Hello, Readers.
It has come to my attention recently that this here website has run afoul of one of our wonderful American tech giants. The Facebook/Instagram corporation (or some worker drone therein) has decided that Swan Fungus is either malicious, spam, or some other nasty word for “harmful to the community.” As such, I am no longer allowed to post links to this site on those platforms. I find it more than a little bit ironic that Facebook still allows Swan Fungus to have a group/fan page on their site — and I receive plenty of notifications asking me to pay Facebook to promote/boost my page — but I am not allowed to use that page to actually link to my website. It’s baffling. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s so far beyond baffling it is infuriating. It must have happened recently, as all of my “Stay At Home: Day __” posts have been removed. Maybe they thought I was spamming my own fan page? Whatever the case may be, there’s no such thing as technical support on Facebook so I can’t get the situation rectified. I’ve deleted the Facebook page. I’d delete my personal profile as well but I need it for work purposes, which is super annoying. I’ll probably delete my @swanfungus Instagram page as well, because what’s the point in having it if I can’t steer people here?
You know what else sucks?! I’m heavily considering selling my record collection and I was going to use both platforms to advertise it. We’re going to be moving within the next couple months and I’m so sick and tired of moving my collection I just don’t think I want to deal with it anymore. More importantly, I think…the fun of acquiring records has lost its joy. I’ve stopped buying new releases. I’ve stopped caring when something that looks comes across my desk. Even before “Safer At Home,” the last time I walked through a record store was probably in 2019. At this point the only reason I’d keep collecting would be to buy new albums from artists I like. Most of the insane prog/kraut/psych records I still covet are well out of my price range. I don’t even read my daily Discogs digest to see if people are selling those records. What does that all say? Before quarantine I was using Spotify at work and in the car. I wasn’t spinning many records at home unless it was newly acquired. I think I’d be just as happy in my new house building a Sonos system in multiple rooms and using a computer/server to play whatever albums aren’t currently available on Spotify. There’s a small chance I’ll keep a handful of my favorites. Things I cannot part with. My mom’s original Beatles records. Maybe my Spiritualized records, and one-offs here and there. But…like, I don’t listen to my Walter Wegmuller Tarot box. I’ve only ever listened to one side of the first Explosions In The Sky records I got from their drummer after interviewing them in college. They’re too rare and precious to actually enjoy.
My plan, then…is to work through the process of selling my collection here. Before I get rid of it I want to try to listen to every record I own one last time. I’ll skip shit like AC/DC that I’ve heard millions of times already and long ago gave up on caring about. So…every day I’ll post here what I’ve listened to, some thoughts about the album and its place in my collection and in my life…and then you guys are welcome to contact me if you want to buy anything. Make sense?
If you think you can talk me out of this, by all means, shoot me an email or a text or whatever and try your best.
Now let’s see how this works…
