Greetings Digesters!
Hah!!
After all these years, we just realized that the term "Digesters" could mean "one who digests things." (1) (2)
I guess the 7.95 billion humans on Earth are "digester" when you look at it that way. That isn't a very exclusive club, now is it?
What is an exclusive club, is folks who subscribe to the Henry Miller Digest.
Just how exclusive?
Well, according to our records, we have 962 Digest subscribers.
Divide that by 7.95 billion, and that means 0.0000121% of the Earth's population subscribes to the Digest.
That is the definition of exclusive!
Now that we've made you feel like a puffed-up golf dude sipping Long Island Ice Teas and eating prime rib at a country club, here is your Digest. 🥰
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| Beatrice reports on Michael P. on Henry's "Into the Night Life"
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On June 22, HML archivist and Emile Norman Arts Foundation Artist in Residence Michael Paduano presented his rare complete set of original sheets of "Into the Night Life," an experimental 1947 project designed by Henry and artist Bezalel Schatz.
Proving that "no good deed goes unpunished," we reached out to her to get her take on the events, and you can read her synopsis here!
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Henry on growing oldA certain unnamed Library staffer (CULS) read Philip K. Dick's "Ubik," in which, at some point in the future, people's consciousness are preserved in some weird liquid chamber for centuries, which enables them to communicate with the "living" on Earth.
If it sounds a little gnarly, it is!
Another bad thing about forever consciousness is that it could prevent people from ruminating on old age. People like...Henry Miller.
Here, in the Marginalian (formerly "Brain Pickings"), Maria Popova, whom the very same CULS met at the Library, ruminates on Miller's thoughts on aging, including his 1972 chapbook "On Turning Eighty." Here's a money quote:
If you have had a successful career, as presumably I have had, the late years may not be the happiest time of your life. (Unless you’ve learned to swallow your own shit.) Success, from the worldly standpoint, is like the plague for a writer who still has something to say.
Hmmm...maybe the weird liquified consciousness chamber doesn't sound so bad after all! 😗
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| Yup, that's the Breeders in the canyon
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Last October, the Breeders were slated to play the Library, but we had to cancel the show due to heavy rains.
But the band stuck around, and once the rain tapered off and the golden hour approached, they ventured into the canyon behind the Library.
The video above documents what transpired. 👏
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New BSP episodes
A Big Sur Podcast is like Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band in the mid-70s — it keeps on truckin' down the highway, consisently producing quality audio content in (figurative) town after town, and taking no prisoners in the process. 🤘(3)
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New show alert! (NSA): Rushadicus, Aug 24!
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This'll be a doozy. For those of you within reasonable driving distance, on Saturday August 24 at 1 pm, we'll be hosting "cellist provocateur" Rushadicus (Rushad Eggleston). (RSVP here.)
According to the press one-sheet
"After a formal music education, his work in the bluegrass, Americana and rock worlds garnered awards and international recognition, yet failed to fulfill his goblin heart."
And so, to quote "Mama" Cass Elliot, he made his own kind of music (4), which he calls “Sneth Metal."
I feel like the less we say the better. Just check out the video!
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Well, that's a wrap!Stay cool, and as we like to say down the coast, "Keep digestin'!!!"
Love,
Magnus, Mike, Niko, Michae P., Mio and Zeak, Brandy, Sam and Dave, and Jack the Cat
..............
Oh! Will you join us for SuRCuS, Weaving, Movie, Music...? It's all here!
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PS. A CULS was in a hurry to get to work a few days ago...
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(1) A "digester" is also a vessel where chemical or biological reactions are carried out, which may involve the use of heat, enzymes or solvent."
...
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Whatever.
(2) It's so interesting. You can do something all the time — in this case, put together an email blast once a month for, what, the past 11 years? — and yet miss something so patently obvious.
(3) We rediscoverd how to insert emojis into the Digest.
(4) Written by the immortal Jeff Barry and Cynthia Weil, who wrote the "perfect" song ("You've Lost That Loving Feeling"), plus "Love is Only Sleeping" (the Monkees"), "Don't Know Much" (Aaron Neville and Linda Ronstadt) and countless other masterpieces.
Their body of work is astonishing.
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