Every week and in public I try to write and record something new. This is the basic premise of MY BIG BREAK, an online correspondence project running since about 2018. In its format as a weekly dispatch, the project keeps me in touch with a lot of people, keeps me observant of my life's narrative and its inner eddies, and gives me something to shoot for every week. It's a little like working out - "getting my reps in" - and a little bit like my freshman year LiveJournal. The weekly work is a helpful anchor.

The music is soundtrack to and source material for the writing, they are separate but linked, digestible individually or together, and every week I simply offer them to you, whoever you are.

For this second volume of MY BIG BREAK tracks, I wanted to hone in on the sound a bit more, present a more digestible collection of work ("hone in? who does this guy think he is? the compilation's still over 90 minutes long!"). This volume is of the meditative, nice-sounding variety, with all manner of approaches - cassette loops, acoustic guitar, various pianos, overheated reel-to-reels, encountered sound, gliding lap steel, and the ever-present synths made of samples of singing voices, my own and that of friends. It's not in any kind of time order, but it does make a kind of sense as you listen. I also wanted to find a way to honor the writing a bit more, the other half of the work, so included with a download here is a 40-page PDF containing the writing and the weekly images, a companion to your listening.

Gathering these pieces of writing and chunks of music proved to be surprisingly intense - years out, much of the work I can't quite remember making, and as I read and listened I found myself reminded of a thousand little sonic and verbal details I wouldn't otherwise remember. As I move through my life and the lives of those I encounter, this project is a leaking camera. Every Thursday I'm getting it out but - more crucially - every Thursday I'm also getting it all down, briefly gripping the little grains of life as they slide slipping through our fingers.