| Dreams |
[Jun. 26th, 2004|04:15 pm] |
1. It's my first day of work at a dingy basement record shop that
suspiciously resembles Turn It Up. I don't know how to run the
ungodly-complicated cash registers, which appear to be quantum
supercomputers. However, I have no time to figure it out because I'm
preoccupied by the fact that one of my shoes is inexplicably missing. When I
walked in, I was wearing silver pointe shoes of the finest silk, but now my
right foot is bare. Also, I've lost my contacts and can't see anything more
than three feet from my face. Brian walks in, looking for a book of Lester Bangs essays. He seems to have gained a littleweight since the last time I saw him, but I can't quite tell. "How strange," I think. "Aren't dreams supposed to be symbolic? It makes no sense for him to be possibly a tiny bit pudgy. He should be obese, or emaciated." Brian
leans over the counter and whispers, "Take the staircase from the wine
cellar; your shoe is in the federal bank upstairs."
2. I am in the employ of the Illuminati, undercover in a London theatre.
Hidden on the walls backstage, going all the way up to the infinitely
distant roof, unnoticed by the stagehands and ballerinas, are oil paintings
in gold frames. I am invisible, clinging to the walls, flying from the
catwalks Spiderman-style. Write down all the portraits, says my masked and
anonymous boss. I want to know where they are, what they are, who they are.
And why they are. "But what is a portrait?" I say. "Is a group of figures in
a fictional setting a portrait if they resemble friends of the artist -- for
example this Orientalist boudoir scene called La Putaine, Claude, et
Moi?" He grows livid beneath his mask. "You realize of course that
'Claude' is a transvestite," he says. "That painter was not a homo. He was
not. I am deeply offended." |
|
|
| I have a garden! |
[Jun. 5th, 2004|11:30 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Calexico:Sonic Wind | ] |
My mint plants, swaying carefree to the summer breeze, don't know it, but they will soon be harvested for mojitos.
Also now have tomatoes, hot peppers, raspberries, basil, sage, parsley, lemon balm, and Mystery Herb Which May Or May Not Be Oregano And/Or Thyme. |
|
|
| Top 40 |
[Jun. 2nd, 2004|11:57 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | contemplative | ] |
| [ | music |
| | see below | ] |
Top 40 songs on my computer,
September 2003-June 2004
(Out of 2550 total songs. #1 was played 64 times, #40 23 times).
1. Nick Cave: To Be By Your Side
2. Yann Tiersen: Comptine D’un Autre Été: L’après Midi
3. The Cure: Maybe Someday
4. Mogwai: Dial.Revenge
5. Coldplay: The Scientist
6. The Notwist: Consequence
7. Josh Ritter: Girl in the War (Shelburne Falls)
8. Johnny Cash: Hurt
9. Josh Ritter: Girl in the War (KCRW)
10. Tom Waits: Barcarolle
11. Leonard Cohen: Chelsea Hotel No. 2
12. Mogwai: 2 Rights Make 1 Wrong
13. Aim feat. Kate Rogers: Sail (Rae & Christian remix)
14. Mogwai: O I Sleep
15. Elvis Costello: Almost Blue
16. Full-Source: A World to Enjoy (twistfinger remix)
17. Gemma Hayes: Back of My Hand
18. Stars: What the Snowman Learned about Love
19. Cursive: Some Red Handed Sleight of Hand
20. Andre 3000 feat. Norah Jones: Take Off Your Cool
21. CMX: Myrskyn Ratsut
22. Pernice Brothers: Judy
23. Radiohead: Where I End and You Begin
24. Mísia: Paixões Diagonais
25. Mogwai: I Know You Are But What Am I?
26. Yann Tiersen avec Neil Hannon: Geronimo
27. Gabriel Yared: Syncopes
28. Josh Ritter: Kathleen
29. WAMH live stream
30. Coldplay: Green Eyes
31. Depeche Mode: In Your Room
32. Josh Ritter: Wings
33. Air: Alone in Kyoto
34. Air: Run
35. The Blue Aeroplanes: Journal of an Airman
36. Four Tet: My Angel Rocks Back and Forth
37. Hilary Hahn, Hugh Wolff, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra: Samuel Barber
Violin Concerto Op. 14, II Andante
38. Lhasa: De Cara a la Pared
39. The Postal Service: Brand New Colony
40. Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah
Notes:
I wrote nearly my entire thesis listening to Happy Songs for Happy People,
so all the Mogwai on this list reassures me that at least I spent enough time working on it.
I wrote a final paper fall semester on the Cash video (a deconstructionist reading incorporating elements of Lacanian psychoanalysis, if you must know) so that one may be skewed.
As for the rest,
well, maybe someday's come again. |
|
|
| A found poem |
[May. 4th, 2004|08:31 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Circle Takes The Square:A Crater to Cough In | ] |
A.7. Environmental sounds, presumed “positive” valence
category
The examples nos. 4–7, 10–17 and 20 are taken
from Sound Ideas. Sound effects library. Series 2000.
WDR/Sound Ideas, 1987.
The examples nos. 1–3, 8, 9, 18 and 19 are taken from
Echoes of Nature. Laser 1992.
1. Morning songbirds
2. Ocean waves
3. Morning songbirds
4. Water, sea shore, sea gulls, waves coming in
5. Water, splash; pebbles into stream
6. Wind and shutter banging
7. Ocean waves
8. Morning songbirds
9. Morning songbirds
10. Leaves, footsteps: shore, slow
11. Cat, lapping up milk
12. Walking through leaves
13. Indoor fireplace: crackling popping
14. Motor cycle, 1200 ccm, start
15. Ship’s horn
16. Clock, striking 12
17. Billiard room, atmosphere
18. American wilds
19. Frog chorus
20. Waves coming in, spray, medium
A.8. Environmental sounds, presumed “negative” valence
category
The examples nos. 2–10 are taken from a series of industrial
noises: Oldenburger Industriegeräusche. Oldenburg,
1988.
The examples nos. 1, 13, 17–19 are taken from Sound
Ideas. Sound effects library. Series 2000. WDR/Sound Ideas,
1987.
The examples nos. 11, 12, 14–16 and 20 are taken from
a Test-CD: Fono-Forum, SZV—Zentrallabor, 1988.
1. Cow-bell
2. Air-pressure polishing
3. CO2-welding
4. Percussion riveting machine
5. Circular saw
6. Punched card machine
7. Lever punched
8. Fast printing machine
9. Planing machine
10. Wood shaper
11. Twin-Tone-Sweep
12. Sine-tone 1 kHz
13. Jet of water
14. Kettle, whistling
15. Sinusoidal-Burst 1 kHz
16. Square wave-sound 6.5 kHz
17. Whistling polar wind
18. Chain saw, cutting
19. Fire Arms: Machine Gun
-Gagnon L., Peretz I. (2002) Laterality Effects in Processing Tonal and Atonal Melodies with Affective and Nonaffective Task Instructions. Brain and Cognition 43, 206-210. |
|
|
| This post's for you, Justin |
[May. 4th, 2004|05:52 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | giddy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Karelian Folk Music Ensemble:Ohotnichek / The Hunter | ] |
My local Big Y supermarket stocks McCann's oatmeal, Kerrygold butter, and Barry's tea. I am drinking a cuppa right now.
Just in time for final papers.
Grand. |
|
|
| Conservation of energy |
[May. 1st, 2004|05:38 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Neutral Milk Hotel:Oh Comely | ] |
Obviously, our head resident is not a physicist:
It is that time again...24 quiet hours officially began today, Saturday
May 1, 2004 and will go until 5pm on the last day of finals. All noise
within your apartment must be contained within your apartment.
Students found in violation of 24 hour quiet hours will be issued a
fine (minimum of 50$). |
|
|
| okay fine |
[Apr. 29th, 2004|01:16 pm] |
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
We all love to tell those we love that we love them, and to hear from them that we are loved — but as grownups we are not quite as sure we know what this means as we once were, when we were children and love was a simple thing.
-Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained |
|
|
| I'm a little concerned...about my future. |
[Apr. 26th, 2004|04:11 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma Variations) Op. 36 | ] |
I am writing three final papers right now:
1. Rogue translations and their implications for opposing philosophies of
meaning in language
2. The growing dissociation between pain and illness in society and literature
3. Recent research on the physiology of music-induced emotion
I think all of these topics, especially 1 and 3, are fascinating. I also think I am reasonably competent to discuss each of them in a meaningful way. But they are also three obscure corners of three (or two?) different disciplines. (OR ARE THEY?) If some sort of coherence jumps out at you, takes you firmly by the lapels, shakes some sense into you, and tells you what I should get a Ph.D. in, won't you please let me know? Sometimes I am afraid my interests don't line up at all with the opportunities the rest of the world provides. |
|
|
| googlism |
[Apr. 21st, 2004|06:37 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | The Precise Temperature Of Darkness | ] |
pruned for truth & fancy:
laurel is undoubtedly a species that has been the most widely written about
and that has aroused great interest at home
laurel is in john smith’s general history of virginia
laurel is one of mississippi's most livable communities
laurel is found along indiana highway 62
laurel is located in maryland
laurel is now always applied
laurel is far more than a summer job
laurel is a pyramid
laurel is one of the few plants mentioned solely in the new testament
laurel is not to purchase cemetery plots here
laurel is building
laurel is listening to thumping techno pop music on her headphones
laurel is a cab driver who inadvertently ends up on the same ship as anita
garvin after she cheats him out of her taxi fare
laurel is fed up with stan hitting the town with ollie
laurel is not a preferred food for most animals
laurel is 8 to 25 degrees centigrade with an annual precipitation of 0
laurel is also a contributing member of the kensington ladies erotica
society which authored ladies' own erotica and look homeward erotica
laurel is not responsible for personal items either lost or stolen
laurel is under way and we invite you to become a part of this renewal
laurel is soaked in this mixture
laurel is more of a counselor than a fortune
laurel is not referred to as a "compleat artist" for nothing
laurel is different and has its own particular specialness
laurel is it is a easy to get to
laurel is 30 minutes driving
laurel is sure having a rough day today
laurel is an excellent idea |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Apr. 13th, 2004|08:52 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | My Angel Rocks Back And Forth | ] |
today my mind is infected by two parallel, inherently monotonous
but endlessly varying concepts:
1. the phrase "Talairach coordinates" (a systematized three-dimensional atlas of the human brain)
2. Four Tet's "My Angel Rocks Back and Forth" (a "folktronica" meditation on repetition and broken melody, tiny concepts building to a narrative)
it circles 'round and 'round, deceptively simple, fascinatingly variant,
decaying towards precisely documented entropy.
We have shown here that music recruits neural systems of reward and
emotion similar to those known to respond specifically to biologically
relevant stimuli, such as food and sex, and those that are artificially
activated by drugs of abuse. This is quite remarkable, because music is
neither strictly necessary for biological survival or reproduction, nor is
it a pharmacological substance. (Blood & Zatorre 2001)
sometimes I am ashamed of selfishly planning for a year of holding patterns: sometimes I realize that giving myself time is the only way to find a life I'm not just tricking myself into enthusiasm for. |
|
|
| Pharmakon |
[Mar. 8th, 2004|11:03 pm] |
Pharmakon
The radio sky is not dominated by the light from stars
and, depending on the wavelength,
may not be dominated by thermal radiation.
parabolic telescopes gather sky
the sun rises for you as I fall asleep
in green bank arecibo mauna kea
5.1.2 Law of large distances
Another helpful simplification
involves the large distances and small angular sizes
of most astronomical objects.
and there is this field here with only red barns and snow
bare against the mountains
pulsars rotate so fast they produce their own radio signals
at fortytwo degrees three minutes seven seconds north
seventytwo degrees four minutes six seconds west
As a rough rule, an incoherent source
that is not resolved in angle
can be seen to vary
only on time scales long
compared with the light travel time
through the region.
typically a dispersed, pulsed emission at frequencies of 400-1400 MHz
I climbed the Notch the night you left
lay in the gash of its granite dome
There are helpful data-reduction techniques
that amount to interpolating or extrapolating
across these gaps. |
|
|
| Not quite Musée des Beaux Arts yet |
[Feb. 18th, 2004|02:46 pm] |
Landscape With The Fall of Icarus
William Carlos Williams
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
near
the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
***
Nachbrueghelikarosgefallenfrühlingszeit
umackermannsschauspielerei
jährlichdabeiklingendeaufwachen
selbstbeschäftigtemeerufer
schweißmachendeflügelschmelzendesonne
vorküstebelangloseunbeachtetepleite
Ikarosertrinken. |
|
|
| translation exercise: The Red Wheelbarrow |
[Feb. 17th, 2004|05:43 pm] |
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
***
Nebenweißenhühnerglattregensroterschubkarrenschlüsselhörigkeit.
- William Carlos Williams, trans. me. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Feb. 15th, 2004|08:56 pm] |
It became increasingly clear to me only after the fact that all the hotel dreams had stopped in preparation for that night.
Empty hotel’s midnight silence, chill of soft miles. That puzzle whole never again: glass walls (spicules of ice on the frost-foliated windows) waterbirds deserting the dark lake. the grid of lonely buildings and lighted paths not quite rectangular.
And the sky bluing in the morning over the white ship; and after hours I climb from the basement into saturated edges of the eightoclock fortytwonorth sky, when the sun’s just brightened and all’s certainty.
oh completion: lavender lavender downhill of one crooked afternoon’s worth of warm spring mist little-known a field of dandelions against a clear red barn produces love’s same effects.
the antidote’s been lost in time, if I snared it in my chase believe I’d only question it tender only set the three scenes against each other add their contrast brightness color values calculate the integral of some future life. |
|
|
| Where am I? Who are these people? |
[Feb. 14th, 2004|04:34 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | eran zur: strawberries | ] |
I make my entrance on the blog scene, again.
checking my coat at the door.
probably I read yours already.
aspiration: blithe nonsense transcendent a la mister andy, without the use of artificial aid. |
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