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Everything has been saved from a wreck
The subject line for Friday’s newsletter came from G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy:
“Stories of magic alone can express my sense that life is not only a pleasure but a kind of eccentric privilege. I may express this other feeling of cosmic cosiness by allusion to another book always read in boyhood, Robinson Crusoe, which … owes its eternal vivacity to the fact that it celebrates the poetry of limits, nay, even the wild romance of prudence. Crusoe is a man on a small rock with a few comforts just snatched from the sea: the best thing in the book is simply the list of things saved from the wreck. The greatest of poems is an inventory. Every kitchen tool becomes ideal because Crusoe might have dropped it in the sea. It is a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours of the day, to look at anything, the coal-scuttle or the book-case, and think how happy one could be to have brought it out of the sinking ship on to the solitary island. But it is a better exercise still to remember how all things have had this hair-breadth escape: everything has been saved from a wreck.”
(Every book of mine is what I was able to save from the shipwreck of a great idea.)
Love TKO (a February 2026 mixtape)
In the tradition of the past two years (see: Feb. 2024: “Music in the Key of Love” and Feb. 2025: “Love is Not a Gadget”), I made a love-themed February mixtape from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents. I taped over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I taped over the music and then I taped over the artwork.
This mix started when I heard the Teddy Pendergrass cut on a Confucius Jones-helmed episode of KUTX’s “Old School.” (Every Friday at 5PM I turn on 98.9 and fix a cocktail while Meg is putting the pizzas in the oven.) I thought it would be a great title for a mixtape, and then I found this photo of George Foreman knocking out Ken Norton in an old NYTimes and the clipping was the perfect size for cassette artwork.
I’d originally planned to start side B with Rick James’ “Give it to Me Baby,” but decided to take a smoother route. (This is, by the way, some of my favorite music ever made.)
SIDE A
– teddy pendergrass, “love TKO”
– barry white, “I’m gonna love you just a little more, baby”
– bill withers, “use me”
– isley brothers, “don’t say goodnight”
SIDE B
– the spinners, “I’ll be around”
– bobby womack, “woman’s gotta have it”
– al green, “I’m so tired of being alone”
– d’angelo, “another life”
– curtis mayfield, “the makings of you”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube
Filed under: mixtapes
Exquisite corpses
These exquisite corpses we made at dinner gave me the idea to write about my favorite drawing game.
The year is too young to be this long
I used this 2016 blackout poem for last Friday’s newsletter, “The year is too young to be this long.” A few people commented that they couldn’t believe it was made 10 years ago. This is the thing about making art and writing in a diary: you keep the receipts.
Tuesday trio
In desperate need of distraction and something to look forward to, I’ve been having a blast writing my new “Tuesday Trio” series for the Tuesday newsletter. In each letter, I recommend one book, one record, and one movie around a theme. The first three: “Radioactivity,” “Problematic Gifts,” and “Sherlock Holmes.”
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