Frosted Echoes

If you’ve ever heard J. Mascis perform Dinosaur Jr. songs solo on acoustic guitar, he goes about it in what could be described as a lazy way. He’s sloppy, which is part of who he is, or his brand, if you will. As one music critic once said of his cover of the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” when he says, “‘I must have been asleep for days,’ you really believe him.” A recently released live album actually has him singing “blah, blah, blah,” on one of the songs when he forgets the words. Though he’s a much revered guitar player, his acoustic guitar playing is rough on live recordings.

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Have you ever thought about how hypnosis so closely resembles guided meditation? Especially the beginning of hypnosis, called induction, which is designed to put you into a state of relaxation in which you are more susceptible to suggestion. The watching of the breath, the attention on sensations in the body that focus and settle your mind are integral to both beginning hypnosis and to mindfulness meditation.

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Austin Kleon writes about blogging as a forgiving medium. It doesn’t carry the risk of social media (particularly Twitter). It allows for editing even after a post is originally published. I was happy to read that I’m not the only one that goes back and edits my blog posts several times after they are published.

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Casey Newton very publicly left his job at The Verge for building his own brand on Substack. However, he continues to work with The Verge in some capacity, and they just published his piece on problems at Medium.com. As most have come to expect, Medium is doing yet another pivot in their strategy and is letting go a large chunk of their editorial staff, admitting that their rapid ramp up of publications had been too aggressive.

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I was recently in search of something to to read after finishing the sprawling epic that was The Count of Monte Cristo. I pored through lists on Amazon, and recommendations I had read elsewhere. I typically read a fiction and a non-fiction book and and I needed something to fit into the former category. Nothing was grabbing me and Dumas’ masterpiece is a hard book to follow.

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The header of the Bandcamp page for Prepare My Glider features a shoegaze staple: an overstuffed pedalboard. True to their name, they offer plenty of Shieldsian glide guitar and dreamy vocal harmonies that float beautifully above the noise.

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After her bass player left a former band she was in to join a band he said was going to be “Jimmy Fallon big,” Michelle Zauner from Japanese Breakfast wrote a song about it. The bass player eventually rejoined Zauner in Japanese Breakfast and got his wish. The band just played their latest single, “Be Sweet” on the Tonight Show. I had this song on heavy rotation prior the performance and now I think I like it even more.

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The Guardian has a piece on near-death experiences (as they have been known since the 70’s), which profiles a psychiatrist named Bruce Greyson and his research into the phenomenon. Like surgeon Dr. Sam Parnia, who has also studied this area thoroughly, Greyson has come up with no verifiable or satisfying scientific ways of explaining the extraordinary things people go through when they are on the precipice of death.

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