The Monday Media Diet with Nik Mercer

On RSS, The Enigma of Japanese Power, and Read Me by Seb Erminia

Nik Mercer (NM) is fascinating multi-hyphenate creative. Happy to have him with us on the page today. -Colin (CJN)

Tell us about yourself.

I’m Nik, and I identify as a “rock-turner”; life is an adventure, and I’m eternally in pursuit of quenching my curiosity thirst. For the past twenty years or so, I’ve mostly bound everything together professionally through music activities: I started my career as a music journalist; in NYC, where I lived for ten years, I ran several dance and electronic music record labels and produced and promoted club events; I worked in advertising, as a music supervisor for a long while; and, most recently, I was a creative producer and developer at a virtual reality fitness and music video game company called Supernatural, that was eventually acquired by Meta. Currently, I’ve found myself refocusing intensely on the source from which all this music enthusiasm initially sprung: Japan. I started studying the language when I was around eleven, and eventually moved there through a study abroad program; I lived in Shikoku for a year and completed high school at Kanonji Daiichi. My interests in music, books, art, design, fashion all, in some way, shape, or form, stem from my commitment to Japan and Japanese. Recently, I’ve been working on a series of deeply researched essays on Japanese culture, society, industry, and government, and I’m developing a new business that I’ve not yet announced. Rest assured, it’s related to Japan!

Describe your media diet.

I probably would describe it as “the chaotic desk” model: I tend to be linearly minded, perhaps excessively so; the notion of multitasking sort of drives me crazy and makes my head hurt; I can’t seem to comprehend it outside of an intellectual concept. And yet, I have this constant desire for adventuring, learning, and finding opportunities that require deep focus without distraction. Perhaps ironically, the fuel I use for the stove upon which I cook is jumbled and disorderly, and I suppose that’s by design. Furthermore, the “meals,” as it were—my day-to-day media activities—tend to be what I impose on myself as the hurdle I must cross to do the thing I wish to do most, which is read novels and study Japanese.

With that out of the way, and running with the culinary metaphors further, here’s my food pyramid: print magazines, blogs, and newsletters; RSS feeds; and podcasts, in order from most foundational to most ephemeral. Frankly, these days, the thing I’m trying to get rid of most is podcasts; it’s frustrating to find the world consumed by so much talking, most of it more op-ed in nature than edited and purposeful. The talking heads have taken over. But, hey, it’s accessible, and our times are defined by convenience and lean-back passive engagement, and headier subjects typically need to be dressed up as entertainment to find traction.

I have resolutely been an RSS-first guy since 2005, when Google Reader was introduced, and I’ve subscribed to the same print magazines since I stopped pinching my parents’: The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, nowadays with The Guardian Weekly in the mix over The Economist or BusinessWeek, for more international and calibrated reporting.

With RSS, my core feed has stayed pretty static since I first started, with Google Reader twenty years ago. Pitchfork, New York mag, Fluxblog, Fashionista, Designboom, Keytars & Violins (KV), etc. Most of my day-to-day news I still extract from those sources, which, yes, of course, I do prune and tune frequently.

I fill that out with Substacks from thoughtful, curious and circumspect people, who are serious and approach their work with a certain level of rigor. Thinking of David Marx, Garbage Day, Today in Tabs, and, of course, my old friend Max Read (Read Max). With podcasts, I go for things like Doomscroll, by the brilliant and studious Joshua Citarella, More or Less, Radiolab, Search Engine, the Cultural Journalist. When it comes to more talky-talky stuff, I’ve been all-in on Maron since jump, and I’ll be with him until he finally throws in the towel. Soon. And I adore Election Profit Makers.

I read books a lot, now a little less than in the past, I guess, which I find frustrating. My dream scenario is really only ever reading fiction, to be honest; Albert Camus said “fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth,” and I tend to hold that as true. And I like to invert that: “nonfiction is the truth through which we tell the lie.” Fiction and movies, most of them older than newer, so convicted of the belief that nothing ever really changes and that you can discover more about the world and yourself by mining the past. It’s humbling. As of late, I’ve been watching a lot of 80s and 90s Japanese and Taiwanese films, and Sans Soleil, an old quasi-doc by Chris Marker, blew me away. What a treat that was.

Change is on the margins, and, in sum, I believe that my maximalist approach, which is tuned to be super scannable about fifty percent of the time and intense for the remainder, helps me cultivate an environment where I invite lots of marginal possibility; little hints and nods here and there can lead to massive ah-ha momenets and weeks- or months-long journies, and this is perhaps what makes me most stimualted in my daily life, the wonder of not knowing what’s ahead but the certainty that by staying the course more will be found.

What’s the last great book you read?

Nobrow, a John Seabrook media and marketing book from around 2000 that is both a fascinating light memoir of his days at The New Yorker during the Tina Brown era and a deep insight into how American media has worked, why criticism and hierarchy, while abstractly unfair or undemocratic, is better than none because it helps in the development and maintenance of damming and cantilevering the various waterfalls and lakes of media that we are absolutely drowning it. It’s essentially anti-poptimist and pro-gatekeeping, though neither of those terms was really used then, and they don’t appear. However, it’s also a celebration of the psychosis that makes America so unique, and how its hegemonic culture has, for better or for worse, informed all global culture and systems of power and control. I also finished Child of Fortune the same day, which was weird. It was written by Osamu Dazai’s daughter, Yūko Tsushima, and boy is it a sad, wrought, sometimes rather maudlin book, but it’s also fascinating in its fierce romanticism that comes in the form of constant unrequited wanting.

What are you reading now?

Two things: The Enigma of Japanese Power, which a friend recommended as I began writing all these essays and research pieces, and The Difference Engine, as I’m a sci-fi and Bill Gibson nut.

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?

I tend to really only get things I feel comfortable committing to fully, and I am too Capricorn-brained to let a weekly publication sit with me for more than a week. That said, if something doesn’t particularly interest me, I just skip it. I’d rather read, for instance, a profile on Michael Heizer than the tenth long-form piece on geopolitics in the Russian zone of influence, which sometimes makes me feel like I’m not trying hard enough. I tend to take notes when they’re useful, so I can track all the things I’ve learned about and want to explore more deeply. Otherwise, though, I really just sorta, like, start at the front and go to the back, and when I’m done, it’s into the recycling bin, and catharsis comes.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

Read Me by Seb Erminia, who used to edit a really inspired little literary journal Penguin put out called The Happy Reader. His newsletter is an unusual collection of oddities and ephemera and nooks around the world that I typically never find for myself. It’s inspiring and a little baffling; But I thought at least a little bit about everything, dammit! And Shfl is a favorite, a collection of guest-curated and -edited collections of records that all fall into certain themes or buckets. That’s where I get loads of older stuff, and where I find myself cracking the door into new wormholes.

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone?

Maybe a cop-out because it’s rather specific: Bunpo, a great language studying app that I use a ton for Japanese. The one and only game I have is SPL-T, a clever, extremely simple strategy game that helps me through long flights.

Plane or train?

I suppose plane, though it’s sort of contextual. Train I really only ever want when I’m trying to be slow and see the world gradually change around me. I took the Shinkansen and then a series of local trains to get back to visit my host family, and that was absolutely the least convenient and most expensive way to do it. But it felt great because the effort was persistent, which made the outcome feel earned. But, yeah, I’d go for planes typically; there is something so mystifying about the blink-and-you-miss-it nature of taking off and landing; How did I get here from there in just four hours? And, furthermore, one of my great tests is this: If the sight of your home from above fills you with dread or anxiety, then something’s wrong. Time for change. It’s been years since I’ve felt this way, thankfully.

What is one place everyone should visit?

This is really hard because I’ll be the first to insist that special places are only special in the eye of the beholder, and especially special when the timing is uncanny. I was at a pretty new clubhouse kind of bar the other night in Mexico City, Abrazarnos, and while I would tell anyone to go, the thing that made it so perfectwas the bizarre confluence of coincidence, happenstance, dumb luck. I’ll go back, I’m sure, and it’ll never be the same. That is, you can never go back. Not really. With all the philosophical mumbo jumbo out of the way, I will say this: the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation in Los Angeles, which is unfortunately temporarily closed, is the most astounding art space anywhere. Weisman was a fabulously wealthy real estate guy who also got in on the Japanese car business in the 70s, when it was just starting up, and I think that was effectively a money mint for a long time. He’s publicly known for his philanthropy and contributions to the Weisman Art Museum, but it’s his private residence that is the most unbelievable. Hundred and hundreds of pieces, mostly modern and mostly America, tightly squeeze into the mansion in Bel Air. It’s unreal.

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.

Two things about Japan: I wrote a long piece about the nature of konbini stores in Japan, in an attempt to understand why the system, which seems, on first blush, legitimately comical and insane (”Wait, there’s 55,000 of these in the country!? And how many in Tokyo alone!?), and yet is actually a truly perfect system that is thoughtfully, deeply considered and made to efficiently and expertly deliver necessities in the most direct, clear, organized, fair-value, and reliable way imaginable. It’s breathtaking. The unlock I had that around their ubiquit—it’s a feature that makes their ability to precisely manage supply and demand, not some wacky absurdity—was a thrilling one to make. Separately, I’m working on some art projects, and thus I’ve been really consumed by learning more, more, more about Japanese photographers and their oeuvres, estates, and collections of ephemera and peripheral work. (NM)