Stop Making Sense
Welcoming new subscribers with a post-world music supersession, plus Joko Beck's crossover thrash dharma
One strategy for treading water here in the zone as it continues to be flooded with the enshittification of everything is to follow the advice of Zen teacher Joko Beck, a collage of language from her dharma talks that will be well-familiar to listeners of Inter-Dimensional Music – which continues to air each Sunday at 11pm CT on Marfa Public Radio – and readers of this newsletter.
“The reason we get confused,” she says, “is because we’re trying to figure it out. The main thing we’re always battling is we don’t think this could be it. We think it has to be somewhere else. There’s just this. That’s all life is, just this absolute moment.”
Perhaps it’s a good time to revisit such helpful, confusing, and undeniable Buddhist wisdom? Not only are we as a species accelerating into dystopia via the most cruel and stupid routes possible, but Vøid Contemplation Tactics just hit 600 subscribers – thank you, and welcome to everyone! Even the lurkers and we love the free subscribers but also you people with paid subs are literal angels.
Maybe this erratic bi-semi-monthly publishing schedule is working out just fine. As usual, you’ll find links to streams and downloads of the latest long-form “mixed live-to-FLAC from the yoga mat” supersession of heavy mellow, post-world music, and void contemplation tactics if you keep on scrolling.
Heads up to the newly arrived heads: “Figuring it out” is also why this newsletter has such an irregular schedule. I sit down to type something real quick about each week’s Inter-Dimensional Music FM broadcast and then I catch a glimpse of a missing piece of my “Grand Unification Theory of Why We Can’t Have Healthcare” masterpiece lurking just out of view. Then I stop drinking water and several hours disappear as I try to write something using a spidery “mind map” outline that connects an aside from a New Scientist article about how “the nasal cavity also provides direct access to the central nervous system via the olfactory epithelium,” which means that it “is the only part of the brain in direct contact with the environment” (!!!), to something I learned on a rude comedy podcast about the similarities between Gladio – the NATO-sponsored post-WWII right wing terrorist stay-behind network in Italy – and the United States’ domestic eugenics programs and international mass murder campaigns, and then somehow make the leap into talking about how I’ve stopped playing metal on the radio show because the only metal I listen to these days is Soulfy and Suicidal Tendencies, who are both very very good, actually. And in conclusion maybe people forget how cool they are because of racism?
Although to be fair Suicidal Tendencies is sort of like what if Red Hot Chili Peppers decided do more of Megadeth’s So Far, So Good… So What! wordplay and Soulfly is basically Nü Age metal – i.e. less like Blood Incantation’s ambience, more like Sepultura with rain sticks and rapping – which is maybe not what a lot of you are looking for due more to unenlightened aesthetic prejudices?
Sometimes these longer pieces work out – see this greatest hits countdown of top-ranking essays about basketball, NFTs, my experiences as a black market medic, or go straight to my wife’s remembrance of Steve Albini which is the most popular and also the best thing we’ve published – but mostly it fills my drafts folder with thousands of words filed under unhelpful titles like “Love is like oxygen???” or “Longevity is a big suffering.” Never mind trying to figure out why that “Home Savers” image is sitting there halfway through the mess. It’s one of the only good photos I’ve taken on my afternoon walks in awhile, which is also why there haven’t been any fresh “Muncie Photo Digests” in the last year. Here are two examples from the archive:
And of course I am also distracted by whether or not to ditch Substack for Ghost as Substack continues to turn into another social network, which is bad enough before being reminded that Substack is fine with hosting nazi newsletters. What if I don't want to build a brand what if I want to make things that lack broad appeal and share them with a small group of people with a complementary enthusiasm for such things while not going further into debt or supporting nazis. Which platform has that feature.
The point is that I get distracted trying to figure things out even though I’ve included Joko’s dharma talk about not trying to figure things out in maybe 20 or 30 episodes of Inter-Dimensional Music and IRL yoga sessions over the last 15 years. If I can defeat Joko in dharma combat and figure out the golden ratio between meditation, exercise, upper head meds and the downer head meds – all prescribed by actual doctors, no more gas station drugs until RFK’s strategies of tension become strategies against “take as needed for panic attacks” anti-anxiety drugs – I might bring one or two of these ADHD-highjacked airliner essays in for a landing.
For example, maybe the one about the bittersweet refuge that I find in that one melancholy space video game where everything looks like Moebius, or one about the importance of forgetting and a British druid biker friend of mine who died 30 years ago, and then there’s the actual “Grand Unification Theory of Why We Can’t Have Healthcare” essay which has a subtitle about how the Allies did defeat the Germans but the nazis didn’t exactly lose World War II and that’s why everything is terrible but also it’s not your fault . . . unless Substack’s algo has referred some of the very openly nazi users that enjoy their platform my way?
Rest easy, squeamish nerds: there’s no Suicidal Tendencies in the mix this time out, but I’ll wrap things up here with their sick crossover thrash riff on Joko from the moderately successful 1990 single “You Can’t Bring Me Down”:
Just cause you don't understand what's going on don't mean it don't make no sense.
Stop Making Sense Supersession: Summer 2025
mixcloud / download
It’s been a busy summer with some fun travel, including the trip to Northern New Mexico I wrote about in the previous Vøid Contemplation Tactics, plus an unexpectedly beautiful weekend staying in a barn with wonderful friends and walking around Northeast Indiana wetlands.
While I was in Taos I had a ball doing live radio with my friend Spiros on KNCE’s Roots & Wires, which is the inspiration for this Outer-Dimensional Music supersession featuring 2.5 hours of blackened livity, goth dubbing, and post-world music. Mixed live from the yoga mat in my friends’ meditation room in Northern New Mexico, and aired in two parts on Marfa Public Radio in July of 2025. It’s one of my all-time favorite shows, noisy bass-forward iration and downwardly dogged soundsystem escapism. Big love and gratitude to all of the aforementioned people! And to you, dear listener and reader, for coming along for the ride.
Listen for a collage of language excerpted from Joko Beck dharma talks throughout the broadcast: “The reason we get confused is because we’re trying to figure it out . . .”
artist – work
Bob Marley – Running Away (Dennis Thompson Version)
Strategy - Daydream Space Graffiti
The Rootsman - Sayidi Dub
PÖ - The Harvest
NKISI - NziNzaNzo
Black Bones - B.E.E.F.
The Clash - Magnificent Dance
Prins Thomas - Nattonsket
Pole - Überfahrt
Porter Ricks - Port of Tangency
Holy Tongue - Rivers Cannot Wash It Away
Natural Information Society - Moontide Chorus
Burial - NYC
Andy Stott - Missing
Jimmy Cliff & Joe Higgs - I’m Gonna Live, I’m Gonna Love (Live in Ann Arbor, 1975)
Holy Tongue Meets Shackleton - Ancient Model
Damien Marley x Dead Prez - Bigger Than Jamrock (DJ Shepdog Mix)
Felinto - Sol Na Cabecça
Horace Andy - See A Man’s Face
The Sabres of Paradise - Planet D
Andy Stott - Faith in Strangers
Equinknoxx Music - Congo Get Slap (Mark Ernestus Remix)
Danny Red - Don Gorgon
Feel Free Hi Fi - Digital Tomb
The Rootsman - Arid Land
Muslimgauze - Narcotic
Othar Turner & The Afrossippi All-Stars - Glory, Glory Hallelujah
Lagoss & Abagwagwa - Dog Star Man
Lui Lepki - Tribute to Bob Marley
Previously in Vøid Contemplation Tactics . . .
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