# 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. Use `/llms-full.txt` for consolidated page and post context.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).

## Pages
- [About](https://www.jamesreeves.co/about.md) - “The moon is a stone and the sky is full of deadly hardware, but oh God, how beautiful anyway.” <em>—Margaret Atwood</em>
- [Metal](https://www.jamesreeves.co/metal.md) - 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…
- [Midnight Radio](https://www.jamesreeves.co/radio.md) - Dedicated to the nighthawks and graveyard shifters, you beautiful enemies of sleep.
- [Spite Privacy Policy](https://www.jamesreeves.co/spite-terms-privacy.md) - 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 loc…
- [Spite](https://www.jamesreeves.co/spite.md) - 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…
- [Welcome, New Listener!](https://www.jamesreeves.co/welcome.md) - 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.

## Posts
- [A Torchlight Shining at the Bastards](https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-torchlight-shining-at-the-bastards.md) - Every showing is full of secrets. –Julian of Norwich, 1373
- [Thirty Years of Monsters](https://www.jamesreeves.co/thirty-years-of-monsters.md) - 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 fas…
- [Air Conditioning](https://www.jamesreeves.co/air-conditioning.md) - Kimchi adds tension to any situation. Become yourself by holding yourself.
- [Open the Door of the Cosmos](https://www.jamesreeves.co/open-the-door-of-the-cosmos.md) - The ability to find beauty, both backwards and forwards, is something I’ve learned from tonight’s Very Special Guest, my friend Earl Carlson.
- [Byung-Chul Han](https://www.jamesreeves.co/byung-chul-han.md) - The Agony of Eros was my first encounter with Han's philosophy, 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 wo…
- [The Shimmer](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-shimmer.md) - Some theories about beauty.
- [The Age of the Holy Spirit](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-age-of-the-holy-spirit.md) - "An age so fragmented that there’s a weird emergent new form of unity."
- [Under the Eye of the Big Bird](https://www.jamesreeves.co/hiromi-kawakami-under-the-eye-of-the-big-bird.md) - Hiromi Kawakami's Under the Eye of the Big Bird begins as an austere fable in the vein of 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.…
- [Dream Theory](https://www.jamesreeves.co/dream-theory.md) - Painting is incredibly hard.
- [Gustav Klimt - Judith I](https://www.jamesreeves.co/gustav-klimt-judith.md) - 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](https://www.jamesreeves.co/star-demon.md) - Why do some encounters alter our perception while others leave no trace?
- [Tobias Pils](https://www.jamesreeves.co/tobias-pils.md) - 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](https://www.jamesreeves.co/crocodile-eye.md) - 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…
- [My Spiritualized T-shirt](https://www.jamesreeves.co/my-spiritualized-t-shirt.md) - It's so soft. And I already have "Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space" tattooed on my arm.
- [Cildo Meireles - Babel](https://www.jamesreeves.co/cildo-meireles-babel.md) - 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 w…
- [Basic Channel - Phylyps Trak II](https://www.jamesreeves.co/basic-channel-phylyps-trak-ii.md) - 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 al…
- [Michael Clayton](https://www.jamesreeves.co/michael-clayton.md) - 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.
- [Fall of Civilizations](https://www.jamesreeves.co/fall-of-civilizations.md) - 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 hea…
- [Candy Chang](https://www.jamesreeves.co/candy-chang.md) - Number one inspiration station. More
- [Midwife](https://www.jamesreeves.co/midwife.md) - 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 →
- [Kobo Abe - The Woman in the Dunes](https://www.jamesreeves.co/k-b-abe-the-woman-in-the-dunes.md) - Published in 1962, Kōbō Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes 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…
- [Coco Cuisine](https://www.jamesreeves.co/coco-cuisine.md) - Hands down the best dim sum in the Middle West and maybe anywhere—and a beloved weekly ritual with my in-laws. Visit →
- [The Studio of Gratifying Discourse](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-studio-of-gratifying-discourse.md) - Chanting and humming until language becomes a holy tone.
- [Datacide - Flowerhead](https://www.jamesreeves.co/datacide-flowerhead.md) - Atom Heart & Tetsu Inoue’s drowsy low-end opus that comforted me thirty years ago and still soothes me today. Visit →
- [Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Midnight Radio](https://www.jamesreeves.co/bohren-der-club-of-gore-midnight-radio.md) - A slow-motion masterpiece from 1995, and the namesake of my newsletter. Visit →
- [Chili oil](https://www.jamesreeves.co/chili-oil.md) - I used to believe in just the oil and not the flakes. However, after a surprisingly robust and persistent intervention from my friend P, 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…
- [Rod Modell & Taka Noda - Glow World](https://www.jamesreeves.co/rod-modell-taka-noda-glow-world.md) - Like mainlining every David Lynch film at half speed. Visit →
- [Topo Chico](https://www.jamesreeves.co/topo-chico.md) - 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](https://www.jamesreeves.co/temple-ov-saturn.md) - 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 →
- [M83 - Don't Save Us From the Flames](https://www.jamesreeves.co/m83-don-t-save-us-from-the-flames.md) - My all-time favorite lyrics: A piece of brain in my hair. The wheels are melting. A ghost is screaming your name. Visit →
- [Variant - Foil](https://www.jamesreeves.co/variant-foil.md) - Basic Channel is the godhead but this 45-minute track is the perfect form. More
- [Noon Radio](https://www.jamesreeves.co/noon-radio.md) - I’ve had more conversations about the human soul in the past six months than the rest of my life combined.
- [Neglected Utopian Energy](https://www.jamesreeves.co/neglected-utopian-energy.md) - I'm interested in my dreams because this is where I can hear myself think.
- [Return of the Gods](https://www.jamesreeves.co/return-of-the-gods.md) - "I guess the real question is: Does God believe in Himself?"
- [Conversations With the Drum](https://www.jamesreeves.co/conversations-with-the-drum.md) - Create routines so they can be abandoned.
- [Bodies Without Organs](https://www.jamesreeves.co/bodies-without-organs.md) - Art, life, and death in a very special (and fun) episode with Candy Chang.
- [Night Flight to Vienna](https://www.jamesreeves.co/night-flight-to-vienna.md) - Practicing the lectio divina with a deep winter chug.
- [Darkly Euphoric](https://www.jamesreeves.co/darkly-euphoric.md) - On spite, lost futures, and the playlist as communion—with a Very Special Guest
- [Cursed VHS](https://www.jamesreeves.co/cursed-vhs.md) - 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…
- [First Things](https://www.jamesreeves.co/first-things.md) - Three songs that possess the righteously serene energy I fantasize about cultivating in the first minutes of a new year.
- [Holiday Lullaby](https://www.jamesreeves.co/holiday-lullaby.md) - Robot love and the glory of reverb
- [2025 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2025-rotation.md) - Highly subjective and therefore entirely accurate.
- [Slow Gold](https://www.jamesreeves.co/slow-gold.md) - Egg foo young, tornados, suffering, and short-circuiting the algorithm.
- [Absorb the Poison](https://www.jamesreeves.co/absorb-the-poison.md) - An ode to Michael Clayton and the giddy illusion of renewal before death.
- [The Heart Keeps Time](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-heart-keeps-time.md) - Notes on time and strangeness, plus an hour-long soundtrack for Grace Wang’s photography exhibition.
- [Hallucination Soundtrack](https://www.jamesreeves.co/hallucination-soundtrack.md) - Revelations and mental rearrangements only seem to occur when I’m not paying attention.
- [Sympathy Tower Tokyo](https://www.jamesreeves.co/sympathy-tokyo-tower.md)
- [Autumn Chrome](https://www.jamesreeves.co/autumn-chrome.md) - A chromatic megamix so glossy it’s nearly lacquered—plus notes on the Mariana Trench and unbearable weather.
- [The Stellar Sphere](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-stellar-sphere-2.md) - Let’s focus on the new.
- [Six Broken Dreams](https://www.jamesreeves.co/six-broken-dreams.md) - Twenty-three minutes of chatter that drifts in and out of focus, echoing and looping like dreams tend to do.
- [Untitled Heat](https://www.jamesreeves.co/untitled-heat.md) - Hunting for freedom through repetition.
- [The Vacuum Lady](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-vacuum-lady.md) - 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](https://www.jamesreeves.co/remembering-lake-superior.md) - You can feel the geography shift when you see all that big pine and cold water.
- [Mirror Games](https://www.jamesreeves.co/mirror-games.md) - Here I am, astral projecting in 1983 to bring you five sun-bleached slabs of summertime music.
- [Ghosts and Gods](https://www.jamesreeves.co/ghosts-and-gods.md) - At some point the screen became the world and now we’re haunting it.
- [Heavy Metal Instructions](https://www.jamesreeves.co/heavy-metal-instructions.md) - This is hands-down the best thing that’s come from having a website, and I can’t adequately express how much it means to me.
- [Escape from Death Prom](https://www.jamesreeves.co/escape-from-death-prom.md) - The ghosts of old standards, summoned for whatever comes next.
- [Desire Is a Demon](https://www.jamesreeves.co/desire-is-a-demon.md) - There’s something within me that will never be satisfied or understood—and this is how it should be.
- [Dream Inventory](https://www.jamesreeves.co/dreams.md) - In Greek mythology, dreams were often personified as black-winged demons that enter our sleeping minds like bats to deliver messages from the gods.
- [Reading List](https://www.jamesreeves.co/reading.md) - Books are meant to be highlighted and dog-eared, their spines cracked and lying facedown on the kitchen table.
- [Dreamland](https://www.jamesreeves.co/dreamland.md) - The first gods were probably born in dreams.
- [Instructions for Myself](https://www.jamesreeves.co/instructions.md) - It can always use more reverb.
- [The First Two Miles Are Always Murder](https://www.jamesreeves.co/music-for-running.md) - Beautiful music for ugly running.
- [An Ongoing Exercise in Accretion](https://www.jamesreeves.co/incense.md) - An ongoing exercise in accretion.
- [Taipei/Tokyo Collages](https://www.jamesreeves.co/taipei-tokyo-collages.md) - Collages of the Taipei+Tokyo ephemera in my suitcase.
- [Destroyer of Obstacles](https://www.jamesreeves.co/destroyer-of-obstacles.md) - An offering of static and fire.
- [Dead Trees Bloom Flowers](https://www.jamesreeves.co/dead-trees-bloom-flowers.md) - Bad fortunes are tied to a rack while a Buddhist chant bleeds through my favorite song of the year.
- [A Partial Inventory of a Night Market in Taiwan](https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-partial-inventory-of-a-night-market-in-taiwan.md) - Fresh meat, blouses, and turnip cakes.
- [Exit the Tiger](https://www.jamesreeves.co/exit-the-tiger.md) - High walls surround the Confucian temple because you must work for the knowledge within.
- [Eighteen Levels of Hell](https://www.jamesreeves.co/madou-daitian-temple-hell.md) - Those who cut corners shall be eaten by predators and snakes.
- [The Obsidian Turtle Governs the North](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-obsidian-turtle-governs-the-north.md) - Broadcasting from somewhere between the bells of a temple and the heat of a night market.
- [Naoshima Notes](https://www.jamesreeves.co/naoshima-notes.md) - I believe the function of art is to create a situation where language falls apart.
- [The Red Curtain](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-red-curtain.md) - A tribute to David Lynch that roams through ruined ballads and slow-motion noir.
- [Tokyo Notes](https://www.jamesreeves.co/tokyo-notes.md) - Landed in Tokyo. I do not know the day of the week or why it’s dark outside.
- [Notes on God](https://www.jamesreeves.co/torched-bliss.md) - Hell can be described in a thousand ways, but heaven remains impossible to grasp.
- [Return to Death Prom](https://www.jamesreeves.co/return-to-death-prom.md) - Where the reverb is heavy and the souls are haunted.
- [A Walk in London](https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-walk-in-london.md) - A delightful collage of me walking through London three years ago.
- [Francis Bacon](https://www.jamesreeves.co/figure-with-meat.md) - The ambiguity forces us to supply our own nightmares.
- [Slow Vessels](https://www.jamesreeves.co/slow-vessels.md) - I’m returning to my spiritual practice of slowing my favorite songs down to a crawl.
- [Hammerhead](https://www.jamesreeves.co/hammerhead.md) - 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 the…
- [Strange Shapes in the Night](https://www.jamesreeves.co/strange-shapes-in-the-night.md) - Dedicated to the great American tradition of speaking to the heavens through car-wreck calendars and junkyard rockets.
- [Naming the Snow](https://www.jamesreeves.co/naming-the-snow.md) - “God is an experience,” an old man said as he reached for another cookie.
- [Holy Ruins](https://www.jamesreeves.co/holy-ruins.md) - Some wobbly loops from T. Rex and Roxy Music, a static-ridden visitation from Nancy Sinatra, and other moments of holy imperfection.
- [2024 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2024-rotation.md) - Here are the albums I played the most this year, the ones I kept revisiting because they challenged, delighted, and reassured.
- [Professional Holiday Party](https://www.jamesreeves.co/professional-holiday-party.md) - Five joyous classics from Chicago, Detroit, and Berlin. Sing along: “If snow was black, I’d wear black shades and drive a black car.”
- [The Heart Accumulates Microcracks](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-heart-accumulates-microcracks.md) - A Very Kind Listener requested a soundtrack to accommodate a slowly breaking heart.
- [Brutal Times](https://www.jamesreeves.co/brutal-times.md) - Because true freedom is not thinking about the president every day.
- [Grey](https://www.jamesreeves.co/grey.md) - Yesterday a man who smelled like gasoline attempted to enter the Capitol with a flare gun.
- [There Will Be No Armageddon](https://www.jamesreeves.co/there-will-be-no-armageddon.md) - As we teeter on the edge of several unpleasant possible futures, here are five of the most reassuring songs I know.
- [Guanyin of Eleven Heads](https://www.jamesreeves.co/guanyin-of-eleven-heads.md) - The bodhisattva was so overwhelmed by the suffering in the universe that the deity’s head split into eleven pieces.
- [A New Dark Age](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-piecing-together-of-dissociated-knowledge-will-open-up-such-terrifying-vistas-of-reality.md) - "The piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality."
- [Monochrome Candy](https://www.jamesreeves.co/monochrome-candy.md) - A soundtrack for Candy Chang to paint to.
- [Two Million Miles to Earth](https://www.jamesreeves.co/two-million-miles-to-earth.md) - Embrace speed. Groove on distraction. Let my thoughts get garbled and strange. Find god in the liquid crystal glow.
- [Track ID](https://www.jamesreeves.co/track-id.md) - Exciting opportunity! Make money at home! I’m offering five dollars and a mountain of gratitude to anyone who can identify this song.
- [Devil Dishwasher](https://www.jamesreeves.co/devil-disease-dishwasher.md) - 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 critic…
- [Five Early Autumn Classics](https://www.jamesreeves.co/five-early-autumn-classics.md) - Analog media is better for hauntings.
- [The Tannhäuser Gate](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-tannhauser-gate.md) - Anything worthwhile rests on a knife’s edge like the delicate art of falling asleep.
- [Cambridge Forum](https://www.jamesreeves.co/cambridge-forum.md) - 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.
- [Slow Machines](https://www.jamesreeves.co/slow-motion-machines.md) - Slowing down my favorite songs has become a spiritual practice.
- [A Tale of Judgment and Grace](https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-tale-of-judgment-and-grace.md) - This man was the antichrist. Yes, he was what the end of civilization looked and sounded like.
- [Night Drive](https://www.jamesreeves.co/midnight-radio-003-night-drive.md) - I feel a bit better each day, even though the world feels a little more insane.
- [Death Prom](https://www.jamesreeves.co/midnight-radio-002-death-prom.md) - It’s tempting to classify Death Prom as mere nostalgia, but it is a complicated haunting.
- [Heatwave](https://www.jamesreeves.co/heatwave.md) - Five songs that work best during a heatwave.
- [Center for Sustainable Urbanization](https://www.jamesreeves.co/csu.md) - A streamlined website that showcases the events and publications of an international non-profit network of urban planners, architects, and policymakers.
- [Mountain Man](https://www.jamesreeves.co/mountain-man.md) - 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](https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-psychedelic-throb.md) - I swear I read somewhere that your uncoiled intestines can reach the moon.
- [Atlantic Beach, North Carolina](https://www.jamesreeves.co/atlantic-beach.md) - A new visual identity and signage, wayfinding materials, and website for this historic beach town on the coast of North Carolina.
- [They Enter Our Minds Like Bats](https://www.jamesreeves.co/they-enter-our-minds-like-bats.md) - The ancient Greeks believed dreams enter our sleeping minds like bats to deliver messages from the gods.
- [Someday We Will Conjure New Gods to Console Us](https://www.jamesreeves.co/will-we-conjure-new-gods-to-console-us.md) - We stood by the window and watched the howling dark, even though this isn’t what you should do in a tornado.
- [3BL Media](https://www.jamesreeves.co/3bl.md) - A series of presentation decks, research reports, websites, and digital assets for a sustainability and social impact communications agency.
- [Scene from My Notebook](https://www.jamesreeves.co/scene-from-my-notebook.md) - I’ve been trying to loosen up: fast collages, illegible notes in the middle of the night, and the smudges of a left-hander.
- [A Staggering Kind of Stillness](https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-staggering-kind-of-stillness.md) - A lone helicopter crossed the sky. The temperature dropped. Dogs barked. Birds stopped chirping.
- [Debris](https://www.jamesreeves.co/debris.md) - There's beauty in repetition, the steady accretion that comes with committing to one thing day after day.
- [Altar](https://www.jamesreeves.co/altar.md) - I share this because I'm fascinated by the totems and rituals of others.
- [Mysterium](https://www.jamesreeves.co/mysterium.md) - As I left New York City, the driver played Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” several times and never said a word.
- [On a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe](https://www.jamesreeves.co/on-a-shrinking-globe-in-an-expanding-universe.md) - An inauspicious flight number. The sound of the door closing. The metal roar of the engines.
- [Instead of Disappearing Completely](https://www.jamesreeves.co/instead-of-vanishing-completely.md) - I’m learning to find pleasure in the ultramundane and routine.
- [Why Am I in Ohio?](https://www.jamesreeves.co/why-am-i-in-ohio.md) - At first, I did not want to leave Vegas. Not so soon.
- [A Craving for Polar Horror](https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-craving-for-polar-horror.md) - Polar horror is one of my favorite genres.
- [Mirrors to Deflect Danger](https://www.jamesreeves.co/mirrors-to-deflect-danger.md) - Eleven years sober and another year older.
- [Why Does the Brain Torture Itself?](https://www.jamesreeves.co/why-does-the-brain-torture-itself.md) - I loathe these brutal nerves of mine.
- [Starting a New Big Thing](https://www.jamesreeves.co/starting-a-new-big-thing.md) - I have a knack for taking the longest, most taxing route to common knowledge.
- [Loss Response](https://www.jamesreeves.co/loss-response.md) - I loathe the moments when the suffering of others reminds me to be grateful.
- [Hallucinations and Routines](https://www.jamesreeves.co/hallucinations-and-routines.md) - There will always be demands and obligations, but they do not need me before eleven o’clock.
- [Michael Clayton](https://www.jamesreeves.co/you-want-to-bake-bread-go-with-god-2.md) - “You want to bake bread? Go with God.”
- [C. Wall Architecture](https://www.jamesreeves.co/cwall.md) - A new visual identity and website for this architecture firm.
- [2023 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2023-rotation.md) - We’re deep into the 21st century, yet I still find myself waiting for the future to begin.
- [After the End](https://www.jamesreeves.co/after-the-end.md) - Historic Chapel at Green-Wood Cemetery<br> Brooklyn, New York
- [Prophets](https://www.jamesreeves.co/prophets.md) - The Joshua tree was named by Mormons who thought they saw their prophet pointing to the promised land.
- [Desert Nomenclature](https://www.jamesreeves.co/desert-nomenclature.md) - "Virga" is the name for precipitation that does not reach the ground.
- [Vegas Dust](https://www.jamesreeves.co/vegas-dust.md) - A few minutes after midnight in the Mojave desert, a preacher appears on a dead radio channel.
- [100 Degrees and Snow](https://www.jamesreeves.co/100-degrees-and-snow.md) - Every year I feel a little more vertiginous.
- [The New House by David Leo Rice](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-new-house-by-david-leo-rice.md) - I can’t remember the last time I’ve dog-eared and highlighted so many pages in a novel. The New House by David Leo Rice 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 prop…
- [Lost Lake and Last Chance Mountain](https://www.jamesreeves.co/lost-lake-and-last-chance-mountain-2.md) - Last night I stayed up late and stitched together my favorite pieces of the Mojave.
- [Orientation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/orientation.md) - Here I am at last, living in the landscape I’ve craved since the first time I drove across the country.
- [The Nightly News](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-nightly-news.md) - Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum • The American School in London
- [Seven Years Ago, I Placed a Significant Bet](https://www.jamesreeves.co/seven-years-ago-i-placed-a-significant-bet-2.md) - Seven years ago, we debated how the world would end.
- [The Effects Are Deeper Than the Struggle to Remain Upright](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-effects-are-deeper-than-the-struggle-to-remain-upright-2.md) - Why does the wind leave us feeling so exhausted and harassed?
- [A Scribble, an Exploded Rocket, and an Oyster Omelet](https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-scribble-an-exploded-rocket-and-an-oyster-omelet.md) - Woke up the other day and watched a billionaire’s rocket explode.
- [Goddammit, I Just Graded a Fucking Robot](https://www.jamesreeves.co/dammit-i-just-graded-a-fucking-robot-2.md) - And it was about the goddamned work of art in the goddamned age of mechanical reproduction, of all things.
- [She Reminisced About the Cambrian Period](https://www.jamesreeves.co/she-reminisced-about-the-cambrian-period.md) - She said we were looking at the Bonanza King Formation, which sounds like a doomed band from the 1970s.
- [What Happens Here Happens Everywhere](https://www.jamesreeves.co/what-happens-here-happens-everywhere.md) - I had time to kill at the Las Vegas airport, where it feels like being returned to a pleasant memory of 1987.
- [Letting Go of the Maps in My Head](https://www.jamesreeves.co/letting-go-of-the-maps-in-my-head.md) - The desert silence baffles my Midwestern mind.
- [Technology Might Have Peaked With Magnetic Tape](https://www.jamesreeves.co/technology-might-have-peaked-with-magnetic-tape.md) - A delightful sense of slippage occurs when you can’t decide if something is brilliant or awful.
- [Suddenly We Found Ourselves Hiking](https://www.jamesreeves.co/suddenly-we-found-ourselves-hiking.md) - If starvation was on the table, would you rather eat your own finger or a stranger's?
- [Church Attendance Is Lowest in Nevada](https://www.jamesreeves.co/church-attendance-is-lowest-in-nevada-2.md) - I had no idea there was so much weather in the desert.
- [We Searched for 10,000 Acres of Sand](https://www.jamesreeves.co/we-searched-for-10000-acres-of-sand-2.md) - Death Valley is a place where ten thousand acres of scenery can easily go missing.
- [My Dithering has Reached Its Vanishing Point](https://www.jamesreeves.co/my-dithering-has-reached-its-vanishing-point-2.md) - We need to make robots and zombies fun again
- [And Entropy Makes Itself Known to Me](https://www.jamesreeves.co/and-entropy-makes-itself-known-to-me-2.md) - It’s cold in Vegas, and strange material is falling from the sky.
- [Towers of Red Rock Loomed Over Us Like a Beautiful Threat](https://www.jamesreeves.co/towers-of-red-rock-loomed-over-us-like-a-beautiful-threat.md) - Yesterday C. and I took a break from our screens and drove into the Valley of Fire.
- [So Much Civilization Where There Shouldn’t Be](https://www.jamesreeves.co/so-much-civilization-where-there-shouldnt-be.md) - I pondered the idea of a Vegas-themed casino until I gave myself a headache.
- [The Reassuring Cadence of Living in the Sprawl](https://www.jamesreeves.co/february-13-2023.md) - These are days of shooting down unidentifiable objects in the sky.
- [A Landscape that Functions Like Memory](https://www.jamesreeves.co/february-5-2023-2.md) - We hit the brakes and followed a dusty road past a gigantic fiberglass ice cream sundae.
- [The Games We Play in Museums](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-games-we-play-in-museums.md) - After all these years, how well do I know her taste? How well does she know mine?
- [Landscapes Like Scenes from Tomorrow](https://www.jamesreeves.co/february-3-2023.md) - Messiness will be a crucial tool in the footrace against artificial intelligence.
- [Yet the Horizon Never Seems to Draw Closer](https://www.jamesreeves.co/february-2-2023.md) - Time and space get wobbly in the desert. I think I’m puttering along, but the speedometer says 98.
- [Ten Years Sober Today](https://www.jamesreeves.co/february-1-2023-2.md) - An old man in a church basement said, "Stick around long enough, and this becomes a life spent stepping over dead bodies."
- [And We Diligently Killed Zombies](https://www.jamesreeves.co/january-31-2023.md) - A few hours later, we wandered into the desert and touched some cacti.
- [The Sensation of Slippage Continues](https://www.jamesreeves.co/january-26-2023.md) - The desert is littered with bizarre facts, and I often think I invented them, like a fragment from a dream or a misremembered film.
- [Desert Run](https://www.jamesreeves.co/desert-run.md) - Chugging electro reverb<br> 60 minutes
- [Fever Dreams Enhanced by the American Government](https://www.jamesreeves.co/january-10-2023-2.md) - Here in Las Vegas, we’re catching the faintest edge of a weather event that sounds like something from a fantasy novel.
- [Algorithms Cannot Compete With the Spectacle of Humans](https://www.jamesreeves.co/january-3-2023.md) - Repetition amplifies humor and pleasure.
- [The Sudden Lights of Vegas in the Valley Below](https://www.jamesreeves.co/january-1-2023.md) - We drove home on an empty parkway, feeling futuristic while fireworks burst alongside our car.
- [2022 Rotation](https://www.jamesreeves.co/2022-rotation.md) - This year, release dates be damned. Here’s the music that delivered an unexpected thrill while motoring through the desert.
- [They Say It’s the Future, They Say It’s Useful for Us](https://www.jamesreeves.co/december-28-2022.md) - The unique scent of desert rain has a scientific name derived from the Greek words for stone and the blood of the gods.
- [Even if the Rewards Have Diminished](https://www.jamesreeves.co/december-27-2022.md) - 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.
- [All the Little Red Bubbles](https://www.jamesreeves.co/december-22-2022.md) - As I begin to orient myself in Vegas, I know I’m edging too close to the Strip when the plasma donation centers appear.
- [There’s Too Much Night Here](https://www.jamesreeves.co/december-21-2022.md) - Due to some 19th-century railroad logic, Nevada is the only non-coastal state in the Pacific Time Zone.
- [White Line Fever and the Higher Silence Within](https://www.jamesreeves.co/december-20-2022.md) - I loaded a 15-foot U-Haul with our furniture and pointed it southwest.
- [My Screens Reflected the Sprawl](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-30-2022.md) - I enjoyed driving along smooth parkways to a fast food joint that served spicy Korean pork in a cup.
- [Vegas Architecture Hides From the Sun](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-29-2022.md) - Most Christian churches are located along an east-west axis, with the entrance to the west and the altar to the east.
- [A Dedicated Place Where I Can Tack Index Cards to the Wall](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-28-2022.md) - The Pacific Time Zone is turning me into a morning person, and I do not like it.
- [Taro Puffs the Size of Your Fist](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-27-2022.md) - We tooled around the city's perimeter, marveling at its sharp edges.
- [Fireworks in the Parking Lot of a Gas Station](https://www.jamesreeves.co/fireworks-in-the-parking-lot.md) - We made good time and hit Vegas a night earlier than scheduled.
- [A Fingernail Moon Rose Over the Rockies](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-25-2022.md) - When I woke up this morning, I struggled to remember the state I was in.
- [The First Pizza Hut is in Wichita](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-24-2022.md) - We woke to the melancholic stillness of a holiday morning somewhere in the middle of America. Even the International House of Pancakes was closed.
- [Movements Are a Relic of the 20th Century](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-23-2022.md) - The billboards we passed felt like chapters from one big story: automatic weapon rentals, bulk ammo, Jesus Christ, and lawyers.
- [Synthetic Tracks for the Motorway](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-22-2022.md) - The road trip kicks off tomorrow, and my packing has been delayed by a much more critical matter: putting together a road trip playlist.
- [Faded Graffiti Like a Vanished Wish](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-21-2022.md) - It’s one of those days when it feels like the world’s got its hands in my pockets.
- [The Spirit of the Information Superhighway](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-20-2022.md) - It’s like some mythical creature from the past has wandered into the middle of a twelve-land expressway.
- [People Behaving Poorly in Glossy Architecture](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-19-2022.md) - We convinced ourselves our tweets were important, newsworthy, career-making, or, god forbid, agents for social change, and it made us crazy.
- [Another Sleepless Night for Reasons Unknown](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-18-2022.md) - My bedtime programming hums with the static of insomnia.
- [Repetition Is Where Things Get Interesting](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-17-2022.md) - A shift in the light on the running trail. An unexpected connection on page 172.
- [Hundreds of Dogs](https://www.jamesreeves.co/hundreds-of-dogs.md) - 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 sidewal…
- [A Body of Water Was Named After a Man Who Was Roasted Alive](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-16-2022.md) - William Gibson has nothing on the Catholics.
- [There Would Be Less Screaming](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-15-2022.md) - I often imagine my writing sessions should be quiet and humble, like those stern Dutch paintings of solitary women making lace in solemn bands of light.
- [A House Always Made of Freshly Chopped Wood](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-14-2022.md) - I still have vivid dreams that my mother is still alive; I find her sitting at a kitchen table in a tiny house by the sea, living under an assumed name.
- [Some Faceless Behemoth Purchased It](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-13-2022.md) - Combing through eighteen years of digital cruft has led me down an unexpectedly emotional walk down memory lane.
- [The Bare Trees Reveal New Scenery](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-12-2022.md) - All the leaves are on the ground now, and the bare trees reveal new scenery.
- [Sleep Has a Moral Dimension](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-11-2022.md) - If someone behaves atrociously, we wonder how they sleep at night.
- [Sometimes You Can’t Find the Door](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-10-2022.md) - Perhaps it becomes self-fulfilling to imagine the future as stern and forbidding.
- [It Feels Like a Video Game](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-9-2022.md) - We spent a fair chunk of the ride debating whether laws were necessary.
- [Complaining While Their Opponents Scorch the Earth](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-8-2022.md) - 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 bl…
- [A White Honda with a Crumpled Fender](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-7-2022.md) - Maybe they’ll wind up on the evening news someday.
- [If We Can Rearrange Time, We Can Do Anything](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-6-2022.md) - Changing the clocks should be the year's biggest celebration with fireworks, parades, and gift-giving.
- [I Recited the Names of Cities Like a Mantra](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-5-2022.md) - 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…
- [A Bright Daytime Moon Hung in the Sky](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-4-2022.md) - I’d like to live in a world of apologetic gods and talking satellites.
- [My Brain Has Run Out of Sleeping Juice](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-3-2022.md) - These summery November days echo my sense of being out of time.
- [A Mumbled Conspiracy Feels Wholesome These Days](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-2-2022.md) - My mind turns gullible in the small hours, ready to believe anything.
- [There's a Thin Line Between Vigilance and Neuroticism](https://www.jamesreeves.co/november-1-2022.md) - The leaves have fallen, and we crunched over them while dressed for spring.
- [Tighter Pores, Fewer Toxins, and a Sharper Mind](https://www.jamesreeves.co/future-sweat.md) - C. and I celebrated her birthday at the Largest Korean Sauna in North America.
- [A Secular Approach to Home Improvement](https://www.jamesreeves.co/wreckage.md) - I took an afternoon drive through Indiana the other day, and it was clear that America is not doing well.
- [An Urge to Tear Apart the Sky](https://www.jamesreeves.co/agony-and-ecstacy.md) - I ran from my screen like someone in a zombie movie.
- [Saturday Night Terrain](https://www.jamesreeves.co/night-station-03.md) - She hummed with the nervy energy of a talented yet unrecognized mind.
- [Good Fortune](https://www.jamesreeves.co/good-fortune.md) - I keep this one in my wallet.
- [Someday We Will Invent Kinder Gods and New Miracles](https://www.jamesreeves.co/sockets-and-flames.md) - Yesterday in twenty-first-century America, I idled behind a jeep with an InfoWars license plate.
- [Night Station](https://www.jamesreeves.co/night-station-02.md) - I stood in line at the Gas ‘n Go behind a man with a pistol tucked into the elastic waistband of his sweatpants.
- [Hallucinator](https://www.jamesreeves.co/hallucinator.md) - 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.
- [Room in the Air](https://www.jamesreeves.co/oktember.md) - The real heroes of this blessed land are the short-order cooks at Chinese takeout joints who manipulate fire, oil, and steel like gods.
- [Kiva](https://www.jamesreeves.co/kiva.md) - A series of reports, website modules, and borrower profiles for this microfinance non-profit that provides loans to low-income entrepreneurs in 77 countries.
- [Antistatic](https://www.jamesreeves.co/antistatic.md) - 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 b…
- [The Throwback Special](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-throwback-special.md) - I have zero interest in football, which can make it challenging to move through American life.
- [Plaza](https://www.jamesreeves.co/service-plaza.md) - Service plazas are 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.
- [The Haunting of Hill House](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-haunting-of-hill-house.md) - Hill House, famously not sane, bothers the soul because Jackson describes the perception of horror, not the horror itself.
- [Drone](https://www.jamesreeves.co/drone.md) - Tinnitus occurs for many reasons, most of them vague.
- [Berenice Abbot](https://www.jamesreeves.co/fields-and-waves.md) - I've been stuck on the last 20% of a story I'm writing about a haunted frequency, so I went to the museum to shake some ideas loose.
- [I Need to Make Mistakes](https://www.jamesreeves.co/old-notebook-new-notebook.md) - The first thing I do with a new notebook is write something stupid and messy on the first page.
- [The Fifth Child](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-fifth-child.md) - Maybe I was primed for horror because I woke before dawn on a Sunday morning.
- [Red Shift](https://www.jamesreeves.co/red-shift.md) - They say evolution occurs most rapidly in body parts that attract lovers and frighten rivals.
- [Pictures from a Bad Dream](https://www.jamesreeves.co/pictures-from-a-bad-dream.md) - This morning I fed a robot a few sentences from the novel I'm writing, and it generated some startlingly accurate pictures.
- [A Fascinating Little Ailment](https://www.jamesreeves.co/reflex.md) - I sneeze whenever I glance at the sun, which I’ve always taken as proof I am a night owl.
- [Passage](https://www.jamesreeves.co/passage.md) - Maps of the Arctic give me vertigo. All that blank bright land feels like leaping off a rooftop.
- [Radioactivity](https://www.jamesreeves.co/radioactivity.md) - Cut to commercial, and I hum along with a jingle for a machine that controls your brainwaves while you sleep.
- [Fires](https://www.jamesreeves.co/fires.md) - The Rockies appeared through the gloom, slow beasts moving across the continent at the speed of time.
- [Summer of Muslimgauze](https://www.jamesreeves.co/summer-of-muslimgauze.md) - The artist’s obsession becomes the listener’s obsession.
- [The Comfort Lounge](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-comfort-lounge.md) - It was a run-down joint where time stood still and probably slid backward.
- [A Matter of Degrees](https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-matter-of-degrees.md) - 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 fin…
- [Dangling Shoes](https://www.jamesreeves.co/dangling-shoes.md) - Some Americans like to tie a pair of shoes together and toss them at a power line.
- [The Corners of the Ceiling](https://www.jamesreeves.co/the-corners-of-the-ceiling.md) - “Science shouldn’t explain everything,” she told me.
- [Folk Religion](https://www.jamesreeves.co/folk-religion.md) - Maybe you’ve heard the soliloquies of sunburnt men who mutter at the traffic.
- [And Thank God, Soon We’ll Be Making More Night](https://www.jamesreeves.co/rewire.md) - 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.
- [The Weather Lady Looked a Little Freaked Out](https://www.jamesreeves.co/spice.md) - 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 follow…
- [Clichés Are Learned the Hard Way](https://www.jamesreeves.co/headlights.md) - 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…
- [Acid Camp](https://www.jamesreeves.co/acid-camp.md) - Memorial Day 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 s…
- ["Only in a rerun."](https://www.jamesreeves.co/only-in-a-rerun.md) - The Running Man (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…
- [More Americans are Unraveling Behind the Wheel](https://www.jamesreeves.co/windshield.md) - The sun went down at 8:49pm, the moon is in its last quarter, and tonight I'm wondering if the health of a society can be pegged to the nerves of its motorists.
- [Like trying to retrofit an 8-track player.](https://www.jamesreeves.co/best-mp3-player.md) - I’ve stopped doing business with streaming music services. The algorithm has transformed music into an endless churn without sense-memory, 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.…
- [Tiny Figures Among the Stones](https://www.jamesreeves.co/tiny-figures-among-the-stones.md) - A floppy-eared dog gnawed a bone while a clown smiled above the bed.
- [I Put a Lot of Faith in Office Products to Solve My Existential Problems](https://www.jamesreeves.co/maps.md) - My map is upside down, inscrutable, and probably for a different planet.
- [Before I Die](https://www.jamesreeves.co/a-soundtrack-for-before-i-die.md) - A soundtrack to accompany the exhibition of Candy Chang’s Before I Die project.
- [Can't Kill the World](https://www.jamesreeves.co/night-of-the-hunter.md) - The Night of the Hunter opens with the disembodied heads of five children floating in the cosmos and gets weirder from there.
- [A Fleeting Shape Glimpsed From the Corner of the Eye](https://www.jamesreeves.co/hand-of-god.md) - My first memory of God: I was five or six years old and feverishly rubbing a white crayon into a dark blue piece of construction paper.
- [I Need to Rethink How I Spend My Dwindling Time on This Planet](https://www.jamesreeves.co/rot.md) - 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 sha…
- [Greenland](https://www.jamesreeves.co/greenland.md) - I’m always in a heavy state whenever I see Greenland, usually red-eyed and emotionally shredded.
- [Last Day in London](https://www.jamesreeves.co/london.md) - 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…
- [April 14, 2022](https://www.jamesreeves.co/brighton.md) - 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 thi…

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