Some artists don’t or can’t tour. They don’t meet and greet. They are not on Ex or Insta or some sort of Abra app dopamine delivery. They work a few jobs maybe, or raise kids, and tend to that art thing in the late eves, between things.
So the artist is not here, near or before you. How you find the time in your life to do such a thing in a doom scrollers wet dream is truly something, seek out work by artists that are not outward facing. Something like this book by Patrick Brayer I keep yammering on about. He had a record out on Shrimper four or five years back, and he won’t quit. This book that Mark Givens and I just published on Bamboo Dart Press, thirty years in the making, it is called The Cold Coin Heart. It was missed visits with David Lynch. It was kids in New York threatening to move to Fontana, CA after seeing Patrick perform live. It is like near nothing that I had ever read as it captures something of The Inland Empire that has eluded so many who have attempted to write about it. Read this fascinating piece that Brayer has posted about the history of his book below with excerpts from The Cold Coin Heart for more about the unique world that he occupies. Here he is digging a grave in Fontana in the 70’s with Roy Ruiz Clayton. I imagine this grave holds a seed as well.