Spontaneously At 10Pm
I’ve had to put together about 3 binders today. The rest of the day I’ve sat around listening to music and reading about synthesizers. I did find a cool website called longnow.org which has lectures about forward thinking. Stewart Brand created this orgnization who found it interesting that different people of different cultures envisioned the concept of “now” very differently.
If you asked someone what they were working on “now,” would they refer to what they’ve been doing that hour? That morning? That year? The Long Now organization has decided to make “now” encompass the next 10,000 years. They’ve even made a clock that plays bells. They have all of their lectures on the site, and I was listening to the kick-off speech from Eno. He began by talking about his first ambient record (discreet music, which I still haven’t heard), and then went onto the other ambient ones and explained why they relate to time and “now.”
Last night, Mariam and Billy came over to watch Prison Break. I love re-watching that show unfold. PJ called and said he was home, so him and Andy joined later. I should’ve napped but I spent the entire afternoon playing with my new gear. Made a quick demo of 2 birds, just to see how it sounded when I was fully listening, and also did a verse and chorus of Bows and Arrows in Garage Band. That one actually came out sounding nice.
Then I saw an amazing video of an Indian guy who created a synth out of a really cool usb device with a bunch of colored balls. He throws the balls around and where they hit the wall is where they change velocity and shape. I want to learn to make music with forces that I can’t control, like throwing a ball: it lands in a different place everytime, you did the initial work, and physics took care of the rest. Drawing on a higher power.
After Prison Break, we went to Andy’s to watch the storm. Big streaks of lightning, so big that they lit up the entire sky. We couldn’t do the lightning-thunder calculation because there was too much lightning, we couldn’t figure out what corresponded to what. We sat on his deck, sheilded by the short ceiling, smoking fruit, and watching the lightning. I’m glad PJ picked last night to be home.
Idea: Compose a series of short stories, that will eventually become songs. Then, write a series of songs that will eventually become short stories. We’ll call this skill development.
Andy caught me off guard the other night with the question: What is it about music that you feel emotionally connected to? I gave him the answer that I’ve always believed, that music is a higher being. He went to ask me if that meant that music was a better form of communication than words. Too much one-dimensional thinking, and too much black-or-white. (From Contact) I’ll never be able to articulate it, but every inch of me knows that it exists. People don’t use the idea of God as a communication tool, they draw energy, love, whatever from that higher being which is available to them all the time, day or night.
Last night, Andy said that to him, lightning is proof that there is a God. To me, it’s all spread over different channels. Lightning, music, particles. Wherever it appears that is relative to you.
Plans for tonight: Go to the library and pay for my overdue library books, check out new ones that I inevitably won’t read. But it’s nice to know that they’re there. I’ll see if I can find anything on Dark Matter. Sleep, maybe try recording. Head over to Scott’s to work out arrangements and sing a little. Hopefully he’s written a song.
Tommorow is the weekend. This has been a long week.