2/29/2012
Leap day—a reminder of how our lives are dominated by clocks and not time itself. Davey Jones of the Monkees died at 66. Forever cute...
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The first video of existing music on specific days.
2/27/2005
Studio: "Thought Trains", conceived using E-G#-D-F# tuning, using a combination of natural harmonics and fretted notes, set against a polyrhythmic groove. *** Sometimes I keep revisiting things--in this case the tuning I used when I wrote it. It's my new experimental tuning to generate new material for Songdays. Also did a video on it recently (It was on the Rhythm By Addition album) Sum II: Songday will be a collective album where people will create music and audio art based on specific dates, similar to the date paintings of On Kawara. The work will be shared on social platforms under the hashtags #songday or #songdays and/or #songdalies.
The 3 main rules are as follows:
Photos taken on a 26th
*** What become evident in the arc of history since the beginning of the internet is the desire for celebrity (re: the "Artstar" show) and immortality and "tripping" on nostalgia. YouTube in particular has allowed a binge-watching of it, but also allows us to remix it, which is what I alluded to in 1999, a time when we were all looking over the edge of a century. 2/26/1999 This is the age of recycling ideas rather than inventing them. The invention is the way in which ideas are recycled and what their effect is. But I'm sort of suspect of how merely creating collages of things can ultimately be that interesting. A friend showed me the mp3.com site. I'm skeptical because I think the sheer amount of things to listen to will trivialize music. We're overstuffed on music just like we're overstuffed on movies, food, and gadgets. But on the other hand, I think the website is exciting from a global perspective. This way we can hear new music coming from all points of the globe. 2/26/2004 Browsed through the Tower Records store on Wabash. They moved all the rock and pop upstairs and put classical and jazz on the third floor. Thought perhaps I'd buy the new Bowie CD, Reality $18.99!!! This is why Napster emerged; buying records became extortive. 2/26/2005 They've got this new reality TV show called "Artstar". It's where people engage in an almost Warholian stunt where they try to get on the show, be harshly critiqued, and then get a show at a SoHo Gallery. This seems like something Warhol would have eventually come up with. (This has a very "4th Dimension" quality to it because once the gallery installs it, it will be relegated to plain Pop Art or "Meta-Art", because the "outside" qualities will provide the experience, even if they're merely representational paintings or even landscapes. I stopped making art in 2019 as the result of "medium nostalgias". I missed the rigor of composing. 2/26/2022 I have a terrible issue with "medium nostalgias". It's been a few years since I've made any art because I had a nostalgia for doing music. Now it's the other way around. I think the idea that disciplines inform one another can only be marginally true. When I'm busy playing music and my time and/or pitch sucks, I'm not thinking about seeing how making art will make that better. Maybe it will... *** What I've been doing with my Riffs channel is to quickly record my thoughts, yet is somewhat different than an audio diary. Somehow recording a video helps me think more fluidly. On nostalgias... I was thinking back to the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was a young musician studying jazz under Bill Russo, then started writing lyrics and songs as a result of the fall of the wall and the world generally convulsing. I was cynical about it all, and was too good to be true. In your 30s you start having your own opinions about things, especially history and philosophy. You develop a gravitas about the world. Lyrics are a way to voice opinions, whereas jazz has no vehicle for it really. I particularly liked what Sting was doing post-Police, interestingly in jazz context. For artists, this bleeds into the work. Generally speaking, artists tend to go through those kinds of periods, which became off-and-on, but never faded completely. Now with Photos Taken On A Weekend in progress, I have new "eyewear"-- a photo eye I can wear on weekends to locate the kind of photos that really feel like a weekend.
This is dated in the early aughts probably. Music became more visual with MTV, or we made the connection that multi-track recording is similar to film editing. Lately I have been creating videos for album sides as a virtualization of listening to a record while looking at the album art, which is so much better than playlists.
2/23/1944
Diary of Anne Frank: The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere they can be alone, alone with the sky, nature and God. For then and only then can you feel that everything is as it should be and that God wants people to be happy amid nature's beauty and simplicity. As long as this exists, and that should be forever, I know that there will be solace for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances. I firmly believe that nature can bring comfort to all who suffer. Oh, who knows, perhaps it won't be long before I can share this overwhelming feeling of happiness with someone who feels the same as I do. 20 years later a phenomenon of pop culture arose from the ashes of World War II. 2/23/1965 Beatles in Studio Two (control room only): 10.00am-1.00pm. Stereo mixing: 'Yes It Is' (from take 14); 'You've Got To Hide Your Love Away. 33 years later I'm in the studio: 2/23/1998 Another warm day, 50 degrees. Finished Ice Moons. 2/23/2001 Longing for a warm day. This winter has been brutally cold. Changing weather patterns are now becoming evident. The Post 9-11 world: 2/23/2006 Sunnis bomb Shiite mosque. Many are saying Iraq is tumbling inexorably toward civil war. (It really takes a dictator to keep the tribes in check). On-Point 2/23/2021 Read an article by one of the soldiers who was in the Iraq war and he was referencing a book and a speech by English philosopher John Gray, "Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia", written in 2007, specifically the bit about when the soldier was fighting there, there was the underlying (sunk) belief that he was there to promote liberal democracy. Without sunk beliefs (or costs) there would be no motivation. It's really a form of cultism not unlike what's happening in the US currently. Some spreads for this section. It's difficult to tell whether something looks and feels like a weekend, But a souvenir pic from the Trianon wouldn't have been taken on a Monday.
I had this idea yesterday for a possible book. It's essentially what the In Sum series is but is more gleaned from the internet and social media. But the downside is that it might not have any veracity vis-a-vis AI-generated stuff.
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