Blind Collaboration

+++ title = “07” date = 2006 +++

The notebook I bought fits in my pocket, barely, and I bought a few pens to go with it.  I linked to an article yesterday which explains how to buy a Mont Blanc ink cartridge and install it into a 2 dollar pen.  Basically, you’re getting the ink of a 300 dollar pen into your tiny little G2.

What have I written in this notebook so far?

• random images, like “four corners”, “dark panel”, “skylight frames the night sky”, “sending smoke signals bouncing off of trees.”
• a chart of blind adjective-noun pairings (I’ll explain later)
• an algorithm involving time intervals between frog noises in Andy’s backyard, which I can loop infinitely.
• descriptions of sound: cavernous, bubbly, tire-gravel, croak, chirp.
• a sonic sketch of Andy’s deck: what a blind person would experience.  X marks the “viewer” and lines connect the viewer to the sound descriptions with lines.  non-encapsulating barrier of brick and glass behind us.
• ideas like going to a movie by yourself

While at Office Depot, I also grabbed about 500 blank index cards, and created a deck of Oblique Strategies.  Since they’re all available on that website, I decided to make a DIY deck.  The actual one costs about 60 dollars.  It’s good that I saved some money since I’ve bought all these records.  Speaking of which Music For Airports, Music For Films, and Another Green World have been shipped.

Went to Guitar Center to get Andy a converter for his keyboard into Reason, but it turns out that it didn’t work.  It’s too bad, I would’ve been interested to see what he came up with.

We ate at Noodle Company right before it closed.  Penne Rosa for Andy, Japanese Pan for me.  Then, an episode of Entourage and back to Andy’s where we played the noun-adjective game, that was actually created by Grant and I.  One person thinks of a noun, and the other an adjective.  The idea is that these two words collide from completely unassuming and unknowing thought banks.  A natural way to write lyrics.

Home early to watch Alias and discuss the spiritual-scientific spectrum with Kevin online. Still have had no time to write music for The Wranglers, but I came up with an idea that could get the ball rolling:  recording vocal lines of nonsense words and harmonizing with them, until I get the asthetic quality I want, and add lyrics later.  If I can do about 5-6 songs this way over the weekend, we could end up with a decent sized set.

Plans for tonight:  dinner with Aimee, see what Billy’s up to, try and construct the 300 dollar pen.  I really get nervous about keeping pens in my pocket.  Ink spills are impossible to reverse.