1
One of my most valuable possessions is the pawn my father carved eleven years ago to replace the one we’d lost from our chess set. We'd fallen into the habit of playing at the hospital while we waited for his new lung, and he whittled the pawn quickly. I can still see the blade coming dangerously close to his oxygen tube. Now I keep it on my little altar next to my sobriety chip and a spell against demons I received when C. and I visited a Taiwanese temple.
I like Simon Critchley’s thinking about the need for the spiritual to take a physical form: “The fragment offers the promise of the whole. The devotional object, the image, the relic, is the material container for what cannot be contained within it." What cannot be expressed in language or thought must be felt and seen, and the object becomes a pathway to the sacred because we know it is not sacred.
My father’s pawn is enough. I don’t need a whole chess set.
2
Sometimes I worry that I'm forgetting how to feel and see. Too much of my life has become a staring contest with the screen, so I bought an enormous sketchpad and some watercolors and ink. I did not intend to paint anything in particular. I wouldn’t know where to begin if I did. So I started with a doodle—a few lines, a confused shape—and followed where it led. A vine became an elephant, which was soon obliterated by too much water so it became a bird-man instead. And so on.
It felt good to get tactile and messy, and I carved out an hour each night to paint, enjoying how my mind roamed while I inked and swirled, jotting notes for this episode in wet fields of blue: half-speed Basic Channel and maybe Aphex too? and why are mannequins scary but sculptures are sublime? This led to the artwork for tonight's installment. Enjoy.
As I watched each shape bleed into another, I became convinced of a profound truth: The fragment is the thing. The fragment is honest. The fragment is how I live and think today. There is no wholeness or completeness. There is no system. Theory is an imposition, perhaps even authoritarian. Yes, I thought as I watched my watercolors dry. Only fragments from now on.
The underbelly of my brain smiled and said we’ll see.
3
I intended to write about robots and mannequins tonight, but this morning I woke from a nightmare I cannot shake. You know the kind of dream where you wake up gasping, maybe even a little teary-eyed because you’re so grateful you’ve been safely returned to reality? One of those dreams.
I was living in a superstore with my dead parents and we would gather food for the day and sleep on mattresses. At night, I searched for my phone because I knew I needed to get out of there. When I found it in a bin of tomatoes, its screen was filled with fragmented madness: creepy vacation ads, old sitcom scenes, porny pop-ups, and commemorative gold coins—a flood of endlessly regenerating nonsense no matter how hard I tried to swipe it away. Kimchi adds tension to any situation. Become yourself by holding yourself. And so on.
The gibberish leapt from the screen and clawed its way into my head, filling my vision with retirement home commercials, badly-drawn cartoon characters, and testimonials about weird surgeries. I found a door that said EXIT but it led to a room filled with giant muscle men and puffy-lipped girls, all yelling, their mouths stretched into a bottomless keen.
Force quit. Ctrl-alt-delete. I tried to reboot my vision, restart my brain. When I called customer support for technical assistance, they giggled and said there's no way out, that I’d been mentally hacked. Nothing but digital shrapnel from now on. Then it occurred to me that I could wake up.
4
So my fragment theory has some holes in it. Last night’s fever dream might also be a sign that I’m exhausted by this summer, this overheated season of orange skies, poisonous lettuce, rogue algorithms, and the sense that things are really coming undone.
So here’s a breather. Hopefully tonight’s soundtrack feels like a drift of cleansing air, maybe the audio equivalent of burning sage. Basic Channel pitched down to a heartbeat chug. An Aphex Twin classic stretched to a crawl. Some new favorites from James Murray, Anthony Naples, and Ron Trent’s plush new La Marr project. Plus an excerpt from a track I’ve been working on that loops a reading of the Rigveda from the Fall of Civilizations episode about the collapse of Vijayanagara:
Being one becomes three, becomes eight, becomes eleven, becomes twelve, becomes infinite. That is the soul within and without, yes, within and without.
Over three thousand years ago. Fractals and fragments become one. Only now do I realize tonight’s mix includes a song called "Depths" and a song called "Shallows". Paradoxes are inescapable. Synchronicities abound.
- Training Chamber - Senza Corpo
Triple Mirror • Downwards, 2026 • Bandcamp - Mnemonics - Depths
Mnemonic Devices • Workshop Records, 2025 • Bandcamp - HTRK - Dying
Lilac • Ghostly International, 2020 • Bandcamp - James Murray - Shallows
Islands Alight • Quiet Details, 2026 • Bandcamp - Basic Channel - Radiance II (63% slower)
Chain Reaction, 1995 • Boomkat - Anthony Naples - Perix
In Studio Magic • ANS, 2026 • Bandcamp - La Marr - Good Magic
Mood Programs • Music From Memory, 2026 • Bandcamp - Rod Modell - Mediterranea II (Excerpt)
Mediterranea • 2016 • Echospace 313 - James A. Reeves - Crocodile Eye
Crocodile Eye • God Is All Mouth, 2026 - YL Hooi - Title
Untitled • Altered States Tapes, 2021 • Bandcamp - Aphex Twin - Tha (112.5% slower)
Selected Ambient Works • Apollo, 1992 • Bandcamp - Christopher Cross - Ride Like the Wind (Midnight Radio Mix)
Christopher Cross • 1979 • With thanks and apologies to M.
And if you're in the market for a nice place to catalogue and analyze your dreams, Dream Club is now up and running.
Thank you for listening.
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