Smunk Pad - Cinestatic Research

::Cinestatic::
::Smunk Pad::

::Tuesday, October 21, 2003::

㉪

Spotting things on Scales

Yes, maybe you can slow down time, but how much does that mean? In music the oscillations occur and interfere across a continuous range of scales - from microtimbres to the traditions spanning millennia. A note is a note because it is a repeated waveform. The gradual change of a tone is brought about by progressive modifications of the waveform. In the same way, a song - say 'intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-middle 8-chorus-chorus' is a wave form, and this is subject to mutations in the same way. Where a note can evolve over microseconds, a form can evolve over decades.

And this hardly needs any conscious intervention at all... The memes (for methods of working, 'pleasing forms', scales, modes, cadences, rhythms, ways to play instruments etc...) are spread through teaching and the musicians' experience - they attach themselves to new hosts and simply through the process of inexact copying, music is able to evolve on its own. But this is beside the point for what I am trying to describe here.

The magic comes from the interactions not just within scales (that is, a sequence of notes, a changing time signature, formal variations, plucking one moment and bowing the next - scales in the sense of 'zooming in and out' - in the sense of looking at fractals) - not only within scales, but also between scales. You don't have a finite set of scales to look at - it's a continuum (even if you delineate the music into a 'song' and choose some minimum resonant frequency detectable by the human ear) - and time is continuous too - you can never predict how the scales interact. The interaction must occur through repetition - the tiny mandelbrots as you go deeper and deeper - the same but different, and resonances - a form resonating with a texture, a set of weaving melodies becoming a single complex tone. A piece of music is a 'set' in a way (heading into abstract mathematics now, which I don't know that much about - I'm a practical theoretician - a physicist - but, as silly maths was eventually usefully applied to physics, so I imagine that the language can be somehow applied to the understanding of music) (though the fascination I have with music is its stubborn unexplainability; like all the best unexplainable things, it teases you with glimpses of clarity which are swallowed as soon as you try to combine them with the whole picture). A set of frequencies? A set of emotions? A set of pre-fabricated components? Yes and no - it's all of these things together - abstract entities that are fundamentally utterly different in nature - completely incompatible, yet somehow not only fitting together, but changing each other - emphasizing different parts of each other.

Christ it. This won't fit into words. I can see this model in my head but it won't come out on paper. I'm trying to explain the beauty of dimensions weaving into together into a one-ness - a tangible 'whole' that you look inside, look from inside - not just 'from another angle' - a form that will still surprise - that resists understanding... Something beautiful anyway.

I think the practice is easier than the theory.

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3:57:31 PM :: permalink
Comments: [skip] [hide]
I just noticed you're aiming at 'musicial (sic) stardom' - can you elucidate?

[ pW 21/10/2003 19:25:23]

Pedanting swine! Hmmm. What do I mean by musicial superstardom..? I guess I was mainly setting up a contrast. A silly dichotomy. Fuck it - we'll see - I've sent out demos now. For the first time. It's important to me that my music is accessible, as we have discussed in previous posts. I don't want music that alienates people before they get a chance to give it a chance. People are so busy. Not many have time to explore music the way we do.

Etc... etc...

[ Mike 21/10/2003 22:53:01]

Care to comment?
Keywords: Music

::Thursday, October 16, 2003::

㊕

By repeating things...

...we can slow down time.

Well - it's just a thought really. If you can't spot something the first time, do the thing you did again and see if you can spot it the next time. If time was going slow, you'd have more time to spot the things, and you wouldn't have to keep repeating the observation. It's like an oscilloscope - you have to get it in phase with the regular part of the oscillations so that you can examine for oscillations within those oscillations, and so on. If you could just watch the whole wave as it happened, you wouldn't have to bother looping it.

What I mean is - Is there some way in which repetition in music has this time slowing effect - or is it a more general distortion of time? I mean - music is definitely to do with time. Maybe it's because there is so much in music, the repetition is the only way to make sense of it all - giving people a chance at seeing all the details. Maybe...

:.
1:14:30 AM :: permalink
Comments: [skip] [hide]
a point becomes a line becomes a plane becomes... (a drop is the ocean)

[ pW 17/10/2003 12:12:13]

did you take a 5 minute break and get stuck repeating it?

[ pWpWpWpWpWpWpW 21/10/2003 14:50:31]

Nah - I was watching my housemate play Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 in slow motion...

[ MikeMikeMikeMikeMike 21/10/2003 15:11:26]

But don't you end up with a timeless thing that resonates through your being once you have absorbed it? That time is just the fractured medium of introduction? i.e. there on one level but ona virtual level of contact and knowing .. not??

[ al 06/11/2003 18:08:06]

Again, resonance is a temporal phenomenon. You're just talking about a tune going through your head. As Hofstadter says in Le Ton Beau de Marot, music is a funny thing in that when you have something in your head, you have to hear it to get the fix. That's when the shivers go through your body- that's the eargasm. Without time there would be no music. Not as we know it anyway [I've spoken to you before on my opinion that music doesn't necessarily have to involve sound - that it is perfectly conceivable to me that aliens might have some other way of experiencing such modulations - I certainly think that oscillations in air are less fundamental to the nature of music than Time... And we have other artforms that operate in our spacial dimensions - static things to look at]. Time is an all important dimension of our 'being'. Entropy, Change, Life - inescapable forward momentum is a beautiful constraint on our existence - a canvas through which incalculable complexities inevitable arise - an Order in which to implant Disorder. It is a luxury and a curse. Simple, but effective. A painting is static. A moving sculpture is basically repetitive. Films, according to my way of thinking, have an extra couple of dimensions of artistic scope (i.e. pictures as well as sound) but maybe that freedom is what makes films seldom as resonant and persistent in the imheadination as music. Music is not some magical artform that transcends reality and existence. It is the artform that resonates with certain modes of experience - it exploits certain aspects of humanity that could easily be described as weaknesses. Anyway, returning to the point: "Timeless thing that resonates" is an oxymoron. 2. "once you have absorbed it" - we don't 'absorb' music - we experience it - the only way I could see the term 'absorb' have any relevance is in terms of repeating it - i.e. ripping off someone else's tune without realising. It elicits feelings, but so do lots of other kinds of experiences. Virtual level of contact? Describe to me an atemporal virtual experience. Lorne Lorne Lorne Lorne Lorne

[ Mike 07/11/2003 01:01:29]

I am not saying that linear time does not exist, and that is isn�t the way in which we process data (sound etc). The point I want to make is to do with where that song goes after you�ve heard it and where it is as you are hearing it (from all its tendrillian deposits through space-time), how once you have heard it, it is not immediately over, it is not a case of you forget each moment as you move on and then you reach the end and forget the whole thing (and I am not talking about that other fucking nightmare �memory�) All I am trying to point out is that part of the way in which there are more dimensions than we realize is that the energetic things we contact � are only constrained to existence in time by part of our trapped mode of perceiving. Once that song has finished � you have �downloaded� the whole thing. You do not have to play it back from start to finish to have its intensity with you. You are making contact with a specific set of modes of engagement (intensities); the specifics of the person�s voice that day, the air within the room as they sung etc. And so are you making contact with the modulated tone of their exertion/expression (the sound � also co-mutated by the former), but you are also making contact with �non sonorous forces� that are finding expression in that piece (often globally labeled in terms of the emotions of the piece, but that must also be thought of on the micro-political level of the piece�s context in its world, its artist�s world, the medium � is it breaking free? What does it transmit? What is it within a world of human /machinic expressions that have different species of intensity (ie. Different blends of confinement/incarceration) Then these forces you are making contact with cannot in any ordinary sense be said to belong to time� (the forces) just as I would not argue that any specific modes I have which may be exhibited in time (e.g. how to play a good forward defensive stroke) are not as an abstract form existing in time� but are virtual sets of modes, apt at any point for selection /transmission /modification / interbreeding (did you say memes?) Anyway � I�m off 2do some music

[ al 07/11/2003 17:23:01]

What ACTION is this philosophy being used to justify? It's all rather controversial yet expertly self-protecting (the mark of a successful parasitic meme). I think you ARE talking about memory ('where it goes'). I think you ARE talking about 'the emotions of the piece' ('non-sonorous forces'). And if not, you can't just say you're not - you have to show why you're not! I can't debate this spray-of-ideas-disguised-as-a-point. Nothing here helps me to understand anything anyway, and that's generally what I'm trying to do when I talk about ideas like the one that inspired the initial entry here.

I don't know - Mark? Are you there? Can you join Al's dots for me?

[ Mike 11/11/2003 14:57:00]

What if the 'dots' are what you get when you use time well, i.e. they ARE time used well; moments with an afterlife. Joining them would mean approaching, through time, the timeless (the value of both thus being affirmed)

[ pW 11/11/2003 17:29:41]

I agree with Al that there's far more to nonsonorous forces than 'emotion' (there's sometimes group/crowd dynamics, relations of power, money, subjugation, but also emancipation, for example) -- these being at work in music, possibly at a more fundamental level than either performer or listener (in cases where that distinction is relevant). I agree that memory doesn't cover one's engagement with music -- there's much more to, say, the Mike-and-hip-hop relationship than simply Mike's memory of all the hip hop tracks you've heard; it's a massive collection of affects, techniques, style, movements, etc -- which of course bleeds into other genres of music and other nonmusical aspects of life (libidinal, social, political, economic). So in terms of 'ACTIONS' 'justified' by this philosophy, surely something along the lines of you (e.g.) deciding to do some (e.g.) hip hop would be an example. You'd be effectuating the hip hop abstract machine! Whether this is a better way of describing what would be going on than any other may well depend on whether you like the terms. But how you think about things will affect where you end up, so the wider the range of schemas you can employ the better, surely? The point I wanted to get to, however, was the time/timeless thing. While 'these forces you are making contact with cannot in any ordinary sense be said to belong to time' that's different from saying that they're timeless (as both pW & Al have said). Clearly, time is not straightforwardly linear and metronomic. Clearly music fucks about with how we perceive it (e.g. through repetition). Clearly the music-producer draws on modes (of which 'skills' would be a subset) and affects (of which 'emotions' would be a subset) that are virtual -- which is to say, these modes and affects are not simply properties of this individual, but connect with (are part of/are new possibly unique instantiations of) the modes/affects that have been and will be expressed through music (or nonmusic) throughout time. I'm just not convinced that 'timeless' is a helpful way to describe this, since as Mike's saying, everything that's interesting, everything that matters happens in time! Sure, 'timeless' might be useful as a term meaning 'static,' or 'not usefully placeable within a linear history of music', or 'starts and ends in the middle', or any number of other interesting accounts. But insofar as it's used to mean 'outside time altogether in every sense' it doesn't apply to music.* Not time versus timeless or even time + timeless but many different and complexly-related times. *which isn't to say that the project of striving nevertheless for a timeless music, or timelessness in music, wouldn't be interesting!

[ bruce 12/11/2003 10:39:43]

Damn, I wish my paragraph breaks had been retained. It would have looked so much more coherent.

[ bruce 12/11/2003 11:23:24]

To respond, eventually, to Mike's requests.... I think Bruce has said everything, really... Isn't it a case with music of making, not keeping time? Music produces time(s). I do wonder what we could do the notion of the untimely? Or what would happen if we made speed (or speeds) primary and time derivative?

[ mark 12/11/2003 20:56:00 :: web]

Good point Mark -- time as derivative of speeds. Distortions in time caused by music can be shown to be somewhat uninteresting if you imagine watching a big clock while you listen to (say) some free improv, some minimalism, some pop, some symphonic work, some jungle, etc. I suspect the perceived speed of the second hand will not seem to change at all, but this won't (necessarily) detract from the different intensities of the music... it just shows how dull and irrelevant clock time is engagement with music (or rather that we read clocks with a different part of our brain from the bits we consume/are consumed by music with).

Admittedly perhaps this experiment should be tried before conclusions are jumped to!

Will reply to your new entry soon Mike!

[ bruce 13/11/2003 11:29:50]

Nice line breaks.

[ Mike 13/11/2003 12:06:32]

"I do wonder what we could do the notion of the untimely?"
Please give us the missing word, Mark!
'Untimely' music presumably means something ahead of its time, visionary, 'progressive'...
'Timeless' music can mean: 1, that it doesn't date (e.g. it is less-than-typically compromised by the fact that its sound ages); 2, that it's amorphous/arhythmical/pure drone/etc; 3, that it's of a type or quality which establishes it as a link in a chain of consistency running throughout/despite/above those 'inconsistent manifestations' of Time.
The 'untimely' and 1 and 2 were not my points; 3 is nearer. pete

[ pW 13/11/2003 12:15:32]

...and "a type or quality which establishes it as a link in a chain of consistency running throughout/despite/above those 'inconsistent manifestations'"...of Music.

[ pW 13/11/2003 12:48:32]

Being deeply wary of capitalised nouns -- they contribute gravitas but very little in the way of semantics -- I'm curious about how you could flesh out what you mean by Time and Music, Pete?

For me 'untimely' is the temporal equivalent of 'otherworldly', 'alien' (in the strongest, most unsettling senses). With the above concern about 'Time' aside, I reckon you could be talking about contact with the untimely in your point 3.

The space comparison also demonstrates the problem with 'timeless' -- what the blinking flip would it be for something to be 'spaceless'? Perhaps string theory has the, er, answer in both cases.

By the by, does anyone know or want to invent the best word to describe the spatial equivalent of 'anachronism'?

[ bruce 13/11/2003 14:00:46]

correction: > I reckon you could be talking about contact with the untimely in your point 3 ...if you'd agree to a substantial injection of uncanniness. Actually, I suspect the inconsistent manifestations are the interesting bits!

[ bruce 13/11/2003 15:09:24]

"I do wonder what we could do the notion of the untimely?" Please give us the missing word, Mark! Jeez, you are a pedant. :-) But, sorry, yes, the missing word is obviously 'with'. Bruce is right. The untimely can't simply be what is ahead of time; that still subordinates it to a chronic logic. It is what can never be assimilated into (chronic) time, what will always be uncanny and anachronistic. The 'uncanny anacrhonistic' strikes me as a brilliant definition of the untimely... Anachronism so much more interesting than the 'timeless'....

[ mark 13/11/2003 20:35:03 :: web]

Yesterday I went out into the garden and felt the earth beneath my feet.
Today, in the same place and beneath the same feet, I felt the Earth.
Why refuse 'gravitas' as semantic function? A) 'earth': a localised and arbitrary sample of B -
B) 'Earth': the sphere-body or spiral-body...
...where A is 'within my experience' and I am within B's.
Same difference for the earlier use of time/Time.
The capitalised 'Music' I take back as a cackhanded aesthetic misjudgement: thanks bruce! Pete

[ pW 14/11/2003 09:44:23]

"The untimely...is what can never be assimilated into (chronic) time"
Nonetheless, the 'subjects of temporal existence' will stick a date on it!

[ pW 14/11/2003 10:29:44]

So enthused I'm gonna bullet-point my responses.
Earth is a proper name of a particular planet (which is quite earthy in some places), whereas the difference between time and Time (and space and Space) is rather more up for grabs.
Strikes me as entirely appropriate for moments of contact with the untimely (singularities?) to be dated!
I was distinguishing gravitas as a semantic function in order to distinguish designation from rhetoric -- clearly a rhetorical device on my part, and also one based on the dubious assumption that the primary function of words is to pick out things in the world. In actual fact I suspect rhetoric is much more fundamental to language -- naming is subsidiary to influencing or attempting to control. To come over all Korzybski for a moment, it's not capitalised nouns that are objectionable so much as nouns in general -- they suggest identity, stability and continuity where in fact there's seething flows of hyperdifferentiation! (Or, more soberly, there's more change and difference in the territory than the map can suggest.) And nowhere else is the confusion of becoming with Being more disasterous than with 'time'.

[ bruce 14/11/2003 17:21:21]

I'm commenting outside the box!!

[ bruce 14/11/2003 17:54:16]

Bloody hell! Stop messing up my pretty layouts youse! (I seemlessly corrected Pete's paragraph tags earlier and erased the evidence. but now Bruce has gone and done it!) From now on (until I can work out some parsing functions) please stick to bold, italic and line break tags! (And links where necessary).

Loving the interest though guys! Who's gonna respond to Val 'upstairs'?

[ Mike 14/11/2003 22:19:27]

ahem -- my third bullet should have begun "I was refusing gravitas as a semantic function..."

[ bruce 14/11/2003 23:55:15]

Bruce!! You made everything go bold! I have closed the tag in this comment. You're lucky...

[ Mike 15/11/2003 14:02:57]

[ Mike 15/11/2003 14:04:21]

Check it out - I fixed it.

[ Mike 03/12/2003 13:54:18]

Care to comment?
Keywords: Music

::Wednesday, October 15, 2003::

㊝

Chattin'..

..wit me colleague on bashment, hot ragga, dancehall, culture - Elephant Man, Sizzla, Capleton - she met Antony B - she cousin produce Mr Boombastic... She hate Shaggy - he too up his own arse.

:.
2:29:08 PM :: permalink Care to comment?
Keywords:

::Tuesday, October 14, 2003::

㊥

:'-(

I miss being in a band so much. This solo stuff is so lonely.

Getting all the stuff in the car, setting it up in the practise room, couple of beers, making loud loud noise. Knowing there're people outside that can hear us. Getting the sets finalised, tightening up the endings, everyone together, excited... I miss having other people relying on me. I miss the focus, counting the days to the gig. Setting everything up, sound checking, riders, watching the people trickle into the room. I miss the nerves. I miss choosing a song to play before we come on. I miss the release when it's over - when it's Time To Get Drunk. I miss standing at the urinal and strangers telling me how great we were. I miss all the conflicts and tensions, the frustrations, the arguments. I miss being in a studio with only 3 hours to go and trying something that shouldn't work, and making it work.

But it's probably better this way. Me in control. Only myself to worry about. Only me to disappoint me.

It's just that other people's opinions matter so much more to me than my own. And when we agree, that's just the best thing ever.

:,-(

:.
3:22:42 PM :: permalink Care to comment?
Keywords: Life Rants

㊕

Music I like

I'm just gonna say what I like as an when I see it... (i.e. it's in no particular order)

What I Like
Beastie Boys. Cypress Hill. Amon Tobin. Cinematic Orchestra. De La Soul. Can. Sugarhill Gang. James Brown. Curtis Mayfield. Sly and the Family Stone. Stevie Wonder. (Yes - I'm looking through a list of vaguely similar artists and writing the ones I like...) Quasimoto. Dilinger. Pavement. Neil Young. Lootpack. PJ Harvey. Beck. Angelo Badalamenti. Ennio Morricone. Michael Jackson. Stereolab. Mouse On Mars. Miles Davis' 70's funk stuff. Sun Ra's crazy vocal bits (Space Is The Place, Nuclear War), Herbie Hancock. Saul Williams. Super Furry Animals. Yeah - Beefheart and Portishead - wow - eclectic man... Saian Supa Crew. Bogdan Raczynski (check it out - Google just found the right spelling of Raczynski for me from "Rayczynski" - try that in Word!). Ooh- DJ Shadow. Future Sound Of London (although it's been a while...). Steve Reich. Company Flow. Homelife. The Velvet Underground (sorry - I know, I know - Lou Reed's a knob...). Dr Dre's production style. Fuck- Raymond Scott! Edan (sort of). Louis Jordan. Latyrx. Jimi Hendrix (though I rarely find occasion for him these days). Tricky (Nearly God, Maxinquaye and PMT, certainly). I like the dub stylee, but I don't know any names.. The Fall.

What I Sort Of Like But Don't Really When It Comes To Actually Listening To It.
The Beatles. Coldcut. Jackson 5. Roots Manuva. Bob Dylan. The Verve. Mogwai. Tortoise. Yesterday's New Quintet. A lot of Miles' stuff. A lot of Sun Ra. Atmosfear. Aphex Twin. Spiritualised. Blur. Daft Punk. Roni Size. Dinosaur Jr.

What I Quite Like But (still) Haven't Heard Much Of.
Al Green. John Coltrane. Howe Gelb. Max Tundra. Ella Fitzgerald. Dilated Peoples. Joy Division.

What I Used To Like
Nick Cave. Jurassic 5. Black Grape. Skunk Anansie. Placebo. The Prodigy. Chemical Brothers. The Charlatans. The Doors. Supergrass etc..

What Other People Really Love But I Just Can't Get On With It.
Everything. And... The Smiths. Nirvana. That weird African stuff that John Peel always used to play.

... Christ, I don't know. There's too much, yet too little. I NEED SOME HELP!! Somebody get me out of this rut. I need something new. Or something old. I JUST WANNA BE INSPIRED BY SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL!

:.
2:23:32 AM :: permalink
Comments: [skip] [hide]
its me, betty barker resuming complete phase control mark 30years. having a celebrationgrief one year on 26th. hey check out some new zealand music. there isa new zealand music site and you never know you might just be impressed. They are all a pack of expressive wizzards anyways. I think it is newzealand music.com and they discuss some sort of derivatives from noise kinda stuff, um....

[ betty barker 20/10/2003 12:48:30]

Care to comment?
Keywords: Music

㉣

Hey - check it out - Captain Beefheart wears glasses!

Just like me. Look.

I'm on a mission of inspiration hunting on the internet. Blog searches. I want to branch out. But so far I haven't found much. I will put links here as I find them. If they're good. Wish me luck.

:.
1:36:09 AM :: permalink Care to comment?
Keywords: Music

::Monday, October 13, 2003::

㊉

Politics and the English Language

"It is easier--even quicker, once you have the habit--to say In my opinion it is a not unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think."

- Politics and the English Language--George Orwell

Just read this essay on Nik's recommendation. And very interesting it is too.

:.
5:31:40 PM :: permalink Care to comment?
Keywords: Politics

㊣

World of Ends

Here's a nice article about the nature of the internet. I chuckled at this bit:
'Perhaps companies that think they can force us to listen to their messages — their banners, their interruptive graphic crawls over the pages we're trying to read — will realize that our ability to flit from site to site is built into the Web’s architecture. They might as well just put up banners that say "Hi! We don't understand the Internet. Oh, and, by the way, we hate you." ' - World of Ends

:.
4:47:43 PM :: permalink Care to comment?
Keywords: Techstuff

㊢

Yep...

...it's all been going wrong again. New housemates required, mental things... just as I thought everything had settled down AT LAST...

I'm beginning to miss a mundane existence. I have no time for myself these days. New problems are emerging faster than I can solve them (well, at about the same rate anyway), and I'm still saying 'I'm a musician' but not really believing it.

But I have begun work on the live set, and I spent last Friday (like, the WHOLE day) making (15!) CD cases for my demo with my sister (Oo that reminds me, I need to buy blank CDs) - I am still moving slowly forwards, which must mean something.

I found yesterday when I tried to express how I'm feeling through writing that it wasn't enough. Words are too precise I think - too political... Music is definitely the medium for me. The live vibe is slowly coming into focus. You'll hear all my tracks very differently once you've heard them live [or (a)live, as Mark would say]. Still in the process of defining smunkonsciousness, but it's in the post...

:.
11:30:15 AM :: permalink
Comments: [skip] [hide]
Unlive. I think?

[ mark k-punk 15/10/2003 18:51:29]

I'll put the 'live' back in 'unlive'.

[ Mike 16/10/2003 15:57:24]

Care to comment?
Keywords: Life

::Wednesday, October 08, 2003::

㉥

China

leylop

Information flow - personal contact with people in secret places across the world - I knew it would happen, I just wasn't clear how. Yay for blogs.

:.
4:04:53 PM :: permalink
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I agree with what you said about the internet/blogs bringing people closer together. World blogs are interesting to read and you can learn a lot from them.

[ Jessica 08/10/2003 21:15:44 :: web]

Care to comment?
Keywords: OtherBlogs

㊏

My Awards

SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Society | The gold standard:
"The London borough of Newham's choice-based lettings initiative, the East London Lettings Company (www.ellcchoicehomes.org.uk) picked up the award in the e-government category."

Here I am, here. I got an award at work. And it's my second mention in The Guardian this year. Spank my arse.

:.
11:17:28 AM :: permalink
Comments: [skip] [hide]
Congratulations! And, er, spank.

[ Angus 08/10/2003 14:29:29 :: web]

Care to comment?
Keywords: Work

::Tuesday, October 07, 2003::

㊤

Welcome to the sphere, George...

GeorgeWBush.com :: Official Blog: "President Bush is scheduled to meet with his cabinet at 10:45 AM."

It's true. He's one of US now.

Now where'd my writing staff go?

:.
3:47:06 PM :: permalink
Comments: [skip] [hide]
pic in post, plus more pics... p

[ pWiseman 07/10/2003 17:56:17]

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Keywords: OtherBlogs Politics

::Monday, October 06, 2003::

㊜

Depression

"As more tangible problems recede in importance, the intangible shifts into the foreground."

By 'Daniel' in the comments of this kpunk.

So true, so true. Quite depressing, really...

:.
5:23:05 PM :: permalink Care to comment?
Keywords: Life

㉤

Something Free

I don't really know what I'm thinking about so I'm gonna do a 2 minute splurge.

There are things that should be considered in a live performance: impact of the playing of instruments, keeping things continuous, or at least without too many gaps. I want the audience-performer line to be blurred, meaning that I must engage with the audience/react to them in some way that means the barrier is not there that would result if I were to take the laptop musician line that is best travelled - the silent man twiddling knobs. You must be able to see what I am doing and see that you could do it too - it should not be enshrouded in mystery, as this will decrease its impact. I want you dancing, I want you to look at each other, not just at me. I want your hairs to bristle when I break a silence with a single tone. I want to set up expectations and then subtley twist away from those; I want you to judge that I am doing one thing and then to do another. I want you to be comfortable, but not complacent. I want the music to wrap around you, but not to cut you off from the world.

Another...

We're thinking about the gargantuan and the microscopic; submicroscopic, beyond nanoscopes, beyond telescopes, beyond red-shift and light years. Then we're thinking about how these things are the same. We're seeing the patterns linking patterns and intricacy disguised as simplicity. Earth, fire, water, protons, electrons, dimensions, dimensional motion. Nothing is static, even when it appears to be, but you know that by now. And if you don't, there's no point telling you. No particles in particular. Strands corrupting strands. The things in the blinding light resolve and figures emerge from absolute darkness. It seems explicable, but you'll soon see more and find yourself back into re-explication - explicate endlessly.

Don't affect the things. Don't affect the people. They're fine how they are, they're doing fine. Anything I say will only corrupt them. They're nearly there. Always nearly there. I'm always nearly there. Sometimes I'm there, but there's no there. Don't burn any bridges, don't do anything you can't take back. Then you'll always be safe. We want to be safe. We want fear to be small, and all things to be known by at least somebody. Someone out there knows what's going on. That person will keep me safe. I can immerse myself in the minutae. I can care about the things that impose themselves on me. I don't have to think about the big picture, because it's just a picture of a man who I do not require.

There's nothing I can do about that. I won't do anything.

I could do something about that! What we need is a revolution!

Oh, hang on; nobody's interested in my revolution. They've got too much minutae.

Yeah - I'm not gonna die. I'll have my body preserved in ice. I'll have my white cells replaced with new and improved robots - they'll flush out the cancer. I'll go to the moon on my 200th Birthday because I didn't have time to book a reservation anywhere better. I'll divide my seeing fingers until I feel that troublesome atom. I'll put it somewhere out of the way. I'll cry.

There will be a thousand me's. A million micromacrome's. We'll all meet up at the end but we'll all be different then. We will have loved planets and built living batteries. We will have flown between time, we will have met others like us, but not like us. We will have changed them. We will have shown them what they hadn't seen and they will do likewise. Or maybe we will all return the same, bored by all the black.

We will be like god can't imagine. We'll show him INFINITE. Infinite wisdom. It doesn't touch. It just knows. It just lets it get on with it and plays solitaire. Solo. In dumb silence.

All the strands are music. All motion and stillness is music. It seems to make sense, but it tricks you. Music is not tethered to airwaves. The medium is not important. It is easier when it just goes forward. Along a timeline. Just one line. Let's split time. Let's unravel it all and weave it together - let's watch five dimensions. Why don't we try that? Too hard? Well. I'll stick with 2D music then. Forwards backwards, up and down (no not up and down, IN AND OUT). It's just hard and soft with time to keep things moving.

I can't escape these melancholy chords. They keep becoming sad. Safe. If I'm sad, then I'll never be wrong. If I'm slow then I'll never run out of it. Careful - don't strain yourself. You'll be worn out.

Fuck. I still don't know how long I've got.

Don't analyse my subconscious. I'm in it, and I can't work it out.

:.
4:29:10 PM :: permalink Care to comment?
Keywords: Rants

㉤

The Correct Way To Live

Today I was reminded of the standard ways that 'people progress through their lives'.
Become progressively more 'mature', where age is proportional to 'maturity', where maturity means being less ambitious, earning more money, having a steady relationship etc...
By the age of 25 I should be getting married in order to have three children by the time I am 30, and I should at least be saving up to this end. Clothing should become progressively more serious as the years tick by.
I dunno... etc. etc. etc.

Having this 'wisdom' proposed to me makes me uncomfortable, bringing a conflict between the adamance that I am doing what I need to be doing to be happy with the way I've lived my life, against the knowledge that for people who have never had a passion, who have never tried to see beyond what they have been taught, will see my life as a failure. It is difficult to explain what I am trying to do, but the prescribed life-path that I am spurning is simple to understand, requiring minimal application of intelligent thought. Think only about Finding A Mate, Being Able To Afford To Bring Up Children, and staying healthy for long enough to be a Grumpy Old Grandpa. All other concerns are Childish and A Waste Of Time.
Once again, the onus is on me to prove that my way can work. I do make things difficult for myself though...

:.
2:59:09 PM :: permalink Care to comment?
Keywords: Rants

::Wednesday, October 01, 2003::

㊭

fUSION Anomaly

..on Information, among LOTS of other things... It's looking like I have a very lot in common with the Psychedelic Trance movement. I can hardly wait to read all this stuff! I want to start talking about this stuff again - the Singularity, Quantum Physics, Information Theory, Fractals, Chaos, Cosmic Ecology, Philip K Dick, and lots of other things that my recent Amazon débacle has made me reluctant to mention here...

:.
1:24:45 PM :: permalink Care to comment?
Keywords: Religion Techstuff

㊝

'Doesn't time fly?'

"I've worked here for nineteen years!" said the woman who sits opposite me at work, cheerfully.

Please don't let the same fate befall me.

Hey - there's a picture of me on page 2 of the internal magazine today, in my suit. Looking extremely curmudgeony, the way everyone looks in these publications. Everyone looking the same, treated the same. It's blandity bland bland.

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10:41:19 AM :: permalink
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piccy done, just need decent envelope. E-mail me your address! p

[ pW 01/10/2003 12:41:30]

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Keywords: Work