Assembling Jack Kerouac ephemera dossiers and stamping postcards, scribbling letters while chatting, grouching about misplacing things and listening to REM’s “Fables of the Reconstruction.”
many items, carefully curated, into envelopes (with splendid stamps of course)
Hang out, no big deal.
PS Wanna get some artifacts for your archive and amusement? Be sure to watch the “Kerouac in Kobe” video to the end.
Bonus from Simon Warner, author of “text, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” and writer/curator of highly recommended “Rock and the Beat Generation” newsletter, who says:
Thank you, Dave Olson, for sharing such a great selection of Kerouac in Kobe 2020/2021 exhibition artefacts: what a wonderful gathering of programmes and images, text, recordings and postcards!
Look out for an interview at Rock and the Beat Generation with the Canadian bodhisattva of Japanese Beat very soon
Simon Warner shares the assortment of Kerouac in Kobe artefacts / which arrived to UK in about a week from Japan, hooray for postal services!
Went back-and-forth to the post office to send out a bunch of “Kerouac in Kobe“ ephemera dossiers and a few poetry books – decorated with splendid stamps of course – but wow, wiped out just from the wander. Have a hospital day tomorrow so better rest #MECFSpic.twitter.com/bKtEcnP2ER
Really, That’s it… just me in the kura studio, fiddling around making a mix cassette tape from a USB drive (weird right) with a story about the “Taos hijacking incident” – while also organizing some postcards, addressing some envelopes and that’s it… Really nothing happens but thought you might want to just come hang out.
Just adding beat related ephemera to binders, poems to scrapbooks, cards and letters too, sometimes to one scrapbook, sometimes to another, depending on the form and function, music plays in the background – a compilation for Jack Kerouac – all in a historic kura storehouse barn in provincial Japan.
No commentary, no chit chat, just ya know,… hanging out playing with scissors, glue, tape and whatnot.
Ambient hang out and putting artifacts and items from the Kerouac “On the Road” exhibit in 2021 at Kobe, Japan – along with a dossier of items from Lowell, Massachusetts – into a plain white binder with sheet covers, while listening to a collection of hep songs assembled for Jack Kerouac’s hundredth birthday by Bear Family records while in “Giggling Piglet Studios” in a historic kura storehouse barn in provincial Japan. No commentary, chitchat – just hanging out.
2020 was a big year as I was turning 50 (halfway there!) and becoming a father. Of course, my priority was taking wonderful care of my darling wife, especially when the “popular virus noted around the world” showed up raising concerns and adding logistical complications. Mostly meant from a practical standpoint, i couldn’t go to the various parenting workshops and medical appointments and so on.
Then came gloriously busy weeks with getting Mama and Baby home, doing his name registration in the city office, more medical check-ins, Grandma’s passing and the rituals and routines which follow.
Before all that, realized once the baby arrives, my creative time would be limited, so i continued on my usual tradition (if that’s what you call it) of doing some big creative project each year around my birthday. Note: a middle of August birthday means most people are “otherwise distracted” with the fun of summer, on vacation, off-line or otherwise tuned out as appropriate, as a kid this meant kind of lousy birthday parties (which I made up in later years with UW40 and UW42) and for my little creative projects, they sort of fall flat but that’s not really the point.
#daveo50 personal archeology project (of course) grew out of hand and/but was very fulfilling
So, before the baby came, I put together a #DaveO50 “Personal archaeology” project in which I documented photos dated to each year of my life and related projects, ephemera, artifacts, museums… The project kind of got out of hand (like they usually do) but all posts were pre-scheduled and ready to go before the baby came aside from the family photo we took on “day of” as a final piece.
my family on Aug 16, 2020
All this blah blah blah led up to August 16, 50th birthday. Of course, my present had already arrived on June 23 in the form of a remarkable lil dude. But still…
Here’s another in which I offer a variety of snapshots captured for no particular reason of records listened to from the variety grab bag. There are hundreds of records, this is not comprehensive representation, though it is representation that this experiences existed in some space and time. This is all, just evidence of lounging time w/ Strummer, Bragg, Bowie, Keithley and Assoc, Cobain and cohorts, Lightfoot, Fitzgerald, Mangan, Janovitz and Co, and many others. Pull em out, rack em up, repeat. So many, just a few here.
As an aside, before lil incredible Ichiro arrived, I was spending several-hours-long sessions in here getting projects captured and queued up for #daveo50 but now, the time is delightfully scant so it’s usually just focussed on sitting, enjoying a beverage and listening to a record or two.
