate business phraseology, but as they say, “Let’s park that here for a minute.” I think we already see less and less diversity in the “risks” that publishers are willing to take on.

Around the same time, Tim Ferriss wrote about the decline in his own book sales, and in prescriptive nonfiction sales generally. I’ll circle back to him in a minute. But key to right now: Ferriss says he’d rather make something for 10,000 people that cherish the content than 100,000 that aren’t really engaged.

And it’s not only Derek, Tim, and Rose talking about this. I’m always on the lookout for takes on books, especially right now, as every bit of creativity and the entertainment that comes from it is in flux.

Last week at the gym, I listened to Bill Simmons and his guest Chuck Klosterman, on The Bill Simmons Podcast. In the episode, they talk about new trends in movies, like Backrooms, Obsession, and The Odyssey. They talk about the WNBA. They riff on soccer and sports tzars, and at some point they get to books.

I know I’ve mentioned Bill for two articles in a row! Last time it was basketball but this time it’s about reading, so give me a break.

Bill wrote The Book of Basketball, the mammoth, superlative doorstop of NBA deep dives. It’s not for the faint of heart but rest easy, it’s a page-turner. Klosterman has written 13 books since 2000. He’s a rock journalist by trade, and a cultural thinker to boot. The last title I read of his was The Nineties. It took me back to those times with wit, clarity and a bit of unnerving insight to those times. Chuck talks about how books shaped who he is. Bill agrees — he’s got a whole shelf of sports books that made up his brain. Chuck’s advice to young writers has been “Just fucking read!”

Great book by Bill Simmons!

Chuck brings up a book called Stoner by John Edward Williams that everyone’s told him to read. I’ve had other readers — readers, this whole subcategory of people — tell me the same thing. We all make the joke: no, not that Stoner, not The Dude.

He muses that novels require you to visualize everything. Hair color, gait, clothes — and that TV, memes, the internet explosion of YouTube has made it rough work to do those things ourselves. It’s some real deal mental calisthenics.

Derek and Rose talked about something similar, where brain scans of children reading a story paired with illustrations versus still photos and plain text show how differently the brain lights up. The scans back up what Chuck is saying.

Then they get to something that really got my interest. They’re talking about the future of book sales, and they’re really walking the same spaces that Derek, Rose, and Tim did.

Chuck says: “A consumer will feel that if they buy this book, and this book will sort of be like the physical representation of who I am, what my identity is, what I’m interested in. Maybe I won’t even read it, maybe it just sits on the shelf. But I wonder if there’s something almost scary to consider, if you sell books for a living: whether the physical possession of books is what ends up saving books. Kind of like vinyl. People kept buying records even after they had the album on CD or cassette. They liked collecting them — the gatefold, the feel, the smell, the idea of the object. Maybe that’s where books are headed.”

Chuck goes on: “And then, the scarier part: it’s possible books just aren’t the most effective way to learn things anymore. Maybe books aren’t the most efficient way to get information anymore.”

“Whoop, there it is.” Everyone is landing on the same point.

Back to Tim Ferriss. He’s got a piece out called “Has AI Already Killed How-To Nonfiction? Sales Trends, My Personal Data, and What It Might Mean for the Future”. He takes us into his own “dirty laundry,” starting with a summary of business book sales.

For Q1 2026, Publishers Weekly reported adult nonfiction down 9% year-over-year. A dive into the particulars shows self-help had the steepest subcategory drop, with units down 26.3% year-over-year. A word of caution: units out the door could be high, but you also want to know what MSRP they were sold for. Craft and Hobby books grew by +9% and Religion grew by +1%, being two bright spots in the category. I’d assume most of Craft and Hobby would be adult coloring books, still performing strong. Considering we all thought it was a fad when it started, it’s a great object lesson. Bibles are still performing well, riding their uptick since 2021. User interaction with a Bible or any religious text is unlike any other book experience. Meditation and entertainment live in different places in our values.

Ferriss lays out his recent book sales. In 2023 he saw a -5% decline, then -13% in 2024, but in 2025 it was -46%! Yowza! If trends stay the same he’ll end up at -57% for 2026. That’s based on the run rate, but if his Q4 sales, holiday time, are bigger than that trend assumes, it could bridge that -46% to -57% gap a bit.

Then he puts the knife in: ChatGPT, powered by the updated GPT-3.5 model, launched on November 30, 2022.

His point, for books like his, prescriptive, how-to nonfiction is that:

“In 2019, the best interface to those answers was a book. In 2026, millions believe the best interface is a free chatbot that reads his books and thousands of others and can hand you a personalized protocol in 15 seconds, adjusted for your bodyweight, your schedule, your injuries, and your aversion to cottage cheese.” — Tim Ferriss

None of these people mention self-publishing.

Publishers Weekly has the numbers: the total number of books published in the U.S. in 2025 with ISBNs jumped 32.5% over 2024, to more than four million — led by self-published work, which soared 38.7% to more than 3.5 million (up from 2.5 million in 2024). Traditionally published books, by contrast, rose just 6.6%, to 642,242. That’s roughly 5.5 self-published titles for every 1 traditionally published one in 2025.

Is that where Derek’s “diversity” is going? Maybe Rose’s decline in reading isn’t captured here?

If you have an ISBN, it’s possible to show up in Bookscan. But if it’s an event? It won’t show up. I talked to the owner of a romance self-publishing house last week, and he told me people bring suitcases to events and fill them up with 100 books, easy — all self-published romance. If you’re a business owner or coach who sells books at your own event, those sales likely aren’t showing up in Bookscan either.

So how many units are they actually selling? Per bestwriting.com’s self-publishing statistics: the global self-publishing market reached $2.16 billion in 2025, growing at 16.7% annually, compared to just 1% for traditional publishing.

But the actual money made is still much less for self-published writers. Still, that growth is impressive. I wonder how much of what Rose, Tim, Derek, Chuck, and Bill are talking about is hiding in the self-pub world? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section!

I 100% think Chuck’s right; the future of books is specialty, premium, collectible products for authors. If that’s something you’re chasing, whether it’s a book, ancillary items, design, and/or the logistics to pull it off, let me know. Thanks for reading.

While modern technology can streamline day-to-day life, making everything from dating to food delivery more efficient, it may come at a cost: early data suggests that our attention span may be shortening, critical thinking capabilities weakening, emotional intelligence fading, and spatial memory getting worse as we offload human tasks to our devices.

They told me “Don’t tell anyone in a hiring position that there is an efficiency backlash coming.”

Regardless, I think it’s an important thing to share for two reasons. Here’s my take. The first take is pretty short, the second one is longer.

The first one is the human concern. Talk of efficiency is really talk about man and machine or man versus machine. Man versus machine has been a roller coaster since John Henry. In our era,

Brene Brown, probably the most popular work life psychologist, built a brand on vulnerability but of late she talks about efficiency and burnout because when doing things faster is the goal the meaning gets lost.

“Our nervous systems aren’t ready for the level of uncertainty we are facing right now”

-Brene Brown

Brown, screenshot from Fortune event 2026

Studies suggest the loss of meaning leads to fatigue and burnout-which can undermine your effectiveness. These concerns alone cost a company a lot of coin. Now, Man AND machine? I’m typing this on a laptop and the benefits are supreme. It’s a win win.

I think what is getting missed is efficiency, and the constant drive to gain more takes you down a road that gets increasingly narrow. There is more than one way to skin a cat but eventually you are just reskinning the same poor cat and new process just to have new process ignores the trade offs and time spent in adoption. My gut is that if it’s not already happening there will be a lot of articles on this coming our way soon.

“Don’t Skin Me!” image from Substack / Unsplash

Now here is the reason that might really get the attention of the C suite.

Efficiency and unique products don’t always go hand in hand. Great products often take a circuitous route. Sometimes they are even developed to hide a perceived downside.

I need to interject right now. I am not advocating luddite inefficiency as a goal. I don’t think you need to spill gasoline all over the parking lot every time you fill up. I don’t think you need to have a meeting when an email will do. But there is something that inefficiency gives us that efficiency cannot.

To have creativity you have to have room for the unknown, or ambiguity.

The bold statement would be, you have to be ok with ambiguity to make something exceptional. Inefficient steps are the bread crumbs of innovation.

I saw an Instagram Reel by the Israeli Jazz Band Marbin last week. Dani Rabin, the band’s guitarist, asked the camera, aka the digital we, do you know why live rock died?

He answers, “It was optimized. Digital rigs, light sync, vocals in tune, auto patch changes, and it all became so boring..” Here is the link

He goes on, “Big show live music is now boring and sterile because there are In Ears, Click Tracks, and Pre Set amps.” He sums it up, “We kept solving problems until there was barely a human left in the equation.” He adds, music was fun when no one knew what was going to happen. But now every risk has been eliminated. He implores us, “Don’t mistake precision for greatness.”

I would add, You cannot move people if there is no motion. Read that in your McConaughey voice.

Besides tech advancements, we live in a time with kids growing up with drum lessons, School of Rock, and a myriad of YouTube videos showing you every step from rig set up up to strumming patterns. A far cry from piecing together issues of Guitar World and playing a record over and over for the young of the 80’s.

I know some guys who play in bands like Dani mentions. And they would argue that the people coming to see these shows aren’t interested in organic or risky sounds, they want something to sound like the record. I think that’s true. Know your audience.

But what blew up the most on Social Media in the last 6 months?

Angine De Poitrine, a band that blends microtonal scales and crazy time signatures. Also they wear costumes. People are hungry for things that are out of the box. It’s certainly inefficient to paint your body in polka dots and wear a giant mask when you play but they now have a sold out tour.

I think there is something crucial Dani said, “We kept solving problems until there was barely a human left in the equation.”

Does that resonate with commercial creativity? Writing songs/ Writing books? Coming up with a new business idea? A new product line? You can certainly try to use data to tell you where lightning is going to strike but I asked ChatGpt what next band will break out like this and it gave me a list of bands similar to Angine. Maybe I need to work on my prompting.

De Poitrine on WKXP-screenshot from YouTube Maybe bands are still leaning into making their limitations work for them. Tell me about ones you know in the comments.

Let’s talk about some examples of inefficiency and uncertainty being necessary to make something creative.

American Rock Band The White Stripes had two members, a husband and wife duo, guitar and drums, with a strange and mysterious intimacy. At the time they hit this was considered impossible but it became a norm due to a wide variety of reasons, all of them art and commerce lessons.

Can you imagine being a bass player in that band? You’d be a chemistry killer off the bat. And shoot, maybe it wasn’t that at all. It’s hard enough to get two people’s schedules to align, much less 3 or 4. Maybe they just needed an Outlook calendar. Ha ha.

This was where they executed efficiency. They didn’t bother with a 3rd person and To combat the lack of low end, Meg played her drums differently, relying on floor toms and keeping the beats simple and pulsating. Solid wham bam.

Did you watch the World Cup the last few weeks? If so, you’ve heard the song “Seven Nation Army.” It’s become a world wide sports stadium mainstay. It was prominently featured in the final halftime show care of The Muppets and New York Philharmonic and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra. When are The Muppets going to retire? They are ageless!

The song’s riff is an iconic bass beat down! But it’s not even a bass. Jack White, the guitarist, used an octave tool and a DigiTech Whammy pedal. He used the Octave Downsetting to give his guitar a deep vibe.

Why didn’t he just use a bass? Because a bass would feel and look totally different. It would take their show out of its groove. It would take them out of their vibe. Conversely, it was inefficient for his ability to play the guitar solos on the song. He can’t very well switch from a bass guitar to a six-string guitar mid-song, back and forth. He could use a looper? Wrong vibe. They could bring out a bass player for this song? Wrong vibe again.

The solution might seem inefficient but it’s working toward a greater creative efficiency. And in the end, a creation that resonated on a world wide scale.

Funnily enough, Jack White is not the only person from Detroit to be inefficiently creative. Perhaps it’s great poetry that Detroit is where Henry Ford brought blazing efficiency to the American workforce.

J Dilla was another Detroit artist that confounded efficiency. Hip hop in its roots is a creative work around. Young inner city artists couldn’t afford instruments but they could afford records, maybe even pilfering their parent’s stash.

Rap and Hip Hop were easily the major music from post grunge mid 90’s to mid 2010’s. Rhythm and the beat are crucial to hip hop. Of course, yes, great lyrics too. But the beat is essential. J Dilla played beats but J Dilla also played with time. He was like a time traveler in milliseconds. The advent of computer recording allowed users to visually see and map time onto a grid. Quantization. But Dilla turned off the feature and manually played his drum machines. With no effort he could get timing perfection but turning off the feature, he invented his own time signature.

Jordan Hall says “Believe it or not, we can thrive on imperfection if we let go of the reins.” in his Medium article on J Dilla. He goes on, “While this may seem necessary for keeping music in time, it can feel robotic in certain situations. Part of what makes music uniquely human is the little microscopic imperfections.”

Obviously, he and I would agree on our sensibilities. I’m just asking you to acknowledge that J Dilla made up a time signature that resulted in immense world wide influence by going down an inefficient route.

I should mention the excellent book, Dilla Time by Dan Charnas for my first exposure to these ideas. The book starts off with much verve and is a fun read, though my review would allow that it gets depressingly bogged down in the artist’s legacy.

I was getting a Cortado this morning.

The gal behind the bar asked, “Where is the matcha?”
The guy working the station with her pointed and jokingly said, “What do you take me for?” As in she didn’t trust he’d made it. He was doing it good naturedly. Fisticuffs were not in play. She declared, “Someone who is human and therefore makes mistakes!” Her tongue was in cheek but she was obviously reacting to many levels of trends in our current lives.

All in all? Preach sister.

I want my pilot to have a check list. I want my surgeon to wash his hands. I love a rain barrel. But, all humanity? All the time?

You might say, limitations or inefficiencies have no place in business.

Many of our largest companies in America are built on a mistake or a challenge.

I feel like I’ve heard these stories 100 times but the takeaway is they were instances where someone was trying to do one thing but by their mistakes or set back or inefficiency ended up being a breakthrough.

There are sort of a business greatest hits of oops. Charles Goodyear dropped a mixture on a stove and ended up making tire rubber. Post It Notes were considered a failed glue but they were perfect for non permanent adhesion. Silly Putty. On and on.

So, an efficiency backlash? Of course there is the uptick in analog record sales. Book stores are opening at a faster rate than in decades. Both purveyors of very inefficient ways of distributing goods. Journaling. Reading groups. Farm to table food. I think we are already doing it to be honest. But again, that’s not exactly what I am getting at. When I see it, I’ll let you know.

Let’s revisit Henry Ford for a minute. Henry Ford was probably dyslexic. I say probably because the diagnosis did not exist in his lifetime.Research shows 35% of entrepreneurs in the U.S. show signs of dyslexia. The very trait that makes reading harder often fuels the kind of nonlinear thinking behind breakthrough innovation.

But that tidbit is not what I want to show you. Ford famously said, “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black” and this and other streamlining of choice made the car cheap and affordable. But then Ford’s popularity fell off because they did not offer variety. He said that in 1909 but by 1927 they took a 65 million dollar loss because they did not let go of some efficiency, only black I’m looking at you, for the sake of options aka colors.

It’s an odd time to create stuff when a computer can solve a math problem that is 70 years old or hack into another company. The news changes too fast to fathom But, some of us are going to have to be able to bridge the gaps, the spaces that are ambiguous, that are not clear wins. If you are still reading along I get the feeling you are with me.

Now, I’m going to be spending some time reading those inefficient books.

Thanks for reading!! Next week will be either on food, memory, and place or business books and making an experience. Still noodling. See how this works? Please subscribe!

The headline grabbed me. Google DeepMind CEO on the skills humans need in the AGI era. In the article, he says, “In the next five years, those with ‘taste, design sensibility, original thinking’ and the ability ‘to synthesize different subjects together’ will be in an amazing position.”

That’s good news for some of us.

There is a concept I use in my professional and personal work. I call it the Emotional P&L. That might sound woo-woo or idealistic, but ignoring it as a blind spot can end up costing you. It needs a better name. Maybe The Emo P&L? What does that mean? In music, Emo is short for emotional hardcore—bands like Sunny Day Real Estate or My Chemical Romance. Honestly, I don’t know a thing about these bands! Maybe they sound like The Pixies.

The Pixies, in the past, if you know the photo credit-let me know.

I think the Emo P&L is exactly the type of work that Hassabis is talking about.

This is an important skill because the emotional P&L is one thing AI can’t seem to master. It falls into “synthesizing different subjects together.” In this case, it’s cost, market perception, or even ethics and that hard-to-pin-down variable: feelings.

Let me give you a publishing example.

What if you are printing a book at a vendor that doesn’t have the best price, but your production manager has a great relationship with them? Maybe the work is costing you an extra $0.50 or so per unit. Let’s say over 10,000 units, that equals $5,000—nothing to sneeze at, for sure. If you print the book year after year, it certainly adds up.

But what if you have a sudden uptick in sales? Your manager has the relationship with this vendor to ask for an expedited turn. With a new vendor, you might be a face in the crowd and lose months of revenue because you are out of stock. Or perhaps this vendor grants you better payment terms? That can be a game changer for cash flow. I’m not saying which is the right answer, but I am saying it’s worth noting.

America recently celebrated its 250th birthday. This reminds me of a great example of the Emo P&L. Here’s a bold statement: “You can’t make a USA 250th Anniversary coffee table book and print it in China!” Maybe people don’t care. Maybe they just want the lower MSRP. Maybe you charge what you would for any product and take the ding on margin? Here’s the question: What would your marketing director tell you? If Walmart is going to sell it, do you think their marketing team wants to risk patriotic egg on their face?

Advert from the web, notice where the item was made? They even add an exclamation point.

How about this? You have an editorial budget for a book. Your author prefers to use a certain editor. The P&L only allows $7,000 for editorial, but the chosen editor is $12,500. What if you go hard-nosed on this and make the author choose? To be sure, in big-name cases, it’s not even a conversation. This is because the publisher has thought about the Emo P&L, whether they realized it or not. You want your star author to have buy-in on the project. Making sure they have their trusted companion for the work is crucial. You might have to look elsewhere in the budget to pay for these changes, but it might be worth it. It’s totally worth it.

My wife and I watch a BBC cop show called “Pie in the Sky.” There was an episode, “Breaking Bread,” in which the police chief tried to replace the cafeteria’s cook with a vending machine and a microwave. You can see where this is going, right? The idea was that there would be lower costs with no impact. Win-win. Not so fast. First off, the team did not like the change or the microwaved food. But here is the Emo P&L at work. Eventually, the chief—after much gnashing of teeth—asks Crabbe, our main character who also owns a restaurant, for his take. I’m going off memory here, but this is the upshot:

“Where do you think most cases are solved?”
“Why in the cafeteria of course!”
“Why”
”Because people from different groups get together, discuss their work, and make connections.”

Sure, this is a TV show and maybe they don’t tell you this at Harvard Business School, but how much money would really be saved by using a microwave if the solve rate suffered as a result?

Detective Crabbe from SkyTV

Here’s another example. I was in a meeting once where a finance leader, summing things up, wanted to leave us with an object lesson. At Chick-fil-A, there was an employee who gave away 2–3 packets of sauce to everyone with their order. He was there for 30 years. He knew every He was beloved, and he doted on his customers.

Well, someone at Chick-fil-A ran the numbers and realized that at $0.05–$0.08 per packet over 30 years, he had given away a million dollars’ worth of sauce.

Naive me, I thought the tale was leading to, “Remember, it’s the customers we impact; it’s the people who make the business!” Because my first reaction was, How much money did this employee generate in revenue for CFA because people felt special, they came back over and over!

But no, that wasn’t it. The lesson was about the money lost.

They are 100% right! It’s a lot of money. However, if you Google this topic, there are CFA brand loyalists Reddit threads upset that Chick-fil-A has a strict one-package-per-order rule in place now. Some say the emotional toll is worse than gas prices!

You could argue that people will bellyache, still come for the food, get over it, and in a few years no one will know, and you will have millions saved. In this case, I would side on the one packet call. It’s substantial impact and if you want more, you can ask. In most cases it sounds like they will comply.

How about the basketball business? It’s long been a mainstay of the Emo P&L, but things are changing. The Luka Doncic trade and the Jaylen Brown trade both come to mind. Both happened in the last two seasons, and both were head-scratchers.

Luka was a beloved star in Dallas playing for the Mavericks, the appointed heir to Dirk Nowitzki’s throne. He took the team to the Finals in 2024, which used to mean something to a franchise. Then, the following February, he was traded for almost nothing in the middle of the night.

The deal made very little basketball sense, but what was clear was that the Mavericks wanted “out of the Luka business.” I love this phrase that is used in basketball talk: “So-and-so team wanted out of the so-and-so business.” To add clarity, the “Luka business” is a once-in-a-lifetime offensive player who struggles with staying in shape and can be mercurial. His offensive stats alone say you’d be mad to let him go, but apparently not—especially against the money (projected five-year, $345 million supermax contract extension) that the Mavericks owed him.

The basketball P&L is weighted for emotions. But now it’s at war with the basketball business P&L.

Jaylen Brown—oh, what a tangled web. He’s the Robin who thinks he was Batman; maybe he is Batman! For the Boston Celtics lore, Jayson Tatum is Batman. In the previous season, Tatum gets hurt with a season-ending Achilles injury. Despite that, Jaylen Brown still takes the Celtics to 50-plus wins and the Finals. But now the plot twist: Tatum returns for the finals, the C’s lose to the Knicks, and the Knicks go on to win the championship. Fast forward to within 18 days of the season ending: the Boston Celtics trade him to a fierce rival, the Philadelphia 76ers, for a lesser player.

One theory is that Brown was no longer happy and would not go back to being Tatum’s second fiddle. Another theory involves the second apron and the Celtics now being owned by a private equity firm. Luka and Brown are both potentially examples of cost-leading basketball decisions.

It’s worth noting that recent NBA financial rules force teams to make these decisions. Does this make the sport better and more equal? Does it protect teams from getting into bad deals they cannot support long-term? The summary is this: team owners are making salary decisions vs. basketball decisions. At the same time, we live in an era where there is no shortage of data to add to the decision-making process—to fill out the P&L.

Photo by author from West Tennessee Public Court.

I’m not remotely a basketball expert. But let me tell you this: I grew up watching the sport. I saw Dr. J on TV. I saw Larry Bird play a preseason game. I watched the Dream Team on TV. I saw Allen Iverson in Philly. I saw Dirk Nowitzki in Memphis. I was at a bar in Fort Pierce when LeBron made “The Decision.” I read The Ringer and ESPN, and I listen to the Bill Simmons show. There are probably sports junkies who make fun of Gen X guys like me who listen to Bill Simmons.

But what is clear is that there are big-time business decisions that you cannot see in the box score.

In the NBA, you have the basic stats: points, rebounds, assists, blocks, steals, turnovers, and minutes played. These are all easily quantifiable. You can dig a little deeper with field goal percentage. If your star makes 33 points a game but does it on 28% shooting, that means he hoisted up a lot of clunkers. You can apply this to three-pointers, free throws, and field goals.

Then you have advanced metrics. Advanced metrics were made possible by optical motion-tracking cameras and increased computing power. Also, baseball sabermetrics influenced this. Basketball, with these new tools, became even more of a data science—for example, the three-point shot with Steph Curry as its most notable user.

The case for taking more 3-point shots was rooted in math. If a team made 50% of their shots inside the 3-point line, they’d score 100 points if they took 100 shots. If a team made 34% of their 3-point shots, they’d score 102 points on 100 three-point shots. -from Underarmor

Here are some advanced metrics: True Shooting Percentage, Effective Field Goal Percentage, Player Efficiency Rating, Box Plus/Minus, and Net Rating.

Let’s look at Net Rating; it’s defined as the difference in team points scored and allowed per 100 possessions during the time a player is in the game.

But analysts, basketball heads, stat nerds, podcast guys, and players all note that none of the above captures other important elements of the game.

What about on defense? If a player is so masterful and intimidating that opposing players don’t even try to take a shot near the rim when they are in the game? The 7’4” Victor Wembanyama could certainly have this applied to him. How about a player like Draymond Green, who is constantly telling his teammates what to watch for in real-time on the defensive end? There is no metric for that but the impact is invaluable.

Some players have a great locker room presence and leadership. The team feels better just by them being there. It might be their wisdom, advice, or a calming presence. Players like Al Horford or Mike Conley exemplify this.

On offense, what if you are such a powerful player that the opposing team’s defense gives you all the attention, leaving other players wide open? If they convert their shots, it works out, but that’s an “assist” that doesn’t show up in the box score. It also might make a subpar player look better than they actually are. To be clear, some of these metrics can hide bad habits.

Steph Curry over Victor Wembenyama 2024 Olympics. Photographer: The photograph by Ezra Shaw of Getty Images.

Of course, all of these points can be applied to your business, your team, your products! With books, units sold would be akin to points per game. Rebounds might be an inverse of returns. Lower returns is better. Your FG % could be factored by the amounts in the market versus how many come back. If you place your product with good fits, it’ll show up in that percent.

Let me know examples you can think of in the comments! Thanks for reading.

Are we all in danger of feeling uninspired? I’ve read or listened to many podcasts about AI and felt my own writer’s ennui on that front. Again, below we will dig in.

It’s never been harder or easier to make art since computers gave us studios on a laptop, phone cameras, and word processors. AI has made the math even weirder.

If you can tear yourself away from the constant doom that the powers that be seem to have in store for us, you might ruminate on making art. Maybe this is what 1963 felt like? I feel like Bob Dylan could write Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan any day of the week right now. “Blowin’ in the Wind” “Masters of War” “A Hard Rain is Gonna Fall.” It’s 1963, plus computers. Plus the rest of the “Unprecedented Times.”

I have a little skin in this game of trying to be a human. This article is written by me, a human—a real live boy. You might or might not believe that, and you’d be wise not to. Apparently, there’s a lot of AI out there now coming at you.

For my real live part, I’m trying to write a second novel. But it’s slow going.

Maybe it’s time management. I was going to write this morning but I made egg sandwiches for the family before they went on a field trip. Then I went to the grocery store. Then I read about The Commonwealth Prize. The gist is a recent literary award went to a short story that has some earmarks of AI generated text. From The Atlantic,

“Readers noticed AI-like prose in a written work and took to ridiculing it online. Some ran the writing through an AI-detection platform that labeled it entirely AI-generated. The institutions involved in its publication scrambled to figure out what had happened.”

But how about a hopeful idea?

Maybe there is a beat living in the world? Recently, I attended a lecture on the Clave at Tempo Coffee (1) on Nolensville Pike. Nolensville Pike remains the most interesting street in town to me; it’s got a little bit of everything from all over the world. I wish it were a walkable neighborhood with small shops, but as is, I’ll take what I can get, and on this night it had Clave: The Rhythmic Base of Afro Latin Music. The event was held by Voces de Nashville and led by Euge Sosa Barboza. She is a Latin music percussionist and musicologist living in Nashville. Sony Music is in the mix for her work life.

From IG

The most recognizable example of the Clave for me was the 3/2 beat called the “Bo Beat.” I had no trouble picking it out and playing along. Playing the 2/3 variation of Clave was like I’d never used my hands before. The Bo Beat refers to Bo Diddley, the American musician who, along with many others in the 1950s, bridged the blues, country, and gospel into rock n’ roll. You know that, right? (2)

She told us the technical aspects and showed us some songs as examples. I have a new record to spin this summer: Edye Gorme y Los Ponchos. It’s got that lush, sweet, hep feel that records from the early ‘60s have. Technology was just good enough but not so great as to distract, and everything sounds like rum and coke. Euge shared an image by the painter Pedro Figari, and I immediately snapped a pic of the slide. Here is a better picture from the internet.

En el Pueblo by Figari (1861-1938) from Wiki

If nothing else, I walked away knowing about this painter. He reminds me of Carroll Cloar or a funky Edward Hopper. I think she said she was his granddaughter. She showed us his work to illustrate life in Latin America and the mixing of dispossessed Africans, South American natives, and Europeans, out of which the Clave beat blossomed. I want to sit in that painting, drink a beer, and play an old guitar.

As the screws of the talk set into the wood, the discussion moved to the metaphysical and spiritual theories of the Clave. Latin American musicians and people feel that the Clave beat is always there and the players just hop onto it. When they play, they find it; they play along with something that is in creation. Groovy, huh? This is the lore of the beat as I understood it. We have a friend who is from Cuba, and I saw her over the weekend. I asked her if she knew the Clave. She didn’t miss a literal beat and she began to dance and clap her hands to the rhythm, saying, “Yes! It’s Bap Bap Bap, Boom, Boom!!”

This idea—that it’s always going—reminds me of how the Earth makes noise. YouTube videos come into my feed that show what Earth sounds like after some sonic tweaking. In the Venn diagram of people who watch videos on how Jimmy Page layered his guitars, Justified shootouts, and bad literary documentaries come videos about the Earth’s sound. Electromagnetic radio emissions and seismic activity make all sorts of noise. Electrons interact and make all sorts of crazy jazz.

For example-

The Indian Ocean Or these The scary sound of Earth’s magnetic field and NASA SVS | Earth’s Song Last one Sounds of the Earth

Keith Richards once said,

“I’m an antenna, I just pick up an instrument and if there are any songs out there, I receive them.”

I relate to the feeling of being an antenna. Every time I pick up a guitar, I come up with something, though I stopped recording a year or so ago. When you hit the record button, it’s like a vow—a promise to make the little sketch something, to let it breathe life, to trace the bones out and add the muscles. Add a drum, add a bass.

Earlier I mentioned it’s never been easier or harder. Right? Because it’s never been easier, everyone can do it, and that’s part of what has made it harder than ever.

Living in 2026, 120,000 new songs are released every day. Releasing a song is so pointless it’s existentially crushing. I remind myself that people played for thousands of years to the fields and the sky, the wind, and the night—not to a microphone in a room or a phone in their corner. The window is who I play to now: the night, the woods, the chair, and the wall. Maybe the rug in the den.

That makes me think of the cover of this Robert Johnson tape that I had in high school. Music is past the doorstep of becoming a commodity, but it’s still a fairly simple thing. It’s a hotel room in Texas with a microphone. Don’t take my picture; it steals my soul! Don’t record my song; it steals it too. Maybe it’s best to just let an A minor on a banjo live with me, strummed to the woods in my yard.

Of course, I’m not even trying to make a record. I’m trying to write a second novel of which 600-1,300 are released every day. Those odds are better right?

Around the same time as the Clave presentation, I went with the superb visual artist and substacker Rob Matthews to see Cave of Forgotten Dreams at Opry Mills IMAX in Donelson, Tennessee. The documentary is from 2010, shot in 3D by Werner Herzog about the Chauvet Cave in Southern France. These images are old; some date back 32,000 years. Visually, in 3D, it’s an immersive, rock-bending dreamscape.

For some reason, the theater was 8,000 degrees and, as I mentioned, the film was in 3D, so I felt a mix of dizzy and nauseous the whole time. It was a tad long but overall enjoyable. The payoff for me came late in the documentary from a scientist, Julien Monney (what a name!), who relates a story of an ethnographer interviewing an aboriginal tribe member. He’s being shown an ancient drawing that needs some repair. The aboriginal decides to repair the drawing on the spot. The ethnographer asks him:

“Why are you painting?” The Aboriginal says, “It is not me who is painting; it is the spirit that is actually doing the painting now.”

Is this like where the Clave is playing? Is this where Keith is just the antenna? Is art just the spirits of the past creating through us? Or God creating through us? I think about this a lot lately. Because when I was young, I was hot to write songs—I was an art major when I started college, I was full of expression. Then I was in a band and could not contain all of the songs pouring down my arm.

Art is wasted on the young, or something like that.

Maybe my frozen progress is not the pointlessness of releasing something, it’s age.

Now, of course, there are lots of older writers, songwriters, painters, and actors who are still at it (Because they have an audience). I’ve read a lot of memoirs by music people in the last few years. I relate to them up to the point of the book when they say, “And then our band took off!” They say, “I can’t imagine not doing what I was born to do.” Well, I can. I am the “choose your own adventure” alternate reality. I think they’d stop if they didn’t have a reason.

Granted, I still do make art. True enough, maybe they are right. But I am really tired of it! I could blame a large part of my writer’s block on how pointless making art is now or on being old. But if I was only repairing the paintings of the past or only playing the banjo to the wind, wouldn’t that count too? Or is that different? Why doesn’t it feel the same?

With AI, it’s starting to look like everyone is going to be in danger of feeling uninspired. What’s the point of all this art we make if AI can make it? Rock is dead. Jazz is dead. Painting is dead. Reading is dead. Movies are dead. Rap is dead. Sex is dead. Email is dead.

Is everyone in danger of feeling this way?

What if, in the not-so-distant future, we start to value music, painting, art—all these dead things—because they will be like the animals in Blade Runner; the real ones are prized and worth a fortune because every animal is a robot because World War Terminus killed the real ones. I like to think that AI will make the real things in life matter more. My gut is that people like what they like, they don’t care about its provenance, and free is their favorite. So no, I don’t foresee a boon.

But hold on. Maybe there will be.

I usher at my church. We’ve seen growth over the last two to three years. Maybe that means there is church growth. There’s a lot to suggest it’s a mirage made from older attendants that will pass away soon and younger attendants that are faddishly trying out spirituality. Because we have grown so much, we have to ferry about 15 to 30 people, and even more during the height of Holy Week, to our meeting hall. No one is ever excited about sitting in the meeting hall. “It’s just not the same,” people tell me. It’s just not the same as being in the room with the icons, the priest, and the incense. I agree. It’s not. I don’t like sitting in there either. The reason we can even offer this? The tech of a television in another room.

If recent graduation speeches where AI has been mentioned—the rousing boos indicate a marketplace where AI might not be welcome. I think this is why chefs are the last rock stars. You can’t conference-call a great sandwich. Which reminds me of one of my pet peeves: a podcast where the person being interviewed didn’t care enough to A) go to the location or B) at least go to a place that will record you. These digressions prove I’m not AI, right?

I recently rewatched the movie Babylon. That movie is raw stuff. Lots of nudity. Lots of sex. Lots of drugs. Elephant dung. Actress barf. All of the bodily fluids, human and animal. Be advised if you venture into the film, but on the topic of the work of creativity, there are a few scenes that are breathless. One is what I’ll call the “Day in the Life” scene and the other is “Trying to Make a Talkie.”

The “Day in the Life” scene depicts our two characters: Manny working on the set of an epic period piece and Nellie working on the set of another film set in an old west saloon. Manny breaks a strike with a pistol, races across town to borrow a camera, a film crew fights against the sinking sun, the lead actor grows increasingly inebriated, and an extra gets impaled by a spear.

Nellie’s day shows her on the set of a film shot against a set that consists of a room cut in half, with a small musical group to the side to set the tone. One camera, and a crew filming whatever was interesting. Much smaller potatoes than Manny’s day, though they will soon intersect.

Whatever happened, happened. The directors let it take them where the story flowed. The dialogue got added afterwards. At the same time as Nellie’s film the whole lot is filled with other small films being shot. A Hot Jazz band, a piano player, a small string group, a bongo band, all of them wailing away at whatever the film crew was capturing.

Image from film, Babylon, Paramount

There was no process. There were no consumer insights. There were no rules. And granted, a lot of it was disposable. A lot of it was not worth a second look. It existed to build the audience for the medium.

The other scene is Nellie’s first day on a talkie. Excruciating. It’s eight million degrees in the room because air conditioning is loud; you must wear rubber shoes and no watches for the sound. These are, fair enough, easy things to do without, but also: no loud breathing! No sneezing. No coughing. No drinking water.

The mic cannot be moved without calling in a carpenter so every move must be to the perfect box marked on the floor. It’s too loud or it’s too quiet or it’s too this or too that. It’s absolutely maddening.

Extrapolated large, this is the world we’ve made for ourselves! The art was no longer in control. The sound guy with his prissy sensibilities was in control, wanting everything to be perfect. Is the silent era to sound era for movies in Babylon as earth-shattering as AI for writers in 2026?

Yes, I need a prissy sound guy to defeat my Podcast pet peeve.

I could make a higher-visual-quality movie with my phone, but the results would probably be less compelling. I realize that I am romanticizing the past and that the movie took liberties with some elements. Tech rules art now. Movies are engorged with CGI. Singers are leadened with vocal tools. I am typing on a computer using Google Docs. The parameters are set. To be fair, it’s a great tool. We are a long way from Kerouac writing on a sheaf of wallpaper. Maybe better. For sure it’s better. But what does it mean to be better? Our goal as humans is to be efficient? I don’t like that idea at all.

There’s the Brad Pitt and Jean Smart scene (Jean Smart is Luella Parsons in this movie, I’d assume. Maybe, maybe not. Whoever she is, she is hot stuff.) where she tells Brad, playing a historical figure amalgam named Jack Gilbert, “You’re just old. You got old.” Maybe I am just old. I’ve been reading East of Eden and I took a picture of this passage.

“You know, Lee, I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody. And my life has not been a full orchestra for a long time now. A single note only—and that note unchanging sorrow. I’m not alone in my attitude, Lee. It seems to me that too many of us conceive of a life as ending in defeat.”

- Samuel Hamilton in East of Eden

Maybe the young are inspired and don’t feel like art means nothing. My kids are into all sorts of things made by young artists. They seem to be rolling with the flow. My son wants to go see a movie called Backrooms. The director started out using his computer and YouTube. Now, he’s with A24.

Maybe it’s AI, maybe it’s age, maybe it’s laziness? Maybe my writer’s block is the place? I moved to Nashville to be a songwriter; didn’t do it, but I still live here. It’s sort of like living in your past. It’s even notable for how inauthentic it is. In fact, Nashville came in worldwide at number 4. Have you ever heard the song, “Walking in Nashville”? No, because it’s “Walking in Memphis,” because Memphis has soul. Nashville is bank-art soul, as in the art on the wall at a bank. Our downtown is held hostage by tourists and bridesmaid parties. I should have moved to Memphis back in 2001, but honestly, my wife says I’d be dead by now.

All this is to say, I often want to be back in South Florida, sipping an oat cortado and reading a book. Listening to fishermen yell and laugh. Watching birds and leering at iguanas. The only people playing music are the cover bands at the Tiki Bars. It’s sort of perfect. Maybe we should just repair old paintings. Maybe that’s all we ever were really doing.

(1) Tempo Coffee holds one of my “You will be shot by firing squad in the morning, you have your choice of meal” dishes. Their eggs, beans, tortillas, and potatoes with a cortado is one of the best breakfasts in the world. Easily the best in Nashville. It’s comfort food served simply and with care. Con cariño! Please visit them on Nolensville Pike and try everything. Nolensville Road remains the street that fascinates me the most in this city.

(2) I saw Bo Diddley at Starwood Amphitheater in Nashville. Bo was opening for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The girl I was dating at the time and I were on a double date. The couple we were with had the tickets, and the husband was dogged and determined to get into a fight with the people sitting in front of us because I think they leaned their seats back too far. It was 20 years ago, so I won’t try to reenact the scene. Bo Diddley had to sit down to play, and I thought it was sad. But shoot, he was probably 74 or so at the time. I’m thankful I saw him because I love Bo Diddley’s music.

Tom Petty was really good but all I remember is being a little disappointed that Mike Campbell played all of his solos note for note like the records. Campbell is one of my all time favorite guitar players. I was stoked to see him and very disappointed he just mimic’d the records. He didn’t throw any paint. But I get it. I’ve lived in color inside the lines Nashville for 25 years. It’s the way of the pros. I get it but I don’t like it.

I can’t conclude without mentioning Starwood was the site of The Replacements opening for Tom Petty, in 1989 or so, in which they in the act of opening the show stole and wore Petty’s wife’s dresses and played a ten-minute version of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” and then sauntered off. That sounds more like it Mike Campbell.

I don’t remember ever feeling such despair with the times. The 90’s were fun, I’m not gonna lie. I get it. I know, I know. The Romans did this. The Nazis did that. Pol Pot had his time. We killed the buffalo. Trouble is always around. But, I was always a fan of my corner of the globe. I guess I was naive. “The basement always has a basement” has become my refrain. In the spirit of sharing positive things, I’m doing a year in review for this Substack.

Books

None of these are new books but they are books I read this year. I went on a Graham Greene tear. I considered over the summer writing a fake travel blog where I used Google Earth, Restaurant Reviews and Hotel Reviews to act like I was in Thailand, Mexico, Jamaica, Ireland, Iceland, and Singapore. Anywhere, but Nashville. But something about it seemed disingenuous and witless.

Graham Greene let me travel the Orient Express, have a drink in London, and go to Vietnam. His writing is accessible but you still experience depth. Not only did I travel the globe but I was back in a time before cell phones. I’d give all of these a recommendation but End of the Affair is the top because it is one of the most profound books about faith I’ve ever read.

The Orient Express,

The End of the Affair

The Quiet American

Graham Greene wikimediacommons

Ludwig Bedelman’s Hotel Splendide came to me organically. I tried to watch a Bourdain episode, I think it was a New York episode and he was drinking in a bar. Don’t worry, it gets more specific. On the wall of the bar was art by Ludwig Bedelman. Bourdain noted this art and mentioned his memoirs as the original tell all of the service industry. Days later, at the Public Library I spied a copy. What a charming delight. Loosely based, thinly veiled, picked your description of Bedelman working at the Ritz Carlton in the 1920’s. It might be the most fun I had reading all year. When I say, I tried to watch Bourdain, I should add to that, I still cannot make it through an episode without sad frustration.

I read two books about going to places that are not your home. It was trying to survive in one case, and trying to understand it in the other. The books were A Passage to India by EM Forester and All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. I really enjoyed both of these books. A Passage to India is about British occupation and India’s culture in the 1920’s. All the Pretty Horses I wrote about earlier this year and it’s a Romance that makes you think it’s a Western set along the US and Mexico border.

There are 75 Maigret books by George Simenon. The best one I read this year was Maigret Sets a Trap. I think I’ve read 14 of them all total. I hope to get a few more for Christmas. Maigret Sets a Trap has been turned into television a couple of times with Michael Gambon and Rowan Atkinson among others. Love Mr. Bean, but his Maigret was lackluster. Gambons’ is my favorite live action version. It’s not hard to see why Maigret Sets a Trap has been used so many times. It’s a great classic police drama in which Maigret gets help from the women on the force to capture a killer who is attacking women. Trying to set a trap, yes, he gets the Women on the Force to walk the streets at night with an army of Police waiting in cars to pounce.

Gambon as Maigret

I read two Ian Fleming books this year. Goldeneye was smashing. It might be my favorite Bond book though it’s been years since I read others so perhaps its recency bias at play. Goldeneye was a show stopper! It left me with no doubts as to how the Bond franchise became one of the most enduring. As well, I read Thrilling Cities, a series of articles Fleming wrote for The Sunday Times. Remember this is pre Instagram, shoot, it’s pre Lonely Planet! I read this when I was toying with a fake travel blog. He’s a bit of a Wolf. He’s a card shark. He likes nice suits. He likes good food.

I read some Hemingway because being in Florida always makes it happen. It’s fun to think everyone in the 1920’s was so eloquent about being bored and frustrated as they are in The Sun Also Rises. Again, the fake travel blog idea poked at me here with their travels around Europe. I wanted to go to Spain with them, drink in the afternoons and try my hand at fishing.

Sea of Tranquility came out in 2022 and was a perfect science fiction time warp novel that was like a perfect turkey sandwich. Nothing tearing your head off but no regrets. Erasure by Percival Everett is solid. Though his bickering against belief while he struggles with the nature of life and death is a bit, “He doth protest too much.”

A Drink With Shane MacGowan, is the Pogues poet giving hot takes on music, sex, drugs, violence, faith, all of it, oh yeah and Ireland. What a raging intellect. He likes Dub Music and Dorothy Parker. I love reading a conversation between two people who don’t look at the internet every time they disagree about something. They just take each other’s word for it and keep moving.

Future Books?

Wasn’t there a news moment a few months ago that mused on how much men think about Rome. In our house, it’s my wife. She’s all about the Greeks and the Romans. I asked for two books on Rome for Christmas. Maybe I’ll get them.

On the new book front, Lawrence Osborne and James Ellroy, my two favorite writers, both have books out in 2026.

Movies

I saw two movies in the theater this year.

F1-

I wanted to go see Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning but the 8th installment of Tom Cruise saving the world couldn’t get me off the couch. Brad Pitt and race cars could. It was a perfect movie. Great sets. Great clothes. Great sounds. Great accents! Kerry Condon and Sara Niles both bring so much verve. The “Whole Lotta Love” scene might be my favorite in the film. And yes, despite the song title, the scene takes place on a racetrack. I’d be remiss not to mention Javier Bardem.

The other time I went to the movies was One Battle After Another. I’ve seen this movie blasted by the left and blasted by the right. I’ve seen it called filth, racist, and misguided. I feel like this movie is the best summation of 2025 in real time. The soundtrack is how I feel on a day to day basis.

Ghetto Pat and Perfidia Beverly Hills are screw loose activists. At their worst they bomb politicians they disagree with, rob banks and in the act kill bank guards. On the other side the Christmas Adventurers are caricatures of racism. They kill and arrest with no legal process, kidnap and detain people, and oh yeah, instigate riots. Whew. Nobody looks good.

But sometimes in a movie, there are characters in movies that you just want to hang out with. You need a friend, like THAT GUY. Sergio St. Carlos played Benicio Del Toro is that guy in One Battle. Ghetto Pat by mid movie is in over his head and think what you will of his bomb making past: he is just trying to save his daughter’s life. No questions asked. Sergio St Carlos, AKA Sensei, is there for him. The stretch of film with Ghetto Pat and Sensei is my favorite buddy adventure since Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio. Wear your seatbelt for the middle part of the movie.

Pat on the Left, Sensei on the Right

Home Movies-Movies, I saw at home. Duh.

Thunderbolts was the most recent Marvel movie I saw. Have there been others? Not sure. Florence Pugh is always easy to watch and fun to listen to, especially her Russian accented Yelena Bulova. David Harbour’s Red Guardian, “So full, so filled” line is one that echoes in my head. I liked the first two thirds of the movie a-lot. I’m totally down with a Bad News Bears version of The Avengers.

After the start up the movie sort of broke down. While I appreciated the metaphor of depression and a black inkwell with the Black Widow entering the Void to rescue Bob, the action of it as a culmination of the movie was just too much as a battle scene. CGI seems to be the only way Marvel can resolve a film and I’m finally tired of it.

Mission Impossible 8 I spent the first hour wishing it would end. However, once it kicked in I enjoyed the ride. The submarine scene was pure tension. The airplane scene was a nail biter. However, I can’t remember how it ended. Did Ethan Hunt live? I don’t know! To be clear, I am a big fan of the series and Tom Cruises’ movie moxie.

I re-watched Coffee and Cigarettes and Dead Man, both by Jim Jarmusch this year. Dead Man holds up really well. Coffee is magic. Tom Waits and Iggy Pop justifying a cigarette is pure life and comedy.

My daughter and I watched the first seasons of X-Files. I remember when it was on originally but I wasn’t interested in it then. I was out of high school and doing community college and making music. TV wasn’t interesting to me. Movies and records were. But now, I can’t get enough of cryptid, spooky, tin hat wearing, conspiracy fodder.

Food

I ate a lot of Apple slices with Tajin.

El Cortado remains my choice of coffee. I try to get it once a week at Soy Cubano or Tempo. Both are perfect.

Alebrije and Maiz de la Vida both have outstanding Mole. After years of no place in Nashville having a great option, it’s nice to have two when you get the craving.

Athletic -I drank a lot of non alcoholic beer this year. Sometimes I think I’m done with booze but then someone asks, “Have you tried this Whiskey?”

Can you live on Fish Dip? I certainly tried when I was in Fort Pierce. The local market had its own mix. I had to pace myself.

Tinned Fish-I know it’s a trend but I started a few years ago and am glad to see more choices in the market here.

Fort Pierce Florida Fresh Fish Market. Look at that blue sky.

Best Trip

Riding a train is one of life’s pleasures. We took The Brightline from West Palm down to Miami. We read. We watched the trees and tried to spot Iguanas. Our stop was Miami. A day in Miami never feels like a waste. I know, I know. I’m fully aware it would eat me alive. I do not have that kind of money or nerve. I’m one hit and run or carjacking gun in my face away from never going back. And I am aware that when I say Miami most people think of girls in bikinis dancing on Instagram to Reggaeton.

But to me it’s a place where I can see art and then look out the window and see a jungle. The sea is there with Pirates of a sort. The Caribbean is there with all the cultures of Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and of course, Cuba. Besides that, Old Florida and its Wild West eccentricities, that new Florida is eroding out, speak to me. Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and Zora Neal Hurston are there with the cigar smoke of an espresso.

And the trees? I love Palm Trees. My blood pressure drops when I see them. The sound of the ocean. The birds and the crazy lizards that are probably invasive all make me feel like I am in a church of nature.

From my sketchbook

We had great food every trip to Miami.

Tinta y Cafe is a Cuban Cafe built into an old house or office. Lined with books it gives off a bohemian cafe shop vibe. If Versailles is the Grandmother, then this is the Niece with tattoos. Locals would probably tell me I’m wrong but I stick by it.

Zak the Baker is a special breakfast. Great eggs and all that but olives and labneh make you feel like you are somewhere else. The latkes are crisp and tasty. We went twice this year. On the second trip, they gave us a bag of bagels to take home because they remembered we traveled from Tennessee. I saw a news story about them this year where they accepted Mangos as payment. That’s the type of stuff that charms my spirit.

12A Buoy in Fort Pierce is a gem on display. Old school, Old Florida, seafood and brews, sitting right against the bay where fishing boats come in. Palm trees, pelicans, and stray cats. None of it is for show. There are so many places in Fort Pierce that make a Mahi sandwich, blackened that tastes right on.

Music-I am always listening to something it seems. I couldn’t tell you all what I listen to, I just like music. But fortunately, or unfortunately, our data mining overlords can tell you exactly what I listened to in 2025.

Nils Frahm - Paris, I played the song “Right Right Right” more than any song this year. I love the grouchy synths. I love the spacey beats. I love the almost R&B feel and Tron overtones.

Jeff Parker - The Way Out of East, I listened to a load of International Anthem releases this year. Oddly, this was one of my favorite work out records. No, it’s not the Norse Death Metal that most gym rats play. It’s groove based jazz with smokey flavors. IA people, you need a subscription service.

Natalia LaFourcade - Cancionera, is a lush trip. “Cocos en la Playa!” What a song. When the background singers come in this is the street I want to live on. The harp on “El Paloma y la Negra” ah stop me! Could I retire to Mexico? No. I know that world is closed to me but it’s fun to listen to these songs and dream.

LALOM- Live at Thalia I played this while driving to Florida, in Florida, and pretty much any time in the car in the warm months. Great guitar playing and swinging rhythm. Not too fancy, not too dry.

Viagra Boys - Viagr Aboys Not since LCD Soundsystem has a band grabbed the “late middle aged ramblings” of life for me. I continue to be surprised at how VB keeps going and making new statements. I wore out the video for “Man Made of Meat” when it came out. I think I sang “Uno II” almost everyday to myself for weeks after it came out. My friend Joe saw them at Coachella and I watched the live feed. We texted during the show. There was probably a time delay but it was surreal, technology made fun. We watched Glass Beams together as well. Together, in a way. I saw the VB a year or two ago on their tour for Cave World. They were loose fun and then kind of a drag but that tracks.

Honorable mentions. Charlie Parker (any of the Afro Cuban stuff), Dizzy Gillespie (Night in Tunisia is my jam), John Coltrane, Aftca Getetchew Mekurya, Estonian Philharmonic & Paul Hiller, Beethoven, Floating Points & Pharaoh Sanders, Laura Cannell for Winter, Augustus Pablo for summer.

One song hit repeat a lot this year. “We Will Not Be Lovers” by The Waterboys. It’s got an insistent fiddle line. It’s got a tight up rock beat. It’s got a reverbed out guitar loop. But the thing about it is the bass. The bass sounds like the player just picked up the instrument when they walked in the room and then they almost dropped it. And it’s perfect.

I always think I’ve heard the final song that will stop me in my tracks. Somehow I missed “This Must Be the Place” by The Talking Heads until about 2012 or so? Last year I discovered this song and it sends me. Lord have mercy, what a song. And in this song, Lord have mercy, what a verse.

“Now the world’s full of trouble

Everybody’s scared

The landlords are frowning

Cupboards are bare

People are scrambling

Like dogs for a share

It’s cruel and it’s hard

But it’s nothing compared to what we do to each other.”

I released a record this year. It was fun to track it but then once released I picked it apart and felt I could have done better. I think 5-6 people bought it. Some friends said some nice things. I hope they liked it. I appreciate it if you gave it a moment.

2026 is coming up. Is Ai Dick Clark going to ring in the new year? I’ve got some books to read next year. I might try to write a novel. I have 3 ideas. Maybe I’ll pick at my banjo. Maybe I’ll make it back to Florida. For now, it’s cold and dark and not even January.

Hey readers who read about books. Have you noticed the uptick in articles on how nobody reads anymore? Especially men. Worse, men don’t read fiction! The claim being that fiction is a path to empathy and the Bros are missing out. My friend Rob Matthews has an excellent Substack. What a 2025 thing to say! He posted in defense of non fiction as a laudable pursuit for men readers because learning about the world around us through non-fiction gives us plenty of insight.

Another friend of mine, Joel Miller touched on this topic. He is an avid reader and his Substack Miller’s Book Review is spelled like it sounds. It’s his review of books but more than that, he deep dives into the ideas books hold and their gifts to us. In fact, he has a new book called The Idea Machine. I suggest you buy it for your book loving friends for Christmas. If we’ve come to a point where real men don’t read then I feel like it’s the 80’s all over again.

I’ve got a lot of new subscribers and I wonder if you read. I wonder if you are real. New estimates suggest that over 50% of all articles are written by Ai now. Well, let’s keep reading while we have the edge.

Reading articles about not reading but being aware of content at large, I wonder if more people than ever are consuming stories that originate in books? Obviously, more people watch TV than ever. Sample data from our home shows a lot of television shows are based on books. Last week my wife and I binged Slow Horses. I’ve read the first book in the series by Mick Herron. Before that we had watched The Thursday Murder Club. The wife read that book. The teens and I binged Lockwood and Co. Please bring it back Netflix! My wife has been watching Will Trent. I must say, I like the wardrobe on the show but no one is wearing those clothes in the summer in Atlanta. My favorite TV show of all time is Justified. It’s based on a book by Elmore Leonard.

From Harry Potter, James Bond, The Godfather, Frankenstein, to little old Father Brown many shows are based on books. For reference, Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling has sold 600 million books and as a film the content is 8.5 billion at the box office plus a theme park. Of course, some of the book sales and movie tickets are the reverse result of the other format but that’s a lot of people interacting with something that originated in a book.

The billion dollar elephant in the room is Marvel, the largest movie television franchise of the last decade and it’s based on books. I can’t get ChatGPT to give me a clear breakdown on what percent of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Peacock, Disney+, or Apple shows are based on books but I think we can all agree that there are a fair amount.

Book ‘Em Danno

The reason there are articles about reading is because it’s all really a question of what we do with our time, right? We don’t work all the live long day in a field and we all don’t spend our free time worshiping God. But we feel like we should do something worthy with our time. Maybe the word for it is Holy. There is definitely a hierarchy at my house.

Taking out the trash or putting away the dishes is a good use of time. Cleaning the litter box is a line to Saint Hood. After that, reading a book is the most lauded. We implore the teens to not watch YouTubers. Watch a “real show” with “real actors” and “real dialogue.” Unscripted shows are growing while scripted shows are shrinking. I myself feel like I’ve really done something if I watch a Kurosawa or Jarmusch film but to be fair I like all kinds of movies. And, honestly, there are some really good YouTubers out there. Further, some YouTubers blabbering on are more interesting than some televisions shows with wooden scripts. But I feel like I should spend my time reading or writing if I’m not at work or church.

I love the phrase, Ongoing Creative Destruction. I wanted to call my last record that. Economists use it to describe the ongoing and essential process within capitalism where new innovations, technologies, and business models continuously replace outdated ones. One of the fastest growing genres on YouTube is Ai generated shows. No camera. No script. No microphones. Nothing. Soon, we will be looking back on unscripted YouTube shows as having real humanity. Maybe one day, we will pine for the good old days when a YouTuber was a real person, no script, no actors but at least a real person.

The orator begat the coliseum, that begat the theater, that begat the book that begat the newspaper, that begat the movies, that begat television, that begat smartphones, that begat social media, that begat YouTube that you now, drum roll please, watch on your TV. I’m probably missing a step in there somewhere. Let’s let the cultural anthropologists give us the timeline. All the bread. All the circus.

Am I saying that Prestige TV is a lofty pursuit?

I’ve got TV below books and work in the hierarchy but above Social Media and YouTube. Do you remember when TV was the Boob Tube and not because you had Cinemax? The great American songwriter, Paul Westerberg once said, “Television does all the thinking for you.” I think he was talking about the making of the “Bastards of Young” video, a video his band The Replacements turned into their record label of their song playing to footage of a speaker. It’s head shaking brilliant. That was in 1986.

Westerberg released a vinyl record as Mr. F in 2010. A song called, This Machine KIlls Time, as a play on Woody Guthrie’s guitar’s scrawl of This Machine Kills Fascists. Here he had gone from deriding television to deriding the Smart Phone and Social Media. Instagram started about a month before this song came out. In 2025 the average American spends 4-5 hours a day on their phone. That’s some homicidal time management.

There’s no rest for the high speed

With their handheld nursery rhymes

Line the pockets of kings lie shiny things

It’d be a shame to be left behind

I stole a man’s cell phone

Just to watch him die

I made my own past

And I sang from the death,

This here machine, it kills time

This here machine, it kills time

Took pictures of myself

and sent them to the sunset

To my disappointment I got no reply

At the time, I thought it was a meh song because I wanted some pop rock Big Star twang from Westerberg conversing the ennui of the brilliant. But looking back, it’s kind of chilling how a man who fought so hard against the commodification of art and conversely our lives was so prescient.

Woody Guthrie with the coolest guitar in history

Westerberg released a song, “Whole Lotta Nothin’” with The I Don’t Cares in 2016. The band that had so much baked in ambition it surprisingly never made another record. I say this because I was at a Q&A for Bob Mehr’s Trouble Boys when it came out and there was a buzz in conversation that this new endeavor of Paul’s could be a project for a few years. Nope.

“Well I’m going online and there goes another hour

Feeling ugly, nervous as a highway wreck

Empty inside and dirty as the basement shower

It’s like cocaine for breakfast,

help me disconnect.

I’m an Icon, everybody hit delete!

How many likes on a whole lotta nothing like me?

A whole lotta nothin’ liking me”

After that he disappeared. I kind of think he saw the world of On Line Life going into hyper drive and it coincided with him hitting his late 50’s. I think he said “No thanks” I’m sure he was tired too. Shoot, if I could read books, live on fish dip, drink espresso, and make like I am Hemingway in South Florida? I would. He has his frost bitten Edina, Minnesota. Who knows. Maybe he likes something new that none of us need to know about. TV is bad and being online is worse, at least according to Paul Westerberg.

The Movies’ll Kill Ya

I recently saw the movie, One Battle After Another, it’s based on the book Vineland, by Thomas Pynchon, in the book you have characters that are Tube Addicts. Not their phones, but the Television Tube. This is the 1980’s! Tube addiction represents, according to an Ai search no less, “Escape from reality, political numbness, consumerist conditioning, surveillance and manipulation through media narratives.”In the book, the main character, who I remember as Ghetto Pat because of the movie, his daughter’s boy friend’s band has a song that goes like so-

THE TUBE

Oh... the ... Tube!

It’s poisoning your brain!

Oh, yes..

It’s driving you insane!

It’s shoot-ing rays, at you, Over ev’ry-thing ya do,

It sees you in your bedroom and on the toilet too

The Tube in Vineland is an addiction machine. Maybe there was a moment when director Paul Thomas Anderson thought about using this television element of the 80’s and translating it to the Smartphones of now. I think where he landed is fantastic. It’s one of my favorite movies of the last few years by far. It was TENET before that, if it helps to know.

The subject of phones always reminds me of one of my favorite Doroty Parker quotes, “Excuse me, everybody, I have to go to the bathroom. I really have to telephone, but I’m too embarrassed to say so.” I feel like we should bring back this level of disdain for the telephone.

Ghetto Pat on the phone in the movie, One Battle After Another (Warner Bros)

After I read Vineland, I read David Foster Wallace’s Something To Do With Paying Attention. I don’t know, I was on a post modern kick. In Something to Do with Paying Attention the narrator, who I assume is DFW, is bumming around his dorm, watching As the World Turns. He’s half asleep but hears the announcer’s voice say, “Your Watching as the World Turns.” He writes-

This is what struck me. It was beyond being feckless or a wastoid—it’s like I wasn’t even there. The truth is I was not even aware of the obvious double entendre of You’re watching As the World Turns’ until three days later-the show’s almost terrifying pun about the passive waste of time of sitting there watching something whose reception through the hanger didn’t even come in very well, while all the while real things in the world were going on and people with direction and initiative were taking care of business in a brisk, no-nonsense way.

“It’s like I wasn’t even there,” is a pretty chilling description of watching TV.

The Book of Faces, The Tube of You

Anton Chekhov

There is a character, Lysevich, in Anton Chekhov’s short story, A Woman’s Kingdom that has two notebooks where he keeps quotations and information. He has two notebooks, that’s it! He is at a dinner and having a conversation, discussing Anna Akinova, the main character and love. He is reminded of French poet, Leconte de Lisle (I had to look him up).

Leconte de Lisle defines such relations better than anyone. He has a superb passage, a marvelous passage....”

Lysevich rummaged in one notebook, then in the other, and, not finding the quotation, subsided. They began talking of the weather, of the opera, of the arrival, expected shortly, of Duse. Anna Akimovna remembered that the year before Lyse-vich and, she fancied, Krylin had dined with her, and now when they were getting ready to go away, she began with perfect sincerity pointing out to them in an imploring voice that, as they had no more visits to pay, they ought to remain to dinner with her. After some hesitation the visitors agreed.

Can you imagine if you had two notebooks of information for all the things you can’t keep in your head? That would be amazing? Maybe? Would you want your doctor to have two notebooks of information? Probably not. If these dinner guests had phones they were glued to would they talk about the weather, the opera, and the arrival of Duse?

We have a dizzying library at our fingertips. That’s amazing. But, there is a television at the gas station pushing commercials at me while I buy my high octane. So if less people read, then I find that many books are TV shows, but then we find less people are watching hows and less shows are even real people. Then reading might really be more worthwhile. More holy.

Recently Paul Kingsnorth released a new book, Against the Machine On the Unmaking of Humanity, argues that man has been fighting the machine for a long time. This journey of content that I am musing on certainly seems to back that up. From told stories, to books, to theater, to screen, to nothing. Optimists will tell you, “Oh people have always said that ‘ the kids these days’ are into something bad”-yeah? Maybe they have been for a long long time. Just because we survived it, doesn’t make it good.

But then sometimes I am an optimist and I am using YouTube to look up how to fix plumbing, or the car, or a Cafe Colada. I thoroughly enjoyed the YouTube show, The Great War. and I enjoy Rick Beato. My friend Rob shared The Civil Rights Lawyer with me. Great stuff, and you’d never find that on regular television. I have to hand it to Ryan Trahan for making some of the most wholesome and fun videos I’ve seen on YouTube. Last summer he raised 11 million dollars for St. Jude with his channel. Pretty amazing. That’s some humanity.

At the same time, YouTube doesn’t meander. It doesn’t reflect life. It’s a point A to B. It’s a set up and resolve, this is what we are going to do, bullet point, endeavor. It encourages makers to delete all of the pauses in speech. Do we not see how damaging that is to our patience to listen to each other?

My teens watch people play instruments on YouTube but they have reduced it to a vehicle for comedy, a sort of Mr Beast equivalent of playing guitar. “What if I put 13 arpeggios into 4 bars!?” These musicians are so capable but they are exhaustingly boring. It’s a mastery of everything on the side of data, algorithms, because they are playing the instrument like it’s spreadsheet not like it’s a bird feather.

A double edged Smart Phone for sure. It’s the access to information that allows me to find Ethiopian Jazz albums I never would have heard that at the same time changed the economics of playing music now. I like to think that reading will serve me well. I implore my kids to read. I assure them it will make a difference in their lives in ways that playing Minecraft never will. I can envision a future where reading makes a real line between the haves and the have nots in work and life. Potentially as simple as being able to read the Danger and Exit signs, real and metaphorical. But as British Historian Niall Fergusson warns if we are surrounded by a culture of illiteracy, the ability to read will be a cold comfort.

I hope you enjoyed this Ai free human musing. Thanks for reading!

We are going to get back on the horse, appropriately, with a Western. A few weeks ago I read All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, a Western clocking in at 300 pages with horse thief dialogue and South Western vistas that starts in San Angelo, a place that was Spanish Territory, Texas-yes the country Texas territory, Mexican territory and ultimately United States territory. The dust wit and smoke fire gets in your eyes. You can smell the gunpowder, see the blood, and hear the saddle leather creaking. Oh, and did I mention it’s a Romance?

I don’t dabble in book reviews. I dabble in the sausage factory parts of how and why books get made, so here we go.

Three things struck me about the book. And not the book in general but the specific used copy of the book I got as a gift.

Check this cover out. Is this intentional? Here is a picture of my copy. It looks like the book jacket bleed was not correct and the manufacturer helped the Publisher out by trimming the jacket print to fit the case instead of trimming to the art.

But then, look at this Border Trilogy set from Etsy. All of the books are like that. If so,then when they went to print the soft cover, they had the image bleed to the edge. So was there a mistake originally and they went with it for the series or was it intentional? Then why change it on the soft cover? At any rate, I’m sure someone sweated it and probably got chewed out but in the end, the book was made into a movie and I read it no less off.

Etsy image up top, soft cover image below

And there was another thing. In the middle of the book I found a small print measuring 5.5” x 7.25” from Olsson’s Book and Record Shop in D.C. According to the internet Olsson’s been out of business for about 15 years. I’ve never been there. The print is a glossary of all the Spanish words used in the book as a reading aid. Other than that, it reads, “Courtesy of Edgar Lopez.”

In All the Pretty Horses, Our main character, John Grady, grew up speaking Spanish and English in the South Texas town of San Angelo circa 1949. In one scene, a prison truck stops and the guards tell the prisoners, “Vamos.” An English reader might not know that it means, “let’s go.” Maybe their customers asked for it. Maybe they had a book club and someone made them.

In 1992 when the book came out, your phone wouldn’t have Google. Here in 2025, my iPhone has an app called Translate, that does just that. Google tech will let you take a picture of a document in one language and translate it on the spot. Keep in mind the book came out in 1992 and Olsson's closed 15 years ago. This glossary they made might have been made closer to the release of the book than the closure of the store.

There was no at your fingertips tech 15 years ago. But you know what you would have had around, at least at the library? A Spanish English Dictionary. I suppose that’s what Edgar had or if I make assumptions with his apellido, he knew the words outright. Employee of the month or concerned citizen, either way, hats off to you Edgar.

In All the Pretty Horses, our Main character, John Grady, can go back and forth. He’s a part of both worlds. Suffice it to say, he wouldn’t need the glossary card. But, Lacey Rollins, his friend, would have found it handy. Once deeper into Mexico the people they encounter speak only Spanish unless they are wealthy, in charge, or both.

There is a lot of literary digital ink on ATPH and the Spanish Language use as what makes the book’s immersion into the Texas-Mexico border authentic. The language is a barrier writ large. I felt like it was a step further. Spanish is a character in the book! Spanish plays a pivotal role, geographically, character wise, story wise. Its use is singular to the time, politics and physical world. If you flipped the languages, it wouldn’t work. As in if you had a Spanish translation of the book, making the Spanish into English and English into Spanish it wouldn’t be the same. That’s not the road geographically. Prison guards speaking English in Saltillo, Mexico would be beside the point and laughable.

Ok, what if a Mexican writer wrote a story about a Mexican Cowboy heading north to look for work in 1949 and he was bilingual but his friend was not and for the reader in Spanish, some of the conversations are in English? I think that works. To translate that experience of the book you would have to flip the map.

I was at a Rest Stop in Kansas once. We’d been driving all day from Colorado. As I stretched my legs after using the restroom I saw two men run walking from the parking lot. They came up to near where I was standing and looked at the signs, MEN and WOMEN, and then one of them furtively glanced at me to see if he could divine which direction I had just come from. Now, I don’t speak Spanish extremely well, but I did know how to say, “El banjo para hombres esta ahi” and I pointed. Their eyes got big. They bolted. I figured my Spanish lessons are paying off, at least for them.

Soon after the McCarthy, I read The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. Loosely based on Hemingway, the main character Jack Barnes travels around Europe through Spain and France. If anyone wants to pay me to write a travel memoir where I retrace his steps, get in touch.

There is a smattering of French and Spanish in this book, again, to give a sense of place though I never felt like it was as bold as McCarthy’s use of Spanish. I wondered how hard Hemingway had to fight his Publisher. Granted, the words he uses are fairly well known, even to the point of being part of our language. Knowing that, “merci” means “thanks” is not a big lift.

Hemingway about 90 miles from Cuba at his home in Key West. Image from the Hemingway House Museum. It’s worth the heat. It’s worth the drive.

But then I wondered if McCarthy had to fight his publisher. Because about 75-80% of Americans are monolingual. I think we bemoan this fact and compare ourselves to Europe but in Europe with a few hours drive you can reach a multitude of languages. If you're in the US if you don’t have a tangible reason, and it’s a rough go to learn another language, especially later in life. China, Japan, and Korea are all high percentage monolingual as well. This makes me think of the Christmas Eve Truce in World War I. Even with their countries close proximity the soldiers on the front that night didn’t speak the same language but when the Germans sang carols, the British joined in, then the French. They might not have understood each other but they knew the melody to “Silent Night.”

I can totally see a Publisher saying that there is too much Spanish in the book and that it would make a barrier to sales. There are passages where it’s clear you are either picking up some Spanish or missing out on the story. Book Publishers are in the business of selling books. I absolutely understand. You have editors to pay, cover designers to pay, and sales teams don't like barriers for buyers; especially missing parts of the plot. The only Borders they liked are the old stores from the 90’s. Maybe it wasn’t a concern. Maybe there were a whole lot of Edgar Lopezes in the world in 1992.

I’m not a linguist or expert in much of anything but I am curious. Here’s a little AI game.

Do Mongolians Speak Russian?

“While Russian is not widely spoken by the younger generation in Mongolia, a significant portion of older Mongolians can understand or speak it due to the historical Soviet influence, though English and Korean are now more popular foreign languages among youth. “

How about, do the Chinese speak Kazakhstani?

“No, people in China do not all speak "Kazakhstan"; rather, there is an ethnic Kazakh population in China, particularly in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, who speak the Kazakh language. Kazakhstan is a country, and its official language is Kazakh, which is spoken by millions, including a significant population within China's borders.

How about if Thais speak Vietnamese?

“No, the vast majority of Thai people do not speak Vietnamese; it is not the national language of Thailand. While there are Vietnamese speakers in Thailand, particularly among international communities and some indigenous Tai-speaking groups, their presence is not as widespread as other languages.”

You can see what I’m doing.

I’m looking at the world map, finding countries beside each other looking for a place to set a new All the Pretty Horses.

Last one, what if a cowboy in upstate New York rode into Quebec in 1949. Would he speak French?

“No, not all Upstate New York residents speak French, but the language is spoken by a significant population in the northern parts of the region, particularly near the Canadian border due to proximity to Quebec. Franco-American communities have a strong heritage and may still use French in daily life or have integrated French words into their English, especially in historical French-speaking areas.”

Ah, now that is similar to our John Grady from All the Pretty Horses! I’m always likely to an almost cynical degree to figure that artists are not as precious as the thinking that goes into the reviews for their work. You know, maybe McCarthy didn’t care either way. Maybe he just liked Spanish. The beauty here is that this old used book came with this little artifact that showed me how a reader would have helped in approaching the book before the internet.

I took a pic of my book in English and a pic of the same passage in Spanish from an online PDF.

I love that “She said”

Mas

Spanish has been a companion in my life. That’s true for all of us whether we realize it or not. The word Montana means Mountainous. Nevada means snowy. Ever had a cafe con leche? Ever had salsa verde? Ever hit a pinata at a part? Ever had a Margarita? It would be weird if life in America didn’t include margaritas wouldn’t it? You like chocolate don’t you? It originates from MesoAmerica. America is famously the melting pot or salad, or whatever they say these days. A big part of the pot is Latin American influence.

Look up the full name of Los Angeles, it 's the succinct city of ​​El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula. LA was founded by the Spanish, then it was in Mexico, then lastly, the US. LA is the largest city in the US by land size. I’m sure there are many other examples and omissions are my blindspots. All this is to say, we run into the Spanish language a lot in our culture. And why wouldn’t we? It’s the major language of the Western Hemisphere by virtue of Latin America. I mean, look at a map! It’s right there, next door. If you consider that LA’s residents went to bed on January, 12th 1847 in Mexico and woke up in the US the next day you see why it has such a unique heritage

When I was a kid my Dad used to sing the song “Deportee.” It was on Dolly Parton’s record, 9-5 and Odd Jobs that came out in 1980 when I was 7. It’s about a plane full of migrant workers killed in an airplane crash. On the news the broadcaster says, “They were only deportees.” The song went, “Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria” so I’ve known that line of Spanish since I was 7.

As well, I’ve felt for and respected immigrants who travel far and work hard and are considered, “Only Deportees,”

I thought Dolly wrote “Deportee” for most of my life, and it made sense, because Appalachians moved out of the mountains in the 1900’s and were looking for jobs in the big cities, much like the African Americans of the Delta. The Hillbilies were, as Hillbilly Highway author Max Fraser notes, “Over the first three quarters of the twentieth century, somewhere around 8 million poor white southerners– perhaps even more – left economically marginal parts of the southern countryside and traveled north in search of work.” The book adds there was a saying at the time, “Kentucky and Tennessee have gone to Indiana, and Indiana has gone to hell.” Apologies for my people. Further, Fraser relates that Detroit citizens put poor Appalachian whites just above gangsters and criminals in a post war survey. The locals of the midwest were afraid that the poor Appalachians were going to steal their jobs.

Book Image from Princeton Press

I learned recently that Woody Guthrie wrote “Deportee”. That makes more sense I guess.

My parents were friends with a couple when I was a kid and the wife was the daughter of a Cuban immigrant. They gave us a rug from Cuba. Its colors were deep red with jewel green and cream. I would hear talk of Cuba and the fall.

The grandmother would be at their house sometimes. I remember standing on their carport and her speaking Spanish. I feel like sometimes she brought dishes for dinner like picadillo. Maybe it was just Manwich. Miami Vice was on TV. I had the soundtrack. I had Member’s Only jacket.

I moved to New York in 1999 and worked in the stock department of a Pottery Barn with Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, Mexicans, Filipinos, Harlemites, Haitians. I hung out with the guys and gals at Pottery Barn. I had lunch with them some days. We played hoops or went to Chinatown after work. This is when I started trying to learn Spanish because it was very quickly a necessity. Our truck driver was from Mexico. He called me “Ah dohn.” Some days I bought his coffee, some days he bought mine.

One day a lady was in the store and she needed a coffee table delivered “Immediately.” She was hellfire mad. I was standing there listening and the sales lady was telling her, “We cannot get a delivery scheduled today. We are full, too late, etc.” The lady was not having it. I asked the lady how far away she lived. She gave me a really weird look, that I‘ll call condescending.

She said, “About three blocks.” I said, “You got an elevator?” She did. So I went and got a dolly, not Parton, and put the coffee table on the dolly and asked her for the address.The lady’s face changed.

The Sales lady was looking at me like I was crazy but mouthing, “Thank You,” while she was ringing it up. Minutes later, I’m walking down the street with a dolly and a coffee table in a box on it. I got there. Of course it just wouldn’t do to have someone deliver something through the front door near Lincoln Center, so I go down the alley around back. I get to the door and the guard is Hispanic. I say I have a delivery. He says something in Spanish. We had these walkie talkies at Pottery Barn. Fortunately, I was still in range. I clicked it on, said, “Hector, it’s Adam, I took the coffee table. This guy doesn’t speak English.” I held up the walkie talkie and clicked it, Hector came through in Spanish. The guy’s eyes lit up! He opened the door! I got on the freight elevator and came back $20 richer.

I know a lot of the time I was homesick, and just wanted to go back to TN and be in a band, but looking back, I always enjoyed –the foods, the languages, and the shit we’d talk. In the afternoons, I’d rain the train back to Astoria and I’d watch Ugly Betty and do my laundry and try to learn more Spanish. Just like my guitar playing, for as long as I’ve been at it, I should be much better at Spanish. I know a lot of words. I know a lot of chords. I just don't always string them together right.

I married my wife in the early 2000’s and her Mom lived in Fort Pierce at the top of the Treasure Coast in Florida. Of course, that comes with Boca, West Palm, Miami and more Spanish and an array of Latin American foods. Maybe one day I'll write a memoir all the way up to my last visit to Miami.

One final fun fact. In the 1960’s the US returned some land to Mexico because the Rio Grande had moved. I guess it’s like that book jacket. Did they cut the jacket for the size of the book or did someone mess up when they sized the art? Maybe we will find out if the Rio moves again.

END

It’s the Holiday Season. Once time left till Christmas shrank to a few days, I started seeing adverts for eBooks. Whenever people find out I work in the book industry they get a solemn look on their face and say, “Real Books are dead aren’t they?” As soon as I tell them print books are alive and well, they look confused. Then I offer the phrase “Screen Fatigue,” and this starts the wheels turning.

Then comes a sigh that leads to the next question. “Aren’t books bad for the environment?”

Well, two things are true.

eBooks aren’t killing print books and paper manufacturers plant trees. Of course, there is waste from making books, nonetheless, paper manufacturers work very hard to be environmental stewards, in some cases they are industry leaders. But I know inside of this conversation is the assumption that eBooks, audio, and podcasts have no physical impact. But that’s not true either.

Electronic Space is Infinite?!

My son told me his friend made a 400 hour long playlist. He wanted me to think this was really cool. I never know what to do with this type of brag. I hate to treat him like he’s from another world, but in a sense he is. I grew up with records, books, and compact discs not digital footprints. Besides that, the idea that excess for excess sake, even digitally, turns me off. We live in a time where the digital space of things pushes us into an abstract world. 8 billion dollars doesn’t sound abstract does it? If it was in a room, 8 billion dollars would be a mighty stack but the digital version disappeared from Bankman Fried., “Ho Hum,” was the reply, at least on the part of Bankman Fried.

Space Trash from https://vienna.usmission.gov/2022-copuos-stsc-space-debris/

“We’re tidying up your timeline”

Recently, I got a notice from Reedsy, the online service where I typeset my book Old Timer’s Blues. The email goes on to say, “To keep Studio running well, we clear the revision history of books that haven’t been accessed for a while.” The conclusion I get from this is that the money to keep up the data of thousands of novels is starting to pinch the folks at Reedsy.

My friend Rob (Who has an excellent Substack) sent me this screenshot of a library book about how the physical world is important. However, it’s only available as an eBook through the library. Rage!!
It’s called The Extinction of Experience. It seems funny that there are only two versions of an eBook available when there is no literal stock of the book anywhere, the physical world important or not.

The limitation of eBook copies to libraries is a protection for the publisher. By the way, Publishers handled tech much better than record makers protected their ability to monetize. But where do those two eBooks live? Even though they aren’t real books, they still exist somewhere.

The Cloud is Getting Heavy

Those eBooks live in The Cloud. The Cloud now has a pretty big footprint on its own due to the energy needed to maintain data. This quote from an article by MIT PRESS

“The Cloud now has a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry. A single data center can consume the equivalent electricity of 50,000 homes. At 200 terawatt hours (TWh) annually, data centers collectively devour more energy than some nation-states.”

But forget the Cloud and its hungry hippo needs. Let’s look at this news about the consumption involved with Ai. Microsoft’s Ai energy needs are so great that they are looking into reopening 3 Mile Island. I’m sure companies are storing eye watering, teeth rattling amounts of info but what gets my attention is the amount of music going on the pile. “My engines can’t take much more of this!!” Scotty proclaims. Scotty better get some new storage because there are now 120,000 new uploaded tracks EVERY DAY.

It might be a lot of music filling our airwaves from streaming but the data farms are making noise in another way. Plain old noise is raking in the dbs that change the environment. Check out this New York Times article on the impact of data farms on a small town.

I’m surprised that Reedsy is the only service I’m hearing from but I figure it’s a matter of time.

Futuromania Electronic Dreams, Desiring Machines, and Tomorrow's Music Today

While stewing on the above, I was reading FuturoMania by Simon Reynolds. Here is a link to his blog. It’s pretty darn groovy.

Futuromania makes me realize how dead rock n roll, blues, and country and anything else for that matter is and has been for a while. But at the same time, all music is alive at once at our fingertips.

As much as the book is about technology as it is about how we consume music or make music with technology, it’s part and parcel. The book is a wide ranging trip on sound and time.

It illustrates what the future meant to us and what the reality is now that it’s arrived.

Mix Tapes, Mixed Results

Reynolds takes us into the history of electronica. In the 70’s synths became more readily available though clunky experimental machines had existed in nascent forms for a long time. By the 80’s music makers embraced the computer and in turn music from the 80s was portrayed as the future, and in 2024 is still how future sounds are portrayed.

When Daft Punk went to follow up their album Random Access Memories they had to retreat to the 70s way of making things, and not the early synths of the era but the way recordings were made and played. The Robot Helmet music punchers said, ““The only way forward was back”

The result is that “Robot Rock” sounds more like AC/DC than Silver Apples but the beat is computer tight in a way Rock never could be. Early synth bands had to lug gigantic machines around to replicate their records on stage. Think of Kraftwerk. Now, these sounds are available in our pockets but inventiveness has stalled out. “The past isn’t what it used to be,” to paraphrase Yogi Berra.

Daft Punk. So cool I can’t stand it.

One funny point Reynolds makes is that The Star Wars Cantina that sounded so exotic to GenX ears in our youth is just Benny Goodman playing on things that look like vacuum cleaners. He continues with a deep dive on the treatment of music in Sci Fi literature and film. Sounds like Ambient and New Age music were music developed as aural medicine and got a short shrift in Science Fiction literature as a sedative for the masses. Science Fiction books portray music as a controlling drug or a commodity that one day robots will churn out symphonies to put in our ears and lull us into comas. If you read about Ai generated Spotify jazz, you might think this future is now.

The book has a chapter on how AutoTune was developed by a scientist that was using the same technology to look for Oil Deposits.. I feel like I heard Cher’s song “Believe” in 1998 so many times I didn’t know what I believed anymore. The unintended consequences of technology are numerous. But in cases like this, the unintentional becomes a new tool that reveals new sounds.

By the end the book is so full of ideas and songs and it’s a little exhausting. I can’t read a paragraph without going, “Well, what does that band sound like?” which says more about my music knowledge than it does his book. The book is a fascinating read about art, tech, and time. and the crazy thing is that everything he mentions I can listen to on my phone. But in doing so I break my reading concentration, which is another topic in itself. It reminds me of this book-

ReSearch Books

I used to own this book ReSearch Incredibly Strange Music and I couldn’t listen to any of this stuff when I bought the book in the mid 90’s. I had to read about it and just imagine it. I bought it at Tower Books in Nashville which is now demolished and a hotel stands where it once was.

Data is Space and the Future is Time

The book gets philosophical, while talking about music and tech, it becomes about life and how it is experienced. The future is an idea, a promise, requiring a faith that things will be better in the future. In the 80’s the future seemed better and now the future does not, now the future seems very uncertain. In so many words, the book Futuromania says, the past is flat because of the internet. The world is flat too, you can hear anything from anywhere.

Our brains are adapting to these changes? But what I notice is there are speed bumps in my neighborhood now. There are speed bumps on the street where we stay in Florida. Everyone is in a hurry playing GTA behind the wheel. Did we used to need all these speed bumps? If not, is the internet to blame for our impatience? I can think of no better culprit.

The internet has made a lifetime of stuff accessible today. A lifetime of trips to the record store, the bookstore, the theater, could be fast forwarded through in a few weeks. Time, despite all of this, remains the number one asset we have. If I make art, how much time will it take? If I consume art? How much time am I going to take to listen to, or watch, or read a piece? The library used to give you two more weeks when a book was overdue. Now, they don’t have overdue books. They erased that system and that makes me a little sad. I imagine a movie where a man has two weeks to live and asks the library for an extension. I suppose in a few years his data can be compiled to keep his facsimile going.

Real or Not

I have a friend who is a professional bass player and he refuses to use any music streaming service so if he wants to listen to something he has to go to the store or order it. That massively cuts into what, where, and when he can listen, but I appreciate the monk-like devotion and given that his work depends on people buying music, who can blame him? But it feels like a microcosm of all the issues. The real book. The eBook. The physical energy. The data energy. Trying to push off the future? But the future isn’t what it promised? Whether it’s Hollywood on Strike or Longshoremen, it’s hard to know where the real and not so real leave us on the balance of things.

But like my friend, I buy books because I work in the book industry. I’ve run so many P&Ls with scenarios for unearned advances that libraries and used bookstores make my eye twitch.

That makes me think of dock workers striking to hold back automation.

In Q4 an East Coast Port Strike was on the horizon. The Port Strike came, striking cold blood fear into Q4 and went. However, there was one topic of discussion, that of Ai automation, that was tabled to be revisited in January 2025. I feared that one could last longer but then I learned that the West Coast went through this and came to a fairly quick resolve. The matter of moving real things around is hard work no matter how you cut it.

I talked to a guy in the Logistics end of things and he said it sounds like the Unions will probably end up calling Ai other things and using it. But I also read articles that suggest Unions will curtail Ai use to protect jobs which leaves US ports inefficient compared to others in the world.

But really, I don’t think we will have a choice for much longer. The average age of a longshoreman right now is 39. Google guesses 62 is the average retirement age. We aren’t having enough children in this country to fill infrastructure and immigration remains a controversy, so things could get interesting.

We might end up needing robots to unload ships and to print books for that matter. The US and China both are projected to shrink by the end of the century. If you’ve been in a car through any of the South’s old small towns you know they are shrinking. China has ghost towns full of empty apartments. While these are both results of rural loss and big city gain, the total amount of replacement needed isn’t happening. Here’s an article on Robots making Houses. 2025 promises to be a very Philip K. Dick kind of year.

Why are there less people? Maybe we are all on our phones all the time? Stuck behind speed bumps?

This article from the Guardian notes that sex in movies has fallen by 40%. My kids often joke about the content in movies that is “80’s PG.”. This article in The Ringer attributes the fall in US movies sex with US movie companies trying to sell into the world market. So it’s the rest of the world that are the prudes? Maybe it’s a plot to get the robots in control! I am kidding. A little.

Reminiscent Of Nostalgia

Recently, I Saw Weezer with my son. I was never a big Weezer fan but the nostalgia for me was suffocating. The timeline. The time. The era. It was 30 years ago. When Weezer first was around, I was around, as in, I was in a band with a future. The excitement for bands in the late 90’s was effervescent because there was a new tech fueling a ton of cash, Compact Discs, into the business but the internet hadn’t flattened all music into one flat free plate-the past wasn’t so readily available. You weren’t in competition with eternity and the business still had a form and function. By the way, Weezer was rad.

Weezer, Live in Nashville, 2024. Bridgestone Arena. Photo by author.

When I stand in Liturgy I think about how I wish I was smart enough to get Charles Taylor. Here is an excerpt for what I’m talking about. I understand it but do I experience it?

“In God’s time there is a sort of simultaneity of sacrifice and Crucifixion. Similarly, Good Friday 1998 is closer in a way to the original day of the Crucifixion than mid-summers day 1997. Once events are situated in relation to more than one kind of time, the issue of time placing becomes quite transformed. Why are higher times higher? The answer is easy for the eternity which Europe inherits from Plato and Greek philosophy. The really real, full being is outside of time, unchanging. Time is a moving image of eternity. It is imperfect, or tends to imperfection.”

Let’s end it here, thinking of the above musings on time, the future, and how music relates to the past and present and this “The really real, full being is outside of time, unchanging. Time is a moving image of eternity. It is imperfect, or tends to imperfection.”

Charles Taylor’s book. I’ve tried many times but always failed to make it very far.

Thanks for reading. See you in 2025.

image -Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall from The Big Sleep

MILLER’S BOOK REVIEW 📚

Meaning in Mystery: Why Noir Speaks in a Morally Ambiguous World

My wife and I have cursed our children. There’s no way they can visit a small English village and not wonder “who done it?” if someone dies while they are there. We watch a lot of crime television. How much? My thirteen-year-old son dressed as Columbo for Halloween this year…

Read more

2 years ago · 57 likes · 14 comments · adam hill

Early in life I discovered that the way to approach anything was to be introduced by the right person.

-Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company

I recently came across the book, You’ve Never Heard Your Favorite Song. I love the title because it’s a hope that never goes away. Even in this Ai encroaching, music tsunami, post post post everything world, having every song ever made, right here in this silver mirror box, at my fingertips,  I still, always dream that there is one more song down the lit screen rabbit hole that will lead to a song I’ve never heard and some magic left to take my breath away. 

Every Friday morning, I scroll through the New Releases on iTunes. I used to look to Rock’nRoll or Country but those spots rarely grab me anymore. Now,  it’s world music or classical that I find interesting. But, I look, I still do because you never know. Of course, my ears change, and not just me going deaf. Arooj Aftab’s “Raat Ki Rani” has been this year's new jewel. When Ilived in NewYork and I worked at Pottery Barn Lincoln Center, I’d go to Tower on Tuesdays for lunch and listen to whatever cover caught my eye in the sampler kiosks. 

Photo by the author 

The book, You’ve Never Heard Your Favorite Song is by Matt Doucet, writer editor, currently living in Pittsburgh, PA. It’s published by Cider Mill Press where Matt plies his trade. Full disclosure, I recently came onboard at Cider Mill Publishing.

Matt’s  book goes deep into the stacks with lots of lush, smoky, tropical, meditative records that are transportive. This collection and talking to Matt took me to Baeleric music, something that I had at best a passing awareness of. Finding those areas where you aren’t used to listening but finding something that sings for you is the tone of the book. It’s got Reggae, Electronica, Pop, folk, from the last 30 or so years that disappeared from the usual lists. There are a few names I know, funnily they come from a section titled, “Who’s This?” 

Jan Hammer, Junior Parker, Carol King, Jimmy Page, Little Richard but the songs mentioned were deep crate finds. It’s not Tapestry. It’s definitely not Led Zeppelin IV. 

The only song in the book I could really lay claim to is Jose Feliciano's version of “California Dreaming.” There is “See and Don’t See” by Mary Lyons that I first heard from The Afghan Whigs. I knew it was a cover but I don’t think I ever dug up the original. That’s the trip here, the obscure cover’s original. I mentioned to Matt that I might return the favor and make him a playlist of prewar 78s. He said, it’s always good to have a guide when you go into the stacks.

That got me thinking. 

The Guide Economy

I worked at a record store called The Disk Exchange in Knoxville, Tennessee in the late 90’s. We had to figure out what song a customer wanted, by them humming, telling us what few words they knew, or where they heard it if they didn’t know the artist or title. There were 8-10 employees with 6 or so of us on the clock at any time. Between all of us, and our collective music knowledge we could usually get it. You had to pass a test to get a job at the record store. I passed the test because I’d been perusing the shelves since the late 80’s.  Cats Records in Oak Ridge. Turtles in Farragut and I’d been reading the Rolling Stone record guide front to back, and the magazines, like Rolling Stone, Spin, Guitar World, anything, everything you could get in East Tennessee back then. When we got to be teens with cars on occasional Saturdays we hauled ourselves out to Tower Records in Nashville. 

Around the time I started at the Record Store, a computer appeared on the showroom floor. Some friends remember it being called MUZE. Others remember it as Phonolog. It’s suggested that TOWER had this machine as well, or something similar. 

This machine made it possible for a  customer to come in and do the work that happened in the employees heads. At the time, I remember it was mostly used by the sales team. We looked for records we didn’t know about. We poked around for holes in the data. But looking back, this took that knowledge in our heads and made it a tool for anyone walking off the street.

One Man’s Trash 

“You know, "nerd culture" is mainstream now. So, when you use the word "nerd" derogatorily, it means you're the one that's out of the zeitgeist Tom (Haverford,)”                                                              -Ben Wyatt Parks and Rec.

There is a Reddit, Facebook Group or Substack for any interest no matter how arcane. My neighborhood has a Facebook Group. The power is out? Yes, it is for all of us. 

Ted Gioia talks about this in his  Substack article, the Tension Between Macroculture and Microculture Will Turn into War

 The modern era has made that less or more fun depending on how you look at it. Mystery, excitement, thrill of the chase, in having to track things down in the real world takes all the fun out of life but you can find more fans and more information about whatever you're into so maybe it’s a net win? 

Obscure things are not so obscure anymore. Right? Because how obscure is it if I can find it immediately on my computer? Well, that’s the pickle. Almost anything can be found and by that reality it becomes obscure. It seems oxymoronic. We are left in this overwhelming moment where it’s harder and harder to find worthwhile results. Add to it the fact that an author can release three books a day on Amazon. Three a day! Asking who can write that much isn’t even the point and with every minute more and more is added to the mix. The search engine capabilities powered by Ai propose to give you better answers than you ever had before - but there are directions out there on how to search without Ai results coming up because they are muddy if not misleading.

 Some  advise to specify your results are from before 2024. Seems almost sci-fi in its implications. We need the proverbial flashlight in the dark. I call this the Guide Economy. Marketers probably have a cool phrase for it, it’s nothing new but I feel like it’s hotter than ever. 

The Guide Economy Movers are the New Gatekeepers

I miss the gatekeeper economy of books and music. But at the same time I’ve released 10 albums and a novel with just as much availability as a major release so do as I say, not as I do.

Anne Trubek has an interesting essay titled Publishing Didn’t Used to be Better. that hinges on the notion that no one really made money in the past, at least not the way we think they did and that there was not a diversity of represented voices. Ultimately it was a closed society boy’s club as opposed to a culture of literary advancement that we rhapsodize as. 

In its essence though, there was an order to things. I would rather live in a system where there is an established idea of greatness and quality and there are decision makers that determine what that is and then make it available to the public in an organized manner through magazines and adverts. But every time I say something like that, someone tells me how wrong I am. I even tell myself how wrong I am. “Who decides what is quality?!?” Well, we had Thelonious Monk on the cover of TIME, so tell me how that happened. 

Time Magazine - Feb 28th, 1964

I digress. This is a topic for the bar, over Palomas. I think we can all agree we live in strange times for discovery. As a friend recently texted me, “The robots are suggesting music for us…made by robots.” 

I submit the idea of the guide, in other words Gatekeepers, Curators, and Bespoke makers, nothing new really,  is becoming more and more a business model. I feel like it’s kicked into high gear lately. 

Dan Levy and Heidi Garnder in a commercial for Homes.com  will infiltrate small town football games to get the skinny on a prospective new neighborhood so you don’t have to. 

In Nashville, for books there is  Joelle Herr’s The Bookshop-it’s highly curated and excellently so. She picks books that are hot and new with a solid blacklist representation but sprinkled in are choices made on the tactile visual experience of the book. Etsy's current marketing is about human pick - a move that anticipates the Ai-ifcaition and mass manufacturing of the world 

Romance only bookstores are popping up to give fans of the Bodice Rippers a place to focus their reading . Even without a guide per se, in 2023 Apple broke out Classical from the rest of their music. If you look into why Apple did this, you’ll get this answer from the internet, via Ai no less

“... to support the complex data structure of classical music and to address the specific interests and needs of classical music listeners:”

Do Not Sell any Price Pre War 78s

Matt’s book got me thinking about the bespoke, the guide economy, the macro and that reminded me of Do Not Sell At Any Price, by Amanda Petrusich, a book I’ve meant to read since it came out. I avoided the book because I worried it wouldn’t be very good, or about what I thought it would be about but the book is what I hoped and better than I could have imagined. 

PreWar music fascinates me in an almost Spiritual way. I started this year planning to only listen to music that was prewar. When this year started I was yearning for emotional quiet.  I was making a playlist from Classical records from the 20’s-30’s, Caruso, to Blues and Jazz. I was going to stay off Instagram and read my prayer book every night and every morning. I don’t know how long I made it but I think The Pogues stepped in by February.

Do Not Sell At Any Price -author photo

I know my interest in prewar music is not like the interest of PreWar Vinyl collectors. It would be cool to have a room with a 78 Player and shelves lined with the shellac discs in  paper sleeves with Art Deco print on them. Shoot, I’d like a few ferns too. An anti gravity chair. I’d like to smoke cigars. But I live with four people and I like convenience a lot. Mostly, I listen to them on my iPhone with a little BlueTooth speaker on my desk. 

If you were wondering why I offered Matt to make a list of PreWar music, it’s because this is where I’ve spent the most time with a shovel. 

I remember the Robert Johnson box set coming out in 1990. I had already bought the tapes in 1986 because of the movie Crossroads. From then on any time I saw a tape or CD that said Colombia Legacy,  Chess, or Rounder, Smithsonian, Columbia Roots and Blues Legacy collections at the record store, I made a note to buy it when I had coin. Then later I discovered Bear Family and Country Reissues. Their releases were big gold rocks in the water trough. I read Guitar World when they had blues issues.  Any record store I went to- I went to the collections section at the end of blues, rock, or country b/c that’s where these types of things would be. 

Old songs would find me and then I had to go find them. 

When I saw the movie Wild at Heart, I waited for the credits for the song “Smoke Rings” by The Casa Loma Orchestra, I looked for it for years. I finally found it on a swing compilation CD. Movies are probably where I heard a lot of stuff. Woody Allen movies hipped me to 30s jazz for sure. 

Around the turn of the century I was on a rooftop in Chicago, drinking beer with some friends, freezing our asses off listening to Blues Before Sunrise. I heard a strange old blues song with a bicycle bell. It was Honey in the Rock by Blind Mamie Forehand. 

I waited till the DJ went over the plays, and wrote the name on a scrap of paper. I finally found it on American Primitive Blues with Charley Patton on the cover. I think I found it when I lived in New York at the Virgin Megastore. 

I saw a Zydeco show in Knoxville at some point so when I saw Cajun Dance Party: Fais Do Do around 1994 I bought it. I thought the pictures of Cleoma Falcon were smoking and what a name but  Amedee Breaux’s song Ma Blonde es Partie has been one of the most romantic things in my life since I first heard it. 

Cleoma and Joe Falcon 

In 1997 a friend bought the Harry Smith Reissue. This was the coolest thing on the planet. I think that was when I realized this is a thing. All of this strange weird ancient mystery was captured. 

Petrusich’s book deals with the magic of old songs and the search, the longing to find these documents and she also interviews the searchers. The men, almost all men, are eccentric, idiosyncratic, and curmudgeonly. Some like Christopher King are gracious and kind albeit a little bit of all those aforementioned things. 

It’s the real search that makes her book fascinating. We live in a world where everything is brought to us. In the book she goes to a flea market in a soaking humid warehouse. She travels on roads that the internet struggles to reach. She drives on foggy mountains where her headlights barely make a dent. 

She ends up scuba diving in a river looking for lost records. She makes the history of the music seem more real because she touches the roads where it traveled. 

She formalized this strange, prickly, fragile beauty with a readable, curious feel getting the gravity and humor. She must be a phenomenal talker because she gets a lot out of challenging subjects.  

The added bonus was Christopher King. I did not know he was in the book. He is also an excellent writer and music producer. He handled the mammoth Charley Patton Box Set, Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues. As well, he wrote one of my favorite reads from last year, Lament for Epirus. The book is an archaeological adventure deep into the countryside of Greece chasing a music that descended from some of the oldest sounds of humanity. 

I attend a Greek Church and we have a festival in the late summer every year. We have a band and they were packing up and I lent them a hand. Funnily enough I was telling them about Lament for Epirus and they could not have seemed more disinterested. They looked at me like I suggested we search for dog turds. I thought we were going to be drinking Ouzo and smoking cigarettes behind the tent but nope. The past is not for everyone. 

Charley Patton-full image, the only image of Charley.

The Past is Prologue

In the back of Do Not Sell At Any Price is an excerpt from an interview she did with Christopher King on a Radio Show. Instead of reading it, I decided to listen to it at the gym.

I go to the gym every day because as my friend Rob’s wife answered, when her Mother in Law asked what she was training for at the gym, she replied “Getting old.” I have two bad knees and a jacked up back. Core work keeps me from pretty serious surgeries. 

I’m standing there on the stairmaster, googling Amanda Petrusich and Christopher King for the radio interview and Amanda’s husband Bret came up in the results. He died suddenly in 2022. 

I don’t know that I was thinking about a guide anymore but maybe connections? It reminded me  I’d recently read Sebastian Junger’s book, In My Time of Dying. It’s about his near death experience and grappling with our fragility. The title comes from a Blind Willie Johnson song of the same name. Johnson presents a singular accomplishment for posterity. 

He has a song on the Voyager Satellite, “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground,” which left our solar system a while ago. Junger doesn’t mention why he named the book after the Blind Willie Johnson song, for all I know he was thinking of Led Zeppelin’s deconstructionist blues.  

In the book, Do Not Sell at Any Price, Harry Smith, the rambling, maddeningly eccentric, is described as, “He was looking for undercurrents. He was looking for ideas that were disappearing, nuances that were disappearing, trying to make connections not just among 78s from Georgia or North Carolina versus upper New York State or Canada, but connections between the string figures that he was interested in from all cultures across the world," Singh said. "He was comparing string figures to tarot cards to 78 records to creation myths to all these other things and finding the things that link all of us as humans together." 

Further Putresich notes, in her book,  “In a 1972 Sing Out! in an interview with Ethel Raim and Bob Norman, Asch confirmed his admiration for Smith’s purview, saying “[Smith] understood the content of the records. He knew their relationship to folk music, their relationship to English literature, and their relationship to the world.” 

That little sentence, “their relationship to the world,” sings doesn't it? Maybe the best guides are making connections for us? That's what I am trying to do, finding connections with these books. I’ve gone far afield but I think it’s worth telling you about it. These things are fun and visceral to figure out and muse on and at some point we are going to need guides through very dark hollows in our days and nights in or out of this solar system.

Junger’s dad studied sound using Helmholtz Resonators. One of the simplest examples of which is when you breathe over a bottle top. When I read that, I immediately thought of KC Moan by The Memphis Jug Band. I read that line in the book and immediately thought of the song “KC Moan.” and it’s bass like pump to and fro of breath over a bottle. 

Maybe that’s what really made my brain go, “It’s time to read Do Not Sell At Any Price.” The galaxy, the afterlife, and a man breathing over a jug but it made all these connections. 

Post Post

Here’s one last thing. It’s from Petrsich’s recent interview with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings for the New Yorker. Welch is talking about Guy Clark and the days before cell phones when she and Rawlings were on tour. 

“He’d (Guy Clark) tell us which exit between each town. He’d say, “Now, when you’re going between Houston and Dallas, you’re gonna wanna stop here. If you’re going between Dallas and Austin, you’re gonna wanna stop here.” This is way before cell phones and G.P.S. You needed this information! You’ve got a Rand McNally at that point. If we were in Texas, in kind of unknown territory, we would call Guy. I’d say, “Guy, we’re down around San Antonio and we need dinner.” And he’d say, “O.K.” He’d think for a minute. “All right, there’s a barbecue place . . .”

Caruso. He has a song in an episode of Boardwalk Empire

 I changed jobs recently, from the Planner Journal market back to Book Publishing and am working on Cocktail  and Cookbooks for the first time. There are even some Kids Books in the mix, so I get to think about glitter. And no, they aren’t Cocktail Books for Kids. Two different imprints.  I’m having a blast but my writing time has shrunk a little. 

Immediately before that change I spent two weeks in South Florida with my family. Some of it was a break, some of it was my beloved mother in law’s to-do list, and some of it was wrapping up items for my previous employer. 

My idea for this installment finally hit me with a text to some friends.

“I went to Miami to party. I went to two bookstores and a library.”

We’ve been to Fort Pierce, Florida many, many times, and Miami often as well but we had yet to visit Coral Gables.  Coral Gables as you might’ve heard  is a very ritzy locale so we are out for most of what it has to offer but books and coffee are in our budget and it has both. 

The Coral Gables location of Books & Books is built around an outdoor cafe. Imagine a U shape with a restaurant cafe in the base of the U and a cafe garden in the middle, books on each arm of the letter. The rooms are filled with books on dark matte wood shelves.  There’s a great selection. Not too esoteric but some interesting finds and solid stock for most things I was looking for. I would have sat outside with a book but it was in July. Miami in July makes you understand why the NBA team is called The Heat. 

From booksandbooks.com

We hopped back in our van and made our way to the Coral Gables Library which is lined by a grove of palm trees. It’s like a library in a  botanical garden. Everywhere you look the jungle is pulsating, waiting for the moment the machine blades are gone. On the inside, it’s plain in comparison but overall it's a stunner of a library. 

Photo by the author 

In bookstores or libraries there is usually a local flavor section. In South Florida you have not only the Florida connection with that but also Latin America with emphasis on Cuba. It’s an intoxicating mix of culture, flora, food, and place. 

Of course there's Dave Barry and Carl Hiassen. Both of whom I’ve read and both I enjoy but aren't to my taste. Lauren Groff is to my taste but a tad too spicy for a man of my age. That said, her writing is intoxicating. Of course, there is the Hemingway. You hear about the Hemingway House. You’ll think to yourself, “It’s just a house. Why did I drive to the bottom of America?” But then you go to and you never want to leave. 

Zora Neal Hurston, a mold breaking writer and anthropologist, spent time in Fort Pierce. She died less than a mile from the home of Natalie’s Orange Juice and Pierced Cider Works where I’ve drank a few Habanero Ciders. Randy Wayne White is a gas. He’s like an AirBoat ride.

 Elmore Leonard comes up because although he was born and died in the MidWest his books make it clear he loved South Florida. His brand of witty crime and terse typewriter work has always been on my radar but I love it more in middle age than ever. 

Besides this, he wrote a character that makes me feel less crazy. Deputy Rayland Givens popularized in the superb television show Justified is from Appalachia, and by the time he retires lives in Miami. The reboot City Primeval is overall about Rayland trying to get out of cold Detroit and back to Miami. This pull to Miami is not strange in his character and although Rayland is often treated as a man out of time as much as place, it works. It works for me too. 

Miami always intrigued me. As a kid my family had a friend from Cuba and because of that, she talked about Miami. They loaned our family a rug from Cuba. It was in our living room growing up. The TV Show Miami Vice was the coolest of the cool to me. I had pink and teal t-shirts that I wore with my white blazer in middle school. I had a Panama Jack hat I wore all the time. 

 I remember in the 80’s other kids would say in aghast shock that their parents told them “No one speaks English in Miami, and it’s in America.” If they were going to the Keys or Florida, they avoided Miami. Honestly, the thought scared me a bit as a kid but at the same time fascinated me. 

When I lived in New York I worked for furniture companies. I ended up working with mostly guys and gals from Puerto Rico, Dominica, and Haiti. Not Miami but again, that part of the world and again.

When my wife and I got married we spent our first honeymoon in Fort Pierce, and the USA Network had a Burn Notice marathon on. Again, Miami.

I guess the real test is, if you gave me $1,000 and said you can make a weekend in the Appalachian Gatlinburg of my youth or a weekend in Miami I’d pick Miami every time. Palm trees make me happy. 

I wanted to read Elmore on this past trip. I picked up LaBrava at the Kilmer Library in Fort Pierce but didn’t get to it. Since we are on libraries, the Kilmer is a sweet, fairly large library by the marina with a terracotta roof. Hopefully, soon I can get a copy of LaBrava and make that happen. Of course, he wrote the rip roaring Cuba Libre.

The Kilmer, from Wikipedia 

At Books and Books, I did buy The Great State of West Florida by Kent Wascom and have started on it. It’s an internet era Western set in this wild political mess we live in in a not so distant future hopped up on roids and crack.  The book, Worm, by Edel Rodriguez, about the Cuban diaspora is also vying for attention before the year ends. This is all to say, Florida reading is firmly ensconced on my night stand. 

We left the Coral Gables library and went to our hotel for naps, dinner, and then the pool. We watched Smokey and the Bandit 2 that night. Burt Reynolds, born in Michigan, ends up playing football for Florida State in Tallahassee. Bums out his knee so he transfers to Palm Beach State College on the Gold Coast. Besides Burt, Smokey and the Bandit also features Jackie Gleason. Born in New York but he ends up working and living in Miami until he passed away in 1987. Florida again, right in the stretch of land we are staying. 

From Wikipedia 

Can you imagine working in downtown Miami in the 60’s? 

After breakfast we went to another location of Books and Books in Coconut Grove and we bought even more books. I talked to one of the shopkeepers. He thought it was groovy that someone from a Publishing house was in the store. He said, “We never see you in the wild.” Lately, he said he was into short books and showed me a few titles. I told him about George Simenon and Inspector Maigret, slim books that satisfy in a big way. We talked about how a short book is kind of perfect. 

We went to the PAMM, checked out some art, perused the gift shop and again, scoped out the books. Art books always tic so many boxes. Great look, great feel, big look, and often cool manufacturing. The PAMM Gift Shop has an excellently curated collection of books. We then headed to Miami Beach for our final night in town. 

I lounged in the AC, napped and  read George Simenon’s Maigret. Specifically, I cannot remember because I read two Maigret novels during my time in Florida. We took a walk on the beach once the sun had backed off a bit, the ocean in front of us, the Art Deco streets over my shoulder. Seemed like everyone was taking pictures. If 80’s Miami was for the gram, that was grams of Cocaine. The gram now is Instagram. 

For the night we stayed on Miami Beach between Washington and Collins and watched the 4th of July fireworks at Lummus Park. After the fireworks I walked alone to a bakery and bought a chicken empanada. Absolute hot neon night.

The Simenon books I read in Florida

The next morning I got up early and went to Cortadito for a Cortado. It was solid. I got my wife a Colada to go. Para llevar. I sat reading George Simenon on Washington Avenue and smiled. After a few pages I strolled back to the hotel. We ended up eating the breakfast buffet on the porch beside a family with a mom from Venezuela and dad from Germany with their baby. They live in Germany now. They had made their way across the United States and were wrapping up in Miami. 

Before we drove back to the Treasure Coast we went to Zack the Baker and bought a few loaves of bread. I talked to one of the waitresses. She was from Cuba. She had not been in the United States long. She told me to go to Hileah if I wanted real Cuban food. “It’s another Cuba,” she said. 

The next time I go to Miami the search will continue. 

Part II

The firework smoke was drifting through the palm trees. Eyes blinking pop streamer light and neon. The streets alive with Spanish. Car stereos and Cuban bands on the corner mixing. My gin and tonic gone, black straw and plastic cup dropped in trash when the Orchestra was still playing. .

 Super models and bums on the corner. It was after 9pm and I felt like a walk. The wife and mother in law went for a sandwich. The teens went to the room to game and text friends. 

I got a chicken empanada and some latin American soda  at the Charlotte  bakery. The woman closing up said the soda was like Sprite. The empanada hit the spot wrangling the heat and hunger. I walked back watching the night world go by managing the crowds  for a few blocks. 

Photo by the author.

Back at the hotel I sat on the porch watching the valets vape and chat. A shower, melatonin and the tv on for the noise, I slip into sleep. In the morning, the same clothes back on, back in the heat and through the lobby that smells like flowers and Fabulosa I take a walk in the morning sun for a Cortado with oat milk and no sugar. Economists warn that you could buy a house with espresso consumption. Perhaps I could. 

We had some great food on our trip. Stand outs includes Caja Caliente owned by Monica Mika Leon and La Sandwicherie on Miami Beach. Sandwhicherie was fresh and booming with veggies, fruit, and meat on a baguette. So simple and refreshing. Caja Caliente was fun, bright, tasty and the espresso was savory. My mother in law had Guava Lemonade. It’s was good as it sounds. 

I’d like to smoke a pipe. I’d like to drink Mezcal everyday but these things will put you in the grave. Fortunately,   there are other vices. I like to read. I like to write, and I like espresso. 

Let me say, I’m not a coffee expert.  I’ll drink the coffee at church. I’m not exceptionally picky but I do know what I like and am thankful when it happens. For instance, if I order an espresso to go and it comes to me in a regular size coffee cup, it bums me out. 

And even with my very giving standards, I had one bad coffee Colada in Miami. I won’t say where but the coffee tasted  like instant, not nearly espresso depth and the sugar was like a pack was tossed in, nowhere near espumita. 

I asked the waitress and that’s rare for me because I don’t like to be that guy. She told me that some of the staff didn’t know how to make a Colada and that even so, the espumita is not always a given with the drink, it’s a treat. A roulette wheel of the coffee maker so to speak. She offered to make me another one but I declined and thanked her and asked her where she was from. She was Colombian but she had worked at a solely Cuban Cafe and had learned from them. She also said, sometimes they are making 2-3 orders at once and one of the orders will have more, another less, but they all essentially taste the same. 

Of course, I think, maybe I don’t know what makes a Colada.

 I remember the first time I had a Colada but maybe that was really the second time. The publishing house where I work has a Spanish division. One of the sales guys and I used to go eat lunch at out of the way places. He took me to Back to Cuba one day and he did the ordering. I think we had pollo y arroz. When we prepared to leave he suggested a Cuban Coffee and he laughed “You’ll be up for days!!!”  We split it. I remember liking it,  it felt like a buzzy rush. 

The first time I clearly, without a doubt,  remember was at Mervis Cafe in Fort Pierce. I’d been there a few times but as I really began to study the menu words began to make more sense and stand out. Desayuno, I learned, was breakfast and everything fell into place. For a while I had disculpe and desayuno mixed up and said to folks in the market, “Desayuno” thinking I was saying, “Excuse me.” 

The word Colada, like Pina Colada but not fruity like a Pina Colada, seemed intriguing and fun to say. I ordered, took the drink, sat at my table and  saw stars. I looked at the waitress and said, “This is delicious” and the waitress in a smug droll sleepy manner said, “I know.” 

This was around the first summer we went to Miami but it all blurs together in heat and memory. At the time I reached out to the Mystery writer Alex Segura, who wrote the excellent Pete Fernandez mystery series set in Miami. He told me we had to go to Versailles. It was touristy but  essential. 

The first time we ate at Versailles it was dinner so we didn’t get coffee but we got guava pastelitos to go. The next time, we made sure to hit Versailles for lunch and have an after lunch cafe. If I could do this every Sunday, I would. We ordered two Coladas, asked for a few little cups to share and a few Guava Pastilitos.

 Versailles has a ventana, a coffee window. You go up, you order, it’s fast. You stand there and you can watch the waitresses make the Colada. The first bit of coffee comes out of the maker like sludge and they pour it into white sugar. They stir  vigorously and it turns to foam. I watched, rapt and then she poured the rest of the coffee into the foam. They hand it over. Watching this, I realized how special this was.  

It was a culture, not a scene. Not disaffected hipster coffee served by someone that wishes they were anywhere but at work but someone sharing their life. Maybe I make too much of it. Maybe I am romanticizing it and yes, there are plenty of hot stuff coffee shops making solid coffee with disaffected hipsters at the controls and I bet there are plenty of lackluster Cuban Coffee shops in South Florida but at its best the Cuban coffee is magic. 

The stirring of the coffee and sugar into espuma bewitched me and the Colada, The Colada! The cigar smoke and birthday cake mix taste! 

The Colada! Picture this. I am getting my hair cut at Legit Cuts in Fort Pierce, run by Jose Ruiz and in comes one of the barbers with a Colada he had got up the street at Mervis Cafe and little cups. Imagine the little cups you might see creamer come in at a diner. He starts passing out the little cups and pouring and sharing the Colada. I took a cup and we all drank up. Some sort of salsa rap reggae booming in our ears. Maybe that’s the Reggaeton talking. 

I’ve tried Cortadito, the restaurant. Their Colada is solid. They do it right. Cortadito is like Chipotle for Cuban Food. I like Chipotle so I mean this in the best way.  The Latin Cafe on Brickell was a good Colada. 

Havana George in Ft Pierce makes a nice one. Defunct Falcon Coffee in Nashville’s We-Ho served a Colada, and did a solid job but the fate of that location seems to be up in the air. 

If you are in Nashville, there is only one Colada that I know of existing. The good news is Soy Cubano in Nashville, owned by Javier Salado, takes supreme care with their version. Always espumita, always the perfect rich espresso taste. The Spanish word Sabor seems the most fitting. Perhaps because I’ve had conversations with Javier and his superlative team, they make the one that is in the back of my mind whenever I am in South Florida as the bar to meet. Additionally the food is as good or better than anything I’ve had in South Florida. Javier crushes the magic of those flavors. He doesn’t make anything harder than it has to be. Rice and Beans with a fried egg? Tostada to dip into coffee? Ropa Veijo? Yuca boiled? All of them are the essence of what makes those things a pleasure, executed without any unnecessary fuss. 

From https://eatsoycubano.com/gallery

I hope you enjoyed this detour on coffee. Note that when drinking an espresso I try to be reading, so books are involved. I’ve never been to and I want to go to CafeLaCarreta.  The link takes you to their instructions for a Cuban Coffee, which in this case sounds like a Colada. Again, I wonder, maybe I don’t know anything about coffee. 

I am always fascinated by the Colada but I’ve become a Cortado guy. 

I rarely eat sweets. I am not a desert guy. I sometimes nibble on dark chocolate. In recent months I have switched to the Cortado with Oat Milk for me and no sugar as my go to, saving the Colada, just a shot or two,  for a time with family and friends and hopefully future times at the barber shop. 

Photo by the author 

It’s not the greatest movie ever, spoiler alert-nothing is.  It is, however, fun action, with a bit of romance. Maybe a lot of romance? 

It’s billed as an ode to stunt men but it's a rom com through and through. Sure, I like Nolan, and Tarantino but most of the time I just want the thrillride. Fall Guy delivers on the goods. 

There’s a few things that really make it great. It’s really economic. The first scene is one shot. It introduces the characters, immerses you in the world, and sets up the rest of the movie. 

Then, it pops forward 18 months but in the span of a phone call it catches you up and moves the story forward at the same time. It makes good use of scenes doing double duty in pushing the story forward throughout. I love to see that with storytelling. Even the title gets in on the act. He’s the Fall Guy, as in stunts. He Falls for the girl and he is the Fall Guy for a plot element that I won’t reveal here. 

Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling’s chemistry is Cinema perfect. I’ve seen them both in a few things. Barbie and Oppenheimer, of course, but nothing I remember displays the happy go lucky celluloid charm these two have together in the Fall Guy. 

The action didn’t feel superhuman, which is a nice change after the Marvel years. I enjoyed the Marvel years but I am a bit worn out on it.  Fall Guy has a realness to it that doesn’t ache your brain with cringy CGI. There is no light show of the sky opening with a myriad of lasers for the final fight scene. Why does it have a realness to it? Because these are stunts done by stunt actors! You can feel the dirt and you can feel the glass in this movie. 

The dialogue is solid.  Yes, some of the script could have been better but Gosling, Blunt, and Hannah Waddingham all get 1,000 miles out of everything they were given. Waddingham’s Gail is the secret weapon of this movie.

But the thing I liked the most? 

It’s pretty simple. The guy. The girl. They have a break up but they like each other, they are in love and they end up ok in the end. I think that’s what irked me the most about Barbie. Ken and Barbie don't end up together. They have to find themselves. I get that. I do. I think my advice to young people would be you find yourself on the job. Life doesn’t give you an Eat Pray Love reprieve. 

I get it. Timing is wrong, things don’t work. But come on, what does it say about our world that Ken and Barbie aren’t together in the end?

 I think in the end it was refreshing to have it be simple in the movie. Remember Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? When Leonard DiCaprio's character can no longer pay him as his stunt guy and you think, “Well, here’s where Pitt turns on him and ditches him” and he doesn’t. I need more movies like this. 

Here’s my final bit. 

I want it to make its budget because I will write the sequel David Lietch. Here you go. 

Gail escapes, kidnaps Jody from the set of MetalStorm II. Colt and Dan and Jean Claude have to get her back. Once you see the movie, please share your ideas for Fall Guy II. 

But why are we here? We are here for books. Well, if the Fall Guy is about stunt men, the using heroes of movies, who are the Unsung Heroes of BOOKS?

Every industry has its unsung heroes and Publishing if full of them. Sure the authors and the publishers get the big applause. Sometimes the photographer does but never the cover designer. Inside the house the editors sometimes get the love but on the street not a bit. So who really saves the day? Who are the ones that you don’t notice until something goes wrong?

I used to work with an editor who had this on their desk 

Of course there are many more but here are a few that come to mind.

Typesetters- This is the person that makes the pretty words you wrote into a print ready, reader friendly experience. At the last minute you want to change a font or the trim size. You think, easy right? Wrong. Big Wrong. This person is the one sweating it after the author did all their hard work, the editors did all their hard work, and the proofreader did all their hard work. The typesetter is under the hood of the car putting everything in place while the author is out eating a steak. 

Proofreaders- The writers words, the editors revisions,, all is for naught when it gets to the typesetter if this person doesn't do their job. Even after typesetting is done it’s a good idea to let the Proofreader see it one more time. One little period can change and then domino through a document. 

Press Operators- I’ve visited LSB Crawfordsville many times in my life. I can’t remember the exact number but the average age of a worker there is 50 something. They are actively looking to entice young people into the trade. Until the robots come for us all, someone on the manufacturing floor  is loading the book blocks into binders and spooling ribbon and watching for upside down signatures. Granted a lot of this is scan code automated now but someone still has to watch and act on alerts. 

Truck Drivers-I always tell people, “Yes, the product will be there on time but pray for no flat tires, no interstate wrecks, no sick driver, and no port strike, “ All of that goes OK and we should be great. 

Production Managers-There are special Production Managers that can read your mind and anticipate what you are trying to do. They can keep you from printing a four color file on a cream sheet and muddying your results. They keep you from making a 450 page book weigh 5 lb because you really wanted 60lb paper. 

That’s just a few of the ladies and gentlemen that dive out of helicopters to make your books look nice and arrive on time. Who would you suggest are some unsung heroes of the book business?

Next time, I might write about book questions I get asked most at parties or my thoughts on writing about food.  

For Specialty books, China was the #1 go to for decades. 

You probably know the major publishers have been moving away from China since 2020. From Tariffs to Humanitarian concerns or even  TikTok there are reasons galore cited for the move. 

Honestly though? China makes great books. They have all the machines that US manufacturers sold them in the 90’s that are worth a fortune to buy new. But having the machines does you no favors unless you know what you are doing. That was solved too. Chinese book makers were trained by US and Euro Publishers for 20 plus years as to what constitutes excellence for Specialty books. Besides this for much of that time period they had an overflowing, diligent workforce.

Right up there with Amazon reviews like “Book arrived damaged, 1 Star” the other one that boils my eggs is  Amazon reviews that say “Book is made in China, the Publisher is making cheap crap!!” Well, it might be cheap but more than likely, it’s an excellently made book. 

With publishers looking elsewhere to make books, we’ve entered an era of unexpected challenges for seemingly simple act of getting books from manufacturers to readers. While the shift away from China has been underway for years, the logistical hurdles involved in sourcing books from alternative locations paint a surprisingly complex picture.

At one time 90% of the work I did was with Chinese vendors but since 2020 that has changed for me and I ended up working predominantly with a US vendor. But I’ve looked at India,  Korea and even Mexico in the last few years with various results. I know Vietnam is in play too but I have no experience with vendors there. 

All of this moving around created a big obstacle for Publishers. As publishers diversify their sourcing, the new chosen locations might not have the infrastructure or trained workforce to handle the influx, leading to bottlenecks.

Good thing that was the only problem right?

Alas. 

Besides the move from China there is an added obstacle of traversing the globe. That existed even when China owned the bookmaking business but the Pacific Ocean was a pretty easy route. It gots its name from being the peaceful ocean, and sure there are exceptions but LA doesn’t have hurricane season does it?

The road, in this instance, the Ocean is a bag of crazy in itself. The Ocean from Vietnam and India is a tough route. Have you read The Wager?  It’s a different route, just across the Atlantic and under South America but The biggest threat to this ill fated boat was not Pirates or Natives on the Islands where they stopped but the brutal ocean water, the high waves, the roiling sea, and the cold.

Did you know 1,383 containers go overboard every year? I’m surprised it’s not higher. Check out this link and hold one eye open.  Moving real things around is always hard! An email won’t send and you just restart your computer. A boat won’t send and you sweat bullets made of blood!

 The Ocean won’t stop being the road any time soon so it’s sobering to read this headline from Boston Consulting that “Right now, more than 50% of global maritime trade is at threat of disruption in four key areas of the world.”

 Michael McAdoo goes on to say

  “These geopolitical risks could turn into a physical impossibility of moving goods to certain destinations. In the short term it will extend lead times on goods. In the longer term, it is likely to make firms seek shorter supply chains because of the risk and higher capital costs associated with maritime transport,” 

A friend of mine in publishing sent me this image. See those little shuttlecock shaped things? Those are boats. 

It’s a lot to look at right? 

Let’s break this down a bit and go from there.

India

If you print books in India and you get through India’s rapidly improving infrastructure and make it to port to get books from India you have to go through the Houthis to get to the Suez canal. Who are the Houthis? They are termed as a political military movement but they are disrupting the middle east ocean traffic. Here’s the website where the map comes from it’s called  Marine Traffic maybe do some breathing exercises before you look.

If you want to avoid that, you can go under Africa. How many boats are trying that?  45% less ships are going through the Suez canal, so that means they are going under Africa or or or going from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean to LA. Wowza, that’s a long road trip. Check out this Reuters article,( 45%, that’s almost ½. Thassalottaboatsbrother!! )for more on the Suez canal. 

The South Africa sea is big, it’s hard to police, and the waters are not regularly patrolled but don’t take my word for it, check out this from the Institute for Security Studies that states the threat of piracy in the modern era became real in 2010 or this article  on the return of Piracy in the new century. Arrrr it be back!

Ok, well, let’s just skip India and Vietnam for a bit. Let’s try “Nearshoring.” Ah yes, one of those cringe phrases like “bad actors.”  For the US that’s Canada and Mexico. I’ve looked at buying print from Canada before. They have some options but nowhere near the pricing of India, Korea, or China. As well, they seem limited in capabilities but that said I am by no means an expert on what’s available for print manufacturing in Canada. If you know some great ones, drop them in the comments. 

Mexico
I can’t find anything that specifically says if you buy cook books from Mexico you will pay graft to cartels but remember the Avocado press from about a year ago? In a nutshell, if you were enjoying guacamole you gave the cartel money.  Forbes said, “In Mexico, the lines between the worlds of organized crime and legal business activity are blurred and sometimes totally missing.” 

I hesitate to make any assumptions but most sources paint a troubling picture, this article from the Carnegie Endowment states that Migration, Drug Enforcement and trade between the two countries is a thick complex situation. 

Check out this comment from Vanda Felbab-Brown  “ It’s kind of notorious that if you buy an avocado in the United States from Mexico, you have paid money to a cartel. You can extend that to corn and citrus too. Water distribution to Mexican citizens is deeply penetrated by Mexican criminal groups. So very many domains of what the state should be in charge of are, at minimum, interfered with and sometimes outright controlled by vicious criminal groups. For the two countries to deeply integrate economically requires rule of law in Mexico, and we have the opposite of it.”

I encourage you to read more about it, one thing I found fascinating was Mexico lost tons of jobs to China in the early 2000’s just like the US did. 

One thing that surprised me is buying books in Mexico is about the same expense as buying in the US and once you pay the trucks and bring it across the border. In the end it’s not much savings at all. But they do have capabilities and in some cases they have the capacity, two things the US might let you down on. This was key especially in 2021-22

It’s a real shame because there are some great book makers in Mexico and Brazil.

The Carnegie article sums up the reality along with the incredible news that Mexico is now the US’s largest trading partner. It’s funny when immigration is the biggest news story on the US new’s cycle which has it’s own economic impact but the fact that Mexico surpassed China as our trade partner isn’t bigger news is baffling. 

“Earlier this year, Mexico became America’s largest trading partner, surpassing China. Bilateral trade during the first four months of 2023 represented over 15 percent of all the goods exported and imported by the United States. In addition to growing trade, Mexico is a site for American companies to invest, for global firms to move production, as part of a growing trend toward nearshoring. And Mexico’s economy minister said that some 400 companies were interested in relocating facilities from Asia to Mexico.”

 It should be a slam dunk win win but meth. Well, apparently meth be damned it’s still a win for a lot of business. 

OK, well clutch your pearls. 

Let’s say you just stick to domestic.
Safe, right? 

Even the US is fraught with freight fright. Check this out-Apparently the latest trucking fun is a manufacturer contacts a trucking company to come pick up a good. These calls get farmed out and a non legit “vendor” picks up the order and then resells it or demands a ransom for it. This article in the Wall Street Journal detailed the fun a yogurt seller experienced.

How big of a deal is this? Apparently it’s an $800 million dollar problem. 

$800 million seems like a pretty big problem. Have you been adding up all the money we’ve been talking about here? 

Ok, let’s assume your shipping does make its destination and is shipped to customers. If you’ve never watched Mark Rober’s videos on glitter bombing Porch Pirates, here’s you chance Porch Pirates are the final barrier to you getting your book. There is no shortage of front door footage of bandits taking off with people’s goods. Probably more often than not a disappointing haul. 

Capitol One has some stats here 

“According to a 2023 report by Capitol One, porch pirates caused $29.2 billion in losses in 2022, affecting 14% of Americans. In 2023, an estimated 119 million packages were stolen, resulting in $6 billion in losses. The average stolen package is worth $112.30”

Honor Among Thieves? Maybe that was an Agatha Christie novel. 

What can you do? I don’t know but I’d like to try to figure it out. Bake in an airfreight forecast? Take the longest, safest route, consolidate elsewhere? None of those are long term solutions.

Really as goods go, books aren’t that expensive. Remember this is happening to everything. Computers, microchips, and yogurt.

You lose books to porch pirates, it’s $3.75 or so but shrug it off and one day added up over time the cost for this makes its way back to you. You ship books to a store. Let's say 4 cartons of 24 books. They cost maybe $2.00 each. Now, remember you paid to ship them so you're out that cash too–but in the moment the biggest loss is the opportunity to sell the goods. Ebooks and audiobooks are safe-right…but that’s part of why a book feels so valuable, it’s a miracle you got the dang thing in your hand. 

The idea, the P&L, the manufacturing, the Ocean, the porch pirates, all of it. 

This is a funny thing about books. 

In our hearts, or at least mine, they are really valuable. Often much more valuable than their MSRP though I might balk at their MSRP if I know it’s hogwash but even then I understand I am paying for the content not the vehicle. 

Buying a book feels like buying a vacation or a friend, having something in your day that is important, meaningful, romantic, even moment? 

If this stat from Forbes is correct, US retailers are losing “ a portion of the estimated $45 billion that crime networks steal from US retailers every year, Dugan says.”

Of course that’s getting passed on to legit buyers in many ways but at some point the MSRP and the value get out of whack and no one still buys. They bat an eye as it were. Is this what what makes real physical goods feel more important? The world is constantly making it harder to make things? 

What about ebooks? Well, those pesky digital pirates cost us a lot of money too. 

Well, I leave you with this-

Suez Canal Authority via AP

I love art directing book covers. I used to manage 30 or so titles a quarter. Maybe one day I will do so again but maybe not that volume! 

Doing one cover at a time is fun but doing a series, having to establish a look that you know you will be able to expand on and that’s a challenge. You have to select a set of fonts, icons, and other particulars that can handle the long haul of multiple titles and you need a theme that will bear out as well. In this case, photography. 

(I’m not totally sure Pietr and the Tramp covers are from the same photographer)

I’m trying to make the Why and How Book Project a bit about the fun of reading, the pleasures of life in books as an added bonus so let’s give you some of that side dish first before we dive into the manufacturing and design concerns. 

The covers for these reissues are so evocative. This article from the Guardian details the enduring appeal of Maigret and the work that went into reissuing the massive title list. The entire reissue project took 6 years from 2013 to 2019 I’m surprised it took me so long to discover them. This in itself is a lesson in how long it takes a product to reach an audience. I’m an avid mystery reader and discovered these in 2023. They’d been making the rounds of publishing news for a decade at that point!

I first encountered Maigret watching Rowan Atkinson's portrayal and wasn’t engaged. It felt overly moody, typical of a lot of Crime TV. Perhaps I should give it another chance.  Last year one of my favorite authors, Lawrence Osborne mentioned Maigret and Highsmith in an interview which led me to buy The Tremor of Forgery and Pietr Latvian, written respectively.  Tremor was great, though I feel like I would not like Highsmith if I had to take a road trip with her but Pietr was special. 

Simenon is a larger commodity in Europe than the US. Simenon, like Christie’s Poirot, was born in Belgium. From 1921 to 1972 he penned 193 novels! 75 of these were the character Jules Maigret. In Europe he is up there with Shakespeare and Christie as far as books in print and sales (800 million units). Somewhere I read, and lost the thread, that copies in English were not always in print thus in the US the books are not always available. This website collects the series over time and it looks to be pretty solid but if there were holes in availability that definitely limits his reach to the American market.

That lack of presence on shelves is now over. 

Lawrence Osborne’s suggestion was followed.The covers called me over to their table for a drink when I went to Amazon and fortunately the art team did their job. I began to imagine and daydream a bit about these stories. The images produce wonder, mystery, and a little scuzziness. All hallmarks of noir, with varying degrees of scuzziness. 

When that dust settled and I’d read a few, the book nerd in me began to wonder how they approached the covers? 

The images come from the photographs of  Harry Gruyaert. When I found This article, I had hopes for a really deep dive into the process and while it’s good I would have liked to hear more. It will tell you that Picture Editor Samantha Johnson developed a relationship with the photographer and while the images are not necessarily period specific to Maigret, they were deemed as  perfect in tone. Indeed. One curious bit is that the tip off for this approach came from the Brazil editions. On the editorial side, Josephine Greywoode, the editor for the project, had to juggle translators, schedules, and getting the interiors ready to go over a period of six years. I love that she was unsure if she would live to see it all done.  

Let’s get back to the How of making books. Keep in mind none of this pertains to using stock photography like Getty, Shutterstock etc. Most, if not all of the concerns below are covered in the structure of those providers

When using a photographer, get a good look at their offerings before you commit. Do they have a lot to choose from? Are there sticky licensing issues or is the photographer in control of their images? Is there a royalty on the images that makes your P&L beg for mercy? Are there items in the photos that will bring up issues. I don’t mean nudes. I mean cans of Coke or pictures of a Volkswagen Bug. I ran into a sticky problem once with a cover that was finally a winner after multiple rounds of comps. But there was one issue. The cover had a Volkswagen car on it and we found out that the folks at VW are merciless when it comes to using their cars likeness. We didn’t go back to the drawing board but we had to hire a photoshop ninja and consult legal for weeks. 

Ok, let’s say you do all that and you get a contract signed. (Yes, get a contract signed.) I spent 36 hours in Austin once trying to get a contract signed while at the photoshoot. If you think your leverage is gone before the shooting starts, wait till during. Yes, I had to spend weeks with legal. 

There are still a few things to consider.

The image has to frame the title or author name  and have a background that doesn’t clash with the title. The perfect title will fit in the right photo. You are looking for space and contrast. Sometimes you break these rules to great effect but until you are on that road keep it clean. 

One other thing is if photos have text, that can be distracting to your title and author name. However, with Maigret covers you will see words like, Hotel, Vacancy, Bar which seem to contradict this warning. I think these words and their context become like an image, the icon element of words that communicate as a picture and not letters.

Still I daydream. I bet the art director for these books changed out photos with titles.

Moved around titles. They sat clicking their mouse, “This title this image or this image.” It was probably like going to the eye doctor. “This one? Or..this one?”

Sometimes, some lucky pulse quickening times,  they knew the pic and the title were perfect from the get go-married up as it were. 

What else can we learn here? Our basic cover rule questions apply. Who is the star? The author? The title? The character? These books present a good exercise for those concerns. 

The star on all of these covers is of course the author’s name, Georges Simenon. But Maigret, while not Holmes or Poirot, also carries a lot of weight. I think they did a great job in balancing these elements. They even have a little Inspector Maigret icon to contend with. Each time, tucked neatly. 

When I saw the plan for 75 titles in 6 years, I thought they Probably whittled them off in sets of 3-4 every quarter. 75 over 6 years - 12 a year, 3 a quarter? Roughly, give or take a book. However  it plays out to 1 a month if you look here.

Honestly, that makes no sense to me.  Why wouldn’t the Publisher want bookstores to take 2-3 at a time? Shelf space is limited? Ok, I agree and really 80% of sales happen on Amazon and you have the algorithm  “If you buy X you might also like Y and Z.” It’s easier to get press for something once a quarter than every month. I don’t know. Maybe it was to be impressive with the onslaught but I feel like no one is aware of those things other than the Product Manager. Perhaps they made 4-5 at a time but doled them out in this manner? I’d imagine from a Production standpoint you’d rather have them in groups. But then you have a product made, cash tied up for a few weeks waiting to release? If I had to guess with what I know, I’d say the small size, low page count, and modest print runs mean the money here isn’t that significant, so none of this really matters. Well, in the comments let me know your thoughts. 

(They even boast in this advert, A New Translation Every Month. I would of asked the editor if they wanted to rephrase that but perhaps that’s picky)

I’ve read all of Wallender, Spade, Marlow, Archer, Poirot, and a healthy bit of the unhealthy Nero Wolf. Then, as I said, Lawrence Osboure mentioned Maigret. Then I saw that Faulker and Hemmingway both liked Maigret and read him for pleasure. My diet was solely American noir for much of my life but In recent years I  gravitated toward Poirot and Holmes but I have to say Maigret is my new favorite. I like him as much as Marlowe or Lew Archer.

Maigret stops for an espresso while on stake out. He stops for a beer at the pub and chats with the waitress to solve the case but it never feels twee. It feels like the pursuit of simple joys in a bleak world. Sitting and waiting, in a cafe, waiting for life. I find myself there more and more. When a case is at a dead end, he goes home and his wife has prepared a dish and is ready to drink wine and discuss matters of the garden and the office. 

He talks to everyone. I myself talk to the cash register person everywhere I go. I want to know what’s going on, what their day is like. What they see. What they are doing. When I went to China I talked to the valet guys. When I worked in furniture in New York I talked to truck drivers. These are the people that know what’s up. Maigret knows that too. 

The books are so short, so immensely readable, so prompt.  They are often compared to sketches. He wrote these books in about 9 days each. You can feel that, in the best way, when you sit with one. Well, I have many more to go, about 60 I believe but only have one question. When can I read another one? 

PS

Here’s an article I found. What a great title! Maigret and the Crime of Being Alive.

If you are still intrigued here is one more article. 

Please read Maigret. Please rave about these books. Bravo to the Penguin team for these titles. Lovely work.

If you haven’t ordered your books for Christmas yet it’s too late. Well, it’s too late unless you want to pay for a higher tier of shipping. 

Amazon is probably still offering before Christmas but they own their own Freight Company. Everyone else, all the other businesses for the most part, it’s too late. 

There’s one big thing at play this year. Christmas is on a Monday. Sunday delivery is pricey. It’s not standard. Sunday is a day of rest. It’s the only day that Full Time employees of the USPS are always off. That’s been on the books since 1912. It was partly from labor and partly from religious leaders. That’s a pretty massive impact on the calendar for this holiday. Believe in God or not, He’s having a massive effect on your calendar this year. Which reminds me of a book I read this year, Dominion by Tom Holland. Not Spiderman, but an English chap who writes about history.

Every year it seems someone asks me if we can cheaply send small things to a customer in a customer friendly manner. Can we just put it in an envelope and send it? Yes, you can! Put it in an envelope and put a Forever stamp on it and cross your fingers. That could totally work but you have no tracking number and though the USPS will give you a window it could be there in a  week or two or maybe never. The other problem is, you probably don’t want to do this yourself so you’d ask your 3PL to do it and your 3PLs is going to charge you at least $3 or so for handling so your dreams of shipping a small thing cheaply is evaporating. 

And let’s be honest. You can’t put something in an envelope and mail it, though I’d find that immensely charming if someone sent me a book like that. 

We all know, if you have customers, it’s no fun to tell them “It’s in the mail” and smile. No, this is 2023. AI Is guessing what you will buy before you buy it. We have long left the world of 6-8 weeks for delivery. 

So we establish that we need a tracking number and we can communicate an expectation of arrival time.

Well for that you have to enter into a higher tier of service. Most of those have a floor of $5 or $6 at least to ship a package. We are talking UPS Ground and FedEx Home. There is DHL and UPS USPS accentuated offerings but for the most part, FEDUPS is your game.

You might see something different if you go out and quote the work. You might get a different offer but it won’t last forever. There’s always someone in the meeting that says “You paid what for air freight?” “I can get it for $500 less!!” Yeah, probably. Everyone always has “Their guy” and “their guy” has great rates but year over year, time after time, they won’t be any better than anyone else. And I know $500 sounds like a lot but sometimes it’s worth it to stick with “Your guy” because they know your business and you'll later learn that, “Oh I didn’t know the delivery needed a truck with a lift” and then it’s $600 for that and “your original guy” is actually ahead. 

I’ve seen less fluctuation with freight and different companies  since Amazon really took off and established their own freight. UPS and FedEx no longer deliver the most packages. Amazon does. Amazon delivers almost a quarter of everything in the US. Amazon is buying almost all the boxes. It’s unbelievable the footprint size so you can imagine that big of a filet o’ fish makes the dynamics for the rest of the fish tank that much smaller. There's less water. 

You might ask, well since this item only weighs .45 lbs. can we send it for less with FedEx or UPS?
It’s like this. You want on this train that has tracking numbers, that has a window of expectation, for that train you have to spend at least $5 or $6. I know it seems weird but it’s the cost of the trucks,  gas and the driver. It’s the cost of that world. You want to run in and grab it to go, that’s McD’s. You want someone to bring you your food, most plates are at least $10. Same idea. 

Freight got really high about 2 years ago. It’s pretty stable now but it’s not dropping to pre pandemic levels soon, if ever.  If the rate table does go under 1lb it’s not like there are charges like .10lb for $.45 cents. That is the envelope at the USPS train. No tracking. We are on this train over here gang. 

Some of you might wonder,  “Why do I sometimes use Ground and get things in 2-3 days? Other companies send me stuff and I don’t get it for 5-8! What’s with these incompetent losers!” They just don’t like you!! No, that’s not it Yelpers.

The answer is really boring. It’s where their 3PL is located. It’s just like you. If you live in Chicago and you are driving to Milwaukee you’ll get there a lot sooner than you’ll  get to Miami, Florida. If you live in Chicago and order deodorant from LA by Ground and a book from Indiana by Ground, Indiana is going to win. 

You also see this one a lot. “Why does my package get picked up and then suddenly end up in Las Vegas?” Because it went to a party. No seriously, whatever routing the vendor is part of your item is going to get sorted at the highest volume option on the route. If it didn’t do this, you’d be paying even more. Seems counterintuitive but that’s the reason. The goal is to spread out the cost over the greatest amount of packages as possible and bring down the unit.

But let’s talk about the Romantic notions of shipping. 

What if money is the object and time is of no consequence and you want to mail a book?
There's Media Mail. What is Media Mail? It's a taxpayer funded subsidy. It does have a tracking number. It does cost less but it takes time. 2-8 days is what the USPS site says. That’s wishful thinking. And 2-8 days!! That’s a spread!!

 Why is there Media mail? This is one of those Romantic things about books in the real world. Media Mail started as a way to share books to promote literacy in 1936. So like there is no mail on Sunday, because of an idea of a day of rest or reflection in God, books can be mailed for less money. Just don’t bank on when it arrives. So, it could go the same distance as a brick, it could weigh the same but it’s going to cost me less via Media Mail? Yes!

What is life without whimsy? 

Here is a kicker. If you sell a comic book, you can’t send it via Media Mail. Magazines, nope. Guess why? Ads. The old filthy lucre!! Here’s another one. Planners, Calendars, Journals also don’t count. Blank tapes don’t count. Because you can use those things to do work. They have a use. As if books aren’t useful!

That’s wild right? It has to have art on it to qualify. It has to include the printed word for nothing more than enjoyment. Which always makes me want to do a YouTube video series of going to the Post Office and asking the following. 

“Well, what if it’s an invisible drawing? What if it’s a conceptual piece? What if it’s a sound experiment?”

I don’t know the answers but I love that it’s a thing. Would I be aghast at the P&L for how it works? Yes, completely. But some things have to have some grace right? Remember Tom Holland, remember there is a tax funded service out there protecting the sharing of art, and some things are closed on Sundays.

Here’s a few bonuses for you. 

Books I liked the most in 2023

1. Libra-Don Delillo. You always know that your favorite authors don’t just appear as a whole but you always feel James Ellory is a man that broke the mold. He did but Libra is Delio's book that inspired Ellroy’s American Trilogy. It’s a hot read. Sometimes books you want to keep reading for the ride, for the story, and sometimes the use of language, the words, the magic that’s happening with the vibes. This book is both. I recently watched a documentary on the JFK assassination and Wesley Buell Frazier said, “I’m a time traveler.” He’s the guy who gave Oswald a ride to work the day of the shooting. He said he is constantly back there at that day. I eat pickles with cucumbers for lunch sometimes and think about time travel. I spend a lot of time in the future worrying about times to come or regretting the past. That quote emphasizes how our internal lives are time travel and thus externally time travel.  

2. The Enchanters-James Ellroy. Libra aside, the Big Dog James stands on his own. I enjoyed this more than any book I read this year. It’s the murder of Marilyn Monroe, it’s LA in the 60s before the hippies take hold. It’s Ellroy’s new antihero, based on real life shake down artist Freddie Otash. It’s beautiful stuff. Is Ellroy getting better at writing at 75? This book and its predecessor WideSpread Panic are the two most enjoyable, readable, books Ellroy has. I don’t know what James is vibing on but it’s agreeing with him. I read this in Florida this summer. Give me el Cafe Cubano y la Tostada con mantequilla. 

3. Lament from Epirus–Christopher C. King  This book reminded me of a lot of things I enjoy. Bourdain elements of adventure with travel, food, and drinking with people in strange places. It also felt like Nick Tosches digging into the past of some mysterious music like when he wrote about Emmet Miller. My wanderlust has been high lately. I want to go to so many places I’ve never been. I want to go back to LA or Miami and spend more than 48 hours there. I want to check into the Hotel Marmont for a week with a laptop and write the soundtrack to a movie. I want to go-to Oaxaca, drink Mezcal, looks at fabrics, eat mole, listen to Son istmeño and now because of this book and my church I want to go to Greece. I want to sit on the beach at Naxos sipping Ouzu and hear a fiddle. On this topic since Shane MacGowan died, I want to go to Ireland. I want to drink a Guiness and read the Irish Poets in a misty street. I am so bored with the places I see every day and books like this remind me of that and for now I can travel in my mind. This book made me start looking for books that are exemplars of cafe culture, which seems a way to travel so I plan to read Lawrence Durrell soon. I read Patricia Highsmith's Tremor of Forgery set in Tunisia. I want to be in places with a legit cafe, reading, and wearing a straw hat in shade blocking a white hot sun. Espressos and oranges with oysters for lunch please. 

4. Burning Angel -Lawrence Osborne’s collection of short stories is the best writing for me in 2023. He portrays idealistic wealthy people getting absolutely eviscerated by the consequences of their  assumptions of how the world works. He develops plots that illuminate human folly and then picks them apart like bugs. Osborne and Ellroy are two of the last writers operating in a right and wrong world. Maybe Osborne would disagree and say he’s operating in the gray of post post modernism but he’s definitely interested in the consequences of bad decisions. Besides this, he writes like a mofo. Also, I am well aware my same tendencies to romanticize from Lament from Epirus will make me a dead person in a Lawrence Osborne novel. 

These two books were fun and helpful. 

Tools by Phil Stutz–This is far and away  the best self help book I’ve ever read. Super easy to follow and to employ the concepts in it. It doesn’t feel unrelatable or pie in the sky.I wish it came in a card deck or journal form to use every day. Once I finished the book, the tenets didn’t stick with me. I would just re-read the book but it’s a drag to read through the case studies again. I get it. I’ve heard it.  I suppose I could bookmark the salient exercises but, again, I really wish it came in a card or Journal format. Phil! My man, it can be done. My guess is, his publisher wants him to do it but Phil feels it’s best if people read the book. I think both are right and hope eventually they talk Phil into it. 

Storyteller Dave Grohl–This reminded me of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards biographies. A fun hang and you're sad when it’s over. I will say, once the adventure of Dave as a punk rock guy in a van is over the book feels less compelling. Dinner parties with Paul McCartney are cool to hear about but tire a bit. Maybe I’m just jealous. That’s probably it.  These days Dave is out  feeding hungry people free BBQ so I’m looking forward to a part II from Dave and he remains a compelling dude who would be a great hang. 

In 2024 I might continue this, might not. I am sort of out of ideas. Honestly, I thought I’d get questions from readers and this would grow. Ha. Well. That was the idea.

I plan to go here in 2024

PS I try not to mention music, but Shane MacGowan died. He was a poet and a hero. God rest his soul. May his memory be eternal.

First off, we’ve picked up a lot of new readers in the last month. I’m not sure how you found me but I’m glad you’re here. I post about 1 time a month. The Why and How Book Project is about book making in general but creativity and life at its most aspirational. Let’s go. 

I’ve been picking at Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act for about 6 months. It’s Rubin’s Mystical Guru on a mat vibe giving out advice of the I Am The Walrus Variety. “I am he as you are he as you are me

And we are all together.” Yes, It’s woo woo but it’s really good woo woo. It’s got a lot to say about the contradictory nature of art.  if you play Punk you need to listen to Country. If sometimes you are loud, you need to be quiet too. Limitations are often your best route to creativity and as Sam Elliot once opined, “Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.” This is true of all creative endeavors. 

What all of this has in common is decision making in art, which is one of my favorite things to think about. It’s one of the hardest things to get done. 

Let’s talk about the book as a physical thing for a minute.

I am 99.9% sure the cover material is Brillianta 4003 with a black pigment stamp over board. It’s a perfect bound book, so with these specs it was probably made in the US. You wouldn't put fabric on a cover and then go for a perfect bound, read- cheap binding unless you were trying to lower cost in the US. In essence you are springing for the vibe and feel of the fabric for the cover and cutting cost on the binding. 

For the interior you have 1c black print on 50 lb cream uncoated stock, which in this day and age is a nice paper weight. 

You know what all of these things are? They are decisions, practical but still creative decisions. Brillianta is an uncoated fabric. That means a few things. See this coffee I spilled on the back? It’s not coming off. I don’t mind that at all. It adds to the book for me. 

See this stamp of the Colophon on the spine? We call that globbing. The detail elements fill on or don’t adhere. The letters run together a bit. This cover material is an uncoated fabric so when you stamp it it’s not a flat surface. 

If this was a coated fabric neither of these things would happen but at the same time, the book wouldn’t feel like fabric. As with most art as commerce, you are picking your poison. 

None of this is bad. If you plan to take the book in and out of a backpack, maybe it’s bad, if you plan to leave it on a coffee table, it’s fine, just watch the coffee. 

While I’ve been picking through Rubin’s book I’ve also been listening to the latest Replacement’s reissue, TIM (Let it Bleed Edition). The Replacements and their mixes is one of the great rock n roll puzzles. Not only has TIM been remixed but Don’t Tell a Soul from 1989 was remixed in 2019 as Dead Man’s Pop. 

I can’t think of any other band that has had two records needing to be remixed and actually having them remixed. This glowing review of TIM 2023  notes that The Stooges Raw Power, Metallica's And Justice For All and The Beatles Let it Be, all have had remixes. But all of those are one record in the band’s output and arguably none are astounding improvements. TIM (Let it Bleed) and Dead Man’s Pop depending on who you ask are revelations. 

Both remixes are the result of a long held belief that the existing mix was done wrong. So twice, history has been rewrit. Lightning has struck the same band, or the same place, twice.  

We live in a disposable world and it’s fast changing too. Digital editing has made it possible for any manner of reimagining to take place in seconds. There are Snyder’s Cuts of Justice League. Star Wars aficionados have Harmy’s edition of the original movies. Harmacek, a teacher in the Czech Republic,  said changing the films constituted "an act of cultural vandalism." “The future is certain; it is only the past that is unpredictable” goes an old Soviet joke.

I’m not going to get into how many versions of Blade Runner there are. Fact is, I don’t know, I just know there are a-lot. 

There are pernicious aspects to change as well. The phrase Orwellian gets used a lot but apparently scenes or offensive phrases from TV shows can get scrubbed out and the online streaming version has no ghosts of the past. One of my friend’s, Joel Miller, writes exceptionally about books at Miller’s Book Review. Here he goes over the topic of changing the works of writers after publication to meet with changing sensibilities. Further into this world of the digital and ephemeral you can purchase a movie on Apple, Amazon or what have you and if their license changes then poof goes your movie. It might come back later but it might not be the same movie you had before. 

Given that stories survived through the Oral Tradition for centuries before the printing press came along, changing content is nothing new but this feels different. We improved the stakes for a piece of art. It could be written, edited, and preserved in a fixed state like Han Solo in carbonite, which I guess is up for change now too. 

When TIM (Let it Bleed) came out, The Replacement’s internet, the FaceBook groups, and Reddit threads were on fire with opinions. Vitriolic, impassioned, and distraught even. There are the obvious human feelings of loss or maybe disorientation but why do fans get so angry? They can still listen to TIM 1985. Part of me thinks it’s the loss of shared experience in our world. We are having a tough enough time agreeing what the middle C’s of our world are, now we have to clarify which version of a record we like? 

When I was in publishing we had an author who sold millions of copies of their book. The author wanted to change or tweak a phrase or word fairly often when we reprinted the title. In every case the intention was to improve the work. 

Unlike most books that never reprint, we could actually make these changes happen. The book was on an aggressive reprint cycle so we kept a spreadsheet of changes to make and scheduled them. 

And change them we did and people noticed. Message boards and Amazon reviews decried the changes, pointed them out and asked what else had we changed? Since we printed Christian Books they wondered what else and where else had we had changed content. More people, more anger about changes to books, movies, and records. Totally different crowd. 

This brings me to the book Dominion that I’ve also been picking at. Dominion is a whopping, spine breaking 640 pages. Dominion argues that we live in the shadow of Christian habits. Whether you believe in Jesus or not, your values are shaped by Christian ideals. Dominion, Rubin, and Let it Bleed rolling through my brain. Texts on art and change, actual change, and on our culture took me to here, the end of the Bible. 

Revelation 22 18-19

18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:

19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

Do not add or take away is a pretty stern rule. 

Is decrying a new version of Star Wars, Blade Runner, Ian Flemming, or The Replacements on the internet really just being worried about heretics in the religion of culture? Maybe. But I think that's an important thing to be concerned about. Culture is important. Language is a part of culture. If everyone can’t agree on the meaning of things then problems come up. If these things change, then “What else are they changing??” is a fair question. 

I asked my friend Rob Matthews if there is an instance of a painter doing a work and then years later going back and redoing the work. Rob is an accomplished t artist in his own right. At one time, he cleaned art at the Philadelphia Museum. I guess arguably that’s an example of redoing art. A remix of a record is a restoration of sorts. Colors that had become muted are clear again, lines that had faded are visible. The term art restoration makes me think of the lady who restored Jesus a few years ago. Remember this? Which one is TIM 1985?

Oddly enough, the next day this article popped up on my feed. AI are you listening? The painter Albert Pinkham Ryder messed with this painting from 1896 to 1908. For a little over a decade he redid the textures and colors of this work. You can tell. There is a depth and strangeness to the colors and textures here that a single pass wouldn’t achieve. 

But Tim, and though I played it and listened to it as is all through highschool, I always knew the drums and guitars sounded like they were played on a boombox in a dumpster and a microphone was put in that dumpster and that’s how they got that record. I say that like it’s a bad thing. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t but that was the record that we all knew and loved for the past  40 years. My options were that record, like that or nothing. So to not have Left of the Dial and Little Mascara would be no life at all, so the record was the record. 

I am a fan of mystery. I don’t have to have things well defined in music or lyrics. I like the idiosyncratic much more than virtuosic. Additionally, If every record sounds good, or like whatever is deemed correct, then everything is identical. That's boring. I like field recordings and single microphone to Shellac recordings from before World War II. Both of those are fraught with challenges. It’s a miracle there is anything captured at all, much less sound. I love how Tusk by Fleetwood Mac sounds. Tusk sounds grumpy and glossy. Some of it was recorded in a bathroom. Bathrooms sound pretty banging if you’ve ever recorded an amp in one. But that's not the “right” way to do it..  My friend Rob says, “It sounds like cocaine and a four track.”

I don’t want every record to sound “right” or “good” because that’s what we have now with most pop, country, rap, and rock n roll and nothing sounds particularly interesting. If everything sounds good, then nothing sounds good. A unique identity is hard to find in sound even if it’s gained at something being off or strange. A good bit of press is out there now and has been for 40 years on how being messed up was a big part of The Replacements appeal. So maybe, Tim as is was the true picture? 

 But there is a line, right? So what is the cost of releasing art in a mess? That’s sort of the Replacements mythology? But didn’t they have enough mythos to cover a book and not need to have a record that sounded smothered?

Tommy Stinson didn't play bass to not be heard in the mix. Paul Westerberg didn’t compose piano parts to have them muted and no, not everything a band plays in a session gets used. True enough. But if you listen to the live album that comes with TIM (Let it Bleed), Bob Stinson plays the licks on Little Mascara live that were muted on the album mix. In his mind, they were there. The remix record makes sonic sense with Let It Be before it and Pleased to Meet Me after it. Same band. Same identity. They were a rock n roll band and they were mysterious enough without a bedsheet full of reverb and mixed out parts.  (Bob Mehr’s epic, lovely, heartbreaking book) You can now clearly hear Westerberg’s amazing rock n roll voice and wholly unique rhythm guitar playing eloquent voicings.

But you have in your hand a changed a version of the past. 

Back to Rubin, “Releasing a work into the world becomes easier when we remember that each piece can never be a total reflection of us, only a reflection of who we are in this moment. If we wait, it’s no longer today’s reflection. In a year, we may be guided to create a piece that looks nothing like it. In an environment where nothing is permanent, we produce static artifacts. Mementos of spirit. Every work of art is an iteration.”

Different versions of work and a competent mix versus an incompetent mix are two different things but I feel like opinions blur the two because all of this is subjective. Elvis played Mystery Train in 1954 differently than he did in the 1970’s in Vegas but both times he recorded it in an agreed upon level of quality. Bob Dylan changes his lyrics over time. His records are not the last word or iteration of his songs, the songs change but at one point he made the document, the representation of them, often expertly. Art is pretty darn malleable to the artist, not so much to the listener. It’s the document that we hold dear. There is even a PreWar Label called Document. 

So was the art ever there? Yes, we have the Documents!  

Did we take the same movie and take two pictures of it? One in 1985 and one in 2023? 

What if David grew back marble every year and we had to chip it away? Who would we hire to do it? You know some year someone would want to get fancy and see what would happen if. 

We all want to go back and redo our mistakes. For art’s regrets, films get Director's Cuts, books get new translations, or edits, or corrections. But when you are changing the agreed upon final snapshots of the past, that’s different?

In Neuroscience is the idea that whenever you think back on something, you don’t remember it as it happened because since then your brain has become a different home to those thoughts. I guess that’s part of it. I was always fascinated as a kid by the map at the mall and the little red dot that says, “You Are Here.” By the time I walk to the Gap that sticker will still be there. The person I was standing there looking at the map is long gone.

Time is always changing and it’s not only changing on the inside it’s now changing on the outside.