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About

What is Random Patterns?

Random Patterns is an open notebook for human storytellers, cinematic songwriters, album producers, DIY filmmakers, and craft-obsessed creative dweebs.

That's the punchy answer. The real answer is: I'm not entirely sure what Random Patterns is yet. It's a place where It's where I can write and share whatever I want. It's the newsletter for my music project, The Okay Lakes. It's my nü forever web home.

Who are you?

I'm Jordan. I'm a songwriter, album producer, occasional filmmaker, and storyteller.

Creative grunt work is the foundation of my life. Over my life, I've worked across a lot of mediums. Depending on the season of life, I write songs, stories, and screenplays; produce my own music, other artist's albums, or music videos, shorts, and films; collaborate on live or recorded music or film projects; and obsess over the craft with my fellow craft-obsessed creative pals.

My life revolves around the work of helping creative people develop and refine their story, soundscape, and vision.

In my studio project, The Okay Lakes, I write songs to feel like short stories and produce albums to feel like films. I released Redshift in 2023, a soundtrack for moonsilvered road trips on patchy Midwest backroads, out where the county lines of cinematic indie-folk, art-rock, and Americana converge.

Why does Random Patterns exist?

It turns out, having our lives revolve around social media and algorithms makes for a miserable way to live/die!

Social platforms are also bad for many other reasons.

It’s not all bad news though because guess what? Social media is 🥳🤞dying🤞!🥳

‘But wait, if social media dies where does all the stuff I make go?’ I once thought. ‘What about the people who are occasionally interested in the stuff I make? How do I keep sharing with them?’ I kept thinking. ‘I mean I make so much stuff, and while most of it is BAD and NOT WORTH SHARING, I don’t have a good place to keep it all/share it anyway! I need a place to keep it!’ I continued to keep thinking. ‘DON’T EVEN THINK OF GOING BACK TO TUMBLR!’

Random Patterns is my attempt at building a healthier habit than living and dying on social media. I want a place where I can live (and die) online with dignity! A place to share more, but bother less. IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK?

Some of it will be about my music, but not all of it will be.

I spent the first half of 2024 pining for the days of web 1.0 and a smaller internet, reading about the Fediverse, hoping for Bluesky to pop off, and looking around for a non-platform-based web home that felt like a place I could live forever. I landed on Ghost. And after developing the vision for a while, I realized the goal of this place is simply to be the change I wanted to see from all my friends/other artists:

Creative people need to build and maintain their own websites, own their own work, and build our own communities.

Ultimately, the central question that motivates me sharing stuff here is: "What good can I share with other people?"

How do I follow for updates?

The best way is to subscribe to the newsletter here. If you want to keep your inbox clean, you can subscribe via RSS, instead.

You can find me on the following socials:

You can also email me at jk at randompatterns dot fyi.