I have a podcast episode to release about the history of American utopian experiments, and I have no idea how I’m going to ship all these books. I can hardly keep my eyes open I’ve been working nonstop. Today is the publication day of a book I wrote with my friend. Out-of-touch people are the people I respect most these days. “Nobody has ever made any money on the internet,” he says, which makes me respect him even more. He talks about how great it would be to have his own private jet, but he refuses to own a phone or a computer. Why, he wonders, hasn’t he achieved stardom? It’s clear that some personal idiosyncrasies have hindered his progress. In the film, he intently studies the books and LPs that have inspired his songwriting: we see him examine the bindings, the liner notes, an image of Lou Reed. There’s a wonderfully OCD quality to Lawrence, who at one point explains his preference for white shirt buttons and at another specifies the only kind of guitar pick his band members are permitted to use. Lawrence (who goes by just his first name) never did anything not great, but at what cost! The doc shows him burning through bandmates and spiraling into homelessness and addiction before ending up, in his fifties, in a London council flat designed by Ernö Goldfinger. It’s about Lawrence Hayward, the front man for the English eighties and nineties bands Felt, Denim, and Go-Kart Mozart. On the mattress I watch Lawrence of Belgravia, a documentary I’ve been avoiding because I don’t want the images of people I admire tarnished by knowing too much about them. I’ve lived in this apartment for four months, and in Austin for twenty, but I feel like I’ve lost track of time. I usually spend all day here drawing, playing with Photoshop, recording music, podcasting, watching stuff on YouTube, and staring off into space. There’s also my wooden desk, the drawers of which are filled with guitar picks and bug spray. To the right of the mattress are a lamp I bought because it looked like it belonged in a private investigator’s office, six guitar pedals, my guitar, and my laptop. I wake up on the cheap, stained mattress I have next to my work area. Productivity experts say that people shouldn’t sleep in the same area they work in, but what is bad for productivity is good for me.
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