Two more things from the show last night:

1. They opened with “The World Can Wait.” Linford said the song was about JOMO: the joy of missing out.
2. They played some new, unrecorded music. Folks, when you get your ears on “Bella Luna,” you’re going to love it.

The Over the Rhine show last night was…well, they seem to get better with each passing year. The music that just seems to flow out of them is unmatched in my experience. It feels effortless. Their live shows are always deeply moving experiences for me.

Hanging out at the record store before the Over the Rhine show. I’m thankful to have such a great place nearby.

I have a very special sweetgum tree in my yard. I’ll tell you the story sometime. But it does require a lot of raking: we fill a few of these barrels with their spiky seed pods every year.

Finished reading A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. The best thing about this book was the way Chambers imaginatively de-centered humans. Apart from that, I can’t say it ever quite gripped me. I’m interested enough to read the next book though.

Speaking of zines, here’s a good post from Jay Springett on the subject.

First pro bike race of the spring Cobbled Classics, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, in 48 hours! I will be continuing my completely cheesy tradition of marking the occasion with waffles and Belgian beer. (Yes, at 8am. It makes for a interesting morning.)

So whaddya say, folks, should we just start sending zines to each other through the mail? (via @jaheppler)

I think about this a lot, actually. I don’t have time for it now but maybe, sometime?

Song in my head today: Marty Robbins, “Bouquet of Roses”

Really illuminating post by James Shelley (via @patrickrhone):

Whether papyrus or the internet, humans doggedly write for influence, status, wealth, conviction, and pleasure. But the so-called sanctity of “authorship” is only a very recent idea. These “rights” of authorship are only true if they are enforced. They are a kind of fiction that only make sense in occasional times, places, and cultures. For the next chapter of the human experiment, I wonder if “authorship” will again recede into the background, as it often seems to do in times of disruptive changes in communication technology.

But the banishment of the author doesn’t mean writing ends. Writers still write even when “authorship” functionally means nothing. And what they write still influences their world, with or without the universe dutifully paying homage to their bylines. In the long arcs of history, what is written typically goes on to mean much more than who wrote it. The future, like today, is built on ideas, not on the people who had them, because people die but ideas never stop evolving.

As we used to say, read the whole thing. I’m particularly struck by his invocation of ancient anonymous and pseudonymous works. It’s the ideas that matter, less so the author.