Well,

With all the charm of an anti-capitalist wearing a bear costume, I've somehow attained millions of views on a video on Instagram.

This wasn't on my New Year's resolution list. My resolutions entailed finishing my book Darklight, along with several others, publishing poetry, and releasing a new album. All of these have been put on the side for the last week, as I grapple with the apparent value of my absurd, bite-sized takes on the internet.

That said, I'm putting the bear hat down as I write this, to share that the new audience has made me incredibly grateful, and I'm really keen on stepping up and sharing properly, in long form, as I am here.

Life has been pretty interesting lately. I had a night without power and heating, coincedentially on the coldest night of the year so far. Made me quite sympathic to the people enduring harsh conditions in our city. I heard there's a movement motivated to house people in The Path overnight, which I am all for, going to try to reasearch it and put a link here:

I researched it, and found nothing. It must have been a dream I had. Or a shower thought. 

Still: seems insane that people have to sleep outside in the winter when we have an UNDERGROUND city that I know lies empty. I'd like to know who to petition about this.

That aside:

One thing that has been on my mind, and exemplified through the last few weeks, is the balance between structure and flow. Form and essence. The ability to have a short formula: weird take, three points, close, has allowed me to make continuously engaging videos on the internet. It's something I've been conscious of in music for a while: intro, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus (or something along those lines) and I've recently started integrating it into my writing, outlining my new stories and writing outlines for the stories that I have already begun to write. It offers a lot of clarity, but most importantly, it lets me mess around without feeling like I have no idea what I'm doing. As an ADHD juggler of every known medium who possesses a persisting delusion that I can learn the inner workings of physics, chemistry, biology, and pretty much every subject, this has been key for me. I dream of an outline for life full of blank spaces. 

A structure that's completely empty of structure. 

To be free to act so I can act freely.

Anyway, I'm realizing more and more this is how success manifests at scale in our world. It's what allows entites to pivot and maintain simultaneously. They don't teach us this on a personal level in any particular place. It's something that I lost when the days of the week became meaningless during Covid, and it's returning slowly but surely, in a way that allows me to push myself out of bed at 5am to go write until the sun comes up, to post three times a day, to set up my music to release every two weeks, etc.

All this to say, reflecting on your own about the type of rules you'd like to impose upon yourself might bear some fruit (every time I say bear now, it's a pun, by the way).

In other news, I joined a community called Pluto in Toronto. Membership is a little pricey and I'm not fully committed on staying, but I'm thinking I'll offer a class or two there, regarding music and writing, more of a communal circle for us to reflect off of. 

If you're in Toronto and interested, keep me posted. If you aren't, maybe I'll make it remote compatible. 

Whether or not I stay at Pluto, I'd like to be able to host containers consistently for people interested in the community going forward, so stick around and I'm sure we'll be co-working on art soon enough.

Being at Pluto was great, because I met some published authors, some poets who are vying to begin writing formula… every point along the spectrum you can imagine. 

And the interesting part is that we're all interested in community. No matter how far along you get, feedback from other human beings seems to be immensely valuable. Whether it's non-fiction, a puppet play, or essays seems beside the point.

I'll leave you all with this: I have a new song coming out for Valentine's Day, which I hope you enjoy. 

You can find it here early (mailing list only)--  (Told you there was a point to joining the mailing list)

I'll be hosting a gathering at Pluto shortly, which I will of course provide here, on the site, with a discount code. Hopefully it'll be next to nothing. I detest paying to play.

Toodles,

Eternal Dave