Random notes versus ransom notes from June 1996.

Sometimes I come across random notes that I've jotted down in the past. They feel like ransom notes from my past self that have been sent circuitously to my present self. The main difference between a "random note" and a "ransom note" seems to be the degree to which a person makes recourse to an X-Acto blade.

 

Other times I come across something that was cut and pasted together in the past. The pieces are all edge.

Random notes and this particular morning in September, 2008.

I sometimes make these random notes. Sometimes I make these false starts. This was the beginning of something reflected through an insufferable inability to start. This one is from September 10, 2008.

This Morning, in Particular

    This. This is the type of thing you write when the sink backs up and the pipes start dripping and the phone won't answer and the maintenance man can't. Not even an appointment. I don't have "writer's block" because I am not a writer because I haven't written anything because I have some sort of... well you can see where this kind of foolishness might lead. Let's just say I woke up this morning. Here. In this apartment.
    Everything has seams and is quietly falling apart at them. I put two and two together and still there are not enough words to piece it all together. The time for summer nights and soft lanterns is broken, divvied out into the time for all things. What comes next is the expectation of something different. What actually comes is another story. Endless, it seems. I woke up alone today and hardly knew it, except for the dull ache. But hey, that could have been from sleeping funny or something. I hear the voices outside and hardly can turn to look. Nothing passes by that you don't see again and again. Certain reruns are longer than others. And Flannery O'Connor can't do a thing about it.
    This is the type of morning that folds itself into fortune cookies and origami cranes. This is the type of morning when the steam rises, smelling like something other than old coffee and crusty dishes. This is one of those mornings that I usually miss because I like to sleep. I like to feel my muscles stretch against themselves and I yawn like fourteen jaded lions at the San Diego Zoo. I want a toothpick and a shovel. I need an hourglass and a washtub. I looked for the Chapstick but my lips went dry without me. No telling where the next shoe will drop. The big stick carries us around and speaks not at all. It has us in its hip pocket. Carries us like a wad of chewing gum. Loosens us up by the Adam’s apple like a monkey wrench. No one really knows how big sticks chew. It must be disgusting. And involves splinters in all the wrong places.
    I lost the only roll of toilet paper in the whole building. I slipped it into my backpack for further review and the next thing you know the damn thing was gone. No remedy for that. No solution diluted enough. No water too weak to leak from that faucet. The situation is dire, and likely up for departmental review. I'll stand convicted of incompetent embezzlement. Losing rolls on the way home from the Literature department. Justice is poetic, if not swift, or impartial, or just.
    I steamed up the mirror with my breath and watched it race away from the edges. All silver and cloud-grey. But no vision came. And I couldn't just obliterate all traces of something that was so willing and compliant in going. I couldn't coax it to do any more self-sacrifice than it was already willing to do, unasked. So I was just left staring at myself expectantly. All for art, he says. Poor bastard had a future in front of him but couldn't recognize a thing past the two blurred sides of his nose. He could've fogged up all manner of windowpanes, or glass houses where inhabitants throw judgments like rocks. Nothing speaks in so fine a tongue as a receding section of undivided time. My lawn suffers from the want of a blade. Cuts both ways. Grows as haphazard as he who forgets to cultivate it. We share a five o'clock shadow.
    I watched the people rise today. I had no clear view of the sun, so I had to settle for watching the people outside my window scamper-clambering into wakefulness. Their actions getting ever more clear as the dew on the window pane evaporated under the breath of an unseen sun.
    I awoke with a bellyache. Which, of course, makes me think of S.J. Perelman: belly acre. Miles of intestines wound up around themselves like twine, griping about something small. Friction, perhaps. I awoke to the kind of scents that a Dust-Owl perches over on the dust fields, searching for dust bunnies. I swirled the morning in my mouth like a fine wine and spat it out in the clogged sink like second-hand saliva and mouthwash. I go over and over the simplest things and yet the morning still looks back at me the same. Cockeyed through a five o'clock bit of shade.
    I wonder when the drains will unclog and the water flow. No other forces are at work in drains but gravity and obstruction. You can split hairs all you want after that, but no passageways will be cleared. No new territories discovered. It always leads inexorably to the same point, it’s just that sometimes something gets in the way.

Random notes and impulse control from January 31, 2012.

Sometimes I come across random notes that I've jotted down in the past. They feel like ransom notes from my past self that have been sent circuitously to my present self. The main difference between a "random note" and a "ransom note" seems to be the degree to which a person makes recourse to an X-Acto blade.

So here is something titled "Impulse Control" that I apparently wrote on January 31, 2012:

Impulse Control

For some time now it has become increasingly clear that we live in a society with little impulse control. In fact, those with the least amount of impulse control are lauded as the centurions of the new economy. They slice a swath through the open-mouthed barbarian hordes of idle and apathetic consumers, and are rewarded with all the spoils of war—splitting the difference between "disruption" and "destruction". They fondle themselves in the rumpus rooms of elaborate corporate “campuses” erected in honor of the creative economy. They eat the sugared cereal of their youth all day long and wear pajamas and ironic slippers and brainstorm about new apps and multitask on cutting edge tech. Multiple windows open, they post on FaceBook, update their tweetfeed on Twitter, and Google clips for shits and giggles on YouTube.

So much hysterical giddiness in the workplace seems unbecoming somehow. But don’t worry. The situation isn’t as erratic as it seems. Pleasure Island from Pinnochio  has been recreated in the workplace because there is money to be made through such ritualized playtime. The brainstorming, being encouraged to act out your CHILDHOOD in all caps, without shame, is the way corporations create the petri dish to formulate—in laboratory conditions—their ideal consumer. Lost in nostalgia for Star Wars and Foosball and low-resolution Atari games, creators and consumers circle-jerk each other like happy drones, and ultimately help define each other.

The word “Synergy” is no longer enunciated with hushed reverence in press releases and extravaganza product release events. It is a fait accompli, the systems have been streamlined, the consumers have been surgically separated from their jobs, and now can spend all their time just mindlessly consuming. "Consumption" is still a "wasting disease". While the centurion and their twin (the mindless consumer) of the new economy are engaged in the exact same activities, one set gets paid to play and indulge in fugues of comic book fantasy, while the other pays for the privilege. This is the essential difference. Nothing is created other than the conditions for an infectious and ecstatic petulance. Faith is expressed through debt.

The internet “post” is perhaps the modern manifestation of the bumper sticker. The bumper sticker, particularly in its East Bay manifestation starting from the Seventies, was narrowcasting. The new tech allows for broadcasting FaceBook to those you know and Twitter to both strangers who share your views and strangers who hate your guts.

856 For Zellersasn

I finally got my hands on a Montreal Assembly 856 For Zellersasn. The name is a mouthful and the pedal itself is chock-full of switches and knobs and capabilities. For my first improvisation using the pedal I used the FUZZ channel of the Dr. Scientist BitQuest! into the Montreal Assembly 856 For Zellersasn and then into the Boss RE-20 and mono out to a Zoom H5.

Then I took the audio clip and edited together shots from The Crowd (1928), an incredible film directed by King Vidor.

Drolo Stamme[n]

I have an early version of the Drolo Stamme[n]. The most obvious difference is that it has an on/off stomp switch in the upper right-hand corner.

Here is Stamme[n] Version 3:

I initially made this animation to capture the sound of the first version Stamme[n].

 

But since the Version 3 Stamme[n] had features that I wanted to explore, I saved up and eventually got one. Here are some explorations of the two pedals used in conjunction with each other.

For this audio clip I edited shots from the silent film Häxan (1922), which was directed by Benjamin Christensen.

 

For this audio clip I edited together shots from the silent film Sherlock, Jr. (1924), which was directed by Buster Keaton,

Drolo Stamme[n] into Hexe Revolver DX-L into Boss RE-20

For the visuals I used some animation that I drew with a Sharpie years ago.

For this clip I didn't use the Stamme[n]. Just a Basic Audio Fuzz Mutant into a Hexe Revolver DX-L.

Basic Audio Bye Bias (germanium)

No visuals to this video. Just a placeholder for sounds to take hold.

Signal:

Basic Audio Bye Bias (germanium)
Montreal Assembly Count To 5
Boss RE-20

 

And here is a longer exploration paired with some actual visuals. The pedals used are the same, but I paired the sound with black and white footage of Grand Central Station from John Frankenheimer's stupendously fantastic film Seconds (1966) and colour footage that I shot at Bon Echo Pronvincial Park.

 

Chase Bliss Audio Dark World

First explorations paired with some pre-freeze flow. No fuzz. Just Boss RE-20 Space Echo for stereo spread.

Pladask Elektrisk Bakvendt

You can read up about this pedal here.

A fine fellow at I Love Fuzz made some custom enclosures for the first run of the Bakvendt. This particular one has a beautiful spring-green centre. What's not to like?

What is it?
BAKVENDT is a granular synthesizer masquerading as a reverse delay. It can delay stuff in reverse, time stretch stuff in reverse, freeze stuff, pitch stuff upwards in octave intervals, pitch stuff downwards in octave intervals and generally make lots of gnarly noises. It packs quite many features in a small footprint.

Soundcloud clip available here.




I've made a few forays into Bakvendt-land. Here is what I've discovered:

Stomping in a Puddle of Pedals Part 8

Why not lose some time with a Basic Audio Buzzin' Sound, Basic Audio Duplex, Drolo Stamme[n], Montreal Assembly Count To 5, and a Boss RE-20?

But I repeat myself... I drone on. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
The hear of this soufflé is hard to hear without a stethoscope.

Stomping in a Puddle of Pedals Part 7

This pedal drone features:
Basic Audio Duplex
Basic Audio Knight
Drolo Stamme[n]
Montreal Assembly Count To 5
Boss RE-20

Stomping in a Puddle of Peddles Part 6

Creating a shifting veil of sound and then trying to pin a few notes like bobby pins onto the surface.

Churning away in the background are shots from Red Light, Blue Screen. Shooting a screen, mis-en-abyme, a picture within a picture, an elaboration of generation loss.

Stomping in a Puddle of Pedals Part 5.

For this puddle of pedals I gathered a mighty pool of sound.
I also experimented with using an expression pedal to subtly
change the delay-line loop of sound while still being able to
play the guitar.

The Boss EV-30 allows you to hook up two different pedals
with expression outputs. So in this case I plugged the EV-30
into the Boss RE-20 so I could "open" or "close" the loop as
far as guitar input being fed into the echo. I simultaneously
used the EV-30 plugged into the expression out of the
Montreal Assembly Count To 5.
 Fun! 

The pedals used:

Dr. Scientist BitQuest!
Montreal Assembly Count To 5 
David Rolo Stamme[n]
Boss RE-20
Boss EV-30
CooperFX Outward

For the visuals I shot a video of some Drinking Birds and
overlay that with some clips of my experimental film Theoria.