INTRODUCTION
Hello and welcome to the crest of my little hill (see chart below).
My plan is to summit this little hill once a week — Tuesday to Tuesday to Tuesday — collecting content, delivering from on high.
Do not mistake this plan for a promise.
Because when it comes to promises, “it wouldn’t be fair of me to impose my interpretation of such lapidarily subjective imagery on you, and because in many cases I don’t really know what [I’m] talking about.”[1]
But with a plan, or scheme, I can lapidate to my liking, release if I want to, make like an axolotl[2] if I don’t.
Lucky for you, I’ve no designs to make like an axolotl just yet, which is why we can both enjoy this inaugural issue of The Churn.
QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS
What is The Churn?
Words and images, compiled weekly, documenting the rumblings, ramblings, and mumblings behind The Butter.
And what exactly is The Butter?
Excellent question. It’s a lot of things. You could even say it is more than it isn’t. At any rate, I think it’s something of a collective that my friends and I started to share the stuff we make — mostly music, but also writing, film, art, etc.
Ok: Who exactly is The Butter.
We are as follows, and I’ll even throw in the where for good measure.
New York [Brooklyn: The Meeks[3] & Alright, Good[4] // Manhattan: Muzzy Hooks[5] & Cheekbones[6]]
California [Truckee: The Wims[7] // LA: Payant[8]]
DC [The Atelier[9]]
Pending [Wheels[10] & the Qualia[11] production team]
Everywhere Always [Ava Mullen[12] on drums].
Thank you for answering my questions. Carry on.
Sure thing, pal.
GOINGS ON
- The Butter just had a show on a roof overlooking the BQE. It was tight.
- Alright, Good just put out “Big Green Field,” the lead single off their forthcoming LP. Listen here.
- Houseplants, an LP by the Meeks, has been out since early August. Listen here.
- The Atelier is about to release their debut LP. We’re very excited about it.
- John King is a lovely human.
- Tom Garvey is too, sometimes.
- This just in: Ava Mullen remains “good at drumming.”
- Grayson Maker (funny, allegedly) has signed on to help produce Qualia. He may or may not get paid.
- The Butter is committed to never recording a podcast.[13]
A PLAYLIST FOR YOUR TROUBLES (PSST … THIS IS A LINK)
- “Big Green Field” by Alright, Good.
- “Hands Down” by 2nd Grade.
- “TLC Cagematch” by MJ Lenderman
- “Hollow Moon” by Why Bonnie
- “Shoes” by The Wims
- “They Replace Your Heart” by Fred Thomas
- “hand crushed by a mallet” by 100 gecs
- “Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince & the Revolution
- “I Just Wanna Have Fun” by This is Lorelei
- “Hours” by Muzzy Hooks
- “Quotations (Alternate)” by Water From Your Eyes
- ‘thanksforcoming.bandcamp.com” by thanks for coming.
- “Noodles” by Cheekface.
- “Intersection” by Slaughter Beach, Dog
- “Something Something Electric” by The Meeks
SHORT & PRETENTIOUS ESSAY OF THE WEEK:
ON HABITUAL RELEASE
Habitual Release: Making quite a lot of things and putting them out into the world, even if nobody seems to care.
“You wrote too many songs,” Fred Thomas[14] wails. “But not enough to keep half an audience halfway singing along.”
Popularity notwithstanding, there’s something to be said about the Fred-like folks who’ve made an (dare I say) atomic[15] habit out of mostly inconsequential pursuits.
Despite little to no prospects of financial, reputational, or even emotional returns, these prolific few lock themselves in the cycle of continuous release, churning out song after song, record after record, film after film, phrase after phrase, opening the floodgates of their tiny little hearts to pour an endless stream of nonsense into the void.
This level of commitment falls somewhere between the amazing, the unreasonable. and pure fucking lunacy.[16]
It also begs the question: Why?
But I refuse to answer. It’s wrong question to ask. It implies a reason and an end where neither exist. It denies the power, the joy, of pure fucking lunacy.[17]
Pontificate all you like,[18] any effort to isolate an impetus for habitual release yields the same response: “Let’s go crazy!”
“Let’s go crazy” because life “means forever and that’s a mighty long time.”
“Let’s go crazy” because things “are much harder” in the object orientation of “this life” than in the ephemeral, maybe even imaginary, obsessions of “the afterlife.”
“Let’s go crazy” because there’s nothing here for us, no impetus for our sleepless, reckless, occasionally destructive acts of creation. It’s just that “We’re all excited and we don’t know why.”
If an atomic habit #leverages systemic mechanics — the language of capital — to generate some sort of return, then habitual release masquerades in the system’s clothes, a trojan horse smuggling lunacy beneath the factory walls. This lovely lunacy infects all returns, exploding from the dictated form to spawn objects that span a spectrum from the hyperreal[19] to the hilariously inane.[20]
It’s tempting to characterize such lunacy as a byproduct of originality: easier to conceptualize if we can place its source inside some mystical, mythical inspiration. We don’t want to admit the obvious.
“If it wasn’t me, I’d copy me to. You just copy everything we do.”[21]
Yep, habitual release is little more than a sham,peddling the simulacrum’s unfailing ability to fuck things up just enough to be cool.
Keep copying a copy’s copy and eventually it’ll be unrecognizable. It iterates on itself endlessly, rejecting forward motion for the weird pleasure of circularity. To participate in habitual release is to quite literally “do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.”[22]
So, if you still want to ask me why, I’ll leave you with this here copy: “Do you feel insane?”[23]
THE PART WITH THE POEM
“caps locked” by R. I. Franklin.
the filing cabinets are full of dirt
wet dirt. good earth.
the night janitor unlocks the soil,
buries thumb tacks and staples.
when the entry level checks in next morning
there’ll be a forest
trees as tall as their debt
to be chopped down
by the branch manager
and turned into desks
strong wood. good desks.
before the sun rises
the crickets will come out of the computers
and eat the keys
s me f the v wels
n ne f the c ns n nts
the c ps l ck
AND LASTLY WHATEVER THIS IS
I’m sorry Ms. Celery, but you offer neither flavor nor nutritional function. You’re a farce among flora.
In both fact and fiction, you’ve nothing to show for yourself but a cheeky crunch and a crispy whisper wasted on the cloying strings to follow.
You’re irreducibly archaic — raw, unmediated — even as you put forth an emptiness on the edge of modernity; it registers Piketty’s hypercapitalism in vegetal form.
You’ve been known to consort with raisins. For this, we cannot forgive you.
Sell her an e and then another. Stiffen with the consonant image. And all for what? Nothing. Fucking nothing.
What do you want with me, Ms. Celery? Why do you feign? Why do you taunt? Why do you flaunt your pointless existence in clean, calculated lines?
Why not entertain me like the pepper or simply sustain me like the humble spud?
Fuck you, Celery!
I’m sorry. That was a bit much.
Coffee, whiskey, meat, saturated anger.
You might not be a lunch, but you don’t deserve this.
It’s unfair of me to think it’s your place — your calling — to serve us, the nibbling.
What seems to me impractical might be for you a pragmatism.
Your patina of meaning slings a zinger wry and dry into our veggie munching [edgy something] mouths.
Our teeth sink, expecting, only to greet exasperation.
Tricky little fibers. Sticky little fibers.
Hiding motionless, emotionless.
The big zoinks.
& salad days no more.
In voice and action, we claimed the mantel of control.
Made Ms. Celery a resource, a commodity substance.
But none control the Chloropunk.
BYE FOR NOW.
[1] Lester Bangs.
[2] “There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them in the aquarium at the Garden des Plants and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility, their faint movements. Now I am an axolotl.” — Julio Cortazar
[3] My project (formerly The Shifties). Stream Houseplants anywhere or come see us play sometime.
[4] Brendan Raimann’s project. Stream “Big Green Field” anywhere or come see him play sometime.
[5] Tom Garvey’s project. Stream Muzzy Hooks anywhere or come see him play sometime.
[6] John King’s project. Come see him play sometime.
[7] Daniel Griffin’s project. Stream The Wims anywhere or go see him play sometime.
[8] Ashley Finster’s project. Stream The Summer I Feel Nostalgia For anywhere or go see her play sometime.
[9] Luke Molinelli’s project. Debut LP coming soon. Go see him play sometime.
[10] John and I (interluders) hatched a shoegaze scheme.
[11] Experimental comedy from Adam Hellinghausen, Grayson Maker and Michael Donovan (me), bringing fresh corporate perspectives to an internet near you: It’s not what is but rather the what it is like.
[12] Cling clang: pots & pans.
[13] Bullshit, probably.
[14] Michigan-based indie scenester known for his work at the helm of Saturday Looks Good to Me, Failed Flowers, Flashpapr, and a sizable body of solo material. Lyrics lifted from “They Replace Your Heart.”
[15] Plucked from James Clear’s spicy little self-help volume about how anybody (but mainly sad middle-aged men) can make #smallChanges to #eliminate bad habits and #develop good ones to see #powerful increases in their annual contributions to the #publishing industry.
[16] “Writing is lunacy” — Susan Sontag.
[17] Italics are too damn fun.
[18] Re: The opening monologue of Prince — “Let’s Go Crazy”
[19] Gecs, Midi, and the like.
[20] “Noodles” — Cheekface.
[21] “hand crushed by a mallet” — 100 gecs
[22] One of Einstein’s thingies.
[23] “Are You there?” — Slaughter Beach, Dog.
The Butter 