The Curator Mindset
Things I Know To Be True
Mark Rushton’s Curator Mindset is a place where I talk in 2026 about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist, tech things, and provide music recommendations. This is being released on Saturday, January 3, 2026.
Topics:
Mark Rushton’s Abundant Spare Time - The Book!
The Curator Mindset
Torschlusspanik
Galina Juritz - “Things I Know to be True”
Mark Rushton’s Abundant Spare Time - The Book!
Amazon link to the paperback. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GDQCJ12W
My first book. It’s just for me, but you can get a copy, too.
I wanted a record of what I’ve written in 2025 on Substack. It did start the year as “Perseverance in the Arts”, then “Interpolation in the Arts”, before spending most of the year as “Abundant Spare Time”.
The paperback is about 260 pages. It has everything from Substack, although a few things were edited out because I was describing photos that weren’t included in the book. It also has a list of my musical guests.
There’s unintentional story arcs in the book: finding a studio space, playing the xBk Annex gig, dealing with “old tech”, and starting the “TimePiece” soundtrack.
I’d like to say right now that “books” are not about “selling books”.
Not at all.
For me, the idea of compiling the Posts into a book didn’t happen until late in the year.
I just wanted to see if I could do it.
Why should I write “on the web” or “in a blog” or in some “walled garden” if I can’t put that into some kind of physical book?
Yeah, books aren’t about selling books. For me, they’re about getting all that stuff out of your head, onto paper, and then moving on.
The Curator Mindset
And with that said, I decided to change the name of this space to “The Curator Mindset”.
What is “The Curator Mindset”?
That’s difficult to explain in a single post. Maybe I want to stretch it over the year?
It’s what I do here already: talking about my work as an artist, influences, obstacles, humor, tech, societal observations, mistakes. Alternatives.
Torschlusspanik
I quote the word robots, but sometimes it’s a good idea to get a screenshot.
You’ll see what I mean here as it’s mentioned in the next section about the new Galina Jurtiz album.
Galina Juritz - “Things I Know to be True”
I’m absolutely knocked out by the Galina Jurtiz album “One Weird Trick”, which was released in November 2025 and appeared in my Qobuz Discover section a week ago. I have since “overpaid” for the album on Bandcamp.
The whole 13-track, 43-minute album is amazing. I don’t mean that lightly.
For me to listen to an entire album by somebody I don’t know, in the first sitting, and then go back it to the next day with my Grado headphones, is extremely rare.
Galina who?
At the time I’m writing this, on January 2, 2026, there seems to be only a single review of the album - at the Foxy Digitalis blog. There’s also an interview with her on that site by Brad Rose.
Here’s a small section:
Though this album is in my own name, I don’t entirely think of it as a solo project. Much of it is built off and inspired by improvisations and moments of performances with other people, as well as two tracks in which I don’t play at all, so there are many voices baked in there. Still, I think it was important for me to do a solo record at this stage because it was a personal challenge – there’s nowhere to hide. You have to make an artistic statement and own up to it, which felt like a scary thing to do. I think I had what German speakers would call Torschlusspanik (thanks to my friend composer Matthijs van Dijk for introducing me to this word a few years ago). I didn’t want to turn 40 without having had the courage to do this. I had a growing collection of unfinished projects burning a hole in my hard drives, and I needed to be free of them! A lot of it also felt very personal – things I needed to get off my chest, before moving on and re-entering the more comforting world of collaboration.
Read the rest if you found that captivating.
Juritz was filed under “jazz” on Qobuz, but it’s way more than “jazz”.
There’s jazz in places, but also minimal electronics, altered voices, found sound, strings, horns, some singing but not much, slightly “hip hop” at times, and it has an “AI” voice glitching out the album’s lyrics on the final track, “Black Hole (let’s exit unceremoniously)”.
Each track is way different, and yet it sounds like a cohesive body of work. That’s difficult to pull off.
If I had to throw some names out - fans of elements of Laurie Anderson, Meshell Ndegeocello, Jon Hassell’s backing tracks, and David Sylvian’s abstract sounds will definitely enjoy this.
All I can do is champion it.
To pick a single track out is extremely difficult. “Black Hole” is amazing, but only if you’ve listened to the rest of the album in the previous 40 minutes. I also really like “Falling in the Sand”, an instrumental.
This time, I chose “Things I Know to be True” - it has a melodic vocal, although processed. It is jazzy with heartbeat bass and key changes galore. There’s a wonderfully messy electronic beat and sputtering synth. There’s space and drift throughout. The soft, closely-miked saxophone arriving your left ear is a dream.
That Juritz album sounds incredible. The way albums can hold disparate tracks together through a shared aesthetic always fascinates me, especially when mixing jazz, minimal electronics, and found sound without it feeling like a playlist. Also really dig the framing that books aren't about selling them but getting ideas out of your head. I've been sitting on alot of half-baked projects too, and that torschlusspanik angle hits close, like mayb the act of compiling is the closure itself.
Love that term, torschlusspanik. Always feels like a little enlightenment to get a word for a feeling that needs it.
Welcome to the new curator mindset!