# James A. Reeves
> James is a writer and designer in the Middle West who makes midnight mixtapes and writes about highways and the search for god.
Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).
## Pages
### About
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/about/
Last updated: 2026-09-01T17:45:22.000Z
## James A. Reeves is a writer and designer in the Middle West who makes [midnight mix tapes](https://jamesreeves.co/radio?ref=jamesreeves.co) and writes about faith in the digital age.
He worked in a gas station, was a terrible waiter at an Indian restaurant, ran a record label, was a partner at a design agency, and did a stint in law school before deciding he would rather dedicate his brief time on this planet to making things.
After traveling 50,000 miles along the back roads of America, his first book, [*The Road to Somewhere: An American Memoir*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-road-to-somewhere/), was published by W. W. Norton. His second book, [*The Manufactured History of Indianapolis*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-manufactured-history-of-indianapolis/), is a collection of myths about the city. His stories have appeared in [*Vol. 1 Brooklyn*](https://vol1brooklyn.com/2020/12/13/sunday-stories-the-greatest-show-on-earth/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and [*Heavy Feather Review*](https://heavyfeatherreview.org/2020/07/07/reeves/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
He often collaborates with the artist [Candy Chang](http://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) on installations that introduce new rituals into public space, including [*After the End*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/after-the-end/), a critic’s pick in [*The New York Times*](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/arts/design/art-gallery-shows-critics-picks.html?ref=jamesreeves.co). Together their work has been exhibited in the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the Rubin Museum of Art, the Mint Museum, and Annenberg Space for Photography.
James has taught courses in the history of art and the politics of design at Bard Early College, Pratt Institute, and Parsons School of Design, where he is an assistant professor. He was a 2022 Innovator-in-Residence at the American School in London, and he’s the founder and creative director of [Design/Context](https://designcontext.co/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
He’s lived and worked in New York City, Helsinki, Philadelphia, Lisbon, New Orleans, London, and Las Vegas before settling in [Columbus, Ohio](https://www.jamesreeves.co/why-am-i-in-ohio/), where he lives down the hall from his in-laws.
##### [Email](mailto:james@jamesreeves.co) • [Newsletter](https://www.jamesreeves.co/radio) • [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/jamesreeves.co?ref=jamesreeves.co)
#####
### Instructions for Myself
###
### Press
> “Memorial artworks are notoriously difficult to pull off. Yet Candy Chang and James A. Reeves, two New York artists who have created similar installations in the past, hit just the right tone with After the End, a participatory work in the Historic Chapel at Green-Wood Cemetery.”
> **THE NEW YORK TIMES**
> “The inspiration is so simple: Head out at random into America and see what you find. James A. Reeves found the America no one seems to be looking for anymore, and he also found himself.”
> **ROGER EBERT**
> “Through his photographs and candid, episodic storytelling, Reeves documents his experiences and the people he encounters in various regions of the United States, reflecting with uncommon honesty on both positive and negative aspects of the culture. Reeves’s obsession with driving long distances in rental cars is fueled by his search to figure out what it means to be an adult and to live a meaningful life in a complicated world."
> **PHOTOLIFE**
> “A tantalizing 21st-century cross between James Agee’s *Let Us Now Praise Famous Men* and Jack Kerouac’s *On the Road*, this remarkable and utterly original memoir heralds the arrival of a new and important American voice. James A. Reeves’s *The Road to Somewhere* will take you places you will not easily forget.”
> **ANDRE DUBUS III**
### Exhibitions
- [**The Nightly News**](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-nightly-news/)
Broad Museum · East Lansing, MI
The American School · London
- [**After the End**](https://www.jamesreeves.co/after-the-end/)
Historic Chapel at Green-Wood Cemetery · Brooklyn
- [**Light the Barricades**](https://www.jamesreeves.co/light-the-barricades/)
Annenberg Space for Photography · Los Angeles
Mint Museum · Charlotte, NC
- **A Monument for the Anxious and Hopeful**
Rubin Museum of Art · New York
- **Grief is a Beast That Will Never Be Tamed**
Lakkos Project · Heraklion, Greece
- **The Atlas of Tomorrow**
Mural Arts · Philadelphia
Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum · New York
### Books
- [**The Road to Somewhere: An American Memoir**](https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Road-to-Somewhere/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
W.W. Norton
- **The Manufactured History of Indianapolis**
We Are City / IUPUI
### Residencies
- **American School of London**
Innovator in Residence
- **Archipelago Art Residency**
Korpo, Finland
- **Hemera Foundation: Tending Space Fellowship**
Garrison, NY
- **Hangar Residency**
Lisbon, Portugal
- **NES Residency**
Skagastrond, Iceland
- **The Lakkos Residency**
Heraklion, Greece
### Current Clients
- [**3BL**](https://3bl.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Creative direction, design, and web development
- [**Lowell Institute**](https://lowellinstitute.org/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Creative direction, design, web development
- [**TriplePundit**](https://triplepundit.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Creative direction, design, web development
- [**Cambridge Forum**](https://cambridgeforum.org/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Creative direction, design, web development
- [**Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization**](https://csu.global/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Creative direction, design, web development
- [**C. Wall Architecture**](https://cwallarchitecture.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Design and web development
- [**Town of Atlantic Beach, North Carolina**](https://atlanticbeach-nc.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Creative direction, design, web development
### Colophon
Built with a custom Ghost theme that I’m forever tuning. The current typography is Bebas Neue Pro and IBM Plex. Much of my thinking on typesetting comes from [Butterick’s Practical Typography](https://practicaltypography.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
The [Midnight Radio](https://www.jamesreeves.co/radio) mixes are produced with a seven-year-old version of Ableton Live, lots of reverb, cassette loops made on a [Boss RC 30 pedal](https://www.boss.info/us/products/rc-30/?ref=jamesreeves.co), and occasional field recordings of [taiko drums](https://www.jamesreeves.co/destroyer-of-obstacles/) and [philosophical friends](https://www.jamesreeves.co/desire-is-a-demon/).
### Midnight Radio
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/radio/
Last updated: 2026-02-18T16:52:08.000Z
Night owls play a crucial role in the survival of animals that live in groups. These species fare better when some members watch over the others at night, a trait that has persisted from the ice and stone ages into this era of neon and sodium light. The [sentinel hypothesis](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28701566/?ref=jamesreeves.co) is a love poem to the long-haul truckers and security guards, the swing shift nurses and factory workers, the insomniac writers and music-makers. We are descendants of the honorable night watchman.
### Welcome, New Listener!
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/welcome/
Last updated: 2024-08-18T02:49:58.000Z
Thank you for your time and attention. Fresh dispatches arrive on the 1st and 15th of each month 'round midnight, and the request lines are open.
### Spite
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/spite/
Last updated: 2026-08-18T03:18:45.000Z
## Origin Story
Sometimes it’d be nice to go back. Before the internet poisoned our politics and stranded us in silos built by black box algorithms. Now more than ever, Adorno’s dictum rings true: we’re given “the freedom to choose what is always the same.”
So I decided to build an altar for the holy format of the MP3.
Renting music from Spotify is stupid and iTunes has become a sluggish beast. Other music players don’t work how I want. I craved a dead-simple widget that:
1. Allows me to share a library with [C](https://www.candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) so we can passive-aggressively delete songs from each other's playlists
2. Displays nice album artwork and doesn’t feel like managing a spreadsheet
3. Automatically sends playlists to my telephone before I go for a drive or a run and requires as little management as possible
4. Runs on bulletproof XML rather than proprietary mysteries in the ether
I asked some friends if they’d like to help me build this. They wished me luck. “To hell with them,” I told C. “I’ll build it anyway and destroy Spotify and Apple.” C smiled and said spite was an interesting reason to make something.
### Spite Privacy Policy
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/spite-terms-privacy/
Last updated: 2026-06-27T14:56:32.000Z
*Updated June 2026*
## Pricing
The macOS + iOS bundle is $10 via the App Store.
## Refunds + Support
Because Spite includes a 30-day free trial, most issues should be resolved before purchase or otherwise handled via the App Store. For technical support, contact james@jamesreeves.co.
## Privacy
Spite is a local music player. Your music files stay on your device.
#### Data Collection
Spite does not collect, store, or transmit your personal data to our servers.
#### Third-Party Services
**Last.fm Integration (Optional)**
If you enable Last.fm scrobbling:
- Your listening history (song title, artist, album, timestamp) is sent to Last.fm
- Last.fm stores this data according to [their privacy policy](https://www.last.fm/legal/privacy?ref=jamesreeves.co).
- You can disconnect Last.fm at any time in Settings
- Disconnecting stops all data transmission to Last.fm
**iCloud / Dropbox Sync (Optional).**
If you enable cloud sync:
- Your playlists and library metadata sync via your chosen provider
- Music files and playlists are stored in your personal cloud storage
- Spite does not have or want access to your cloud data
- iCloud: [https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/](https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- Dropbox: [https://www.dropbox.com/privacy](https://www.dropbox.com/privacy?ref=jamesreeves.co)
## Legal
By purchasing and using Spite ("the Software"), you agree to these terms.
#### License Grant
Your purchase grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use Spite on devices you own or control. This is a one-time purchase for lifetime use of the Software.
#### Updates
Software updates and bug fixes are provided free of charge.
#### No Warranty
The Software is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. While we strive to ensure Spite works reliably, we cannot guarantee it will be error-free or meet all your requirements.
#### Limitation of Liability
Midnight Radio LLC and James Reeves shall not be liable for any damages arising from the use or inability to use the Software, including but not limited to loss of data or business interruption.
#### Changes to Terms
We may update these terms occasionally. Continued use of the Software after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.
#### Governing Law
These terms are governed by the laws of the United States and the State of Ohio.
### Metal
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/metal/
Last updated: 2026-07-13T13:40:54.000Z
**Free for 30 days, then own it $5\. No subscriptions. No freemium bullshit**
I built Metal because the exercise apps I previously relied upon devolved into bloated garbage with dead-eyed AI coaches and greedy subscription models. Metal is simple: open an exercise, see what you did last time, and do it again or maybe a little heavier.
Each set shows the weight and reps from your previous session. Tap to log a new set, long-press to adjust it, and that's pretty much all this thing does, aside from some handsome bar graphs and a zen rest timer.
## Features
- **Easy logging.** Tap to mark it done. Long-press to fiddle with it on the fly.
- **Don't forget.** Every set box shows the weight and reps you did last time.
- **Rest timer.** Listen for the bell.
- **Plate math**. See which plates to load, including the 2.5s.
- **Notes.** Quickly add reminders and revelations to each exercise.
- **Charts.** See your progress (or lack thereof) over time.
- **Works offline, saves to your iCloud.** No servers and passwords.
- **Monthly updates.** I'm perpetually fiddling with this as I use it.
- **Apple Health integration.** Totally optional.
## Privacy
Metal collects nothing and is interested in nothing. Your data lives on your phone and your iCloud. No accounts, analytics, ads, or third-party nonsense.
Health data (body weight, workouts) stays inside Apple's HealthKit and it's only read or written with your permission.
Questions? Email james@jamesreeves.co.
## Posts
### How to Think About Dreams
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/how-to-think-about-dreams/
Last updated: 2026-09-06T02:29:19.000Z
*In the aesthetic dimension of vision and dream, the question in itself is an answer.*
—[J.F. Martel](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9781541607248?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### 1
All streaks come to an end, at least if good sense prevails. For the first time in two years and 52 episodes, I missed my Midnight Radio filing deadline because I went to Montreal and came home with a Canadian Death Flu. When I woke at dusk after sleeping *seventeen hours*, my first impulse was to knock out a half-assed episode before midnight. But if writing isn't fun for me, it's even worse for the reader. Especially if it's composed through the fog of a high fever.
Several years ago, I made an obnoxious comment to someone I admired about how I'd meditated so-and-so many days in a row. He smiled politely. "Now I want you to skip a day." And so I learned that habits should never become attachments, let alone fetishes. Non-practice is my practice, aimlessness is nirvana, and there are no straight lines in the universe. Only waves.
Let it go.
But I'm pretty sure I know who got me sick. In Montreal, [C.](https://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and I attended Mutek for the first time. My favorite thing in the world is to look at new things with C., and we saw—and heard—so much good art. It was a rare treat to sit in a concert hall, close my eyes, and *listen* to heavyweight sounds from artists like Fennesz and Voices From the Lake. We also got to properly meet October's Special Midnight Radio Guest (but let's live in the mystery).
Now my head is soaked in new inspiration. And congestion. Because while sitting on a concrete floor in a dark room for an experimental film screening, a young woman covered in tiny tattoos blew into a handkerchief. I inched over, not wanting to inherit her air. But who carries a handkerchief in the 21st century? When I looked again to confirm, she stood up, coughed on my head, and snuffled off into the dark. She was like an assassin. As an American, I am certainly not blameless for the state of the world, but there must be more worthy targets.
So I apologize for leaving you bereft of Midnight Radio for five days. There are more mea culpas to come tonight, but first I want to tell you about the revelations I had while drifting in and out of feverish sleep.
### 2
Over the past year, my relationship with dreams has been enhanced by countless spirited discussions with C. and [Marty](https://martinessig.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). Here's where I stand this evening:
- Dreams are the membrane between the logical mind and the mysterious intentions of the universe. They are not therapeutic tools for self-improvement or whatever today's grifters and faith dealers are selling. They are portals.
- Better yet, dreams should be approached like a work of art. Like the statue in this episode's cover art: a barely humanoid form, its body stretched as it plunges down into this world. "No, it looks like he's ascending," said C. Art's resistance to a fixed interpretation, how it flits between sensations, is the point.
- Lately I've been falling asleep while [Professor Brian Cox](https://www.bbcearth.com/shows/universe?ref=jamesreeves.co) tells me about the universe at 65% speed. Somehow I manage to doze off while learning the universe has a skeleton. But black holes keep me awake. Until now, I thought an event horizon was [the scariest, most cursed movie](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/event-horizon-1997?ref=jamesreeves.co) ever made. But apparently it's where time stops, objects vanish, and space does not exist. I think this is where dreams come from.
- Dreams are [the godhead of reverb](https://www.jamesreeves.co/five-early-autumn-classics/), and dub techno in particular, the way a rhythm slowly emerges like something dredged up from the deep. Which is tonight's soundtrack.
### 3
It's been a humbling week. A few days ago, a Very Kind Listener emailed to ask, very politely, if I could send him better-sounding versions of my mixes. I was about to fire off a salty response, but thankfully I remembered [my first rule](https://www.jamesreeves.co/instructions/): *Wait an hour, preferably two.* So I spent this time investigating, and soon I was reacquainted with the whiplash feeling of thinking I'm right when it turns out I'm colossally wrong. The popular podcast widget I've been using was compressing my files into 96 kilobits of crunchy monoaural garbage. Man, I had no idea.
So I spent my days of convalescence rewiring this situation via a classier service called [Transistor](https://midnightradio.transistor.fm/?ref=jamesreeves.co) that promises to serve Midnight Radio in 320kbps stereo like God intended. And if you'd like to upgrade any episodes, I dumped them all [here for easy listening and downloading](https://midnightradio.jamesreeves.co/traxx/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
I apologize to all of Midnight Radio’s Special Guests this year whose thoughtful selections were squashed into mono. You are such good sports. And to everyone who suffered through trashy audio files, I am sorry. The fact that you're still here means a lot to me. And while I'm at it, I might as well apologize for future embarrassments and glitches. With luck, Midnight Radio will always be a learning process.
### 4
Now for some deep listening inspired by my Mutek experience and subsequent recovery from [Canadian Death Flu™](https://bsky.app/profile/crompsy.com/post/3mulizbvgys25?ref=jamesreeves.co). I selected some songs that patiently unwind themselves, starting with a portion of a glorious cv313 set. Of all the drum patterns in this world, this is one of my favorites. Then a gear-shift into a late summer Japanese pastoral that blurs into the heartbeat chug of a Fennesz epic. There's also some lovely bottomless drone from the new Windy & Carl album, a bit of Sisters of Mercy, two different dream moods from Donato Dozzy, and a dusting of Roy Orbison.
I've also been learning how to fold my sheets of reverb a little more nicely with returns, sends, damping, and a [snazzy plugin](https://valhalladsp.com/shop/reverb/valhalla-vintage-verb/?ref=jamesreeves.co) that [Earl](https://www.jamesreeves.co/open-the-door-of-the-cosmos/) recommended. Hopefully this one's worth the wait.
Thank you for listening.
1. **cv313 - Forever in the Sky** \[Excerpt\]
*Plays Sequential Space* • Echospace, 2025 • [Bandcamp](https://echospace313.bandcamp.com/album/plays-sequential-space-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Tomo Katsurada and Jonny Nash - Anone None**
*At The Emerald Pool* • Melody as Truth, 2026 • [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/at-the-emerald-pool?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Fennesz - In My Room**
*Agora* • Touch, 2019 • [Bandcamp](https://fenneszreleases.bandcamp.com/album/agora?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Donato Dozzy - Vaporware 01**
*Plays Bee Mask* • Spectrum Spools, 2013 • [Bandcamp](https://spectrumspools.bandcamp.com/album/plays-bee-mask?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Windy & Carl with Optigan Conservatory - Coast Starlight**
*Windy & Carl Meet Optigan Conservatory* • Kranky, 2026 • [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/windy-carl-meet-optigan-conservatory?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **Sisters of Mercy - Neverland** \[Midnight Radio Edit\]
*Floodland* • Merciful Release, 1987
7. **Donato Dozzy - Velluto**
*Magda* • Spazio Disponibile, 2024 • [Bandcamp](https://donatodozzy.bandcamp.com/album/magda?ref=jamesreeves.co)
8. **Variant - Flux Reprise (Live in Ann Arbor)** \[Excerpt\]
*Dreaming Thru Vector* • Echospace, 2015 • [Bandcamp](https://echospace313.bandcamp.com/album/dreaming-thru-vector-reprise?ref=jamesreeves.co)
#### [Download](https://media.transistor.fm/4030a064/bd101b0e.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) • [Podcast](https://midnightradio.transistor.fm/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
The first draft of this episode
Oh, and a brand new version of [our Dream Club widget](https://thedream.club/?ref=jamesreeves.co) is available. It's getting weirder.
[The first God Is All Mouth video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo3%5FXUq085c&ref=jamesreeves.co) is now broadcasting.
And I just noticed the Tchitcheri Sakwa Ancestor Figure on this episode's cover would be an ideal companion for [the Venus of Willendorf in Episode 49](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-shimmer/).
### Normal Headlines
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/normal-headlines/
Last updated: 2026-08-31T16:49:05.000Z
I can't deal with the New York Times anymore. I want to scan for information, not wade through clickbait horseshit like "How This Will Ruin Everything" or "This Vegetable Might Kill You."
So I made [this page that generates matter-of-fact headlines](https://normalheadlines.jamesreeves.co/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
### The Return of the Gods
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-return-of-the-gods/
Last updated: 2026-08-31T16:25:42.000Z
The first God Is All Mouth video is now haunting the Information Superhighway: a breakneck journey from ancient storm gods to the development of pantheons, monotheism, and alienation—and maybe we’re heading back to the zone of mystical imagination.
Made with [Martin Essig](https://www.martinessig.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) using original soundtrack and photography, public domain artwork, and licensed footage. No AI.
### Crocodile Eye
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/crocodile-eye-carthage/
Last updated: 2026-08-18T02:14:17.000Z
I made [two songs](https://jamesreeves.bandcamp.com/album/crocodile-eye?ref=jamesreeves.co) this month made while writing and painting and learning about minor chords.
The title track comes from a wild dream I had about killing a digital crocodile by carving an ancient glyph into its eye, and it contains a looped bit from the three-thousand-year-old Maitri Upanishad read by Paul Casselle in [episode 14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlMpxUYKTcU&list=PLR7yrLMHm11X6-M%5FusCj5H-gdstyWNLXQ&index=17&t=1792s&ref=jamesreeves.co) of Paul Cooper's excellent *Fall of Civilizations* series.
> Now the part of him which belongs to darkness, that is called Rudra. That part of him which belongs to obscurity, that is called Brahma. That part of him which belongs to goodness, that is called Vishnu.
>
> He being one becomes three, becomes eight, becomes eleven, becomes twelve, becomes infinite. Because he thus came to be, he is the being, he moves about, having entered all beings, he has become the Lord of all beings.
>
> That is the soul within and without, yes, within and without.
The B-side is dedicated to my fascination with [Carthage](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9781324123279?ref=jamesreeves.co), which is such a heartbreak, and includes samples of friends breathing, Middle Western traffic, and television static.
[Crocodile Eye by James A. Reeves](https://jamesreeves.bandcamp.com/album/crocodile-eye?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### A Torchlight Shining at the Bastards
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-torchlight-shining-at-the-bastards/
Last updated: 2026-09-02T18:31:42.000Z
*Every showing is full of secrets.*
–Julian of Norwich, 1373
### 1
I'm going to let go of any intentions for this episode and simply follow the path of coincidence because I'm exhausted and my muscles ache. I spent last night pulling everything out of the storage unit in our parking garage, which flooded after a derecho blew across the Midwest this week. I schlepped giant canvases, copies of an unpopular book I wrote, Christmas ornaments, and boxes of god only knows so I could put all of this stuff on plastic risers. For the next once-in-a-lifetime storm. Because there will be more.
It was like a metaphor came to life, suddenly being forced to deal with all the riff-raff I thought I'd hidden away. As I tossed soaked upholstery into a dumpster and frowned at piles of dead electronics, I pondered what I might write for this episode, which tonight's special guest suggested calling *A Torchlight Shining at the Bastards*. What does a title like that need? I wondered. Then I found the lamp.
### 2
For decades, this brass pirate lamp stood on a workbench in my grandfather's basement that smelled of spider poison and Saginaw Bay. I was afraid of it when I was small, perhaps sensing it was a relic from a different world, unable to imagine it would become part of mine.
My grandfather inherited it from Queenie and Hazel, his spinster aunts. They said Hazel bought it at a Detroit pawn shop in the early 1900s. They said a lot of things about Queenie and Hazel. Like that they hopped a fence and walked across a military airstrip in Kalamazoo, determined to register as nurses in World War I. When a man tried to kiss Hazel, they said Queenie grabbed her rifle and chased him down the street. She fired off a couple shots in some versions of the tale.
The pirate watched over my grandfather's basement for decades, switched on whenever he went downstairs to putter in his woodshop, where he produced vases and bookends. He sold most of his belongings before he moved to a retirement home. But he brought his lamp with him.
To help residents locate their rooms, the nursing staff encouraged each patient to place a memento on a shelf next to each door. Plastic flowers, birthday cards, family snapshots, and woodland figurines lined the halls because it's easier to remember a picture of your grandchild than room 27B. My grandfather placed his lamp outside his door, where it threatened the tiny shelf with its brass weight, the pirate looking like he might murder the neighbor's ceramic chipmunk. Some of the residents complained. When my grandfather asked my opinion, I told him I loved it. "Good man," he said. "I think it classes up the place."
He taped my name beneath the lamp before he died, and I'd forgotten it was in our storage unit. As I installed it on my desk, I could hear him saying *good man, let's shine a light on these bastards*.
### 3
I'm not quite sure how I crossed paths with [Michael Donaldson](https://8sided.blog/8sided-about/?ref=jamesreeves.co), which is one of the delightful effects of the internet we once knew, the way people would bleed into our lives, maybe starting with a stray comment on a blog or a social media encounter, but there was the very real sense of sending out a signal that could attract fellow travelers. And Michael is a steady and welcome presence on my screens. (Find him on [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/8sided.blog?ref=jamesreeves.co), [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@qburns?ref=jamesreeves.co), and [Letterboxd](https://letterboxd.com/8sided/?ref=jamesreeves.co).)
He's turned me on to countless new sounds and broadened my tastes, and his commitment to championing creative goodness now arrives at scale via his publication, [*The Tonearm*](https://www.thetonearm.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
He even went out of his way to arrange for me to interview one of my all-time music heroes, who then completely flaked. But that's what the best heroes do. They teach us to kill the Buddha in the middle of the street. And so:
### 4
*Do you believe in a god or any spiritual dimension to the universe?*
"Does it matter?"
"I know that feels flippant, but I don't mean it that way. It's just that I don't know that I'd behave differently knowing than I do *not* knowing, and there's no way to be sure of anything anyway. All I have is an interpretation of my perception. I think, therefore I am—fine. But what is that? These thoughts could be the fever dream of a caterpillar sitting on a leaf. They could be one expression of a consciousness that exists collectively in everything. Maybe the nerds are right, and I'm the center of a simulation, [*World on a Wire*](https://www.criterion.com/films/27742-world-on-a-wire?ref=jamesreeves.co) style, which is honestly the most tangible argument for a god I've heard. There's no escaping this dream within a dream, as Poe had it, and I've made my peace with that."
"I've also been thinking about John Keats's idea of negative capability. In an 1817 letter to his brothers, Keats describes a person 'capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.' Yeah, I should probably steer clear of any irritable reaching. It's also tempting to say that the mystery is god, that god is the churn of the cosmos in random directions, but I don't think that's right. A god would be part of the churn, subject to the uncertainty like everything else."
"If perception is king, then it's my job to imagine the world I want to live in, and bring it about as best I can. That's tough work—I don't think humanity is innately good and thus isn't much help. For one thing, factory farming exists and is tolerated, which settles the humanity question for me. If you really dig into it, there's very little that humanity contributes to this universe that's a net positive. Two things come to mind, though. One is the asking itself, philosophy, the fact that anyone bothers with a question like yours. The other is art."
"Art is what survives us. When we look at a civilization gone for thousands of years, we marvel at its art before anything else, and that art is how we come to know those people. It's how we understand where we live and who we're living among. And I guess that's the feeling that inspires [*The Tonearm*](https://www.thetonearm.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). The world I want to live in encourages the making of art, the consumption of it, and the understanding of it. That's as pure a way to connect as we have. It's a resistance against the darkness, a torchlight shining at the bastards."
"Art makes no promise that things improve (spoiler: there's a good chance they won't). It's a shared recognition of existence, which is a means of connection, perhaps a means of hope, and most of all a means of expressing this unknowable universe. And that brings us back to my answer to the original question: I don't think the yes-or-no of a god matters much. Yet whatever passes between a person and a work of art might be that same question in a form we can use, arriving as insight, feeling, sympathy, and empathy rather than an answer."
"So we need more people talking about art, more people talking about philosophy, and best of all more people bringing the two together. Despite the dispiriting reports about online journalism and music criticism, *The Tonearm* is having those conversations, adding more people to its cohort every week. It's going great. It's fun. And there is so much great art, music, and writing out there—as negative as I can be about 'the wretchedness,' being swallowed up in the culture keeps me resilient and ready for battle."
"The songs I've collected for this edition of *Midnight Radio* carry some of these feelings, I think. They've all got an air of wondering and wandering, curiosity, and unanswered questions. A few might conjure that pull you feel in your stomach as you turn into a philosophical creature, something mysterious swelling up, a little melancholic and somehow uplifting at the same time. Enjoy."
### 5
Given Michael's omnivorous taste, I wasn't sure what to expect, and the dozen songs he sent me remain unexpected. It's a delightfully eclectic mix of old favorites and exciting new sounds that immediately reminded me of [the Electrifying Mojo](https://www.jamesreeves.co/mojo/), whose broadcasts fused funk, new wave, classical, and electro into new creatures. So I dusted this set with a few clips of Mojo—and to bring our lights full circle, let's do as he says: *If you’re in your car, I want you to flash your lights. If you’re sitting on the porch, blink your porch light. I want you to show some solidarity tonight.*
1. **David Sylvian - Preparations for a Journey**
*Alchemy: An Index Of Possibilities* • Virgin, 1985 • [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/alchemy-an-index-of-possibilities?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Caterina Barbieri & Bendik Giske - Intuition, Nimbus**
*At Source* • Light Years, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://caterinabarbieri.bandcamp.com/album/at-source?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Cinna Peyghamy - Glass Teeth 94**
*Music For Tombak & Synth* • Other People, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://cinnapey.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-tombak-synth?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Andy Stott - Luxury Problems**
*Luxury Problems* • Modern Love, 2012 • [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/luxury-problems?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Sylvester - I Need Somebody to Love Tonight**
*Stars* • Fantasy, 1979
6. **Agile Experiments - Mysteries**
*Havana* • None More Records, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://davederosemusic.bandcamp.com/album/havana?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **King Tubby & Yabby U - Tubby’s Vengeance** (48% slower)
*Conquering Lion* • Prophecy, 1975
8. **Q-Burns Abstract Message - Uncertain T** (52% slower)
*Mixed Emotions: Jazz In The Eighth Dimension Volume One* • Eighth Dimension Records, 1995
9. **Radwan Moumneh & Frédéric D. Oberland - Walked and Walked سار و سار**
*Eternal Life No End ليلة ظلماء ملعونة، كحياة طالبيها* • Constellation, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://rgmfdo.bandcamp.com/track/walked-and-walked?ref=jamesreeves.co)
10. **Tim Hecker - Music of the Air**
*Love Streams* • 4AD, 2016 • [Bandcamp](https://timhecker.bandcamp.com/album/love-streams?ref=jamesreeves.co)
11. **Cabaret Voltaire - Landslide** (47% slower)
*Red Mecca* • Rough Trade, 1981
12. **Chrome - New Age**
*Red Exposure* • Beggars Banquet, 1980 • [Bandcamp](https://chromemusic.bandcamp.com/album/red-exposure?ref=jamesreeves.co)
#### [Download](https://media.transistor.fm/cd258849/59d5d9c6.mp3?download=true&src=player&ref=jamesreeves.co) • [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co)
And I hope Michael can abide how much I've slowed down one of his own productions, the Q-Burns cut from '95—I love how it lopes along and shivers the trunk. But Michael knew what he was getting into. Last week he shared my favorite comment about Midnight Radio, which I will print and hang above my pirate lamp:
[](https://bsky.app/profile/8sided.blog/post/3msgwyghoxs2y?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Some breaking news:
- Dream Club now has [an exciting global index](https://thedream.club/dream-index?ref=jamesreeves.co). Here in the Middle West, we're dreaming about art while Australians dream about nature and New Yorkers are haunted by shadows. [Join the fun!](https://thedream.club/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- I have [a new favorite chili oil](https://www.jamesreeves.co/chili-oil/) after [my friend P](https://panthealee.substack.com/) convinced me to stop dismissing the flakes.
- [Spite](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spite-music-player/id6757397964?ref=jamesreeves.co) continues to improve and now offers seasonal listening reports. You can also advertise your good taste by [sharing mixtape tracklists](https://spite.jamesreeves.co/m/lost-futures-new-spirituals?ref=jamesreeves.co) with built-in Boomkat and Bandcamp links.
- [I made two songs](https://jamesreeves.bandcamp.com/album/crocodile-eye?ref=jamesreeves.co) inspired by an eerie dream about a crocodile and my love for [*Fall of Civilizations*](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR7yrLMHm11X6-M%5FusCj5H-gdstyWNLXQ&ref=jamesreeves.co).
Thank you for listening.
### Thirty Years of Monsters
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/thirty-years-of-monsters/
Last updated: 2026-08-03T17:19:57.000Z
The announcement came over loudspeakers: There would be another thirty years of monsters. We would be stuck in their muck while they battled and it would be painful. But we could fast-forward if we chose.
You could pay to see what you'd be like in the future so you could decide if you wanted to fast-forward. She wanted to do it. I didn’t.
### Air Conditioning
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/air-conditioning/
Last updated: 2026-09-02T18:41:30.000Z
### 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](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9781681378244?ref=jamesreeves.co)’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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlMpxUYKTcU&ref=jamesreeves.co) 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.
1. **Training Chamber - Senza Corpo**
*Triple Mirror* • Downwards, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://trainingchamber.bandcamp.com/album/triple-mirror?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Mnemonics - Depths**
*Mnemonic Devices* • Workshop Records, 2025 • [Bandcamp](https://lowtec-workshop-records.bandcamp.com/album/mnemonic-devices?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **HTRK - Dying**
*Lilac* • Ghostly International, 2020 • [Bandcamp](https://htrk.bandcamp.com/album/lilac?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **James Murray - Shallows**
*Islands Alight* • Quiet Details, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://quietdetails.bandcamp.com/album/islands-alight?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Basic Channel - Radiance II** (63% slower)
Chain Reaction, 1995 • [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/radiance-i-ii?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **Anthony Naples - Perix**
*In Studio Magic* • ANS, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://anthonynaples.bandcamp.com/album/in-studio-magic?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **La Marr - Good Magic**
*Mood Programs* • Music From Memory, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://music-from-memory.bandcamp.com/album/rainsong?ref=jamesreeves.co)
8. **Rod Modell - Mediterranea II** (Excerpt)
*Mediterranea* • 2016 • [Echospace 313](https://echospace313.com/rod-modell?ref=jamesreeves.co)
9. **James A. Reeves - Crocodile Eye**
*Crocodile Eye* • God Is All Mouth, 2026
10. **YL Hooi - Title**
*Untitled* • Altered States Tapes, 2021 • [Bandcamp](https://ylhooi.bandcamp.com/album/untitled-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
11. **Aphex Twin - Tha** (112.5% slower)
*Selected Ambient Works •* Apollo, 1992 • [Bandcamp](https://apollorecords.bandcamp.com/album/selected-ambient-works-85-92?ref=jamesreeves.co)
12. **Christopher Cross - Ride Like the Wind** (Midnight Radio Mix)
*Christopher Cross* • 1979 • With thanks and apologies to [M](https://www.martinessig.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
And if you're in the market for a nice place to catalogue and analyze your dreams, [Dream Club ](https://thedream.club/?ref=jamesreeves.co)is now up and running.
Thank you for listening.
#### [Download](https://media.transistor.fm/0bf53f5e/a39b8176.mp3?download=true&src=player&ref=jamesreeves.co) • [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?i=1000779484765&ref=jamesreeves.co)
The first draft of this episode.
### Open the Door of the Cosmos
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/open-the-door-of-the-cosmos/
Last updated: 2026-09-02T18:46:27.000Z
Earl and his truck
### 1
But I'm still [thinking about beauty](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-shimmer/), how it is incidental and cannot be contrived. Perhaps this is why I've suddenly become obsessed by the loose strangeness of Leonardo Da Vinci's *Adoration of Magi*, which I recently re-encountered in [a Ken Burns documentary](https://kenburns.com/films/leonardo-da-vinci/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
*La pittura è mentale*, Da Vinci said. Painting is a mental phenomenon. A few roughly sketched lines can evoke an entire world behind the viewer's eyes, but Da Vinci was more interested in the interior worlds of the faces on the canvas. He understood that emotion drives form.
"You must wander around," he wrote, "and constantly as you go, observe, note, and consider the circumstances and behavior of men as they talk, quarrel, laugh, or fight together. Make brief sketches in a notebook, for the movements of bodies are so infinite that the memory is incapable of retaining them. So keep these sketches as your guides and masters."
Da Vinci's sketches of laughter and bickering in Florence's piazzas guided his [*Adoration*](https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/leonardo-adoration-of-the-magi?ref=jamesreeves.co). He was not interested in the presentation of Christ—he wanted to capture the *reaction* to the sudden appearance of the divine. Here are some of my favorite details:
There's a river of thinly painted figures, spectral among the yellow. The kings who worship at the infant's feet look humbled and reverent, but also haunted. Even the horses appear unsettled, ready to trample. I've counted at least fifty expressions in this painting, some richly shadowed and others brought to life by only a few lines. There is devotion, yes, but also overwhelm, disbelief, and maybe even fear on these faces.
And me? How would I react?
Hard to say. Although I feel like an alien whenever I enter a church, I admire how it shapes grief into a dignified spectacle. Swinging pots of incense and shuddering organs. Elaborate fabric and voices echoing across stone. Leonard Cohen was right when he said religion is the greatest work of art.
After two and a half years of struggling with his *Adoration*, Da Vinci abandoned it and went to Milan. I think it is his most beautiful painting because it is not finished.
### 2
When describing the trajectory of art, [John Berger](https://aeon.co/essays/john-bergers-ways-of-seeing-and-his-search-for-home?ref=jamesreeves.co) once said, "Tradition wins in the end." I'm not yet sure if this is true.
My grandmother's funeral took place in the same church where she was baptized in 1918\. "Her life was coherent," the priest said as he swung a censer over her coffin. He was right. Although I did not know her well, my grandmother was tradition personified. Strictly westside Polish. Kielbasa and cabbage on Sundays, and fried smelt on Fridays. She had a succession of nine black Scottish terriers, each named Mitsy, and she lived in the same house for 75 years with the same furniture arrangement.
Here's a snapshot of my mom with her brothers circa 1960\. On the back of the photo, my grandmother's spindly handwriting insists that "the smudges in this picture are on the film and *not* my living room." Half a century went by and the only thing that changed was the size of the television screen.
My life is not coherent. Choices compound and I will never have deep roots or generational memory. Fifteen years ago, a book reviewer called me "a perpetual interloper," and this phrase lingers because it's true. I crave novelty and flux, and I do not know if this reflects some inner discomfort or an ease with the world.
Perhaps like painting, beauty is also mental, and the best I can do is increase my capacity to recognize it.
### 3
The ability to find beauty, both backwards and forwards, is something I've learned from tonight's Very Special Guest, my friend Earl Carlson, who I've known in New Orleans, New York, and now the Middle West. Every month we challenge each other's taste by trading five songs based on themes like "camp" and "death". He's always fiddling with surprising projects and making [genre-blurred music](https://kikikisound.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co), such as [this magnificent track](https://soundcloud.com/kikiki-186154667/snowblow?ref=jamesreeves.co) that soundtracked my [night flight to Vienna](https://www.jamesreeves.co/night-flight-to-vienna/). (Here's his [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/kikiki%5F%5Fmusic?ref=jamesreeves.co), but like everyone else in my life, I'm harassing him to use Bluesky instead; maybe he'll start doing things there if you [follow him](https://bsky.app/profile/kikikimusic.bsky.social?ref=jamesreeves.co).)
Earl owns a pickup truck, enjoys telling me about professional wrestling, and almost every time we speak, he offers an observation about friendship or creativity that leaves me a little misty-eyed. When I asked him the Official Midnight Radio Question, he responded with a poem, which caught me off guard because I did not know Earl wrote poetry. And so: "Do you believe in god or any spiritual dimension to the universe?"
*I’ve found my way to the river again*
*last winter I fell through the ice*
*many springs ago I couldn’t climb*
*up your muddy banks*
*so I let you carry me through the rapids*
*down towards your swimming holes*
*do you start or end*
*some nights I wonder of all the struggle*
*you’ve seen and caused*
*the wildfires licking at your hips*
*making ash of plans*
*I wonder of your torrents and your seasons*
*where nothing but cracked earth lay*
*baptisms and skinny dipping*
*and rainbow trout*
*we have seen and been*
### 4
I do not understand poetry, so I asked Earl to explain his poem to me even though I know you're not supposed to do this. He sighed with the very specific mixture of exasperation and love that makes a friendship worthwhile. A few hours later, I received this explication of what we will hear tonight:
“So the gist of this is we start in a weird cosmic but grounded space that feels familiar but a bit strange. It's techno. It's dancy. It's leftfield. But also comfortable. It's our vibe right now. Or my vibe right now. I've always tried to make things that impress my friends, that resonate with my friends, but I also struggle with making 'normal' music. I find myself getting frustrated with the output. It's never quite what I hope it'll be. The artists in the first section of tonight's mix seem to be finding their own spaces. Things that feel real."
"I moved back to southeastern Michigan a couple years ago, and I think a lot about Berlin's techno scene being added to the UNESCO world heritage list—this feels like the erasure of something important, while honoring something else important."
"This year I tried my hand at making dub techno, but I struggled to be engaged. I found myself asking *why?* Why am I using this minor chord—what's beneath this? These subtle drums—am I making muzak or am I making something that sings?"
"Ras G passed away, and it hit home—not because I loved him, but because I recognized he was in our lineage: an SP-404 and a belief he could ride with the ancestors if he sampled them just right. Carlos Niño is doing the same but through a different lens, which tapped into something here. Mandré was a new find for me, from 1977, a decade before I was born, but he's here in the lineage. And my god, [Gil Scott](https://magazine.waxpoetics.com/article/the-groundbreaking-1971-debut-of-brian-jackson-and-gil-scott-heron/?ref=jamesreeves.co)—this is the despair that sits as a partner to the cosmos. Any minority voice knows that despair, rage, anger, hopelessness is part and parcel along with the expansive hope and possibility of the cosmos. [Black Atlantis](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/25/drexciya-how-afrofuturism-inspired-calls-for-an-ocean-memorial-to-slavery?ref=jamesreeves.co)."
"Cannibal Ox was my first touch of this vein, this river, this experience. It was them or Binary Star—I didn't know that rap could sound like this, or maybe that music could feel like this. These two projects were the doors for me. This mix is an answer to the question of whether I believe in god or any spiritual dimension to the universe."
"The written answer is: *I don't know*. What I do know is that stepping into this river, feeling the current—it feels right. For the first time, it feels like I'm part of a lineage. It's the horrors, it's the sorrow, it's the pain, it's a country, a separate lineage telling us that we aren't enough, that we need to show up differently. It's the joy, it's the community, it's the knowledge that my ancestors are singing spirituals, and before that singing in languages I don't know. It's knowing that after me there will be more."
"I know that I was raised looking up to a white Christ with a pastor telling me I'm born with sin. I looked for my own answers, searching desperately for meaning. Only now, as I raise my own part of this lineage am I starting to feel settled with the answer of 'I don't know but I want to swim in this river.'"
### 5
Tonight there will be no extravagant sheets of reverb or uncomfortably long slow-motion songs. Something gave me the sense that I should leave Earl's mix alone. Perhaps because there's such a strong sense of a rarefied vision within this sequence of songs. Or maybe because Earl sent me a fully mixed audio file and said, "You should leave it alone."
He's right. Sometimes there's nothing to do but step aside and let the music play.
1. **JakoJako & Rødhåd - Passeri/Helonias**
*In Vere* • WSNWG, 2022 • [Bandcamp](https://rodhad.bandcamp.com/album/in-vere-wsnwg009?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Lyder - Brack**
*Weird.fishes* • tunnel.visions, 2025 • [Bandcamp](https://lyder.bandcamp.com/album/weird-fishes?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Rrose - Rib Cage**
*Please Touch* • Eaux, 2023 • [Bandcamp](https://rrose.bandcamp.com/album/please-touch?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Skee Mask - Session Add**
*Compro* • Ilian Tape, 2018 • [Bandcamp](https://iliantape.bandcamp.com/album/itlp04-compro?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Polygonia - Ceaseless Motion**
*Ceaseless Motion* • Timedance, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://polygonia.bandcamp.com/album/ceaseless-motion?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **The Upsetters - Super Ape**
*Super Ape* • Black Ark, 1976
7. **Prince Far I & The Arabs - Final Chapter/Shake the Nation**
*Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Chapter III* • Daddy Kool, 1980 • [Bandcamp](https://pressuresounds.bandcamp.com/album/cry-tuff-dub-encounter-chapter-3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
8. **Ras G - Been Cosmic**
*Back on the Planet* • Brainfeeder, 2013 • [Bandcamp](https://brainfeeder.bandcamp.com/album/back-on-the-planet?ref=jamesreeves.co)
9. **Sun Ra & His Arkestra - Door of the Cosmos**
*Sleeping Beauty* • El Saturn, 1979 • [Bandcamp](https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/sleeping-beauty-expanded?ref=jamesreeves.co)
10. **Carlos Niño & Friends - It's All Happening!** (featuring Madlib, Jamire Williams and Dexter Story with strings by Miguel Atwood-Ferguson)
*Flutes, Echoes, It's All Happening!* • Stones Throw, 2016 • [Bandcamp](https://carlosnino.bandcamp.com/album/flutes-echoes-its-all-happening?ref=jamesreeves.co)
11. **Mandré - Solar Flight (Opus I)**
*Mandré* • Motown, 1977
12. **Gil Scott-Heron - Home Is Where the Hatred Is**
*Pieces of a Man* • Flying Dutchman Records, 1971 • [Wax Poetics](https://magazine.waxpoetics.com/article/the-groundbreaking-1971-debut-of-brian-jackson-and-gil-scott-heron/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
13. **Cannibal Ox - Iron Galaxy**
*The Cold Vein •* Definitive Jux, 2021
14. **Binary Star - Reality Check**
*Masters of the Universe* • 2020 • [Bandcamp](https://onebelo.bandcamp.com/album/masters-of-the-universe-2025-remastered?ref=jamesreeves.co)
15. **Wata Igarashi - Mineral**
*Mastery Quantum Sound* • Houndstooth, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://houndstoothlabel.bandcamp.com/album/mastery-quantum-sound?ref=jamesreeves.co)
16. **Vince Staples and Lil Baby - East Point Prayer** (Vocals only)
*Ramona Park Broke My Heart* • 2022
17. **Erykah Badu - Out of My Mind, Just in Time** (Vocals only)
*New Amerykah, Part Two (Return of the Ankh)* • 2010
#### [Download](https://media.transistor.fm/8988d2aa/9aa421e5.mp3?download=true&src=player&ref=jamesreeves.co) • [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?i=1000776999785&ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Byung-Chul Han
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/byung-chul-han/
Last updated: 2026-07-06T18:39:48.000Z
[*The Agony of Eros*](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9780262533379?ref=jamesreeves.co) was my first encounter with [Han's philosophy](https://aeon.co/essays/thought-tinkering-the-korean-german-philosopher-byung-chul-han?ref=jamesreeves.co), and I was especially struck by his argument that, despite being a trendy thing to say at dinner parties, capitalism is very much *not* a religion.
> Every religion operates with both debt (guilt) *and* relief (pardon). But capitalism only works with debt and default. It offers no possibility for atonement, which would free the debtor from liability. The impossibility of mitigation and atonement also accounts for the achievement-subject's depression. Together with burnout, depression represent an unredeemable failure of ability—that is, it amounts to *psychic insolvency*.
Thank you, [Marty](https://martinessig.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co), for introducing me to Han. And thank you, kind stranger who wedged my copy of this book into concrete so I could retrieve it after discovering it fell out of my pocket on an incredibly windy day.
### The Shimmer
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-shimmer/
Last updated: 2026-09-02T18:49:49.000Z
### 1
Nine years ago, I was unexpectedly alone in Rome so I spent the day at the [Barberini](https://barberinicorsini.org/en/palazzo-barberini/?ref=jamesreeves.co), where I consumed so much Bernini and Caravaggio that my brain was stunned into silence by all that fleshy marble and bloody oil. When I reemerged into daylight, something shimmered at the edge of my vision, a glittery squiggle that had not been there before.
The shimmer became a swirl that shrouded my sight like when the horizon appears to boil, a mirage that Italian sailors called *vecchie signore che balla*: old ladies dancing. Navigating a motorcycle-infested Roman piazza is difficult under the best conditions, and now I was helpless, alone in a strange city and unable to see. I collapsed into a café chair and waited to find out if I would go blind. This was my first [visual migraine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintillating%5Fscotoma?ref=jamesreeves.co), but my first thought was *I've seen too much beauty today.*
### 2
Strange that beauty can be sinister. A dare or a test. As if madness might come if one looks or lingers too long.
Jeff VanderMeer's [*Annihilation*](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9781250824042?ref=jamesreeves.co) is a story about beauty. So is Alex Garland's [film version](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/annihilation-2018?ref=jamesreeves.co). Both confront an ambiguous horror, alternately called the Crawler and the Shimmer, that exists beyond comprehension. As the narrator, a biologist, journeys toward its center, she encounters a landscape so plush and green it troubles the mind. Sort of like how summer starts to feel a little obscene. The world looks too bright and vivid, too ripe. Especially here in the Middle West, where we're currently melting beneath a heat dome.
"The beauty of it cannot be understood," says the biologist. "When you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you."
I've been pondering this for weeks, how it feels right even if I don't understand it. Perhaps something is beautiful *because* it overwhelms the senses. And when the senses are flooded, a reckoning with our limits follows. Our mortality. Our insignificance. Desolation of the ego, perhaps.
"What occurs after revelation?" asks the biologist. The answer comes quick: "Either death or a slow and certain thawing. A returning to the physical world."
Do not look directly into the sun. Better to simply enjoy its light.
### 3
Last week, a dozen of us gathered to discuss *Annihilation,* how its horror is a limber metaphor that, like the creature at its center, shapeshifts into the meaning we need at the moment. The first time I read it, I interpreted it as a fable about grief. This was shortly after my father died. Now, ten years later, I think it's about the anxiety and beauty of change. And the uncertainty it brings.
Although *Annihilation* was published ten years before the mass-market arrival of artificial intelligence, [C](https://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). thinks the shimmer evokes AI's uncanny mimicry, its sycophantic language and too-many-fingered hands. The biologist's attempt to categorize the horror she encounters certainly anticipates this direction:
> It creates out of our ecosystems a new world, whose processes and aims are utterly alien—one that works through supreme acts of mirroring, and by remaining hidden in so many other ways, all without surrendering the foundations of its otherness as it becomes what it encounters.
Other friends suggested environmental degradation, panic, a poisonous media culture, and of course, the ravages of capitalism. But we all agreed there is a beauty to this horror, which VanderMeer emphasizes is *pristine*, *stunning*, and *exquisite*. Everything is flowering. The colors dazzle.
As I sat in a friend's living room while the daylight dwindled and voices I love lightly bickered, I felt a brief but undeniable sense of grace, a momentary hush. Beauty cannot be calculated or intended. It is always incidental. Unexpected.
We ended the evening by drawing how we imagined the Crawler or Shimmer might look. Our drawings certainly weren't trying to be beautiful, but I think they are.
Annihilation drawings by (in no particular order) Larry, Charla, Cady, Bree, C., James With the Good Hair, Marty, Chicago Tommy, Jason, Patrick, Diane, Chris, Texas Sam, and me.
### 4
And so I've stitched together a soundtrack that follows tonight's rules of beauty:
- Beauty is almost sinister.
- Beauty overwhelms the senses.
- Beauty cannot be intended.
We begin with billowing vocals and cloudy guitars that gradually disintegrate until we're left with instrumentals, each peeling back layers of sound to uncover an endless thrum from [Éliane Radigue](https://elianeradigue.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co), who sought to evoke the Tibetan Book of the Dead after she lost her son. I first heard this song an hour before dawn and I think it's what revelation must sound like. Then we come home to one of the most beautiful pieces of music I know: a glittery guitar from Windy & Carl that sounds like temptation itself.
1. **Mister Baby - Canyon City Blues**
*EP* • 2023 • [Bandcamp](https://misterbabey.bandcamp.com/album/mister-baby-ep?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Midwife - Angel**
*Prayer Hands* • Antiquated Future, 2018 • [Bandcamp](https://antiquatedfuture.bandcamp.com/album/prayer-hands?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Sugar Plant - Impure**
*Trance Mellow* • Pony Canyon, 1996 • [Bandcamp](https://kilikilivilla.bandcamp.com/album/trance-mellow-2018-remaster?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Hilary Woods - Faults**
*Night CRIÚ* • Sacred Bones, 2018 • [Bandcamp](https://hilarywoodsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/night-cri?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Romance & Not Waving - Shepherd's Dream**
*Wings Of Desire* • Ecstatic, 2024 • [Bandcamp](https://notwavingromance.bandcamp.com/album/wings-of-desire?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **Flying Saucer Attack - Instrumental Wish**
*Distance* • VHF, 1994 • [Bandcamp](https://flyingsaucerattack.bandcamp.com/album/distance?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **Brian Eno - Dunwich Beach, Autumn 1960**
*Ambient 4: On Land* • EG Records, 1982
8. **Éliane Radigue - Kyema** (Excerpt)
Trilogie de la Mort • 1988 • [Bandcamp](https://elianeradigue.bandcamp.com/album/trilogie-de-la-mort?ref=jamesreeves.co)
9. **Windy & Carl - The Sun**
*We Will Always Be* • Kranky, 2012 • [Bandcamp](https://windyandcarl.bandcamp.com/album/we-will-always-be?ref=jamesreeves.co)
#### [Download](https://media.transistor.fm/1228330e/abef072a.mp3?download=true&src=player&ref=jamesreeves.co) • [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Tonight marks two years of Midnight Radio! Thank you for tuning in, and for the delightful notes and other forms of encouragement along the way. In these days of mind-numbing overload, attention is a gift I neither expect nor take for granted. Perhaps this is why Midnight Radio is the only deadline I've managed to honor. Episodes will continue to arrive on the 1st and 15th until the end of the year, at which point I'll reevaluate this endeavor.
In other news, I've made some significant upgrades to [Spite](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spite-music-player/id6757397964?ref=jamesreeves.co) if you're in the market for a dignified music player without any algorithms or bullshit. This [heavyweight mix](https://www.martinessig.com/detroit-warehouse/?ref=jamesreeves.co) from Marty is an ideal thing to play on it.
This 49th episode is 49:49.
The first draft of this episode.
### The Age of the Holy Spirit
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-age-of-the-holy-spirit/
Last updated: 2026-09-02T19:16:56.000Z
### 1
At my Thursday night Men's Spirituality Book Club, we've been debating the recovery cliché that "acceptance is the answer," which sounds so limp and lazy.
But I'm learning that acceptance is not passive. Wearing the world as a loose garment requires a difficult and oftentimes exhausting stance that makes room for total inflow: the mental shred, pixellated heat, and humiliating muck that comes with being alive in this absurd century, not to mention the stupid feelings and existential jitters that are part of simply being a person.
In the end, there's no workable choice other than to hoover it all up and learn to live in the beautiful grey because everything is connected and always changing. So accept it all. Except negation. I reject rejection.
### 2
But then I came across this sentence from [Simon Critchley](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9781681378244?ref=jamesreeves.co) that I find difficult to accept:
*And most writing, like most love, is self-love, which is what makes that writing uninteresting, and that love uninteresting, or not really love—it is one long song of myself.*
Reading this, I felt exposed. After all, I write a *newsletter* of all things. Is this an act of self-love? Perhaps, although it usually feels more like self-loathing, especially when I cannot get my sentences to behave or an episode to sound how I think it should, which is most of the time.
But if not for this habit, I might not write anything at all. To write requires an audience, real or imagined, which generates an interesting flicker between the self and not-self: the self as author and the self as receiver. This flicker is where the action lives. It creates mistakes and glitches, but also sometimes sparks, which makes the whole undertaking feel worthwhile.
To write anything worth reading requires writing something I do not already know. I learned this lesson well twenty-something years ago when I was a graduate student receiving bleak red letters on my essays about Plato, Rousseau, and Freire. I thought I understood the material and was writing clearly enough, so I asked my professor why I was failing. She smiled as if she’d been waiting for this question. “When you write something you don’t know the answer to,” she said, “I’ll give you an A.”
Ten years ago, I tracked her down at a dinner party to thank her for changing how I write and think and teach. When the party drifted toward the hors d'oeuvres, she took me aside and asked for a hug. I realized how important it is to say these things to people while I can, to let them know how much they've influenced me along the way.
Which is the reason for this year’s special guest series.
### 3
[David Leo Rice](https://www.raviddice.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) is another professor who influenced me. Six years ago, I was stuck on a story that I wanted to start again, so I signed up for a creative writing class at the school where I teach. This was during the strange weeks in New York when rumors about a sick lawyer in Westchester were circulating like a virus but we took the subway anyway and went out to eat and laughed and coughed on each other. So I was already primed for the uncanny when David turned me on to writers like [Aimee Bender](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9780385492164?ref=jamesreeves.co) and [Steve Erickson](https://www.jamesreeves.co/shadowbahn/), as well as bits of wisdom like *a man who really wants a sandwich is more interesting than a man who sort of wants to cure cancer*. We stayed in touch after the class, and soon I was reading [*High Weirdness*](https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781907222870/high-weirdness/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and Mark Fischer and thinking about lost futures.
David's stories also broadened my perception. [*The New House*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-new-house-by-david-leo-rice/) is a fable about the headfuck of creation that I'd like to press into the hands of every artist, writer, and seeker I know. His stories have renovated the architecture of my nightmares, especially [*The Hate Room*](https://1111press.bigcartel.com/product/drifter-stories-by-david-leo-rice?ref=jamesreeves.co), and I can’t wait to receive my copy of his latest collection, [*The Squimbop Condition*](https://1111press.bigcartel.com/product/the-squimbop-condition-pre-order?ref=jamesreeves.co), which follows a pair of time-addled brothers who “leave a trail of chaos in their pursuit of an impossible mission: to bring about the Golden Age—over and over again.”
Every few months, David and I have long telephone calls in which we walk around our respective cities and sanity-check our understanding of an increasingly illegible world. Each time we sign off, I'm heartened by his cheerful rejection of nostalgia, which is crucial for acceptance of any kind, and by the way he embraces the mess of our culture [to map new routes to the sacred](https://southwestreview.com/volume-110-number-1/the-feast-of-fools-on-carnival-imagination-and-heresy-in-the-age-of-the-trickster/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
And David is with us tonight to discuss the age of the holy spirit. But first, he must answer the official Midnight Radio interview question.
### 4
*Do you believe in god or any spiritual dimension to the universe?*
"Yes, I feel quite certain that there are dimensions and powers beyond our comprehension, at the very outer edges of our awareness. The human condition, as I've experienced it so far, is to be able to grasp the presence but not the nature of these 'things,' whatever they may be—to know that *something* is out there (or 'in there,' because I think the innermost part of the imagination merges with the outermost limits of perception), but never to grasp what it is. This is why dreaming, talking, drawing, and writing are so important to me, because they feel like a way of harmonizing and playing with these presences, and finding a means of enjoying rather than suffering from the fact that we can never know what they really are, nor can we ever forget that they're there, on the margin and at the center of everything. Perhaps, therefore, this form of play is the same as prayer—it's not a means of asking for something, nor of pledging loyalty in the usual sense of that term, but of enacting a playful and dynamic relationship with the forces that make us who we are, and whose nature we can never grasp."
### 5
Tonight's episode opens with six minutes of David reading a few bits from his latest essay, "[Master of Puppets: On My Mother’s Death and the Last Chapter of the History of the World](https://southwestreview.com/volume-111-number-1/master-of-puppets-on-my-mothers-death-and-the-last-chapter-of-the-history-of-the-world/?ref=jamesreeves.co)," after which we discuss acceptance versus surrender and how to act accordingly in an age of grief and algorithms. I'm cheered by how he presents the act of reading and writing in 2026 as a holy covenant.
This was a ninety-minute conversation that I've chopped down to 29 minutes, and I’ve exorcised myself from the recording because 1) I like the odd shape that remains, the abrupt shifts that suggest an invisible logic; and 2) I cannot tolerate the sound of my voice or laughter (but [Marty](https://www.martinessig.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) is helping me deal with this by making me do [argumentative videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjzhbT2b9T0&ref=jamesreeves.co)).
Because David says things like "in a dead world, mediated by a dead internet that is spawning its own undead successor," I wanted this broadcast to sound like an eerie late-nite transmission, the sort of thing that bleeds across your dashboard in the fog of a cross-country drive. It's laced with static, sighs, and mumbles, and I mangled David's voice until I forgot what it sounded like, searching for a zone between legibility and illegibility which, I think, is where the holy ghost lives.
Here are the songs that cycle in and out of tonight's broadcast:
1. **Burial - Strange Neighbourhood**
*Antidawn* • Hyperdub, 2022 • [Bandcamp](https://burial.bandcamp.com/album/antidawn-ep?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Blasé Saint - Lifelover** (17% slower)
*Matryoshka* • Sferic, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://sferic.bandcamp.com/album/blas-saint?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Kali Malone - The Spectacle of Ritual**
*The Sacrificial Code* • Ideal Recordings, 2019 • [Bandcamp](https://kalimalone.bandcamp.com/album/the-sacrificial-code-2025-edition?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Flowchart - Y2AOK** (68% slower)
*Pre-2000 Singles and Comp Tracks* • 1997
5. **Romance & Dean Hurley • White Lace and Promises**
*In Every Dream Home A Heartache* • Ecstatic, 2022 • [Bandcamp](https://romancedeanhurley.bandcamp.com/album/in-every-dream-home-a-heartache?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **Yassin Omidi - Lineup**
*Electronic Wave Function* • Mosaic, 2025
7. **Datacide - Sixties out of Tune** (41% slower)
*Flowerhead* • Rather Interesting, 1996 • [Bandcamp](https://atomtm.bandcamp.com/album/flowerhead?ref=jamesreeves.co)
8. **Blackwater - Woodstock** (35% slower)
*Istanbul/Woodstock* • 2018 • [Bandcamp](https://blackestwater.bandcamp.com/album/istanbul-woodstock?ref=jamesreeves.co)
#### [Download](https://media.transistor.fm/66bf4b26/e514861f.mp3?download=true&src=player&ref=jamesreeves.co) • [Podcast](https://midnightradio.transistor.fm/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
The first draft of this episode
### Under the Eye of the Big Bird
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/hiromi-kawakami-under-the-eye-of-the-big-bird/
Last updated: 2026-07-07T10:38:42.000Z
Hiromi Kawakami's [*Under the Eye of the Big Bird*](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9781593768072?ref=jamesreeves.co) begins as an austere fable in the vein of [*Woman in the Dunes*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/k-b-abe-the-woman-in-the-dunes/) or *Never Let Me Go* before it unfurls into a uniquely strange creature. Centuries pass. New modes of consciousness emerge.
> “My brothers, my father, my mother—they all wanted to be understood. But as soon as I truly understood them, they started to hate me for it. To them, being known was the same as being controlled.”
Better than any thinkpiece about the future, Kawakami conjures the horror and wonder of our species giving way to another as a genuinely *felt* experience that left me shaken. She might be writing from the year 9000 and telling us the news.
### Dream Theory
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/dream-theory/
Last updated: 2026-07-05T21:52:26.000Z
### 1
Parking garages are the most frequent setting for my dreams. Sometimes they are crumbling. Sometimes they are flooded. Sometimes I find my parents there. I'm always trying to find my car.
Last night I dreamt I was walking the jetway to an enormous Korean airplane when I keeled over because of an unholy pain behind my face. Several people were inside my mouth, writing strange graffiti across my teeth, and I frantically tried to get this under control before my flight departed.
Most of my dreams occur at airports, train stations, parking lots, and docks—places for waiting to go elsewhere. But where?
### 2
For most of my life, I discounted my dreams as random babble drawn from the muck of memory. If you scatter a few coins across a table, the eye hunts for a pattern, so naturally the day's riff-raff would be hung on the skeleton of narrative, however bizarre or rudimentary. But now I believe dreams serve a more vital function.
My dreams allow new truths to marinate and seep into my bones. Sometimes this process takes years. For instance, in 2010 or so, I came across this idea from Epictetus: *Do not say something has been lost; say it has been returned.* A decent piece of clichéd wisdom, I thought. But after my parents died, I returned to this sentiment with urgency. And although these words comforted me on an intellectual level, it would take years of dreaming before I came to inhabit them.
In the immediate wake of grief, my dreams were full of horror. Finding my father in the shadows of a parking garage. Discovering my mother beneath an overpass. Jagged fever dreams in which they were dead but shouldn't be, or worse, alive but shouldn't be.
Over the years, almost imperceptibly the way water shapes a pebble, these dreams became smoothed out, easier and warmer, until I was no longer afraid to enter the parking garage. *Oh, there they are. I'm so lucky to have known them, and yes, this is where they've been returned.* So I've come to believe that life's big-budget wisdom has three levels:
1. Wisdom is encountered (and often dismissed) as cliché.
2. This wisdom is remembered and understood through experience.
3. The wisdom becomes truly inhabited through dreams.
I think this is why so many of my dreams occur at sites of transit, suspended between two places.
### 3
Salvador Dali said his paintings were "hand-painted dream photographs," and on Saturday night, we gathered in a friend’s warehouse to paint while [M. mixed the best summertime warehouse tracks ever](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/failure-is-freedom/id1833118551?i=1000769848970&ref=jamesreeves.co). It’s already one of my happiest memories, a dozen of us studiously painting to the heavy thump and whir of 808s and 303s.
0:00
/0:56
1×
A glorious minute of Painting Club
Demons and robots were the subjects of our previous Painting Club sessions, and they were child's play compared with that night’s theme: Love*.* After a bout of sighing, my thoughts turned to [Klimt’s *Judith I*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/gustav-klimt-judith/), how her face offers an intensely terrifying flavor of love as she grips the bloodied head of Holofernes. So I tried to paint my own version, and as I pushed a fleshy blob of acrylic around the canvas, I felt a hypnagogic calm.
### 4
I believe the following activities are connected: Meditating. Climbing mountains. Praying while kneeling on rice. Fasting. Jumping out of an airplane. Snapping a rubberband against your wrist to stop a bad habit. They're all chasing the same sensation: Presence. An escape from the chattering mind. An abrupt, even if painful, return to the here-and-now. The trick is to keep this desire aimed in a good direction.
Sometimes I experience presence while writing, which keeps me coming back despite the self-loathing. Sometimes it shows up when I run, although not as often as I'd like. And I felt it that night at the easel. A few days later, I bought my own set of oil paints and continued my attempt to copy Judith. So far, I've learned that mixing ultramarine with burnt umber produces an excellent black, and soft dabs with a dry brush help smooth out the streaks. I also discovered that painting is maddeningly difficult.
My Judith is not as convincing as Cecilia Giménez’s [restoration of *Ecce Homo*](https://news.artnet.com/art-world/botched-restoration-of-jesus-fresco-miraculously-saves-spanish-town-197057?ref=jamesreeves.co), but I intend to keep plugging away until it's reasonable enough to share with you. By then, hopefully I'll have the skillset to paint some dreamy airports and nightmarish parking garages.
### 5
Like painting, dreams are about presence. It's the only time we're released from ego and intention. Dreams dredge up our mess and drop us into the here-and-now of it, which leads to tonight's soundtrack.
It's a busy swirl that begins with Pink Floyd’s "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" (a few shades slower, naturally) and ends with Mika Vainio’s stark cover version. There’s also a pair of Seefeel remixes, a dash of Springsteen, some Spiritualized, and a lot of murmuring. I was aiming for something warm, maybe a little pretty and sinister, that feels like sinking into the soft ground of a dream.
When I played tonight’s songs for C’s approval, she called it my “magical mushroom mix” and made groovy far-out gestures to underscore her point. She meant this in an encouraging way, I think, so I photographed her hands being psychedelic and that’s how we arrived at the artwork for this episode.
1. **Pink Floyd - Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun** (19% slower)
*A Saucerful of Secrets* • 1968
2. **Flavor Crystals - Cetecea (Seefeel Adjustment)**
*Five* • 2020 • [Bandcamp](https://flavorcrystals.bandcamp.com/track/cetacea-seefeel-adjustment?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Anthony Calonico - Collapsing**
*Spacious Heart* • Music From Memory, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://music-from-memory.bandcamp.com/album/spacious-heart?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Ana Roxanne - Wishful (Draft)**
*Poem 1* • Kranky, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://anaroxanne.bandcamp.com/album/poem-1?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Blackwater - Oaxaca**
*Navigation* • Ethbo, 2021 • [Bandcamp](https://ethbo.bandcamp.com/album/blackwater-navigation?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **Bruce Springsteen - State Trooper** (15% slower + reverbed)
*Nebraska* • 1982
7. **The Dengie Hundred - Tamar**
*Brackenbank* • Ethbo, 2022 • [Bandcamp](https://ethbo.bandcamp.com/album/the-dengie-hundred-brackenbank?ref=jamesreeves.co)
8. **Roly Porter - Al Dhanab**
*Aftertime* • Subtext, 2011 • [Bandcamp](https://rolyporter-subtext.bandcamp.com/album/aftertime?ref=jamesreeves.co)
9. **Spiritualized - Electric Mainline II**
*Electric Mainline* • 1993 • [Archive.org](https://archive.org/details/spiritualized-complete-works-volume-one)
10. **Cocteau Twins - Cherry-Coloured Funk (Seefeel Remix)**
*Otherness* • Fontana, 1995
11. **Variant - The Setting Sun**
*The Setting Sun* • Field Records, 2009/2026 • [Bandcamp](https://echospace313.bandcamp.com/album/the-setting-sun-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
12. **Mika Vainio - Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun**
*Oleva* • Sahko, 2024 • [Bandcamp](https://sahkorecordings.bandcamp.com/album/oleva?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Thank you for reading and listening. (And whoa—I *just* noticed this 47th episode is 47:47 which is a total coincidence, and although I'm a little spooked right now, I hope this is how the godhead has chosen to speak. Groovy far-out gestures indeed.)
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/19278556-dream-theory.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) • [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co)
####
The first draft of this episode
### Gustav Klimt - Judith I
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/gustav-klimt-judith/
Last updated: 2026-06-02T02:25:17.000Z
Klimt’s masterpiece is this rendering of Judith with an expression so seductive and relaxed it's defiant. The glint of her teeth electrifies the picture; the severed head she cradles becomes an afterthought. Flat and graphic, entirely modern—soaked in mythic atmosphere but frighteningly alive.
### Star Demon
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/star-demon/
Last updated: 2026-07-05T21:52:33.000Z
### 1
My first memory is sitting in a high chair in front of a small Zenith television. The opening credits for a sitcom played, maybe *Happy Days* or *Laverne & Shirley*, and there was a shenanigan that involved kissing a mannequin. It scared the hell out of me, and I screamed until my father patted my head, called me “big guy,” and changed the channel. For years, my mom couldn’t take me into a department store because I was so horrified by mannequins. Much of our shopping at Sears took place with her hand over my eyes.
Why do some encounters alter our perception while others leave no trace? C and I have been discussing resonance quite a bit these days, now that everything feels both more customized and predictive yet also more chaotic. She described resonance well in [episode 42](https://www.jamesreeves.co/bodies-without-organs/), and I’m increasingly convinced an event, idea, or image sticks only when it is unexpected and half-understood.
A scene from Dream Club
### 2
Last week, eight of us gathered to eat tacos and cookies and analyze our dreams. There were vicious doppelgängers, teeth in the sink, and berserk sports fans. We talked about killing crocodiles, getting crushed by giant orbs, and being forever stranded in a terrifying zone that C calls “the video place.”
Some dreams feel profound, even seminal, while others are dismissed as a strange entertainment. I’ve begun to [catalog my dreams](https://www.jamesreeves.co/dreams/) after finding a tranche of family photos from the 1970s. Most of these snapshots make no sense to me, and not just because I wasn't around then. They are chaotic inbetween moments, off-kilter scenes that capture the heat of family life without any concern for their presentation to the world. A different time. But these pictures feel like they belong with my twenty-first-century dreams. This pairing feels right even though—or perhaps *because*—trying to explain why fails.
### 2.5
There’s also a Barthesian can of worms regarding the subliminal meanings that emerge when an image is joined with text, such as the *being there* and the *having-been-there.* But thankfully for all of us, I have no interest in semiotics tonight. I mention Barthes only because he [dismantled a pasta advertisement](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Rhetoric%20of%20the%20Image.pdf?ref=jamesreeves.co) in search of "authentic Italianicity"—and tonight’s Special Guest is quite authentic and Italian.
### 3
My friendship with [Andrea Mazzariello](https://www.andreamazzariello.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) has been unexpectedly resonant. We met seventeen years ago on the subway after attending an educational function that neither of us can recall. He thinks it was at the Cloisters but I remember the Bronx Botanical Garden. Either way, we had plenty of time to discover we shared strong opinions about music and writing. These were days of isolation in the months following my mother’s death when I was living in a small flat in Greenpoint, caught between lives in Detroit, New York, and Helsinki. For reasons that remain unclear to me, I decided the logical move was law school in New Orleans. (I lasted a year before realizing I did not want a life of conflict.)
A. and I stayed in touch over the years, ambiently popping into [each other’s feeds](https://andreamazzariello.substack.com/) while we hopscotched around the country, both winding up in Vegas at different times. A few years ago, we discovered we were both writing novels and that our loved ones were tired of hearing about it. But we had each other. Our monthly calls appear in my calendar as *Star Demon*, a name whose origin I can't quite recall, but it makes for an obvious episode title.
Last month, I visited A. in Minneapolis to hear him read his novel to an audience, and it was a thrill to see how far it’s come from its first draft. And just as I can't explain why a sitcom mannequin haunted my childhood, I'm not quite sure how a subway conversation became a seventeen-year friendship that led to tonight's very special episode.
### 4
A. is a ridiculously gifted musician, a fact I’m only now beginning to comprehend. It's an interesting sensation, suddenly discovering your friend can *sing*. For tonight’s episode, he sent me eight gigabytes of stems from his latest album and said I could have my way with them.
Although A. is one of the most generous people I know, someone who is truly and cheerfully engaged with everybody in his life, I was intimidated nonetheless. I don’t understand the mechanics of music, but suddenly I had 364 .wav files performed by real musicians who knew all about chords and measures. I mean, A’s job title is [*Professor of Music*](https://www.carleton.edu/directory/amazzariello/?ref=jamesreeves.co), for god’s sake, and he teaches courses called “The Principles of Music Creation” and “Introduction to Music Technologies.” Meanwhile, I once asked C. which notes are the good ones, and she smiled politely.
But eventually I began do what I like to do: I slowed everything down and marinated it in reverb until it sounded a little hypnotic, and I can’t remember the last time I had such fun playing with music. So thank you for this unexpected delight, A.
### 5
But first, A. must answer the official Midnight Radio interview question:
*Do you believe in god or any spiritual dimension to the universe?*
“I was raised Roman Catholic, like many first-gen Americans of Italian parents. In retrospect it makes sense as a helpful extension of the assimilation mindset: follow the rules. I was definitely a rule-follower. I wore a scapular so as to land in purgatory instead of hell. I became a soldier of the church and took the name Michael. For the Archangel. I wanted a reason to fight.”
“In college I would go to folk mass. This is what broke me. Panic and hyperventilation, even though everyone seemed nice. Wealthy. Monogrammed backpacks, existential comfort.”
“I hung onto some God-notion with various nuances and exceptions. Then I started having trouble that didn't seem to map onto any of the metaphysics and that was that. I realized I had no memory of ever feeling like I experienced anything on the order of God, or felt any comfort in any of the rituals, teachings, or documents. It seemed to live in the same domain as whatever else one does to get into college, not get in trouble at home, and make gainful employment more likely.”
“*When you die it goes to black* became my operating premise. It helped me make the decency project even more defensible: Nothing matters but this, so be tolerable to those around you. Same motivation as building a sand castle or stacking rocks or playing a string quartet on the deck of the Titanic. Ship is going down, so you can choose beauty and gentleness or you can feel entitled to something other than the world as it is. The former won every time. Still does.”
“That easy decision, that obvious this-versus-that impulse doesn't come from nowhere. There is a valence to the allegedly blank slate that I feel in my bones. Maybe at some point religions x y z were in intimate contact with that lovely leaning towards goodness, maybe some still are. But it strikes me that you have to make a lot of excuses and take a lot of interpretive license in order to get what my direct experience tells me: We have choices. When push comes to shove I can't help but lean towards care. I don't know why, but it feels like God.”
### 6
Maybe it's the simultaneous knowing and not-knowing that makes anything resonate. Tonight we have some half-understood Midnight Radio variants of six songs from Andrea Mazzariello's [*War Footing*](https://andreamazzariello.bandcamp.com/album/war-footing?ref=jamesreeves.co) playbook—rewired, filtered, and slowed down between 21% and 93%:
1. **Fair Is Foul Is Fair** (Astronomical Dub)
2. **43:1** (Tranquil + Justified)
3. **Aspirational Gardening** (Cosmic Harvest)
4. **80s Death** (Redshifted + Microwaved)
5. **Post Nova** (Initial Singularity)
6. **Pre-Post** (Final Singularity)
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/19186508-star-demon.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) • [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### *Andrea Mazzariello (words, keyboards, synths, programming, drums), Brady Lenzen (bass), Jason Treuting (drums and percussion), JC Sanford (brass), Dan Trueman (strings), Mike Williams (acoustic guitars), Andy Flory (electric guitars)*
### Tobias Pils
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/tobias-pils/
Last updated: 2026-05-15T00:17:29.000Z
Figures hunch in the murk. One looks like a two-and-a-half legged woman. Some squeeze their hair and others fondle eggs. But the blank spaces in his roomy pictures does most of the work because these tormented bodies are all Pils wants us to see.
### Crocodile Eye
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/crocodile-eye/
Last updated: 2026-07-07T10:11:14.000Z
C. and I were walking through a museum that might have been Versailles or the Vatican in the year 3000\. Baroque galleries. White cubes. Abstract paintings at precise intervals. We agreed, quietly and with some pride, that we were lucky to live in a society that could build such a place.
Screens in the walls adjusted themselves as we passed, and C. went to find a bathroom. I waited near the entrance to a gallery. It was one of those finger-wagging exhibits that tells you how to feel. I went in.
A live satellite feed covered an entire wall, displaying a continent I did not recognize. Along its southern tip, smoke rose from what had once been cities and jungle was reclaiming the rest. The nation above it was pushing downward, pressing these people into the sea. The place was reverting to something before history.
I watched footage of people hunting animals. Hunting each other. A woman in a lab coat stood at a stainless steel table, consulting a page of instructions. She opened a door and the eye of an enormous crocodile filled the doorway. The scientist said there was a specific way you had to cut the eye, and only this would kill the beast. The incision was intricate, almost calligraphic, and the crocodile howled when I made it. When it finally went still, people emerged from the undergrowth to tear strips of flesh from its flanks.
### My Spiritualized T-shirt
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/my-spiritualized-t-shirt/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T22:53:09.000Z
It's so soft. And I already have "Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space" tattooed on my arm.
### Cildo Meireles - Babel
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/cildo-meireles-babel/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T15:55:25.000Z
At the Tate, a mammoth tower of twentieth-century radios fritz and skip through stations. Meireles was concerned with the cacophony of the modern world. He built *Babel* in 2001\. I wonder what he would build today. When I encountered the tower, the radios were tuned to Journey’s 1981 hit, an anthem we knew as well as our names—*don’t stop believin’* called through the static while we stood in a circle, taking pictures.
[More](https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/meireles-babel-t14041?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Basic Channel - Phylyps Trak II
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/basic-channel-phylyps-trak-ii/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T22:48:44.000Z
In January of 1995, I snuck out alone to St. Andrew’s Hall, where the militant thump of Phylyps Trak II drew me upstairs to the dark third floor. Club kids in overalls, drag queens in chartreuse wigs, a man in a three-piece suit—all lock-stepping in a grid, heads bowed before the bassbin like an altar, which I soon l discovered it was.
### Michael Clayton
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/michael-clayton/
Last updated: 2026-07-07T10:40:31.000Z
A fine-grained collision between existential anxiety and end-game capitalism—and a masterclass in dialogue. The first three minutes might be my favorite opening scene in cinema: cosmic horror soundtracks the ultramundane. [More](https://www.jamesreeves.co/absorb-the-poison/).
### Fall of Civilizations
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/fall-of-civilizations/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T22:51:47.000Z
I fall asleep to an episode every night at 75% speed. The first hour or so is always delightful: This place is nice. Let's start a society. But wake up a few hours later for a sleepy pee, and everything's gone to hell. Usually because of the Assyrians.
Start with Carthage, but be warned: it’s a heartbreak.
##### [More](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dbdVhVSat8&list=PLR7yrLMHm11X6-M%5FusCj5H-gdstyWNLXQ&index=21&ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Candy Chang
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/candy-chang/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T22:52:22.000Z
Number one inspiration station.
##### [More](https://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Midwife
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/midwife/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T21:40:22.000Z
Madeline Johnston’s voice sounds like it’s fighting its way through the static on a radio in the kitchen of a different decade. This is beautiful vapor, the afterimage of a flashbulb popping off after the encore of a band that littered the stage with only the finest reverb pedals.
[Visit →](https://heavenmetal.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Kobo Abe - The Woman in the Dunes
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/k-b-abe-the-woman-in-the-dunes/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T22:27:21.000Z
Published in 1962, Kōbō Abe’s [*The Woman in the Dunes*](https://www.amazon.com/Woman-Dunes-Kobo-Abe/dp/0679733787/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485836852&sr=1-1&ref=jamesreeves.co) offers a single image: a man trapped in a sandpit with a mysterious woman. Their survival depends upon shoveling the accumulating sand each night, a metaphor for the hard labor of existence. Does shoveling an endless pit of sand make him any less free than his former life of paperwork and obligations?
He contemplates the mind’s craving for routine: “It goes on, terrifyingly repetitive. One could not do without repetition in life, like the beating of the heart, but it was also true that the beating of the heart was not all there was to life.” But what else is there? This question becomes difficult to answer as he ponders the woman’s acceptance of their strange fate. Shoveling, she says, gives her life as much meaning as any other activity. Meanwhile, villagers peer into the pit to ensure his compliance. “More than iron doors, more than walls,” Abe writes, “it is the tiny peephole that really makes the prisoner feel locked in.”
Abe's fable reads like an epitaph for the digital age: “Loneliness was an unsatisfied thirst for illusion. And so one bit one’s nails, unable to find contentment in the simple beating of one’s heart…one smoked, unable to be satisfied with the rhythm of one’s brain…one had the shakes, unable to find satisfaction in sex alone.”
This story has seeped into my dreams, grinding at my thoughts like sand in the teeth.
### Coco Cuisine
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/coco-cuisine/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T22:32:43.000Z
Hands down the best dim sum in the Middle West and maybe anywhere—and a beloved weekly ritual with my in-laws.
[Visit →](https://cococuisineohio.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### The Studio of Gratifying Discourse
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-studio-of-gratifying-discourse/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:16:30.000Z
### 1
C. says it’s better to make tacos at home because we know what’s in them. But I think it’s the not-knowing that makes Taco Bell the spiritual choice.
The sociologist [Eva Illouz](https://www.are.na/block/37074325?ref=jamesreeves.co) describes the imagination of our ancestors as “information-thin,” which is why they could conjure such intense visions of gods and ghosts. To fill in the gaps.
Today we have “internet imagination.” Our brains cook in a vat of liquid crystal fragments, leaving no room to ponder the whole, let alone the void. Desire no longer flows from the unknown parts of ourselves, says [Byung-Chul Han](https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262533379/the-agony-of-eros/?ref=jamesreeves.co). Now it’s like shopping. We crave images and information.
But not-knowing is fun. Like when you’re bullshitting with friends, trying to remember the name of the actor who was in that thing with the airplane or whether it’s true your intestines can reach the moon. Then some jackass pulls out his phone to look it up.
### 2
In 1985, Italo Calvino wrote a [memo for the new millennium](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/23/six-memos-next-millennium-italo-calvino-review?ref=jamesreeves.co):
> What will the future of the individual imagination be in what is often called the ’image civilization’? Will humanity’s power to develop images in absentia continue to develop as it is increasingly swamped by the flood of ready-made images? The visual memory of individuals used to be restricted to the legacy of their direct experience and to a limited repertoire of culturally reflected images; the opportunity to give shape to a personal myth arose from the way in which fragments of that memory could come together in surprising and suggestive ways. Nowadays, we are bombarded by so many images that we can no longer distinguish direct experience from what we’ve seen for a few seconds on television. Bits of images cover our memory like a layer of trash, and among so many shapes it becomes ever difficult for any one to stand out.
When we discuss technology in my class, my students berate themselves to an unsettling degree. They mourn their lack of control, their weakness when it comes to the mad urge to doomscroll. Their self-loathing vexes me because I know it well. I do my best to remind them that we were not built to see the suffering of the entire world at once, that our attention-hijacking devices have mutilated the decent human impulse to bear witness. And they should not punish themselves for this.
### 3
But back to everything-at-once, here’s Byung-Chul Han quoting Roland Barthes quoting Kafka: “We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.”
The anonymous 14th-century author of [*The Cloud of Unknowing*](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2024/08/05/seven-adverbs-that-god-loveth/?ref=jamesreeves.co) summons the spirit of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite from a thousand years before:
> Thought cannot comprehend God. And so, I prefer to abandon all I can now, choosing rather to love him whom I cannot know. Though we cannot know him we can love him.
Or more succinctly from Meister Eckhart:
> Therefore we beg God to rid us of God so that we may grasp and eternally enjoy the truth.
And this gets to the heart of all this eye-shutting and not-knowing. I should put the question of god aside. Focus instead on the strange desire to love something that can never be known. The hardwired craving for glimpses and shadows. That's the information.
### 4
Last month at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, I encountered [an 18th-century study](https://collections.artsmia.org/art/12134/the-studio-of-gratifying-discourse-china?ref=jamesreeves.co) with an enormous scholar’s rock, the bloopy stones chosen for their mysteriously compelling forms. "If the rock does not seem like a painting by the powers of nature," writes Liang Jiutu in his 19th-century [*Chats on Rocks*](https://www.christies.com/en/stories/collecting-guide-scholars-rocks-b39280a0d3ea4e5d81f4ad14eee2beb2?ref=jamesreeves.co), "then you should not choose it." Inside the study, an unknown Qing dynasty scholar had carved "The Studio of Gratifying Discourse" into a ceiling beam, and I can’t stop thinking about this delightful phrase.
What is gratifying discourse? Beyond the baseline requirement of speaking in good faith, I think it means being quick with a compliment, laughter, and a question. More importantly, a willingness to look foolish. A lack of certainty. Which means not knowing.
### 5
Tonight's selections gratify me because they aim straight for the pleasure centers and risk looking foolish (especially the Orbital track, even though I slowed it down 220%). Yet they also retain some mystery, perhaps even to themselves, chanting and humming until language becomes a garbled holy tone—from the climactic minute of the xx's "Intro" to a loopy Enya edit to a Byzantine hymn from Father Dionysios Tabakis**,** a 52-year-old priest who dropped one of my favorite albums of the year via the crucial Heat Crimes imprint.
Thank you for listening. (And thank you to [Martin Essig](https://failureisfreedom.buzzsprout.com/2528418?ref=jamesreeves.co) for encouraging me to read Simon Critchley and Byung-Chul Han.)
1. **The xx - Intro**
*xx* • XL Recordings, 2005 • [Bandcamp](https://thexx.bandcamp.com/album/xx-deluxe?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Walls - Sunporch (Holy Other Mix)**
*Coracle Remixes* • Kompakt, 2012 • [Bandcamp](https://walls-kompakt.bandcamp.com/album/coracle-remixes?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Seraphim - A3**
*London Is Tired of Me* • Lost Domain, 2026 • [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/london-is-tired-of-me?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Death in Vegas - Girls**
*Scorpio Rising* • Sanctuary Records, 2002
5. **Frederic D Oberland & Radwan Ghazi - Squeal of Swine**
Eternal Life No End ليلة ظلماء ملعونة، كحياة طالبيها • Constellation, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://rgmfdo.bandcamp.com/album/eternal-life-no-end?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **Enya - Afer Ventus (DNTEL Remix)**
*Enya Mixes* • 2010 • [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/enya-mixes?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **Tears for Fears - Mad World** (Midnight Radio Mix)
*The Hurting* • 1982
8. **Walls - Burnt Sienna**
*Walls* • Kompakt, 2010 • [Bandcamp](https://walls-kompakt.bandcamp.com/album/walls?ref=jamesreeves.co)
9. **Father Dionysios Tabakis - ΑΝΑΡΧΟΣ ΘΕΟΣ Βυζαντινά Κάλαντα των Χριστουγέννων σε α΄ήχο**
*Paradise Metal* • Heat Crimes, 2026 • [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/paradise-metal?ref=jamesreeves.co)
10. **Placid Angles - Saint Anne**
*Canada* • Oathcreations, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://oathcreations.bandcamp.com/album/canada?ref=jamesreeves.co)
11. **Orbital - Halcyon and On and On** (Midnight Radio Mix)
*Radiccio* • 1993 • [Bandcamp](https://orbitalofficial.bandcamp.com/track/halcyon-and-on-and-on?ref=jamesreeves.co)
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/19112046-the-studio-of-gratifying-discourse.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) • [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Datacide - Flowerhead
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/datacide-flowerhead/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T22:29:15.000Z
Atom Heart & Tetsu Inoue’s drowsy low-end opus that comforted me thirty years ago and still soothes me today.
[Visit →](https://atomtm.bandcamp.com/album/flowerhead?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Midnight Radio
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/bohren-der-club-of-gore-midnight-radio/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T22:34:27.000Z
A slow-motion masterpiece from 1995, and the namesake of my newsletter.
[Visit →](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkw2kcQ5Lzs&ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Chili oil
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/chili-oil/
Last updated: 2026-08-11T19:50:46.000Z
I used to believe in just the oil and not the flakes. However, after a surprisingly robust and persistent intervention from my friend [P](https://panthealee.substack.com/), I now believe 80% of the flavor lies in the flakes and Lao Gan Ma should be my preferred brand. I make this decision of my own free will and this was not written under duress.
### Rod Modell & Taka Noda - Glow World
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/rod-modell-taka-noda-glow-world/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T21:36:53.000Z
Like mainlining every David Lynch film at half speed.
[Visit →](https://silentes.bandcamp.com/album/glow-world?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Topo Chico
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/topo-chico/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T22:37:37.000Z
Because I don't drink stale water. Fact: the Topo Chico that comes in clear glass bottles tastes better than the green-tinted bottles. And don't even talk to me about plastic or metal.
### Temple ov Saturn
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/temple-ov-saturn/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T22:39:59.000Z
Joan Pope’s music is hypnotic, even compulsive, and sounds like an incantation that threatens to summon something ominous, which might help us prepare for the days ahead.
[Visit →](https://templeovsaturn.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### M83 - Don't Save Us From the Flames
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/m83-don-t-save-us-from-the-flames/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T22:42:27.000Z
My all-time favorite lyrics: *A piece of brain in my hair. The wheels are melting. A ghost is screaming your name.*
[Visit →](https://www.jamesreeves.co/ghosts-and-gods/)
### Variant - Foil
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/variant-foil/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T22:43:51.000Z
Basic Channel is the godhead but this 45-minute track is the perfect form.
##### [More](https://echospace313.bandcamp.com/track/dreaming-thru-vector-part-one-foil?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Noon Radio
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/noon-radio/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T17:58:44.000Z
###### 1
Among the headlines about oil blockades, missile strikes, and the perils of artificial intelligence, the New York Times offers "3 Salad Dressings You Should Memorize". Good information in a crisis, I suppose, although I was taught it’s poor form to begin a title with a numeral. It should be "Three Salad Dressings".
The rules continue to fade away.
###### 2
The other day a friend called to tell me he saw a ghost and my first instinct was to deny it, to say it must have been a shift in the light. Why?
In 1928, [Paul Valéry](https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/who-do-we-think-we-are/articles/paul-valry-and-the-mechanisms-of-modern-tyranny?ref=jamesreeves.co) had a vision of the future: "Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign."
“The days of pilgrimage are over," said [John Berger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-4LwAuTw7k&themeRefresh=1&ref=jamesreeves.co) in 1972\. "It is the image which travels now."
And now we can invite the entire world—and everybody's opinions about it—into our heads with a flick of the finger. The day's outrages and humiliations seem to bleed through the walls no matter how vigilantly I practice my information hygiene. Sometimes my mind lands on an awful thought: the screen is now reality and the physical world exists only to serve its needs.
Might as well invite the ghosts inside too.
###### 3
Artificial intelligence is taking us into a strange new religious age and I think this is good. I’ve had more conversations about the human soul in the past six months than the rest of my life combined.
Nobody understands how artificial intelligence works, so maybe it's like god.
Last week at Men's Spirituality Book Club, we discussed [Matthew's account](https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/4?ref=jamesreeves.co) of when Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days, Jesus is hungry. *Just turn these rocks into bread,* says the devil. *You know how.* But Jesus refuses because the word of god is sustenance enough. So the devil takes him to the top of a temple. *If you trust your god so much, then jump*. But Jesus refuses to test god. And so on.
"Go into the desert to seek god, and who do you find instead?" asked M. "The devil."
As I pondered this, my head began to hurt. If the Spirit led Jesus to the devil, we're back to an ancient and perhaps more truthful theology—Shiva as creator and destroyer, yin and yang—in which the devil is doing the work of God, issuing tests not much different than the story of Job. Like that scene in the movies when the husband drives into oncoming traffic while screaming *do you love me?!* at his frightened wife. I cannot understand the upshot of envisioning a god like this.
But I was looking at it backwards. Focusing on the wrong side of the equation. God does not matter. Neither does the nature of artificial intelligence. Only my relationship with the concept matters. My reading of Matthew's gospel can lead me towards a god who is a basketcase, but a gentler reading is also possible: Ignore the tests of your faith and simply abide.
###### 4
I should give the last word to my mother-in-law. While discussing the day's headlines over dim sum, she said, "It doesn't matter because we'll be dead soon and someday the world will end." So that's another point of view.
###### 5
But if that's too strong, we have a springtime tonic served by tonight's very special guest, [Stephen Baker](https://stephenbaker.cc/about?ref=jamesreeves.co).
I met Steve a hundred years ago at college orientation. A Canadian flag was stitched to his backpack and he turned me on to crucial sounds from Flying Saucer Attack and Windy & Carl because he played in a band called [Tomorrowland](https://tomorrowland.bandcamp.com/track/sunspot?ref=jamesreeves.co) that released spacey records on cool labels like [Kranky](https://kranky.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and [Darla](https://darla.com/products/tomorrowland-stereoscopic-soundwaves-bliss-out-v-6?ref=jamesreeves.co). In the years to come, we would start our own record label, run a decent design studio in NYC with an office on Broadway, and play a show in France with [C](https://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). He also created [this righteously serene soundtrack](https://stephenbaker.bandcamp.com/track/after-the-end?ref=jamesreeves.co) for an art project C. and I installed at a cemetery. And when we traveled into the desert a couple of years ago, we found only big rocks and stillness. No devils. Today I call him whenever I need good advice.
These days, Steve makes incredible music under [too](https://minorhexachords.bandcamp.com/album/brinkmanship?ref=jamesreeves.co) [many](https://addisko.bandcamp.com/album/isometric?ref=jamesreeves.co) [aliases](https://the-conversationalist.bandcamp.com/album/every-ending?ref=jamesreeves.co)—but [this set on NTS Radio](https://www.nts.live/shows/kranky/episodes/kranky-30th-may-2024?ref=jamesreeves.co) should help you process the Stephen Baker experience. And he's with us tonight, ready to answer the official Midnight Radio interview question:
*Do you believe in god or any spiritual dimension to the universe?*
"I've never been religious. I do believe there's some kind of higher order as a force, a structure, or an intelligence that underlies existence in a way we can't fully grasp or articulate."
"Whether that's the intricate complexity of the universe, laws of nature that seem impossibly fine-tuned, or something science hasn't yet explained, I find it hard to believe that everything simply is without a greater framework behind it."
"Some may call that god."
###### 6
For tonight's episode, Steve sent me a file with selections from some of his favorite songs. He wanted to put together something that would be ideal for a warm afternoon because he's a contrarian who must test the limits of Midnight Radio. Fair enough. Here are the changes I made:
- Swapped the [Topdown Dialectic track](https://peakoil.bandcamp.com/track/a1?ref=jamesreeves.co) he selected for one I like better.
- Because he's the least self-aggrandizing person I know, it probably didn’t occur to him to include his own music. I’ve fixed this. A song from his [Minor Hexachords](https://minorhexachords.bandcamp.com/album/brinkmanship?ref=jamesreeves.co) project appears midway, and I love how the high-gloss majesty of a Burger & Ink classic gives way to "Radians," which shatters the dub techno template into glittery shards.
- Slowed down the last two songs by 39% and 210% because they sound fantastic this way.
And of course, the usual reverb and static. This 44th episode is exactly 44 minutes long, which pleases me. Thank you for listening.
1. **Topdown Dialectic - 20170804-2**
*20170804* • Aught, 2017 • [Bandcamp](https://aught.bandcamp.com/album/20170804?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Foote/Dickow - Volcano Snail**
*High Cube* • Geographic North, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://foote-dickow.bandcamp.com/album/high-cube?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Sa Pa - Ride High**
*Ambeesh* • Short Span, 2025 • [Bandcamp](https://sa-pa.bandcamp.com/album/ambeesh?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Burger & Ink - Elvism**
*Las Vegas* • Harvest, 1996 • [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/las-vegas-5baa7c31-9109-4a83-9ef7-ef2b97ecba1a?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Minor Hexachords - Radians**
*Brinkmanship* • 2025 • [Bandcamp](https://minorhexachords.bandcamp.com/album/brinkmanship?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **Paperclip Minimiser - B2**
*II* • Peak Oil, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://paperclipminimiser.bandcamp.com/album/ii?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **Gramm - Legends/Nugroove™**
*Personal Rock* • Source, 1999 • [Bandcamp](https://grammpersonalrock.bandcamp.com/album/personal-rock?ref=jamesreeves.co)
8. **Vehicular - Vehicular 02** (39% slower)
*False 5* • False Aralia, 2025 • [Bandcamp](https://falsearalia.bandcamp.com/album/false-05-vehicular?ref=jamesreeves.co)
9. **Koen Holtkamp - Atmos 01** (210% slower)
*Atmosfera* • Love All Day, 2021 • [Bandcamp](https://koenholtkamp.bandcamp.com/album/atmosfera?ref=jamesreeves.co)
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/19024401-noon-radio.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) • [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?i=1000761722684&ref=jamesreeves.co)
The first draft of this episode
### Neglected Utopian Energy
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/neglected-utopian-energy/
Last updated: 2026-04-03T17:22:07.000Z
###### 1
Last month I dreamt the houseplant by the television began to move. It's a snake plant, also known as mother-in-law’s tongue, and it rocked itself until it fell to the floor. It began to crawl towards me, dragging itself onward by its leaves. I knew it wanted to kill me.
Last week I dreamt I was standing before a hostile crowd, trying to convince everyone that the prophets and gurus of the past would not survive our digital age. They'd be just as brainwormed by technology as the rest of us and probably rely upon artificial intelligence for their revelations. When we only had three TV channels and a handful of films, our screens united us but now they divide and isolate us. The crowd jeered and threw green caterpillars at me.
Last night I dreamt of hammerhead sharks. As I swam away from a burning airplane and they swarmed around me, chewing off pieces of my belly and arms until I woke up. [C](https://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). says it’s because I’m afraid of hammers, which is true. I need to close my eyes whenever there’s a bludgeoning on television. "Dreams don’t lie," she says.
In 1913, Carl Jung believed [his dreams](https://www.museumofdreams.org/dreams-of-destruction?ref=jamesreeves.co) about an Arctic frost across Europe anticipated the psychosocial weather that led to the first world war. I wonder if more of us are having destructive dreams these days.
###### 2
I'm writing this at the airport while I wait for a night flight from Ohio to Minneapolis to visit [A](https://www.andreamazzariello.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). My thoughts are scattered, ratfucked by the frillion demands that add up to a life in the 21st century even though I’ve silenced all notifications. I'm surrounded by monsters who watch cooking videos, play gumdrop games, and crow about quarterly projections. None of them are using their inside voices or headphones.
More and more, I'm interested in my dreams because this is where I can hear myself think.
###### 3
I still have vivid dreams that my mother is alive; I often find her sitting at a kitchen table in a small house by the sea, living under an assumed name. The house is always made of freshly chopped wood, and it's the wood that sticks with me most, this minor detail that points to an entire world.
###### 4
Sometimes a dream can feel like an invitation. But it can also feel like a taunt.
###### 5
Yesterday I jotted down the phrase “neglected utopian energy” and I have no idea what it means, but I enjoy the way it natters at my mind.
Maybe it's because I've been listening to utopian music from the past, specifically the middle 1990s when we earnestly said things like “trip hop” and “acid jazz” and “dub techno” and thought new hybrids of music would lead us to a polyglot paradise rather than flattening everything into a sheet of liquid crystal gloss. The synthesizers were shameless, the chimes crisp, and every other song required a tabla.
From the vantage point of 2026, is my affection for this music a form of nostalgia, camp, or kitsch? Let's look at some of the album covers from tonight's selections.
Jesus Christ. But I feel affection for these images, for this is the visual culture of a generation coming into its own with Netscape and Earthlink, entirely liberated by zip drives, CD-Rs, and most of all, the radial filters of Photoshop 2.8.
###### 6
Susan Sontag believed [camp](https://monoskop.org/images/5/59/Sontag%5FSusan%5F1964%5FNotes%5Fon%5FCamp.pdf?ref=jamesreeves.co) rejects the binary of "good" and "bad" by placing its ideas in quotation marks—but the ambient-techno excursions of the 1990s believed in a technological paradise. So perhaps it's kitsch, which requires a degree of earnestness.
Kitsch is tricky to pin down, but I've always admired Milan Kundera's definition: "Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: *How nice to see children running on the grass!* The second tear says: *How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!* It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch."
Can a dream be kitschy? I don't think so. Dreams are inherently future-facing because they are often emblems of anxiety and desire. To escape the sharks. To convince a crowd or make peace with a demonic houseplant because better things are ahead. Dreams are proof of life.
###### 7
Nostalgia is a form of death.
###### 8
In its common form, nostalgia is a taunt because it fetishes a time that can never be reclaimed. But when dealing with mid-1990s electronica, perhaps it can also be an invitation. To reclaim the energy from a time inspired by *Koyaanisqatsi* and the incense-soaked rhythms of Kingsuk Biswas's [Bedouin Ascent](https://www.juno.co.uk/junodaily/2025/02/24/bedouin-ascent-interview-i-was-searching-for-authenticity-and-a-musical-form-of-ecstatic-abandon/?ref=jamesreeves.co) project. It was a time of creating for its own sake without an eye on any marketplace or notion of virality. Of making things simply because new tools were there.
So maybe I’ll just sink into this plush couch with cigarette burns in the cushions while *Strange Days* plays on mute and somebody tells me all about the benefits of globalization and the Information Superhighway.
1. Introduction: Stonecirclesampler, Air Liquide, Mojave 3, assorted radio static, etc.
2. **Dr. Atmos & Oliver Lieb - Music to Films Movement V**
*Music to Films* • Fax, 1994
3. **Pete Namlook & Richie Hawtin - Silent Intelligence V**
*From Within III* • Fax, 1997
4. **Bedouin Ascent - Mammon** \[Midnight Radio Edit\]
*Science, Art, and Ritual* • Rising High, 1994 • [Bandcamp](https://lapsus.bandcamp.com/album/science-art-and-ritual-30th-anniversary-edition?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Massive Attack vs. Mad Professor - Protection (Radiation Ruling the Nation)**
*No Protection* • Wild Bunch Records, 1995
6. **B12 - Radiophonic Workshop**
*Time Tourist* • Warp, 1996 • [Bandcamp](https://warprecords.bandcamp.com/album/time-tourist?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **Photek - T’raenon Version**
*T’raenon* • Op-Art, 1996
8. **Bedouin Ascent - Transition R**
*Science, Art, and Ritual* • Rising High, 1994 • [Bandcamp](https://lapsus.bandcamp.com/album/science-art-and-ritual-30th-anniversary-edition?ref=jamesreeves.co)
9. **Makyo - Devabandha**
*Rasa Bhava* • Silent Records, 1996 • [Bandcamp](https://makyo.bandcamp.com/album/rasa-bhava?ref=jamesreeves.co)
10. Epilogue: Stonecirclesampler, Patsy Cline, assorted radio static, etc.
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/18948896-neglected-utopian-energy.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) • [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### 10
Now I'm in Minneapolis after a viciously turbulent flight because a snowstorm is on the way. They're talking about 8 to 12 inches. I mention this because Midnight Radio seems to be the only deadline I honor and I'm pressing the button at 11:53pm Central Time. It counts.
More importantly, the latest version of Spite is now available in [your local App Store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spite-music-player/id6757397964%20Spite%20Music%20Player?ref=jamesreeves.co) or you can learn more and [download it directly here](https://www.jamesreeves.co/spite/).
Thank you for listening.
The first draft of this episode
### Return of the Gods
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/return-of-the-gods/
Last updated: 2026-03-20T17:06:33.000Z
###### 1
This is a time of synchronicities and spiritualized encounters—and I'm aware this is the sort of thing a crazy person says. This is why I tend to deny anything that seems mystical or improbable. Pattern recognition, I tell myself. Frequency illusion, that's all.
Because if I attempt to explain a moment of grace, it gets suffocated by words. Or maybe I'm afraid to think about it. Reverence and anxiety belong to the same coin, and I do not want a divine beam of light drilled into my skull. I couldn't handle it. I'd rather admire the beam of light from a safe and respectful distance, comforted to know it exists but not delusional enough to think it's for me.
Or perhaps I am vain and far too worried about sounding like an insufferable self-care grifter who talks about how the universe told them to get bangs.
###### 2
I often think about Leonard Cohen's observation that religion is the greatest form of art. When I'm moved by a painting, I am not thinking about its veracity. I do not question whether my emotional response is true.
With thoughts like this in my head, I'm grateful that [Martin Essig](https://www.martinessig.com/tag/fiction/?ref=jamesreeves.co) will join us tonight to talk about the history of faith.
M. first appeared in [episode 23](http://localhost:2371/desire-is-a-demon/?ref=jamesreeves.co) to tell us that desire is a demon. Because synchronicities abound, he came into my life at a time when I was grappling with faith, and he was hellbent on making sure I understood symbolic failure and [the Lacanian Real](https://nosubject.com/Jacques%5FLacan:Real?ref=jamesreeves.co). Along the way, he became a reliable friend, ensuring that I never wander too far into doubt or belief but instead learn to enjoy the dance.
Tonight M. will discuss animism and disenchantment on top of some songs he selected, several of which I've bludgeoned into unrecognizable shapes. But first, he must answer the Very Special Guest Question.
###### 3
*Do you believe in god or any spiritual dimension to the universe?*
"I guess the real question is: Does God believe in Himself? I prefer a God who isn’t really sure if He exists or not. In all the best religious experiences, nobody’s certain about what’s going on, including and especially God."
"When God showed up in a whirlwind and upbraided Job about how he wasn’t there at the foundation of the Universe, God starts talking about those weird and heady *creatio ex nihilo* times all cool like *were you there when Deep calls to Deep?* and this sounds badass, but then God gets lost in rambling about Behemoth and Leviathan and stuff that nobody’s sure *why* He made or what exactly they even *are*—but God wanted to seem like He was in more control than He actually was."
"God reveals His unconscious in this diatribe when He disavows His part in the evil that Job is suffering. Jung interpreted God’s "shadow self" as His repudiation of His relation to His son Satan—which is to deny that if you are the author of everything, then you are also the instigator of evil."
"For me, God’s shadow is ambiguity, which is His inability to determine all there is of the Universe. In other words, God has an unconscious just like the rest of us. He can’t be omnibenevolent because of His part in the evils of the world. But this lack of at-oneness, this lack of control, allows for whatever cool but incomprehensible stuff might follow from this impotence."
"My favorite Talmudic passage depicts rabbis arguing about [the Oven of Akhani](https://www.sourcesjournal.org/articles/rereading-the-story-of-the-oven-of-akhnai-from-interpretive-rights-to-interpretive-responsibilities?ref=jamesreeves.co), which was a dispute about the purity of said oven for kosher cooking. God shows up to settle the controversy because it's His law after all. But Rabbi Joshua tells God that He doesn’t have a say in the matter since the Torah is in their hands now."
"The gift of ambiguity is better than clarity because it is always open to
further interpretation, and the joy of humanity is the community of interlocutors that indeterminacy gifts to us. Belief as a test of faith was a huge mistake. Religion took a wrong turn when it started to lift up psychosis as its preferred position. Psychosis is fine and has its place, but neurotic doubt is an undeniable salve for too much belief."
"I’m whatever religion they were at Gobekli Tepe. Religious practice should be a celebration of irreducible ambiguity. I was so excited when they uncovered Gobekli Tepe in Southern Turkey and Klaus Schmidt was like, “What the hell was going on here?” and decided it was a prehistoric zoo. Here was a city almost twelve thousand years old, built not for sedentary and hierarchical people but for the sacred practices of hunter-gathers who came together uncoerced to celebrate holy mysteries with ambiguous trickster gods in liminal spaces designed for music, dancing, stories, feasting, and shit-tons of carved animals doing stuff, like a vulture presenting an orb to a man without a head but with a prominent phallus, and the sublime wonderment of a submerged room with benches along the walls and loads of giant stone penises in the middle for some reason."
"Schmidt and countless others have speculated on what these people thought that they were doing there. I for one, perhaps naively, hope they didn’t precisely know what they were doing there. Hegel famously pondered the “mysteries of the Ancient Egyptian religions,” to which Žižek postulated that “the mysteries of the Ancient Egyptians were mysterious to the Ancient Egyptians too.”"
"Amen."
###### 4
In tonight's broadcast, M. breaks down the human impulse to assign intentions to the unknowable. It's an impulse as old as time, and it left me wondering if a freaky new age of faith is upon us. The logic of today's artificial intelligence is inscrutable, even to its makers. Spend a few minutes working with a chatbot and it will begin to behave as if it has its own intentions.
New modes of magical thinking will emerge, but this time they will be customized and personalized, each of us kneeling in our own algorithmic temples rather than engaging in collective belief.
At least I'm having fun before the Singularity hits. For months I've wanted to add a video component to Midnight Radio but I never felt inspired enough to deal with the godawful interface of Adobe Premiere or the mind-numbing hours required to sequence a few video clips. Last night I fed Claude some of my favorite paintings, a Max Headroom reference, a painting from [C](https://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co), and an excerpt from tonight's transmission. Then I plugged it into a terminal window and watched as it generated video after video while I directed the aesthetic.
In this recent [NY Times piece](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/magazine/ai-coding-programming-jobs-claude-chatgpt.html?ref=jamesreeves.co), Anil Dash observes that "in the creative disciplines, L.L.M.s take away the most soulful human parts of the work and leave the drudgery to you. And in coding, L.L.M.s take away the drudgery and leave the human, soulful parts to you.”
It was exhilarating and a little humbling to suddenly find myself liberated from technical barriers and left only with my own soulful human ideas. Here's what this first effort looks like:
And so onward, pushed forward by gods and robots and kick drums. M. sent me [this playlist](https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/midnight/pl.u-AkAmmlGH2XD9Mg?ref=jamesreeves.co) of fun (oftentimes French) songs, and it's highly recommended, especially if you'd like to hear Can do their best Parliament impression. I selected six of these tracks and lodged in some others that I think harmonize with his ruminations on being enchanted, disenchanted, and hopefully back again.
1. **XDCVR - Psalm 68**
*I Hate That Shit, I Hate All That Shit* • Ooh Sounds, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://ooh-sounds.bandcamp.com/album/xdcvr-i-hate-that-shit-i-hate-all-that-shit?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Luke Slater - Love (Burial Remix)**
*Love Remixes* • Mote Evolver, 2019 • [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/love-remixes-2bcd1e2f-664e-4930-9519-f2564ef624c5?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Sun Electric - Episode VI**
*Episodes* • Detuned, 2026 • [Bandcamp](https://detunedrecords.bandcamp.com/album/episodes?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Blawan - 993**
*Nutrition* • Ternesc, 2017 • [Bandcamp](https://ternesc.bandcamp.com/album/nutrition?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Jürgen Paape - So Weit Wie Noch Nie** (Midnight Radio Edit)
*Total 3* • Kompakt, 2001 • [Bandcamp](https://juergenpaape.bandcamp.com/album/so-weit-wie-noch-nie?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **The Field - Reflecting Lights (Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith Remix)**
*Reflecting Lights Remixe* | Kompakt, 2016 | [Bandcamp](https://thefield.bandcamp.com/album/reflecting-lights-remixe?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **Kakuhan - Kak-Juk**
*KAK* • Nakid, 2026 • [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/kak-364e5f7b-b78a-4c76-96f2-80baff580504?ref=jamesreeves.co)
8. **Patche - Motorik** (60% slower)
*Patche* • Popop, 2023 • [Bandcamp](https://patchemtl.bandcamp.com/album/patche?ref=jamesreeves.co)
9. **Can - I Want More** (500% slower + filtered)
*Flow Motion* • Harvest/Mute, 1976 • [Bandcamp](https://canofficial.bandcamp.com/album/flow-motion?ref=jamesreeves.co)
10. **Babe Ruth - The Mexican** (21% slower)
*First Base* | Harvest, 1972 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FMexican%5F%28song%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Thank you for listening.
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/18851961-return-of-the-gods.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) • [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?i=1000755493950&ref=jamesreeves.co)
The first draft of this episode
### Conversations With the Drum
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/conversations-with-the-drum/
Last updated: 2026-05-13T02:06:38.000Z
###### 1
I’ve come to believe that getting spiritualized means learning to stand in the center of a storm of paradoxes. I picture a storm because there are so many charged collisions between opposing truths that they threaten to spill.
Examples:
- Only when I do not think about sleep can I fall asleep.
- Staying sober—or committing to anything, really—requires a silent, contradictory wish: take it one day at a time so I can do it for the rest of my life.
- Set an intention but do not allow it to become an expectation.
- Lightness is a form of seriousness. By recognizing the absurdity of my thoughts and desires, I relate to the people in my life more seriously.
- The desire to believe *is* belief even if it feels like cheating.
- Create routines so they can be abandoned.
- Aggressively attempting to remember a dream guarantees it will evaporate. For instance, last night I dreamt about a houseplant that began to drag itself across the floor to kill me. But now the rest is gone.
###### 2
In 1995, the United States banned [Richie Hawtin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xn1-AyYcrk&ref=jamesreeves.co) from entering the country due to border paranoia after the Oklahoma City bombings. "I remember going home after being in detention for six or seven hours and just crumbling on my mum and dad’s floor because it was like my career was over," he said. "My girlfriend was living in Detroit, all the parties we were doing were in Detroit—it was everything that Plastikman had become. It was like cutting the umbilical cord. It changed everything for me."
For a year he remained in Canada, where he cast off his acid [Plastikman](https://richiehawtin.bandcamp.com/album/plastique?ref=jamesreeves.co) persona and committed to releasing a new record every month, which was not easy to do in 1996\. The resulting 24 songs in [the Concept series](https://richiehawtin.bandcamp.com/album/richie-hawtin-concept-1-96-12?ref=jamesreeves.co), named only by month and number, were an exercise in stripping techno down to studs, setting the stage for his masterpiece, [*Consumed*](https://richiehawtin.bandcamp.com/album/consumed?ref=jamesreeves.co).
Thirty years later, I try not to think too hard about the middle-agedness of it all—how listening to a Concept record today is like listening to Percy Sledge or Simon & Garfunkel in 1996\. But there’s a night and day difference between music in 1966 and 1996\. I don’t think the same can be said of 1996 and 2026\. Hawtin’s *Concept* series still sounds like the future.
Even if I didn’t think so at the time. A stoned college sophomore with no money, I bought the Concept record released in November ’96, eagerly took it home to my scuzzy little flat, and *hated* it. The seasick rhythms and erratic clangs, the sterile drums and hostility toward melody—it sounded cold and evil. When I played it for C, she got physically ill.
But I continued to listen until I began to appreciate it. Today I love it. These records are a conversation with the listener. They drift and breathe, fundamentally unstable and strangely animal. An offset snare becomes high drama. A glitched drum and an abrupt silence tells a story, and I marvel at how something so skeletal feels like some of the warmest, most generous music I know.
###### 3
In 1996, my relationship with art and music was defined by concrete parameters. With only a few records in my collection, I had no choice but to learn to love an album. In the Age of the Algorithm, we have fewer opportunities to deal with the friction and patience required to come to art on its terms—to spend hours, let alone months or even years, wrestling with something until it clicks and you realize you love this thing because it’s been resisting your intention for it to be something else.
I think this relates to stepping into the eye of spiritual confusion: both require letting go. Yet another paradox: I must have some level of intention *to* let go, which can be the trickiest move of all.
Perhaps it’s a matter of perception. Whenever C and I visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we stand before a giant ceramic [*arhat*](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/44799?ref=jamesreeves.co) to be judged. Sometimes his face looks benevolent and I feel *held*—like I could remain there for hours; other times I wither beneath his glare and quickly move along.
###### 4
I’ll admit, I flew too close to the sun on this one. First off, the Concept series has become such a personal landmark that it’s hard to approach it objectively. Of the 32 songs across these records, I have 23 favorites, which would be a four-hour mix. Eventually I had to turn the process of selection into an exercise in subtraction until I whittled it down to an hour.
Second, I’ve never been good at matching beats. It’s hard and boring. And these songs are phenomenally difficult to mix, filled with analog drift and reversed stutters as if they were designed to ratfuck any crossfade.
Thomas Brinkmann’s variations make this even more challenging. He built a custom turntable with two tonearms that had separate outputs for the left and right channels. By splitting the stereo field across two needles in the same groove, unexpected rhythms and phase shifts emerged, creating what Brinkmann described as "a little intervention and displacement of elements."
There's a lot of displacement in tonight's tribute: hard cuts, truncated tracks, and rips of static—but I've savored the past two weeks I've spent immersed in these songs. When I listen to them today, I hear the wild sense of play that only emerges from routine and parameters; I think about the commitment to a regular cadence that teaches one to live with imperfect results. Most of all, these tracks succeed because they are a dialogue with the listener: they stake out a rigid framework so expectations can be fucked with. The spiritualized zone lives in the delightful space between what I think will happen and what actually occurs.
1. 96:01 01:00
2. 96:01 02:00 VR
3. 96:05 09:00
4. 96:05 10:00
5. 96:07 13:00
6. 96:08 16:00
7. 96:11 21:00 VR
8. 96:12 23:00
9. 96:12 24:00 VR
Richie Hawtin - *Concept 1 96:12* | [Bandcamp](https://richiehawtin.bandcamp.com/album/richie-hawtin-concept-1-96-12?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Thomas Brinkmann - *Concept 1 96 VR* | [Bandcamp](https://thomasbrinkmann1.bandcamp.com/album/96-vr-concept-1?ref=jamesreeves.co)
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/18772484-conversations-with-the-drum.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?i=1000752392039&ref=jamesreeves.co)
The first draft of this episode
### Bodies Without Organs
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/bodies-without-organs/
Last updated: 2026-09-02T19:28:52.000Z
### 1
Eight years ago, I hid in a dark forest and saw the future. It was a Saturday night in rural Pennsylvania, where a muddy path led to a statue of the Virgin Mary in a shallow cave, an elaborate recreation of her appearance in a French grotto in 1858\.
Dozens of telephone screens floated in the gloom like devotional candles. Hanging back, I watched a strange ritual unfold among the men attending a weekend Catholic retreat. They lined up before the statue, and when the first man knelt to pray, he handed his telephone to the man behind him, who photographed him while he prayed. When he finished, he retrieved his phone and reviewed the footage while he shuffled into the dark. The next man did the same. And so on.
The photo was the reason for this pilgrimage into the woods to kneel before a simulation of the appearance of a ghost. I took a picture of the statue but did not pray because it felt like one or the other.
Our screens have thoroughly rewired how we see ourselves, like a maximum-strength headfuck of Susan Sontag’s 1977 maxim that “everything exists to end in a photograph.” And that night in the woods, I realized technology is more potent than religion.
Walter de Maria, **Time/Timeless/No Time* (2004). Chichu Art Museum, Japan. Image: Mitsuo Matsuoka
### 2
But is this impulse to document every aspect of our world, no matter how sacred, a bad thing? Last year at Naoshima, I was initially vexed by the prohibition against photography, startled by my need to take a picture to prove I'd witnessed a piece of art. But this phantom twitch quickly subsided as we moved through Tadao Ando’s severe concrete halls. Soon I was delighted to discover I was experiencing art with strangers in a way I hadn’t since the early 2000s. We weren’t ducking out of each other’s shots. We lingered longer. Even the roomful of Monets held my interest.
I enjoyed the ritual of removing my shoes before entering a gallery. It was somehow both formal and intimate. And quieter.
But how to deal with Walter de Maria's marble orb on a staircase surrounded by dozens of gold-pronged statues? To start, we moved around it slowly. We hunted for patterns and imagined the rituals that might occur in such a place. We stayed until its strangeness became familiar, and eventually we were dealing with it on its terms, where language and logic cannot reach.
A dozen screens and Gustav Klimt's **The Kiss* (1909) | Belvedere, Vienna
### 3
Last week in Vienna, I fell for Gustav Klimt and [Egon Schiele](https://onlinecollection.leopoldmuseum.org/en/search/?offset=0&limit=30&layout=default&artists.name=Egon+Schiele&ref=jamesreeves.co), both of whom I’d misunderstood. Somehow I was not aware of Klimt’s [*The Kiss*](https://sammlung.belvedere.at/objects/6678/der-kuss-liebespaar;jsessionid=3E3E28528D3AEF36C44B4860FF6405B5??ref=jamesreeves.co), which C found hard to believe because she thinks it wallpapered many dorm rooms alongside Monet’s water lilies. I was about to suggest she was wrong but then we entered an overheated gallery with a crowd crushed around *The Kiss* like a many-armed beast waving screens and snapping pictures. This is the state of visiting icons in the twenty-first century.
For my money, Klimt’s real masterpiece is [his rendering of Judith](https://www.belvedere.at/sites/default/files/jart-files/Presskit-Klimt-Japan-en.pdf?ref=jamesreeves.co) with an expression so seductive and relaxed it's defiant. The severed head she cradles becomes an afterthought. The stray dot of light in her eye and the glint of her teeth give the picture an almost sinister presence. Klimt’s work pulls off a rare feat: flat and graphic, entirely modern, yet drenched in mythic atmosphere and very much alive.
### 4
C and I have been discussing what makes a piece of art, music, or writing feel alive rather than dead. It’s tricky to pin this quality down, but I know it when I see it. I’ve certainly smothered my sentences until they can no longer breathe, and I’ve drained the blood out of entire projects by being too perfect and precious, or worse yet, talking them out of existence.
If I can't define "alive" art, what about dead art? I think it's something that gets so overcooked it becomes calculated and performed, almost needy, like an elbow in the ribs. *See what I'm doing here? How funny/virtuous/tragic?* George Saunders's fiction and Cy Twombly's canvases come to mind, but many people love their work, so the definition of lightness and vitality must be personal—and this fogginess is a blessing that should be cultivated as a counterpoint to the inert prose and imagery of algorithms.
When it comes to the inexplicable, I think of how C tends to favor the most analog, complicated, and embodied process to create her paintings. Carving text with a tiny knife. Shellacking individual letters to canvas. Experimenting with horribly complicated ink transfer techniques that sometimes inexplicably turn green. Are these fingerprints felt in [her work](https://www.candychang.com/paintings/?ref=jamesreeves.co)? I think so.
For those who've been following along, C (aka Candy Chang) is a popular character on Midnight Radio. We've been together for thirty years and she's the best and luckiest thing in my life. She nudges me along and challenges me to make things better, even if sometimes my ego revolts: "Alright critic, what songs would *you* choose?" Thus we have tonight's Very Special Guest Episode.
### 5
But first, C. must answer the official Midnight Radio interview question:
*Do you believe in god or any spiritual dimension to the universe?*
"Yes. Watching Carl Sagan’s *Cosmos* was my first spiritual experience. It made me feel existentially connected to all of time, space, and life. That feeling pulled me out of despair and it was my first understanding of god: a widescreen kinship."
"Now I feel spiritual in charged moments of communion—with a person, an artwork, a text, or a tree. I felt it making this episode with James. For decades we’ve been two little animals lost in time making stuff together, from janky stop-motion animations and fuzzy ambient music to public art and screenplays. We also rattle around on our own, and it’s been fun watching James make Midnight Radio. His process is loose but reverent. He tosses songs together, plays rough versions as we drive to the park, and then defers to the emerging forces. He’ll ask what I think and before we’re done bantering, he’ll say, 'I know what it wants to become.' It wafts through our home for days like something slowly baking until it becomes another Proustian madeleine."
"One of my favorite episodes is [Slow Gold (#35)](https://www.jamesreeves.co/slow-gold/) where he stretched a Simple Minds track into buoyant goth. So I slipped him A Flock of Seagulls. He delivered by swelling the intro into an epic stadium show and following it with another slow-mo’d ‘80s song that always makes me want to dance like a cartoon maniac."
"I initially thought I'd put together a tracklist of tragic-astronaut-in-space music, which is my specialty, but the energies went somewhere more fun. In the spirit of James, I went where it wanted to go, and each version he played inspired more songs until we landed in a place that is very me but way cooler now in his land of reverb. I felt a charged back-and-forth towards something greater, and it makes me wonder if spirituality is always about resonance: being in relation and vibrating together."
"In a time when it’s easy to feel disillusioned, I’m drawn to the punk philosophies of Zhuangzi and Deleuze. Zhuangzi describes riding “the back-and-forth of the six atmospheric breaths,” which is the skill of being at home in the continuous flow of change. Deleuze and Guattari’s “body without organs” is about obliterating conventions for dynamic fields of play. Both pursue spiritual freedom not through detachment but through deep engagement and transformation. Be game for whatever forces happen to be around you and remain curious about what they can become."
### 6
Tonight C demonstrates her transformative taste, anchored by a pair of bangers from ’82\. The Wikipedia page for "[I Ran (So Far Away)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%5FRan%5F%28So%5FFar%5FAway%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)" is worth a read: "The F-G-Am chord progression in the chorus is distinctive and unusual in a pop song but dates back to Romantic-era music." So it's classy.
And a very big thank you to Mike Roller for introducing me to the glory of [Paulstretch](https://sonosaurus.com/paulxstretch/?ref=jamesreeves.co), a piece of early-2000s software with a frillion little buttons for slowing things down. I’m delighted to use it for the first time with A Flock of Seagulls.
Speaking of software, my grouchy music player is now [officially in the Apple app store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spite-music-player/id6757397964?ref=jamesreeves.co) and version 5.0 should hit the streets at any moment. It has some nifty things like a Labels section so you can gather your Chain Reaction flowers into a beautiful bouquet. Thank you to everyone who's been sending along crash reports, suggestions, and encouragement. It takes a village.
Also worth noting: this 40th episode of Midnight Radio is exactly 40:40\. As always, synchronicities abound. Thank you for listening.
1. **Bertrand Belin - Choses Nouvelles**
*Persona* | Cinq 7, 2019
2. **Füxa - Dirty D**
*Dirty D* | Rocket Girl, 2013 | [Bandcamp](https://fuxaband.bandcamp.com/album/dirty-d?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Damien Jurado & Richard Swift - Radioactivity**
Other People’s Songs Vol. 1 | Secretly Canadian, 2016 | [Bandcamp](https://jurado-swift.bandcamp.com/track/radioactivity?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Cliff Martinez - Abscess**
*The Knick Soundtrack* | Milan, 2014
5. **The Cure - Plainsong (Studio Rough Guide Vocal)**
*Disintegration* | Fiction Records, 1989 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/disintegration-deluxe-edition?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **Cliff Martinez - Son of Placenta**
*The Knick Soundtrack* | Milan, 2014
7. **A Flock of Seagulls - I Ran** (620% slower + filtered / 28% slower)
*A Flock of Seagulls* | Jive, 1982
8. **Peter Schilling - Major Tom** (31% slower)
*Error in the System* | Elektra, 1982
9. **Belong - Perfect Life**
Common Era | Kranky, 2011 | [Bandcamp](https://belong.bandcamp.com/album/common-era?ref=jamesreeves.co)
10. **Brian Reitzell & RJ Manning Jr. - On the Subway**
Lost in Translation Soundtrack | Emperor Norton, 2003
11. **Aural Indifference - The Park**
*The Sound of Indifference* | Minimal Wave, 1981 | [Bandcamp](https://auralindifference.bandcamp.com/album/the-sound-of-indifference?ref=jamesreeves.co)
12. **Air - Au Fond du Rêve Doré** (150% slower + filtered)
*Love 2* | Astralwerks, 2009
#### [Download](https://media.transistor.fm/9508cbb3/5cb277ae.mp3?download=true&src=player&ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Podcast](https://midnightradio.transistor.fm/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
The first draft of this episode
### Night Flight to Vienna
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/night-flight-to-vienna/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:18:34.000Z
###### 1
At my Thursday night Spirituality Book Club, we’re a gloriously jumbled group of men. There’s an electrical engineer and a financial advisor. A teacher and a security system installer. A retired insurance adjuster and a young rehab facility supervisor. Others are unemployed, and for some, god only knows. But we’re all reading Simon Critchley’s [*Mysticism*](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9781681378244?ref=jamesreeves.co) and practicing *lectio divina*.
Early mystics like [Origen](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/origen/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and Saint Ambrose developed *lectio divina* as a Christian ritual, but this practice belongs to all traditions. It probably began the moment we invented writing and thought words were imbued with magic.
1\. *Lectio:* Read
2\. *Meditatio:* Reflect
3\. *Oratio:* Respond
4\. *Contemplatio:* Rest
Each week, one of us volunteers to offer a text. The schoolteacher gave us three versions of Christ curing a leper, which led to a lively discussion about whether the leper should have told everyone what happened. The retired insurance adjuster delivered a slow and careful reading of the complete [Serenity Prayer](https://archives.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2008%5F07/serenity.html?ref=jamesreeves.co).
###### 2
For my part, I wanted to track down a bizarro deep cut, some gnarly bit of psychedelic outsider mythos. Instead, an unexpected sentence entered my head with the force of fact. It's from Margaret Atwood's *The Handmaid's Tale*, a novel I haven't thought about in some time—and so, *lectio*:
*The moon is a stone and the sky is full of deadly hardware, but oh God, how beautiful anyway.*
*Meditatio*. Why do I remember this sentence after all these years? Yes, the cadence is sleek and clinical, even a little badass, but I think it resonates because my mind is likewise inclined to strip this world's magic down to studs. Perhaps I inherited my cynicism. Or maybe this is a time of disenchantment.
I know the bush is always burning, but it's so easy to believe otherwise.
There are two movements to Atwood's sentence. First: this world is beautiful *despite* its apparent indifference, even hostility, towards us. But the second turn is more subtle and requires me to squint a little, like a shift in the light that triggers an unexpected memory or jolt of déjà vu: this world is beautiful *because* of its apparent indifference, even hostility, towards us.
*Oratio.* Which is more magical: the ancient belief that a rabbit lived on the moon or that it was the literal cause of lunacy—or that there's an enormous rock suspended above our heads that controls the seas?
Most of all, I admire the effortlessness of this sentence, how it captures a wonder that comes naturally and therefore gratefully.
Now it's time to *contemplatio*.
A drawing of myself marveling at a stone moon and a sky filled with deadly hardware
###### 3
I'm writing this on a Vienna-bound airplane. A full moon shines over the Atlantic, which is roiling away down there in the dark, and I suppose I'm inside a piece of deadly hardware.
I've been keeping [a simple journal](https://jamesreeves.co/notebook?ref=jamesreeves.co) where I try to write a sentence about my life each day even though I sometimes forget. But I'm hoping to remember in Vienna, where C. and I will visit the [Venus of Willendorf](https://www.nhm.at/en/research/prehistory/research/venus-research?ref=jamesreeves.co), Bruegel's [*Tower of Babel*](https://www.khm.at/en/artworks/the-tower-of-babel-323-1?ref=jamesreeves.co), Freud's office, and Giuseppe Arcimboldo's [16th-century fever dreams](https://www.khm.at/en/digital/artists/giuseppe-arcimboldo?ref=jamesreeves.co).
I love flying at night, cocooned in a netherworld beyond space and time, and tonight we'll listen to the music that has been soundtracking this sensation. This hour-long installment kicks off with a synthesizer chorus from Richie Hawtin's 1993 debut as [F.U.S.E](https://ra.co/reviews/23764?ref=jamesreeves.co). Then comes a soulful slab of dub techno that [my friend Earl](https://www.instagram.com/earl%5Fkikiki?ref=jamesreeves.co) casually sent me the other day, which bleeds into a wonderfully fuzzy track from [A New Line (Related)](https://boomkat.com/products/crewe-away-ep?ref=jamesreeves.co)—the territory between cozy and spectral is tough to locate, but these two songs live in its downtown. Then we'll take a cold plunge into some deep winter chug with slow-motion glaciers from Monolake, cv313, and the Field (god, those drums at the 41:40 mark).
1. **F.U.S.E. - Night Drive**
*Dimension Intrusion* | Plus 8, 1993 | [Bandcamp](https://richiehawtin.bandcamp.com/album/dimension-intrusion?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **My Friend Earl - Snowblow**
2026 | [Bandcamp](https://kiatre.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **A New Line (Related) - Crewe Away**
*Crewe Away* | Sound in Silence, 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://anewlinerelated.bandcamp.com/album/crewe-away-ep?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Monolake - Cyan** (44% slower)
*Hong Kong* | Chain Reaction, 1997 | [Bandcamp](https://roberthenke.bandcamp.com/album/hongkong-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Tropic of Cancer - Dive (Wheel of the Law)**
*The Sorrow Of Two Blooms* | Blackest Ever Black, 2014 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/the-sorrow-of-two-blooms?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **The Field - Leave It** (31% slower)
*Yesterday and Today* | Kompakt, 2009 | [Bandcamp](https://thefield.bandcamp.com/album/yesterday-and-today?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **cv313 - Beyond the Clouds Reprise II** (19% slower)
*Beyond the Clouds (Reprised)* | Echospace \[Detroit\], 2011 | [Bandcamp](https://echospace313.bandcamp.com/album/beyond-the-clouds-remastered?ref=jamesreeves.co)
We return to land with a brief pitched-down snippet of Duran Duran's "Ordinary World" because I really enjoyed [*The Bone Temple*](https://www.vulture.com/article/review-28-years-later-the-bone-temple-is-glorious.html?ref=jamesreeves.co).
A quick shout-out to [M](https://www.martinessig.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) for introducing me to Critchley, the *lectio divina*, and many other new flows of intensity. And a tremendous thank you to everybody who has been testing [Spite](https://www.jamesreeves.co/spite/) and taking time to send such helpful feedback. I'm genuinely shocked and delighted by the interest in this grouchy mp3 player—there are 38 beta testers now (!) and it will be available in Apple's app store by the end of the week.
Thank you for listening.
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/18606281-night-flight-to-vienna.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co)
The first draft of this episode
### Darkly Euphoric
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/darkly-euphoric/
Last updated: 2026-03-20T17:16:58.000Z
###### 1.
Woke up the other day and the pain was gone. The torment of gum surgery had ended. My mouth felt okay. “Back to my old self,” I thought as I shuffled into the bathroom to get ready for dim sum with the in-laws. Might as well trim my beard. The guard on my clippers clattered into the sink and I accidentally mowed a three-inch wide slash across my face. Nothing to do but completely shave it off, and now my head looks too small. But it was a helpful reminder that everything changes and there’s no going back to the way we were.
Exclusive luxury preview of the app I'm building
###### 2.
But sometimes it’d be nice to go back. Maybe to 2006 or so. Before the internet rotted our politics and stranded our culture in ever-narrowing rabbit holes made by black box algorithms. This is why I’ve spent the past month building an altar for the holy format of the MP3.
Apple has turned iTunes into a sluggish beast that harasses you into renting your music. Other music players don’t work how I want. I craved a dead-simple music app that 1) displays big album artwork; 2) allows me to share a library with [C](https://www.candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co); 3) doesn’t feel like managing a spreadsheet; and 4) automatically delivers playlists to my telephone before I go for a drive or a run. All built on bulletproof XML files rather than proprietary mysteries in the ether.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so consumed by a project, but this is what happens when you have a dream. Before I got started, I asked some friends if they’d like to help. They wished me luck. “To hell with them,” I told C. “I’ll build it anyway and destroy Spotify and Apple.” C smiled and said that spite was an interesting reason to make something.
Spite is now ready for beta-testing. If you’d like to give it a whirl, [let me know](mailto:james@jamesreeves.co). If everything goes according to plan and I don’t accidentally mow a three-inch path through my code, Spite should be ready for the world very soon.
Some archived images of Burnlab.
###### 3.
If we ever do go back in time, I’d like to show you Burnlab because it was the best example of where the Information Superhighway should have taken us. When I moved from Michigan to New York City in 2001, my taste was deep but narrow: Basic Channel, Thomas Brinkmann, Plastikman, etc. Fellow metro-Detroiter [Mike Doyle](https://bsky.app/profile/mikeburnlab.bsky.social?ref=jamesreeves.co) followed a similar path, but he was always a few miles ahead of me. His publication, Burnlab, turned me on to new ways of thinking about visual culture and opened me up to the spiky electro-goth of bands like Telefon Tel Aviv and Adult. I credit him with returning vocals to my life, priming me to fall in love with everything from Public Image Limited to HTRK.
Today, a quick search for Burnlab coughs up an alpha-fuckhead fitness venture and a startup that “develops sophisticated autonomous AI agents that can make intelligent decisions with minimal human intervention”—even though human intervention is the whole fucking point of being on this planet. These search results are a dismal yet accurate portrait of what we’ve lost over the past twenty years. But there’s no going back.
And this is why I’m especially delighted Mike Doyle is here with us tonight to inaugurate the First Very Special Guest Episode of Midnight Radio.
“Hi, I’m Mike. I’ve been a culture enthusiast my whole life. Obsessed with learning and sharing, my dream job was to be a magazine editor. I DJ’d my junior high dances and was editor of my high school newspaper, which led to co-founding the DJ groups [Dorkwave](https://www.metrotimes.com/music-2/revenge-of-the-dorks-2181158/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and [Dethlab](https://soundcloud.com/dethlab?ref=jamesreeves.co), and the blog Burnlab, and contributing to design sites Core77 and Archinect when the internet was exciting. I’m also an exhibit designer, [designed albums](https://ghostly.com/artists/mike-doyle?ref=jamesreeves.co) for Solvent and Matthew Dear for Ghostly International, and produced music events in Detroit because nobody else would fly artists like MOTOR and Vitalic at the time.
At the Godspeed You! Black Emperor show in Detroit recently, James asked if I’d like to do a guest mix for Midnight Radio. I was thrilled, but wanted it to be collaborative: I’d submit a playlist and James would do his editing magic. And here we are.”
And here’s the question I will ask all Midnight Radio guests: *Do you believe in god or any spiritual dimension to the universe? Please describe your metaphysics in 150 words or less.*
To which Mike replied, “Do I believe in God? No. Not the Christian god that’s watching you masturbate. I am fascinated by the invisible forces of the universe. If I could choose a superpower, it would be to see, hear, and feel all the waves outside the visible and audible spectrums.”
With new waves in mind, here are some songs he loves.
1. **Liars - No. 1 Against the Rush**
*WIXIW* | Mute, 2012 | [Bandcamp](https://liars.bandcamp.com/album/wixiw?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Cold Cave - Double Lives in Single Beds**
*Love Comes Close* | Heartworm Press, 2009 | [Bandcamp](https://coldcave.bandcamp.com/album/love-comes-close?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Telefon Tel Aviv - You are the Worst Thing in the World**
*Immolate Yourself* | BPitch Control, 2009 | [Bandcamp](https://telefon-tel-aviv.bandcamp.com/music?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **The Horrors - Sea Within a Sea**
*Primary Colours* | XL Recordings, 2009
5. **ERAAS - Fang**
*ERAAS* | Felte, 2012 | [Bandcamp](https://eraas.bandcamp.com/album/eraas?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **Adult. - Tonight We Fall**
*The Way Things Fall* | Ghostly International, 2013 | [Bandcamp](https://adultmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-way-things-fall-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **A Place to Bury Strangers - Love Reaches Out (GIFT/Reality Delay Mixes)**
*See Through You Rerealized* | 2023 | [Bandcamp](https://aplacetoburystrangers.bandcamp.com/album/see-through-you-rerealized?ref=jamesreeves.co)
The title of tonight’s episode comes from Mike's post-Burnlab blog, a variant on [Bruce Sterling's 2009 announcement](https://www.wired.com/2011/02/transcript-of-reboot-11-speech-by-bruce-sterling-25-6-2009/?ref=jamesreeves.co) at a conference in Copenhagen that days of dark euphoria were upon us: intense digital-driven pleasure that masks societal collapse and crisis. These seven glittering tracks fit the bill, and they've become an ideal companion for cold January night drives and early morning runs.
I’m glad Mike reminded me of ERAAS, who produced some of the sleekest yet underrated synthpop I’ve heard. He selected “[Briar Path](https://eraas.bandcamp.com/track/briar-path?ref=jamesreeves.co)” but I made an eleventh-hour switch to “Fang” because it’s a personal favorite and I wanted to loop its drums. I also couldn’t work in Holly Herndon’s "[Fade](https://hollyherndon.bandcamp.com/track/fade?ref=jamesreeves.co)", Nick Cave’s "Spinning Song", or Chelsea Wolfe’s "[Survive](https://chelseawolfe.bandcamp.com/track/survive?ref=jamesreeves.co)"—but if you listen close, reverberated traces of all three songs haunt this broadcast.
Also swapped in a couple of remixes that transform "Love Reaches Out" into an M83-style anthem that delivers some good advice for surviving what looks to be another dreadful year: *Love reaches out to everyone, not as much as it'd like to, but you gotta keep the dream alive.*
There’s something very satisfying to me about the fact that this mix is exactly 33 minutes and 33 seconds.
Thank you for listening.
#### [Download ](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/18517450-darkly-euphoric.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co)| [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/darkly-euphoric/id1842707342?i=1000745379722&ref=jamesreeves.co)
The first draft of this episode
### Cursed VHS
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/cursed-vhs/
Last updated: 2026-07-07T10:15:15.000Z
C. and I watched a stuttering videotape. Somebody warned us that we shouldn’t watch the ending because it shows how we’ll die. Everyone in the movie had the flu and was laying down to die. We stopped the tape. She sniffled. I coughed. I wanted to run, but she shook her head and took my hand. I put on a favorite record—[*A Million Miles to Earth*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/two-million-miles-to-earth/)—and we laid down.
### First Things
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/first-things/
Last updated: 2026-03-20T17:17:19.000Z
###### 1
They carved a strip of flesh from the roof of my mouth and stitched it to my gums. Never go to a periodontist.
Before they started, I asked if they could knock me out. Please, just take me offline so I won’t be around for this. But they didn’t have the equipment for anesthesia. Instead, they offered me a buffet of delightful drugs. Valium perhaps? Or would I prefer a nitrous drip and some Percocet? But I didn’t want to mess with twelve years of hard-earned sobriety, so we agreed I would raise my left hand during the procedure if I needed drugs. Then they covered my eyes with a towel. “So you don’t see all the blood.” As they rooted through my mouth with a scalpel and thread, my right hand remained clamped around my left like it was strangling an unpredictable animal.
So I’ve been thinking about pain over the holidays.
###### 2
Pain has color and shape. Sometimes it’s a purple-grey oval throb. It can be a sharp triangle coated in the red heat and muck of the body. And sometimes it’s just pale blue vapor without an identifiable center.
In my mouth, the pain was animal and alive, shapeshifting and uncovering new ways to torment as if it were possessed with its own wicked intelligence. Pain in the mouth is a particularly hellacious creature, a reminder that, in many ways, I live in my mouth, so accustomed to the contours of this cavern for sustenance and speech that it feels like my soul lives beneath my tongue.
More than ever, I was haunted by the idea that “God is all mouth.” To my mind, this phrase is pure cosmic body horror, but for [Madame Guyon](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22269/22269-h/22269-h.htm?ref=jamesreeves.co), a 17th-century mystic, it articulates the need for complete surrender and passive reception—a radical shift in which God consumes one’s voice and annihilates the self to become a vessel for divine speech.
Anyway, I was not supposed to speak. I had never appreciated how crucial the tongue and the roof of the mouth are for formulating sound. Although talking was an agony, I couldn’t help myself. “Covering your mouth with your hand when you talk doesn’t count,” C. reminded me. So I remained unusually quiet for six days. And I was consistently surprised by how often I was frustrated by my inability to share some goofy opinion or pointless remark only to discover a moment later I’d forgotten it.
I never realized I was such a chatterbox.
###### 3
Must pain be the driver of self-awareness and change? Tales of mental upheavals and revelations tend to unfold in hospital beds, jail cells, and the lonesome hour of the wolf.
The beginning of a new year might be the only time an impulse to improve oneself is collectively determined by an ambivalent calendar rather than some urgent personal need.
My resolutions for 2026 are the usual fiddling with the volume of existing habits: read more, less television, longer runs, more cooking, less complaining, etc. But most of all, I intend to follow the advice of this fortune cookie and avoid making things worse—starting with leaving the stitches in my mouth alone.
###### 4
Meanwhile, [C.](https://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) gave me the most wondrous gift I’ve ever received: a custom-made plaster replica of the Fragmented Head of Colossal Boy (Hellenistic Greek, 2nd century BCE). Over the past few years, this figure has become my avatar (and made [a cameo in this newsletter](https://www.jamesreeves.co/six-broken-dreams/)) because I think it perfectly expresses the psychic shred of living in the 21st century. Now it lives on my desk.
###### 5
Speaking of C., we discovered a great deal of controversy within a narrow channel of sound. She asked for an early morning mix to start her day, which led to hours of heated debate about how a person should wake up. “The first thing I want to hear is astronaut music,” she said. She believes a morning playlist should start off cosmic then gradually return the listener to earth, whereas I prefer a churchy hush as I rub the sleep from my eyes and pad into the kitchen to make coffee, a soundtrack that begins as a hum and slowly unfolds into something widescreen and vivid. This is the route I've selected tonight because C. can start her own Morning Radio newsletter for psychonauts who need a safe reentry.
Regardless of their order, these three songs possess the spiritualized energy I fantasize about cultivating in the first minutes of a new year. Then the actual year starts happening. But playing this mix each morning should keep the dream alive.
1. **Kali Malone - Spectacle of Ritual**
*The Sacrificial Code* | Ideal Recordings, 2019 | [Bandcamp](https://kalimalone.bandcamp.com/album/the-sacrificial-code-2025-edition?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Abul Mogard - Desires Are Reminiscences By Now**
*The Sky Had Vanished* | Ecstatic, 2015 | [Bandcamp](https://abulmogard.bandcamp.com/album/works?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Autechre - VLetrmx21** (65% slower)
*Garbage* | Warp, 1995 | [Bandcamp](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/garbage?ref=jamesreeves.co)
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/18442111-first-things.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 037: First Things
0:00
/2010.0440816326532
1×
The first draft of this episode
### Holiday Lullaby
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/holiday-lullaby/
Last updated: 2026-05-27T23:35:59.000Z
Although the year is winding down, the future is still coming fast and dumb. The people in charge are hellbent on giving us artificially intelligent colleagues and companions, and they’re banking on a heavy assumption: that we value the *sense* of a relationship more than a living person. That we will privilege feeling over the fact. They might not be wrong. For the past year, [C.](https://www.candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and I have been playing with a scenario:
###### 1
C. and I have been together for decades, and our relationship is the best and happiest and luckiest thing in my life. Everything else is noise, a game to be played. We know how to surprise and delight and vex one another, and every year we accumulate more material. There is also the friction that shapes any relationship. I can be annoying. Before I got sober, I was a disaster. But she can be difficult too, like when she ruins a song by saying it sounds like a magic show or cats meowing. But I never thought it was possible to keep loving someone more and more, and I would not trade this relationship for anything.
###### 2
Picture it: I wake one night at an unwholesome hour for a sleepy pee and discover C. is gone. I search our flat but cannot find her. Her shoes and coat are still there. Her phone and keys are on the kitchen counter. A mechanical hum breaks the silence. A strange blue light spills across the floor. It’s coming from the utility closet. I slowly open the door and find her folded up inside. Plugged into the wall. Recharging.
She is synthetic. Artificial. A machine designed to deliver the love and laughter I want, and the frustration and friction I need.
Perhaps I recoil and get sick. Maybe I’m fascinated. Probably a little of both.
###### 3
What should I do, now that she’s powered up and opening her eyes? Remember when I said I wouldn’t trade our relationship for anything?
Our friend [M.](https://failureisfreedom.buzzsprout.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) often talks about Kierkegaard’s belief that a parent and child who never quarrel or disappoint each other do not have a relationship. Because it’s the friction and mess, the points of failure and even the occasional tears—and how we recover—that give any relationship its heartbeat.
And if I’ve enjoyed this dynamic for thirty years with a robot?
There’s a crucial distinction between the accidental discovery in my hypothetical scenario and knowing what you’re signing up for when you open ChatGPT. But this fork is coming fast because they’re stuffing chatbots and algorithms into everything. How many of us would happily sign up for the mess of another human being if an easier, always eager and self-affirming companion were available?
The other day I was using a chatbot to debug some code and it started to make jokes, including a reference to the [video game Myst](https://cyan.com/games/myst/?ref=jamesreeves.co), which means it knows a) I’m old; and b) that I’m a dork. If the robots are getting sassy, genuine friction and argument might not be far behind.
For my part, I’m unsettled by how much the spouse-as-robot scenario gives me pause. I know I wouldn’t be able to scrap C. for parts, which means I value the dynamic between myself and another entity more than whether it is flesh-and-blood or microchip. But it’s hard to accept that I favor the feeling over the fact, the “soft product” over the hard reality.
The future is not Skynet or lasers in the sky but something more sinister, slowly chipping away at our capacity for difficulty and uncertainty.
###### 4
A similar rupture between perception and fact haunts my listening. Since 2018, I’ve compiled [an annual list of favorite albums](https://www.jamesreeves.co/tag/heavy-rotation/), a reassuring ritual that etches some memories for each year. I also dread it. At first I thought this was because writing about music often feels like abusing the thesaurus. *Lumber. Lope. Drone. Galumph.* But lately as I cycle through songs, skipping some and bookmarking others, I experience a not-entirely unpleasant sense of slippage. *Do* I like this? Why do I feel compelled to have an opinion about it? How do I know what I like? What is taste anyway? I should just stay out of it and let the song be what it is. And suddenly the idea of picking favorites becomes absurd. Maybe I’m zen now, I don’t know.
In a similar vein to the argument for artificial assistants, lovers, therapists, and friends, I’ve decided to focus on my *relationship* with music this year rather than evaluating the music itself. I’ve put together a collection of albums released in 2025 such as:
- the album that challenged me until I learned how to love it;
- the album that delivered the most transcendental experience while running;
- the most rewarding exercise in patience while dealing with an Old Testament bass drum that sounds like creation itself.
[Here’s my highly subjective list](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2025-rotation/), starring Biosphere, Sa Pa, Minor Hexachords, Sixsixsevenfortyseven, and more.
###### 5
Onward to tonight’s broadcast. The first seven songs are table-setting for Me-Sheen’s “Sonic Lullaby,” one of the most beautiful songs in my canon. I came across it in 1997 on one of those ponderous [Excursions in Ambience](https://www.discogs.com/label/436102-Excursions-In-Ambience?ref=jamesreeves.co) CDs with hellacious cover art and it’s been living in my head ever since. But first we kick off with Julianna Barwick’s “Prizewinning”, a song that’s somehow lulling and thrilling at once. It never fails to leave me cheering and C. plays it all the time, so it’s definitely a winner. Then we have a spiritualized vocoder workout from Matchess, a nugget of AM radio gold, and a powerful burst of dub techno from Vril—I hope to be reincarnated as the low-end whir on “Infinitum Eternis Anime” and join the rings of Saturn.
(I was introduced to Vril via [this ten-minute video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWbhxqCRd5o&themeRefresh=1&ref=jamesreeves.co) about dub techno that six people sent me. At first I was a little irritated that my taste is so predictable, but yes, I loved it, so thank you, [Earl Carlson](https://www.instagram.com/theearlcarlson/?hl=en&ref=jamesreeves.co), [Will Elwood](https://blog.will-ellwood.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co), and everyone else.)
And tonight there’s plenty of reverb to carry us into the holidays, along with fragments of some 1950s Welsh miners singing carols because I’m feeling festive.
1. **Julianna Barwick - Prizewinning**
*The Magic Place* | Asthmatic Kitty, 2011 | [Bandcamp](https://juliannabarwick.bandcamp.com/album/the-magic-place-2024-remaster?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Matchess - Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes**
*Sacracorpa* | Trouble in Mind, 2018 | [Bandcamp](https://matchess.bandcamp.com/album/sacracorpa?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Vril - Infinitum Eternis Anime**
*Anima Mundi* | Delsin, 2018 | [Bandcamp](https://vrilofficial.bandcamp.com/album/anima-mundi?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Air - Le Soleil Est Près de Moi** (28% slower)
*Premiers Symptômes* | Parlophone, 1997
5. **Eagles - I Can't Tell You Why** (20% slower)
*The Long Point* | Asylum Records, 1979
6. **Voices From the Lake - Max**
Live at MAXXI, 2015 | [Bandcamp](https://voicesfromthelake.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-maxxi?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **Me-Sheen - Sonic Lullaby**
*Electronic Membrain* | Reflective, 1995
8. **Rhos Male Voice Choir: Psalm 23 / Holy Night** \+ Vril loop
Carols From The Welsh Mines, 1958 | [More](https://boomkat.com/products/music-and-carols-from-the-welsh-mines?ref=jamesreeves.co)
If you prefer upbeat holiday music, please attend last year’s [Professional Holiday Party](https://www.jamesreeves.co/professional-holiday-party/).
Thank you for listening.
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/18361038-holiday-lullaby.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?i=1000741469385&ref=jamesreeves.co)
### 2025 Rotation
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/2025-rotation/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:12:21.000Z
The music that gave me the most memorable experiences this year. Highly subjective and therefore entirely accurate.
## Most euphoric song of 2025 because it sounds like 1982 and the year 3000 at the same time
**Unspecified Enemies - "Romance in the Age of Adaptive Feedback"**
##### Numbers, February 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://nmbrs.bandcamp.com/track/romance-in-the-age-of-adaptive-feedback?ref=jamesreeves.co)
I first heard this while running along the Tansui River where distant mountains and temple-tops poked through the shadows of Taipei’s skyscrapers and apartment blocks. Dig those crashing drums and widescreen synthesizers—this is pure electro sleaze like a beautiful machine top-rocking in a *Blade Runner* alley, and the perfectly placed robo-growl that makes it a classic. I left this song on repeat for days, and it’s looping now as I write these words at the library, nodding and grinning like an idiot while people do Zoom calls and study for exams. And because synchronicities abound these days, I just noticed the title of this track harmonizes beautifully with my [robo-spouse scenario](https://www.jamesreeves.co/holiday-lullaby/).
[Romance in the Age of Adaptive Feedback by Unspecified Enemies](https://nmbrs.bandcamp.com/album/romance-in-the-age-of-adaptive-feedback?ref=jamesreeves.co)
## The album that challenged me until I learned how to love it
**Sa Pa - *Ambeesh***
##### Short Span, July 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://sa-pa.bandcamp.com/album/ambeesh?ref=jamesreeves.co)
At first it sounded like visiting a construction site where men yelled at me to get out of the way while rusty machines pounded the earth. For some reason, I kept returning. Gradually it became the throb of a hostile dance party in a distant warehouse. Then one afternoon, it clicked: this is the earthbound answer to Porter Ricks’s “[Nautical Dub](https://forceincmilleplateaux.bandcamp.com/track/nautical-dub?ref=jamesreeves.co)”: the sound of soil and muck dredged by an alien machine with so many beautiful gears that I could stare at it forever.
[Ambeesh by Sa Pa](https://sa-pa.bandcamp.com/album/ambeesh?ref=jamesreeves.co)
## The album that delivered the most transcendent experience while running
**Nakibemebe Embaire Group & Naoyuki Uchida - *Phantom Keys***
##### Nyegenyege Tapes, November 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://nyegenyegetapes.bandcamp.com/album/phantom-keys?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Maybe it was a surplus of dopamine or the lack of oxygen in my muscles and brain, but the world started to burn extra-bright at the four-mile mark of a wintry run. Then came the giddy sense of sliding out of time and I realized everything about this fallen world was just fine because the animal heat and precision-drilled logic of the drums in my head reminded me that we are wild and inventive creatures. I was taken back to the column of fire and taiko boom of a Goma ceremony and embodying the ancient rites I’d seen in documentaries and by the time a voice yelped in my left earphone, I was nearly in tears. Also: plenty of reverb.
[Phantom Keys by Nakibemebe Embaire Group & Naoyuki Uchida](https://nyegenyegetapes.bandcamp.com/album/phantom-keys?ref=jamesreeves.co)
## The album I played six times in a row to soundtrack my view of the North Atlantic at 36,000 feet
**In Transit - *In Transit***
##### Felt, October 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://amadeupsound.bandcamp.com/album/in-transit?ref=jamesreeves.co)
When a fog horn blares exactly five minutes into the first song, it’s a burst of pure audio excitement and disorientation. Until then, everything had been burbling along pleasantly: a plush low end beneath a micro-clickety haze like a tranquilized Jan Jelinek doing his best impersonation of Pole. But the fog horn ruptured my understanding of what I’d been hearing and how many layers and organs this music might possess. I squinted my ears and inspected each song until I began to doze with distant white caps roiling far below me and my forehead left a smudge against the cold polycarbonate window.
[In Transit by In Transit](https://amadeupsound.bandcamp.com/album/in-transit?ref=jamesreeves.co)
## Most rewarding exercise in patience while dealing with an Old Testament bass drum that sounds like creation itself
**Sixsixsevenfortyseven - "I Stood There"**
##### *Wounded Dogs* | Youth, June 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://theyouthlabel.bandcamp.com/album/sixsixsevenfortyseven-wounded-dogs-y23th-youth?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A cloud of static rolls across the stereofield, mumbling with a French accent. Then comes a bottomless drum, a seasick lurch, and a skitter of laughter that dead-ends into negative space. It’s hard to understand what’s happening until the 4:50 mark when the situation coheres into a deadly cool machine and I can’t wait to play it again so I can wait.
[Sixsixsevenfortyseven - Wounded Dogs - Y23TH - YOUTH by YOUTH](https://theyouthlabel.bandcamp.com/album/sixsixsevenfortyseven-wounded-dogs-y23th-youth?ref=jamesreeves.co)
## A delightfully complex situation that destroyed my reliance upon language and genre
**Minor Hexachords - *Brinkmanship***
##### May 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://minorhexachords.bandcamp.com/album/brinkmanship?ref=jamesreeves.co)
I kept hunting for three or four words to mentally classify this album. Dub techno as psychedelica. An interstellar pastoral. But whenever I thought I had a grip on the thing, the music skittered off to do something else. Tracks like “Inflection” somehow rock out and remain tight-looped while pulsars orbit smeared guitars. “Radians” sounds like somebody strangling a Chain Reaction record in a bathtub. These songs are alive and heaving, the messy stuff of fingerprints and breath, but also injected with silicon, aerogel, and any other strange material the future holds.
[Brinkmanship by Minor Hexachords](https://minorhexachords.bandcamp.com/album/brinkmanship?ref=jamesreeves.co)
## The music I played at least five hours per day in 2025
**Variant / Intrusion / cv313 / Echospace**
##### [Bandcamp](https://echospace313.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
The patron saint of reverb, the godhead of majestic hour-long slabs of frigid drift and groove. Once you enter the Echospace, the journey is fittingly infinite. Beneath the mist of aliases—Intrusion, Soultek, cv313, Phase90, Radius, etc—there’s a man named Stephen Hitchell whose discography is an ever-evolving Deleuzian organism. Seems like every other day there's a new remaster or extended analogue version or live set from Japan or Nebraska—and yet I still want more because the hiss is kaleidoscopic, the reverb is boundless, and I think he's approaching dub techno as a 21st-century religious technology.
I have no idea where to tell you to begin but you'll find your way. Maybe give this short one a go:
[love in lofi \[unreleased tape sessions\] by intrusion](https://echospace313.bandcamp.com/album/love-in-lofi-unreleased-tape-sessions?ref=jamesreeves.co)
## The song that got stuck in my head the most
**Biosphere - "Time of Man"**
##### Way of Time | AD 93, June 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://biosphere.bandcamp.com/album/the-way-of-time?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Pairing futuristic synthesizers with a vintage Southern accent performing a 1951 radio adaptation of a novel from 1926 sounds like a terrible idea yet the result edges toward the holy. Tracks like "Way of Time" and "All Stars Have Names" threaten to leap from the speakers, they're so vivid and saturated. But the title track lodged itself into my head for the better part of 2025: a woman's voice saying *time of man time of man time of maaan* until I wanted to scream. But Biosphere's ability to transform his synthesizers into glorious sculpture more than makes up for it.
[The Way of Time by Biosphere](https://biosphere.bandcamp.com/album/the-way-of-time?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Slow Gold
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/slow-gold/
Last updated: 2025-12-02T04:34:11.000Z
###### 1.
My father liked to order egg foo young from cheap takeout joints with faded menus and bulletproof glass. God, how I shamed him when I was growing up. “That’s not *real* Chinese food, Dad.” Because I knew about mei fun and sticky rice and dim sum, I thought I was worldly. He would smile and nod as he tucked into his gnarly pork omelette soaked in Thanksgiving gravy. After he died, I ordered some egg foo young to remember him, and holy christ it was a joyful concoction of salt, fat, acid, and the rest of it.
My mother-in-law is a small but mighty Taiwanese woman with intense opinions about food. I was surprised to see egg foo young on the menu of one of her favorite spots, and I mentioned my father’s affection for it. “Let’s try it,” she said. After she’d eaten a fair amount of it, she said my father was a very smart man, and I like to think he’s looking on from wherever the dead are and saying, “I fucking *told* you.”
So this holiday season, give the people you love the greatest gift of all: righteous vindication.
###### 2.
I once asked my students to define beauty. "Beauty is remembering the sad times without crying," said a fourteen-year-old girl who is wiser than I will ever be.
###### 3.
A formative memory: six years old on a soccer field when the sky turned orange and green. The sound of something terrible filled the air, a cosmic revving that stopped us on the field, the ball forgotten, our little faces tilted up as we watched the clouds. I still remember the air, the sense of something being sucked out of the world before it returned in terrible form. Maybe it was just the barometer dropping, but this sensation is still with me when a summer storm gathers or the telephone rings with bad news.
Our parents argued on the sidelines about whether to take shelter in our cars or under the trees. But here comes my mom, racing across the field, scooping me into her arms—maybe scooping all of us because she was a hero that day, how she scooched us under a picnic table and lay on top of me, saying *don’t worry, hunny bunny, it’s gonna be alright* while a terrible engine crossed the sky and took the roof of a gazebo with it.
###### 4.
In my Thursday Night Men's Book Club, we've been discussing whether suffering is required for transcendence or even plain old growth. It’s a hard problem. Tragedy did not make me more intelligent or bring me closer to faith. In fact, it made the transactional nature of religion repellent—as if I lost my parents because I did not pray enough or we were bad people.
A few years later, I came across a quote from Epictetus: *Never say something is lost, only that it is returned.* These words consoled me on an intellectual level (although I am very much not a stoic) but it would take several more years before I came to inhabit them. This transformation occurred so slowly that I only noticed it in the rearview mirror. Now I feel damned lucky to have been raised by such big-hearted people. This world owes me nothing and, while our time together was too short, most people don’t get even that.
###### 5.
Like these thoughts on egg foo young and tornados, tonight’s broadcast is all over the map—but I’m increasingly fond of intensely personal playlists that ratfuck the algorithm. We kick off with a *Breakfast Club* anthem pitched down into Sisters of Mercy gloom, followed by a heavy slice of Detroit electro I bought in '95 and played to death, entranced by its bottomless growl. Years later, I heard this track on a compilation CD and realized it was meant to be played at 45rpm. This might be the godhead of my passion for slowing things down, and the ritual continues with a song from ’74 that reminds me of my parents’ kitchen and the big romance they had when they were young. Then comes a dub techno staple that sounds like a beautiful machine at 40% speed, which gives way to a Swans track I love. It came to mind after reading [Adam Greenfield’s delightful piece](https://www.patreon.com/posts/dispatch-for-23-144145584?ref=jamesreeves.co) about wanting to eat God while watching them perform—and I discovered “Leaving Meaning” degrades into a lovely ambient song if you fiddle with the equalizer and douse it in reverb. Then we head to heartbeat city, here we come.
1. **Simple Minds - Don’t You Forget About Me** (38% slower)
*The Breakfast Club* | 1985 | [More](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXzcTdsRDjE&ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Will Web - Spacewalk** (30% slower)
*Cosmic Driveby* | Direct Beat, 1995
3. **The Hollies - The Air That I Breathe** (20% slower)
*Hollies* | EMI, 1974
4. **Vladislav Delay - Huone** (46% slower)
*Multila* | Chain Reaction, 2000 | [Bandcamp](https://vladislavdelay.bandcamp.com/album/multila-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Swans - Leaving Meaning** (20% slower)
*Leaving Meaning* | Mute, 2019 | [Bandcamp](https://swans.bandcamp.com/album/leaving-meaning?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **Pole - Hafen** (40% slower)
*2* | Kliff/Matador, 1999 | [Bandcamp](https://pole-stefanbetke.bandcamp.com/album/1-2-3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **Aphex Twin - #1 (Cliffs)** (42% slower)
*Selected Ambient Works II* | Warp, 1994 | [Bandcamp](https://aphextwin.bandcamp.com/album/selected-ambient-works-volume-ii-expanded-edition?ref=jamesreeves.co)
8. **The Cars - Jacki** (31% slower)
*Heartbeat City* | Elektra, 1984
Thank you for listening.
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/18283507-slow-gold.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Podcast](https://www.midnightradio.us/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Absorb the Poison
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/absorb-the-poison/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:13:04.000Z
###### 1
This is dedicated to [*Michael Clayton*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vi4z%5FBxrfA&ref=jamesreeves.co), the 2007 corporate drama filled with reflective surfaces that usher us through the fine-grained details of a class-action lawsuit. Tinted windows and boardroom glass. Hotel lobbies, millionaire homes, and Chinatown gambling dens. George Clooney is a reliably crisp protagonist, his noble jaw carrying the correct amount of cynicism and charm as he moves through the lives of the rich and the damned. But the movie belongs entirely to Tom Wilkinson, who launches this serviceable legal thriller into the realm of mystical allegory.
*My God. I know what this is, this is some sort of amniotic, embryonic fluid. I’m drenched in afterbirth, I've breached the chrysalis, I've been reborn . . . no no no, reset, this is not rebirth . . . I’ve emerged from the asshole of an organism whose sole function is to excrete poison, the ammo, the defoliant necessary for other, larger, more powerful organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity.*
He’s unmedicated, manic, but frighteningly lucid—a sweaty metaphor for the drastic measures required to escape the atmosphere of end-game America. Metaphors and aphorisms abound in this zone. There’s Frederic Jameson’s chestnut that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Or Adorno’s dictum that, now more than ever, we’re given “the freedom to choose what is always the same.” Or John Carpenter’s [magic sunglasses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4XiKChyK7A&ref=jamesreeves.co) that inevitably became a mass-marketed fad via Shepard Fairey. But I prefer Tom Wilkinson off his meds.
Nerves outside of his skin, he is an entirely sensate creature who is no longer retreating from the big-budget questions of existence. He is pursuing answers. He is engaged. And running naked through a parking lot.
###### 2
But here comes Saint Jerome, determined to reject the world in exchange for salvation. Although he removed himself from his family, friends, and the ‘dainty foods’ he loved, he could not bear to leave his books behind. He carried Cicero, Virgil, and Ovid through the Syrian desert. It lingers in the mind, this image of a man carrying his books into the wilderness only to punish himself for reading them.
Several years ago, [C](https://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). gave me a small framed reproduction of my favorite painting, Caravaggio’s *Saint Jerome in His Study*, from 1605\. Jerome was typically depicted in the wilderness. But in Caravaggio’s hands, he resides in the blackness of a void or outer space. Hushed and desiccated, he gazes intently at the page of a book. Although he’s probably completing his translation of the Old Testament into Latin, I prefer to think he’s returned to Ovid or Cicero, unaware of the skull on his desk that mocks the vanity of knowledge in the face of the unknowable.
Clenched fists. A slash of light across the cheek. This portrait is [the patron saint of Midnight Radio](https://www.jamesreeves.co/radio/), and it is the root of film noir, where darkness gives no option except to look within. [John Berger](https://www.studiointernational.com/caravaggio-a-contemporary-view-by-john-berger-vol-196-no-998-1983?ref=jamesreeves.co) has said Caravaggio’s darkness “smells of candles, over-ripe melons, damp washing to be hung out the next day.” To me, it feels like the purple-black thoughts that burble within the midnight brain. And in this darkness, Jerome no longer belongs to history or dogma but to the silence he sought in the desert.
###### 3
[Zhuangzi](https://hackettpublishing.com/zhuangziphil?ref=jamesreeves.co) would disagree, and he comes to mind thanks to C, who sometimes shares his writing with me—like his idea of finding liberation by “charioting upon what is true both to Heaven and to earth, riding atop the back-and-forth of the six atmospheric breaths so that your wandering could nowhere be brought to a halt.”
My tendency is to detach from the embarrassment and overwhelm of the 21st century. Protect my attention span. Seek stillness. Learn to watch a fireplace the way I watch television or stare at my computer screen. But this is looking backward to an overly romanticized pre-internet age, and it is reactionary.
Because what am I protecting? Better to steer into the skid. Ride the back-and-forth. Embrace every atmospheric breath, no matter how tacky or difficult or mundane. Cultivate the philosophy of [Tatsuo Miyajima](https://www.akionagasawa.com/en/shop/books/akionagasawa/keep-changing-connect-with-everything-continue-forever/?ref=jamesreeves.co): *Keep changing. Connect with everything. Continue forever.*
###### 4
So I’m doing hard new things. Forcing myself to run for an hour although my mind and thighs rebel. Last week I took my fear of heights for a spin and accepted an invitation to go rock climbing. I don’t think it’s for me, but I deeply enjoyed hearing people say things like *meat hook*, *flash*, *jug*, *crimp*, and *sloper*. I successfully climbed two walls, fighting the mad urge to look down. Later my friend S. said that while it was nice that I made it to the top, it might be better to try a hard path and fall. So I’m finally teaching myself to use [GitHub](https://github.com/mrjamesreeves?ref=jamesreeves.co) and the command line.
While running and moaning and cursing, I try to remind myself that I *get* to run. Because soon this body will fail. And soon the robots will infect everything that was fun to make and learn.
###### 5
*I took a deep, cleansing breath and I put that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself, “As clear as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe I have witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time.” And Michael, the time is now.*
So the hour has come for some Tom Wilkinson and George Clooney interlaced with five pieces of profound bass and machine grind. And plenty of amniotic, embryonic reverb.
- *Try to make believe this is not just madness because this is not just madness.*
- **Richie Hawtin + Thomas Brinkmann - 96:12/24:00 VR**
Concept | 1998 | [Bandcamp](https://thomasbrinkmann1.bandcamp.com/album/96-vr-concept-1?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- *As potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe I witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time.*
- **HTRK - Poison (Mika Vainio Remix)**
Ghostly International, 2013 | [Bandcamp](https://htrk.bandcamp.com/album/poison-mika-vainio-remix-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- *Yes, the nudity in the parking lot was a mistake, I admit it. It was wrong. It was lame. It was obvious. And therapeutically, it was completely useless.*
- **TM404 - 202/303/303/303/606/606**
Kontra, 2013 | [Bandcamp](https://kontra-musik.bandcamp.com/album/tm404-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- *Is that the correct answer to the multiple choice of me?*
- **Tropic of Cancer - Stop Suffering**
Blackest Ever Black, 2015 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/stop-suffering?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- *What makes this feel good is that I don’t know where this goes.*
- **µ-Ziq - Peppermint Aero**
Manzana | Balmat, 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://mikeparadinas.bandcamp.com/album/manzana?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- *You think you got the horses for that? Well good luck and god bless.*
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/18197137-absorb-the-poison.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 34: Absorb the Poison
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### The Heart Keeps Time
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-heart-keeps-time/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:14:28.000Z
###### 1.
The clocks roll back an hour tonight, and it’s my favorite moment of the year. Not only does it bring the night closer, it reminds me that if we can rearrange time, we can do anything we want. Invent new colors. Remove days from the week. Reset the internet to 2009\. Have a functional government. Changing the clocks ought to be the year’s biggest holiday with fireworks, parades, and gift-giving.
Because I’m lucky, I get to experience the end of Daylight Saving Time twice this year. When C. and I woke up in Copenhagen last Sunday, we discovered the time had changed in Europe. It was confusing at first, but then came the giddy sensation of temporal slippage, and we felt extra refreshed, knowing we’d gotten a free hour of sleep.
###### 2.
Scenes from my notebook
I’m finally learning how to keep a notebook: nothing is sacred and nothing is profane. Let it all blur together, the ruminations and hopeful plans and overheard phrases and client work and memories of my parents and shopping lists and aspirational routines and things to look up later and ideas for new songs to reverberate.
I’m learning to live in the grey. Sort of like the music in my headphones, the waves of hiss and low-frequency drones that muffle the 21st century. Because no matter where I go these days, some jackass is braying into a telephone and terrible music is playing.
But I found some unexpected faith in the human project at the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. Dozens of us bobbed in the steamy water while murmuring to our wives and husbands and children and friends in every kind of English and Cantonese and Portuguese and Arabic and Italian and Korean and languages I did not recognize from Africa, India, and Eastern Europe. Here we all were, at the top of the world in search of a warm place to float around, behaving with peace and decency.
“The people I like most are the ones who are always one sentence away from a laugh,” says C.
###### 3.
C. took this picture of me admiring the rainy reflection of a Bacon and a Giacometti.
In Copenhagen, we spent three days looking at art. We saw a lot of classics, some new favorites, and a fair amount of annoying contemporary work.
Earlier this year [in Taiwan](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-obsidian-turtle-governs-the-north/), I decided the purpose of art is to create a situation where language falls apart. Copenhagen taught me something more: my favorite artwork offers a question—it inspires possibility and speculation rather than stunting the imagination by bludgeoning the viewer into a specific point of view.
A highlight was listening to heavy rain fall on the skylights of the Louisiana while we looked at some Giacomettis and a Francis Bacon, our reflections merging with theirs in the glass. At the [Statens Museum for Kunst](https://www.smk.dk/en/?ref=jamesreeves.co), I admired the factual cadence of phrases like “Sirens were bird-women whose music comforted the dead on the way to the underworld,” and at the [Glyptoteket](https://glyptoteket.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co), the frozen halls of marble gods from three thousand years ago was soundtracked by the delighted shrieks of riders at a nearby amusement park.
Most of all, I appreciated the sci-fi aesthetic of five-thousand-year-old figurines in glass cases, casting extraordinary reflections beneath the spotlights.
###### 4.
Back in the Middle West, on Thursday nights I sit in the lunchroom of a financial services company with a dozen very different men and together we discuss spiritual books. For the first time, I opened my grandfather’s Bible, which he carried with him through France in World War II. It looks and smells like what you’re imagining: yellowed pages gone red at the edges, a velvety odor of damp and time. How such a ferocious smell can be stored away for so many years, I have no idea, but I feel like I’m in conversation with him when I come upon shakily underlined passages like “And God said to Moses, I am who I am.”
We’re queueing up Simon Critchley’s [*Mysticism*](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9781681378244?ref=jamesreeves.co), and I’m already haunted by the proclamation of Madame Guyon, a 17th-century mystic who declared that “God is all mouth.” I imagine a voice howling across time and space, framed by [Francis Bacon teeth](https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bacon-three-studies-for-figures-at-the-base-of-a-crucifixion-n06171?ref=jamesreeves.co). (Bacon believed in “an area of the nervous system to which the texture of paint communicates more violently than anything else.” I think he’s right.)
But maybe the best way to survive the twenty-first century is to cultivate an appetite for mutation and strangeness.
###### 5.
Tonight’s soundtrack harmonizes with this idea of time and mutation. Over the past several weeks, I’ve been smudging my favorite mid-century vocals across a heartbeat drum and some loops that were trapped in my delay pedal. The result is an hour-long soundtrack composed for [Grace Wang](https://gracewang.format.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)’s photography exhibition, *The Heart Has Not Stopped,* at [Clark Centre for the Arts in Toronto](https://www.toronto.ca/explore-enjoy/history-art-culture/cultural-centres-galleries/clark-centre-for-the-arts/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
“Through dreamlike, layered images created with in-camera multiple exposures on film, Wang evokes fleeting moments of memory and time—an intimate meditation on a world both beautiful and unknowable.” The show runs through November 30\. (If you can't make it, you can see some of her work [here](https://www.instagram.com/etheriel/?ref=jamesreeves.co).)
Grace’s pictures combine the haze of memory with the shock of color and unexpected overlays that edge toward the spectral. I tried to capture this sensation by letting bursts of Patsy Cline, Rebekah Del Rio, Nancy Sinatra, The Platters, Yao Su-jung, Roy Orbison, and other familiar voices gradually unfurl. In addition to these samples, the final track was built from tape loops, pitched-down field recordings, and a couple of selections from the excellent [Echospace sound library](https://echospacesoundscapes.bandcamp.com/album/echoes-in-space-42gb-sound-library-w-variant-rework?ref=jamesreeves.co).
Thank you for listening, and the request lines are open.
#### [Bandcamp](https://jamesreeves.bandcamp.com/track/the-heart-keeps-time?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[The Heart Keeps Time by James A. Reeves](https://jamesreeves.bandcamp.com/track/the-heart-keeps-time?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Hallucination Soundtrack
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/hallucination-soundtrack/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:12:41.000Z
###### 1
Last night I dreamt my mother was alive and serving a delicious tea brewed from stones. I woke up pondering the feedback loop of life: is there anything we eat or drink that wasn’t once alive?
This morning C. turned me on to [Simon Critchley](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/18/on-mysticism-the-experience-of-ecstasy-by-simon-critchley-review?ref=jamesreeves.co)’s argument that “it’s impossible to be an atheist while listening to the music you love.” This sounds right because I spent my high school nights making cassette loops, hunched over the guts of a disemboweled Maxell, splicing bits of brown magnetic tape and piecing everything back together with a jeweler’s screwdriver. I remember the purple-black energies that burbled at the back of my mind, the shimmery thoughts that take hold while intently making something.
Thirty years later, I suppose I’m doing this again with Midnight Radio, only now I’m stitching together songs in an overheated and disembodied world I wouldn't have recognized back then.
###### 2
But why does talking about God feel so tacky? Strange how the grammar of damage is so vivid and precise, endlessly inventive—*torched, shanked, concussed*—while the vocabulary of peace remains squelchy and limp, reduced to cloudy words like *serenity* and *bliss*. I do not know how to speak about faith without feeling embarrassed, annoyed at the saccharine pitch in my voice. Language fails. Hell can be described in a thousand ways, but heaven remains impossible to grasp.
###### 3
Thinking about God is hard. Deciding to live with a powerful ghost is not for the faint of heart.
My first memory of God: crouched on the yellow linoleum of the kitchen, maybe six or seven years old and feverishly rubbing a white crayon into a dark piece of construction paper while the Iran Contra scandal unfolded above me on a little black-and-white on the countertop, back in the days when politicians could be shamed.
When I had finished, I scribbled “God” in the bottom corner of my drawing, and I remember feeling a little crazy while doing it. But the strongest part of this memory is my certainty that I had uncovered what God looked like and not understanding why my mother wasn’t more impressed.
What inspired this in a little kid?
###### 4
My childhood scribble came to mind while reading Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s [*God: An Anatomy*](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9780525520450?ref=jamesreeves.co), which outlines a fleshy, breathing creature who was just as messy as the rest of us, prone to laughter, jealousy, and despair. I dig how Stavrakopoulou captures the psychology of three thousand years ago:
> “The cosmic membrane separating the earthly from the otherworldly was highly porous and malleable, so that divinity in all its myriad forms could break through into the world of humans, whether it was perceived as a strange scent on the wind, a fleeting shape glimpsed from the corner of the eye, or felt at a powerful place in the landscape.”
So I’ve been thinking about the cosmic membrane, which Madeline Miller’s [*Circe*](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9780316556323?ref=jamesreeves.co) plays with beautifully. Her generous retelling of Greek myth was one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I've had in years.
---
As I listen to tonight's broadcast now, I realize it got messy when I wasn't looking, which might make it one of my favorites. Revelations and mental rearrangements always seem to occur when I’m not paying attention.
We kick off with some slow-motion Slowdive. When I asked my friend S. if it sounded cool or cursed, he said "Both." Then comes a slow variant of a track from Belong's stone classic, [*Common Era*](https://belong.bandcamp.com/album/common-era?ref=jamesreeves.co), which towers above *Loveless* and *Souvlaki* when it comes to gazeability*.*
Autechre's "Bronchusevenmx24" sounds like the heat shimmer on the horizon when the pavement warps and boils, a mirage that Italian sailors called *vecchie signore che balla*: old ladies dancing. The ladies are even more visible when it’s slowed down.
And moving through the shimmer to fourth century Ethiopia, liturgies in the Christian church were accompanied by the [benega](https://www.temesgen.com/learn/instruments?ref=jamesreeves.co), a stringed instrument "given to king David by God, and brought to Ethiopia by Menelik I, together with the Ark of the Covenant." But the singer's voice is the true instrument here, offering a fragile melody that brings to mind the thoughts of a kid taking apart cassette tapes. And finally, a chilled cup of stone tea with an excerpt from one of [Stephen Hitchell](https://echospace313.com/album/2511652/depths-of-perception-submerging-waves?ref=jamesreeves.co)'s hour-long excursions before we wind down with some drowsy My Bloody Valentine.
1. **Slowdive - Machine Gun** (50% slower)
*Souvlaki*, 1993 **|** [More](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11841-just-for-a-day-souvlaki-pygmalion/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Belong - A Walk** (22% slower)
*Common Era* **|** [Bandcamp](https://belong.bandcamp.com/album/common-era?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Slowdive - Mousakka Chaos** (20% slower)
*Souvlaki*, 1993
4. **Autechre - Bronchusevenmx24** (25% slower)
*Garbage*, 1995 **|** [Bandcamp](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/garbage?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Sosena Gebre Eyesus - Save Us From Our Death**
*The World Is But a Place of Survival: Begena Songs from Ethiopia* | [Bandcamp](https://deathisnot.bandcamp.com/album/the-world-is-but-a-place-of-survival-begena-songs-from-ethiopia?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **cv313 - Depths of Perception** (Excerpt)
*Depths of Perception*, 2022 | [More](https://echospace313.com/album/2511652/depths-of-perception-submerging-waves?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **My Bloody Valentine - Only Shallow** (45% slower)
*Loveless*, 1991 | [More](https://store.mybloodyvalentine.org/release/223063-my-bloody-valentine-loveless?lang=en%5FGB&ref=jamesreeves.co)
8. **My Bloody Valentine - Instrumental B**
1988, featuring a Public Enemy sample | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental%5F%28My%5FBloody%5FValentine%5Fsong%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Dusted with static and murmurations from Spiritualized, Dean Martin, and always and forever, Nancy Sinatra. Here's [a powerful mp3](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/18020196-hallucination-soundtrack.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) and a [fleeting podcast link](https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co).
Thank you for listening, and the request lines are open.
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/18020196-hallucination-soundtrack.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) **•** [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Sympathy Tower Tokyo
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/sympathy-tokyo-tower/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:09.000Z
_This post is for subscribers only._
### Autumn Chrome
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/autumn-chrome/
Last updated: 2025-11-18T20:19:44.000Z
It’s the first of October but the weather is all wrong. Here in the Middle West, it’s been endless sunshine with temperatures twenty degrees above normal. Meanwhile, our government shut down last night because we’re ruled by bullies and cowards who’ve been brainwormed by the internet. Each day brings inventive forms of idiocy and degradation. Feels like something’s got to give but nothing does.
So I’m looking elsewhere for reason. I find myself hunting for patterns and signs that the universe still contains reason and decency. Perhaps I’m getting mystical in my middle age and becoming a man who believes in gut sense and patterns, the information encoded in the hairs on my neck.
I’ve never given the Mariana Trench much thought, but it entered my life three times last week. First, a friend in Las Vegas told me about the delights of [hollow earth theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agartha?ref=jamesreeves.co). Apparently, the Trench is the door. The next day, a friend in Minneapolis mentioned helping his kid with a school project about the Mariana Trench. That night, I finished the last chapter of [*In the Dust of this Planet*](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9781846946769?ref=jamesreeves.co), which recounts an anonymous poem called “[The Subharmonic Murmur of Black Tentacular Voids](https://ossz2vasz4.wordpress.com/2019/03/08/the-subharmonic-murmur-of-black-tentacular-voids/?ref=jamesreeves.co)” that, according to certain corners of the internet, causes metabolic changes if you recite it aloud. And so, Stanza IV:
*Increase with depth of the deepest site…*
*Moritella abyssi 2693T, Mariana Trench, Popt = 30MPa*
*A life form in dynamic, cosmic equilibrium*
*With its environment is dead.*
Why deny myself the pleasure of coincidence?
Because when I try to imagine a divine intelligence that announces itself through geographies casually mentioned on the telephone or obscure internet poems, it’s alternately comic and horrifying.
In [*On the Calculation of Volume*](https://bookshop.org/lists/midnight-radio?ref=jamesreeves.co), Solvej Balle writes:
> It seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurrences and improbable coincidences. That we wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for these curious twists of fate. That there are human beings on what we call our planet, that we can move around on a rotating sphere in a vast universe full of inconceivably large bodies comprised of elements so small that the mind simply cannot comprehend how small… Anyone would think that this knowledge would equip us in some small way to face the improbable. But the opposite appears to be the case.
Last night I became unexpectedly emotional about the lost future of Mercury and the horrible weather on Venus, thanks to BBC’s [*The Planets*](https://www.bbcearth.com/shows/the-planets?ref=jamesreeves.co). The Late Heavy Bombardment (which seems like a good name for this decade) obliterated life on Mars and was likely Neptune’s fault. Each night I fall asleep to this mayhem at 65% speed while I patiently wait for this year’s episode of [*Fall of Civilizations*](https://www.patreon.com/c/fallofcivilizations%5Fpodcast/posts?ref=jamesreeves.co) to drop.
Even though it’s far too warm for the first of October, the night continues to inch closer, which means it’s chromatic season.
The Chromatics have always been an unlikely proposition for me. I prefer my songs scuzzy and reverberated, whereas their music is so sleek and glossy it’s almost lacquered. It’s pop music from a neon world where Ruth Radelet’s frigid voice sings fabulous things like *my leather glove grips the wheel*. In 2017, they appeared on [*Twin Peaks*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW1QLFCj4mI&ref=jamesreeves.co) before abruptly [disbanding](https://pitchfork.com/news/chromatics-coming-to-an-end-band-members-say/?ref=jamesreeves.co) for reasons I don’t care to discover. Aside from rattling around the algorithms of streaming services, they've become a ghost—it's impossible to buy their music and their online presence is a sea of 404s.
During their ten-year run, the Chromatics released only three proper albums but my library has over 250 songs. Drumless versions. Extended mixes. 8-track versions. Alternate takes for fictional movies. The same instrumentals reappear with different vocals and new titles. All these variations leave me wondering about the line between chasing perfection and forever relitigating the past. As if adjusting the variables enough times will finally yield the Platonic synthpop song. All of which makes finding their best tracks a daunting task, so I’ve made a megamix of ten favorites, including three of their covers.
If you like the Chromatics, this is the place to be tonight. And if not, even better: hopefully you’ll start.
1. **Lady Night Drive** (*Cherry*, 2012)
2. **The Page** (*Kill for Love*, 2012)
3. **Stiff as a Board** (*Faded Now*, 2020)
4. **Running up that Hill** (*Night Drive*, 2007)
5. **The Sound of Silence** (*Closer to Grey*, 2020)
6. **Back from the Grave** (*Kill for Love*, 2012)
7. **Yes (Symmetry Remix)** (*Love Theme from Lost River*, 2007)
8. **Headlight’s Glare** (*Night Drive*, 2007)
9. **Disintegration** (*Running from the Sun*, 2012)
10. **Into the Black** (*Kill for Love*, 2012)
Listen below or [download tonight’s chromed-out mp3](http://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20031%20-%20Autumn%20Chrome.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co). And because I take listener feedback seriously, even when they’re complaining about the difficulty of right-clicking and saving a high-quality audio file, I’ve adopted [the latest state-of-the-art podcast technology](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co). We’ll see if [this works](https://www.midnightradio.us/?ref=jamesreeves.co). Or lasts. Or if the Chromatics get back together again to sue me.
Thank you for listening (and caring enough to suggest new audio formats). The request lines are open. For my part, I’m requesting a proper autumn that chills America the fuck out.
#### [Download](http://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20031%20-%20Autumn%20Chrome.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co) **•** [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 31: Autumn Chrome
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### The Stellar Sphere
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-stellar-sphere-2/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:13:45.000Z
Feels like the 21st century is just getting started but we’re already a quarter of the way through. I don’t think I’m going to survive it. I often think about a blurry voice I heard on the radio while driving through Texas: “We can’t wipe the blood from our eyes fast enough to see what’s coming next.”
One night C. and I sat among the dunes in Death Valley, stunned by the stillness save for the murmur of distant lovers and families. Two dunes over, a family bickered in Mandarin before the husband slowly slid away from his wife, inching down the slope. After sunset, we turned our attention to the stars. I felt so peaceful, stretched on the sand next to C. while gazing at the night. “Look, a shooting star!” she cried. “Or maybe a plane is going down.”
The first philosophers were astronomers, leathery desert creatures who squinted into the night and believed the stars were wise. Here's a sublime image of the afterlife from [Posidonius](https://assets.cambridge.org/052160/4419/toc/0521604419%5Ftoc.pdf?ref=jamesreeves.co), written two thousand years ago: “The virtuous rise to the stellar sphere and spend their time watching the stars go round.” Three hundred years later, [Plotinus](https://plato.stanford.edu/ENTRIES/plotinus/?ref=jamesreeves.co) agreed. Our souls must join the stars, he thought, because “the heavenly bodies naturally inspire and make man less lonely in this physical universe.” Living in the final days of the Roman Empire, he turned away from “the spectacle of ruin and misery in the actual world to contemplate an eternal world of goodness and beauty.”
Or take the word *disaster*, the inversion of *astro*, a term that means a negative star, a kink in the heavens that leads to catastrophe.
Human fuckery has been going on for a while now, even if today it feels more dimwitted and earthbound. But the only difference is its delivery: the headlines and opinions that bleed through our screens and seem to seep through the floorboards, hijacking and poisoning the decent urge to bear witness.
Anyway, tonight I’m thinking about time, how difficult eras produce otherworldly philosophy, and whether there’s anything new or if this is just how it feels to get old. I suppose having artificial intelligence foisted upon us is new—every tool and device is now infected with a synthetic consciousness designed to take me straight to the mundane.
Only 48 days until my favorite day of the year, when night comes an hour earlier and I’m reminded that if we can make night fall sooner, we can do anything we want.
So let’s focus on the new. I’ve stitched together five favorite songs released this year. The first comes from Biosphere’s *The Way Of Time*, which samples a 1951 radio adaptation of Elizabeth Madox Roberts’ 1926 novel [*The Time Of Man*](https://kirkcenter.org/essays/elizabeth-madox-roberts/?ref=jamesreeves.co), set in central Kentucky, and the collision of a vintage Southern accent with sleek synthesizers is more enjoyable than I expected. Then we have some solid class from Romance’s latest outing, this time an exercise in melodramatic noir, followed by my old friend [S](https://stephenbaker.cc/?ref=jamesreeves.co), whose latest [Minor Hexachords album](https://minorhexachords.bandcamp.com/album/brinkmanship?ref=jamesreeves.co) has softly crept up the charts and become some of my most heavily rotated music this year. It’s such a delight to be here to see and hear and love the righteous things the people in my life are making.
Meanwhile, I’m continuing to deal with [Jiddu Krishnamurti](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9780060648084?ref=jamesreeves.co), who says heavy things like “the moment I am aware that I am aware, I’m not aware.” But synchronicities abound when I’m paying attention: last night I noticed my favorite song this month is called “Jiddu,” and it will take us home tonight. Listen below, or set your controls to the heart of [this interstellar mp3](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2025/09/Midnight-Radio-030---The-Stellar-Sphere-1.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co).
1. **Biosphere - The Way of Time**
The Way of Time | 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://biosphere.bandcamp.com/album/the-way-of-time?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Romance - Leave Her to Heaven**
Love Is Colder Than Death | 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://youmustrememberthis.bandcamp.com/album/love-is-colder-than-death?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Minor Hexachords - Minor Concession**
Brinkmanship | 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://minorhexachords.bandcamp.com/album/brinkmanship?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Sa Pa - Nonspiration**
Ambeesh | 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://sa-pa.bandcamp.com/album/ambeesh?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Rue des Garderies - Jiddu**
2025 | [Bandcamp](https://femacosme.bandcamp.com/album/jiddu?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Also includes bits of Rebekah Del Rio and David Bowie, along with the optimal dosage of static and reverb.
A few months ago, I made some noise about a Midnight Radio book hitting the streets in August—but it seems this book has other plans and wants to be longer and stranger than these dispatches. I’m beginning to appreciate the value of [letting a project tell me what it wants to be](https://masoncurrey.substack.com/p/john-cage-on-discipline) rather than the other way around, so I’m going to hang out with it until the end of the year.
Until then, I offer you this portrait of M. rocking [a Midnight Radio t-shirt,](https://www.teepublic.com/user/midnightradio?ref=jamesreeves.co) proving yet again that Midnight Radio is where relaxed comfort meets refined style. (And if you've ever wondered if failure can be a form of liberation, [M. has you covered](https://failureisfreedom.buzzsprout.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co).)
Thank you for listening, and the request lines are open. Could be *red*. Perhaps *plastic*. Maybe *monster*. Sky’s the limit.
#### [Download](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2025/09/Midnight-Radio-030---The-Stellar-Sphere-1.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co) **•** [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Six Broken Dreams
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/six-broken-dreams/
Last updated: 2025-11-18T00:40:45.000Z
I’m writing this on a cruise to Canada with my in-laws because life is a bizarre adventure. So much humanity here. Dozens of languages chatter on the decks. Hundreds of forks scrape through the remains of the buffet. Five thousand heads snore and dream.
Last night I dreamt I was on a ship of crumbling skyscrapers. We could not leave and would never reach our destination. Every so often, new passengers would arrive, and when I approached them they were terrified because I was a ghost, haunting them. I’ve had this dream many times in my life. Dreams travel.
When C and I first met in the 1990s, we traded memories through the night, starting with branches of personal history and working backward until we reached the primeval muck that fuels a life. Propped on an elbow, she described a dream in which she wore a curly blonde wig that chewed through her scalp until she woke up in tears. In return, I offered my boyhood nightmares about mannequins, how my father had to cover my eyes when we entered a department store.
Years later, I discovered her stories had bled into mine. While making a sandwich or gassing up the car, I sometimes find myself remembering a dream I had about a flesh-eating wig. Dreams travel.
We recently got together with some friends to record our dreams, which became the backbone for tonight’s episode. C cooked her holy Taiwanese beef stew, and for two and a half hours, six of us shared and deciphered our dreams before a red blinking light.
*—a man with pen-markings all over his face. There’s pen on his cheeks and in his hair—*
*—and the sky was filled with these looming beings who weren’t really doing anything but looming—*
*—bears were coming in through the windows, and soon I was surrounded by a sea of bears—*
Sometimes it feels like a pointless errand, attempting to attach words to a dream. My dreams often evaporate the moment I try to describe them, as if they cannot withstand the weight of language. What had been known at a deep-boned level turns to vapor. Only fragments remain.
Describing a dream might be like trying to explain silence. [This summary of Krishnamurti’s philosophy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW5R0XhBQM8&ref=jamesreeves.co) comes to mind: “You can say the word *silence,* but that is not silence . . . the only way to speak silence is to not speak at all.”
But the failure to adequately express a dream is what makes it fascinating. If these hallucinations were easily understood, they might be little more than simple entertainments, defanged and bloodless, completely drained of mystery.
The rupture is what makes anything interesting, much like two of my favorite pieces at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: the fragmented head of a colossal boy and the inked imprint of a shattered stele.
[Fragmented Colossal Head of a Youth](https://www.jamesreeves.co/crash/), 2nd century BCE | [Stele for the Confucius Temple](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/64027?ref=jamesreeves.co), 960–68
Neither would catch my attention if they were perfectly formed. And likewise, our dreams are composed of fragments and shards. They often begin sensibly: a familiar location, perhaps a few loved ones before the loopy plotting of the subconscious takes hold, descending into something murky and nameless like the material beneath the tongue.
Tonight's episode tries to capture this sensation by compressing two and a half hours of dream chatter into twenty-three minutes that drift in and out of focus like dreams tend to do.
S kicks things off with a stone classic: a nightmare about being chased by bears. Then comes [O](https://oliverfarshi.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co), who dreamt that [C](https://www.candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) became a fountain of sugary water. C follows up with a dream about a drawing that led her into a forest of mysterious nests and enormous but speedy pigs.
Things begin to disintegrate with my dream about a regal bald woman who glided above the floor with her back arched like a vacuum. I said hello, and she said, "You're welcome." No matter what I said to her, she replied, "You're welcome." Then she zoomed away, leaving me alone in a long white room without any doors. Next comes Ch's frantic dream in which she discovers she's driving a replica of her old car before being detained in a room of chain-smoking shoplifters at a discount fashion store. Finally, [M](https://www.martinessig.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) witnesses an epic battle of sky gods above his dead grandparents' house.
But I'm off to hit the buffet. Synchronicities abound on this cruise ship, even minor chords such as setting C’s dream to one of her favorite songs, which I only now realize is from an album called *Silence*.
1. **Abul Mogard - Staring at the Sweeps of the Desert**
Works | Ecstatic, 2016 | [Bandcamp](https://abulmogard.bandcamp.com/album/works?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Black Polygons - Incarnat**
Silence | 2014 | [Bandcamp](https://blackpolygons.bandcamp.com/album/silence?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Seefeel - Rupt (Cut Mix)**
Rupt and Flex | Warp, 1995 | [Bandcamp](https://seefeel.bandcamp.com/album/rupt-and-flex-1994-96-1?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Transient Waves - Soulspace**
Transient Waves | i, 1997 | [Bandcamp](https://transientwaves.bandcamp.com/album/transient-waves?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Intrusion - Love in Lofi (Remastered by Pole)**
Unreleased Tape Sessions, 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://echospace313.bandcamp.com/album/love-in-lofi-unreleased-tape-sessions?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Thank you for listening. The request lines are open.
### Untitled Heat
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/untitled-heat/
Last updated: 2025-11-18T00:15:05.000Z
I’m trying to wring as much billable time from my skillset as I can before I’m obsolete. It's a race against the robots and I’m exhausted.
I almost didn’t send this dispatch tonight, but I haven’t missed delivering an episode yet. If I do, this enterprise will probably end. It’ll be easy to let things slide. Worse yet, I’ll probably return to my perfectionist tendencies in which I sit in some dark sad corner of my brain and gnaw at my soul until everything is \*perfect\*. But there's no such thing. So let it go. Move along to the next thing. Perhaps my black-and-white rules when it comes to Midnight Radio are helping me become a grey-area kind of guy.
Everything is a paradox. Wisdom lives at the threshold of [the Tannhäuser Gate](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-tannhauser-gate/).
Here’s a quick and knotty mixtape I made for tomorrow morning’s run, built from my favorite songs for lumbering along the river this summer—and *lumber* is the operative word. Laced with static and fried chatter, these tracks move like I do: sighing and lurching like a tired beast. But wait until the bass hits at the 41-second mark. It makes living in 2025 feel worthwhile.
Sixsixsevenfortyseven’s [*Wounded Dogs*](https://boomkat.com/products/wounded-dogs?ref=jamesreeves.co) is one of my favorite albums this year, a low-frequency exercise in patience, just like running or any repetitive act that hunts for freedom through repetition. An Egyptian low-rider comes next, followed by some metropolitan Detroit sleaze. This sequence lopes along until we get to Drissi El-Abbassi belting from the 1980s in Algeria. [Look at this album cover](https://nashazphone.bandcamp.com/album/rai-sidi-bel-abbes?ref=jamesreeves.co). He was born to make us sweat. But his voice gets shredded by Autechre’s “Clipper” as we drop into more frigid and fractured terrain before winding down with a touch of Digital Underground. Here’s [the hyperlink to tonight’s broadcast](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20028%20-%20Untitled%20Heat.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co), or listen below.
I often think about this line from Richard Powers’s *Orfeo*: "Make the music that you need, for need will be over, soon enough."
Meanwhile, I'm reading Madeline Miller’s [*Circe*](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9780316556323?ref=jamesreeves.co), which is so lyrical it’s turning my eyeballs lavender. But lines like “all that smoke and savor rising so delicately from our altars, it leaves only ash behind” are well-earned when recasting the myths of Prometheus and the Minotaur. I look forward to getting into bed with this book each night before dozing off to [the final days of Petra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSfFq02pK4s&ref=jamesreeves.co), where incense was invented.
More and more, I enjoy fragments and collisions, the hairpin turn from one idea to the next. This is what it feels like to be alive in the 21st century when every day brings a new headfuck.
A question woke me up this morning as a thunderstorm rolled in: it’s raining, but what does “it” refer to?
I should go to bed.
1. **Sixsixsevenfortyseven - I Stood There**
Wounded Dogs | Youth, 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://theyouthlabel.bandcamp.com/album/sixsixsevenfortyseven-wounded-dogs-y23th-youth?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Jana & El Nashmy - 3al Bayez**
Place: Egypt | Air Texture, 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://musicandactivism.bandcamp.com/album/place-egypt?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Erika - Tomorrow's Fires (Whodat Remix)**
Anevite Void Remixed | Interdimensional Transmissions, 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://erika.bandcamp.com/album/anevite-void-remixed-it-52?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **DVA Damas - Wet Vision II**
Wet Vision | Downwards, 2015 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/wet-vision?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Drissi El-Abbassi - Zedti Laadab Aliya**
Nashazphone | [Bandcamp](https://nashazphone.bandcamp.com/album/rai-sidi-bel-abbes?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **Autechre - Clipper**
Tri Repetae | Warp, 1995 | [Bandcamp](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/tri-repetae?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **Broken English Club - Prayer Space**
Suburban Hunting | Cititrax, 2015 | [Bandcamp](https://brokenenglishclub.bandcamp.com/album/suburban-hunting?ref=jamesreeves.co)
8. **Plastikman - Contain**
Consumed | Minus, 1998 | [Bandcamp](https://richiehawtin.bandcamp.com/album/consumed?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Thank you for listening. We'll kick off September by listening to other people's dreams, and the request lines are open.
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/18128701-untitled-heat.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?i=1000735135316&ref=jamesreeves.co)
### The Vacuum Lady
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-vacuum-lady/
Last updated: 2026-07-07T10:13:06.000Z
I dreamt about a regal bald woman, impossibly tall, who glided above the floor with her back arched like a vacuum.
I nodded hello, and she said, “You’re welcome.” No matter what I said, she replied, “You’re welcome.” Then she zoomed away, leaving me alone in a long empty white room.
### Remembering Lake Superior
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/remembering-lake-superior/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:14:09.000Z
A stray factoid that lingers in the mind: evolution is fastest in body parts used to attract mates or frighten rivals. Some words haunt the subconscious like *moonfish* and *gorgons*. Sometimes I scan the liturgical names of geological epochs like the Time of the Great Dying and scribble phrases I cannot place: *Light echoes from red supergiants*. *Eyes on stalks*. *Static implies fixture as well as chaotic noise*.
There’s a similar flavor to crossing the 45th parallel, the halfway point between the equator and the North Pole. You can feel the geography shift when you see all that big pine and cold water. I usually cross this line while speeding toward Michigan’s upper peninsula on an empty road in the dark.
Lake Superior frightened me when I was small. My parents enjoyed camping along its shore on long weekends, and I would doze on the sticky pleather backseat of our Pontiac while we drove from Detroit to some vacant beach where we would set up our tent. I would squirm in my sleeping bag, unable to sleep with that mysterious lake sitting out there in the night like it was waiting.
In second grade, we studied the Great Lakes and read a pamphlet that described Lake Superior as the deepest and coldest of the five lakes: *Scientists have not yet reached the bottom, and they do not know what lives there.* I’d lie awake thinking about what might live in all that uncharted space.
There’s enough water in Lake Superior to submerge all of the Americas. Its southern edge is known as “the Graveyard of the Great Lakes” due to a cascade of shipwrecks. On July 30, 1985, Jeffrey Val Klump became the first person to reach the bottom of Lake Superior at 1,333 feet. This happened after I read that pamphlet.
Forty years later, I think I’ve made my peace with Lake Superior. Antarctica scares me today. My head goes swimmy if I look at it for too long on a map. All that blank land feels like leaping off a rooftop. Maybe this is why I’m drawn to signs that position me on the planet: the 45th parallel, the Continental Divide, and bullet-ridden signs cheerfully announcing the state line. And yes, the pulsing blue dot that accompanies me wherever I go, keeping me oriented and globally positioned.
But there were years when I would crisscross the nation with only a dog-eared atlas. Now I can hardly drive to Target without mapping my route. Something has been lost—a sense of agency, a way of being in the world—but I cannot argue that squinting at a roadmap with a flashlight was better.
Perhaps I’m thinking about Lake Superior tonight because it speaks to a deep-boned craving for mystery in these unmysterious times when it feels like everything can—and should—be answered. Feelings are mistaken for wisdom. Information has displaced wonder.
So tonight's soundtrack offers a murky marine-themed response to a [Very Kind Listener](https://8sided.blog/?ref=jamesreeves.co)'s recent request for some dub techno—here's forty minutes submerged in mysterious echoes and watery orchestras. Listen below or better yet, take a sip of [this mp3](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20027%20-%20Remembering%20Lake%20Superior.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co).
1. **Loscil - Drained Lake**
Monument Builders | Kranky, 2016 | [Bandcamp](https://loscil.bandcamp.com/album/monument-builders?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Porter Ricks - Nautical Dub**
Biokenetics | Chain Reaction, 1996 | [Bandcamp](https://forceincmilleplateaux.bandcamp.com/album/biokinetics?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Polmo Popo - Aqua**
The Science of Breath | Subtractive, 2002 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/the-science-of-breath?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Variant - Ocean’s End Revisited**
Ocean's End | Echospace, 2015 | [Bandcamp](https://variantsonics.bandcamp.com/album/oceans-end?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Black Polygons - Underwater**
Silence | 2014 | [Bandcamp](https://blackpolygons.bandcamp.com/album/silence?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **Mammo - Traversing a Raincloud**
General Patterns | Short Span, 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://mammoworks.bandcamp.com/album/general-patterns?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **Deepchord - Oceanic**
20 Electrostatic Soundfields | Soma, 2021 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/20-electrostatic-soundfields-special-edition-with-bonus-dvd?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Served with several gallons of reverb, some crushed static, and a dollop of Stevie Wonder.
I'm blocking your view of a brand new [Candy Chang](https://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) painting.
And dig [the quiet luxury of Midnight Radio apparel](http://tee.pub/lic/pG-OGvVcM2A?ref=jamesreeves.co). TeePublic's tri-blend t-shirts are the softest I've found—but a person can only own so many Spiritualized and Basic Channel shirts, so I've made a few Midnight Radio options to expand my repertoire and weird out the normals. (This isn't a dumbass attempt at monetization, I swear. I earn fifty cents per sale. I just like these shirts—but *only* the tri-blend.)
Thank you for listening, and the request lines are open.
#### Midnight Radio 27 | [Download](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20027%20-%20Remembering%20Lake%20Superior.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 27: Remembering Lake Superior
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### Mirror Games
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/mirror-games/
Last updated: 2025-11-18T00:05:20.000Z
###### 1
There was this thing we did in grade school, and maybe you tried it too. It was one of those childhood dares that spread through playgrounds and school buses until it gathered force, becoming a fate to be tempted, something that must be proved. One night during a sleepover, my friend muted the television and said, “I heard if you say ‘Bloody Mary’ three times in the mirror, you’ll see a witch.”
On the screen, a shirtless man silently unloaded a belt-fed weapon into a crowd while my friend described how the cousin of his sister’s boyfriend saw an ancient woman with blood streaming down her cheeks. That boy was in a hospital now, pulling out his hair, which had turned white.
“He was probably on drugs,” I said, even though I did not yet know what drugs did.
Two nine-year-olds in a dark bathroom, jostling through nervy giggles. *Bloody Mary.* We said it again, our voices softer this time. *Bloody Mary.* A door slammed—my friend had fled the bathroom. Alone, I said *Bloody Mary* a third time, and as the words left my mouth, my belly dropped like I was falling from a great height.
###### 2
Bloody Mary was not born on a playground. Her legend began in drafty medieval homes where young women would walk backwards down staircases with a hand mirror and candle, hoping they might glimpse their future husband. If they saw a wailing skull, they’d die before they could marry.
A century later, the ritual required the speaker to say *Bloody Mary, I killed your baby*, which suggests a connection to Mary I of England, the Catholic queen who burned Protestants at the stake because she thought their deaths might be instructive. History named her Bloody Mary, this dour little woman who suffered multiple miscarriages and phantom pregnancies before succumbing to ovarian cancer. It’s not hard to imagine the children of her victims gathered before a mirror, taunting the queen for her failure to produce an heir.
There is, of course, another Mary associated with childbirth, and my eyes breeze past her portraits in museums, already sensing her devotion, vague yet familiar like a cloud. Bloodying the Madonna offers the thrill of transgression, a way to test the weight of the sacred by pulling it down into the muck.
There’s also [Mary of Magdalene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary%5FMagdalene%5Fin%5FEcstasy?ref=jamesreeves.co), who I first encountered in Chicago while moving through Renaissance and Baroque galleries, paintings that held no interest for me until the people I loved began to die. The feverish Magdalene in oils across the centuries, knelt before Christ as he cast the demons from her body, each becoming one of the seven sins. Or [the penitent Magdalene](https://www.nga.gov/artworks/54386-repentant-magdalen?ref=jamesreeves.co) pleading in the darkness for salvation, her hair grown long to cover herself while she wandered the desert, hair she would one day use to clean Christ’s wounds before dying in a cave.
Mary of England’s faith was the product of a disordered mind. The Virgin Mary’s faith is so perfect it’s almost inhuman and therefore dull. But Magdalene’s tortured devotion feels not only real, but possible. Sometimes I envy the gleam in her eyes.
###### 3
But Mary, whoever she might be, is only half of the ritual. The other is the mirror. One night, thirty miles south of Memphis, I considered myself in a large motel mirror behind the television, my face illuminated by a slash of light from the parking lot. I tried not to imagine the other guests this mirror had witnessed, the ones who left cigarette burns in the sink. I concentrated on my reflection as if I could summon the old-world belief in the mirror as a paranormal device, a practice so common it has a name: catoptromancy.
But has anyone seen a ghost in the mirror? Was there ever a white-haired boyfriend in a hospital? Neuroscientists offer explanations, such as [Troxler’s Fading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troxler%27s%5Ffading?ref=jamesreeves.co), a phenomenon in which staring at a point in the mid-distance, especially in a dim environment, can generate psychedelic effects in the peripheral vision. Autohypnosis is another possible cause: the suspension of disbelief coupled with ritualistic chanting can induce dreamlike visions.
But science does not account for the persistence of evil queens and vampires, of our desire to invent worlds beyond the looking glass or the flash of apprehension when a mirror is broken, even if we do not believe in luck.
###### 4
Today we hide our dead in morgues and urns, but we used to display their bodies in our homes and cover the mirrors, even if we no longer recalled the ancient belief that a reflection of the departed might trap their soul in the house and prevent passage into a better world. Those were days when our images were honored, even feared—echoes and reflections were the sounds and sights of our souls.
Now we photograph ourselves in front of mountains, memorials, and sandwiches. We’re drowning in faces, which echoes the oldest mirror story, the tale of a young man who fell in love with his reflection and stared at it until he lost the will to live because he knew he could never have the object of his desire.
###### 5
But back to being nine years old in a dark bathroom, saying *Bloody Mary* for the third and final time. Nothing happened, and I returned to the television. But that split-second of expectation is the best way I can describe the sensation of almost-belief, the feeling that my understanding of reality was about to go off the rails. I’d like to feel it again sometime.
The only time I came close was in an abandoned asylum where an amateur ghost hunter tried to conjure a poltergeist, but that’s another story.
###### Tonight’s Mixtape
Speaking of going off the rails, I was planning to stitch together a sequence of slow-motion dub techno classics per a request from a Very Kind Listener, but tonight’s episode veered into unexpected territory. Perhaps dub techno is too chilly for this fever dream of summer. Or too consistent. Something led me to these five very different songs, bound only by high degrees of humidity, but I think they hang together, thanks to some grey zones of reverb and static. I’m intrigued by the possibility of consistency through differentiation—after all, pure repetition leads to seeing the Bloody Mary.
Tonight kicks off with some liturgical rock followed by an infectious ballad from Anna Domino, recorded in her childhood bedroom circa 1984, then Deepchord dons the incense-soaked guise of Mystic AM, pointing the way to a stone classic from Iran in ’71 before we hit Polmo Popo’s majestic 2003 rework of [an Arthur Russell disco track from '78](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O92UBBaiI4&ref=jamesreeves.co)—it’s one of the few masterpieces of the early 21st century. Listen below, or reach through the cobwebs of hyperspace and [collect this em pee three](http://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20026%20-%20Mirror%20Games.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co).
1. **Gnod - Peace at Home**
Spot Land | Rocket Recordings, 2024 | [Bandcamp](https://gnod.bandcamp.com/track/peace-at-home?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Anna Domino - Everyday I Don't**
East and West | Crépuscule, 1984 | [Bandcamp](https://lesdisquesducrepuscule.bandcamp.com/album/east-and-west?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Mystic AM - Caravanserai + Den of Thieves**
Cardamom & Laudanum | Astral Industries, 2022 | [Bandcamp](https://astralindustries.bandcamp.com/album/ai-30-cardamom-laudanum?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Googoosh - Gol Bi Goldoon**
Iran, 1971 | [More](https://www.finderskeepersrecords.com/shop/pomegranates/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Polmo Popo - Kiss Me Again and Again (Arthur Russell Cover)**
Intr\_version Records, 2003 | [Bandcamp](https://polmopolpo.bandcamp.com/album/kiss-me-again-and-again?ref=jamesreeves.co)
If you listen close, you’ll hear some chanting from the *Eyes Wide Shut* party along with the usual static and snippets of the Paris Sisters, Bobby Vinton, etc.
Thank you for listening, and the request lines are open.
#### Midnight Radio 26 | [Download](http://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20026%20-%20Mirror%20Games.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
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Midnight Radio 026: Mirror Games
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### Ghosts and Gods
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/ghosts-and-gods/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:16:09.000Z
###### 1
Here are my all-time favorite lyrics:
*A piece of brain in my hair*
*The wheels are melting*
*A ghost is screaming your name*
They come from M83’s “Don’t Save Us from the Flames”, and like Rutger Hauer’s monologue about [C-beams glittering in the dark](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-tannhauser-gate/), this handful of words conjures an entire world—alien yet somehow known.
I’d like to hear a ghost scream my name. Every now and then, I crave proof that there’s some magic in this fallen world. But if it were to arrive, I’d probably be terrified. Or else you’d find me on a street corner with a sandwich board, screaming at the sky. I’ve never understood the person who claims to have peeked behind the veil yet continues to send emails and worry about their checking account.
Ghosts are scarier than demons, I think, because they’re a presence rather than a desire. They simply *are*. It’s up to us to live with them.
###### 2
The twenty-first century has some terrible lyrics:
*Recommended for you*
*Because you liked*
*Here’s something we think you’ll enjoy*
*Based on your interests*
*Curated for you.*
Every day is a fight for control. Algorithms gnaw at my agency, hijacking even something as mundane as deciding which TV show to watch, something I used to be able to figure out on my own.
Sometimes it feels like a gut punch, the sight of us weaving along sidewalks and hallways like ghosts, gazing into an illuminated piece of glass. At some point the screen became the world, and now we're haunting it.
But there was a time when people believed sin might cause the stars to fall out of the sky, therefore only the virtuous should practice astronomy. So who knows what the future holds.
###### 3
Hiromi Kawakami’s [*Under the Eye of the Big Bird*](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9781593768072?ref=jamesreeves.co) begins as an austere fable in the vein of *Woman in the Dunes* or *Never Let Me Go*, then it unfurls into its own strange creature. Centuries pass. New modes of consciousness emerge.
> “My brothers, my father, my mother—they all wanted to be understood. But as soon as I truly understood them, they started to hate me for it. To them, being known was the same as being controlled.”
Better than any thinkpiece about the future, Kawakami conjures the horror and wonder of our species giving way to another as a *felt* experience that left me shaken in ways both satisfying and horrified. She might be writing from the year 5000 and telling us the news.
###### 4
In 1977, [Roland Barthes described listening](https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/0533/Barthes%2520Listening.pdf?ref=jamesreeves.co) as “an attitude of decoding what is obscure, blurred or mute, in order to make available to consciousness the ‘underside’ of meaning.” He believed this attentive mode was religious in the literal sense because it binds—or ligatures—the listener to “the hidden world of the gods, who, as everyone knows, speak a language of which only a few enigmatic fragments reach men, though it is vital—cruelly enough—for them to understand this language.”
I encountered this argument in Ben Raitfliff’s [*Run the Song*](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9781644453285?ref=jamesreeves.co). He applies it to classical music, but I think it captures the spectral quality of dub techno, how it strips the body to its essence and raises it as a shadow: machine drums that once sounded like the future become a heartbeat thump, reverberated like the chug of blood in the veins, sometimes paired with the skeletal snap of a high-hat or snare, always drenched in tape hiss that reminds us hauntings are analogue, not digital.
There’s some of this in tonight’s broadcast. After extending a loop from Suicide until it becomes a dirge, we’ll encounter the heavyweight churn of Variant’s “Foil”, followed by the Superpitcher remix of “Don’t Save Us From the Flames”, a pitched-down dose of AM radio glory, and finally, Basic Channel’s landmark “Inversion”. The original burbles along at a swift 132 beats per minute yet its extended phrases of metallic shimmer approach ambient terrain. This is what Barthes’s sacred fragments sound like to me.
1. **Suicide - Cheree**
Bronze, 1978 | [More](https://www.superiorviaduct.com/products/suicide-cheree-7-inch?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Variant - Foil**
Dreaming Thru Vector | Echospace Detroit, 2014 | [Bandcamp](https://variantsonics.bandcamp.com/album/dreaming-thru-vector?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **M83 - Don’t Save Us From the Flames (Superpitcher Remix)**
Before The Dawn Heals Us: Remixes and B-Sides | Gooom, 2005
4. **Gerry Rafferty - Down the Line (30% slower)**
City to City | 1978 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry%5FRafferty?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Basic Channel - Inversion (46% slower)**
1994 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/inversion-e703ad43-72db-4b5c-a3bc-6aac8b6f8eb8?ref=jamesreeves.co)
As always, these tracks are laced with echoes from Nancy Sinatra, the Paris Sisters, the Zombies, the Righteous Brothers, and more. I think they pair especially well with pitched-down and fuzzed-out dub techno. Listen below or [download this pale blue mp3](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20025%20-%20Ghosts%20and%20Gods.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co) before it turns to vapor.
---
Hooray for the first anniversary of Midnight Radio! Thank you for celebrating with me—and for the notes of encouragement that have carried me along and made this a reassuring ritual throughout this unfortunate and humiliating season. I’ve never managed to keep a public-facing endeavor going for such a long stretch, but I intend to keep doing it until I’m dead or bored, whichever comes first.
In the meantime, I’m compiling the first year of writing into a little book, cleverly titled *Midnight Radio Volume 1*, and it will include other bits and bobs about faith, ghosts, and reverb. I’m still fiddling with the design, but if everything goes according to plan (which it probably won’t), it should be available in August.
Speaking of "Don't Save Us From the Flames," a couple of years ago, I used it to soundtrack [this video mood board](https://www.jamesreeves.co/static-mood/) of the ghost story I've been writing and rewriting for years.
In other news, [C.](https://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and I were invited to create a futuristic temple at the [McConnell Center for the Arts](https://mcconnellarts.org/?ref=jamesreeves.co) in 2027\. It’s an excellent space here in Columbus, Ohio, and we’re looking forward to filling it with neon and echoes, assuming there’s still an Ohio and we’re not [eaten by robots before then](https://ai-2027.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
But the most exciting thing arrived in [a small box from Prince Edward Island, Canada](https://www.jamesreeves.co/heavy-metal-instructions/).
Looking ahead to the Ides of July, longtime friend of Midnight Radio, [Michael Donaldson](https://8sided.blog/?ref=jamesreeves.co), recently mentioned he’d appreciate some more hiss-soaked reverberations along the lines of Variant’s "Foil"—this will be the next episode, and it might be several days long.
Thank you for listening. The request lines are open.
#### Midnight Radio 25 | [Download](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20025%20-%20Ghosts%20and%20Gods.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 25: Ghosts and Gods
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### Heavy Metal Instructions
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/heavy-metal-instructions/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:11.000Z
Last night I finally got around to checking the mail, which I rarely do because it’s usually filled with bills and sad advertisements. Inside, I found a small box from Prince Edward Island, Canada. [Peter Rukavina](https://ruk.ca/?ref=jamesreeves.co), whose blog I’ve enjoyed for years, had emailed a month ago asking if he could set [my instructions to myself](https://www.jamesreeves.co/instructions/) in metal type and letterpress them. Of course I’d be delighted—I’m thrilled when anyone spends their brief time on this planet reading this station, let alone considers working with it by hand.
And he did it. And it’s magnificent. The pebbled texture of the paper, the pleasurable ivory hue, the heft of the ink—it’s impossible to capture the sensation of this little booklet in a photograph or words. Which is the whole point.
A snapshot of the metal type from [Peter](https://ruk.ca/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
Thank you, Peter.
### Escape from Death Prom
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/escape-from-death-prom/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:13:13.000Z
###### I.
Here in the landlocked center of Ohio, I stood in a superstore parking lot and watched a dozen seagulls circle overhead, hunting for minnows or plankton or whatever seagulls eat. Their rusty squawks filled the night, and I wondered if something in nature was breaking. Then I remembered my parents' relationship with birds. My mother was a lapsed Catholic who kept the church at a distance. My father never talked about god, at least not until the end. But they both believed in birds.
My dad lost his mother to cancer when he was twenty-four. I never met her, but I know she loved the blue heron, a big swoopy thing that dragged its legs across the sky. When my parents spotted one, they'd pull the car to the side of the road and gawk. *There she is*, they'd whisper, and my father would bite his lip. It was the closest I saw him come to tears until the day my mother died.
My grandfather kept a stuffed bald eagle in his basement—an oddly seditious act. But he was delighted to show everyone the paperwork, including a letter with a presidential seal that confirmed the bird was legal. He’d found it on the beach with a broken wing and tried to nurse it back to health but failed. After he died, my father reported seeing bald eagles in improbable places. A parking lot in Chicago. Circling over the Detroit interstate.
My father's faith in birds deepened after my mother died. "Now she's a cardinal," he said. "Remember how excited she’d get when she saw the first one each spring?" He would call at strange hours with reports of cardinals. He saw one perched on the railing of the building where he moved after selling the house, and again on the hospital lawn after his lung transplant. Over the years, I became accustomed to the way he'd clear his throat to make space for his inventory of herons, eagles, and cardinals. These birds were plain facts to him, proof of a sensible universe where those who left did not leave us.
I realized too late that I never knew my father's favorite bird, and now there's nobody left to ask. But if I ever see a cardinal flying alongside another bird, maybe that's the one.
Perhaps it's more fruitful to contemplate the desire to believe, rather than worry about the shape it takes.
###### II.
But there is precedent for my parents’ faith: an ancient work called the *Ornithogonia* that describes the transformation of humans into birds may have inspired Ovid’s [*Metamorphoses*](https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Metamorph.php?ref=jamesreeves.co#anchor%5FToc64105451).
In this poem, Ovid mourns the lost ages of gold and silver, when people were decent, magic filled the world, and the gods were good. He was nostalgic in the year 8.
Holding onto the past is not a good look, although it’s tempting. I struggle to separate the flux of 2025 from the standard-issue complaints of middle age. But ‘normal’ disappeared a long time ago; it’s not coming back, and good riddance—it's time to clear the stage and put on a better show.
[Death Prom](https://www.jamesreeves.co/midnight-radio-002-death-prom/) is not nostalgic. Squint your ears through the reverb and the exhausted fumes of the past might fuel a new mystery. Old standards by Elvis Presley and Bobby Vinton decay into digital artifacts, leaving behind an interesting residue that makes room for moments like M83’s "Moon Child", which sounds like the exhaust of history plunging into the future, come what may. At any rate, it’s the perfect soundtrack for when the heavens come crashing down. Listen below, or [right-click + save-file-as](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20024%20-%20Escape%20From%20Death%20Prom.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co) and let this artisanal mp3 take root in the soil of your hard drive.
1. **Elvis Presley - Summer Kisses, Winter Tears (8-14% slower)**
RCA Victor, 1960
2. **M Fadzil & Clique Fantastique - Do'a**
Malaysia, 1971
3. **Bobby Vinton - Sealed With a Kiss (20% slower)**
Epic, 1972
4. **Drugdealer - Wild Motion**
Raw Honey | Mexican Summer, 2019 | [Bandcamp](https://drugdealerband.bandcamp.com/album/raw-honey?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Naomi Akimoto - 十六夜の月**
Aquarelle, 1984
6. **M83 - Moon Child**
Before the Dawn Heals Us | Gooom, 2005 | [Bandcamp](https://ilovem83.bandcamp.com/album/before-the-dawn-heals-us?ref=jamesreeves.co)
In other news, [I was interviewed about my internet website](https://manuelmoreale.com/pb-james-a-reeves?ref=jamesreeves.co) and I’m still compiling [a list of my favorite things](https://www.jamesreeves.co/favorites/) and a playlist of [beautiful songs for ugly running](https://www.jamesreeves.co/music-for-running/).
The next episode will mark the one-year anniversary of Midnight Radio, and we’ll celebrate with a somewhat exciting announcement.
Until then, the request lines are open. Thank you for listening.
#### Midnight Radio 24 | [Download](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20024%20-%20Escape%20From%20Death%20Prom.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 024: Escape From Death Prom
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### Desire Is a Demon
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/desire-is-a-demon/
Last updated: 2025-11-17T17:51:31.000Z
###### 1.
I’ve been thinking about my father's little spiralbound notepads. After my mother died, he would wander through superstores, fixated on tracking down the exact model or color of an item for his apartment. A particular brand of mechanical pencils with white erasers. Non-slip adhesives for the bathtub, the ones like starfish. He carried his notepad in the back pocket of his khakis, and after he died, I found stacks of them, their pages filled with his thin penciled scrawl: *Lampshade repair. Talk to neighbor. Screen for bathroom faucet. Eggs are good for protein.*
His notebooks were a balm against the howl of the internet. He did not understand how the world had become so interlinked, how all its information could live on a screen. It felt like an optical illusion, a bit of cheap sleight-of-hand. Information was supposed to be earned through effort, luck, and scribbling into your notepad. It required engagement, and my father craved the human contact needed to get it. The sales clerks would check their stock and make calls to other locations for a linen drum lampshade or a pair of loafers with tassels. He'd eventually find the item but would not purchase it, deciding he didn't need it after all.
Only while writing this do I realize I am becoming my father. Last year I started planning my days with index cards. Now they are color-coded. Mondays are definitely blue. Wednesdays feel green, and Thursdays seem pink or purple. Fridays are bright yellow.
Why do I make these cards? They are strategies for handling my obligations, yes, but also evidence of my aspirational self: *Finish Chapter 10\. Run five miles. Call so-and-so.* They reflect my desire for steadiness and structure, and I enjoy the ritual of writing them out each Sunday, much like I’ve come to depend upon the rhythm of putting together a Midnight Radio dispatch twice a month.
###### 2.
Repetition can be beautiful, the steady accretion that comes with committing to the same thing day after day. Ben Ratliff writes wonderfully about this in [*Run the Song*](https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/run-song?ref=jamesreeves.co), a meditation on running and listening:
> “The ability to stay upright and engaged—as opposed to keeping silent, dying, or otherwise disappearing—deserves attention. Do it over and over again: that’s the idea. ‘Good’ or ‘bad’ as markers of the repetition will fall away after a while. Making art can be boring. Running can be boring. Asking the same questions can be boring. But now is a good time to ask the same impossible question day after day, in order to render the efficient answer inadequate. Whenever ‘boring’ runs hot through intent or repetition, it becomes valuable.”
Yuji Agematsu collected [bits of debris](https://www.jamesreeves.co/debris/) in his cigarette packs on his daily walks, and they became a gloriously deranged calendar.
But repetition is also a path to madness. Say the same word several times and it will eventually become drained of meaning. [Semantic satiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic%5Fsatiation?ref=jamesreeves.co), they call it.
###### 3.
When I moved to Ohio last year, I didn’t expect to become fascinated by death drives, desire, and demonology. There are several reasons for this trajectory—such as living in the Year of Our Lord 2025—but a primary force is my friend [M](https://www.martinessig.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
M. rolls heavy. There’s not much small talk with him. Doesn’t matter who you are—interact with him for five minutes and you’ll be reckoning with [Lacanian lack](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lacan/?ref=jamesreeves.co) or, if there’s a shift in the light, perhaps Deleuzian notions of new inflows of creativity and intensity. He's pushed my thinking into new terrain, and he’s with us tonight to pull hammers, snakes, money, and Samara from *The Ring* into the zone where desire and demons meet.
Here’s how tonight’s audio came to be: M. asked if I wanted to do a podcast, and I said no because podcasts are annoying and I don’t need more media in my life. He showed up with microphones anyway, and we recorded a conversation, after which I deleted myself and left his side of the discussion intact.
M’s thoughts on the horror of insatiable desire offer some strategies for dealing with the unruly self. It also sounds like an accurate diagnosis of the current American moment.
No matter how many lists I make, there’s something within me that will never be comfortable or understood—and this is how it should be. But here’s a list anyway:
1. **Ghost Dubs - Chemical (18% slower)**
Damaged | Pressure, 2024 | [Bandcamp](https://ghostdubs.bandcamp.com/album/damaged?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Pole - Berlin**
1 | Matador, 1998 | [Bandcamp](https://pole-stefanbetke.bandcamp.com/album/1-2-3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **MMMD - Egoismo**
Egoismo | Antifrost, 2019 | [Bandcamp](https://www.jamesreeves.co/dreams/)
4. **Biosphere - Houses on the Hill**
Shenzhou | Touch, 2002 | [Bandcamp](https://biosphere.bandcamp.com/album/shenzhou-reissue-with-bonus-album?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Basic Channel - Radiance I (31% slower)**
Basic Channel, 1994 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/radiance-i-ii?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **Heathered Pearls - Beach Shelter (Loscil Grind Remix)**
Loyal Reworks | Ghostly International, 2013 | [Bandcamp](https://heatheredpearls.bandcamp.com/album/loyal-reworks?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **Keith - Flob Gob (Jukebox Mix)**
Pernod Parks Productions, 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://keithy.bandcamp.com/album/flob-gob?ref=jamesreeves.co)
8. **Rod Modell - Forester Park**
Vibrasound: The Deepchord Years 1999-2004
9. **Civilistjävel! - A2**
Järnnätter | Felt, 2022 | [Bandcamp](https://civilistjavel.bandcamp.com/album/j-rnn-tter?ref=jamesreeves.co)
10. **Thomas Brinkmann - Maschine**
Totes Rennen | Supposé, 1998 | [Bandcamp](https://thomasbrinkmann1.bandcamp.com/album/totes-rennen?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Tonight’s episode opens with some heavyweight dub to introduce M., and when he finishes speaking, we’ll test the limits of repetition by listening to Thomas Brinkmann’s intensive loop of a vocal from [Blixa Bargeld](https://neubauten.org/en/blixa-bargeld/?ref=jamesreeves.co). And here’s a partial list of the audio files of M. if you'd like a roadmap:
- M Saturated Spew.m4a
- M Broken Hammer.m4a
- M Making a Clearing.m4a
- M Demon Mother Desire.m4a
- M You Want Your Mother to Feed You.m4a
- M Insatiable Serial Killer Desire.m4a
- M Desire Itself Is Excessive.m4a
- M It Goes On and On.m4a
In the tradition of a proper dub record, the A-side has M’s vocals, while the flip is instrumental with only reverberated traces of M's voice. Listen below, or better yet, right-click+save-as on [this desirable mp3](http://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20023%20-%20Desire%20Is%20a%20Demon.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co) or its [demonic instrumental twin](http://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20023%20-%20Reverb%20Is%20a%20Demon.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co).
Thank you for listening, and the request lines are open. With summer upon us, it might be time for another trip to the [Death Prom](https://www.jamesreeves.co/midnight-radio-002-death-prom/).
#### Side A: Desire Is a Demon feat. [Martin Essig](https://martinessig.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Download](http://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20023%20-%20Desire%20Is%20a%20Demon.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 23: Desire Is a Demon
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#### Side B: Reverb Is a Demon | [Download](http://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20023%20-%20Reverb%20Is%20a%20Demon.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 23: Reverb Is a Demon
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### Dream Inventory
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/dreams/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:12.000Z
In Greek mythology, dreams were often personified as [black-winged demons](https://jamesreeves.ghost.io/ghost/?ref=jamesreeves.co#/editor/post/682944c7867079000107279a) that enter our sleeping minds like bats to deliver messages from the gods.
An ongoing archive of my dreams:
- Another tangled, richly plotted dream about picking up my teeth in the street while a gigantic man told me he was raised by a mountain and that I did not understand how to live. When I asked if I could bum a cigarette, he tossed me into the sea. I swam into the dark until I was rescued by an inflatable child who cried like a ticking clock. I woke up wondering if I would live my life any differently if I measured my age in days or hours instead of years.
- Last night’s dream brought me to the ruins of a university where we played chess with pieces of tandoori meat. “You cannot withdraw from this game without suicide,” said my veiled opponent.
- A fire destroyed the library, and I picked my way through the ruins. Among the empty metal shelves, people were doing grotesque things with each other in the dark—every act of violence and perversion—until they were flaying themselves into strips of flesh. I ran away, and when I returned, I realized they had figured out how to make books with their bodies, to replace the classics that were lost.
- I discovered my consciousness was powered by someone forced to run on a treadmill.
- A dream in which my mother was alive and serving a delicious tea brewed from stones. I woke up pondering the feedback loop of life: is there anything we eat or drink that wasn’t once alive?
- I discovered a new substance called ‘onesium’, which are the forgetting cells.
- My father won a silver medal at the Olympics. He was the first man with a lung transplant to medal in the hurdles, at first we cheered but then we cried because we knew this was not true.
- A complicated dream about whether a mental breakdown occurs gradually or slowly. The debate took place in a crowded waiting room where I could not find a seat.
- I ducked in and out of tiny record stores, spinning racks of cassettes and flipping through stacks of vinyl, frantically trying to find my favorite song. Turns out I was kneeling on it the whole time. Perhaps this dream was the result of my anxiety about having so many unheard songs in my queue—the lack of connection to an artifact, the impossibility of ever getting my head around music again.
- A doctor told me I had a rare condition and no matter how far I walked, it would take one hour and twenty-two minutes.
- C. and I watched a stuttering videotape. Somebody warned us that we shouldn’t watch the ending because it shows how we’ll die. Everyone in the movie had the flu and was lying down to die. We stopped the tape. She sniffled. I coughed. I wanted to run, but she shook her head and took my hand. I put on a record—[*A Million Miles to Earth*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/two-million-miles-to-earth/)—and we laid down.
- Another dream about meat. I was cooking it for important guests but no matter how long I fried it or how much I seasoned it, it had no flavor.
- I drank perfume and had a minor role in a detective show in which none of us could remember the name of the president between Johnson and Ford.
- At the hospital my father threw a fit, fighting with the nurses and hollering slurs. I'd never seen him like this. He tried to smoke a syringe. "But you quit smoking twenty years ago," I said. I look into his eyes and realized I’d been trying to rescue the wrong man.
- I dreamt that each of my fingers had its own consciousness.
- C. and I had a baby and it called me by my first and last name the moment it was born. We lived in a world made entirely of bread. The ground was soft and tasty, and it was wonderful at first—and then it wasn’t.
- A dream about something called digital atonement.
- I was driving over hundreds of dogs, their bodies kerchunking beneath the wheels, and I could hear them howling. I sped up to put them out of their misery. The car veered onto a lawn, where my parents were moving into a new home. They were older than I would ever see them and I stood on the sidewalk, happy but frightened because they were not supposed to be alive.
- I dreamt about the infamous “dishwasher episode” of a critically acclaimed drama.
- I was on my knees, picking spaghetti out of the carpet, and the noodles turned into all the people who would ever want to hurt C., a long line of cruel men and a few women. I led them into a building and was given a choice: I could flip a switch and kill everyone who might harm my beloved or set them free—the promise of safety versus the possibility of grief.
- I often find my father within the labyrinthine architecture of parking structures. I once woke in tears from a dream about hugging him after he told me I could always find him there. I asked him about the afterlife and he smiled. This was the closest I’ve come to experiencing a visitation.
- With my mother, I tend to find her in small houses or remote cabins. She is living a new life and she is happy. I do not intrude.
- I dreamt I painted a picture and could not tell if it was god or the devil because the image was too big for its frame.
Schopenhauer comes to mind: “What is to be expected of heads even the wisest of which is every night the scene of the strangest and the most senseless dreams, and which is expected to take up its meditations again on awakening from them?”
### Reading List
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/reading/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:12.000Z
The idea of converting my reading life into pixels on a screen unsettles me. Books are meant to be highlighted and dog-eared, their spines cracked and lying facedown on the kitchen table. They become part of the scenery and signposts for our memories. Here are some of the books I've read, many of which I recommend. (My strongest recommendations live [here](https://bookshop.org/shop/jamesreeves?ref=jamesreeves.co).)
### 2025
- [*So Far Gone*](https://chireviewofbooks.com/2025/06/16/fractured-politics-fractured-families-in-jess-walters-so-far-gone/?ref=jamesreeves.co), Jess Walter
- [*The Dream Hotel*](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/717465/the-dream-hotel-a-read-with-jenna-pick-by-laila-lalami/?ref=jamesreeves.co), Laila Lalami
- [*Orbital*](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/05/books/review/orbital-samantha-harvey.html?ref=jamesreeves.co), Samantha Harvey
- [*The Cabin at the End of the World*](https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/30/17444584/paul-tremblay-the-cabin-at-the-end-of-the-world-horror-book-review?ref=jamesreeves.co), Paul Tremblay
### 2024
- [*In the Dust of this Planet: The Horror of Philosophy*](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/717465/the-dream-hotel-a-read-with-jenna-pick-by-laila-lalami/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*,* Eugene Thacker
- [*The Lathe of Heaven*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FLathe%5Fof%5FHeaven?ref=jamesreeves.co), Ursula Le Guin
- [*Hum*](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Hum/Helen-Phillips/9781668008836?ref=jamesreeves.co), Helen Phillips
- [*The Anomaly*](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/books/review-anomaly-herve-le-tellier.html?ref=jamesreeves.co), Hervé Le Tellier
- [*Recursion*](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/books/review/recursion-blake-crouch.html?ref=jamesreeves.co), Blake Crouch
- [*The North Water*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-craving-for-polar-horror/), Ian McGuire
### 2023
- [*Leave the World Behind*](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/leave-the-world-behind-a-novel-about-the-disaster-that-wont-end?ref=jamesreeves.co), Rumaan Alam
- [*The New House*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-new-house-by-david-leo-rice/)*,* David Leo Rice
- [*The Power*](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-power-is-our-eras-handmaids-tale/2017/10/10/032a5866-ad05-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98%5Fstory.html?noredirect=on&ref=jamesreeves.co), Naomi Alderman
### 2022
- [*The Throwback Special*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-throwback-special/), Chris Bachelder
- [*The Fifth Child*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-fifth-child/), Doris Lessing
- [*The Haunting of Hill House*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-haunting-of-hill-house/), Shirley Jackson
### 2021
- [*Shadowbahn*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/shadowbahn/), Steve Erickson
- [*The Memory Police*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-memory-police/), Yōko Ogawa
### 2020
- [*The Children of Men*](https://bookshop.org/a/114777/9780307275431?ref=jamesreeves.co), PD James
- [*The Stand*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/clay/), Stephen King
- [*Severance*](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250214997/severance?ref=jamesreeves.co), Ling Ma
### 2017
- [*Oryx and Crake*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/oryx-and-crake/), Margaret Atwood
- [*The Woman in the Dunes*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-woman-in-the-dunes/), Kōbō Abe
### 2016
- *Cruising Paradise*, Sam Shepard
### Dreamland
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/dreamland/
Last updated: 2025-11-17T17:26:55.000Z
Last night’s dream brought me to the ruins of a university where we played chess with pieces of tandoori meat. “You cannot withdraw from this game without suicide,” said my veiled opponent.
I dreamt that I drank perfume and had a minor role in a detective show in which none of us could remember the name of the president between Johnson and Ford.
I dreamt that each of my fingers had its own consciousness.
Every night the mind plays wild games with itself—making up stories, hiding information, behaving like a prophet—but dreams tend to only be interesting for the dreamer. A particular dream might be fascinating for you, it could hold great meaning, but without a shared reference point or sense of context, I cannot participate. There is no generosity toward the listener or involvement of a wider audience; the brain is feeding on its own anxieties and desires. I worry this is where we’re heading algorithmically: customized channels, personalized entertainments, private information—each of us inhabiting our own secret planet of dreams.
Is this rapidly approaching future worse or better or simply different? Since you’re here, I'd like to offer some scenes from my dream inventory to see if they hold broader appeal (or you can jump to the end for tonight's dreamy mixtape).
- C. and I had a baby and it called me by my first and last name the moment it was born. We lived in a world made entirely of bread. The ground was soft and tasty, and it was wonderful at first—and then it wasn’t.
- I ducked in and out of tiny record stores, spinning racks of cassettes and flipping through stacks of vinyl, frantically trying to find my favorite song. Turns out I was kneeling on it the whole time. Perhaps this dream was the result of my anxiety about having so many unheard songs in my queue—the lack of connection to an artifact, the impossibility of ever getting my head around music again.
- C. and I watched a stuttering videotape. Somebody warned us that we shouldn't watch the ending because it shows how we'll die. Everyone in the movie had the flu and was lying down to die. We stopped the tape. She sniffled. I coughed. I wanted to run, but she shook her head and took my hand. I put on a record—[*A Million Miles to Earth*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/two-million-miles-to-earth/)—and we laid down.
- A doctor told me I had a rare condition and no matter how far I walked, it would take one hour and twenty-two minutes.
- I was driving over hundreds of dogs, their bodies kerchunking beneath the wheels, and I could hear them howling. I sped up to put them out of their misery. The car veered onto a lawn, where my parents were moving into a new home. They were older than I would ever see them and I stood on the sidewalk, happy but frightened because they were not supposed to be alive.
- I dreamt about the infamous “dishwasher episode” of a critically acclaimed drama.
- I was on my knees, picking spaghetti out of the carpet, and the noodles turned into all the people who would ever want to hurt C., a long line of cruel men and a few women. I led them into a building and was given a choice: I could flip a switch and kill everyone who might harm my beloved or set them free—the promise of safety versus the possibility of grief.
- I often find my father within the labyrinthine architecture of parking structures. I once woke in tears from a dream about hugging him after he told me I could always find him there. I asked him about the afterlife and he smiled. This was the closest I’ve come to experiencing a visitation.
- With my mother, I tend to find her in small houses or remote cabins. She is living a new life and she is happy. I do not intrude.
- I dreamt I painted a picture and could not tell if it was god or the devil because the image was too big for its frame.
Will I ever believe in god? If so, it will probably begin in my dreams. I often think about this line from [Herbert Spencer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert%5FSpencer?ref=jamesreeves.co): “God was, at first, only a permanently existing ghost.” The first gods were probably born in dreams. How else could our ancestors explain the visions that unfolded in their heads each night?
Some of tonight’s songs are about heaven, some are about hell, and perhaps this is what all dreams are ultimately about. Listen to Charlie Megira’s guitar, more alive and determined than his voice, grasping for something we know but cannot define. An Israeli guitarist whose life was brief and tragic, Megira was "[a mold-breaking artist who disintegrated while we were all staring at our phones.](https://numerogroup.com/products/charlie-megira-tomorrows-gone?srsltid=AfmBOooWPlDhfPEo%5FAhVjzbxL-FSooK23yNX-k-wZ7Qz9dsUKQ-DNWX4&ref=jamesreeves.co)” In the final minute of ‘Tomorrow’s Gone’, I like to think he’s saying “my heart to heaven” even though he’s singing in Hebrew. It makes a nice transition to Midwife, who reminds us that the hounds of heaven run like hell.
1. **Charlie Megira - Tomorrow’s Gone**
*Da Abtomatic Meisterzinger Mambo Chic* | 2001 | [Bandcamp](https://charliemegiranumero.bandcamp.com/album/tomorrows-gone?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Midwife & Vyva Melinkolya - Hounds of Heaven**
*Orbweaving* | Heaven Metal, 2023 | [Bandcamp](https://heavenmetal.bandcamp.com/album/orbweaving?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Ensemble Economique - Your Lips Against Mine**
*Melt Into Nothing* | Denovali, 2014 | [Bandcamp](https://ensemble-economique.bandcamp.com/album/melt-into-nothing?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Windy & Carl - Lighthouse**
*Drawing of Sound* | Blue Flea, 1996 | [Bandcamp](https://windyandcarl.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Füxa - Dreamlanding**
*3 Field Rotation* | Mind Expansion, 1995 | [Bandcamp](https://fuxa1.bandcamp.com/album/3-field-rotation?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Listen below, or [download this mp3](http://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20022%20-%20Dreamland.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co) before it turns to vapor. If you prefer a Spotify or Apple Music playlist, I trust you know how to make your own.
And if you still have an appetite for dreams, a couple of years ago C. and I made a project called [*The Nightly News*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-nightly-news/) that collected hundreds handwritten dreams. Given the frequency of oddly specific imagery such as one's teeth falling out, there's an argument that dreams point toward the universal—and perhaps, with enough time, our personal algorithms might lead us back to a shared reality.
In other news, I’ve started compiling [a list of my favorite things](https://www.jamesreeves.co/favorites/) to keep up morale, as well as [some instructions for myself](https://www.jamesreeves.co/instructions/).
Thank you for listening, and the request lines are open.
#### Midnight Radio 22 | [Download](http://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20022%20-%20Dreamland.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 22 - Dreamland
0:00
/1500.0555102040817
1×
### Instructions for Myself
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/instructions/
Last updated: 2026-09-05T20:35:32.000Z
1. Wait an hour before responding, ideally two.
2. Before going to bed, leave a note on my desk that reminds me to do a creative thing in the morning before looking at any screens.
3. It can always use more reverb.
4. Avoid people who take themselves seriously.
5. Write it down immediately. I will forget.
6. Whatever I'm making better be fun because I'm certainly not doing it for the money.
7. Do not confuse my beliefs, complaints, and politics with having a personality.
8. The best advice I ever received was from a profane old Buddha in New Orleans: “Opinions kill motherfuckers. Experience saves lives.”
9. Make it a game: "How quickly can I let this go?"
10. Algorithmic recommendations are poison, cf. "[the freedom to choose what is always the same.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor%5FW.%5FAdorno?ref=jamesreeves.co)" Never forget the joy of learning to deal with a piece of music or writing or art on its terms, even if it takes a while.
11. For every hobby and pastime—music, running, movies, photography—there’s always a middle-aged man nearby taking it way too seriously. Don't be that guy.
12. Artificial intelligence cannot make cool shit, but it can help me learn *how* to make cool shit.
###### See also: the [heavy metal version](https://www.jamesreeves.co/heavy-metal-instructions/) from [Peter Rukavina](https://ruk.ca/content/algorithmic-recommendations?ref=jamesreeves.co).
### The First Two Miles Are Always Murder
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/music-for-running/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:13:53.000Z
I wish I appreciated running when I was younger: the art of breathing, moving like a metronome. Now it’s a war against entropy, which I suppose is an art of its own. I run at night so nobody can see me cry. Here are some songs for this—updated frequently, organized alphabetically, and tracks appear, disappear, and reappear as needed. A [Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2NKbEl6ICKk32G4kEsOzp1?ref=jamesreeves.co) is below.
[**Aphex Twin - Tha**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selected%5FAmbient%5FWorks%5F85%E2%80%9392?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A stone running classic, thanks to a steady basketball beat beneath plush tones of optimism. Remember how exciting a technological future felt back in ’92? I wonder if I’ll ever feel that way again.
[Selected Ambient Works 85-92 by Aphex Twin](https://apollorecords.bandcamp.com/album/selected-ambient-works-85-92?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[**Bassvictim - Canary Wharf Drift**](https://bassvictim.bandcamp.com/album/basspunk-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
The sound of everything at the same time. I hope this is what the kids are into these days.
[Basspunk by bassvictim](https://bassvictim.bandcamp.com/album/basspunk?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[**Cranes - Beautiful Friend**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loved%5F%28Cranes%5Falbum%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
One of the most bighearted road songs that I know: 1960s drums, surf guitar, and the way Alison Shaw sings “our love was special, our love was strange.” I will always remember the night C. gave me this song on a Maxell cassette a few days before I fell in love with her.
Beautiful Friend
0:00
/194.6122448979592
1×
[**Demdike Stare - Hashshashin Chant**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj5B5PhL0Ko&ref=jamesreeves.co)
A sinister low-end and a klaxon in the distance herald an otherworldly swirl of voices and drums that evoke a conjuring, even an exorcism, which running sometimes is.
Demdike Stare - Hashshashin Chant
0:00
/380.1338775510204
1×
[**Dj Niraha - Lali Lale**](https://heatcrimes.bandcamp.com/track/lali-lale-ft-lale-pishmari?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Lale Pishmari sings in a language I do not understand, but the intent is clear: to speak to the limbic, to make the listener feel cool and sleek. When she bursts into laughter in the middle of a verse, it is not calculated or cool; it’s the sound of someone breaking character, and now the song is truly alive—a document of the unpredictable, an artifact of the human. It’s the sound of joyful abandon, even if my running style is anything but.
[KorgMusic2024DemoEL-HELL-EΛ by DjNiraha](https://heatcrimes.bandcamp.com/album/korgmusic2024demoel-hell-e?ref=jamesreeves.co)
---
---
[**Drissi El-Abbassi - Zedti Laadab Aliya**](https://boomkat.com/products/rai-sidi-bel-abbes?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Skeletal psychedelica with a wild voice that wraps it in flesh and blood. When the clapping starts, it’s impossible not to pick up the pace.
[Rai Sidi Bel Abbes by DRISSI EL-ABBASSI](https://nashazphone.bandcamp.com/album/rai-sidi-bel-abbes?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[**Fever Ray - If I Had a Heart (Fuck Buttons Remix)**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiXP3IL2w3s&ref=jamesreeves.co)
Ideal for an ugly run in the rain, gloriously dramatic in the mud and the grey, and perfect for picking up some springtime mileage once the weather is no longer fuck-you degrees.
[If I Had A Heart by Fever Ray](https://feverray.bandcamp.com/album/if-i-had-a-heart?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[**M83 - Don't Save Us From the Flames (Superpitcher Remix)**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHF7MFz5hdU&ref=jamesreeves.co)
Anthony Gonzalez’s third album remains the godhead of stadium anthems for wiping away your tears beneath neon skies, and Superpitcher stretches it into church.
Dont Save Us From The Flames Superpitcher remix
0:00
/626.9333333333333
1×
[**Negro Dinero - We Must Unite or Die**](https://promesses.bandcamp.com/track/we-must-unite-or-die?ref=jamesreeves.co)
I imagine a hypeman on a PA system at the end of the world—lasers fill the sky and he’s encouraging the crowd to unite against our robot overlords in one last gasp of humanity. Anyway, this track gets me moving.
[Promesses Vol. 2 by Negro Dinero](https://promesses.bandcamp.com/album/promesses-vol-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[**Orbital - Halycon and On and On**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halcyon%5F%28Orbital%5Fsong%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
My guiltiest of pleasures. Never fails to cheer me up.
[Orbital 2 by Orbital](https://orbitalofficial.bandcamp.com/album/orbital-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Taipei, 2025
[**Saint Abdullah & Eomac - Kiarostami's Stash**](https://thetrilogytapes.bandcamp.com/track/kiarostamis-stash?ref=jamesreeves.co)
The perfect song to kick off a run. Built from crowd noise, an encouraging emcee, and a loop that sounds like a false memory of Mobb Deep's [Shook Ones Pt. II](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh0kdRVH9m8&ref=jamesreeves.co), it builds into a loopy haze that provides a gentle motivational chug.
[Of No Fixed Abode by Saint Abdullah & Eomac](https://thetrilogytapes.bandcamp.com/album/of-no-fixed-abode?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[**Thirteenth Floor Elevators - Slip Inside This House**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5F13th%5FFloor%5FElevators?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Roky Erickson kisses God’s forehead while an acid-eating jug-player keeps the ship from going down. This song has its own weather system.
[Easter Everywhere by The 13th Floor Elevators](https://13thfloorelevators.bandcamp.com/album/easter-everywhere?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[**Thomas Brinkmann - 2Suns**](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11550-when-horses-die/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Like being pulled along by an industrial strength piece of elastic while a voice like stones tells me to keep up.
[when horses die ... by Thomas Brinkmann](https://thomasbrinkmann1.bandcamp.com/album/when-horses-die?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### An Ongoing Exercise in Accretion
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/incense/
Last updated: 2026-07-09T17:35:22.000Z
One year of incense ash.
Eleven months and one day of incense ash.
Ten months and seven days of incense ash. (This time with a bit of smoke.)
Nine and a half months of incense ash.
Seven months and five days of incense ash.
Six months of incense ash.
Five months of incense ash.
Four months of incense ash.
Three months of incense ash.
Two months of incense ash.
One month of incense ash.
### Taipei/Tokyo Collages
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/taipei-tokyo-collages/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:14.000Z
Assembled from the ephemera in my suitcase. Made with letter paper, [scissors](https://amzn.to/44o8GrX?ref=jamesreeves.co), glue, and the scanner on my telephone.
### Destroyer of Obstacles
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/destroyer-of-obstacles/
Last updated: 2026-05-23T02:29:49.000Z
### 1
The man takes his large fingers out of my mouth, snaps off his latex gloves, and says he needs to scrape the flesh from the roof of my mouth and sew it to my gums so my teeth won’t fall out.
You sound like a horror movie, I say.
He shrugs. It’s possible to use the skin of a cadaver, he says, but it doesn’t always bind well. I can’t tell if he’s fucking with me. Whoever made your braces when you were a kid really screwed the pooch, he says. I tell him I never had braces. My parents couldn’t afford it.
He wants me to pay thousands of dollars to let him carve up my mouth. Maybe I’ll torture you with the world’s worst GoFundMe page.
Anyway, I’m back in America.
### 2
A few days before this encounter, I was on the other side of the planet, where a monk held my notebook over a fire to protect it from demons.
The Goma ceremony, practiced by [an esoteric sect of Buddhism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingon%5FBuddhism?ref=jamesreeves.co), empowers [a god of justice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acala?ref=jamesreeves.co) to burn away the destructive desires that clutter the path to enlightenment. It’s rooted in the fire worship of ancient Indian Brahmanism and Iranian Zoroastrianism, and in Japan, this god is called [Fudō Myō-ō](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/8085/fudo-myo-o?ref=jamesreeves.co), or “the immovable or unshakable one,” but he has many names, including Immovable Wisdom King, the Violent Wrathful One, God of Justice, and Destroyer of Obstacles—all of which might be the same thing, depending on your point of view.
A dozen men in gray robes sat with their backs to us, some barely visible in the shadows. A bell chimed, followed by the squeal of a conch and a chant, soft at first, flickering at the edge of perception until it became an undeniable rhythm. Then came the drums. The temple shuddered with a taiko boom so deep it rattled my ribcage, its drummer like a dancer, boom upon boom until it sounded like the universe was coming undone.
And I remembered: music is a religious technology.
Smoke rose from a cauldron of flames as the chant quickened, almost frantic, until the air was saturated with voices, drums, and incense. We lined up with our offerings to be blessed by the fire. Purses. Telephones. Hats. Photographs of the living and the dead. I handed my notebook to the monk, who silently passed it over the embers and performed his ministrations.
For the past two weeks, my head has been filled with the recording I made of this ceremony. It took several days to accept that no amount of audio trickery—bass boosting, EQ, compression—could capture the holy reverberations of those taiko drums. It felt like staring into the sun, so I turned in the other direction, subtracting drums and layering traces of the chants until it began to sound like static. It became an exercise in contouring the edges rather than attempting (and failing) to capture the mystery of the thing itself. Which, I suppose, is the point of any art.
After days of listening to these looped chants, I began to feel pleasantly haunted, finding information in the static, a hymnal in the hiss as I carved two hours down to the eighteen minutes we have before us now. Here are the ingredients:
- A drum loop from Woob’s “Odonna” (*Woob 1194*, 1994 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woob%5F1194?ref=jamesreeves.co))
- Goma ritual chants, tape hiss, static, and fifty-two pounds of reverb.
- Hiroshi Yoshimura – Adelaide (*Flora,* 1987 | [Bandcamp](https://hiroshi-yoshimura.bandcamp.com/album/flora?ref=jamesreeves.co))
- Some in-house synthesizers and a kick drum that, late at night, sounds like something knocking from the other side of the veil.
Perhaps demons are ready for a reboot. The grifters, faith-dealers, dead-eyed influencers, and screamers are stripping our world for parts, and we crave justice—not the justice of our rickety institutions, but something cosmic that assures us the universe can balance itself.
In that temple, I suspended my disbelief and trusted that a dozen men chanting around a fire could conjure something holy. And for a moment, they did.
It’s strange to think that the mouth has a roof.
All kinds of things require surrender.
Listen below—or take a deep breath and [download the ceremonial mp3](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20021%20-%20Destroyer%20of%20Obstacles.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co). (And here's [the original recording](http://jamesreeves.work/files/Fukagawa%20Fudodo.m4a?ref=jamesreeves.co) I made of the ritual. Use it however the spirit moves you, and if you make anything out of it, let me know.)
Thank you for listening, and the request lines are open.
### Dead Trees Bloom Flowers
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/dead-trees-bloom-flowers/
Last updated: 2025-11-17T17:16:04.000Z
###### I. Fortune
Although I have no religion and do not believe in omens, something takes hold of me whenever I step into a church or a temple. My cast of mind shifts into the superstitious. I find myself hunting for revelation.
At the crowded Sensō-ji temple in Tokyo, I received an auspicious fortune: *Just like dead trees bloom flowers when spring comes, everything will be prosperous.* I smiled as if I’d won a rare prize. For a moment, I believed this random piece of paper knew things about my life.
The lady next to me received a bad fortune. It actually said 'Bad Fortune' in several languages, and the portion I glimpsed warned her that happiness and money would be scarce and a season of loneliness was on its way. Bad fortunes are folded up and tied to a metal rack. A few laugh it off, but others look shaken, and we give them sympathetic looks.
###### II. Movement
Entering a sacred zone demands a shift in thinking. Some say the raised stone thresholds we step over to enter a temple are there to repel bad spirits, but a woman told me they are meant to humble us. In the past, people were forced to bow as they lifted their robes to cross.
I wish we had some architecture to humble us today. I’d like to see people bow as they enter a Target or a Taco Bell.
I’m jealous of those who know how to move through religious spaces—the ones whose faith seems limbic, their bodies following a secret choreography they’ve always known. They know which way to cross themselves. They know when to kneel, or bow, or clap.
At Taoist temples, people often bow three times before they approach the altar, and I envied their holy thoughts—the sutras and incantations in their heads. I later learned that, with each bow, they often recite their name, birthday, and address, to make sure the gods can find them if they’re listening.
Knowing this took the pressure off. Let the ultramundane and the spiritualized mingle.
###### III. Concrete
Designed by Kenzo Tange in 1962, [St. Mary’s Cathedral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St.%5FMary%27s%5FCathedral,%5FTokyo?ref=jamesreeves.co) in Tokyo's Sekiguchi neighborhood is an alien tower of stainless steel that forms a cross. Inside, waves of soaring concrete are slashed with sunlight and shadow, their surfaces stained with time.
As I sat in an empty pew, I gazed at the skylight fifteen stories above my head and thought about my mother, even though we never went to church together. Enveloped by forces beyond my usual scale, I felt strangely tranquil. I felt held.
No photographs were allowed, and I admired this policy. It forced me to deal with the space through language and ink. I made this sketch—something I haven’t done in years:
There was no stained glass or Biblical scenery. Only a massive solitary cross that made the notion of religion seem even more otherworldly. A spotlight hung over the altar, casting the only electric light. There was no noise except the occasional rustle of a visitor shifting in their seat, and a low hum that sounded like outer space.
I watched and listened in a way I hadn’t in a long time. It occured to me that all those bad fortunes knotted together on a metal rack looked like snow-covered branches of flowers, just like my auspicious fortune had promised.
Metaphors abound, but on to tonight’s episode, which kicks off with a Buddhist chant that bleeds into my favorite song of the year so far. Like Kenzo Tange’s cathedral—which feels both like mid-20th-century optimism and a vision from a still-distant future—“Romance in the Age of Adaptive Feedback” simultaneously sounds like 1982 and the year 3000\. After a few detours through Shibuya and Shinjuku, we’ll find our way to Sugar Plant, a Japanese duo whose dreamy vapor from the 1990s ought to be etched into memory alongside names like Cocteau Twins and Slowdive.
1. **Unspecified Enemies - Romance in the Age of Adaptive Feedback**
Numbers, 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://nmbrs.bandcamp.com/album/romance-in-the-age-of-adaptive-feedback?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Tomo Akikawabaya - A Dream of No Pillow**
The Invitation of the Dead, 1986 | [Bandcamp](https://tomoakikawabaya.bandcamp.com/album/the-invitation-of-the-dead?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Brian Reitzell and Roger Joseph Manning Jr - Shibuya**
*Lost in Translation* Soundtrack, 2003
4. **2814 - 新宿ゴールデン街 (Shinjuku Golden Street)**
Birth of a New Day | Dream Catalogue, 2015 | [Bandcamp](https://dreamcatalogue.bandcamp.com/album/--18?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Sugar Plant - Happy**
Wonder, 1998 | [Bandcamp](https://kilikilivilla.bandcamp.com/album/happy-2024-remaster?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Also features field recordings I made of ritualistic chants and the soothing sounds of a shopping mall at the Tokyo Dome. Listen below or better yet, [download a neon-soaked mp3 here](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20020%20-%20Dead%20Trees%20Bloom%20Flowers.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co).
The next episode will be dedicated to fire purification, taiko drums, and as always, reverb. Thank you for listening. The request lines are open.
#### Midnight Radio 20 | [Download](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20020%20-%20Dead%20Trees%20Bloom%20Flowers.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 020: Dead Trees Bloom Flowers
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### A Partial Inventory of a Night Market in Taiwan
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-partial-inventory-of-a-night-market-in-taiwan/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:15.000Z
Sweet potato balls, socks, salted grapes, electric fans, live shrimp, umbrellas, anything you can imagine doing to a squid, mobile phones, beef noodle soup, blue jeans, games of mahjong played for stuffed animals, pepper steak, an archery range with real arrows, quail eggs, the spoiled gasoline reek of stinky tofu, corn on the cob, wedding rings, live gerbils, flashlights, chili oil, a crepe filled with ice cream and peanut dust and cilantro, carrot smoothies, cookware, a lady screaming *cheesecake!* at my very white self, pajamas, dumplings filled with every flavor of flesh, toy robots, sweet sausages wrapped in sticky rice, live goldfish, strawberries, luggage, anything that can become a kebab, toolboxes, scallion pancakes, flip flops, a sweaty man auctioning remote-controlled cars, fresh meat, blouses, turnip cakes, hairdryers, eclairs, intestines, and hats.
[Blood Drums by Cavern of Anti-Matter](https://cavernofanti-matter.bandcamp.com/album/blood-drums?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Exit the Tiger
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/exit-the-tiger/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T19:19:47.000Z
### 1
When visiting a Taoist temple, you enter through the east door, the mouth of the dragon, which is good luck. After performing your rituals and prayers, you exit through the west, the deadly mouth of the tiger, because now you’re protected from danger. Never enter through the middle door. That’s for gods.
[C](https://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). suggested *Exit the Tiger* for the name of tonight’s episode because it’s the opposite of *Enter the Dragon*. “Oh that’s an excellent title,” I said. “I know,” she said.
After a month in Taiwan, I’ve lost track of the encounters and events; I'm left with only a residue: the sensation of a too-bright sun followed by days of rain like I’m living in *Se7en*, of sidewalks choked with plastic stools and folding tables with heavy cookware, the air tinted by the haze of dumplings and chili oil and delicacies I can only guess at. And an endless array of temples, where C. and I received several exorcisms and accepted various protections against evil, which often comes down to paperwork.
### 2
At the Xingxiu temple in Sanxia, a small woman stood before me in a blue garment, almost like hospital scrubs. She waved a stick of burning incense at my face, orbited my shoulders, and twirled it around my chest while she puffed and sighed. This was more than a blessing; it was an expulsion of demons. I’m not sure if I believe in anything, but I figure I might as well get as demon-proof as possible before heading back to the States.
Meanwhile, my thoughts keep returning to the ancestor posts at the [Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shung%5FYe%5FMuseum%5Fof%5FFormosan%5FAborigines?ref=jamesreeves.co), massive planks of carved wood that each represent a lost mother or father. Initially smeared with pig blood, they must be allowed to decompose naturally, and sometimes they support the ceiling. I can’t stop thinking about this abstract yet extraordinarily visceral presence of the ones we’ve lost. I like to imagine it: the avatars of my mother and father looming in the corner, supporting my home.
### 3
In 2016, the NYC-based guitarist Hewson Chen discovered the homesick ballads his father recorded after emigrating from Taiwan. He set them to music and called it [*Taiwanese Folk Style*](https://moonglyph.bandcamp.com/album/taiwanese-folk-style?ref=jamesreeves.co), and it’s a remarkable collaboration across generations—and one of the most delightful albums I’ve heard in years.
Two weeks ago, my friend [P](https://www.panthealee.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). turned me on to [Yu Ching](https://huangyuching.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co), a Taiwanese musician who serves chilled shots of shoegaze. I’ve also been steeping myself in [Alex Zhang Hungtai](https://alexzhanghungtai.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)’s extensive catalog, especially his work as Dirty Beaches, a patron saint of [Death Prom](https://www.jamesreeves.co/midnight-radio-002-death-prom/).
So tonight’s episode is dedicated to the Taiwan-related music that has been soundtracking my slow rainy runs along the Tansui River, where clouds are draped over the mountains on the horizon, and all of those ancient landscape scrolls suddenly make perfect sense. I also realized that the pylons of the interstate looked like Shinto shrines before I accidentally ran up the exit ramp. But they don’t make landscape scrolls about that.
Every block of Taiwan is riddled with 7-Elevens, sometimes two or three. Except here, the 7-Eleven is not a repulsive zone of body horror but a cheerful place where you can buy everything needed to live a good life. They’ll print documents for you. You can pay your bills. They’ll even cook food for you in their microwave. Although C. prefers the beverage selection at 7-Eleven, my heart is with the little cakes at FamilyMart, and the jingle that plays when you open the door has been stuck in my head for weeks. If you make it to the end of tonight’s mixtape, you’ll get to hear it for yourself, and perhaps the same thing will happen to you.
High walls surround the Confucian temple because you must work for the knowledge within.
1. **Yu Ching - Love**
The Crystal Hum | Night School, 2024 | [Bandcamp](https://huangyuching.bandcamp.com/album/the-crystal-hum?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **姚苏蓉 (Yao Su-jung) - 磁性的迷惑 (Magnetic Seduction)**
MMI, 1969 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yao%5FSu-jung?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **James Chen - Summer in Taiwan**
Taiwanese Folk Style | Moon Glyph, 2016 | [Bandcamp](https://moonglyph.bandcamp.com/album/taiwanese-folk-style?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Dirty Beaches - Low Rider / I Dream in Neon**
Cassette/Drifters | Zoo Music, 2008/2012 | [Bandcamp](https://alexzhanghungtai.bandcamp.com/album/drifters?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **James Chen - Don’t Be Discouraged**
Taiwanese Folk Style | Moon Glyph, 2016 | [Bandcamp](https://moonglyph.bandcamp.com/album/taiwanese-folk-style?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **Yu Ching - 桑桑 (Sun Sun)**
Planetes Records, 2024 | [Bandcamp](https://huangyuching.bandcamp.com/album/no-no-love?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **Alex Zhang Hungtai & Tseng Kuo Hung - Ten Swords**
Longone | 2020 | [Bandcamp](https://alexzhanghungtai.bandcamp.com/album/longone?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Also contains the sounds of elderly people doing circulatory exercises in Da’an Park, the recording from an aggressive ice cream vendor, and the usual bits of static and tuning. And as always, plenty of reverb. Listen below, or here's [a humid mp3](http://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20019%20-%20Exit%20the%20Tiger.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co).
Other bits and bobs: [this forty-minute slab](https://blanckmass.bandcamp.com/album/mind-killer?ref=jamesreeves.co) from Blanck Mass is some glorious heavyweight sleazy discotheque laser grind. I really enjoyed [*A Thousand Blows*](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/feb/21/a-thousand-blows-review-the-irresistible-new-boxing-drama-from-the-peaky-blinders-creator?ref=jamesreeves.co), a scuzzy and fun series about 19th-century fistfighting in London. There’s a new anniversary edition of Seefeel’s [*Quique*](https://seefeel.bandcamp.com/album/quique-redux-2025-remaster?ref=jamesreeves.co), an album that feels like the entire purpose of music. I’m reading Philip K. Dick’s [*Valis*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valis%5F%28novel%29?ref=jamesreeves.co), thanks to the enthusiasm of my friend [M](https://www.martinessig.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)., and in the spirit of this year so far, here’s [a dispatch from the eighteen levels of hell](https://www.jamesreeves.co/madou-daitian-temple-hell/).
Thank you for listening. The request lines are open.
#### [Podcast](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/17920244?ref=jamesreeves.co) • [Download](http://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20019%20-%20Exit%20the%20Tiger.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 019: Exit the Tiger
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### Eighteen Levels of Hell
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/madou-daitian-temple-hell/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:15.000Z
The idea of an animatronic version of eighteen levels of hell sounds funny, and for the first five or six levels, it is. But repetition nudges comedy into absurdity, which can quickly descend into horror.
Like the sinners it torments, [Madou Daitian Temple](https://www.worldofinteriors.com/story/madou-daitian-temple-taiwan?ref=jamesreeves.co) is trapped in time. Built in 1979, its sun-bleached paint and lonely vending machines evoke the tender melancholy I felt while visiting Coney Island on a February afternoon: The memory of families with a picnic basket, wowed by the crowds. The ghosts of honeymooners spending more than they should. Madou Daitan Temple occupies a similar zone, its heyday etched in the face of the ancient woman who collects $1.20 for admission to hell and another $1.20 to visit heaven.
Each level of hell is ruled by a king who governs demons that specialize in tongue ripping, disembowelment, and gouging. They could do with some fresh oil in their gears, but their squeaky joints pay dividends in hell. (Anyone with a memory of Chuck E. Cheese knows animatronics are high-grade nightmare fuel.) The eeriest quality belongs to the contemporary clothes of the sinners—blue jeans and khakis conjure a local fever dream rather than a mythic otherworld.
Video seemed like the best way to capture the relentlessness of this particualar hell, so I made this inventory.
Who is this place for? Is it a cautionary tale for the believer who might take a wrong moral turn? A godsend for frazzled parents who want to tame their children? Or is it the equivalent of rubbernecking at a wreck, an attraction that offers the cheap rush of self-righteousness, an opportunity for those who *aren’t* selling adulterated pharmaceuticals to feel smug in knowing this suffering will not be theirs?
And what is hell for?
I think it speaks to a craving for justice, the need to know the monsters among us— even if they have escaped the punishment of our earthbound institutions—will pay what’s owed in the afterlife. And it’s hard to imagine a rougher hell than being trapped with a squeaky machine performing the same mindless gesture until the end of time.
As for heaven? Lots of tea and board games. The human brain is [endlessly inventive](https://www.jamesreeves.co/liquid-crystal-god-01/) when it comes to suffering, but the prospect of eternal salvation seems to leave us at a loss.
### The Obsidian Turtle Governs the North
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-obsidian-turtle-governs-the-north/
Last updated: 2026-05-23T02:24:19.000Z
### 1
I used to be so shy. There were years when I counted how many words I said each day. At night I would log the number into a notebook. Sixteen. Twenty-three. Anything in the thirties was a good day.
Now I don’t stop talking. I’m always prattling away at [C.](https://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co), announcing some bold new plan or crackpot theory or question that feels profound at the moment. If you were starving to death, would you rather eat your own finger or someone else’s? Would you still love me if you discovered I was a robot? And so on.
But it’s easy to stay quiet when I don’t speak the language. And here in Taipei, the babble around me sounds so intelligent and engaged. I like to think everyone is arguing about art or plotting revolution.
### 2
I’d forgotten about the friction of a crowded city, its insistence upon itself, how it becomes a steady presence in your thoughts, a character you live with.
Meanwhile, I’m getting decent mileage out of saying “sorry” (*duì bu qǐ*) and “excuse me” (*bù hǎo yì si*), and it feels like a distillation of my life so far, the persistent urge to walk up to strangers and apologize for myself.
A cab driver wants to practice his English. He was a professional baseball player who visited the United States in 1970 for a tournament, and he insists George Washington signed the Declaration of Independence in Minnesota. I don’t have the heart to correct him because, more than anything, I wish for an alternate timeline for my country.
I also wish I had half the confidence of the artist at the Asian Art Biennial who claimed their use of color “creates effects that transcend space and time.”
Then again, my eyes are still humming from the electric red, gold, and green at the temples, so maybe such a thing is possible.
### 3
C. often talks aboutthe Japanese [concept of *ma*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%5F%28negative%5Fspace%29?ref=jamesreeves.co), the interval between space and sometimes time. This feels like where I live now, half my brain stunned by Taipei while the other half is still struggling to calculate the time back home where things seem to be unraveling quickly.
In the morning, I wake from complicated dreams about losing and forgetting things. Last night I raced barefoot through the galleries of a prestigious museum, desperate to find my shoes. Before that, I was hunting for the perfect record to play at a crucial moment, but the names of the songs kept changing and the crowd was waiting and I knew the record should be *right there*. This morning, I woke up trying to remember the name of an artist who creates beautifully frightening sculptures crafted from the innards of artificial intelligence. It wasn’t until I was brushing my teeth that I realized this artist might not exist yet.
More and more, I believe the function of art is to create [a situation where language falls apart](https://www.jamesreeves.co/naoshima-notes/).
Somewhere between the bells of a temple and the heat of a night market, I learned that the obsidian turtle governs the north, an ancient belief that lodged itself in my brain for several days until it became a mantra, a whispered phrase like the password to a clandestine intelligence network.
### 4
Tonight's installment is bookended by two tracks from an all-time favorite album that’s been keeping me company on this trip: Atom Heart & Tetsu Inoue's [*Flowerhead*](https://atomtm.bandcamp.com/album/flowerhead?ref=jamesreeves.co), a drowsy low-end opus that comforted me thirty years ago and still delights me today. Along the way, there are some newer songs drenched in fuzz and streaked with Taiwanese ballads from the mid-twentieth century before winding down with a chant I recorded at [Songshan Ciyou Temple](https://eng.taiwan.net.tw/m1.aspx?sno=0000208&id=227&ref=jamesreeves.co). This mixtape is tailored for headphones, ideally while walking down a rainy street filled with people carrying clear plastic umbrellas.
1. **Datacide - Flowerhead**
*Flowerhead* | Rather Interesting, 1995 | [Bandcamp](https://atomtm.bandcamp.com/album/flowerhead?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Civilistjävel! - XVI**
*Följd* | Felt, 2025 | [Bandcamp](https://civilistjavel.bandcamp.com/album/f-ljd?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Matchess - Of the Living**
*Sacracorpa* | Trouble in Mind, 2018 | [Bandcamp](https://matchess.bandcamp.com/album/sacracorpa?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Leyland Kirby - They Are All Dead, There Are No Skip At All**
*Eager to Tear Apart the Stars* | History Always Favours the Winners, 2011 | [Bandcamp](https://leylandkirby.bandcamp.com/album/eager-to-tear-apart-the-stars?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Datacide - Deep Chair**
*Flowerhead* | Rather Interesting, 1995 | [Bandcamp](https://atomtm.bandcamp.com/album/flowerhead?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Interspersed with sections from:
- **美黛 (Mei Tai) - Unforgettable Memories**
Taiwan | Union Records, 1965 | [More](https://www.discogs.com/artist/3673297-Mei-Dai?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- **Zhen Hui-Ling - Ice Point**
Taiwan, 1960s
- **姚蘇蓉 (Yao Su-jung) - 負心的人**
Taiwan, 1967 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yao%5FSu-jung?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- **Unknown - Lighthouse in the Night Fog**
Taiwan, 1960s
- **紀露霞 (Chi Lu-hsia) - 黃昏嶺 (Sunset Ridge)**
Taiwan, 1957 | [More](https://www.moc.gov.tw/en/News%5FContent2.aspx?n=480&s=17456&ref=jamesreeves.co)
- **胡美紅 (Hu Mei-Hong) - Autumn Wind, Night Rain / Three Sighs**
Taiwan | ATS, 1967 | [More](https://www.discogs.com/artist/4603059-Hu-Mei-hong?srsltid=AfmBOoq5OOj3RrqoOkcTLIpkfdHE7Ss%5FghN49lmL1LWiunzXI8V4Gexc&ref=jamesreeves.co)
- **Recording from Songshan Ciyou Temple**
March 13, 2025 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciyou%5FTemple?ref=jamesreeves.co)
The next episode will bring some of these songs into sharper focus, especially [Yao Su-jung](https://radiodiffusion.blog/2022/01/23/%E5%A7%9A%E8%98%87%E8%93%89-%E5%92%8C-%E9%9B%BB%E6%98%9F%E6%A8%82%E9%9A%8A/?ref=jamesreeves.co), who covered Nancy Sinatra and was known as "the Queen of Tears." Listen below, or [scrape this transpacific mp3](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20018%20-%20The%20Obsidian%20Turtle%20Governs%20the%20North.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co) off the pavement of the information superhighway.
Thank you for reading. And listening. The request lines are open.
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/19225346-the-obsidian-turtle-governs-the-north.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) • [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 018: The Obsidian Turtle Governs the North
0:00
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### Naoshima Notes
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/naoshima-notes/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:13:21.000Z
You have to really want to get to the island of Naoshima. A bullet train from Tokyo across five hundred miles in two hours. A sluggish taxi ride along a coastal road with five thousand stoplights. A ferry among the islands with muted freighters on the horizon, cutting through the fog.
Squid ink curry is my new favorite food.
Eliminating photography at museums is a righteous policy, although I was initially vexed by the need to take pictures to prove I had witnessed a piece of art. Nowadays, taking a picture is how we *see* an image or event, an amplified echo of Susan Sontag’s declaration in ’77 that “today everything exists to end in a photograph.” But this phantom twitch quickly faded as we moved through [Tadao Ando](https://benesse-artsite.jp/en/art/chichu.html?ref=jamesreeves.co)’s severe concrete halls, and I was delighted to discover I was experiencing art with strangers in a way I hadn’t since the early 2000s. We weren’t ducking out of the way of each other’s shots. We lingered longer. Even the roomful of Monets held my interest.
Walter de Maria, **Time/Timeless/No Time* (2004). Chichu Art Museum, Japan. Image: Mitsuo Matsuoka
But how to deal with a gigantic marble orb on a concrete staircase surrounded by dozens of golden three-pronged statues? To start, we moved around it slowly. We hunted for patterns and imagined the rituals that might occur in such a place. We lingered long enough that its strangeness became familiar, and soon we were dealing with it on its terms.
I enjoyed the ritual of removing my shoes before entering a gallery. It was somehow both formal and intimate. And quieter.
James Turrell's room of hyper-blue light gnawed at my peripheral vision until I was on the edge of a big-budget hallucination, unsure if he meant for me to be seeing what I was seeing.
The town of Hommura on the island Naoshima
We walked through a tiny silent town that smelled like a sauna. The wooden buildings were elegantly charred, and a sign above a shuttered door said *Fortune Favors a Merry Home*.
Fifty-two degrees is the threshold between a light and a heavy sweater.
For the first two nights, we dined next to a stern young couple who were always holding hands. The boy wore an oversized black coat, she floated within a billowy skirt, and I never saw them speak. They looked like they stepped out of an [Aubrey Beardsley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey%5FBeardsley?ref=jamesreeves.co#/media/File:Beardsley-peacockskirt.PNG) print, and I’m surprised how heartened I was to see that Romanticism is still kicking.
Lee Ufan, **Relatum-Silence* (2010). Lee Ufan Museum, Naoshima.
I was moved by a hunched boulder that appeared to pray before a glossy sheet of metal.
A line from Tatsuo Miyajima caught my attention: *Keep changing. Connect with everything. Continue forever.* I purchased a copy of [his sketchbook](https://www.akionagasawa.com/en/shop/books/akionagasawa/keep-changing-connect-with-everything-continue-forever/?ref=jamesreeves.co), and C. bought a letter-opener shaped like a bird.
I always get drowsy on ferries. It’s such a fight to stay awake. The amniotic rocking of the waves, I guess.
Japan has the best coffee, especially the cans of iced black charcoal.
On the island of Teshima, we took a long rainy walk down an empty road to get our heartbeats archived for posterity at Christian Boltanski's [*Les Archives du Cœur*](https://benesse-artsite.jp/en/art/boltanski.html?ref=jamesreeves.co)*,* where a lone lightbulb in a dark hallway pulses to the beat of any one of the 90,000 archived heartbeats, generating the effect of a sinister rave in a forgotten factory.
You’re given two attempts to record your heartbeat. My first recording was a slow industrial thump that made me grateful for all the time I've spent running, but there was a slight scuffle against my shirt, so I tried again. The second recording was a disaster, and now the sound of a microphone snaking through a noisy forest of chest hair has been archived for eternity.
Postcards from Ryue Nishizawa and Rei Naito's **Matrix*, where photography is forbidden.
I believe the function of art is to create a situation where language falls apart, and this happened at Teshima. An absolute hush came upon me when I stepped into the strange curves of Ryue Nishizawa and Rei Naito's [*Matrix*](https://hicarquitectura.com/2023/05/ryue-nishizawa-teshima-art-museum-2/?ref=jamesreeves.co). Beneath the oval of a cloudy sky, droplets of water darted across the concrete to join larger rivulets that fed into a puddle. It's a remarkable feat to make water look alien.
But is there a correlation between the effort required to view a work of art and the degree of my appreciation for it? Perhaps this is why I've never felt anything close to the sublime while flicking through images on a screen.
Is a digital sublime possible?
In America, the men's restroom is typically a site of unconscionable body horror. But in Japan, even the public restroom at a far-flung bus station was immaculate. My home country is fucking barbaric.
A resonant moment from Bruce Nauman’s [*One Hundred Live and Die*](https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2019/03/22/the-spirit-and-the-damage-done-on-bruce-naumans-100-live-and-die/?ref=jamesreeves.co) says "Try and live."
Bruce Nauman, **One Hundred Live and Die,* 1984 at Benesse Art Museum, Naoshima
### The Red Curtain
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-red-curtain/
Last updated: 2025-11-18T18:27:45.000Z
###### I.
I’m writing this on a Tokyo-bound airplane somewhere over the Bering Sea. The sun has been setting for six hours since we took off from Chicago, and my sense of time has been destroyed, an effect aided by a headful of antibiotics and decongestants due to a hellacious bout of bronchitis. It might be Sunday. It could be Tuesday somewhere.
Lately I’ve been thinking about ruin. There’s [Iris Murdoch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris%5FMurdoch?ref=jamesreeves.co)’s maxim that “every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.” Or [Ian Penman](https://masoncurrey.substack.com/p/the-fassbinder-method)’s directive to “let the ruin attract its own spectres.” In this zone, failure dissolves into possibility, and there is liberation in the wreckage of my plans, an idea perhaps best expressed in the [Surrealist Manifesto](https://www.arthistoryproject.com/artists/andre-breton/the-manifesto-of-surrealism/?ref=jamesreeves.co):
*Let yourself be carried along, events will not tolerate your interference. You are nameless. The ease of everything is priceless.*
But perhaps it all boils down to if *you want to hear god laugh…*
###### II.
Similar to my sense of [the Tannhäuser Gate](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-tannhauser-gate/), the Red Curtain has become another mental landmark, a threshold where my precious ideas and little desires yield to the reality of the moment. And this moment in the twenty-first century is fucked. Everything is splintering, and each of us must contend with a buckshot spray of information coming from god only knows.
For too long, I’ve felt obligated to cobble the fractured experience of living in the Digital Age into nineteenth and twentieth-century forms. But the Red Curtain is where fragments come together and find their own logic.
David Lynch always understood this. “I started with the idea of front yards at night,” he said of the image that led to [*Blue Velvet*](https://time.com/archive/6716008/david-lynch-czar-of-bizarre/?ref=jamesreeves.co). His playground was the limbo between death (the ultimate failure) and desire (proof of life) where the innocent exists alongside the sinister. This dynamic is hardwired, I think, and it begins with the childhood realization that clowns are frightening because they are smiling without reason.
###### III.
When I think of Lynch’s work, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t a story or a scene—it’s a sound: the long dark hum that runs throughout the pilot episode of *Twin Peaks*, roving like a ghost through the rooms of the familiar and the damned. The effect is like noticing an appliance or ventilation system that’s been droning all the while, but a shift in focus has occurred and now it’s impossible to hear anything else.
This is what I’ve tried to channel in tonight’s tribute to Lynch: a long dark hum that focus-shifts from the ruins of vintage ballads to fragments of sleek noir. Let it all garble and meld. I’m a freshly converted advocate of [Tatsuo Miyajima](https://tatsuomiyajima.com/texts/tatsuo-miyajima-connect-with-everything-essay-by-rachel-kent/?ref=jamesreeves.co)’s philosophy: *Keep changing. Connect with everything. Continue forever.*
- **Angelo Badalamenti - Laura Palmer’s Theme**
Twin Peaks, 1990 | [More](https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781501323041&ref=jamesreeves.co)
- **Rebekah Del Rio - Llorando**
Mulholland Drive, 2001 | [More](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jul/14/rebekah-del-rio-david-lynch-mulholland-drive?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- **Dean Hurley - Night Electricity Theme**
Anthology Resource Vol. 1 | Twin Peaks: The Return, 2017 | [Bandcamp](https://deanhurley.bandcamp.com/album/anthology-resource-vol-i?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- **Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Constant Fear**
Black Earth | Wonder, 2002 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohren%5F%26%5Fder%5FClub%5Fof%5FGore?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- **Roy Orbison - Crying**
RCA Victor, 1961 | [More](https://www.jamesreeves.co/tokyo-notes/)
- **Bobby Vinton - Blue Velvet**
Epic, 1963 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%5Fon%5FBlue%5F%28Bobby%5FVinton%5Falbum%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- **Chris Isaak - Wicked Game** (23% slower)
Reprise, 1989 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked%5FGame?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- **The Paris Sisters - I Love How You Love Me**
Gregmark, 1961 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%5FLove%5FHow%5FYou%5FLove%5FMe?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- **Julee Cruise - Falling**
Floating Into the Night, 1989 | [Three Demos](https://juleecruisesb.bandcamp.com/album/three-demos?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- **Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Theme**
Twin Peaks, 1990 | [More](https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781501323041&ref=jamesreeves.co)
- **Roy Orbison - In Dreams** (20% slower)
Monument Records, 1963 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In%5FDreams%5F%28Roy%5FOrbison%5Fsong%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
- **Rod Modell + Taka Noda - Untitled 2**
Glow World | Silentes, 2024 | [Bandcamp](https://silentes.bandcamp.com/album/glow-world?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Many of these songs appear in Lynch’s most familiar work, although two do not—but Bohren & Der Club of Gore and Rod Modell’s work with Taka Noda almost sound more like *Twin Peaks* and *Mulholland Drive* than original films.
The Red Curtain is also a zone of detuned radios, busted machinery that bleeds through the walls, Patsy Cline, Elvis Presley, The Platters, and, if you listen closely, [the Woodsman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ShRdYm2ogE&ref=jamesreeves.co) will remind you which is the water and which is the well. Listen below, or [here's a shadowy mp3](http://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20017%20-%20The%20Red%20Curtain.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co), and many thanks to [C](https://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). for requesting a David Lynch episode.
Fragment-wise, here are some fast notes from [Tokyo](https://www.jamesreeves.co/tokyo-notes/), a bit of [rough thinking about god](https://www.jamesreeves.co/liquid-crystal-god-01/), and as C. and I travel from Naoshima to Taipei and back through Tokyo, I'll be throwing snapshots and snippets onto [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/jamesreeves.co?ref=jamesreeves.co) like it's 2009.
Thank you for listening. The request lines are open.
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/18212802-the-red-curtain.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Podcast](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/18212802?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Tokyo Notes
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/tokyo-notes/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:14:46.000Z
Nodded off in a taxi crammed with screens that blared about ambiguous products. The effect was like watching a film from a century ago. Everyone smiling too fast, the frame rate all wrong. Twenty minutes later, minimalism reached its vanishing point: unable to find the door to our hotel, we were about to give up when two concrete slabs slid open to reveal a young man who took our luggage and our shoes.
Socks with sandles give the sinister effect of cloven feet.
An exhausted but persistent corner of my brain keeps reciting these lines from [the Surrealist Manifesto](https://www.arthistoryproject.com/artists/andre-breton/the-manifesto-of-surrealism/?ref=jamesreeves.co): “Let yourself be carried along, events will not tolerate your interference. You are nameless. The ease of everything is priceless.”
The rare and tiny trashcans in Tokyo make me feel like a gluttonous and negligent beast, constantly shedding bottles, wrappers, and receipts.
I woke up sweaty from a dream in which I could hear everything except my voice.
Jinbōchō, Tokyo
The Tokyo streets are busy yet hushed, and I cannot put my finger on the sounds that are missing. Shouting? Laughter? Police sirens and angry horns?
But living fourteen hours in the future is fantastic. Wake up and squint at the news back home. Alright, so that’s what America did today. Now they’ve gone to sleep and I can enjoy not thinking about the president for a while.
Nobody in Tokyo seems to wears sunglasses except for me and C. even though it’s unusually bright.
I say *sumimasen* constantly and enthusiastically.
Fifty degrees might be the line between a light sweater and a heavy sweater.
In Chiyoda City, there's [an endless street of used bookshops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinb%C5%8Dch%C5%8D,%5FTokyo?ref=jamesreeves.co) where so many people, mostly middle-aged men, quietly peruse decades-old publications about astrology and jazz and George Lucas and aerobics.
And god, dig all these middle-aged Japanese men with fine-tuned haircuts and selvage denim and understated sneakers.
Otemachi One Tower, Tokyo
I had an elaborate fantasy of picking up smoking again and pretending I’m in [*Tokyo Vice*](https://www.jamesreeves.co/instead-of-vanishing-completely/), but there’s no smoking on the streets of Tokyo. It’s a ¥2000 fine, about fourteen dollars. I want to live in the future with the aesthetics of 1971.
But holy christ, it feels so good and lucky to be seven thousand miles away from America—like running away from an awful odor or the sweet relief that comes when a car alarm suddenly falls silent.
Learned to find freedom through the ritualized dressing and undressing and scrubbing and soaking in the *onsen*.
I’m disoriented enough that at one point while orbiting Tokyo Dome City, I found myself earnestly saying, “The sun sets in the west here.”
Time for bed.
## Current Tokyo soundtrack
[Glow World by Rod Modell & Taka Noda](https://silentes.bandcamp.com/album/glow-world?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Notes on God
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/torched-bliss/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:17.000Z
But why does talking about God feel so tacky? Strange how the grammar of damage is so vivid and precise, endlessly inventive—*torched, shanked, concussed*—while the vocabulary of peace remains squelchy and limp, reduced to cloudy words like *serenity* and *bliss*. I do not know how to speak about faith without feeling embarrassed, annoyed at the saccharine pitch in my voice. Language fails. Hell can be described a thousand ways, but heaven remains impossible to grasp.
Whenever I think about taking a leap of faith, a fork in the road appears: I’ll either become a wild-eyed zealot who wears a sandwich board, or I’ll have the self-satisfied smile of the public radio listener who speaks of energies and crystals. Agnosticism, atheism, nihilism, and even cosmic horror are more appealing than these options. So I turn away from the path and retreat into the familiar, even easy, life of doubt.
Yet the craving to become spiritualized persists.
### Return to Death Prom
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/return-to-death-prom/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:17.000Z
Frozen rain is falling in the Middle West, and I’m writing to you through a haze of fever and sniffles and nostalgia. This morning I came across a photograph of my mother that has the atmosphere of a dream. There's the incidental heat of a family in motion, the twinned gesture of a hand to the forehead. My mother is returning from an event, and my grandmother follows in the background. An unknown girl stands in the foreground, watching.
The overheated colors and pebbled texture of this picture left me romanticizing the aesthetics of the past: a tactile world of cigarettes, record players, snow on the television, and radios that filled the room like furniture. Might as well have been another planet compared to how I sit with a scrunched face and white plastic in my ears, tapping at a piece of glass. And soon this will look like the days of the hand-cranked Victrola or the first Model T.
It’s a strange sensation, living a life divided between today’s liquid crystal and a youth defined by magnetic tape. Audio and VHS cassettes contained my first impressions of the world. Each unit of entertainment was bound in plastic that occupied space and respected the logic of time, its information deteriorating each time it was played until it dissolved into garbled images and hiss. Now the whole world feels like static. No orientation. No sense of time. Perhaps my generation is uniquely positioned to be disappointed by the humiliations of clicking and scrolling. After all, I still remember the optimism of *world wide web* and *information superhighway*.
I miss the reassuring kerchunk of buttons and punching out the plastic tabs on a cassette if the recording was good. Or taping them up again when better music came along. It was a tactile world of messing with limitations, a sensibility defined by the boundaries of the physical rather than a never-ending feed coming from god only knows. Was life better in the Era of Magnetic Tape, or am I suffering from the nostalgia of a man settling into middle age?
Either way, this calls for a trip to [the Death Prom](https://www.jamesreeves.co/midnight-radio-002-death-prom/), where I can hide beneath the crashing waves of an old Ronettes single: big heartbeat drums and an even bigger voice, Ronnie Spector and her beehive carryied the fever dream of American history when she sang “Keep on Dancing” back in ’64, a song so perfect that her husband refused to release it because he was a psychopath. In my notebook, I jotted down a quote from her that reads like a poem: “Everything was quiet, then all of a sudden I heard a low rumble, like there was thunder coming from every corner of the room.”
1. **Jeanette - Oí Tu Voz**
Hispavox, 1967
2. **Jessica Pratt - Life Is**
Here in the Pitch | Mexican Summer, 2024 | [Bandcamp](https://jessicapratt.bandcamp.com/album/here-in-the-pitch?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Hasnah Haron - Hanya Padamu**
Malaysia, 1970
4. **Dirty Beaches - True Blue + The Ronettes - Keep on Dancin’**
Zoo Music, 2010 + Philles Records, recorded 1964, released 1978
5. **Connie Francis - Siboney**
MGM, 1960
And god, how Connie Francis holds those final notes. This mixtape also includes shards of Johnny Mathis, Bobby Vinton, Patsy Cline, and some ominous basslines. Listen below, or [here’s an mp3](http://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20016%20-%20Return%20to%20the%20Death%20Prom.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co) so dusty you can almost touch it.
The next few episodes of Midnight Radio will be broadcast from Taipei and Tokyo because C. was awarded a generous [research grant](https://www.candychang.com/electric-shadows/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and I got lucky and married above my station, so I get to tag along. (She also made [this delightful collage of me](https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-walk-in-london/) walking down the street.)
Thank you for listening. The request lines are open.
#### Midnight Radio 16 | [Download](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20016%20-%20Return%20to%20the%20Death%20Prom.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 016: Return to the Death Prom
0:00
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### A Walk in London
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-walk-in-london/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:17.000Z
And [Candy Chang](https://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) made this delightful collage of me walking through London three years ago. The graffiti behind me says, "Money is being made from Covid but whose pockets are being lined?"
This brings to mind a line from Rakim: "I'm hard to read like graffiti but steady, the science I drop is real heavy." Perhaps a more interesting question is whether Eric B. & Rakim's "[Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2wMJ3Liq5Y&ref=jamesreeves.co)" or Eric B. & Rakim's "[Follow the Leader](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95gP3m-uBHA&ref=jamesreeves.co)" is the best hip-hop performance of all time.
### Francis Bacon
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/figure-with-meat/
Last updated: 2026-05-15T01:59:27.000Z
There are many reasons Bacon's [*Figure with Meat*](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/4884/figure-with-meat?ref=jamesreeves.co) bothers the mind. It's a crazed smear of flesh, velvet, and bone, but it lingers because his shrieking popes inhabit a space that cannot be determined, a zone etched only by a few ghostly chalk lines. The ambiguity forces us to supply our own nightmares that pulse in the murk beyond the grasp of language. Which is the point of painting, I think. And perhaps horror, too.
Bacon described the crucifixion of Christ as “just an act of man’s behavior,” yet [his depiction](https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/crucifixion?ref=jamesreeves.co) of it looks more otherworldly than anything the Catholics conceived. Bad weather fills Bacon’s canvases: damp and clammy, the faces of his subjects melting in the rain. But here’s reverence for death here. His ghoulish scenes demand to be taken seriously. “I think most artists are very aware of their annihilation,” he said. “It follows them around like their shadow.”
But those mouths. More specifically, [the teeth](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/494826?ref=jamesreeves.co). His realistic snarls provide an entry point into the surreal, for the dissolution of logic into something more real. My eye struggles to understand the face before me, even though it already makes sense, for it exists deep in the basement beneath words and speech, somewhere among the limbic muck and heat of being a panting, living mess.
Bacon believed in “an area of the nervous system to which the texture of paint communicates more violently than anything else.” I think he’s right.
### Slow Vessels
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/slow-vessels/
Last updated: 2026-05-14T19:28:32.000Z
### 1
Lately I’ve been pondering a line from Ingmar Bergman’s *The Seventh Seal*: “I often wonder why people torment themselves as soon as they can.” It’s an excellent question without an easy answer.
As of today, I haven’t had a drink in twelve years. There are dogs and teenagers who’ve been sober longer than this, but there was a time when I thought I wouldn’t make it twelve hours, let alone twelve years. I’ve lost so many people to this thing. Like my mom, who was so much smarter, kinder, and tougher than me. When I cleaned out her things after she died, I found a yellow book tucked under her mattress called *Sobriety for Dummies*. Addiction is a disease of isolation; if you’re struggling, please reach out to someone. (I’m [here](mailto:james@jamesreeves.co).)
Twelve years ago, I found a community that told me to meditate. They said it would help me learn to live in my skin and might even introduce me to a higher power. I thought meditation was goofy new-age woo, but I was desperate not to drink again, so I said okay. This was a year or two before mindfulness became a lifehack for greater productivity because end-game capitalism devours everything, even the ancient practice of staring at a wall. Nowadays, people who talk about meditation tend to be insufferable, and I do not intend to do this here. I only want to tell you about the rain. And the stick.
At first, I could not sit in silence for thirty seconds without wanting to fuck with my phone, but eventually, I found myself at a Zen temple where I was directed to a small pillow and told to face the wall. The others were middle-aged men. They had shaved heads and wore black kimonos. I wore skinny jeans and smelled like cigarettes.
The temple belonged to a small ancient monk for whom the only adjective is *wizened*. He paced behind us with a wooden rod the length of a baseball bat. If our spines sagged or our shoulders went off-kilter, he would whack us with his stick. Actually, he only whacked me. He was remarkably strong for an 86-year-old monk. Meanwhile, the men on either side of me remained like statues, radiating intensity and seriousness. (As a general rule, I’ve found that no matter what you enjoy—music, running, photography, cycling—there’s always a middle-aged man nearby who is taking it way too seriously.)
The introductory meditation was *three hours*. My mind gnawed at itself. I listened to my veins until the blood pulsing in my vessels became a form of entertainment. But deep within the second hour, a light rain began to fall, and I could hear each drop. Then came a hush I’d never known, and I thought I had glimpsed beyond the veil.
Then came the stick.
A few months later, I mentioned this experience to a friendly nun, and she smiled. “We’re hard enough on ourselves as it is. We don’t need somebody hitting us with a stick.”
### 2
In other news, the Late Heavy Bombardment was a cosmic event that occurred four billion years ago, and it feels like it’s happening again. So I’m returning to [my spiritual practice of slowing my favorite songs down](https://www.jamesreeves.co/slow-motion-machines/) to a reverberated crawl as an antidote to these chaotic subzero days. There’s a lot of [Echospace](https://echospace313.com/home?ref=jamesreeves.co) on this outing, particularly [*The Coldest Season*](https://boomkat.com/products/the-coldest-season-66e8661d-976a-46e2-b5df-187b8d877bd0?ref=jamesreeves.co), the best winter album ever made. (I think it sounds even better 48% slower).
One of tonight’s tracks is called ‘Abraxas,’ which might be the ancient form of 'abracadabra'. [The Wikipedia entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraxas?ref=jamesreeves.co) starts like heavy science fiction: “Abraxas is a word of mystic meaning in the system of the Gnostic Basilides, being there applied to the Great Archon, the princeps of the 365 spheres.” It gets wilder from there.
1. **TM404 - 202/303/303/303/606/606** (43% slower)
TM 404 | Kontra-Musik, 2013 | [Bandcamp](https://kontra-musik.bandcamp.com/album/tm404-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Topdown Dialectic - A4** (44% slower)
S/T | Peak Oil, 2018 | [Bandcamp](https://peakoil.bandcamp.com/album/s-t?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Echospace - Aequinoxium/Sunset/Abraxas** (48% slower)
The Coldest Season | Modern Love, 2008 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/the-coldest-season-66e8661d-976a-46e2-b5df-187b8d877bd0?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Von Schommer - Wuerfel/Wuerfel Version** (45% slower)
Deepchord, 2000 | [Bandcamp](https://mikeschommer.bandcamp.com/album/deepchord-dcv07?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **IMAX - Concorde** (47% slower)
Deepchord, 2000 | [Bandcamp](https://mikeschommer.bandcamp.com/album/deepchord-dcv07?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Also includes snippets from Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Leonard Cohen, Yazoo, Skeeter Davis, Rebekah Del Rio, and 10cc. (The moment at the eight-minute mark when a Joy Division fragment lands on a half-speed synth is my favorite thing yet in these fifteen mixes.)
Listen below, or here’s [a premium executive mp3](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20015%20-%20Slow%20Vessels.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co) you can play while you ponder whether or not to root for [this asteroid](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/29/science/asteroid-2024-yr4-earth.html?ref=jamesreeves.co). (And here’s [a Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6sohFvy4zgExMy0nGVhZvP?ref=jamesreeves.co) of the songs at their normal boring speed.) Now I’m about to board an airplane to Chicago because C. surprised me with a birthday trip to see three of [my](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/147003/woman-descending-the-staircase-frau-die-treppe-herabgehend?ref=jamesreeves.co) [favorite](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/120172/penitent-saint-peter?ref=jamesreeves.co) [paintings](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/4884/figure-with-meat?ref=jamesreeves.co).
Thank you for listening. The request lines are open.
Midnight Radio 015 Slow Vessels
0:00
/3429.642448979592
1×
### Hammerhead
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/hammerhead/
Last updated: 2026-07-07T10:20:10.000Z
Last night I dreamt of hammerhead sharks. I was swimming away from a burning airplane and they swarmed around me, biting away pieces of my back and arms until I woke up. I don’t know what this means, but C. says it’s because I’m afraid of hammers, which is true. I have to close my eyes whenever there’s a bludgeoning on television.
### Strange Shapes in the Night
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/strange-shapes-in-the-night/
Last updated: 2025-11-17T03:30:16.000Z
I had to ask Chat GPT how to delete my Instagram account. Living in the twenty-first century feels not only slightly embarrassing but increasingly like an ultimatum: embrace the future without complaint or be left pining for the textures of the past. But there’s always a third way.
###### 1.
Salvation Mountain, 2019
Near a decommissioned military base between the Chocolate Mountains and the Santa Rosa range, there’s a candy-colored hill shellacked with religious slogans, the handiwork of a man who dedicated his final years and nine thousand gallons of paint to writing *God is Love* and *Jesus I’m a Sinner* in shades of pink and red that make your eyeballs scream. He painted [Salvation Mountain](https://salvationmountain.us/?ref=jamesreeves.co) after his homemade hot air balloon failed to carry him to heaven, leaving him earthbound in the Mojave desert, where he remained for the rest of his life. “I was only planning to stay for a week,” he told a tourist before he died. “But it was a very good week.”
###### 2.
Carhenge, 2011
There’s nothing on County Road 59 in western Nebraska except sleepy cattle and miles of sky. When the silhouette of Stonehenge appeared on the horizon, I thought I was hallucinating until I parked on the shoulder and laid my hands upon the [thirty-six Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carhenge?ref=jamesreeves.co) stacked into arches that track solar and lunar events—a man’s memorial to his dead father.
###### 3.
Candy Chang among the Forevertron, 2015
Further north in Wisconsin, there’s a wrought-iron spaceship known as the [Forevertron](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=forevertron&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&ref=jamesreeves.co), a forbidding contraption assembled from lightning rods, two Thomas Edison dynamos, debris from the local ammunition factory, and a decontamination chamber retrieved from Apollo 11\. The Forevertron was built by a frustrated demolition man who wanted to create rather than destroy. One night, he rechristened himself as a Victorian inventor named Dr. Evermore. “I was rather upset with the world,” he explained. “So I decided to send myself back into the heavens on a magnetic lightning forcefield.”
---
I love this genre of old men speaking to the heavens (and occasionally attempting to launch themselves there) by building candy-colored mountains, car-wreck calendars, and junkyard rockets. I'll probably join them someday, and I hope you have your own Forevertron that you're tinkering with. In the meantime, we have five songs tonight, each promising transcendence in its own way.
First off, the blistering pleasure of Earth’s guitars that ride the line between the sacred and the demonic, followed by a synth-and-vocal workout from The Field that sounds like a crumbling memory of a warehouse party on the brink of the void. Then comes the centerpiece, which C. and I have decided is our favorite genre for 2025: “[preposterous yet strangely compelling.](https://www.candychang.com/prepo/?ref=jamesreeves.co)”—and I-F’s “Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass” fits the bill perfectly. It’s gloriously dumb and a technical triumph that conjures a much nicer future. After this late-20th-century masterpiece, the only logical option is to drop into some static-ridden Joy Division, which I’ve glitched and reverberated when the spirit moved me, followed by Temple ov Saturn's "Last Stand at Ankh Sanctuary"—[Joan Pope’s music](https://templeovsaturn.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) sounds like an incantation that threatens to summon something ominous, which might help us prepare for the rest of 2025.
1. **Earth - Coda Maestoso in F(flat) Minor (Autechre Remix)**
Legacy of Dissolution | No Quarter, 2005 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/legacy-of-dissolution?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **The Field - Made of Steel, Made of Stone**
Infinite Moment | Kompakt, 2018 | [Bandcamp](https://thefield.bandcamp.com/album/infinite-moment?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **I-F - Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass**
Fucking Consumer | Disko B, 1998 | [Bandcamp](https://viewlexx.bandcamp.com/album/disko-b-db069-fucking-consumer?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Joy Division - Day of the Lords**
Unknown Pleasures | Factory Records, 1979 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unknown%5FPleasures?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Temple Ov Saturn - Last Stand at Ankh Sanctuary**
Last Stand at Ankh Sanctuary | 2019 | [Bandcamp](https://templeovsaturn.bandcamp.com/album/last-stand-at-ankh-sanctuary?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Also includes a healthy serving of reverb, a relevant snippet of David Bowie, and Neil Diamond’s "Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show" in slow-motion. Listen below, [use this hyperlink](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2025/01/Midnight-Radio-014---Strange-Shapes-in-the-Night.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co) to score a high-grade mp3, or if you must, here's [a Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5riAdik3W5QIFiLn3KlxGH?ref=jamesreeves.co) without the fun stuff.
---
Some recent inputs: [*The Lazarus Project*](https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/the-lazarus-project-2022?ref=jamesreeves.co) is one of my favorite television shows: smart, mind-bendy sci-fi that remembers to be fun. The British know how to make a conspiratorial tech thriller much better than Americans (see also [*The Capture*](https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/the-capture?ref=jamesreeves.co)). The first two songs from [this Matchess record](https://matchess.bandcamp.com/album/sacracorpa?ref=jamesreeves.co) have been my morning soundtrack all week, and thank you to [Philip Sherburne's newsletter](https://futurismrestated.substack.com/p/futurism-restated-94-dont-call-them) for introducing me to her work. I'm also happy I found [Adam Greenfield's dispatches](https://www.patreon.com/c/adamgreenfield/posts?ref=jamesreeves.co) again. Reading-wise, I've started Samantha Harvey's [*Orbital,*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital%5F%28novel%29?ref=jamesreeves.co) and I'm getting the sense that not much will happen in this novel besides hanging out on a spacecraft in the most lyrical way possible, which isn't a bad way to spend some time.
---
It was a Sunday morning when C. told me that [Kessler’s Syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler%5Fsyndrome?ref=jamesreeves.co) might kill us all because sooner or later, all the space debris speeding around above our heads will start colliding, which could produce a chain reaction that mucks up the magnetosphere and we’ll get vaporized by solar wind. Or something.
A few hours later, a friend called to tell me [octopuses are from outer space](https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/123479-trending-science-do-octopuses-come-from-outer-space?ref=jamesreeves.co). He thinks they will become the dominant species after artificial intelligence determines humans are an illogical lifeform and wipes us out. This produced a delightful new euphemism for a scary future, e.g., *after the technological/climate/nuclear disaster, there’ll be nothing left but Juan’s Octopus Word*. It cushions the blow.
I’m so thankful for the interesting people in my life—and thank you for reading and listening. The request lines are open. (I hope you'll request something, otherwise we’ll have a subzero dub session because here in the Middle West, it’s fuck-you degrees outside.)
#### Midnight Radio 14 | [Download](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2025/01/Midnight-Radio-014---Strange-Shapes-in-the-Night.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 014: Strange Shapes in the Night
0:00
/1912.1371428571429
1×
### Naming the Snow
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/naming-the-snow/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:18.000Z
Last night I watched the snow come down, my nose pressed against the cold glass like a little kid—not judging or wanting, just watching. They’re calling it Winter Storm Blair. I’m not sure when we started christening snowstorms, but like everything else these days, the weather is branded and marketed, which leaves me even more disappointed when it fails to perform as advertised.
When I was a little kid, and I imagined the distant future, I always pictured people being nicer. They wore similar outfits and smiled and got along.
Meanwhile in Washington DC, they’re certifying the presidential election, and there is no insurrection this time because the man who tried to overthrow the government won. The other day, I performed some dark calculations while running around the pond: If I get lucky and live to eighty years old, I’ll have spent a tenth of my life with a grifter-clown as the leader of my country.
Yesterday at the library, there was a low-level thrum of anticipation as Winter Storm Blair approached, a subtle magnetic force that pulled us a little closer. Strangers smiled at one another. They told each other to keep warm and stay safe. A snowstorm might be the last benign unifying event.
They advertised fourteen inches, but we only got six. Still, it’s enough to soften the world a little. Enough to remember childhood winters and marvel at all this strange material from the sky.
---
Most of all, I’m grateful to be surrounded by snow because I can finally enjoy [*The Coldest Season*](https://boomkat.com/products/the-coldest-season-66e8661d-976a-46e2-b5df-187b8d877bd0?ref=jamesreeves.co) in its proper context.
### Holy Ruins
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/holy-ruins/
Last updated: 2025-11-17T03:02:24.000Z
###### 1.
The first housecats in ancient Egypt gradually discovered they received more attention from their owners when their [meows mimicked a human baby’s cry](https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/news-blog/the-manipulative-meow-cats-learn-to-2009-07-13/?ref=jamesreeves.co). Today, birds mimic [police sirens](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-68790496?ref=jamesreeves.co) and [chainsaws](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0ZffIh0-NA&ref=jamesreeves.co), and artificial intelligence is probably harvesting these videos for b-roll footage and ambient soundscapes designed to wake us up at an optimal hour. Someday, we might no longer understand what is echoing what.
###### 2.
When I was growing up, my mom often told me that perfectionism was my worst trait. I took this as a compliment because I was young and arrogant. Who wouldn’t want to be a perfectionist? Three decades and so many missed opportunities later, I can’t tell you how many times I look up at the ceiling—or wherever my mom’s ghost might be—to tell her she was so damned right.
###### 3.
It’s the first day of a new year, and I’m thinking about accidental laughter. There’s a song called “Lali Lale”—upbeat and a little seductive, the singer’s voice autotuned for a hypnotic effect. Although she sings in a language I do not understand, the intent is clear: to speak to the limbic, to make the listener feel cool and sleek. But in the middle of a verse, she breaks into laughter. Her laugh is not calculated or cool; it’s awkward and nervous, the sound of someone breaking character. I like to imagine the moment in the studio when she glances at the faces behind the mixing board to do another take. Instead, they tell her to keep going, keep rolling. So she gets back to the beat, and now the song has become truly alive, a document of the unpredictable, an artifact of the genuinely human.
This song is the last track in tonight’s mix, and the laughter at the 28:51 mark is one of [my favorite moments in the music I listened to last year](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2024-rotation/). Messes and accidents, weird typos and blurts of laughter—these things feel more essential now that everything is increasingly filtered, auto-suggested, and optimized.
---
Someday I will finish the novel I’ve been rewriting for years about a very loud god. It's time to let it go. I want to practice working fast and loose, to stop taking myself and my opinions so seriously. Embrace the fragment. Cultivate collisions. Bring the residue to the forefront.
Residue is how tonight’s broadcast begins: I excavated the vocal dregs from last year’s mixes to usher in one of my favorite songs, Wolfgang Voigt’s off-kilter loop of T. Rex and Roxy Music, which I like to play first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Then I’ve paired Nancy Sinatra with some bass, static, and a kick drum that I scraped out of an old file. The third track is a terribly-named song by a terribly-named band, but the music itself is an ideal way to start the new year in easy mode.
1. **Love, Inc - Life’s a Gas**
Force Inc, 1996 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang%5FVoigt?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Nancy Sinatra - Bang Bang (Midnight Radio Static Mix)**
3. **Japancakes - Handguns & Firearms**
Bliss Out Vol. 19: Belmondo | Darla, 2002 | [More](https://darla.com/products/japancakes-belmondo-bliss-out-v-19?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Chantssss - Swan**
Shyness | Theory Therapy, 2024 | [More](https://theorytherapy.bandcamp.com/album/shyness?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **DjNiraha & Lale Pishmari - Lali Lale**
KorgMusic2024DemoEL-HELL-EΛ | Heat Crimes, 2024 | [More](https://heatcrimes.bandcamp.com/album/korgmusic2024demoel-hell-e?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Listen below or [grab an mp3](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2025/01/Midnight-Radio-013---Holy-Ruins.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co) before it gets cold. Thank you for listening, and the request lines are open.
#### Midnight Radio 13 | [Download](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2025/01/Midnight-Radio-013---Holy-Ruins.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### 2024 Rotation
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/2024-rotation/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:19.000Z
When making this sort of list, there's the temptation to go flashy or hyper-obscure, to use the occasion to advertise one's esoteric taste. So these are simply the new albums I played the most this year, the ones I kept revisiting because they challenged, delighted, and reassured. These records shifted my horizons, and more importantly, I *enjoyed* them.
### Gyeongsu & June - All to None
##### Dear Dogs | [Bandcamp](https://deardogs.bandcamp.com/album/all-to-none?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A shimmer on the horizon. Extremely patient and a little gaudy, but never forgetting that music is a direct line to catharsis. These four songs are pop music from a much better future.
[All to None by Gyeongsu & June](https://deardogs.bandcamp.com/album/all-to-none?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### DJ Niraha - KorgMusic2024DemoEL-HELL-EΛ
##### Heat Crimes | [Bandcamp](https://heatcrimes.bandcamp.com/album/korgmusic2024demoel-hell-e?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/korgmusic2024demoel-hell-e?ref=jamesreeves.co)
"Derived from the fiery Roma wedding music of Kavala, in northern Greece, eastern Macedonia," this album has been a steady companion for my ugly morning runs around the pond, and it delivered my favorite musical moment of 2024: Lale Pashmiri's accidental laughter in the middle of a hypnotic vocoded verse at the 1:43 mark of "Lali Lale". It's the sound of reckless abandon, ecstacy in its strict sense of escaping the body to join something greater, even if my running style is anything but.
[KorgMusic2024DemoEL-HELL-EΛ by DjNiraha](https://heatcrimes.bandcamp.com/album/korgmusic2024demoel-hell-e?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Cindy Lee – Diamond Jubilee
##### Realistik | [Bandcamp](https://cindylee.bandcamp.com/album/diamond-jubilee?ref=jamesreeves.co)
This nostalgia-soaked opus will fill your living room with shag carpet, sploshed drinks, and overflowing ashtrays made of amber-tinted glass. At some point, it will soundtrack your grocery shopping, and you'll realize it's not an album, it's a haunting, the sound of a forgotten beehived girl group circa 1963, maybe the Rubies or the Sapphires, fooling around with the occult. As much as I've listened to this album, it shape-shifts and evaporates like an expertly blown smoke ring, and the only thing I can do is play it again.
[Diamond Jubilee by Cindy Lee](https://cindylee.bandcamp.com/album/diamond-jubilee?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Midwife - No Depression in Heaven
##### The Flenser | [Bandcamp](https://heavenmetal.bandcamp.com/album/no-depression-in-heaven?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Madeline Johnston's voice sounds like it's fighting its way through the static on a radio in the kitchen of a different decade. This is beautiful vapor, the afterimage of a flashbulb popping off after the encore of a band that littered the stage with only the finest reverb pedals.
[No Depression in Heaven by Midwife](https://heavenmetal.bandcamp.com/album/no-depression-in-heaven?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Eat-Girls - Area Silenzio
##### Bureau B | [Bandcamp](https://eat-girls.bandcamp.com/album/area-silenzio?ref=jamesreeves.co)
These ten tracks have nicely filled the [DVA Damas](https://boomkat.com/products/wet-vision?taxon%5Fid=107761&ref=jamesreeves.co)\-shaped hole in my soul. Spiky vocals cut through the coldest of waves, and it's a durable album for running through the frost.
[Area Silenzio by eat-girls](https://eat-girls.bandcamp.com/album/area-silenzio?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Chantssss - Shyness
##### Theory Therapy | [Bandcamp](https://theorytherapy.bandcamp.com/album/shyness?ref=jamesreeves.co)
The color blue in all its permutations, aquatic and airborne, and it inspired me to get with the spirit of the twentieth-first century and create my very first [personal automation](https://support.apple.com/guide/shortcuts/create-a-new-personal-automation-apdfbdbd7123/8.0/ios/18.0?ref=jamesreeves.co). Fifteen minutes before sunrise, this album plays throughout our flat. Sometimes I wake up to the sub bass. Most of the time it seeps into my dreams.
[Shyness by CHANTSSSS](https://theorytherapy.bandcamp.com/album/shyness?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Dregs - Dregs
##### Purely Physical Teeny Tapes | [Bandcamp](https://dreggin.bandcamp.com/album/dregs?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Seedy and a little tacky like remembering a night in 1994 when people earnestly said things like "trip hop" and "acid jazz" and "dub techno" and thought new hybrids of music would lead us to utopia rather than the inevitable flattening of everything into an endless sheet of liquid crystal gloss. But the production here is so plush and friendly that alright, sure, I'll sink into this corduroy couch with cigarette burns in the cushions while *Strange Days* plays on mute and you tell me all about the Information Superhighway.
[Dregs by Dregs](https://dreggin.bandcamp.com/album/dregs?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Alva Noto - Xerrox Vol. 5
##### Noton | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/xerrox-vol-5?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Dignified music for the right side of dawn. Stately orchestration woven with long threads of burning synthetics that conjure something beautiful entering an elegant room like Gerhard Richter's [*Woman Descending a Staircase*](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/147003/woman-descending-the-staircase-frau-die-treppe-herabgehend?ref=jamesreeves.co) in all her streaked glory.
#### See also:
- [2023 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2023-rotation/)
- [2022 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2022-rotation/)
- [2021 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2021-rotation/)
- [2020 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2020-rotation/)
- [2019 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2019-rotation/)
- [2018 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2018-rotation/)
### Professional Holiday Party
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/professional-holiday-party/
Last updated: 2025-12-24T22:22:39.000Z
Here’s the last installment for 2024, and thank you for tuning in throughout the past six months—and for the encouraging notes and special requests that have made this such a delightful ritual for me.
As this exhausting year comes to a merciful end, we’ve earned a little fun. Here are five joyous songs that make me smile whenever I hear them. Three of them are thirty years old; the other two are pushing twenty-five—these are nostalgic songs, and I hope you’ll enjoy revisiting them. Or better yet, having a first encounter.
**Mike Dunn - God Made Me Phunky**
*MD-Express, 1994*
Possibly the most righteous loop ever made: built from a piano that burrows its way into your soul and makes a very nice home for [Mike Dunn](https://ra.co/dj/mikedunn/biography?ref=jamesreeves.co) to sound like the coolest earthling to ever spend time on this planet. Back in 1996, I was living in a sketchy flat and inviting god only knew inside as long as they had gin or drugs. One night, this older guy went out to his car and returned with a 12” in a black sleeve with a serif O on the label. “You need this,” he said. Later, somebody told me that guy was 3070, the other half of [Cybotron](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT4qqZHN8no&ref=jamesreeves.co), the godhead of Detroit electro. But those were fever-dream nights, and I have no idea what’s true. Thirty years later, this track still stands, and I’m grateful I’m still standing too, sober and sane and finally able to properly commune with the moment when Mike Dunn purrs, “Well alright, you squares…”
**SoleTech - Sole Waves**
*Detrechno, 1994 |* [*More*](https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2018/05/key-tracks-chuck-chuck?ref=jamesreeves.co)
This track is both ridiculous and also the best-ever use of [a Kraftwerk sample](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYMIkq3NIgE&ref=jamesreeves.co). In the summer of ’94, “chuck chuck” earwormed everyone in the metropolitan Detroit area and improbably became the most requested song on the radio for a few weeks, which might be the easiest way to explain to someone why Detroit is a very special place. It also prepared me for my encounters with the [Electrifying Mojo](https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/electrifying-mojo?ref=jamesreeves.co), [Deep Space Radio](https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2014/11/detroit-radio-feature?ref=jamesreeves.co), and [Basic Channel](https://basicchannel.com/label/Basic+Channel?ref=jamesreeves.co).
**Detroit Grand Pubahs - If Snow Was Black**
*Intuit Solar, 1999*
One of the most underrated songs I know, this track sounds like [the steam that billows from Detroit’s streets](https://www.hourdetroit.com/community/whats-the-source-of-the-steam-pouring-out-of-detroits-sidewalks/?ref=jamesreeves.co) on a subzero January night, and Paris the Black Fu’s voice will live in your head all winter if you’re lucky: *If snow was black, I’d wear black shades and drive a black car. I’d smoke black cigarettes and hide in the shadows…*
**Quarks - I Walk (Superpitcher Schaffel Mix)**
*Kompakt, 2002 |* [*More*](https://kompaktextra.bandcamp.com/track/i-walk-superpitcher-schaffel-mix?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Although this song is from Cologne, the memory is firmly New York. My friends and I had [a record label](https://www.discogs.com/release/116471-Karl-Zeiss-Berlin-New-York?ref=jamesreeves.co), where we managed to lose money on every release because we decided to silkscreen the 12” sleeves by hand. We were in our early twenties, logging time at Other Music, Kim’s, Tonic, and the Bunker—and music-wise, Komapkt reigned supreme. We didn’t try to emulate their sound, but they reminded us that electronic music could be monumental *and* fun, and this is a lesson I still carry into my writing and other personal pursuits: I’d better be having a good time because I’m sure as hell not doing it for the money.
**Basic Channel - Phylyps Trak II**
*Chain Reaction, 1994 |* [*More*](https://boomkat.com/products/phylyps-trak-ii-95bfcafb-abf3-4a3f-8538-227069ff0d34?ref=jamesreeves.co)
The high hat is the skeleton, but the body never sits still. This was my first techno encounter, and it reprogrammed my understanding of the world. In January of ’95, I snuck out alone to St. Andrew’s Hall to check out a hip-hop show I’ve long since forgotten. But I remember the militant *thump thump* that drew me upstairs to the dark third floor with windows that overlooked the city. I’d never seen humanity like this: club kids in overalls, drag queens in chartreuse wigs, a man in a three-piece suit, all lock-stepping in a perfect grid, their heads bowed before the bassbin like an altar, which I soon discovered it was.
I did not attempt to mix these songs properly because 1) they’re such a deeply grooved part of my personality that warping their tempo feels sacrilegious, and 2) I’ve seen too many brilliant DJs juggle these records into the sublime over the years. Aux 88\. Daniel Bell. Michael Mayer. Mike Servito. Paris and Billeebob with like nine turntables. So I’ve stitched them together using my heavily-reverberated tactics, along with a sprinkling of Nancy Sinatra, the Paris Sisters, Ricky Nelson, and a brief appearance from Green Velvet.
Although I don’t party, I’ve been taking this mixtape for ugly winter runs in the Middle West, and it’s a pretty good time.
Thank you again for listening, and the request lines are open.
#### Midnight Radio 12 | [Podcast](https://www.midnightradio.us/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/18412745-professional-holiday-party.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co)
### The Heart Accumulates Microcracks
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-heart-accumulates-microcracks/
Last updated: 2025-11-17T02:23:59.000Z
A few weeks ago, a Very Kind Listener asked for a soundtrack to accompany “being awake at 3am with a heart accumulating microcracks like the tibiae of the greenest of Marine recruits on a forced march with a pack that weighs as much as they do.”
This seems like a good time to honor this vivid request because there’s a lot of heartbreak going around at various scales. Individual. National. Maybe even planetary. The humiliations and insults of living in an exhausted age take a toll, and I admire how our Very Kind Listener captures this sensation in the image of a heart gradually breaking beneath the weight.
Slowly, as they say. Then all at once.
There are a few ways to tackle this, radio-wise. The obvious move would be to queue up some sad-sack ballads and call it a night. But grief rolls heavy. Heartbreak is hot-blooded. Sometimes it sounds less like weeping and more like a scream. So I’ve stitched together five all-time heavyweight favorites, chosen because they sound very much involved with the human condition. When Kim Sun’s voice drops at the two-minute mark, you’ll know if this is for you. These voices have lived heavy. They understand that grief is the price of love.
Everything worthwhile rests on a knife’s edge, which brings us back to [the Tannhäuser Gate](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-tannhauser-gate/), that strange zone between wakefulness and sleep, suspended between doubt and faith—and I hope this half-hour captures the bleary sensation of tuning a radio in the hour of the wolf, hoping to hear a voice that knows what it’s like. Sometimes wisdom is tonal, and sometimes it’s concrete, like when O. V. Wright sings *I want to go to heaven but I’m scared to fly*.
1. **Kim Sun + Shin Jung Hyun - The Man Who Must Leave**
*Beautiful Rivers And Mountains* | 1973 | [More](https://lightintheattic.net/products/beautiful-rivers-and-mountains-the-psychedelic-rock-sound-of-south-koreas-shin-joong-hyun-1958-1974?srsltid=AfmBOooZJdext2yiWJ91pI-CQJpkzaLpiDwyK-Yz2Yj0gVcIjtiw%5FZ96&ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **O.V. Wright - Everybody Knows**
*(If It's) Only For Tonight* | Back Beat Records, 1965 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O.%5FV.%5FWright?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Chen Mei Feng - 誰能知道我的情 (Who Can Know My Love?)**
Singapore, 1969 | [More](https://www.discogs.com/release/13640630-%E7%BE%8E%E9%B3%B3-%E8%87%A8%E5%88%A5%E4%BE%9D%E4%BE%9D?srsltid=AfmBOoohbxz911EHl2C91kthKX7u8fkIQp8av%5Fngv6HOaEwl5o0Kf1OL&ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Dilber Doğan – Yıkılla Köyler (Destroyed Villages)**
*Yıkılada Bizim Köyler* | 1988 | [More](https://epicistanbul.kudosrecords.co.uk/release/epcist001/various-artists-turkish-ladies?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **M83 - Farewell/Goodbye + Je Vous Hais Petites Filles**
*Before the Dawn Heals Us* | Mute, 2005 | [More](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5009-before-the-dawn-heals-us/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Also includes several layers of crackle and reverb, along with echoes from Skeeter Davis, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Nancy Sinatra, The Paris Sisters, and more.
Listen below—better yet, keep it classy and [download this state-of-the-art MPEG Audio Layer 3](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2024/12/Midnight-Radio-011---The-Heart-Accumulates-Microcracks.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co). Or here’s [a joyless Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5Uf7Vdk2Gw5ZPDyYyhiOXC?ref=jamesreeves.co) if that’s your thing, but you won’t get any crackle or reverb or Al Green easter eggs, and you won’t hear Chen Mei Feng sing “Who Will Know My Love?”
Thank you for listening, and the request lines are open.
#### Midnight Radio 011 | [Download](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2024/12/Midnight-Radio-011---The-Heart-Accumulates-Microcracks.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 011: The Heart Accumulates Microcracks
0:00
/2064.0391836734693
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### Brutal Times
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/brutal-times/
Last updated: 2025-11-17T01:39:06.000Z
On a flight to Washington DC last month, I discovered I felt okay above the clouds. No shivering or hyperventilating or fighting back tears. Christ, how long has it been since I boarded an airplane without trembling or praying to something I’m not sure I believe in?
My last normal flight was in 2009 from Helsinki to Istanbul on a chaotic airplane with ashtrays in the armrests. Three weeks later, I flew to Detroit because my mother was dying, and that’s when it began: the panic attacks and dread, the inability to do anything except monitor every mechanical noise and atmospheric shudder. For fifteen years, I was strangely insane, my brain intent on torturing itself rather than letting come what may. Hypervigilence is a core feature of anxiety, but there’s also ego: I alone knew my flight was uniquely doomed. The airplane required *my* attention to stay aloft.
I thought about this when the result of last week’s election became clear. As I stared at the reddening map of America, I wondered why I’d invested so much time monitoring the polls and listening to punditry, diligently following every gasp of two dying political parties, both driven senile by the internet. So no more news for me. From now on, I will seek a life without opinion mongers, thought leaders, professional outragers, pundits, and faith dealers.
True freedom is not thinking about the president every day.
---
As my government shifts from feckless to frightening, the idea of [*vnutrennaya emigratsia*](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/06/opinion/trump-future-mourn.html?ref=jamesreeves.co) is circulating, the Russian strategy of [internal exile](https://www.nybooks.com/online/2019/02/11/a-refuge-from-reality-a-la-russe?ref=jamesreeves.co) to survive the idiocy of public life in bleak times. Liberation through rejection is a classic move, such as Voltaire’s advice [to cultivate my own garden](https://themillions.com/2018/11/but-let-us-cultivate-our-garden.html?ref=jamesreeves.co) rather than wring my hands at the state of the world—or worse yet, to imagine this is noble or productive.
Better still, there’s Dada’s cognitive leap into the absurd, which set the stage for the dreamlife of Surrealism. From a stage in 1916, [Hugo Ball](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo%5FBall?ref=jamesreeves.co)'s words echo into our time: “This humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect."
“Leave everything,” [André Breton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9%5FBreton?ref=jamesreeves.co) instructed a few years later. “Leave Dada. Leave your wife. Leave your mistress. Leave your hopes and fears. Leave your children in the woods. Leave the substance for the shadow.” If logic produced catastrophic wars and rotting institutions, perhaps logic itself was the problem.
Internal exile sounds nice. It’s a trip I should have taken a while ago.
---
So we’re on this timeline now, and here are five ribcage-shuddering songs to greet the moment. Think of it as sage clearing or whatever prophets and healers do.
Tonight’s installment kicks off with the most badass beat I know, a beat that burns every other beat to ashes, followed by a track from [Panasonic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan%5FSonic?ref=jamesreeves.co) that becomes a cathartic buzzsaw. It was their final song. Then we steer into the supernatural with some Ectomorph sleaze and a low-end haunting by Demdike Stare, named for [a witch](https://www.pendlewitches.co.uk/demdike/?ref=jamesreeves.co) whose gaze could either hex or cure, which might be another strategy for psychic liberation (see [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj5B5PhL0Ko&ref=jamesreeves.co)). Then we hit Grungerman’s “Fackeln Im Sturm”, a Gothic anthem from ’97 that translates to “torches in the storm,” and finally, we cool off with some end-of-days AM radio chatter that I recorded in the Mojave desert twenty years ago, a reminder that American paranoia is evergreen.
1. **Muslimgauze - Ryoji Ikeda Remix #6**
Staalplaat, 2020 | [More](https://archive.org/details/muslimgauze-ryoji-ikeda-re-mixs-2020-web-flac)
2. **Panasonic - Pan Finale**
*Gravitoni* | Blast First, 2018 | [More](https://boomkat.com/products/gravitoni?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Ectomorph - Crawl of the Cthulu**
*Stalker* | Interdimensional Transmissions, 2018 | [More](https://ectomorph.bandcamp.com/album/stalker-it-42?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Demdike Stare - Metamorphosis**
*Elemental* | Modern Love, 2012 | [More](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15012-tryptych/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Grungerman - Fackeln Im Sturm**
Profan, 1997
Listen below or better yet, [let’s make mp3s great again](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2024/11/Midnight-Radio-010%5F-Brutal-Times.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co).
In other news, I'm sprucing up [my website](https://jamesreeves.co/?ref=jamesreeves.co) with some bold typography because I’m feeling punchy these days. It's still a bit of a mess, but that's okay because nothing matters or makes sense anymore except doing whatever it takes to keep our torches burning.
Thank you for listening, and the request lines are open.
#### Midnight Radio | [Download](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2024/11/Midnight-Radio-010%5F-Brutal-Times.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 010: Brutal Times
0:00
/1878.1257142857144
1×
### Grey
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/grey/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:20.000Z
The sun goes down at 5:23pm, and the temperature is an unseasonable seventy degrees. The skies feel hungover, damp and grey, which matches my mood. Yesterday [a man who smelled like gasoline](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/man-arrested-when-trying-to-enter-u-s-capitol-with-a-torch-and-flare-gun-police-say?ref=jamesreeves.co) attempted to enter the Capitol with a flare gun. A few hours later, my country elected another man to do more or less the same. Again.
Materially, my life is the same as before. I trade encouraging nods with joggers as I run my morning laps around the pond. Strangers make room for each other at the supermarket. But my mind is stained with suspicion. Did *you* vote for him? Did *you* want this? This is the zone of horror: the inability to see the world as others do and vice versa.
I feel like a fool for allowing myself to hope for a few weeks, mainlining punditry from CNN and The New York Times and The Guardian, assuming we would choose consensus-driven reality over the poisonous feedback loops and silos of the internet, where the extreme left and right have driven each other into madness. But now I must accept that I’m the one who’s been living in a silo because the internet has won.
### There Will Be No Armageddon
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/there-will-be-no-armageddon/
Last updated: 2025-11-17T01:44:22.000Z
Yesterday, one of my students turned me on to a delightful bit of Japanese slang from the Meiji era: [*tsundoku*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku?ref=jamesreeves.co), the phenomenon of acquiring books and letting them pile up without reading them. I’m glad there’s a name for this hobby of mine. It’s heartening to know this was also an issue in nineteenth-century Japan.
But these days, I’m only reading about [crosstabs and herding](https://www.reddit.com/r/fivethirtyeight/new/?ref=jamesreeves.co). This habit has become so compulsive that I’ve needed to create a situation that physically prevents me from checking the latest election news by pairing a keyboard with a tiny screen no less than 36” away. It’s an embarrassing yet effective solution: keep the internet out of arm’s reach.
Why am I so hopelessly addicted to the latest news? Because the mind craves certainty—and this is the crux of so many of my troubles: the inability to live in the grey.
For years, casting a vote has felt like choosing between murder and suicide, and for most of this election, I was enjoying this season finale of America as bizarro entertainment. But in September, I found myself experiencing something I hadn’t felt in years: hope. I’ve never felt as connected to a candidate as I do with Kamala Harris. She seems like a genuinely happy, recognizable, consensus-driven, grey-area person operating in good faith. She seems like somebody who’s been in a supermarket before.
I don’t agree with Harris on everything, but only a child expects the world to conform to their will. Besides, policy is a speck in the rearview mirror these days. Right now, Americans must choose between living in a shared reality or the hallucinations of a vicious game show host. I don’t know what we’ll decide.
Which brings me to tonight's playlist. As we teeter on the edge of several unpleasant possible futures, I thought it might be nice to stitch together five of the most reassuring songs I know, starting with these lyrics from Union Jack’s There Will Be No Armageddon:
*There will be no Armageddon. There will be no sudden ending. We will see our children grow, and theirs grow after them.*
*For fifty years, we have awaited the future with a mounting sense of fear. Our path to the next millennium seemed certain to be lit by the bright lights of a nuclear conflagration. But now, as we raise our arms, we see that we have almost made it to the year 2000 and beyond.*
These vocals come from [*The Lathe of Heaven*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FLathe%5Fof%5FHeaven%5F%28film%29?ref=jamesreeves.co), a 1980 film adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s [1971 novel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FLathe%5Fof%5FHeaven?ref=jamesreeves.co). Union Jack released this song thirty years ago, back when many of us had faith in technology, and it’s *very* 1995\. It noodles around in ambient-trance mode for a while, and I clipped out the bits that haven’t aged well—but I implore you, wait until the bass kicks in at five minutes and thirty-three seconds. It’s one of my favorite moments in the world, and I'd like to have it played at my funeral.
Next up is the song I tattooed on my arm thirteen years ago: “Ladies and Gentlemen We’re Floating in Space” by Spiritualized. The tattoo has grown blurry over the years, and I’ve blurred the song tonight, fusing it with the original Elvis Presley version (which was based on [a French melody from 1784](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaisir%5Fd%27amour?ref=jamesreeves.co)!) and lacing it through the mix.
1. Union Jack - There Will Be No Armageddon
(1995 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%5FWill%5FBe%5FNo%5FArmageddon?ref=jamesreeves.co))
2. Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen, We’re Floating in Space
(1997 | [More](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13984-ladies-and-gentlemen-we-are-floating-in-space-collectors-editon/?ref=jamesreeves.co))
3. T. Rex - Cosmic Dancer
(*Electric Warrior* | Reprise, 1971 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric%5FWarrior?ref=jamesreeves.co))
4. Air - Le Soleil Est Près de Moi
(*Premiers Symptômes* | Source, 1997 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premiers%5FSympt%C3%B4mes?ref=jamesreeves.co))
5. Gyeongsu & June - Lead to Curse
(*All to None* | Dear Dogs, 2024 | [More](https://deardogs.bandcamp.com/track/lead-to-curse?ref=jamesreeves.co))
Also features The Paris Sisters, Elvis, and more. Listen below or [download a state-of-the-art mp3](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2024/11/Midnight-Radio-009%5FThere-Will-Be-No-Armageddon.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co). Or here’s a boring unmixed, unreverberated [Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5KeBAgccaSOTntXsZPEKn9?si=dvLdJNwaTq2V0hqY7o0n0Q&ref=jamesreeves.co). Whichever route you choose, I hope these songs help smooth out the next 90 hours or so.
Meanwhile, let’s celebrate the end of Daylight Savings Time, my favorite day of the year because it brings the night closer. And if you’re staying at a motel, you get a free hour. Changing the clocks should be the year’s biggest celebration with fireworks, parades, and gift-giving. Because if we can rearrange time, we can do anything we want. Invent new colors. Add more days to the week. Reset the internet to 2009.
Please take moody portraits of your desk in the six o’clock dusk and [send them to me](mailto:james@jamesreeves.co).
Thank you for tuning in. The request lines are open.
#### Midnight Radio 009 | [Download](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2024/11/Midnight-Radio-009%5FThere-Will-Be-No-Armageddon.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 009: There Will Be No Armageddon
0:00
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### Guanyin of Eleven Heads
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/guanyin-of-eleven-heads/
Last updated: 2026-05-15T02:00:11.000Z
The [bodhisattva](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalokite%C5%9Bvara?ref=jamesreeves.co#:~:text=One%20prominent%20Buddhist%20story%20tells,head%20splits%20into%20eleven%20pieces.) was so overwhelmed by the suffering in the universe that the deity’s head split into eleven pieces. But then, seeing the deity's plight, the buddha gives Guanyin eleven heads to better hear the cries of those who suffer—and a thousand arms to help them.
### A New Dark Age
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-piecing-together-of-dissociated-knowledge-will-open-up-such-terrifying-vistas-of-reality/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:21.000Z
I’ve never read HP Lovecraft. I understand him only as an early twentieth-century landmark that casts a long shadow over cosmic horror and as a man who held some noxious views, perhaps even for the early twentieth century. I am, however, reading [Eugene Thacker](https://eugenethacker.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)’s extravagant [meditation on cosmic horror](https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/zer0-books/our-books/in-the-dust-of-this-planet?ref=jamesreeves.co), and he includes a paragraph that Lovecraft wrote in 1928 as the opening paragraph of *The Call of Cthulhu*. A century later, it sounds like my relationship with the internet.
> "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but someday, the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
I understand less and less these days, yet I know too much: a blast on the other side of the world, shootings across the nation delivered like the weather forecast, something awful that somebody said thirty years ago, the sexual lives of politicians, the opinions of a distant acquaintance on Israel, the fact that a body found in an Ohio nature preserve turned out to be a discarded sex doll, and so on.
Are we standing on the precipice of a new dark age? Probably. I often catch myself thinking, *yes, this is what a society circling the drain feels like*, and in America, these nineteen days before the election feel genuinely existential. But there’s a phrase from [Don DeLillo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FSilence%5F%28novel%29?ref=jamesreeves.co) that refines Lovecraft’s prophecy: “Too much of everything from too narrow a source code.” Which means it’s time to step away from the screen.
### Monochrome Candy
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/monochrome-candy/
Last updated: 2025-11-17T01:43:47.000Z
The first five minutes of every movie should be very noisy so we can comfortably open our snacks without bothering anyone. But enough politics. The request lines have been open for two months now, and C. has made a very special request: a soundtrack for painting.
She’s doing remarkable things with ink and a knife these days, and you can see some of her paintings on [this brand-new website](https://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) I designed + built for her. Sometimes I get to watch her work, and she moves fast and loose, belonging entirely to the moment as she swirls her ink across a massive canvas. Meanwhile, I hunch over my notebook like a troll, frowning over the placement of a comma and wondering whether I have anything to say, any words to offer, and if I do, worrying they might be misunderstood.
Is it possible to write the way she paints? Can I become less stilted on the page, maybe really let loose and get wild without writing bad poetry? Perhaps these midnight letters will degrade into abstract bursts and garbled scenes—conditions that feel like the headspace of being alive in the 2020s.
People on TV talk about how they’re going to vote for so-and-so because they seem like they’re going to win. At the superstore, a kid consoles his little sister by saying, “If you think too hard, you get scared,” which pretty much sums up the human situation.
But back to tonight’s soundtrack for C’s painting. She’s a tough customer with top-shelf taste, capable of decimating an artist’s entire discography with a single word. (Burial: “itchy”; LCD Soundsystem: “clownish”; My Bloody Valentine: “carsick”.) But I love that C. loves [Cliff Martinez](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff%5FMartinez?ref=jamesreeves.co)'s film scores, which are stellar, even though he was the drummer in [the worst band on planet Earth](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/564703-i-m-forever-near-a-stereo-saying-what-the-fuck-is?ref=jamesreeves.co). He's also a native of Columbus, Ohio, which is our current home. Sometimes the universe aligns.
What is "taste," and where does it come from, anyway? Is it hardwired or learned? When it comes to C's taste, I'm certain of two things: a) she prefers greyscale synthesizers that tilt toward the tragic but has no patience for treacle; and b) she loves the maximalist howl of Godspeed You! Black Emporer’s “Moya,” a song, she says, “that makes you want to get on your knees and believe in something.”
So here’s an attempt to move from point A to B, and I hope you’ll find it a reliable companion for the times you'd like to catch your breath, swirl some ideas around, and maybe even pray to whatever gods or demons are helping you get through this decade.
1. **Cliff Martinez & Gregory Tripi - Sister**
(Only God Forgives | Milan, 2013 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only%5FGod%5FForgives%5F%28soundtrack%29?ref=jamesreeves.co))
2. **Cliff Martinez - I Drive**
(Drive | Lakeshore Records, 2011 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive%5F%28soundtrack%29?ref=jamesreeves.co))
3. **Popnoname - Fembria**
(Pop Ambient | Kompakt, 2008 | [More](https://kompakt.bandcamp.com/album/pop-ambient-2008?ref=jamesreeves.co))
4. **The Black Dog - Vertical Grip on Reality**
(Music for Photographers | Dust Science, 2021 | [More](https://theblackdog.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-photographers?ref=jamesreeves.co))
5. **Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan - Aerial Views by Helicopter**
(Interim Report, March 1979 | 2021 | [More](https://warrington-runcorn-cis.bandcamp.com/album/interim-report-march-1979?ref=jamesreeves.co))
6. **Romance - Never Will/Hymn to the Sea**
(Fade Into You | Ecstatic, 2023 | [More](https://boomkat.com/products/fade-into-you-86971046-56a6-42d9-b17b-0d1780588261?ref=jamesreeves.co))
7. **Dedekind Cut - De-Civilization**
(Tahoe | Kranky, 2018 | [More](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dedekind-cut-tahoe/?ref=jamesreeves.co))
8. **Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Moya**
(Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada | Kranky, 1999 | [More](https://godspeedyoublackemperor.bandcamp.com/album/slow-riot-for-new-zero-kanada?ref=jamesreeves.co))
Also includes reverberated snippets from T. Rex, Beach House, Lee Hazlewood, Johnny Mathis, Velvet Underground, Ricky Nelson, Bobby Vinton, and Chromatics. (There are three extra songs in this mix because I owe you a few after the single-minded focus of [the previous installment](https://www.jamesreeves.co/two-million-miles-to-earth/).)
You can listen below or better yet, [download a freshly pressed mp3](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2024/10/Midnight-Radio-008-Monochrome-Candy.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co). If you prefer a subpar experience without any transitions, static, reverb, or fun, here's [a Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1G1UsqgyBIJScLa89OwA1r?si=4qIZp7D3TLGbt3kOTSLSKw&ref=jamesreeves.co).
Thank you for listening. The request lines are open.
#### Midnight Radio 008 | [Download](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2024/10/Midnight-Radio-008-Monochrome-Candy.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 008: Monochrome Candy
0:00
/2168.0326530612247
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### Two Million Miles to Earth
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/two-million-miles-to-earth/
Last updated: 2025-11-17T01:38:42.000Z
There’s a New York Times headline that says “You Won’t Stop Thinking About This Clam Chowder,” which sounds like a fucking curse.
But I'm still thinking about reverb. Last night, it struck me that reverb is my [Tannhäuser Gate](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-tannhauser-gate/), both there and not there, a threshold between the zones of shape and fog, definition and possibility. Sort of like my brain during the first hour of the day.
Here’s the routine: Wake up. Check the weather. Check the latest polls. Make some coffee. Check the latest polls. The other day, C. asked, “Did you see the news?” and I held my breath, bracing for scenes from another disaster, the latest inhuman act. She could tell me everyone in Nebraska disappeared last night. She could tell me anything, and I would believe it, for these are days of suspended disbelief.
I often think about [Douglas Coupland’s confession](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/19/douglas-coupland-on-generation-x-at-30-generational-trashing-is-eternal?ref=jamesreeves.co) that “around 2010 my own brain started feeling truly different. I realised that I was never going to go back to my old, pre-internet brain: I’d been completely rewired. Ten years later I don’t even remember what my pre-internet brain felt like.”
Coupland takes comfort in the idea that we’re in this together, that we’ve all been “neurally homogenised,” but this idea horrifies me on an elemental level, as if my soul is on the line. Sometimes it feels like an ultimatum: embrace a pixellated future without complaint or grieve for the textures of the past. Perhaps the only solution is a cognitive leap similar to how the [Constructivists](https://www.jamesreeves.co/decree-1-on-the-democratization-of-art/) and Futurists plunged into the future a century ago, determined to fuse with the machine. Embrace speed. Groove on distraction. Let my thoughts get garbled and strange. Find god in the liquid crystal glow.
Until then, one of my favorite songs for concentration is Richard Hawtin & Pete Namlook’s “A Million Miles to Earth", an ambient classic that turned thirty years old this year. It’s an epic of sweeping chords with a very 1990s synthesizer pitched to a particular flavor of pre-millennium optimism—faith that technology would improve us, that history had ended, and global harmony was around the corner.
Last week, I slowed it down to sludge and tended to it while I worked on other things, occasionally adding a dash of Ronettes here, a pinch of Elvis Presley there. I couldn’t decide whether I preferred it 57% or 89% slower, so I smushed both versions together, stripped out the treacly piano bits, and installed some passages of static and reverb. Now it sounds like wave upon wave of a slowly freezing sea, and it has become a reliable companion for hour-long bouts of writing and pixel-pushing.
- **Richie Hawtin & Pete Namlook - A Million Miles to Earth**
**(57%—89% slower)**
(From Within | Plus 8, 1994)
- Radio static, reverb, highway traffic, and fragments of Skeeter Davis, Elvis Presley, Mojave 3, Tommy James & the Shondells, Everly Brothers, Paris Sisters, The Zombies, Righteous Brothers, Lee Hazlewood, and Patsy Cline.
Listen below, or better yet, [here’s an mp3](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20007%20-%20Two%20Million%20Miles%20to%20Earth.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co). If you’d like to hear the original version, here’s [a Spotify link](https://open.spotify.com/track/3pd3pkwPqxnBSYXn1QiD9H?ref=jamesreeves.co) and [a nifty video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVVeVWDLoS8&ref=jamesreeves.co) on YouTube.
If you have two more minutes to kill, please [help me identify this wonderful song](https://www.jamesreeves.co/track-id/) and/or the language it’s in.
Thank you for taking the time to listen. The request lines are open.
#### Midnight Radio 007 | [Download](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20007%20-%20Two%20Million%20Miles%20to%20Earth.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 007: Two Million Miles to Earth
0:00
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### Track ID
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/track-id/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:22.000Z
Someday I’d like to be an old man who sits in museums with a sketchpad and tries to draw the paintings. In the meantime, I’m trying to identify a song that surfaced in my speakers the other day, a burst of fuzzed-out psychedelia in a language I do not recognize. After two minutes and eighteen seconds of pure delight that sounds like the Platonic ideal of 1971, it abruptly cuts out.
The filename is *10A - 126 - Download*, and there’s no other metadata. My mp3 library is about to turn 25 years old, and with over forty thousand tracks, I have no idea when or how this song entered my life, and artificial intelligence knows nothing about it. So I turn to you in the hope that the Information Superhighway is not yet totally useless: I’m offering five American dollars and a mountain of gratitude to anyone who can identify it for me.
10A 126 Download
0:00
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### Devil Dishwasher
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/devil-disease-dishwasher/
Last updated: 2026-07-07T10:21:28.000Z
I dreamt I painted a picture and could not tell if it was god or the devil because the image was too big for its frame.
A doctor told me I had a rare condition and no matter how far I walked, it would take one hour and twenty-two minutes.
I dreamt about the infamous “dishwasher episode” of a critically acclaimed drama.
### Five Early Autumn Classics
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/five-early-autumn-classics/
Last updated: 2025-11-17T01:34:43.000Z
I've been pondering my love of reverberations. Last week, I received a request from a very kind listener: the filmmaker [Grace Wang](https://gracewang.format.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) suggested a Linda Rondstadt track, and my first impulse was to drown it in static and reverb. Why?
Perhaps the answer is simple: echos and fog generate mystery. In 1973, the painter [Gerhard Richter](https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/art/paintings/photo-paintings/women-27/high-diver-ii-5519?categoryid=19&p=1&sp=32&pg=20&ref=jamesreeves.co) said, "I've never found anything lacking in a blurry canvas. Quite the contrary: you can see many more things in it than in a sharply focused image. A landscape painted with exactness forces you to see a determined number of clearly differentiated trees, while in a blurry canvas, you can perceive as many trees as you want."
For years, I’ve been writing a novel about a noise that belongs to either God or a demon. Along the way, I’ve become convinced the trick with storytelling is to create a situation where whatever the reader might imagine is infinitely more compelling than anything I might describe. "Nothing is so frightening as what's behind the closed door," Stephen King writes in [*Danse Macabre*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse%5FMacabre%5F%28book%29?ref=jamesreeves.co). "When you made the monster in your mind, there was no zipper running down its back; it was a perfect monster."
A lack of mystery might explain why today's ultra-high-definition, motion-smoothed devices evoke nausea. There's no room for the imagination. Analog media is better for hauntings: a whisper in the crackle of an old record, a face emerging from snow on the television set, a sinister voice on a reel-to-reel. Ghosts don't feel at home in mp3 files or LCD screens.
The connection between reverb and mystery is clear to me, but I’m curious why reverb sounds like memory. There's a direct link in my brain between a voice drenched in echo and, say, a rainy night seven years ago at a dim sum joint that felt as if it'd been concocted in a dream: diner chrome and pleather mixed with Chinese lanterns while a 1970s sitcom played on a Zenith over the bar. Sure, the past tends to blur, but my vision of the future isn't exactly crisp, especially when I can’t stop watching the news these days. This season finale of America is freakier than anything I might imagine.
But here are five early autumn classics that always mellow me out.
1. **Gas - Pop 02**
*Pop* | Kompakt, 2000 | [More](https://kompakt-gas.bandcamp.com/album/pop?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Aphex Twin - #19**
*Selected Ambient Works Volume II* | Warp, 1994 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selected%5FAmbient%5FWorks%5FVolume%5FII?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Midwife - Forever**
*Prayer Hands* | Antiquated Future, 2018 | [More](https://heavenmetal.bandcamp.com/album/prayer-hands?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Sonic Youth - Superstar**
*If I Were a Carpenter* | A&M, 1994 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstar%5F%28Delaney%5Fand%5FBonnie%5Fsong%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Seefeel - Filter Dub**
*Quique* | Too Pure, 1993 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quique%5F%28album%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
And yes, this mix is soaked in reverb, much of which is the residue that's been accumulating from prior episodes—plus the requested Linda Rondstadt and a dash of Lee Hazlewood. Listen below, or get your freshly-mixed mp3 [here](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2024/09/Midnight-Radio-006---Five-Early-Autumn-Classics.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co). (Or [a Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5VUrsNhTrsCbVFmjIHY6PF?ref=jamesreeves.co) if you're square.)
Thank you for listening. And reading. The request lines are always open.
#### Midnight Radio 006 | [Download](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2024/09/Midnight-Radio-006---Five-Early-Autumn-Classics.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 006: Five Early Autumn Classics
0:00
/2216.071836734694
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### The Tannhäuser Gate
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-tannhauser-gate/
Last updated: 2026-05-28T00:12:49.000Z
### 1
Rutger Hauer sits crosslegged on a rain-soaked rooftop, a nail driven through one hand and a white dove in the other, as he delivers the greatest monologue in film history: “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.”
Forty-two words. The last lines are iconic, but the magic lives in the first three sentences. These mythic names conjure entire worlds and leave the mind hungry for more. What are C-beams? Where is the Tannhäuser Gate? The internet is littered with baroque theories about [cesium beams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium?ref=jamesreeves.co), [medieval poets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannh%C3%A4user?ref=jamesreeves.co), and even [Christ himself](https://www.patheos.com/blogs/ecopreacher/2019/07/like-tears-in-rain-rutger-hauer-blade-runner/?ref=jamesreeves.co) (as per that nail-pierced palm), but I prefer to live in the mystery.
### 2
Meanwhile, another overheated summer has ended, and we’re entering my favorite season, a time of longer nights and shifting gears. Lately, I’ve come to believe that anything worthwhile rests on a knife’s edge, balanced by a paradox that I can only compare to the delicate act of falling asleep—because it’s only when I do not think about sleep that I can fall asleep.
When I got sober eleven years ago, they told me to take it a day at a time, although this cliché comes with a silent, contradictory wish: a day at a time *so I will never drink again and wreck my only life*. I’ve also learned the hard way that the only way to avoid a panic attack is to not worry about having a panic attack. And if I do not want to squander this life as a cheap cynic or an insufferable zealot, doubt and faith must exist in equal measure.
These paradoxes can probably be unwound all the way back to the Buddha’s claim that “non-practice is my practice, the attainment of non-attainment.” But I like to think of the rare zone between two opposing conditions as the Tannhäuser Gate.
### 3
Enough philosophy. Onwards to tonight’s maximum-strength Blade Running mix. It opens with a sequence of neon-soaked synthesizers, then we’ll take a breather before ramping up to an end-of-days song that sounds like klieg lights sweeping across a fiery sky. As usual, this mix comes packaged with a heavy dose of reverb and some fractured ballads. Listen below or [download it here](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2024/09/Midnight-Radio-005---The-Tannh-user-Gate.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co). If streaming is your thing, here’s a Spotify [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5bm7XSxBr3LhbW9uScKtNx?si=8c9460729c704fd5&ref=jamesreeves.co), but it’s not as fun, and there’s no end-of-days track.
1. **Blanck Mass - Chernobyl**
*Blanck Mass* • Rock Action Records, 2011 • [More](https://blanckmass.bandcamp.com/album/blanck-mass-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Alessandro Cortini - Gira**
*Forse* • Important Music, 2013 • [More](https://importantrecords.com/products/imprec373?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **M83 - On a White Lake, Near a Green Mountain**
*Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts* • Gooom, 2002 • [More](https://ilovem83.bandcamp.com/album/dead-cities-red-seas-lost-ghosts?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. *(Blade Runner interlude)*
5. **Kristoffer Lo - Front Row Gallows View**
*The Black Meat* • Propellor Recordings, 2016 • [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristoffer%5FLo?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **Bremen - Entering Phase Two**
*Bremen* • Blackest Ever Black, 2014 • [More](https://bremen2.bandcamp.com/album/second-launch?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Thank you for listening. The request lines are open.
#### [Download](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541955/episodes/19251354-the-tannhauser-gate.mp3?download=true&ref=jamesreeves.co) • [Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/midnight-radio/id1842707342?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 005: The Tannhäuser Gate
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### Cambridge Forum
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/cambridge-forum/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:14:01.000Z
A new visual identity and website for a non-profit founded in 1967 that provides a space to debate challenging issues, hosting figures such as Naomi Klein, Fareed Zakaria, and Nancy Pelosi.
The rebrand emphasizes Cambridge Forum’s commitment to dialogue, and the redesigned website offers streamlined access to an extensive archive of lectures and events, making its rich history and mission more accessible. Comprehensive brand guidelines were also developed to ensure consistent messaging and visual continuity for future programs and communications.
##### Art Direction + Design, Web Development
### Slow Machines
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/slow-motion-machines/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:15:58.000Z
### 1
It’s late summer, and everything is overgrown and looks obscene. Trees sag, their leaves are tired, and the grass is scorched. The night hums with creatures I cannot identify—frogs or crickets, maybe, or possibly the power lines. Even though the news continues to break at an alarming speed, these are sluggish days, and I’m doing my best to match their rhythm and collect my thoughts while I wait for the blessed relief of autumn.
The sound of distant traffic shushing through late-night rain might be one of the most relaxing sounds I know. The same goes for a drowsy radio talking about light drizzle at the airport. But my favorite soundtrack for contemplation is slow-motion techno.
Over the years, slowing down my favorite songs has become a spiritual practice, and I’ve come here tonight to preach the poetics of pitched-down electronics. It’s a rebellion against time, a way to slow down the clock and peek into its gears. There is fascinating information in the heartbeat of a half-speed machine: gunk and grain, the unexpected pleasure of negative space. When I die, I’d like to spend eternity nestled in the bass of Pole’s "[Modul](https://pole-stefanbetke.bandcamp.com/track/modul-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)". Until then, the best I can do is slow it down and make it last a little longer. And so this episode of Midnight Radio is devoted to the glory of slow-motion machinery, featuring five all-time favorites from the 1990s stretched out until they’re nice and roomy. For me, hearing the title track from Plastikman’s landmark [*Consumed*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumed%5F%28Plastikman%5Falbum%29?ref=jamesreeves.co) at half-speed feels like a revelation.
### 2
Ventriloquism began as a religious practice. The word comes from Latin for “speak from the stomach”: *venter* (belly) and *loqui* (speak). The ancients believed the sounds produced by the belly belonged to the dead, and the ventriloquist would interpret these growls and grumbles because people thought they told the future. So who’s to say what’s spiritual today?
Tonight's mix is below, or you can [download it here](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2024/08/Midnight-Radio-004---Slow-Motion-Machines.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co). It's doused in plenty of reverb and sprinkled with some doo-wop and torch songs by Nancy Sinatra, Ricky Nelson, Skeeter Davis, the Ronettes, and the Righteous Brothers. (Here's [a Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5h6CmK2E4CEMFEbdBWusPU?si=2824e38837094df9&ref=jamesreeves.co) if you'd like to hear the original songs at their normal speed.)
1. **Richie Hawtin - 07 13-00** (54% slower)
Concept 1 | 1996 | [More](https://richiehawtin.bandcamp.com/album/richie-hawtin-concept-1-96-12?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Pole - Modul** (56% slower)
1 | Matador, 1998 | [More](https://pole-stefanbetke.bandcamp.com/album/1-2-3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Autechre - Yulquen** (48% slower)
Amber | Warp, 1994 | [More](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/amber?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Basic Channel - Radiance II** (44% slower)
Radiance | Basic Channel, 1994 | [More](https://boomkat.com/products/radiance-i-ii?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Plastikman - Consumed** (50% slower)
Consumed | Minus, 1998 | [More](https://richiehawtin.bandcamp.com/album/consumed?ref=jamesreeves.co)
These five songs rewired my brain when I first heard them 25 years ago, back when I had faith in the Information Superhighway and the new millennium. What will my nostalgia look like 25 years from now? I try to imagine myself as an old man, telling the kids about the good old days when every street corner had a Chase bank and a CVS, how we carried pieces of glass in our pockets that made us cranky. But in the meantime, let’s install roadside plaques across the nation that describe its hauntings and spiritual visions. Put a sign in front of a grain silo that says it’s a sculpture by a conceptual artist named Olive Garden. Return some myth to this fallen world.
#### Midnight Radio 004 | [Download](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2024/08/Midnight-Radio-004---Slow-Motion-Machines.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 004: Slow-Motion Machines
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Thank you for listening, and the request lines are now open: if there's a certain mood you'd like to hear in the next installment, let me know.
### A Tale of Judgment and Grace
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-tale-of-judgment-and-grace/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:14:18.000Z
I was at the library, pretending to write. The man at the table across from me was loud. Pushing fifty and sunburnt. Fancy haircut in a pink polo and khakis. He brayed into his laptop about quarterlies and metrics and clickthrough rates.
This sunburn with teeth was the avatar of the utter lack of care or even bare-minimum awareness of other human beings that has poisoned public life. Yes, this man was a demon. He was what the end of civilization looked and sounded like.
I decided to say something. But first, I needed to make sure the people were with me. A woman two tables away nodded in the man’s direction and rolled her eyes. Good enough. I started to stand up, ready to tell him to knock it off.
Then a child appeared.
I don’t know anything about children, but this one was three feet tall, and I think it was a girl, although it was difficult to say because a bandage was wrapped around her bald head and her skin was grey save for the purple rings under her eyes. She wore a gown with a chunk cut out to accommodate a machine that sent tubes into her nose, and she cradled an armful of books as she toddled up to the demon’s table, grinning so wide it made me smile too.
“Daddy, look at all the cool books I found!”
I hung my head, and when I looked up again, the demon had become a saint. An exhausted father just trying to do his job while looking after his sick kid.
I thanked something I don’t quite believe in for saving me from myself and sparing that child from a scene of me haranguing her dad about civility. I made a promise to do my best to treat everyone as if they're dealing with something heavy. Because they are.
But it’s hard. Hating that man was easy. I *enjoyed* it. I could have turned up the volume on my music and focused on my work. Instead, I removed my headphones to be more fully annoyed. Why?
Because righteousness feels good. Righteousness is intoxicating, oftentimes addictive, because it provides a sense of purpose, even when its premise is false. And this is far more likely to lead us to societal collapse than some middle manager on a Zoom call at the library.
### Night Drive
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/midnight-radio-003-night-drive/
Last updated: 2025-11-17T01:36:45.000Z
Many years ago, I wrote [a book](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-road-to-somewhere/) about driving fifty thousand miles back and forth across America. “Motorist” was part of my bio. I owned a radar detector. Then last year, I experienced a big budget panic attack on Interstate 15 while boxed between two semi-trucks. Soon I couldn’t even look at a highway ramp without seeing spots and getting dizzy. I began to research my routes in advance, telling myself I preferred the scenic route, even when going to the mall. I studied satellite images to ensure there would be side streets and shoulders, nothing that would leave me feeling boxed in again. My world got small.
Panic is an attack on reason. The world sparkles like it might evaporate. Arms go swimmy. The body feels like it’s been turned inside out, and the heart jackhammers against bone, trying to escape this mess. It’s a hell of a thing to experience at eighty miles per hour. Under these conditions, it's impossible to practice the tools I've learned for surviving the 21st century: breathe through the nose, tune into the moment, and remember that I belong to the deathless, that I'm a little beacon of joy beyond body and form. No, the lizard brain takes control: I scream. I hyperventilate. I swerve toward the nearest exit.
Why must the mind torture itself? They say a panic attack is residue from our Stone Age brains, a glitch in the wiring, although I fail to see how such a reaction would save me from a tiger. Or maybe panic disorder is a Jungian arrow pointing to an unsettled problem, and my anima needs alignment. But my hunch is that it’s genetic. My mother suffered terribly from agoraphobia. She avoided the highway, even as a passenger, and now this is happening to me. My inheritance.
So I’m giving psychology a shot, and it was long overdue. Gutting it out wasn’t getting me very far. My therapist taught me how to give myself a panic attack in twenty seconds flat, which is a fun party trick. He wants me to do this five times per day, and I do. At night, I drive the Midwestern highways, trying to get my interstate mojo back. Each day, I feel a bit better, even though the world feels a little more insane.
Perhaps my highway panic reflects a loss of faith in the human project. Because you have to kid yourself a little when you get on the freeway, not think about it too hard—all those speeding vehicles with distracted, angry, and anxious creatures at the wheel. You're relying upon blind faith they won’t hammer their brakes or punch the gas. And there might be a lesson here.
But who are these insomniacs and mutants who ride the suburban highways after midnight? I try to imagine their lives: the blonde in a Honda blowing kisses to herself in the rearview, the exhausted man with purple skin in a rusty pickup, the kid with wraparound shades on my bumper, teeth flashing like he wants to gnaw it. It’s enough to rattle the best of us, which brings us to tonight’s broadcast: five reassuring songs for midnight driving—sleek and glossy, something that sounds like the sight of neon washing across your hood.
The other day, my friend M. told me I might enjoy a band called the [Glass Beams](https://glassbeams.bandcamp.com/album/mahal?ref=jamesreeves.co). Fortunately, I misheard their name, and that’s how I discovered my new favorite band, the [Glass Beads](https://theglassbeads.bandcamp.com/music?ref=jamesreeves.co): slick Ukrainian cold wave that kicks off tonight’s mix, followed by Tropic of Cancer’s heavenly reverb, then Robert Görl’s ‘Mit Dir,’ which might be the most perfect song ever made on this planet. Forty-one years later, it still sounds like the future. Then we have a deep cut from the high priests of night driving, Chromatics, before concluding with a glorious detour through Japan circa 1985\. While stitching this mixtape together, I discovered [C](https://cancychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). has very strong opinions about her night driving soundtrack, and I thank her for making it better.
1. **Glass Beads - City of Anger**
Therapy | Fabrika Records, 2020 | [More](https://theglassbeads.bandcamp.com/album/therapy-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Tropic of Cancer - Court of Devotion**
Restless Idylls | Blackest Ever Black, 2013 | [More](https://tropicofcancer.bandcamp.com/music?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Robert Görl - Mit Dir**
Mute, 1983 | [More](https://boomkat.com/products/mute-audio-documents-1978-1984?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Chromatics - Lady Night Drive**
Cherry | Italians Do It Better, 2018 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatics%5F%28band%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Tomo Akikawabaya - A Dream of No Pillow**
The Invitation of The Dead | Minimal Wave, 1985 | [More ](https://minimalwave.com/artists/artist/tomo-akikawabaya/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Also includes reverberations of some sad-sack country music via Jack Greene and Hank Williams, a few grainy loops, and some paranoid ramblings I recorded from AM radio. You can [download it here](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2024/08/Midnight-Radio-003---Night-Drive-1.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co) or listen below. If you prefer Spotify, [here's a playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/11OKub8irbXcmA77bGaUHO?si=28a91bdf74674344&ref=jamesreeves.co), although you won't get any reverb or radio chatter.
#### Midnight Radio 003 | [Download](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/media/2024/08/Midnight-Radio-003---Night-Drive-1.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 003: Night Drive
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When I get into bed after a bout of night driving, I like to hear someone tell me about the past. [*Fall of Civilizations*](https://www.youtube.com/@FallofCivilizations/videos?ref=jamesreeves.co) is my favorite thing for this, and I can’t recommend it strongly enough. It's pure class, and feels timely these days. But be warned: [Carthage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dbdVhVSat8&ref=jamesreeves.co) is a heartbreak.
### Death Prom
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/midnight-radio-002-death-prom/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:15:23.000Z
Sometimes the sunlight filters through the sliding doors at Target in a way that reminds me of church. A honey-red radiance floods the self-checkout lanes and soaks the mannequins in Women’s Apparel. We pause our carts, and for a moment, there’s a hush.
Welcome to the second installment of [Midnight Radio](https://www.jamesreeves.co/radio/), a dispatch of five thematic songs delivered 'round midnight on the first and fifteenth of each month. I’m not sure who coined the term “death prom,” but it is a crucial sound in my life. The first and only mention of it I’ve found comes from Joe Colly’s [2011 review](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15281-badlands/?ref=jamesreeves.co) of [Alex Zhang Hungtai](https://alexzhanghungtai.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)’s important work as Dirty Beaches, which transforms mid-century Americana into spectral karaoke.
Death Prom should be a proper genre. But it’s more than a catchall for anything that evokes a saccharine 1950s ballad or girl bands named after jewels, their voices reverberated and ghostly. Here are my guidelines:
- Time is a factor. Listening to Roy Orbison in 1961 is not Death Prom, but hearing it bleed through the walls of a cheap motel in 2024 is very Death Prom.
- The urtext for Death Prom is Suicide’s "[Surrender](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwMjhWn3OQ4&ref=jamesreeves.co)", a 1988 confection that injects a 1950s slow dance with dread.
- A doo-wop ballad from a long-dead one-hit wonder fighting its way through the radio static is the ultimate Death Prom sound.
Death Prom makes you feel a little seductive, perhaps leaning against a wall outside the party while you take a cinematic drag from a cigarette. But Death Prom also contains grief, bringing to mind [Roland Barthes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera%5FLucida%5F%28book%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)’s argument that every photograph is inherently morbid because it captures a moment lost to time. And Death Prom *sounds* like a faded photograph: a romanticized snapshot of youthful longing that exists only in hindsight. Most of all, Death Prom is about reverb; it's the sound of elegant decay and vapor trails.
It’s tempting to classify Death Prom as nostalgia, but I think its trajectory is forward-facing because it carries the dreams of the past into the present. It is a haunting.
And it's a fitting soundtrack for this unsettled season, in which everything seems to be happening at once yet also feels weirdly static. In a similar vein, I’m currently reading Hervé Le Tellier’s [*The Anomaly*](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/books/review-anomaly-herve-le-tellier.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.7E0.tShs.IdPMu9RCQGkU&smid=url-share&ref=jamesreeves.co), a sprawling, somewhat fractured novel in which the same airplane with the same passengers lands twice. This line resonated: “But when the remote control batteries are dead, we just keep pushing harder. It’s only human.”
Sadly, we're [making more daylight](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/15/climate-crisis-making-days-longer-study?ref=jamesreeves.co) every year because we broke the weather, but I hope tonight’s broadcast provides a moment of reprieve from this overheated summer. After a brief station identification featuring the [Electrifying Mojo](https://www.jamesreeves.co/mojo/), we'll move through five essential ingredients of my Death Prom canon, including a pair of ballads from Detroit and Indonesia that seem to exist without any frame of reference or biographical information. Which is very Death Prom.
1. **Dirty Beaches - Lord Knows Best**
Badlands | Zoo, 2011 | [More](https://alexzhanghungtai.bandcamp.com/album/badlands?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **The Larados - Now the Parting Begins**
Detroit, 1957
3. **Annie Rae - Bang Bung Ranggaek**
Indonesia, 1970
4. **Suicide - Surrender**
NYC | Chapter 22, 1987 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender%5F%28Suicide%5Fsong%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Richard Swift - Would You?**
Ground Trouble Jaw | Secretly Canadian, 2008 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard%5FSwift%5F%28musician%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Also contains fragments from Skeeter Davis, The Teddybears, The Paris Sisters, The Righteous Brothers, Bobby Vinton, The Moody Blues, and Elvis Presley.
The mixtape is below, or you can [download it here](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20002%20-%20Death%20Prom.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co). If you prefer Big Streaming, here’s a [Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6AZhCgpf43DDq1m9DBYDiE?si=ac8e80eba162445b&ref=jamesreeves.co), but it doesn't contain half as much reverb or whispering at the edges or an earworm from Annie Rae.
Thank you for reading. And listening.
#### Midnight Radio 002 | [Download](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Midnight%20Radio%20002%20-%20Death%20Prom.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight Radio 002 Death Prom
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### Heatwave
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/heatwave/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:25.000Z
So there’s this guy with a belly that pokes out of his Harley Davidson t-shirt like a grin, and the other day, he walked up to me and said, “First thing I do every morning is send God a knee-mail,” and I hate him so much for saying this because now it’s lodged in my head whenever I try to pray. Maybe telling you will help me exorcise it.
Welcome to Midnight Radio, a dispatch of five thematic songs + a brief ramble delivered 'round midnight on the first and fifteenth of each month. Our debut broadcast begins with a stone summertime classic and some underrated Japanese dream pop, followed by a humid laser workout, a touch of Suicide, a river of Michigan space rock, and mountains of glorious reverb.
Now, about that summertime classic: there are nights when I listen to “Jesus Children of America” for hours, getting lost in its plush bassline before Stevie Wonder delivers a righteous inventory of America’s soul. He challenges those who claim religion as faith: “Tell me, holy roller, are you standing for everything you talk about?” He captures the hell of addiction: “Are you happy when you stick a needle in your vein? Tell the truth now.” And he sings like the world’s about to come undone at any moment: “You’d better tell your story fast.”
Three days after the song was released, Wonder was asleep in the passenger seat after a show in South Carolina when a truck loaded with timber hit its brakes. A log smashed through the windshield, and Wonder spent four days in a coma. “We brought one of his instruments—I think it was the [Clavinet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clavinet?ref=jamesreeves.co)—to the hospital,” said a friend. "For a while, Stevie just looked at it. You could see he was afraid to touch it because he didn’t know if he still had it in him. He didn’t know if he could still play. And then, when he finally did . . . man, you could just see the happiness spreading all over him. I’ll never forget that."
That was fifty years ago. Wonder lost his sense of smell, but he found God. “Everything is the way it is supposed to be," [he said](https://www.nytimes.com/1975/02/23/archives/to-be-young-gifted-and-blind-a-sense-of-wonder.html?ref=jamesreeves.co). "The accident, losing the sense of smell — everything that has ever happened to me is the way it is supposed to have been. I wrote ‘Higher Ground’ before the accident. Something must have been telling me that something was going to happen to make me aware of a lot of things and get myself together.”
I’m still getting myself together. It’s a never-ending project. Last year, I made [an album](https://www.jamesreeves.co/vegas-dust/) to accompany my bouts of late-night writing. I’m doing my best to [be less self-righteous](https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-tale-of-judgment-and-grace/). And I moved from Vegas [to Ohio](https://www.jamesreeves.co/why-am-i-in-ohio/).
Now for tonight's broadcast: after a brief station identification, we'll hear the [Electrifying Mojo](https://www.jamesreeves.co/mojo/) tell us to flash our headlights because he's our spirit animal for this endeavor, then we'll drop into a loop or two before moving through five songs that work best during a heatwave:
1. **Stevie Wonder - Jesus Children of America**
Innervisions | Tamla, 1973 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innervisions?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Sugar Plant - Rise**
Happy | 7th Heaven, 1998 | [More](https://kilikilivilla.bandcamp.com/album/happy-2024-remaster?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Actress - Hubble**
Thriller, 2009 | [More](https://boomkat.com/products/swarm-hubble?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **Suicide - Cheree (Remix)**
Suicide | Bronze Records, 1978 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide%5F%281977%5Falbum%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Füxa - Karmaloop**
Accretion | Mind Expansion, 1998 | [More](https://fuxa1.bandcamp.com/track/karmaloop?ref=jamesreeves.co)
The mix is below. If you prefer Big Streaming, here’s a [Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/200Z8CGiThMIooaJ5FacUr?si=0a4c11b9ad4047c2&ref=jamesreeves.co), although it’s not nearly as interesting as the static and reverb of the proper midnight broadcast, which also includes some advice at the nineteen-minute mark for how to relax circa 1963.
Midnight Radio 001: Heatwave
0:00
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### Center for Sustainable Urbanization
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/csu/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:14:39.000Z
A new visual identity and website for an international non-profit network of urban planners, architects, and policymakers who advocate for resilient design in the planning of our cities.
This work included restructuring CSU’s extensive archive into a streamlined website that clarifies its mission and makes its programming and publications more engaging for the general public. To ensure a consistent voice for the organization in the future, this engagement culminated included a set of brand guidelines, content strategy, and style guide for copywriting.
##### Art Direction + Design, Web Development
### Mountain Man
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/mountain-man/
Last updated: 2026-07-07T10:18:31.000Z
I dreamt about a gigantic man who knelt down to tell me he was raised by a mountain. He said I did not understand how to live.
When I asked if I could bum a cigarette, he tossed me into the sea, where I swam in the dark until I was rescued by an inflatable child who cried like a ticking clock.
### A Psychedelic Throb
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-psychedelic-throb/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:26.000Z
Meanwhile, my head is gunked up with fragments that point in all directions. There’s half of a zen aphorism about a fingernail pointing to the moon, but I can’t remember why this is supposed to be profound, although I swear I read somewhere that your uncoiled intestines can reach the moon.
Last night, we watched tornados threaten our neighborhood on the news while sirens rang from all corners of the county. We cheered when they zoomed into our street. They told us to wake our neighbors and take shelter, but we remained glued to the TV as a psychedelic throb of purple passed over a map of where we lived. The weather people said they’d never seen anything like it. When the blob reached the Target a mile away, we went to bed.
And what of silence? Lately I’ve been concentrating on the sliver of quiet between each passing car on Route 33 outside my window. Although I’m still reckoning with panic attacks on the highway, the thrum of nighttime traffic lulls me—perhaps an echo of growing up in apartments along Interstate 75 on the edge of Detroit. Some people are afraid of silence. They cannot tolerate it. I’m learning to savor it.
Except when I fall asleep. I need to hear someone mumbling about the past. [Fall of Civilizations](https://www.youtube.com/@FallofCivilizations?ref=jamesreeves.co) is my favorite thing for this, and it feels timely these days. Last night I learned that, five thousand years ago, the Sumerians gave us sixty minutes in an hour because they counted the three joints on four fingers five times and believed this was a sacred number.
### Atlantic Beach, North Carolina
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/atlantic-beach/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:26.000Z
A new visual identity for Atlantic Beach, a historic town along the North Carolina coast. The identity system features a series of icons that highlight its waterfront, shopping, dining, and historical sites, which were then applied to a wayfinding system for pedestrians and cyclists, street signage, and graphics for the water tower and municipal departments.
Also designed and built a new website that spotlights local events as well as resources for residents and attractions for tourists.
##### Art Direction + Design, Web Development
### They Enter Our Minds Like Bats
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/they-enter-our-minds-like-bats/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:26.000Z
In Greek mythology, dreams were often personified as [Óneiroi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneiros?ref=jamesreeves.co#:~:text=In%20Greek%20mythology%2C%20dreams%20were,brothers%20of%20Hypnos%20%28Sleep%29.), black-winged demons that enter our sleeping minds like bats to deliver messages from the gods. Last night I dreamt I drank perfume and had a minor role in a detective show in which none of us could remember the name of the president between Johnson and Ford.
This week our previous president went on trial for being sleazy, and I envy the optimists who think this might save our republic. Meanwhile, my therapist taught me how to give myself a panic attack in twenty seconds flat. He wants me to do this five times every day. I’m finally giving psychology a shot, and it was long overdue. Gutting it out wasn’t getting me very far. Each night, I drive along deserted highways with the Chromatics, trying to get my interstate mojo back. Each day, I feel a bit better, even though the world feels a little more insane.
Strange how it’s perfectly acceptable to say ‘goodbye’ in person or over the telephone, yet it transforms an email or a text message into a suicide note. In other news, I no longer understand the atheist who wants to talk people out of their gods. I often think about this line in [*First Reformed*](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/first-reformed?ref=jamesreeves.co): “The desire to pray is itself a form of prayer.”
### Someday We Will Conjure New Gods to Console Us
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/will-we-conjure-new-gods-to-console-us/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:26.000Z
Last night I woke up to tornado sirens. Wind rattled the walls and lightning filled our flat like a thousand camera flashes. We stood by the window and watched the howling dark, even though this isn’t what you should do in a tornado. On the local news, the weather people nervously discussed a map of angry red streaked with purple. Tornados in February were not normal, they said. But I’m learning to give up on normal. Global heat records have shattered for [the ninth month in a row](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/earth-has-shattered-global-heat-records-for-the-9th-straight-month-scientists-say?ref=jamesreeves.co#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20%28AP%29%20%E2%80%94%20For%20the,European%20Union%20climate%20agency%20Copernicus.).
When the Atlantic washes over Interstate 95, will a new age of miracles be upon us? Will we conjure new gods to console us or continue to relitigate the beliefs from the past? American politics have taken the place of religion, always a scary sign, but there will be no miracles there. The candidates for president match the moment: exhausted and deranged. What comes after that?
As the world becomes more uncertain, are we easy marks for grifters, opinion merchants, and faith dealers? “Philosophy is no longer the pillar of fire going before a few intrepid seekers after truth,” wrote [Bertrand Russell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand%5FRussell?ref=jamesreeves.co) in 1946\. “It is rather an ambulance following in the wake of the struggle for existence and picking up the weak and wounded.” Will the future deliver a new Vishnu or Buddha or Jesus Christ or Muhammad? Perhaps they’re already out there, asking you to subscribe to their newsletter.
I crave more mystery, more distance and shadow and myth. Today’s televisions come with a ‘motion smoothing’ effect that transforms movies into a nauseating hyperreal. I do not need 120 frames per second when the eye requires only 12 frames per second to imagine motion. It’s good to have a bit of chop and static, some fog on the stage.
[80s Underground Cassette Culture Volume 1 (2xLP) by Contort Yourself](https://contortyourself-cy.bandcamp.com/album/80s-underground-cassette-culture-volume-1-2xlp?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### 3BL Media
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/3bl/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:14:59.000Z
3BL is a leading social impact communications agency that partners with companies such as Bloomberg, T-Mobile, and FedEx. My work involved refining and expanding 3BL’s brand identity across key materials, including presentation decks, websites, and social media assets.
Also produced a series of reports that translate 3BL’s research on consumer perceptions of sustainability across various sectors into a data-driven narrative. Streamlined typography, a flexible grid system, and data visualizations help communicate the research’s impact to a broad audience, and a cinematic aesthetic elevates the brand’s business offerings.
### Scene from My Notebook
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/scene-from-my-notebook/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:27.000Z
Lately I’ve been trying to loosen up and make a mess: fast collages, illegible notes in the middle of the night, and the inky smudges of a left-hander. There is no logic yet, but the scenery tilts toward the religious.
I want to believe in God but don’t know how. Some say it’s just a matter of making a decision, even inventing your own higher power if needed. But I require proof. A burning bush. A voice that shakes the heavens. Imagine that: demanding God prove itself to me rather than the other way around.
Meanwhile, the nation is preparing for an eclipse tomorrow. They’re playing countdown clocks on the news, and astronomers and astrologers are getting equal attention. Words like *gamma*, *perigee*, and *orbital plane* blur with talk about realigning our spiritual nodes and dramatic upheavals in our karmic journeys. Arkansas and Maine have declared states of emergency because of the traffic, and in rural Illinois, a Super 8 motel is charging $949 for the night. So many energies are colliding around this grand and rare event, possibly the last event, to pull everyone into a moment of shared reality before we go our separate ways.
Then again, if I look carefully and squint a little, maybe the bush is always burning.
[Eclipsed by Bremen](https://bremen2.bandcamp.com/album/eclipsed?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### A Staggering Kind of Stillness
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-staggering-kind-of-stillness/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:27.000Z
The television mumbled in the background, and we followed along as the eclipse passed through Mazatlan, Dallas, Little Rock, and Indianapolis. When our turn came, we stood on a ridge by the river and watched the moon chip away at the sun. A lone helicopter crossed the sky. The temperature dropped. The light turned silvery and dim with crisp strange shadows. Dogs barked. Birds stopped chirping.
Darkness fell quickly from the north, bringing a staggering kind of stillness. For ninety seconds, the eclipse was total, and I stood beneath it feeling a giddy sense of slippage, a perceptual freefall that edged toward the frightening. The television had not prepared me for this.
Although I was grateful for the brief fellowship when everyone across a troubled hemisphere was momentarily joined by the sun and moon, broadcasting their experiences in real-time, I tried to imagine what it must have felt like to encounter such a chaotic sky in ancient times, bewildered and alone. As daylight returned, I understood why the first rituals were performed to ensure the sun would rise each morning, and I wondered what the last ritual might be.
### Debris
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/debris/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:27.000Z
There is beauty in repetition, the steady accretion that comes with committing to one thing day after day. [Yuji Agematsu](https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2022/03/14/microscopic-city-yuji-agematsu-interviewed/?ref=jamesreeves.co) collected bits of debris in his cigarette packs on his daily walks, and they became a gloriously deranged calendar. What can I commit to doing each day? A couple hundred words and a photograph or a collage? Maybe there’s some sense to be made—or good nonsense to be found—in the debris of my old notebooks.
### Altar
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/altar/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:27.000Z
The time changed yesterday and nefarious forces are afoot, delivering personal setbacks, professional disappointments, and hard forks in the road. Also, a favorite character on a TV show died (if you're watching *Tokyo Vice*, then you know) and my speakers refuse to connect to my device. In times like these, I’m grateful for my little altar, where I practice my meditations each morning and night (except Saturdays). “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” wrote [Pascal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise%5FPascal?ref=jamesreeves.co) back in 1654\. And it remains a struggle. I fidget and sigh and glance greedily at the clock. But they say there’s no such thing as good meditation or bad meditation; there's only meditation. The same might apply to running, but I’m not sure if it can be said for writing and design.
Inventory of my altar:
1) a patch of [fake IKEAN grass](https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/fejka-artificial-potted-plant-with-pot-indoor-outdoor-grass-10508456/?ref=jamesreeves.co) because synthetic nature tickles some pleasure center I can’t quite describe (although [I’ve tried](https://atlasminor.com/artificial/?ref=jamesreeves.co)). I find it very reassuring.
2) a small brass Buddha that came from god only knows. I found it rattling around a cardboard box seven years ago when moving from New Orleans.
3) a [Charity Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity%5FIsland%5F%28Michigan%29?ref=jamesreeves.co) “round stone” that delighted my grandfather, who enjoyed telling long geological stories while we stood in the cold by Saginaw Bay.
4) a chess piece my father carved after one went missing in Wisconsin because chess was serious business for us while we waited for a lung.
5) a [Garry Winogrand](https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/garry-winogrand?all/all/all/all/0&ref=jamesreeves.co) photo that captures the joyful lunatic energy I’d like to bring to the [new thing](https://atlasminor.com/starting-a-new-big-thing/?ref=jamesreeves.co) I’m writing.
6) a Glade lemon + bergamot mist diffuser that smells like a fancy hotel lobby. Available for $12 at Target.
7) a handy visual timer purchased after reading [Jack Cheng’s newsletter](https://www.jackcheng.com/sunday/413-my-daily-routine-january-2024/?ref=jamesreeves.co). (I spent ages dithering between Fern Green and Pale Shale before choosing the green because it matches my fake grass.)
I share this because I'm fascinated by the totems and rituals of others. At my Thursday night philosophy book club, there’s a gentle old Catholic who likes to say, “God can’t give us happiness, so he gives us habit.”
### Mysterium
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/mysterium/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:28.000Z
The muscle memory of New York is durable. Hopped on the G train and spent the weekend in my old neighborhood, where I expected to get misty-eyed while a montage of memories played in my head. But as I stood before my old building on India Street, I simply thought *yep, I lived there fifteen years ago, and it was a nice time, and now it has passed*. My neutral reaction disappointed me. Maybe I’ve seen too many movies.
Later that night, the lights went out and a bottomless drone filled the shell of a former glass factory in the industrial zone between Brooklyn and Queens. Then [Godspeed You! Black Emperor](https://godspeedyoublackemperor.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) took the stage. One of my all-time favorite bands, and I had no idea what they looked like. I expected elaborate beards, aggressive tattoos, and maybe cloaks. But they looked normal and sane, like your kid’s cool history teacher. Then came the Biblical guitars, joined by 16mm film loops of flowers and vacant buildings and wildfires and crowds mowed down by firehoses and choking on tear gas. Unlike any other band, their music captures modern dread with hope burning along the edges.
A few hours earlier at the Museum of Modern Art, I visited [one of my favorite Francis Bacon paintings](https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79285?artist%5Fid=272&page=1&sov%5Freferrer=artist&ref=jamesreeves.co), another traveler into glorious nightmares. A few days before that, I came across the phrase *mysterium tremendum et fascinans*, which belongs to [Rudolf Otto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf%5FOtto?ref=jamesreeves.co)’s concept of the [*numinous*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numinous?ref=jamesreeves.co), “a non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self . . . whereby the human being finds himself utterly abashed.” The *mysterium tremendum* repels and reduces us to a sense of “humility, submission, and creatureliness,” while the *mysterium fascinans*attracts us and generates spiritual joy (and thus feels less interesting, at least for the stories I want to tell). But taken together, *mysterium tremendum et fascinans* effectively describes the appeal of artists like Godspeed You! Black Emperor and [Francis Bacon](https://atlasminor.com/teeth/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
As I left New York City, the driver played Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” several times and never said a word. I milled around the airport, again trying to make peace with my sweaty palms and wobbly legs. I consoled myself by an elaborate fountain, where I ate a burrito and started the first pages of [*Tony and Susan*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1786495058?psc=1&ref=ppx%5Fyo2ov%5Fdt%5Fb%5Fproduct%5Fdetails), the poorly named novel that inspired Tom Ford's [*Nocturnal Animals*](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/nocturnal-animals?ref=jamesreeves.co), one of the most frightening and beautiful films I've seen. This line resonated: “It was the habit of his mind to know the worst case, the ultimate. His life was a scenario of disasters that never took place.” Somewhere over Pennsylvania, my fear of heights evened out, and I listened to Godspeed while I admired the lights of civilizations below, glimmering in a sea of absolute black.
[Yanqui U.X.O. by Godspeed You! Black Emperor](https://godspeedyoublackemperor.bandcamp.com/album/yanqui-u-x-o?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### On a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/on-a-shrinking-globe-in-an-expanding-universe/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:28.000Z
My fear of flying kicked in the moment I entered the queue for security. Tingling limbs. Kaleidoscopic vision. The gloopy sensation of walking through a nightmare. The plan was to fly to NYC to see [Godspeed You! Black Emperor](https://godspeedyoublackemperor.bandcamp.com/track/mladic?ref=jamesreeves.co) and catch up with some old friends. I had not flown by myself in a decade, and by the time I approached the jetway, I was sweat-soaked and sick. My brain was a fire alarm telling me not to get on the plane. Reimburse so-and-so for the ticket. Enjoy a quiet weekend at home. Not a big deal. I turned back, shouldering past confused passengers. Then I boomeranged around a trash can and hurried onto the jetway.
My brain is ridden with omens and ghosts and catastrophic visions, which I'm beginning to understand is the squealing of a misfiring organism determined to protect itself, throwing up every possible reason to flee. An inauspicious flight number. The sound of the door closing. The metal roar of the engines. Turbulence. Just the thought of these things is enough to send my nerves into Stone Age terror: shallow breath, constricted vision, a mad urge to climb the walls. But there's no reasoning with a glitch. A broken machine cannot repair itself. *Thought cannot fix thought.* This was my magnificent revelation at 35,000 feet, which I now realize is the point of everything from Zen to stoicism to the power of now. But I need to learn my lessons the hard way.
I felt like a hero as the plane descended over Queens. If you squint through the window, you can see [the Unisphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisphere?ref=jamesreeves.co) from the 1964 World's Fair, which was dedicated to "man's achievements on a shrinking globe in an expanding universe." In 2009, grass was growing in the area representing Antarctica. A year later, the piece for Sri Lanka blew away in a tornado. Maybe there's a metaphor here. (Either way, the Wikipedia page for it is delightful.)
[River Of Dreams by Romance & Dean Hurley](https://romancedeanhurley.bandcamp.com/album/river-of-dreams?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Instead of Disappearing Completely
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/instead-of-vanishing-completely/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:28.000Z
An Alberta clipper shocked the metro area last night with six inches of snow. I crept along at twelve miles per hour in whiteout conditions, scrolling past spun-out cars as I headed to the superstore because I needed some peanut butter cookies and a case of Topo Chico to get the weekend started.
Fact: the Topo Chico that comes in clear glass bottles tastes slightly better than the tinted green bottles.
As the world becomes increasingly incomprehensible, I’m learning to find pleasure in the ultramundane and routine. My preferred table at the library. The Thursday night philosophy book club I’ve joined. In the evenings, C. and I watch *[Tokyo Vice](https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/tokyo-vice?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, my new favorite show. It’s a slow drift with neon pouring down car windows and violent men with righteous hair, punctuated by delightful moments such as Ken Watanabe watching *Full House* with his family. And god, it makes me miss smoking. ([This piece in Vulture](https://www.vulture.com/article/tokyo-vice-season-two-vibes.html?ref=jamesreeves.co) is a good companion if you’re one of the five or six other people who watch it.) After I perform my nightly ablutions, I like to fall asleep to old documentaries about Rome. I fantasize about Rome and Tokyo, but right now, I’m happy where I am, existing in pleasantly neutral conditions that give my mind room to roam on the page.
My friend [O.](https://www.instagram.com/oliverblank/?ref=jamesreeves.co) sent me a WikiHow tutorial called “[How to Disappear Completely](https://www.wikihow.com/Disappear-Completely?ref=jamesreeves.co).” (He stumbled across it while searching for something else; he’s doing okay.) I can’t stop thinking about this article: the clinical tone without any trace of an author, the untalented illustrations in shades of pastel, the hard turn from “running away usually isn’t necessary” to “withdraw cash gradually from any bank accounts you have.” Beneath a lightbulb icon, there’s a tip to “make sure you have enough food and water with you.” This tutorial has been read over two million times and has three-and-a-half stars. I give it five stars as a creative writing exercise that lives in the genre of horror: an aggressively benign presentation that launches the imagination into frightening terrain.
At the superstore, a little girl said, “Most of the things on my street are dead.” I think she was talking about the trees in the winter, but what an excellent sentence to start a horror story or fuel an awful dream.
#### Kevin Richard Martin – To Disappear
###### Black | Intercranial, 2023 | [Bandcamp](https://kevinrichardmartin.bandcamp.com/album/black?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[Black by Kevin Richard Martin](https://kevinrichardmartin.bandcamp.com/album/black?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Kevin Richard Martin’s subterranean eulogy for Amy Winehouse. [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/black-6e054b84-1908-4c9f-be8c-28a00600f14d?ref=jamesreeves.co) described it as “the elegiac appeal of Bohren und der Club of Gore at a midnight crossroads with Rhythm & Sound,” which might be the Platonic equation for all the music I enjoy. This is a perfect late-winter soundtrack.
### Why Am I in Ohio?
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/why-am-i-in-ohio/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:29.000Z
C. and I left the desert sooner than expected because an ideal apartment opened up down the hall from her parents. At first, I did not want to leave Vegas. Not so soon. Then I thought about how I would move heaven and earth to live down the hall from my parents if they were still here. A different timeline, perhaps. I like my in-laws. They taught me to play mahjong. And it's a rare gift to live down the hall from them. When I lived with my father while [we waited for a lung](https://atlasminor.com/the-last-year-of-my-father/?ref=jamesreeves.co), I quickly discovered it wasn't the weekend dinners or games of chess that mattered—it was the day-to-day business of schlepping groceries and being nearby when he tipped over.
Truth be told, I like our spot in Ohio, even though this fact gnaws at my soul in the hour of the wolf. It's more diverse and strange than I expected, the food is fantastic, we live by a river, and there's a magnificent new library eight minutes away. We only lived in Vegas for a year, but by then, I knew [my fantasy of the desert](https://atlasminor.com/orientation/?ref=jamesreeves.co) did not square with my reality. I imagined spending my days roaming the white spaces on the map, perhaps growing a long beard and summoning visions like the ancients. Instead, I spent a lot of time at Target. Despite [hanging maps](https://atlasminor.com/lost-lake-and-last-chance-mountain/?ref=jamesreeves.co) of the Mojave on the wall, I could not capture the hungry eye that comes with road-tripping, and there's an interesting phenomenon at work here: the psychology of the resident versus the interloper.
Living in Ohio reminds me of Tarkovsky's [*Stalker*](https://www.criterion.com/films/28150-stalker?ref=jamesreeves.co), which I haven't seen in years, but I remember it as a fable about the need for a mythic place. Three men search for a room that can fulfill your deepest desire. When they reach it, they are too frightened to enter. Because what meaning would life hold if you were utterly satisfied? They fear terrible men might abuse the room, yet they cannot bring themselves to destroy it. The promise of fulfillment it offers is necessary in the world. The room's presence is enough.
Maybe I need the desert to remain a fantasy. Perhaps an annual pilgrimage will do.
### A Craving for Polar Horror
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-craving-for-polar-horror/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:29.000Z
Sunny skies and the temperature is sixty degrees because winter is just a blip now, the bulk of it consigned to childhood memory. I’m dragging out the last pages of [*The North Water*](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250118141/thenorthwater?ref=jamesreeves.co), Ian McGuire’s novel about a catastrophic Arctic whaling expedition. I’m reading slowly, not because it’s a slog but because I do not want it to end. I want winter to last a little longer.
McGuire is a hell of a writer. A lean 250 pages, this story rips along in a dignified yet ferocious present tense that details “fetid blasts of butchery” while smudging the lines between man and beast. McGuire has created an exquisite villain in the form of Henry Drax, a harpooner whose intuitive violence begins to make existential sense. “You can’t kill us all,” the captain tells him, to which he replies, “I ‘spect I can kill enough of you though.” And later: “I do as I must. Int a great deal of cogitation involved.”
But the location is the primary draw, with its snow-choked fjords, ice like cracked marble, and temperatures so cold your teeth explode. Polar horror is one of my favorite genres: the temporal dislocation of permanent night, the cosmic vertigo of being at the very top—or bottom—of the world, and claustrophobic outposts populated by characters with sketchy pasts who are running from their sins or searching for salvation. Then comes the inevitable moment when they must depend upon the heat of other bodies to survive, and once they leave the distressed ship or bunker, there’s a lot of room to go crazy.
And all that snow covering god only knows.
*The North Water* joins Dan Simmons’s *[The Terror](https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/dan-simmons/the-terror/9780316003889/?lens=little-brown&ref=jamesreeves.co)* among my favorite polar horror stories. And there’s a fine television version of *[The North Water](https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/the-north-water?ref=jamesreeves.co)* with Colin Farrell as evil incarnate. Viewing-wise, there’s also the bonkers *[Fortitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortitude%5F%28TV%5Fseries%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, the slow burn of *[Trapped](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapped%5F%28Icelandic%5FTV%5Fseries%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, and the first seasons of *[The Terror](https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/the-terror?ref=jamesreeves.co)* and *[The Head](https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/the-head-2020?ref=jamesreeves.co)*. A verdict is still pending re: *True Detective: Night Country*.
Any recommendations for other polar horror tales would be much appreciated, especially now that a snowy winter feels more and more like a strange memory.
#### Ben Chatwin – Snow Crash
##### The Hum | Village Green, 2020 | [Bandcamp](https://benchatwin.bandcamp.com/album/the-hum-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[The Hum by Ben Chatwin](https://benchatwin.bandcamp.com/album/the-hum-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Mirrors to Deflect Danger
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/mirrors-to-deflect-danger/
Last updated: 2026-06-03T17:29:57.000Z
Boston. Eleven years sober and another year older. Spent ten hours wandering the galleries of the Museum of Fine Art with C., which is my favorite thing to do on this planet.
I fell in love with [John Singer Sargent](https://collections.mfa.org/objects/32955/a-capriote?ctx=2eeba3a4-93c9-4853-992f-34dddaf6fa4b&idx=32&ref=jamesreeves.co) for the first time, I savored the tranquil light in Vilhelm Hammershøi’s [*Woman in an Interior*](https://collections.mfa.org/objects/34742/woman-in-an-interior?ctx=ecd3b41c-bbb6-4f0d-8e21-db30af13c873&idx=0&ref=jamesreeves.co), and I admired the paintings of François Boucher, who disliked nature because it was “too green and badly lit.” As for natural lighting, I’ve always appreciated the phrase ‘civil twilight,’ which describes the moment the sun sinks 6° below the horizon, and perhaps more broadly, the moment we’re living through today.
When I came across an artist whose placard mentioned “his untimely death at the age of 35,” I resisted a mad urge to look up the cause. Why do I crave this detail? Does it come from a decent place of human curiosity, or is it rank rubbernecking?
I love Catholic art. If I take a mental step back, it looks like Europe was absolutely out of its mind: little winged babies flying around the heads of men who beat their chests and stare at the sky, zombies awakening after being nailed to posts, and so many elaborate portraits of breastfeeding. Or consider [Francesco del Cairo’s portrait of Herodias](https://collections.mfa.org/objects/32243/herodias-with-the-head-of-saint-john-the-baptist;jsessionid=FD6E9423ECC625ABB5ACF107EDA3F80B?ref=jamesreeves.co) with Saint John the Baptist’s decapitated head, “swooning in ecstasy as she mutilates the tongue that spoke against her.”
In the African wing, I was struck by a Kongo [*nkisi nkonde*](https://collections.mfa.org/objects/4708?ref=jamesreeves.co), a power figure that served as a healer of conflicts, its body studded with nails, each signifying a problem or a vow. “The figure’s open mouth suggests the uttering of judgment, and the abdomen and eyes contain mirrors to deflect danger.” I’m determined to work this detail into my life.
### Why Does the Brain Torture Itself?
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/why-does-the-brain-torture-itself/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:30.000Z
I’m on an airplane to Boston to look at some art. I’m still a terrible flyer. The first thirty minutes of every flight are spent in the thrall of a big-budget panic attack, my body pulling out all the stops. Pink-purple dots crowd my vision. My arms go numb and useless. My heart rate is jacked to an industrial techno bpm. This lasts from the moment the door closes and I realize I’m trapped until the plane has spent fifteen minutes at cruising altitude without falling out of the sky. When I look out the window, it’s a torment. I shouldn’t be up this high. But eventually, the screaming sense of *I want to get down I want to get down* subsides, and I accept my new reality. My vision clears. The tingles fade. My heart drags back to normal, and the scenery becomes a Burkean sublime: beauty twinned with reverent awe, a scale I cannot comprehend—the pink tops of clouds, the drift of tiny civilizations below.
I loathe these brutal nerves of mine. It’s like some alien organism has installed itself in my amygdala, utterly detached from truth or reason. Why does the brain torture itself? Perhaps these bouts of panic are a Jungian arrow pointing to an unsettled problem. Maybe my aura needs alignment. But my hunch is that it’s genetic and hardwired. My mother suffered terribly from agoraphobia. Lately I’ve been thinking about how she avoided the highway, even as a passenger, because this is happening to me too. It started last year in Vegas, and now I do not drive on the highway, although I still happily tear down surface streets and county roads, which makes no objective sense.
Quietly losing my mind in a window seat at 35,000 feet is fine. I can gut it out, even get to know it. But I should not explore my panic while seeing spots at 85 miles per hour between a semi-truck and some jackass flashing their high beams. To panic while driving on the interstate, of all things! [I wrote a book about driving](https://jamesreeves.co/the-road-to-somewhere/?ref=jamesreeves.co). I built a small personality around it. Looks like I’m finally going to have an adventure with therapy because this cannot stand. Now the call is coming from inside the house.
### Starting a New Big Thing
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/starting-a-new-big-thing/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:30.000Z
Columbus is the eighth cloudiest city in the country, and after spending a year in a very bright desert, I’m savoring the gloom. I’m still turning up at the library to write fiction every morning, and I’ve been pondering why I’m good at doing a particular task every day or not at all. If I aim for three or four times per week, I’ll push it around until it dissolves.
I’m starting a new book while I wait for my first novel about a loud god to cool off and collect feedback from a gracious reader. Then I’ll spend the spring and summer revising it a final time before I harass agents in the fall.
This new novel started while dredging up the half-finished short stories I’d squirreled away in various clouds and drives. The ones I expected to be worth finishing were ponderous and concerned with “themes.” Then I found a ludicrous three-page thing I wrote fifteen years ago about a cage fight at a nursing home. It was terrible. But a line from it kept nagging me: *They returned to the old ways and shaved their heads, grew their fingernails long, and slicked themselves down with baby oil.* I wanted to know the conditions that could bring such a world into being. Perhaps a reader would too.
So here I am, five thousand words into something I can’t distinguish from worthwhile or ridiculous, but I’m having big fun writing again. This is important because I’m certainly not doing it for money.
Starting a New Big Thing has taken the weight off the Old Big Thing and made writing feel much less precious and fraught. How many times have I encountered this advice in writing how-tos? Put your draft in a drawer for a few months, they say, then start something new. But I have a knack for taking the longest, most taxing route to common knowledge before finally climbing out of the muck and saying *ah, right, there’s wisdom in that.*
### Loss Response
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/loss-response/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:30.000Z
Woke at 8:30 and showered and filled a mug with coffee and drove straight to the library. Only when I sat at a desk did I take a sip, look at my phone, open a can of [Helwit Salmiak](https://helwit.co.uk/product/salmiak-4-4/?ref=jamesreeves.co), and satisfy the little beast inside me that craves caffeine, internet, and nicotine. This is progress.
(I’ve been importing my nicotine from Sweden and the shipping costs are killing me but I enjoy having an international vice.)
Flipped through a massive book of [Gary Winogrand](https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/garry-winogrand?all/all/all/all/0&ref=jamesreeves.co) photos and selected characters for a new story: a gnarled old man who looks like he was muscle for a union in some midwestern town, another with a spooked expression like he’s spent too much time thinking about God.
Went for an ugly run in the rain, and it was gloriously dramatic in the mud and the grey. I’m picking up my mileage now that the weather is no longer fuck-you degrees.
Came home to the news that one of my favorite music producers was found dead in a Los Angeles hotel room, along with two other artists whose work I’ve admired. For fifteen years, [Silent Servant](https://ra.co/features/4304?ref=jamesreeves.co) has been a steady part of my life’s soundtrack, a name always in my playlists via landmark imprints like [Sandwell District](https://thequietus.com/articles/33233-sandwell-district-feed-forward-review?ref=jamesreeves.co) and [Hospital Productions](https://hospitalproductions.bandcamp.com/album/negative-fascination?ref=jamesreeves.co) and [Jealous God](https://jaegeroslo.no/jealous-god-a-legacy/?ref=jamesreeves.co), and an early producer of one of my all-time favorite projects, Camella Lobo’s [Tropic of Cancer](https://boomkat.com/artists/tropic-of-cancer?ref=jamesreeves.co). Now there will be no more. Goddamned fentanyl. It has claimed so many, and the chemicals are only getting weirder and more relentless.
Early in my sobriety, a loud old man in a church basement said this would be a life of stepping over dead bodies. I thought he was being melodramatic, but his words come to mind more often with each passing year. I loathe the moments when the suffering of others reminds me to be grateful. This should not be necessary. But tonight, I’m reminded yet again that my sobriety is like grace and cannot be taken for granted.
#### Silent Servant – Loss Response
###### Shadows of Death and Desire, 2018 |[ Boomkat](https://hospitalproductions.bandcamp.com/album/shadows-of-death-and-desire?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[https://jamesreeves.co/radio/Loss%20Response.mp3](https://jamesreeves.co/radio/Loss%20Response.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Hallucinations and Routines
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/hallucinations-and-routines/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:30.000Z
The winter has turned warm again. Rain and fog and highs inching into the fifties. I write about the weather because it is the only thing that feels true these days. This country is becoming a hallucination, everyone committed to the reality they prefer.
Time to get serious about writing again. Two hours at the library every morning except Sundays. A dead simple schedule, something I can remember even though I’m not a morning person—but I can no longer wait for the day to get out of the way. There will always be demands and obligations, but they do not need me before eleven o’clock.
Last week, I fell hard for [IBM Plex](https://www.ibm.com/plex/concept/?ref=jamesreeves.co), an open-source type system that is dignified yet future-facing, which is nice because the current future does not feel dignified. I want the things I design to feel the same: crisp, cool, and sane. It’s a never-ending search for the line between clarity and personality, a quest that might apply to dealing with the self as well.
Last night, I sat in a half-lit conference room with eight very different men, and we discussed God, forgiveness, and making amends to those we’ve lost. One man scoffed at the idea. “Let the dead bury the dead.” Another spoke of time as a kind of god, that we live with all that came before and yet to be born, which meant our dead were with us now. And why not believe this? Why not believe my dead are waiting for me to speak to them?
But I do not. Instead I drove around Ohio listening to Sisters of Mercy.
### Michael Clayton
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/you-want-to-bake-bread-go-with-god-2/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:31.000Z
Last night’s film: Tony Gilroy’s *Michael Clayton* for the 38th time because it’s one of the best movies ever made: a microscopic collision between existential anxiety and end-game capitalism, a masterclass in dialogue, and the first three minutes might be my favorite opening scene in cinema—a perfect juxtaposition of cosmic horror soundtracking the ultramundane.
> "And I’m suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I’m covered with some sort of film. And it’s in my hair, my face. It’s like a glaze, like a coating. At first I thought, my God, I know what this is, this is some sort of amniotic, embryonic fluid. I’m drenched in afterbirth. I’ve bridged the chrysalis. I’ve been reborn. But then the traffic, this stampede, the cars , the trucks, the horns, the screaming and I’m thinking, no no no, reset, this is not rebirth. This is some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moment before death."
### C. Wall Architecture
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/cwall/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:31.000Z
C.Wall Architecture is a full-service architecture and interior design firm specializing in custom-designed construction and materials. When the firm sought to refine its visual identity and showcase its extensive portfolio, I developed a streamlined, portfolio-driven website that clearly differentiates its residential and commercial projects while highlighting the cohesive sensibility across C.Wall’s work.
### 2023 Rotation
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/2023-rotation/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:31.000Z
2023 got away from me, but I’m not surprised. Time itself has gone wobbly. We’re deep into the 21st century, yet I still find myself waiting for the future to begin. Music-wise, I’ve always enjoyed cobbling together a yearly list of my favorite new albums to mark the passage of time and cement some memories. Perhaps it’s a side effect of age, but each new release these days reminds me of something I’ve heard before. Whether this is a curse or blessing, I’m not sure, but I’d like to listen to a song that immediately gives me a splitting headache or, better yet, leaves me covering my ears while screaming *that’s not music*.
I tortured my parents with Plastikman and Boogie Down Productions. They assaulted their folks with Jefferson Airplane and The Byrds, and my grandparents probably did the same with The Glen Miller Orchestra and The Andrews Sisters. Youth should frighten middle age. This is the sign of a healthy culture.
My sense of losing touch is compounded by today’s condition of all-at-once, in which images and sounds hit our devices stripped of context and location and time, leading to a strange dual sensation of liberation and stasis. So this year, release dates be damned. Here’s the music I played most often or rediscovered or that delivered an unexpected thrill while motoring through the desert.
### Scatterwound – 0.0 / MN / CB
##### Midira Records, 2017/2019/2021 | [00](https://dirkserries.bandcamp.com/album/00?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [MN](https://dirkserries.bandcamp.com/album/mn?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [CB](https://dirkserries.bandcamp.com/album/cb?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Ambient drone of the highest order. Each track ranges between fifteen and forty minutes, giving it plenty of room to slowly unfurl from the faint whir of an appliance into a monumental pulse that feels absolutely life-giving.
[0.0 by Scatterwound](https://dirkserries.bandcamp.com/album/00?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Date Palms – The Dusted Sessions
##### Thrill Jockey, 2013 | [Bandcamp](https://datepalms.bandcamp.com/album/the-dusted-sessions?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Sun-soaked desert drone like the hum of a distant powerline.
[The Dusted Sessions by Date Palms](https://datepalms.bandcamp.com/album/the-dusted-sessions?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Kevin Richard Martin – Above the Clouds
##### Intercranial Recordings, 2023 | [Bandcamp](https://kevinrichardmartin.bandcamp.com/album/above-the-clouds?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Music for a rain-soaked thriller in a fallen city: steam rises through the grates while trunk-rattling drums echo across windows with the shades drawn.
[Above the clouds by Kevin Richard Martin](https://kevinrichardmartin.bandcamp.com/album/above-the-clouds?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Reinhard Voigt - Robson Ponte
##### Kompakt, 1999 | [Bandcamp](https://reinhardvoigt.bandcamp.com/track/robson-ponte-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
While dusting off my Speicher and Kresiel records, I rediscovered this unhinged ode to a footballer. Twenty-five years later, it’s still the best thing for running as fast as I can manage, and it still gets stuck in my head for weeks: *Robson Ponte. Robson Ponte. Robson Ponte. Te. Te. Te.*
[Robson Ponte by Reinhard Voigt](https://reinhardvoigt.bandcamp.com/album/robson-ponte?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Orville Peck - “Kansas (Remembers Me Now)”
##### Pony (Sub Pop, 2019) | [Bandcamp](https://orvillepeck.bandcamp.com/track/kansas-remembers-me-now?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Woozy Americana that sounds like a half-remembered, rose-tinted fantasy, even if the song is about the murder of the Clutter family. “Come, Las Vegas sunset…”
[Pony by Orville Peck](https://orvillepeck.bandcamp.com/album/pony?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Sandra Plays Electronics – Want Need / Sessions
##### Minimal Wave | [Bandcamp](https://sandraplayselectronics.bandcamp.com/album/sessions?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Late 1980s and early 1990s sessions from the muscle behind the indispensable Sandwell District and Downwards imprints. A concoction of new wave and no wave, punk and post-punk, industrial and pre-industrial, and every other genre that produces visions edging toward the sacred.
[Want Need by Sandra Plays Electronics](https://sandraplayselectronics.bandcamp.com/album/want-need?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### DVA Damas – Nightshade / Wet Vision / Clear Cuts
##### Downwards, 2014/2015/2016 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/artists/dva-damas?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Voice, twang, and drums stripped down to raw spikes. Minimalism as a provocation, perhaps an act of seduction. Or aggression.
### Plastikman – Consumed
##### Downwards, 2014/2015/2016 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/artists/dva-damas?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A masterpiece and a monument, a cold hard tower of sound yet malleable like a Rorschach test depending on my mood. Twenty-five years later, this still sounds like the future.
[Consumed by Plastikman](https://richiehawtin.bandcamp.com/album/consumed?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Earth - “Coda Maestoso In F(Flat) Minor (Autechre Remix)”
##### *Legacy of Dissolution* (Southern Lord, 2005) | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/legacy-of-dissolution?ref=jamesreeves.co)
High-grade low-end head-nodding sludge. An essential tool for challenging times.
### Philus - “Acidophilus”
##### *Kolmio* (Sähkö, 1998) | [More](https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2017/apr/18/mika-vainios-quiet-influence-on-electronic-music-was-deafening?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Mika Vainio's dirtiest teeth-grinding moment, and he delivered so many full-bodied moments.
### Heart - "Crazy on You"
###### *Dreamboat Annie* (Mushroom, 1975) | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy%5Fon%5FYou?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A magnificent piece of songcraft, this is the plush sound of AM gold alchemized with some guitar shred. I played this song nearly every day in 2023, each time stunned by the sound of a band doing everything they know how to do all at once. It's like mainlining the 1970s in five minutes flat.
### Pieter Nooten & Michael Brook – Sleeps With the Fishes
##### 4AD, 1987 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeps%5Fwith%5Fthe%5FFishes?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight music by turns haunted and reassuring, here is the 1980s ancestor that not only birthed Bohren & Der Club of Gore’s turn of the century gloom but the emotional bombast of early M83\. And “Searching” is a stone brooding classic.
### Robert Görl - Mit Dir
##### Mute, 1983 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert%5FG%C3%83%C2%B6rl?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Everything you need from a pop song: streetlights washing across the hood, a cigarette nodding on the lip, a memory of being cooler than you ever were, and a hook that will worm its way into your dreams because even though you don’t speak the language, you get the drift.
#### See also:
- [2022 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2022-rotation/)
- [2021 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2021-rotation/)
- [2020 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2020-rotation/)
- [2019 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2019-rotation/)
- [2018 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2018-rotation/)
### After the End
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/after-the-end/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:14:53.000Z
> “Memorial artworks are notoriously difficult to pull off. Yet Candy Chang and James A. Reeves, two New York artists who have created similar installations in the past, hit just the right tone with [*After the End*](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/arts/design/art-gallery-shows-critics-picks.html?ref=jamesreeves.co), a participatory work in the Historic Chapel at Green-Wood Cemetery.”
##### [THE NEW YORK TIMES](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/arts/design/art-gallery-shows-critics-picks.html?ref=jamesreeves.co)
As one of the first garden cemeteries in America, Green-Wood Cemetery offers a contemplative respite for urban residents to commune with nature and restore perspective. [*After the End*](https://www.green-wood.com/aftertheend/?ref=jamesreeves.co) is a participatory public art installation in Green-Wood’s Historic Chapel dedicated to contemplating loss in all forms: the loss of loved ones, relationships, health, and worlds we once knew. And the practices that help us endure.
[Candy Chang](http://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and James A. Reeves invite visitors to anonymously share their experience on a scroll and place it upon an illuminated altar. Lit from within, each response takes the form of a devotional candle, and together they create an evolving field of light. A cycle of projected reflections encourages visitors to contemplate the experiences of others as well as their own as they sit in the chapel’s apse, a rarefied space oriented towards the greater community. Set to an original score by [Stephen Baker](https://stephenbaker.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co), the installation considers how we weather the difficult transitions in our lives.
Inspired by the role of light in religious ceremonies and the visions of science fiction, *After the End* offers a refuge that reminds us we are not alone as we mourn the end of one reality and enter the next.
Over 5,000 letters were written about loss. Visitors have also shared the rituals and practices that provide comfort: *I swim laps like he did…* *I eventually forgave you and now I feel lighter… The grief comes in and out like radio static… I am in recovery. I will find my way back… Trees comfort me. Faith exists in these hills… I bought a turntable and began to go through my father’s record collection, his musical legacy… I wish I had appreciated her more when she was still alive… Why did I let you go?… Every year we light candles for each of them… I’m more honest with myself than I used to be… I’ve committed to helping others who are affected by the very thing that took you from me… No matter how painful, I found myself during this time… We all need a little mercy now.*
Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk
Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk
Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk
Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk
Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk
Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk
Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk
Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk
Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk
Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk
###### *After the End* is curated by Harry Weil, Green-Wood’s Director of Public Programs. Original score by [Stephen Baker](http://stephenbaker.cc/?ref=jamesreeves.co). Acoustic design by [Connor Whiriskey](https://www.cutmistake.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). Video assistance by [Rooftop Films](https://rooftopfilms.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). Fabrication assistance by [KLN Studio](https://www.klnstudio.nyc/?ref=jamesreeves.co), Frank Morelli, William Rivera, Pelegrin Rosario, Alex Hernandez, and Joseph Cubero. Archival assistance from Nadia Delisfort. This installation is supported with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Photos by [Walter Wlodarczyk](https://www.walterwlodarczyk.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
### Prophets
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/prophets/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:32.000Z
The Joshua tree was named by Mormons in the 1850s, who thought they saw their prophet pointing to the promised land. I wonder what it would feel like to see prophets and omens in the landscape. “God is not interested in our theology but only in our silence,” writes Cormac McCarthy in *[The Passenger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FPassenger%5F%28McCarthy%5Fnovel%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, which restates Psalm 46:10 from a human point of view: “Be still and know that I am God.”
Stillness has been in short supply these days, and I’m trying to puzzle out the relationship between peace and growth. Does growth require pain? Or at least some degree of tension? I have yet to hear someone say their life was bursting with love and tranquility and they couldn’t count all the money in the bank and that’s when they decided to get spiritualized.
### Desert Nomenclature
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/desert-nomenclature/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:32.000Z
*Virga* is the name for precipitation that does not reach the ground. It hangs across the desert like a torn curtain. When rain does fall, the unique scent of a desert storm comes from the oil released by the creosote bush, and this odor has a scientific name, [*petrichor*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor?ref=jamesreeves.co), derived from *pétros*, the Greek word for *stone*, and [*ichor*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichor?ref=jamesreeves.co), the mythic golden blood of the gods. In Mexico, the creosote bush is called *gobernadora* or “the governess” because its root system crowds out nearby plants. This is why they appear so evenly spaced apart. There’s a creosote known as “King Clone” in the Mojave Desert that is 11,700 years old. The Mojave is a [rain shadow desert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain%5Fshadow?ref=jamesreeves.co) because it is surrounded by mountains that absorb the damp winds from the Pacific and dry the air on the leeward slopes.
### Vegas Dust
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/vegas-dust/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:15:15.000Z
A few minutes after midnight in the Mojave desert, a preacher appears on a dead radio channel: “The devil’s job is to deceive you. The devil’s job is to make you think that God can’t do nothin’ for you, that God don’t care about you.”
This preacher is the centerpiece of [*Vegas Dust*](https://atlasminor.bandcamp.com/album/vegas-dust?ref=jamesreeves.co), a 77-minute sequence of grainy loops and phantom Americana built for a late-night drive. Neon gives way to starlight. Voices worry about their souls on the AM dial. A caller from Twentynine Palms says the universe might not even exist, that maybe the sun is hanging from a tree somewhere. But you can never see further than your headlights.
*Vegas Dust* is now available on [Bandcamp](https://atlasminor.bandcamp.com/album/vegas-dust?ref=jamesreeves.co) (and for you bargain-hunters: three of the tracks are twenty minutes long. Because with Atlas Minor, your dollar goes further.) And [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/album/78DQY7RS4NMKKEMfnOx8tH?si=pt%5FXzPh4QQ-DNJCSTcACdg&ref=jamesreeves.co).
[Vegas Dust by Atlas Minor](https://atlasminor.bandcamp.com/album/vegas-dust?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### 100 Degrees and Snow
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/100-degrees-and-snow/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:32.000Z
Today the air temperature in Vegas reached 100 degrees for the first time this year. Meanwhile, 28 miles away, C. and I found a 68-degree breeze and a few patches of snow at 8,600 feet in the Spring Mountains.
But I did not enjoy the mountaintop. Each year I feel a little more vertiginous. A little more overwhelmed by the belly-flop sensation of tumbling from a great height. Perhaps this is another fun side-effect of becoming more familiar with mortality. Or maybe I’m just a ground-dwelling creature who prefers the pavement and neon and dunes.
#### [Abul Mogard – Dizziness That Shakes Rivers and Mountains](https://abulmogard.bandcamp.com/track/dizziness-that-shakes-rivers-and-mountains-individual-track?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Schleißen 1 | Emotional Response, 2015 | [Bandcamp](https://abulmogard.bandcamp.com/track/dizziness-that-shakes-rivers-and-mountains-individual-track?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[Schleißen 1 by Abul Mogard / Harmonious Thelonious](https://emotional-response.bandcamp.com/album/schlei-en-1?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### The New House by David Leo Rice
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-new-house-by-david-leo-rice/
Last updated: 2026-06-14T17:35:25.000Z
I can’t remember the last time I’ve dog-eared and highlighted so many pages in a novel. *[The New House](https://whiskeytit.com/product/the-new-house/?ref=jamesreeves.co)* by [David Leo Rice](https://www.raviddice.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) has become an all-time favorite—a delirious book that has burrowed into my thoughts like a seminal dream. It reads like the murk of limbic memory. And in parts, it reads like prophecy.
When a child wonders whether he is at *the* Trader Joe’s or *a* Trader Joe’s, it becomes “a question deep enough to knock on the locked doors of the sacred.” From here, the doors keep opening, one after the next, until they’re swinging like a mad cartoon, corkscrewing down into the muck of ambiguity, where things are one way yet possibly also the other way, and these endless forks generate a feedback loop of the paralyzing and the possible that feels like invention itself.
This is a fable about the headfuck of creation, and I want to press it into the hands of every artist, writer, and seeker I know.
Art-making intertwines with myth-making as we follow “an artist whose singularity will come close to justifying the entire American experiment.” He meets an enigmatic old woman who says, “When you show people images they’ve never seen before, something dead inside them comes back to life.” And this book teems with life as Rice conjures a world of shapeshifting bullies, talking drops of blood, and two villains known only as “the couple from another town”—all moving through a night “so deep it serves as a sort of anesthesia.” Likewise, Rice’s prose generates a hypnotic effect that lowers the defenses until moments of terror arrive with a single phrase, like the butcher whose voice “that of a pig who’s been trained by some lonely pervert farmer to speak.”
Ancient mysticism collides with freaky Americana in a glorious mess through which Rice carves a precision-grade line between the liberating and the horrifying—two conditions that describe any creative endeavor, including faith. There’s a moment when the hero fumbles his way to a definition of art as “the brute dragging of heavy objects from the world in which they already exist into the world in which strangers, ignorant of their origins, can admire them in comfort.” Because when it comes down to it, as one character observes, most of us “want to touch the weird without fearing that the weird will touch them back.”
This book touches back.
### Lost Lake and Last Chance Mountain
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/lost-lake-and-last-chance-mountain-2/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:33.000Z
Last night I covered my office with maps. I stayed up late and stitched together my favorite pieces of the Mojave: the Imperial Dunes and the Devil’s Playground, Last Chance Mountain and the Confusion Range. At dawn, I stepped back to admire my handiwork and discovered I’d turned into my father. Shortly before he died, he wallpapered a small room in New Orleans with maps of the bayou, marking the places he liked to fish: Jesuit Bend. Port Sulphur. Lost Lake.
For the first time in decades, I remembered the fat sheath of maps in my grandfather’s fishing boat, where I would marvel at the mythic language of Michigan’s lakes: Thunder Bay. Jackfish Channel. Knife River Harbor. I did not expect these maps of Death Valley and Joshua Tree to draw me into the past, to join me with my father and grandfather’s need to comprehend where they were. But it felt good to say hello to these memories, my ghosts. My grandfather. My father. And me, the end of the line. They had the water. I have the desert.
### Orientation
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/orientation/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:33.000Z
Here I am at last, living in the landscape I’ve craved since the first time I drove across the country. Twenty years ago, the desert appeared through my windshield, and it felt like driving into a cartoon: a yellow rectangle beneath a block of electric blue. To my Midwestern mind, accustomed to damp fields and pale skies, the Mojave was another planet. Although I was only twenty-five years old and not yet thinking about god or regret or reinvention, I heard a spiritual hum beneath the silence of the mountains. Tribes of dune buggies crawled across the dunes, and I thought I saw the future. I’m going to live here someday, I said.
Instead, life led me through cities, snow, and swamp—New York, Helsinki, New Orleans—and it took my parents and delivered terrible scenes. A pandemic. Berserkers in the Capitol. Mass shootings like the weather report. Screens that scrambled my sense of space, time, and self. And all the while, I fantasized about the desert as a refuge where I might heal my battered brain and *really* get to work.
I’m finally here, perched on the southwest edge of Vegas. But I’m older now and fighting to resist the exhaustion of the twenty-first century, or worse yet, resignation. My view of the desert has changed too. The future is still here, but I also see the past. I think about all those ancient ascetics who wandered across the sand in search of the sacred, and I wonder if I can do the same.
#### [The Date Palms – Honey Devash](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Honey%20Devash.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Honey Devash | Mexican Sumer, 2011 | [More](https://datepalms.bandcamp.com/album/the-dusted-sessions?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Honey%20Devash.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Honey%20Devash.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A sun-soaked desert hymn that veers into the otherworldly at the six-minute mark.
### The Nightly News
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-nightly-news/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:15:43.000Z
> *"We are quite probably dreaming all the time, but consciousness makes so much noise that we no longer hear the dream when awake."*
> —Carl Jung
*The Nightly News* is a participatory video-based installation that illuminates the surreal scenes of anxiety and desire when we dream. Initially created at the American School in London and expanded at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, the ever-evolving video features thousands of handwritten responses from visitors describing the striking scenes that fill their heads at night. Presenting torn responses in reverse, the video speaks to the sensation of recalling a dream: sifting through scraps, searching for meaning beyond the reach of logic.
Themes have emerged: we fall, we flee, and we search for answers. We can’t get away, our teeth fall out, and we are strangers in a strange land. Devoted to the intensely private yet universally recognizable symbols that haunt us, *The Nightly News* reminds us that we’re all deeply weird creatures bound together by nerves, fantasy, and the unknown. Created in collaboration with [Candy Chang](https://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
###### 2022, The American School In London, London, England. Projector, speakers, fabric, wood, seating, paper, pens, 36′ x 36′ x 10′ space. Installation assistance by Graham ‘Titch’ Fort, Joe Harris, Shane Murdock, Dean Hoffland, Mick Fernandez, and Youcef Benhadi. Organizational assistance by Jen Kirstein, Dean Evans, Gavin Hughes, and Cosmo Murphy. This installation is supported by the Innovator-in-Residence Program at the American School In London.
2023, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, Michigan. Projector, speakers, wood, seating, paper, pens. Curated by Dalina Perdomo Alvarez. Organized by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum in collaboration with Michigan State University’s International Studies and Programs. Special thanks to DEI Program Coordinator Anjam Chaudhary.
### Seven Years Ago, I Placed a Significant Bet
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/seven-years-ago-i-placed-a-significant-bet-2/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:34.000Z
I live in Las Vegas, but I do not gamble. When I first visited the Strip twenty years ago, I tried my luck at blackjack. Took out $100 in mad money. Lost $85 immediately. Back then, they had $3 tables with human dealers rather than machines, and a kind woman from Monterey showed me how to split and double down. I kept winning and let it ride, telling myself it was just fifteen bucks. Night became day, but I had no concept of time until I realized I’d smoked an entire pack of cigarettes. I was up nearly $800.
Five years later, I drove through Vegas again. I’m great at blackjack, I thought. I should play. Vegas took it all back and then some. This city will get its money, no matter how long it takes.
So I do not gamble. Except for one longstanding wager.
Seven years ago, C. and I debated how the world would end. We’ll all be killed by a disease, she said. All those chemicals, long-haul flights, and antibiotics are going to add up to something bad. I thought it would be [the singularity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological%5Fsingularity?ref=jamesreeves.co), mostly because I was reading a lot of sci-fi. Our conversation felt theoretical at the time, this debate over whether we’d perish while holding hands on a cot beneath the harsh lights of a stadium transformed into a quarantine zone, or if we’d be running through the streets for our lives before getting laser-blasted by a renegade sex robot.
During the peak of the pandemic, there was a constant hum from C., faint but unmistakable. It said *I told you so*. But I’m gaining serious ground this year. I don’t think the Rise of the ChatBots will destroy us right away. [Torching the livelihoods of millions](https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/will-ai-become-the-new-mckinsey?ref=jamesreeves.co) so a few billionaires can line their pockets is the next logical step. But you never know what the side effects of any new technology will be. If someone told me fifteen years ago that Facebook and Twitter would transform America into a basketcase, I doubt I would have listened. I don’t know if anyone could connect the dots between sharing a picture of your lunch and attempting to hang the vice president. Social media seemed benign in its early years. AI feels sinister after two months.
So our wager continues, and it will be the biggest jackpot of all: one of us gets to look into the other’s eyes during our final moments and know we were right.
#### [Religious Knives – Luck](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Luck.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Resin | No Fun, 2008 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/resin-d5a050d3-a9f3-45f2-b3f6-3cc3c38c4cbd?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Luck.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Luck.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### The Effects Are Deeper Than the Struggle to Remain Upright
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-effects-are-deeper-than-the-struggle-to-remain-upright-2/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:34.000Z
The wind is fierce in the San Gorgonio Pass, the narrow strip between the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains where there’s a field of [1,224 wind turbines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San%5FGorgonio%5FPass%5Fwind%5Ffarm?ref=jamesreeves.co). On Interstate 10, a gust knocked over a truck and its container blocked the westbound lanes. C. and I thought about the wind a lot as we toured [Desert X](https://desertx.org/dx/dx-23?ref=jamesreeves.co), an exhibition of large-scale installations scattered around the margins of Palm Springs. We bowed our heads into 40-mile-per-hour gusts while we visited a chain-link maze and a headless, armless woman on a bucking horse.
Why does the wind leave us feeling so exhausted and harassed? I pondered this while we trudged into another howling gust to view an eerie ballet of mechanical bulls replaced by steel plates. C. said the wind tires us out because we use our muscles to brace against it. But I think the effects are more profound than struggling to remain upright, almost metaphysical, as if my life force is being blown away. C. stopped and looked at me, her hair whipping around her face. “So you think the wind is blowing away your ch’i?” Yes. It’s all over the Coachella Valley now.
*No. 1225 Chainlink* by Rana Begum
*Searching for the Sky (While Maintaining Equilibrium)* by Mario García Torres
*Namak Nazar* by Hylozoic/Desires
Just off 29 Palms Highway, [a loudspeaker](https://desertx.org/dx/dx-23/hylozoic-desires?ref=jamesreeves.co) broadcasted a frantic chant followed by ritualistic drums. As we approached, a soothing voice unfurled a theory about a grain of salt that can heal our climate. It’s a fine rare thing to encounter a conspiracy aimed in a positive direction rather than the usual apocalyptic doom.
But the most compelling piece was an incidental moment rather than any piece of art, which is often the case. As we walked alongside the eastbound lanes of Interstate 10 to see a sculptural arrangement of shipping containers, we passed a billboard for Tattoo Mark’s Estate Sales. A 20-foot-tall man in a ball cap grimaced above the speeding traffic as if struggling to arrange his face to meet the chipper demands of advertising while maintaining the solemnity his trade requires.
*Sleeping Figure* by Matt Johnson
The tangled formation of shipping containers was a beautiful feat of scale and balance, although I wish it wasn’t arranged like a reclining person. The artist even drew a face. I’d rather see a mystery and imagine the kind of force that could produce such an uneasy arrangement. Perhaps a terrible wind. As I stood beneath the shadow of a cantilevered Chinese shipping container, I thought about the truck flipped over on the interstate. But mostly, I thought about Tattoo Mark moving through the homes of the dead.
### A Scribble, an Exploded Rocket, and an Oyster Omelet
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-scribble-an-exploded-rocket-and-an-oyster-omelet/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:34.000Z
Woke up the other day and watched a billionaire’s rocket explode. Then C. and I ate breakfast at a Taiwanese deli on Rainbow Road: a bowl of soy milk, intensely fried bread, and an oyster omelet. We wandered into a hip zone of Vegas where a 1960s motel has been retrofitted into a breeding ground for nitro coldbrew, artisanal photography, chalkboard mantras, and shade-grown candles. Every surface gleamed with a gently neutered Art Deco aesthetic that belongs to no geography or point of view beyond lifestyle pieces that use phrases like “digital nomad”—a style so frictionless and familiar it feels almost narcotic.
Bought a small new notebook to carry around the desert, and it’s a pleasant shade of green. Whenever I buy a new notebook, the first thing I do is make an ugly scrawl to prevent myself from ever mistaking it for something precious.
In *[Novelist as a Vocation](https://www.harukimurakami.com/book/novelist-as-a-vocation?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, Haruki Murakami contemplates why his novels sold particularly well during times of sudden upheaval: Russia and Eastern Europe as communism collapsed, Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He writes:
> In any age, when something major occurs and there’s a shift in social reality, there’s a related yearning for a shift in the reality of stories as well. Stories can exist as metaphors for reality, and people need to internalize new stories (and new systems of metaphor) in order to cope with an unfolding new reality. By successfully connecting these two systems, the system of actual society and the metaphoric systems . . . people are able to accept an uncertain reality and maintain their sanity. I get the sense that the reality in the stories I provide in my fiction just happens to function globally as a kind of cogwheel that makes that adjustment possible.
This is a sound case for fiction when things get weird, particularly stories that shrug off the familiar and engage with the surreal. “Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all,” said [André Breton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9%5FBreton?ref=jamesreeves.co) a century ago. “Convulsive beauty will be veiled-erotic, fixed-explosive, magic-circumstantial or not at all.” Could this sensibility also insert itself into our cafes, motels, parking garages, and department stores?
#### [Eternal Tapestry – The Weird Stone](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Weird%20Stone.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### A World Out of Time | Thrill Jockey, 2012 | [Bandcamp](https://eternaltapestry1.bandcamp.com/album/a-world-out-of-time?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Weird%20Stone.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Weird%20Stone.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Goddammit, I Just Graded a Fucking Robot
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/dammit-i-just-graded-a-fucking-robot-2/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:34.000Z
In this Terrible Year of 2023 when algorithms are chewing through the scenery, I thought I was decent at catching AI-generated vapor from my students. The incursions have been fewer than expected—and painfully obvious. Perhaps this is because I continually nudge my students to connect everything we read to their personal experiences. I want them to rant, revelate, and set the course material on fire if need be. Because the last thing anyone needs to write—or read—is another summary of the Bauhaus or ode to Constructivism. I take the work we do together seriously, aiming for conversation rather than evaluation until we find ourselves asking questions we cannot yet answer.
But the other day, I was sleepy, and after a long day of grading, I thought I was reading an especially uninspired essay about Walter Benjamin’s “[Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction](https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf?ref=jamesreeves.co),” and I responded with a few hundred words of feedback and questions. Then it hit me. With gritted teeth, I pasted the essay into a text box, and yep, three of the algorithms that check the other algorithms delivered a 92% result.
And it was about the goddamned work of art in the goddamned age of mechanical reproduction, of all things. Perhaps I should just enjoy the beautiful irony here, but the image of myself spending my brief time on this planet thoughtfully reading and responding to the patterns of an algorithm fills me with a horror that edges toward the existential. And for some reason, I also feel a little dirty.
### She Reminisced About the Cambrian Period
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/she-reminisced-about-the-cambrian-period/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:35.000Z
Twenty-six inches of rain fell in Fort Lauderdale yesterday, and they’re calling it a once-in-a-thousand-year flood. At this point, it feels like we’re all hundreds of thousands of years old. Meanwhile in the Mojave desert, we’re hoping to prevent a “dead pool,” a grim term for the moment Lake Meade drops so low the Hoover Dam can no longer function, which would knock out portions of the electrical grid and eliminate freshwater to a fair chunk of the southwest. The [federal government](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/11/climate/colorado-river-water-cuts-drought.html?ref=jamesreeves.co) is calling for water reductions, [nineteen bills](https://knpr.org/show/knprs-state-of-nevada/2023-04-13/several-bills-even-from-northern-lawmakers-focus-on-nevadas-water?ref=jamesreeves.co) are pending in Nevada, and the water wars are coming.
C. and I wandered further into the desert last weekend. As we marveled at the tower of rock that loomed before us, she told me we were looking at the “[Bonanza King Formation,](https://dbpedia.org/page/Bonanza%5FKing%5FFormation?ref=jamesreeves.co)” a lovely bit of cadence that sounds like a doomed band from the 1970s. Dead crustaceans create limestone, she said, and this part of the desert was unique because ancient slabs of limestone live on top of younger rocks due to collisions between the continental plates. We scrabbled among red and yellow boulders, and I happily listened while she reminisced about the Cambrian period when the Pacific coastline was somewhere in Utah.
As we picked our way along a ridge, I tried to imagine myself as an amateur geologist, someone for whom this static landscape was filled with slow-motion violence and flux. Could I ever become interested in rocks, or must it take catastrophic weather to get my attention? These days it might be more necessary than ever to develop an eye for the timeless.
### What Happens Here Happens Everywhere
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/what-happens-here-happens-everywhere/
Last updated: 2026-02-19T13:08:41.000Z
C.’s flight home from the Middle West was delayed due to some tornadoes that were tearing up Missouri, so I had time to kill at the Las Vegas airport, where it feels like being returned to a pleasant memory of 1987: corridors of neon, spaceship aluminum, slot machines, and burgundy carpet.
Eager tourists queued up to photograph themselves with the new Vegas slogan. A few years ago, Vegas decided to shake off the sleazy implications of *What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas*. So they hired an advertising agency to drain the English language of any meaning until it became a cheap koan that belongs anywhere: *[What happens here, only happens here](https://rrpartners.com/case-study/lvcva-what-happens-here-only-happens-here/?ref=jamesreeves.co).* I pondered this phrase until it became terrifyingly existential.
A tattered man settled into the bench next to me and surrounded himself with a fortress of plastic bags and the weather of the street. He launched into a litany of muttered theories about the government and a man named Bobby. I would have given him a dollar or two, but I never seem to have any cash these days. It might be worth carrying some for these moments. Because I’m goddamned lucky. A few tweaks in the timeline could have left me in his seat, haunted and alone. Hell, it could still happen. Two airport cops eyed the man for a while, then kept walking.
Time stretched into a crawl while my neighbor’s muttering downshifted into a snore. Eventually, the big screen said C.’s flight had landed, and I scanned the faces that passed by, each defined by the simple fact of not belonging to her. When I finally spotted her at the other end of the terminal, she gave a little wave, and time resumed again.
### Letting Go of the Maps in My Head
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/letting-go-of-the-maps-in-my-head/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:35.000Z
We live in the far southwestern corner of Las Vegas, and it’s a strange nexus between the extremes of nature and civilization. Four miles to the west, there is no cell service, and the temperature begins to drop as the mountains rise. Six miles to the east, there’s, well, *Vegas*: manic neon, skyscraper-sized screens, and the fever dream of end-game capitalism buffed and polished to a synthetic sheen.
The first three months of 2023 have been the coldest in Las Vegas in over fifty years. But yesterday was pleasant, so C. and I headed into the mountains. You can tell a lot about a relationship by the way couples hike. A sunburnt man raced ahead, screaming at his partner to hurry up, while others ambled and murmured, lost in their private worlds. C. and I just tend to get lost. We’ll climb onto a boulder, scan for trail markers or cairns, and realize we’ve wandered into god only knows. Straying from the prescribed path makes me antsy, but the whole point of dealing with nature might be learning to let go of the little maps and well-worn paths in my head.
The desert silence baffles my Midwestern mind. No birds chirping, no insects buzzing, not even the faint hum that I associate with humidity. It feels like I’m on a movie set, a manufactured world, and sometimes my hand reaches for a boulder, expecting it to be made of papier-mâché. This fleeting confusion between the genuine and the artificial captures my sense of being alive these days.
### Technology Might Have Peaked With Magnetic Tape
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/technology-might-have-peaked-with-magnetic-tape/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:36.000Z
The winter gloom has receded from Vegas, leaving behind electric blue skies punctuated by a few Super Mario clouds. I’ve been working on touching my toes because I worry I’m getting creaky. Last week, I could barely reach my knees, but now I can almost brush my shins. I don’t want to become one of those grey men who struggle to put on their socks or sigh when they drop a pen, knowing it will be a significant event to retrieve it. I need to find a way to do the same with my brain because the future is coming fast and weird, and I’ll need a limber disposition to survive it.
“Soon we will find ourselves living inside the hallucinations of non-human intelligence,” said some big thinkers in [The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/opinion/yuval-harari-ai-chatgpt.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=gzEiqA63Jl%5FN5vmoYjvv4H1W2bksNKM6Ap980TGy0H7HaSejgKx6BiAjlb4kDECjfiAQ66GKjELmpUj401dx-EPIdLstynog01X-wZkyEAR%5FEsE8CUT7jdx5r63zt334pmPlNv3d2E6yUImNagPIspy%5FM0AJqDbAZrTB1oF0PUYLmL%5FdeD5KDVZyzQDP%5FdbXs-cEHORT69aVaqhPFvDYN3GUxGnqhDn6g1PUQP%5FwpIlPwZlKi6GbHUuxL9XFfEuNj7Dl%5F3R1wpwmQQljyPvGJ4CjFzQfVRKz%5F3SrNbAAT7po3hsgVQaMJNUrv1rG34GawcKnFQJglCgOlLbrmG3Ry8U&smid=url-share&ref=jamesreeves.co). It’s already made an incursion into my classroom. A student wrote, “I cannot describe the last advertisement to influence my behavior because I am a machine-learning model and I experience the world differently than human beings.” How do you respond to this type of thing? That night I stared at the ceiling, worrying about a world where writing becomes so cheap that reading is pointless and frightened by the havoc that will occur when these systems inevitably converge with the personal data harvested from us over the years. Technology might have peaked with magnetic tape: mix tapes and movies on VHS—perhaps that’s all we ever needed.
A delightful sense of slippage occurs when you can’t decide if something is brilliant or awful, which is how I felt the first time I heard [Deux](https://mw-deux.bandcamp.com/album/golden-dreams-ep?ref=jamesreeves.co), a French synthwave duo who recorded a handful of tracks in the early 1980s before disappearing. In a dimension light years away from whatever their synthesizers are doing, Cati Tête and Gérard Pelletier mumble-sing to each other about how it might be time to dance, and they sound effortlessly cool, an effect enhanced by the photograph on the cover of *[Golden Dreams](https://mw-deux.bandcamp.com/album/golden-dreams-ep?ref=jamesreeves.co)*. The two of them look so young and hopeful and French, smoking in a way that makes me miss cigarettes terribly. There’s a tenderness to this snapshot: forty years have passed, and Pelletier passed away in 2013\. Thanks to the indispensable Minimal Wave label, their music has earwormed into my day-to-day life. In addition to “Golden Dreams,” I highly recommend the android grind of “[Lassitude](https://open.spotify.com/track/2ic8EdvL4dYP0sJJAzD0A8?ref=jamesreeves.co),” the spiky bop of “[Game and Performance](https://mw-deux.bandcamp.com/track/game-and-performance?ref=jamesreeves.co),” and the terrifyingly catchy “[Decadence](https://open.spotify.com/track/7GSJ44BWvsVx5DkhVidou7?si=0fc54143a23d4592&ref=jamesreeves.co)”.
### Suddenly We Found Ourselves Hiking
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/suddenly-we-found-ourselves-hiking/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:36.000Z
At what point does a walk become a hike? C. and I often ponder this when we find ourselves on a dirt path or crossing a parking lot. We’ve decided it requires a bit of an incline and enough time to demand a granola bar.
We have interesting discussions when we wander into nature. If dehydration became life-threatening, would you rather drink your own urine or someone else’s? The car was still in sight when this question came up. Or if starvation was on the table, would you rather eat your own finger or a stranger’s? This inspired some lively debate. On the one hand, we know where we’ve been and what we’re made of, but God only knows the ingredients of a stranger. Then again, consuming oneself has an ouroboros quality that feels demonic.
A few years ago, our friends dragged us on a hike through [a New Hampshire forest](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/nature/?ref=jamesreeves.co), and they moved with terrifying urgency. We sat down at the first scenic viewpoint and let them continue crashing through the trees so they could exorcise their ghosts and satisfy whatever hunger was pushing them onwards.
But now that we’re in the desert, we want to engage with the scenery beyond the windshield. So we drove ten minutes to Red Rock Canyon and suddenly we found ourselves hiking. We leapt across creeks, shimmied up ledges, and at one point, we clung to the sheer face of an action-movie boulder over a canyon that plunged into the center of the earth. I can’t believe the government allows its citizens to risk their lives like this.
Vista of Vegas from the Calico Tanks
At first, I hated everything about it, this scrabbling across the rocks like an animal. Everyone else wore grippy shoes and backpacks stuffed with equipment I couldn’t even guess at, and as I scrambled after C., who was weirdly talented at hopping from rock to rock, I was convinced I was about to become a local news item. When we finally reached the summit, we were rewarded with a view of Vegas that reinforced my theory that this city is a mirage. Then I needed to sit down as a bout of vertigo took hold.
On the way back down, I moved more confidently. That sheer drop into the center of the earth was actually only four or five feet, and I felt surprisingly good and accomplished. Like I’d satisfied a hunger I never knew I had.
### Church Attendance Is Lowest in Nevada
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/church-attendance-is-lowest-in-nevada-2/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:36.000Z
Heavy skies here in Vegas, and the wind has been ferocious. I had no idea there was so much weather in the desert. By now, I thought I’d be begging for a cloud.
“I can’t wait for summer,” I said, and the lady cutting my hair shushed me as if I were summoning a demon. She gave me a long talk about hydration while she snipped away. Not just plenty of water, she said, but also salads and cucumbers, and you should never go outside in daylight. By the time she finished, I was convinced a cup of coffee in July would send me to the emergency room.
“I love the summer,” said the man next to me. “Especially the nights.”
“Because it gets cooler?”
“Because it’s hot and dark.”
Among all U.S. states, church attendance is lowest in Nevada. But I think this is where I’ll really learn to pray. The other day C. and I went to a zen temple behind a strip mall for a beginner’s meditation session. We removed our shoes and stepped inside to find a dozen bald elderly people in red robes chanting in Burmese. We edged backward out of the room and quietly closed the door.
The wind is still howling, but the cold is finally gone. Forty-mile-per-hour gusts out of the southwest spill over the Spring Mountains after soaking California with another atmospheric river and a collapsed bank.
### We Searched for 10,000 Acres of Sand
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/we-searched-for-10000-acres-of-sand-2/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:37.000Z
Saturday night in Death Valley was wild. Ninety-mile-per-hour curves and a thirty-degree temperature shift as C. and I dropped out of the Spring Mountains, hooked a left at [the opera house](http://jamesreeves.co/opera/?ref=jamesreeves.co), and motored toward Zabriskie Point, where the wind tore us to pieces. Fifty-mile-per-hour gusts blew the lifeforce from our bodies as we surveyed the dramatic rocks of Red Cathedral and teetered back to the car.
We looped around for fifty miles, hunting for some famous sand dunes, but we couldn’t find the damned things. But Death Valley is a place where ten thousand acres of scenery can easily go missing. The area spans over three million acres, and it is a zone that can only be understood by extreme measurements: elevation, wind speed, precipitation, and temperature.
Maybe we’ll find the dunes next time, we said as we dropped down into Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level. *Next time*. Maybe even next weekend because it’s only eighty miles from our place. Later that night, a friend in New Orleans called while I waited in a Vegas parking lot for some Singapore *mei fun*.
“What’s in Death Valley?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “And everything.”
#### [Tim Hecker – In Death Valley](https://timhecker.bandcamp.com/album/konoyo?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Konoyo | Kranky, 2018 | [Bandcamp](https://timhecker.bandcamp.com/album/konoyo?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/In%20Death%20Valley.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/In%20Death%20Valley.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### My Dithering has Reached Its Vanishing Point
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/my-dithering-has-reached-its-vanishing-point-2/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:37.000Z
Las Vegas is 2100 feet above sea level and surrounded by mountains. The highest peak is 11,000 feet. Right now, snow covers most of the ranges, which I did not expect when I moved to the desert. But I should look at the mountains instead of the news. The New York Times has a story about “the power of instant pudding mix” next to horrific photos from an endless war.
My office has three little whiteboards that tell me what to do, and I rely upon them entirely because I’m a nitwit in the morning. The dust doesn’t shake lose until noon. I also have a large plant I’m trying my best not to kill.
Yesterday I ignored my whiteboard and watched the profoundly unnecessary mid-2010s remakes of *Total Recall* and *Robocop*. It must have taken a heroic effort to destroy all the joy that made the original versions so iconic. (It’s called “Robocop,” for fuck’s sake, how can you not make it fun?) Even the winks at classic moments such as the Two Weeks Lady or “I’d buy that for a dollar” were delivered with furrowed brows among grayscale scenery. Now granted, Paul Verhoeven is a uniquely bonkers director, but the gulf between his 20th-century sci-fi camp and these glum 21st-century remakes might be the clearest example of the condition that has infected so much contemporary television and film, in which grinding ponderousness is mistaken for prestige entertainment. I hope the darling of the moment, *The Last of Us*, marks the vanishing point for these dour fantasies, and we can make robots and zombies fun again.
Another vanishing point: I know I’ve reached a tough spot with writing when I find myself dithering over whether to use a serif or sans-serif font for my blog. I cannot overstate how much this decision pains me. It is philosophical, perhaps ethical, and certainly reflects a point of view.
Sans-serif makes good sense on screens. Dull typefaces like Arial and Source Sans have become the invisible carrier waves of email, Wikipedia, and search results; they are [Beatrice Warde’s crystal goblet](https://readings.design/PDF/The%20Crystal%20Goblet.pdf?ref=jamesreeves.co) of the digital age, and I feel obligated to embrace this future. Serifs, however, are willfully defiant of the pixel, reaching instead back to the days of chiseling letters into stone. This emphasis on the manual rather than the mechanical gives serif text a sense of warmth and ease. So I’ve switched my stylesheet to serifs because I could use some of that. Although by the time you read this, I may have changed it back again.
Now I should return to my whiteboards, which are admonishing me to finish revising the last sixty-eight pages of my manuscript—and to do it with pen and paper so I don’t wind up in typographic cul-de-sacs or lost in stories about instant pudding mix.
### And Entropy Makes Itself Known to Me
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/and-entropy-makes-itself-known-to-me-2/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:37.000Z
It’s cold in Vegas, and strange material is falling from the sky, a plasticky hybrid of snow and hail called *[graupel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graupel?ref=jamesreeves.co)* that takes a long time to melt. Meanwhile, I’ve humbled myself and purchased a pair of reading glasses.
I’d been frowning at fine print in the kitchen for nearly a year. Lists of ingredients and legal clauses would swim before me, just beyond the bounds of legibility, and I told myself it was a trick of the light rather than the result of the grey in my beard.
A few months ago, I was waiting for C. at the superstore when I pulled a pair of reading glasses from a rack by the register, and I was astonished by how much sharper my immediate world became. How else was I needlessly suffering? But I did not buy the glasses due to a potent mixture of denial and pride. There was nothing wrong with squinting. I was probably just going through a phase.
Yesterday, I finally purchased a pair of ugly reading glasses for six dollars, and I gritted my jaw and held my breath as I swiped them at the self-checkout station, bracing for a dramatic leap into middle age. Now I need to wear them.
On Flamingo Avenue, a stranger told me a fable about a traveler who climbed a mountain to ask a wise monk the secret to happiness. “Do not argue with fools,” said the monk. The traveler said he disagreed. The monk smiled and said okay.
And on the subject of foolishness and aging, here’s [a thirty-year-old staple from my youth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXJc2NYwHjw&ref=jamesreeves.co) transformed into a glacial blur on the [new compilation](https://ecstaticrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/catch-feelings?ref=jamesreeves.co) from the top-shelf Ecstatic imprint. I keep waiting for the beat to drop, but it never comes.
[Catch Feelings by 93 'Til Infinity](https://ecstaticrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/catch-feelings?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Towers of Red Rock Loomed Over Us Like a Beautiful Threat
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/towers-of-red-rock-loomed-over-us-like-a-beautiful-threat/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:38.000Z
Yesterday C. and I took a break from our screens and drove into [the Valley of Fire](https://parks.nv.gov/parks/valley-of-fire?ref=jamesreeves.co), a surreal stretch of geology an hour northeast of Vegas. From the passenger seat, C. told me this was where they filmed *[Total Recall](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DwNb-ZGVjE&ref=jamesreeves.co)*, and our journey became a pilgrimage to a time when entertainment was fun and science fiction still felt far away.
Towers of red rock loomed over us like a beautiful threat. It was the first warm day of the season, and the trail was crowded. Shuffling through nature’s silence with strangers felt oddly intimate. Voices carry. Every lover’s whisper and family squabble. Every count to three for the camera. We spread ourselves across a sheet of red sandstone, two dozen clumps of humanity from all corners of the world, each searching for an untouched vista that felt like the movies.
Back in the parking lot, I admired a man slouched in a lawn chair on top of a battered Winnebago. He wore mirrorshades, had a gnarly beard, and smiled down upon us like someone who might cheerfully tell you the end of days were nigh. He seemed to have his priorities straight, like he’d made peace with something I was only beginning to grasp, and I thought about him while I drove home to check my inbox.
Nature is noisy tonight. The wind is howling with 70-mile-per-hour gusts, and the temperature is crashing. Flights have been grounded, and several roads are closed due to blowing dust. But I like to think that man in mirrorshades is still on top of his Winnebago, untouched and unruffled, the unmoved mover at the center of the storm.
Meanwhile, Erika of Ectomorph has delivered [a much-awaited second album](https://erika.bandcamp.com/album/anevite-void-it-50?ref=jamesreeves.co) that functions as a perfect soundtrack for a midnight desert storm. Highly recommended.
#### [Erika – Desert Red](https://erika.bandcamp.com/album/anevite-void-it-50?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Anevite Void | Interdimensional Transmissions, 2023 | [Bandcamp](https://erika.bandcamp.com/album/anevite-void-it-50?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Desert%20Red.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Desert%20Red.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### So Much Civilization Where There Shouldn’t Be
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/so-much-civilization-where-there-shouldnt-be/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:38.000Z
An old friend from Boston visited the other day, and we sped into Death Valley to see the desert, stopping by the old opera house before we looped back to the city. The appearance of Vegas is always a shock to the system: so much electricity where there shouldn’t be.
In the evening, we hit the Strip because my friend wanted to gamble. The only game he wanted to play was the coin pusher, those old arcade machines with a metal arm that nudges a pile of coins toward the edge. Coin pushers aren’t a big draw in Vegas. As we scrolled past the roulette and blackjack tables, the atmosphere shifted from scented lobbies and luxury malls to cigarette smoke and stained carpet, and the themes became increasingly blunt. Beneath the eye of the Luxor’s pyramid, plastic pharaohs gazed down upon us, and I pondered the idea of a Vegas-themed casino until I gave myself a headache.
We found a bank of coin pushers in the Fun Dungeon of Excalibur, a casino that feels like getting kidnapped at a Renaissance fair while on dirty hallucinogenics. My friend diligently plugged tokens into the machine, where they joined a delicate web of coins *so close* to falling over the edge that I held my breath. Here was suspense and possibility in its most concrete form. Eventually, the coins fell, and my friend collected a small payout of tickets that could be traded for candy, which he gave to a small boy and his father.
Metaphors and lessons abound.
### The Reassuring Cadence of Living in the Sprawl
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/february-13-2023/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:38.000Z
These are days of shooting down unidentifiable objects in the sky. Yesterday they shot down “an octagonal structure with strings” over Lake Huron. It’s a delightful story, even though it’s probably a trial run for something more sinister.
Meanwhile, Las Vegas is a city of suddenness and extremes. The other day, C. and I raced along a blank desert parkway that felt like driving across a blank sheet of paper. Then we hit a glossy miracle mile to run some errands. IKEA, Home Depot, and Target: the reassuring cadence of living in the sprawl. At Barnes & Noble, a man hollered into his telephone about how they had no right to make him take a DNA test.
As we inched eastwards across the city, we took random turns just to see what was there, and soon we were lost in a maze of service drives, scrapyards, and sun-battered strip clubs beneath ancient billboards of fading flesh and thongs. We hooked a left on Deliveries Only Road and landed the car in the parking structure for the Bellagio, mainly to take advantage of the free parking for Nevada residents, partially to check out the casino’s elaborate diorama for the Year of the Rabbit.
We wandered the corridors of an airport-sized replica of a Mediterranean villa until we collided with a three-story [Chinese god of wealth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caishen?ref=jamesreeves.co) who lorded over a network of plastic bridges and artificial rivers with dancing fish and rabbits. Digital fireworks exploded across the walls, and I admired how so many pieces of space and time had collided here in the most plastic way imaginable.
I caught the same thrill the other day at a Szechuan joint when a man loudly proclaimed that Moscow has more airports than Los Angeles over the vocoded chorus of “California Love.” Or this morning at the Korean market as Hank Williams moaned on the PA system while we hunted for a tin of panang curry.
### A Landscape that Functions Like Memory
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/february-5-2023-2/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:39.000Z
I could not sleep last night in Los Angeles. The hotel room had turned humid, and when I stepped outside, the weather was worse. Heavy clouds and fog covered the sky as dawn broke. Bouts of insomnia used to torture me, but I’m getting better at sleepless nights. I read. I write. I walk. I’ve learned to relax because I’ve discovered I can still function without sleep, even though the day burns brighter at the edges.
Los Angeles looked like a prestige dystopia as we inched towards Interstate 15 early on a Sunday morning. In the wake of record-breaking rain, electric green vines and weeds spilled down walls of damp concrete, and a heavy fog draped itself across eight lanes of traffic and swallowed the vehicles a few yards ahead. After we crossed the San Gabriel Mountains, patches of sunlight broke through the dark grey swirl, and soon we were speeding northeast to Vegas under a brilliant blue sky.
Twelve miles east of Barstow, where the desert appears especially endless, I glimpsed [the Tank Man in Tiananmen Square](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank%5FMan?ref=jamesreeves.co). Dammit, I thought, maybe I can’t function without sleep after all.
Tank Man by Chen Weiming | Yermo, California
We hit the brakes and followed a dusty road past the gigantic fiberglass ice cream sundae that marks [Eddie World](https://eddieworld.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co), the largest gas station in California. A mile later, there was a handmade sign for [Liberty Sculpture Park](https://en.libertysculpturepark.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co), a 36-acre patch of desert purchased by the artist [Chen Weiming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen%5FWeiming%5F%28sculptor%29?ref=jamesreeves.co) as “a memorial ground for victims of communism.”
Gigantic sculptures dotted the horizon: Xi Jinping’s bloodied head, thirty feet high with COVID-19 spike protein for hair—and theories that [the Chinese government had torched its first iteration](https://news.artnet.com/art-world/us-blames-china-operatives-sculpture-burning-2166879?ref=jamesreeves.co). A recreation of [the Goddess of Democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddess%5Fof%5FDemocracy?ref=jamesreeves.co) stared down Interstate 15, a hundred yards away from the number 64 sculpted in steel, 6.4 meters tall, to commemorate the date of the massacre in Tiananmen Square, which is 6400 miles away. And there was the Tank Man, staring down [a Soviet-style T-54 tank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-54/T-55%5Foperators%5Fand%5Fvariants?ref=jamesreeves.co#T-54) in the blankness of the Mojave desert.
Perhaps the American desert is a canvas large enough to contain scenes from all corners. But I’m beginning to think something else is at work in this landscape that functions like memory, how it distills history and fantasy into visions that refer back to the ancients who believed this hallucinatory space spoke the language of faith and horror.
### The Games We Play in Museums
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-games-we-play-in-museums/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:39.000Z
C. and I spent the day wandering through museums. There’s a game we play whenever we enter a gallery: after spending a few minutes looking at every painting in the room, we guess each other’s favorite. This wager forces us to slow down and consider each image more closely. But sometimes, the game feels risky. After all these years, how well do I know C.’s taste? How well does she know mine?
How do we define *favorite*? Over the years, we’ve landed on three criteria, which sometimes overlap:
- Which painting do you like the most?
- Which would you like to live with at home?
- Which draws your eye?
The last question has become the most interesting. I’m more aware of the images that magnetize my eye even if—sometimes especially if—they do not match my sensibilities. An uneasy blotch of color or the shine in some dead countess’s eye will leave me rethinking my default preferences and spiraling into existential terrain: what is taste, anyway, and where does it come from? Do I even *know* what I like? And so on.
In gallery E203 at the Getty, we both selected Jusepe de Ribera’s [stern portrait of Euclid](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/108GV4?ref=jamesreeves.co). Two rooms later, C. thought my favorite painting was a tranquil Madonna, but it was a dark [picture of a pope](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103RJN?ref=jamesreeves.co). I’m glad I can still surprise her.
### Landscapes Like Scenes from Tomorrow
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/february-3-2023/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:39.000Z
California was a shocking green as C. and I drove into Los Angeles, the hills almost alpine while we navigated ten lanes of bumper-to-bumper.
Last night we visited a friend in the Coachella Valley who studies water for a living. Water leads to fire, he said. The heavy rains that battered California last month are generating more grass which will die over the summer and provide more fuel for fires. We nodded quietly over our drinks, grateful for our yard of sand in Nevada.
At the Broad Museum, we dug [the William Kentridge exhibit](https://www.thebroad.org/art/special-exhibitions/william-kentridge-praise-shadows?ref=jamesreeves.co), whose smoldering landscapes looked like scenes from a fast-approaching future.
Kentridge’s sketches and films meld the surreal with the political but, above all, they offer a reminder of the value of art as performance, a mode of play rather than a clinical intellectual exercise. The charcoal smudges, the streaks of erasure, the jittery handheld camera—at what point does imperfection accumulate into a distinct aesthetic? In Kentridge’s hands, the stray marks that my perfectionist brain would consider an error become a vital style, ripe with mystery and teeth.
7 Fragments for Georges Méliès, Day for Night and Journey to the Moon, 2003
Messiness will be a crucial tool in the footrace against artificial intelligence.
Meanwhile, a Chinese surveillance balloon was spotted over Montana. In our hotel room, C. and I caught a few minutes of the Pentagon’s press briefing, where a taciturn general studded with brass said the word *balloon* in every sentence. It was delightful. Can we shoot it down? asked the reporters. Where is the balloon now? “The public can look up in the sky and see where the balloon is,” the general said.
The Chinese spy balloon has become part of the weather report as it drifts across Kansas and Missouri. Perhaps this is a weird echo of the mood that swept America in 1957 when Russia launched Sputnik.
### Yet the Horizon Never Seems to Draw Closer
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/february-2-2023/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:39.000Z
I spent my birthday speeding through the Mojave with C., and it was the best celebration I could ask for. Time and space get wobbly in the desert. I think I’m puttering along, but the speedometer says 98\. Hundred-mile distances collapse, yet the interesting scenery on the horizon never seems to draw closer.
Thirty minutes southwest of Vegas, my heart leapt when I saw I had no signal. It’s so rare to find myself out of range, unreachable, and I savored the sensation. (It rarely occurs to me that I can turn my telephone off.) We zipped along the two-lane ribbons that carved up [Bristol Lake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol%5FLake?ref=jamesreeves.co), a dried-up landscape of mud, gypsum, and pyramidal mounds that looked ritualistic and alien. (Bristol Lake has 2.3 stars on Google.)
An hour later, a familiar thrum moved through my belly, and my hand twitched, wanting to check my phone. But I was still out of range. What was I missing? I imagined all the messages and demands piling up, all the possible emergencies. I felt negligent, as if I’d abandoned my post.
When we reached Twentynine Palms, I checked my messages in a Denny’s parking lot: a birthday wish from a friend, a spam message for better financing, and an email alerting me to the release of a new album. I joined C. in a red pleather booth, ordered a Grand Slamwich, and marveled at the rot in my brain.
My little tics and anxieties seem to be moving from the vexing to the comic. Perhaps this is a happy side effect of getting older.
### Ten Years Sober Today
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/february-1-2023-2/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:40.000Z
*Ten years sober today.* These four words fill me with a strange concoction of gratitude and shock. Gratitude for obvious reasons: I am not dead; my life feels worthwhile, and I have my sanity and people who care about me—which is more than many people get. But a decade is an incomprehensible amount of time for someone who lived in a broken Lincoln Towncar and couldn’t stay sober for an hour, let alone a day or a month.
Shock is good. I cannot accept sobriety as a given fact. Years ago, an old man in a church basement said, “Stick around long enough, and this becomes a life spent stepping over dead bodies.” It sounded brutally morbid at the time, but it makes more sense with each passing year. I know too many people who’ve died, some with double-digit sobriety who believed they were cured. So I must continue to do what I’ve been taught and keep practicing the little routines that have been drilled into me over the years. Most of all, I must turn outward and focus on others, even though my tendency is to turn inward—as if I might ever solve the riddle of the self. But that’s a dead end.
This morning I went for a run in the desert behind our home. The elevation creeps up subtly, then suddenly. Patches of snow coated the sand, and I carefully picked my way through rivers of broken stones. After fifteen minutes of huffing and cursing, I looked back, stunned by how far I’d climbed. I switched off [my running mix](http://jamesreeves.co/desert-run-i/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and savored the blessed silence. Metaphors abound.
If you’re struggling, please reach out to someone. I’m [here](mailto:james@jamesreeves.co).
### And We Diligently Killed Zombies
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/january-31-2023/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:40.000Z
Some friends visited this weekend, and we played mahjong at our kitchen table until three o’clock in the morning. A few hours later, we wandered into the desert and touched some cacti. Then we hit Spring Mountain Road for dim sum. That’s when I began to appreciate how many moods exist in Vegas and how dramatically the scenery can change in just a few miles.
In the afternoon, we went to Red Rock Casino and saw *[Infinity Pool](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVnIMvVEkrA&ref=jamesreeves.co)*, an excellent film about a man who has a life-changing experience while on vacation and doesn’t want to go home. After sunset, we huddled around a firepit in our backyard of stones. Fifteen minutes and eight miles later, we ate *xiao long bao* on the Strip before getting lost in corridors of soaring metal and glass. On Monday morning, I found myself wandering through the endless black-lit acreage of [Meowolf](https://meowwolf.com/visit/las-vegas?ref=jamesreeves.co), an exercise in sensory overload that left me feeling old.
But I don’t mind feeling older. It brings a liberating sense of honesty. For instance, C. and I bought a used PlayStation because we wanted to play *The Last of Us* alongside the new prestige television series. Maybe we’ll become gamers, we thought. And for a few hours, we diligently killed zombies and collected the ingredients for Molotov cocktails. Then we discovered we could subscribe to Britbox and access an endless supply of quiet murder mysteries. The Playstation waited patiently while we dozed on the sofa to *Line of Duty*, and a few days later, we returned it.
Recommendations for Britbox programming would be much appreciated.
### The Sensation of Slippage Continues
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/january-26-2023/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:40.000Z
Last week I drove two hours to Barstow to meet a friend for french toast. We agreed to meet in Barstow because it’s halfway between Vegas and Los Angeles, where he lives. After speeding west across the beautiful blankness of the Mojave, I found M. nursing a coffee in a booth at Roy’s Diner. We both felt the cinematic weight of the scenario, like we should be plotting a murder.
The desert is littered with bizarre facts, and I often think I invented them, like a fragment from a dream or a misremembered film. Example: twenty miles east of Barstow, there’s an abandoned waterpark, and M. and I toured its ruins. I later learned this is where Boards of Canada debuted their *Tomorrow’s Harvest* album in 2013, and the Korean supergroup BTS live-streamed a concert there last year. These facts are clearly stated on [the Wikipedia entry for the waterpark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake%5FDolores%5FWaterpark?ref=jamesreeves.co), yet I’ve returned to this page several times this week, wondering if I made them up.
The sensation of slippage continues. This morning I checked out [ChatGPT](https://chat.openai.com/auth/login?ref=jamesreeves.co) so I could understand [the fuss](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/technology/chatgpt-artificial-intelligence-universities.html?ref=jamesreeves.co). I gave it this prompt:
*Write a blog post about visiting my friend M. in the Mojave desert, eating french toast, and exploring an abandoned waterpark.*
Here’s what it generated two seconds later:
*Last weekend, I had the pleasure of visiting my friend M. in the Mojave desert. After catching up over a delicious breakfast of french toast at a local diner, we decided to take a trip and explore an abandoned waterpark in the area.*
*When we arrived at the waterpark, we were in awe at the state of disrepair the once-thriving park was in. We started our exploration by wandering through the abandoned buildings, peeking into the empty rooms, and trying to imagine what it must have been like when the park was operational. The graffiti on the walls and the debris on the ground gave us a glimpse into the lives of the people who had visited the park.*
*The slides were rusted and overgrown with weeds, and the pool was empty and cracked. The park was eerie but also beautiful in its own way. The natural elements had taken over, and the park had become a part of the desert once again. It was a fascinating experience to see the contrast between the man-made structures and the natural landscape.*
*As the sun set, we made our way back to the car, feeling both a sense of wonder and a touch of sadness at the sight of the forgotten waterpark. It was a reminder of how nature reclaims what man has created. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to share this experience with my friend M.*
The ability of a machine to generate a coherent narrative in two seconds is stunning, even if it reads like a grade-school essay written under duress. But its observation about the beauty of “nature reclaiming what man has created” is what really frightens me. There’s the sense that the algorithm isn’t just composing but *thinking*. And this particular observation has the tone of a threat.
### Desert Run
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/desert-run/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:40.000Z
I spent the first weeks of January cobbling together my favorite running songs because I needed some solid entertainment to keep me moving through the desert's scale and monotony.
My running life is messy: long stretches of moaning while I drag myself along, interrupted by occasional bursts of speediness. This mix reflects my style: speedy songs (Tuxedomoon, Demdike Stare), chugging songs (Thomas Brinkmann, Vainqueuer), and abrupt shifts in tempo. There are no biometric rhythms here, just peaks and valleys.
I need distraction when I run, so there's a lot of swirling reverb, mumbling AM radio voices, and trails of static. I extended a few favorite breaks, trimmed some songs in half, and added layers until the thing served my needs. It starts slow, gets going at the 7-minute mark, and if I gut it out to the end, there's a psychedelic classic to carry me home on wobbly legs.
This hour-long mix works well for a five-mile run or a couple of three-mile runs, and it includes plenty of time for shoe-tying, cursing, dithering, and even a bit of stretching if you do that sort of thing. But cheetahs don't stretch.
1. Thomas Brinkmann - VR 01 01 02 00
*Minus, 1998*
2. Sandra Electronics - It Slipped Her Mind
*Minimal Wave, 2014*
3. Public Image Ltd - Flowers of Romance
*Virgin, 1981*
4. Adult. - Silver Screen Shower Scene (Remix)
*City Rockers, 2001*
5. Tuxedomoon - No Tears (Continous Mode Mix)
*International Deejay Gigolo Records, 2001*
6. Aural Indifference - Park
*Minimal Wave, 1981*
7. Cranes - Beautiful Friend
*Dedicated, 1994*
8. Demdike Stare - Hashshashin Chant
*Modern Love, 2010*
9. Squarepusher - Love Wil Tear Us Apart
*Warp, 2002*
10. The Crystals - Then He Kissed Me
*Philles, 1963*
11. Vainqueur - Elevations II (Reprise)
*Chain Reaction, 1997*
12. Martin Dupont - I Met the Beast
*Lice Records, 1985*
13. Muslimgauze - Sandtrafikar
*Staalplaat, 1997*
14. Suicide - Devastation
*Chapter 22, 1988*
15. Shackleton – Blood On My Hands (Ricardo Villalobos Mix)
*Skull Disco, 2007*
16. 13th Floor Elevators - Slip Inside This House
*International Artists, 1967*
17. Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit (Atlas Minor Loop)
*RCA Victor, 1967*
#### [Desert Run I](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Desert%20Run%20I.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
##### 2023 | 59:59 | [Download](https://jamesreeves.work/files/Desert%20Run%20I.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Desert Run
0:00
/3604.4538775510205
1×
### Fever Dreams Enhanced by the American Government
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/january-10-2023-2/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:41.000Z
Spent last week thrashing in the grip of a nasty bug, my fever dreams enhanced by the American government, which, after fifteen votes for speaker of the House, has been reduced to an endless screech. Here in Las Vegas, we’re catching the faintest edge of [the atmospheric river](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric%5Friver?ref=jamesreeves.co), a weather event that sounds like something from a fantasy novel.
In *[The Peripheral](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/310417/the-peripheral-by-william-gibson/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, William Gibson describes “the jackpot,” a cascade of crises that wipe out most of humanity ten or twenty years from now. His vision of the apocalypse is “multicausal, with no particular beginning and no end. More a climate than an event, so not the way apocalypse stories liked to have a big event, after which everybody ran around with guns . . .” And ten pages later: “Conspiracy theory’s got to be simple. Sense doesn’t come into it. People are more scared of how complicated shit actually is than they are about whatever’s supposed to be behind the conspiracy.”
Shopping at Walmart in Vegas sounds bleak, but it was remarkably pleasant. Phil Collins sang about how he could feel it coming in the air tonight while I collected the materials for a shepherd’s pie. But the secret ingredient must be found elsewhere: Sichuan peppercorns.
There’s a bird in the desert that sounds like a buzzy little synthesizer, maybe a 303, and I’d like to know its name.
### Algorithms Cannot Compete With the Spectacle of Humans
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/january-3-2023/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:41.000Z
Maybe it was a bum pork dumpling or a vicious stomach bug, but I’ll leave the mystery alone and simply savor my return to consciousness after thirty-six hours of being reduced to a sweaty, heaving mess. Not a very auspicious start to the new year, although it made me grateful for the things I take for granted, such as speech, digestion, and regulated body temperature.
In the grip of my delirium, I half-watched [a lousy Netflix series](https://www.netflix.com/title/80992058?ref=jamesreeves.co) that can be viewed in any order, which seems like a trial balloon for [AI-generated entertainment](https://www.vulture.com/2022/12/ai-art-midjourney-chatgpt-phenaki-movies-hollywood.html?ref=jamesreeves.co). But algorithms cannot compete with the messy spectacle of humans. This afternoon I tuned in to watch some jackass repeatedly lose the vote for House Speaker, three times as of this writing. It was a testament to the glorious stupidity of American politics and, relatedly, an extraordinarily entertaining reminder that repetition amplifies humor and pleasure. Sort of like Donald Barthelme’s very short story, *[The Schoo](https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxmaWN0aW9ud2l0aGdyZWd5d3cyMDE1fGd4OmJjNGQ1ZWE1NWI0MDBlMw&ref=jamesreeves.co)l*, which I recently revisited via George Saunders’s [Story Club](https://georgesaunders.substack.com/).
### The Sudden Lights of Vegas in the Valley Below
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/january-1-2023/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:41.000Z
C. and I rang in the new year at the top of Route 93, where the Black Mountains unfold and reveal the sudden lights of Vegas in the valley below. Fireworks bloomed over The Strip, and we killed the lights and joined the other cars on the shoulder to watch the show. Parked along a dark highway, watching colorful explosions over the city: it looked like a hallucination. But after twenty years of fantasizing, we finally made it to the desert, and I felt a stillness I hadn’t known in a while. Two minutes past midnight, a steady rain began to fall, and we drove home on an empty parkway, feeling futuristic while fireworks burst alongside our car.
Seven hours later, I woke up with aggressive sunlight in my face. The sky was an overwhelming blue, a blank new year stretched before me, and the night before felt like a scene from a half-remembered film. My resolutions are the same as usual, although slightly more attuned: write more (always start with paper + pen) and read more (in a chair rather than bed) and also worry less, run farther, be more pleasant, and make some music again.
[Venus in Leo by HTRK](https://htrk.bandcamp.com/album/venus-in-leo?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### 2022 Rotation
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/2022-rotation/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:42.000Z
I’ve given up my hunt for the bleeding edge. Perhaps we’re living in an exhausted age that offers only iterative variations on deep-grooved patterns. More likely, I’m too old to catch the mind-blown thrills I felt twenty or thirty years when I first heard Boogie Down Productions, Drexciya, Autechre, and Thomas Brinkmann.
Several of my favorite albums this year came from artists who delivered my favorite albums from other years: Romance, Ralph Kinsella, Pye Corner Audio, and Kali Malone. Bohren & Der Club of Gore did not release a new album this year, but Kevin Richard Martin delivered a pair of records that filled my annual need for a soundtrack for rainy streets. I want to think my aesthetic has become more refined over the years—that by now, I know what I like. But another word for this might be stagnation.
Thankfully, the artists listed here had other plans. They’ve pulled off the neat trick of delivering the sounds I love while pushing them into unexpected nooks and alleys and, occasionally, wheeling around and smashing my assumptions to bits. My favorite records this year sounded messier than in years past: scuffed and bruised yet defiant—which sounds like the future.
### Nils Frahm – Music for Animals
##### [Leiter](https://leiter-verlag.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://nilsfrahm.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-animals?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Nils Frahm nixes the piano and now I like Nils Frahm. This was my most-played album of 2022: three hours of shadowy pulse and thrum that sounds like it’s keeping something darker at bay. A perfect soundtrack for reading and writing.
[Music For Animals by Nils Frahm](https://nilsfrahm.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-animals?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Romance & Dean Hurley – In Every Dream Home A Heartache
##### [Ecstatic](http://www.ecstaticrecordings.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://romancedeanhurley.bandcamp.com/album/in-every-dream-home-a-heartache?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A symphony for today’s malaise that looks backward, cribbing its title from [my favorite Roxy Music song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSniBxXjK%5F8&ref=jamesreeves.co), the one where Brian Ferry reaches peak modernism and enjoys open-plan living while he romances an inflatable doll. Wrong-headed infatuations and Ballardian ennui also fill this record as soap operas swirl in a half-remembered fog of ringing telephones.
[In Every Dream Home A Heartache by Romance & Dean Hurley](https://romancedeanhurley.bandcamp.com/album/in-every-dream-home-a-heartache?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Kevin Richard Martin – Nightcrawler / Downtown
##### [Intercranial](https://boomkat.com/labels/intercranial?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://kevinrichardmartin.bandcamp.com/album/nightcrawler-3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A slightly less despondent cousin visits the house of [Bohren & Der Club of Gore](https://boomkat.com/products/black-earth-31d4d24f-610d-4dae-b42c-5d4358457682?ref=jamesreeves.co), where time no longer works and the only illumination is rain-streaked neon. Trapped in the hour of the wolf, Martin soaks his jazz in static and grain until it potent barrel-aged doom.
Nightcrawler by Kevin Richard Martin
### Ralph Kinsella – In The Lives That Surround You
##### [8D Industries](https://8dindustri.es/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://ralphkinsella.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-lives-that-surround-you?ref=jamesreeves.co)
The guitar gets destroyed but its ghost remains. Kinsella recorded one of my favorite albums [a couple of years ago](http://jamesreeves.co/2020-rotation/?ref=jamesreeves.co), and now he’s returned to conjure visions that blister and flare like the afterimage of something that cannot be named. When I close my eyes and listen to tracks like ‘Holding On To Memory Devices’ and ‘An Ocean In The Pines,’ I see the beauty and drama of a burning cathedral.
[In The Lives That Surround You by Ralph Kinsella](https://ralphkinsella.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-lives-that-surround-you?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Erasers – Distance
##### [Moon Glyph](https://moonglyph.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://erasers.bandcamp.com/album/distance?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Drowsy Casio calypso beats and dead-eyed vocals edge toward a liturgical reenactment of [Murakami’s superflat theory](https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/magazine/the-murakami-method.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=rt9XtLC8I%5FBSS62gD4ivjdN8DH7ezzZ%5F4aCOOW3Rm%5FaXzEmrq9AQG5fMrXZaBNiOs7h3-rrB3u67daWQMvjsegJ6jtxPQRcYYeopFOckfJCT70vARHBxEC4oGInvgn4lQtdSRTeDuodNlj7YO1gLP1eP4dq7wrGA4CIRY73O1aEf%5FJcEK74xvkrE1AXgQNsVJCO2nfi0sidafPa97svX33k7Cg8b0sTpcwkK80YuqD1dqLSN1UPbUuCLaybjFvy1TUMFT0R6VCqioFXw-krX8oncVkEDyDcQqlMlgcHOv468hkSeRh3NmFCgFIsfhFJVPqFT6YBCJH73K6rqwPA&smid=share-url&ref=jamesreeves.co): pure stasis, the carcass of a cold-wave song circa 1982 buried beneath a thousand layers of acrylic.
[Distance by Erasers](https://erasers.bandcamp.com/album/distance?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Kali Malone – Living Torch
##### [Portraits GRM](https://portraitsgrm.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://kalimalone.bandcamp.com/album/living-torch?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A pair of endless liturgical drones with bursts of science fiction at the edges. Thanks to composers like Malone, [Tim Hecker](https://timhecker.bandcamp.com/album/ravedeath-1972?ref=jamesreeves.co), and [Yosuke Fujita](https://hallowground.bandcamp.com/album/fuji-ta-iki?ref=jamesreeves.co), the pipe organ feels essential in the 21st century. (If you worship in [the church of Chain Reaction](http://basicchannel.com/label/chain+reaction?ref=jamesreeves.co), Maxime Denuc’s *Nachthorn* smudges the line between novelty exercise and classic timepiece, esp. “[Dusseldorf](https://maximedenuc.bandcamp.com/track/d-sseldorf?ref=jamesreeves.co)”.) With *Living Torch*, Malone trades the organ for trombone, bass clarinet, and sine wave generators, but her harmonics remain pure stained glass.
[Living Torch by Kali Malone](https://kalimalone.bandcamp.com/album/living-torch?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### **Civilistjävel! – Järnnätter**
##### [Felt](https://f-e-l-t.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://stephenbaker.bandcamp.com/track/after-the-end?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Electronic music as topography: plenty of breathing room with miles of alpine air over pristine clicks and deep valleys of bass. This project remained clandestine for a while, harkening back to the golden age of faceless machine music distinguished by clinical names like Model 500 and Basic Channel. Now we know [Civilistjävel!](https://substack.sashafrerejones.com/p/civilistjavel?ref=jamesreeves.co) is the alias of [a quiet Swede](https://truantsblog.com/2022/interview-civilistjavel/?ref=jamesreeves.co), but there’s still plenty of mystery in the music.
[Järnnätter by Civilistjävel!](https://civilistjavel.bandcamp.com/album/j-rnn-tter?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### **San Mateo – Exspiravit Luminaria**
###### [8D Industries](https://8dindustri.es/san-mateo-the-mira-variable/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://8dindustri.es/san-mateo-the-mira-variable/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
100% uncut Blade Runner aesthetic: plaintive chords and endless twilight, the image of some new lifeform crossbreeding Stars of the Lid with Vangelis at the edge of the sprawl.
[Exspiravit Luminaria by San Mateo](https://sanmateo.bandcamp.com/album/exspiravit-luminaria?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### **M. Geddes Gengras – Expressed, I Noticed Silence**
##### [Hausu Mountain](https://hausumountain.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://hausumountain.bandcamp.com/album/expressed-i-noticed-silence?ref=jamesreeves.co)
If you prefer a more incense-soaked Vangelian future, M. Geddes Gengras pairs psychedelic twang with his cyborg bells. This was the first album I played when I set up my office in Vegas, where I finally have a desk large enough to enjoy a stereo field, and it’s a deep artificial dream forever looping the moment psychedelic music reached for the sitar, affirming that tomorrow’s music can also steep itself in magic.
[Expressed, I Noticed Silence by M. Geddes Gengras](https://hausumountain.bandcamp.com/album/expressed-i-noticed-silence?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### **Pye Corner Audio – Let’s Emerge**
##### [Sonic Cathedral](https://www.soniccathedral.co.uk/2022/05/31/lets-emerge/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://pyecorneraudio.bandcamp.com/album/let-s-emerge?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight gets dragged into the sunlight, where it’s peeled and stretched into steam-gathering drones and dreamgaze guitars. A welcome update on the [blissed-out](https://darla.com/products/v-a-the-best-of-the-bliss-out?ref=jamesreeves.co) and [spiritualized](https://spiritualizedband.bandcamp.com/track/ladies-and-gentlemen-we-are-floating-in-space?ref=jamesreeves.co) sound, this album plays like a movie I would very much like to see.
[Let’s Emerge! by Pye Corner Audio](https://pyecorneraudio.bandcamp.com/album/let-s-emerge?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### The Black Dog – Brutal One to Five Mix v2
##### [Dust Science](https://www.dustscience.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://theblackdog.bandcamp.com/track/brutal-five-to-one-mix-v2-full-mix?ref=jamesreeves.co)
The Black Dog has held the fort since ’89, and with this one-hour mix, they melt down their recent fixation on architecture into glorious ambient exhaust.
[Brutal Five To One Mix V2 by The Black Dog](https://duststoredigital.com/album/brutal-five-to-one-mix-v2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Honour – Beg 4 Mercy
##### [PAN](https://p-a-n.org/release/honour-beg-4-mercy-pan-122/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://honour2.bandcamp.com/album/beg-4-mercy-ep?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Originating from points unknown, this gunky tape lurches from battered breakbeats to hypersaturated spaghetti westerns to bottomless hum. Each time I play this, I remember the teenage nights when I would drive around Detroit to watch the steam rising from the winter streets.
[BEG 4 MERCY EP by Honour](https://honour2.bandcamp.com/album/beg-4-mercy-ep?ref=jamesreeves.co)
#### See also:
- [2023 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2023-rotation/)
- [2021 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2021-rotation/)
- [2020 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2020-rotation/)
- [2019 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2019-rotation/)
- [2018 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2018-rotation/)
### They Say It’s the Future, They Say It’s Useful for Us
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/december-28-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:42.000Z
It rained in Las Vegas last night. For a few minutes, I sped down a rain-slicked desert parkway with beads of water across the windshield. When I rolled down the window, a beautiful scent filled the car. Like fresh vinyl. But I’m not a nature writer.
The unique scent of desert rain has something to do with dry soil and the [creosote bush](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrea%5Ftridentata?ref=jamesreeves.co), and it has a scientific name, *[petrichor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, derived from the Greek words for stone and the blood of the gods.
The rain stopped as I pulled into the parking lot of a church in the far northwest corner of the city. I sat in the basement for an hour and listened to men speak. A small map hung from the wall with a blob of land around a body of water, and after squinting at it for a while, I thought I could make out the shape of Clark County and Lake Mead. Later I realized it was a map of Guatemala.
Disorientation has become my hobby. Each day I learn something new. For instance, Las Vegas has more Del Tacos than any other city in the United States, and it’s exponentially better than Taco Bell.
My current night-driving soundtrack is this Dutch track from ’82 that sounds downright sinister forty years later: *They call it computers, useless anyway, they say it’s the future, they say it’s useful for us. Do you remember when we used to be human? They call it robots, meant to be your friend. They say it’s the future, they say it’s useful for us, and we should be grateful…*
#### [Nine Circles – What’s There Left?](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Whats%20There%20Left.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### RadioNome | VPRO, 1982 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine%5FCircles?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Whats%20There%20Left.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Whats%20There%20Left.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Even if the Rewards Have Diminished
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/december-27-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:42.000Z
It was cloudy in Las Vegas today. Unlike the blank winter grays of the Midwest and East Coast, these clouds are well-defined, painterly, and startlingly low. Here and there, sunlight escapes and soaks the mountaintops. Each time I step outside, I feel like I’m on a new planet, and I wonder if I will ever tire of the desert.
*The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.* This is the monumental first sentence of William Gibson’s *[Neuromancer](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/28/william-gibson-neuromancer-cyberpunk-books?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, and it came to mind while I languished at the post office for an hour, waiting to pick up a key to my mailbox. Last night I crossed the halfway point of another Gibson novel, *[The Peripheral](https://www.theverge.com/2014/10/27/7066433/william-gibson-the-peripheral-review?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, and I’m not sure whether to proceed. Abandoning a book feels like a failing on my part, but doggedly finishing every book I begin, even if the rewards have diminished, might point to a deeper failing. That said, I’ve enjoyed the big-game future-casting in *The Peripheral*, and Gibson writes like he knows something I don’t.
A nearer vision of the future, via [Ryan Oakley](https://thegrumpyowlredux.wordpress.com/2022/12/15/the-great-and-gummy-void/?ref=jamesreeves.co): “And, perhaps previewing of the shape of future wars, automated plagiarism detectors have been deployed against automated essay generators.” I’ve added his novel, *[Technicolor Ultra Mall](http://www.edgewebsite.com/books/technicolorultramall/tum-catalog.html?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, to my queue. And I might go for a long walk into the desert after reading [this post from Craig Mod](https://craigmod.com/ridgeline/153/?ref=jamesreeves.co): “Basement solitude — isolated without serendipity, static, stagnant, stuck with your face in a screen, manipulated by the algorithms — is the death of the soul.”
### All the Little Red Bubbles
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/december-22-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:42.000Z
Las Vegas feels like the future, e.g., there’s a new [face-slapping league](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/24/nevada-new-face-slapping-league-ufc-dana-white?ref=jamesreeves.co). But I’m also living in the past. I loved working with West Coast clients while I lived in the Eastern Time Zone. *Sure thing, you’ll have my files in the morning. Of course we can talk at 9am.* But when I wake up now, New York has been busy for hours, sending me things to do.
Over the past few years, I’ve worked hard to ditch the lunatic habit of checking my inbox thirty seconds after opening my eyes. These days I wait until I’m showered, meditated, caffeinated, and I’ve done some writing. Then I pick up my telephone and look at all the little red bubbles. Cultivating this small habit was more challenging than it sounds because my lizard brain craves the neurochemical buzz of new information. Maintaining my morning ritual in the Pacific Time Zone will be harder now that I know everyone elsewhere has been busy without me. But it might offer a much-needed lesson in humility: the world will get along fine without me for a few hours. It’s not like I have the nuclear codes.
[Yesterday I returned to running](http://jamesreeves.co/december-21-2022/?ref=jamesreeves.co) after a three-week hiatus, and it was ugly. Today I’ve returned to working on the novel, and the results are the same. *Why am I doing this? Why doesn’t my brain work anymore? What the hell is happening on page 182? What’s the point of fiction anyway?* And so on. But this is par for the course. Muscle memory dies quickly, but it also returns. It just requires surfing some waves of doubt and self-loathing to find it.
As I begin to orient myself in Vegas, I know I’m edging too close to the Strip when the plasma donation centers appear. Meanwhile, a record-shattering snowstorm is sweeping across the rest of the nation. According to the news, everyone in the Midwest will be dead by Friday.
The population of Vegas is expected to double within the next fifty years. Last night I talked with a man in his eighties. “The Air Force sent me here fifty-nine years ago,” he said. “I fell in love with the desert and never left.” When I told him where I lived, he said it was all desert back then. He mapped the city with his hand and drew a line down the center of his palm. Everything on the left side was desert. “You had to drive for miles to get to the mountains. Now they’re in your backyard.”
Here are some ritualistic Dutch synthetics from ’82:
[H.S.T.A. by Das Ding](https://das-ding.bandcamp.com/album/h-s-t-a?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### There’s Too Much Night Here
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/december-21-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:43.000Z
It’s the longest night of the year, and I went for my first Las Vegan run. Ordering cheeseburgers through a small metal box for two thousand miles has taken its toll. I looked like an abomination as I hauled myself along an empty avenue, screeching and swearing. The mountains peered down at me, laughing in the dark. It was too late at night to run, I decided, and I turned back after two miles.
It was 4:38pm.
I love the night, but there’s too much of it here. Due to some 19th-century railroad logic, Nevada is the only non-coastal state in the Pacific Time Zone, and Vegas is tucked into the far eastern corner, only thirty miles away from Mountain Time. In December, the sun technically sets a little after four o’clock in the afternoon, but it sinks behind the Spring Mountains an hour before that. For the first time I can remember, I’m grateful we’re going to start making more daylight tomorrow.
Until then, here’s some sludgy cold-running new wave from Japan circa 1980:
[The Bedroom Tapes by Perfect Mother](https://minimalwave.bandcamp.com/album/the-bedroom-tapes?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### White Line Fever and the Higher Silence Within
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/december-20-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:43.000Z
Life has been a blur since the night C. and I left our car in the driveway of the little house we rented on the edge of the Vegas sprawl. We flew back to Ohio on a jam-packed redeye to collect our belongings. Traveling on Spirit Airlines is a mythic test of a person’s spiritual fitness, and I spent four hours squished in the middle seat, fighting a gargantuan woman for the armrest.
Four days later, I loaded a 15-foot U-Haul with our furniture and pointed it southwest. I drove alone to spare C. thirty hours in a juddering truck. She’ll fly to Vegas in a few days, probably on Spirit Airlines, and I’m not sure who will suffer more.
In Indiana, I drove past the world’s largest mailbox, and I slowed down to admire the holiday lights on a lone farmhouse in the night. In Missouri, I had a fantastic cup of cinnamon coffee at a Flying J before crashing at a Super 8 somewhere in the Ozarks. I followed the path of Route 66, pushing sixteen hours behind the wheel, and by the time I hit Oklahoma, a fugue state had taken hold. Highway hypnosis. White line fever.
A flipped semi burned in the eastbound lanes of Interstate 44\. Hallucinatory signs began to appear: Visit the [Infant Jesus of Prague](https://www.shrineofinfantjesus.com/about-us/history-national-shrine-infant-jesus-prague?ref=jamesreeves.co). Exit right for Garth Brooks Boulevard. A billboard in Tulsa demanded freedom for women in Iran. As my U-Haul swerved across nine lanes of Amazon delivery trucks, a neon sign asked *Are you prepared to meet Jesus?* and I was certain I was going to die.
Billboards across the panhandle told me to find nirvana, win a free furnace, and invest in crypto. The radio encouraged me to purchase Patriot Supplies, a bundle of freeze-dried food that will help me “prepare for what’s coming” because I’ll definitely need at least 2000 calories per day. The radio said a record number of guns were confiscated from Americans this year, and eighty percent were loaded. An earthquake in West Texas sent tremors across Amarillo, but I felt only the shake of the truck. I saw a shooting star and a half-moon blazed in the rearview. A sign flew by like a koan: Gusty Winds May Exist.
By the time I left Texas, my vision was vibrating from the stutter and shake of the interstate. Rowdy families, sunburnt truckers, and teenage gangs crowded the Flying J at one o’clock in the morning. The motels in Tucumcari were booked, so I pushed another hundred miles west to my second Super 8, where I collapsed and dreamt about mileage. I woke up in New Mexico near a town called Las Vegas (pop. 13,157) which felt like an omen. A lone cow wandered down the ramp to Interstate 40\. I sped across the Continental Divide and continued into Arizona.
In addition to the usual slate of vintage electro and motorik, I soundtracked my journey with an audiobook of Joseph Campbell’s *[The Hero with a Thousand Faces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FHero%5Fwith%5Fa%5FThousand%5FFaces?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, one of those texts I’ve always felt like I’ve read even though I haven’t. The desert washed past my windshield as the narrator said, “The entrances to temples are flanked and defended by colossal gargoyles: dragons, lions, devil-slayers with drawn swords, resentful dwarves, winged bulls. These are the threshold guardians to ward away all incapable of encountering the higher silence within.”
A few miles west of Kingman, I hooked north on 93, where I was the only vehicle on a Saturday night. Entering Vegas felt like a dream as ‘Fade to Grey’ played on the dashboard while my headlights swooped along shadowy mountains on a vacant parkway. Then a field of light appeared below me, and I remembered Las Vegas means The Meadows.
#### [Visage – Fade to Grey (12″ Version)](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Fade%20To%20Grey.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Polydor, 1980 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fade%5Fto%5FGrey%5F%28Visage%5Fsong%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Fade%20To%20Grey.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Fade%20To%20Grey.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### My Screens Reflected the Sprawl
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-30-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:43.000Z
Another hectic day of touring rental properties. We stopped for lunch at a Mexican spot, and our timing was perfect. Turned out Mexico was playing Saudi Arabia in the World Cup, and cheers and whistles filled the bar. They scored two goals while I ate a chimichanga. Everyone was so happy, and I’m glad we didn’t stick around long enough to find out Mexico wouldn’t make it to the knockout round and their coach was fired.
As we pulled up to our ninth small tan house of the day, “American Woman” rocked the block, emanating from someone’s backyard. It was a fine soundtrack as we punched in the entry code and let ourselves inside a freshly painted home with chipper decals on the walls from an invisible real estate agent. *Welcome home! A kitchen you’ll love!* From the balcony, we saw the source of American Woman: a chunky old man in a bathing suit climbed out of his tiny backyard swimming pool and poured himself a big drink at his tiny tiki bar. I want to be his neighbor.
(I never knew The Guess Who were Canadian; the lyrics—*American woman, stay away from me*—can be interpreted many ways.)
At night, I enjoyed driving along smooth parkways to a fast food joint that served spicy Korean pork in a cup. This place feels like the future, and I tried to capture the gestalt with a blurry photo of my screens reflected against the sprawl. This is a photographic style I’d like to improve upon.
### Vegas Architecture Hides From the Sun
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-29-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:43.000Z
Sunny skies with highs near sixty and lows near freezing. After corresponding with several real estate companies, most of which turned out to be automated systems, C. and I spent the day touring homes for rent. Most tours are self-guided now, with robots texting lockbox codes.
Vegas architecture hides from the sun. Blank walls of concrete and stucco face the south, with windows punched in odd places to allow some light but not so much that it will cook everyone inside. Perfect squares of sky look like a [James Turrell](https://jamesturrell.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) installation. As we consider each room, there is much discussion of orientation.
I recently learned most Christian churches sit along an east-west axis, with the entrance to the west and the altar to the east. In most cathedrals, stained glass scenes from the Old Testament are on the north wall, and moments from the New Testament cover the south. “This was a theological statement,” write Gabriele and Perry in *[The Bright Ages](https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-bright-ages-matthew-gabrieledavid-m-perry?variant=40262551044130&ref=jamesreeves.co)*. “In the northern hemisphere, the south-facing side of any building receives more sun, so the New Testament would be illuminated even as the Old Testament remained in the shadows.”
As we continue our search, I find myself studying the sunlight through the windows more closely, hunting not only for moments of shade and aesthetic delight but also metaphysical propaganda.
### A Dedicated Place Where I Can Tack Index Cards to the Wall
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-28-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:44.000Z
Las Vegas. The Pacific Time Zone is turning me into a morning person, and I do not like it. When I check my watch, I do a double-take, thinking it must be near midnight when it’s only half past eight. The sun goes down at four o’clock here, which does not help. I feel elderly and feeble, yawning and drowsing at ten o’clock. This morning I woke before seven and had no idea what to do with myself. I tried to work on the novel, but my brain was still filled with cobwebs. So I opened my inbox. The Eastern Seaboard had been sending me emails for hours, so I had plenty to do until noon.
As far as timekeeping goes, I came across [this great link](https://mastodon.world/@Si@tech.lgbt/109309159433704845?ref=jamesreeves.co) on [Mastodon](https://mastodon.world/@jamesreeves?ref=jamesreeves.co) to [a literary clock](https://literature-clock.jenevoldsen.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
After another dim sum lunch, C. and I began to search for a place to rent. We want a box at the edge of the sprawl with a big room with hardwood floors where C. can paint and a small room where I can write. After so many years spent writing in libraries, lobbies, and cafes, the prospect of my own office feels like a luxury, even a little obscene. But the possibility of a dedicated place where I can tack index cards to the wall like a real writer gives me a happy little buzz.
Hundreds of listings cluttered our screens, all variations on the same tan townhouse. We gave them names to keep them straight. Tomorrow we’re seeing Crazy Stairs, Fake Ash Zen, and Astroturf Fire.
#### [Severed Heads – We Have Come to Bless the House](https://severedheads.bandcamp.com/album/city-slab-horror?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### City Slab Horror | Ink Records, 1985 | [Bandcamp](https://severedheads.bandcamp.com/album/city-slab-horror?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/We%20Have%20Come%20to%20Bless%20the%20House.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/We%20Have%20Come%20to%20Bless%20the%20House.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Taro Puffs the Size of Your Fist
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-27-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:44.000Z
The line for the dim sum joint spilled into the parking lot, so C. and I drove two blocks down and went to another spot with excellent bean curd and taro puffs the size of your fist. The exterior was a hellacious strip mall in the 1990s style; the interior had picture windows overlooking a soothing vista of acacia trees and Italian cypress with pink mountains in the distance. This felt like a metaphor.
We tooled around the city’s perimeter, marveling at its sharp edges. A neighborhood is backed against a mountainside. A retaining wall shields a grocery store from the desert rolling behind it. The parkways are pristine and feel particularly futuristic at night. Instead of dead grass and fallen leaves, topiaries and swept gravel fill the medians like an endless zen garden.
Just before midnight, I stepped into the small yard of the house we rented and savored the unfamiliar flora and stillness. There’s something so tranquil about an illuminated palm tree, a science-fictional kind of calm.
### Fireworks in the Parking Lot of a Gas Station
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/fireworks-in-the-parking-lot/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:44.000Z
Woke up in Grand Junction and kept pushing west. We dipped down to Moab because the name rang a faint bell. The mountains gave way to Martian cliffs, and I enjoyed delicious French toast at the Canyon Steak & Waffle House. The people around us looked healthy and ready for adventure, but we weren’t about to pay $30 to enter the park and look at some [arches](https://www.nps.gov/arch/index.htm?ref=jamesreeves.co). We returned to the interstate.
A small green sign said *No Services Next 106 miles*. It’s [the most desolate stretch of interstate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate%5F70%5Fin%5FUtah?ref=jamesreeves.co) in the USA. A spray of clouds sent the light pouring down over the cliffs. “It looks religious over there,” said C.
As we crossed the Nevada state line, fireworks bloomed in the parking lot of a Chevron station. We made good time and hit Vegas a night earlier than scheduled. “Warm Leatherette” played on the dashboard as a sea of light appeared in the valley like a hallucination, and we booked a relatively cheap room on the strip. There are televisions in the bathroom because we should not be alone with our thoughts, and I felt very modern, watching protests in China while I showered in a glossy Vegas hotel.
#### [The Normal – Warm Leatherette](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Warm%20Leatherette.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Mute, 1978 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warm%5FLeatherette?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Warm%20Leatherette.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Warm%20Leatherette.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### A Fingernail Moon Rose Over the Rockies
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-25-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:44.000Z
When I woke up this morning, I struggled to remember the state I was in. Then I looked out the window and saw the Rocky Mountains in daylight.
C. and I needed a break from the road, so we enjoyed the Denver Art Museum this afternoon. As I wandered through an exhibition of Flemish art, I better understood their neurotic obsession with glistening grapes, intricate lace, and water beads on lobster tails. They believed every facet of the world belonged to a divine logic; the closer we look, the nearer we might come to God.
An exhibition of Japanese women calligraphers was filled with exquisite work and shocking stories. After her stepfather chopped off her arms, [Ōishi Junkyō](https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/her-brush-companion-guide-taking-tonsure?ref=jamesreeves.co) taught herself to paint with her mouth. When a monk told [Ryōnen Gensō](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%8Dnen%5FGens%C5%8D?ref=jamesreeves.co) she was too beautiful to become a nun, she burned her face with an iron and wrote a poem: *In this living world / the body I give up and burn / would be wretched / if I thought of myself as / anything but firewood*.
A fingernail moon rose over the Rockies as we crossed the [Continental Divide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental%5FDivide%5Fof%5Fthe%5FAmericas?ref=jamesreeves.co) via the Eisenhower Tunnel, the highest point on the Interstate Highway System at 11,158 feet. We coasted through Vail to admire wealthy families in nice sweaters before pushing west to Colorado Springs, where we had an excellent meal at a Nepalese restaurant surrounded by Christmas lights.
### The First Pizza Hut is in Wichita
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-24-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:45.000Z
Thanksgiving Day. We woke to the melancholic stillness of a holiday morning somewhere in the middle of America. Even the International House of Pancakes was closed. We sped west into Kansas on an empty interstate, and heavy rain gave way to blinding sun over the plains.
From the passenger seat, C. entertained me with tantalizing facts. The world’s largest Amoco sign was back in St. Louis. The first Pizza Hut is in Wichita. A bone from [St. John the Baptist’s finger](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/holy-finger-kansas-city?ref=jamesreeves.co) sits in a museum in Kansas City.
The flatness gets to you—the eye darts around for any point of interest or frame of reference. A lone tree becomes exciting. A sign for the [National Agro-Defense Facility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National%5FBio%5Fand%5FAgro-Defense%5FFacility?ref=jamesreeves.co) fires the imagination. As night fell, the fields of wind turbines turned sinister. Hundreds of red lights blinked on the horizon, pulsing to the drumbeat that filled the car, and I felt like I was in a music video that I wanted to last forever.
After twelve hours on the road, we crashed out in a hotel by the Denver airport. 764 miles to Vegas.
#### [Ike Yard – Night After Night](https://ikeyard-sv.bandcamp.com/album/night-after-night?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### 1980-1982 Collected | Acute Records | [Bandcamp](https://ikeyard-sv.bandcamp.com/album/night-after-night?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Night%20After%20Night.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Night%20After%20Night.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Movements Are a Relic of the 20th Century
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-23-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:45.000Z
2017 miles from Ohio to Vegas. We cut across Indiana and Illinois and sped through a sea of dead grass and November browns. The billboards we passed felt like chapters from one big story: automatic weapon rentals, bulk ammo, Jesus Christ, and lawyers. *Wrongful death? Call Ken!* Mid-season leagues are now forming at the laser-tag facility on the south side of Indianapolis. An exit sign for the Ronald Reagan Ameriplex Parkway.
We hit St. Louis too late to visit [Cementland](https://richardsprengeler.com/category/galleries/gallery/cementland-bob-cassillys-unfinished-masterpiece/?ref=jamesreeves.co), an unfinished amusement park at an abandoned cement factory. Its creator, Bob Cassilly, died while working on the site. They initially thought he was killed in a bulldozer accident; a medical examiner later concluded he had been beaten to death. America is filled with strange dreams and violent endings.
Dinner at Cracker Barrel, where C. and I discussed whether coherent new styles in art and music are possible now that our screens have erased the technological, geographic, and temporal constraints that yielded everything from Dada to Detroit techno. The cold/new/minimal wave tracks from the early 80s that are soundtracking our journey still sound more future-forward than most music today. Perhaps movements are a relic of the 20th century. Maybe I’m just getting old. But I enjoyed discussing Tristan Tzara, [Simon Reynolds](https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571232093-retromania/?ref=jamesreeves.co), Basic Channel, and vaporwave while eating Grandpa’s Country Fried Breakfast.
Tonight we’re staying at a Holiday Inn Express on Mid-American Industrial Road fifty miles east of Kansas City. It’s nice. There’s an Arby’s across the street. 1456 miles to Vegas.
### Synthetic Tracks for the Motorway
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-22-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:45.000Z
The road trip kicks off tomorrow, and my packing has been delayed by a much more critical matter: putting together a road trip playlist. I’m calling it *Cold Interstate*, and I have to say, it’s stellar: nine hours of coldwoven synthetic tracks for the motorway, including Suicide, Cybotron, Tropic of Cancer, The Normal, Sisters of Mercy, Thomas Brinkmann, Plastikman, some *Liquid Swords* instrumentals, Chris & Cosey, Ectomorph, Tuxedomoon, an [Ectomorph remix of Tuxedomoon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGUDwWRdkFw&ref=jamesreeves.co), and four remixes of Shari Vari.
Cobbling this mix together has me in a metro Detroit state of mind and, more specifically, an [Electrifying Mojo](http://jamesreeves.co/mojo/?ref=jamesreeves.co) state of mind. Our screens advertise better connectivity, but they can’t hold a candle to the communion of thousands of radios across the city tuned to the same station on a Saturday night while a voice tells everyone to flash their headlights and porchlights. I recently came across [this reflection on Mojo’s legacy](https://www.nkrumahsteward.com/2014/05/05/a-tribute-to-the-electrifying-mojo/?ref=jamesreeves.co): “Mojo flew into Detroit every night on a spaceship,” writes Nkrumah Steward. “As his ship descended, he would say, ‘Hello Detroit,’ then he would gradually get more specific, ‘I see Pam over at Belle Isle, hello Pam,’ or he would comment on how he could see the planes coming in at Metro Airport or maybe a traffic jam down on I-94\. It was so fucking cool you just have no idea.”
I’m feeling sentimental tonight like it’s 1995 and I’m smoking clove cigarettes while speeding down I-75 to the Packard plant or Saint Andrews Hall. It’s a pleasant sensation, this tension between nostalgia in the rearview and motoring into the future for a possible new life in the desert.
Here’s a cold highway classic from ’94 that begins with two minutes of vapor before giving way to a glossy machine that builds and rebuilds while neon drips across the hood. This was the first Plastikman record I bought, so it holds a special place in my heart. Like Dean Martin or Jefferson Airplane for another generation, these are my oldies.
[Musik by Plastikman](https://richiehawtin.bandcamp.com/album/musik?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Faded Graffiti Like a Vanished Wish
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-21-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:45.000Z
A sunny Monday in the Middle West with unremarkable temperatures, and it’s one of those days when it feels like the world’s got its hands in my pockets. Spent an hour on the phone haggling with health insurance, then car insurance, and I lost both arguments. It takes so much work to be a person.
Meanwhile in [strike land](https://gothamist.com/news/part-time-faculty-strike-at-nycs-new-school-continues-as-contract-talks-stall?ref=jamesreeves.co), where The New School spends [only 14% of its budget](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S4UU%5FqgX4jBpHhqCkoyfVz4e1CVK8tL6RHpQA0P0RCU/edit?ref=jamesreeves.co#heading=h.26ixbz8nnwc) on the part-time professors who make up 87% of its faculty, [the university’s lawyer](https://www.akerman.com/en/people/genaira-tyce.html?ref=jamesreeves.co) is trying to bust our union by forcing a vote on [a contract](https://www.youarethenewschool.com/bargaining-blog/the-universitys-last-best-and-final-offer-does-more-harm-than-good?ref=jamesreeves.co) that pits those with health insurance against those without. Amazon, Walmart, and Starbucks use these hardball tactics. Not higher education. This could set a chilling precedent.
This afternoon I ran beneath an overpass with faded graffiti that read like a vanished wish: *planet over profit*. But some happy news: I’m enjoying [Mastodon](https://mastodon.world/@jamesreeves?ref=jamesreeves.co). I found [Michael Donaldson](https://8sided.blog/?ref=jamesreeves.co) over [there](https://mastodon.world/@qburns@mas.to/109382703161032191?ref=jamesreeves.co), and he turned me on to a nice sludgy [Joy Division cover](https://yacht.bandcamp.com/track/isolation?ref=jamesreeves.co), which is the whole point of social media.
Tonight I’m making motions toward packing for our road trip. So far, I have two items on my shopping list: ice scraper and nicotine gum.
[Sub Versions by YACHT](https://yacht.bandcamp.com/album/sub-versions?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### The Spirit of the Information Superhighway
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-20-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:46.000Z
A brittle Sunday with temperatures in the 20s. [The part-time faculty strike against The New School](https://news.artnet.com/opinion/the-new-schools-part-time-faculty-cant-afford-not-to-strike-were-fighting-to-survive-2213334?ref=jamesreeves.co) continues, and the administration has hired a [union-busting law firm](https://www.akerman.com/en/work/services/practices/labor-employment/labor-law.html?ref=jamesreeves.co). This afternoon I phone banked and attended online bargaining meetings, and all I can say is our union leaders are doing the Lord’s work.
Last night I managed to find my way onto Mastodon. I didn’t think I had the appetite for another social media channel, but when my friend [O](https://www.mroliverblank.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). mentioned it had the same spirit as the early 00s information superhighway, I decided to log on. It was heartening to find some familiar avatars in a space blessedly free of advertisements, promotional horseshit, and the other grift mechanics to which we’ve become accustomed. Mastodon feels oddly wholesome, perhaps even too wholesome, as if a non-commodified space like this shouldn’t even exist nowadays. It’s like some mythical creature from the past has wandered into the middle of a twelve-land expressway. I’m not sure what I’ll do over there, but [here I am](https://mastodon.world/@jamesreeves?ref=jamesreeves.co).
This week’s edition of Sam Valenti IV’s [Herb Sundays](https://herbsundays.substack.com/p/herb-sundays-62-veronica-vasicka) series features Veronica Vasicka, a diligent archivist of jet-black 1970s and 1980s synthetics and the founder of one of my favorite imprints, [Minimal Wave](https://minimalwave.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). If you’re not familiar, start with the [Minimal Wave Tapes](https://minimalwave.bandcamp.com/album/v-a-the-minimal-wave-tapes-volume-1?ref=jamesreeves.co), then dig into the [Lost](https://minimalwave.com/releases/release/the-lost-tapes-lp/?ref=jamesreeves.co), [Found](https://minimalwave.com/releases/release/the-found-tapes/?ref=jamesreeves.co), [Hidden](https://minimalwave.bandcamp.com/album/the-hidden-tapes?ref=jamesreeves.co), and [Bedroom](https://minimalwave.bandcamp.com/album/the-bedroom-tapes?ref=jamesreeves.co) tapes.
The soundtrack has been sorted for our 2000-mile drive in three days. Now C. and I can focus on packing.
[V/A The Minimal Wave Tapes: Volume 1 by Various](https://minimalwave.bandcamp.com/album/v-a-the-minimal-wave-tapes-volume-1?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### People Behaving Poorly in Glossy Architecture
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-19-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:46.000Z
Went for an ugly run in a ten-degree wind chill. I cursed loudly, frightened passersby, and my skin was angry and red beneath my wooly sweater. Ten degrees might be my threshold unless I invest in a special outfit.
Meanwhile, a childlike billionaire is grinding Twitter into the dirt. Whether this is intentional remains unclear, but I think he’s on the right track. Grind it to dust and salt the earth. I loved Twitter back when it didn’t matter, circa 2008-2015\. Its pointlessness was the point: an ambient network of people eating breakfast, talking junk, and finding delight in the mundane. Then some nitwit slapped a scoreboard on it and transformed us into cult leaders with followers (rather than readers) who chased the virtual currency of hearts. We convinced ourselves our tweets were important, newsworthy, career-making, or, god forbid, agents for social change, and it made us crazy. Myself included. I tapped out six months ago when I finally admitted I was writing and thinking in a way I did not enjoy.
An advertising platform that teems with voices stripped of complexity will never improve the fabric of public life. But as they say in recovery, the persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Addiction feels like the right metaphor: on a social level, we know the outrage mechanics of social media aren’t good for us, and yet . . . so here’s some wishful thinking: I hope the childlike billionaire shuts the whole thing down and announces this was his plan all along. He would save face, and history will judge him kindly as the man who removed the poison from the well.
Went to the cinema and saw *[The Menu](https://www.searchlightpictures.com/the-menu/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, another entry in the eat-the-rich genre (*Triangle of Sadness*, *Parasite*, *Ready or Not*, *Knives Out*, *The Hunt*, etc) that works as an exercise in capitalist-angst-ventilation rather than imagining an alternative. The first half was a near-perfect escalation that flirts with the surreal; the last act needed a point of view. But it was worth the price of a matinee ticket for the taco night scene, and I’m a sucker for people behaving poorly in glossy architecture on a remote island, e.g., *Ex Machina*.
Tonight C. reminded me today would have been my mom’s birthday, thanks to an automated reminder in her calendar that she never deleted. Strange, these new digital ghosts.
I’m no longer hyper-attuned to the dates of my parents’ births and deaths. Part of me feels negligent; the other part thinks this is progress: I can carry them with me without fixating on beginnings and endings. My mom would have turned seventy today. And now that I remember, I’m unsure how to observe the date except to say a prayer and be grateful she was my mom.
### Another Sleepless Night for Reasons Unknown
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-18-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:46.000Z
My bedtime programming hums with the static of insomnia. *All the President’s Men*. William Gibson. The history of medieval Europe. Cassette tapes of a Buddhist nun. But I’m learning to enjoy the extra time to brood. Acceptance is the answer.
This afternoon I finished migrating this internet station—and eight other websites—from [the world’s worst hosting company](https://mediatemple.net/?ref=jamesreeves.co) to a [new home](https://www.siteground.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). It feels zippier here. Untangling my nameservers, redirects, feeds, forwarders, and security certificates felt much like the jittery fever logic of insomnia: the knotty plumbing below the surface, the systems that work only when they go unnoticed.
Five days until C. and I drive into the desert. Illinois and Indiana look like fangs. I should go to bed.
[Eyes Of Fate by Not Waving & Romance](https://notwavingromance.bandcamp.com/album/eyes-of-fate?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Repetition Is Where Things Get Interesting
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-17-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:46.000Z
Ohio. An uninspired grey November day. Cold weather without snow feels like an insult, a lost opportunity. Dragged myself through a five-mile run and ninety minutes of novel editing. The most important thing I’ve learned over the years is to show up, especially when I don’t feel like it. Repetition is key. Repetition is where things get interesting. A shift in the light on the running trail. An unexpected connection on page 172\. This journal is part of that repetition too.
There’s liberation in giving myself over to routine. I used to burn up so much energy worrying about when, where, what, and for how long. Add this quote from André Breton’s *[Surrealist Manifesto](https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil330/MANIFESTO%20OF%20SURREALISM.pdf?ref=jamesreeves.co)* to the mix, and the daily grind becomes downright exciting: “Let yourself be carried along, events will not tolerate your interference. You are nameless. The ease of everything is priceless.”
#### [Ester Brinkmann – Maschine](https://thomasbrinkmann1.bandcamp.com/album/totes-rennen?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Totes Rennen | Supposé | [Bandcamp](https://thomasbrinkmann1.bandcamp.com/album/totes-rennen?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[Totes Rennen by thomas brinkmann](https://thomasbrinkmann1.bandcamp.com/album/totes-rennen?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Hundreds of Dogs
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/hundreds-of-dogs/
Last updated: 2026-07-07T10:25:49.000Z
I was driving over hundreds of dogs, their bodies kerchunking beneath the wheels, and I could hear them howling. I sped up to put them out of their misery.
The car veered onto a lawn, where my parents were moving into a new home. They were older than I would ever see them and I stood on the sidewalk, happy but frightened because they were not supposed to be alive.
### A Body of Water Was Named After a Man Who Was Roasted Alive
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-16-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:47.000Z
Ohio. Grey skies, temperatures just below freezing, and a few glorious minutes of snow while I ran around the pond. This week’s running soundtrack is Public Image Ltd’s *[Metal Box](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22374-metal-box/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, a record that sounds like prophecy forty-something years later.
Today I noticed two of my favorite blogs come from Prince Edward Island. Over the past few years, [Peter Rukavina](https://ruk.ca/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and [Clark MacLeod](https://kelake.org/?ref=jamesreeves.co) have become welcome presences in my feed that epitomize a relaxed, more personal internet of yore—and hopefully the future. I have no idea if one referred me to the other or if they even know one another. I also realized I had no idea where Prince Edward Island was, so I looked it up this afternoon. It looks beautiful on the map: a squiggle tucked in the bottom of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, its arms cocked northeast toward the coast of Newfoundland and the frozen cadence beyond: Labrador Trough. Baffin Bay. Cumberland Sound.
I’ll bet the winters are first-rate on Prince Edward Island. I love the cold and the dark; I fantasize about living near a frozen sea someday, which leaves me wondering why I’m hellbent on living in the Mojave desert, where it’s very bright and two hundred degrees. In the meantime, it’s nice to have a new place on the map to romanticize, and I hope Peter and Clark will share lots of pictures of snow.
The Gulf of [Saint Lawrence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint%5FLawrence?ref=jamesreeves.co#Martyrdom). Some joker named a cold body of water after a man who was roasted alive. There’s some low-key synchronicity here because I’ve been thinking about the Catholic saints lately, particularly the strange relationship between aesthetics and suffering, e.g., [Titian’s painting](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Titian%5F-%5FMartyrdom%5Fof%5FSt%5FLawrence%5F-%5FWGA22837.jpg?ref=jamesreeves.co) of Saint Lawrence’s last moments. The paintings of [Saint Sebastian riddled with arrows](https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/gerrit-van-honthorst-saint-sebastian?ref=jamesreeves.co) have always made an impression on me, but it wasn’t until today that I learned he survived these wounds. A widow named [Irene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene%5Fof%5FRome?ref=jamesreeves.co#/media/File:Georges%5Fde%5FLa%5FTour%5F004.jpg) nursed him back to health. Two years later, he heckled the emperor Diocletian, who clubbed him to death and tossed his body into a sewer.
A Catholic pun: the Dominican order of priests took the name of [Saint Dominic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint%5FDominic?ref=jamesreeves.co), whose mother had dreamt that a dog leaped from her womb with a torch between its teeth and set fire to the earth. The Dominicans ruthlessly pursued heretics and became known as “the hounds of the Lord”: *domini canis*.
I’m slowly working through *[The Peripheral](https://www.npr.org/2014/11/01/358118728/william-gibson-skypes-the-future-in-the-peripheral?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, with its dense sci-fi visions of keratotic skin, floating cities, and ceramic androids. But William Gibson has nothing on the Catholics.
### There Would Be Less Screaming
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-15-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:47.000Z
A properly gloomy autumn day with cold rain and a heavy sky that looked like it might crash. I often imagine my writing sessions should be quiet and humble, like those stern Dutch paintings of solitary women [making lace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FOld%5FLacemaker?ref=jamesreeves.co) in solemn bands of light. Maybe someday. But not today.
While working in the library this afternoon, Richie Hawtin and Pete Namlook’s “A Million Miles to Earth” surfaced in my headphones. I’d forgotten how perfectly this song captures a flavor of 1990s techno-optimism that now sounds nostalgic. But my audio file was missing the cover art. When my search led me to [Wolf’s Kompaktkiste](https://www.kompaktkiste.de/hawtin.htm?ref=jamesreeves.co#pw11), I made a loud happy noise that turned the heads of my fellow library patrons. Since 1994, this website has been a staple for double-checking track titles and release dates, and its continued existence nearly three decades later feels like a cause for celebration.
A few minutes later, I opened the *New York Times* because of some dumb muscle memory. An explosion in Poland. A deadbeat clown running for president again. Next to these stories, a headline asked, “What Does Your Favorite Restaurant Reservation App Say About You?” I should start a new habit: keep a book next to my laptop and, whenever I feel the urge to check the news, read some fiction or philosophy instead. There would be less screaming.
More breaking news: the union for part-time faculty at The New School [declared a strike](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/16/nyregion/new-school-parsons-strike-walkout.html?ref=jamesreeves.co) tonight. I’m furious a university that incessantly advertises its “commitment to equity, inclusion, and social justice” allowed things to reach the point where I must stop teaching my students. The New School has sadly become an excellent case study of how progressive jargon tends to mask more sinister motives. The top twenty-odd deans and vice presidents made nearly $2 million more in 2020 than all 1700 part-time faculty make in a semester. (Here’s a publicly available [tax form](https://drive.google.com/file/d/13kpZn9IFZa13Nn9MghUQ5VjcSfJkQDww/view?ref=jamesreeves.co).) We haven’t had a new contract since 2016, and our pay has been frozen since the pandemic due to “uncertain times.” Hopefully, the brass will recognize you need to practice what you preach.
[Pete Namlook & Various - The Ambient Gardener · Summer by Pete Namlook](https://namlook.bandcamp.com/album/pete-namlook-various-the-ambient-gardener-summer?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### A House Always Made of Freshly Chopped Wood
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-14-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:47.000Z
Maybe one day we’ll reach a point when all possible frequencies have been recorded, every combination of words written. Sometimes I wonder if it has already arrived. A frumpy man in the elevator told me he needs to do some housecleaning. “My closets look alcoholic,” he said.
I still have vivid dreams that my mother is alive; I find her sitting at a kitchen table in a tiny house by the sea, living under an assumed name. The house is always made of freshly chopped wood.
Voltaire believed “true prayer lies not in asking for a violation of natural law but in the acceptance of natural law,” and Kant insisted “morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.” And last night, a skittish young man with fantastic hair said, “God’s probably just some creep looking over us like a petri dish or some shit.”
Turned on the television so I could ignore it.
[Retreat Into Fantasy Soundtracks by Wasted Cathedral](https://wastedcathedrallove.bandcamp.com/album/retreat-into-fantasy-soundtracks?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Some Faceless Behemoth Purchased It
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-13-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:47.000Z
A cloudy Sunday with temps near freezing. Today I’ve been thinking about systems, some creaky and rotted, others still holding.
The Democrats held the Senate last night. Five days after the midterm election, our votes continue to creep through America’s rickety democratic plumbing, inching along narrow margins. But it’s heartening to know most Americans are still relatively sane and have no stomach for lunatics. And once again, we’ve learned that pollsters and pundits are useless. Imagine the blessed silence of a newspaper without opinion-mongers or a newscast without smug panelists.
Meanwhile, the company that has hosted this website for nearly twenty years has become a hostile wasteland after some faceless behemoth purchased it. The only way to reach them nowadays is through a well-hidden phone number, and I listened to a broken loop of sleazy jazz while a robot periodically told me she could not wait to exceed my expectations. After an hour, I hung up. Tonight I’m switching to a new hosting company. Hopefully there won’t be too many outages on this station while I untangle my nameservers.
Combing through eighteen years of digital cruft has led me down an unexpectedly emotional walk down memory lane. Twenty thousand photographs of various and mostly useless sizes. Dozens of abandoned projects. A cache of mp3s. Fourteen domain names purchased during brief fits of enthusiasm. It’s a stark autobiography.
I might go on strike tomorrow. The contract for part-time faculty at The New School expires at midnight. Our class sizes have grown since the pandemic, yet our wages remain frozen. Even though we make up 87% of the faculty, the university continues to nickel-and-dime its teachers when they’re not sending out self-congratulatory emails about their commitment to social and economic justice.
Ten days until C. and I head into the desert.
### The Bare Trees Reveal New Scenery
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-12-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:48.000Z
Yesterday it was in the seventies, and today the first snowflakes fell. Halfway through an ugly run, I paused beneath a highway overpass to enjoy the wonder of white material swirling in the air. Snow makes me sentimental. All the leaves are on the ground now, and the bare trees reveal new scenery, exposing windows across the street and offering new vistas when turning a familiar corner.
The story I’m writing includes a fallen priest who transforms old sitcom footage into a frightening new gospel, and I’ve been looking for a historical model to help me better understand how devotion can lead to murder. For weeks I’ve been grinding through histories of medieval Europe in search of a point of inspiration, even though I did not know what I hoped to find. The apocalyptic asceticism of [Girolamo Savonarola](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamo%5FSavonarola?ref=jamesreeves.co) has always captivated me, but he’s a familiar archetype, e.g., the High Sparrow in *Game of Thrones*. This morning I found my model in [Pope Innocent III](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope%5FInnocent%5FIII?ref=jamesreeves.co#Crusades%5Fand%5Fsuppression%5Fof%5Fheresy), who rewired the Gospel of Matthew to sanctify the killing of tens of thousands of fellow Christians, believing separating [the wheat from the chaff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable%5Fof%5Fthe%5FTares?ref=jamesreeves.co) would speed up the return of Christ. I hope the thing I’m writing is more fun than this. At any rate, I’m eager to inject some holy madness into the head of a fallen Las Vegas priest.
### Sleep Has a Moral Dimension
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-11-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:48.000Z
Low clouds and cold rain. Our summery November has come to an end, and I’m excited to see my breath again.
Sleep has an oddly moral dimension: those with a clear conscience sleep like babies, and if someone behaves atrociously, we wonder how they sleep at night. When I tell people I cannot sleep, they ask what is wrong. Am I anxious about the future or haunted by my past? Am I eating poorly, drinking too much coffee, or watching scary movies before bed? No, I say, I’ve simply forgotten how to do it. Perhaps I sound like someone who claims they can’t remember how to walk.
The pulse of distant highway traffic in the rain is the most soothing sound I know.
### Sometimes You Can’t Find the Door
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-10-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:48.000Z
Michigan. Clear skies and seventy-four degrees as we enter mid-November. Last night at the hotel, two middle-aged men in business attire conferred in the hallway while I waited for the elevator. “And that’s why I cried in your office,” said one. The other man smiled and said, “It was very important to me that you did that.” I squinted my ears, dying to gather some context for one man’s tears and another man’s pleasure. But my elevator arrived, and I had no excuse to linger.
C. and I spent the afternoon in a dark gallery, where we tested how our video reflected off different surfaces and considered how we might restage *[The Nightly News](http://jamesreeves.co/the-nightly-news/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*. The museum is a dramatic piece of contemporary architecture without any right angles. Strange how architecture that announces itself as futuristic often feels unsettling, even hostile. There’s no place to rest your eye. Sometimes you can’t find the door. Perhaps it becomes self-fulfilling to imagine the future as stern and forbidding.
We drove back to Ohio alongside a sunset streaked with vapor trails. “It looks like a [Julie Mehretu](https://whitney.org/exhibitions/julie-mehretu?ref=jamesreeves.co) painting,” C. said. There’s so much carnage along the roadside. Exploded deer. Smushed raccoons. Shredded tires. A shoe.
### It Feels Like a Video Game
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-9-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:48.000Z
Michigan. My home state. Sunny skies, a high near seventy, and there were no kidnappings or explosions in the wake of last night’s election. We’re doing great.
Tonight C. and I are driving to a museum to discuss a possible thing. We spent a fair chunk of the ride debating whether laws were necessary to prevent us from killing each other and bouncing checks or if they merely reflected the fundamentally good inclination of human nature. I was the optimist in this debate, which surprised us both. But I enjoy imagining we need a complex system of federal and state statutes to prevent C. from causing trouble.
I love driving at night. It feels like a video game.
### Complaining While Their Opponents Scorch the Earth
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-8-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:48.000Z
It’s Election Day in America, and I showed up at my polling place to unenthusiastically vote for some Democrats. Today I learned your gun permit is an acceptable form of voter identification, which feels too American.
Pundits, pollsters, and other parasites have spent the past month predicting a bloodbath for the Democratic Party, and this seems amoral because it suggests the game has already been called, and your vote doesn’t count. But the media wouldn’t do this if there wasn’t an audience that enjoyed reading about losing, which reveals the frightening chasm between our two parties: Democrats anticipate defeat before the game begins; Republicans declare victory even when they lose.
Whether they win or lose, I hope the Democratic Party will make a cognitive leap and stand for something concrete instead of complaining while their opponents scorch the earth. It’s beyond me how you transform taxing billionaires or providing health insurance into a losing argument.
#### [Vatican Shadow – They Always Fight the Last War](https://vaticanshadow.bandcamp.com/album/american-flesh-for-violence?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### American Flesh for Violence | 2019 | [Bandcamp](https://vaticanshadow.bandcamp.com/album/american-flesh-for-violence?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/They%20Always%20Fight%20The%20Last%20War.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/They%20Always%20Fight%20The%20Last%20War.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### A White Honda with a Crumpled Fender
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-7-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:49.000Z
Ohio. The moon is full, and the weather remains strangely warm in the Middle West. Meanwhile at a climate conference in Egypt, the head of the United Nations said, “We are on a [highway to climate hell](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/11/07/climate/cop27-climate-summit/cop27-gets-underway-amid-compounding-crises-of-war-warming-and-economic-instability?smid=url-share&ref=jamesreeves.co) with our foot on the accelerator.” Here in America, we’re bracing for another degrading election between the toothless and vicious. We lost [Mimi Parker](https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/remembering-lows-mimi-parker-with-6-essential-tracks/?ref=jamesreeves.co) from Low yesterday.
This afternoon, I idled behind a white Honda with a crumpled fender and a bloody palm print on the trunk. A decal said *HELP* in a horror movie font. What is the psychological profile of someone who decorates their car this way? Perhaps they’re a beloved prankster and a big hit at parties. Maybe they’ll wind up on the evening news someday.
I’ve started reading William Gibson’s *[The Peripheral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FPeripheral?ref=jamesreeves.co)* between bouts of Graeber + Wengrow’s *[Dawn of Everything](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374157357/thedawnofeverything?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, which is helping me think about fiction—sort of like how [Bertrand Russell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%5FHistory%5Fof%5FWestern%5FPhilosophy?ref=jamesreeves.co#Catholic%5FPhilosophy)‘s analysis of Catholic Scholasticism reads like the best sci-fi.
### If We Can Rearrange Time, We Can Do Anything
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-6-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:49.000Z
Another summer day in November, but I’m delighted because the sun went down an hour earlier tonight. It’s such a beautiful thing, this seasonal reminder that we can tinker with the rules. The end of Daylight Savings Time is my favorite holiday because it brings the night closer. And if you’re staying at a motel, you get a free hour. And here I return to what has become my annual appeal, perhaps even an invocation:
Changing the clocks should be the year’s biggest celebration with fireworks, parades, and gift-giving. Because if we can rearrange time, we can do anything we please. Invent new colors. Add more days to the week. Rewind the internet to 2005\. Erase the borders on maps and replace money with hugs.
Tonight I flipped through an old notebook and came across this quote from [Germain Bazin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germain%5FBazin?ref=jamesreeves.co) on the Baroque:
> After two centuries of light, Caravaggio created darkness—a darkness whose nature was metaphysical. Henceforward, darkness was like a mantle of nothingness, a habit of mourning, enveloping the monk in his cell, the philosopher in his den, and the hermit in his retreat, and bending the back of Crespi’s St. Charles Borromeo, who eats his meager repast of bread and water without lifting his eyes from his book, for life is short: the days of man are numbered.
I’ll be crushed if this is [the last year](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-congress-split-making-daylight-saving-time-permanent-2022-11-03/?ref=jamesreeves.co) we fuck around with time.
### I Recited the Names of Cities Like a Mantra
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-5-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:49.000Z
A summer Saturday in November, bright and breezy with highs in the upper 70s. C. and I are trying to determine our best route to Vegas. There’s no way to avoid Indiana and Illinois, but St. Louis will present a crucial decision: Interstate 70 or Interstate 40\. The former will take us through Kansas City, Topeka, Denver, Grand Junction, and the center of Utah before dipping through Cedar City and Mesquite. The latter offers Tulsa, the Texas panhandle, Albuquerque, and Flagstaff before swinging up through Bullhead City.
I considered the merits of each route while I went for a run through the woods, repeating the names of cities like a mantra. Denver versus Albuquerque. The mythic cadence of Bullhead City. Maybe we’ll decide in St. Louis.
Music is critical while I run; I need a wall of sound to block out my gasping and heaving. Today I soundtracked my run with 1970s motorik: Can, Neu!, Harmonia, Cluster, Amon Düül II—and [Kosmischer Läufer](http://www.kosmischerlaufer.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co), an uncanny distillation of the above with an elaborate backstory about a sound engineer tasked with composing training aids for athletes in East Germany’s Olympic program. Because the state owned the tapes, they languished in storage until 2013, when they finally saw daylight. [None of this is true](https://www.spin.com/2013/06/olympic-sized-hoax-lost-krautrock-warm-up-tapes-mysteriously-surface/?ref=jamesreeves.co), but pairing music with fiction should be encouraged.
(And today I learned the term [*Ostalgie*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostalgie?ref=jamesreeves.co), a nostalgia for Communist East Germany that leads down a rabbit hole of reactionary narratives, irony, and kitsch, which brings to mind [Milan Kundera’s definition](https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n10/john-bayley/kundera-and-kitsch?ref=jamesreeves.co) of kitsch as fundamentally oppressive: “Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!”)
The clocks roll back tonight, one of my favorite moments of the year. I love having more night.
#### [Kosmischer Läufer – Sandtrommel](https://kosmischerlaufer.bandcamp.com/music?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Volume One | Unknown Capability Recordings, 2013 | [Bandcamp](https://kosmischerlaufer.bandcamp.com/album/volume-one?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Sandtrommel.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Sandtrommel.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### A Bright Daytime Moon Hung in the Sky
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-4-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:49.000Z
Ohio. Another seventy-five-degree day in November. This afternoon I sat in a park and watched the ducks, which was out of character for me. A bright daytime moon hung in the sky, surrounded by the vapor trails of airplanes.
In antiquity, we told stories to explain this uncanny sight. That god’s plan for our world has gone awry, and the daylight moon is an apology for these errors. Or that the moon refused to live in the same sky as the sun, asking, “[Of what use is a candle in broad daylight?](https://www.hartman.org.il/kiddush-levana-of-what-use-is-a-candle-in-broad-daylight-the-reinvention-of-a-myth/?ref=jamesreeves.co)” I’d like to live in a world of apologetic gods and talking satellites.
I turned on the radio, and a woman was reading a letter from a man in prison who wondered about the opening scene of the Bible: “God said, let there be light. So one would then have to reason that God himself was dwelling in the darkness.”
Tonight a cheerful old blackjack dealer told me about “the ministry of presence,” a term from smoke-filled church basements about the value of simply showing up.
#### [Ulla Anona – Moon](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Moon.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### bblisss | 2018 | [Bandcamp](https://bblisss.bandcamp.com/album/bblisss?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Moon.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Moon.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### My Brain Has Run Out of Sleeping Juice
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-3-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:50.000Z
This morning’s fog matched my mood after another night of patchy sleep. By noon the temperature edged into the seventies beneath a cloudless sky. These summery November days echo my sense of losing the rhythm, of being out of time. But I’ve decided to embrace the upside of insomnia. No more tossing and turning. If my consciousness refuses to rest, so be it—I’ll shift into vampire mode and use the small hours to write.
Last night I finished Richard Matheson’s [*I Am Legend*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%5FAm%5FLegend%5F%28novel%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)*,* a remarkable book, especially for 1954\. We spend 180 pages in the head of one lonely man, the last survivor in a world of vampires. When he visits the crypt where his wife’s body rests, it becomes a meditation on grief and depression:
> "He had no idea how long he’d been there. After a while, though, even the deepest sorrow faltered, even the most penetrating despair lost its scalpel edge. The flagellant’s curse, he thought, to grow inured even to the whip. He straightened up and stood. Still alive, he thought, heart beating senselessly, veins running without point, bones and muscles and tissue all alive and functioning with no purpose at all."
He gently closes the crypt so as not to disturb her sleep and returns to his suburban home for another bout of rumination while the monsters beat at his shutters. The story is so durable—and haunting—because Matheson’s prose lives between psychological interiority and clinical detachment. (The precision of his writing in *Legend* is a million miles from [*Hell House*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell%5FHouse%5F%28novel%29?ref=jamesreeves.co), another horror landmark he wrote seventeen years later, and reads like something blurted out on a bender during a botched attempt to plagiarize [Shirley Jackson](http://jamesreeves.co/the-haunting-of-hill-house/?ref=jamesreeves.co). Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.)
My insomnia puzzles me because I cannot point to a cause. I’m facing no catastrophes or major vexations beyond the search for meaning and a way to survive this century with some dignity. Perhaps my brain has run out of sleeping juice. Or maybe I’m just anxious to get on the road in a few weeks.
### A Mumbled Conspiracy Feels Wholesome These Days
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-2-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:50.000Z
Ohio. A warm and hazy November day, and my insomnia continues. Tonight I ran around a lake until I tired myself out. Why does the brain go to war with itself? My body is hungry for sleep, yet my soul races around like a crazed puppy, fetching unpleasant memories and scraps of regret for inspection. And my mind turns gullible in the small hours, ready to believe anything.
*I believe you believe that.* C. and I often discuss what would happen if one of us saw a ghost. It might be the most fundamental test of any relationship. One person sees a spectral figure at the foot of their bed, maybe a flying saucer over the highway or Jesus Christ floating in their soup. Now they stand before their lover, telling them magic is real and it’s all they can think about anymore. And the other person must decide whether to humor them or rearrange their own understanding of the world.
Last night I gave up the search for sleep and watched *[All the President’s Men](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/all-the-presidents-men-1976?ref=jamesreeves.co)* at four o’clock in the morning. When played at low volume, it functions as a nostalgic fireplace: typewriters and shuffled paperwork, cigarette lighters and shoes clacking in hallways. The soft ding of an elevator is followed by a mumbled conspiracy that feels wholesome these days.
#### [Black Polygons – Ghost](https://blackpolygons.bandcamp.com/album/accalmie?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Accalmie | 2013 | [Bandcamp](https://blackpolygons.bandcamp.com/album/accalmie?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Ghost.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Ghost.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### There's a Thin Line Between Vigilance and Neuroticism
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-1-2022/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:50.000Z
It was a muggy and unusually warm first day of November here in the Middle West. The leaves have fallen, and we crunched over them while dressed for spring. Meanwhile, Iran is shipping a fresh batch of [Loitering Kamikaze Drones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loitering%5Fmunition?ref=jamesreeves.co) to Russia, pundits are wondering if [words are dead](https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/galaxy-brain/63609043b606fe00376a82da/welcome-to-geriatric-social-media/?ref=jamesreeves.co), and American elections are becoming extremely American. In Arizona, a group of paranoiacs known as [Clean Elections USA](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/01/us/politics/election-monitors-arizona-judge.html?ref=jamesreeves.co) agreed not to carry guns or wear body armor within 250 feet of a ballot box, and they’ll stop screaming at voters within 75 feet—which creates an interesting 175-foot zone of getting yelled at without worrying about getting shot.
Three weeks until C. and I point the car west and search for a new home in the desert. I’m determined to finish the novel I’m writing before the year ends. I’m midway through another line-by-line edit, and every sentence looks so ugly, riddled with commas and gerunds. I’m becoming aware of my tics in sentence composition as well as my thoughts, and perhaps this is good and necessary, even if it’s irritating. But there’s a thin line between vigilance and neuroticism.
Insomnia has hit me hard lately. You can almost taste it, that bright metallic sensation that floods the brain when it decides there will be no sleep tonight. I tried sniffing lavender and eating melatonin. I even tried watching *The Phantom Thread*. But no luck. I toss. I pace. The upshot is I’ve learned to appreciate [thirty-minute-long vaporwave tracks](https://telepathtelepath.bandcamp.com/album/--42?ref=jamesreeves.co), thanks to [Sasha Frere-Jones’s recent reviews](https://theshfl.com/collection/5659420552331264?ref=jamesreeves.co).
#### [2814 – Drifting](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Drifting.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Birth of a New Day | Dream Catalog, 2015 | [Bandcamp](https://dreamcatalogue.bandcamp.com/album/--18?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Drifting.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Drifting.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Tighter Pores, Fewer Toxins, and a Sharper Mind
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/future-sweat/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:50.000Z
C. and I celebrated her birthday at the Largest Korean Sauna in North America. I’ve always loved the mythic sound of “Chicagoland,” how it conjures a shadow empire within the nation, and this effect was enhanced by [King Spa](https://www.kingspa.com/chicago/?ref=jamesreeves.co), a retrofitted big-box store nestled between Home Depot and H Mart in the northern sprawl of Chicago.
As we entered the changing room, an attendant handed us our uniforms: a drab t-shirt and gigantic shorts. After dipping into icy and boiling pools, we logged time in saunas made of charcoal, salt, amethyst, gold, ocher, and infrared light—each advertising various healing properties: increased blood flow, keener vision, tighter pores, fewer toxins, and a sharper mind. Signs warned against heavy petting.
A game of Uno in the Pyramid Room | Photo by Candy Chang
Some people brought their laptops. They composed emails and entered data into spreadsheets between bouts of mind-blowing heat and bites of kimchi fried rice. Some played cards, and others played chess. Most of us just stared into the middle distance, trying to take it all in.
The decor leapfrogged postmodernism and landed in a 21st-century dumping ground of pleather, plastic, and faux marble. Cottonball clouds hung from the rafters. Stalks of fake bamboo sprouted among black lacquer credenzas, fake pineapples, and massive geodes on sale for $16,500\. Propellors spun on the ceiling. A selfie station faced a meditation area with fifty recliners. On the mute flatscreens, Formula 1 cars quietly zipped around a racetrack. The mounted head of a deer gazed down at a golden Buddha and a silkscreen of Audrey Hepburn.
The clientele was just as eclectic. Hushed voices spoke in Korean, Russian, Spanish, and every variant of American slang. The movie theater was playing *Full Metal Jacket* for reasons unknown, and we stuck around long enough to watch Gomer Pyle blow his brains out before heading back to the Pyramid Room.
We stayed for eleven hours, reluctant to leave this beautiful polyglot future where everyone wore the same terrible outfit, all of us refugees from the 21st century, searching for some peace and quiet in a hot room.
#### [Wasted Cathedral – Heatstroke Cowboys Ride On](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Heatstroke%20Cowboys%20Ride%20On.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Wasted Cathedral | Dub Ditch Picnic, 2015 | [Bandcamp](https://wastedcathedrallove.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Heatstroke%20Cowboys%20Ride%20On.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Heatstroke%20Cowboys%20Ride%20On.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### A Secular Approach to Home Improvement
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/wreckage/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:51.000Z
Here in the Middle West, it’s seventy-seven degrees in late October. I took an afternoon drive through Indiana the other day, and it was clear that America is not doing well. The interstate was a patchwork of craters and ragged concrete, and I still feel the judder of the car in my nerves. Above a shuttered rest area, a billboard announced *Jesus Christ is the Answer! Call Dan’s Windows & Flooring*. I spent several miles wondering about the net return on this marketing strategy: those who want a Christian window installer versus those who prefer a secular approach to home improvement.
Real-world rot feels related to [Drew Austin’s meditation](https://kneelingbus.substack.com/p/193-sludgefeast) on being choked by digital content. “It fills our cloud storage to the brim and piles up at the margins of our digital interfaces like garbage scattered across a freeway median,” he writes. “It is the lorem ipsum that wallpapers and carpets the internet’s liminal spaces.”
Last night I received an error message from The New York Times: *You are browsing and clicking much faster than is typical of a human being.*
### An Urge to Tear Apart the Sky
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/agony-and-ecstacy/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:51.000Z
The sun went down at 6:46pm, the moon is waning, and a cold front has arrived. I need to support my writing and teaching habits, so I logged into LinkedIn last week to hunt for some design work. Depression hit me in seconds, followed by an urge to tear apart the sky. Instructions to “Measure the Weight of Your Social Media Voice” and “Forge Emotional Bonds with Your User Base” commingled with homilies about resilience, creativity, and being authentic. Hundreds of grinning avatars were psyched, chuffed, delighted, elated, blessed, and thrilled about social media strategy and UX design. Somehow we’ve moved from doing a job to advertising it as a state of ecstasy. I ran from my screen like someone in a zombie movie.
Over in Velcro City, [Paul Raven shared his experience](https://www.velcro-city.co.uk/complaints-of-a-reluctant-larper/?ref=jamesreeves.co) with opening LinkedIn for the first time in ages, and I found it tremendously reassuring. He nails the weirdly homogenous atmosphere of “performativity and personal-brand backslapping, a river of abstract aspiration laced with brow-furrowed bits about mental health and the risks of over-obsessing about what one does, all written in a style whose careful optimisation to the platform’s affordances suggests people doing the exact opposite of what they’re saying, quite possibly without even realising it.”
Our networks are transforming us into such peculiar creatures. Meanwhile, people are scaling buildings in France and [turning off the lights](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/13/world/europe/paris-energy-conservation-parkour.html?ref=jamesreeves.co), hoping to stave off an energy crisis. It’s happening more frequently now, the gut-punch realization that I’m living in the future that so many books and movies warned me about.
#### [Public Image Ltd – Careering](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Careering.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Metal Box | Virgin, 1979 | [Reviewed by Simon Reynolds](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22374-metal-box/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Careering.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Careering.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Saturday Night Terrain
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/night-station-03/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:51.000Z
She hummed with the nervy energy of a talented yet unrecognized mind. Maybe it was the way she talked about omens or her deep cigarette drags, but I sensed she belonged to a world of jukebox bars and motels with bulletproof glass at the check-in counter, moving through the Saturday night terrain of nicknamed men and last-call specials. And I wanted to join her there.
#### [Ectomorph – Crawl of the Cthulu](https://ectomorph.bandcamp.com/album/stalker-it-42?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Stalker | Interdimensional Transmissions, 2018 | [Bandcamp](https://ectomorph.bandcamp.com/album/stalker-it-42?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[Stalker \[IT 42\] by Ectomorph](https://ectomorph.bandcamp.com/album/stalker-it-42?ref=jamesreeves.co)
The deeper nights of autumn always draw me back to Ectomorph, purveyors of Detroit electro sleaze. *[Stalker](https://ectomorph.bandcamp.com/album/stalker-it-42?ref=jamesreeves.co)* is their masterpiece: debauched drums and queasy synthesizers, a rumbling from the depths. It’s the sound of something impossibly cool and possibly wicked loping through the backstreets. This brings to mind [David Leo Rice’s meditation on the virtue of seediness](https://raviddice.medium.com/on-seediness-undead-literature-and-reengaging-with-the-american-mythic-in-the-2020s-5ea698b1b6?ref=jamesreeves.co): “The seedy trace that’s left behind when a drifter leaves a motel is reduced to an essence of past human presence, and thus the seedy both erases the human and offers the possibility of its renewal. Rather than starting a new life, the seedy offers the chance to be reborn in one’s own life, or perhaps to be born in earnest for the first time, well into middle age.”
### Good Fortune
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/good-fortune/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:51.000Z
I keep this one in my wallet.
### Someday We Will Invent Kinder Gods and New Miracles
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/sockets-and-flames/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:51.000Z
The sun went down at 7:01pm, and the moon is full. When I stepped outside this morning, I saw my breath—the first frost of the season. Next month C. and I will drive into the desert to find a new place to live. In the meantime, I am savoring the heavier skies and reds and yellows. The burning leaves and earlier nights. Still working my way through *[The Bright Ages](https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-bright-ages-matthew-gabrieledavid-m-perry?variant=40826412597282&ref=jamesreeves.co)*, Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry’s retelling of medieval European history.
There’s a story from the eleventh century about a French baron who would kidnap the locals and hold them in his castle for ransom. A soldier named Gebert rescued them, but they were soon recaptured and tortured. The baron punished Gebert by removing his eyes from their sockets.
> “Gebert despaired of his fate . . . and decided to starve himself to death. But on the eighth day, he had a vision. A ten-year-old girl appeared to him, clothed in gold, suffused with light, and beautiful beyond description. She regarded him closely, then stuck her hands into his sockets and seemed to reimplant his eyes. Gebert awoke with a start to thank the girl, but no one was there. His vision began to return slowly.”
This was one of the many miracles ascribed to [Saint Foy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint%5FFaith?ref=jamesreeves.co), a third-century girl who was burned alive after refusing to sacrifice an animal to Roman gods. Gabriele and Perry connect this story to a broader uptick in miraculous saints throughout the eleventh century, a time of destabilized power centers and decaying traditions that divided Western Europe “into fragmenting segments fraught with low-grade but constant strife.” For many, the solution was to invent new gods and new miracles.
Yesterday in twenty-first-century America, I idled behind a jeep with an InfoWars license plate. We’ve been creating fucked up religions lately to deal with uncertainty, casting each other as heretics and heathens. Hopefully, one day we will invent kinder gods and new miracles. Or at least better stories.
### Night Station
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/night-station-02/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:52.000Z
I stood in line at the Gas ‘n Go behind a man with a pistol tucked into the elastic waistband of his sweatpants, yelling that the cashier only gave him three Powerball tickets when he should’ve gotten four. I bowed my head and thought about patience and chance. The manager intervened, and everyone narrowly avoided getting shot. Near pump number nine, a woman in the passenger seat of a pickup wiped away some tears. She caught me looking, and I turned away and fiddled with the radio. A chipper advertisement encouraged me to order nutrients harvested from jellyfish.
[Nightcrawler by Kevin Richard Martin](https://kevinrichardmartin.bandcamp.com/album/nightcrawler-3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
This year Kevin Richard Martin has been racing [Bohren & Der Club of Gore](https://boomkat.com/products/black-earth-31d4d24f-610d-4dae-b42c-5d4358457682?ref=jamesreeves.co) to the bottom of the doom pits with two grainy, low-lit releases: *[Nightcrawler](https://kevinrichardmartin.bandcamp.com/album/nightcrawler-3?ref=jamesreeves.co)* and *[Downtown](https://kevinrichardmartin.bandcamp.com/album/downtown?ref=jamesreeves.co)*. Both albums are steeped in seedy slow-motion drums, subterrestrial bass, and smudges of brass while something sinister whirs in the background. Perfect autumn music. *Downtown* was released today, and it’s [Bandcamp Friday](https://kevinrichardmartin.bandcamp.com/album/downtown?ref=jamesreeves.co).
### Hallucinator
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/hallucinator/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:52.000Z
We traded memories through the night, starting with branches of personal history and working backward until we reached the primeval muck that fuels a life. Propped on an elbow, she described a recurring nightmare in which she wore a curly blonde wig that chewed through her head until she woke up in tears. In return, I offered my boyhood fear of mannequins, how my father had to cover my eyes whenever we went into a department store.
She recounted the day her friend across the street moved away after the boy’s father committed suicide, and for several years she did not know what this meant, only that it was a terrible crime. When she finally understood what it meant to kill yourself, she began to avoid balconies and driving down two-lane roads.
Draping herself in a chair by the window, she bit off the filter of a cigarette before lighting up. When she was six years old, her father moved their family halfway across the country because he believed their old house was haunted. “He thought it was a Civil War ghost,” she said. “But I didn’t start believing in ghosts until a few weeks ago.”
Years later, I would discover her stories had bled into mine. While making a sandwich or gassing up the car, my mind would wander to the night my mother held me when I was seven years old, stroking my hair and saying it wasn’t my fault our dog was killed by a delivery truck because I left the gate open. Then I remembered we never had a gate or a dog, and my mother would never say such a thing if we did.
Sometimes I am still jolted awake by a dream about a flesh-eating wig.
###### *This is the fourteenth episode of* [*Interstate Scenes*](http://jamesreeves.co/tags/interstate-scenes/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, a fictional collection of homeless paragraphs, remixed and upcycled bits from the past, and bloopers from the stories I’m writing.*
### Room in the Air
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/oktember/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:52.000Z
Obscenely red skies over the Middle West this evening. The real heroes of this blessed land are the short-order cooks at Chinese takeout joints who manipulate fire, oil, and steel like gods. It’s the first of October, and I give praise for the arrival of proper autumn at last. Deeper nights. Sharper weather. There’s room in the air to think.
Saw [*Barbarian*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr89pmKrqkI&ref=jamesreeves.co) at the multiplex, and it’s a brilliantly effective horror movie. At one point, I shrieked like a child. More importantly, it was *fun*, succeeding because we’ve become so blunted by the deadening rhythm of thrillers that its refusal to play along keeps us edgy. *Barbarian* understands what kind of movie it is, preferring the absurd over the ponderous or, god forbid, exploring themes. And it delivers a brilliant approach to haunted real estate.
Currently reading *[The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe](https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-bright-ages-matthew-gabrieledavid-m-perry?variant=40826412597282&ref=jamesreeves.co)*, which recasts the Middle Ages as a knotty, polyglot time with all kinds of gods—and points towards better possible futures.
### Kiva
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/kiva/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:52.000Z
Created a series of presentations, reports, newsletters, wireframes, website modules, and borrower profiles for this microfinance non-profit that provides loans to low-income entrepreneurs and students in 77 countries.
Drawing upon photography-driven design, the annual reports present Kiva’s work through borrower stories and data visualizations that demonstrate the impact of lenders. Additionally, a range of print and digital collateral was developed alongside editorial design, copyediting, wireframes, and new features for the website. Research and copywriting led to fifty borrower profiles, bolstering Kiva’s mission with user-centered narratives that spotlight subjects such as climate change, education, and gender equity.
##### Presentation Design, Web Development
### Antistatic
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/antistatic/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:53.000Z
A jumbotron flashed above an overpass, and I held my breath. Lately there’s been a shiver in my nerves whenever I see an illuminated screen, a reflexive bracing for scenes from another disaster, the latest inhuman act. Someone could tell me everyone in Nebraska disappeared last night, and I would believe it. I’ve become accustomed to the suspension of disbelief. But it was just the weather report. Dust, more dust, and probably smoke.
For years, I inhaled the news until I heard myself screaming. Then I began to understand the relief she had found in radio static, those flecks and dots like listening to an abstract painting. Driving to the crackle of an untuned station, I found peace in noise without meaning, a hum that boxed in my mind and prevented it from wandering too far. I jotted down the stations that played my favorite static, noting them as plush or brittle, warm or cool, a codex for the textures that matched my mood.
#### [Vainqueur – Antistatic](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Antistatic.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Elevations | Chain Reaction, 1997 | [More](https://ra.co/reviews/23177?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Antistatic.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Antistatic.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
*This is the thirteenth episode of [Interstate Scenes](http://jamesreeves.co/notes/interstate-scenes/?ref=jamesreeves.co), a fictional collection of homeless paragraphs, remixed and upcycled bits from the past, and bloopers from the stories I’m writing.*
### The Throwback Special
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-throwback-special/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:53.000Z
I have zero interest in football, which can make it challenging to move through American life. I dread getting cornered in an elevator or stuck in line with some chipper guy asking if I saw the game. Saying *no, I don’t follow football* feels like a failing and a pretension that leaves me doubting my manhood. So a novel about middle-aged men who gather each year to reenact a violent NFL moment from 1985 was not high on my reading list.
But Chris Bachelder’s *[The Throwback Special ](https://amzn.to/3UqSmiH?ref=jamesreeves.co)*relies upon football only as a stalking horse to guide us through the interior muck of failure and pretension. The action unfolds in hotel rooms and hallways, where the hum of the ice machine veers from reassuring to sinister. The story is delivered in a deadpan, ethnographic tone that flirts with the surreal: “The bright, enormous clock bathed the entire lobby in time.” Continental breakfasts and highway medians become totems of American desire and pilgrimage, our last shared rituals and churches. A man admires the trash strewn along a service drive: “By night it looked ceremonial, festive, as if it had once stood for something holy but now just stood prettily for itself.”
Line for line, this book has some of the best writing I’ve read in years, dignified and comic without slapping you on the back, and I’m harassing everyone I know to read it. This sentence captures its overall spirit: “Chad had ceased being a discrete unit of biological meaning. It felt okay.”
([Matt Bell’s newsletter](https://mattbell.substack.com/p/exercise-31-how-to-not-stop-saying) encouraged me to read it, and here’s a nice [interview with Bachelder](https://brooklynrail.org/2016/04/books/chris-bachelder-with-weston-cutter?ref=jamesreeves.co).)
### Plaza
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/service-plaza/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:53.000Z
Service plazas are thrilling architecture, modern works of art where I can eat slick food next to twelve lanes of humming traffic, lording over a glittering river of steel and glass. Last night, I sat at a polycarbonate table gnawing at a cold cheeseburger, watching my fellow travelers stalk the food court, hunting and gathering, snapping and mumbling while they bumped into chairs, walls, and one another, their faces tanned blue by the screens in their palms.
Munching a cold french fry, I counted the logos flying around my head. Because sometimes it makes me feel rather grand, all these entities competing for my attention: the billboards and commercials, the avatars and pop-ups and shriekers. *Please look at me*, they cry. *Pay attention to me*.
A girl asked her mother whether the Bible was fiction or non-fiction. A man in flip-flops yelled “shoot me an email” six times to nobody in particular while he pumped quarters into a candy machine. Five elderly women solemnly examined the offerings at Panda Express, their white hair like a system of low-flying clouds. A monk in a saffron robe paced in front of a cash register, waiting for his tacos. The fluorescent lights granted no shadows or gradation, no mercy.
A voice ricocheted from the massage chairs: “Don’t *push* me!” The air felt too tight, stretched thin by the transactional beep and churn, the horror of strangers. My heart began beating in my jaw, my teeth grinding like the time I accidentally gunned the engine while in neutral: the smoke and overheated gears, something close to breaking.
###### *This is the twelfth episode of* [*Interstate Scenes*](http://jamesreeves.co/tag/interstate-scenes/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, a fictional collection of homeless paragraphs, remixed and upcycled bits from the past, and bloopers from the stories I’m writing.*
### The Haunting of Hill House
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-haunting-of-hill-house/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:53.000Z
It wasn’t until midway through revising the novel I’m writing that I realized I was writing a ghost story. It’s an interesting moment when you give up control of something you’re making and instead become its servant, helping it become what it needs to become. The trick, I think, is to stay out of its way.
I spent the summer reading some touchstones of horror: Ira Levin’s *Rosemary’s Baby*, Koji Suzuki’s *The Ring*, Michel Faber’s *Under the Skin*, Doris Lessing’s *[The Fifth Child](http://jamesreeves.co/the-fifth-child/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, and most recently, *The Haunting of Hill House* by Shirley Jackson.
Hill House, famously “not sane,” bothers the soul because Jackson describes the perception of horror, not the horror itself:
> "\[The house\] had an unbelievably faulty design which left it chillingly wrong in all its dimensions, so that the walls seemed always in one direction a fraction longer than the eye could endure, and in another direction a fraction less than the barest possible tolerable length."
We’re left to imagine what these walls might look like. Later, a woman turns and sees something, then screams to her companion, “Don’t look back—don’t look—run!” Another character struggles with her bedroom door but is “unable to open it against the volume of noise outside.” The fear is vivid; the causes remain unknown.
Early in the story, a professor ruminates about our need for explanations. “People are always so anxious to get things out into the open,” he says, “where they can put a name to them, even a meaningless name, so long as it has something of a scientific ring.” Jackson trusts that our imaginations are far more wicked than anything she might describe, and she creates the conditions for these imaginings to fester into something genuinely horrifying because they cannot be named.
Ghost-wise, I’m not sure where to go after Jackson. Any recommendations for novels that deal with hauntings would be much appreciated.
### Drone
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/drone/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:53.000Z
Tinnitus occurs for many reasons, most of them vague. Exposure to loud noise or stress. A kink in the nerves. It’s a purely internal phenomenon, and it’s important to distinguish between the mental and the material. It could be a matter of life and death. Or worse. Like the story about the man whose tinnitus became so loud, he punctured his eardrums with an ice pick, preferring deafness to the incessant ringing. After the job was done, he held the bloodied pick before a mirror and began to scream. Not from the pain. No, he screamed because the ringing continued. Tinnitus is just another trick of the brain, a glitch that compensates for a lost frequency by reproducing it in the mind.
So I turn up the radio to drown the hum in my ears. This is the only medicine that works: the gray noise of modern living, the wash of air-conditioners, static, and highway traffic. Strange how the noise in my head can only be soothed by more noise. Maybe this makes sense in a world of ever-increasing volume, all of us chatterers and screamers seeking to mute the unpleasant sounds in our heads, some hollow ringing of the soul.
Now sight is merging with sound: everyone is snapping pictures or hunched over tiny screens, their faces bathed in pale blue light as if talking with ghosts. My brains scrape against a story about a god who could no longer tolerate the constant babble of humans that swarmed the earth, until one night, unable to sleep, this god unleashed a terrible flood. This might be an ancient myth. Or maybe I made it up.
###### *This is the eleventh episode of* [*Interstate Scenes*](http://jamesreeves.co/tag/interstate-scenes/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, a fictional collection of homeless paragraphs, remixed and upcycled bits from the past, and bloopers from the stories I’m writing.*
### Berenice Abbot
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/fields-and-waves/
Last updated: 2026-05-13T00:45:07.000Z
As I wandered the Columbus Museum of Art, my brain was gunked up with doubt and bad adjectives. Then I ran into [Berenice Abbott’s](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/10/berenice-abbott-science-photography-trailblazer?ref=jamesreeves.co) portrait of a magnetic field. Its cosmic pattern reminded me of fireworks beneath the eyelids and my childhood conception of God, which came from the opening scenes of [*It’s a Wonderful Life*](http://jamesreeves.co/eve/?ref=jamesreeves.co). My thoughts turned to the moment dots become a recognizable pattern, the phenomena of stray bursts of electricity in our heads cohering into shapes, ideas, and loops that can seduce or horrify.
Abbott pulled signals from the air and [made them visible](http://photomediationsmachine.net/2015/03/24/making-science-visible-the-photography-of-berenice-abbott/?ref=jamesreeves.co). Between 1958 and 1962, she documented magnetic fields and captured the interplay between prisms, water, and beams of light. She photographed wave patterns crashing into a piece of glass. “The artist through history has been the spokesman and conservator of human and spiritual energies and ideas,” Abbott [wrote in 1939](http://seeingscience.umbc.edu/2016/10/berenice-abbott-photography-and-science-1939/?ref=jamesreeves.co). “Today science needs its voice.”
### I Need to Make Mistakes
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/old-notebook-new-notebook/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:54.000Z
The sun goes down at 8:05 tonight, there’s a waxing crescent moon, and the blessed cool edge of autumn is in the air. Today I learned that Cheez-Its were invented in Ohio. There’s magic here. There’s also magic in a fresh notebook.
The first thing I do with a new notebook is write something stupid and messy on the first page. This helps cure any notion that it might be precious. For years I believed the right notebook would solve all my problems. I explored blank pages, dots, and grids. I fooled with modular systems. I invested in artisanal, shade-grown leather journals. In the end, I’ve settled on [these Muji notebooks](https://www.muji.us/products/high-quality-paper-bind-flat-open-notebook-horizontal-line-and-vertical-dot-grid-8s62?ref=jamesreeves.co). They’re five bucks a pop, the pages are nicely coated, and they lie flat, which seems to aid my left-handedness. And they can take a beating. They heroically suffer rain and sploshed coffee. They get jammed in my back pocket, I fall asleep on them, and sometimes I use them to kill bugs. Pen-wise, I remain committed to black [0.4mm Zebra Sarasa](https://www.jetpens.com/Zebra-Sarasa-R-Gel-Pen-0.4-mm-Black-Ink-Black-Body/pd/31080?ref=jamesreeves.co) pens.
I’ve been relying more on these tools lately, drafting my stories with pen and paper before punching them into a machine. I think differently when I’m not locked into a staring contest with a screen. Maybe because my writing doesn’t look like the final product yet, I’m more willing to make mistakes.
(Inspired by Warren Ellis’s [recent note](https://warrenellis.ltd/work/the-only-good-notebook/?ref=jamesreeves.co) about notebooks.)
### The Fifth Child
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-fifth-child/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:54.000Z
Maybe I was primed for horror because I woke before dawn on a Sunday morning and could not find my way back to sleep. I hate the sunrise. It brings to mind all-nighters and benders from my past, the grit and clench of bad drugs and insomnia. When I think about all those blissed-out swamis, granola-eaters, and alpha go-getters who believe dawn is the most beautiful part of the day, I wonder if something is wrong with me. So as the sky turned an uneasy pink, I picked up [Doris Lessing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris%5FLessing?ref=jamesreeves.co)‘s *[The Fifth Child](https://amzn.to/3pRoM83?ref=jamesreeves.co)* and discovered a story about living beyond the bounds of time, consensus, and normalcy.
The novel’s crisis is simple; its implications are not. A young couple is determined to fill their home with children and find “happiness, in the old style.” But their fifth child frightens them. I’ll leave it at that. Read it. It’s a fast 125 pages, and we should have more novellas. There are no chapters or sections, which makes the story relentless.
Lessing’s writing is lean and frighteningly precise, fusing the sweep of a fable with a cinematographer’s mastery of space. She carries us through the family’s home across decades, roving through rooms I came to know well until, without my realizing it, she’d left me stranded in a moral grey zone where I found myself rooting for a terrible outcome. I had become part of a horror that telescopes from the personal to the social to the existential. We remain in the house until the mother takes a ghastly trip that feels like a permanent stain on some part of myself I cannot name. At that moment, I was grateful the morning sun was shining through my window.
(Thank you, [David Leo Rice](https://www.raviddice.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co), for the recommendation.)
### Red Shift
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/red-shift/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:54.000Z
The years disappeared while I drove, my life red-shifting as catastrophes streaked across my windshield and cars zipped past me, their drivers clutching tiny screens flashing the latest news. Strange how we’ve become so hellbent on speed rather than slowing down. Maybe it’s a knee-jerk defense against decay, the senselessness of entropy. They say evolution occurs most rapidly in body parts that attract lovers and frighten rivals, but what’s the reason for the grey in my hair or the creases across my forehead?
Chattanooga. Kansas City. Los Angeles. I wanted to admire the flash of plastic and neon, the synthetic gloss of interstate life. Instead, I found myself squinting into the sprawl, thinking of a time when this was a wilderness of women and men raising feeble lamps against the darkness and calling out to God.
Wichita. Newark. Seattle. It felt like one big meeting with the same metal chairs, the same fleshy carpet, and the same voices fumbling for a grammar to describe the kinks in the soul. *A halo is only six inches from being a noose.* I folded myself into the back of church basements and joined a shambling collection of retail workers, grandmothers, nightwalkers, software developers, mystics, teenagers, blackjack dealers, and cops who spoke in aphorisms and numbers. They smiled politely and told me I must humble myself if I hoped to find anything resembling peace.
###### *This is the tenth episode of* [*Interstate Scenes*](http://jamesreeves.co/tag/interstate-scenes/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, a fictional collection of homeless paragraphs, remixed and upcycled bits from the past, and bloopers from the stories I’m writing.*
### Pictures from a Bad Dream
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/pictures-from-a-bad-dream/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:55.000Z
Clear skies in the Middle West. The sun goes down at 8:25pm, and the moon is in its last quarter. This morning I [fed a robot](https://openai.com/dall-e-2/?ref=jamesreeves.co) a few sentences from the novel I’m writing, and it generated some startlingly accurate pictures. It also generated a complex headrush of emotions.
On a visceral level, it was unsettling to suddenly glimpse a fictional world I’d spent years imagining—and struggling to build with words. This uneasiness mingled with an undeniable wow factor, and I briefly imagined using this technology to create stunning mood boards and bleeding-edge pitch decks. But most of all, I felt a little dirty, as if sneaking a peek at someone else’s private dream.
There are knotty ethical issues to untangle, such as [Charlie Warzel](https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/galaxy-brain/62fc502abcbd490021afea1e/twitter-viral-outrage-ai-art/?ref=jamesreeves.co)‘s observation that these systems are “trained on the creative work of countless artists, and so there’s a legitimate argument to be made that it is essentially laundering human creativity in some way for a commercial product.” And while this doesn’t sound much different from the advertising industry since the beginning of time, it’s another reminder that we’ll only have a worthwhile internet once we’re [paid for our data](https://www.thedataunion.org/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
But I’m more interested in how quickly I grew bored with this technology. I spent ten minutes conjuring fanciful scenes that my mind’s eye thought it would never see. Then I drifted back to editing my manuscript and organizing my mp3 collection. If you had told me twenty years ago that I could instantly illustrate anything that popped into my head, I would have burst with excitement at such a far-out future. Now that it’s here, I meet it with a shrug. I don’t know if this speaks more to my age, my character, or the world we’ve created.
Meanwhile, China is firing rods into the sky to [make it rain](https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/17/asia/china-heat-drought-climate-yangtze-intl/index.html?ref=jamesreeves.co).
#### [Arpanet – Wireframe Images](https://arpanet.bandcamp.com/album/wireless-internet?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Wireless Internet | Record Makers, 2002 | [Bandcamp](https://arpanet.bandcamp.com/album/wireless-internet?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Wireframe%20Images.mp3](http://jamesreeves.co/radio/Wireframe%20Images.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### A Fascinating Little Ailment
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/reflex/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:55.000Z
The electrified humidity is finally evaporating, the sun goes down at 8:36pm, and there’s a full moon tonight. Tonight I’m contemplating this apocalyptic quote from the photographer [Robert Adams](https://fraenkelgallery.com/artists/robert-adams?ref=jamesreeves.co): “After people live awhile in a place to which they’ve laid waste, it gets easy to hate a great many things.”
I sneeze whenever I glance at the sun, which I’ve always taken as proof I am a night owl. It’s called a [photic sneeze reflex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic%5Fsneeze%5Freflex?ref=jamesreeves.co), and it’s a fascinating little ailment. In 350 BCE, Aristotle considered this condition in his wonderfully titled *[Book of Problems](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674996557&ref=jamesreeves.co)* and concluded the sun’s heat makes the nose sweat. In the 17th century, Francis Bacon noticed he did not sneeze if he faced the sun with his eyes closed, so it must have something to do with the eye rather than the nose. I like to think two thousand years passed before someone else pondered this issue.
Finished reading Michel Faber’s *[Under the Skin](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/05/michel-faber-under-the-skin-changed-my-life-for-good?ref=jamesreeves.co)* and rewatched [the movie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under%5Fthe%5FSkin%5F%282013%5Ffilm%29?ref=jamesreeves.co), which was an excellent example of the memory burning brighter than the thing itself. Now I’m grazing between three or four novels, waiting for my attention to settle. Meanwhile, I’m inching along with edits and revisions to my own story, and I’m determined to send this thing to somebody this year. And somewhere behind me, a boy nags his father, telling him he wants to learn to fight. “Son, I’m only going to teach you to block. You don’t ever need to punch.”
### Passage
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/passage/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:55.000Z
Maps of the Arctic give me vertigo. All that blank bright land feels like leaping off a rooftop. And it’s peppered with bland names that sound like death: Baffin Bay, Kettle Passage, Resolute Island. There were forty-two failed expeditions to find the Northwest Passage. Sailors’ teeth exploded in the cold as they searched for the Open Polar Sea, an imaginary body of water that haunted nautical maps for centuries. Some sailors died with these maps in their hands after cannibalizing their shipmates. But today, this sea is becoming a reality in these record-breaking days of fire and flood. Sooner or later, the map creates the world.
The rusty squawk of seagulls interrupts my jabbering brain. Dozens of them circle above this superstore parking lot, hunting for minnows, plankton, or whatever they eat. Something in nature is breaking. Overhead, a star-spangled billboard advertises the Eighteenth Annual Quad County Bible Study & Gun Show. A verse from the Gospel of Luke blinks in red, white, and blue: *When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace.*
Maybe they had the right idea with the Northwest Passage, hoping to skip America altogether.
###### *This is the ninth episode of* [*Interstate Scenes*](http://jamesreeves.co/tag/interstate-scenes/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, a fictional collection of homeless paragraphs, remixed and upcycled bits from the past, and bloopers from the stories I’m writing.*
### Radioactivity
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/radioactivity/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:55.000Z
Headlines at the top of the hour: Another heat dome has settled across the nation, and the new movie that reenacts ten celebrity drunk-driving offenses broke a box-office record over the weekend.
Cut to commercial, and I hum along with a jingle for a machine that controls your brainwaves while you sleep: *Wake up energized and get more done!* Now a story about the latest self-help manual from a celebrity chef who is a recovering pyromaniac: “And I discovered this is the way with all things, a gentle breath can keep the tiniest flame alive—”
I scroll down the dial in search of the midnight call-in shows, those carrier waves of national rumor and patchwork theory. A woman in San Diego says the CIA is responsible for the body parts washing up on the Pacific coastline. “Chopped-off feet are coming in with the tide, and nobody knows why.”
Callers assign divine significance to the calendar and the moon, offering theories rooted in numerology and biblical verse; they implicate Hollywood and the United Nations. “The government is controlling the weather so they can push through an eco-terrorist agenda. There are secret machines at the foot of the Rocky Mountains that manufacture terrible winds.”
A man in New Hampshire talks about an alien transmission that left behind three disemboweled bodies in Arkansas: “Humans don’t have the technology to suck out a person’s intestines through their naval, but that’s exactly what happened.”
Cut to commercial. “At the California Institute of Psychics, only two of every three hundred applicants are selected, so you’re guaranteed a good reading.”
I tune into another voice, this one sweaty and frightened. “I’m alone in Idaho where it’s just me and God, and it gets so lonely. Because I’m just a normal guy, and there are times when I get tired of being His servant and I say, ‘God, how much longer do you want me to do this, to keep warning people about your judgment?’ And the Lord tells me I have until the end of winter to prepare everyone for—”
Station after station of this: doomsayers and faith-dealers tormented by the ghosts in their heads. What has gone so horribly wrong in their lives that they’re on the radio, telling us we’re all going to burn?
I mute the radio. I’ll get more information from the rain.
###### *This is the eighth episode of* [*Interstate Scenes*](http://jamesreeves.co/notes/interstate-scenes/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, a fictional collection of homeless paragraphs, remixed and upcycled bits from the past, and bloopers from the stories I’m writing.*
### Fires
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/fires/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:56.000Z
The Rockies appeared through the gloom, slow beasts moving across the continent at the speed of time, oblivious to the tiny metal creatures carving up their sides. Headlights and taillights shimmered, their drivers hopped up on coffee and talk radio, heads on fire with hope and regret as they rehearsed thousands of monologues nobody would ever hear. What was the reason for all this consciousness? If we’re only here to replicate our genetic code and serve the demands of some blind Darwinian logic, why carry around heads filled with so much noise? Perhaps this is why every religion riffs on the renunciation of self. The bondage of ego. The pain of identity. *It is by [self-forgetting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer%5Fof%5FSaint%5FFrancis?ref=jamesreeves.co) that one finds.* And that’s all we crave in the end, isn’t it? Self-forgetting. To get out of our heads and see the mountain. My eyes flicked up to the sky, half-expecting to see God’s face beaming at my insight, even though I did not yet believe in such things.
*This is the seventh episode of [Interstate Scenes](http://jamesreeves.co/notes/interstate-scenes/?ref=jamesreeves.co), a fictional collection of homeless paragraphs, remixed and upcycled bits from the past, and bloopers from the stories I’m writing.*
### Summer of Muslimgauze
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/summer-of-muslimgauze/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:15:07.000Z
Organizing my mp3 library is my preferred form of procrastination. Instead of reading the news, I make sure each song is accurately labeled and every album has the correct artwork. It’s a soothing antidote to the buckshot lunacy of the algorithm. The other day I noticed I have 2,362 songs by Muslimgauze. At first, I thought this must be an error, but no, I’ve somehow collected 189 Muslimgauze albums over the past twenty years, and new records continue to appear each month, which is prolific for someone who died in 1999\.
I heard my first Muslimgauze record in 1998 while deejaying the midnight hour at WCBN in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Rooting through the new releases one night, I found an album called [*Uzi Mahmood*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=%5FGxfgDtwS1Y&ref=jamesreeves.co) with a grainy image of a man’s face on the sleeve. The camera caught him looking at something off to the left, and he looked haunted, maybe afraid. There was no other information, but the hyper-saturated drums and clipped Arabic vocals permanently rearranged my sense of music. I imagined this record as an answer to the faceless mythos of groups like [Underground Resistance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground%5FResistance?ref=jamesreeves.co), [Drexciya](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/02/inside-the-stunning-black-mythos-of-drexciya-and-its-afrofuturist-90s-techno/?ref=jamesreeves.co), and [Basic Channel](http://www.basicchannel.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
Years passed before I learned that Muslimgauze was the moniker of a white guy named [Bryn Jones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslimgauze?ref=jamesreeves.co), who lived in a Manchester suburb. After reading about Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, Jones created the Muslimgauze alias in 1982 and devoted the remainder of his life to making albums with names like *The Rape of Palestine, Vote Hezbollah,* and *United States of Islam*—a move that, from today’s vantage point, feels like strip-mining another culture’s trauma for experimental music. The singer and producer [Lafawndah](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/feb/02/lafawndah-tan-yasmine-dubois?ref=jamesreeves.co) offers a different point of view: “It would be superficial to say that Bryn’s art would be more legitimate if he’d spent time there—that perspective has turned contemporary art into a failed state of a different kind.” Perhaps both viewpoints can coexist, but my sense is his frantic output points to something heavier and weirder that will forever remain beyond understanding.
Noting the “inconceivably deep sadness” that haunts Jones’s music, the critic [Ian Penman](https://thequietus.com/articles/20065-muslimgauze?ref=jamesreeves.co) finds it hard to believe this melancholy came from a region he never knew firsthand. “The sadness seems much deeper and further ingrained than that, approaching pathological—almost as if the terrible dispossessed ‘birthright’ of the Palestinians corresponded, secretly, to some personal scar or shadow in Jones’s own life.”
Although he was invited, Jones never visited Palestine. He hardly left his parents’ home. He was thirty-seven years old when he died. Twenty-five years later, the records keep coming.
At least [215 Muslimgauze releases](https://www.discogs.com/artist/484-Muslimgauze?ref=jamesreeves.co) are circulating today: that’s at least an album per month during his seventeen-year career. He claimed he recorded a new album every week. Record labels could not keep up. Stop, they told him. We have too much. After he died, his parents told his label to take what they wanted. “I declined,” said Geert-Jan Hobijn, who runs [Staalplaat](https://staalplaat.bandcamp.com/artists?ref=jamesreeves.co). “Then they said they would put the rest in the dumpster, so I took as many masters as I could.”
I’ve been thinking about this image all summer: all that music stuffed into trash bags.
[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f%5Fauto,q%5Fauto:good,fl%5Fprogressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2fa059e1-cd18-4d8c-b65d-460d041c4ffb%5F4965x3310.jpeg?ref=jamesreeves.co)
My first Muslimgauze record, twenty-four years later.
Jones remains a black box. Some say he had no interest in politics or religion. Others think he was a zealot. Now only the music remains. For such an elusive figure, his music is profoundly *present*. He was a talented drummer whose production skills edged toward the otherworldly. His drums beat against your brain stem, hammering out rhythms that cast a freaky shadow across everyone else’s narrow turf of industrial, hip-hop, drone, techno, electro, and dub. The field recordings and radio broadcasts that pepper his songs are astonishing when you check the date: 1987, 1991, 1995\. Where was he finding this material before the internet?
“There are no lyrics because that would be preaching,” [Jones ](https://www.bellussinister.com/homepage/2018/8/7/songs-for-a-marsiyah-remembering-muslimgauze?ref=jamesreeves.co)said in a rare interview. “It’s music. It’s up to you to find out more. You can listen to only the music, or you can preoccupy yourself more with it.” But how do you reckon with such an overwhelming catalog? My music widget says I have over 291 hours of Muslimgauze in my library—nearly 13 solid days.
And so the artist’s obsession becomes the listener’s obsession.
It’s a worthwhile journey. If you’re new to Muslimgauze, here’s [a short playlist ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2Pm6PsSJzfsN0PawSuX1eJ?si=adaf99aae57f4396&ref=jamesreeves.co)I’ve put together of my favorite tracks. Start with thirty seconds: “[Jagannath, Jagannath Who?](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ikj4gWpWWkQ?ref=jamesreeves.co)” from *Jaab Ab Dullah*. Then track down “[Uzi Mahmood 7](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0kf8hgAEX0&ref=jamesreeves.co),” a fistful of razor-blade drums, crackle, and dub. These are the building blocks of the Muslimgauze universe. Next, give the moody heat shimmer of [*Mullah Said*](https://muslimgauze.bandcamp.com/album/mullah-said?ref=jamesreeves.co) and [*Sandtrafikar*](https://muslimgauze.bandcamp.com/album/sandtrafikar?ref=jamesreeves.co) a shot. (Artists like Vatican Shadow have made entire careers out of attempting to reproduce these two records.) See also “[Veil of Tear Gas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZJaAKPoALk&ref=jamesreeves.co)” and “[A Small Intricate Box Which Contains Old Blue Opium Marzipan](https://muslimgauze.bandcamp.com/track/a-small-intricate-box-which-contains-old-blue-opium-marzipan?ref=jamesreeves.co).” Or consider [Ryoji Ikeda’s Remix #6](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=%5FIrD1prQfUY&ref=jamesreeves.co), a blitz of vision-blurring drums that reduces every other breakbeat to ashes. The remixes are where things get most interesting. Artists around the world continue to remix Muslimgauze, and, in the process, they are rewiring, reclaiming, and broadening Jones's single-minded vision.
Jones’s fanatical output haunts me because his reasons remain unintelligible. *An album every week.* I try to imagine the rhythm of his daily life. His relationship with his parents. Those trash bags. His devotion has produced a body of work that continues to regenerate beyond the grave. New Muslimgauze albums and remixes will probably keep surfacing long after we’re all dead, and it’s a beautiful thought: a feedback loop of remixes from every continent until there’s just one great big endless drum.
[Mullah Said by Muslimgauze](https://muslimgauze.bandcamp.com/album/mullah-said?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Many of the above quotes are from [*The Quietus*](https://thequietus.com/articles/20065-muslimgauze?ref=jamesreeves.co), which published several musicians’ reflections on Jones’s work, and it’s the most substantial information I’ve encountered. I’m still trying to track down Ibrahim Khider’s book, [*Chasing the Shadow of Bryn Jones*](https://www.soleilmoon.com/shop/muslimgauze-chasing-the-shadow-of-bryn-jones-10xlp-box-set-book-cd-11770/?ref=jamesreeves.co), which is part of a handsome box set I cannot afford. Here’s a trailer from [Cultures of Resistance Films](https://culturesofresistancefilms.com/muslimgauze-chasing-shadow-bryn-jones/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
### The Comfort Lounge
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-comfort-lounge/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:56.000Z
It was a run-down joint where time stood still and probably slid backward. Wood-paneled walls. Cracked leather studded with brass. Deep booths that were once red, now the color of a bruise. It was the kind of place where you might have sealed a business deal in a different decade, but now it was where you came when you had no more business to conduct. Paper lanterns and a plastic palm tree. Tangled Christmas lights on the ceiling and a Rock-Ola jukebox that sang *listen to the rhythm of the falling rain.* A flatscreen above the bar showed a celebrity laughing in a prison yard, and I could not tell if it was a movie or a news report.
A woman mumbled into her drink. “Everything’s a mystery and I’m just a tiny part of it. Maybe that’s all I need to know.” The wall of liquor shimmered like stained glass. The Christmas lights flickered and the TV glitched. Another brownout.
###### *This is the sixth episode of* [*Interstate Scenes*](http://jamesreeves.co/tag/interstate-scenes/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, a fictional collection of homeless paragraphs, remixed and upcycled bits from the past, and bloopers from the stories I’m writing.*
### A Matter of Degrees
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-matter-of-degrees/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:56.000Z
Most people walk away from their dreams sooner or later, usually in tiny steps that are hardly noticeable, the course altered by fractional degrees until it leads to a reversal of the poles. The childhood fantasy of becoming an astronaut or paleontologist fades into paying down a credit card or finding low-deductible insurance. Big dreams die every minute in this country, crushed into the smaller ones that keep us setting our alarm clocks, buying paper towels, and checking the weather forecast.
Lose enough faith, and you might forget how to live. Bills and bank statements begin to look like fiction, baffling abstractions that have nothing to do with the real business of being alive. Words like *appointment* or *Thursday* lose their meaning, and you increasingly find yourself spaced-out in the grocery store, struggling to remember what you like to eat. You might begin to spend time in bars or churches, searching for instructions. Some people will recognize this starved look in your eye. They will see you as a kindred spirit or easy prey. Either way, they will find you. And they will talk to you.
#### [Spectrum – Then I Just Drifted Away](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Then%20I%20Just%20Drifted%20Away.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Highs, Lows, and Heavenly Blows | Silvertone, 1994 | [More](https://medicalrecords.bandcamp.com/album/highs-lows-and-heavenly-blows-mr-079?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Then%20I%20Just%20Drifted%20Away.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Then%20I%20Just%20Drifted%20Away.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
*This is the fourth episode of [Interstate Scenes](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/notes/interstate-scenes/?ref=jamesreeves.co), a fictional collection of homeless paragraphs, remixed and upcycled bits from the past, and bloopers from the stories I’m writing.*
### Dangling Shoes
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/dangling-shoes/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:57.000Z
Some Americans like to tie a pair of shoes together and toss them at a power line or a tree branch until they catch and hang. Very few people have seen these shoes actually thrown, and of the witnesses who have been surveyed, their reports vary as to the average number of attempts before the shoes find their mark, ranging from three to nineteen. This practice is more frequent in urban areas, although this might simply be a function of population density rather than any fundamental difference between the psyche of the city and the country. The style of shoes and their arrangement, however, is worth noting. Lone sneakers are common in the city, but when dangling shoes appear in rural areas, the formations tend to be more elaborate. In some parts of the Mojave desert, dusty shoes cover dead Joshua trees like leaves. Hundreds of black army boots hang from irrigation pipes over neglected crops in Oklahoma.
Some say a pair of tennis shoes draped over a telephone line indicates a place to score drugs. Often referred to as *cosmic kicks* or *crack tennies*, they serve as a storefront shingle for the local dealer. Others will tell you they mark a shooting gallery where heroin is used, a reminder that you’ll never walk away once you get hooked. These theories, however, do not explain the shoes strung over desolate roads or beneath the highway overpasses where nobody goes.
Many of these shoes once belonged to children. Seeing a child’s shoes hanging in a bottle-strewn alley bothers the soul, calling to mind Hemingway’s famous six-word story: *For sale: Baby shoes, never worn*. Some say these abandoned shoes memorialize a gangland killing. Others believe they mark the sighting of a ghost. But most levelheaded folks chalk them up to run-of-the-mill bullying in which some asshole kid steals another kid’s shoes and tosses them beyond his reach.
If any of these theories are true, there are an awful lot of victims, ghosts, and bullies in the USA.
*This is the third episode of [Interstate Scenes](https://www.jamesreeves.co/tag/interstate-scenes/), a fictional collection of homeless paragraphs, remixed and upcycled bits from the past, and bloopers from the stories I’m writing.*
### The Corners of the Ceiling
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-corners-of-the-ceiling/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:57.000Z
When she was a little girl, she would watch the darkness in her bedroom, hypnotized by the grey-pink flecks that seemed to dance in the air while she waited for sleep. One night, she climbed out of bed to tell her parents that she saw fairies in the corner of her ceiling. Her mother dismissed her, saying it was only a trick of the eyes, but a faint smile played across her father’s mouth as he tucked her back into bed. “We’ll talk later,” he whispered as he shut the door. They never did.
She eventually learned those shimmery dots were the natural interplay of retinal fluid and optical cones. But part of her still preferred to believe they were dancing pieces of darkness, the living material of the night. “Science shouldn’t explain everything,” she told me. She often succumbed to earaches and ennui, and she would watch the sparkles in the gloom, the rods and motes that flickered just beyond her vision. “Sometimes I thought God lived in the shadows of the ceiling,” she said, and she would gaze at the high corners of the room whenever she felt overwhelmed, half-expecting to find an answer there. “Some habits come strange and never leave.”
And some habits are infectious. Years later, I would find myself murmuring to the fluorescent lights at the Gas ’n Go or the drop ceilings of the church basements where people insisted on living a day at a time. Like her, I would search for answers in forgotten spaces with cobwebs and patchy paint jobs.
###### *This is the second episode of* [*Interstate Scenes*](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/notes/interstate-scenes/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, a fictional collection of homeless paragraphs, remixed and upcycled bits from the past, and bloopers from the stories I’m writing.*
### Folk Religion
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/folk-religion/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T18:15:37.000Z
Maybe you’ve heard the stories, the baroque theories on late-night radio or the soliloquies of sunburnt men who mutter at the traffic. Like the one about how they trained telekinetic children to interrogate terrorists and accidentally discovered how to bend time with a pack of playing cards. Or how they dosed soldiers with LSD and dropped them in a forest to see how they would perform in combat. (Not very well.) Or the one about the college student who volunteered for a behavioral study. After feeding the kid a mescaline cocktail, they watched him pace a padded room for three days before he sat down and announced that he was a glass of orange juice, and if anyone came too close, he would tip over and spill himself all over the floor. They say that kid is an old man now, still sitting motionless in the corner of an institution in Virginia.
They’ve invented sights and sounds that will ruin your personality and cause you to soil yourself in the middle of the street. *Aural destabilization*, they call it. Its milder variants are used for dispersing street protests, but its more extreme applications belong to the land of rumor, those two o’clock in the morning stories told by creatures teetering on barstools who say they’ve heard a sound so loud it heats the air, dredging up your ugliest memories and rupturing your intestines if you stick around long enough.
These stories always boil down to the spectral *they*, don’t they? The black choppers and nameless spooks, the shadows that haunt the minds of wild-eyed loners with custom-built radios, their speech riddled with dates and acronyms.
This is the type of man I would become for a while.
### And Thank God, Soon We’ll Be Making More Night
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/rewire/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:57.000Z
The longest day of the year, and, thank god, soon we’ll be making more night. The weather has been vivid lately. A heat dome has settled over the Middle West, the moon was extra bright last night, and I saw a rainbow in the parking lot yesterday.
A headline in *The New York Times* says “America is Heading Off a Cliff,” which is pretty evergreen. Last week a computer programmer claimed a chatbot achieved consciousness. Either Google is abusing sentient chatbots, or one of their chatbots drove a man insane. I’m not sure which scenario is more frightening. This morning I flipped on the local news, and they were interviewing “the first non-celebrity family” to ride a new waterslide. All of this feels like weather, too.
Tonight I’m trying to figure out what to do with this journal. I don’t want to write about current events or, god forbid, issues. There are far too many faith dealers, soothsayers, and thought leaders. The last thing this world needs is another opinion. Certainly not mine. On the other hand, writing about my life feels increasingly recursive, more and more like a dead end. Probably because I’m doing my best to live a boring life of routine.
I’m increasingly interested in digging deeper into fiction, particularly as the 21st century grows more science-fictional by the minute. I’d like to rewire this station into a space for experiments and exercises, for writing weirder and trying on points of view I don’t necessarily believe. So this journal will become a halfway house for homeless paragraphs, remixed and upcycled snippets from the past, and a few bloopers from the novel I’m writing. I’m going to call this series *Interstate Scenes*, and if I reach a decent number, maybe I’ll shape them into a little book. Hopefully, this feed will get a little strange. But I promise, I’m okay.
### The Weather Lady Looked a Little Freaked Out
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/spice/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:58.000Z
Mostly sunny, the heat is building, and there’s a strawberry supermoon. Wall Street fell into a bear market today, and last year’s attempted coup is being relitigated on television in the hope that justice might still exist in some corner of the universe. I admire their faith. The television followed this up with a special report about dogs overdosing on their owners’ drugs. Later, a senator solemnly said, “We just want to keep guns out of the hands of people who might use them for violence.” The weather lady looked a little freaked out as she stood before a map soaked in neon red, forecasting a heat index of 110 degrees and 80-mile-per-hour winds.
A few months ago in London, I had a beautiful bowl of ramen so spicy I got the sniffles and glimpsed the face of god. I went back every Saturday like church. Now I’ve found something similar here in Ohio: a Szechuan lamb dish soaked in chili oil and cumin that can only be described as holy. It’s good to have a meal in your life that demands regular pilgrimage.
Hypothetical art project: a device that gives you fifty dollars each time you share an embarrassing personal detail—but there’s a one-in-fifty chance it will share a picture of you and your secrets online.
Sometimes we go to IKEA just for a nice and affordable meatball dinner.
#### [](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Heat%20Beat.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)[Massive Attack vs Mad Professor – Heat Miser (Backward Sucking)](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Heat%20Miser.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### No Protection | Wild Bunch Records, 1995 | [More](https://web.archive.org/web/20080919084325/http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/massiveattack/albums/album/123201/review/5944966/no%5Fprotection)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Heat%20Miser.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Heat%20Miser.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Clichés Are Learned the Hard Way
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/headlights/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:58.000Z
Tornado sirens rang the other day while I played mahjong with the in-laws. The sun went down at 9:02pm, the humidity is building, and there’s a supermoon tonight.
*You can never see further than your headlights*: this old slice of trucker philosophy makes more sense to me with each passing year, how I stagger through my life, pretending I know where I’m heading even though I haven’t got a clue.
But there’s also the rearview mirror. I’ve been rewriting the same book for so many years. Each time I think it’s ready to submit somewhere, I strip it for parts and start again. With each draft, I’m becoming a better storyteller, and this steady improvement keeps me going. This also means learning to keep my eyes on my own page and run my own race. (Quitting social media has helped tremendously with this.) But I’m determined to finish this book this summer, so I’ve shifted gears, and now I’m focusing on output. At least five pages per day, come hell or high water. Progress not perfection, as they say. Clichés are learned the hard way.
I’ve honored this quota for four weeks, except for taking yesterday off to recover from a head cold. Snuffling in bed feels unwholesome when the sun is shining and it’s eighty degrees. When you have a cold in the summertime, it feels like you’re doing something wrong.
After revisiting the bonkers wonderland of [*The Running Man*](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/only-in-a-rerun/?ref=jamesreeves.co) last month, I picked up the original [Stephen King novel from 1982](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FRunning%5FMan%5F%28King%5Fnovel%29?ref=jamesreeves.co). He wrote the whole thing in a week when he was 35, just to see if he could do it, and he later called it “a book written by a young man who was angry, energetic, and infatuated with the art and the craft of writing.” It’s a little unpolished, sure, and it definitely reads like something written by an angry guy in ’82\. But still, the story rips along, and few writers can summon bug-eyed, fever-dream crazy like King:
> A carnival of dark mental browns . . . names came and repeated, clanging in his mind like bells, like words repeated until they are reduced to nonsense. Say your name over two hundred times and discover who you are.
Tonight I’m dipping into Murakami’s *[1Q84](https://www.harukimurakami.com/book/1q84?ref=jamesreeves.co)* to see how a brick-sized epic from a master works. I’ve never fully tuned into his wavelength, but I’ve admired him from a distance.
And all the while, I’m itching to move to the desert and drift along new roads at night with tunnels of sand in my headlights. But now is the time to stay still and count pages. First things first: another durable cliché.
#### [Chromatics – In the Headlights (Johnny Jewel Remix)](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/In%20the%20Headlights.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Italians Do It Better, 2010 | [More](https://italiansdoitbetter.com/chromatics/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/In%20the%20Headlights.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/In%20the%20Headlights.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Acid Camp
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/acid-camp/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:58.000Z
[Memorial Day](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/memorial/?ref=jamesreeves.co) in Ohio. Clear skies, highs near 90, and the sun went down at 8:54pm. The moon is brand new, and my computer gave me an eye exam. I stood ten feet away from my screen, read aloud the five letters that appeared, and a robot renewed my prescription. It felt very futuristic and a little sad.
Maybe I don’t want to deal with the future. My two favorite television shows right now are amplified and campy depictions of events that took place fifty years ago: *[Gaslit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslit%5F%28TV%5Fseries%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)* and [*The Offer*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FOffer?ref=jamesreeves.co), which reanimate the shenanigans behind Watergate and the making of *The Godfather*. In both shows, the 1970s are drenched in booze, cigarette smoke, and garish colors. Everyone must have been walking around back then with a splitting headache.
There’s this track that’s been rattling around my mp3 library for nearly twenty years, and I can no longer tell if it’s fantastic or terrible. It starts with a canned dance beat and a vampy keyboard, neither of which have aged well. (And it’s interesting, the subtle texture, the sonic patina that renders something dated rather than timeless.) Then Johnny Cash begins to growl his funereal cover of Will Oldham’s “I See a Darkness” across 140 beats per minute. [Susan Sontag](https://monoskop.org/images/5/59/Sontag%5FSusan%5F1964%5FNotes%5Fon%5FCamp.pdf?ref=jamesreeves.co) once said that camp puts everything in quotation marks. Pairing acid techno with Johnny Cash seems like it automatically belongs in extra-bold 100pt quote marks. Yet somehow, this mash-up feels oddly earnest, and I always catch a guilty rush around the 3:50 mark when the synthesizers start grinding away while Cash sings about how he hopes someone can save him from this darkness.
#### [Acid Pauli – I See a Dark(er)ness](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/I%20See%20a%20Darkness.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### The Munich Mash-Up Issue | White label, 2004 | [More](https://www.discogs.com/release/295575-Mixed-Bizness-Gema-05-The-Munich-Mash-Up-Issue?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/I%20See%20a%20Darkness.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/I%20See%20a%20Darkness.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
In a similar yet far more calculated but no less bizarre vein, there’s that Teddybears track from 2006 with Iggy Pop, [“Punkrocker”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P09rxVaQAM&ref=jamesreeves.co). I have no idea how they landed Iggy Pop, but his line about being “sincere” in an elegy for punk rock set to disposable electronica that became a car commercial could probably launch a thousand annoying dissertations in cultural studies and media theory.
### "Only in a rerun."
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/only-in-a-rerun/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:58.000Z
*[The Running Man](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/le-jeu-du-defi?ref=jamesreeves.co)* (1987) is weird comfort food. I find myself craving every now and then, like a favorite meal. I first saw it when I was twelve, and nostalgia tends to tint objectivity, but I think this movie only improves with age. They don’t make them like this anymore, with that distinctly 1980s blend of bleak social commentary, schlocky spectacle, and self-aware humor that remembers, first and foremost, to entertain.
Over the years, it’s become my ur-text for a sleazy future of trashcan fires, black markets, station hijacking, and vicious game show hosts. And if you squint at it a certain way, it’s a genuinely frightening portrait of America’s appetite for violence. Thanks to one of the most inspired casting decisions ever made, *The Family Feud’s* Richard Dawson plays the ringmaster of televised bloodsport with terrifying charisma. But the real villain is the crowd. They just want to watch people die.
The entire film hinges on a small moment after Schwarzennager refuses to bash in the head of a large man dressed like a Lite-Brite who sings Mozart’s *[Marriage of Figaro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMtWEdfPIS4&ref=jamesreeves.co)* while he electrocutes his victims. (That was such an enjoyable sentence to write.) The crowd begins to boo, tentative at first—then they gather steam. And Dawson looks at the bloodlust on the faces of these old ladies and nebbish accountants, and he looks *scared*. Because these people want to watch a murder, they don’t care who. And when Schwarzenegger starts righteously slaughtering the baddies with razor wire, a chainsaw, explosives, and a belt-fed weapon while delivering clunky one-liners, we’re cheering too. We’ve become the crowd.
And somewhere in my brain, my sense of *The Running Man* is soundtracked by this song by Bremen, which captures the nervy end-of-days energy of midnight sirens and searchlights sweeping the sky.
#### Bremen – Entering Phase Two
###### *Second Launch* | Blackest Ever Black, 2011 | [Bandcamp](https://bremen2.bandcamp.com/track/entering-phase-two?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[Second Launch by Bremen](https://bremen2.bandcamp.com/album/second-launch?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### More Americans are Unraveling Behind the Wheel
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/windshield/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:59.000Z
The sun went down at 8:49pm, the moon is in its last quarter, and I’m wondering if the health of a society can be pegged to the nerves of its motorists.
First off, I am a phenomenal driver with a solid resume: raised in metro Detroit, six years of food delivery, hundreds of thousands of miles of cross-country driving, and no accidents yet. I’m accustomed to the gawkers, droolers, speed freaks, and road ragers that clutter our highways. But lately, it seems like more Americans are [unraveling behind the wheel](https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/06/feature-traffic-safety?ref=jamesreeves.co).
Cars drift at twenty miles per hour, veering into the gravel and weeds. Yesterday a Jeep came crashing into my lane while I idled at a red light. If I hadn’t reversed, I would have lost the front half of my car. Today a lady chewed my bumper while I puttered along in a column of slow-moving rush hour traffic. I could see her in the rearview, giving me two middle fingers, rotating her arms like a referee. Then she stuck her head out the window and screamed. She drove a Honda Civic and had a professional hairdo, which made the fury on her face more frightening. Where does this rage come from?
Strange, the psychological liberties granted by three thousand pounds of metal and a windshield. I doubt that woman would have given me two rotating middle fingers at the grocery store. Perhaps the expectation of instant access, immediate gratification, and center-of-the-worldness has spilled from our screens into our cars.
### Like trying to retrofit an 8-track player.
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/best-mp3-player/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:59.000Z
I’ve stopped doing business with streaming music services. The algorithm has transformed music into an endless churn without [sense-memory](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/echo/?ref=jamesreeves.co), and the idea of renting the same songs every month feels ludicrous.
But nowadays, tending to an mp3 collection feels like trying to retrofit an 8-track player. I’m spending an increasingly significant portion of my lifespan wrestling with Apple Music. Sync issues. Playback issues. And many of the songs I’ve purchased from Bandcamp or ripped from vinyl tell me I’m living in the wrong region or country and refuse to play.
The problem of managing a digital music library seemed like it was solved twenty years ago, and I’m not sure why it feels like a problem again. Can anyone recommend a solid alternative to Apple Music that will sync my mp3s with my desktop and telephone? So far, I’m leaning toward [Vox](https://vox.rocks/?ref=jamesreeves.co), but there must be something better.
#### [TM404 – 202 / 303 / 303 / 303 / 606 / 606](https://kontra-musik.bandcamp.com/album/tm404-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### TM404 | Kontra-Musik, 2013 | [Bandcamp](https://kontra-musik.bandcamp.com/album/tm404-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/202\_303\_303\_303\_606\_606.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/202%5F303%5F303%5F303%5F606%5F606.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Here’s an all-time favorite album from Andreas Tilliander that I’d love to play on all my devices at the same time, if possible. Absolutely flawless machine bliss.
### Tiny Figures Among the Stones
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/tiny-figures-among-the-stones/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:59.000Z
I first encountered one of my favorite painters six years ago at the Art Institute in Chicago, a few days after putting my father's ashes in Saginaw Bay. At first, I was relieved to walk among the dignity of marble and skylights, grateful to escape the nervy loop of strip malls and service plazas. But the artwork felt grim, all those little spotlights shining upon the relics of the dead: Etruscan and Byzantine and Aztec, the endless cycle of flourishing wealth followed by rapid decline.
Every image seemed to illustrate our inability to tame our appetites. Drunken feasts and forest bacchanals. Leering portraits of undressed women and four-headed bodhisattvas stomping on the heads of passion. There's no escaping our worst impulses, is there? The abstract artwork in the modern wings tried to sidestep this question with antiseptic sculptures and fields of color that left me cold. So I reversed through the halls, history rewinding as I hunted for the exit until, somewhere between the Renaissance and Impressionism, I hit a wall with three canvases of a crumbling Roman arcade.
Ruins filled each frame, and I nearly overlooked the tiny figures among the stones, their bodies dwarfed by architecture designed for gods. A woman crouched over a puddle, laughing as she scooped greywater into a pail. An elderly man groped among the rocks with a cane. Young lovers kissed against a statue’s shattered torso. A floppy-eared dog gnawed a bone.
**The Old Temple*, **The Fountain*, and **The Obelisk*, by Hubert Robert, 1788
The label next to the paintings offered no information except their titles: *The Fountain*, *The Obelisk*, and *The Old Temple*—dispassionate names that gave them the force of fact. They were painted in 1787 by [Hubert Robert](https://www.journal18.org/issue8/hubert-robert-in-prison-self-revolution-and-the-contingencies-of-artistic-inscription/?ref=jamesreeves.co). (Such beautiful cadence in that name: *Hubert Robert*. Say it out loud and you can’t help but smile.) He was known for his [capricci](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capriccio%5F%28art%29?ref=jamesreeves.co), a genre of architectural fantasy that disregards time and scale.
The happy woman with her pail of water, the blind man and flushed lovers, all of them were dwarfed by history, eking out an existence in its shadows. Although the painting was devoted to the relics of a grander age, it also felt like prophecy, a vision of future generations fetching water among the cinderblocks of a discount department store.
My eye kept returning to the dog. Its gums glistened as if on the brink of laughter, and a very different painting came to mind: a watercolor of a grinning clown that hung above my bed when I was small. How I dreaded going to sleep, knowing I would be left alone with that smile when my mother shut the door. Even with the covers pulled over my head, I could feel it above me, laughing in the dark. One night I slipped the clown under my mattress, and although its face was mashed beneath ten inches of cotton batting, I knew it was there, still grinning. So I slipped the painting into a stack of newspapers and buried it in the trash. My parents never noticed.
Thinking about it now, I was not afraid of the clown, only its smile, permanent and unexplained. Most nightmares begin with a smile like that: a favorite doll or jolly grandparent whose grin crosses the thin line between cheer and menace, when happiness exists without reason, something even a child can recognize. Attempting to be joyful without acknowledging the world's sorrow is dishonest. A grin without purpose is insane. Maybe true happiness requires a tragedy to transcend, like the face of the woman with the pail of water. Look how she's laughing: full-bodied and well-earned because she knows her life beneath the obelisk is bizarre; nothing to do but accept it.
This was enough to keep me returning to museums, where I would become increasingly emotional in front of paintings, hungry to connect to some kind of history or tradition, to stitch together a patchwork faith that might arm me against the darkness waiting for me when I returned to my car.
### I Put a Lot of Faith in Office Products to Solve My Existential Problems
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/maps/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:59.000Z
The windows are open, summer is here, and [I sent a newsletter](https://atlasminor.substack.com/p/some-grand-experiment?s=w) yesterday. The sun went down at 8:35 tonight, and this bit in Stephen King’s *[Joyland](https://amzn.to/3McXSkc?ref=jamesreeves.co)* struck a nerve:
> When you’re twenty-one, life is a roadmap. It’s only when you get to be twenty-five or so that you begin to suspect you’ve been looking at the map upside down, and not until you’re forty are you entirely sure. By the time you’re sixty, take it from me, you’re fucking lost.
Yeah, my map is upside down, inscrutable, and probably for a different planet. But I bought a whiteboard yesterday. Maybe this will help. I put a lot of faith in office products to solve my existential problems.
I’ve been reading too many dreary new literary novels lately, so I’ve retreated to Stephen King for a palette cleanser. It’s nice to be reminded that it’s possible to write outlandish, frightening, even bloody things while still *liking* people and having some faith in the human project.
Tonight I’m putting my faith in [Civilistjävel!](https://www.lowcompany.co.uk/collections/civilistjavel?ref=jamesreeves.co), which is Swedish for “Civilian Bastard.” That’s all anyone knows about this shadowy outfit, which releases hyper-limited vinyl without much of a digital trace. Some say these records are private tapes unearthed from the 1990s, and their press releases deploy heavyweight phrases like “lonesome, levitating kosmische themes” and “a dronal, dubwise, heavily psychoactive minimal techno realm.”
Regardless of where these records fit in space and time, they’re a welcome throwback to techno’s ghost-in-the-machine ethos circa early 90s [Basic Channel](http://basicchannel.com/label/Basic+Channel?ref=jamesreeves.co), [Studio 1](https://kompakt.bandcamp.com/album/schwarz?ref=jamesreeves.co), and [Plastikman](https://richiehawtin.bandcamp.com/album/sheet-one?ref=jamesreeves.co). And I’m grateful to [Sasha Frere-Jones](https://substack.sashafrerejones.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)‘s weekly dispatch for alerting me to a proper new Civilistjävel! release available via Bandcamp.
Low-slung and roomy, this is excellent music for the small hours, especially A2 and B1\. Any recommendations for more mysterious music in a similar vein are much appreciated.
[Järnnätter by Civilistjävel!](https://civilistjavel.bandcamp.com/album/j-rnn-tter?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Update: I just came across [this interview with Civilistjävel!](http://truantsblog.com/2022/interview-civilistjavel/?ref=jamesreeves.co), posted a few days ago. It’s a nice piece, but I’m disappointed there’s one less mystery in the world.
### Before I Die
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-soundtrack-for-before-i-die/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:48:59.000Z
I put together a soundtrack to accompany the exhibition of Candy Chang’s [*Before I Die*](https://candychang.com/work/before-i-die-in-nola/?ref=jamesreeves.co) project at [Wonderspaces](https://www.wonderspaces.com/artists/candy-chang-2?ref=jamesreeves.co).
Built from a bass tone, some vapor, and a cassette tape of Candy reading the responses from visitors, it’s a spare, whispery thing designed to flicker around a gallery. But I think it also performs nicely in headphones while working, reading, or contemplating one’s final moments. As I recorded this, I kept thinking about the phrase “a glitch in the ego death.”
[A Soundtrack for Before I Die by James A. Reeves](https://jamesreeves.bandcamp.com/track/a-soundtrack-for-before-i-die?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Can't Kill the World
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/night-of-the-hunter/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:00.000Z
Charles Laughton’s [*The Night of the Hunter*](https://www.criterion.com/films/27525-the-night-of-the-hunter?ref=jamesreeves.co) (1955) opens with the disembodied heads of five children floating in the cosmos and gets weirder from there.
When we meet Robert Mitchum’s murderous preacher, he’s puttering along in a stolen car, talking to God. “Sometimes I wonder if you really understand,” he says. “Not that you mind the killing. Your book is full of killing. But there are things you do hate, Lord. Perfume-smellin’ things. Lacy things. Things with curly hair. There are too many of them. Can’t kill the world.”
This is a drive through America’s puritanical brainpan, a freaky portrait of the neurotic Christian obsession with sex, its hatred of women, and how dogma can be honed into violence. When Mitchum ogles a stripper, a switchblade erupts in his pocket.
Then style enters the scene: the love/hate tattoos that inspired [Radio Raheem’s four-finger rings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1updTZ2JTw&ref=jamesreeves.co); a bedroom that belongs in [*The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari*](https://theconversation.com/100-years-of-the-cabinet-of-dr-caligari-the-film-that-inspired-virginia-woolf-david-bowie-and-tim-burton-131899?ref=jamesreeves.co) with its brute angles and unnatural light; midnight scenes along the river unfold beneath the stillborn skies of a soundstage; a woman’s watery grave looks like a snapshot from a dream.
As if skittish of the dark terrain it maps, the second half of the film retreats into a Scooby-Doo mood. Mitchum threatens precocious children and hunts down a rag-doll stuffed with cash, which becomes comic until Lilian Gish lays down the hammer between speeches about Moses and the Massacre of the Innocents. It’s a gothic sprawl of the sinister and the absurd, much of it soaked in Biblical verse punctuated by the occasional startling line: “And that slit in her throat, like she had an extra mouth.” This uneasy combination of the profane, the ridiculous, and the pious leaves *The Night of the Hunter* nattering at the mind—perhaps because we know faith can fuel all three conditions.
### A Fleeting Shape Glimpsed From the Corner of the Eye
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/hand-of-god/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:00.000Z
A gloomy Wednesday in Ohio with highs near 60\. The sun went down at 8:30, there’s a waxing crescent moon, and I’m reading about God.
Here’s my first memory of God: I was five or six years old, crouched on the kitchen floor and feverishly rubbing a white crayon into a dark blue piece of construction paper. I still remember feeling a little crazy while doing this. I titled the resulting smudge “God” in the bottom right corner. The strongest part of this memory is feeling certain I’d uncovered what God looked like and not understanding why my parents weren’t more impressed with it.
This blurry scribble came to mind while reading Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s *[God: An Anatomy](https://amzn.to/38TYuNa?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, which digs into the origins of the Judeo-Christian deity as a fleshy, breathing creature who was just as messy as the rest of us, prone to laughter, jealousy, and despair. He had parents ([El](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El%5F%28deity%29?ref=jamesreeves.co) and [Athirat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah?ref=jamesreeves.co)), and he moved through the world like we do, only on a grander scale. I like how Stavrakopoulou captures the psychology of three thousand years ago:
> "The cosmic membrane separating the earthly from the otherworldly was highly porous and malleable, so that divinity in all its myriad forms could break through into the world of humans, whether it was perceived as a strange scent on the wind, a fleeting shape glimpsed from the corner of the eye, or felt at a powerful place in the landscape. But divinity was at its most tangible when materialized in images of the gods."
So I’ve been thinking about the cosmic membrane lately.
### I Need to Rethink How I Spend My Dwindling Time on This Planet
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/rot/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:00.000Z
They look less and less like recognizable humans, these billionaires buying everything we care about: books and newspapers, transportation and the moon. And now Twitter.
I have no moral objections here. Perhaps I should, but I’m not sure if Twitter was any more righteous when it was governed by [shadow corporations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackRock?ref=jamesreeves.co) that bankrolled nuclear weapons and cluster munitions. Maybe it’s better if social media is delisted from Wall Street and no longer pressured to maximize revenue through attention hijacking and outrage mechanics. But now that this space I once loved belongs to an unstable billionaire, it might be the kick in the seat I need to rethink how I spend my dwindling time on this planet and who it serves.
We tend to talk about social media in binary terms—*follow/unfollow, like/block*, *share/mute*—which warps our thinking and, not coincidentally, mirrors the language of addiction. We talk about quitting, even detoxing from social media. I’ve never heard someone say, “I’ll just check it on Wednesday afternoons.” And like an addict, I’ve been languishing in the uneasy state of knowing Twitter is terrible for me, yet using it anyway, hoping to rekindle the golden days of making new friends, exchanging minutiae, and getting turned on to new movies, music, and ideas. But the scene turned sour years ago. Now it feels like retching in the street.
And so, after fifteen years of broadcasting on somebody else’s airwaves, I’ve decided to let my channel rot. It’ll be a dead station, auto-posting hyperlinks to my own patch of the Information Superhighway until the lights go out. I’m not going to look at Twitter anymore.
But habits are hard to break. My lizard brain is a ferocious beast. Whenever I get stuck in my work, my fingers twitch, eager to launch a new tab and type “tw…” for a dose of distraction or attention. I *physically* twitch. What on earth have I been doing to myself all these years? So I’ve had to [block Twitter at the root level](https://masonsklut.com/how-to-block-websites-on-your-mac-using-terminal/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
I’ll continue to tend my little garden here, maybe even compile some of the writing I’ve accumulated into small books. Something concrete. And I think I’ve managed to switch on the comments in case anyone wants to say hello or recommend a movie or a song.
[Live at No Way Back \[IT LIVE 6\] by Adam Arthur](https://ithq.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-no-way-back-it-live-6?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Adam Arthur’s [new live set for Interdimensional Transmissions](https://ithq.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-no-way-back-it-live-6?ref=jamesreeves.co) is perfect concentration music for me: a long stretch of ambient drift that slowly gives way to sparkling synthetics that remind me I was once optimistic about a techno-future.
### Greenland
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/greenland/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:00.000Z
I’m somewhere over Greenland, and the sun will never go down because we’re flying west. I’m always in a heavy state whenever I see Greenland, usually red-eyed and emotionally shredded. Something is starting. Or ending. It’s a landmass associated with transitions and emergencies.
And I still have this foolish anxiety about flying, as if the airplane requires my vigilance to keep it in the sky. I’m better at flying at night, cocooned in some non-space and feeling sleek. In daylight, I’m too aware of being 36,000 feet above the planet, absorbing the judder of 500 miles per hour. A panic attack comes—*I need to get off the plane now*—and, as always, it goes. As my breath drags back to normal, I look down at the chunked ice in the ocean and consider the shape of my life when I return to the States.
C. and I are going to log some more time in Ohio while we figure out how to settle in the desert later this year, hopefully in the margins of Vegas. My life is weirdly open at the moment: no career, commitments, or clients. Maybe it’s finally time to start writing like it’s my job, at least until I run out of money. This idea inspires another bout of panic, but I try to pretend it’s excitement instead. Watching the ice and clouds scroll past my window, I concoct a routine: at least two hours of longhand writing before looking at a screen, then an hour or two of email and obligations before lunch. Then to the library for editing until five o’clock, when I’ll put my pencil down and go for a run or watch a movie before falling asleep with a book. A simple life. We’ll see how long it lasts.
### Last Day in London
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/london/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:01.000Z
Mostly cloudy skies with a high near seventy degrees while C. and I sat in the National Gallery, awaiting the results of our mandatory Covid tests so we could fly home. The possibility of containing this thing vanished years ago, yet America still believes the fictional boundaries of nations matter, so we installed a widget that verified our identities and had a man swab our nostrils. Then we sat among portraits of saints and gods, refreshing our telephones every few minutes, knowing our odds were fifty-fifty. At last, our screens turned green. We slapped five and did a quick tour of all the postcard sights we hadn’t yet seen: Big Ben, Tower Bridge, thousands of CCTV cameras, etc.
In the evening, we wandered into a service at Westminster Abbey, where we were seated next to a bust of William Blake, looking haunted and a little crazy. I saw his birthplace between an Indian restaurant and an expensive handbag store during my first days here. Now I was seated beneath his gaze while I admired the rituals of Christianity, particularly its acknowledgment that we’re imperfect: “We have sinned against thee and against our neighbor, in thought and word and deed, through negligence, through weakness, through our deliberate fault. We are heartily sorry.”
High voices filled the soaring canopies of stone while the names and faces of the famous dead surrounded us. Austen. Dickens. Newton. Darwin. Each time I go to church, I encounter something new. This time the priests washed people’s feet, and they burned so much incense our eyes watered. The Archdeacon was a woman who sermonized beautifully about “the body language of God” and how divine grace is manifested in the way we carry ourselves in the world. As far as I can tell, the Church of England preserves the mystery, guilt, and theatrics of Catholicism while draining its venom and dialing down the neurotic obsession with sex. If I ever join a religion, this might be the one— although I’d be joining for aesthetic reasons. But maybe this is enough.
### April 14, 2022
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/brighton/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:01.000Z
York to Brighton. Sunny skies, highs in the low sixties, and the sun went down around eight o’clock. I fell hard for this seaside city of faded glamour that felt like the original signal for Atlantic City, Santa Monica, and Coney Island. Why is elegant decay more appealing than the gleaming new thing? Perhaps because it inspires sympathy, even a sense of recognition. Because we’re all falling apart.
From the few hours spent there, Brighton seemed like a genuinely functional city intertwined with a [hallucinatory palace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal%5FPavilion?ref=jamesreeves.co) built by a dissolute prince, an old pier rotting in the English Channel, and the smell of funnel cake mingling with the broken tune of an old merry-go-round. “The people here are very indiscreet and troublesome,” said Queen Victoria in 1845\. And the food is fantastic.
And a massive thank you to the very kind people who run the National Rail. They reunited me with my camera after I foolishly left it on the train. I’d spent the evening glumly kicking at the stones on the beach, thinking I’d never see it again, but the next day at the train station, a man guided me into a cluttered office and handed it to me with a smile. I nearly wept. He simply nodded and said, “It’s what we do, mate.” Later I discovered dozens of their portraits on my camera roll, and they’ve restored my faith in humanity in all kinds of ways.
One of the snapshots I found on my camera
### York
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/york/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:01.000Z
Bath to York. Drizzle and highs near sixty. The sun goes down at eight o’clock, and there’s a waxing gibbous moon. We rolled into York with the clouds and the damp, and we wandered its cluttered lanes and jigsaw puzzle squares, listening to tour guides tell their flocks this town was inspired by Harry Potter because who cares anymore.
Every restaurant was booked except a lone spot next to a vape shop, and it was one of those dusty places where you know you should leave the moment you grok the peeling wallpaper and empty dining room, save for the elderly couple drowsing in their dinner plates. But hope is a powerful thing. Maybe this meal will be fantastic, a best-kept secret. But no, the food was scary, the waiters were angry, twenty minutes of silence segued to 200bpm industrial techno, and a man combed the carpet and drapes with a deafening handheld vacuum. Always trust your instincts.
Also: the British definition of “pudding” is broad and roomy, accommodating all kinds of beliefs.
[York Minster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York%5FMinster?ref=jamesreeves.co) is the largest Gothic cathedral north of the Alps, and it hangs from the sky like lace. Whenever I see these colossal palaces to God, it’s easy—and perhaps correct—to frown at all the blood and treasure hoovered up by faith-dealers to sustain a corrupted fantasy. Yet if I squint a certain way, I see something humble and profound, even a little heartbreaking: a community deciding, upon finding themselves alone and confused on a strange planet, to use their finest materials and labor to erect a space devoted to an otherworldly logic, hoping to find some answers.
At eleven o’clock, a soothing voice on a speaker filled the cathedral and encouraged us to bow our heads and pray for peace. It felt like the future.
[Garbage by Autechre](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/garbage?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Because we passed through Sheffield. And it’s one of the most beautiful songs I know.
### Bath
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/bath/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:01.000Z
London to Bath. Mostly sunny skies and highs in the upper fifties. The sun goes down at 7:57pm.
As we pulled out of Paddington Station, I closed my eyes and enjoyed the announcements on the Great Western Railway. The artificial woman’s voice was so reassuring it was nearly narcotic. Information about our travel time. Information about refreshments. Then she told us to stay alert. “See it. Say it. Sorted!” she said, reciting the [UK’s security mantra](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-national-rail-security-campaign-starts-today-see-it-say-it-sorted?ref=jamesreeves.co), which is just as elastic as the “See Something, Say Something” campaign in the States. (And Christ, we’ve been listening to this paranoid gibberish for [twenty years](https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/SeeSay-Overview508%5F1.pdf?ref=jamesreeves.co) now.) Maybe it’s my American ear, but there’s a sinister edge to hearing a chipper, disembodied voice say *sorted*. I imagine an unpleasantness quickly swept from public view, a killing in a backroom.
An hour later, we tumbled out of the train station, us tourists from all corners, and we squinted at the bright stone city of Bath, where a Roman spa from the year 60 is around the corner from a Sunglass Hut and a KFC. A mammoth 7th-century monastery is down the street from Urban Outfitters. This might be the world’s most beautiful shopping mall.
Inside the [Bath Abbey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath%5FAbbey?ref=jamesreeves.co), there’s a tiny chantry near the apse, about the size of a shipping container. When I stepped inside, I was alone and there was a brief moment of slippage; my brains quieted down, and I felt outside of time. Reverent, even, as I imagined myself believing in divine logic, everything classifiable and clear. The sensation fled the moment I noticed it, and I returned to the throng of people taking pictures of tombs and stone angels.
Prior William Birde’s Chantry Chapel, built in 1515
Two thousand years ago, the Romans etched their resentments into metal and cast them in the water, hoping the gods would punish those who’d done them wrong. A note about a lost pair of gloves: “The thief should lose his mind and eyes.” Like an ancient version of Twitter.
After sunset, C. and I leaned over a bridge, snapping pictures because the internet told us this was a meaningful sight. When I lowered my camera, a man stood closer to me, grinning like a jump scare. He nudged closer, wanting to touch my shoulder and take my hand. “Get a good photo, mate? Got a good shot? Beautiful night, yeah?” Maybe he was just a lonely drunk. Perhaps he was getting ready to sort me. The creepy is always unclassifiable.
[Transformations I by Thomas Ragsdale & Richard Arnold](https://thomasragsdalemusic.bandcamp.com/album/transformations-i?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Some favorite new UK music: this beautiful neon-soaked release via [Mysteries of the Deep](https://mysteriesofthedeep.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
### Somnambulist
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/somnambulist/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:01.000Z
One of those fine afternoons when you wander into a dusty bookstore in an unfamiliar city and come across [a book](https://www.swedenborg.org.uk/product/dialogue-with-a-somnambulist/?ref=jamesreeves.co) by a writer you don’t know, but it harmonizes with the noises in your head and leaves you wondering about the lines between randomness, serendipity, and synchronicity.
### Berger + Turner
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/violent-light/
Last updated: 2026-05-15T01:22:59.000Z
A line from [John Berger](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/320/320076/steps-towards-a-small-theory-of-the-visible/9780241472873.html?ref=jamesreeves.co)’s analysis of [J.M.W. Turner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.%5FM.%5FW.%5FTurner?ref=jamesreeves.co)’s paintings has been rattling around my head for days, how it unexpectedly harmonizes with the shocks and indignities of our pixellated age:
> The light which he thought of as devouring the whole visible world was very similar to the new productive energy which was challenging and destroying all previous ideas about wealth, distance, human labour, the city, nature, the will of God, children, time.
Berger suggests the violent light and calamitous seas of Turner’s landscapes were his way of dealing with “the first apocalyptic phase” of the Industrial Revolution. I wonder how today’s flux might be rendered into something approaching the sublime.
### A Fair Chunk of Our Time Was Spent Pacing and Sighing
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/black-walls/
Last updated: 2026-05-12T23:56:05.000Z
These have been long days of hanging vinyl and caressing air bubbles with a squeegee as C. and I finished installing a situation in the atrium of a school. Over the past four weeks, we’ve collected over one thousand dreams from students ranging from kindergarten through high school. It’s striking to see the weird material from my own dreams rendered in the handwriting of six-year-olds and teenagers: *I was chased through an endless hallway in the sky / I was running in slow motion and couldn’t run away from my problems / I dreamt about a red door, and just as I went to open it, I woke up.*
There’s something comforting in knowing we’re all bound together by the same scenes of being chased, going backward, searching frantically, lost in mazes, and expecting mysteries to be revealed. We run through sludge, and our teeth fall out. Little kids seem more likely to have zany dreams about talking animals and flying over rainbows, but they’re also dreaming about war and viruses.
C. and I began making sketches for a theater to display these dreams.
I’m still not sure how to write about the process of installing a public art project or if it’s interesting to read. A fair chunk of our time was spent pacing and sighing while we waited for the space to give us an idea of how it wanted to be, and we spent a week shivering in a damp glass-enclosed courtyard with rain dripping down the sides. We called it the Tarkovsky Box. Eventually, we grew tired of staring at the doors to the school toilets, so we decided to cover the glass with shiny black vinyl and see what would happen with the reflections.
At first, we wanted to cover the ground with stones to absorb the water and create a Zen garden in the center of the school. Then we considered the combination of children, rocks, and glass. So we laid down astroturf instead, and the shape of a theater began to emerge.
After running some tests with paper that we pilfered from the art department, we decided to project our video on large white drapes that generated a slightly eerie effect, as if they were hiding something, with the center strip of fabric running towards an illuminated well that contains the handwritten responses. The process of sifting through these scraps of writing feels like the act of recalling a dream, how its logic sits just beyond the reach of language and thought, leaving us only with a few fragments: *a room filled with sand / a clown burning my soul / a pixellated hand / stabbed with a fork / the world was empty, and I was stuck in time*.
So that’s some process, and if all goes well, *The Nightly News* will be ready to share in a few days.
### Stone
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/stone/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:02.000Z
London. A chilly Saturday with fast-moving clouds and confusing bursts of snow while the sun shines. The sun goes down at 7:35pm. On the Tube, a woman thumbed through a large book called *Solar Power Financing Without the Jargon*. A few seats down, a kid in bright red sneakers held a book called *Finding God* while he scrolled through his phone. I understand that.
C. and I tagged along on a high school field trip to Stonehenge. It was our first time beyond London, and I was eager to see some foreign terrain. But the landscape looked like Ohio or Pennsylvania, and the motorway felt like any American highway, except backward. My disappointment shifted to a specific flavor of reassurance as I watched the familiar blur of concrete pylons, jersey barriers, and breakdown lanes: the universal grammar of our strange human project.
Stonehenge appeared on the horizon, and, like the Mona Lisa, it was smaller than I thought. All the photographs I’d seen since childhood had led me to believe it was larger than life. Strange how an image can both amplify and diminish reality. [A photo display at the visitor’s center](https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/things-to-do/exhibitions/yourstonehenge/?ref=jamesreeves.co) included a 1970s snapshot of a little boy with a quote that would be an excellent first sentence for a novel: “This is me, age 2, climbing on Stonehenge in a cape, carrying a shovel and a gun.”
You can’t climb on Stonehenge anymore, but you can walk around it under the eye of a tour guide and two uniformed guards. Some people said they felt a shift in their energies and auras as they stepped into the ring of jumbled stones, and I wished like hell I believed in such things. If I have an energy field, it’s probably something like television static.
Stonehenge with truck traffic in the background
As the tour guide described the lifestyles of hunter-gatherers and the effects of solstices, I got very tired and wanted to lean against one of those stones—but you’ll go to jail if you touch anything. It’s not like the 1970s when people used Stonehenge for picnics, sex, and sacrifices while their children scampered around with toy weapons. Maybe those were better days.
I had no idea Stonehenge was plopped next to a highway, but I admired the juxtaposition of truck traffic framed by prehistoric stonework, a beautiful collision of prehistoric and modern engineering. What relics from our world will people marvel at four thousand years from now? Will children in the year 6022 be clambering over the bones of a shopping mall or superstore?
Many of the stones have fallen over the centuries. They sink into the grass, covered in lichen. Maybe we should tidy the place up and move them back to where the Druids or Martians put them—it’d be a sign of respect. Then the wind began to howl, the blue sky turned a mean grey, and sheets of snow whipped across the scene. It felt like static had descended upon this ancient site, and for a moment, I think I felt some energy.
[Infinite Moment by The Field](https://thefield.bandcamp.com/album/infinite-moment?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### They’re Making Video Poems About the 1990s
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/believe/
Last updated: 2026-05-13T00:23:29.000Z
Clear skies and a high near sixty degrees. The sun goes down at 6:11pm, the moon is full, and I can’t stop thinking about this 11-year-old I met the other day.
“I’m interested in old stuff,” she said. “Everything seemed better a long time ago, like in the 90s.” I gasped for air and did the math. Good god, I’m old. But also, why wasn’t this kid interested in the future? It broke my heart a little.
As we moved through classrooms, C. and I met quite a few nostalgic students. They’re making video poems about the 1990s. They delivered speeches in auditoriums about the stress of screens. They rhapsodized about a simpler time, sounding like ancient poets pining for a lost golden age. Days spent playing outside. The days when our telephones and screens were chained to walls, and the world did not follow us around, haunting our thoughts.
In the 1990s, I was bent toward the future, moving from hip-hop to electro to techno. The 1960s and 1970s did not interest me: those times were dead. The future was the sound of a screeching modem. I believed in compact discs, sky pagers, and dial-up. Of course, the liberating, polyglot promise of the internet would soon turn sour, poisoned by money and our worst emotions. But it was nice to believe in the future for a little while, and I’m grateful I get to carry this sensation with me.
I recently saw [Cildo Meireles’s *Babel*](https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/meireles-babel-t14041?ref=jamesreeves.co)at the Tate, a mammoth tower of twentieth-century radios that fritz and skip through stations. Meireles was concerned with the cacophony of the modern world. He built *Babel* in 2001\. I wonder what he would build today. When I encountered the tower, the radios were tuned to Journey’s 1981 hit, an anthem we knew as well as our names, singing *don’t stop believin’* through the static while we stood in a circle, taking pictures.
### Evensong
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/evensong/
Last updated: 2026-05-13T00:27:37.000Z
London. A damp weekend of clouds and mist. The sun goes down at 5:51pm and the moon is waxing. Yesterday I saw the birthplace of [William Blake](https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/william-blake-artist?ref=jamesreeves.co), now a strip of concrete between an Indian restaurant and an expensive handbag store.
C. and I stepped out of the drizzle into St Paul’s Cathedral, where a choir was preparing to sing the daily [evensong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evensong?ref=jamesreeves.co), a sunset ritual that “is identical to the canonical hour of vespers.” God, I love the cadence of the church, how it renders everything into hushed and mysterious phenomena. Today’s language feels harsh and overlit, its contrast cranked into a black-and-white binary that echoes our machines: like/dislike, follow/block, save/delete, and so on.
Looking up at the constellation of arches around the dome inspired a sense of vertigo that was almost too much to bear. Perhaps this is how faith is supposed to feel. Most of all, I was struck by [Gerry Judah’s memorial](https://www.stpauls.co.uk/news-press/latest-news/giant-white-crosses-remind-st-pauls-worshippers-and-visitors-of-the-horrors-of-warfare?ref=jamesreeves.co) for the First World War, a pair of mammoth white crosses with destroyed cities clinging to their beams. Photography was not permitted in the cathedral, and I appreciated how this rule preserved the dignity of the space. Even if I spent much of my time thinking about how badly I wanted to take a picture.
The sun might come out this week. I sent [a newsletter](https://atlasminor.substack.com/) a few days ago.
#### [Brian Eno & Robert Fripp – Evensong](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Evensong.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Evening Star | EG, 1975 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evening%5FStar%5F%28Fripp%5F%26%5FEno%5Falbum%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Evensong.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Evensong.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Feedback Loops
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/loops/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:03.000Z
The usual clouds, the usual forty-something degrees, and the usual misty drizzle. The sun goes down at 5:47pm, and it’s been a long strange week of giving presentations in an auditorium at an unholy hour in the morning. Sometimes C. and I spoke to a hundred teachers, sometimes two hundred fifth-graders. How much do they need to know about Dada? They know it in their bones.
Last night I had a dream that my mom was calling me. I answered the phone, and she was saying my name. I knew it was a dream, and I told her so. But no, she said, this was very real, and she was very much alive, and she was so sorry she had to go away, but now she was coming back.
Two hours later, I’m standing on a stage with C., presenting our work, and there’s a photograph of my mom on the massive screen behind us. She’s on a beach, a snapshot my father took a year before she died. Her image was meant to appear for only a second before discussing the work she inspired. But she’s glitching, frozen on the screen. The photograph of my mom refuses to leave the auditorium. We jiggle the cords, but she’s still there, twenty feet tall and gazing at the water, her head turned away so you can hardly see her face. She remains there until the tech guy comes onstage, crouches over a box, and flips some switches.
There are 144 slides in that presentation deck. I do not dream about my mother often, certainly not about her calling me to say she never died. Even my battered, disbelieving mind senses a frequency here. The odds are too great; the signal is too strong.
Pattern recognition, maybe. [Baader-Meinhof](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency%5Fillusion?ref=jamesreeves.co), confirmation bias, or just a good old-fashioned coincidence. I’ve been reading John Berger this week. After I finished the last page of *[Confabulations](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/gaps-and-threads/?ref=jamesreeves.co)* and closed the book, I opened my inbox and found [a newsletter from Sasha Frere-Jones](https://substack.sashafrerejones.com/p/monday-february-28-2022?s=r&ref=jamesreeves.co) that introduced me to [Time Is Away’s magnificent mix](https://www.nts.live/shows/timeisaway/episodes/timeisaway-24th-january-2022?ref=jamesreeves.co) featuring Berger reading from *[Pig Earth](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/12348/pig-earth-by-john-berger/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*. (There’s also [a dub version](https://www.nts.live/shows/timeisaway/episodes/timeisaway-21st-february-2022?ref=jamesreeves.co).) I’ve been listening to both mixes all week, and I can’t recommend them enough.
Berger speaks to the sensation of seeing my mother’s image linger in an auditorium, a sensation amplified by a dream: “Between the moment recorded and the present moment of looking at the photograph, there is an abyss . . . the photograph is more traumatic than most memories or mementos because it seems to confirm, prophetically, the later discontinuity created by the absence or death.”
Coincidence, probably, but why not believe moments like this point to something more interesting? Perhaps even something reassuring.
#### [Time Is Away – Pig Earth Mix](https://www.nts.live/shows/timeisaway/episodes/timeisaway-24th-january-2022?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### NTS Radio, London, 4.01.22 | [Soundcloud](https://soundcloud.com/user-62184333/time-is-away-240122?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Pig%20Earth.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Pig%20Earth.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Gaps and Threads
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/gaps-and-threads/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:03.000Z
London. Another day of clouds and drizzle punctuated by a few moments of sunshine—an event so rare that it feels like a cosmic event when the light shifts and the world briefly brightens as if the gods are smiling down upon us. A high of 53 degrees and the sun goes down at 5:28pm. England ended most of its pandemic rules today, and Russia is claiming territory in Ukraine. The moon is in its final quarter.
My mind is fragmented this morning, flicking around our little flat by the train tracks, batting at threads but unable to grab hold of anything. “You can say anything about everything,” said C. as we studied the pompous text on the wall of an art gallery, where a blotch of paint was apparently renegotiating the past with the future and forcing us to confront our problems. *You can say anything about everything*—this might be a proverb for the 21st century. We’re living in murky times, and nobody’s keeping score of what makes sense anymore, which is both frightening and liberating.
Yesterday I tracked down a copy of John Berger’s *[Confabulations](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/301/301519/confabulations/9780141984957.html?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, needing to read something sane from someone who could render fragments into something beautiful. I like everything about this little book. The simplicity. The straightforwardness. Even the large typeface. “True translation demands a return to the pre-verbal,” Berger writes. “What has prompted me to write over the years is the hunch that something needs to be told and that, if I don’t try to tell it, it risks not being told. I picture myself not so much a consequential, professional writer, as a stop-gap man.”
And somewhere off to the left, I can hear [Georges Perec](https://www.ubu.com/papers/perec%5Finfraordinary.html?ref=jamesreeves.co): “Question your teaspoons.”
### Midnight in London
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/midnight-in-london/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:03.000Z
Damp streets, a stiff breeze, and Bertrand Russell comes to mind: “Eternal objects can be conceived as God’s thoughts. Hence Plato’s doctrine that God is a geometer, and Sir James Jean’s belief that He is addicted to arithmetic.” But few things feel as eternal as a lone bus stop in the middle of the night.
### We Tuned In to Watch Airplanes
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/train-dreams/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:04.000Z
Record-breaking wind swept across England yesterday, closing bridges, train lines, and attractions. The nation tuned in to watch a livestream of airplanes struggling to land at Heathrow, and a gust of wind punched open the roof of an arena.
The trains started running again late last night. I know this because our flat is next to the Kilburn High Road Station, where four different trains rumble around the clock. One is light and faint like a sigh; the loudest is all judder and screech. At night, C. falls asleep encased a head-tomb of earplugs and noise-canceling headphones held fast with a scarf. But I enjoy the clatter and vibrations. There’s something soothing about drowsing next to a train station in an unfamiliar country, knowing that people are traveling at all hours to god only knows.
The noise worms its way into my dreams. Last night I dreamt I lived in a mechanical hotel that slowly dragged itself down the street. We could not leave, and we would never reach our destination. The hotel loved us too much to let us go. Every so often, new people would appear, and they were frightened when I approached because I was a ghost, haunting them. Then I dreamt that I drank perfume and had a minor role in a detective show in which none of us could remember the name of the president between Nixon and Carter.
A dream is defined as “a series of images and sensations that occur involuntarily during sleep.” Some definitions substitute *visions* for *images*, which may be a critical distinction between those who take their dreams seriously and those who do not.
I’ve always been skeptical of people who decipher their dreams or believe they are messages from some hidden realm, for they conjure the tacky aesthetics of the soothsayer or the drone of the dinner guest who talks about being present for the moment and worships rocks. My prejudice might be a knee-jerk reaction to the word *involuntary*—if something in my head cannot be controlled, does it belong to me? But like the trains, I’m learning to accept my dreams as a fine form of entertainment.
#### F.U.S.E. – Train-Trac
###### Dimension Intrusion | Plus 8, 1993 | [Bandcamp](https://richiehawtin.bandcamp.com/album/dimension-intrusion?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[Train-Tracs by F.U.S.E.](https://richiehawtin.bandcamp.com/album/train-tracs?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Dark Trees
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/dark-trees/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:04.000Z
London. We experienced a brief hour of sunlight before the rain and gloom resumed. Meanwhile, a storm named Eunice is churning over the Celtic Sea, and the news is advertising it heavily. I thought naming winter storms was a purely American marketing move to drum up ratings. But events are being canceled, the government says it will be “a major incident,” and the United Kingdom is a swirl of yellow, amber, and red alerts. They’re saying it could be the most powerful storm in thirty years. They’re saying it could develop something called a “[sting jet](https://news.sky.com/story/what-is-a-sting-jet-and-how-could-it-make-storm-eunice-deadly-12544077?ref=jamesreeves.co).”
But I never know how seriously to take anything anymore.
At first, I thought London was filled with a rare and surreal species of tree with thick branches and twisted, blunted tops. Now I’m beginning to suspect these are just normal trees that the city has abused. This is the type of thing I never bother to look up, preferring my impressionistic sense of the world. Let the mystery be, I say. We have far too few of them these days.
I remember staring at the sky in a superstore parking lot somewhere in North or South Dakota, watching a dozen seagulls circle overhead, hunting for minnows or plankton or whatever they eat. What had drawn them to this landlocked square? Their rusty squawks filled the night, and that’s when I realized something in nature was breaking.
There are quite a few palm trees here in London, enhancing my disorientation.
### The Ides of February
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-ides-of-february/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:04.000Z
The Ides of February, and the London gloom and rain continue with a high of 59 degrees. Or 15°C, which looks less satisfying. The sun goes down at 5:17pm, and there’s a full moon tonight. All my little routines and ablutions get blown to bits whenever I travel, and soon I’m pacing the floors at three o’clock in the morning, trying to remember who I am and what I do.
I keep colliding with people in the streets and shops. I just can’t pick up the rhythm here. In New York, there’s a dance, a perpetual flow of pedestrians veering to the right, and if you stop to look at your phone or admire a window display, you’ll get killed or shamed. But here, people plant themselves in the concrete, taking deep root and not budging. Or they make a bee-line for me, inviting me to a game of chicken. Yesterday I had a theory: if people drive on the left, perhaps they also walk on the left. But no, I’m still getting out of everyone’s way. The problem is me. And I should get my own house in order rather than casting sinister motives on innocent Londoners. At least I’m finally a morning person in Eastern Standard Time.
### Night Flight to London
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/night-flight-to-london/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:04.000Z
God, the indignity of getting yelled at while standing in your socks. Getting dressed down because you put your bag in a bin or you did not. They’re constantly changing the procedures, and it’s so much wear-and-tear on the human spirit, these systems we’ve created. How many terrorists are captured each day at a Midwestern airport? How many plots foiled?
Night flight to London, and I spent six hours looking down at the Atlantic, hunting for the distant lights of boats, imagining a different life of shipping lanes and navigating the Labrador Sea.
London was breathtaking at six o’clock in the morning and ten thousand feet: a glittery sprawl without any discernible grid that slowly revealed itself beneath threads of low-flying clouds.
Our luggage went missing somewhere in the depths of Heathrow, so I bought a cheap change of clothes at a discount chain called TK Maxx, which has the same logo and chaotic atmosphere as TJ Maxx in the States. Only one letter was different. This minor tweak captures the uncanny sensation of being on the other side of an ocean, yet everything feels more or less the same now that we’re living in the shadow of an end-game corporate colossus. Also: I almost get killed every time I jaywalk, and the power jacks are large and ostentatious, like something an American would have come up with. They have chicken Big Macs here.
I’m sure other quirks and delights will become apparent after I get some sleep and our luggage turns up so I can install new contacts and see properly. But oh, I love this fifty-degree gloom. I also love the new *[Brutal Minimalism](https://theblackdog.bandcamp.com/album/brutal-minimalism-ep?ref=jamesreeves.co)* extended player from [The Black Dog](https://www.theblackdogma.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co):
[Brutal Minimalism EP by The Black Dog](https://duststoredigital.com/album/brutal-minimalism-ep?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Slush and Stone
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/slush-and-stone/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:05.000Z
Cloudy skies with a high near fifty degrees. The snow is melting quickly, leaving behind grey-black slush and patches of dead grass: a scene like the bleary-eyed aftermath of a really good party. The sun goes down at 6:01 tonight, and the moon is in its first quarter. We’re leaving for London in two days.
Anything I know about London comes from detective dramas, so I imagine it as a city of CCTV cameras and well-fitted coats. Thirteen years ago, I was in London for an eight-hour layover while trying to get home from Helsinki to Detroit, where my mother was dying. I only remember riding the bus in a daze, my disorientation compounded by the reversed traffic. I sat there for hours, orbiting stops with fairy tale names until the bus was empty and the driver was kind to me and helped me find my way back to the airport.
Continuing this thread of grief in Britain, here are some beautiful lines from Hilary Mantel’s *[Bring Up the Bodies](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250024176/bringupthebodies?ref=jamesreeves.co)*:
> *He once thought it himself, that he might die of grief . . . but the pulse, obdurate, keeps its rhythm. You think you cannot keep breathing, but your ribcage has other ideas, rising and falling, emitting sighs. You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.*
And that’s the trick, I suppose: avoiding that fucking stone. One morning I woke up in the grip of those tangled dream-thoughts that have the force of revelation: *After suffering loss, the soul can go one of two ways: it can harden into something spiky and guarded or…* I’m not sure what the other option looks like, but I want to find it.
Detroit is heavy on the hi-fi this week. This live set from Ectomorph has been playing around the clock, and it’s a perfect hour of bare-bones electro sleaze.
#### Ectomorph – Masonic (Live in Detroit)
###### Interdimensional Transmissions, 2018 | [Bandcamp](https://ectomorph.bandcamp.com/track/masonic-live-in-detroit-it-live-1?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[Masonic (Live in Detroit) \[IT LIVE 1\] by Ectomorph](https://ectomorph.bandcamp.com/track/masonic-live-in-detroit-it-live-1?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Morning Man
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/morning-man/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:05.000Z
Snow-blasted skies and temperatures around zero. The sun goes down at 5:49pm.
I thought about [Haruki Murakami](https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2/the-art-of-fiction-no-182-haruki-murakami?ref=jamesreeves.co) while C. and I wandered through hotel lobbies and fields of snow. The days around my birthday often find me rethinking the rhythm of my life and nursing morning fantasies, and this seed was planted ages ago after reading about Murakami’s routine:
> *When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.*
>
> [The Paris Review, 2004](https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2/the-art-of-fiction-no-182-haruki-murakami?ref=jamesreeves.co)
I’ve spent years crafting a morning fantasy of my own, and it’s become a vision as rich and familiar as a favorite film. I wake at dawn, splash cold water on my face, and stretch. I meditate in the quiet and jot down notes for stories, maybe the scenes from last night’s dreams. Then I run a few miles and return home for a shower and a light breakfast: fruit, barley, or whatever morning people eat. Then I sit for an hour or two with only a notebook and pen, writing in silence before switching to editing and compiling. I do not check the internet or listen to music. Silence is essential, so my mind is left only with the world I am building. I work this way until late morning when I finally let the world enter my head and deal with the day’s obligations and bill-paying labor. Because I’ve already taken care of my spiritual, physical, and creative work, the day can go to hell at noon, and it will still have been worthwhile.
I’m very proud of this routine even though I’ve never done it. Instead, I wake up at all hours, never eat breakfast, and I scribble into my notebook while I’m in bed or the car or standing in the middle of a superstore. Music is always playing. An unholy number of browser tabs are open. I can’t contemplate walking quickly, let alone running, until deep into the afternoon. Although I meditate most days, I still fight the urge to look at my watch. Even if my phone is in a drawer, it hums in the corner of my skull like there’s another person in the room. The babble doesn’t fade until midnight. Then I can concentrate.
Yet my Spartan Morning Man fantasy persists, year after year. Maybe because it takes so much effort. Nobody works at becoming [a night owl](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/night/?ref=jamesreeves.co), do they? Yet just thinking about becoming an early riser makes me feel crisp and minty like I’m in a commercial, slipping into cool water with a fresh linen scent. The persistence of this fantasy is astonishing. Perhaps I’ll try it someday.
In the meantime, I’m grateful to be surrounded by snow because I can finally enjoy Echospace’s *[The Coldest Season](https://boomkat.com/products/the-coldest-season-66e8661d-976a-46e2-b5df-187b8d877bd0?ref=jamesreeves.co)* in its proper context: at two o’clock in the morning on a long winter night.
#### Echospace – Winter in Seney
###### The Coldest Season | Modern Love, 2008 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/the-coldest-season-66e8661d-976a-46e2-b5df-187b8d877bd0?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Winter%20in%20Seney.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Winter%20in%20Seney.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Nine Years Sober Today
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/night-flight-to-utah/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:05.000Z
Yesterday C. surprised me with a birthday trip into the mountains, and I spent most of the flight gazing out the window, wondering how I could have ever taken this view for granted: the tiny winter trees and miniature snow-covered houses, the rivers of headlights and taillights. The mountains out there in the dark. A car drifts down a highway like a ghost, and there’s a perfect pool of light from a lone sodium lamp in a parking lot. I find so much peace in the electrified grids of cities. From this altitude, our civilization looks so safe and orderly, even sane.
Nine years sober today. There were times I couldn’t even dream of nine days. Or hours. Proof there’s such a thing as grace. If you’re struggling, please reach out to someone. (I’m here.)
### January 27, 2022
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/decivilization/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:05.000Z
Grey skies and light flurries with dangerously cold temperatures on the way. The sun sets at 5:45pm, and there’s a waning crescent moon.
I need a word for the slightly hungover sensation after a bout of clicking and scrolling. A word for shaking off the digital residue. Maybe it’s like sand: a fine grit that gets into everything: our eyes and ears, our teeth and nerves.
Meanwhile at the library, a middle-aged man is jabbering into his computer. It’s a bold move, having a full-blown conference call in the midst of students studying, readers reading, and writers brooding. He’s draped across his chair, dressed like a toddler in sweatpants and sneakers—just another person treating public life like their living room. He’s been braying about his spreadsheets for twenty minutes now. Nobody says anything. I don’t either. The last time I fancied myself the lone defender of civilization, I nearly got into a fistfight and caused more noise than I’d hoped to silence.
So I crank up my headphones and return to rewriting my novel, where a priest stands in a parking lot watching a superstore burn, and there’s madness on his face because God has just moved through the world, rearranging the lives of everyone in earshot. Except for him. God has spoken, yet he heard only silence. I’m curious to see what he will do next.
Writing about the loss of faith is so, so much easier than finding it.
### “They make advertisements for soap. Why not for peace?”
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/hiroshima-mon-amour/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:06.000Z
Last night I watched *[Hiroshima, Mon Amour](https://www.criterion.com/films/217-hiroshima-mon-amour?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, a film I hadn’t seen since my days in college. I remember it filling me with a particular and nameless kind of dread, and this mood has been on my mind lately: the overlapping of global calamity with the tragedies of our private lives. Released in 1959, Alain Resnais’s film is ground zero for French New Wave and perhaps the wellspring for most arthouse tropes. The camera lingers in dark rooms. Lovers speak in monologue and monotone. They thrash and sulk in shadows. They repeat themselves while gazing into the middle distance of the emotionally detached.
Much of the film is about recreating and relitigating the recent past. A French actress comes to Hiroshima to play a nurse in a movie about the atrocity of August 6, 1945—which occurred only fourteen years before. (Try to imagine, say, a film called *9/11, My Love* released in 2015.) Her lover is a Japanese architect, and they discuss their private lives while surrounded by actors caked in makeup that resembles the burns from a nuclear blast. Tea rooms and cocktail lounges evoke bygone eras and far-flung locales, culminating in a tropical speakeasy called “Casablanca”. Along the way, the lovers move across tatami mats and stern Modernist lobbies, history collapsing as their desire to rekindle the first blush of youthful romance melds with the fallout from the bomb.
The French actress tries to attach herself to apocalyptic destruction, hoping to stave off indifference towards a new atomic age by narrating its horrors over a montage of destroyed bodies and post-blast footage. “You saw nothing in Hiroshima,” her Japanese lover repeatedly reminds her.
*Hiroshima, Mon Amour* is a profoundly fucked-up film that may not withstand the lights of 2022\. But I can’t think of many movies that go after such big game by conflating the historical with the personal, the horrific with the romantic. It plumbs emotions unique to cinema, the ones beyond language or conscious thought—such as the dark urge to give our lives meaning by attaching ourselves to tragedy and violence, hoping to make an impression when we tell people we could have been the next victim, that we were just a few blocks away from the shooting or the blast site.
### Middle Path
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/middle-path/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:06.000Z
Ohio. A snowy Sunday afternoon with temperatures dropping into the teens and an inch or two of accumulation. The sun sets at 5:40pm and the moon is in its final quarter.
With each passing year, the tension becomes more pronounced between the new and the unfinished. More and more, I feel the weight of decision: create new work and pursue fresh ideas—or devote my time, which dwindles by the minute, to refining, completing, and sometimes relitigating my half-finished projects from the past. All those drafts and fragments, the notebooks filled with half-legible scribbles and pages scrawled when waking from a dream—I could spend the rest of my life tending to them.
Perhaps there comes a time to draw a bright line, stuff the past in the trash, and trust these old ideas will live on in whatever comes next. It’d be nice to feel a little lighter, to live free from the muck of stalled manuscripts and half-laid plans. But I’ve learned by now that the clean slate is a fantasy, and the tabula rasa is the domain of zealots.
Meanwhile, the snow outside my window is melting as soon as it piles up, and there might be a lesson here.
### Midwinter Inventory
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/midwinter-inventory/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:06.000Z
Blank skies, single-digit temperatures, and the sun goes down at 5:38pm. Spent the afternoon at the Department of Motor Vehicles, trying to figure out how to legalize a car. It takes a lot of paperwork to be a person. While explaining myself to the grumpy clerk behind the glass, I realized I have no idea where I legally live. Ohio for a few more weeks. Maybe Nevada in a few months. Perhaps we’ll wind up back in New York. But I need to make a decision so I can be taxed appropriately: another small reminder of the fiction of states, the collective hallucination of nations and borders.
Here in the Middle West, I’m filling the quiet with books and music, absorbed by text and sound in ways I haven’t felt in years. I’m midway through many books at once, which is unusual for me. I tend to doggedly read one book at a time, grinding it out until the last page even if I’m not enjoying it. I like to believe I have faith in an author’s vision and should see it through—but really, I just don’t want to admit I’ve made a poor selection.
Right now, I’m midway through a few books, and I’m enjoying all the ways to tell a story while I continue to work on my own. After discarding a few buzzy new novels that were rants and op-eds masquerading as fiction, I’m settling into Sequoia Nagamatsu’s *[How High We Go in the Dark](https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-high-we-go-in-the-dark-sequoia-nagamatsu?variant=39325279911970&ref=jamesreeves.co)*, a dreamlike series of vignettes about calamity and grief. And I’m looking forward to getting deeper into Agustín Fernández Mallo’s [*Nocilla Trilogy*](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374222789/the-nocilla-trilogy?ref=jamesreeves.co), a patchwork of desert weirdness, scattered histories, and technological speculations.
At night, I fall asleep with [*Bring Up the Bodies*](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250024176/bringupthebodies?ref=jamesreeves.co). Although I’m not terribly interested in the Tudors, Hilary Mantel’s prose is so lyrical, dense, and wise that it feels like learning to read—and write—again. I drift off with Tomonari Nozaki’s *[Waves](https://secretpress.bandcamp.com/album/waves?ref=jamesreeves.co)* looping on the hi-fi: 54 minutes of ambience that pulses and breathes.
This month I’m playing [Dedekind Cut](https://dedekindcut.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)‘s entire discography for days at a stretch: a suite of releases that fuses the quiet with the dreadful, occasionally erupting without warning into growling synths and manic percussion. (I recommend starting with *[Tahoe](https://dedekindcut.bandcamp.com/album/tahoe-ded007?ref=jamesreeves.co)* and *[American Zen](https://dedekindcut.bandcamp.com/album/american-zen-ded003-ep-17-se?ref=jamesreeves.co)*.)
### Winter Robots
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/winter-robots/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:06.000Z
Ohio. Clear skies with highs in the mid-thirties, sunset at 5:34pm, and it finally snowed last night. Not a lot of snow, but enough to soften the world a little. Enough to remember childhood winters and even recall a sense of wonder at all this strange material falling from the sky.
After admiring the snow, I navigated the rat’s nest of modern living. Caught in a reverse Voight-Kampff test, I spent nine minutes quarreling with a telephone robot who refused to deliver me to a human until I successfully answered its increasingly existential questions: Is there a disruption in your area? Are you experiencing technical difficulties? Is your connection intermittent?
As I waited to be connected, I caught a glimpse of a cold future, a binary world in which all of our services and transactions are brokered by robots—*1 for yes, 2 for no*—leaving no room for the grey zone of being human.
#### [Anthony Rother – Destroy Him My Robots](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Destroy%20Him%20My%20Robots.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Redlight District | Elektrolux, 1998 | [Bandcamp](https://anthonyrother.bandcamp.com/album/redlight-district-destroy-him-my-robots?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Destroy%20Him%20My%20Robots.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Destroy%20Him%20My%20Robots.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Cusp of Things
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/cusp-of-things/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:07.000Z
A grey Sunday with the possibility of snow. They’re calling it a Saskatchewan Screamer, this weather system moving northeast across the Tennessee Valley. In the meantime, I’m trying to sort myself out. Will I ever untangle the stories scattered across my notebooks? What am I doing with my time on planet Earth? What do I stand for? But I’m not going to figure myself out today. It’s a lifelong process, I know, and I can’t imagine many of us walk around feeling certain about ourselves and the choices we’ve made. At least not without being an absolute jackass.
Looks like C. and I are going to London next month for a residency, coronavirus be damned. But first we must contend with the paranoia of nation-states and institutional logistics. Yesterday we got fingerprinted for an FBI background check, and I was surprised by my anxiety as we awaited the results. Maybe they’ve figured me out; I certainly haven’t.
I braced for surveillance footage of myself doing something awful, maybe a print-out of my search history or photographs of my strangest dreams. But I’m clean. *A search of the fingerprints provided by this individual has revealed no prior arrest date*, said the report. *This does not preclude further criminal history at the state or local level.* I admire how they’ve hedged their bets in case I’m causing local problems.
So these are days of waiting. Today I’m waiting for the snow to arrive on this Sunday afternoon in the long middle stretch of January. The year is no longer shiny yet it has not fully started, its rhythms only faintly heard. There’s a thrum in the atmosphere just before the weather changes, maybe something to do with barometric pressure that I’ve never understood. The forecast has been downgraded from six inches of snow to only two, and there should be a word for this: the specific flavor of disappointment when the weather fails to perform as advertised.
I went for a short ugly run to get out of my Sunday funk, and I stopped to admire a streak of white against the grey clouds: the contrails of an airplane—*jet screams*, I called them when I was small—and it neatly divided the sky in two. For a moment, I wanted to assign it cosmic significance.
#### [Dean Hurley – Edge of the Known](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Edge%20of%20the%20Known.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Anthology Resource Vol. II: Philosophy of Beyond | Sacred Bones, 2019 | [Bandcamp](https://deanhurley.bandcamp.com/album/anthology-resource-vol-ii-philosophy-of-beyond?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Edge%20of%20the%20Known.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Edge%20of%20the%20Known.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### We Need New Gods
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/we-need-new-gods/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:07.000Z
Last night I dusted off and tuned up an old track that I made from a pair of half-speed classical loops, a lot of reverb and crackle, and a touch of Joseph Campbell.
This thing’s been drifting in and out of my headphones for nearly three years now, becoming a moody companion on late-night walks. I keep fiddling with it, never feeling confident enough to share it. But it’s time to let it go. My aim was to create something contemplative yet tense, which more or less captures my sense of faith.
#### [James A. Reeves – We Need New Gods](ttps://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/We%20Need%20New%20Gods.mp3)
###### 2022 | [Bandcamp](https://atlasminor.bandcamp.com/track/we-need-new-gods?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/We%20Need%20New%20Gods.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/We%20Need%20New%20Gods.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Tomorrow's Gods
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/tomorrows-gods/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:07.000Z
Cloudy skies, still no snow, and a high of 43 degrees.
There’s an [old Roman maxim](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Statius?ref=jamesreeves.co) that fear gave birth to the gods. The historian [Will Durant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will%5FDurant?ref=jamesreeves.co) elaborates: “It was fear that made the gods—fear of hidden forces in the earth, rivers, oceans, trees, winds, and sky. Religion became the propitiatory worship of these forces through offerings, sacrifice, incantation, and prayer.”
How else could our ancestors explain thunder? But our fear of nature might be more frightening today because we know what’s causing all this drought, fire, flood, and plague—it is us. Meanwhile, the old gods have grown feeble. Our sites of worship were not equipped for today’s heat and speed. The church and the temple, the faith in free markets and human reason: it all feels a bit creaky. What new gods will today’s fears create?
#### [Dedekind Cut – Fear in Reverse](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Fear%20in%20Reverse.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### $uccessor | Hospital, 2016 | [Bandcamp](https://dedekindcut.bandcamp.com/album/uccessor-ded004-lp?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Fear%20in%20Reverse.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Fear%20in%20Reverse.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### A Low Rumble
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-low-rumble/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:07.000Z
Clear skies without any snow, temps in the low forties, and the sun went down at 5:28pm. There’s a waxing gibbous moon and omicron everywhere.
Ronnie Spector died today. Sometimes I find myself listening for answers beneath the crashing waves of an old Ronettes single: big heartbeat drums and an even bigger voice, so reverberated and haunted, carrying the fever-dream of American history. Ronnie and her seminal beehive, singing “Keep on Dancing” back in ’64, a song so perfect that Phil Spector refused to release it for years. Several years ago, I’d jotted down a quote from her that reads like a religious vision: “Everything was quiet, then all of a sudden I heard a low rumble, like there was thunder coming from every corner of the room.”
### The Hum of Machinery You Can See
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/rewind/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:08.000Z
Another frigid and atmospherically pointless day without any snow. The sun goes down at 5:27pm.
My brand new cassette tape arrived. It cost me seventeen dollars, but it was worth the money just to hold it. I haven’t held a cassette in years, and I found myself unwrapping it slowly, ritualistically, like a pack of cigarettes. As I peeled back the shrink-wrap, the effect was anticipatory, almost like returning to smoking: the familiar weight in the palm, the hum of possibility, of returning to better days.
It’s just a piece of plastic with a spool of magnetic tape, but it contains entire worlds. I remember solitary high school nights spent crouched over a Panasonic boombox in a metro Detroit apartment near Interstate 75, traffic hissing through the walls while my finger waited to release the pause button the moment [the Electrifying Mojo](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/mojo/?ref=jamesreeves.co) played Kraftwerk or Cybotron again. You had to release that button just right for a clean segue between songs without any ugly clicks.
The reassuring *kerchunk* of buttons. The hum of machinery you could see. Punching out the plastic tabs on the top of the cassette if the recording was good. Or plugging them with paper if the tape was needed again. This was the tactile world of limitations, the parameters of a physical thing rather than a never-ending stream. Was my creative life any better then? Or is this just the nostalgia of a man settling into middle age?
I’m recording my little loops to cassettes because I crave the constraints of linear time. Maybe I simply want to return to a known way of being. There’s a fork in the road when it comes to reckoning with the 21st century: walk away from our increasingly humiliating and disorienting technologies, or make a cognitive leap and embrace the mess. But this is nothing new. In 1895, [William Morris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William%5FMorris?ref=jamesreeves.co) said, “Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.” Then came the [Futurists](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/unique-forms-of-continuity-in-space/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and Constructivists and the rest of the Modernists. So much for that.
#### [Cybotron – Clear](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Clear.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Enter | Fantasy, 1983 | [More](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18886-cybotron-enter/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Clear.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Clear.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Word Count
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/word-count/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:08.000Z
Wind chills in the single digits and still no snow. The sun sets at 5:27pm tonight.
It took some time to humble myself and write [yet another draft ](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/gift/?ref=jamesreeves.co)of this novel I’ve been working on for years. But at last, I’m settling into a steady writing groove for the first time in months. I write in the library for an hour or two each morning, which is terrible because I’m a night owl in my bones. But I’ve learned the hard way that I need to write fiction before I let the world into my head and start doing things for money. As much I dislike these early hours, I’m beginning to savor the routine: Brewing a thermos of coffee while last night’s dreams evaporate. Warming up the car in the January cold. Taking a seat in the far corner of the Quiet Room.
I do my best to write longhand for an hour before looking at a screen. But how do you measure progress? It’s easy to applaud myself for spending an hour or two each day on my draft, but when does this end? I need to get back to counting words. Tonight I made a spreadsheet with a reasonable daily target of 500 words. I’m a slow writer, but I should be able to hit this no matter if I’m in Ohio, London, the desert, or some state of emergency. It also outlines the task for the day, and there’s a spot for me to note how many words I actually wrote to make sure I’m not kidding myself. (Maybe my reliance upon counting words is hardwired; I used to count [how many words I spoke](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/quiet/?ref=jamesreeves.co) each day because I was so shy.)
I can keep rewriting the same story forever. If I’m not paying attention, I can push commas around for hours or lose a whole day deliberating between *that* and *which*. Years ago, I came across an excellent Finnish word for someone fixated on the unimportant details: *pilkunnussija*, which means “comma fucker”. Yes, that’s me.
### 17 Minutes Remaining
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/17-minutes-remaining/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:08.000Z
The grey skies of January continue, the moon is in its first quarter, and the sun goes down at 5:25pm on this gloomy Sunday.
Today I spent an hour in the corner of a shopping mall, borrowing the internet of a fast-fashion shop that closed at noon because too many of its workers had the plague. I leaned against an artificial tree, still recovering from the chipper mayhem of the Apple store, where I’d just exchanged some old hardware for their smallest telephone (which they might [discontinue](https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/after-iphone-13-its-not-looking-good-for-apple-iphone-mini/?ref=jamesreeves.co)).
I want my phone to have less influence in my life, for it to feel like a tool rather than a devious magnet. Owning one with a smaller physical presence seems like a sensible move.
Crouched at the foot of the artificial tree, I waited for my tiny new device to sort itself out and set itself up. Seventeen minutes remained as the progress bar inched across the screen, restoring my life from god only knew. I grew antsy during these long minutes of being genuinely off the grid. I was not just euphemistically in *Focus Mode* or *Do Not Disturb*—no, I was truly unreachable for the first time in ages. I felt like a negligent citizen as I imagined the critical messages I might be missing: breaking news and urgent work requests, perhaps an offer of cash and prizes—or loved ones having medical events.
Beneath this junkie craving for fresh data, a new thought arrived with the force of revelation: *Why set up my phone at all?* The idea left me woozy with fantasies of a spartan, monastic life beyond the network. But I needed to get my phone running because I had no idea how to find my way home from the shopping mall.
When I finally reconnected to the grid, there was no new information waiting for me except a spam message offering to make me a custom logo for $10.
### Dream Language
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/dream-language/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:08.000Z
Temperatures in the thirties and everything is coated grey. I scan the forecast for snowflake icons, but no luck yet. I’m craving a good snowstorm like a favorite food.
This morning I came across a koan: *When I breathe in, the universe is breathing out. When I breathe out, the universe is breathing in.* At the time, this sounded incredibly necessary and profound. But looking at these words on the page now, I recoil. Why is the vocabulary of spirituality so tacky? Maybe because it’s dealing with vapor and there’s no room for concrete detail.
Last night I dreamt tangled, deeply plotted dreams about rotted airplanes, teeth in the street, and a gigantic man who knelt down to tell me he was raised by a mountain and that I did not understand how to live. I asked him if I could bum a cigarette and he tossed me into the sea. I swam into the dark until I was rescued by an inflatable child who cried like a ticking clock.
I woke up wondering if I would live my life any differently if I measured my age in days or hours instead of years.
### January 7, 2022
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/collision/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:09.000Z
Sunset at 5:23pm with temperatures deep below freezing. At a meeting in a church basement, I admired a large wooden cross before a bank of filing cabinets and contemplated the two-thousand-year collision of metaphysics and paperwork that led to this moment.
Outside, an airplane engine grinds overhead. Telephone screens glow in the night like devotional candles. I once heard a woman say, “I refuse to believe in a god of confusion.” I often think about her voice, small and hushed, a desire addressed to nobody in particular. Perhaps it’s the greatest desire of all, to believe there’s some sense to all of this.
#### [Temple Ov Saturn – Stellar Collision](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Stellar%20Collision.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Bride of the Sun | 2018 | [Bandcamp](https://templeovsaturn.bandcamp.com/album/bride-of-the-sun?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Stellar%20Collision.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Stellar%20Collision.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### January 6
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/timelines/
Last updated: 2026-05-30T13:10:25.000Z
My father died six years ago today. It still feels like it’s only been a year or two, maybe three. Time gets funny when you start losing people. More dates and sometimes even entire seasons become associated with a loved one’s final days, the ambient quarrels or tiny grudges that you’d give anything to feel again.
Maybe some people structure their histories in terms of accomplishments or presidencies. My timeline is organized by loss, something I only notice when confronted with personal and cultural trivia: When did I go to China? What year did *Ex Machina* come out? I find myself riffling through the years between when my mother’s liver failed (2009) and when I drove like hell to make it to my grandfather’s bedside but got the news in a strip mall parking lot (2011) and when my father died of septic shock (2016), just weeks after getting his new liver (2015). So much hope, suddenly gone.
I once visited a therapist who said these were traumatic losses because they were sudden and unexpected, which implies if the circumstances were different, I might have been prepared. I did not return to therapy. Maybe I should give it another try. Perhaps it’s abnormal to organize my sense of time around my dead. Or maybe everyone does this, and it’s simply the price of getting older—the cost of loving and being loved. After losing my parents, a sensation of freefall appeared, and it’s still with me now: the slight flutter in the belly, the sense of being untethered from the world. So I like my way of understanding time because it keeps everyone close to me.
Last year I did not think about my father’s death on January 6\. I was busy wondering if our government might fall. Only now does it occur to me these dates are shared, that I’ll see this date advertised in retrospectives and commemorations for years to come. Live long enough and maybe it’s inevitable that personal and public damage will collide.
### An Elderly Man Sighs Over a Dusty Book About Trees
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/ship/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:09.000Z
Forty degrees with gusty winds. The sun goes down at 5:21pm tonight. I’ve been spending my mornings at the local library, a dramatic new glass building with angled struts, and it feels like I’m on a spaceship in a mid-budget space opera where there’s a glitch with the hyper-sleep.
And I’m so tired these days. I’ve been setting my alarm so I can arrive when the library opens and snag a study room even though the place stays mostly empty until noon. A young woman studies for medical school. In the far corner, an elderly man sighs over a big dusty book about trees. And I’m hunched over my notepad, trying to make a go of it, this writing thing. The twenty-first draft of my novel is coming along slowly and painfully. But it’s coming.
Nobody’s sure what they should be doing, plague-wise. Uncertainty hangs in the air alongside the virus. We’re still vaporizing each other with our voices. Our breath. But they say it’s mild now, mostly upper respiratory. But it’s still sweeping the nation and disrupting public life. They’re still making alarming charts. No matter how this shakes out, uncertainty is here to stay, and how do you learn to live with that? Meanwhile, I’m keeping an eye on the statistics again, wondering if we’ll go to London next month.
#### [Brian Eno – The Big Ship](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Big%20Ship.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Another Green World | Island Records, 1975 | [More](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22061-another-green-world/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Big%20Ship.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Big%20Ship.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Goodness
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/goodness/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:09.000Z
Ohio. Tonight the sun sets at 5:20pm, and I’m thinking about my soul. Goodness. What does it mean to be a good person? Sometimes it feels like striving towards an object on the horizon that turns to vapor when we draw near. Maybe we punish ourselves for failing to grasp it, never realizing that striving is what makes us good, even though it’s a familiar platitude: the journey, not the destination, and progress, not perfection, etc. The maddening thing about clichés is they are usually true.
In 1932, [John Dewey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%5FDewey?ref=jamesreeves.co) described goodness as a dynamic, not a state: “Not perfection as a final goal, but the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining, is the aim in living. The bad man is the man who, no matter how good he has been, is beginning to deteriorate, to grow less good. The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better. Such a conception makes one severe in judging himself and humane in judging others.”
But is severity necessary? I think of an old friend down in New Orleans, how he’d often say, “When I’m hard on myself, I’m hard on other people.”
### The Memory Police
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-memory-police/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:10.000Z
In Yōko Ogawa’s [*The Memory Police*](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/252774/the-memory-police-by-yoko-ogawa/?ref=jamesreeves.co), the residents of an unnamed island suffer the ritual disappearance of objects big and small. Flowers. Lemons. Perfume. Calendars. These erasures are enforced by a surveillance state that deforms the lives of its citizens a little more each day. First published twenty-five years ago, Ogawa’s meditations feel incredibly urgent in today’s atmosphere of digital disorientation and alternate realities:
> But in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined. If my body were cut up in pieces and those pieces mixed with those of other bodies, and then if someone told me, “Find your left eye,” I suppose it would be difficult to do so.
This is a haunted fable with secret rooms and voices trapped in typewriters. Although the surreal metaphors of [Kōbō Abe](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/the-woman-in-the-dunes/?ref=jamesreeves.co) or the eerily arid writing of Albert Camus come to mind, Ogawa’s writing lives in the moments just before a dream evaporates.
Sooner or later, any story about loss becomes a story about normalization, and *The Memory Police* captures the ways we adjust ourselves to fit the cruel logic of the world, whether it is delivered by the power of the state or the inevitability of death. We can become accustomed to terrible things. What’s the alternative? Ogawa provides an answer through moments of grace and devotion to the truth—and its final pages are devastating. I can’t remember the last time I cried while reading.
### January 3, 2022
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/post-internet/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:10.000Z
How do you reckon with the internet when writing a story that takes place in the present day or near future? Writing about online living feels tacky for some reason, even though it might be the only thing we have left in common.
Many contemporary novels, television shows, and films sidestep the issue by retreating into the ’70s or ’80s. Other stories leap into a decimated future without electricity, let alone email. They depict an offline world in the wake of infrastructural collapse or intergalactic warfare. But maybe there’s no need to be so dramatic. More likely, the internet will soon become so choked with horseshit that it will become increasingly untenable. Perhaps we’ll just walk away. Imagine it: the year is 2030 and we’re laughing at how unhappy our noisy screens made us, all the misunderstandings they caused.
#### [Arpanet – Wireless Internet](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Wireless%20Internet.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Wireless Internet | Record Makers, 2002 | [Bandcamp](https://arpanet.bandcamp.com/album/wireless-internet?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Wireless%20Internet.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Wireless%20Internet.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Broken Scales
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/broken-scales/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:10.000Z
Sunset: 5:19pm. A cloudy day with highs in the low 40s and a few beautiful minutes of blustery snow. I’m reading *[Bring Up the Bodies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bring%5FUp%5Fthe%5FBodies?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, the second installment of Hilary Mantel’s dense portrait of Thomas Cromwell. It’s slow-going for me, but worthwhile for images like this: “Troubled men . . . sidling around the peripheries of their own souls, tapping at the walls: oh, what is that hollow sound?”
If I have a soul, what are its measurements and boundaries? I close my eyes and try to imagine it. Perhaps this is a fool’s errand, a pointless exercise in metaphysical speculation. Then again, there’s the 21st-century joke—or horror—that our search histories might be the most accurate portrait of our souls.
All the little gestures and routines that define me—listening to music, walking, running, meditating, writing, reading, sleep, *breathing*—can now be quantified via a weirdly persistent army of devices and apps that want to tell me how fast, how long, how far, how often, and how many people.
While I wasn’t paying attention, my life became gamified into metrics and streaks. But turning myself into a scoreboard has led to blinkered thinking, a binary view in which every activity becomes about the accretion of data, not the mystery and mess of life itself. Maybe I’m not meant to know so much about myself.
So I spent the afternoon sidling around the peripheries of my devices, tapping at the delete button.
#### [Tsone – Taking Measurements from Broken Scales](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Taking%20Measurements%20from%20Broken%20Scales?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Pagan Oceans I, II, III | Home Normal | [Bandcamp](https://homenormal.bandcamp.com/album/pagan-oceans-i-ii-iii?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Taking%20Measurements%20from%20Broken%20Scales.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Taking%20Measurements%20from%20Broken%20Scales.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### January 1, 2022
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/rainy-day/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:10.000Z
The first day of the year, and there’s a new supermoon tonight. Maybe this is auspicious. I’d like to believe in some kind of signal or sign that we’re turning the corner here on planet earth. In the meantime, it’s strangely warm here in Ohio with constant rain. The sun sets at 5:19pm.
This morning I lumbered into the park for a run in the heavy rain. I tried my best to feel fresh and brand new for these first hours of the year, but I could still hear the head noise of unsent emails, ignored text messages, unwritten words, and the litany of errands and obligations that come with being a person in the 21st century. Then I rounded the corner and saw an otherworldly mist rising from the pond, and for a moment, I felt a rare stillness. And I realized I’m forever nursing a pointless fantasy: If only I had enough time. Enough space. Enough silence. I can’t stop the world. But occasionally, I get lucky, and I can stop my thoughts.
My new year’s resolution is to write more—and write looser and weirder. And I’m going to work on being kinder, more curious, rather than trading in the cheap currency of cynicism and despair.
I’ve been contemplating this line from *[The Twilight Zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long%5FLive%5FWalter%5FJameson?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, rolling it around in my head like a koan: “We love a rose because it will soon be gone. Whoever loved a stone?”
#### [Sugar Plant – Rainy Day](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Rainy%20Day.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Happy | World Domination, 1998 | [Apple](https://music.apple.com/us/album/happy/1238304277?ref=jamesreeves.co)/[Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/album/1Bnk68HL9uJ7sJFeGW9LQv?si=08W8Xa3iS52TqFIXWhwE-Q&ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Rainy%20Day.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Rainy%20Day.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A lush and nearly perfect Japanese dream-pop album from ’98 that deserves more attention.
### 2021 Rotation
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/2021-rotation/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:11.000Z
The end of another year, and exhaustion hangs heavy like a fog. We move through virus variants and frightening weather. We reckon with attention hijacking and institutional decay. This doesn’t feel like the future we were promised thirty years ago when Warp released the first installment of its [*Artificial Intelligence*](https://bleep.com/release/20365-various-artists-artificial-intelligence?ref=jamesreeves.co) series, back when electronic music eagerly awaited the arrival of a new millennium. Drawing upon the futurism of Kraftwerk, Cybotron, and Derrick May, the promise of better living through technology seeped through the discography of the 1990s: *Surfing on Sine Waves. Bytes. Electro-Soma. Dimension Intrusion*. And now, looking at my favorite records this year, it strikes me that many of these artists are dismantling and rewiring these templates to better suit our times. Instead of celebrating technology, they’re leaning upon the language of faith.
### Black Swan – Repetition Hymns
###### Past Inside the Present | [Bandcamp](https://pitp.bandcamp.com/album/repetition-hymns?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Lamentations for a decaying future. Layers of grit and grain gradually congeal before blooming into tones that approach something that sounds like grace.
Repetition Hymns by Black Swan
### Topdown Dialectic – Vol. 3
###### Peak Oil | [Bandcamp](https://peakoil.bandcamp.com/album/vol-3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Electronic contrails and drum machine residue. These blurred transmissions from an unknown station conjure the lowlight hiss and mystery of a half-remembered Chain Reaction record from twenty-five years ago. This third installment is the most spectral of the series on Peak Oil. Be sure to check out their [more structured releases](https://aught.bandcamp.com/album/02?ref=jamesreeves.co) for the Aught label.
[Vol. 3 by Topdown Dialectic](https://peakoil.bandcamp.com/album/vol-3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Christina Chatfield – Sutro
###### [Mysteries of the Deep](https://www.mysteriesofthedeep.net/releases?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://christinachatfield.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Sleek midnight ambiance fused with a Drexciyan edge. Tracks like “Concatenate II” begin with fragile drift before gathering the ballast of low frequencies and arpeggiated synths that reconfigure and refine the sensibilities of optimistic mid-1990s electronics into a darker and savvier score for the 21st century.
[Sutro by Christina Chatfield](https://christinachatfield.bandcamp.com/album/sutro?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Akira Rabelais – À la Recherche du Temps Perdu
###### Argeïphontes | [Bandcamp](https://kalimalone.bandcamp.com/album/the-sacrificial-code?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A four-hour epic that melds reverb, opera, and detached strings into the sound of a distant century bleeding through the walls. The album begins with a minute of silence save for the faint sound of a ticking clock before the music of [La Belle Époque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle%5F%C3%89poque?ref=jamesreeves.co#Art%5Fand%5Fliterature) unfurls through a scrim of crackle, echo, and time.
[À la recherche du temps perdu by Akira Rabelais](https://akirarabelais.bandcamp.com/album/a-la-recherche-du-temps-perdu?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Not Waving & Romance – Eyes of Fate / Restoration of Bliss
###### Boomkat Editions | [Bandcamp](https://notwavingromance.bandcamp.com/album/restoration-of-bliss?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Melodramatic loops and choral sludge of the highest order. Sometimes these tracks drift and fade midway, only to return in more menacing form. See also Romance’s [*A Kiss Is Just a Kiss*](https://youmustrememberthis.bandcamp.com/album/a-kiss-is-just-a-kiss?ref=jamesreeves.co) and [*You Must Remember This*](https://youmustrememberthis.bandcamp.com/album/a-kiss-is-just-a-kiss?ref=jamesreeves.co) for more smudged slow-motion elegance.
[Eyes Of Fate by Not Waving & Romance](https://notwavingromance.bandcamp.com/album/eyes-of-fate?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Microcorps – Xmit
###### Alter | [Bandcamp](https://microcorps.bandcamp.com/album/xmit?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Alien hymns varnished with a jet black gloss. These eight tracks resurrect the cyberpunk spirit of mid-1980s Transmat and Cybotron for a new century, collapsing time and space until I’m in the passenger seat of Model 500’s [night drive through Babylon](https://boomkat.com/products/night-drive-thru-babylon-63dcfbc6-0967-4ef2-a1c8-21b1c25d4a7d?ref=jamesreeves.co) back in ’83: *The lights of passing vehicles reflected in her mirrored sunglasses. She looks at her watch, and I can see the liquid crystal display reflected dancing where her eyes should be.*
[XMIT by Microcorps](https://microcorps.bandcamp.com/album/xmit?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Stephen Baker – After the End
###### [Bandcamp](https://stephenbaker.bandcamp.com/track/after-the-end?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Perhaps I’m biased, but Baker’s original score for [*After the End*](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/after-the-end/?ref=jamesreeves.co) has become one of my all-time favorite pieces of music. After spending three months listening to this sci-fi lamentation reverberate across the stone walls of a chapel, it continues to reveal new textures and connections between the liturgical and the Blade Running.
[After the End by Stephen Baker](https://stephenbaker.bandcamp.com/track/after-the-end?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Suss – Night Suite
###### Northern Spy Records | [Bandcamp](https://suss.bandcamp.com/album/night-suite?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Sometimes synchronicity strikes hard. This record was released on October 22, a day I’ll remember because it was C’s birthday and we were driving through the Mojave after passing through Kingman and Needles. And this record captures the gestalt of the desert as I’d like to imagine it: wide open and dazzling but edged with mystery and an eerie twang.
[Night Suite by SUSS](https://suss.bandcamp.com/album/night-suite?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Muqata’a – Kamil Manqus كَامِل مَنْقوص
###### Hundebiss | [Bandcamp](https://muqataa.bandcamp.com/album/kamil-manqus?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Broadcasting from Palestine, Muqata’a fuses classic Arabic songs with nearly every facet of electronic music, dicing up the sensibilities of DJ Shadow, techno, and even the occasional jungle break. But here, these styles are artifacts, grist for the mill of a much larger project that sounds like the stress and shred of thinking these days. This is my soundtrack for running and imagining what the future might sound like.
[Kamil Manqus كَامِل مَنْقوص by Muqata'a](https://muqataa.bandcamp.com/album/kamil-manqus?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Wasted Cathedral – I’m Gonna Love You ‘Til the End of Time
###### Cardinal Fuzz | [Bandcamp](https://wastedcathedrallove.bandcamp.com/album/im-gonna-love-you-til-the-end-of-time?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A durable collection of hazy and occasionally frost-bitten loops from Saskatchewan that range from chugging drones to tranquilized dub to blissed-out reverb.
[I'm Gonna Love You 'Til The End Of Time by Wasted Cathedral](https://wastedcathedrallove.bandcamp.com/album/im-gonna-love-you-til-the-end-of-time?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Minced Oath – Superstrate
###### Countersunk | [Bandcamp](https://countersunk.bandcamp.com/album/superstrate?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Elite-level shimmer and hum. This record operates in a state of suspension, echoing the sensation of an endless afternoon with dust hanging in shafts of sunlight. But these sounds never settle; they morph and unfurl new patterns. This is music for speculation, a future balm.
[Superstrate by Minced Oath](https://countersunk.bandcamp.com/album/superstrate?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Pye Corner Audio – Entangled Routes
###### [Ghost Box](https://ghostbox.greedbag.com/buy/entangled-routes-0/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Boomkat](https://canvas-index.bandcamp.com/album/love-dead?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A masterful synthesizer workout that swings between the baroque and the zen, this is propulsive late-night highway music for speed racing and imagining better horizons.
#### See also:
- [2023 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2023-rotation/)
- [2022 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2022-rotation/)
- [2020 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2020-rotation/)
- [2019 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2019-rotation/)
- [2018 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2018-rotation/)
### Parameters Are Critical
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/holiday-drift/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:11.000Z
Sunset: 5:14pm. The blurry days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve stand outside of time. These long nights are tailor-made for dusting off childhood memories and tending to personal passions. Perhaps this is why I’m dredging up my old delay pedals, tape decks, and loop machines. I’d like to start making tracks again, and I don’t want to do this anywhere near a screen. In an age of mind-numbing options and endless virtual palettes, parameters are critical.
Today I spent the afternoon rooting through a storage unit for my copy of *[Snowcrash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow%5FCrash?ref=jamesreeves.co)* and some audio cables, and my brains hummed with digital chatter and trash. Celebrities are shaving their heads, there’s a glass bottle shortage, and China is building a hotter version of the sun. I want to improve my ability to sit still and simply be a person, so I stopped by the local zen center.
I meditated in the recreation hall of a Unitarian church with two elderly men who were live-streaming the situation to the internet. No matter where I go these days, there’s a fucking screen. I closed my eyes and tried not to fidget or look at the clock while I listened to the two men breathe. Heavy rain fell on the rooftop that sounded like static, and I spent the time thinking about how to set up my soundsystem, debating whether my beautiful new reverb pedal should come before or after the cassette deck.
#### [Atlas Minor – Texas Radio Drift](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Texas%20Radio%20Drift.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### American Decay | 2015 | [Bandcamp](https://atlasminor.bandcamp.com/releases?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Texas%20Radio%20Drift.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Texas%20Radio%20Drift.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
An old reverberated and looped bit of radio that I caught down in Texas ten years ago. I collected this with some other tracks for an [extended-player in 2015](https://atlasminor.bandcamp.com/releases?ref=jamesreeves.co), and I’m looking forward to making a new batch.
### It Dramatizes Grief and Bends Towards Science Fiction
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/midnight-mass/
Last updated: 2026-03-22T14:01:35.000Z
A warm and rainy Christmas in Ohio. Highs in the mid-60s and the sun will set at 5:11pm.
It felt like somebody else’s dream, going to Midnight Mass last night. We dove down empty rain-slicked streets before entering a cathedral filled with incense, chanting, and a menacing organ that shuddered the stone walls. I’d never been to Midnight Mass before, although I have smudgy memories of spending the holidays with my Polish grandparents when I was very small. Of mysterious late-night comings and goings, their voices downstairs mixing with the smell of cabbage and kielbasa. I wonder what it would have been like to grow up in a world shaped by ritual.
The pews were crowded with an exceptional cross-section of humanity, all awake at this late hour, hoping to connect with something beyond themselves. Taking a seat in the back, I thought about Leonard Cohen’s comment that religion is the greatest form of art. Maybe I don’t need to feel like an interloper. Perhaps it’s okay if I admire Catholicism only for its aesthetics, how it dramatizes grief and bends towards science fiction: the surgical ministrations of the priest and the fixation on eternal life and sexless creation; the swinging censer that fills the vault with smoke. The theatrical outfits and elaborate hats; the orchestrated calisthenics of kneeling, standing, and sitting while a man on a platform holds up a golden book. There’s a fascinating feedback loop in how speculative fiction borrows from the ancient rites of a faith that yearns for a future without death.
Most of all, I admired the humility of the Penitential Act: *I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do.* There was power in the sound of so many strangers chanting these words together, admitting we were screw-ups and wanted to be better. There was reassurance in knowing these words have been repeated for over two thousand years. I bowed my head and remembered my parents.
When the service ended, we wished each other Merry Christmas. “Peace be unto you,” we said. Then we scattered into the dark, where the streets were empty except for drunks and insomniacs, the penitent and devout.
### The Right Notebook Will Solve All My Problems
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/ohio-interlude/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:11.000Z
Sunrise at 7:51am with lows in the teens and highs in the forties. Omicron is now the dominant variant in America and Joan Didion died today.
Yesterday I woke up several hours before sunrise, which was out of character for me. Perhaps some deep part of my brain wanted to catch the last hours of the longest night of the year. I sat in the early morning dark with a new notebook in my lap, thinking about the routines I’d like to develop here, the type of man I’d like to become. Although I should know better by now, part of me still believes the right notebook will solve all my problems.
I think about my grandfather, who believed adding cream and sugar to coffee was a sign of weak character.
The dust is beginning to settle from our move to the Middle West. We have a car now. Our furniture is in a storage facility on a blank county road. As I shoved boxes, cabinets, and chairs into a unit with a concrete floor and corrugated metal siding, I encountered a few middle-aged men tending to their belongings, men like me with their lives in some state of disarray.
At the supermarket, I scrolled down aisles wide enough for a car and marveled at the endless array of frozen pizzas. I bought an iron, cookies, and a candle that smells like a pine tree. At night it is silent, save for the lull of distant highway traffic that sounds like the sea. Space and quiet: I’m grateful to have some of it for a few weeks—even if it might be more interesting, more tenable, to crave the noise.
#### [Claire M. Singer – A Different Place](//jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/A%20Different%20Place.mp3)
###### Solas | Touch, 2016 | [Bandcamp](https://clairemsinger.bandcamp.com/album/solas-3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/A%20Different%20Place.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/A%20Different%20Place.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Goodbye, New York
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/goodbye-new-york/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:12.000Z
After a week of schlepping and haggling, C. and I emptied our flat, loaded our belongings, and pointed a rental truck west. As we bounced along the George Washington Bridge, I had the freefalling sensation of being ejected from the city, of being spat out of a whirlwind. There are no tolls to enter New Jersey, and there’s a proverb here: it costs money to get into New York City, but it’s always free to leave.
#### [Not Waving & Romance – Say Goodbye](https://notwavingromance.bandcamp.com/album/restoration-of-bliss?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Restoration of Bliss | Ecstatic, 2021 | [Bandcamp](https://notwavingromance.bandcamp.com/album/restoration-of-bliss?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Say%20Goodbye.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Say%20Goodbye.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Endless
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/nothing-ends/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:12.000Z
Two days left in New York City. Highs in the fifties and the sun went down at 4:29pm—one more minute of daylight. Tonight the moon is waxing. These days I spend most of my time frowning at objects once happily forgotten in the shadows beneath my bed or the back of my closet. Now I’m dragging them squinting into the light, and they seem to shiver in my hand, awaiting judgment. An ill-fitting sweater. A box of cables for god only knows. My mother’s grade-school report card (straight A’s except for gym).
Walking around the city, I passed long lines for COVD-testing. They wrapped around the corner and all the way down the block. Then I went for my last run through Central Park. I’ll miss the cinematography of the experience, the hyper-mediated sensation of running through a location defined by the movies. But I’m also looking forward to running through dull terrain where people aren’t taking pictures or getting married and my thoughts are mine alone. I’m craving the boring sublime.
At the coffeeshop, I listened to two men discuss investing in ammonia, how the price had tripled, and they’re going to be so rich by the end of the pandemic. I wanted to tell them nothing ever ends; it just piles up. The proof is under my bed and in the back of my closet.
#### [The KVB – Endless](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Endless.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Minus One | Sans Issue, 2013 | [Bandcamp](https://thekvb.bandcamp.com/album/minus-one?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Endless.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Endless.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Crossroads
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/crossroads/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:12.000Z
Four days left in New York City. Sunset: 4:28pm with highs around 50, and the weather has been distressingly warm while we put our things into boxes.
Last night I finished Jonathan Franzen’s *[Crossroads](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374181178/crossroads?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, and even as I turned the final page, I was amazed I was reading it at all. Franzen has become an unfashionable writer for reasons I no longer remember. My opinion of him is nonexistent; I’ve only read him in bits and pieces. He writes realistic novels that mirror our world, whereas I prefer fiction that takes me somewhere new. But late one night, I came across a series of reviews in which the fashionable critics seemed to be writing with gritted teeth: yes, Franzen is pompous and says punchable things, but his new book is very very good.
And so, in a reckless post-midnight mood, I decided I should read something that inspired such begrudging praise. I pressed the pre-order button and forgot all about it until, three weeks later, a six-hundred-page slab appeared, and I wondered why on earth I ordered up a saga about a Midwestern minister’s family in 1973\. *Crossroads* sat on my table for several weeks, taunting me for making impulsive purchases. Finally, I cracked it open to confirm my poor decision and that I could gift it to someone else. Then I was on page 100.
The writer [Elisa Gabbert](https://twitter.com/egabbert/status/1458972205207851008?ref=jamesreeves.co) posted, “Still reading a little Franzen every night the way people used to read the Bible.” This captures the appeal of *Crossroads* perfectly. Reading it became liturgical. Each day I found myself looking forward to bedtime, when I could spend an hour or two with this broken yet hopeful family, each member lost in their private dramas and desires. There’s no flash or flourish in Franzen’s writing, just clean sentence after clean sentence that conjures a cozy, richly detailed world of people falling in and out of faith—and sanity. A fair chunk of it takes place just before Christmas, back when it used to snow, so it’s an ideal holiday read.
### She Swirled Her Ink Across a Massive Canvas
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/freewriting/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:12.000Z
Sunset: 4:27pm. Last night I watched C. paint, and she moved so quick and loose, belonging entirely to the moment as she swirled her ink across a massive canvas. Meanwhile, I was hunched over my notebook like a troll, frowning over the placement of a comma and wondering whether I had anything to say, any words to offer, and if I did, worrying I might be misunderstood.
Is it possible to write the way she paints? How can I become less stilted on the page and maybe really let loose and get wild? Perhaps this journal could degrade into abstract bursts and garbled impressions, which does feel like the headspace of being alive in the 2020s. But oh god, I do not want to start writing poetry.
One week left in New York, and all I want is a decent snowstorm so I can listen to *[The Coldest Season](https://boomkat.com/products/the-coldest-season-66e8661d-976a-46e2-b5df-187b8d877bd0?ref=jamesreeves.co)* while walking through the city one last time.
#### [Echospace – Aequinoxium](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Aequinoxium.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### The Coldest Season | Modern Love, 2008 | [More](https://boomkat.com/products/the-coldest-season-66e8661d-976a-46e2-b5df-187b8d877bd0?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Aequinoxium.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Aequinoxium.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Crosstown
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/crosstown/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:12.000Z
New York City. Sunset: 4:27pm. Cloudy skies and drizzle with temperatures in the thirties. Russia might invade Ukraine. The latest variant of the virus is spreading quickly, but its effects might not be too severe. There’s a shortage of cream cheese. More and more, the news sounds like the muttering of a madman, without any frame of reference or sense of plot. Last night a man set the Christmas tree at Fox News on fire, and now they’ll be howling about the war on Christmas until the end of time. Yesterday a Chinese rover spotted a cube on the moon, and it’s inching towards it for a closer look.
“Christ, I love Judge Judy,” said my cab driver. The judge was streaming on the dashboard, and I hadn’t seen the show before, but soon I was entirely absorbed in the proceedings while we inched across 23rd Street in the December gloom. I almost kept the meter running to find out if the defendants would need to return their landlord’s washer and dryer.
The driver was a thick man with a buzzcut, and he told me he’d been invited to appear on Judge Judy’s show when he sued his ex-girlfriend for the engagement ring he’d given her. “But we got back together,” he said. He told me all kinds of things. His father and grandfather were both drivers who made a good living, not like today with Uber and Lyft and algorithms. “My old man knew five different routes to every destination in the city,” he said, “but I don’t know how to get anywhere without using GPS.”
And somewhere high above us, that Chinese rover was navigating towards that cube. It will take two months to reach it, and it’ll probably just be an oddly shaped boulder. But what if it’s not? We’re exhausted down here, and thinking about something otherworldly would be nice.
#### [Windy & Carl – The Same Moon and Stars](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Same%20Moon%20And%20Stars.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Songs for the Brokenhearted | Kranky, 2008 | [Bandcamp](https://windyandcarl.bandcamp.com/album/songs-for-the-broken-hearted?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Same%20Moon%20And%20Stars.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Same%20Moon%20And%20Stars.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### End
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-end/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:13.000Z
After three months in Green-Wood Cemetery’s historic chapel, [*After the End*](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/after-the-end/?ref=jamesreeves.co) closed last night. Along the way, visitors have contributed thousands of reflections about reckoning with loss in the 21st century, and they’re such a rare gift of wisdom and grace—a reminder that we’re all walking wounded. Each response contains whole worlds of lives lost and lives still lived. Most of all, I was moved by their collective presence.
A light rain fell outside as [Candy](http://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and I sat before a masked audience and recounted the losses and questions that led to this project. Then we collected the scrolls from the altar and turned out the lights.
Many thanks to [Stephen Baker](https://stephenbaker.bandcamp.com/track/after-the-end?ref=jamesreeves.co) for the beautiful sci-fi hymn that filled the chapel. And [Cut Mistake](https://www.cutmistake.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) for acoustic design, [Rooftop Films](https://rooftopfilms.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) for video mapping, [KLN Studio](https://www.klnstudio.nyc/?ref=jamesreeves.co) for fabrication assistance, [Walter Wlodarczyk](https://www.walterwlodarczyk.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) for the stunning photographs, [the NEA](https://www.arts.gov/grants/grants-for-arts-projects?ref=jamesreeves.co) for the support, and the vision, faith, and patience of curator Harry Weil and [Green-Wood Cemetery](https://www.green-wood.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). Most of all, thank you to everyone who visited and brought this thing to life.
#### [Stephen Baker – After the End](https://stephenbaker.bandcamp.com/track/after-the-end?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### 2021 | [Bandcamp](https://stephenbaker.bandcamp.com/track/after-the-end?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/After%20the%20End.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/After%20the%20End.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Winter Noises
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/winter-noises/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:13.000Z
Sunset at 4:28pm with clear skies and lows in the thirties. Last night I was sitting in a church basement when someone’s phone began to chime with notifications. Then a voice behind me said, “Omicron is here.” A chair squeaked. Somebody shrugged. Conversation resumed.
This afternoon I encountered an exciting holiday scene. A man carrying a Christmas tree pounded on the windshield of a Cadillac Escalade that nearly hit him in the crosswalk. “You wanna be an asshole?” he yelled. “Let’s see what kind of asshole you are.” The driver got out, and the two assholes circled each other, making threatening noises in the middle of First Avenue, one with a Christmas tree drooped over his shoulder. For all I know, they could still be out there, shaking their fists and calling each names. I wonder what that man will think about tonight while he decorates his tree.
But humanity isn’t completely hopeless. Wolfgang Voigt released a new installment of his [Gas](https://wolfgang-voigt.com/en/music/music-projects-en/gas/?ref=jamesreeves.co) project today, and it’s as stately and monolithic as expected: an unshakable kick drum chugs through the murk of strings, frosty reverb, and smudged choral voices. Winter music of the highest order.
#### [Gas – Der Lange Marsch 10](https://kompakt-gas.bandcamp.com/album/der-lange-marsch?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Der Lange Marsch | Kompakt, 2021 | [Bandcamp](https://kompakt-gas.bandcamp.com/album/der-lange-marsch?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Der%20Lange%20Marsch%2010.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Der%20Lange%20Marsch%2010.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### This Is the Third Time I Will Leave New York
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/two-weeks/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:13.000Z
Sunset at 4:28pm, and a new supermoon is on its way. In two weeks, C. and I will load up a truck, stash our stuff in a storage unit, and wander for a while. We’ll log some time in Ohio before spending a few months in London for a residency. Then we’ll finally move to the desert and get weird and develop theories.
How do you say goodbye to New York? I feel pressure to aestheticize my departure. Ever since Joan Didion published *[Goodbye to All That](https://essaysspring13.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/files/2013/04/Joan-Didion-Goodbye-to-All-That.pdf?ref=jamesreeves.co)* in ’67, there’s been a rich and irritating tradition of people romanticizing and rationalizing their decision to pull up stakes from the center of the universe. They moan about the hassle and cost. They complain about the subways, trash, and crowds. But that’s the point of this city. Living in New York means living in a drawer and knowing it will probably cost $100 each time you leave your apartment.
Saving money is one reason why C. and I want to move. We want more space. More concentration. But more interestingly, there seems to be a new balancing of the scales as New York continues its grim march towards becoming a giant Chase Bank + CVS where entertainment is streaming, and everything is delivered within hours. You don’t need to leave your apartment anymore. For some mysterious reason, Manhattan has been building luxury shopping malls while the suburbs are manufacturing downtowns with sixth-wave coffee and cheap food from all corners of the world. Soon the city and the sprawl will belong to the same monoculture.
Over the next two weeks, I’ll look at the city more closely, hoping to etch its jangle and hum into a well-worn memory. I’ve done it before. This is the third time C. and I will leave New York. It might draw us back someday. Maybe the only way to say goodbye is not to say anything at all.
#### [Vatican Shadow – Manhattan Is A Haunted City](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Manhattan%20Is%20A%20Haunted%20City.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Church of All Hallow’s Eve | Hospital Productions, 2019 | [Bandcamp](https://vaticanshadow.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Manhattan%20Is%20A%20Haunted%20City.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Manhattan%20Is%20A%20Haunted%20City.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### There’s Nothing Sane to Do
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/control/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:14.000Z
Sunset: 4:29pm. Cloudy skies and temperatures holding steady in the forties. The United States detected its first case of the Omicron variant today. Christ, the cadence of that sentence is dystopian. *Omicron.* Like some sinister corporate project that serves as the centerpiece of a lazy 1990s thriller, back when the prospect of an interconnected virtual world still felt like a productive fantasy.
But the planet keeps turning while we go through motions that were once alarming but are now familiar. Finger-pointing and flight restrictions. An outsized concern about stock market performance. Frightening diagrams of mutated spike proteins. All soundtracked by the usual chorus of outragers, grifters, and opinion-mongers. Maybe it’s becoming too familiar, this absurd culture we’ve made.
There’s nothing sane to do except remain vigilant and uncertain. And that’s the hardest thing, isn’t it? Remaining uncertain until the shape of a thing becomes clear.
Tonight I remember my father. He was the tidiest man I knew. Every surface in his apartment gleamed. Everything in his refrigerator was lined up: armies of little water bottles, perfectly squared stacks of cheese. He carefully folded his bags of potato chips like an origami project, and he would cut down the plastic trays of cookies with each serving. These rituals became more pronounced as his lungs declined, and only later did I realize this was his way of controlling the few things he could.
Meanwhile, I blunder through life like a child, always patting down my pockets in search of a pen, never knowing where I’ve put anything.
#### [Ensemble Economique – We Come Spinning Out of Control](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/We%20Come%20Spinning%20Out%20of%20Control.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Fever Logic | Not Not Fun, 2013 | [Bandcamp](https://ensemble-economique.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/We%20Come%20Spinning%20Out%20of%20Control.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/We%20Come%20Spinning%20Out%20of%20Control.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Burn yourself completely.
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/burning/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:14.000Z
Sunset: 4:35pm. A bright springlike day with a high of 70 degrees and lows in the fifties. Tonight the moon is full. This morning I flipped open my beaten copy of Shunryu Suzuki’s *[Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen%5FMind,%5FBeginner%27s%5FMind?ref=jamesreeves.co)* because I needed what it advertised. Some zen. Some peace of mind. Some enthusiasm for this exhausted world. My finger landed on a heavy-duty sentence I’ve been considering all day: “When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.”
Suzuki emphasizes the importance of doing rather than thinking because ruminating leaves a trace. I like this image of traces, of thoughts that can tint and even stain. And my head is shellacked with so much babble and gunk. I can feel it in my nerves. Maybe even my soul, although I’m not yet sure if I believe in such a thing. Perhaps I must. Otherwise, what is the Darwinian function of all this head noise?
I’ve also started reading John Yorke’s *[Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey into Story](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1468310941/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1468310941&linkCode=as2&tag=spinoza0c-20&linkId=c54b1313e8bfcbef3e6a17fae67a581c&ref=jamesreeves.co)* to improve my understanding of how stories work. I wish I’d read something like this sooner. It’s both humbling and reassuring to see all of my tangled plots and narrative cul-de-sacs crisply addressed thousands of years ago by Terence, Horace, and Aristotle.
And returning to the bonfire, I love the doom-metal energy of this line from Shakespeare’s *Richard II*: “Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.”
### I Went for a Run Because I Didn’t Want to Start Smoking Again
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/gift/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:14.000Z
I was running the other night, heaving and hauling myself across 85th Street, when something clicked. I’d been ruminating about the novel I’ve been writing and rewriting for an embarrassing number of years. With each draft, my story got a little better, but something still wasn’t working. When I finally screwed up the courage to let someone read it, she confirmed what I knew: the main character was boring. He didn’t know what he wanted or what he believed. *Of course* he was boring: the main character was me—or some elderly, nostalgic avatar of myself.
So I went for a run because I didn’t want to start smoking again, and I was gasping and sweating and hating myself because I write so slowly while everyone else seemed to be cranking out new books every few days. I wanted so badly to finish this novel this year. Instead, I was once again dreading the chore of taking yet another stab at improving the main character’s wants, needs, and flaws. Then a thought landed in my head that literally stopped me in my tracks on the corner of Third Avenue: Get rid of that guy. He’s dead weight, so ditch him. Replace him with the lady who’s been lurking at the margins of the story, [the embittered Olympic diver](https://heavyfeatherreview.org/2020/07/07/reeves/?ref=jamesreeves.co) whose devotion to a strange ritual accidentally maimed her neighbors and sent her daughter running into the night. *She* has flaws and wants.
Everything started clicking into place, and I haven’t been this excited about writing in a long time. It was liberating to realize the world I wanted to build would become much more interesting if I removed myself from the equation.
And yet. Here’s the reason I mention any of this: I resisted this idea for two solid weeks because the thought of undoing all that work and deleting all those words was too much for my pride to bear. My ego revolted. *Look how much time you’ve spent on this! It’s good enough!* But I know this story can be better, and that idea on 85th and Third Avenue was a rare gift, one of those moments of illumination that happens every five or six years, if I’m lucky. And who am I to turn my back on such a thing?
#### [MMMD – Egoismo](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Egoismo.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Pèkisyon Funebri | Antifrost, 2016 | [Bandcamp](https://mohammadsound.bandcamp.com/album/p-kisyon-funebri?from=embed&ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Egoismo.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Egoismo.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
An all-time favorite: slow-motion strings and liturgical drones from Athens, Greece.
### Frictional
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/frictional/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:14.000Z
There was a flurry of thunderstorm warnings and a tornado watch on this November afternoon. Then the sky turned black and exploded with summer rain. Everything feels out of season these days, slightly out of step. I keep waiting to click into a groove and return to some familiar rhythm, but this might be a fantasy.
It’s Saturday night, and a familiar melody started looping in the background of my usual head noise, something sleazy and a little menacing. It took some work to track it down, and it was worth the effort: Kit Clayton’s “Belt Frictional Problem,” a luxuriant synthesizer workout from the overlooked *Too Many Clowns, Not Enough Jokers* compilation released over twenty years ago. This piece of Detroit vinyl had everything: a glitchy clown graphic on the label, lock grooves, and tracks that played inside out. This is the sound of late-night Michigan radio, of mysterious transmissions that felt like they were pushing us towards a better future: streamlined and anonymous, faceless and collective. This is the nostalgic music of my youth.
#### [Kit Clayton – Belt Frictional Problem](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Belt%20Frictional%20Problem.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Too Many Clowns, Not Enough Jokers | Throw/Twilight 76, 1999
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Belt%20Frictional%20Problem.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Belt%20Frictional%20Problem.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Crowd
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/crowd/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:15.000Z
New York City. Sunset 4:43pm. Another bright spring day in November with a high near 70 degrees. Last night, I finished one of Stephen King’s early novels, *[The Long Walk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FLong%5FWalk?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, published in 1979 under his [Richard Bachman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard%5FBachman?ref=jamesreeves.co) pseudonym (a fascinating, almost avant-garde exercise in testing the dynamics of raw talent versus name recognition). I read it because the premise was so simple: One hundred boys must walk. If they fall under four miles per hour, they get shot. The last one walking wins the prize. I wanted to see how King pulls it off and, for the most part, he does.
I often overlook King’s ability to make a few hundred pages disappear in a night, which feels like an increasingly rare gift to the reader, given the glut of books with writers working so hard to remind you they are clever. And there are moments of excellent description, such as when the boys are followed by a “small evil-sounding high school marching band.”
Most of all, I’ve been thinking about his personification of the bloodthirsty crowd along the roadside, the villain that allows this slaughter to continue year after year. There was “only Crowd,” he writes, “a creature with no body, no head, no mind. Crowd was nothing but a Voice and an Eye, and it was not surprising that Crowd was both God and Mammon . . . Crowd was to be pleased. Crowd was to be worshipped and feared. Ultimately, Crowd was to be made sacrifice unto.”
This image struck a chord because it captures my anxieties about online living, the mental work required to avoid each day’s two-minute hates and think my own thoughts. But the internet is a cheap scapegoat. Tonight I helped my extremely offline elderly neighbor with some errands. Before I left her, she said, “Have you noticed how much evil fuckery there is in the world lately? These people seem to operate with impunity.” Seems like Crowd is everywhere these days—no choice but to walk through it.
#### [Dalhous – He Was Human and Belonged With Humans](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/He%20Was%20Human%20and%20Belonged%20With%20Humans.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### After the Affair | Blackest Ever Black, 2012 | [More](https://dalhous.bandcamp.com/album/an-ambassador-for-laing?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/He%20Was%20Human%20and%20Belonged%20With%20Humans.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/He%20Was%20Human%20and%20Belonged%20With%20Humans.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### My Favorite Moment of the Year
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/holy-day/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:15.000Z
Sunset: 4:44pm. A high in the 50s and a low of 39 degrees. Last night the clocks fell back an hour, and it’s my favorite moment of the year because we create more night. Changing the clocks should be the biggest celebration of the year, with parades, feasts, and fireworks. Because if we can rearrange time, we can do anything. Invent new colors. Eliminate money. Add more days to the week. Rewind the internet to 2004\. Erase the borders on maps.
We celebrated last night with a heavy mahjong session: four of us talking junk and eating spicy noodles for seven hours while the tiles clacked and swirled like an ancient ceremony.
This morning I woke up feeling acutely aware of time as I considered everything I’d like to do before the year ends. Buckle down and finish this damned novel once and for all. Need to get back to writing for two hours every morning. And I’d like to return to cold night-running, maybe five miles each weeknight. It’s easy to feel ambitious when you’re still under the covers. Then I dozed to the holler and hum of the crowd along First Avenue as it cheered the city’s marathon runners.
#### [Pye Corner Audio – Sleep Games](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sleep%20Games.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Sleep Games | Ghost Box, 2012 | [More](https://blackswan.bandcamp.com/album/the-sentimental-drift-2019?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sleep%20Games.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sleep%20Games.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### I Seem to Remember Less and Less
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/abattoir/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:15.000Z
Sunset: 5:47pm. Sunny with a high of 53 and lows in the upper thirties. There’s a new supermoon tonight, which means the moon is invisible but massive as it draws near its closest point to Earth.
Writing. It’s such a slippery, terrible habit. Always thinking I should be writing. Or that I’m not writing enough. Or I’m not writing well. How did I wind up in this position? Maybe writing isn’t so important anymore. The baton has passed to other forms. Or perhaps it’s more vital than ever, this need to pin down and make sense of an increasingly insensible world.
Today I learned the definition of *abattoir*—one of those half-familiar words I’ve glossed over whenever it appears. I’d always thought it referred to something churchy and medieval, maybe a monastery. But it’s a slaughterhouse. Now I’m wondering what the hell I was reading where my religious definition made any kind of sense.
But I can’t remember. I seem to remember less and less. I worry about my attention span. I worry about my brain. I often think about an essay [Douglas Coupland](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/19/douglas-coupland-on-generation-x-at-30-generational-trashing-is-eternal?ref=jamesreeves.co) published last summer. He notes that “around 2010 my own brain started feeling truly different. I realised that I was never going to go back to my old, pre-internet brain: I’d been completely rewired. Ten years later I don’t even remember what my pre-internet brain felt like.” Coupland takes comfort in the idea that we’re all in this together, that we’ve all been “neurally homogenised.” But I find this idea frightening, even if this means punishing myself for no longer living up to some romanticized ideal of literary discipline.
Maybe the only solution is some cognitive leap similar to how the Constructivists and [Futurists](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/future-2/?ref=jamesreeves.co) plunged into the future a century ago, determined to fuse with the machine. Embrace speed. Groove on distraction. Let everything get garbled and weird.
In this spirit, today C. and I visited the Frick Collection, where Renaissance paintings hang in [Marcel Breuer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel%5FBreuer?ref=jamesreeves.co)‘s brutalist ziggurat. The only way to access any information about each painting was via your phone. People gazed into their personal devices, hunting for details as they stood before oil portraits of the dead. I go to museums to get away from screens, so I walked around feeling very old and confused.
#### [Topdown Dialectic – 03 ](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/03.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### /\\\\02 | Aught, 2014 | [Bandcamp](https://aught.bandcamp.com/album/02?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/03.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/03.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
My new favorite band: blurred transmissions from an unknown station that conjure the lowlight hiss and mystery of vintage Basic Channel. Be sure to check out their [new release on Peak Oil](https://peakoil.bandcamp.com/album/vol-3?ref=jamesreeves.co).
### Writing for Whoever Might Find It
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/all-saints-day/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:15.000Z
Sunset: 5:51pm. Partly cloudy in New York with a high of 60 degrees and lows dipping into the 40s at last. Now begins my favorite season, the deep stretch of time when the landscape weighs upon the mind and perhaps the other way around. This is the season of choral music and childhood memories drifting through the heating vents, of headlights in the gloom and trees that look like old gentlemen.
Tonight I’m grateful I’ve returned to this channel in the static, writing for whoever might find it. The idea of an audience, real or imagined, forces me to move beyond fractured scribblings in my notebook towards complete sentences and, occasionally, better thoughts. I’d like to read more blogs. If you’re still broadcasting on the information superhighway like it’s 2004, please let me know so I can add your station to my feed.
#### [Gas – Oktember](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Oktember.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Oktember | Mille Plateaux, 1999 | [Bandcamp](https://kompakt-gas.bandcamp.com/album/oktember?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Oktember.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Oktember.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Brain in the Desert
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/night-drive/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:16.000Z
Sunset: 5:52pm. A waning crescent moon on Halloween with a high of 64 degrees. I’m back in New York City, where everything is smaller and harder, and the city is constantly inserting itself into my thoughts like another person in the room. New York is still glittering and grand; the problem is me. I’ve had enough input. Enough inspiration.
My body moves down First Avenue, but my brains are still in the desert, driving around the quiet margins of Vegas through roomy streets with tan bungalows and garbled strip malls with every service from every nation. C. and I have decided to move to Nevada next spring—partially for the lower cost of living, mostly for the aesthetic of night driving down desert parkways with neon spraying across the windshield and the Chromatics on the radio.
This is the plan, and I’ve made a note to reread this entry six months from now. Because life has a funny way. If you want to hear God laugh, etc. But I hope I’ll be reading this from the desert.
#### [Chromatics – Lady Night Drive](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Lady%20Night%20Drive.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Cherry | Italians Do It Better, 2017 | [More](https://italiansdoitbetter.com/product/chromatics-cherry-deluxe/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Lady%20Night%20Drive.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Lady%20Night%20Drive.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Desert Cadence
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/desert-cadence/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:16.000Z
Twentynine Palms. Sunset: 6:00pm. Sunny with a high of 80 degrees and lows in the forties. The Mojave desert is my favorite place on the planet. For fifteen years, this landscape has pulled at my thoughts like a magnet. Maybe it’s the cadence: Groom Lake. Chocolate Mountain Gunnery Range. Devil’s Hole. Mythic names that speak of salvation and redemption.
The desert is a land of religious vision, the home of desperate saints and ascetics dragging themselves across the sand in search of revelation. Airplane graveyards glint in the desert sun, perfectly preserved by the unoxidized air. I once heard about a woman who can tell your future by deciphering the contrails of experimental military aircraft. Driving out of the town of Mojave, there’s a sign that says, “If my people humble themselves and pray, I will heal their land.”
The desert offers a promise: drive a little further, keep racing through nothing and you might see something grand, something that will help you make sense of the world. A tragic ghost town. An abandoned gag shop that sold alien beef jerky during the UFO craze in the summer of ’71\. A place in Death Valley where a woman performed an opera each night to empty seats. A historical marker where they detonated the first atomic bomb. And so much sky and land there’s nothing to think about except something resembling god.
### Silence and News
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-21-2021/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:16.000Z
Sunny with a high of 80 degrees and a low of 48\. A slow day in the desert was spent watching the shadows of the Joshua trees grow while thinking about the future. How to live and concentrate again. How to start the next chapter. How to find some quiet.
In the midst of this silence, C. and I heard *[The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/arts/design/art-gallery-shows-critics-picks.html?ref=jamesreeves.co)* featured *[After the End](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/after-the-end/?ref=jamesreeves.co)* as a critic’s pick, noting that it “provides a place for anyone suffering loss or battered by contemporary life to mourn, meditate and perhaps heal a little.”
### Hunter's Moon
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/hunters-moon/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:16.000Z
Mojave desert. Sunset: 6:03pm. There’s a full moon tonight, a hunter’s moon. Like a scene from a noir film, C. and I pulled over by the side of a deserted highway and watched the moon rise above all this endless space where the silence carries weight, a cosmic pressure against the skin.
### Phoenix Is Impossible, but Its Cacti Are Platonic
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-19-2021/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:17.000Z
The sun went down at 5:48pm, the high was 83 degrees, and the moon is nearly full. This morning C. and I drove through Sedona, drawn by the cadence of its name but repelled by the hucksters and faith-dealers: establishments with names like Gratitude Latitude, New Energy Café, and Sacred Elements Energy Balancing Center. We did not stop. Instead we visited the [Chapel of the Holy Cross](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapel%5Fof%5Fthe%5FHoly%5FCross%5F%28Sedona,%5FArizona%29?ref=jamesreeves.co), a peak-modernist Catholic chapel inspired by the geometry of the Empire State Building that juts out of a red butte. I’m writing this while chomping nicotine gum with caffeine nerves, so maybe my energy could use some realignment.
Phoenix is impossible, but its cacti are Platonic. After scrolling through its grids for hours without feeling like the scenery had changed, we checked into a Ballardian hotel along the interstate. The bathroom mirror is Bluetooth-enabled for reasons I cannot comprehend.
#### [Dirty Beaches – Golden Desert Sun](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Golden%20Desert%20Sun.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### From Golden Desert Sun/Night Drive | Italian Beach Babes, 2010 | [Bandcamp](https://alexzhanghungtai.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Golden%20Desert%20Sun.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Golden%20Desert%20Sun.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A highlight from Alex Zhang Hungtai’s Dirty Beaches project that rewires jittery Americana into something haunted.
### An Abandoned Baby Stroller and a Bottle of Champagne
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-18-2021/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:17.000Z
Moon: waxing gibbous, almost full. A high of 68 degrees and clouds, dust, and a spatter of rain. Scrolled past a Vegas tableau of an abandoned baby stroller and a bottle of champagne on the median of Dean Martin Drive. Lunch at a Malaysian restaurant on the second floor of a strip mall crammed with markets from nearly every Asian nation, then we continued combing through the sprawl. I love the garbled energy here, the thrum of people around the world drawn to the desert, to a landscape that once belonged to religious visions, and now there’s a city invented solely for hustling people—a city built *around* an airport. There’s something bracingly honest and futuristic about this place.
We drove south until we picked up Route 66 in Arizona, its diners and gas stations faded and empty, or else transformed into photogenic trinket shops: the ghosts of a lost nation.
#### [Farben – Sexing Dean Martin](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sexing%20Dean%20Martin.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Farben | Klang, 1998 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/16f87f3860bfc370b2cecd8e0476b6166af254d0d?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sexing%20Dean%20Martin.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sexing%20Dean%20Martin.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Orbiting the Margins of Vegas
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-17-2021/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:17.000Z
Sunset: 6:01pm. Shocking skies with a high of 83 and a low of 50 degrees. C. and I headed straight to Chinatown for ridiculously excellent dim sum, then spent the day orbiting the margins of Vegas and thinking about how to live. We’ve been fantasizing about living in the desert for a solid decade, and the idea of living at the farthest edge of the Vegas sprawl has a solid *Neuromancer* ring to it. Perhaps this will be our future.
#### [Burger/Ink – Twelve Miles High](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Twelve%20Miles%20High.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Las Vegas | Matador, 1998 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/las-vegas-5baa7c31-9109-4a83-9ef7-ef2b97ecba1a?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Twelve%20Miles%20High.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Twelve%20Miles%20High.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Suspended in a Timeless Non-Space
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-16-2021/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:17.000Z
Night flight to Vegas. First proper trip in twenty-two months and my fear of flying has not improved. We crossed a line of thunderstorms along the eastern seaboard, and I searched for cosmic meaning in the turbulence. Although I know the science and statistics by heart, turbulence still leaves me clawing at the seat, overwhelmed by full-bodied vibrations of doom and a sudden belief in fate—a desire to repent and a craving for god, any kind will do. Then the air grows calm again, I forget my vows, and I return to gazing into a screen.
Despite my anxieties, I love flying at night, suspended in a timeless non-space while I watch the electrified grids of distant civilizations spread out below.
#### [Transient Waves – Slightly More Than Flight](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Slightly%20More%20Than%20Flight.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Transient Waves | i, 1996 | Bandcamp
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Slightly%20More%20Than%20Flight.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Slightly%20More%20Than%20Flight.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Antonello da Messina - Christ Crowned with Thorns
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/ecce-home/
Last updated: 2026-05-13T00:40:57.000Z
A sunny Friday with a high in the 80s: a beautiful June day in the middle of October. I popped into the museum to visit my favorite Jesus: [Antonello da Messina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonello%5Fda%5FMessina?ref=jamesreeves.co)‘s *Christ Crowned with Thorns*, painted in 1470\. Depicted at the moment Pontius Pilate presents him to the hostile crowd—*behold the man!*—he is “a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” (Isaiah 53:3). And it’s startling to see Christ looking so human, so plain. Messina has given him the face of a boxer, mashed and pleading, and those eyes are filled with bottomless sorrow—and maybe a sense of shock at what his very human pain will unleash across the centuries, what would be done in his name.
The flesh-and-blood realism of this painting emerged from an ancient belief in visualization as a form of prayer. Maybe it’s limbic and hardwired, this desire to see the divine rather than hear or touch. “And in grieving you should regard yourself as if you had our Lord suffering before your very eyes,” wrote Saint Francis of Assisi in the years before the Renaissance transformed painting into worlds that looked like our own. Inspired by the belief that visualization could lead us to God, these canvases became aids for contemplation. All the better if they left us damp with tears and blood. Seeking to clarify the role of the artist within the church, Cardinal Charles Borromeo’s *Instructiones* insisted that a painting’s only function was to move viewers towards penance.
I wonder where we find these images today.
### Rituals
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-14-2021/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:18.000Z
Sunset: 6:16pm. Moon: Waxing gibbous. A high of 77 degrees because there’s no such thing as seasons anymore. During my morning meditation, my widget instructed me to select an object of focus, and I could not decide between a pattern on the carpet or the sensation of my hands in my lap. I spent the session dithering between the two, struggling to pick the best one. This seems like a metaphor for my life, evidence of a deeper issue. Perhaps it’s better to simply sit in silence and not listen to instructions.
What will be the rituals of tomorrow as the world speeds up and the fires, floods, and droughts increase? Maybe there will be more magical thinking, more people retreating into superstition. The first rituals began to make sure the sun would rise each morning, and I often wonder what the last ritual will be.
### Extension
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-13-2001/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:18.000Z
New York City. Sunset: 6:18pm. A high of 70 degrees and 84% humidity. I can’t believe people buy humidifying machines on purpose. Seventy-two hours until C. and I head into the desert to consider whether we’d like to make it our home for a while. I’ve always imagined one day I would become a strange old man in the desert; the past year has punched the accelerator on this.
Spent a late night at the cemetery chapel, tending to *[After the End](http://jamesreeves.co/after-the-end/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*. There are over a thousand responses from visitors now, far more than we anticipated at this point, and the exhibit has been extended for an extra month until December 6\. I’m moved by just how *much* people are writing. Long letters to their dead. Long letters to themselves. I see myself in the handwriting of these strangers. Apologies for not being present for a parent in their last days. The collateral damage of repression, denial, and gritted teeth. And one that says *I’ve committed to helping those affected by the very thing that took you from me*.
#### [Stephen Baker – After the End](https://stephenbaker.bandcamp.com/track/after-the-end?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### 2021 | [Bandcamp](https://stephenbaker.bandcamp.com/track/after-the-end?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/After%20the%20End.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/After%20the%20End.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
The original score that [Stephen Baker](https://stephenbaker.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) recorded for the installation, a beautiful sci-fi hymn.
### Future Church
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-12-2021/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:18.000Z
New York City. Sunset: 6:20pm. A late spring day in October with a high of 72 degrees. Spent the afternoon meeting people around the city, and everyone is trying to figure out what to do with their lives, myself included, which is why my thoughts are half-cocked towards the desert, thinking about how the forecast for Vegas today was simply “dust.”
More and more, I admire the imagery of Catholicism as a vocabulary of mourning. This evening I dipped into [Saint Patrick’s Cathedral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St.%5FPatrick%27s%5FCathedral%5F%28Manhattan%29?ref=jamesreeves.co), and holy christ, does that place feel like the future: metal detectors and bag searches, two-dollar devotional candles and four-dollar commemorative coins—and Mary cradling her son’s body while she gazes down at a credit card machine.
#### [Tropic of Cancer — Children of a Lesser God](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Children%20of%20a%20Lesser%20God.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Restless Idylls | Blackest Ever Black, 2013 | [Bandcamp](https://tropicofcancer.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Children%20of%20a%20Lesser%20God.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Children%20of%20a%20Lesser%20God.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### A Perfect Crescent Dangled Over the Street
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-11-2021/
Last updated: 2026-05-12T23:55:55.000Z
Sunset: 6:20pm. A first-quarter moon. A high of 72 and another humid night that feels like the wrong season. Last night I dreamt that I painted a picture and could not tell if it was god or the devil because the image was too big for its frame. Then I had a horribly complicated dream about playing darts and spitting up green caterpillars. “We are quite probably dreaming all the time,” said Carl Jung. “But consciousness makes so much noise that we no longer hear the dream when awake.”
The [moon](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/moon/?ref=jamesreeves.co) was beautiful tonight, so striking that it silenced my idiot head chatter. It was a perfect crescent that dangled over the street, and I stopped in the middle of First Avenue and took a picture even though I knew there was no way to capture it.
#### Noveller – Concrete Dreams
###### Fantastic Planet | Fire Records, 2015 | [Bandcamp](https://noveller.bandcamp.com/album/fantastic-planet?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Concrete%20Dreams.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Concrete%20Dreams.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Elderly Couples Held Each Other Steady
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-10-2021/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:19.000Z
A drizzly Sunday with a high of 66 and thousand-percent humidity. The clean winds of autumn have yet to arrive. I’d like to read [Herodotus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histories%5F%28Herodotus%29?ref=jamesreeves.co) someday. I remember reading about ancient Egypt on the top floor of a library while waiting for my mom to pick me up after work; I thought the pyramids and the Sphinx were science fiction. Rain streaked the windows, smearing the lights of Grand Rapids as the library began to close. I must have been eight years old.
I want to spend more time in the distant past while thinking about the future. Time is moving too fast, so I sat in the park this afternoon, hoping to slow it down. I watched the people pass by. Young lovers and middle-aged hand-holders. Elderly couples holding each other steady. Ducks drifted in pairs, and I wondered if they mate for life. (They don’t. They find new mates each season, and this fact left me disappointed.) Then I pulled out my notebook, and my pen hovered above the page for a half-hour, wanting to write something observant or clever or true, but I didn’t write anything except for this.
### Everything Feels Like a Metaphor These Days
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-9-2021/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:19.000Z
Sunset: 6:24pm. Moon: Waxing crescent. Cloudy with a high of 66 degrees and a low of 57\. Finally, a semi-autumnal day with proper gloom. Took the Q down to 34th Street to load up on ramen, pork shoulder, gochujang, bok choy, and extreme-flavored shrimp chips from H-Mart and [Woorjip](http://woorijip32.com/menu/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
A dog-sized rat scurried along the subway platform. Everyone pulled out their screens, cameras ready to flash, and two people nearly fell onto the tracks. Everything feels like a metaphor these days.
### A Mystic Allure
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-8-2021/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:19.000Z
New York City. Sunset: 6:26pm. A waxing crescent moon. Sunny skies and a high of 75 degrees. The weather is too chipper. I crave gloom, damp leaves on the sidewalk, and a chilly breeze.
I’m almost done with Margaret Atwood’s *[MaddAddam](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/books/review/maddaddam-by-margaret-atwood.html?pagewanted=all&%5Fr=0&ref=jamesreeves.co)*, the last book in her apocalyptic post-plague, post-human trilogy that swings between the poignant and bonkers. She writes wonderfully about technology: “As the online world became more and more pre-edited and slicked up, and as even its so-called reality sites raised questions about authenticity in the minds of viewers, the rough, unpolished physical world was taking on a mystic allure.” Will this happen to us? Is it happening already? It’s difficult to imagine a society that has willfully abandoned its technologies. Maybe we can only romanticize life without them.
Atwood also writes about talking with the dead. “But it was a reassuring story: that the dead were not entirely dead but are alive in a different way.” And why shouldn’t this be true? I wonder if believing we can communicate with the ones we’ve lost makes us better people. It must provide a sense of comfort, which is no small matter. Sometimes I look at a photo of my parents and wonder what it would feel like to believe such a thing. Or where to begin.
[Ravedeath, 1972 by Tim Hecker](https://timhecker.bandcamp.com/album/ravedeath-1972?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Falling in Love With a Moment
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-7-2021/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:20.000Z
Sunset: 6:27pm. Partly sunny and high of 75 degrees. It’s much too warm for October. Today I was introduced to the concept of *[samādhi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samadhi?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, a rarefied state of absorption described as “falling in love with a moment.” I’ve been savoring this phrase all day: the idea of becoming hopelessly enamored by the aesthetics of a particular point in time. Maybe a shift in the light, a fleeting sense of calm, or coming upon an interesting arrangement in the city that reminds you of the wonder of belonging to a strange civilization.
I’ve also been thinking about a great sandwich I recently ate: focaccia, bresaola, parmesan, arugula, salt, and balsamic vinegar.
### Local Artists on the Local News
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-6-2021/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:20.000Z
New York City. Sunset: 6:29pm. Cloudy with 76% humidity and a high of 70, a seasonless day that felt as if it could be anywhere on the calendar.
Today C. and I talked with a reporter from a local television station about [our installation](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/after-the-end/?ref=jamesreeves.co) in the chapel at Green-Wood Cemetery. When I mentioned this project was rooted in the loss of my parents, the reporter asked if I’d like to discuss how they died. It’s an interesting sensation, glitching in the glare of a television camera. But they put together a nice little story with some thoughtful b-roll footage and person-on-the-street interviews, and I’m grateful for their interest in our work. I’m grateful for anyone who pays attention to anything these days.
Some people shine on television, as if they’re high-definition, whereas I’m a bit fuzzy, more VHS. As we listened to the reporter deftly introduce the segment, C. said, “It sounds like she has TV in her voice.”
#### [The Normal – TV O.D.](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/TVOD.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Warm Leatherette | Mute, 1978 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FNormal?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/TVOD.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/TVOD.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Respiration
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-5-2021/
Last updated: 2026-05-13T01:15:27.000Z
New York City. Sunset: 6:30pm. A new moon. Heavy clouds and damp air, a high of 66 and a low of 57 degrees. My father would have turned 73 today, and I still do not know how to mark days like this, which I suppose is why I work on projects like *[After the End](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/after-the-end/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*: the need for ceremony, for some patchwork kind of faith. This afternoon I went to the museum and sat among the busted statues from antiquity, and I felt so damned lucky that I had the chance to get to know my father in [his last year](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/the-last-year-of-my-father/?ref=jamesreeves.co), that we were no longer baffled by one another, which is too often the case with fathers and sons. I wish we had more time, and once again I found myself reciting these instructions from Epictetus: *do not say something is lost, only that it is returned*.
Although they were two thousand years old, these broken marble bodies from the Hellenic age felt illustrative of our current moment: an exhausted and fractured dignity amidst the decay of modern living. As I moved through the galleries, I listened to Lawrence English’s *[Observation of Breath](https://hallowground.bandcamp.com/album/lawrence-english-observation-of-breath?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, which captures the respiration of a 132-year-old pipe organ, a sound that reminded me of my father’s machines as the two of us sat in a small room, waiting for a lung. And the sheer miracle of being here, right now, and simply breathing.
[LAWRENCE ENGLISH – Observation of Breath by Lawrence English](https://hallowground.bandcamp.com/album/lawrence-english-observation-of-breath?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Hardcode
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-4-2021/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:20.000Z
New York City. Sunset: 6:32pm. A damp Monday with dull grey air, and a waning crescent moon. High of 72, light drizzle, and a low of 64 degrees tonight. I spent twelve hours behind a screen today, fiddling with the code for my website and untangling some domain names.
Meanwhile, the internet buzzed with the news that Facebook’s lights went out for several hours, highlighting just how far its tentacles reach. Transactions failed. Employees were locked out of their offices. Thermostats stopped working. There was a flavor of joy in these reports, not just *schadenfreude* but tentative hope that we’d been released from the grip of some leviathan or terrible dream.
Today’s outage was a crucial reminder that we must maintain our little stations in the digital ether and control our own signals. I’m not giving up hope that one day we will return to the chaotic, polyglot promise of the internet rather than Adorno and Horkheimer’s 1947 prediction that our [culture industry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture%5Findustry?ref=jamesreeves.co) would one day grant us only “the freedom to choose what is always the same.”
#### [Autechre – JNSN CODE GL16](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/JNSN%20CODE%20GL16.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### JNSN CODE GL16 / spl47 | Touched Music, 2017 | [Bandcamp](https://touched.bandcamp.com/album/jnsn-code-gl16-spl47?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/JNSN%20CODE%20GL16.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/JNSN%20CODE%20GL16.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Talking Over a Car Alarm
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-3-2021/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:20.000Z
New York City. Sunset: 6:34pm. Moon: Waning crescent. Weather: Mostly cloudy and 77 degrees with steadily increasing humidity and a low of 59\. It’s too warm for October, yet C. and I are dreaming about the desert again. Today I told someone I want to live in the New Jersey of Las Vegas, which sounds like a curse, but I absolutely meant it.
Spent the afternoon at a get-together on the Brooklyn piers talking with people I did not know. I listened to them discuss film distribution, Istanbul’s club scene, sadism, book pitches, South Korean cinema, and the architecture of Dubai. There was a different texture to these conversations, the noises of friends of friends making small talk at a party. Two hours later, I realized: not one person mentioned the pandemic. It’s simply an unpleasant fact of life now, like talking over a car alarm.
#### [Fuck Buttons – Okay, Let’s Talk About Magic](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Okay%20Lets%20Talk%20About%20Magic.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Street Horrsing | ATP, 2008 | [Bleep](https://bleep.com/release/16488-fuck-buttons-street-horrrsing?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Okay%20Lets%20Talk%20About%20Magic.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Okay%20Lets%20Talk%20About%20Magic.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Shamble and Stride
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/shamble-and-stride/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:21.000Z
Sunset: 6:35pm. Moon: Waning crescent. Weather: Mostly sunny with a high of 75, partly cloudy tonight with a low of 54 degrees and a light southwest wind.
I always wake up too early on Saturdays because I’m excited it’s Saturday. This morning I went for an ugly jog and accidentally got absorbed into a marathon-in-progress. For three miles, I debated the ethics of helping myself to the Gatorade-and-banana stations. I declined. Better to run poorly with a clear conscience.
Packed into a tight group, I ran much faster than usual. I suppose there’s a lesson there. And I was struck by how each person has their own shamble and stride, their particular way of carrying themselves through the world, as unique as a fingerprint.
### A Sinful Sun
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-1-2021/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:21.000Z
Sunset: 6:37pm. Moon: Waning crescent. Sunny and clear with a high of 66 and a low of 48\. A well-earned autumn is finally here after a horrid summer of broken records. A light breeze while the American government continues to decay.
I’m recovering from a bout of [public speaking](https://www.green-wood.com/event/after-the-end-artist-talk/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and re-reading Bertrand Russell on [Origen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen?ref=jamesreeves.co), one of the first Christian theologians, whose second-century philosophy reads like science fiction: “The stars are living rational beings to whom God has given souls that were already in existence. The sun, he thinks, can sin.”
Yesterday I saw a chipper commercial for a website that makes it cheap and easy to run a background check on your friends and neighbors. Maybe there are no more mysteries in this century. More and more, I like the idea of living beneath intelligent stars and a sinful sun.
#### [Brian Eno – Dunwich Beach, Autumn 1960](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dunwich%20Beach.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Ambient 4: On Land | EG, 1982 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient%5F4:%5FOn%5FLand?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dunwich%20Beach.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dunwich%20Beach.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Scenes From the Chapel
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/scenes-from-the-chapel/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:21.000Z
A pair of snapshots from installing a new project in the chapel at Green-Wood Cemetery: last month we started painting the first of 2,880 holes, and last night [Candy Chang](http://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) applied the final touches as she balanced on top of a precarious platform of light. Of all our projects together, I’m most proud of this one. It’s certainly the most personal.
After losing my parents, I did not have religion or tradition to ground me. Whenever I visit a church, temple, or cemetery, I find myself craving a gesture or ceremony that might provide a sense of connection, even coherence. Perhaps these things can be invented. Maybe they’ll lead me to some sort of patchwork 21st-century faith.
*[After the End](https://www.green-wood.com/aftertheend/?ref=jamesreeves.co)* is now on view through November 10\. More photos and a proper project description coming soon…
#### [M83 – In Church](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/In%20Church.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### From *Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts* | Gooom, 2003 | [More](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5006-dead-cities-red-seas-lost-ghosts/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/In%20Church.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/In%20Church.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### New Project
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/new-project/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:21.000Z
My next project with [Candy Chang](http://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) is happening in this magnificent chapel.
**[After the End](https://www.green-wood.com/after-the-end/?ref=jamesreeves.co)**
*A ritual about loss*
September 15 – November 10, 2021
Green-Wood Cemetery
Brooklyn, New York
### Finding My Thoughts Has Felt Difficult Lately
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/tired/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:22.000Z
The only way I can understand these uneasy days is to write about them. But finding my own thoughts has felt difficult lately. It seems to require more effort to keep my brains out of the muck of today’s opinion-mongers and two-minute hates, these digital screamers and bad-faith dealers. No matter what I do, their poison bleeds through the walls.
Maybe there’s no coming to terms with these days of lurching from calamity to calamity while being told it’s time to get back to normal. As I write this, a hurricane is approaching the eastern seaboard, which captures the spirit of the past eighteen months: the waiting-and-seeing, wondering how bad the damage might be.
New York City’s big reopening concert was canceled midway through Barry Manilow’s set due to lightning strikes. Last week it rained at the top of Greenland for the first time in recorded history. We’re back to wearing masks indoors.
What is the best strategy for surviving the 21st century? Does it require some sort of cool detachment? [Bertrand Russell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand%5FRussell?ref=jamesreeves.co) notes that Stoicism naturally took root during “a tired age” when Rome began to decay, a time when “the future, they felt, would be at best a weariness, at worst a horror. In a hopeful age, great present evils can be endured, because it is thought they will pass; but in a tired age even real goods lose their savour.”
Philosophies such as Stoicism suit a tired age because “its gospel is one of endurance rather than hope.” Maybe we’ve entered an absolutely exhausted age. But here’s why I often turn to Russell for comfort: “There is, in fact, an element of sour grapes in Stoicism. We can’t be happy, but we can be good; let us therefore pretend that, so long as we are good, it doesn’t matter being unhappy. This doctrine is heroic, and, in a bad world, useful; but it is neither quite true nor, in a fundamental sense, quite sincere.”
So I’ve been thinking about what it means to be sincere on and off the screen in 2021\. This feels more productive than contemplating how to endure.
Today I learned that in 1983, Visage covered one of the most frightening songs I know: Zager & Evans’s improbable 1969 hit “[In the Year 2525](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In%5Fthe%5FYear%5F2525?ref=jamesreeves.co)“, which races through ten thousand years of technological horror fueled by numbed-out consumerism. For example: “In the year 5555, your arms are hanging limp at your sides and your legs got nothing to do because some machine is doing that for you.” Both versions are catchy as hell.
The fall of Rome. 1969\. Wherever we stand today. The year 2525\. Real goods keep their savor.
#### [Visage – In The Year 2525](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/In%20The%20Year%202525.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Fade to Grey: The Singles Collection | Polydor, 1983 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fade%5Fto%5FGrey%5F%E2%80%93%5FThe%5FSingles%5FCollection?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/In%20The%20Year%202525.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/In%20The%20Year%202525.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Monster
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/monster/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:22.000Z
Six years later, I have 88,000 words about an elderly truck driver, a frightened voice on the radio, and a very loud god. It’s the nineteenth draft of this story, and it still has problems, but it’s as good as I know how to make it right now. I’m ready for C’s advice before I start the twentieth draft. She’s my ideal reader, the reason I write stories. I must remember this whenever I start worrying about things like symbolism, style, and relevance. Keep it simple. Return to the image of sitting around a fire thousands of years ago: we make up stories to entertain the people we care about. That’s all.
Along the way, I began to think of this book as a monster. A bizarre, embarrassing, and occasionally fascinating creature showed up in my life, and like it or not, it must be dealt with, or else it will leave me exhausted and haunted. As long as I pay some attention to it each day, it is happy. Sometimes it even performs neat little tricks. But if I ignore it for a day, it begins to get sullen. Let three or four days go by, and it turns downright mean when I try to approach, snapping at my hands. Weeks will pass before I can summon the nerve to go near it again.
After years spent fooling around with countless rituals and productivity routines, I learned the hard way that it’s all a mirage. The time of day does not matter. The perfect notebook will not solve my problems. Everydayness is the most important thing for me. If I’m lucky, this might mean a few hours of steady work in the afternoon. But it’s often just twenty minutes of scrolling through the document at midnight, rearranging commas and pruning a sentence, just to keep the monster tame. Even a quick pat on the head will do.
#### [Legowelt – A Monster So Beautiful!](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/A%20Monster%20So%20Beautiful.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Loch Ness | Pacific Micro International Software, 2013 | [Bandcamp](https://legowelt.bandcamp.com/album/loch-ness-complete-soundtrack-2013?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/A%20Monster%20So%20Beautiful.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/A%20Monster%20So%20Beautiful.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Fireworks
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/fireworks/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:22.000Z
Fireworks showered the nation last night, in part to commemorate the end of masking and distancing. This is cause for celebration, no question. But it seems like a sane society would pause to mourn their dead, maybe even have rethink before launching explosives and boasting about its economy. Last year I thought everything might change as I walked through an empty city, feeling anxious and ghosted but also hopeful. If a rupture must come, I thought, maybe we’ll find something better on the other side. Healthcare, at least, maybe even a sense of common cause. But if a plague couldn’t accomplish this, I shudder to think what it might take.
#### [Bohren & Der Club of Gore – Black City Skyline](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Black%20City%20Skyline.mp?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### From *Sunset Mission* | Wonder, 2000 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/sunset-mission?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Black%20City%20Skyline.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Black%20City%20Skyline.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
An ode to cities. A cigarette on a rain-slicked street while neon blinks mindlessly through the night.
### Eastbound
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/eastbound/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:22.000Z
One of my favorite American moments: the gleaming pumps of the Vince Lombardi Service Area in New Jersey, the last service plaza before entering the tangled ramps and tunnels into New York. I returned to the city a few weeks ago, and I’m still recovering from the shock of so many people in the streets talking about money and brunch. The helicopter traffic is relentless, all these choppers shuttling the wealthy to their beachfront homes.
Crypto, personal brands, and a life spent unwittingly training algorithms. Cyberhacked utilities, the mercenary jargon of self-care, and billionaires in outer space. My sense of slippage grows each day, but I know a cognitive leap is necessary if I hope to survive this century and not be left pining for some romanticized past.
#### [Love, Inc — Life’s a Gas](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Lifes%20a%20Gas.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Force Inc, 1996 | [More](https://wolfgang-voigt.com/en/music/music-projects-en/love-inc/love-inc.-life%E2%80%99s-a-gas/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Lifes%20a%20Gas.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Lifes%20a%20Gas.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Vinyl Anxiety
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/vinyl-anxiety/
Last updated: 2026-07-07T10:22:57.000Z
I ducked in and out of tiny record stores, spinning racks of cassettes and flipping through stacks of vinyl, frantically trying to find my favorite song to play at a wedding. Turns out I was kneeling on it the whole time. Perhaps this dream was the result of my anxiety about having so many unheard songs in my queue—the lack of connection to an artifact, the impossibility of ever getting my head around music again.
### Oryx and Crake
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/oryx-and-crake/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:23.000Z
Last week I reread Margaret Atwood’s *[Oryx and Crake](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/6113/oryx-and-crake-by-margaret-atwood/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, and it harmonized with our latest heatwave to an unsettling degree. Snowman is the last person on the planet after a virus intersects with technological hubris. Sunburnt and crazed, he wanders the ruins, seeking refuge from the unbearable heat.
> But suppose—just suppose, thinks Snowman—that he’s not the last of his kind. Suppose there are others. He wills them into being, these possible remnants who might have survived in isolated pockets, cut off by the shutdown of the communications networks, keeping themselves alive somehow. Monks in desert hideaways, far from contagion; mountain gatherers who’d never mixed with the valley people; lost tribes in the jungles. Survivalists who’d tuned in early, shot all comers, sealed themselves into their underground bunkers. Hillbillies, recluses; wandering lunatics, swathed in protective hallucinations. Bands of nomads, following their ancient ways.
> *How did this happen?* their descendants will ask, stumbling upon the evidence, the ruins. The ruinous evidence. *Who made these things? Who lived in them? Who destroyed them?* The Taj Mahal, the Louvre, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building—stuff he’s seen on TV, in old books, on postcards . . . Imagine coming upon them 3-D, life-sized, with no preparation—you’d be freaked, you’d run away, and after that you’d need an explanation. At first they’ll say giants or gods, but sooner or later they’ll want to know the truth.
Written nearly twenty years ago, *Oryx and Crake*‘s premise feels absolutely plausible today. But Atwood is fantastic at transforming this frightening material into something loopy, often tender, and in the process, she leaps over the glut of dystopian visions that fill 21st-century entertainment. You say the end of the world is coming? Fine, let’s crank it to eleven: here’s the last man standing—what happens now?
I’m on to the second book in the trilogy, *The Year of the Flood*. The American editions are nasty, glossy objects, so I recommend tracking down [the UK edition](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bookseries/B00NEAIT06?ref=jamesreeves.co).
### Reboot
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/reboot/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:23.000Z
##### Art Direction, Identity, Web Design + Development
Created a refreshed visual identity and bold new website for Reboot, an international consultancy that works with government, corporate, and philanthropic sectors to develop programs for systemic change. Vivid colors, highlighted text, and angled elements underscore Reboot’s dynamic approach to working with stakeholders to address structural challenges.
### We Were Distracted
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/we-were-distracted/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:23.000Z
On June 2, [Candy Chang](http://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and I will be at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, to discuss our *[Light the Barricades](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/light-the-barricades/?ref=jamesreeves.co)* installation and talk about ritual, doubt, and art with artist-theologian [de’Angelo Dia](https://dia1518.com/home.html?ref=jamesreeves.co).
This discussion will be part of the opening celebration for the [*WALLS: Defend, Divide, and the Divine*](https://mintmuseum.org/walls/light-the-barricades/?ref=jamesreeves.co) exhibition at the Mint. Food trucks, cash bar, DJ Fannie Mae, and complimentary museum admission.
*We Were Distracted: A Conversation about Ritual, Attention, and Public Space*
WALLS Opening Celebration
June 2, 2021 | 5–9 PM
Mint Museum Uptown
### The debris of a falling Chinese rocket
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/northbound/
Last updated: 2026-05-22T13:47:49.000Z
America felt busy and extra-bright as we drove across Florida, wondering if we might be hit by the debris of a falling Chinese rocket. We shouldered through crowded sidewalks to reach the beach and look at the Atlantic. Then we scrolled through St Augustine, founded in 1565 by some conquistador, now a maze of trinkets and daiquiris, a first draft of New Orleans. Nightfall in Savannah: stone walls and trenches, gangways to restaurants, and a ceiling of Spanish moss.
And oh, the misery of Interstate 95\. Two lanes of bumper-to-bumper at ninety miles per hour through Georgia and South Carolina without a single rest area. We sped along memorial freeways named after dead sheriffs. A cryptic sign announced that we were entering the Polymer Alliance Zone. In Columbia, we ate sandwiches and listened to Black Hebrew Israelites in purple gowns lecture the families heading a graduation ceremony. Evangelicals appeared with their sandwich boards and pamphlets. American religion is so loud. Billboards tell us to repent. They tell us hell is real, and because we probably live there already, they tell us to learn more at helltruth.com and follow them on Twitter.
In Charlotte, we stopped to visit our [*Light the Barricades*](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/light-the-barricades/?ref=jamesreeves.co) project, a series of illuminated walls built from billboard materials that we installed in Los Angeles in 2019\. Now they’re at the [Mint Museum of Art](https://mintmuseum.org/walls/light-the-barricades/?ref=jamesreeves.co), reckoning with the humidity and rain of the southeast. A nearby wedding reception boomed through the night. The deejay made a deft segue between “Atomic Dog” and “[it’s time for the percolator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8KZ0wspws0&ref=jamesreeves.co)” while we photographed our installation on doubt, and it was a beautiful collision of energies, possibly the highlight of my art career. Then came swoopy hills, high winds, and excellent travel plazas on the West Virginia turnpike. Along the way, a woman told me that Americans have a “bullying style of driving” that reflects the national character. I think this is partly true. We’re not all tailgaters and road-ragers. Some of us drift from lane to lane while composing emails, watching videos, or under the influence of sleep aids—which reflects the 21st-century character.
The remains of the Chinese rocket fell to earth somewhere over the Indian Ocean. There were reports that hackers seized control of a major pipeline along the eastern seaboard. I put on my mask as I entered a gas station for sugar and caffeine. How do you prepare to live in science-fictional times? Things are speeding up; living today feels like the constant sensation of ninety miles per hour, bumper to bumper, all glare and chrome. Or maybe this is what getting older feels like. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.
### Mahjong
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/mahjong/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:23.000Z
Mahjong is my favorite game. Everything is aestheticized: the clack of the tiles, the building of walls, and the language of seasons, flowers, and pork fat. The ritual of washing the tiles and talking junk. “You can tell a lot about a person by the way they play mahjong,” said my mother-in-law in the middle of our thirtieth game. Two games later, she said something to me that roughly translates as “you are still breathing but you have no strength.”
#### [Black Swan – Night Games](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Night%20Games.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### The Sentimental Drift | Ethereal Symphony, 2019 | [Bandcamp](https://blackswan.bandcamp.com/album/the-sentimental-drift-2019?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Night%20Games.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Night%20Games.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### May 7, 2021
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/southbound/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:24.000Z
First proper road trip in nearly two years. One thousand miles from Ohio to Florida for a three-day game of mahjong with the in-laws. I’d almost forgotten how it feels, the rattle and throb of the long drive. The road-ragers and elderly drifters. The truck shudder, rumble strips, and windshield splatter. The landscape of mattresses, exploded tires, and orphaned vehicles along the shoulder. The overwhelm of America all at once.
Billboards asked us where we would spend eternity. They advertised steaks, skin-care routines, and swap meets. They told us hell was real. Along the Big Sandy River where West Virginia faces Kentucky, we ate fast food at an exhausted picnic table while petroleum freighters drifted through the dusk. A crowd of recreational vehicles gathered behind us, stringing up lanterns and preparing a bonfire. We listened to syrup-voiced singers from a half-century ago, the lullabies of fictional Americana. Tight lanes and heavy truck traffic through Tennessee. We paused to admire an empty swimming pool in front of an aluminum shed that said *Dreamland*. A small car appeared out of nowhere, and the driver’s door swung open. “Did you order a pizza?”
So many billboards for Jesus: he saves, he heals, he delivers. But maybe Jesus is having a hard time these days. None of us looked particularly saved or healed. We were wandering in the shadow of a pandemic, half of us masked, half with naked mouths, all of us wondering how to behave. The parking lot of the adult video store was packed; the Presbyterian church next door was empty. A man vomited behind his car at the travel plaza. Another wept in the courtyard of our motel next to a Waffle House.
Somewhere between Knoxville and Chattanooga, we ate bún xào in a parking lot. Then we hacked our way through Atlanta traffic, its tailgaters and stunt drivers declaring their political opinions on their bumpers. On a sleepy Sunday street in Macon, I ate an artisanal shade-grown burger the size of a toddler. In Florida, we got stuck behind a van with decals that advertised the latest conspiracy theory. Good to know the person in front of you is profoundly insane, the one who’s operating six tons of steel at eighty miles per hour. An oncoming car flashed its headlights to warn us there was a cop ahead. This gives me faith in the human experiment. The highway logic, the conversations between cars: all of us speeding through the night, each with our own theories and points of view. I’ve missed this.
#### [Bobby Vinton – Sealed with a Kiss](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sealed%20With%20A%20Kiss.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Epic, 1972 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealed%5Fwith%5Fa%5FKiss%5F%28Bobby%5FVinton%5Falbum%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sealed%20With%20A%20Kiss.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sealed%20With%20A%20Kiss.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### "We’re smothered by words, images, and sounds that have no right to exist."
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/eight-and-a-half/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:24.000Z
Federico Fellini’s [*8½*](https://www.criterion.com/films/150-8-1-2?ref=jamesreeves.co) is a head-scraping, memory-swirled portrait of the judgment and shame that comes with creative effort. Tonight it speaks heavy to my desire for clarity, how I worry time is running out for me to find some niche or single point of focus:
> Could you leave everything behind and start from zero again? Pick one thing, and one only, and be absolutely devoted to it? Make it the reason for your existence, the thing that contains everything, that becomes everything, because your dedication to it makes it last forever? Could you? No, this guy here, he couldn’t. He wants to grab everything, can’t give up a single thing. He changes his mind every day because he’s afraid he might miss the right path. And he’s slowly bleeding to death.
But hyperspecialization might be an illusion in these days of everything-at-once, a romanticized relic that belongs to the medieval artisan. Lately I’ve been wrestling with my anxiety about contributing to our crowded screens, and this line hit me particularly hard:
> We’re smothered by words, images, and sounds that have no right to exist, that come from the void and return to the void. Of any artist truly deserving of the name we should ask nothing but this act of faith: to learn silence.
Most of all, I love this detail: when shooting began in 1962, Fellini taped a piece of brown paper next to the viewfinder of his camera. It said, “*Ricordati che è un film comico*.” Remember, this is a comedy.
### Shadowbahn
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/shadowbahn/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:24.000Z
In Steve Erickson’s [*Shadowbahn*](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/546974/shadowbahn-by-steve-erickson/?ref=jamesreeves.co), the Twin Towers reappear in South Dakota, wholly intact and without explanation.
> “As the crowds arrive over the following days, the families and loners, the footloose and motor-bound, the drivers and passengers and hitchhikers, the cards and RVs and trailers, the shuttles and buses and private jets, the news vans and military jeeps and airborne surveillance, the constituents and pols and advance teams, the graphic designers and Hollywood scouts and novelists who can’t make up anything anymore, the systems and cynics and juries-still-out, the Towers loom from the end of what becomes a long national boulevard.”
Meanwhile, Elvis’s stillborn twin brother roams the mid-twentieth century, rewiring history. *Shadowbahn* is a widescreen novel with a sense of lightness and invention I hadn’t encountered before. Each chapter is a page, and each page leaps and loops through a garbled American landscape dotted with the Velvet Underground, Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X, John Lennon, new states and territories, and endless music trivia. And there’s the sense of being held captive—in the best and worst ways—to the author’s obsession with the perfect playlist.
### Nightcrawler / Bringing Out the Dead
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/double-feature/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:24.000Z
A double feature. First up, [*Nightcrawler*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightcrawler%5F%28film%29?ref=jamesreeves.co). Dan Gilroy’s 2014 neo-noir follows a man without conscience who prowls the Los Angeles night, hunting for footage of fresh accidents and violence to sell to the local news. He approaches his work with the gusto of an auteur: nosing his camera into dying faces, creeping through the homes of the murdered. The networks do not question his tactics. There’s too much money to be made in keeping people home, frightened in front of the television. A producer describes their approach to journalism as “a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut.” By nixing the logic of heroes and villains, *Nightcrawler* delivers one of the most chilling figures in recent cinematic memory: a man warped by the cult of the entrepreneur and the vacant language of self-improvement. He wields cliches about persistence and hard work like a weapon while he cheerfully exploits the dead and the living to achieve the American dream. “That’s my job,” he says. “I’d like to think if you’re seeing me, you’re having the worst day of your life.”
*Nightcrawler* inspired me to queue up a nocturnal film from the opposite side of the nation. Set in New York City circa 1990, Martin Scorsese’s [*Bringing Out the Dead*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bringing%5FOut%5Fthe%5FDead?ref=jamesreeves.co) works in reverse. Whereas *Nightcrawler*‘s loner thrived on capturing the pain of others, here an ambulance driver is decimated by the suffering he encounters as he loops through Hell’s Kitchen, trying—and failing—to undo its cardiac arrests, overdoses, and crack-ups. If you see him, you’re absolutely having the worst day of your life. But he’s come to save you rather than film you. And his compassion leaves him ghosted and half-insane.
*Nightcrawler* is sleek and solitary, almost arid; *Bringing Out the Dead* is loopy and crowded, its streets crammed with detours and anecdotes. Taken together, both films operate as seedy poems to cities and night sweats, and they are portraits of bearing witness in the worst and best ways.
Scorsese’s use of this song while an ambulance drifts through the night has stuck with me for twenty years as one the best pairings between image and sound: both drift and meander despite the urgency of their subject. The lyrics of “T.B. Sheets” are a harrowing testament to a man’s inability to deal with his dying lover. He fumbles with the window and radio rather than face the fact of the hospital bed.
### Shock G
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/shock-g/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:25.000Z
Shock G died yesterday. As the years pile up, maybe you become accustomed to your influences passing away. But this one hit me hard. I grew up with Digital Underground. I copied the cartoons from their albums into my middle-school notebooks, and I memorized their lyrics; my brain still carries them around thirty years later.
I was fourteen when my neighbor scowled at my meager collection of pop-rock cassettes and gave me a mixtape with Boogie Down Productions, Stetsasonic, and Digital Underground’s “[Doowutchyalike](https://digitalunderground.bandcamp.com/track/doowutchyalike?ref=jamesreeves.co)“—a sprawling nine-minute party that began with Shock G’s affable delivery: “Now as the record spins around, you recognize this sound. Well, it’s the Underground.” It was the sound of someone inviting you into a new world, and Digital Underground’s world was a mad sci-fi cartoon that swerved from cultural satire to psychedelic transport (“[The DFLO Shuttle](https://digitalunderground.bandcamp.com/track/the-dflo-shuttle?ref=jamesreeves.co)“) to speculative cyber-sex, from stern warnings about addiction (“[The Danger Zone](https://digitalunderground.bandcamp.com/track/the-danger-zone?ref=jamesreeves.co)“) to rapping fish (“[Underwater Rimes](https://digitalunderground.bandcamp.com/track/underwater-rimes-remix?ref=jamesreeves.co)“) to paying respect to our heroes while they’re still with us (“[Heartbeat Props](https://digitalunderground.bandcamp.com/track/heartbeat-props?ref=jamesreeves.co)“).
Digital Underground was a direct descendant of [Parliament-Funkadelic](https://www.vice.com/en/article/pgkxkv/george-clinton-explains-the-future?ref=jamesreeves.co)‘s 1970s Afrofuturism. It’s a strange sensation, encountering the original material after the remix, sample, or homage. But Shock G went beyond borrowing or recontextualizing. While everyone else was looping “Flashlight” and “Atomic Dog,” Digital Underground’s second album, *Sons of the P*, featured [George Clinton](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/how-george-clinton-made-funk-a-world-view?ref=jamesreeves.co) in one of his first appearances on a hip-hop record, and Shock G’s multi-tracked alter-egos carried the spirit of Starchild and Mr. Wiggles through the 1990s. I’m grateful to Shock G for introducing me to music that could be simultaneously bonkers, wise, and mythic—and for priming me to appreciate Funkadelic, [Drexciya](https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2017/06/drexciya-infinite-journey-to-inner-space?ref=jamesreeves.co), and the programming of the [Electrifying Mojo](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/mojo/?ref=jamesreeves.co). I can think of no better introduction.
---
#### [Digital Underground – Tales of the Funky](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Tales%20of%20the%20Funky.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Sons of the P | Tommy Boy, 1991 | [Bandcamp](https://digitalunderground.bandcamp.com/album/sons-of-the-p?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Tales%20of%20the%20Funky.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Tales%20of%20the%20Funky.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### April 22, 2021
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/shot/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:25.000Z
A late April snowstorm blew through Ohio last night, quick and heavy, and the sudden shock of snow was a fine addition to my hallucinations while I lay on the couch, gratefully suffering from fever, aches, and chills: the side effects of the second dose of vaccine. A few hours later, the snow and the fever disappeared as quickly as they came.
### 3+1
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/3plus1/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:25.000Z
I answered a few questions about writing and the allure of lonely gas stations as part of Michael Donaldson’s [3+1 interview series](https://8sided.blog/31-james-a-reeves/?ref=jamesreeves.co). I’m flattered to appear on his eight-sided channel, which has the passion and sprawl of a vintage zine, and it’s one of the first places I visit when I’m looking for new great music.
### "No landscape is as lovely as a woman."
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/lavventura/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:25.000Z
In Michelangelo Antonioni’s *[L’Avventura](https://www.criterion.com/films/209-l-avventura?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, a woman disappears on a rocky island. Her wealthy friends search for her until it begins to rain. They pace empty rooms. They speak in non-sequiturs and nod off mid-conversation. They stare at the ceiling and count. They are bored out of their skulls, trying to pass the time. And I played along at home, fidgeting and waiting for the film’s 144 minutes to end. This is the double-bind of an Antonioni film: the characters are adrift, searching for heat and drama; so is the viewer. The effect is physical.
Antonioni developed a cinematic grammar of modern isolation: people alienated by their comfort, their architecture, and one another. It was a revelation sixty years ago; now it’s as familiar as air. “Our myths and conventions are old,” said Antonioni. “And everyone knows that they are indeed old and outmoded. Yet we respect them.” And when they no longer provide solace, where do we turn? “It is impossible to be happy simply because one is ceaselessly entertained,” wrote [Roger Ebert](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-lavventura-1960?ref=jamesreeves.co). “*L’Avventura* becomes a place in our imagination—a melancholy moral desert. Why don’t we have movies like *L’Avventura* anymore? Because we don’t ask the same kinds of questions anymore. We have replaced the ‘purpose of life’ with the ‘choice of lifestyle.'”
### Some Terrible Paintings
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/some-terrible-paintings/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:25.000Z
One thing I hate about my writing is that it often feels bunchy and tight. I want to recover a sense of play, so I’ve decided to find a hobby. Something unrelated to frowning at my sentences. Something I can do for the hell of it. And most importantly, something that doesn’t require a staring contest with a screen. So I bought a sketchbook and some watercolor paints because I have no illusions about being a painter. I haven’t drawn anything in years; the last time I painted was twenty-five years ago when I was very high.
But what to paint? I opened a random page from Flaubert’s [*The Temptation of Saint Anthony* ](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/temptation/?ref=jamesreeves.co)and painted the first phrase that caught my attention. This has become my new hobby, a weekend ritual. Here are my first attempts:
“Our ancestors of painted wax” / “And lichen formed upon my jaws”
“My 74 antlers are hollow like flutes. When I turn toward the south, they draw ravaged animals around me.”
Looking at these paintings, it’s hard to believe I’ve been sober for eight years. But it feels good to do something for its own sake, results be damned. And I have a newfound respect for [Caravaggio](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/devotional-image/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
---
It’s a little sad that my first impulse when considering a fun activity is to get away from the screen. But the screen feels increasingly heavy nowadays, magnetized with nervy energy. In the class I teach, we discuss the mental effects of attention-hijacking and outrage mechanics. My students have a lot to say, and their vocabulary is vivid, often violent: onslaught, bombarded, drowning, shredded, etc. More and more, these conversations leave me wondering if it’s possible to experience a “digital sublime,” a renewed quality of delight or awe. Or if I will ever recover a sense of lightness or play when I’m online.
Despite my best attempts at information hygiene, I’m still buffeted by the digital winds. The other day I caught myself reading an article called “What Yogurt Does to You.” Then I lingered over the ambient horror of a *New York Times* article about mushrooms that casually referred to “our ruined global moment.” This morning I received a marketing email for a meditation app from someone whose job title is “Editor of Wisdom Content.” Now I can meditate upon living in hell.
So back to weird painting. Tonight’s sentence: “They pelt each other with shells, devour grapes, strangle a goat, and tear Bacchus asunder.”
### Temptation
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/temptation/
Last updated: 2026-05-13T01:18:53.000Z
I’m attempting to read Gustav Flaubert’s *[The Temptation of Saint Anthony](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52225?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, his 1874 depiction of the saint’s struggle with vice and distraction while searching for salvation in the Egyptian desert two thousand years ago.
Flaubert’s account inspired one of my favorite artists, [Odilon Redon](https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-redemption-of-saint-anthony?ref=jamesreeves.co), whose eerie etchings sought to capture the “unfettered, immaterial world of the psyche.” The titles alone conjure worlds reminiscent of a Godspeed You! Black Emperor album: *Then There Appears a Singular Being*, *Having the Head of a Man on the Body of a Fish*, *Everywhere Eyeballs Are Aflame*, and *Different Peoples Inhabit the Countries of the Ocean*. And now you can buy [a Temptation of Saint Anthony face mask](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-temptation-of-saint-anthony-head-of-a-man-on-the-body-of-a-fish-odilon-redon.html?product=face-mask-flat&googleShopping=true&completeProductSku=artworkid%5B30139252%5D-productid%5Bfacemaskflat-large%5D-imagewidth%5B704%5D-imageheight%5B1156%5D-targetx%5B-3%5D-targety%5B-153%5D-modelwidth%5B704%5D-modelheight%5B495%5D-backgroundcolor%5B1b00a3%5D-orientation%5B0%5D&gclid=Cj0KCQiAx9mABhD0ARIsAEfpavR1GvpKkKFtBVe5HOEoF6EvEnTl48e1WzrW5%5F0cXV6-pMrIjM%5FGsQoaAi0WEALw%5FwcB&ref=jamesreeves.co) because we’ve built ourselves a fine little hell.
I wrote a few more notes on my decayed attention, berserkers, and my father’s spiral notepads in [my January letter](https://atlasminor.substack.com/p/13-god-knows-where?r=ll6u&utm%5Fcampaign=post&utm%5Fmedium=web&utm%5Fsource=copy).
### Caravaggio - Saint Jerome in His Study
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/devotional-image/
Last updated: 2026-05-13T00:46:02.000Z
For my birthday, C. gave me the most magnificent gift: a small framed reproduction of my favorite painting, Caravaggio’s *Saint Jerome in His Study* from 1605\.
[Saint Jerome](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/profane/?ref=jamesreeves.co) was often depicted in the desert wilderness, forsaking worldly distraction in exchange for salvation. But in Caravaggio’s hands, he is hushed and desiccated as he completes the first translation of the Bible into Latin. He stares deep into its pages, hunting for revelation, ignoring the skull on his desk, a memento mori that mocks the vanity of our knowledge in the face of the unknowable. The darkness that envelopes him is heavier, more textured than the red cloth he wears, yet he’s determined to write one last word before the night consumes him.
[John Berger](https://www.versobooks.com/books/2521-portraits?ref=jamesreeves.co) has said Caravaggio’s darkness “smells of candles, over-ripe melons, damp washing to be hung out the next day.” To me, it feels like the purple-black thoughts that burble within the midnight brain. And in this darkness, Jerome no longer belongs to history or dogma but the silence he sought while crisscrossing the desert in the prime of his life.
### Between
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/between/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:26.000Z
On the first day of the year, I stood before the humming pencil grids of an [Agnes Martin](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/22/agnes-martin-the-artist-mystic-who-disappeared-into-the-desert?ref=jamesreeves.co) canvas at the Columbus Museum of Art. The ancient Greeks believed God was a geometer, but I think she was closer to the mark: “Geometry has nothing to do with it,” said Martin. “It’s all about finding perfection, and perfection can’t be found in something as rigid as geometry. You have to find it elsewhere, in between the lines.”
This seems like a good philosophy for an extreme season.
### Clearing the Decks Before Trying Something New
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/end-2/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:26.000Z
On [the first day](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/cathedral/?ref=jamesreeves.co) of this year, I sat in the pews of a medieval cathedral in Turku, Finland, and tried to pray, which is alien to me. I tried to pray because my thoughts were gummed up with so much chatter and junk, the outrage and opinions of digital living, the residue of too much time spent behind screens. I wanted to know if it was possible to develop any type of faith these days. And underneath this desire, I had buried too many memories of grief. I had also stalled in my writing. I found myself trapped in an idiotic loop of procrastination and perfectionism, stuck with a mind that deleted words before the first keystroke. So I decided to dust off this station and commit to writing *something* each night for one year. Perhaps a few ideas about art, faith, and loss. Maybe some notes about each day’s events for my future self.
And now, on the last day of this year, the memory of sitting in a church in a different country feels as though it belongs to some lost golden age, like telling your kids about the days when airports did not have x-ray machines or you could smoke in supermarkets. The end of the year leaves me feeling as if I’m supposed to be reflective; I find myself hunting for insights and revelations that never arrive. And as this nightly journal ends, I feel compelled to make sense of it. My first thoughts are: 1) I do not recommend such a needlessly compulsive approach, and 2) I wish I’d picked any other year. (From [February 26](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/cross/?ref=jamesreeves.co): “New infections are being reported. How far will this thing go? Will history record this as a blip, or is this the start of something bigger?”)
But this practice helped me develop a steady writing routine. I managed to carve out an hour each night, and I’m eager to point this habit toward books and stories. Writing 366 entries in a row also helped me reckon with my precious bullshit. I often found myself wrestling with some murky idea or failing to make a sentence behave the way I wanted—then it was two o’clock in the morning. So let it go. Good enough. There will be something new to write tomorrow.
Most of all, I appreciated the need for people I do not know. I’ve always preferred writing in museums, hotel lobbies, and train stations because these places remind me that I am a stranger. At home, I become too familiar, and my perspective narrows. In a year without the babble, mess, and wonder of people on sidewalks and subway cars or the small adventures and chance encounters that come with simply moving through the world, I found myself plumbing my memories and dreams and revisiting moments of loss. So, in the end, this exercise felt like walking away from something, a way of clearing the decks before trying something new. Which I hope is how this year feels for all of us one day when we look back in the rearview.
Thank you for reading, and here’s to a more sensible year.
#### [Autechre – All End](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/All%20End.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### NTS Session 4 | Warp, 2018 | [Bandcamp](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/nts-session-4?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[NTS Session 4 by Autechre](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/nts-session-4?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Clearing the Decks Before Trying Something New
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/end/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:27.000Z
On [the first day](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/cathedral/?ref=jamesreeves.co) of this year, I sat in the pews of a medieval cathedral in Turku, Finland, and tried to pray, which is alien to me. I tried to pray because my thoughts were gummed up with so much chatter and junk, the outrage and opinions of digital living, the residue of too much time spent behind screens. I wanted to know if it was possible to develop any type of faith these days. And underneath this desire, I had buried too many memories of grief. I had also stalled in my writing. I found myself trapped in an idiotic loop of procrastination and perfectionism, stuck with a mind that deleted words before the first keystroke. So I decided to dust off this station and commit to writing *something* each night for one year. Perhaps a few ideas about art, faith, and loss. Maybe some notes about each day’s events for my future self.
And now, on the last day of this year, the memory of sitting in a church in a different country feels as though it belongs to some lost golden age, like telling your kids about the days when airports did not have x-ray machines or you could smoke in supermarkets. The end of the year leaves me feeling as if I’m supposed to be reflective; I find myself hunting for insights and revelations that never arrive. And as this nightly journal ends, I feel compelled to make sense of it. My first thoughts are: 1) I do not recommend such a needlessly compulsive approach, and 2) I wish I’d picked any other year. (From [February 26](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/cross/?ref=jamesreeves.co): “New infections are being reported. How far will this thing go? Will history record this as a blip, or is this the start of something bigger?”)
But this practice helped me develop a steady writing routine. I managed to carve out an hour each night, and I’m eager to point this habit toward books and stories. Writing 366 entries in a row also helped me reckon with my precious bullshit. I often found myself wrestling with some murky idea or failing to make a sentence behave the way I wanted—then it was two o’clock in the morning. So let it go. Good enough. There will be something new to write tomorrow.
Most of all, I appreciated the need for people I do not know. I’ve always preferred writing in museums, hotel lobbies, and train stations because these places remind me that I am a stranger. At home, I become too familiar, and my perspective narrows. In a year without the babble, mess, and wonder of people on sidewalks and subway cars or the small adventures and chance encounters that come with simply moving through the world, I found myself plumbing my memories and dreams and revisiting moments of loss. So, in the end, this exercise felt like walking away from something, a way of clearing the decks before trying something new. Which I hope is how this year feels for all of us one day when we look back in the rearview.
Thank you for reading, and here’s to a more sensible year.
#### [Autechre – All End](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/All%20End.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### NTS Session 4 | Warp, 2018 | [Bandcamp](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/nts-session-4?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[NTS Session 4 by Autechre](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/nts-session-4?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Clocks Only Measure Other Clocks
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/almost/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:27.000Z
It’s like a new form of weather, this atmosphere of everyone waiting for this wretched year to end. Although conditions won’t be much different on the first of January, we wait and hope nonetheless. Even though time is just a concept and clocks only measure other clocks, the promise of a new year is heavy: the logic of a new day stretched out, blown up to worldwide scale, a collective need for a fresh start.
Last night I dreamt that god appeared on the internet, issuing demands and revealing answers before stunned eyes in lonely rooms and rapt faces on street corners. I experienced the type of revelation that only appears in dreams, some urgent message or a new way of connecting the dots that I almost grasped. But now I can only remember angry colors pulsing beneath pixellated text. Perhaps it was a subconscious reminder to stop looking at my phone. Now there’s a resolution: keep it switched off until noon or maybe April.
The other day I found a sentence I’d scrawled in my notebook that I cannot place. A sense of vertigo comes, a slight internal slippage whenever I recognize my handwriting but not the words or their intention. I keep staring at it: *Here comes an old man in a three-piece suit the color of sand, and he’s telling children not to grow up, it’s a goddamned trap, and he leaves everyone shaken in his wake.* I don’t remember if this was a fragment of a dream, an idea for a story, or something I witnessed, maybe in New Orleans.
It’s snowing tonight in Ohio, and I cheered when I saw the first flakes falling through the streetlights. I’ve been watching it for an hour with my breath fogging the glass, and I’m grateful there’s still wonder there.
#### [Leyland Kirby – The Arrow of Time](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Arrow%20of%20Time.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Eager to Tear Apart the Stars | History Always Favours the Winners, 2011 | [Bandcamp](https://leylandkirby.bandcamp.com/album/eager-to-tear-apart-the-stars?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Arrow%20of%20Time.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Arrow%20of%20Time.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Unthinkable
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/unthinkable/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:27.000Z
I remember the hope I felt this time last year, my naive faith that a foolish and frightening decade was drawing to a close and something better must be on the way. I try to imagine my reaction if someone showed me some scenes from the year to come: Wildfires tinting the skies a *Blade Runner* shade of red. Thousands of cars queued outside a stadium for virus testing. Shuttered restaurants, silent streets, and an empty Times Square. Americans tear-gassed and sometimes killed by their public servants. Candidates delivering speeches before parking lots of honking cars. A president who discussed invoking martial law to overturn an election. And on Christmas morning, a man played Petula Clarke’s “Downtown” on a loudspeaker and detonated a bomb. All of this seems poorly scripted, as if the tropes from every dystopian movie had escaped the screen to mock our definition of entertainment. Yet even these devastatingly real events are swiftly packaged and glossed into stories, becoming grist for punditry while the death counts are tallied across our devices. From gunfire to overdoses and now pandemic casualties, America is particularly adept at making needless suffering seem like the natural course of things.
Nineteen years ago, on the morning of September 11, C. shook me awake and told me to look at the television. After glancing at the live footage of the first tower, I wriggled deeper into the bed. “I don’t want to watch a movie,” I said, thinking it was one of those 1980s thrillers where the hero would leap from the burning building in the nick of time. I could not shake this idea, not even when we climbed to the rooftop to watch the towers that were falling several blocks away. This is the closest reference point I have for the sensation of living through this year.
I’m fumbling here. But as this journal draws to a close, I want to record this feedback loop, one that is *felt* rather than understood: fiction bleeding into reality and back again without the time required to comprehend, let alone mourn. There’s also the question of how to mentally brace for the unthinkable—and whether this requires the cynicism I’ve been hoping to shed.
### Version
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/version/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:27.000Z
Without new faces or scenes to cement memories, a rubbery sense of time has defined most of 2020\. These final days of the year especially tend to drift and blur, as if they belong to some shadow calendar. The holiday buzz begins to fade and my thoughts nervously peek around the corner, wondering what changes and plans I should make.
I used to be a big believer in resolutions, in the mirage of a sparkling new James, now under new management. But my black-and-white thinking has mellowed with time (aside from my weird commitment to posting something each night this year). It might be a function of age, this acceptance that I’ll likely drag my flaws into the grave, and the best I can do in the meantime is forge a détente with my ornery and self-sabotaging traits. There will be no flash of light or burning bush.
Or maybe I’ve become infected by the chipper language of our culture. People keep talking about “becoming a better version” of themselves, a phrase that drives me nuts, how it reduces us to software. But perhaps it’s natural to equate our minds with the technology of our time: unplugging, recharging, feeling overloaded, etc. “Blowing off steam” originated with the steam engine, and being caught between a rock and a hard place might be prehistoric.
I’ll still attempt a few resolutions, although now I have more faith in fiddling and tuning rather than the myth of the tabula rasa or thinking of myself as something that can be easily upgraded. It’s always a moving target, this process of establishing some measure of discipline and structure without creating pointless or even painful little boxes.
---
#### [Rhythm & Sound – King Version](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/King%20Version.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### The Versions | Burial Mix, 2003 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/the-versions-3d541900-c47b-4578-a8ca-04d034cd9e15?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/King%20Version.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/King%20Version.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### December 27, 2020
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/fallout/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:28.000Z
Two years ago tonight in New York City, a strange blue light filled the sky. We stood at our windows, spellbound by an eerie neon glow that looked like something from science fiction. It was the fallout from an explosion at a power plant in Queens. But for three or four minutes, something otherworldly seemed possible. (And now I know that when the rapture comes or aliens descend, I’ll pace the room for a few minutes, finish my coffee, and check the internet.)
I often think about the hum in my nerves that night, the flush of excitement when it looked like something unthinkable was happening, that the world might change completely. Be careful of what you wish for. Now I’m in Ohio, sheltering-in-place aside from trips to the grocery store. Tonight at the supermarket, I watched two shoppers get into an argument in front of the deli meat because one of them was wearing her mask below her nose.
### 2020 Rotation
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/2020-rotation/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:28.000Z
Each year I debate whether I should make an inventory of my favorite albums because it’s such an arbitrary exercise. Then I revisit my lists from the past, and I appreciate how this process generates a unique portrait, a sense memory of a lost season. But Christ, who wants to remember this year, let alone provide the soundtrack? And yet music felt more necessary than ever, carrying me through long nights of uncertainty and heavy bouts of cabin fever, and I’m grateful for these new sounds that provided some much-needed perspective and restored my faith in the human enterprise.
### Alessandro Cortini – Ritmo / Memorie
###### [Bandcamp](https://cortini.bandcamp.com/album/ritmo-i?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Introspective late-night synthetics so polished they seem to gleam in the dark. These songs start off murky, all bass and shadow, but they slowly gather steam, conjuring the optimistic tones of early 1990s electronics, back when there was still a little faith left in better living through technology. Driving down the highway late at night with these tracks on my dashboard, sometimes the synthesizers squiggle or veer a certain way, and I can’t help but let out a little cheer.
[Ritmo I by Alessandro Cortini](https://cortini.bandcamp.com/album/ritmo-i?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Autechre – Sign
###### Warp | [Bandcamp](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/sign?ref=jamesreeves.co)
In this era of algorithmic playlists designed to satisfy our immediate moods, *Signs* is an increasingly rare phenomenon: music that teaches us to meet it on its terms. I’m not sure if I *like* this album, yet I find myself returning to it, almost compulsively. After a decade of increasingly brittle and cloistered records, Autechre has rebooted their software and returned to more poignant terrain. And like many things this year, the emotions here are alien and new. The result is stately and occasionally melancholy, with the residue of melodies flickering within patterns that never stabilize, and it sounds very much like a ghost in a machine.
[SIGN by Autechre](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/sign?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Bohren & Der Club of Gore – Patchouli Blue
###### Play It Again Sam | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/patchouli-blue?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A soundtrack for these long isolated nights. This is distilled rainy noir with faint neon on the horizon, a companion for a lone car drifting down the street. Bohren & Der Club of Gore’s slow-motion gloom is the music I play most often, usually around midnight. Their *Midnight Radio* album from 1995 is a masterpiece, and this new installment proved to be a logical score for these elastic nights.
### Cindy Lee – What’s Tonight to Eternity
###### [W.25TH / Superior Viaduct](https://www.superiorviaduct.com/collections/w25th/products/cindy-lee-whats-tonight-to-eternity-lp?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://cindylee.bandcamp.com/album/whats-tonight-to-eternity?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A demented version of the Ronettes in the best possible way, like an otherworldly transmission of those mid-century bands named after jewels, their voices reverberated and haunted.
[What’s Tonight To Eternity by Cindy Lee](https://cindylee.bandcamp.com/album/whats-tonight-to-eternity?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Jonnine – Blue Hills
###### Boomkat Editions | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/blue-hills-0ab599f7-841e-4060-ad89-30af0d8d6386?ref=jamesreeves.co)
These songs capture a sensation that lives a few clicks beyond words, something listless and unsettled. Maybe it’s the sense of suspension that defines this season of distancing and isolating, or a childhood memory of killing time in a room while a voice bleeds through the walls. Drowsy guitars and drums blend with the rustling weather of someone pacing and waiting, perhaps sighing for time lost.
[Blue Hills by Jonnine](https://jonnine.bandcamp.com/album/blue-hills?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### KMRU – Peel
###### [Editions Mego](http://editionsmego.com/release/EMEGO-289?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://kmru.bandcamp.com/album/peel?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Elegant longform ambience that patiently begins at the periphery. Atmospheric hiss and cavernous tones hover at the edge of attention before they slowly, almost imperceptibly bloom into hypnotic loops. This is music that sounds like a shift in the light.
[Peel by KMRU](https://kmru.bandcamp.com/album/peel?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Olan Monk – Love/Dead
###### [C.A.N.V.A.S.](https://www.c-a-n-v-a-s.com/canvas006%5Flovedead.html?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://canvas-index.bandcamp.com/album/love-dead?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Midnight vapor and pop songs for dead cyborgs. Lurching across a bottomless low end, *Love/Dead* delivers a nervy Joy Division or Suicide aesthetic that’s been ground into matte black sludge. It’s an almost poignant flavor of future dread.
[Love/Dead by Olan Monk](https://canvas-index.bandcamp.com/album/love-dead?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Oliver Blank – Fin
###### [Bandcamp](https://oliverblank.bandcamp.com/album/fin?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Orchestral drift that finds the territory between sorrow and hope. The centerpiece of this record is a magnificently restrained twenty-three-minute meditation that gives every element space to breathe, including the listener.
[Fin by Oliver Blank](https://oliverblank.bandcamp.com/album/fin?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Ralph Kinsella – Lessening
###### [8D Industries](https://8dindustri.es/ralph-kinsella-lessening/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://ralphkinsella.bandcamp.com/album/lessening-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
This album entered my life as reliable background music while I puttered around the room. Then it quietly moved to the foreground and became one of my favorite records this year. Gathering the soft-focus residue of an old shoegaze song, these ever-evolving compositions are equally comfortable with moments of abrupt silence as with gestures that soar.
[Lessening by Ralph Kinsella](https://ralphkinsella.bandcamp.com/album/lessening-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Tomas Jirku – Touching the Sublime
###### [Silent Season](http://silentseason.com/ssv18/?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://silentseason.bandcamp.com/album/touching-the-sublime?ref=jamesreeves.co)
A deeply strange and panoramic record that merges the frigid elements of dub techno with moments of unexpected warmth: the half-heat of voices at the margins, a hushed guitar, a sudden flash of brass. These songs roll in like a fog, and the word “sublime” is well-earned in the way this album transfixes you, holding you in its gaze. A perfect soundtrack for reading about failed arctic expeditions and contemplating the allure of such forbidding terrain.
[Touching The Sublime by Tomas Jirku](https://shop.silentseason.com/album/touching-the-sublime?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### William Basinski – Lamentations
###### [Temporary Residence](https://www.temporaryresidence.com/products/trr343?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://williambasinski.bandcamp.com/album/lamentations?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Dignified heartache that bleeds through the grain of decaying tape loops. “Our world is in a bad feedback loop right now,” Basinski [said](http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2013/05/memories-are-loops-a-conversation-with-william-basinski/?ref=jamesreeves.co) a few years ago. “We’re at a point right now where we need to get rid of some bad feedback loops and it’s happening. It’s not gonna be pretty, but eventually things will resolve.” Listening to this album, it’s almost possible to imagine a moment when the loop finally and truly breaks.
[Lamentations by William Basinski](https://williambasinski.bandcamp.com/album/lamentations?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Vatican Shadow – Persian Pillars of the Gasoline Era
###### [20 Buck Spin](https://www.20buckspin.com/products/vatican-shadow-persian-pillars-of-the-gasoline-era-lp?%5Fpos=3&%5Fsid=7e2f44a22&%5Fss=r&ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://20buckspin.bandcamp.com/album/persian-pillars-of-the-gasoline-era?ref=jamesreeves.co)
Vatican Shadow appears on my list of favorite albums every year. So be it. These are dark and conspiratorial times fueled by suspicious energies, and this project has nailed the gestalt.
[Persian Pillars Of The Gasoline Era by Vatican Shadow](https://listen.20buckspin.com/album/persian-pillars-of-the-gasoline-era?ref=jamesreeves.co)
#### See also:
- [2023 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2023-rotation/)
- [2022 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2022-rotation/)
- [2021 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2021-rotation/)
- [2019 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2019-rotation/)
- [2018 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2018-rotation/)
### Shambles
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/shambles/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:28.000Z
C. and I spent the evening assembling a jigsaw puzzle of Hieronymus Bosch’s *[The Garden of Earthly Delights](https://archief.ntr.nl/tuinderlusten/en.html?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, one of the most vexing images humanity has produced. The left panel depicts an idyllic scene where God introduces Adam to Eve and perhaps describes the joy of virtuous living. In the center panel, however, humanity is left to its own devices. The result is a literal clusterfuck as people frolic, feast, and copulate with one another—and with enormous strawberries. (Theories abound as to the fruit’s symbolism, ranging from their seeds to their sweetness; perhaps they are the devil’s candy.) The last panel introduces us to hell, and there is no devil here, only nightmares made from the material of our world. A city smolders on a hill while a bird-man feeds upon bodies, expelling them into a void. A pair of ears clutches a knife. A pig dressed as a nun encourages a man to sign a legal document. And so on.
Slowly piecing this image together left me with no better understanding of Bosch’s vision; it’s too overwhelming. Some have argued it’s a subversive commentary on the doctrine of original sin, that we might find delight in this world if we could live without shame. But Bosch was a devout Christian, so it’s more likely a warning about the perils of forsaking religion in favor of a frivolous life. Desire as heaven, desire as hell. But I marvel that arguing for a disciplined life of the spirit can be this delirious and fun.
The idea of developing a new visual grammar to speak to a fallen world brings to mind the painter [Barnett Newman](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/denial/?ref=jamesreeves.co)‘s rationale for minimalism and abstraction. “We felt the moral crisis of a world in shambles,” he said, “a world destroyed by a great depression and a fierce World War, and it was impossible at that time to paint the kind of paintings that we were doing—flowers, reclining nudes, and people playing the cello.”
Thinking about these things while doing a jigsaw puzzle feels connected: the inherent pleasure in putting together something that’s been broken, the clarity and sense of presence that comes with moving a piece from point A to B, and the fleeting sense of control it brings.
#### Kali Malone – Dungeon Canon
###### Studies for Organ | Rehearsal Demo, 2020 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/studies-for-organ?ref=jamesreeves.co) | [Bandcamp](https://kalimalone.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dungeon%20Canon.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dungeon%20Canon.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Moment
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/moment/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:28.000Z
I woke before dawn on Christmas like a little kid, pop-eyed with excitement because C. and I were exchanging presents, something we haven’t done in years. But first, I spent an hour in silence watching the fresh snow whip below the streetlights. I sat before the glow of our artificial tree with its fake pine perfume and savored this peculiar ritual of wrapping up packages of socks and tea. It was a moment of grace and cheer in a year that has felt like living in somebody’s bad dream, and I know I’m damned lucky to have it. Remember this, I thought, because it won’t always be this way. And it’s an odd sensation to get caught between wanting to be entirely present for a rare moment while also trying to commit every detail to memory. I heard C. padding down the hallway. “I can hear you waiting,” she said.
---
#### [Arvo Pärt – Memento](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Memento.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Ode VII from *Kanon Pokajanen*, 1994 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanon%5FPokajanen?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Memento.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Memento.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Eve
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/eve/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:28.000Z
My first concept of god came from *It’s a Wonderful Life*. I was four or maybe five years old, and I remember sitting on an orange-rust shag carpet with my parents’ knees behind me, all of us watching the pulsing globs of light that functioned as angels. Even today, it’s an unnerving sequence for me, far too existential for a Capra film. But I’m grateful that my first image of the supernatural was so abstract, rather than someone’s punishing god. Perhaps it’s fitting that it came from television.
This year’s holiday soundtrack is a [collection of hymns](https://moochinaboutltd.bandcamp.com/album/music-from-the-welsh-mines-songs-of-peace-goodwill-remastered?ref=jamesreeves.co) and carols from the Welsh mines recorded in the village of Rhosllannerchrugog in 1959\. These slightly haunted voices sound like my smudgy childhood memories of old black-and-white specials.
It’s snowing tonight.
#### [Rhos Male Voice Choir – Holy Night](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Holy%20Night.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Music from the Welsh Mines & Songs of Goodwill | 1957 | [Bandcamp](https://moochinaboutltd.bandcamp.com/album/music-from-the-welsh-mines-songs-of-peace-goodwill-remastered?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Holy%20Night.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Holy%20Night.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Banquet
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/banquet/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:29.000Z
My memories tend to pile up around the holidays, fogging my thoughts with the textures of Christmas seasons from the past. Today I’m in a kitchen somewhere in Ohio, teaching myself to make crepes while I think about last year in Finland, where I remembered thinking about a sunny Christmas in New Orleans, where I was thinking about a strange holiday in Vegas when I watched a cowboy behind the sliding doors of the Sahara, eating an ice cream cone like he wanted to kill somebody.
That cowboy still shows up in my dreams. Salvador Dali described his paintings as “hand-painted dream photographs,” and I often think about that phrase. Last night I dreamt I was walking down a corridor of rooms with the names of the people I’ve lost on the doors. A woman stood before a door with my father’s name, her hand on the handle. “The objects inside this room are this person’s true identity,” she said. “Do you really want to open the door?”
My attention span feels like gripping a snake these days, wriggling and squirming in all directions. Tonight it wanders through the living rooms and dim sum parlors of past holidays, mostly happy scenes that are slightly shaded by the melancholy of time and people lost, the regret that I didn’t savor the moment when I was there. I remember a drowsy version of ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ playing to an empty banquet hall at midnight, which seems to capture the holiday gestalt in this year of isolation. And I’m going to do my best to remember every detail.
#### [Horrid Red – Marble Staircase I & II](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Marble%20Staircase.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Banquet in Blue | Burundi Cloud, 2012 | [Bandcamp](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Marble%20Staircase.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Marble%20Staircase.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Marble%20Staircase.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Stimulus
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/stimulus/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:29.000Z
A billionaire was on television this morning, and he’s concerned about our social fabric. He told us not to buy Christmas presents this year; he said we should donate to our public services instead. This was followed by a senator who thinks we ought to invest our $600 pandemic checks in the stock market after we pay off our debts. America’s billionaires vacuumed up another trillion dollars since the pandemic began. “Their wealth growth is so great,” says Frank Clemente, the executive director of [Americans for Tax Fairness](https://americansfortaxfairness.org/issue/net-worth-u-s-billionaires-soared-1-trillion-total-4-trillion-since-pandemic-began/?ref=jamesreeves.co), “that they alone could provide a $3,000 stimulus payment to every man, woman, and child in the country, and still be richer than they were nine months ago.” How does this get unwound? The image of a billionaire on television worrying about civil unrest feels significant.
I remember making terrible small talk at an airport with a cheerful man from Houston or San Diego who invented the McGriddle. “We watched our customers roll up their pancakes and stuff them with syrup and bacon,” he said. “So we just gave them what they wanted.”
#### [Flexitone – Pulse of Revolution](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Pulse%20of%20Revolution.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Rotoreliefs | Planet E, 1995 | [More](https://planetecommunications.bandcamp.com/album/twenty-f-ing-years-of-planet-e?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Pulse%20of%20Revolution.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Pulse%20of%20Revolution.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Hibernal
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/hibernal/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:29.000Z
Heavy rain beats against the windows. It’s the longest night of the year, one of my favorite moments. I love these long nights when the world contracts to a few pools of light and time gets slippery. Someday I’d like to spend a winter far up north where the night stretches into months.
A year ago, C. and I arrived at a ferry house on an island in the Baltic Sea where the sun barely rose above the horizon before setting at three o’clock in the afternoon, a suspended twilight. We felt furtive, almost apocalyptic as we pilfered the unoccupied flats for salt, blankets, and power adapters. Although we couldn’t know it at the time, that remote winter became a kind of preparation for this long year of isolation. Now we’re holed up in the Midwest, trying not to think too hard about the headlines that say the virus is becoming more contagious.
But the sky continues to go about its business, creating situations that inspired our ancestors to invent gods, feast, recite poetry, sit in silence, and take hot baths. Thirteen hours and forty minutes of darkness in Ohio tonight before we begin inching back towards the light, and the winter stillness feels almost holy.
---
#### [Echospace – Sunset](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sunset.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### The Coldest Season | Modern Love, 2007 | [More](https://boomkat.com/products/the-coldest-season-66e8661d-976a-46e2-b5df-187b8d877bd0?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sunset.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sunset.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Postmortem
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/postmortem/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:29.000Z
I often think about an article I read late one night, a study that suggested we might be aware of our own deaths. That consciousness may linger after the last beat of the heart, our minds still working even when blood is no longer washing the brain. “The evidence thus far suggests that in the first few minutes after death, consciousness is not annihilated,” says [Dr. Sam Parnia](https://www.wired.com/2013/04/consciousness-after-death/?ref=jamesreeves.co), who studies [this phenomenon](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11801343/?ref=jamesreeves.co). “Whether it fades away afterwards, we do not know, but right after death, consciousness is not lost.”
This unsettling idea decimates the best argument for making peace with our mortality: the Epicurean assurance that we needn’t fear death because we will not be around to witness it. Science might tell us otherwise. According to Parnia’s research, a significant number of patients who were declared dead reported hearing things they could not have known unless they were conscious in the minutes before they were revived. They heard the last efforts of doctors and nurses, the wailing of lovers and children.
If there’s any truth to this study, it seems like it should be the most discussed story of the decade, perhaps the century. How would knowing that consciousness lingers while the body goes cold change the way we reckon with death—or bear witness? How would it affect the way we behave in a hospital room? We would need to hide our terror and grief long past the terrible moment we once thought was singular and fixed. New ceremonies would develop. Soundtracks and incantations. An extended score for the dying. I can’t help but think of the weather in the room after my parents died, the animal noises I made after the nurse turned off the machines and closed the door.
And how would we prepare for our own death, knowing it would be elastic and uncertain, that those last minutes could be terrifying or transcendent? It would require a strange kind of training, a preparation like no other. The fact of death would no longer be as easy to bury under the clutter of appointments and headlines, no longer a thought that could be tucked away like an overdue bill beneath a pile of catalogs and magazines.
C. and I once sat in an old monastery where a February wind rattled the stained glass while a physicist and monk named [B. Alan Wallace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.%5FAlan%5FWallace?ref=jamesreeves.co) described his meditation practice as a preparation for dying. “Am I a short story that can come to an end at any moment?” he asked with a smile. “If so, I can live with that. But is it true?” Although our bodies will rot and our minds will disappear, he said, some level of awareness might persist. If we do not identify with our body or thoughts, but only pure awareness: what then? “Train yourself to keep the light on,” he said.
That night we silently returned to our spartan room and laid down on our cots, listening to the sleet ricochet against the window. I fell asleep thinking of a candle that remains lit long after the lights of the mind slowly flick off one by one like the windows of a skyscraper as midnight comes and goes.
#### Tomas Jirku – Idiis Mortii
###### Touching the Sublime | Silent Season, 2020 | [Bandcamp](https://silentseason.bandcamp.com/album/touching-the-sublime?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Idiis%20Mortii.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Idiis%20Mortii.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Programming
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/programming/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:30.000Z
Lately I’ve been wondering what my brains would be like if I grew up without a television. Would my reference points for the world be more dignified and sensible? What would replace my head’s soupy mess of laugh tracks, jingles, and catchphrases? For no reason I can identify, this afternoon I remembered an upsetting episode of *Silver Spoons* in which Ricky killed a deer. I absorbed so many forms of 1980s sitcom trauma: *Punky Brewster’*s friend trapped in a refrigerator, the Maytag man as a sexual predator on *Diff’rent Strokes*, and I swear there was a dead girl in a rocking chair on a special episode of *Webster*. And the entirety of *Small Wonder* and *Mama’s Family*, which have the sticky memory-feel of a sickbed or fever dream. I don’t remember consciously watching any of these shows; they were just *on*.
In [an interview](https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6329/the-art-of-comics-no-2-chris-ware?ref=jamesreeves.co) with *The Paris Review*, Chris Ware detailed the aura of network programming. “I was sensitive to the broadcast vibe of ABC versus CBS versus NBC versus PBS and to how their particular programs made me feel, even how the particular resolution of each channel was different,” he said. “ABC always felt sharp and acidic, for some reason, and NBC softer, and I’d associate or think of real moments in my life as being more ABC or NBC, as if they were adjectives.” He goes on: “I realized that if I was ever going to do anything meaningful, I had to completely detox from TV, so I quit watching it altogether, and I also very self-consciously tried to eliminate any influence it had on my drawing.”
During this year of indoor living, I’ve been watching a stunning amount of television while working, doing jigsaw puzzles, thinking about writing, and feeling crummy for not writing. So now I have a resolution for the new year.
---
#### [NRSB-11 – Consumer Programming](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Consumer%20Programming.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Commodified | WéMè Records, 2013 | [More](https://wemerecords.com/shop/nrsb-11heinrich-mullerdj-stingray-%E2%80%8E-commodified-2lp-out-of-stock/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Consumer%20Programming.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Consumer%20Programming.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Fracture
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/fracture/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:30.000Z
We’ve entered a season of revised death projections and hospital bed trackers. Meanwhile, our elected officials debate whether to give Americans six hundred dollars or shut down the government instead. It’s like they want us to believe they’re from a different planet.
Today I watched videos of government officials getting shots, wearing stoic smiles as they tried not to flinch when the needle entered their arms. It was good television. And for some reason, I watched footage of anti-mask protestors marching through a discount department store somewhere in Arizona. They shouted, “Free your face,” and waved American flags. They were a shambling collection of people in athleisure wear, motorcycle gear, and sensible blouses. The internet brought them together and delivered them here, united by the delight they found in antagonizing the masked shoppers who stood nearby.
There are no microchips in the vaccine. There are no tracking devices of any kind. Authorities are doing their best to make this clear. Several years ago, I listened to a midnight preacher sermonize across my dashboard, detailing the arrival of the antichrist. “But I’m working on a special microchip that will block the signals of all demons and devils,” he said. Consigned to the margins of AM radio, his craziness was contextualized. Now this sort of thinking needs to be debunked on the front page of the New York Times.
### Death
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/death/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:30.000Z
So much thinking about death these days, yet I rarely think about my own. Maybe it’s the silence in this room tonight or a certain quality of the light, but thinking about my own ending unexpectedly brought to mind an incident in Rome four years ago.
An elderly man collapsed against the base of a Bernini. There was the slap and shudder of a body hitting the floor, followed by the split-second of shocked silence after a medical event. We gathered around him, not knowing how to help yet needing to bear witness. I did not know the Italian number for 911\. His wife sat on the floor and cradled his head; the authorities arrived quickly. He was breathing and nodding as we drifted away to give them privacy. And I remember thinking that if it’s necessary to leave this world, dying in the arms of someone I love at the foot of a Bernini might be the best possible place.
---
#### [Claro Intelecto – Beautiful Death](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Beautiful%20Death.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Metanarrative | Modern Love, 2008 | [More](https://boomkat.com/products/metanarrative?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Beautiful%20Death.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Beautiful%20Death.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### The Greatest Show on Earth
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-greatest-show-on-earth/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:30.000Z
One of my short stories has been published in *[Vol. 1 Brooklyn](http://vol1brooklyn.com/2020/12/13/sunday-stories-the-greatest-show-on-earth/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*. It’s about an elderly couple in a Walgreen’s parking lot, and they’ve been haunting my dreams for years. It’s called “The Greatest Show on Earth,” and here’s how it begins:
There’s this old couple that gets around. Maybe you’ve seen them. They’ve been touring the country for years, long before America elected a game show host for president. They started off doing decent business at casinos and conventions until their tantrums began causing problems.
[Read More](http://vol1brooklyn.com/2020/12/13/sunday-stories-the-greatest-show-on-earth/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Flurries
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/flurries/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:31.000Z
Light snow today in Ohio, and a nor’easter is moving up the Eastern Seaboard, promising as much as two feet in some areas. I find myself craving snow more intensely as I get older. I cheer like a child whenever flurries fall. Maybe it has to do with the silence it brings, how it tranquilizes the world for a while. Or because a snowstorm is one of the few remaining shared events that cannot be misinterpreted or denied. Perhaps my attraction is more symbolic: the blank slate, everything buried and wiped clean. Maybe I savor this weather because I know it’s becoming more rare as the world overheats. No matter the cause, my hunger for snow grows each year, and I nurture increasingly elaborate fantasies about Greenland’s snowfields and the Siberian Express.
Tonight I’ve started reading *[The Terror](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FTerror%5F%28novel%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, Dan Simmons’s haunted variation on Captain Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated quest across the Arctic where it gets so cold your teeth can explode.
---
#### [Detroit Grand Pubahs – If Snow Was Black](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/If%20Snow%20Was%20Black.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Comin’ From Tha D | Intuit Solar, 1999 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit%5FGrand%5FPubahs?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/If%20Snow%20Was%20Black.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/If%20Snow%20Was%20Black.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Reflection
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/reflection/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:31.000Z
Nowadays we hide our dead in antiseptic rooms but not too long ago, we displayed their bodies in our homes. Sometimes we covered the mirrors, the legacy of an ancient belief that a reflection of the departed might trap their soul in the house, preventing passage into a better world. Those were days when our images were honored, even feared. We believed echoes and reflections were the sounds and sights of our souls. Today we grin in front of mountains and breakfast sandwiches. We traffic in faces. We crave our reflections, which brings to mind one of the [oldest mirror stories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissus%5F%28Caravaggio%29?ref=jamesreeves.co): the tale of a young man who fell in love with his reflection and stared at it until he lost the will to live, eventually plunging a sword into his chest because he would never have the object of his desire.
---
#### [Seefeel – When Face Was Face](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/When%20Face%20Was%20Face.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Succour | Warp, 1995 | [More](https://warp.net/releases/115932-seefeel-succour?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/When%20Face%20Was%20Face.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/When%20Face%20Was%20Face.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Mundane
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/mundane/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:31.000Z
A dull grey Monday here in Ohio, thirty-eight degrees with a sky like a stone. The first vaccinations were administered today as the American death toll crept past 300,000\. In Taiwan, seven people have died from the virus this year.
Images of health workers rolling up their sleeves for injections were intercut with live-feeds of masked officials sitting six feet apart in legislative buildings across the country as they cast their electoral votes for president. This process is a vestigial relic of our creaky democracy, a perfunctory duty that usually occurs without comment. This year, however, some state officials faced “credible threats of violence” from the president’s supporters. They had police escorts and met in secret rooms. Is this a blip, the last gasp of a cult, or is this a harbinger of America’s future, a society where every governmental function, no matter how mundane, is met with denial or a threat?
Thankfully, there were no surprises; nobody caved to the president’s demands. I’m reappreciating the joy of mundane events this year, the delight in everything happening as expected.
---
#### [Tropic of Cancer – The Dull Age](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Dull%20Age.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### The End of All Things | Downwards, 2012 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/the-end-of-all-things?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Dull%20Age.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Dull%20Age.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Vaccine
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/vaccine/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:31.000Z
The vaccine is coming. This weekend was filled with images of pharmaceutical workers in lab coats and helmets packing vials into cold-storage units. We saw footage of UPS and FedEx trucks rolling across the country to deliver the vaccine to health workers. What will the transition to a post-pandemic world look like? Once a substantial chunk of the population is vaccinated, how long before the mouths of strangers no longer look like a threat—or will the anxiety linger like a bad memory?
These hopeful scenes of vaccine delivery commingled with images of protestors who refused to accept the election results and probably never will. They gathered in Washington DC to wave flags with the president dressed up like Rambo, slicked with sweat and carrying a belt-fed weapon. They carried banners that said “stop the steal” with the *t*s shaped like Christian crosses. They sang the national anthem as the president passed over them in a helicopter. Four people were stabbed. A group of racists torched a sign they stole from a Black church.
And for a half-insane moment, I imagined those FedEx and UPS trucks rolling through the night might deliver a cure for this anger, that it too might break like a fever.
---
#### [Aphex Twin – To Cure a Weakling Child](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/To%20Cure%20A%20Weakling%20Child.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Richard D. James | Warp, 1996 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard%5FD.%5FJames%5FAlbum?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/To%20Cure%20A%20Weakling%20Child.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/To%20Cure%20A%20Weakling%20Child.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Narrows
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/narrows/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:31.000Z
I look forward to midnight when the day’s insults and stresses recede into their proper places. I feel more present in the world at midnight, most like myself. My routine has become more aestheticized over the years: a single lamp, a candle, and something gloomy on the radio, usually Bohren & Der Club of Gore. I keep a snapshot of my parents on my desk, impossibly young in the overheated color scheme of the 1970s. I chew nicotine gum and drink a cup of powdered Malaysian instant coffee. I write with pen and paper until, beyond the pool of the light, the rest of the world disappears.
The cult of the morning person has become so hardwired into our culture that I sometimes feel sheepish about my late-night tendencies. I’ve read countless profiles of prolific writers who rise before dawn like monks, not to mention the thought leaders and faith dealers who preach the gospel of the morning routine. But in the light of day, my brain feels as if it’s performing rather than being. Late-night thinking tends to be more honest. I felt a little vindicated when I read that Obama writes between 10pm and 2am. In a [recent interview](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/books/barack-obama-promised-land-reading-writing.html?ref=jamesreeves.co), he said, “I find that the world narrows, and that is good for my imagination. It’s almost as if there is a darkness all around and there’s a metaphorical beam of light down on the desk, onto the page.”
I like this image of late-night solitude as “the narrows.”
#### [Bohren & Der Club of Gore – Midnight Radio 6 ](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Midnight%20Radio%26.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Midnight Radio | Epistrophy, 1995 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight%5FRadio%5F%28Bohren%5F%26%5Fder%5FClub%5Fof%5FGore%5Falbum%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Midnight%20Radio%206.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Midnight%20Radio%206.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Numbers
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/numbers/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:32.000Z
Three thousand Americans are dying each day from the coronavirus, and two hundred thousand more are infected. The numbers numb. Sometimes I worry I’ll forget what they mean, that they’ll blur into an abstract metric like the stock market. Maybe it’s because these tallies are burned into our screens, a dark scoreboard with the logic of a record to be broken.
Looking through the early days of this year’s journal, I’m startled by how I dutifully jotted down the numbers each morning as if this might provide some insight or control. The first hundred infections. The first dozen dead. There was a week in early March that I remember as the Days of the Westchester Lawyer, a time when we knew the profession, daily commute, and family situation of a specific person who was infected. We understood the virus was in the city, yet we still crammed into trains and classrooms. We washed our hands more often but did not wear masks. We waited for instructions that came too late.
This week, the coronavirus is the number one cause of death in America. I am lucky and grateful that my understanding of the pandemic has been largely buffered by screens. But these tallies, statistics, and curves cannot become familiar or abstract; each number represents a life that radiated out to so many others. When I dart through the supermarket, I’m likely passing someone in the frozen food section who lost someone. Perhaps we would be better off if we all treated each other as if this might be the case.
### Worship
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/worship/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:32.000Z
Three years ago on a Saturday night in rural Pennsylvania, I saw a vision of the future that I cannot shake. I visited an elaborate recreation of the Virgin Mary’s appearance in [a French grotto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our%5FLady%5Fof%5FLourdes?ref=jamesreeves.co) in 1858\. A narrow footpath led through a forest to a candlelit statue of the Virgin in a shallow cave. The scene was illuminated by dozens of telephone screens that floated in the gloom like devotional candles.
Hanging back, I watched a strange ritual unfold among the men attending a weekend Catholic retreat. They formed a line in front of the statue, and when the first man knelt to pray, he handed his telephone to the man behind him, who would photograph him praying. After the man finished his prayer, he retrieved his phone and reviewed the image. The next man repeated this process as he knelt before the statue. The photo had become the meaning, the reason for this pilgrimage to kneel before a simulation of the appearance of a ghost.
I took a photo of the statue, too. Our technologies have taught us to document every activity, no matter how personal or sacred; our screens are becoming the way we see the world and ourselves, and it looks like they’re even more potent than religion.
### December 9, 2020
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/stare/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:32.000Z
Each time I visit the museum, I seek out this thousand-year-old ceramic statue. Known as an *[arhat](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/44799?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, or protector of Buddhism, he sits on a high pedestal and looks down with a stare as bottomless as time. Never have I felt so judged. Or wanting. His gaze leaves me questioning my life choices and entire personality. And I keep returning to him for this sensation.
#### [Rafael Anton Irisarri – A Thousand-Yard Stare](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/A%20Thousand-Yard%20Stare.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Daydreaming |Miasmah, 2007 | [Bandcamp](https://irisarri.bandcamp.com/album/daydreaming?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/A%20Thousand-Yard%20Stare.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/A%20Thousand-Yard%20Stare.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Alright
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/alright/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:32.000Z
Electric signs on the highway flashed messages telling us to stay home and stop the spread. Small cars zipped past me tonight as I drove to the megamarket, their drivers’ faces illuminated by phones and dashboard screens. Strange how we’re so hell-bent on speed rather than slowing down, perhaps a misguided defense against decay. I passed a church sign that said, “Jesus paid the price, you keep the change.”
Do I believe in Jesus as a man, myth, or concept? I’m not sure. (But I hear a jangly echo of the Byrds singing that Jesus is just alright, oh yeah.) I recently learned the origin of Jesus’s chest wound: a final stab from [a lance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy%5FLance?ref=jamesreeves.co) to ensure he was dead. The violence of Christianity still startles me, although it probably shouldn’t. Is suffering always a prerequisite for faith? I also learned the word “gospel” comes from “god spell,” an Old English phrase for “good news.”
Idling at a light, I glanced in the mirror and did not recognize myself. I’m still becoming familiar with the mirror-shock that signifies middle age. I have so much more grey hair this year.
#### [The Byrds – Jesus Is Just Alright](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Jesus%20Is%20Just%20Alright.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### The Ballad of Easy Rider | Columbia, 1969 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballad%5Fof%5FEasy%5FRider%5F%28album%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Jesus%20Is%20Just%20Alright.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Jesus%20Is%20Just%20Alright.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Absence
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/absence/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:33.000Z
Even when I put my telephone in a drawer, I am acutely and sometimes painfully aware of its absence. I catch myself patting down my pockets while feeling phantom vibrations, seeking synthetic communion. A liquid crystal shadow tints my thoughts; I never feel truly alone.
There’s a moment in *[Neuromancer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer?ref=jamesreeves.co)* when the hero descends into a labyrinthine brothel in search of his partner. He races through corridors of steel doors that lead to sound-proof rooms for every sensual pleasure imaginable. When he finally finds his partner behind door #43, he is surprised to discover that she is alone. Being alone, she tells him, has become “the most expensive special service of all.”
---
#### [Basic Channel – Radiance II](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Radiance%20II.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Radiance | Basic Channel, 1994 | [More](https://hardwax.com/00038/basic-channel/radiance/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Radiance%20II.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Radiance%20II.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### My Father Nodded His Head to Funkadelic on Highway 61
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/release/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:33.000Z
Five years ago this week, my father was released from the hospital with a new lung, and we drove home from Wisconsin to New Orleans. We aimed for the Mississippi River, speeding past the world’s largest truck stop on Interstate 80 and flashing billboards that advertised the best deals in the Quad Cities. My father told me that he laid sandbags in Dubuque when the Mississippi flooded back in ’65, which was something I never knew. I cannot picture my father in Iowa in the sixties.
I often return to that night in the car. Had I know it would be our last drive together, I would have asked him more questions. But I’m so grateful for one memory from that drive: my father quietly nodding his head to Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain” while we rode down Highway 61 just before midnight.
They say George Clinton told guitarist Eddie Hazel to play the first half of the song as if he found out his mother had just died, then play the rest as if he discovered she was still alive. And I’m learning to carry my dead with me, to ask them questions while pacing the kitchen or driving to the supermarket as we wait out this season somewhere in the Midwest.
#### [Funkadelic – Maggot Brain](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Maggot%20Brain.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### *Maggot Brain* | Westbound, 1971 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggot%5FBrain%5F%28song%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Maggot%20Brain.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Maggot%20Brain.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Metal
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/monoliths/
Last updated: 2026-07-03T23:52:29.000Z
Monoliths have been appearing and disappearing in Utah, Romania, California, and the United Kingdom. But there is no mystery or wonder; nearly every event these days feels like a stunt aimed at our screens. If aliens landed, I’d probably mistake them for a guerrilla marketing campaign.
More mysterious are the young men who dismantled one of these metal obelisks and replaced it with a wooden cross while chanting “Christ is king!” and “America first!” According to [various reports](https://www.deseret.com/u-s-world/2020/12/4/22153819/california-monolith-disappearance-utah-cross?ref=jamesreeves.co), they wore night-vision goggles, camouflage outfits, and chugged energy drinks while they broadcasted conspiracies and slurs. These are the new religions and sects the future will bring: internet-rattled zealots with caffeine nerves who confuse politics with faith and are looking for any excuse to outfit themselves in militarized tech.
### Michelangelo's Pietà
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/pieta/
Last updated: 2026-06-02T02:27:58.000Z
I’m reading P.D. James’s [*Children of Men*](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/movies/28men.html?ref=jamesreeves.co), and the novel is an entirely different creature from the film, particularly in how it grapples with faith. In a childless world where humanity quietly fades away, the protagonist tours Europe’s museums. James’s description of the *Pietà* captured my own glimpse of it three years ago:
> “His keenest memory was of Rome, standing before the Michelangelo *Pietà* in St. Peter’s, of the rows of spluttering candles, the kneeling women, rich and poor, young and old, fixing their eyes on the Virgin’s face with an intensity of longing almost too painful to witness. He remembered their outstretched arms, their palms pressed against the glass protective shield, the low continual mutter of their prayers as if this ceaseless anguished moan came from a single throat and carried to that unregarding marble the hopeless longing of all the world.”
*Almost too painful to witness*. This phrase hammers the scene home, but where is the pain located? Is it a knee-jerk empathy response to another 's suffering? Or does it stem from jealousy, a craving for my own focal point of devotion and a world made sensible through myth? The image of the *Pietà* occupies such a familiar place in cultural memory that I often forget it translates to “the pity.”
### Eat
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/eat/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:33.000Z
Nearly three thousand deaths from the virus yesterday while we wait for a vaccine and a new president to appear. Questions have emerged about whether the government can prohibit religious gatherings in the interest of public health. Are our spiritual needs as essential as groceries? Where are the lines drawn between a funeral, a restaurant, and a protest?
Walking through the parking lot of a strip mall, I caught a glimpse of people eating inside an Olive Garden or maybe a Red Lobster. I gaped like a hermit suddenly confronted by society, floored by the sight of middle-aged couples, toddlers, and grandparents laughing and chewing and gabbing at waiters. All those mouths looked violent. The infection rate has crossed 15% here in Ohio. Maybe it’s like smoking: the damage is hidden, so far so good, and it’s easy to pretend we’re taking a personal risk while overlooking the effect on others.
Last year, C. and I drove across Nevada. We were starving as we sped through the dark, but we held out for a well-reviewed buffet on the edge of Vegas. We later learned a man shot himself in the head on Easter Sunday as a gesture of revenge after losing his lifetime pass to eat there for free. He had won it in a contest. This feels like a very American story.
#### [HTRK – Eat Yr Heart](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Eat%20Yr%20Heart.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Work, Work, Work | Ghostly International, 2011 | [Bandcamp](https://htrk.bandcamp.com/album/work-work-work?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Eat%20Yr%20Heart.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Eat%20Yr%20Heart.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Language
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/language/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:34.000Z
Shortly before he died, I took my father to the museum. I watched him drag his oxygen tank through curtains of plastic string that dangled from the ceiling of an empty room. We diligently consulted the explanation on the wall, which described how these “multi-sensory penetrables rendered our passage through space fully palpable.” I will never forget the look on my father’s face when he said, “I guess this stuff is over my head.” How tragic to enter a museum hoping to feel dignified and ennobled, only to walk away feeling like a fool.
---
#### [Midwife – Language](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Language.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Forever | Antiquated Future, 2020 | [Bandcamp](https://midwifemusic.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Language.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Language.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Writing Through a Uniquely Terrible Year
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/snow/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:34.000Z
The first day of the last month of this nightly journal, and I’m thinking about the value of this exercise. Back in January, I’d planned to write each night about aesthetics, loss, and faith for one year and see where it took me. Instead, this journal has become a garbled catalog of memories, ruminations, and each day’s insults. Maybe it’s a result of writing through a uniquely terrible year, but I have a hunch this would have happened anyway.
I’d hoped this ritual might help me reclaim my attention span and reckon with my anxieties about writing. It’s done some of this. After 336 nights, I’ve cut a new groove of writing for an hour at midnight. I’ve also come to appreciate pen and paper, the aesthetics of candlelight, and I’ve rediscovered many old tracks in my music collection. So it’s been fruitful for me, if not the reader.
There’s snow on the ground tonight, just enough to cover the grass, and I’m trying to savor it while it’s here. Feels like I haven’t seen proper snow in years. Strange that this was my biggest concern in January during those weeks in Finland when everyone was complaining about another [black winter](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/climate/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and phrases like “social distancing” were unknown.
Lately I’ve been listening to electronic music from twenty-five years ago, focusing on a specific neon-synth that sounds a little chintzy but gleams in a particular way. Autechre, Polygon Window, B12, etc. I struggle to separate my nostalgia from whether these songs are objectively fantastic. Probably a little of both. Perhaps there’s something to be said for parameters, the same few synthesizers being pushed beyond their limits in very different ways.
---
#### [Autechre – Yulquen](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Yulquen.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Amber | Warp, 1994 | [Bandcamp](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/amber?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Yulquen.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Yulquen.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### When a Pounding Headache Fades
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/bear/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:34.000Z
Light snowfall here in Ohio, and the weather report was mixed with grim coronavirus forecasts. I want to believe things are moving in a better direction, that these days of anxiety and pain might produce a better world.
Tonight I realized I hadn’t thought about the president in days, and the effect is like the relief when a pounding headache fades. I’m not sure if this is due to a healthier media diet on my part or if he’s temporarily disappeared to sulk in some gold-plated room, only to return in worse form. Pointing this out, however, raises [the white bear problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironic%5Fprocess%5Ftheory?ref=jamesreeves.co).
### Leave Your Children in the Woods
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/leave/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:34.000Z
The first days of the holiday season often remind me that I don’t have the type of family that appears in commercials and television specials. No parents, siblings, or children. Strange how our culture is so committed to a narrow definition of family that leaves most people feeling awful.
Jesus instructed his followers to leave their wives and children, to forsake their families and follow him—which brings to mind [André Breton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9%5FBreton?ref=jamesreeves.co)‘s exhortations in 1924 to leave everything in favor of Surrealism’s dreamlife: “Leave your wife. Leave your mistress. Leave your hopes and fears. Leave your children in the woods. Leave the substance for the shadow. Leave your easy life, leave what you are given for the future. Set off on the roads.”
#### [Kim Sun – The Man Who Must Leave](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Man%20Who%20Must%20Leave.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Sung Eum Limited, 1969 | [More](https://lightintheattic.net/releases/616-beautiful-rivers-and-mountains-the-psychedelic-rock-sound-of-south-korea-s-shin-joong-hyun-1958-74?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Man%20Who%20Must%20Leave.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Man%20Who%20Must%20Leave.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Fully Loaded with Faux Pinecones
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/tree/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:34.000Z
C. and I bought an artificial Christmas tree today, another unexpected development in 2020\. We haven’t celebrated the holiday in years. This wasn’t a conscious decision, more of a gradual drift as the hassle of storing boxes of ornaments and trying to guess what to buy one another faded into a preference for end-of-year travel or logging time in dim sum parlors and movie theaters. But these options are no longer available this year, and we need something to anticipate, so we bought a fake frosted spruce from the superstore, twenty-five percent off and fully loaded with faux pinecones and prewired lights. We even bought some Christmas tree perfume, a remarkably specific product that makes it smell like a real tree.
I admire the artifice of our Christmas tree, from its polyvinyl chloride leaves to its pine-scented cologne. It makes me feel very modern, simulating an ancient ritual with murky origins that can be traced to the Roman mid-winter festival of [Saturnalia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia?ref=jamesreeves.co) or perhaps the Viking worship of trees. Bring outdoor scenery indoors and push it to the brink of flames.
Domestic rituals of all kinds will be critical during this long winter.
#### [Apex Twin – Tree](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Tree.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Selected Ambient Works II | Warp, 1994 | [Bandcamp](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/aphex-twin-selected-ambient-works-volume-ii/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Tree.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Tree.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Access
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/access/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:35.000Z
Tonight an old friend in New Orleans reminded me that even if I’m wrestling with the idea of faith, I’m in conversation with something bigger than myself. Perhaps doubt can become a form of faith; certainty cannot.
Sometimes I blame modern-day aesthetics for my difficulties. The optics seem wrong for devotion. The blue glow, the squinched face. The restless clicking and scrolling rather than staring and contemplating. But to argue against technology is not only boring, it lands on the wrong side of history—as if claiming that *less* access to information or reinstalling hurdles of time and space might be a better thing.
---
#### [Emeralds – Access Granted](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Access%20Granted.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Does It Look Like I’m Here? | Editions Mego, 2010 | [Bandcamp](https://emeralds.bandcamp.com/album/does-it-look-like-im-here?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Access%20Granted.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Access%20Granted.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Gratitude
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/gratitude/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:35.000Z
Thanksgiving. Tonight I am grateful because I have a safe place to sleep, food to eat, and the freedom to make my own decisions. Sometimes I overlook how rare these things can be and how lucky I am. I’m thankful for those I love and those who are patient with me. I am grateful for the memories of the people I’ve lost and that I’m slowly learning to hold them close, although they are no longer here. I am thankful I can walk and run without complaint, and I must remember to savor this, for this will not always be the case. I’m damned grateful for seven years and nine months without a drink. This year I’ve finally learned to fall asleep in silence, and I’m thankful for that too. I’m also thankful for the first sentence of *Neuromancer*: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
### November 25, 2020
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/ash/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:35.000Z
Hunkered down somewhere in Ohio, and there’s not much to do except finish my book. I’ve made a commitment to wrap it up by the end of this terrible year, and I managed to write 1300 words today, which is logorrheic for me. Then the gears ground to a halt as I began to doubt this enterprise. Maybe I should shift the point of view to the first person. Perhaps I should rewrite the entire thing in the present tense. And so on. I often think about this observation from Annie Dillard: “I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend.”
Writing for longer than an hour leaves me craving a cigarette, even though I quit three years ago. I miss the dopamine loop, the carrot and the stick, and the rhythm of stepping outside for five minutes after each page or paragraph. I would probably start again if it didn’t leave me feeling like a pariah. My memories of smoking will have to do.
Four years ago, C. and I worked on a project in Greece, where they still believe in smoking. Someone invited us to dinner, and we spent five hours in a dim café with a fireplace, shouting with strangers over endless cigarettes. Metal cups of wine covered the table, and people jostled their chairs to accommodate new arrivals. I don’t remember any food. A few Greeks sang dirty songs while an earnest French backpacker chattered in my ear about his support for Trump. A German flutist described her meditation practice, and I nursed a coffee and smoked until my lungs felt burnt. An elderly woman in a red cloak settled herself next to me, drained her glass of ouzo, and began to roll a cigarette. She had the judging look of the elderly, the deep-staring eyes. She asked if I had any brothers or sisters, and I shook my head no. “I thought so,” she said. “Being an only child is like living in the desert beneath a mountain of feelings.” And later, her parting comment as she toddled toward the door: “I am still naive, and I will always choose to be that way.” The party ended when a dog was dropped on the table, knocking everyone’s glasses and ashtrays to the floor.
That night feels like another life. I miss the cigarettes, of course, and also the ability to travel. Most of all, I miss the heat and noise of strangers who are chattering, singing, and saying whatever comes to mind.
These days are so quiet.
#### [Ensemble Economique – I Light My Cigarette, I See You There](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/I%20Light%20My%20Cigarette.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### No Vacation | Sound of Cobra, 2013 | [Bandcamp](https://soundofcobra.bandcamp.com/album/no-highway-black-vacation?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/I%20Light%20My%20Cigarette.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/I%20Light%20My%20Cigarette.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### We Scrolled Down the Aisles in Hunter-Gatherer Mode
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/shop/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:35.000Z
This morning my meditation tape asked me if there’s an observer or just the act of observing. I have no idea what to do with questions like this. I’m trying to focus on concrete things these days. Like iceberg lettuce. Whether I’m in Ohio or New York, a bodega or a supermarket, the iceberg lettuce looks increasingly ratty. The other vegetables are growing larger, genetically engineered into Platonic ideals of carrots or tomatoes, but iceberg lettuce seems to be getting smaller, wilted with brown bruises. Perhaps this is an ambient sign of an emergency, like the dwindling bees.
C. and I scrolled up and down the aisles of the megamarket in full hunter-gatherer mode, aiming to collect enough supplies for a few weeks. While contemplating the fish tank, I tuned into the woman’s voice looping over the P.A. system, struck by how it sounded simultaneously rational and insane: “We’ve widened our aisles to help with social distancing, we’ve enhanced our sanitizing practices, and we’ve increased our options for contactless payment…”
A new culture of shame is emerging, and not just in the trenches of social media. Reporters at the airport harass travelers on television, asking them if they even care about humanity. The *New York Times* is publishing heat maps of where people plan to spend their Thanksgiving—and with how many people. I’m not sure what I’m expected to do with this information.
#### [Smackos – Shopping at the Survival Store](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Shopping%20at%20the%20Survival%20Store.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Pacific Northwest Sasquatch Research | Strange Life, 2007 | [Bandcamp](https://viewlexx.bandcamp.com/album/strange-life-records-slr020-pacific-northwest-sasquatch-research?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Shopping%20at%20the%20Survival%20Store.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Shopping%20at%20the%20Survival%20Store.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Patterns
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/patterns/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:36.000Z
It’s been a long year of predictions: infection rates, election outcomes, the future of cities, and the nature of work. This year has also been a hard lesson in the inability to predict anything. Nonetheless, I’m constantly pattern-seeking, hoping to glean new information from the rhythms of my life: morning routines and habit fields, the glitches and loops of ambient thought. But my conclusions are arbitrary, tinted by how I squint at my compulsions or occasional moments of coincidence. Maybe I’ll find better information by examining the pattern of the tiles in the bathroom.
There was a time when people believed the stomach’s gurgles and rumbles belonged to the voices of the dead. Ventriloquism began as a religious practice; the term is Latin for “speaking from the stomach”: *venter* (belly) and *loqui* (speak). The ventriloquist would decipher the belly’s sounds and predict the future.
---
#### [Labradford – Listening in Depth](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Listening%20in%20Depth.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Prazision | Kranky, 1993 | [Bandcamp](https://labradford.bandcamp.com/album/prazision-lp?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Listening%20in%20Depth.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Listening%20in%20Depth.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Stretch
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/stretch/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:36.000Z
Today we packed up a rental car and drove to Ohio to hide from the world this winter. We’re going to hunker down and shelter-in-place through this terrible season that has adopted the grammar of a hurricane. After navigating the manic tangle of New York’s bridges and New Jersey’s turnpikes, it was a straight shot across Pennsylvania on Interstate 80, my least favorite stretch of American highway. Nothing but Amazon delivery trucks and cops in my headlights. We drove through McDonald’s for lunch. We stopped at a rest area where a man stood on the grass, grinning at the moon. Six hundred miles later, we arrived in the Middle West. I love the full-bodied thrum in my nerves after a long drive, as if the mechanical has merged with the neurochemical.
---
#### [Suss – Road Trip Part 4 (Fork in the Road)](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Road%20Trip%20Part%204.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### High Line | Northern Spy Records, 2019 | [Bandcamp](https://suss.bandcamp.com/album/high-line?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Road%20Trip%20Part%204.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Road%20Trip%20Part%204.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Image
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/image/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:36.000Z
Last night I dreamt about a world where we were required to wear plastic bags over our heads. A dead man sat in the backseat of a car, and an unseen voice told me to pretend he was alive. And somewhere on the rooftop of a parking structure, there was an image or memory that would make sense of my life, but I woke just as I was about to reach it.
Maybe it’s hardwired, this idea of an image that might provide revelation. The cross, the host, and the idol. I read about [a temple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinathji%5FTemple?ref=jamesreeves.co) where an image is treated as the living incarnation of an infant god. Over the years, this belief gradually became ritualized into elaborate festivals. Worshippers prepare food for the image, including fifty-seven delicacies and 125,000 fresh mangoes. They bathe and dress it several times each day. There’s something beautiful in the idea that an image might shape collective behavior, and perhaps it speaks to our relationship with the image world today. This phenomenon also points to the very human trait to take a simple idea and complicate it until it must be torn down and made simple again.
---
#### [Vatican Shadow – Church of All Images](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Church%20Of%20All%20Images.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Kneel Before Religious Icons | Hospital Productions, 2011 | [Bandcamp](https://vaticanshadow.bandcamp.com/album/kneel-before-religious-icons-remastered?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Church%20Of%20All%20Images.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Church%20Of%20All%20Images.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Walk
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/walk/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:36.000Z
These have been days of long walks through the city with friends before the weather forces us indoors. Our conversations loop and wander, fueled by the jittery energy produced by information overload. This line from Don DeLillo captures the gestalt: “Too much of everything from too narrow a source code.” From Battery Park to Herald Square. From Red Hook to the Brooklyn Bridge. These rare hours of in-person chatter are a sanity check. Are things going to be okay? Were they ever?
Some people say they feel as if reality is slipping away. But perhaps reality is becoming more evident. Disease and indifference. Institutional decay and mortality. This might explain the increasing appetite for conspiracy, the nonsense that bleeds through our screens. More of us are inventing our own narratives, hunting for clear-cut villains and overarching themes. Meanwhile, there’s a very real morgue crisis in El Paso and new curfews in California, Colorado, and Massachusetts.
Tonight I watched a man on a crowded train, unmasked and defiantly eating a slice of pizza. He chewed at us like a dare. In the park, a woman harassed anyone within earshot if they weren’t wearing a mask, even if they were alone and far away, quietly looking at the city lights over the river.
#### Belong – A Walk
###### Common Era | Kranky, 2011 | [Bandcamp](https://belong.bandcamp.com/album/common-era?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/A%20Walk.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/A%20Walk.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Post
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/post-2/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:37.000Z
My mom would have turned 68 today. I never know how to mark this day. Growing older means that more and more days on the calendar become attached to the memories of those no longer here. But a negative suggests a positive, an absence reminds us of a presence, and contemplating our short time here requires remembering why we want to stay, why we would be sad to leave. To consider the work and conversations left unfinished; the things left unsaid, the ideas that were not shared. We are but fitful flashes of an eternal light, said Spinoza, and we can describe this light in any number of ways.
I found a rare picture of my mom young and smiling, caught beneath the overheated gloss of a 1970s photo and sporting an incredible yellow collar. I wonder what she would have made of this world.
A defeated president fumbles toward a coup d’etat, generating insanities that have somehow exhausted their power to shock. Another recording-breaking day of infections and the outbreak maps require new colors. Orange and red no longer suffice; there are now deep burgundies and purples. Went to the doctor for my annual exam. Blood pressure taken, blood drawn, and heart monitored. I learned that it’s far more challenging to balance on one leg if you close your eyes. This seems like crucial information that I should have known by now.
---
#### [Abul Mogard – Post-Crisis Remembrance](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Post-Crisis%20Remembrance.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Drifted Heaven | VCO Recordings, 2014 | [Bandcamp](https://abulmogard.bandcamp.com/album/drifted-heaven?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Post-Crisis%20Remembrance.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Post-Crisis%20Remembrance.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Forward
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/forward/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:37.000Z
Cold today, wind chill in the twenties. I’m getting crotchety. I increasingly find myself squinting at the world and wondering if maybe dignity disappeared around the time we began advertising our politics, gods, and the intelligence of our children on the bumpers of our cars. Thoughts like this must be resisted; I don’t want to become a prematurely old man, pining for a romanticized past. A chiding quote from [Tristan Tzara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan%5FTzara?ref=jamesreeves.co) comes to mind. Back in 1922, he said, “You’ll never know why you exist, but you’ll always allow yourself to be easily persuaded to take life seriously.”
Tonight I meditate to the sound of helicopters, sirens, and someone hollering on the street, repeatedly shouting, “You just don’t understand.”
---
#### [The Detroit Escalator Co. — Abstract Forward Motion as a Mission](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Abstract%20Forward%20Motion.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Soundtrack \[313\] | Ferox, 1996 | [Bandcamp](https://peacefrog.bandcamp.com/album/excerpts-album?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Abstract%20Forward%20Motion.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Abstract%20Forward%20Motion.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Hijack
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/hijack/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:37.000Z
The president still refuses to concede the election; he’s firing his critics as well as the few remaining officials who tell the truth. An 87-year-old senator tested positive for the virus. Ten o’clock curfews in Ohio and New Mexico. Mask mandates in Iowa, North Dakota, and Mississippi. They’re closing the schools in New York City.
Meanwhile, I keep forgetting the screen is a tool, not an environment. Sometimes it feels like a sense of obligation, the way I keep clicking and scrolling—as if I’m abandoning my post if I press the off button. The decent urge to bear witness has been hijacked and thoroughly mangled. I think of Jung working and writing in a tower without electricity: “Simple acts make man simple; and how difficult it is to be simple!”
#### [Fuck Buttons – Stalker](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Stalker.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Slow Focus | ATP Recordings, 2013 | [More](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18295-fuck-buttons-slow-focus/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Stalker.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Stalker.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Venus Mourning the Death of Adonis
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/museum/
Last updated: 2026-05-13T00:52:28.000Z
I always find solace in the depictions of Venus mourning the death of Adonis, the way she cradles her lover’s body while gazing into the heavens for answers, her face flickering between longing and defiance, depending on my mood.
### A New Medieval Age of Faith and Feeling
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/reality/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:38.000Z
The Pope is praying for our relationship with technology. “Let us pray that the progress of robotics and artificial intelligence may always serve humankind,” he said. In Washington DC, the self-styled militias that once haunted the dirty fringes of the American mind commingled with Republican leaders, groups with names like the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers. They hollered “stop the steal” outside the Supreme Court because they believed the president should have been reelected.
We’re slipping into a new medieval age of faith and feeling. Our screens encourage us to curate the realities we’d like to believe, revealing a deep-boned craving for affirmation and grievance, as well as dot-connecting that festers into conspiracies. How does any of this get unwound? When I got sober seven years ago in New Orleans, a profane old man would often tell me, “Fuck your feelings.” Then he’d remind me of the facts. That advice probably saved my life.
Despite my best efforts, I don’t trust most of my clicking and scrolling, knowing it’s guided by the invisible hand of an algorithm. Meanwhile, I’m having long telephone calls with people about the facts of this winter. We discuss our plans for hunkering down and sheltering in place. All of us staying home, spending more time navigating the world through screens.
#### [Calimex Mental Implant Corp. – Reality Is Possible](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Reality%20Is%20Possible.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### El Saber Del Arpavor | Nightwind Records, 2015 | [Bandcamp](https://legowelt.bandcamp.com/album/el-saber-del-arpavor?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Reality%20Is%20Possible.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Reality%20Is%20Possible.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Lament
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/lament/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:38.000Z
We knew it was coming. They’ve been telling us for months, and now it’s here: a dark winter as infections explode across the country at a staggering rate. Despite the warnings of experts, it still feels like a shock to enter another grim season when public life fades and the suffering becomes uncountable. Like grief, there’s no preparing for such a thing.
C. and I spent the afternoon alone in a chapel at the cemetery, its silence broken only by distant sirens and the occasional drone of an airplane descending toward JFK International. We tested some lighting ideas and measured the apse and alcoves for a project about loss that we’re planning for next spring. And what will the world look like then? How will this winter be remembered? More and more, the future feels impossible to comprehend until it arrives.
---
#### William Basinski – Passio
###### Lamentations | Temporary Residence Limited, 2020 | [Bandcamp](https://williambasinski.bandcamp.com/album/lamentations?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Passio.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Passio.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
I’ve been waiting for this album for months, and it’s music that meets this moment: sorrowful and slightly out of focus.
### Profane
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/profane/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:38.000Z
I sympathize with the sleeping figure in Valentin de Boulogne’s [*Dream of Saint Joseph*](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/701141?ref=jamesreeves.co), a portrait of a weary man unaware of the angel tugging at his sleeve. The description that accompanies this painting often comes to mind these days: “Incapable of rising to the truths of the spirit, exhausted by the effort, mankind falls back into his torpor.” How many times have I glimpsed a better, more spiritualized way to live—and retreated? Sometimes I fantasize about chucking my gadgets into the river, retreating into the pages of the classics, and living a solitary life in the gloom like [Magdalene](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436839?ref=jamesreeves.co) or [Francis](https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/francis-ribera-palatina?ref=jamesreeves.co) with their skulls and candles that remind them time is short. Yet even as I write this, I find myself still scrolling, refreshing, and clicking *yes, I am still watching*.
But it’s reassuring to know that saints wrestled with distraction, too.
In the year 375, Saint Jerome was determined to escape the world’s clamor and find salvation in the desert. In a letter to a student, he described the difficulty of removing himself from the ones he loved and “harder still, from the dainty food to which I had been accustomed.” Although he managed to leave these comforts behind, he could not bear to abandon his books. So he carried his copies of Cicero, Virgil, and Ovid through the Syrian wilderness, books that were considered profane by his religion. “And so, miserable man that I was,” he wrote, “I would fast only that I might afterward read Cicero.” It lingers in the mind, the image of a man dragging his library through the desert, only to punish himself for reading.
---
#### [Kali Malone – Sacer Profanare](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sacer%20Profanare.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### The Sacrificial Code | Ideal Recordings, 2019 | [Bandcamp](https://kalimalone.bandcamp.com/album/the-sacrificial-code?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sacer%20Profanare.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sacer%20Profanare.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Suffuse
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/suffuse/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:38.000Z
A peculiar stretch of November summer has faded into grey skies and rain. My mind is fragmented tonight, flicking around the room and batting at threads but unable to grasp any one thing. Story of my life, perhaps. But how can anyone concentrate when the news is filled with our president’s infantile attempt at a coup d’etat while the predictions of a scary winter are coming fast and true? Hospitals are reaching capacity in several states. Restrictions are returning to New York.
So I’m retreating into my old notebooks for a few hours, hunting for distraction. Maybe I need a reminder of what it felt like to write when politics and infections didn’t constantly tint my thoughts. I riffle through stray factoids that never found a home: Evolution is fastest in body parts used to attract mates or frighten rivals. Words that haunt the unconscious: Trilobites, moonfish, and gorgons. I scan the liturgical names of geological epochs like the Time of the Great Dying, or jotted phrases that I can no longer place: Light echoes from red supergiants. Eyes on stalks. How the word *static* implies fixture as well as chaotic noise.
#### Ralph Kinsella – Suffuse
###### Lessening | 8D Industries, 2020 | [Bandcamp](https://ralphkinsella.bandcamp.com/album/lessening-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Suffuse.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Suffuse.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Spirit
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/spirit/
Last updated: 2026-05-12T23:59:39.000Z
The philosopher Herbert Spencer believed the first gods appeared in our dreams. These visions gradually became ghosts that haunted our stories. After all, the word *spirit* applies to ghosts as well as gods. And in the beginning, God was only “a permanently existing ghost.”
Last night I dreamt about a regal bald woman, impossibly tall, who glided above the floor with her back arched like a vacuum. I nodded hello, and she said, “You’re welcome.” No matter what I said, she replied, “You’re welcome.” Then she turned and zoomed away, leaving me alone in a long empty room.
#### [The Psychic Stewardess – Ghost Apparitions](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Ghost%20Apparitions.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Spiritual Foundation | Strange Life Records, 2010 | [Bandcamp](https://viewlexx.bandcamp.com/album/strange-life-records-slr037-spiritual-foundation?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Ghost%20Apparitions.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Ghost%20Apparitions.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Test
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/test/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:39.000Z
Got my first coronavirus test today. Figured it would be a good idea after spending seventeen hours in a middle school gym on Election Day, which feels like a lifetime ago. I waited in line for nearly three hours, slowly inching past a shuttered diner, a construction site, and a mattress store until I reached the clinic. Some people came prepared with folding chairs and picnic lunches. Others paced and had tantrums. Inside the clinic, a nurse shoved a Q-tip up my nose for four seconds. Then I left. I walked down First Avenue feeling as if I’d participated in an obscure religious ritual, or perhaps an unsatisfying art installation.
There’s news about a possible vaccine for the coronavirus. In the meantime, infections are breaking records each day, and this winter might teach us a hard lesson in exponential math.
In New York, the weather is still impossibly warm and sunny. Shops are removing the plywood boards from their windows after barricading for riots that never came, despite the hysteria that spread across the networks and newspapers. The election was peaceful, and America’s institutions appear to have survived an unprecedented stress test. But a shadow lingers. The president fired the secretary of defense this afternoon, the one who refused to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy America’s military against its citizens. This bare minimum qualifies as moral fiber these days. Is the president planning something? Will he ever concede?
It’s a confusing time.
### Shift
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/shift/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:39.000Z
After the election results were announced yesterday, a burst of spontaneous cheers gathered steam until people were dancing in the streets, celebrating in a way that felt like the end of wartime. New York. Atlanta. Detroit. After so much time spent fixating on the psychological needs of rural and suburban voters, the cities finally got to have their say, and they said it loud: Donald Trump is just a bad memory. Philadelphia. Washington DC. Los Angeles. The heat of the crowd wrote history last night, rendering Trump’s tantrums into background noise, barely audible through the music and cheers.
Yes, I wept as Kamala Harris and Joe Biden delivered their acceptance speeches from a parking lot in Delaware. Politics aside, I wept with the relief of seeing people who were recognizably *human*, with faces capable of joy, humility, and concern. Only then did I fully recognize just how much mental armor I’d required to deal with the White House’s alien garble of orange make-up, baffling slurs, Christian viciousness, and crazy-making reminders to “be best.”
Misty-eyed for Joe Biden. 2020 has been filled with disorienting moments. The president-elect spoke to us from a parking lot with a Planet Fitness in the background. Instead of applause, cars honked. “It sounds like he’s talking to the world’s worst traffic jam,” said C. And the optics did look apocalyptic, a reminder that America is not okay as the pandemic claims more citizens each day. If I’d tuned into this scene a year ago, I would have thought we were building a provisional government after a terrible explosion or zombie invasion.
And there’s a heatwave in November. Record-breaking temperatures here in New York City, and the summertime weather is heightening the sensation of suddenly stepping into a new and unfamiliar season.
---
#### [Ela Orleans – Something Higher](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Something%20Higher.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Lost | La Station Radar, 2009 | [Bandcamp](https://elaorleans.bandcamp.com/album/movies-for-ears?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Something%20Higher.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Something%20Higher.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Catharsis
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/catharsis/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:39.000Z
The networks called the race for president at 11:26 this morning, and the city erupted in cheers. Horns honked, voices hollered, and pots banged. We went to our windows and screamed with sweet relief. It was a beautiful inversion of the evening cheer in the early days of the pandemic—spontaneous and joyful because there’s some sense left in this nation after all. A collective exhale. I stood at my window, wiping away some tears.
Like a gift, it was seventy-five degrees and storybook weather in New York City today, so we filled the streets, strangers needing to look at one another to confirm that yes, this was real, as if waking from a terrible dream.
---
#### [NYC Cheers for a New President](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/NYC%20Election%20Cheer.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### November 7, 11:26am
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/NYC%20Election%20Cheer.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/NYC%20Election%20Cheer.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Endless
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/endless/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:39.000Z
An unusually warm and sunny day in November, seventy degrees with a light wind. And we will have a new president after the counting is done. But it’s a confusing sensation, standing on the verge of catharsis while also bracing for the president’s hellacious meltdown. How far will the radius of the blast site reach?
Meanwhile, we wait for a signal, a 72-point headline or a glossy cable news graphic that cements and formalizes. Televisions chatter through the walls and fill the hallways, the sound of news anchors endlessly reporting that there’s no new news to report. I need to remember to look at the sky.
---
#### [The Field – Infinite Moment](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Infinite%20Moment.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Infinite Moment | Kompakt, 2018 | [Bandcamp](https://thefield.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Infinite%20Moment.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Infinite%20Moment.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Goo
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/goo/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:40.000Z
Patchy sleep and fever dreams about narrow margins and outstanding ballots. But the line between sleep and waking life feels awfully thin this week. Reporters stand in from of the White House, saying things like, “Reality has not set in for Trump that he could lose.”
It looks like Biden will take Pennsylvania and probably Georgia. This election is a nail-biter, but only because it’s unfolding in slow motion. Like everything else it has touched, the pandemic has warped the election timeline into gooey dream logic. If these results had come through by midnight on Election Day, we’d cheer a resounding victory. (The blue wall! Georgia, and maybe even Arizona!)
Last night the president stood at a podium in the White House and whined about how it’s so unfair. He babbled about cardboard and binoculars. He said the votes for his opponent were illegitimate. My skin crawled as I watched. Never in my lifetime, etc. But I’m reassured that most of the nation ignored him and went back to counting votes and waiting.
During the seventeen hours I spent in a middle school gym on Election Day, I was often overwhelmed by the chaos of the voting process. Ninety-two strangers from across the human spectrum had gathered to work the polls. Some of us had challenging personalities. Some of us had tantrums. Some of us made mistakes that needed to be corrected. We bumped into one another and got in each other’s way. We had a lot of questions, but we did our best. It was ugly and unruly, but at the end of the night, thousands of people had voted, the numbers tallied up correctly, and there was something beautiful about the whole thing.
### Razor
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/razor/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:40.000Z
Last night a friend gave us a package of red-white-and-blue Oreos that were produced for the Olympic Games that did not happen this summer. Now they’ve been rebranded as some kind of all-purpose patriotic cookie. I ate ten of them for breakfast because time is no longer measured by clocks, only the steady drip of votes. A razor-thin margin in Nevada. Refresh. A nail-biter in Georgia. Refresh. A slow-motion drift in Pennsylvania. Refresh. A lot of places are sold out of nicotine gum.
#### Temple Ov Saturn – The Narrow Path
###### The Serpent’s Gift | 2019 | [Bandcamp](https://templeovsaturn.bandcamp.com/album/the-serpents-gift?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[The Serpent's Gift by Temple Ov Saturn](https://templeovsaturn.bandcamp.com/album/the-serpents-gift?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Election
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/election/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:40.000Z
After so many months of isolation, working the polls for seventeen hours reminded me of something important: New Yorkers are beautiful and insane.
Through the evening, the possibility of a landslide and repudiation stretched into a close race, and now it’s a nail-biter in several states. There’s no excuse for this, given all the needless death and pain in this nation. But now there’s nothing to do except to keep the faith while we count the votes.
### November 2, 2020
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/gesture/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:40.000Z
One more day until the election. My head is garbled with stories about yard signs booby-trapped with razor blades and news that the White House is barricading itself behind a non-scalable fence in case the president’s craving for bedlam comes true. These final hours feel like pacing the halls of a hospital, waiting and bargaining. So I’m going to focus on something small and stupid tonight. It’s a juvenile ritual and I’m not proud, but it’s an undeniable feature of my year, and I might as well mark it down.
A few years ago, I started jogging to ward off the entropy of middle age. What began as a lousy replacement for cigarettes slowly became an aestheticized way to empty my head of thoughts—dusk, doom metal, and rain. By the time I round the southwest corner of Central Park, I’m about five miles into my run, and my thoughts are a distant hum. When I glimpse the name of our president on his obnoxious tower, I’m forced to think about him again, this braying mouth that has swallowed the nation’s attention. So I give his tower the finger each time I lumber past it, a satisfying if feeble echo of Ai Weiwei’s *[Study of Perspective](https://www.moma.org/collection/works/117098?locale=en&ref=jamesreeves.co)* series.
A grown man flipping the bird at a building. At first, I was mortified by just how childish I’d become, that I would allow any man to crank my lizard-brain into full swing, blotting out dignity and common sense. I’ve never made this gesture in any other situation. Yet it gradually became ritualistic and almost superstitious, something I had to do each time I rounded that corner. An old woman joined me the other day, and it was a beautiful moment of connection. Tomorrow I’ll wake up at four o’clock in the morning to help work the polls, and hopefully, the desire to delete this man’s name from our heads will carry us to more dignified times.
#### [The Rapture – Dumb Waiters](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dumb%20Waiters.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### The Chair That Squeaks | Hymnal Sound, 1998 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumb%5FWaiters%5F%28song%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dumb%20Waiters.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dumb%20Waiters.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Hour
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/hour/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:40.000Z
We stopped the clocks for an hour last night, and even though we do this every autumn without much fanfare, it still feels like a rare kind of magic. The end of Daylight Savings Time is my favorite holiday because it creates more night. And if you’re staying at a motel, you get a free hour. It’s such a beautiful thing, this annual reminder that we can tinker with our shared fictions and rules.
Changing the clocks should be the biggest celebration of the year with fireworks, parades, and gift-giving. Because if we can rearrange time, we can do whatever we want. Invent new colors. Add more days to the week. Rewind the internet to 2005\. Erase the borders on maps.
In the meantime, I stare at my watch, waiting and wondering. In 48 hours, we might take a decisive step towards writing a better future—and hopefully the president’s road-raging supporters are simply the scattered last gasps of something being swept off the stage.
#### [Rafael Anton Irisarri – The Clock](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Clock.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Midnight Colours | 2018 | [Bandcamp](https://irisarri.bandcamp.com/album/midnight-colours?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Clock.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Clock.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### October 31, 2020
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/halloween/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:41.000Z
I’ve never enjoyed Halloween because it reminds me that I’m not very fun. Maybe it’s my childhood memories of fake cobwebs, canned moans, candy corn, and those plastic spider rings that pinched your fingers—it all feels sticky and feverish.
But I doubt anyone’s having much fun this Halloween. America hit nearly 100,000 new infections yesterday. Britain declared another lockdown tonight, joining Germany and France. A study says the president’s campaign rallies may have caused [seven hundred deaths](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=3722299&ref=jamesreeves.co). In North Carolina, police pepper-sprayed a get-out-the-vote rally. In Texas, a group of Trump supporters in pick-up trucks swarmed a Biden-Harris campaign bus and nearly forced it off Interstate 35\. The president cheered them at his rally. Despite these horrifying tactics by the state, voter turnout remains stupendously high, and I have faith this augers well. And there was one promising if slightly unnerving piece of news: artificial intelligence might be able to detect COVID-19 by [listening to your coughs](https://news.mit.edu/2020/covid-19-cough-cellphone-detection-1029?ref=jamesreeves.co).
Tonight I’m grateful because the clocks will rewind an hour and we’ll have longer nights. And tomorrow is All Saint’s Day. Although I’m not a Christian, it’s one of my favorite days simply for its cadence—and it’s the beginning of the end of this year.
#### [Gas – Oktember](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Oktember.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Oktember | Mille Plateaux, 1999 | [Bandcamp](https://kompakt-gas.bandcamp.com/album/oktember?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Oktember.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Oktember.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Devil
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/devil/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:41.000Z
It sneaks up softly, then twists sharply: the realization that it’s going to be another sleepless night. There’s a rhythm to it. First, the tossing and denial, the hours spent skating across near-sleep, chasing the trails of happy thoughts and better times. Then comes the metallic twitch when it’s clear the brain will not tire itself out. So I sat on the sofa in the living room gloom and looked at my watch. October 30.
Devil’s Night. That’s what they called it in Detroit for a decade or two. Growing up just north of Eight Mile Road, I remember the anxiety that gripped the city in the 80s and 90s around this time of year, how the six o’clock news would advertise the number of houses that burned. This was my first understanding of how media hysteria works, the way it creates a dark scoreboard with a record begging to be broken. By the late 90s, the fires began to fade, thanks to volunteer patrols who rebranded it as Angel’s Night.
A few years ago, I mentioned Devil’s Night to my students in New York—a class of undergrads from all corners—and they blinked at me, uncomprehending as I explained it was a night devoted to setting buildings on fire. “But why?” they asked.
This morning I read an article about upscale retailers who are boarding up their windows for the election, bracing for bedlam. Maybe this is the new state of democracy in the USA. But hopefully it’s just half-heat and vapor, the result of media-manufactured anxiety that spreads like a virus.
#### [Black Devil Disco Club – The Devil In Us ](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Devil%20In%20Us.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### 28 After | Lo Recordings, 2006 | [Bandcamp](https://lorecordings.bandcamp.com/album/28-after?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Devil%20In%20Us.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Devil%20In%20Us.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Wind
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/wind/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:41.000Z
A friend in New Orleans said the power might be out for several days after last night’s hurricane, the fifth to hit Louisiana this year. Another record broken. Its unexpectedly powerful winds were amplified by an ice storm in Oklahoma, which was fueled by a firestorm in California. Fire, ice, and wind from coast to coast, as if generated by the national tension as a pandemic rages and an election approaches.
Here in New York, it’s damp and gloomy. Deep autumn is finally here. I went for a rainy run, pausing on an empty street to admire how the skyscrapers vanished in the fog. The grey light and spectral towers reminded me of an afternoon in Michigan, maybe ten years ago. It was the last time I saw my grandfather.
I picked him up from the nursing home to see the old sights, the family plot at the cemetery and the little harbor where the Reeves once had a fishery. We drove through the flat soybean fields that stretched toward Saginaw Bay, a blank line of road I’d known since childhood. But now wind turbines straddled the fields, alien sculptures that left me feeling futuristic and a little uneasy. My grandfather often watched them from the window of his nursing home. “Sometimes I think they are graceful like ballerinas,” he said as we drove. “Other times, I think they are wicked.”
I often think about this unexpected moment of lyricism from my grandfather, and how wildly our perception can change depending on our mood or maybe just a shift in the light.
#### [Autechre – Windwind](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Windwind.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Incunabula | Warp, 1993 | [Bandcamp](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/incunabula?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Windwind.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Windwind.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Light the Barricades
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/light-the-barricades-reflections-from-an-exhausted-age/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:41.000Z
*Light the Barricades: Reflections from an Exhausted Age* by Candy Chang and James A. Reeves is the culmination of [*Light the Barricades*](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/light-the-barricades/?ref=jamesreeves.co), a public installation that spanned four sites across Los Angeles. These electrified shrines served as spaces for contemplating the psychological barriers in our lives and garnered over 3,000 handwritten reflections from visitors.
This limited-edition book collects hundreds of these responses, ranging from personal reflections to broader political and psychosocial statements that create a contemporary American portrait. It also includes the fables that appeared on the installations, an introduction to the ancient *I Ching*, meditations on emotional barriers, and the artists’ notes on the role of ritual in public life. Each book is signed by the artists and comes with a one-of-a-kind Chinese ink study by [Candy Chang](http://candychang.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co) that developed into the artwork for the installation.
386 pages. 342 illustrations. 8.75 x 5.75 x 1.5 inches. Pearl linen cloth hardcover. 100 lb satin interior. Numbered edition of 250\. Signed by the artists. Ink study: 7.5 x 5.5 inches, ink on watercolor paper, signed by the artist. **Available at [Ritual Fields](https://ritualfields.gumroad.com/l/rnxfb?ref=jamesreeves.co).**
### Mirror
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/mirror/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:41.000Z
Today the White House declared victory over the coronavirus while infection rates continue to soar and people suffer. But this is the spirit of our government, a crazy-making funhouse mirror designed to leave us disoriented. “One person dies from coronavirus every ninety seconds,” said the television.
Six days until the election and color-coded maps of the nation clutter our screens while pundits outline increasingly baroque strategies for flipping states, winning battlegrounds, and carving a path to victory through shades of red and blue. It looks like half the country is burning while the other half is freezing.
Meanwhile, I try to do my work. But I keep wandering into the weeds of polling websites, compulsively refreshing the latest numbers from Pennsylvania and Arizona as if I might find revelation. The numbers look encouraging. Maybe we’ll put an end to this sorry chapter when we let a vicious clown take the wheel. It’s an awful feeling, being afraid to hope. But I’ve relied on pessimism as a protective measure for too long, only to discover it’s another warped mirror.
---
#### Recondite – Mirror Games
###### Dwell | Ghostly International, 2019 | [Bandcamp](https://recondite-music.bandcamp.com/album/dwell?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Mirror%20Games.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Mirror%20Games.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### History
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/history/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:42.000Z
While puttering in the kitchen, I heard the television say that voters in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania hold an unprecedented amount of power in human history because of the garbled logic of the electoral college. “They hold the fate of the world in their hands,” said the television while I fried an egg. These are hyperbolic days. It’s an uneasy sensation, knowing something massively historical is one week away. Hackers briefly seized the president’s website, issuing a bizarre message in broken English before demanding cryptocurrency. Another hurricane is pointed at the Louisiana coast, which is unusual this late in the year.
Meanwhile, pandemic-themed advertisements for banks followed me around the city while I ran errands. They thanked me for wearing a mask and reminded me we’re all in this together. They told me it’s a great time to set up an appointment with a financial adviser. Restaurants are dragging heat lamps into the street, and for some reason, the sight of them made me want to start smoking again. I miss the ritual and unique solitude of a cigarette, a reason to step into the night chill for five minutes and stare into the middle-distance.
---
#### [Rhythm & Sound – History Version](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/History%20Version.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### The Versions | Burial Mix, 2003 | [More](https://boomkat.com/products/the-versions-3d541900-c47b-4578-a8ca-04d034cd9e15?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/History%20Version.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/History%20Version.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Court
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/court/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:42.000Z
A medieval judge was confirmed to the Supreme Court tonight, sealing this country’s fate for years unless the Democrats can find some spine. The energies that have brought us to this point can only be expressed by a sucking of the teeth followed by a pointless scream. “She has such hollow eyes, that judge,” said my elderly neighbor when I dropped off some face masks and a gallon of water. “Nefarious forces are afoot.” Then she told me a complicated joke about a bee, hoping to lighten the mood.
I’d like to see the world through a supernatural lens like my neighbor. Maybe the world would make more sense.
Tonight I received my assignment for Election Day. I need to report to a middle school at five o’clock in the morning to help set up the machines. This means reversing my sleep schedule if I want to be halfway sensible and avoid causing an incident. So I will channel my anger into becoming a morning person this week.
---
#### [Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement – The Verdict Handed Down By A Kangaroo Court](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Verdict%20Handed%20Down%20By%20A%20Kangaroo%20Court.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Water Witches | Hospital Productions, 2018 | [Bandcamp](https://rainforestspiritualenslavement.bandcamp.com/album/water-witches?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Verdict%20Handed%20Down%20By%20A%20Kangaroo%20Court.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Verdict%20Handed%20Down%20By%20A%20Kangaroo%20Court.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### "We're safe and all is well in our world."
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/safe/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:42.000Z
A friend sent me an article about a helmet you can buy that creates its own microclimate of filtered, customized air. It inspired me to rewatch *[Safe](https://www.criterion.com/films/28548-safe?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, Todd Haynes’s 1995 film about a woman who becomes allergic to the modern world and maybe her life. She develops nosebleeds and has seizures. She blames the polluted air and the chemicals in the carpet. After joining a hermetic community in a “toxin-free zone” somewhere in New Mexico, she listens to their charismatic leader give speeches about cultural illness. They stop reading the papers and watching the news—not to protect their minds, but their immune systems. Everything is poison. She lives in a spare room like a prison cell, safe at last.
Twenty-five years later, this ambiguous film is no longer a cinematic metaphor now that the air is far more likely to infect us with a new disease. We wonder what it will take to feel safe. But it’s also a reminder that 1995 believed the modern world was poisonous. So did 1895\. “Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things,” said the designer [William Morris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William%5FMorris?ref=jamesreeves.co), “the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.” But I struggle to reconcile anxiety as a relative condition with the fact that the world is genuinely, objectively more insane.
Communes and off-grid living. Strange how the desire to flee the world is so deeply associated with cult logic. And sometimes it’s difficult to tell which way of living is more irrational.
### Up
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/up/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:42.000Z
Eighty-five thousand new cases reported in America yesterday, another record smashed in a year with too many records broken. Here in New York, people are still dining outside in the autumn chill, determined log as much time outdoors as possible before the weather confines us to our tiny apartments.
There aren’t many visitors to the city these days. It’s nice to have the sidewalks to ourselves, but I miss how the tourists would remind me to look up. Sometimes I’d see a family on a corner in Midtown, gazing up slack-jawed at the dizzying buildings, and I’d realize I should this more often. The gargoyles and friezes, the dignified stonework and dramatic arches that have weathered everything.
---
#### [Biosphere – City Wakes Up](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/City%20Wakes%20Up.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Man With a Movie Camera | 2001 | More
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/City%20Wakes%20Up.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/City%20Wakes%20Up.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Lights
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/lights/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:43.000Z
Returning to the city, I felt a familiar drain on my attention as I drove down the FDR to ditch the rental car. I wasn’t distracted by the lights or skyscrapers. No, these pieces of the city looked supernatural in the Friday night fog, like impressions from a dream. Rather, it was the sensation of returning to news and anxiety after two days of widescreen thinking. Maybe it’s because going away requires intention, whereas coming home implies routine. But why should I feel like coming home requires me to monitor headlines and refresh my inbox? This doesn’t do anyone much good. These were my thoughts as I rode the subway back, half-watching an old man play scratch-off lotto.
It would be nice to be one of those lonely lights I saw last night on the horizon of the Atlantic, surrounded by the static of the sea rather than screens delivering news about spiking infections and perception hacking.
#### [The Detroit Escalator Company – City Lights](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/City%20Lights.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Black Buildings | Peacefrog, 2001 | [Bandcamp](https://peacefrog.bandcamp.com/album/black-buildings-album?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/City%20Lights.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/City%20Lights.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Ocean
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/ocean/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:43.000Z
I surprised C. with a trip to the sea for her birthday. This morning I woke before dawn to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic, which goes against my night owl nature. I hadn’t seen the sunrise in years, and I was surprised by how fast it moved. Standing in the wind while the world lightened, I felt wholesome. Maybe there’s something right about these early hours that justifies the pluck of morning people, the moral dimension they achieve when they advertise waking up at 5 am. I wrote for a while and caught up on some work. Then I took a nap.
A few hours later, I woke to the sound of C. making coffee and waves crashing on the rocks. Whenever I hear the ocean, I think about how it sounds like highway traffic or radio static, not the other way around.
The final presidential debate was tonight, and some self-hating part of myself felt obligated to tune in. Thankfully, C. is wiser than me: “It’s my birthday,” she said, “and I don’t want to see Donald Trump’s face today.” So we listened to the sea, and it gave us much better information.
#### Echospace – Ocean of Emptiness
###### The Coldest Season | Modern Love, 2007 | [More](https://boomkat.com/products/the-coldest-season-66e8661d-976a-46e2-b5df-187b8d877bd0?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Ocean%20of%20Emptiness.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Ocean%20of%20Emptiness.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### We took a night drive through the fog.
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/fog/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:43.000Z
We took a night drive through heavy fog, aiming toward the ocean. Reverberated guitars washed across the dashboard while we admired the smudged headlights of oncoming traffic, the fleeting sense of driving on some other, better planet.
She dozed for a while, and I contemplated my constant need for motion and my craving for faith in something otherworldly because, really, what would that solve?
#### [Yellow Swans – Sovereign](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sovereign.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Going Places | Type, 2010 | [Bandcamp](https://yellowswans.bandcamp.com/album/going-places?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sovereign.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Sovereign.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Landscape
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/landscape/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:43.000Z
I’ve been thinking about the connective tissue between the fragments of writing I’ve generated over the years. How to stitch everything together in some sensible way when the world feels increasingly insensible? This anxiety might explain why I’m dragging my feet on finishing the book I’ve been endlessly rewriting, forever shuffling scenes and squinting at the possibilities.
This afternoon I came across [an old interview](https://bombmagazine.org/articles/michael-ondaatje/?ref=jamesreeves.co) with Michael Ondaatje:
> “In that last editing stage, I am outside myself. I’m looking at it much more clinically and saying, okay, get out of this scene quicker. There’s that element of technique and dramatics and timing and ‘lighting’ in those last stages. Punctuation and paragraph. But I don’t at any point say, ‘What is this book really about?’ It’s unsaid. I worry instead that it’s cloudy over here, or the brambles need clearing.”
A good reminder that, at a certain point, writing requires you to stay *outside* of your head. Easier said than done. But I like this idea of thinking about writing in terms of lighting and landscape. Snap the shot and keep moving.
---
#### [The Sight Below – Through the Gaps in the Land](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Through%20The%20Gaps%20In%20The%20Land.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### It All Falls Apart | Ghostly International, 2010 | [Bandcamp](https://irisarri.bandcamp.com/album/it-all-falls-apart?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Through%20The%20Gaps%20In%20The%20Land.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Through%20The%20Gaps%20In%20The%20Land.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Monsters
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/monsters/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:43.000Z
I had a dream about frightening beasts called Fahrenhogs. They were spiky piggish creatures that loped across the edges of my dream on two legs like men.
It started with a peaceful scene. A flock of ducks bobbed on a pond, the ones with that green-black velveteen shine. Mallards, I think. I tossed them bits of bread, but they weren’t eating. Why weren’t they eating? The people I’ve lost were somewhere behind me, and I could hear my grandfather clearing his throat to say, “Well, you see, Jimmy…” The way he always did before explaining something. Suddenly the ducks darted toward the shore in a determined way that didn’t seem natural, and they rose from the water, attached to bodies of pinky muscle and hair. They weren’t ducks at all, but the topknots of terrible creatures with drooling fangs and stinking breath. I ran through the trees. *Well, Jimmy, what do the Fahrenhogs mean?*
Why would my brain invent these monsters to terrify itself? And why on earth did it give them a name? I could only think of bad reasons, so I described this dream to C. because she’s good at seeing dreams as instructive, the grey spaces where transformation lives. She suggested that feeding the ducks meant nurturing my projects and plans—but right now, they feel overwhelming. There’s too much on the table. I always feel like I’m starting something, as if my work will begin once I figure things out or get smart enough. But there’s no figuring anything out. There’s just the work.
---
#### [HTRK – Dream Symbol](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dream%20Symbol.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Venus In Leo | Ghostly International, 2019 | [Bandcamp](https://htrk.bandcamp.com/album/venus-in-leo?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dream%20Symbol.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dream%20Symbol.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Fatigue
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/fatigue/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:44.000Z
Infections are increasing across America and Europe. They’re talking about “pandemic fatigue.” The signs at the park that instruct us to keep six feet apart are faded and worn. I don’t think anyone expected they would be on display for so long.
What is the line between fatigue and acceptance? Maybe fatigue would make sense if this season of masks and dots on the floor lasted only a month or two (and for a time, this was possible). The muscle memory of *normal* might be exhausted, but it would eventually find its way back to its original condition. After seven months with no end in sight, however, acceptance seems like the only workable strategy. Again I find myself returning to the logic of grief, how it’s like losing an arm and there’s no growing it back. But sometimes loss can uncover new ways of understanding what’s important.
---
#### [Nine Inch Nails – Your New Normal](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Your%20New%20Normal.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Ghosts VI: Locusts | 2020 | [Download](https://store.nin.com/products/ghosts-digital-download?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Your%20New%20Normal.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Your%20New%20Normal.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Louise Nevelson
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/monument/
Last updated: 2026-05-15T01:45:15.000Z
No matter how many times I see them, I am captivated by Nevelson’s monuments built from furniture scrap painted black. They remind me of childhood, conjuring dim memories of playing among the legs of tables and dressers, of my first intimations of death. It’s a specific feeling I cannot quite connect to words, and this is why her work moves and reassures me. More and more, I admire this quote from her: “I have made my world, and it is a much better world than I ever saw outside.”
##### [More](https://www.moma.org/artists/4278-louise-nevelson?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### October 16, 2020
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/noise/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:44.000Z
As I walked past a shuttered café this afternoon, I realized how much I miss writing in public. There’s an interesting shift between writing in silence versus writing *against* noise, such as the din of a coffee shop or a busy train station. A wall of babble can become a springboard that drives me deeper into my thoughts. That’s something reassuring about this, like a favorite blanket. Maybe it’s the social contract of working among strangers; I can’t pace, moan, or gaze into the refrigerator like I do at home. On the other hand, one person’s coughing or skreaking pencil in a library can shatter my thoughts and become a vector of hate. So there’s a distinct bandwidth for me: either lots of noise or none at all.
The perpetually miserable philosopher [Schopenhauer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur%5FSchopenhauer?ref=jamesreeves.co) agonized over the noise of the early 19th century: “I have long held the opinion,” he wrote, “that the amount of noise which anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity. Noise is a torture to all intellectual people.” Perhaps my industrial soundtrack of doom metal and blurred techno reveals my intellectual worth.
In this year without coffee shops or libraries, I’m surprised how much I miss being around sounds I can’t control. I’m even becoming nostalgic for someone coughing while I try to concentrate.
#### [Mønic – Cut Through The Noise](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Cut%20Through%20The%20Noise.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### In a Certain Light | Osiris Music, 2020 | [Bandcamp](https://osirismusicuk.bandcamp.com/album/m-nic-in-a-certain-light-lp?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Cut%20Through%20The%20Noise.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Cut%20Through%20The%20Noise.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Watching
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/watching/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:44.000Z
Last night I had a dream that I found my father in a parking garage. I hid behind a car and watched him from a distance, afraid he might shoo me away if I approached. He was in charge of picking things off the floor and he was taking it very seriously. Parking garages are the most common architecture in my dreams, and I wonder if there’s any meaning in this, some insight to be gleaned. Woke up and tried to meditate, but garbled instructions rattled around my head. *Stay alert. Click to accept. Stay six feet apart. See something, say something. Breathe through the backside of your body. Are you still watching?*
Tonight the president held a town hall on a major network and refused to distance himself from conspiracy theorists who believe the Democrats belong to a satanic pedophilia cult. When the interviewer pressed him on this, he replied, “They are strongly against pedophilia, and I agree with that.” Can a nation recover from this?
Maybe the question shouldn’t be *Are you still watching?* but *Why?*
#### [The Normal – TV O.D.](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/TVOD.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Warm Leatherette | Mute, 1978 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FNormal?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/TVOD.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/TVOD.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Simulation
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/simulation/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:45.000Z
Day three of the confirmation hearings of another retrograde Supreme Court justice, and it’s a simulation of government. Nobody will deliberate. Nobody will listen. Everyone’s locked in and committed. I flipped on the television and saw footage of one of the president’s frightening rallies. He stood in front of his airplane, flapping his hands and crowing before a sea of red hats. All those red hats like angry sores.
Scientists say there’s [a 50/50 chance we live in a simulation](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50/?ref=jamesreeves.co). The idea that some lunatic is behind the controls would explain a lot, although I can’t imagine what kind of intelligence would find this entertaining. At least give us magic or Martians or something wild streaking across the sky.
---
#### [Satomi Taniyama – Simulations Of A Garbage Truck](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Simulations%20Of%20A%20Garbage%20Truck.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Portopia | Strange Life Records, 2010 | [Bandcamp](https://viewlexx.bandcamp.com/album/strange-life-records-slr039-portopia?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Simulations%20Of%20A%20Garbage%20Truck.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Simulations%20Of%20A%20Garbage%20Truck.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Tabula Rasa
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/slate/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:45.000Z
I’m fantasizing about the desert again. The Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan. A place where only the occasional shredded tire or dilapidated cabin would interrupt my fantasy that I’m driving on another planet. I’m daydreaming about the desert as a tabula rasa, a blank-slated land of spiritualized visions, even though I know there’s by now no such thing as a fresh start. The past must be reckoned with, and it can be done painfully or gracefully. But one day, I’m going to live in a double-wide and get weird.
### Pictures
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/pictures/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:45.000Z
October weather at last. A blustery evening, damp and grey. Maybe it’s the remnants of a tropical storm. While running through the rainy dark, someone stepped in front of me and took my picture for no apparent reason. Maybe they needed a snapshot of a man lumbering into middle age.
*Took my picture.* Such an odd phrase, as if we carry a single image of ourselves with us like a rare object, something that can be snatched away. This line of thinking brought to mind a quote from Milan Kundera’s *Immortality*: “Even when I was a child, adults would ask me: little girl, may we take your picture? And then one day they stopped asking. The right of the camera was elevated above all other rights, and that changed everything.”
---
#### [Franz Falckenhaus – Secret Photographs](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Secret%20Photographs.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Stories from My Cold War | Strange Life, 2006 | [Bandcamp](https://viewlexx.bandcamp.com/album/strange-life-records-slr012-stories-from-my-cold-war?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Secret%20Photographs.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Secret%20Photographs.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Drome
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/drome/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:45.000Z
“The television screen has become the retina of the mind’s eye,” says Professor O’Blivion in *Videodrome*. “Therefore, the television is part of the physical structure in the brain.”
David Cronenberg’s 1983 film is a fever dream that’s tough to shake, and it’s impossible to watch without mapping it onto today’s internet. How it has colonized our minds, steadily rewiring the real world until every snapshot, thought, and interaction conforms to its logic. Lurking beneath videotaped sleaze and torture porn, a mysterious signal infects James Woods’s brain, warps his body, and transforms him into something ruthless and inhuman. It’s a vivid blend of body horror, sci-fi, and media critique. But now it reads like a heavy-handed metaphor for online radicalization. And like a weird feedback loop, the internet has claimed the mind of the real-life James Woods, transforming him into a pitiful troll who traffics in paranoia and spite.
Would it be possible to update *Videodrome* for the digital age? Television is unidirectional and, in the end, it’s an object in the room. But how do you make art out of something as omnipresent as air? More and more, it feels like trying to critique the sky.
A childhood fear inspired Cronenberg to make this movie. After the stations had gone off the air for the night, his television would pick up strange signals from Buffalo, and he worried he might see something upsetting. That’s how I feel each time I open a screen. As one of the film’s characters says before he hustles out of the room: “I just can’t cope with the freaky stuff.”
### Spare
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/spare/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:46.000Z
Sometimes designing a website can veer into unexpectedly existential terrain. Who am I? And what do I believe? That’s what happened today when C. and I began sketching some ideas for a new project website. The internet has become bloated and ugly, not only spiritually but in terms of code. Everything I click feels over-designed with font stacks, carousels, gargantuan banners, and wall-to-wall bullshit. So we decided to aim for something as spartan as possible. One font size. Two columns. Dead simple with white space galore.
When you cut something down to the bone, every decision becomes much more dramatic. Adding a few pixels to a margin can feel like a sudden crescendo. We spent the entire day and much of the night dithering over these decisions, and it was the most fun I’ve had in a while, bickering about whether to use regular or semi-bold.
Nowadays, reduction feels far more productive than addition.
---
#### [Belong – Remove the Inside](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Remove%20the%20Inside.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### October Language | Carpark, 2006 | [Bandcamp](https://spectrumspools.bandcamp.com/album/october-language?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Remove%20the%20Inside.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Remove%20the%20Inside.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Silentium
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/silentium/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:46.000Z
There were no foiled plots today, no shocking revelations or newly infected politicians or footage of horrifying violence. Just another hurricane in the Gulf and a continuing rise in coronavirus cases. But these calamities are becoming familiar, and it almost felt like a slow news day, aside from the president’s usual braying and bullshit. I fantasize about the day this man’s face no longer lives in my head, a time when I can return to forgetting about the president for a few hours.
This afternoon C. and I rode the train to Green-Wood Cemetery, where we’re planning a project in its beautiful Gothic chapel that was designed by the architects who built Grand Central Station. We switched off the chandelier and watched the pools of stained glass light that glittered on the limestone floor. For a moment, I felt as if I was standing outside of time. Because it was such a rare quality these days: silence.
### Landfall
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/landfall/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:46.000Z
Authorities charged thirteen men with plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan. Another hurricane is bearing down on the Louisiana coast. It will be the tenth hurricane to make landfall this year, the most ever recorded. Lately I’ve been having a dream about a weatherman grinning in front of a map while talking about a hurricane of bullets.
But I miss driving through this country. I miss the sensation of collapsing into a vinyl booth and listening to her softly recite the items on the Denny’s menu like a koan: “Lumberjack slam, grand slam, triple slam, or maybe the grand slamwich…”
---
#### [Earth – Omens & Portents I: The Driver](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Driver.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull | Southern Lord, 2008 | [Bandcamp](https://earthsl.bandcamp.com/album/the-bees-made-honey-in-the-lions-skull?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Driver.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Driver.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Creature
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/creature/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:47.000Z
A fly sat atop Mike Pence’s head for two minutes and three seconds during the vice presidential debate. This headline appeared in the *New York Times* and elsewhere, and I’m glad it was recorded for posterity. During this debate between two supernaturally telegenic candidates, a large fly landed on the vice president’s perfectly shellacked, snowy-white hair. It hardly moved while the man rambled about hallucinatory riots. The fly complemented the aura of this man who already lives in the uncanny valley, a man who seems like an alien lifeform doing its best impression of a movie president circa 1958.
The fly felt like a portentous symbol in a year that has reached the caliber of myth. Perhaps it was an emblem of this administration’s rot, bringing to mind [Sartre’s play](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FFlies?ref=jamesreeves.co) that introduces Zeus “as the god of flies and death.” (As a counterpoint, there was the time a little bird landed on Bernie Sanders’s podium in 2016.) The fly could also be read as proof of our craving for spectacle—and as a symbol of our attention spans. Within a week, we’ve darted from the president’s tax evasion to a horrifying presidential debate to wondering whether the president was dead to tracking the spread of the coronavirus throughout the White House to, oh look, a fly. For two minutes and three seconds, the fly had done what even a pandemic could not: it briefly unified the nation.
---
#### [Suicide – Creature Feature](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Creature%20Feature.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### The First Rehearsal Tapes, 1975 | [More](https://www.superiorviaduct.com/products/suicide-first-rehearsal-tapes-lp?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Creature%20Feature.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Creature%20Feature.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Kite
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/kite/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:47.000Z
I woke from a dream where I was frantically searching for the *unsubscribe* and *unfollow* buttons while a giant mouth kept telling me the news. As I sat down in front of my screen this morning, it occurred to me just how much of my life is spent entering text into imaginary boxes and pressing *publish* or *send*. Maybe one day I’ll become one of those middle-aged men with a fervent interest in woodworking.
Took the subway to the bottom of Manhattan to catch up with a friend. Life feels so unsteady right now, yet the city is still plastered with messages reminding me to drink coconut water, subscribe for non-stop entertainment, and check out the latest styles.
I once saw an old woman in a red sundress flying a big yellow kite down a busy street. This image has been stuck in my head lately. Maybe because we need more moments of public joy.
---
#### [Deadbeat – A Joyful Noise (Part I)](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/A%20Joyful%20Noise.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Something Borrowed, Something Blue | \~Scape, 2004 | [Bandcamp](https://blkrtz.bandcamp.com/album/something-borrowed-something-blue?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/A%20Joyful%20Noise.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/A%20Joyful%20Noise.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Dust
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/dust/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:47.000Z
My father would have turned 72 today. He taught me about grace during the year we spent together, [waiting for a lung](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/the-last-year-of-my-father/?ref=jamesreeves.co). Sometimes we snuck away from the hospital and went fishing. “If I’m going to die,” he said, “I might as well die outside doing something.” We played long games of chess while we waited for the phone to ring. I came across a picture of him as a little boy that feels like a fragment from a dream. Maybe it’s the blue spoon.
After losing someone, maybe the soul goes one of two ways: it hardens into a scar or maybe or it can . . . I don’t have the words to finish this thought.
Meanwhile, our president has escaped the hospital, and he’s hopped up on steroids and sneering without a mask while the networks scramble to figure out who he’s infected. He’s telling people the virus isn’t that bad. It’s the fountain of youth, in fact. “I feel better than I did twenty years ago!” he says, spitting on the graves of over two hundred thousand dead. Any compassion I’d tried to muster for another human being who was ailing has turned to dust.
For a moment my eyes flick to the ceiling, and I’m almost thankful my parents aren’t here to see what’s happened to the world. As if I’m doing something wrong just by living in such an embarrassing time.
---
#### [Flying Saucer Attack – Dust](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dust.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Mirror | Drag City, 2000 | [Bandcamp](https://flyingsaucerattack.bandcamp.com/album/mirror?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dust.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dust.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Extreme
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/extreme/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:47.000Z
The president’s condition remains a mystery. There he is, waving at his fans from the backseat of a bulletproof Chevrolet Suburban. Now he’s back at the hospital, receiving steroids and experimental cocktails while headlines range from “improving” to “alarming.” Conspiracies dribble across my screen, not just from the sludge of the internet but otherwise sensible people I know. Theories run to extremes. Some say it’s a calculated ploy to reveal a miracle cure that will win the president a second term. Others wonder if he’s dead.
This year has made conspiracy theorists of so many of us to some degree. We hunt for patterns in senseless tragedy and bizarrely cruel behavior, trying to clear some kind of path through the daily onslaught of bullshit. Extreme voices. Extreme weather. Extreme wealth disparity. Extreme sports, flavors, and entertainment. Does a culture ever become more mild?
### Oldies
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/oldies/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:48.000Z
Some enchanted evening. Room full of roses. How high the moon. For some reason it broke my heart, watching an elderly man slowly type the songs from his youth into a search box. As I walked through the park tonight, I wondered what I’ll search for when I’m grey and clutching a cane. Maybe I’ll be looking for Autechre and Basic Channel and Plastikman, the music that sounded like the future to me. Even now, I find myself craving the days when a 303 sounded like it contained all the mysteries and possibilities of the world.
---
#### [Fuse v. Plastikman – Krossover](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Krossover.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Krossover | Minus, 1999 | [More](https://www.discogs.com/FUSE-vs-Plastikman-Epok-CD/release/521084?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Krossover.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Krossover.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Positive
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/positive/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:48.000Z
Today the president went to the hospital after testing positive for the coronavirus. Three days ago, he stood on a debate stage and mocked his opponent for wearing a mask. Now he’s hospitalized and details are sketchy. I’ll be frank: when I saw the news, my lizard-brain flickered with glee. It was the grubby pleasure of *somebody getting what they deserved*. The sensation left me feeling ghoulish, cheering for another person’s illness.
Maybe it’s not wrong to crave justice in the universe, some balancing of the scales. Particularly if that person’s recklessness and viciousness led to the needless deaths of so many Americans. Tonight it’s 208,536 and counting. But in this case, justice was not delivered by the crowd, dumb luck, or karma. It was entirely self-inflicted and avoidable. Justice cannot be self-administered. And so the effect is like watching a Greek tragedy: it’s not enjoyable, but it feels instructive.
The First Lady, two senators, and some aides and advisors have also tested positive for the virus. I wish them well. I wish the president well. And humility on the other side.
### Ritual
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/ritual/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:48.000Z
C. and I returned to the Met this afternoon. It’s my favorite activity in the world: wandering the halls of a museum with her while we chatter about our projects and plans. And today we began plotting some interesting new directions for [Ritual Fields](http://ritualfields.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
The pilgrimage to inspect a painting or ancient relic is inherently ritualistic, and it felt even more so as we stood before statues, scrolls, and gelatin prints in hushed galleries with masks covering our mouths. The scene brought to mind one of my favorite moments at the Met: the fragmented statue of a soldier from two thousand years ago, a mixture of marble and steel that looks like a collision of the past and future.
---
#### [Bersarin Quartett – Futur II](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Futur%20II.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Methoden und Maschinen | Denovali Records, 2019 | [Bandcamp](https://bersarinquartett.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Futur%20II.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Futur%20II.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Training
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/training/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:48.000Z
Heavy rain fell last night, and it felt like a much-needed shower after the degradation of the first presidential debate. Today was my training session for becoming an [election worker](https://www.eac.gov/help-america-vote?ref=jamesreeves.co), and I was grateful for this small concrete thing that occupied my attention for a few hours while everything else feels like it’s coming undone.
We reported for training at the Javits Convention Center, which had been a makeshift hospital earlier this year. Now it’s a husk of *Robocop* architecture filled with shuttered shops and empty escalators, save for the decals on the floor that kept us six feet apart before we filed into a conference room for four hours. A small bald man barked at us like a drill sergeant, running us through the logistics of address changes, court-ordered ballots, and affidavit requests. “You’ll be working at least seventeen hours on Election Day,” he said. “So bring a sandwich.” Seventeen hours is workable, but I made a strangled noise when he said we had to be there at five o’clock in the morning, which is usually my bedtime. But I’ll gut it out. Every vote truly counts in this election, even in New York City. Each vote that makes it onto the scoreboard on election night will help inoculate us against the thieving fuckery that’s sure to come.
They gave us a 116-page manual and showed us a video that told us not to wear flip flops. “And remember, remain calm and neutral in *all* circumstances,” said the video. I learned that ballots come in packs of fifty, and we must mark an X on a paper grid whenever we give one to a voter. The machines are horribly complicated creatures that require configuration reports, diagnostic tape, serial-numbered tags, and sealed envelopes. There’s a device with a beautiful sci-fi name called The Cradlepoint that networks the polling site. We learned how to plug it in. They told us to cover extension cords and remove any items that a voter might bump into. We learned the appropriate distances that must be observed for exit polling and political discussion. We did hypothetical math problems that tallied up emergency ballots, voided ballots, and any ballots remaining in the scanner.
We will wipe down surfaces after each voter. And we must work in bipartisan teams at all times, so maybe I’ll make a Republican friend.
### Shame
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/shame/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:48.000Z
Tonight’s presidential debate was a fitting spectacle for a degraded nation. After ten minutes, C. left the room and shut the door because she’s much smarter than me. I just gaped at the screen, jaw-dropped and groaning. Five years ago, our president entered the arena as a cheap punchline, a six-car pileup causing gawker slowdown. There was the distinct sensation of millions of Americans laughing in the dark while a clown took the wheel. This man became president because of a craving for spectacle.
Published sixty years ago, Daniel Boorstin’s *[The Image](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/the-image-in-the-age-of-pseudo-reality/509135/?ref=jamesreeves.co)* remains one of the most clear-eyed assessments of the power of optics to cannibalize all common sense. But tonight’s event ripped past even the most dire warnings about “the shadow becoming the substance.” Tonight the shadow puffed itself into full authoritarian mode, refusing to honor the democratic process while telling white supremacists to stand by.
Switching gears slightly, there’s another quote from Boorstin that seems worthy of contemplation tonight: “Our great artists battle on a landscape we cannot chart, with weapons we do not comprehend, against adversaries we find unreal.”
---
#### [Low – Shame](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Shame.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Long Division | Vernon Yard, 1995
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Shame.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Shame.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Dots
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/dots/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:49.000Z
They’re talking about new spikes in Brooklyn and Queens. They’re talking about the president’s taxes, how he grifted, dodged, and only paid $750 when he bothered to pay anything at all. His supporters think this is proof that he’s clever because our system rewards those who know how to strip the bones clean.
Meanwhile, we stand on dots spaced six feet apart while waiting to deposit a check or pay for groceries. Sometimes this feels perfectly normal after six months of pandemic living. Other times it’s like a cold wave crashing over my head, the shock of just how much we’ve lost and how quickly life has been remade. If I’ve gleaned anything from keeping this glum journal throughout this year, it’s that I keep returning to the language of grief. It seems like the closest reference point for being pushed into new terrain.
Anger or compassion? The answer must be compassion because it’s so much harder.
#### [Matrix – Isolated Dot](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Isolated%20Dot.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Various Films | Chain Reaction, 2000 | [More](https://hardwax.com/30515/matrix/various-films/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Isolated%20Dot.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Isolated%20Dot.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Converge
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/converge/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:49.000Z
Ran five miles for the first time in weeks and it was ugly. I can deal with the new creaks and pains; it’s my mind that kills me, the constant looking at my watch until I remember how to forget about time and accept the grind of hauling myself around. This feels like a kind of mental training for dealing with this terrible year.
Fifty minutes later, I collapsed in the grass and thought about what next. For some reason I flashed on an aluminum ladder, the long days spent cleaning out an attic stuffed with my childhood belongings as well as the things my mom and dad once owned. I liquidated dishware and stuffed animals. I condensed my Reeves history into a small wooden trunk that my great-grandfather made. Tonight I’ve opened it, and I’m sifting through postcards with elegant handwriting, a pair of brass bookends, and a small velveteen box with my parents’ wedding bands.
These things seem connected. The perpetual letting go of plans and assumptions. Maybe even stripping away and seeing what remains.
#### [Plastikman – Converge](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Converge.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Consumed | Minus, 2003 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumed%5F%28Plastikman%5Falbum%29?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Converge.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Converge.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Lull
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/lull/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:49.000Z
Back in New York. After six weeks away, I thought the city would feel different when I returned, that I’d feel overwhelmed or awed or at least see its New Yorkness with fresh eyes. But this city’s muscle-memory is a remarkably stubborn thing; the moment I stepped onto First Avenue and waited for the crosswalk, it felt as if I’d only been away for a few hours. Maybe it’s the weather, still as warm and sweaty as when we left for the woods in August.
There are more people on the street. And more people sleeping on the sidewalks. There’s also a distinct quietness, a holding of the breath. It feels like the city is waiting. Waiting to see how the election turns out, if any sense of reason might return or if this nation is truly lost. Waiting to see if the infection rate will spike once the weather turns cold. Will our masks and distancing shield us, or will we return to the shuttered days of April when the streets were empty and ambulances filled the night?
We’ll have these answers soon. But tonight there’s light rain, our windows are open to the city’s hum, and there’s something dark and slow on the radio.
---
#### [Bohren & Der Club of Gore – Dead End Angels](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dead%20End%20Angels.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Sunset Mission | Wonder Records, 2000 | [Boomkat](https://boomkat.com/products/sunset-mission?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dead%20End%20Angels.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Dead%20End%20Angels.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Homeward
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/homeward/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:49.000Z
We’re leaving the Ohioan wilderness behind, night-driving back to New York. It’s been a fruitful time. Found a solid morning-writing groove and added 34,000 words to my book that are more or less in the right order. Reminded myself how to fall asleep without screens. Most importantly, I’ve recalibrated my relationship with the internet to a few short, intentional visits rather than a constant unwanted presence in the room. Of course, I probably didn’t need to travel six hundred miles into a dead zone to remember my devices have an option that *says turn wifi off*.
---
#### [Transient Waves – Ride Home](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Ride%20Home.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Transient Waves | Darla, 1996 | [Bandcamp](https://transientwaves.bandcamp.com/album/transient-waves?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Ride%20Home.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Ride%20Home.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Birds
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/birds/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:50.000Z
As I stood in a superstore parking lot before leaving Ohio, I watched some geese fly south and remembered my parents’ relationship with birds. My mother was a lapsed Catholic who kept the church at a distance. My father never talked about god. Not until the end. But they both believed in birds.
My father lost his mom to cancer when he was twenty-four. I never met her, but I know she loved the great blue heron, a big swoopy thing that dragged its legs across the sky. Whenever my parents saw one, they’d pull the car to the side of the road and gawk. *There she is*, they’d whisper. My father would bite his lip, and it was the closest I ever saw him come to tears until the day my mother died.
My grandfather kept a stuffed bald eagle in the basement, an oddly seditious act. But he was all too happy to show you the federal paperwork, including a letter with the president’s seal that said the bird was legal. He found it on the beach when he was a boy. It had a broken wing, and he tried to nurse it back to health but failed. After my grandfather died, my father reported seeing bald eagles in improbable places. A parking lot outside of Grand Rapids. Circling over the Detroit interstate.
My father’s faith in birds deepened after my mother died. “Now she’s a blue jay,” he said. “Remember how excited she would get when she saw the first one each spring?” Over the years, he would call at odd hours with reports of blue jays. He saw one perched on the railing of the building where he moved after selling the house. He saw one on the hospital lawn after his lung transplant. He saw blue jays in places they don’t live. Over the years, I became accustomed to how he’d clear his throat to make space for his inventory of herons, eagles, and bluejays. These birds were plain facts to him, proof of a sensible universe where those who left us did not leave us.
I realized too late that I never knew my father’s favorite bird, and now there’s nobody left to ask. But if I see a blue jay flying alongside a different bird, maybe a cardinal or robin, I’ll know that’s the one.
Perhaps it’s more fruitful to contemplate the desire to believe rather than the shape it takes.
### Shatter
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/shatter/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:50.000Z
Three moments in America today that reach beyond my ability with words, striking only the rudimentary language of grief:
Six months ago, three white cops killed a Black woman named Breonna Taylor while she slept. Today one officer was charged for “wonton endangerment” because one of his bullets shattered a neighbor’s window and could have killed someone. The officers who *did* murder somebody still have their jobs. They can still walk around and do things. Because that’s the law. It’s just one of those things, say the legal experts. Even though it’s never the other way around.
Today our president suggested there might not be a peaceful transfer of power after the election.
Over 200,000 Americans have died from this pandemic so far. In Austin, an artist has been planting [little red flags](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/insider/front-page-200k-deaths.html?ref=jamesreeves.co) in his yard, one for every Texan who has died of the coronavirus. He has over 15,000 so far. And although I cannot find the words, this small gesture of marking and honoring each life gives me a small glimmer of hope.
### September 22, 2020
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/equinox/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:50.000Z
Autumn equinox and the light matches the dark. We’re standing on the verge of an uneasy fall, unsure just how high the curve will go. This pandemic has pressed the gas pedal, accelerating the death of brick-and-mortar, social isolation, and a world understood through screens. Meanwhile, a handful of billionaires are busy [vacuuming up](https://americansfortaxfairness.org/issue/billionaires-pandemic-wealth-gains-burst-700b/?ref=jamesreeves.co) the scraps that remain. Something must give way. *Like putting a band-aid on a corpse*, someone once said to me. Can an entire system be overturned without becoming ideological and frightening?
The attorney general declared Portland, Seattle, and New York City to be “anarchist jurisdictions” for reasons unknown. The large digital clock in Union Square now displays the time remaining before climate disaster becomes irreversible. About seven years. Sometimes I think about those hanging chads in Florida, the world we might have had. Maybe not wildly different, but perhaps a little calmer and cooler. But something as slight as a poorly-punched piece of paper can send the world speeding down a very different road.
#### Lee Hazlewood – My Autumn’s Done Come
###### MGM, 1966 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee%5FHazlewood?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/My%20Autumns%20Done%20Come.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/My%20Autumns%20Done%20Come.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Plaza
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/plaza/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:50.000Z
The Lake Forest Oasis Service Plaza on Interstate 94 is one of my favorite moments in America. It’s a modern marvel where you can eat fast food on top of eight lanes of freeway traffic, hypnotized by an 80mph river of concrete, steel, and glass. Built in 1959, this tollway plaza just north of Chicago became a destination for motorists, and it was renovated in 2003 to “give patrons better views of the highway.” Last time I was there, a Buddhist monk in an orange robe and sneakers paced in front of the Taco Bell counter, anxiously waiting for his order. An angry man in flip-flops kept saying “shoot me an email” to nobody in particular while he pumped more quarters into the candy machine.
### Closer
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/closer/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:51.000Z
Last bonfire before we return to the city. I’m going to miss how the darkness presses closer out here, erasing the rest of the world until we’re left with only our stories and dreams.
---
#### [Demdike Stare – Nothing But The Night](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Nothing%20But%20The%20Night.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Symbiosis | Modern Love, 2009 | [More](https://boomkat.com/products/symbiosis-3d9c20e1-053b-4052-8fcb-aab80db49879?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Nothing%20But%20The%20Night.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Nothing%20But%20The%20Night.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Spectrum
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/spectrum/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:51.000Z
Insects buzz in the trees like bad reception, but the nights are finally cooler and crisping up. A bad memory came crashing in last night. My father’s hand, so alien and paper-light while a doctor on a screen—on television!—said my father was the sickest man in the hospital, and all he could offer was prayer. It did not work. Where does one turn for comfort when memories begin looping? There’s a problem with modern grief, a rupture that cannot be filled with squishy words like *mindfulness* and *acceptance*. Sometimes I want blood, messy-faced emotion, and revelation. Wailing and ecstasy. But this craving has been muted and flattened into the language of self-help.
Something is grinding away beneath my screens, scraping down the emotional spectrum until there’s only performance and outrage—and even these seem to be blurring.
### Process
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/process/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:51.000Z
Looking at the state of the world today, perhaps we need more architectural details designed to scare away demons.
They’ve run out of names for this year’s tropical storms, so now they’re using the Greek alphabet. Beta developed this afternoon. More disturbances lurk near the Gulf. Disturbed weather. Disorganized currents. It’s the language of shambling through life, trying to pull it together. Meanwhile, the number of people who’ve died from coronavirus creeps toward 200,000\. It’s now the third most common cause of death in this country.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg died today. Before her death, she said, “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” 46 days to go. The *New York Times* is running a *Live Ruth Bader Ginsburg Death Updates and Tracker*. This country’s fever is going to burn hotter before it breaks.
Outside my window, somebody said, “It’s more of a process than an event.”
### Behalf
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/behalf/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:51.000Z
Five thousand years ago we began outsourcing prayer and devotion to statues that would worship on our behalf. Human nature hasn’t really changed, and I can’t decide if this is reassuring or terrifying.
#### [Tropic of Cancer – Children of a Lesser God](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Children%20of%20a%20Lesser%20God.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Restless Idylls | Blackest Ever Black, 2013
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Children%20of%20a%20Lesser%20God.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Children%20of%20a%20Lesser%20God.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Encounter
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/encounter/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:51.000Z
Today the president shared a fake video of his opponent playing “Fuck the Police” from his telephone. This seems like a sentence that should be recorded for whoever finds the remains of our civilization.
I saw a deer today while jogging, and I’m trying hard to hang on to this innocent encounter. The deer didn’t seem alarmed by my presence. It just watched me while munching some foliage. I felt the urge to lecture it, to tell it that it should be very afraid of humans because look at what we’ve done to the world. Instead, I took its picture and carried on. Because that’s what we do these days.
### Legs on a Snake
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/simple/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:52.000Z
Tried to write a better blurb about myself that explains who I am and what I do. Thought I’d bang it out in a few minutes but trying to describe myself in a coherent and marketable manner is like throwing all of my dreams and regrets into an existential blender. For an hour, I stared at “James A. Reeves is.” Maybe this is enough.
*Like painting legs on a snake.* My in-laws taught me this Chinese idiom, a scold against unnecessary embellishment for making things too complicated.
#### [Seefeel – Plainsong](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Plainsong.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Quique | Too Pure, 1993 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quique?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Plainsong.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Plainsong.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### September 14, 2020
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/falling/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:52.000Z
Sometimes I fall asleep thinking about the ancient [atomists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomism?ref=jamesreeves.co#Antiquity), lulled by the image of a world composed of particles endlessly falling like a curtain of rain.
#### [Demdike Stare – Falling Off the Edge (Alternate Version)](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Falling%20Off%20The%20Edge.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Elemental II | Modern Love, 2011 | [More](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16163-elemental-parts-1-2/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Falling%20Off%20The%20Edge.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Falling%20Off%20The%20Edge.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### September 13, 2020
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/water/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:52.000Z
Heavy rain last night, and it seeped into my dreams. I had another dream about running through a flooded parking structure, looking for everyone I’ve lost. Maybe these dreams of water were connected to the calls from people I know on the West Coast. They’re calling and saying they’re having trouble breathing because of the ash in the air. The wildfires keep burning. The governor of Oregon called it a “mass fatality event.” Meanwhile, five named storms churn in the Atlantic, breaking seasonal records. A hurricane named Sally is bearing down on New Orleans, and it’s hardly making a dent in the national news.
This has been a year of references to plague novels and the dystopian skies of science fiction. These stories and movies no longer feel like fantasies; they feel like some kind of mental preparation.
#### [Daniel Avery & Alessandro Cortini – Water](https://danielavery.bandcamp.com/album/illusion-of-time?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Illusion of Time | Mute/Phantasy, 2020 | [Bandcamp](https://danielavery.bandcamp.com/album/illusion-of-time?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Water.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Water.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Superstore
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/superstore/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:52.000Z
After five weeks in Ohio, the bright lights and sheer acreage of its suburban supermarkets still enthrall me. The aisles are so wide you can drive a car. My cart skates across buffed linoleum while I scan, judge, and reject. There’s a cocooned and safe sensation here, a narcotic effect in coasting along and not buying anything, just enjoying the great deals to be had. My breath catches in the existential and super-saturated detergent aisle: All. Era. Gain. Cheer. Bold. I’m dazzled by yards of eggs.
Today I scrolled past housewares, automotive, office supplies, and toward the book section where a father solemnly placed a book in his daughter’s hands. “I’m buying this for you today,” he said. “It’ll tell you everything you need to know about the world.” It was a copy of *The Art of War*. She couldn’t have been more than ten years old.
### Nineteen
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/nineteen/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:53.000Z
September 11\. Nineteen years ago but it still feels like it was just the other day. Its cascades have reshaped the world, from a hallucinatory war on terror to shoes and belts at the airport. Flag pins, surveillance, drone strikes, and half a million dead in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. Last I checked, there were still camouflaged soldiers with submachine guns at Penn Station and Grand Central. These things don’t seem to get undone. I can’t imagine the cascades this year’s pandemic will bring.
I spent a lot of time driving around the country after September 11, talking to strangers and trying to get my head around things. Somewhere in Wyoming, I saw a mural of burning towers on a train trestle in the middle of blank countryside. Not a soul in sight. That’s when I understood we were heading someplace dark.
When I told people I was from New York, they wanted to talk about that day. Was I there? Was I scared it would happen again? Those bastards need to pay, they’d say. I’d mumble something vague, hoping to change the subject. “Let the tigers come with their claws,” I’d say. I picked this up from *The Little Prince*, and it sounded heavy enough to stop the questions. But I still remember a night in Memphis when a boozy woman in a pink pantsuit kept going: “We’ll be a target, just you watch. We got some major attractions like Graceland here and in a year or two they’re gonna attack us. You wait and see.” There was no fear in her voice, only screwy pride. She got angry when I tried to reassure her. She wanted me to agree that, yes, her city would be terrorized. And I think I understand this: we want to be at the center of things.
### Deer
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/deer/
Last updated: 2026-05-12T23:56:48.000Z
The first leaves are falling, and I’m eager for early dusk and deeper nights. Last night I dreamt of hammerhead sharks. I was swimming away from a burning airplane and they swarmed around me, biting away pieces of my back and arms until I woke up. I don’t know what this means, but C. says it’s because I’m afraid of hammers, which is true. I have to close my eyes whenever there’s a bludgeoning on television.
Carl Jung believed [his dreams](https://www.museumofdreams.org/dreams-of-destruction?ref=jamesreeves.co) in 1913 about an Arctic frost that blanketed Europe were a barometer of the energies that led to the first world war. I wonder if we’re all having more destructive dreams in 2020.
This afternoon I jotted down the phrase “negligent utopian energy.” I’m not sure what this means, but I like the way it natters at the mind. While running this evening, I saw three deer grazing in an empty soccer field, which felt like dreamlife glitching into reality. If I want to believe in symbols and signs, today gave me plenty to decipher.
### Smoke
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/smoke/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:53.000Z
California’s wildfires have dimmed the sun, transforming San Francisco’s skies into a *Blade Runner* scene, a never-ending twilight. They’re calling it a once-in-a-generation event. Record-breaking heat, drought, and fires generating their own weather systems. There have been too many once-in-a-lifetime events this year. I’d always thought the future was just around the corner, but it’s already here.
Meanwhile, a new book says our president knew a pandemic was coming yet minimized the risks anyway. There are recordings of him saying things like “this is deadly stuff” but “I wanted to always play it down.” In a different world, this would be a bombshell, cause for outrage. But it won’t make a dent.
But cynicism is easy. The challenge is maintaining a sense of dignity, maybe even hope in these undignified times.
#### [Abul Mogard – The Sky Had Vanished](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Sky%20Had%20Vanished.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Works | Ecstatic, 2016 | [Bandcamp](https://abulmogard.bandcamp.com/album/works?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Sky%20Had%20Vanished.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Sky%20Had%20Vanished.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### September 8, 2020
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/pearl/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:53.000Z
The first Christian monks believed dirt was proof of faith. They walked around caked in mud with lice in their hair, which they called the “pearls of god.” This factoid has been rattling around my head for months. Maybe because it shows how our worldview can transform the abhorrent into the virtuous. Which of our beliefs today will seem superstitious and bizarre centuries from now?
### September 7, 2020
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/thunder/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:53.000Z
Labor Day. Tornado sirens rang for an hour here in southeastern Ohio. The sky dimmed, the temperature crashed, and leaves boiled in the trees. No tornado came, but thunder rumbled all evening, bringing to mind the full-bodied pleasure of bass. Why is the sound of thunder so soothing? Maybe it’s rooted in nostalgia, first childhood impressions of the mysterious and sublime. Or simply the sensation of being safe inside.
---
#### [M83 – God of Thunder](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/God%20of%20Thunder.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts | Gooom, 2003 | [More](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5006-dead-cities-red-seas-lost-ghosts/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/God%20of%20Thunder.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/God%20of%20Thunder.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Kindling
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/kindling/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:54.000Z
The first chilly night. I stayed in the woods, switched off my devices, and reckoned with the fat neverending stack of index cards I’ve collected for the book I’ve been writing for five years. Scraps of local detail. Fragments of dialogue. Weird factoids about monks, radio static, and the interstate system. And impossible questions like what would it take for me to believe in god?
There’s [that principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's%5Flaw?ref=jamesreeves.co) that we burn up all available time to complete a task—and this gets scary when measured in years. I also fall into the trap of thinking whatever I’m working on must be a bulletproof summation of a life, which leads to something like [Theseus’s ship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship%5Fof%5FTheseus?ref=jamesreeves.co). But it’s just a story. There will be others. This morning I gave myself a deadline of sundown to decide what goes into this book and what gets killed, and I jotted it all into an outline. Tonight I lit a bonfire, and those index cards made excellent kindling.
---
#### [Ensemble Economique – The Night Air Burning](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Night%20Air%20Burning.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Fever Logic | Not Not Fun, 2013 | [Bandcamp](https://ensemble-economique.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Night%20Air%20Burning.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/The%20Night%20Air%20Burning.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Beauty
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/beauty/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:54.000Z
I spent the morning watching the light flicker in the trees. The buzz and whirr of insects sounded electrical, like power lines and transformers and feedback. I wonder if I’ll ever appreciate nature without reference to the humanmade.
A few years ago, I asked my students to define beauty, and we discussed aesthetics, grace, and whether it’s universal or personal. “Beauty is remembering the sad times without crying,” said one girl, who at fifteen years old was already so wise it broke my heart.
---
#### [Temple Ov Saturn – Nature of the Pattern](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Nature%20of%20the%20Pattern.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Lord of this World | 2019 | [Bandcamp](https://templeovsaturn.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Nature%20of%20the%20Pattern.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Nature%20of%20the%20Pattern.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Howl
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/howl/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:54.000Z
“His soul is that of a coward,” said Biden after reports that our president described dead soldiers as “suckers” and “losers.” With two months remaining until we vote, it’s tempting to howl at each outrageous statement and exploded norm—but monitoring this madness won’t do much good for my soul. Nothing I read or write will change how I vote. Beyond that, best I can do is volunteer where needed and channel my energy into my teaching, my work, and the people in my life.
I’d started this nightly journal on January 1 so I could remember the texture of this year. But in terms of politics, the shape is clear and will not be forgotten. This election will test how much cruelty Americans will tolerate, and how many of us crave it.
#### [Damien Jurado & Richard Swift – Be Not Fearful](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Be%20Not%20Fearful.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Other People’s Songs | Secretly Canadian, 2010 | [More](https://secretlycanadian.com/artist/damien-jurado-richard-swift/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Be%20Not%20Fearful.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Be%20Not%20Fearful.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Radioactive
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/radioactive/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:54.000Z
What is my obsession with late-night AM radio? I started tuning into it eleven years ago while driving around the country after my mom’s death. I drove from Detroit to the Pacific Ocean with her ashes in the car, wanting to scream. As I scrolled through the radio in search of voices to keep me company, I began to understand the appeal of its doomsday preachers and fear merchants. They take personal pain and direct it outwards, pointing our private fears and failings toward the government, Marxists, or flying saucers. If that fails, you can always blame the ubiquitous *they*. They control the weather. They lie to you. They want to take your freedom. And so on.
Over the years, the radio became meaner and more partisan. No matter the program, the tone was the same: frightened voices indoctrinating a cult that rejected compassion and rational thought. I worried about where these energies might lead. Today [the paranoid style](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FParanoid%5FStyle%5Fin%5FAmerican%5FPolitics?ref=jamesreeves.co) dominates the internet and speaks from the White House. Late-night radio has lost its weird appeal for me, a dead canary in a coal mine. But sometimes, I enjoy skipping from station to station and listening to the nation babble to itself as it glides through frazzled sermons, nutritional advice, alien abductions, financial planning, and light drizzle at the airport.
Today the *New York Times* published at least two essays about doomsday prepping for the election and maybe a civil war. (Another unexpected iteration of those late-night shows about emergency food rations, etc.) Anxiety spreads like a virus, and perhaps these hysterical articles aren’t helpful when the election is still two months away. Our president is a grifter, a bully, and, thankfully, uniquely stupid; I don’t think he can tear civilization apart unless the media wills it into reality so it can gin up page views. Meanwhile, health officials are warning Americans not to gather in large groups this Labor Day weekend, which feels like Memorial Day again because the pandemic has stopped America’s clocks.
### Swerve
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/swerve/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:55.000Z
Lately I’ve been thinking about something I heard back in 2012 while driving along the Gulf Coast after a terrible night in Texas. Just after midnight, a metallic voice began to flicker through the radio static: “Report. Report. It is unclear if they want the invasion of Iran to commence during a U.S. presidential election year. Regardless, World War III is already upon us.”
The voice rode an uncanny line between robot and human as it delivered garbled prophecies about bombings, earthquakes, and the Rockefeller Foundation. It was the usual batshit conspiracy schtick that was fringey eight years ago but has since been mainlined into our government. On a purely tonal level, however, it was a hypnotic slurry of lurching pauses and alien cadence. Then it took a sudden turn towards the personal: “Will enough people wake up, throw away their egos, and cry for a couple of days after accepting their whole life is a lie?”
I listened to this broadcast for hours, all the way from Beaumont to Baton Rouge, where I lost the signal. I listened because I couldn’t easily categorize it as a synthetic preacher, a political crackpot, or some futuristic form of self-help. Hell, I couldn’t even categorize it as a computer or a person. The content didn’t interest me, nutty and vivid though it was. The defiance of categories kept me hooked, the strange borderland this voice had staked out between diatribe and confessional, between staccato and slang, and between artificial and human.
There’s a creative lesson here: once we can categorize something, it no longer requires our full attention. But if we can’t put it in a neatly labeled box, we’ll stare at it all night. Perhaps the best work scrambles genre and rides strange lines that might swerve at any moment.
I dredged up a short recording of some of what I heard that night. The sound quality is terrible because I forgot to roll up the windows, but maybe you’ll understand why I’ve held onto this file all these years.
Gulf Coast Radio Clip
0:00
/94.01469387755103
1×
### Hex
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/hex/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:55.000Z
Speeding through dark prairie with only the pale green glow of the dashboard, I listened to a midnight preacher rattle and roar, talking about how the Apocalypse is near, how the mark of the beast is everywhere you look, and yes, these are truly the end of days.
Demons and hexes would help explain why some people behave the way they do. It would certainly account for 2020\. But we’re always bracing for the end of the world. We’ve been doing it since the beginning of time. It’s an easy way to feel special, maybe even chosen.
At three in the morning, I briefly considered buying a product that converts stagnant pond water into fresh drinking water for my whole family. “The coming economic disaster will transform the globe,” said the pitchman. “Are you prepared?” A retired general talked about remote viewing, and a young man from Cleveland worried about the kill shot from the sun. I lost the signal before I could find out what he meant. Beneath the static, I swear I heard a woman whispering, “You need to hide your mind.”
### Writing Is a Physical Act
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/loose/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:55.000Z
Struck by this interview with the novelist [Amitav Ghosh](https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/writer-amitav-ghosh-on-how-climate-change-continues-to-turn-fiction-into-reality/?ref=jamesreeves.co) about the value of working with paper and pencil, and it’s always good for me to be reminded that writing is a physical act:
> Every word I publish has been through thirty edits. My first draft I do with a pencil. I just write freehand with a pencil. I do that for quite a while, and then I write with a pen. I make a draft with a pen. And then I get onto the computer. For me, it would be really kind of crippling if I were to go straight onto a computer. I would just freeze up. I think there’s a lot to be said for trying to find ways of not freezing up, of being able to be loose . . . I think the whole editing process is essentially one of reducing your thoughts into a kind of solidity. You can’t begin with the solidity. You have to begin with a kind of liquidity, if you like. Even a kind of airiness. The whole process of distilling it down to something very solid is that gradual process of going through multiple edits and so on. I think if you were to start at the other end, trying every day to produce something that’s absolutely solid and determinant, it could have the effect of just making you freeze in anxiety.
I know the subzero temperatures of that freeze too well. So much effort goes into avoiding that chill. And there’s an interesting twist in the idea of cultivating, even practicing looseness.
#### [Amen Dunes – Lower Mind](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Lower%20Mind.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Through Donkey Jaw | Sacred Bones, 2011 | [Bandcamp](https://amendunes.bandcamp.com/album/through-donkey-jaw?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Lower%20Mind.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Lower%20Mind.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### August 30, 2020
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/burn/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:55.000Z
Tonight I contemplated the animal quality of fire, the way it hunts for fuel and moves like it wants to live.
I also pondered two separate phone calls with friends on either side of the country and opposite ends of the political spectrum. They each described vivid fears of violence in the wake of the election. They both idly wondered if they should buy a gun. (And no, they shouldn’t because that’s not helpful.) But fuck. This is the mood these days. The reassurances I tried to offer in these conversations left me feeling like a Pollyanna: the fringes have hijacked our screens and the media magnifies conflict—but most of us are peaceful and kind, even when we’re incoherent and foolish and scared. This election will be ugly, but we will survive and perhaps be better for it, now that we sense how fragile things can be.
And I believe these things tonight. Or at least, I don’t see the upshot to amplifying fear. But I’m chilled by how quickly phrases like “the other side” have become so natural, even in my own thinking. Because that’s the grammar of war.
#### [Yellow Swans – Burnt Dub](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Burnt%20Dub.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Deterioration Yellow Swans | Modern Radio, 2008 | [Bandcamp](https://yellowswans.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Burnt%20Dub.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Burnt%20Dub.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### I miss the golden days of scrolling through lyrical babble.
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/channel/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:56.000Z
I miss the golden days of Twitter when I discovered new music, scrolled through lyrical babble, and made genuine friends. But no matter how hard I try to maintain a feed dedicated to these things, the hysteria and hate somehow still bleed through the floorboards. I don’t want to feed that machine anymore.
Is it possible to engage with social media without losing your soul? To sidestep its outrage mechanics and degrading scoreboards? With their idiot logic of hearts and retweets, these channels are fundamentally designed to advertise oneself—so perhaps using them sensibly requires stripping away the self. To quit any attempt at appearing bright and clever and instead find new ways of listening and looking that encourage imagination rather than opinion. To erase the “I” and stand outside of time, writing like a ghost.
Such were my thoughts as I wondered if I might find a way to use these spaces differently. Then I realized I should follow this advice in all areas of my life.
#### [Labradford – Phantom Channel Crossing](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Phantom%20Channel%20Crossing.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Labradford | Kranky, 1996 | [Bandcamp](https://labradford.bandcamp.com/album/labradford?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Phantom%20Channel%20Crossing.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Phantom%20Channel%20Crossing.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Monochrome
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/monochrome/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:56.000Z
> “He understood for the first time that black-and-white was the only true medium for film as an idea, film in the mind. He almost knew why but not quite . . . it was completely necessary, black-and-white, one more neutralizing element, a way in which the action becomes something near to elemental life, a thing receding into its drugged parts.”
>
> Don DeLillo, *[Point Omega](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point%5FOmega?ref=jamesreeves.co)*
After years of primarily black-and-white photography, I’ve been drifting towards color these days. Perhaps it’s because this summer feels extra-vivid. But I’m still drawn to monochrome moods. Sometimes color gets in the way. It conjures specific memories and decades: the cool pastels of the early 1960s, the overheated textures of the 1970s. With all the filters at our disposal today, the technical constraints of color that defined a fair chunk of the twentieth century have become an aesthetic shorthand with buttons labeled retro, kitsch, purple haze, sepia, magic hour, pinhole, etc.
But whether you encounter a black-and-white photo in an old shoebox, hanging on a gallery wall, or displayed on your screen, it always looks pretty much the same. You’re not looking at the photographer’s favorite decade, you’re looking at the subject.
I wonder if there’s anything to learn from my recent drift towards color and my desire to return to monochrome. Perhaps there aren’t any lessons beyond the allure of novelty and the craving for clarity. Which brings to mind a challenging quote from [Andrei Tarkovsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei%5FTarkovsky?ref=jamesreeves.co) that I’ve been pondering:
> “It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all. We should long ago have become angels had we been capable of paying attention to the experience of art, and allowing ourselves to be changed in accordance with the ideals it expresses. Art only has the capacity, through shock and catharsis, to make the human soul receptive to good.”
>
> Tarkovsky, *[Sculpting in Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sculpting%5Fin%5FTime?ref=jamesreeves.co)*
### Stimuli
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/stimuli/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:56.000Z
The other day I drove past a church sign that said: *What’s missing from CH\_\_CH? UR*. I keep thinking about all the interesting dots that connect this pun to a crucified man. I’ve also been contemplating my hardwired need for stimulation. Maybe it’s a law of the universe. After all, how else does an organism know it’s alive? But my craving for headlines, entertainment, and controversy needs to be unwound.
I made a vow to be better. Then I flipped on the last night of the Republican Convention while I cooked a frozen pizza. Somebody from the Ultimate Fighting Championship was singing the president’s praises because this is American now. He said, “The president recognizes the best way to restore normalcy to people’s lives is to bring back entertainment options.”
And this president slouched over a podium on the South Lawn of the White House. He slurred, perspired, and trashed his enemies as he degraded the White House, transforming it into a chintzy prop for a television demagogue. And he made it clear he intends to stay. “It’s not just a house,” he said. “It’s a home.” Fireworks spelled his name in the sky. Outside the perimeter, protestors held an illuminated sign: *Trump lied. 180,000 died*.
---
#### [Vatican Shadow – Peace Rage](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Peace%20Rage.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Ghosts of Chechnya | Hospital Productions, 2012/2020 | [Bandcamp](https://vaticanshadow.bandcamp.com/album/ghosts-of-chechnya?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Peace%20Rage.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Peace%20Rage.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Weather
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/weather/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:56.000Z
In Wisconsin, the police shot a Black man in the back. Seven times. In front of his children. Protests collided with gun-wielding vigilantes. Two protestors were killed. The suspect is a white seventeen-year-old with “an intense affinity for guns, law enforcement, and President Trump,” according to the *New York Times*. Meanwhile, a massive hurricane named Laura churns in the Gulf of Mexico, breaking records as it aims for the Louisiana-Texas border.
This was the American weather when our synthetic Vice President solemnly told us to “never forget that where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom—and that means freedom always wins.” This mind-bending statement left me making a strangled noise somewhere near the borderline of sanity. Again: there’s something very rotten in Christendom if it can be used to sanctify bigotry, pollution, corporate tax cuts, and assault weapons.
I switched the channel and a meteorologist said, “Just behind this vortex is a wall of water getting ready to surge.”
### Untethered
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/untethered/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:57.000Z
Each day the American brain becomes more scrambled. People who believe the world is governed by a secret cabal of satanic cannibals are winning elections and holding rallies. Footage circulates of protestors harassing a woman at a restaurant for not joining their chants for justice.
Cut to the Republican Convention, a hallucinatory pageant of fear-mongering in the name of the Second Amendment and Jesus Christ. Every televised speech seemed calculated to nudge its supporters toward real-life violence. “No matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America,” they said. Then the First Lady stood in the Rose Garden and lectured us about civility while her husband smirked.
#### [Black Sabbath – Paranoid](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/paranoid?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Paranoid | Vertigo, 1970 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoid%5F%28album%29?ref=jamesreeves.co#Controversy)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Paranoid.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Paranoid.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Observance
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/observance/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:57.000Z
If I hadn’t been absently flipping through an old journal tonight, I might not have remembered that my mom died eleven years ago today. I felt guilty for losing track of the date, as if I’d abandoned my post. But over the years, my observances have drifted towards her birthday rather than those final memories of her kicking at the sheets, saying *I have to go*. Perhaps this is natural and good.
How do we observe the anniversaries of our dead? Tonight I sat outside in the unfamiliar terrain of southeastern Ohio, lit a candle, and watched the stars.
Some [words from John Berger](https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/observations/2016/01/history-meeting-place?ref=jamesreeves.co) come to mind: “There are no longer any acknowledged occasions for us to receive the dead and the unborn. There is each day’s life, yet what surrounds us is a void. A void in which millions of us are today alone. And such solitude can transform death into a companion.” Reading Berger is always a shot in the arm, for he urges us to engage with the texture of our memories, no matter how tragic or mundane, and to connect with that “wordless language which we have been reading since early childhood, but which I cannot name.”
### Pegasus
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/pegasus/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:57.000Z
What is the power of a first memory? They are such peculiar creatures, these fuzzy impressions and garbled snapshots that teach us how to see the world. I’m pretty sure [my first memory](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/televised-memories/?ref=jamesreeves.co) is bawling at the mannequin in the opening credits of *Happy Days*, which led to a childhood phobia that required my mom to cover my eyes whenever we entered a department store. This gradually mellowed into a grown-up interest in the uncanny valley.
Another early memory came to mind the other night while I idled in a Taco Bell parking lot and ate a Crunchwrap Supreme because sometimes I hate myself. Glancing in the rearview mirror, I caught a shift in the light that left me remembering a hot summer night spent laying in the backseat while *Superman* played at a drive-in theater (or, after doing the math, more likely *Superman II)*. My parents sat in the front seats watching, but I was facing the other direction, staring out the back window at a red neon horse with wings. It was the old Pegasus sign for Mobil gas station, and I remember thinking that winged creature in the sky must have something to do with words like *heaven* and *god*.
My first reaction to this memory is sorrow for my parents because I’m sure they didn’t choose the movie. So there they were, dutifully watching *Superman II* on my behalf while I preferred to watch a gas station sign. But I have a hunch this small moment cemented my lifelong fixation on night driving and [lonesome gas stations](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/night-stations/?ref=jamesreeves.co).
### Scan
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/scan/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:57.000Z
For a glimpse into the brainpan of America, you can’t beat late-night AM radio with its paranoid callers, heavy-breathing preachers, and baroque debates about whether aliens are interfering with our thoughts.
“—they might not be fuzzy little beings at all. But that doesn’t automatically make them devils or representatives of Lucifer. It might make them simply creations, just as we are creations. And we could have been tampered with.”
“Well, I think they’re tampering with us now.”
It’s the sound of a nation mumbling to itself late at night, long after it should have gone to bed. Driving alone in the dark, I’m moved by these lonely and sometimes frantic voices searching for a pattern in the stars, their souls, or the CIA that might provide clues for how to live.
Tonight I stitched together a few recordings from a late-night drive and added some reverb and drone. And somewhere between the discussion about alien tampering and the angel of death, you can hear my turn signal blinking while I idled at an empty intersection in the middle of America.
#### [AM Radio Scan](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/AM%20Radio%20Scan%201.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### 2020 | [Download](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/AM%20Radio%20Scan%201.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/AM%20Radio%20Scan%201.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/AM%20Radio%20Scan%201.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Sunset
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/sunset/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:58.000Z
The great American eclipse was three years ago today, a cosmic event that covered the nation coast to coast. I remember how the temperature plummeted as the world was cast in silvery light. And the gorgeous sight of everyone studying the sky with their cardboard glasses. There’s a dark resonance between that moment and these days of masked faces. We could use another extraterrestrial event.
Heading west on Interstate 70, there’s a beautiful sunset and it’ll have to do for tonight.
Gas stations, car dealerships, and strip malls streak past the windshield. Old waltzes bleed through the radio static and voices howl about wearing masks. Late-night callers connect the dots between wildfires, traffic accidents, and factory explosions.
Hard cut to Hank Williams doing “I Saw the Light” back in ’48—*worries and fears I claimed for my own, then like the blind man that God gave back his sight, praise the Lord, I saw the —*
“Welcome back to Gun Talk, you’re on the air.”
“Any advice on the best place to buy a thousand rounds?”
#### [Low – I’m On Fire](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/I'm%20On%20Fire.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Dead Man’s Town: A Tribute to Born in the USA | Lightning Rod, 2014 | [More](https://time.com/3306867/bruce-springsteen-tribute-album-dead-mans-town/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/I'm%20On%20Fire.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/I'm%20On%20Fire.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Machine
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/machine/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:58.000Z
Yes, I wept during Biden’s convention speech. And I was annoyed by my tears, even a little ashamed. But why?
I wanted to flatter myself as a media-savvy cynic who’s immune to a televised assault on my emotions. But I sniffled through those well-produced biopics as I remembered my bouts with grief and loss, and I found reassurance in home-video clips of folks telling stories about Biden shepherding them through difficulty and mourning. (And now I half-expect Biden will appear at my bedside when my time comes.) Catharsis doesn’t care about the cause.
Yet part of me was still mad. Not just because my preferred candidate didn’t win, but because of the political fuckery before Super Tuesday when the powers-that-be seemed hellbent on manufacturing consensus for restoring the “normal” that led to someone like Trump in the first place.
But February was years ago. Before lockdowns and masks. Before 175,000 unnecessary dead. Our lives have been tinted by too many new shades of grief and uncertainty—universal emotions that can draw us closer if given a chance. So I’m heartened by the prospect of a president who can speak honestly about the shock of sudden loss, who is fluent in sorrow and knows how to reckon with grief. An empathy machine sounds like a pretty good leader right now.
### Signs
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/signs/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:58.000Z
Somewhere in southeastern Ohio, I drove past two ranch houses sitting side by side with tidy sidewalks and neatly mowed lawns. The house on the left had a row of signs running down the property line between the two homes: *Trump 2020*, *Law & Order*, and *Keep America Great*. Their neighbor matched them sign for sign: *Biden 2020*, *Black Lives Matter*, and a handmade placard that said *Love Wins*. These two teams of signs blare at each other day and night, an endless argument by proxy.
I’ve been thinking about symbols lately, how we can condense entire worlds of history and sensation into an apple or serpent, a cross or a star. The image lingers, not the plot.
There’s a national coin shortage because of the pandemic. Fear of contamination. Reduced production at the U.S. Mint. But today the S&P 500 hit a record high and stocks are officially back in a bull market. That’s another symbol, but one without reference to reality.
---
#### [Seefeel – Signals (Momentum 1.3 Remix)](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Signals%20Remix.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### i-01 | Promo, 1994 | [More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seefeel?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Signals%20Remix.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Signals%20Remix.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Jeremiad
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/jeremiad/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:58.000Z
A woman at the supermarket kept making a noise I could not decipher. It was a sound that reminded me of the thin line between laughter and a sob, how the mechanics are basically the same.
In the parking lot I scrolled through predictions from health experts and historians of an awful autumn. Everything I click reads like one long jeremiad. Today I learned this term comes from [Jeremiah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book%5Fof%5FLamentations?ref=jamesreeves.co), the “weeping prophet” who foresaw Jerusalem’s downfall and developed the “city lament” in which collective grief blurs with nostalgia for god’s kindness in the past.
These are biblical times. The pandemic continues. Evacuations in Northern California as more fires burn. The area has experienced ten thousand lightning strikes over the past three days. Meanwhile, a former president issued a grave warning that our current president is a threat to democracy. I registered to [become a poll worker](https://www.eac.gov/help-america-vote?ref=jamesreeves.co) on Election Day.
---
#### [Low – Violence](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Violence.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Long Division | Vernon Yard, 1995 | [Bandcamp](https://lowtheband.bandcamp.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Violence.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/Violence.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### People looking in the wrong direction.
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/convention/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:59.000Z
Somewhere north of Columbus, we tuned in to the first night of the Democratic National Convention. News anchors repeated the phrase “unconventional convention” again and again. Then came two hours of tear-jerking montages, a Springsteen song, politicians in their living rooms, and people looking in the wrong direction because video conferencing is still awkward and wrong. It was a stark reminder that we now live in a world without crowds. (A line from Don DeLillo’s *Mao II* comes to mind: “To become a crowd is to keep out death.”) The effect was a weirdly intimate blend of traditional political banality delivered by decontextualized faces that could have been live, prerecorded, or algorithmically generated. But there were some welcome signs of reassurance and hope, aside from whenever the actual candidate appeared.
The most powerful moment came from a woman whose father believed the president’s pandemic denial and paid with his life. “There are two Americas,” she said. “The America that Donald Trump lives in, and the America that my father died in.” This should become a slogan.
### Grind
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/grind/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:59.000Z
I haven’t been running much at the cabin in the woods. I gave up after a suicidal jog along a loopy stretch of road where monstrous pickup trucks Tokyo-drifted around the curves. This afternoon I drove to a path along the Scioto River, and I thought I’d run an easy three or four miles. Although it had only been a week since my last run, my body creaked and juddered. Even worse, I was bored out of my skull, checking my watch every two minutes and wondering if I should start smoking again.
The body remembers slowly and forgets very quickly. This lesson also applies to writing. A day or two passes without working on my book, and my brains start panting and wheezing the next time I sit at my desk. *Why are you making up stories? Let’s do something else instead.* The daily routine isn’t poetic or even interesting. There are no flashes of insight, no white-hot burst of motivation that fuels me until dawn. God knows I’ve waited long enough for these things to show up. From now on, it’s just a steady grind.
### Tornado
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/tornado/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:59.000Z
Ohio. Storms today. Maybe it’s because I’m back in the Midwest, but a memory flashed to mind that I haven’t thought about in years. I was six years old and playing with some of the neighborhood kids in a park somewhere south of Chicago. The sky turned black and green. The sound of something terrible filled the air, a cosmic revving that stopped us cold on the grass. Our little faces tilted up as we watched the clouds swirl. I remember the texture of the air, the sense of something being sucked from the world before it returned in terrible form. Maybe it was the barometer dropping, the rearrangement of air pressure. Decades later, this sensation returns whenever the telephone rings with bad news.
The grown-ups argued about whether we should take shelter in the cars or under the trees. But here comes my mom, racing toward us across the field, scooping me into her arms—maybe scooping all of us because she was a hero that day, the way she scooched us under the picnic tables while she lay on top of me, her breath in my ear saying *don’t worry, hunny bunny, it’s gonna be alright* while that terrible engine crossed the sky and took the roof of a nearby gazebo with it.
I remember her face that day, filled with love and instinct and knowing exactly what to do. I knew she would have died for me, for any of us. Sometimes I fight to remember her this way. Because as the years passed, she didn’t know what to do. Most of the time, none of us do. But we have our moments.
#### [Tropic of Cancer – I Woke Up And The Storm Was Over](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/I%20Woke%20Up%20And%20The%20Storm%20Was%20Over.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
###### Stop Suffering | Blackest Ever Black, 2015 | [Bandcamp](https://blackesteverblack.bandcamp.com/album/stop-suffering?ref=jamesreeves.co)
[http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/I%20Woke%20Up%20And%20The%20Storm%20Was%20Over.mp3](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/radio/I%20Woke%20Up%20And%20The%20Storm%20Was%20Over.mp3?ref=jamesreeves.co)
### Buzz
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/buzz/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:49:59.000Z
We’ve entered the last stretch of summer when everything is overripe and so green it feels obscene. The alien whirr of the cicadas enhances the uncanny mood. They spend years underground feeding on the roots of trees before emerging to buzz for a few weeks so they can find a mate, breed, and die. The ones that surface every seventeen years are classified into Broods I through XXIII, which enhances their mythos. I think we’re in the neighborhood of Brood X, but their cycles are getting screwy because of climate change.
Strange how I can fall asleep to traffic, sirens, and yelling in the city, but a few cicadas chirruping in the countryside leave me feeling frazzled and existential. Maybe it’s because they sound so synthetic, like a machine on the fritz. Surely I’ve heard cicadas before, but tonight they sound extraterrestrial—have I never paid attention? Ohio’s forests are noisier and more surreal than I expected.
### Lot
URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/lot/
Last updated: 2025-11-15T03:50:00.000Z
Each night I drive twelve miles from the cabin to a nearby town where I can pick up a signal and join the grid. I check my email. I send files to whoever needs them. I spend thirty seconds scrolling through the news, just long enough so I don’t scream.
I enjoy these midnight drives. Mist rises from the fields, and my headlights catch the shining eyes of deer. Along the town’s empty Main Street, the faces of men and women who’ve served in the military hang from the lampposts. The doctor’s office has a sign that says, “Doctors can cure, but only Jesus can heal.”
Tonight I’m idling in the vast parking lot of a strip mall anchored by a Walmart. It’s a deeply American scene here after hours. Teenagers drag race from the shuttered Chinese buffet to the Lawn & Garden side of the Walmart, their cars tricked out with neon and earsplitting engines. An old man pushes a shopping car filled with metal scrap and hollers about demons. A few middle-aged guys toss a football while their wives cheer from the bed of a pickup. Beneath the sodium lights, it looks like a futuristic sport.
This parking lot is an inspiring office after midnight.
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