Here’s John Gregory Dunne, in his introduction to The Studio:

Writing is essentially donkey work, manual labor of the mind. What makes it bearable are those moments (which sometimes can last for weeks, months) when the book takes over, takes on a life of its own, goes off in unexpected directions.

Read more in last Friday’s newsletter, all about writing and how to make it less like Donkey Work. 

Here’s another monthly mixtape I made from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents. (Loudon Wainwright III’s Grown Man.) I tape over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I tape over the music and then I tape over the artwork.

For this one, I was going for summer pool vibes. I started with the Junior Murvin track that I think I’ve played every day of this month.

All these songs are streaming online, so you can listen on Spotify or Youtube:

SIDE A

– junior murvin, “roots train”
– the marvelettes, “the hunter gets captured by the game”
– james brown, “super bad”
– donovan, “epistle to dippy”
– the everly brothers, “gone, gone, gone”
– junior murvin, “give me your love”
– prince, “the ballad of dorothy parker”
– deerhoof, “running thoughts”

SIDE B

– the knife, “heartbeats”
– wailers, “duppy conqueror”
– new order, “thieves like us”
– bacao rhythm & steel band, “PIMP”
– lefty frizzell, “always late”
– mulatu astatke, “tezetaye antchi lidj”

Friday’s newsletter, “Ampersanding,” started with this collage that had an ampersand stuck in the middle of it.

I looked it up on Wikipedia and voila: “The ampersand [&] originated as the ligature of the letters et — Latin for ‘and.’”

Seemed as good of a way as any to start a newsletter, since the structure of the Friday newsletter is basically a collage: this and that.

The next book might wind up with an ampersand in the title. But it’s too early to tell…

I was running out of month so I made another monthly mixtape from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents. I tape over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I tape over the music and then I tape over the artwork.

This one turned out weirder and sadder than I thought it would? The title wasn’t planned — I just saw the headline in a magazine and switched around a few words to suit the vibe.

I used a bunch of snippets of songs from Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee faded in and out to bookend it, so it can’t really be replicated on a streaming service, but you can listen to an approximation on YouTube.

SIDE A
– cindy lee, “dracula” (snippet)
– grandaddy, “hewlitt’s daughter”
– cate le bon, “sad nudes”
– james brown, “i don’t mind”
– king geedorah, “fazers”
– lee moses, “hey Joe”
– cindy lee, “dracula” (snippet)

SIDE B
– cindy lee, “always dreaming”
– yukihiro takahashi, “flashback”
– stevie nicks, “bella donna” (demo)
– yeahyeahyeahs, “y control’
– judy mowatt, “the gardener”
– the zombies, “tell her no”
– ketty lester, “love letters”
– cindy lee, “stone faces”

I’ve made these mixes five months in a row now, so I guess I’m going to keep going for the rest of the year…