In November 2022 I was very pleased to be a very lousy guest on the very gracious Jason Emde’s podcast (broadcast in Gifu rock city) in which writers share their “early, unripe… etc. etc.” work along with Jason’s curious questions, amusing banter and general graciousness.
very un-reliable account of King Tut’s life. this is not science (yet i won the ribbon)
We spoke for something like four hours which is a world record for me of late, yes I was a little spun out and it’s not my finest moment *but* gave me an opportunity to dig deep into the archive to find things from my legit early days. Of course about an hour makes it into the finished program but my goodness, is it a lot of action in an hour. Leaping wildly from topic to form, location to era, anecdote to musing. A bit rant-y sure so hold on to yer cap.
from my fave of several college/university experiences at Larry Harper’s honours creative writings class making a collective chapbook with my “Sweetgrass” story
In this case I pulled items from: fourth grade King Tut mimeographed hand out from my (award winning :-)) science fair project at Prince Charles Elementary; newspaper editorials and chapbooks at the Orem (UT) high school; early stories at Utah Valley community college; and, the beginning of the *disgruntled with the literary establishment years* at University of Utah years.
(one of several fusillades fired in the Orem High School newspaper (under different surname), this one about student teachers from BYU
Yes there are many digressions, rapid speaking, a few shots fired, salvos really, a bit of sweetness and a bit of tenderness as I figured out who I thought I might be when I was already completely myself.
Chapbook with brother Bob (Cmdr USN) about hippie elementary school teacher’s bus made at Orem High School Unified Studies program
Jason welcomes under-qualified window-washer Dave Olson & his fantastic beard & beautiful hands for a natter about punching or hugging Dostoevsky, see-through loincloths, meeting REM, borrowing mustard from Allen Ginsberg, dodgy Greyhound stations, working out the writing life math, and how cheerleaders are people too.
There’s ropey Egyptian history, a savage polemic, the details of hippy teacher Mr Boris’s new motorized home, a few bits & Brother Bobs of Dave’s early poetry & prose, & Jason getting his Tutankhamun timeline wrong by only 3700 years. An unnerving—if not terrifying—time is guaranteed for all.
Check out Dave’s creative life archive at https://daveostory.com—much to enjoy there. Music by the outrageous DJ Max in Tokyo.
Jason welcomes under-qualified window-washer Dave Olson & his fantastic beard & beautiful hands for a natter about punching or hugging Dostoevsky, see-through loincloths, meeting REM, borrowing mustard from Allen Ginsberg, dodgy Greyhound stations, working out the writing life math, and how cheerleaders are people too. There's ropey Egyptian history, a savage polemic, the details of hippy teacher Mr Boris's new motorized home, a few bits & Brother Bobs of Dave's early poetry & prose, & Jason getting his King Tut timeline wrong by only 3700 years. An unnerving—if not terrifying—time is guaranteed for all. Music by the outrageous DJ Max in Tokyo. Many thanks, wherever & whoever & however you are, for listening.
PPS more should be said about this wonderful conversation and yes, I have scans of more of the artifacts {and about Jason & my correspondence} so pardon brevity, I’m in a fog
Whittling away on my poetry / musings book project “circumnavigation, of sorts” / working title being more appropriate to the process than I could’ve imagined…
Digging into so many diaries, journals, notebooks, scrapbooks and what have you to find messages to a future self from various incarnations of someone who might be me.
Gotta say, the scribbles are sometimes quite emotional, sometimes surprising, often times amusing, other times well,… hard to say except noting ‘I was always trying & always making’
Why yes, I am very official, thank you for asking.
Licensed to hug with Diplomatic Immunity (adding to passport collection)
Entered the TinTin phase of Ichiro’s life:
Well blistering barnacles, no internationally minded youth misses out on that goodness that is Tin Tin, I have a complete collection including the “rather awkward” ones written in that *cough cough* colonial European mindset.
Hergé’s leather satchel of supplies
We’re enjoying Tintin in Tibet right now (and I’m up playing the friendship angle and downplaying the plane crash angle considering our upcoming travel at his fascination with airplanes).
Yesterday, after seitai, we stopped at a secondhand shop to purchase a couple more dining room chairs, shelf and whatnot… The secondhand stores here are really fantastic and we furnished our house in our eclectic style thanks to these treasure troves, but the point is: There was a model ship, triple masted, vaguely like The Unicorn, on a shelf and while we were purchasing the other larger items I said “and I will take that as well!” (pretending I’m paying in US dollars so I’m getting a great deal – macro economic currency humour is great right?)
Brought it home and a little guy right away realized that it was “just like Tintin” and the Unicorn. He examined it very carefully, which was a relief because he’s at that stage were smashing things is a lot more fun :)
Speaking of: here at my “creative life archive” (fancy name for a blog) scheduled on the 31st is a photo of me doing my best to dress up as tin Tintin in the crappy suburbs in probably 1978, my glasses kind of ruining the whole thing and spent the night trying to explain to people who I was… people would say “Rintintin the dog?” I would roll my eyes and sadness/discussed and stumble away with my crappy candy wishing i could go live in some exotic land.
Also at this aforementioned “don’t call it a blog“ is field notes from a Hergé museum exhibit in Quebec city with loads of his original sketches but even better for me, ephemera, his supplies, kit bag, inspiration items all that kind of stuff. Have you seen it? I mean I expect everyone has seen every post that I put out there so I mean, you must have :-) geez, there is even a [TinTin Fun category]
Photographic Evidence
Picked up 2 family studio portraits (1 of the three of us and 1 of wife as a young girl with mother, father and younger brother) we had matted, edged (filleted?), framed and holy smokes, so great! Fancy times & so worth it. Going to make a gallery on a wood panel wall soon.
One is the three of us is from the “time traveler“ series a couple years ago / matted with burgundy, gold edge and carved up wood frame and looks quite Taisho era: mysterious and majestic.
Time Traveler Family, v. 1 (this pose with burgundy-ish mat an brown carved frame and gold edges, such fancy!)
The wife & in-laws photo has kind of a mirror image pose with “lost in Showa” beige vibes + kimono splash. Both F-i-L and I have rather “serious/neutral” expressions, both photos have baby feet and Mothers with Fujii-family trademark short-cut hair.
Will hang up soon and will look so great. Next up: photo shoot with Grandparents and us all together… so we go on #AxeHandles
Hospital Switcheroo
Not of particular interest to anyone but, for the record: Finished hopefully-last visit to the “big city hospital” it’s shiny and efficient however from now, the diligent if a-bit-worn Okayama University Hospital with their MECFS program is my primary point of contact and care.
Reminder of this article about MECFS in The Atlantic (i’ve printed it and taken to Doctors) by Ed Yong is really worth reading to understand a bit about the weird medical conundrums which me and many many deal with. Oh and a great recap by someone called Heather about “10 things i wish people knew about ME“.
Grateful Dead Dave’s Picks
Trying *not* to buy too many records of late due to impending trip (more later) but the new “Dave’s Picks” Grateful Dead is from the Eugene 1990 shows, ergo:
Seaside Chat: Dave's Picks 2023 Subscriptions https://t.co/Z4Ilm8Mk0s / these riffs from @lemieuxdavid about the Grateful Dead releases are so pleasant. Happy the archive is in hands of this curator (funny, he's my age and lives where i used to but we've never met) PS Hi Dave.
and next Dave's Picks is the legendary (for me and my pals) Eugene 1990 shows (day 1) and the next announcement is staying in #Cascadia from late 70s Portland. https://t.co/5eMZYHqA1N
Also Neal Casal “Illuminations for the Dead” which was made special for the set break music at the Grateful Dead 50th anniversary shows – instrumental, ethereal, atmospheric – but sadly Neal packed it in shortly thereafter :(
And Dan Mangan’s new offering “Being Somewhere” is en route, just missing “Postcards and Daydreams” to complete my vinyl archive including the 10 year reissues for “Nice Nice Very Nice” and “Oh Fortune”
“Television” is one of those bands who’s talked about in reverent tones by aficionados of a certain type / mostly as ‘the band that could’ve’ or ‘band that influenced that other band that became…’ / fraught with conflicting genius, specter of addiction, calamity of timing #sighhttps://t.co/1dy1D3NfTK
Aside: Need to re-up my cardigan stash with 2+ decent wool all-around-ers.
Current are a little bit too shabby (even for my “weary/eccentric community college prof” style) & cotton ones are quickly becoming inadequate for season.
i mean, who is even who here?
Now, how do I do this without leaving the house?
Note: I like “aged/classic“ communication methods but what I don’t miss: long distance phone bills (remember being stiffed so many times cause i was the sucker with a Sprint card). And my seitai Dr just gifted me a classic black rotary phone! Will sit like a noble buffalo in the studio so i can call you whenever i can’t.
(pending) Book project
Pals have namechecked for #NaNoWriMo( which is awesome National Novel Writing Month campaign) but I’m not attaching my star to it because I’m physically incapable of sitting at a chair and banging out 50,000 words // my head has the stories no doubt but the body won’t cooperate so instead I’m using the month to assemble poems like Lego bricks and hide out in the barn…
It’s really also a “mental reset“ from this year of endless paperwork, I mean so much paperwork and so many hospital visits.
The good news is: the recent medication/IV routine and seasonal weather changes here have given me a little bit of a spark / Summer was brutal, typhoon season crushed what was left of my head, but now it’s chilly, crisp and sunny. So aside from a neighbour (probably 3 km away) trimming their grass requiring me to close the window, I’ve managed to patch together a couple “good days” in a row. Just writing this though I feel like I’m jinxing it. But, I’ll eat my oatmeal and head to work at a standing bench desk with records playing and probably record somekind of meta-documentation (unsurprisingly) and see how we roll on.
So, recap: Planning on spending November in the barn assembling a book of poetry, with snippets of letters, maybe some musings, prose riffs… I’m not sure yet but… Importantly, I want the book to “look and feel beautiful”.
I’m not sure what I will do for publication whether that’s self/on demand, shop it out to a boutique publisher but it’s really important to me that it’s typeset to look timeless and dammit, gorgeous and be printed on paper stock with a nice hand.
I think I will add in some black-and-white Lomo images just for atmosphere in section breaks but stay away from color so it doesn’t become an unwieldy expense for people to collect/purchase.
Mostly I just don’t want it to look like that sort of “I made this book in Word and sent it as a PDF“ typography style if you know what I mean. Margins, gutters, typefaces are all very important but I don’t really have the true skills.
Anyhow, i’m making the book for Stanley (before he heads off to sea)
Written (maybe March 2021?) in reply to an association/community of creatives riffing off the Jack Kerouac writing for Japhy Ryder (*cough* modeled after Gary Snyder) about a rucksack revolution.
My feeling is the beat generation, the lost generation, romantics, punks/hippies/pranksters and/or whatever movement you want to namecheck are labels of convenience (we love to categorize) and – importantly – don’t live fossilized in amber.
Ergo: people who are creating today *honestly and authentically* are part of a continuous strand which occasionally picks up names along the way.
daveo
stash your gear in a rucksack and go be in the world
We are a *new* movement whether it has an “name” or not. If you are writing, sharing, wondering, wandering, rambling, sharing, filling notebooks with joy & impunity, endless letters to lovers you’ll never meet & living full on, going going going.
We are who we are, regardless of generation and accidental timings of birth or state of the world, we take in all that came before us and (perhaps) we spark what will come after us. We are the rucksack revolution who found a place to sit calmly, share widely, create honestly, give openly, inspire gently and carry-on intrepidly through it all.
Indeed for decades when I would ramble on about these literary heroes, most people would stare blankly, even lots of Deadheads didn’t trace the lineage but now, what was once “counter culture” has bubbled up into consensus reality so often.
We are the ambassadors and the diplomats but also the practitioners … and we have mighty tools available to us! So many writers were never “known“ because a suit in a New York City office didn’t *take a chance* on them (their efforts sequestered in shoeboxes in attics and lost to unknowing grandchildren or recycle bins) but now all of us can publish everything / all the time / everywhere and (importantly) cultivate a community like one does with a garden.
Now I’m so pleased and proud to help amplify these classic & contemporary stories in Japan through exhibits and examples, plus – again importantly – inspiring other people to create their stories and sprinkle them out to the universe in whatever form they choose.
Fck Stats, Make Art.
Right here / it’s all about the cycles: they showed us the way, keep your notebooks handy & pencil sharpened, remember to share, remember to seek, & remember to go go go.
“I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ’em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures …”
Jack Kerouac *fictional quoting* Japhy Ryder in Dharma Bums
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)
Think of *every* surface as your own personal notebook and remind often you’re doing *this for yourself* and for the future and everyone else is just kind of “bonus” looking over your shoulder. In other words, write when you can, write what you want > mix medias and metaphors, use social channels as a memo book to later copy & paste and expand into your archive.
Importantly: don’t put pressure on yourself, days are *just days* – you’re doing this for years and the decades.
+ Let’s go for a walk and talk with a Story in Mind +
Hey whatta fun conversation! Riffing about creative projects from 1970s to current days and how all the threads connect together in the most unexpected ways. I.e.: fanzines, chapbooks, paintings, mustaches, Ayurveda, Dead tour, grain barns of mystery, goat farms, hemp #theusual
From Moss Whelan / writer, papermaker, renegade & podmaker: “Back in the swing—talking with {Dave Olson} about writing, art, and health”
Sent to a friend who was feeling confused about how to get started archiving and documenting one’s own creative life ~ shared here for edification – sorta for business-y types i suppose
In brief: Gotta just start… choose the things which are important to you and interesting about you, but make this easy by “meta documenting” your documentation.
what may look like *too much* and clutter-y is really a delightful afternoon or 3 of discovering and contextualizing your projects and life
Ergo: Regarding personal archeology… Rather than feeling sh!tty, start by doing the *easy things* to chronicle the things you’ve pulled off this last bunch of years.
i.e.
List of all the speaking engagements you’ve done
List of all the events you planned/ wrangled/ coordinated/ hosted
List of speaking gigs you rocked
List of all the media, tv appearances/ news write-ups List of all the publications/articles you are in or wrote etc
List of all the jobs/positions you held
Then you can start to chronicle/ archive the particular artifacts from each of the above as available.
You might fall into a very nice rhythm – practical meditation in a way.
Turn off the TV, put on the music and space out with yourself and you’re fascinating history.
These kinds of things are good mental exercise but also I put forth somehow “important” and future *you* will be grateful for present day *you* for doing so.
Of course some examples at my website #NotAPlug Let me know if you require further encouragement or advice.
Continuing the story of the Olympia SM9 typewriter (from 2018 at Wonder Hotel) simply to show the difference a year of diligence and intrepidness can bring.
Yup, it truly was the most difficult of times, pulled in directions i didn’t want to go but then… states and provinces crossed, affairs sorted, planes and memories faced, trains and ferries joined / turmoil, bureaucracy, paperwork, disrespect and frustration, all well, just sort of sorted itself out. I mean, I know how but the point is: the time came when i was reunited with this typewriter and all was different from when i left it.
changing the ribbon, over and over for some reason…
Still the keys get jammed, the ribbon inexplicably requires flipping/rewinding after barely a page of typing but, now smudged with thumbprints from changing said ribbon and supplied with aerogrammes from often lost countries, used envelopes with franked stamps (and sometimes intimate thoughts), and the usual hotel stationery, I made things.
Aerogramme loaded on splendid work table
Mostly poems and erstwhile letters, quite literally banged out without regard for perfection, just passion! Rapid transcriptions from scribbled journals, imagined lives of a doppelgänger, and notes from undergrounds.
Then joyfully accessorized with inky stamps and collages of postage stamps which may or may not have anything to do with the poem at hand (actually, they were all very intentionally consciously chosen but hey… that’s for the art to say). Oh, you can find evidence of these sessions in Items: Forgotten cycle vol. 7 Espionage and bits in vol. 6 Circumnavigation.
from Items: Forgotten, vol. 7, Espionage
Now, the burly beast sits in a teakwood closet awaiting another opportunity to resist my indelicate fingers. Reminding me to touch gently with nuance and care.
waiting in teakwood closet (behind)
All this is to say, art saves lives (in some cases anyhow).
mixed-media art library, global diary, project dossier and whole life documentation
