I Miss Ask Jeeves

This weekend in Austin we’re getting those beautiful overcast skies that make you want to stay inside and watch movies. You know the kind — the sky is gray, the air is quiet, and suddenly the idea of leaving the house feels completely unnecessary. Honestly, I’m looking forward to it. A rainy weekend, a couch, maybe a blanket, and a good movie is one of life’s simplest pleasures.

Which brings me to something strange I’ve been feeling lately.

I’ve had this sudden urge to buy a Blu-ray player again.

I know, I know. It sounds ridiculous. We live in a world where essentially every movie ever made is floating around in the cloud somewhere, available instantly on demand. But lately I’ve been thinking about physical media again — Blu-rays, CDs, tapes. You already know how I feel about vinyl. There’s something about holding the thing in your hands, sliding it out of a case, placing it on a shelf, that makes the experience feel more intentional somehow.

Maybe that’s why I never really got on board with e-readers. I’ve always been a book person. I like pages. I like margins. I like the weight of a book in my hands. Something about the physical object slows the experience down in a way I’ve always appreciated.

Lately I’ve been wondering if this renewed interest in physical things is connected to how much of life now exists online.

The other day I was scrolling through old photos — as one does — and I stumbled across a picture my mom had sent me years ago. It was our very first computer setup at home. The thing was glorious in that late-90s way: a giant CRT monitor, the beige tower with a CD drive, and a little external desktop microphone sitting on the desk.

I posted the photo on Instagram, and my mom texted me a little while later saying she remembered exactly why she had taken that picture.

It was the first time we logged onto AOL.

When she said that, I swear it felt like someone kicked a soccer ball into my stomach. Pure nostalgia.

Because suddenly I remembered something that feels almost impossible now: the internet used to be a place you had to go to.

You sat down at the computer. You logged on. You browsed around for a while. And then eventually you logged off and went back to the rest of your life.

It wasn’t everywhere.

Some of you reading this probably don’t even remember that era, which is a slightly strange thing for me to realize as I write it. But there was a time when the entirety of human existence wasn’t digitized and living in the palm of your hand. You couldn’t ask a robot to proofread your paper. You couldn’t instantly Google whatever random thought popped into your head.

You had Ask Jeeves.

And boy did Jeeves take his time.

If you wanted to watch a show, you checked the TV Guide and waited for it to come on. If you wanted to hear a record, you put the record on. If you wanted to go online, you physically went to the computer.

Now everything is immediate. ChatGPT this, Google that, ask Siri something. Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok — an endless stream of information and noise that follows us everywhere we go.

And don’t get me wrong — I love technology. Truly. Having access to the entire history of recorded music at the press of a button is still something that feels miraculous to me.

But I also think something subtle has changed along the way.

We’ve trained ourselves to expect immediate results. If we try something once and it doesn’t work right away, we assume we’re not good at it. If we can’t master something quickly, we move on to the next thing.

Creativity doesn’t really work that way.

The things that end up meaning the most to us — learning an instrument, making art, building something with care — tend to move at a much slower pace. They require repetition. Patience. Time spent failing quietly before anything good starts to emerge.

I suppose that’s part of why I’ve always been drawn to slower things.

Books instead of screens.

Vinyl instead of playlists.

And, in many ways, the kind of music I make.

Ambient music, at its best, isn’t really asking for your attention in the way so much of modern media does. It’s more like an invitation. A small pocket of space where things can unfold a little more slowly.

Which, now that I think about it, might be why the idea of buying a Blu-ray player again suddenly feels appealing. Not because I need one. But because the ritual itself feels nice to imagine — choosing a film, putting it on intentionally, letting the experience unfold without scrolling or multitasking or checking my phone every five minutes.

Maybe that’s all I’m really chasing.

Not nostalgia exactly.

Just a slightly slower rhythm.

And honestly, that’s probably the same instinct that led me to make the music I make in the first place.

If you’d like to hear the newest piece of that, my new EP drift is out now.

A blog.

So, you might ask yourself, “what is TJ doing writing a blog? Doesn’t he already do so much?” And the answer is well…I don’t know and…yes.

I thought it could be fun to start a longer form writing practice as I’ve found my newsletters can get a little wordy. But that’s the thing - I am so passionate about what I do and how I do it that I find it nearly impossible to condense it down to what are essentially bullet-pointed thoughts in a newsletter.

Alas, we’ve arrived at “the blog.”

I suppose you could say I missed the boat back in the early 2000s when everyone was blogging and writing posts - I think it would’ve probably helped me become more popular within the Instagram world earlier too had I done that. But I was too busy occupying myself with other things - namely music. Truthfully, I didn’t even really understand the purpose of Instagram when it first started. Share photos? Why? But very quickly the photos became a way to reach people and then people saw the power of that and figured out a way to upload videos. But then the videos could be used as a way to brand yourself and now you’re competing with actual brands so your videos had to get better; look better, sound better, be snappier. And now we’re making Reels and the trend is to make a 6 second reel, so on and so on…

It’s massively overwhelming being an artist, period. I don’t care what time you were or are one, it’s hard. Off the bat you’re a person who likely “feels” more than your average person so you’re acutely aware of human emotions, the human condition, nature, animals, all of it. Take that “feelingmachine” and drop it into a world where you have to advocate for yourself and your art 24 hours a day and you’ve got yourself quite the situation. But I actually love it. I love sharing my work and who I am and how I make my art. I truly enjoy hearing about the connections it makes with people and not in the self-stroking-ego way, but in the way that makes me feel truly good that I was able to drop some positivity into this chaotic world.

Here we are now. Coming back to the blog.

Is blogging more or less journaling? Maybe I’ll use it that way. There are already so many people out there using longform blogs as a way to catalogue their methods and work so I don’t feel the need to fill that void. Rather, I want to share more about who I am and the person that is behind my work. Perhaps you’ll find things that you connect with and say “hey, I feel that too!”

Okay, so. Blogging. Blogging.

Time see where this goes!