The first distracting tunes of the New Year.
God, I love Ableton Live. At this rate I'll have the raw materials for a full album in about a week. During which time I'll also learn my next belt in Kung Fu, learn Flash, and solve the Unfied Field Theory (hint: the Strong Force is Love).
Highbrid
Annual Crazy Day
Friday, January 1, 2010
Buh-bye 2009, and the decade you rode in on.
Don't get me wrong (I'll get myself wrong on my own), a lot of good things happened in 2000-2009. Both for me personally and for a lot of people. Most importantly, all of us here are still alive and reasonably healthy. Far more than in any other time in human history.
But it sure seems that this decade had more than it's share of total freaking chaos. And lot of chaos-inducing crap that didn't need to happen if people were just paying attention. Yes I'm looking at you, Bush administration...and the just-over 50% of American voters who somehow re-elected you.
And what can you say about a decade that began with not even knowing who our President would be - for months?? A decade that is now bracketed on both sides with recessions bordering on depressions, a two-front war, and Britney Spears to boot?
In my own personal life, where my focus is probably more worthily spent, it's been a similarly crazy decade. Realistically, every decade of my life has been pretty crazy. But this decade, and in particular these past 6 months, have been especially ridiculous.
Reviewing the past is an infinitely-edged sword. One arbitrarily selects a number of years and examines them as if they are a cohesive unit. Rather than just a period in which a bunch of stuff happened. We still need to go through this process, in order to understand the present and then plan for the future - but we need to be aware that such a review can only be subjective. And very incomplete.
In other words, no matter what we guess about the causes, shit happens and it's done. In a real sense, the past doesn't even exist any more. Nor the future. All there is is the knife-edge of the present, expanding and contracting according to the scope of our focus. Just as all that really matters in the entire physical universe is the range we're focused on outside ourselves. We can focus on something as small as the fly on our hand, or as large as the jet plane we're flying in. Our focus can even expand to abstract concepts of impossible size such as nations, globe and species.
But no matter what bits of space and time we're focusing on, it's still just a bunch of stuff that is, and events that happen, that we move our way through and try to plan how to best come out the other side.
So, whew. With all of that in mind, I wish everyone (including me!) the best of all possible fortunes in this coming year, and coming decade, and all that moves forward after that.
Because life is beautiful and even existing is such a blessing that everything afterwards is parsley on the full and lovely plate.
But it sure seems that this decade had more than it's share of total freaking chaos. And lot of chaos-inducing crap that didn't need to happen if people were just paying attention. Yes I'm looking at you, Bush administration...and the just-over 50% of American voters who somehow re-elected you.
And what can you say about a decade that began with not even knowing who our President would be - for months?? A decade that is now bracketed on both sides with recessions bordering on depressions, a two-front war, and Britney Spears to boot?
In my own personal life, where my focus is probably more worthily spent, it's been a similarly crazy decade. Realistically, every decade of my life has been pretty crazy. But this decade, and in particular these past 6 months, have been especially ridiculous.
Reviewing the past is an infinitely-edged sword. One arbitrarily selects a number of years and examines them as if they are a cohesive unit. Rather than just a period in which a bunch of stuff happened. We still need to go through this process, in order to understand the present and then plan for the future - but we need to be aware that such a review can only be subjective. And very incomplete.
In other words, no matter what we guess about the causes, shit happens and it's done. In a real sense, the past doesn't even exist any more. Nor the future. All there is is the knife-edge of the present, expanding and contracting according to the scope of our focus. Just as all that really matters in the entire physical universe is the range we're focused on outside ourselves. We can focus on something as small as the fly on our hand, or as large as the jet plane we're flying in. Our focus can even expand to abstract concepts of impossible size such as nations, globe and species.
But no matter what bits of space and time we're focusing on, it's still just a bunch of stuff that is, and events that happen, that we move our way through and try to plan how to best come out the other side.
So, whew. With all of that in mind, I wish everyone (including me!) the best of all possible fortunes in this coming year, and coming decade, and all that moves forward after that.
Because life is beautiful and even existing is such a blessing that everything afterwards is parsley on the full and lovely plate.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
More Live Living
Or at least, the creation of another piece of musical life. An ambient loop, that I find soothing in a disturbing way. Or is it disturbing in a soothing way? Perhaps it's best described as hopefully unsettled.
That's how it is in my brain, of course.
String Things
That's how it is in my brain, of course.
String Things
Anonymustarded
The condition of being deliberately unknown and covered with mustard due to possibly congenital slowness.
Live Life
I had a 104 degree fever for a couple of days. This gave me some time to reevaluate the amount of time I have spent playing Warcraft. In short, fuck that. So I'm replacing that time with something a bit more productive. At least, involved with music production. This has involved getting more familiar - that is, at all familiar with - the program Ableton Live.
It's an all-around monster of sorts, with its core focused on live electronic performance via loops, songs, midi, and any physical instrumentation you want to plug into it.
So far engaging this beast has resulted in a couple of fun beats:
This is only a test 5
This is only a test 6
And so I have sat here a couple of hours this morning, after waking up early, installing software and flying around the Internet, getting this tutorial and that preset and the other patch. And for what?
To enjoy myself. : )
There's so many other projects I either love or hate but want to finish. But this is just pure fun in the moment right now, with the added far-off possibility of performance in the future - which is just completely teh awesome.
Does life get harder or easier as we get older? Both, I'd say. You have more physical energy and an easier recovery time when you're younger, but when you're older you know more both about the world and yourself, that can help you focus and marshal your energy the better.
But within this earned seriousness, sometimes one can forget to cultivate fun in one's life. And then turn around, seemingly suddenly, to find out you're marching forward in a barren field. That's no freaking fun at all.
It seems safe to say that, with my ideADDiction, that at least is an unlikely fate.
It's an all-around monster of sorts, with its core focused on live electronic performance via loops, songs, midi, and any physical instrumentation you want to plug into it.
So far engaging this beast has resulted in a couple of fun beats:
This is only a test 5
This is only a test 6
And so I have sat here a couple of hours this morning, after waking up early, installing software and flying around the Internet, getting this tutorial and that preset and the other patch. And for what?
To enjoy myself. : )
There's so many other projects I either love or hate but want to finish. But this is just pure fun in the moment right now, with the added far-off possibility of performance in the future - which is just completely teh awesome.
Does life get harder or easier as we get older? Both, I'd say. You have more physical energy and an easier recovery time when you're younger, but when you're older you know more both about the world and yourself, that can help you focus and marshal your energy the better.
But within this earned seriousness, sometimes one can forget to cultivate fun in one's life. And then turn around, seemingly suddenly, to find out you're marching forward in a barren field. That's no freaking fun at all.
It seems safe to say that, with my ideADDiction, that at least is an unlikely fate.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Force Walk With Me
Apparently David Lynch had the opportunity to direct Return of the Jedi, and turned it down. http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2009/12/what_if_david_lynch_directed_r.php
Let's imagine:
...........
wooo. This might take some time.
All i've got so far is a horrific incest between Darth Vader and Luke. Which is dark enough to be right up Lynch's alley.
Let's imagine:
...........
wooo. This might take some time.
All i've got so far is a horrific incest between Darth Vader and Luke. Which is dark enough to be right up Lynch's alley.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
A snippy musical snippet
So I was flying back from Florida for Thankgsgiving, with a cranky baby on crank crying for almost the whole way. When the baby was catching it's breath between bouts and I started to almost have some rest, the pilot would fire up the PA and tell us about the prefab food available for sale to amateur masochists.
So I pulled out my laptop, put on my headphones and wrote this loop - "Is it wrong to feel this way?"
I don't know if I'll ever do anything with it. But it damn sure felt good to write it - even if only because the headphones drowned out the crying outside. And the crying inside too.
So I pulled out my laptop, put on my headphones and wrote this loop - "Is it wrong to feel this way?"
I don't know if I'll ever do anything with it. But it damn sure felt good to write it - even if only because the headphones drowned out the crying outside. And the crying inside too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)