| |
|
|
|
|
| |
::Thursday, April 29, 2004::
㊞
YOUR HUB A SPLODE
I'm copying all of the tracks off my laptop onto my 'big' computer, whilst downloading the latest Angel off of the internet. The little orange light at the bottom left of my hub is flashing like crazy! Packets are colliding! I hope it doesn't explode.
:.
11:11:39 AM :: permalink
Keywords:
㉤
Researchers
I made a referrals tracker last night and I have been watching how people are getting to Cinestatic.
The best one so far is someone in Australia who's Googled on 'research for "jesus isn't real" ', safesearch switched on, and come to Music and Religion on this very 'pad'. I wonder whether this person read my conversation with the mysterious "C", or just thought 'This isn't what I wanted! Bloody Google!' before hitting the back button...
I will be sticking a "top referrers" chart on the homepage soon.
:.
10:52:32 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Cinestatic OtherBlogs
::Wednesday, April 28, 2004::
㊓
Rain
 Returning from work yesterday I was perturbed to see the exit to Brixton tube station all clogged up with people sheltering under the leaking roof from the most torrential downpour I have ever witnessed. I got about 10 metres before I was soaked through, pausing to shelter under the bridge. Then some hail kicked off - there were ice balls the size of hazelnuts and bigger! And me with no umbrella. I called Rachael to find she was waiting in the station; she ran out to meet me and we decided to take shelter in Sainsbury's. 15 minutes of procrastination later it was STILL hammering away. Then I remembered that my flat is prone to a leaking roof under these circumstances, so we set off into the flood with a sense of urgency derived from my desire NOT to return to a drenched, short-circuited collection of electronic instruments and applicances. We made it across Atlantic road to the next bridge, sodden once more, heavy traffic pushing vast tides of water in our direction every few seconds, my concerns transferring to the welfare of my phone and PDA. Bag turned over, phone placed in back pocket we made another few feet to the entrance of the Beehive and sheltered with a cursing man who was desperate to find a taxi. He bravely ventured out (to a good old soaking) and we helped a middle aged lady to open her umbrella (she was having trouble with the clasp). "You want to hold on to THAT", I telled her, implying that umbrella-theft was currently the number-one most likely opportunistic criminal annoyance. She didn't hear me, but we sent her out with umbrella open. Don't know how far she made it. To be honest, my glasses were so covered in water, no dry clothing left to wipe them, the world had become a noisy blur.
We made another run for it, splashing through puddles two inches deep, to find that some helpful soul had put up some signs to indicate that the pedestrian crossing was "out of service". Well, yeah - the water was nearly a foot deep - boats and swimmers only! We walked along Brixton road, hoping to find a place where the water was a bit shallower, but four minutes later it became apparent that the whole of Brixton Road had been transmogrified into a river, and not having gleaned any bridge-building skills from the tv-survival shows of Ray Mears and the likes, it became apparent that the only way we were gonna get home was by wading. The downpour had slowed down a bit by then at least. We went back to the first crossing and made a break for it. I had considered removing my shoes, but the prospect of all that sewage, chicken bones and used syringes against my feet was not entirely appealing. One brave fellow hopped across, feet darting in and out of the water, and we soon followed his example. It wasn't as bad as I'd expected - our trousers and shoes got soaked through, but the socks took most of the wetness and we were through the door and pulling them off before our feet got too saturated.
Thankfully, the ceiling drippage was minimal. A builder had been around earlier in the day in response (at last) to our complaints a couple of weeks ago that my housemate's possessions had all been soaked from the last downpour by water dripping through the light fittings. Not much consolation to Jon, who had already been screwed by the rain, but thankfully there were no electrical casualties.
The landlord came round and breathed a sigh of relief that his property was okay, "In the fourty years I've lived in this country I've never seen anything like this!". Apparently, during that storm in the 80's our ceiling and the ceiling below had both come down...
Unfortunately, the evil-church's glass roof was spared. Dammit.
:.
1:36:48 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Life
㉰
Angel Review: 5x18 Origin
Angel is earning his redemption (and about time too!)
Just finished watching an absolutely tremendous new episode of Angel. My head's racing just like it used to when I saw certain episodes of Buffy for the first time...
Click here to show the review (right here on this page - it's a hidden 'div') unless you haven't seen it yet. I think you should watch it if you possibly can.
What has this episode done? It's unlocked vast swathes of character history that have been locked away for months by memory erasures and network pressure to make the show more accessible. Characters have been fractions of themselves for a long time now - so many events of the last few years cancelled out by Angel's removal of Connor from the timeline - why is Wesley still the miserable one? What in god's name happened, if it wasn't all tied up with the multi-season spanning arc of Angel's mysterious fatherhood? It's like being back outside - the claustrophobia of the last 17 episodes is suddenly stripped away and, like Wesley and (not)Fred on the rooftop, we're less 'trapped indoors - locking ourselves in boxes', we're free. We're creatively FREE again. And the really fucking clever bit is the way they've done it without taking ANYTHING away - you've got to respect writers with such integrity - I mean - how does anybody even begin to imagine how to untangle a problem like this? Yet they can still do it. Because they are so audacious that probably ANYTHING can be deduced. I'm suddenly thinking: "what the hell IS Connor, anyway?!" - hey, maybe Connor and Illyria could get it on - you know, Connor being a kinda 'virgin birth' and all..
Let's just remember what happened: experiments on Spike - the funny stuff with Illyria (who was in the credits for this episode, unlike Connor who only popped up as a guest star credit), "I'd like to keep Spike as my pet.". Although I wish she'd stop waggling her head about like that all the time (you're not '7 of 9' here, Amy!) , Illyria's written funny enough to showcase Acker's unseen-until now-ability to deliver ludicrously humerous lines, almost as deadpan as a Cordelia. "Your body warms..." (is she detecting that reality has been changed? is she sensing that connor has a strangely exaggerated warnth towards Angel, and is going she to ask why? no...), (to everyone else) "this one is lusting after me" "Oh - no it's just, uh... it's the outfit... " Oh, the embarrassment. Poor kid.
We've got Gunn trapped in a hell dimension. He's changed, he's not taking any more deals - it's true atonement - he's a good man - we can forgive him - and he's a badass. We've got Spike - yes, he's spent so much time being comic relief we'd forgotten how funny it can be! "and three, don't touch the clip-board".
Sahjan! How great was it to see him again (coming out of the urn "I will grant you three wishes" "really?" "nah - I'm just messing"). Connor - Vincent playing the part perfectly, yes I KNOW it's kinda cheesy; the casual "oh!" rather than angsty "aaaaarrgh" response to discovering the 'calling'. He is as cool as Buffy - I NEVER thought I'd be thinking that! But yeah - you definitely got the 'super-strength' being physical, but more importantly emotional strength - that's something we always loved about Buffy. Cheeky. Good job reprogramming him, wrinkly demon IV-demon-drip man. That's if Connor IS actually gonna stay the same... Who is he?
"I built him" for me brought up the whole Connor arc - was this the man that physically created Connor?! Were they really going to finally explain it?! Nah - that was just another too-much-thinking response, just the way I like it.
The "Orlan Window" didn't actually CONTAIN the memories - merely allowed those whose memories had been altered to see the truth. My theory on Connor: he was protected by the mystical one-way bookshelf spell (the guy saidit was a barrier, and we got the visual too, Angel running into it like a buffoon) when the thing was broken, and he is now free at last (another great thought-entangling line, from Sahjan "you're gonna do a great deal for the whole concept of free will") - and we're free to stick with the more difficult problems at hand ... those being the impending apocalypse. (Or maybe it's exactly Angel's fatherhood issues that will give birth to the most powerful ending - Spike's kinda Angel's son, Wesley killed his father [who presumably was partly responsible for his trust issues], um - they showed Fred's parents... nah - they probably won't do that - I mean, Connor's parents were hardly real at all - not much scope for interesting showdowns there, not like with Holtz - yeah - they've done that stuff already)... On a second viewing, I concluded that Connor now knows that Angel is his real father, but only as a fact. The barrier protected him enough that he did not get swamped in memories of Quor'toth (however you spell it) or the emotions of his childhood - I think it was probably more in the way that Joyce saw that Dawn 'wasn't real' in S5, in that episode with the moon-monster. Connor knows he's adopted, but he's cool enough not to let it phase him too much.
So what HAS Angel done? He's changed EVERYONE's memories, and suddenly it seems like ... ah ... hangonaminute... that's a REALLY BAD thing to do ... Remember when Willow said "forget" to Tara back in Buffy S6? Remember how bad that was? Remember how TARA reacted? And now they all know. Wesley now realises that this is not the first time he's betrayed Angel... But he's so weak now - drinking constantly - clutching at the slightest hint of residual Fred - what does he want to ask her? He said he trusted Angel. But then he found out what Angel had done.
The subtlety of Wesley's entrance towards the end. Wasn't the Orlan Window floating above the multi-intravenous-dripped red wrinkly memory inventing demon a second ago? No - Wesley's got it, and the demon's frozen. So he must have pulled some pretty serious mojo to get that, but no flashes, just seeing him with it - you DON'T wanna mess with Wesley. Especially not with him and Illyria so tight right now... (who knows how THAT relationship will end... It's like Xander and Anya all over again, except that Illyria still has her powers...). Wesley is not afraid of Angel. He's got way better gadgets than Angel's ever had, and he's a little cleverer...
We hit a lull. But with five episodes of the Buffyverse to go EVER (??), it's finally looking like we'll get a finale worthy of the best-show-on-telly-ever.
Like Season 4 Buffy - when they all splintered apart and I couldn't see HOW they'd all get back together in time for a finale (but then they wrapped the whole thing up with an episode to spare...) - we've got a forgiveness problem. How can we forgive a betrayal whose magnitude we cannot even grasp, with so little time to spare? The end is upon us, there is no time for bickering - no time to grieve the trust that was lost, and then we don't know what to think, HOW to interact - without trust to hold us together, we cannot fight. Set that against the inevitable requirement of continued day-to-day living - will Wesley off Angel a cup of tea if they bump into each other in the kitchen? Man - I hate it when it's that awkward! And the only things I've ever known a colleague to do were merely small and twatty. Nah - they're heroes - they can't waste time with such matters - they'll just head on in and fight the fight - but what if the big fight turns out to be BETWEEN Wesley (good??) and Angel (bad??) - talk about grey areas!
The Senior Partners have suddenly become a lot more imposing: the new lawyer fella made Angel look rather small. He now represents the senior partners, and we are starting to see how senior they really are... This guy can make homosexual innuendoes in Angel's FACE without breaking a sweat. Like the power relationship between Angel and 'Spanky' in the first episode of this season (Josstastically put: "I have NO problem spanking men"), there's a real power relation in that. If Angel's Spanky, then I don't want to KNOW what the Senior Partners are like... Although it would make for a great quip from Angel before he kills him. Or maybe Angel will realise that he was gay all along and take him right there... Um, meaning that Buffy was a man... Um... so does that mean that Angel was female all along? So Angel's a lesbian?
Summing up then:my theory is that Angel turns out to be a lesbian, then he and Lindsey go to Vegas.
:.
11:50:04 AM :: permalink
Keywords: TV
㊢
A little progress
Insomnia-induced inspirations have hit with my live-performance brainstorming campaign. I feel like I have to invent the form before I can get good at it... A couple of little jokes from my brother reminded me of the importance of practicing stuff, and knowing that I have similar but long-forgotten faculties for learning 'parts' I can see that it is necessary to settle on something rigid, practice that, and know that the spontaneity will emerge afterwards. So I done splurged out a 'form' for a performance to practice.
It's not based around specific parts (yet), it's written out in the way that I imagine music when I am inspired at (and sometimes by) someone else's gig. It's a sequence of sonic elements, written out in my own language - essentially a checklist that I can refer to when I get up on a Thursday morning, bleary-eyed and utterly confused about what I should be getting on with.
Slow progress, it's true, but progress nevertheless.
:.
11:14:57 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Smunk
::Friday, April 23, 2004::
㉨
Changing History
I've got a great big Angel post on its way, but I've saved it as a draft.
And suddenly I'm faced with all the draft entries I've written and never published. Some half-finished thoughts, but more discomfortingly, all those things I wrote when I was drunk (and could hardly type) and have subsequently forgotten about. All those posts I started and then thought better of publishing for one reason or another... You get off lightly - or maybe I'm censoring myself (well, I'm DEFINITELY censoring myself - aren't you?) in the wrong ways? Maybe some of the wrong posts got published... But that's just the thing, isn't it - you can worry forever about misjudging things, but in the end what's done is done.
Got a blog? Check out your unpublished drafts! You might find out something about yourself...
:.
2:50:56 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Blogging
::Thursday, April 22, 2004::
㊏
Demo Page
Just thought I'd mention that I made a nice streaming player for my tracks - it's on the demo page (the jukebox icon) and works pretty nice I reckon!
- Mike
:.
6:35:22 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Smunk
::Tuesday, April 20, 2004::
㊢
The Frog is Coming Out of the (Beat) Box!
Okay Londoners, who's coming to the Mean Fiddler (Charing Cross Road) this Saturday (24th April 2004) night? It's the "Frog." launch party, featuring my brother, Radio 1 Beatboxing Champ "Foz". It's from 11pm-4am - see thisisfrog.com for details (they haven't posted the live acts yet, but I's got words from the INside, plus, it came up on a Google: here.
Peter's mouth features on "UK Duty Paid", available at DealMaker Records. Nottingham 'massive' in 'full effect' (I'll get me coat).
UPDATE: You can get in for £4 (plus, use the "Guestlist" queue) by signing up for the membership (like you can't handle a LITTLE more junk...) at their membership page. See you there then?
:.
4:52:55 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Music
::Wednesday, April 14, 2004::
㉵
'Dot Dot Dot'
Harsh, intense weekend.
I won't go into it here. You can always email me.
Suffice to say, I've taken a couple of days off work, so I'm here at home, half-dreaming - trying to make some progress on the Smunk stuff. Trying to work out what I'm doing.
:.
10:45:52 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Smunk
::Thursday, April 08, 2004::
㊏
The Collective
Messenger conversation that took place last night...
[Having agreed to do something together, and having ascertained that Soogie and Inventor already know each other quite well - in fact they live in the same complex...]
M:
So what do you guys reckon I should be getting on with?
Soogie:
you should start on your live stuff - get that laptop back on... i wanna hear more a dat ableton stretching. loud.
Inventor:
A good point. You have opportunities to play live - it is certainly something you should be thinking about.
M:
Weren't you saying I should get this website sorted out though? I thought your point about a Smunk Collective Microsite was a good idea - gigs are good for promotion, and since I don't have an album coming out or anything, I think I should at least have somewhere to send people...
Soogie:
naw man - you needs to get out into the REAL world! this internet shit's pretty ill, but ain't nobody can DANCE to it!
M:
Mwagh!
Inventor:
Listen. You work best when you're doing one thing at a time. You've just got the two of us on board and I'm not sure that anybody know's what's going on here, so you have some...
Soogie:
..splainin' to do, y'aw! i can't get my head round this shit. why not do a page for each of us and we can put our favourite tracks you done... i ain't gettin involved cos i don't know HOW all this works...
Inventor:
That is what I was thinking. If we do a page for me and a page for Shutsugi, we can then direct people with less eclectic tastes than yourself to a selection of your tracks that they are most likely to get on with. I think Rephlex and other intricate electronica accolites are more likely to agree with my tastes, while your brothers and other hip-hop afficionados might better enjoy Soogie's choices. Certainly at the outset.
Soogie:
yes yes - i got my picks picked out already!
Inventor:
So the first thing you will need is a Jukebox - I suggest using your audio database to power a Flash mp3 streaming device.
M:
I tried that before - couldn't get it to work. But now we got Flash MX, which lets you import mp3s at runtime, so it should be easier now. I want to show people where you guys live, too - I was thinking of modelling up your study, Inventor, and your basement, Soogz...
Soogie:
don't get so technical, people! i don't know what you're talking about! do you mean you wanna put up a picture of my basement?
M:
i'll do a virtual version.. that way...
Soogie:
hey yeah man - you can make my sound system look DOUBLE SIZE!
Inventor:
All interactive, suffice to say...
Soogie:
you gonna use that freaky wirey alien head thing? thats dope. you should put that in
M:
I may use some of the wire code, but I'm not sure I'm quite ready to put that up the way I always imagined... It can wait.
Soogie:
dam :(
M:
But anyway. What am I doing?
Inventor:
First set up your jukebox. Then model up Sugi's basement. Then implement the comic-book style talking system we discussed. That way you will be able to explain things with the minimum of labour intensive animation. I think you should do Sugi first, because you seem to be enjoying his kind of music at the moment.
Soogie:
stop calling me that! it's "soogie"
Inventor:
Forgive me. I was only trying to hint at the origins of your full name "Gaishutsugi" - 'Street Wear' in Japanese.
Soogie:
i got so much shit at school for that stupid ass name...
M:
Fellas! Look, I gotta go. I'm gonna get started on this work.
Inventor:
I am pleased. I will speak to you later.
Soogie:
aite. later. peace y'all.
M:
It begins....
:.
12:58:13 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Conversations
::Wednesday, April 07, 2004::
㊈
I Inventor
Michael.
You know as well as I do that the notion of 'self' is an illusion.
The singular "I" at the centre of your consciousness is an important but expendable construct created to aid your interaction with physical reality.
Here, away from meatspace, where identities are constantly blurred, where there is no longer a physical body associated with your actions that others might recognise, the notion of a single 'personality' is less important. We all contain many voices, often with conflicting opinions, many taken from different influences on our lives. A father's critical voice will continue to undermine his son's confidence regardless of distance, his whole life. We are fragmented, clustered, bundles of memes modulated by genetic predisposition and experience. There is no supreme central cluster that drives the body; ideas and possible actions fight for attention and those ideas that win are then acted upon.
I am not you, Michael, yet I have a rare advantage in that I remember your memories; I know the things that you know.
I see your potential. I see things the way you wish you could - I see that hard work will yield positive results. My viewpoint is unfettered by your insecurities and irrational fears. I will drive you to action.
We will make some 'dope beats'.
- Inventor
:.
11:46:38 AM :: permalink
Keywords: Smunk
::Tuesday, April 06, 2004::
㊎
Mwargh.
I've been feeling fucking miserable this last week. I spent all my time not knowing what I should be doing - waiting for people to get back to me. I don't want to waste time by doing a load of work on something that turns out not to be worth doing, but if that just means I don't do anything at all then I'm pretty stupid.
Now I'm back at New'm, and I hate it. I don't like working here any more. The same tedious statistics reporting, almost nothing in common with anyone in the whole office. An hour on the tube in the morning and another in the evening grimacing at Daily Mail readers and trying not to puke over the inane Metro with its "Letters" selected from a pool to give a "balanced view" of "issues" like "smoking". I'm coughing my guts out, and only cover my mouth because I have marginally more respect for human beings than spasm-inducing selfish microbes. The sooner my white blood cells annihilate those fuckers the better.
Religion - Christ-inanity - I come down my stairs and the church that shares my building has put their billboard halfway across my front door "Depressed? Tired of life? Etc? Come in here and we will take your soul"... Already scowling, the next thing I see is some aimless fudgewit holding a sign, with some pointless bible quote, like some "The End Is Nigh" halfwit - at the already congested tube entrance, trying to smile at blank-faced commuters who couldn't care less whether or not he "found Jesus" last week.. "I have given my life to Jesus. I am saved. I am a disciple. Blah blah blah. Now I don't have to think up anything myself ever again. I'm safe from my inquisitive brain at long last. Die brain, die." They never got along that well. That guy and his brain. But yeah - next thing I know I'm sitting with some bloke reading about How David Defeated Goliath With God (he's hiding these photocopied sheets of A4 behind his briefcase, glancing gingerly at it from time to time, hoping nobody can see him, hopefully ashamed, but from my priviledged position I can see exactly what he's up to) - I'm sitting with him on my left and some bible reading woman to my right, who seems to take a dislike at my sticking my empty fuckaccino cup behind her head and rustling a paper within her earshot. Yeh - I'm a terrorist - it's an empty-coffee-cup-bomb - you should call the helpline and/or "talk to other passengers". Too much like hard work? Well God Help You if you're right. If everybody on this train dies it's all your fault. What's Saint Peter gonna say to that?
None of my best friends are christians any more. I used to only have christian friends. Such a warming, reassuring, gentle an existence as it was, my brain got too inquisitive and now I'm here - not even an atheist any more - I'm just not interested either way. There are bigger, harder, more tangible fish to fry - the tales of Christ and his Demon Adversaries are no longer big enough to fill the yawning void in my gut - I don't know where I'm going and I'm getting fat.
I'll be twenty-six in June. Some would say I'm still young. Most of my friends would. I'm younger than most of them, you see. But I feel too old already. I wanted to be so much further by now.
I'm nobody in so many ways.
Look at my technorati links cosmos - I'm nobody in the blogosphere. Mark k-punk recommended me a couple of times, but that's about it...
What about at work? Am I anybody there? Not particularly... Yes, everybody knows who I am (right up to Director level, I've exchanged challeging emails with the head of "ICT", the Mayor has commended my good work) - but does anybody really know what I DO? I think they might get a shock if they saw how I spend most of my time here... If I stay here, I will stay a trapped nobody, that is for sure.
Who am I as a web designer? Nobody, of course. Who's heard of Cinestatic beyond my friends and friends of friends? Who says: "If you want to see some clever database-driven web design then head on down to www.cinestatic.com?" Nobody!
What about "Me as an animator"? Well - I didn't get too far with my film, did I? It's KINDA good, but who cares about anything that's not finished?
Flash programming? Some people devote their lives to that stuff - there are websites and websites full of fancy little pointless Flash toys... What are they for? Don't know. They look good. Why would I bother finishing any Flash toys? What good would it do?
Certainly nobody's heard of "Michael Forrest the writer".
Here's the big one though. Here's the one that twists me in two...
Michael Forrest the musician.
Who's heard of him? No-fucking-body. I've been hammering away for nearly ten years. I'm good. But no fucker gives a shit. Why should they?
Seems like I was doing better when I was sixteen than I am now. At least with Dionysus I was playing lots of gigs (albeit involving Doors covers, and the occasional Bon Jovi smash), selling tapes, getting radio play, writing songs in my basement, doing all the sound, making tapes from OctaMED on my Amiga, learning how to do everything...
Then I went to University, found a better band, left the old one. Had some fun. Didn't stick to a style for long enough to go anywhere with it, missed opportunities as a result, ended up in the endlessly politically mutating Gaijin, the music getting more interesting all the time, but the satisfaction proportionally decreasing. The gigging thinned out and the band split up and I found myself on my own. Alone at last.
Was it my fault? I don't know. Partly, that goes without saying.
Was it a bad thing? Is it a bad thing to be alone? To be solely responsible for the quality of my musical output? Yes and no.
I think I've always had a belief that the world IS ultimately a FAIR PLACE. This makes failure not a product of luck, but of skill. "Define failure" I hear you say. "Fuck off" I say. "That's just the way I feel".
I want to be somebody. I always wanted to BE SOMEBODY. I used to want to be the youngest successful computer games programmer who does wicked music for his games. I wanted to be the youngest SOMETHING ever, anyway. I want to be the MOST something-or-other at SOMETHING.
It's cracking... my head's cracking... what's that crawling out.......?
:.
12:08:46 PM :: permalink
Keywords: Rants Life
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Care to comment?
