The Toyotathon of thons
Thon onto others as thou wouldst thon unto oneself
It’s giving season, aka the “Toyotathon of thons,” aka I’m taking a break from being emo to be fully metal, and I have some holidaython ledes:
I made a playlist of dark Christmas music because I love my friends, and this year we—friends who get morbidly depressed during the holidays—are taking over. You’re welcome.
XXmas on TIDAL—Napalm Death, Autopsy, Mosaic Window, Krallice, Liturgy, The Locust, Milemarker, Four Hundred Years, Jucifer, The Murder City Devils, Clikatat Ikatowi, Fishbone, Kyoka, UMFANG, Ellen Alien, Apparat, Kim Hiorthøy.
PS: support any other streaming service on earth than Spotify, y’all.
I have music out there too: TOTALLY AUTOMATIC the trio in which I drum and short circuit electronics, is some good ass background music—to be clear I’m not self-abnegating; not receding into the background with that description. I am very proud of this music but our tracks average 30 minutes in length so I say “background music” to be practical—press play and go for a walk. We just mashed up with The Early on Squashed Dragons.
Unlike Christmas, this stuff is actually full of peace and good will toward all humans.
Did you know I am a servant to the arts? Consider donating to the following in increasing order of cash monies.
If you’re a baller-shotcaller, you should partner with us at United States Artists where I am “waving not drowning,” to quote Stevie Smith, as its program director. We are the crawler bulldozer of the arts sector, moving big stones from point a to point b with an engine assembly designed for war. When our hard-won federal arts administration gets canned under the Orange Hole Sun, USA will be there with some soft machines and quiet weaponry.
If you have ever interloped in Mardi Gras chicanery in New Orleans and claim to love the arts, you should donate to National Performance Network where as board co-chair I “get low to the window” with a mighty crew of maniacs running the wrecking ball of the arts sector out of the American South. NPN is not just occupying but possessing the discourse on the arts and social equity (for so many held identities).
Every building site needs scaffolding, and that’s Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia and when I say no one needs support like Philadelphians, I mean no one needs support like Philadelphia—state funding for the arts here hasn’t numerically increased whatsoever since the 1990s :[
AAI is a party, a promenade, a mutual aid, a blackout curtain in a lousy hotel, a megaphone, a lazy susan, an initiative, a movement. Support the protection of pathways for artists making brave work in and for the diaspora.
You have the Asian American Writers Workshop to thank for every good book you have ever read in your life. OK I’m playing, but you would have believed me if I didn’t say anything. This is probably the organization in which I have had to use the most number of muscles in my brain—it evades construction metaphors, but AAWW is like if protest songs and quantum math had sex and created a karaoke machine.
Vox Populi is a shovel. Also based in Philadelphia (see above: re: support!), this aggressively queer, non-standard artists collective will bat at, and dig up as much infrastructure as any of the other organizations, with a tenth of the resources and a hundred times the network. We are the proverbial strength of a spider’s web, the strength of an ant. Movement building starts with the determination of the strangest artists.
