I’ve been sitting down this morning to try to rejuvenate this project - the core of YVYNYL - for months now and frankly, I haven’t had it in me. I log in, look at the tens of thousands of unread emails, the dozens of unpublished saved drafts. Life throws you all kinds of annoying challenges and some of the burdensome, unpaid ones simply become the first thing to go. YVYNYL as a project has been one of those things for me. At least, YVYNYL as it has been for the past few years. I let it drag and dip into a swamp that took all its energy out of itself. I didn’t let my intentions give it the lightness, ease, and energy that I wanted to give it. 

Now, in the early months of 2020, I find myself pondering what comes next. For one thing, I still have more than two dozen unpublished Letters to YVYNYL sitting in my ‘to publish’ Drafts section of the site, but still in need of one last push, whether it be a small edit or publishing detail. Every time I log in to Tumblr the only thing I see is un-author sourced recognition gloop and more random internet re-posts. Nothing is original. Nothing here is clear. It’s all just about how many people were bored enough to just click “like” as they swipe and swipe and swipe. Or maybe that’s 98% of the internet itself these days. 

I wish things here on Tumblr were better. I’m glad that it hasn’t closed up shop entirely. It still seems to have the slightest bit of steam within the context of the personal blog platform amongst people who love music. All kinds of music. Posting it, linking to it. And while I don’t have as much personal time as I used to have to engage on the level of spending ten’s of hours a week to read indy music blogs and to cull through the endless waves of independent music being published, I am still drawn to the possibility that many of us share a goal. We want to use music-the-artform to explain our lives, our burdens, our stories. The words we use, the ones we write are our tools for being outlaws, preachers, writers, wildly independent thinkers, anything we want. We are the people with a deep reverberating reason to listen to and make more music. We are the people listening with intention. Even if that group is a fan base of 10. Or 100. Or 10,000. 

I love those relationships. Back in the late 00′s and the early 10′s, a lot of us were finding space to do just that, finding great new music. Now, I’m searching and searching again for that place, that energy, that community. 

If you’ve read this that long and you are interested in being a part of that kind of community, here it is. Read on. And if anyone wants to jump in with me to make that idea thrive. Let’s do it together. Let’s publish good work. Let’s tell stories. Let’s sit together, far away from one another or together in a club. Let’s meet each other. Let’s date each other. Let’s surf the constant flow of the now and how much it serves as a beacon of truth. The ultimate experience we all crave. 

Thank you for reading and listening to this rant. I don’t know whether I’ll keep pushing on here on Tumblr or let it die and reuse the connections I already have on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. For now, I just need to write this. To get something going. Anything. Otherwise, it will be truly lost. And truly dead. 2007 to 2019. Long live 2020! and beyond! 

Click on to see some of the best-unpublished Letters here. It’s my goal to post a bunch of these, even though some are half a year old. 

And thank you for being a supporter of this long-suffering project. If you’d like to join, head over to the socials or if you’re in Philly, let me know and we’ll go share some coffee or tea.

Love,

Mark* aka @yvynyl

PS - If you are a designer, wanna help me out and rebuild this page on Tumblr or on something else, hit me up!