Why I don't write erotic fiction, and a musician you've never heard of

Welcome to the very third Dispatches Weekly Digest. The format might change, the content might change, but here’s one thing that won’t change:

This is only for my coolest friends.

Today’s Schedule of Events

1. The song recommendation (by a guy you have almost certainly never heard of)

2. TMI - A fellow Substack fiction-writer asks me what I’m too afraid to write about

3. A recap of everything that got published on the Dispatches this week, including

4. Links to all the Nooners, in a row

Let’s get started!

The Song

I don’t know how I originally discovered this guy. Somehow, I ended up with a couple of his albums in the early 2000s, and a handful of his songs survived at least a dozen purges of my music library over the next fifteen years or so.

Then, a few months back, on a nostalgic Spotify excursion, I was shocked to discover that not only were his old albums there, he was also (as recently as 2019, anyway) still making music.

This is the first track from that most recent album.

Patrick Park is a great songwriter with a uniquely soothing voice. I love him. But this is a man who doesn’t make any money at all on his music. You find these artists sometimes, their discography swallowed up and virtually invisible in the robot oceans of new media platforms. It is a tragedy, and I have no hope that there are any universal solutions forthcoming.

I guess it’s sort of a starfishes on the beach situation. I can’t possibly save all, or even any, of the artists stranded in perpetual obscurity.

But I can at least bring this man’s beautiful work to you.

TMI

This week, I invited my oldest and bestest Substack friend,

Meg Oolders

, who writes the eclectic and wonderful

Stock Fiction

. She asked me if there’s anything I’m afraid to write about, and I stammered my way through a confused confession about my hesitation to publish anything erotic.

Enjoy!

The Digest

This week, I republished my post on Gilead, and another six Nooners.

Here’s a list of the Nooners:
(Listeners get to hear all of these in a row, one right after the other, without the intros and outros attached to the daily version. Once again, I’ll remind you that this is what you paid for.)

• #59 (July 22) - The internet is a toxic ocean
  Time to build a new one

• #60 (July 23) - Heaven is not a paradise of comfort
  The advantage of not dying of dysentery

• #61 (July 24) - No, I can’t do all the things
  Escaping the fog of denial

• #62 (July 25) - How to get out of a bad moment
  …and into a better one

• #63 (July 26) - Art is when you mean it

  Nature can't do it, and neither can robots

• #64 (July 27) - Storytelling is a compression algorithm

  Good luck on the decompression

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In Closing…

Two things, real quick.

1. If you want to help me out with the TMI segment, let me know and I’ll set it up.

2. If you’ve got ideas for other segments, also let me know! I want you to get your money’s worth.

Alright, that’s all. Thanks again, and don’t tell the others, but…

You’re my favorite.