D’Addario XL Half Rounds Electric Guitar Strings, medium 11 – 49: Turns out they are impossible to find in the Twin Cities, where I am presently trying to get them strung to my G&L F100 Series II that is being serviced by the capable Mr. Mark, of Mr. Mark’s Music in downtown Anoka, MN. Thank God for Amazon and fast, but pricey, next-day shipping. It should be worth it though. A smoother feel and more buttery mids and low end... Read more
One of the inconvenient things about moving to North Dakota is this: it’s weird to tell people “well, if you’re ever in North Dakota…” Most people don’t go there, so goodbyes have a certain ring to them that feels a bit less promising and bit more hollow than moving to other, more familiar, places. I’m glad to not be moving right away; it makes a lot of goodbyes a lot gentler. Other goodbyes are never gentle: when parents bury their... Read more
Playing a gig with Andre Scott and Theo Thompson at Wabash College. Read more
I just read a short 1999 essay by Ray Monk on the importance and relevance of Wittgenstein’s thoughts on the limits of scientific knowledge and the value of the humanistic knowledge. Especially how the humanities have something important to teach us without necessary recourse to, or justification in, science. Science, this essay argues, doesn’t have a monopoly over knowledge, truth, or the human condition. This is not an attack on science or scientists; only on scientism, one of the narrow,... Read more
Okay, I admit it: I have fallen head over heels in love with tumblr. It’s intuitive, simple, and seems like a space I can really make my own. I doubt I’ll be posting lots of things from other spots around tumblr, but I do expect to be pretty active with all sorts of postings of my own. Shit, this thing even makes me want to take pictures — something I generally DESPISE. Finally, this tumblr thingy has a mood to... Read more
Just discovered Daniel Johnson today; courtesy of Sam Bennett. Not a freak show. A person, a human person. Read more
My wife called tumblr a “grown-up facebook” today. I hope that she’s right. I am also becoming the proud owner of a new, old typewriter very soon. I’m caught in a somewhat nasty predicament: growing more and more appreciative of old things and lifeways and, at the exact same time, reluctant — perhaps ‘unable’ is the better term — to remove myself from this newer world altogether. Furthermore, I am also becoming tired of the ways in which the “old”... Read more
Old photo from a show in Milwaukee. Read more
I just deleted my facebook account. It felt good but also showed me a side of facebook that is its ONLY possible redemption: people, real ones. I will miss them, not all of them, but many of them. Hopefully that feeling will actualize in more real encounters someday. In the meantime, I will dwell in this, alternative virtual space. Read more
The modern Western adult’s fear about himself is that, to put it as crudely as possible, his hatred is stronger than his love; that there is, in the British psychoanalyst Ernest Jones’s words, “much less love in the world than there appears to be.” Our kindness is chronically in doubt (and not, as philosophical skeptics have traditionally tried to persuade us, our existence.) Childhood has become the last bastion of kindness, the last place where we may find more love... Read more
Sam Rocha
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