Non-collige
Virgo rosas.
Non-collige
Virgo rosas.
We were dreaming
Under pavement;
And I asked you,
“Will you be my
Earthly body?”
Then we shivered.
“What the hell is that…?”
That is basically what was going through my head this morning when I woke up. I was told that Norway would not really get snow until maybe as late as February. But here we are, the 3rd of October, and there lies a thin layer of snow on the ground. My only consolation was that a steady downpour of rain was slowly melting the snow.
The snow took several hours to actually melt, but the rain is still falling. Having talked to a few other people, it is going to be like this quite often now until the actual snow starts in earnest. Snow during the chilly nights; thawing during the day. I guess I can live with that. I am from Wisconsin, after all. I was just a bit shocked to see this today – the leaves just started really falling two or three days ago.
After getting over the fact that I would be cooped up in my room all day, it was actually kind of nice to sit on the balcony and watch the rain. It is not often that you get a chance to witness three kinds of condensation in work at once. It was foggy, snowy and rainy. Perhaps it happens more often than we think, but it was nice to notice it.
I am becoming increasingly surprised with how much of a day I can waste and how quickly, at that. A nap, a meal and a few episodes of MythBusters, and eight hours have already passed since I woke up. Without being able to really do anything out side of my dorm, I am finding it a bit difficult to get anything done inside my dorm. And it surprises me that I feel so much “cabin fever” today. Normally, I have no problem being alone. But lately, I have wanted less and less to be by myself.
I guess lately I have been feeling an exceeding amount of loneliness. I feel a blatantly unfounded sense of being left out. And it bothers me a bit, not so much because I know that I am wrong, but more because of these angsty teenage feelings. I am better than that kid stuff… I have friends both here and back home, so why would I feel this?
Perhaps the worst is that these feelings manifest themselves in strange ways. I can sometimes get an odd feeling in groups, which is the exact opposite of how I am used to being. Even worse are the dreams / nightmares. Always of things I can not have, in an emotional sense more than material; they usually start off amazing, with a sense of elation, only to end in a deafening sense of rationality. It is a sinking feeling waking up to that.
But enough of that unwarranted depression….
There are a lot of things I can occupy my time with, even if I have difficulty doing so. I have this next week off. Unfortunately, my trip to Amsterdam fell through – we could not get tickets soon enough to make the trip very affordable. I will instead maybe take the train or bus out to some place in Norway that I have not visited (which would be any place in Norway, basically). Probably, I will end up sitting in my room or taking a walk, though. Hope and some of the other American girls are off to Ireland and other cool places like that, and later in the week, Marco and Jesus are going to London. Money is tight, though, so I am actually not too upset about not going anywhere – just a bit bummed. I am planning to save as much as I can for now, and instead, take some nice trips next semester when I have a better idea of where my money sits.
Thanks in large to conversations with Kelsey, I have started to pick up writing again. I am making my first true attempt at writing a book of some sort. A real book, not the things I have done in the past. It is going to be based a lot on my experiences here, but in a sort of bizzaro way. I can not imagine what people will think of my personal experiences here if they read what I have in store.
I am also working on more music, as always. I had a really great talk with Corey the other day, and we are finally going to try some true collaborative stuff now. We have some ideas and some sketches to go on. In the end, I do not know what we will have. But Corey is great at what he does – I have no doubts about his ability and drive. I am fairly confident that we will come up with something respectable.
I have been picking the tempo up with my label lately. The other day, we were approved for a Content Distributor account at mininova.org. We have had 480-some downloads in about a day with our first two torrents. I think it is already starting to lure in some new artists for the label.
And whenever all of the above fails, I guess I have this blog to turn to.
This man has committed blasphemy in the most beautiful of ways. To the usual superfans of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and some other bands of such lofty status, touching a GY!BE song is akin to spitting on the bible. To me, the bible is just a book, but even I – a steadfast atheist – would find that disrespectful.
You can understand, then, why my expectations for this video were not very high when it first came up in the section of YouTube’s homepage that displays videos recommended based on personal viewing patterns. But I didn’t have high expectations for a video titled “2girls1cup” either – and we all know how epic that piece of cinematic gold turned out to be.
Whether you know GY!BE or not, it’s important to note that YouTube user gihm has managed to take a near-orchestral composition by a band that claims up to thirteen past and present members and successfully condensed it into a solo acoustic piece. Other covers tackled include songs by Efterklang, Múm, Joanna Newsom and Rachel’s, among others.
This YouTube user is demonstrating something I hold very close to my heart – music experimentalism. Through creative use of arrangement and playing techniques, gihm was able to successful create a beautiful work of art that not only pays tribute to a respected band but also stands alone as an accomplishment in its own right.
When I was a senior in high school, I purchased a $70 Belkin stereo microphone for my 3rd generation iPod.
It was in response to a) curiosity, b) changing musical influences and c) seeing other “nobodies” creating sounds independently of any organization. With things lying around my basement, I recorded a song titled “The Keys Are Brightly Burning As My Fingers Slide Past.” My first music project outside of school – [praw] – was born.
My work with [praw] devoured my free time, and that project eventually spun into The Purple Paring Knife, The Assh*le Pr*ject, Pushmi-Pullyu and The Purrring Pythonsss, among other projects that I choose to forget or not mention. Since starting [praw], I have come a long way. I have developed methods of creation on several applications as well as with instruments I have no training in. To date – within the last 4-or-so years – I have created at least three hundred (300) recordings amounting to well over twenty hours of audio. I work on some aspect of recording, performing or writing almost every day. Not even moving to Norway for a year has slowed me down. I can’t help it.
These numbers are not meant to be seen as boasting. The quantity does not necessarily represent quality, though I have been happy with everything I’ve recorded and released at some moment during my development. Instead, I wish the numbers to serve as a demonstration that music creation has become a very important part of my life in the last so-many years. It was important to me before this time, of course; I was a member of band and choir as soon as I could be and stayed very involved as long as possible (college quashed that). I can say with the strongest of conviction that my decision to spend $70 on a simple stereo microphone changed my life. My involvement, dedication to and appreciation of music is greater now than ever before. I can not begin to count the friends, acquaintances and lives I have come to know because of music experimentalism.
One issue has been tearing at the back of my head for some time now. If experimentalism has become so important to me now, why was I not exposed to it earlier? Surely I could have come much farther as an artist and lay person if I had been exposed to experimentalism, say, in middle school as opposed to before moving away to college. By nature, experimentalism needs to be figured out independently, but surely someone could have pointed me in the right direction much earlier. Somebody – anybody – could have slapped a microphone in my hand with a piece of paper saying, “Audacity.” These simple clues would have been enough. But that did not happen. I had to discover my inclinations – and that many others share these same inclinations – on my own. Knowing what I know now, it seems like cruel fate; like losing something only to find it in your hand all along.
I believe that we need to change the lack of music experimentalism in public. That is, we need to “teach” experimentalism. General art classes seem to be the only places in public schools where a child is encouraged to be creative and experiment, but even then are they given often strict guidelines and are eventually judged on some qualitative basis. Our music classes certainly do not encourage experimentalism. The closest we get is the experimentalism that has become the body of jazz standards. Why is it that schools will teach jazz, yet completely forget the extremely experimental nature that jazz was and still is? There was never a class where I was told to put down the instrument I had bound myself to in 5th grade and make something new – something even avant-garde or silly at worst. Instead, I was told to read what someone had written and perfect a style of playing that was decidedly definitive.
One of this year’s most popular songs is titled “My Girls.” This Animal Collective song would most definitely not exist without a sense of experimentalism.
Mentioned earlier, jazz is a great example of experimentalism in music. I do not understand how this can be forgotten. Nor that both The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band were very experimental in nature. Their experimentation become innovation. Everything new ever has come about because of accidents and/or experimentation.
That is the way it always will be.
I’ve always liked the idea of closeups. Not in an “I need attention – I’m a movie star” sort of way, but from an artistic point of view. Maybe that is why the first image I took with my new mini SLR was a closeup of sorts.
When one looks for a pattern, it is usually on a grand scale, but a close look on a smaller reveals rigid patterns and rhythms there too.
It is almost as if we are stuck in a rut between the big and the small – in a place where patterns do not appear unless you look outside. The prize is not in front of you, but rather below and above.
Of course this is not an absolute – just a generalization itself. I believe in a sort of patterned randomization of objects. What happens when something is patterned in a random way? That is, when it is perhaps made to seem random, when in fact it is completely fixed. Someone designed the piece of art below to appear random. What would one even begin to call that?
Rhythm and entropy: both patterned by design. How much randomness is there really? According to my astronomy studies, not much. Even galaxies drifting apart in seemingly random directions form distinctive patterns. This image below represents galaxies held together by gravity. It may seem rather random, but if you look at a flat representation of this or similar data, you see a very definite pattern of filaments and voids.
By the way, if you have not noticed, much of this may seem like a rant. In fact, it is a collection of some thoughts from the last few days – so take it however you wish. I do not claim to be a brilliant philosopher. I only claim to think.
I find it particularly curious that the abstract can be both patterned and random. Perhaps that is the answer to it all. It isn’t that the world has spots of patterned space and places where entropy rules, but rather that space can be both. Perhaps it is wrong to look at space as one or the other, but necessarily both.
Whatever the truth is, I think it is an interesting thing to ponder. Even if it means nothing in actuality. Sometimes it is important to think in circles to yourself. But maybe the most important thing is just to look.
The sun will always be beautiful – from any distance.
<3 JOHN
