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my lj presence - real blog at www.benthic.cc
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damn. i miss doing the podcast. i also miss writing here regularly. that hasn't really happened since i left NYC. i don't doubt for one minute that the energy of the city made me more alive and more energetic. go ahead, go back to 2004, 2005 entries. the quality and quantity of emblogenation there is far greater than this (though i won't listen to any bitching or disgust or mockery as to the what i wrote about back then). have i achieved minimalism? doubtful: realised last night that while i love minimalism and consider myself a minimalist, at this point, it's just a goal. damn. here's a great chameleons song, with some great lines and ideas, in a sorta-endearingly low-budget video and mimed performance. httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBjJIIn the chameleons "monkeyland" I shake my head and shiver I'm idly staring at the sky I have to know what is real Do I dismiss this with a sigh I have to know what is real Life's an optical illusion
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well, maybe you've been wondering what has happened to my podcast. i talked a lot about having some exciting stuff planned for my 100th episode (and around then), but that was in july. months have passed, and nothing. well, all of the exciting stuff i wanted to do, i couldn't get anything more than lukewarm responses from the folks i wanted to have as guests, so i guess i've scrapped it. the whole thing. i don't want to come across as all emo, but i've only recently heard from three people that they listen regularly, and i guess i just don't feel motivated to do it if it's the digital equivalent of a tree falling in a forest. my increasingly-irregular schedule must have clued you in (if you actually paid attention, that is to say), so i suppose one can tell i'm just not feeling it. in a way, a shame, as i've certainly found a lot of music i enjoy listening to lately, and i wish i had people around to talk to about it, to share it. that's the point, there: i wish i had people around. doing the podcast must have given me the idea that i would be creating a conversation with my friends (and maybe make some new ones) about music i enjoy and they might enjoy as well. that didn't really happen. no reason why it couldn't, but i'll look elsewhere for that. try a new method, maybe, something different. i still want the connection, but it's not happening like this. i'll have to come up with something else. anyways, i finished with 99 episodes, so some would say it is incomplete. i can see that. maybe it ends now, incomplete, as a reminder of _______. maybe i finish it later, somehow, appropriately. we'll see.
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maybe this is how i am undeniably american. i see the suburbs as a very evocative place. maybe it's because i grew up there, and had all my most influencing (?) experiences in suburban icons, but they're really quite mysterious. david lynch would agree, no doubt. brian eno, too, probably. the suburbs at night are amazing. after midnight, on a weeknight? they're so dark and lonely. there are these little pockets of light and warmth a streetlight here, a porch light there. houses sit, full of restful people, sharing a little coziness from the dark and cool night. the real beautiful areas are the edges of the suburbs, where they start to go rural. there you have fewer streetlights and homes, and more open space. those open spaces often fill with a little mist at night. at night, the land gets to be what it misses being. deer, owls, and other creatures of the night move around. this also includes the lone policeman, sitting in his car at a stoplight, guarding against the scourge of the suburban night, teenagers. the shopping plazas are quiet and bathed in the glow of their mercury bulbs. all that they can do is wait peacefully. they get to sleep, too. the empty parking lots radiate warmth left over from day, like giant sleeping beasts. of course there are suburban hells: light pollution has ruined the night skies for four generations of americans and counting, the days are full of miserable traffic and wastes of water, and they are far too insular & self-absorbed. at night, though, the suburbs are a surreal elsewhere, where mystery is heightened and things seem just askance of reality.
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hey Blog. so i've got a wackload of pictures from my august travels. (for me, a wackload is a lot...like about 2 dozen.) first i gotta sort 'em and tweak 'em, so i'll just leave you with a teaser. this is the view i had for a few weeks at my grandparents' on lake michigan:
can't argue with that, can ya? so, to tide you over until those pics come...Song of the Past Two Weeks: It's nice here with a view of the trees Eating with a spoon? They don't give you knives? 'spect you watch those trees Blowing in the breeze We want to see you lead a normal life
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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Mackinac Bridge from Fort Mackinac (a/k/a looking north to the UP): do you like how I stuck the flag in there, like it's a chee(r/s)y postcard?"]  [/caption] |
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surprising local concert action tonight: gang gang dance played at the bug jar (aka the hipster bar). $10, hellza yes, i'm there. shout-out to the prof who said "hey, you'll never guess who's coming to the bug jar?" so, crap, what a good show. i haven't seen a band with such good sense of rhythmic interplay since TNT-era tortoise. of course you had to dance. you had to. unless your hip felt weird from falling asleep on the couch (speaking from experience), in which case you stood there and tried to do a one-legged swaying gyration. you could tell this was a band from the same scene as !!!both are the same kind of chaotic-mishmash-party. i think they played for about 90 minutes, but there were only about 7 or 8 "songs". there were only about four breaks in music, including the encore. (also wonderful to see a band come out and do an encore because the crowd wanted them to, not as a foregone conclusion.) i recognised about 5 or 6 tracks, but they expand and alter them so much live. much more chaotic and glorious. almost seems like getting into them via the live set would be a letdown. the albums are just more restrained and composed, i suppose. as i write this, i'm wondering why i don't love this band more. the music is perfectly geared towards me:
i'll have to make it up to myself.
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i had my first lucid dream last night. i guess i've had dreams where i've realised i'm dreaming before, but this is the first one i made happen. it really wasn't too hard, but i already have an active dream life and pay attention to my dreams anyway, which is the catch. if you want to lucid dream, you have to be aware of your dreams even after they happen. how i trained myself was easy. i needed to introduce a visual cue that would prompt me to check out if this was reality. for the past month, for several times a day, i've been looking at the palm of my right hand and saying to myself "this is real". then, when you are dreaming, if you have developed enough of a habit of looking at your hand and telling yourself this is reality, you'll continue your habit in your dream. as you look at your hand, it becomes less of a statement than a question, though, and that's enough for your brain to catch and say "wait a second, this isn't real at all". at that point, some level of consciousness should come around to let you have control of your actions. it's a good idea to go to bed every night with an idea in your head as to what to do as soon as you realise you've gained lucidity: try to make it the same idea every night, something simple, but also something that is essentially impossible in reality (the old standard of being able to fly works well here). as soon as you come around, it's quite easy to remember to try what you've planned, and you only need to do it for a split second for lucidity to come around fully and tell yourself "oh yeah, no fucking way this is real". at that point, it's pretty easy to go do whatever you like then. one word of advice, though: i wished it was quieter. when i was asleep and lucid dreaming, i became aware of what i could hear outside my house. it was disrupting, and it actually takes some dream concentration to do what you want. at one point, i heard some kids yelling outside, and i (literally) thought "dammit, that's going to wake me up". about 30 seconds later, i thought "well, i'm awake now" and then 10 seconds after that i was awake. the interesting thing was is that i could feel the transition from dream consciousness to waking consciousness. also interesting is that i woke up very easily and sprang from bed energised. so, pleasant side effect to waking during a lucid dream: you already have some consciousness, so you're already awake, so it's really easy to wake. it was damn fun, though. can't wait to sleep again tonight. :)
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me and my brother and lord stanley's cup:
funnily enough,the photographer had technical issues, and i literally had to stand there kissing the cup for about 5 minutes. seriously. i think i spent more time smooching it than some guys who've won it, heh. (and, as it turns out, i was kissing the most recent ottawa senators win, which explains the jinxed photo.)
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httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-FmcfD well, no, i'm not going to write about one of luke vibert's classic d'n'b workouts, though it is quite the jam, don't you agree? i saw the anti-gay marriage brigade holding signs at one of the major intersections in town today. a bunch of psychotically earnest-looking young man wearing suits (and some weird red cowls, doubtless borrowed from beelzebub's supply closet) holding up signs that said "marriage = man + woman" and "honk if you support traditional marriage". i sat, waiting to turn left for about a couple minutes, and i heard not a single honk. whee! i read the phrase "gender sedition" somewhere the other day and i've been turning it around in my mind. interesting. another concept i've been playing with in my head is "emotional methadone". (that one i came up with.) depeche mode concert this friday. time for my ritual cleansing...
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(yes, it's best to do these kinds of things at 3am.)
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episode 98 how could you know that the moment would mean so much? barry adamson "everything happens to me" moss side story http://www.benthic.cc/podcast/podcast.x
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hey lj. sorry i haven't visited in a while. i don't know what my friends here are doing (mostly). sorry about that. i just got into this habit of reading RSS feeds instead of lj, when it comes to blogs and stuff, and i don't think i've looked at my friends list here in...yikes, three months? some of them i have seen, because i put all of my friends RSS feeds in google reader, but, as i realised a few days after that, those of you who have locked journals that i need to log in to read, well, those journals don't syndicate to RSS (which makes sense, of course). so i don't know what i'll do about livejournal. actually, that's not true: i don't take advantage of the paid (or free) features of livejournal anymore, and i haven't really used it in at least 9 months, so i really don't signing up again (i pay by the year, so that means i'm good until august). as for my friends on here whose journals i haven't read in a few months...well, sorry. i don't know if it's likely that i'll come back. it just doesn't seem like my kind of thing anymore. i had a hard drive on my computer die awhile back, and that week without my laptop changed my habits. i just don't want to sit in front of a computer now (especially as i'm taking design classes this summer, where i sit in front of a computer all day). i suppose i'll just have to put my best effort into keeping touch with you the old fashioned way. ;) i still blog, in case you didn't notice, over at my own website (benthic.cc), but i don't post like i used to (though i am changing that). i'll probably still syndicate those posts over here, but, well, like i said, i don't read lj anymore. just the way it turned out. we all knew this day would come. etc. thoughts?
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my hauntological place is all over america, and probably all over the world. it is the edge of town, the edge of the suburbs, where they start to turn into the country, on a cool, humid, misty summer's night, with everybody in their homes and most lights turned out, and stillness all around. i will always be 17 there. |
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episode 97 kinda legendary john barry "main title" the ipcress file http://www.benthic.cc/podcast/podcast.x
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RIT has been whomping my ass this year, and i respectfully, gleefully, doff my hat to it and wish another academic year adieu (well, temporarily, as i'm taking summer classes). ergo, i awoke late today and had a great day. for two hours, i read the newest novel by my favourite author: good to be god by tibor fischer. i got about 130 of the 300 pages done. tibor's getting less jaded...i like it. the book got lightly panned, but i know him and understand him, so i'm sure i'll like it. i met someone i corresponded with over email about a year ago and talked for a of couple hours, in an act of sorta public service/karma rebalancing. that went well, and it fully had potential to be weird and awkward (though it was one of the oddest things i've ever done, probably). i ran some errands, then came home and unexpectedly took a 45 minute nap. now, i never nap, because it really screws up my brain patterns, but this one bore fruit in a surprisingly vivid and random erotic dream. nutty. i created a handful of thematic depeche mode playlists in my media library. will be getting a lot of miles out of those, no doubt. i watched a french movie from several years ago on netflix that ended up having a lot of naked people in it. i liked it more than would normally be warranted, because it was bad, but swung around to the so-bad-it's-good end of things. i drove around briefly and listened to REM's green. i'll have an in-depth post on that album forecoming. came home, ate a bowl of cereal with blueberries and almond milk, and am now sitting on my porch. hello summer. :)
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episode 96 information kept to yourself is information greeting danger swayzak featuring kirsty hawkshaw "state of grace" himawari http://benthic.cc/podcast/podcast.x
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once again, because i love to enumerate... i've been working on a list of my all-time favourite remixes. pretty sure i've got it nailed down solid now. i started from a rough list of 150 (ahem), and i cut it in half and then ranked those. the actual list will floow at a later date because i'm going to do something cool with it but here are some comments: apparently, my all-time favourite remixer is the orb. wait, this is not a surprise. alex (and his chums) have done hundreds of remixes over the past 20 years. no surprise that he would lead the pack with 9 remixes. the impressive part is 4 in the top 15. the rest of the top remixin' pack:
myer, also no surprise. autechre, somewhat of a surprise, as they haven't done nearly as many remixes as myer and the orb. underworld and jack dangers, both definite surprises i guess i'd expect those numbers to be higher, considering the amount of remixes each has done and how much i like their stuff. in retrospect, however, i guess i just don't like their remixes as much. especially jack dangers some of his remixes are amazing, but by and large they're only ok. he does his best with the source material, no doubt, but only a few times has he reached a level of transcendence, so to speak. [edit: i just went back and listened to jack's remixes of a bunch of bands. updating my list is necessary.] other names i was surprised to see with just one are:
once again, i'll be posting my full lists soon, in conjunction with turning them into a neat little project (no, i didn't do a dj mix of them it's actually collaborative!).
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i have read many pieces lately on why facebook and/or twitter are bad. these complaints seem to have the same source: these services are populated exclusively of dullards who will waste your time. message to the people who agree with that statement: YOUR FRIENDS ARE DULL AND YOU HAVE NO SELF-CONTROL. my friends are sources of fascinating thoughts, have amazing creativity, and do interesting things. the content they generate and share on twitter and facebook is excellent! i have never felt like any of them waste my time...and if i did, i would either stop following them or i would have the self-control to step up and get away from the computer and do something. seriously, if you can't get off of facebook long enough to take a walk or read for 30 minutes, then it sounds like you've got some kind of problem.
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yesterday, about 2pm. bubbly german woman: hello, this is andrea [unintelligible] from berlin. i got your phone number from wolfgang because, umm, i will be coming to new york next weekend with my colleague and we are interested to do a feature on the restaurant. so wolfgang had suggested to call you because he told us that he would be in the, uh, the city on this, um, special weekend. but now i tried to call you to chat about it and to make [an] appointment for the second or third [of] may, um...but i didnt get you! [laughs] um, ill try you tomorrow again. ok, bye-bye. thanks! she hasn't called yet today. dammit! i want this to be one of those cool wrong numbers that turns into an interesting conversation. [i think it's legally sketchy and karmically shite, otherwise i'd post the mp3.] |
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