Just A Peck 0067 // Concert, Incline, Art

Just A Peck

Welcome to the latest issue of Just A Peck. I’m glad you’re here!

JOURNAL

Last Sunday night, Jody and I attended a backyard concert fundraiser for The Northerly School of Music. It was a beautiful evening for live music under the stars. (Plus, Chef Stewart made tacos!)

A trio with two acoustic guitars and an upright bass playing in a fenced backyard under trees, audience members in camp chairs in the foreground
Four Mile Portage and an upright bass player performing on the lawn beneath strings of glowing bistro lights
A full band of fiddle, guitars, bass, and keys playing on the grass at dusk under bistro lights and a canopy of trees

That’s a pretty nice haircut! This week is actually the ten-year anniversary of when I first went to see our family hair stylist Dena. I had been instructed to figure out a “wild” hairstyle for a unique production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I don’t have hair that accommodates “wild,” so I needed something more specialized than the general Great Clips work I’d been getting for years. At the time, Dena was renting a chair in another Duluth salon, but since then she has transformed the porch of her house into a single-seat salon suffused with good vibes. Coincidentally, Jody, Kaylee, and I all had appointments with her this week without realizing the auspiciousness of the occasion.

Justin pointing at his fresh haircut with Lake Superior behind him

On Friday, I huffed and puffed my way up the incline with my awesome friend Kate. Kate normally runs the incline, but she slowed things to a walk to accommodate me. She had to throw me over her shoulder and carry me up the final stretch like a dead man, but the views from the top were worth the struggle. (Also, we got to nose around an abandoned cabin that will be an excellent refuge during the zombie apocalypse.)

A selfie of Justin and Kate at the top of the incline, Duluth rooftops and Lake Superior glowing at sunset behind them
A view from the hilltop down to Canal Park, the Aerial Lift Bridge, and the curve of Minnesota Point stretching across Lake Superior

On Saturday, I made a day trip to the Twin Cities to catch On the Razzle at Park Square and You Can See Everything at the Main. (You can tell from the photo, they were really getting into it.) I also stopped by the soft opening of the new Vinegar Syndrome store in Dinkytown (which was awesome) and a new neighborhood video rental store in the Seward neighborhood.

Holding up a program for On the Razzle in front of the Park Square Theatre stage, lit in blue with a rustic shop set
Justin peeking into the frame below the Main Cinema marquee, which jokingly reads You Can See Primetime, You Can See Sense and Sensibility, You Can See Ken Russell's The Devils, and You Can See You Can See Everything
Justin peeking into the frame below the Vinegar Syndrome sign on a brick storefront in Dinkytown
A sidewalk sign reading Saturn Video Grand Opening and Sidewalk Sale outside a small stucco storefront

While I was in the Twin Cities, I visited Jeffrey Larson’s incredible one-man exhibition at the Galleria in Edina. (Larson runs the atelier here in Duluth, and I’m so in awe of his work. If you’re ultra-wealthy, go buy some of his paintings!)

A Jeffrey Larson still life of a single silver teapot on a pale shelf, in a heavy black frame
A Jeffrey Larson painting of copper pots, a colander, and kitchenware crowded on a wooden table before an ornate tin backdrop
A Jeffrey Larson painting of an antique metal hand tool resting on a ledge against a soft gray background
A Jeffrey Larson painting of a brass trumpet hanging against a pale wall
A Jeffrey Larson portrait of a blonde woman in a black feathered gown and gray wrap, gazing to the side

WHAT I WATCHED THIS WEEK

You Can See Everything poster
You Can See Everything (2026). There are moments from this that might live in my head forever. What an incredible, fascinating film. I saw this with a packed theater at 11:30 in the morning, and we were absolutely eating it up — laughter, gasps, vocal responses. I loved it.
Sense and Sensibility poster
Sense and Sensibility (2026). I'll keep my comments mostly to myself. Nowhere near the caliber of Emma Thompson's adaptation, but some interesting performances.

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK

Finished:

The cover of The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee, a red-cloaked figure with a sword against a snowy, futuristic city
The Last Contract of Isako, by Fonda Lee (audiobook). I was a kid during the heyday of cyberpunk, and its bleak themes of corporate tyranny, extreme inequality, and information as currency have only gotten more relevant over time. I love when it is refocused to address similar themes in a multitude of subgenres (biopunk, climatepunk, steampunk, etc.) or when genre conventions are subverted — replacing rainy neon-lit Neo-Tokyo settings with Bosphorean cafes or the Russian taiga or a clockwork version of Bangkok. I don't remember who recommended The Last Contract of Isako to me, but it was a solid cyberpunk novel set on a distant world undergoing terraforming, which has lost contact with Earth. The society that has formed under the breathable-air shield is ruled by corporations competing for resources with which to make the planet livable, and the inter-company espionage (and literal warfare) is carried out by a formal sect of contracted corporate samurai.

Finished Plays:

In Progress:

BOOKS I PURCHASED

MEMORIES

10 years ago — We were in Stevens Point to see Spencer in his university production of Unnecessary Farce.

A smiling car selfie of Kaylee and Spencer
Family and friends gathered with Spencer beneath a Department of Theatre & Dance sign

WHAT I'M EXCITED ABOUT

Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom opens this week at The Lab. Get your tickets!

Promotional image for Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom, four cast members smiling eerily with blood spattered on their faces and clothes

In honor of its 100th anniversary, xkl’s latest project is creating a score for F.W. Murnau’s masterpiece, Faust, and they’re going to play it live at the Zinema this week!

Poster for the 100th anniversary screening of F.W. Murnau's Faust, a winged demon looming over a dark town, with a live original score at Zeitgeist Zinema on Thursday, October 22

And then the very next night, renowned organist Aaron David Miller will accompany the expressionist masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari on the historic Felgemaker pipe organ housed at Sacred Heart Music Center! An embarrassment of riches!

A black-and-white poster for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a figure carrying a woman up a jagged, angular staircase

MY FAVORITE QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“What I do know is that people have always made and will always make art. Part of possessing a consciousness is wanting to be known while also living with the fundamental mysteriousness of human beings, including ourselves. Art is how we enter that mystery, and how we express it to the world. It is how we know, and are known. Art is the dream life of the self, the collective unconscious of our species. We come to it—and come to make it—to experience something both within and without us, a piece of ourselves that, only when it is separated from us and put into the world, can make us whole. History shows us that this aspect of our humanity cannot be stopped, and the ability of those in power to control it is finite, even in the direst of circumstances. If we cannot keep faith with our nation at this moment, or with our government, or with each other, perhaps we can at least keep faith with that.”

— Isaac Butler, The Perfect Moment

That’s it for this week. Stay safe, friends. Thanks for reading!

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