Now Everybody

Macro/Micro Music

2011-11-03T14:58:00.000-07:00

I'm be interested to know if anyone who does a lot of sampling for music works with the concept of scale in their music.

It seems like there is an interesting space open for exploring the size of different sounds and their production. One of the interesting elements of mixing and mic tech is that you can put yourself in relation to very differently sized sound producing objects and then reproduce them with maybe equal volume and clarity.

I'm not sure what trace of that act of recording would remain on a track, but I can imagine there would be interesting techniques for representing the distinction in scale that you're in the process of erasing. Might be an apt use of multi-media.

For the chaotic version of this, I imagine Tom Waits probably already incorporates this type of work into the clutter of his songs.

Blogger

2011-09-27T20:44:00.000-07:00

Blogger had been long overdue for a makeover. And then it got one. And I couldn't resist but come back.

And now it got another one! And it's prettied up my blog!

Still not sure what I'm going to be writing here except for occasional rambling, but hey, it looks pretty now?

Approximate Run Route for Today

2011-09-18T16:56:00.000-07:00

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While this was doable, I'm not quite ready to run this distance (~10 miles) in vibrams.

Or maybe I need to wear socks with my vibrams.

It would be surprisingly easy to construct a 1/2 marathon around Alameda. Tho it'd be more fun if you could actually keep to the coast the whole time.

The Great Outdoors

2011-09-14T18:34:00.000-07:00

I'm back from a 50 mile jaunt in the outside.

I know the title is a completely overused phrase in modern English, but reading the contemporary French philosopher Meillassoux recently, it gets used in the translation to mean the big outside of us otherness. (Unlike the big O Other, I get the sense that the Great Outdoors is intended to inspire an awe in us that isn't about not being able to have knowledge about it, but about how damn immense and without a need for us it is...That was a terrible sentence and a confusing aside, I'm quite aware.)

But the Great Outdoors is just that and I rediscovered it for myself going out there.

I went out naively expecting a fantastic zen aesthetic experience full of quiet beauty.

Instead it was that and my panting breath and sustained discomfort. I had a wonderful time, but a lot of it was spent cold, hungry, hauling heavy shit around on my back and very very dirty. It is an understatement to say that the Great Outdoors doesn't care about you. You're out there and you're tired. You're busy getting by. And perhaps that's the best way to be.

I didn't find myself doing all too much reflecting in the big silence. (In fact, it wasn't much silent at all since we mostly followed a river the whole trip. The sounds, however, were simpler, much less complicated than the layered sound of the city. The river roars. And then it roars louder. The birds flit and chirp. Thunder rolls and you think it might be a plane. But it rolls again distant, unaware of you and not even threatening.) I found myself surviving instead of reflecting. And not even reflecting on surviving. Just doing things.

Now, however, I'm reflecting away with gusto. Once of the interesting difference in this trip for me was that it was the first extended trip of my adult life. Meaning I was in charge of myself. Not that I did anything different per se, but that there wasn't some default person in charge were I do forget any of my taking care of myself actions.

Some quick notes:

We had a close encounter with two bear cubs and their mother right off the bat.
I hiked a bit of the trip in Vibrams quite happily (once because my boots had fallen, with me, into the river)
We saw a lot of deer trotting around our camps
We ran into three scoutmasters from our hometown
We were snowed on at 11k feet (in what we were told was the first snow flurry of the year)
We had campfires most nights that were lovely

Advanced Beginning

2011-09-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

I have two simultaneous writing desires today. To write about the massive living situation changes that I'm beginning to become adjusted to and to write theoretically about the concept of "advanced beginning" which is just one more iteration of my basic attitude toward life, work and whatever else..

Let's start with the latter.

I always feel like a novice in the things that I do. In part this is a personality trait, some inherent lack of full commitment or immersion in my current environment or project. But it is also something a lot of us experience. Link courtesy of my lovely wife.

One of my professors from my best—let's just say best—courses in my master's program once gave a rousing and salient speech about the harsh reality of permanent uneasiness in the academic world. Everyone is always off-kilter she said. You've never read enough. You've never read the right enough. Which of course I took to mean become an excellent con artist (which I with perverse pride feel I've done). But I think probably meant 1) read as much as possible always and 2) realize that everyone is always bullshitting you even when they aren't.

I've come to terms largely with my novice position. I'm in fact wary of losing it because I think it'll make me a better teacher. But I do worry that sometimes it becomes an excuse not to commit, not to jump full bore into project because of an abstract fear of failing (read: of everything).

Hence advanced beginning. Jumping into the fray; investing in pursuits with the wide-eyed naivety of the novice. A lot is gained from the pure effort of it, but even more for the simplicity which is willing to learn about an entirely new world. If I understood Heidegger better, I might be explaining a basic state of thrown-ness, of finding oneself already fully immersed in a world before you can even start to get your bearing (but I don't know Heidegger, so feel free to pretend with me or otherwise ignore that comment).

Having run quite long on the theory, let me just say that I now actually live in my house despite there still being a number of scattered boxes and not enough yet on the walls. Actually living there struck me most forcefully yesterday when I actually had a solid workday and got some good prospectus drafting done.

Some quick reflections:

It's lovely living by the sea (which I'm just going to say despite the fact that it's the bay that I live three blocks from...it is ocean water, it laps up in little waves, it smells right).

It's wonderful to live in a house that has both 1) classic style and 2) new, clean appliances and fixtures of all sorts.

It's the best thing to have a home and a wife (and cats) to share it with (or more appropriately make it a home).*

*I still want all sorts of nomadic adventures and aesthetics, including but not limited to, gypsy boxes, caravans, tents, rugs and all sorts of lanterns...not to mention the variety of peoples, cultures and terrains.

Pack Running

2011-08-31T10:40:00.000-07:00

I've become somewhat of a runner of late. Which is to say not only have I been doing a good deal of running, but I'm sort of invested myself in the idea of running. I find myself thinking about how it could be more a part of my day (as in naturally, habitually and not a cut out of my day for "exercise"). I'm really committed to running without music. I like getting to in touch with the space I'm running through and headphones trap me in my own little bubble. It's a bubble where I think far too much, about pace, about breathing, about time. Free from that imposed bubble, I still think too much, but it's a bit more rambling, a bit more like meditation.

But the point of this post is an idea I had recently. As much as I enjoy being free of musical accompaniment, I also love getting to be around people. I often nod in commiseration to other joggers passing me. I'm a social animal, I like community. So here is what I would like:

I want to run in a pack. It doesn't mean we'd have to do a lot of talking or even stay all that clustered together, but I'd like to get a group of people together and just go for a run. Think like a peloton of bikers. The bikers will fan out based on speed, ability or desire, but they're still be little clusters of like paced folks. That type of spanning is totally without judgment; it's not a race. Instead you get all the support of your group, the safety of numbers and everyone can pretty much go their own pace (with a little nudge here or there to slow it down or speed it up). For me this would be ideal. But I'm of my own ilk I guess.

(Side note: I saw a pack of hipster bikers late night a few months back and a similar idea struck me. There were a bunch of them, it was like 3am, and only some of them had lights or whatever. What got me was not only how fun it is to be with a group of friends all doing the same things actively, but also how much safer it was for them to travel clustered like that. They were highly visible, even the one's without lights, and I'd imagine much less likely to get harassed at all. Pretty rad is all.)

Making the Scene

2011-08-10T09:58:00.000-07:00

It seems ludicrous at this late date to comment in any way on the hipster phenomenon, but I'm going to do just that.

I'm sick of hipster hating. Especially because "hipster" is just a painfully hip signifier that is owned by no one, applied to everyone, and always used with some spiteful, hip irony. It acts like a stupid empty signifier.

But it doesn't have to!

Hipster has become such a mockable/negative/positive/ambiguous stereotype because it's made to do too much heavy lifting; it's missing it's companion term: scenester. In the early oughts, the two terms were as yet unsettled and used somewhat interchangeably. You'd have your hip hipsters and your sceney scenesters. Back then it was skinny black pants (not yet jeans) and white belts. But it could have been anything.

Hipster was clearly the victorious term, but scenester still has its place. You see, hipster is pulling (at least) double duty working as the partial signifier for a self-applied identity group and as the term of distain for this group (and I hope it has been made clear through all my cagey phrasing and parentheticals that there is no stable group whatsoever, more like an aura of hipsterdom that clings to objects and attitudes).

Scenester on the other hand is more naturally oriented toward critique. "Making the scene" is inherently showy and thus has put itself directly in the path of critique. It's all about visibility, literally being seen, to make a pun of it. And thus you can mock and disdain scenesters because they've opened themselves up for public exhibition.

My hope then, with the application of this term, is that the hip can continue to be hip more naturally, without all the back-bending irony (because seriously there is nothing less hip than that at this point). And those just making the scene can be rightly critiqued (and those critiquing hipsters at this point are certainly trying to make some scene).

So let's give ourselves a more descriptive set of terms to work with.

Or, we could just all stop being mean spirited and make nice.

I don't think in text boxes

2011-08-09T11:45:00.000-07:00

I hope this blog isn't just an abortive attempt at returning to Internet writing, but I just don't think straight in blogging text boxes.

I need some more stable location to think. That can mean paper or even word processing programs. Or it can mean physical locations like a nice clean desk or a rumbling café. But there is something so unnerving about blogging text editors. Something so pressing about their desire for you to hit publish.

(And here I was trying to keep this from becoming a blog about feelings again.)

But this is where the generation gap is going to become most evident. I'm sure there are plenty of older people for whom computer thinking is much more difficult. For me, it flickers between productive computer interactions and screenic distractions. Sometimes I need to drop down to paper and map things with the fluidity of my writing hand.

I talk to my students about the import of medium and of knowing your own needs and abilities with various media. I wonder now if they are already on the other side of the digital divide happily finding computational outline and brainstorming softwares to meet their needs. I wonder if pulling out paper seems like going an archeological dig. I doubt it, but I don't think it's far off.

For me, a torn fast food to go bag is sometimes best. Or the delicate tissue of a bar napkin that requires you to sketch your thoughts with care lest everything tear to bits.

All this to say, I might start scanning scraps of paper and typing up transcriptions instead of composing in this merciless box.

I don't know what a blog is, but I have 50 of them anyway

2011-08-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

First result from Googling "fancy record player"

The only thing Ciana and I know about our new home is that it needs to have a record player.

The only thing I know about blogging right now is that it's a construction, a presentation, a stewarding of content in tension with something like opinion and self-promotion.

It's an odd bird.

I won't, however, use this platform to meta-critique the art of blogging (it is an art and it has a legion of artisans hard at work pushing its limits).

Instead, my (current) MO here is going to be reflective sharing. I'll keep it to what I'm thinking about and not so much what I'm feeling about.

2nd image "curiosity cabinet"

So, record players. I'm inclined to wax (pun) lyrical about their straight forwardness, their comprehensibility as an analog form in a digital world. But instead I want to think about it in terms of functional furniture.

The operative principle I want in designing our new space is operative principles. This is to say that the things in the house do something and that they do it pretty. (Being pretty is also doing something, doing a lot in fact and is as such purely justified in its own right.)

I know the parenthetical might seem to undermine the idea of operative principles, but really I think it just complicates it. But it is complicated! The importance of design to my mind is choice pure and simple. Intention. I am a half-intentioned clutter fiend and perhaps I would do better simply to admit that and move on with my life. But instead I want to intentional, operational, ideational clutter.

What's it all mean? It means that each things that enters the house (the blog) does so by choice. That it needs to sit on the chopping block of choice and be chosen or get cut. There will, of course, always be an abundance of things waiting to make the cut.

And you can expect as much from this blog as well. I'm at odds over order and chaos. Of excess and minimalism. And perhaps the fun will be the play out between the two.

Welcome.

In Medias

2011-08-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

Welcome back...me!

I've decided to return and reclaim my original piece of the web here at this blog. There is something in the air that's brought me back, some sense that after a brief period of being quite unsure what is and is not appropriate for the web that I can again reclaim my personal public voice.

I have a space for my work voice. But I don't have a space for the other part of me that might want to chat, invent and play. Undoubtedly this blog will present my most loose and baggy thinking. Fair warning.

I've grown to expect nothing less of myself.