I drove across part of the country with my brother this winter. We listened to a lot of music. There came a point when we’d exhausted our stockpile. He had a book on tape, written by his favorite anthropologist, David Graeber, on the topic of debt. Graeber is the kind of brilliant mind that, in my dullness, I cannot always follow. Hearing his words come out of the car speakers reminded me of reading Aristotle or Kant, Nagarjuna or Mipham, in that the slightest gap in my attention resulted in me feeling as though I had completely fallen off of a finely tuned and brilliantly colored cargo train. By the time that I would realize at a certain point that I was rolling in the ditch of my own discursiveness, Graeber was already on to his next examination of an aspect of the relationship between creditors and debtors. Needless to say, I don’t really know what he said in his book, but I loved it.

Our concept of money depends on credit and debt. Money symbolizes a credit that can relinquish a debt. If I give you something, you are indebted to me. If you pay me some money, then I have a credit that I can use to buy something else, and thus even the score in some way. Somehow, economic systems create a situation in which a lot of people are in a lot of debt, just by being alive. I have friends who are pretty fucked by this system.  It could be that everybody is pretty fucked by this system.

In the past, I sent all the money that comes in off of selling my music on bandcamp to my dear friends in Cambodia who run a school there. I am not giving up on developing a relationship with, and raising money for my friends in Cambodia at all. I want to thank you for your generous donations over the last few years. All told, we have sent over 1,000 dollars! At this point, for an undecided amount of time, the money that I make from your donations I will be keeping to buy groceries and other stuff I want.
At this point, I am directing energy towards doing benefit concerts for my friends in Cambodia and elsewhere. The money you donate online will now go into my bank account. Why? Because I’m strapped for cash.

If you can help set up a benefit show, please contact me ASAP.

The newest Michael Jordan Touchdown Pass album called Baby Steps is finished now. You can order it from my brother Pat the Bunny’s music collective called Savage Wasteland, or you could download the tracks online, or if you’d like you can send me a letter to PO Box 356, Marlboro, VT 05344 with maybe 5 bucks tucked in there.