Category Archives: LiveJournal Imports

40 Years Later – The Last Four Remember Dr. King

“…martyrdom also forced onto King’s dead body the face of a toothless tiger. His threat has been domesticated, his danger sweetened. His depressions and wounds have been turned into waves and smiles. There is little suffering recalled, only light and glory. King’s more challenging rhetoric has gone unemployed, left homeless in front of the Lincoln Memorial, blanketed in dream metaphors, feasting on leftovers of hope lite.

White Americans have long since forgotten just how much heat and hate the thought of King could whip up. They have absolved themselves of blame for producing, or failing to fight, the murderous passions that finally tracked King down in Memphis, Tenn. If one man held the gun, millions more propped him up and made it seem a good, even valiant idea. In exchange for collective guilt, whites have given King lesser victories, including a national holiday.

But blacks have not been innocent in the posthumous manipulations of King’s legacy. If many whites have undercut King by praising him to death, many blacks have hollowed his individuality through worship. The black reflex to protect King’s reputation from unprincipled attack is understandable. But the wish to worship him into perfection is misled; the desire to deify him is tragically misplaced. The scars of his humanity are what make his glorious achievements all the more remarkable.

Both extremes of white and black culture must be avoided. Many whites want him clawless; many blacks want him flawless. But we must keep him fully human, warts and all. In the end, King used the inevitability of a premature death to argue for social change and measure our commitment to truth. There is a lot to be learned in how King feared and faced death, and fought it too. What we make of his death may determine what we make of his legacy and our future.”

AVS

Three years later, Bone Music is finally done. 13 tracks, just under 77 minutes.

Ancients
Waiting For Gira
Friends of Father
Bone Music
International Dark Skies
No Exit
Number Nine
Just
Epilogue
Friends of Father (Tonikom Remix)
Bone Music (Antigen Shift Remix)
Number Nine (Synapscape Remix)

Bonus Track: Urusai - Learned Helplessness (Destroy and Contaminate Mix by Ad·ver·sary)

Yann came into town for the weekend so that we could mix it down and get the master ready, and he worked some kind of audio voodoo — it sounds so much better than the old International Dark Skies demo. I have to finish some final level adjustments to the mastering, and then the album is ready to press — I’ve decided to mix the album to an average RMS level of about -14 dBFS, rather than the much louder -8 to -5 dBFS that’s currently standard for most electronic albums. (For reference, My Bloody Valentine averages at about -17 dBFS, Cyanotic at -9dBFS , and DJ? Acucrack at -6dBFS.) This means that you’ll probably have to turn up the volume when you listen to it, but it’ll sound much better for it.

The art will be done in the next few days, and then everything gets sent to the CD replication house early next week, in time to release at the Kinetik festival in May. There’s also a remix EP coming in the fall (which I’m very excited about), with Cyanotic, Imminent, Stendeck, Asche, Iszoloscope, Synkro, JF Coleman (Cop Shoot Cop, Phylr), Mo (Zykotik K9), Totakeke, Shane (Fiveways) and more.

When Bone Music is released I’ll be making the tracks and artwork available for download on my site– payment optional — and I’ll post here with details on how to buy or download the album. I’ve redesigned the Ad·ver·sary website in preparation, and I’ve put together a new look-and-feel for the Tympanik site, which I’ll be handing over to them next week sometime. Then to design some new merch: stickers, buttons, and maybe hoodies, hats, or new shirts. (Any preferences?)

And maybe, if things work out, a tour in the fall.

Things I need more of, in no particular order. (first in a series)

– science-fiction
– coffee
– Super Paper Mario
– Eric B & Rakim
– weird sex
– sun
– N2O
– time
– Amsterdam
– robots
– teeth
– teeth made from robots with smaller teeth inside them so that they chew my food for me when my mouth is closed
– lucid dreaming
– Strongbow
– the responsible abuse of pleasure

My pyrokinesis training at The Shop goes well

After 3 or 4 sessions, I’m starting to get into the groove with neurofeedback. We’ve been mostly working on one or two areas of focus so far, and the “reward” headspace is starting to become familiar, when I manage to get there. I can’t really describe that state of being very easily. It’s much more nebulous and indistinct than the headspace from, say, threshold-dose MDMA or a light D/S scene. At least for now, it is. The ultimate goal is to become so familiar with that state that I can very nearly wear it as a second skin, or better yet, that it’s indistinguishable from my own.

This is a results screenshot from the end of the last session I did. I don’t have the ‘before’ screenshot to compare, but there were a lot more mountains and a lot less gently rolling slopes. The bottom view is probably the clearest of how things progressed over the 8-9 minute session. I was in a foul, foul mood when I arrived (so much so that I very nearly cancelled), but despite my own anger and scepticism I found myself thinking much more clearly as the hour went on.

I’m still looking for appropriate music to make a DVD with, knowing that whatever music I choose will be forever associated with the training. Current thinking is Synaesthesia or Rapoon.

My life still sucks

Dear Diary,

So one of my favourite artists (that I met at Maschinenfest and gave my demo to) just released a new album. This album is on one of my favourite labels (one of the labels that was supposed to release my album, in fact), and is a fairly high-profile release.

This would usually be a good thing. Unfortunately, the first 45 seconds or so of one of the tracks on this album are exactly the same as the first 45 seconds of one of my songs (my best song, in fact).

I emailed the act and the label, and according to the people who wrote the album, we just happened to sample the same sounds from the same place and arrange them in the same order. An “unhappy coincidence”, as one of them put it.

I dug up the extremely-early-and-rough version of my song to see exactly where each of the sounds came from (this song in particular is a collage built almost entirely out of samples), and it would seem that it’s theoretically possible that they went through the same creative process as I did in selecting/assembling the sounds.

Honestly, at this point I don’t even care if they ripped it off on purpose, if it was cosmic synchronicity at work, or if they heard the track and then subconsciously rebuilt it. The most frustrating thing about this is that there’s no way I can release it now. Everyone knows I’m a fan of the artists involved, and everyone knows I listen to everything the label releases. If I put out the track on an album tomorrow, everyone who buys it will think that I’m ripping them off.

I’m so tired of music bullshit already, and I don’t even have a fucking album out.

mania, anxiety and paranoia

Today was my first real neurofeedback session, now that all of the personality tests and 18-point EEG readings are out of the way. We’ve identified a few brain patterns that aren’t what they should be, and we’re going to be focusing on the more emotional areas first. I think it was the ratio of gamma-to-theta waves, but I could be mistaken.

The process itself is deceptively simple: You’re hooked to an EEG, you sit at a computer, and you play with a program. In today’s session, the software we used had science-y looking realtime readouts around the sides of the screen, and in the centre a video was playing. It was a generic meditation/relaxation DVD, with babbling brooks and new age music and whatever else. On the readouts beside it, you could see each of the brainwaves that were being monitored, and how far away from the target range they are. If you’re not hitting the target, the video window gets smaller and smaller, and the sound starts cutting out. The closer you get to the target, the larger the video is, and the better you can hear everything. If you’re hitting the target perfectly, the video plays perfectly.

You have to figure out how to put your brain in the space it’s supposed to be, and then try to keep it there. If you overanalyze what you’re doing, you’ll lose it. If you trance out, you’ll lose it. There’s a very fine balance that you have to find, and it wasn’t easy at all.

It’s also a total mindfuck to participate in an exercise where you’re concentrating on thinking, and you witness an immediate reaction in the physical world; it feels a lot like you imagine telekinesis might.

The session was fairly short today, I was only able to get in 20 minutes or so before I started to become mentally exhausted, and my performance started to bomb. It’s a very odd kind of fatigue, and not one that I really have words for. I’ve been warned that when a lot of work is done on these specific brain pattens, I might become unusually emotional, or start mentally stepping through old and unpleasant memories. What fun that sounds like!

Anyway.

Wednesday is the next one, and I’m thinking about burning my own DVDs to use. Maybe Brian Eno or some Coil, with vidcaps from milkdrop or something similar.

This is a pretty spooky process, in truth. I’m not saying that so I can collect internet reassurances or show the world how spookproof Jairus is (or isn’t), but rather so I can understand it myself. I don’t scare easy; I might freak out, panic, worry, or lose my shit, but those are familiar emotions, and this one isn’t.

…

Let the night be too dark for me to see
into the future. Let what will be, be.

Trip Report

After much travel chaos, I’m home safe and sound after Web Directions North.

I’ve been to a number of conferences, but I don’t remember the last one that I enjoyed as much as this. There were a lot of great sessions, like Cameron Adams‘ full-day JavaScript workshop, and Brian Fling‘s Mobile Web presentation (did you know more people have access to the web via a mobile than people who have access via a desktop?), but the huge take-away for me was Andy Clarke‘s full-day workshop, “Transcending CSS”.

I wasn’t expecting much out of the CSS workshop, honestly, because there isn’t too much about CSS that I don’t already understand — but Andy’s workshop focused on thinking differently about using CSS, and composing meaningful markup. We spent a lot of time reviewing traditional web design workflow, and why/how to move to more progressive, browser-oriented techniques, and somewhere between the two topics I realized why I’ve had such design ennui when it comes to my own projects.

When I was younger and much more prolific (in my design prime, so to speak), I didn’t know nearly as much about web design, or html/css as I do now. I didn’t really know how difficult a design would be to markup or implement, and I never stopped to consider how I was going to manage the content itself once the code was done. I’d design the site in Photoshop, and I’d start hacking together code to try to get it to look right in a browser. Along the way, I’d run into a problem getting the design to display faithfully — maybe a limitation of HTML or CSS, maybe a gap in my own knowledge, maybe a weird IE rendering bug — and I’d have to find a way around the issue, which generally involved modifications to the design or rewriting most of the code.

This would happen a lot (just how often depended on how complex the site was, but a dozen times or so per site is a safe estimate), and each time this happened, the design and code evolved further away from the original concept. In other words, problem solving had become part of the creative process, and my design was being informed not just by my own ideas, but also by the limitations of browser rendering engines.

This doesn’t happen anymore for my personal sites. When I design a site in Photoshop, I’ve got a solid understanding of what is and is not possible. When I run into implementation problems, my understanding of XHTML/CSS is such that I can almost always solve them, and I end up with a fully validated design that looks exactly like the Photoshop. And that’s a great thing, if you’re a consultant and you have client sign-off on a mockup, but I’ve realized that this has robbed my sites of the things that keep me interested in them. My creative process for personal sites ends at Photoshop, now, and doesn’t carry any further than that.

I believe design is problem solving, not art. When I design a site and there’s no creative problem-solving process involved, I end up with something that I think is very pretty, but completely lifeless and boring, and I abandon it immediately.

The trick is now to translate this new knowledge into a new creative process.

…

Personal epiphanies aside, it was incredible to spend a week chatting, learning, (and drinking) with so many people whose work I’ve followed (or idolized) over the years, like Dave Shea, Matt Webb, or Jeffrey Zeldman. (It was like a Maschinenfest for web geeks, in that sense.)

Twelve or thirteen years ago (half a lifetime away), when I was a Very Small Jairus, and first trying to learn learn HTML, I didn’t understand how any of it was put together. The markup part was easy (I was a fairly competent C++ programmer, writing System 7 apps), but the design element of it was frustrating and confusing. How come the page didn’t look the same on Windows as it did on MacOS? Why doesn’t this tag do the same thing on two different browsers? I didn’t get it.

There were six or seven big names on the web at the time, and I emailed them all. I told them that I was trying to learn HTML, none of it made any sense to me, and (heh) could I please rip off their websites to build my own so that I could figure out how the fuck any of it worked.

The only person who emailed me back was Jeffrey Zeldman, and he said “Of course you can — go ahead and rip the code off, that’s what it’s there for”. And I did, and I ended up making my first website based off of the code and layout of his site. And honestly, if he had never emailed me back, I don’t know if I would have kept bashing my head against the keyboard until everything started to make sense; so it was very important to me that I had the chance this week to thank him in person for this, and I did.

…

I’ve been posting a lot of photos from this trip to my Flickr account, but the photo I posted earlier from the top of Blackcomb is the only Whistler photo I’m going to put online. The vastness and scale of the mountains are awe-inspiring, and it’s completely impossible to capture that in film. I took dozens of photos, but on a computer screen they’re just a bunch of snow covered rocks, and not the mountains that I spent two days on.