1
It’s Sunday afternoon as I write this. I am watching the big game. Right now Philadelphia is down by seven in the second quarter.
Of course, by “big game” I mean today’s barely meaningful regular-season matchup between the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and my Milwaukee Bucks. Hubie Brown’s final game as a broadcaster. Fear the deer!
Yeah, I’ll be observing the football-themed national cultural event later today, too. I’m excited to see what Kendrick Lamar does during the break in the action.
Wintertime. Good time to sit down, check out and watch something on the TV. Satisfying to the compulsive need to orient my eyes to a screen. An escape from the scroll, from the feed. From the fascism and diagonalism. Sucking in the colors and sounds. Shadows on a wall; pixels in a box. Emotions, images in the mind.
Sports are really good for that.
Live televised events are good for that, whether they involve sports or not, I guess.
2
The Grammys last week. I’m the guy who tunes in at noon to watch the pre telecast awards ceremony. Fanboying out for people like the legendary mixing engineer Bob Clearmountain, who presented some behind-the-scenes awards to the types of people whose names used to appear in fine print the sleeves and backs of records. My people!
They don’t bleep out peoples’ swears on the pre-telecast. Cool.
In a few weeks we’ll have the Academy Awards. The Oscars. I’m really excited for that.
I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately. Kind of a project for 2025. Recommitting myself to my enthusiasm for the cinema. Feeling a little burned out from all this running on the streaming TV treadmill.
So far, I’ve seen 27 movies so far this year. 26 at home and one in the theater. I joined Letterboxd and created a massive watchlist. So now I’m going through it. Alphabetically.
So I started with the letter “A.” Scorsese’s After Hours from 1985. Four and a half stars. Last night I watched my “X” movie: the 2014 Morgan Matthews autism and math drama X+Y. Three stars. I’ve seen a few films out of the alphabetical order, too. We’re not trying to be rigid about this.
I gotta catch up on the Academy Award nominated films.
☝🏻My faves and recents on Letterboxd
3
Movies really mean a lot to me. Visuals. Imagery.
One of my goals is to find ways to match my music to movies. In a lot of ways, my songs don’t feel complete yet; not until they become matched with imagery.
I wish I had any amount of filmmaking expertise. But I don’t. Whenever I try to film myself performing, I have a really hard time putting it all together. For example, I’ve been entering the NPR Music Tiny Desk Contest every year since 2019. Performing a song? No big deal! Great! But setting up a camera and a few lights and performing a song? Goddammit! Endlessly frustrating.
(Here’s a YouTube playlist containing all my Tiny Desk Contest entry videos)
I filmed my 2025 Tiny Desk Contest entry video the other day. I have about 30 hours to get it ready, sync the sound and upload it. And I’m dreading the work I have to do.
I made a big deal out of it. Dragged all my stuff out to the living room and set up a bunch of lights. Dressed the set and myself. Took about four or five hours. Then did about 20 minutes of takes before my phone’s battery died.
I’ll let you know how it goes with that. There’s a chance I might scrap the whole thing this year. There’s a chance I’ll just prop my phone up against some sturdy object and do it over, disregarding all the sunk costs. I don’t know.
4
Thankfully, I know some people who are better at certain things than me.
One of those people is my friend Austin Hille. Austin is a talented visual artist and filmmaker. As you may know, he created videos for my Family Plot songs “No Secret” and “Zombies Of The Heartland.”
Austin also directed and starred in a video for the final single and title track from the album.
I’m excited to announce the video for “Family Plot” will premiere this Wednesday, February 12 at 12:00 pm MST on YouTube.
Follow me over there to make sure you get a chance to see the thing. It’s great! Austin did a fantastic job.
I talked to Austin a while ago about the video and his artistic process. The conversation was recorded for my podcast, The Matt Kollock Show. That episode will also arrive this Wednesday. Check it out!
5
It’s all about coming into the light, really. Creating some shadows
There is no imagery without the partnership between light and shadows. I’ve been working so hard for so long in darkness. No light, no shadow. It’s been tolerable here. Sometimes even comfortable. There are sounds here. One sound and then another sound. A pulse. This is music! Music encased in a nurturing(?) membrane, though.
I feel the shell is cracking, breaking now. There is light. It hurts my eyes sometimes. But it’s all worth it for the photosynthesis. Mine and yours. If you will. Won’t you?
tl;dr: I like watching sports and movies and I’d like to match my music more with movies, and the video for my song “Family Plot” arrives this Wednesday (along with an associated podcast), and follow me on Letterboxd and how about the price of eggs, anyway?