Division 3

I'm waiting in the Chico train station, for the 3:50am southbound to San Jose. In the company of 3 other passengers-to-be, sleeping peacefully on the indoor benches.

I packed my bag 3 times this morning. The first time I packed it with everything I wanted to bring with me to San Jose. The contents of the bag reflected what I wanted to do when I got there. The bag was too heavy though, so I unpacked the contents onto my bed.

The second time I packed my bag it was with everything I needed to bring to San Jose. A laundry list of assignment I needed to complete while away from school determined which notebooks and which textbooks to bring with me. The bag was still too heavy, literally and figuratively.

The third time I packed my bag only with what I believed I might actually use. The contents were reduced to those items I honestly thought my time in San Jose would necessitate. Laptop, notebook, sketchbook, book of poetry, two textbooks, a change of clothes, and a camera.

My bag is a box, more tangible than most. The final contents represent my intentions and aspirations, and they define my options and actions.

I am having trouble staying awake as I wait for the train to come, my eyes close on their own, and I long for a montage cut-scene to transport me to next week. Hopefully the train will get here soon.

Division 2

I've been making mixes again, some for me and some for friends. I think it serves as a good example of making boxes, and also it is fun.

When I start making a mix, I have an idea of what I want it to feel like even though I can't and won't ever touch it. I have an idea of the message it carries, though it won't ever be overtly stated. I know what it sounds like, but I can't lure the sound of it from my throat. I know the vicinity of the box, but I don't know exactly where it is or if what's inside is alive or dead.First thing I do is to name them.

Normally I'll work on several mixes at the same time. Building them at the same time lets me compare and contrast, cull them when they grow to similar, and in another way hone in on their boxes. Listening to music, certain tracks or artists will grab my attention and find themselves added to a mix. Others will inspire the creation of new mixes or the nixing of the old.

A song is picked to go into a mix if it matches up with the criteria of the mix, if it lies within the box. And yet, a mix is defined by it's songs, they connect as dots to outline the box. So which comes first, the mix or the idea of the mix?

And also, they are fun.

Division 1

I think something very important happened last night.

Lindsey dropped by the bike shop a few hours before closing and we talked about getting together later in the evening with other kids and instruments. Five hours later I was walking with my guitar around my neck and Ryan hefting his upright bass beside me. We cut a zig-zagging path through the frat district of Chico and made our way downtown. Converging with Lindsey and her fiddle in an empty web-design office above a bar, we tried to make noises.

Before Ryan and I had set out from his house with our instruments, he mentioned some ideas for improving our chances of making actual music, particularly how essential it was that the three of us actually listen. Because we each come from what we would consider very different musical places, it might be difficult to identify a common ground. If we didn't, he warned, it would be the three of us playing three different things, just in the same place at the same time. Real listening, as opposed to merely projecting, would facilitate a treatise of taste.

A few hours later, after much noise and a bit of cooperation, we called it quits for the evening. On the streets below us the bar patrons and police were just beginning their early morning dance. Our trio hadn't simultaneously erupted into an aural experience remarkable and new, but progress had been made toward something musical.

Ryan and I debriefed the situation once we had our instruments back at his apartment. Whenever I've played along with Lindsey on fiddle before, I've found myself lost. My abilitiy to follow melody, rhythm, or mood seems to take a nose-dive as the bow makes it's way across those four taut strings. Lindsey plays a lot of traditional Irish folk music, and it may be with this style that I have such trouble.

Listening to her play, considering my difficulty with playing or even listening along, and understanding the style of music with which I am comfortable playing, finds me in a box. I'm not able to satisfactorily define the perimeter of this analytical division, but I can tell when something lies within, or as with Lindsey's traditional fiddle skills, outside of my box.

Thinking of experiences as divided and grouped by boxes can imbue the experiences with a different significance or cast them under a new light. Right now I believe very strongly in the importance of turning ideas into things. Be it music, text, art, or sounds traveling from our mouths to our friends' ears. Immaterial ideas afloat without context aren't enough, though they're certainly aplenty. If all we have is our ideas with no manifestation to show for it, they are but data without value.

These boxes are really easy to make, to give them form and to see them surround experience, to watch as fields of data become valuable information encompassed by classification and context. These boxes verb nouns.

Synergy Emergency

Wildfires and oil spills. Anybody else get the feeling these problems just might solve each other?

1-800 911

Naomi Klein (author of Shock Doctrine) recently wrote up a brief article which is available HERE, courtesy of AlterNet.

In the article, Klein addresses the growing presence of privately operated emergency response services that cater only to those who can afford them. One such example is HelpJet, which offers it customers a "first class experience" as it shuttles them from an emergency (something like Katrina or SoCal wildfires) to a five star hotel in some far-away jet setting locale. Other companies offer services that range from the fire fighting offered by Firebreak to the "full spectrum" services soon to be offered by our friends at Blackwater USA.

While the operation of private prohibitively expensive emergency services doesn't necessarily harm the state provided emergency services that are offered to all, it still creates a two-tiered system that offers superior protection to those who can afford it, while those who can't are left with state-operated services that are often the victim of severe budgetary cuts.

In some cases, the privatization of services even usurps state provided services. For example, many on the ground in Iraq have said it would be impossible to continue operating there if not for private security like Blackwater USA.

Privatization of these kinds of life-or-death services takes us in a direction that brings both profit margins and the value of human lives into the same decision making processes. As with any other privately operated corporation, these emergency service companies' ultimate bottom line will be one of financial gain, and not necessarily the value of human lives.

Klein ends her article,

The same pay-to-be-saved logic governs this entire new sector of country club disaster management. There is, of course, another principle that could guide our collective responses in a disaster-prone world: the simple conviction that every life is of equal value.

For anyone out there who still believes in that wild idea, the time has urgently arrived to protect the principle.

Video Blitz

In the future food will come in pills, email will come in the newspaper, and flash video players will get elected to public office. May I submit these fine candidates:

One Got Fat (1963)
Want to see children dressed up as monkeys riding bikes? Want to see them brutally run down by cagers one by one in what can only be described as "Saw On Wheels"? Of course you do. (from ZPG)

Journey to the Moon (2005)
Apparently a home recording by William Kentridge. Makes me feel like the least productive person ever. If you like it, check out this other highly Kentridge-influenced animation: Deterioration. (thanks Jon)

Shock Doctrine Short Film (2007)
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is a book by Naomi Klein, from the book's website:

In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

Klein sent a copy of The Shock Doctrine to Alfonso Cuarón (director of Children of Men) expecting maybe a quote to print in the jacket of her book. What she got instead was a short film directed by both Alfonso Cuarón and Jonás Cuarón. Animation and stock footage are combined slickly to deliver a powerful introduction to Klein's book. (Thanks Ryan)

And I Play Music?

Here's a song, it's called These Days.

Here's are the lyrics:

There are holes, in my sheets, they don't stop me from sleeping.
There are holes, in my teeth, they don't stop me from speaking.
No they don't, no they don't.
So I do, so I do, so I do.

There are days when I, will play along.
There are ways that I, will do you wrong.
Through my words and through my work,
try to affect a reduction of harm.

And I've been feeling out of body these days.
And I've been feeling out of my mind these days.
I've been feeling awful out of body these days.
And I've been going out of my mind.

Based on what we know of particles that go
in straight line trajectories they'ill bend around the heavy things
but really there's uncertainty the same kind for you and me
and I can't trust, in anything,
and I can't say, anything.

I'm trying to learn, how to think,
and I'm trying to learn, how to speak.
Neurons fire concordantly,
like flames onboard a ship sinking into the sea.

And I've been feeling out of body these days.
And I've been going out of my mind these days.
And I've been feeling awfully out of body these days.
And I said I've been going awfully out of my mind these days. these days

Based on what we know of particles that go
in straight line trajectories they'ill bend around the heavy things
but really there's uncertainty the same kind for you and me
and I can't say anything.

If you like:

moving images with sound.

I read about a movie today called The Tracey Fragments. You ought to watch the trailer right now.



There are a lot of things about The Tracey Fragments that get me very excited. There are a few of those things that I can fairly describe with words.

First off (and why I heard about this film in the first place) the director Bruce McDonald is fully embracing creative commons licensing. Nearly 20 Gb of video, audio, and Final Cut Project files are downloadable as torrents on the film's official site, under the heading "Re-Fragmented". Everything shot during the four week's of the film's shooting, the script, and the original soundtrack by Broken Social Scene are available under a BY NC SA license.

McDonald explains:

“The Tracey Fragments is a film that fully embraces experimentation and teamwork. I wanted to find out if that experience exists on the Internet and give others the chance to experiment and play with some beautifully shot footage of a world class actress in a free form environment. I hope people make their own feature films, short films, rock videos, trailers, experimental films and personal manifestos out of The Tracey Fragments.”

Don't like the way the editor paced the film? Fix it. Want to make a trailer that will highlight the portions you think are most appealing? Do it. Want to see the guts of the project splayed out on your monitor? Get to it. Read more about how this film is made of pure futurethought over on the CC Blog.

The Tracey Fragments has it's US premier next Tuesday in LA. By then I will have all of the aforementioned files on my computer, but nothing can stop me from paying to see this movie.

The Darjeeling Limited? I'll be stealing that off of the tubes, thanks. Saw IV? Yeah, um, pass.