a big fucking corkboard

For the first time in more than 10 years I've a raging desire to buy a big fucking corkboard and fill it with index cards with scenes and scraps and phrases and stuff on them (in no particular order), a desire to bring the tactile prototyping approach to thinking that metal (or cardboard and tape) brings to the present (and far-preferred) iteration of my creative practice. Not sure what these hypothetical cards are meant to become – I remain proudly medium agnostic until the time comes to declare my project-faith – though I do know it will be something a.) I can do on my own (or learn to do on my own) and/or b.) nifty, the latter of which is really all that interests me these days. Or, perhaps, it's all just a desire to redecorate The Shed and make one of the walls more useful than as a shelf for things that could and probably should be shelved elsewhere because they're going to fall on me any day now.

thinking of writing something again why why why

yes but one written in this new way of working and influenced more by my passion for metalwork than encumbered by my past lives in various creative media that wanted nothing to do with me by virtue of shit timing and/or shit luck and/or shit writing; 67% honored as I was, I can't have three obituaries be the final things I get published (and they won't be – but the next non-self publishing is a ways off, and really out of my hands at this point). And, as metalwork starts taking off, I'm not adverse to showing up at art shows (otherwise I'll have to build another shed just to house all the shit I've built) but I think showing up with not only aforementioned shit but with a zine of ?? might make for an interesting melange. Have some notions I want to play with plus, since I've got some fresh ink that prevents me from doing any metalwork for a few days, might as well take the opportunity to play around, see what comes – maybe something, maybe nothing. Either way, it's nice to have that desire to write again – even if it won’t ever be the all-consuming thing it was, once upon a time.

a few stray thoughts on recent comics

While every title in the Absolute DC line is fantastic, Deniz Camp and Javier Rodriguez's ABSOLUTE MARTIAN MANHUNTER is my favorite by far. Insanely good; invention pours off the page... At this point, I'm reading DAREDEVIL solely out of my love for the character - no matter how much I love seeing the black armored costume again: Ahmed's run is readable at best and moderately painful at worst; ideal team: Chris Condon and Montos from GREEN ARROW but please keep them on GA too because it's so good and it's nice to read GREEN ARROW again... ... ASSORTED CRISIS EVENTS is at the top of the to-read stack every month (and Camp's THE ULTIMATES is my favorite of the line which makes sense given that he's writing ABSOLUTE MARTIAN MANHUNTER which brings me full circle to....

refuel / bridge

Riding and occasionally drowning in the wave of The Void, the BIG Void, first zilch period, no long-term projects, in almost 25 years. Simultaneously liberating and terrifying, finding my way back to having a creative brain again or, rather, a creative brain able to concoct something interesting be it word, picture, word and picture, scrap metal, and/or any combination thereof. Perhaps more regular textual postings will appear here (as I've wanted before) but I do know that I've brought out my paints and canvi and am painting again. Seems to be a bridge / gap pursuit / release that yields things in those other media that I have slightly more than a fetus's ability at and even then – and an invaluable tool for returning to "play and explore," something I'm going to fight like hell to maintain going forward, no matter the medium. Think it was something I read / heard David Bowie say, that when he's stuck or empty, he turns to painting to reignite. If I'm going to take anyone's advice...

Clearly what the comics world needs is more variant covers from Dynamite. 😵‍💫😵‍💫

new approach

A shift in my writing practice, from the daily guilt-ridden grind of days, weeks, years past to a more "blast all of it in a few weeks or days when the need strikes" now. Perhaps what I was needing was something like metalwork (and my resultant newfound obsession with 3D printing not only to reproduce metalwork in plastic but to design pots for K since I found scanning and printing different versions of existing ones to be onerous, to put it mildly) to fulfill me in the non-writing parts of my day. Which are a lot of them. Far happier and more fulfilled, creatively, away from the computer, playing with fire and sparks and making weird metal things, than I am staring at a screen and hating myself for not being able to write something no one will read anyhow.

But yes, a new approach. Toying with the notion of blasting out a novella or something in a short time frame, two weeks to a month, when the need to write strikes me; otherwise, I'll tinker with metal stuff and mini-comics and Singularities and etc. A note to myself in my Obsidian canvas: long-form ≠ long-term.

Now I have figure out how to assemble this 3D printer cover because a shed is not the most dust-free place for a 3D printer to while away its non-whirring hours.

Didn’t think my experience with insulin pump dosage adjustment would have so much experiential transfer to 3D printing, but it does. Whole thing makes a lot more sense now.

Social media increasingly makes me think of a great line from Dylan's "Mississippi": "Got nothing for you / had nothing before / don't even have anything for myself anymore."

After welding his eye back in from a scan attempt fall, I managed to get a solid 3D scan of Giuseppe. Now to figure out how to go from green blob on-screen to blob of printed, corporeal plastic.

When you write a post about a thing you’re thinking of doing and decide, before you finish writing the post, that you’re not going to do that thing you were thinking of doing.