Unlikely Collaboration
Once again, PJ returned home without any prior notice. We went to Joe’s Crab Shack to say hi to Billy, who is now working as a barback. He was sweaty when we met up with him. PJ created a mission of throwing any excess food into the center of the paper towel roll in the table. Being children again is satisfying.
My rental from blockbuster is overdue. For some reason, I can’t seem to drive the extra mile and a half to return library books or video rentals. It’s almost as if I feel too good for them or something. This explains my love for Blockbuster Online.
After lobster pasta, Aimee came over, and PJ left. After a while of trying to decide a course of action, we went to Joe’s Crab Shack, which turns into a night club after 11pm, apparently. I suddenly got very sick, and Aimee left after finishing half of a Corona.
For a while I thought the workday had slowed down significantly, but today is proof that I’m fast forwarding with ease. Maybe it was more things to occupy my mind today. I finally got an assignment from esquel, a foundation that has hired me to maintain their website. If you take a look, you’ll see that it’s pretty barebones. I created a new design, but I have yet to implement it.
Saturday night had a smoke with Billy and my sister. Enjoyable. It’s funny that I get worried about her developing some sort of disease from smoking hookah too much. I’m looking forward to having clean lungs for a while starting next week.
Last night caught up with Andy and watched a few more episodes of entourage. Afterwards, we recorded a piece which involves Andy’s narrative voice and my synth playing. It’s short but provocative, and we didn’t come up with the words ourself. They were taken from Astonish Yourself, some arbitrary chapter, but I like the way that the author puts his words together. I think this particular chapter was on cleaning a room. It consists of 3 tracks: 1) me playing the synth with a spacey sort of patch, 2) Andy narrating bits and pieces of a chapter of this book, so as not to be too specific, the listener can apply the advice to anything. My music trails on for a bit after he finishes speaking. 3) Another track of Andy’s narration, copied and pasted, except this time I’ve applied a tape loop. It sounds almost like cicadas in the background, but it’s actually Andy’s voice in a huge feedback loop. Eventually the cicadas fade and Andy wraps up his advice to the listener.
We’ve decided that we want to make more creations like this, with the objective in mind before we begin. It’s something I really want to get into with Ryan. One idea we’ve been playing around with is recording ambient noise from my deck, the frogs croaking, the fireflies lighting up (no sound, but there is some presence) and using some sort of method to create songs. I’m really into the idea of unlikely collaboration.
I made it my goal to collect all four of Brian Eno’s Ambient LPs. I bought 2-4 from Joe’s Record Paradise, but it’s apparently very hard to locate Music For Airports. I can’t even locate it on ebay, aside from a boxed set of about 10 Eno LPs. The initial price was 30 dollars, so I bid on it, and I found someone wanted it more than I. So I kept bidding to see how high this guy had bid. At this point, I’m almost hoping that I lose the action. Which seems reasonable, this guy made a very high bid. But then again, these are truly collector’s items.
Today as I was creating a binder, I suddenly came up with lyrics. How does inspiration hit so fast and at the wrong time?
Plans for tonight: see Billy, possibly Andy. Maybe create music with them. Back to AU in a week.