My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/23/20 "Rooftop Sunset"

"I guess it’s time/Kept away for a while/Hide behind a smile/Travel many miles/I guess it’s time." Yesterday marked one month of doing this journal. At the time, the US had 408 deaths. Today, they have 42,209. Korea currently has 240, up by 2 since yesterday. Despite that difference, the thought of leaving Korea has been worming itself into my brain. As I said to a colleague today, I think it's the coronavirus I want to leave, and what better place to escape it than Korea? They asked if I was ever going back to the US, and I said "no." The situation there, regarding the pandemic and everything else, is only going to get worse. I'll visit occasionally, if I can safely visit and know I'll be allowed to leave again, but I won't stay. Despite the friends and family I have there, the real love that's there, the country has no place for me and is deeply invested in a politics that has no patience for those it has no place for. -4/23/20. "Rooftop Sunset" from Twelfth Apostle (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/22/20 "How Many Places"

"You go write on the wall, I will not talk in class/Fifty times, go write on the wall/When they sent you back here/Did they make a mistake." Someone on Twitter pointed out that GA's plan to reopen on Friday only includes low-income workers who can't maintain social distancing while doing their jobs. So they'll have to choose between work and survival, but if they choose not to go to work, they no longer qualify for unemployment insurance so the state isn't obligated to pay them. So what, as someone trying to feed your family, are you supposed to do? This also undermines organizing efforts because, as Mumia Abu-Jamal points out, anti-poverty measures like UI help the poor organize for better conditions--they can afford to not work. This staggered return-to-work removes that safety net and divides potential allies: those going to work out of necessity are separated from those who can afford to continue to shelter-in-place. -4/22/20. "How Many Places" from Lost Cause (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/21/20 "Yellow Pages"

"Beast got me walking straight/Straight to the stockyard gate/I ain’t about to die/But you can have your way." How much is compliance bred into the white American psyche? I've been struck for a long time that despite its founding myth being the overthrow of a king, the American people are desperate to be ruled, eager to take whatever proclamation comes from their leaders as divine truth. The governor of Georgia, who was too slow to enforce lockdown orders and said he didn't know asymptomatic people could spread the disease, is talking about reopening the state. Not only will that mean people die, it'll mean mostly black and city-dwelling people will die. These people don't tend to vote for Republicans so really it's unfair to call them people at all. If they were people, if they were loyal Americans, they'd be willing to face this disease just to show those traitors that the death toll won't be that bad. -4/21/20. "Yellow Pages" from One Foot in the North (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/20/20 "What You Give Me"

"You give what you give me/I got to tell you/I take what I want/I don’t take nothin’/You can take what you want." I'm almost a month into the process of doing this journal, just about a quarter of the way through all my Jandek albums. I don't know that I thought it would be running this long even though things really kicked off in Korea 2 months ago. We've handled it well but we're still 60-odd days into self-isolation and social distancing with the government saying we'll need another 2 weeks, although a relaxed standard over those 2 weeks. Busan was 2 days away from being declared clear of the virus--we've had 26 days with no new cases--but 2 more just sprang up: a nurse and her father. That's unfortunate, but not surprising. There's no question of how they got exposed and they likely haven't put anyone else at risk. It's nice, for a moment, to be able to just think, I hope they get better, and nothing else. -4/20/20. "What You Give Me" from Somebody in the Snnow (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/19/20 "The Living End"

"bet you don’t know/What you been working for/Maybe I got a clue/I been working for you." In an interview with The New Yorker, Jason Stanley says the administration "seems to be basing his reelection campaign on a nationalist propaganda war against China." The same day I read this I see the Biden ad blaming the administration's failed pandemic response on their deference to China. The ad highlights Biden's moments of blaming China for the pandemic, much like the administration's insistence on calling it "the Chinese virus." So Biden has moved from refusing to criticize the President during the pandemic to joining the President in blaming the pandemic on China. Still no stated plan for Medicare for All or the kind of nationwide free testing that's required to combat a public health disaster. But are any of us surprised? We saw his boss for eight years say "Single-payer is off the table." We know what Biden's priorities are. -4/19/20. "The Living End" from The Living End (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/18/20 "I’ll Sit Alone and Think a Lot About You"

"Sometimes I sit and think alone/I have daydreams and memories/Right here with me at home/I sit alone and think a lot about you." Not much else to do in the midst of these pandemic days. Then again, I didn't do much else before the pandemic. I got to thinking about my friends back home last night and mocked up some care packages for them online. Nothing will be shipped until May so I'll probably have forgotten that I sent them by the time they arrive, but there is a pleasure in that, like the one package that arrives late after Christmas. You've gone from enjoying the holiday to being exhausted by leftovers to missing the minor pleasure when this last reminder that you're in someone's thoughts arrives. I took my bike out today and rode down to Dadaepo Beach. People were out flying kites including one that was a triptych, so large that they roared as they cut through the air. I stood by and thought, There are untold wonders on the other side of the pandemic. -4/18/20. "I’ll Sit Alone and Think a Lot About You" from On the Way (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/17/20 "When the Telephone Melts"

"When your shoes got holes/And the sidewalk’s not the same/And you’re falling down/Then you can think about your mother/Yes, and you can think about your friends/But you can’t blame me for not being around." In the midst of a pandemic, everything is about the pandemic. I started watching Godzilla movies, one a week, on March 13th, the same day HHS in a "not for public distribution" report said the pandemic will last 18+ months. All the movies, maybe because they get progressively goofier and absurd, seem to be about the pandemic. A massive, unprecedented threat emerges that the government is woefully unprepared for, even as they face it many times. They insist on solutions that always failed in the past while the populace fails to prepare. Despite the common foe, selfish short-term goals and base idiocy undermine potential solutions. In the end, the day is saved by those who persevere despite the harms they've suffered and the forces amassed against them keeping people from dying. -4/17/20. "When the Telephone Melts" from You Walk Alone (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/16/20 "One Minute"

"That’s right, settle back in your chair/Listen to the music/Close your eyes and watch the pretty colors dancing around in your hair/Follow the music." There are protests now in the US against the stay-at-home orders and public shutdowns of businesses. Unsurprisingly, they're also ad hoc rallies for the administration. But what a strange thing to protest: here's how you don't catch the disease--how very dare you prevent us from dying. It goes back to the early days when the market crashed and apparatchiks were floating "die for the economy." Pushback against preventative responses have echoed post-9/11 rhetoric: we won't surrender to fear. Diseases don't care about your feelings. The outrage in the protests speaks to something else, though: the paucity of opportunities for public participation. These people are on the verge of tears because they can't shop, but what other activity is available to them, what other way of defining themselves hasn't been absorbed by neoliberalism? -4/16/20. "One Minute" from Blue Corpse (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/15/20 "I Want to Know Why"

"Because, because that’s the only reason why." Korea held national elections today. What are the consequences of responding to a pandemic effectively? Apparently your country starts limping back to normal, you get to hold elections without killing your constituents, and the public forgets all your controversies. Meanwhile the US has topped 26,000 dead and cut off funding to the WHO. Because it's easier to blame someone else than to get the work done. Election day is a national holiday here so I took advantage of the time off work to go shopping and see a movie. Crowds were still thin, the movie theater sparsely populated, which speaks more to prudence than paranoia, but it felt okay. I didn't feel angry going out and going out didn't feel transgressive. It's just something to do. Even Jandek faded into the background. Whereas earlier it had made me start paying more attention even to other music I played, now it's become music I have on in the background like anything else. -4/15/20. "I Want to Know Why" from Modern Dances (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/14/20 Follow Your Footsteps

I was going to go to the movies today. The weather was beautiful, I have tomorrow off, and there is something weird screening that I'd like to see. Then I decided against it, thought it'd be an asshole move, and started getting angry. This marks 4 weeks in a row I've made a last-minute choice to not see a movie, less out of any safety concerns than not scorning self-isolation, but why was I angry? Who was I angry at? I feel like I'm seeing the world twice--the reality before me and the mediated experiences of people in the States, two asynchronous soundtracks playing at once. Busan is awakening, people are out and about. Meanwhile, in the States people are violating quarantine orders to sneer "don't tell us what to do." Somehow I've laid that anger and contempt on top of my unrelated situation. The Jandek album seemed to have that same tone: unrelated music tracks layered on top of one another. But the tuning seemed familiar, the chords reminding me of spring days at college where I'd go to the record store just to go out. -4/14/20. Follow your Footsteps (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/13/20 "You Painted Your Teeth"

"I got my knife/If you want to breathe, baby/Don’t paint your teeth/Don’t paint your teeth." This is the song I'd always play my students when I said I listened to Jandek. I used it to emphasize the idea that they didn't have to agree with me. In that way, it was always kind of a joke: I like this thing that objectively can't be liked so don't trust me. Yet I was somehow surprised to hear it pop up even though I'm 12 days into the process of listening to every album in order. I knew it was here and it still caught me off-guard. And that should be the transition point, the metaphor of the music connecting to the political reality. So what unsurprising shocks are we witnessing? The administration trying to destroy the USPS and the revelation that the Labour Party sabotaged its own election to keep the leftists from winning. Both are shocking despite being the open ambition of everyone involved. But you rarely see people being such cartoonishly stupid villains, sabotaging themselves for "victory." -4/13/20. "You Painted Your Teeth" from Telegraph Melts (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/12/20 "Lost Cause"

"Everyone’s gone to the lost cause/Take off my shoes to the lost cause/Quit eatin’ food for the lost cause/Take it all back to the lost cause/Forget your life to the lost cause." What, given enough time, will not seem normal? I've been listening to Jandek about an hour or so every day for three weeks and what initially seemed abrasive and dissonant evolved into making me feel nauseous and finally graduated into sounding like music. This is just what music is to me now, nothing strange or notable about any of it. The US has passed 20,000 coronavirus deaths, more than anywhere else in the world. The administration is withholding equipment from states with governors of the opposing party. The opposing party is refusing to criticize the failed pandemic response of the administration. The Post Office is going to shut down. All of this is accepted. This is the new normal. Not because there's no one to oppose it, but because the people standing against it are facing more opposition than the people perpetrating it. -4/12/20. "Lost Cause" from Foreign Keys (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/11/20 "Wrong Time"

"I am a fool/Forgive me/If a door is open/I should be back soon." The pandemic has given me plenty of time to think about lost loves, the friends I've left behind, how things could have been different. That kind of thinking requires reaching back so far, unwinding so much time, so many events. If I take that garden walk with Borges, do I still end up here? None of those choices would have turned back COVID. I got up early for a Saturday to meet friends online to play games, then jumped into another online convo that alternately kept trying to recoil from the seriousness of things with levity and trying to maintain levity in the face of the seriousness of things. When the second set of conversations ended, I was alone on my side of the world, settling into the arrival of the afternoon. I cleaned the floors, washed the dishes, did some laundry. I repotted some plants and put the tiny details of my life that I could control in order, and stayed there. -4/11/20. "Wrong Time" from Nine-Thirty (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/10/20 "Sung"

"I’m looking at a blank page/Looking at a blank page/I’m just singing a song/That I didn’t write/I just sung." A week ago, I was noting how nice things were--the weather, the sunset, the sense that people were reemerging after all of this. This week I feel like I've adopted the anxiety of being in the US. I'm thinking about when I've gone out and panicking--did I go out more often than normal? Have I put someone at risk? How much have I managed to move without leaving any mark? Can I still disappear without being noted? I'm not sleeping right anymore. I don't gradually get tired then head to bed, I focus on things and as soon as that task is done I pass out. If I'm not teaching, I'm struggling to stay awake. I have dinner at home and, regardless of my intentions, fold up and pass out on the couch. Despite all this constant passing out, I'm still not having eight hours total in any one day. I'm constantly sleeping and still not sleeping enough. -4/10/20. "Sung" from Interstellar Discussoion (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/9/20 "Lonesome Company"

"I ain’t got no home/When I leave some place, I’m gone/Come back another time/To read the wanted sign." Sometimes I don't know what to say. Sanders dropped out of the race yesterday so now Biden is facing off against the President in November. Tomorrow, the federal government is going to stop financing coronavirus testing. The existing testing centers, which were too few, will either shut down or switch to state funding. Because there's still no national plan because it's not a national problem. The administration lashed out after reporters asked about using the federal stockpile of medical equipment, describing it as "ours, not the states'." Again, the shrinking conditions of who is a citizen. To die to coronavirus is to make the party look bad, so your death marks you as disloyal and unworthy of aid. It's their government and their supplies, not yours. And Sanders dropped out after the second date of primaries in the pandemic. He said stay home. Biden said, "die for me." And now we fall in line. -4/9/20. "Lonesome Company" from The Rocks Crumble (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/8/20 "Dance of Death"

"Dance the dance of death/For it is there that you will live." What will we commit to and abide in the wake of cornavirus? Leftists pointing out that so many things we were told we couldn't do, large and small, are suddenly available to all--no data caps on cell phones, rent and mortgage moratoriums, the elevation of minimum wage workers to "essential" status. There's public acknowledgement that we need grocery store workers and Amazon warehouse employees more than the we need billionaires, but there's no talk about raising wages for the former or taxes on the latter. Grocery store workers have started dying from COVID-19 and the Washington Post wonders how those jobs are going to be filled. We've passed into the realm of accepting and assuming that you might just die for your job. Before this, we were teetering on the edge of workers paying their bosses for the privilege of a job. Now you'll die to guarantee their profits. -4/8/20. "Dance of Death" from Your Turn to Fall (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/7/20 "Rather Be Blind"

"You call me out/From this cave/And now I fall out/Into my grave." My friend in Canada contacted me last night to ask how my family was handling the virus. One of his relatives died and, while it seems unrelated to COVID, they can't have a service because of the disease. His parents and friends are also at high risk for the disease. I replied that my family was fine, and then in describing each of their situations realized how fragile and precarious each of their situations is. I'm firewalled here, privileged. Even though the disease is present in my mind, it's not manifesting in my home. I don't have to fear the effects of it; I can imagine that it's not touching me because its ravages are being felt on the other side of a screen. But that other side of the screen is where my family lives and the touch of this pandemic is going to ripple trough every aspect of their lives even if they never catch it. I go for a walk, listening to a man from Texas to keep myself thinking about it. -4/7/20. "Rather Be Blind" from Staring at the Cellophane (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/6/20 "Comedy"

"Here’s looking at you kid/You got the German measles/It’s a comedy." Busan announced its 120th case of coronavirus today. This is not a validation of my anxieties of people becoming complacent--the new case was a foreign visitor. This isn't evidence of a resurgence, it's just the disease traveling as normal. And if lives weren't on the line there could be some delicious schadenfreude of all the so-called developing countries having to bar entry to the dirty, diseased, and untrustworthy white nations. Too backwards to recognize that when people are sick, you help them get better. You don't ask how they'll pay. One thing that is risible is the angry laments of evangelicals over churches being closed. One tweeted that the anti-Christian left is laughing at the empty pews on Palm Sunday. They're the ones who voted for the administration that caused this. Apparently all it took for Christianity to die was to let Christians have their way. -4/6/20. "Comedy" from Living in a Moon So Blue (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/5/20 "The Times"

"It took about a month or so for you to know what you are after." I'm only 2 weeks in so what can I say about purpose? Pandemic manifests first as threat, then reality, then trauma. Went out to meet friends again today and part of me should be saying this as life after coronavirus, but the idea persisted. I had to stand up after someone sat next to me on the subway. My friends are still out of work. One of them voiced the suspicion that this doesn't stop until there's a vaccine next year. How long can you flatten a curve? Suddenly we have a use for all the Flat Earth conspiracy theorists. As for me, I'm listening more. I played this Jandek album twice--once on the subway and again at home. I started to relax into the early spring feel of it. Afterwards, I played 2 other albums that I hadn't listened to all the way through, and I really listened. I'm paying more attention now. And while I was doing chores, I let silence reign again. -4/5/20. "The Times" from Chair Beside a Window (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/4/20 "So Fly, Max"

"Oh you don’t know where you wanna go and/Who you wanna see or what you wanna be/And so you walk along, you sing a song/You know tomorrow’s gone." Listening to Jandek while taking my first bike ride of the year, along the bicycle highway canopied by cherry blossoms. Too many people were out, crowding the path, ignoring social distancing instructions. With the general jollity of the people and the pleasant weather, the music seemed to set an appropriate counterpoint: the disease is not yet gone. 11 days without a new case in Busan, but it lies dormant for 10-14. Of course, I only know about how crowded it was because I was there too. This whole album seemed to speak to the moment, but I chose the song that seemed to be trolling me--always reacting, never acting. What are my priorities and my goals? Where am I even trying to be? I would have said "Ireland" 3 months ago, but I've let inertia overtake me so much that I forgot that's the path I want to set. -4/4/20. "So Fly, Max" from Later On (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/3/20 "Point Judith"

"But you know there’s more than this/’Cause you can see the boats sailing/And the gulls fly by fishing." I took a long walk after work today, along the bus route, past my stop, and over toward the edge of Seomyeon as I know it. The weather was beautiful and I was in just a t-shirt. I had a burger and a beer and watched the sun set over increased foot and vehicular traffic. Busan hasn't had a new infection for 10 days. Maybe it's okay to start being optimistic, to start thinking of how we'll shape the world to come. I talked to my colleague by the bus stop along my walk and they said they'd regretted not remaining in Spain. Despite the ravages of the disease there, they would have been in a community they were familiar with, nearby their partner. There are reasons to stay behind, things that call you back, even in the worst of circumstances. Were I still in the States, I'd feel as far away and useless as I do now which suggests, despite the people I care about there, that I'd left long ago. -4/3/20. "Point Judith" from Six and Six (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/2/20 "They Told Me I Was a Fool"

"Wish them well at the marketplace/I fear a fiery face/Is staring from the future." And the indifference of disease to celebrity or stature starts to emerge. Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne and Ellis Marsalis Jr, jazz pianist and father of the jazz greats have both died. There's no meaningful eulogy to offer and there's something diminishing about invoking their deaths as meaningful: This has happened to someone whose name I recognize so now it matters. However, it is another escalation, a demonstration of the scope. If I stay in Korea long enough, I may meet someone who knew someone who had it. My friends and family may contract this. In related fascism, the administration is sending testing kits to small, red state towns instead of the blue state cities that need them. Fascism lies--this will only affect blue states, there are plenty of tests--and then works to make those lies the truth. This is an escalation. -4/2/20. "They Told Me I Was a Fool" from Ready For the House (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/1/20 "Stopped"

"I thought I was just layin down/But really I’d passed some time/Where did the time go?" This is an experiment in spontaneous creation. Like Tom McHenry's comics that he set to upload as soon as he'd saved them, this is about making the work of creation into work. The wait for inspiration, the endless crafting, revising and restarting, all the ideas abandoned because they stopped feeling new before they felt finished. All of them means of avoiding the work so I never have to deal with the efforts of completing and owning something, to put my name on something and accept responsibility for its presence. It's just passing time. How much of Jandek is crafting and how much are we hearing his learning process as he goes? Why not make an a cappella album, why not do an hour-long piano improvisation, and why not record and release every experiment? The lesson is learned whether the experiment succeeds or not. Learning is part of the work. -4/1/20. "Stopped" from Worthless Recluse (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 3/31/20 "Afternoon of Insensitivity: Part Two"

"The landscape changes/Dead things rot and become betrampled/Seeds sprout/It all continues/An aging mind wants none of it." A warm day with inviting skies. During my lunch walk I take a picture of the cherry blossoms. When I get back into the office, I type up my Enneadecameron essay and start expanding on it. I haven't sat and written like this in years. My colleague likes it, considers it funny, is shocked when I say how out of practice I am. Is that politeness on their part or can I actually do what I've wanted to do all my life? Does there remain a fecundity in me that things can grow from? I've laid a top soil of lost time, but what could grow there? At school, to address coronavirus, high schools and middle schools are shifting to online teaching. I'm not trained for that nor particularly interested in it. Then again, they want me to teach to the test, a model I never had respect for anyway, so how is this different? -3/31/20. "Afternoon of Insensitivity: Part Two" from Manhattan Tuesday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 3/30/20 "First You Think Your Fortune's Lovely"

"I curse the day I found my freedom." Long day of writing, of trying to work out my coronavirus story. I want to avoid talking about fascism, about what I see and is obvious, but to do so means not talking about America at all. 200,000 deaths is now being floated as a victory. Meanwhile, I find that my own story is about following paths and reading the maps. The work is easier when the destination is clear. But I can still be led astray. I tell my own story and find I'm the monster. I plan to listen to a different album, my first album, my summer Jandek, but I no longer recognize which one it is. All my guesses are dour and alienating. I return to the start, the first LP that no longer sounds strange and uncanny, just not yet fully formed. The Representative hasn't learned to be himself yet. And so the curséd freedom of self-knowledge: you may shape yourself, but at the cost of knowing yourself and the path you followed to become what you are. -3/30/20. "First You Think Your Fortune's Lovely" from Ready For the House (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 3/29/20 "Fantasy One"

I went for a walk this evening. I had to get out of the house. The day had gotten away form me--slept through my alarm and then tried to solve a computer problem that I'd caused. The sun had set before I left, but I needed to be outside, even if just for a little bit. I went walking away from the main street, down the side road my apartment building stands upon. As the road arced off to the left with no sign of a cross street, I ducked down an alley to my right hoping it'd deliver me to the other side of my block. The alley snaked and ambled with t-intersections and openings onto small courtyards. People passed me coming from the other direction, emerging from and vanishing into nothing. I did my best to go straight, but had no sense of direction or distance. If I dead-ended, I'd never know how to get back out. I am haunting this alleyway just as I am haunting this nation, but what unfinished business keeps my restless spirit here? -3/29/20. "Fantasy One" from Ghost Passing (one week earlier) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 3/28/20 "What Should I Do?"

"I found out/something different/So what should I do?" There's an impotence that comes with being safe from harm. I'm watching my country fall apart, have been my entire life whether it be Reagan laughing as AIDS ran rampant, Clinton ordering troops to attack protesters in Seattle, Bush bringing imperial rule to domestic policy, or Obama rubber-stamping it all and jailing only those who revealed those secrets. The sin is not what we've done, but being made aware of who we are. And now the current administration. The day before my last summer as an adjunct I went through every floor of my building on campus taking down Neo-Nazi propaganda. A year later, I quit higher ed and started the process of leaving the country. I left for economic reasons, but the proud display of overt fascism made leaving a priority. I no longer felt safe. Now watching fascism seize more and more control by leveraging the pandemic, I'm at a loss as to what to do. If all I could do while I was were there was flee, what can I do from outside? -3/28/20. "What Should I Do?" from White Box Requiem (lyrics) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 3/27/20 "No Mind Was a Good Mind Part Four"

"I'm a cancer and I eat healthy tissue/as I advance my disease all around/I can't help but be malignant." Fascism creeps ever onward. The US now has more coronavirus cases than anywhere else in the world and the administration is halting the emergency production of ventilators. They're publicly saying that governors who aren't friendly to them will be denied aid. Meanwhile apparatchiks are saying the disease will only affect blue states and so shouldn't be taken so seriously. Fascism creates the crisis that it then needs to respond to as white supremacy consistently narrows the definition of whiteness and who is worthy of salvation. First this was an Asian problem that didn't need to be taken seriously, then Italian, then you have to be willing to die for the market, and now it's only a threat to political opponents. Dying to the disease is failing the leader, a sign of a lack of faith, which means you always deserved to die. True believers won't get checked, they'll just keep spreading the faith. -3/27/20. "No Mind Was a Good Mind Part Four" from London Tuesday (lyrics) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 3/26/20 "White Box"

"The box said do not open under pain of death [...] But I opened it anyway/I died anyway." After releasing all the evils into the world, all that was left in Pandora's box was hope. What is hope doing there with all the evils of the world? And what's it mean that hope doesn't get unleashed as well? We get famine, war, pestilence, death, but can we soldier on with hope that there will be something after? No. After playing this song, I dug up the Mountain Goats' cover of it, a small and isolated-sounding track that hearkened back to the old-school Goats, music that made you feel like you'd found a secret shared only between you and the singer, the appeal, in some ways, of Jandek. It was the Mountain Goats who turned me on to Jandek when they posted about the Representative's first live show. Years later, I'd be in Houston, home of Corwood, sitting in the driver's seat of a moving van, crying in the rain, so desperate to leave that city and feeling I never would. Then the Mountain Goats' "This Year" came on the radio reminding me hope had been held inside. -3/26/20. "White Box" from White Box Requiem (lyrics) (one week later)

My Jandek Plague Journal: 3/25/20 "Worthless Recluse"

"Go, and be alone, and stop crying/Well it's not any fun/And I look at myself being busy/And I know I'm putting something off/What is it?" The titular track from the Representative's third and, so far, final a cappella album. What is the work I'm not yet doing? What am I putting off? Despite people going into self-isolation, the myth of productivity, the cult of the job endures. "What will you accomplish on your coronacation? How will you best use this time that's been gifted to you?" The song also says, "Back in my brain, is the cold northern cities" and they're in mine too. All the people I miss back in Philadelphia, all the people I haven't checked in with or sent a message to. And I realize again that I'm not going back home, that my story is one of constant exodus. Leaving brings with it finality and the Representative's voice speaks to the same feeling. Whether for good or ill, choices have been made and their consequences will have to be lived with. Such things are clear to the Worthless Recluse, to the self-exiled, but what about those who remain? -3/25/20. "Worthless Recluse" from Worthless Recluse (lyrics) (one week later)