Yup, i ramble on about items arrived by post and think you should hang out (i’ll make tea)
Opening a big santa sack of recent items by post including aerogrammes/ aerograms, passports, international driver’s licenses, documents, hotel letterhead, records (namechecking recent interview on Rice Field Records), postcards, etc from Nepal, Monaco, East German DDR, probably i dunno… Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, United Nations, others i don’t quite understand.
Also mail from Ukraine which allows mention of intrepid postal workers delivering despite war and displacement, + blabbity blah about guest coming to visit, feeling discombobulated after #MECFS “crash mode” – that’s it except the parts i forgot. Argh prob a ramble about the “passport forgery project” {recalling i riffed about taking “intimate documents” and adding life to them}
Bonus: Rice Field Records Interview
{this should and will be a separate bonus post but in the meanwhile…}
Just remixing some passports from Romania and Albania.
Ambient views and vibes of making a series of 4 very different postcards ~ fiddling with stamps (postal and inky), various pens, scissors, glue and other crafts odds and ends in kura barn in provincial Japan
Stamps and items from: Gibraltar, Malaysia, Diego Garcia, Nepal, Palau, Tuvalu, Japan, Tahiti, Antigua, Sri Lanka, India, BOIT, Newfoundland, CCCP, Canada, UK, & featuring Fredrick Varley, Ichiro Olson, Baden-Powell, Capilano suspension bridge, rabbits and many other notable details and destinations.
No chit-chat or narration, just hanging out.while listening to Bill Janovitz’s great album Walt Whitman Mall (used w/o clearence) on vinyl with admiration.
Just remixing some passports from Romania and Albania.
Remixing expired passports from Romania and Albania into “dossiers of mystery and tactical intrigue” complete with endorsements, visas, assignments, sightings, safe houses, maps, aliases, poetry, ephemera, snippets, stamps – both ink and postal – musings, memos, codes, secrets.
Completely usual behavior – carry on with your diligent efforts.
Checkpoints include: Sri Lanka, Nepal, Diego Garcia, Vatican, Athens, Kyoto… etc + green beavers and diligent dogs
In front of a wood stove, Dave stashes cards from the “string of honour” into archival book while recounting tales of the wonderful folks who sent greeting cards and letters to Tsuchida Cottage.
Very grateful for your friendship and lovely correspondence.
Along with banter about:
* having several scrapbooks on-the-go at all times
* special collections and on-going correspondence
* topsy turvy start to the year
* “lap projects” like mending and scrapbooking
* thoughts about last year (lots of paperwork!)
* theme for this year (letting go)
and usual digressions, meanderings and anecdotes (i.e. hanging stereo speakers and maybe something about solar panels). Oh, there is a Dymo LabelMaker in action.
Very grateful for your friendship and lovely correspondence.
Meanwhile I’m trying to tidy up the room a little bit so here are albums of postcards/greeting cards etc., duly annotated by Dymo label.
PS if I’ve missed sharing your card I probably shared under separate cover / somewhere else, or will do another time (thinking of you Astrid in Germany who’s art is already hanging up).
Thanks for the sweet note. Sometimes I wonder what I do all the archiving for but a lot of the reason is because when the illness started ( #MECFS) In 2013, my “brain broke” and I sort of had to relearn how to do everything from writing into painting whatever so found that making scrapbooks, postcards and later “sort-ganizing” helped rebuild the neural pathways.
Scrapbook: in process, a pleasant way to pass the time, sitting in bed, with scissors, tape, glue and ephemera
When I went to India to the Ayurveda clinic, I can still remember the day the brain started sparking again and then I tried starting to write and paint. Was a little clumsy so I filed everything under “old man punk rock“ :) and made some drawings of the neighborhood and unforgiving oil pastels which quickly attracted a throng of fellas around me who I snapped with a Lomo camera (note: evidenced somewhere here in this archive).
I spend a lot of time in bed still so it’s kind of like playing a video game or puzzle or something for me… finding the right context for all the miscellanea. Imagining about containers in the bath and filling them with stories in all sorts of mediums, both in and out of my fog.
As for the handmade scrapbooks, comes from our mutual love of notebooks etc. – which I don’t keep near as orderly as you do – but now they’ve all sort of come full circle back to me, I’m enjoying transcribing the scribbles, putting checkmarks on the pages that are finished, and organizing on a semi-climate-controlled shelf. All shapes and sizes and formats, eras, all intertwined. Mostly (vaguely at least) inventoried.
Making whole buncha scrapbooks
My own handmade scrap journals are so much fun to make as it gives me that mixed media/interdisciplinary thrill of playing with tools and sharp objects and paper and the finished result is something that very few people understand the endless possibilities.
A page from Nagano to see the wizard
Anyhow, thanks for your kind words, honestly it’s been a really tough summer so far for me, I just can’t seem to bounce up so it’s nice to just be “seen”.
Pages from a journal for no particular trip or reason, just feeling with things that cheered me up
One of these days, I’ll hook you up with a scrap journal of your own if you would like. I know you’re very partial to your own specifications so I might go a little bit off script if that’s all right.
Collection: Scrapbooks, Journals and Notebooks (view 2)
Do you keep travel ephemera and other clippings, oddities, coasters, matchbox, ticket stubs etc.? What do you do with them all?
Scrapbook: assembly / stack of books (binding detail)
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.
Just hanging out at Giggling Piglet Studios – an historic kura storehouse in provincial Japan – taping and glueing ephemera, snapshots, stamps, postcards etc from a trip to Kyoto for Kominka Summit, plus stops at Gion Post Office and Ginkakuji temple – into an accordion-style scrapbook.
While listening to records by Sonic Youth, Iggy Pop, The Ramones, Husker Du, JFA… maybe something else.
No narration, banter (witty or otherwise) or “action” beyond, playing with papers, scissors, glue, double sided tape and whatnot.
Sorting, cutting and organizing scrapbook items – snapshots, insta-photos, fliers, brochures, stamps etc – from trips to Shimane and Kyoto in a historic kura storehouse barn (dubbed “Giggling Piglet Studio”) in Tsuchida, Japan.
Sort-ganizing ephemera from Shimane and Kyoto (with records) and cutting snaps.
While listening to records from Dan Mangan, Bob Dylan, and Courtney Barnett.
No chit-chat, narration or blah blah, just hanging out, playing with scissors, paper, scrapbooks, and cheap cutter knife.
Very pleasing scrapbook session recently working on an accident triptych in similar type notebooks with similar decorations.
Getting my standard supplies at hand including: several scissors and pinking shears, a few glue, several widths & depths of double-sided tape, Photo corners, straight edge and a crappy cutting knife. Plus importantly, good records, and a phone to the wind.
Topics include: recent correspondence cards and letters; a trip to see money to a museum and aquarium; a trip to Kyoto for a workshop and a temple.Topics include: recent correspondence cards and letters; a trip to see money to a museum and aquarium; a trip to Kyoto for a workshop and a temple.
Assembling the raw material – Postcards, Insta snapshots, a few calligraphies, various business cards, couple of pamphlets and notations from a temple… then choosing a scrapbook that will fit *everything* and somehow connect to the aesthetic of little bit [Note to self and others: don’t overthink]
Then comes much cutting then sort of sort into piles by topics, themes – loosely around chronology, media and colors.
Best kind of mess. Then you start gluing, taping, floating, making little envelopes portfolios inside the notebook. Plus a special cover and back cover and often inside fly leaves, and an envelope to put all the odds and ends don’t quite fit right away.
Final step is writing in bits of narrative just enough to push the story along. In these cases, used various letter and date stamps to give a general sense of place and time.
I made some videos, eventually you’ll see some of them, maybe… Now that I think about this one you can see and I even talk about the letters and put it in the scrapbook so it’s the one before this one if you’re keeping score
