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From The Desk Of Mac McCaughan: Amber Tamblyn “The Loneliest”

mac_mccaughanlogo110bbOutdated reference point or not, the anti-apathy sentiment on Superchunk‘s sophomore single “Slack Motherfucker” still seems characteristic of Mac McCaughan 20 years after he wrote it. The recently dormant Superchunk is moving again, and McCaughan also fills his time with Portastatic and co-ownership of Merge Records. As if that wasn’t enough to keep him busy, McCaughan is guest editing magnetmagazine.com this week.

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McCaughan: In the age of digital dowloadability, this is the kind of art project/art object that can make you feel connected to people and the art, too. Actress Amber Tamblyn wrote haiku poetry; one per page appears in The Loneliest accompanied by collages by artist George Herms, who apparently has had a long and fascinating career at the fringes of The Art World. (I don’t know this because I’ve followed his work for six decades; I read it on the Internet.) But his collages are pretty and Tamblyn’s poetry is off kilter, like the the music of Thelonious Monk, which inspired this “book” (I say book in quotes because it actually is a nicely printed stack of sheets of paper that comes in a cardboard box with a picture of Monk on the front) and seems alternately addressed to a jealous lover and Monk himself. To my knowledge, he and Tamblyn were never involved.