Original notebook photograph with handwritten notes, provisional music selections and early A/B/C pyramid sketches.

A Million Scattered Pieces

Edition 002

Tomorrow’s Afternoon
Is Running Early

A Mix Tape

Thirteen recordings in a fixed order, played through the Magnetic Instrument, with the versions and connections around them.

01 · Letter

October has been a lot. A lot of projects in the works: websites, live events, programming. And then, somehow, a mixtape. Meanwhile, the afternoons keep getting shorter.

The mixtape started with thirteen recordings I wanted to put in a particular order. Then I started drawing a pyramid. Because I’m new to coding, the pyramid somehow turned into a jukebox. It may have gotten a little out of hand.

After coding this second edition of the newsletter, I can see why people choose things like Substack or Buttondown. Apparently there’s a button you can just push. I built a pyramid instead. Press Play, or explore the connections. And yes, Tomorrow’s Afternoon Is Running Early is late.

Fall is a kind of memento mori. The leaves turn color, fall to the ground, and crunch under our feet. Summer ends. So do we.

I’ve been thinking about the people who aren’t here anymore, especially the ones I used to share music with. There are songs I still wish I could send them. And not necessarily songs we listened to together. Sometimes it’s something entirely new, a voice I know someone would have loved, a strange cover that would have made them laugh, or started an argument.

I hear something and think, oh, I have to send this to them. And then I remember.

But making a mixtape is also a way of spending time with people who are here. Passing someone a song is a small way of saying, “I thought of you.” I spent time putting these recordings together, and you might listen tomorrow, next month, or whenever. We don’t have to be in the same room, or even listening at the same time, for something to pass between us.

There are other things rattling around in my head, too. Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s film about Elizabeth Holmes, You Can See Everything, has me thinking about the difference between believing somebody and caring about them.

I’m not sure looking at somebody tells you very much. But taking their picture can be a way of paying attention, of spending a little time together. That’s part of what Vanessa and I were trying out at Tru Yoga: making portraits with people, not just of them, and seeing what could happen when a community was invited into that process.

I’m still figuring out what A Million Scattered Pieces needs to be. The first edition opened the door. Maybe we’re a little further inside now, but we still didn’t get to all the parts we were hoping to.

Rigatoni, a small grey-and-white dog, on a lap beneath the desk, with notebooks and a yellow legal pad on the desk above.

Anyway, enjoy the mixtape. Walk through some leaves. Send someone a song. And if something makes you want to send one back, I’d love to hear it.

Jay

A Million Scattered PiecesTru Yoga · Rochester · October 10, 2026

In the studio at Tru Yoga, on a white seamless backdrop between studio lights, a woman in denim overalls adjusts the shoulders of a teacher kneeling in camel pose.

Framing Your Practice

Vanessa Airey adjusts Essence Taylor’s mala beads for the pose and photograph.

In the first edition, Vanessa and I said we’d turn Tru Yoga into a photo studio for an afternoon. On October 10, the white paper went up.

We made the day together. Vanessa knew the room, the practice, and the people; I brought the camera and lights. We left room for each person to decide how to stand, move, pause, and occupy the frame.

It was a really beautiful day spent in community.

Here are a few photographs from that afternoon.

  1. A teacher in triangle pose on the white seamless, seen past a dark arm and hand in the foreground.
  2. A woman in denim overalls steadies a teacher holding a low squat, hands pressed together at her chest.
  3. A teacher reaches one arm up in a wide side stretch while a woman in denim crouches beside her.

    Lizz Ortolani moves through a series of poses during Framing Your Practice, with Vanessa Airey assisting in the studio.

A teacher in warrior pose at the centre of the white seamless, with the whole studio around her: lights, stands, cables and the wooden floor.
A teacher in glasses holds warrior pose on white while a tattooed figure watches from the right edge of the frame.
Samantha holds a pose while Vanessa watches her form.
A teacher in a low lunge on white, arms reaching back overhead, eyes closed.

I also want to thank Vanessa Airey for collaborating with me on Framing Your Practice at Tru Yoga. What began with photographs we'd made together became a larger experiment in how to invite people into a photographic experience. We explored community pricing, built a website, and created an afternoon where yoga teachers could participate in making portraits without deciding in advance exactly what those photographs needed to become.

I'm grateful to Vanessa for her generosity, curiosity, and willingness to try something a little different with me. And to everyone who participated, thank you for bringing your time, your practice, and yourselves into the room.

I'm excited to see what comes from the photographs and where this collaboration might go next.

A bearded man in glasses laughs mid-kick on the white seamless, one arm flung up, studio lights behind him.

Photographs: Jay Muhlin

03 · In motion · October 2026

Continuum

Things moving through Lemon Juice now.

Shows the original Monster Mixer handbill.
The original pink Monster Mixer handbill: Make It Believable presents Monster Mixer, an experiment in making bureaucracy interesting. Tuesday, October 27, 7:00–8:00 PM. Irondequoit Public Library, Room 113. Free, open to the public, costumes welcome. Independent public event; the library is the venue, not the organizer. makeitbelievable.org, a project by Lemon Juice.

New project · Rochester

Make It Believable

Believable here doesn't mean correct. It means checkable.

Monster Mixer · took place Tuesday, October 27, 2026

Irondequoit Public Library, Room 113 · 1290 Titus Ave, Rochester

About the project · where it began, who’s in the room

It began with a school-bus camera notice I couldn't make sense of: video from an out-of-state company, then a hearing. The questions became public-records requests, and the records led somewhere stranger—13th-century bestiaries, and the old habit of sorting the world into beasts, laws and categories.

Make It Believable is where that inquiry lives now. It's also a new Lemon Juice experiment in creative coding, built in HTML, CSS, JavaScript and SVG with AI-assisted coding.

Monster Mixer was the first public gathering, held October 27. Betsy hosted (they/them), and I was the sidekick. Hannah, who works in healthcare, and Courtney, who works in agriculture, were guests. Derek and Abigail worked on sound and video.

The mayor, City Council members, neighbors and friends were invited. The event was part comedy and part public pressure valve. Costumes were encouraged, never required.

The Irondequoit Public Library is the venue, not a sponsor or organizer.

makeitbelievable.org ↗The Unicorn Pen ↗

04 · The Magnetic Instrument

Tomorrow’s Afternoon
Is Running Early

Thirteen recordings in a fixed order, with the versions and connections around them.

PLAY THE MAGNETIC INSTRUMENT →

Listening opens each recording on its own service, in a new tab. Nothing plays on this page.

05 / Behind the Music

Behind
the Music

Making a mixtape used to involve a little arithmetic. You had only so much tape. What would fit? What belonged together? Where should one song end and the next begin?

Thirteen felt right for October—an odd, unlucky, slightly superstitious number. I gave myself sixty minutes. That limit brought back some of the care of making a tape by hand.

More notes from behind the music

ORIGINAL PROCESS PHOTOGRAPHY

The drawings, before the code.

Notebook page: handwritten edition notes, the song sequence and early pyramid drawings.
View original ↗

But the songs didn't arrive first and the connections afterward. I was listening for covers, remixes, different performances, collaborations and the paths a recording might open. What I found for Sides B and C changed some of what I chose for Side A.

And things were still happening. New Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Fontaines D.C. recordings kept arriving while I was following these older connections.

As I drew, the relationships began to take the shape of a pyramid. A pyramid is mysterious, but it was built by many hands. Music works that way too. The artists are there, but so are all the people and recordings that help make the work possible.

Closer study of a box-like pyramid structure and the A/B/C sketch.
View original ↗

The thirteen-song mix became its fixed point. Beneath it, versions and other performances accumulated. Other connections extended further, into collaborations and music that hasn't been made yet.

Sometimes I imagine the whole pyramid upside down: the sky moving across its tip like a needle, playing it.

Angled detail of the hand-drawn A/B/C pyramid and branching arrows.
View original ↗

And somewhere below, there may be chambers we haven't entered, waiting for a song that hasn't been written yet to lead us there.

Nilüfer Yanya · Underground Arts, Philadelphia · May 4, 2022Photographs by Jay Muhlin · Originally posted May 5, 2022

The mixtape is a gift. Everything beyond it is an invitation.

Return to the Magnetic Instrument ↗Notes, sources & diagrams (FASCIA / Notion) ↗

06 · Following

Following

On October 27, Make It Believable held its Monster Mixer at the Irondequoit Public Library. More about the gathering at makeitbelievable.org.

I'm planning Edition 003 for November 24, with more from From a Distant Star, including some special greeting-card offerings. More about those soon.