Videos

Craft Sessions, Records

Tidying Up Vinyl Records in the Kura (find the right neighbourhood to spark joy

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All these records bring me joy so i am tidying up in the wake of a super enjoyable visit from Rice Field Records and a used record fair in nearby Ushimado.

Tidying Up Vinyl Records in the Kura

So, I putter along talking about how i organize the records into “neighbourhoods” so they have pals to hang out with, pull out some box sets, try to find where i put that “one thing” and where *exactly* this one fits best while wearing an moth-eaten cardigan and noticing my beard is compensating for my thinning noggin (still cute :)).

Finishes with flipping through some 7 inches while playing a live clip recorded at Ubud Jazz festival.

So name checks for fave artists including Courtney Barnett, Bill Janovitz / Buffalo Tom, Buffalo Springfield, David Bowie, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Joe Jackson, Talking Heads, Lone Justice, Ramones, Pixies, Weakerthans, more more more… and extra affection for compilations and soundtracks from Nardwuar, Flipside, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Urgh a Music War, Life in European Theatre, Easy Rider, Times Square (movie) etc infinity.

Continue reading Tidying Up Vinyl Records in the Kura (find the right neighbourhood to spark joy →
Japan Cottage Musings

BC Invasion trip / energy vs expectations and plans #driBC

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Feeling a little bit antsy and in a tizzy about all the plans and options for upcoming “BC Invasion trip [April 11 ~ May 25] to Vancouver & Victoria etc areas. #driBC

So, first I’m very grateful for everyone’s participation & interest and for simply remembering me after i disappeared with illness and other life conundrums.

Keeping Expectations Balanced with Priorities

Next, extending a warm invitation to come meet us at various parks and gardens where we’ll be with a picnic blanket and a thermos of coffee at checkpoints in:

  • Langley/Surrey: current til April 19
  • West End / DT Vancouver: April 19 ~ 25
  • Metchosin: April 25 ~ 29
  • Victoria / Oak Bay: April 29 ~ May 3
  • Pender Isle (Woods & Sparrow): May 3 ~ 10
  • Fairview / Kits: May 10 ~ 12
  • North Van / Lynn Valley: May 12 ~ 17
  • Langley / Surrey: May 17 ~ 25
  • Home to Tsuchida Cottage: May 25/26

“Main point” of the trip is for my darling wife and adorable son to meet family as well as to reconnect with hugs and gifts with so many of you wonders.

Especially eager to meet kids for Ichiro to hang with at wonderful playground. Also, so grateful for recent friends coming to visit and participating in our life.

My big concern is “crashing” with this illness which puts me out of action for days/weeks. Good news is: doing the best i have in years thanks to some recent treatment protocols and modalities.

PS great article in The Atlantic about #MECFS

I’m doing my best but/and if we can’t meet, no big deal – its complicated and folks have lives/jobs etc, please come to Japan! A safe, efficient, interesting, amusing, and somewhat affordable destination where we will be happy to welcome you with tea and goats.

Very eager to avoid micro-planning on phone robot and dealing with the social media diaspora if you know what i mean. Oh, there’s a GDoc, hit me up if you want access.

Fondly, from Tsuchida Cottage

dvo + ryoko and ichiro

us at the goat farm… heading your way
Craft Sessions, Scrapbooks + Journals

Sort-ganizing Ephemera by Post (with Royal Dudes & the Muffs)

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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…}

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Craft Sessions, Scrapbooks + Journals

Postal Art cards hang out (in kura barn with Bill Janovitz tunes)

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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.

Craft Sessions, Scrapbooks + Journals

Forging Passports, so to speak (“life during wartime”)

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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

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Craft Sessions, Japan Cottage Musings, Post'd (cards + letters)

Festive Greetz Cards Scrapbook Time (backwards)

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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).

Field Notes, Japan Cottage Musings, Japan Life/Travel

Japan Renegade Travel Musings (specifically *not* Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka)

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Oh look, adventure Ted is having a beer, sashimi and plotting good times…

Adventure Tour Guide Ted Taylor and DaveO riff in a historic Kura barn in Tsuchida, Okayama, Japan talking about exploring… well off-the-beathen-ish-path Japan – specifically not Tokyo, Kyoto, & Osaka (sure those places are great or whatever but plenty of info) so let’s explore elsewhere with places, tactics, tips and musings. Alas, no “b-roll”, links, edits, but plenty of digressions and pretty great hats.

Despite what dashing Ted Taylor tells ya, you can/should hire him for adventure tours (seriously) plus dig his most excellent journals at: Notes from the Nog blog

Continue reading Japan Renegade Travel Musings (specifically *not* Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka) →
Japan Cottage Musings

Tiger Year 2022: Flashback Musings in Present Moment

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A meandering rundown from the kura barn about New Year routines, foods and rituals in Japan, plus usual gabba gabba about postcards, lucky numbers and postal obsessions… but this time featuring various hats and even more personal translucency, unnecessary archaeology, remarks about improving the campsite, being a good hubbo and papa, health situation, life admin tasks, blank sheets, re-caps of projects: poems, pods, vids, trips – and various anecdotes about wonderful pals, probably you ya beauty.

Very important annotations

Special hellos to friends in places where I left pieces of my heart – important for a rambling type with out that “regular hometown” vibe.

Postcards fr. Gravelly Beach, Postcards via video

“Personal Archeology” – Postcard #88 (+ via audio &/or video)

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Riffs about the glory of journals, diaries, notebooks full of musings and importance of turning off inner-critic and not overthinking while savoring the process of transcription, curation and further creative wonderment from Kura barn in provincial Japan. With evidence with my own process.

Items are Marty Thurston’s backyard studio for “Personal Archeology – Postcard #88”

Plus sorta re-cap how far I got about Circumnavigation poetry book project, tips and tactics for enjoying and “doing something with” your diaries, scrapbooks and so on, having multiple books on the go (and mixing up with all manner of stuff all at once, notes about semantics of freeverse, lyrics, short stories and prose poems, and probably a riff about remembering to forget, questioning “who are you making this for” and where I place the ghosts.

Finally, I read straight from some barely legible poetry scribbles with meanderings about sensory depravation chambers, menthol smokes with Leonard Cohen, Pan Am flights with Zeus, Buddha, Glen Canyon, and solving algorithms with nuclear fusion.

“Personal Archeology – Postcard #88” audio
43:33, 256kbps mp3, 84MB

With special thanks to all who bravely step out with creative endeavors and extra for following along with my projects and what have you.

Namechecks for:
Rogério De Freitas
José Naranja
Jason Emde
Austin Kleon
Gord Downie
Henry David Thoreau
James Joyce

+ Julian, Derek, Diego, JoBot
& others, maybe you

Let’s “Embark on Personal Archeology”

Note: “Personal Archeology – Postcard #88” is available in audio-only via all normal podcast channels.

Postcards via video

Nepal Stupa Choruses – Postcard #87 via video

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Ambient video version of a Postcards from Gravelly Beach podcast “Nepal Stupa Choruses” with a cycle of poems written on a lake heading towards a temple and tea in shadow of Annapurna – the audio in the *actual pod* is much better but just happened to film whilst recording and added a few snaps from the journey for amusement and colour, so here we are, in my kura barn studio in provincial Japan, ergo:

“Washing dishes and busted spectacles lead to rowing a lake in Nepal figuring out deity, enlightenment, peace and power with choruses fresh from diaries – plus Royal hospitals, poetic devices and question mark eyebrows. Your turn Buddha, your turn.”

Note: “Nepal Stupa Choruses” is available in audio-only via all normal podcast channels and elsewhere in this library.

Nepal Stupa Choruses also avail in luscious audio