Mark Richardson

There’s a guy who wanders around my neighborhood, I’ve seen him for years, and he’s recognizable from a good distance because he’s tall and he walks very quickly and with an oblong gait. He always looks like he’s in a tremendous hurry to get somewhere and I’m pretty sure he sleeps in the street, at least a lot of the time. His pants are often torn and his clothes are generally dirty and he wears a lot of layers. His hair and beard are long. And if I walk by this guy he always says, without fail, “Do you have a quarter?” And he never says anything else. The first few times I saw him I was a little nervous because he appears very agitated and his eyes dart around furiously, like he’s really upset or angry about something. But after seeing him a few times I realized that this is just his state, and if I said “No” to the quarter, he just moved on, walking at his usual double-speed clip.

A few weeks ago I was walking back home in the early evening and it was very cold, the coldest day in New York that I could remember in a long time. I happened to be listening to Harry Belefonte’s version of “Danny Boy,” which I like very much. It had been a while since I’d heard it–I’m finally getting used to Spotify and slowly adding old favorites to playlists. I’m attracted to a certain kind of maudlin music for some reason, music that floods with broad sadness in a way that for some people makes it trite. And Belefonte’s version of this ballad is a good example–when his voice jumps up to falsetto in the chorus, it just kills me.

And then walking down the sidewalk toward me was the guy. It was dark, but I knew his shape. As he got closer I could see he had a winter jacket on but it was unzipped and open, and his shoes didn’t look warm or insulated or even water-tight. I thought man, he must be freezing, and I took off my headphones, and he reached me and asked for the quarter. I said “Sure,” even though I knew I had only a $10 bill. This time I felt like I wanted to say something. I dug for my wallet and said “Man, it’s cold. What’s your name? I’m Mark,” and he said “Danny.“

Posted at 11:03pm and tagged with: writing,.

January 4th 2017

10 notes

This one has been killing me. “We do not know where you go/In the night
Through the door/Through the door that holds you.” Bill Callahan has written a lot of songs about feeling alienated, but the way I hear it, this is a rare one about looking at it from the other side, about how little we can really know about another person’s interior life.

Posted at 10:13pm and tagged with: bill callahan,.

December 31st 2016

10 notes

There was a family joke that when I was a kid, I used to lay into my parents about the fact that we had never traveled outside “The Great Lakes Region.” During some Geography unit in 4th or 5th grade the teacher had broken down the United States by “region,” which I suppose included places like “Mid-Atlantic” and “Pacific Northwest” but I can’t be sure because I don’t remember any of the others. What I do remember is The Great Lakes Region, which included Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. I had only been to four of these states, and that was including just driving through Indiana and Ohio. Which may not have been so bad considering I was 11 years old. But I complained, loudly and often.

Maybe because I grew up thinking the world was so small, I was always on the look out for things that expanded it. And one of those things turned out to be alcohol. I can remember the first time I got drunk like it was yesterday, even though it was many years ago. It was in the basement of a friend’s house. I was 16. There were four of us there, and we got two six-packs of Michelob. A cheap boombox was playing. I believe I had three beers. And I got drunk. And it felt amazing. Suddenly a large part of the anxiety that consumed me for my life to that point was gone. I felt centered in the world, unafraid and happy.

Later that year, my friend Dave and I would regularly go to see his friend Colin at his dorm room at Michigan State. Dave and I were 16 and Colin was 18. Colin was a freshman. He had a roommate but he wasn’t around much. Colin’s room was quite spare, very little on the wall, a steel bunk bed on the floor, another on the other side of the room, two old desks, a mini fridge. There may have been a Pink Floyd poster up. It was not a cheerful place.

My main memory of being in this room is it’s dark and I am drunk. Every time I am in there, it’s one of the first 10 or 15 times I was ever drunk. Which is to say that every time was great. I saw new worlds. There were hints that entire universes, ways of being, and ways of thinking existed that I hadn’t heard about. And often, on the small stereo that Colin had in the corner, the Doors were playing, and it often seemed to be a live version of “Texas Radio and the Big Beat"

Posted at 12:36am and tagged with: the doors, writing,.

December 30th 2016

4 notes

mysterious item found on computer

Posted at 10:35am.

December 23rd 2016

Things I Wrote in 2016

14 notes

It wasn’t a lot. Generally speaking, I write during my “free time,” and this year, spending nights and weekends in front of the same computer that I spend my weekdays in front of didn’t happen as much. I had a lot of non-work stuff going on this year, family things, health things, spent entirely too much time reading about politics. Very proud of the work we did at Pitchfork in 2016, our first full year being owned by Conde Nast.

I enjoyed the writing I did manage to finish, and I have a few pieces coming up that I’m excited about.

My favorite thing I wrote was the piece about Albert Ayler in New York.

I still love ya, Tumblr!

Reviews

Burial: Young Death / Nightmarket
Mike & Rich: Expert Knob Twiddlers
Manuel Gottsching: E2-E4
Avalanches: Wildflower
Neil Young: Tonight’s the Night
Bill Evans: Some Other Time: the Lost Session from the Black Forest
Kevin Morby: Singing Saw
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: EARS
Flying Saucer Attack: Further / Chorus
The Range: Potential
Albert Ayler: Bells/Prophecy

Feature:

New York Is Killing Me: Albert Ayler’s Life and Death in the Jazz Capital

Tumblr Posts:

Quick Thought About Robots - thinking about the mind and the body after watching a Herzog movie.
RIP Murphy - a guy I used to see on the way to work almost every day died.
My Life as a Paperboy - inspired by the mourning dove
Weird Life - on my father’s illness and writing about Led Zeppelin

Posted at 11:44am and tagged with: writing, pitchfork, one column,.

November 23rd 2016

14 notes

Hi Mark. Loved the Pitchfork top 50 ambient list. What were your own votes? And what's the album that you most regret not making it on?

Anonymous

Thanks. This was my ballot:

Oval - 94diskont
William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops I-IV
Keith Fullerton Whitman - Playthroughs
Mouse on Mars: - Glam
Tim Hecker – Harmony in Ultraviolet
Caretaker: An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
Gas - Königsforst
Nuno Canavarro - Plux Quba
Stars of the Lid: Music for Nitrous Oxide
Robert Ashley: - Automatic Writing
Aphex Twin — Selected Ambient Works Vol. II
Brian Eno - Discreet Music
David Lynch & Alan R. Splet - Eraserhead
Folk Rabe - What??
Windy & Carl - Depths
Grouper: A I A : Alien Observer
Brian Eno and Robert Fripp - Evening Star
Sogar: - Basal
The KLF - Chill Out
Various Artists: - Pop Ambient 2001
Bohren & Der Club of Gore — Dolores
Labradford — fixed: content
Microstoria - Snd
Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica
Julianna Barwick - The Magic Place
Manuel Göttsching - Inventions For Electric Guitar
Ekkehard Ehlers - Plays
Brian Eno - Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks
Philip Jeck – Vinyl Requiem I-III
David Behrman: On the Other Ocean
Tony Conrad & Faust - Outside the Dream Syndicate
Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, and Panaiotis - Deep Listening
Woo: - It’s Cosy Inside
Sam Prekop - Old Punch Card
Experimental Audio Research: Phenomena 256
Thomas Koner: Permafrost

The one record I regret not making it is the Philip Jeck/Alter Ego version of The Sinking of the Titanic. There was some question as to whether it counted as ambient at the time, and I was leaning toward no, but I listened to it again after the list ran and I think you could make a good argument for it. And it’s just a fantastic record.

Posted at 7:09pm.

August 20th 2016

Quick Thought About Robots

5 notes

Tonight I watched Lo and Behold, the new Werner Herzog movie. It’s about the internet, and robots, and artificial intelligence, and where technology might be taking us. I really enjoyed it, as I do most Herzog’s films. I watched it via the internet, paid $6 on Amazon thru my Roku,which seemed appropriate.

There was one sequence in the movie where Herzog is interviewing a guy who works in a robot laboratory and this engineer is working on a robot that looks vaguely human and he’s trying to get it to think and do things. There is a monitor that shows what is happening in the robot’s “mind” as it scans its surroundings and runs little simulations that show what actions it might take with its limbs and what outcome might be expected. And as the robot learns, it will understand what it takes to do something like, say, ambulate through a door and into a room and shut off a valve on the opposite wall. Herzog and the engineer discuss when this kind of thing could be useful—something like the meltdown of a nuclear reactor, when it is too dangerous to send people inside to shut the systems down but a robot could potentially accomplish such a task.

Later, about an hour after Julie went to bed, I was getting ready for bed myself and I realized I needed to charge my computer, but I forgot to bring my charger home from work. Our other charger was on the coffee table, but I have a Mac Air, and this charger is for the Mac Powerbook—it doesn’t fit. But I have an adaptor, a little $10 part that is rectangular and about the size of a small coin. I remembered that I had opened the drawer in the bedroom yesterday while looking for something else and that I saw the adaptor with a bunch of other small junk in the corner of the drawer. Now Julie was sleeping in there and I didn’t want to wake her. But I knew, just knew, that I could now find that small part in the crowded drawer based on my memory of its position, without needing to see it. So I walked into the dark bedroom, walked over to the desk, felt around until I found the knob for the drawer, opened it, put my hand inside, and there it was: the adaptor, the first thing I touched.

I am typing this on my computer as it charges, and now I am going to sleep.

Posted at 11:51pm and tagged with: werner herzog, robots, writing,.

July 3rd 2016

4 notes

Do you know of The Needle Drop?

Anonymous

Of course I know of it; I’ve only watched a couple of videos, because in general I much prefer reading over watching videos of people talking (which will probably spell my doom, eventually).

Posted at 10:31am.

July 3rd 2016

10 notes

Geoff Dyer: By the Book

Something in this quote resonated, the essential suggestion that early on he didn’t know that he shouldn’t be doing this kind of writing. There is, sometimes, a power in being ignorant of the right way to go about things. I would say the structure for writing in the social media era is very good at telling you when you’re wrong, when something is a bad idea, which is a positive thing 95% of the time. But there is that 5% where you might go someplace different b/c you’re insulated from the people who will tell you you shouldn’t and you could find something interesting there.

Posted at 10:24am and tagged with: writing, Geoff Dyer,.

“

Of the books you’ve written, which is your favorite or the most personally meaningful?

I guess the jazz book, “But Beautiful,” because I hit on a new form, a combination of criticism and fiction that was entirely appropriate to the subject matter. I’m also struck by the confidence I had back then, to write about this predominantly African-American art form that I’d only been listening to for a couple of years. I’d never have the confidence/arrogance to do that now. It also means a lot to me because musicians liked it (I can’t play a note on any instrument) and it was the first book of mine to be published in America.

”

July 1st 2016

21 notes

At one time or another I’ve probably mentioned on tumblr how much I love Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night, and a week ago I got to write a long piece on it for Pitchfork. Something very exciting about writing a piece like this, where you get to type out years of stored-up ideas, and when you’re writing it you also realize this is probably the one time in your life you’re going to try and get at what this thing that has been so important to you means. Here’s me doing that.

Posted at 10:53pm and tagged with: neil young, writing, pitchfork,.