Rova and the Nels Cline Singers - Head Count

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Some dude emailed me this one song. Usually I wouldn't review just one song, let alone upload it, but this is Nels Cline doing experimental stuff, so it's obviously an exception for me.

Buh-doo.

I don't really dig it, to be honest. It's too short, it's too structured, and there is not enough noise.

Tumblr > Blogger

Case.

I'll be posting a lot more of my random gibberish thoughts there. I'll keep most of my music posts here.

Avatar Machine Design Museum - Designers in residence 2009 from MARC OWENS on Vimeo.

the human eye is spherical and envelopes a spherical image, but your brain tells you no, it doesn't. you can best take part in the way the eye really sees by approaching a very straight and long wall that has parallel lines adorned and best approached if said lines are at eye level. approach the wall perpendicularly with one eye closed and you will see that the wall curves away as if peering into a fish eye lens.

Vladislav Delay - Toive from Lorenzo Sportiello on Vimeo.

anyone else feel most motivated some time past 3am when you can sense the mist of the night seeping into your window and making your panes moist to perhaps lie peacefully as the sun rises and slowly evaporates it from our understanding of existence?

for some reason I've neglected music entirely from my life for the past few months. instead I've devoted my time to reading philosophy and taking notes about my ideas about these things, spending time with my beloved girlfriend and working a really bad job as I search for a better, more stable and suitable place of employment that will maintain my way of life and bills until I find it time to advance my career further. I've done other things here and there - some intense, marijuana induced nights of philosophically motivated discussion that weaved through subjects like the thread of a very desperate blind man frantically sewing his torn uniform.

but personally, I know music means a lot to me. music has been there during very dramatic and important moments in my life, and drove my emotions and imagination away from reality into the realm of colorful mountains and kind lions. and sitting here, capable of stepping aside to objective examine my situation, I still stand perplexed. I can find very obvious reasons for my departure from such a beautiful habit of human communication and creation, but still remain confused and surprised.

I've traveled such departures previously in my life, but those were much shorter than the present one. I hope to soon find myself driven to engage with the conversation of music, to fall gracefully into the arms of some giant peaceful tree with eyes closed and ears open. The last time I returned it was very moving, and I expect my coming return to be as equal or much, much greater; I expect the latter with glee.

Hey, check out this example of ancient, dying court rulings

Damn, what it feels like to be a giant multi-billion dollar corporation, DEMANDING $675,000 from a 25 year old college student for sharing 30 songs.

I realized that I enjoy writing letters to people. I enjoy making postcards out of cheap Walgreens/CVS/Target cardstock and mailing them to people. I enjoy these things because getting things in the mail will never be replaced by something else, that getting something in the mail is always a wonderful experience. Is it localized to "civilized" society? Maybe. All I know is that I enjoy getting things in the mail.

I do follow this blog, as you can see from recent posts. I check for new comments, I look at the blogs that I follow. I know people come here, be it for whatever reason, and I know some of those people enjoy the kinds of things that I enjoy. I'm slowly adapting to adultwhiteamericanmale society, and I'm beginning to understand how to entirely reject it.

So that's the reason for this post.

If you want me to mail you something, send an email to lookatyourshoe@yahoo.com with the subject as, but not necessarily limited to, "MAIL MAIL REQUEST." Yes, that's two "MAIL"'s. In the email itself, obviously include the address to which you'd like me to reply.

What I'll be sending is up in the air. If you're lucky enough for me to choose your address, if you're lucky enough to catch me just at the right time, you might get a 10 page diatribe on consciousness and how humans fail to adapt to their own concepts. If you catch me at another time, you might get a 5"x5" postcard with a doodle and a note.

Thanks and I'm looking forward to this little engagement of mine to you.

Where is literature going and why is it going in that direction?

Growing up I always felt detached from history, unable, at all, to become a part of it, that today is just today and it will not become history. History has already happened and it will not ever happen again. But I grew older and realized, in a very dramatic moment, that history never was, that human beings make it up because of our sense of time as linear. We are born, we do some things, and then we die. Some times these things are significant to other people, some times these things are significant to ourselves. Some times these things are both, or neither, but any way you approach it - any way you attempt to define it, to brush it up, to polish it, or to throw it away and destroy it - our conscious experience decays and no longer sustains itself. Our bodies continue to be, but only in many other forms: a rock, a baby bird, a fig tree, a gust of wind, a scientific experiment with magnesium, a foundation for a self built house. I realized that history is always occurring, that the word "history" itself is nothing but a human concept, that it is a word to describe the development of human beings with other human beings. "History" is human beings with other human beings.

Then what? Sociology, psychology, philosophy, architecture, science, literature, terrorism, etc. Tools, senses. Things to further our reach into the depth of the universe, into its crevices and around its edges. We're here, and we're here together.

Alright? Alright.

So, the development of literature is pushed by forces explained by some listed, some not. History books of the future will say that the popular opinion of the time, specific socioeconomic conditions shaped the prevalence of popular genres of literature in 2009. And here we are, blind to these forces because they don't really exist.

It's pretty weird that:

a.) as a child, I had to get glasses, in general, and being ridiculed for it
b.) having to worsen this situation because I had to choose from the "insurance" rack of styles, the styles for which insurance would either help to pay or pay entirely, which furthered the ridicule
c.) people today spend hundreds of dollars to achieve the "look" I was forced to have

'sup, George W. "Big Brother" Bush

Gotta love extensive surveillance programs snooping American citizens enacted solely by their own president.

And while the public is just beginning to find out about this from mainstream media, the Obama administration continues many Bush administration surveillance programs.

Media - especially the internet - further establishes just how real beginnings and ends are to human beings.

I can much more easily set up for myself a schedule that runs from the present moment to my very death; it makes life seem so fragile and temporary, and shows how desparate one can become in attempts to create a life one wants to live.

The argument set forth by big music corporate, "Every pirate would have paid for every file they illegally downloaded," is hogwash stupidity.

Nels Cline and Devin Sarno - Buried on Bunker Hill

At long last, I was able to find a digital copy of this glorious collaborative album between guitar god Nels Cline and noise god Devin Sarno.

Enjoy.

Pixels are digitized representation of a small portion of reality, existing as a color created by a program that finds the correct color that goes with the corresponding six number and letter code.

Attempting to shape the world through these is futile. It is like trying to accurately explain taste through metaphor--although, with talent, one can nearly encompass the entirety of a taste, like a pixelated image, one can never fully reach its borders and trace such a taste verbatim.

After experiencing these past few days in 80% wilderness, I find reality nearly impossible for human beings to entirely explain. We'll come across highly accurate explanations of the slow path of giant cosmic behemoths, we'll enjoy reading a portrait of modern man. But we, humanity, will never fully understand anything.

Until our brains or senses, quite possibly both, advance to a higher stage of evolutionary development, our grasp of the universe will be a slippery one, as if our hands are drenched in the oils that our own bodies produce.

I've always thought it was miserable that we take the supposed best and brightest in society, charge them up to $60,000 a year in fees, then put them to work for four years on producing busywork that no one -- not them, not their profs, not other scholars -- actually wants to read. Might as well get them to spend four years carving detailed models of ships from sweet potatoes (and then bury the potatoes).
-Cory Doctorow

Quite right. This excerpt is from a blog post of his regarding the dispute between a programming student and his professor about his professor giving him a failing grade in the course for posting his program online for everyone else to read and learn from.

Here. Pretty cool stuff.

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.