#printedinternet

[cyberpunkonline]

Paperweight Dreams

The Battery Died So I Printed the Internet by R A Z, as overheard on a southbound train

In the early 2000s, we didn't "read PDFs" on the go. We printed them. Like war criminals. There was no mobile Internet worth a damn.

Zines weren’t retro—they were necessary. Laptops cost a month’s rent and had the stamina of a bored housecat. Try booting up a Toshiba Satellite on a train back then. You'd get 45 minutes, max. Enough time to open Notepad, fail to read a .txt, and watch your screen dim into purgatory while your knees caught fire.

E-readers didn’t exist. Phones were still glorified bricks with T9 keyboards. Wi-Fi? A myth whispered by café baristas guarding their WEP codes like state secrets. If you wanted to carry the underground with you, you had two choices:

Print it

Forget it existed

So we printed. Folded DIY manifestos into coat pockets like contraband. Spilled tea on ASCII art. Highlighted hyperlinks out of pure habit. The train hummed, the paper crackled, and somewhere between two towers and a decaying industrial estate—you were jacked into a different kind of net. One made of toner and tape.

And honestly? It slapped.

Now? Your Apple Neural Core™ can display 4000 zines simultaneously while also giving you a dopamine stroke. But none of them smell like burned toner. None of them smudge when you cry in the rain.

That’s what we gave up.

That’s why we archive.

[fire-dad]

printedinternet replied to your post: Just had one of the greatest surprise ...

what went down

intended to go for a walk alone/to a bar to drink until I started to write and instead walked like 2 miles with some friends I hadn't seen in a while and we saw all kinds of crazy parts of Bushwick and Brooklyn and it was gr8.

[boundtothewater-blog]

ryan, i am BAFFLED by this album. or really more by its reception. Kozelek is--remains--my favorite artist, but i just can't see what's so special about this record. "Carissa" and "Micheline" are gorgeous, sure, but no more so (far as I can tell) than anything on April/Ghosts/Old Ramon/etc etc, and the rest just seems, to me, haphazard and ill-thought-through and plodding and hold on losing space...

(cont’d) basically my question here, posed in good faith & by someone who would be *thrilled* to hear a brand-new Kozelek masterpiece in 2014, is what exactly you see in this record, and in Kozelek’s new approach generally. i’m failing to find it, though i want to. (but again, i’ve teared up four times to “Carissa” in the last 24 hrs, so who knows, maybe i’ll come around to the rest of it, probably not though, i mean damn, that song where he inventories his sexual history? whoa.)

——-

I’ll admit I’ve only done about three deep listens and some of the songs still haven’t clicked for me, but I’m also remembering how long half of April took to grab me. I’m probably not going to be able to answer your question about why the critical response to Benji has been so effusive because honestly I feel the exact same way about this record as I did about Among the Leaves - the good songs on it are absolutely stunning and the boring songs are boring and baffling and it would have been a better record without them. I think that maybe part of that critical response comes from the fact that it’s shorter and more focused than any of his records since Ghosts of the Great Highway. It’s more varied than Admiral Fell Promises but it’s less tossed-off than like three-quarters of Among the Leaves or any of his other ancillary releases and collabs. SO I’m also kind of confused because for me it’s Another Late-Period Mark Kozelek Record.

THAT BEING SAID - I really do love his sense of humor that he’s flexed since Among the Leaves and I think it balances his more morose tendencies really well and part of what’s so great about the record is how he has started to weave humor into the music itself as well (like in I Love My Dad and Ben’s My Friend for example). I think it really suits the more conversational tone he’s started to adopt and makes the heavy moments hit heavier. I think that the super long verse structure really suits Carissa and Ben’s My Friend and Richard Ramirez… and adds a forward momentum that his music often lacks. When this record clicks it feels like a satisfying realization of the sound he’s been working toward since Admiral Fell Promises. I mean Ghosts and April were profoundly different records and then the last three records have been Of A Piece (and to be quite honest I think the good songs on Among the Leaves still hit harder for me because right now my thoughts are more consumed with aging and irrelevance than family and death) and I think a lot of people just stopped paying attention to Mark Kozelek since April because his last few records have been so monochromatic and this one is easier to grab onto, more varied, and more compact.

[aloofshahbanou]

Hey! So you probably do not remember this, but about half a year ago I sent you a message, and you sent an incredibly kind and thoughtful response to that message, which I never properly responded to, because generally I am the worst at responding to messages. But I just wanted to say that a) that message you sent meant a lot to me and b) your blog really has genuinely altered, subconsciously+otherwise, the way I think about and consume a great deal of culture. Hope you're doing well! --D

Daniel, I totally remember that exchange — I never forget anything, my mind is like a neatly-organized arsenal of feelings, memories, and miscellaneous fragments of information. We’ve followed each other for the longest time and your writing has always inspired me. Also, your observation holds very true. I have changed so much, every single day of every single year really, and that transformation has totally altered my blog. It fills my heart with great joy to hear that I’ve had that kind of impact on you — that we are all growing and evolving together. I hope you are well, my friend. I have nothing but respect and love for backleftlitz.

[imathers]

Know what's wild? I read your 'Playing With God' Wowee Zowee piece when I was 14, and only upon re-reading it ten minutes ago did I realize that you wrote it.

I have two equal reaction to this:

1. HA HA THANKS DOOD I AM INTERNET FAMOUS FOREVERRRRRRRR2. oh god i can’t even bear to go back and reread that to make sure it’s not completely stupid, i’m sure it’s hideous, you must think i am awful at writing in english

But in either case, thanks! I’m assuming absent other information that you liked it when you were 14, because of my ego.