We’re all survivors, but who transcends survival? -joan baez. History is all about polishing the edges and flattering the ego, so don’t worry about that part of it while you’re doing the work. -todf

Sitting in the semi-dark of Lucian’s room, playing with a wordpress app for my new “smartphone” (a title no object deserves when it requires so much instruction and direction), reviewing family, christmas, music, and food in my head (in that order).
Seeing the armature of xmas in a vision and it’s dark, silver and purple and blue. There are other layers- esp. that 50s-tinged jangly postcard and toy skin so close to the surface that it often masquerades as the true face; however, there is (for me) a soft gloaming, a purple shadow on snow, an infinite refraction of a lamp when seen through a web of ice-rimed branches… That is core.

Interesting because this feeling is tied to an environmental vision, not a domestic one.

Tired.

My ears are buzzing like they’re filled with boar bristles. Electric boar bristles. It’s been a long day.

My throat is a continuous lost sigh.

I am going to bed.

Managed to uncover some novelty tonight, pushed Crucifixion Doll in another direction entirely but one that made me much happier. This is the song I have found entirely unyielding to manipulation lately … I have spent the last 4 sessions, several hours each, really trying to wrench this out of the sonic hole it was in. Terribly frustrated, but then a breakthrough or two tonight. I just couldn’t leave it alone. Then, because success breeds success, happened across 9soundware, which looks/sounds quite promising… an answer to my recent conceptual dilemma: do I dig in and spend some serious time synthesizing/creatively editing and make myself a library of sound and noise? Of course, if I had the time, this would be my preference; but I feel the pressure of trying to get this first EP done, and there is still some significant song-writing to be done. Finding some interesting/powerful sounds/sampler instruments to use as a base would be a definite boon, letting me concentrate on the song while still having something sonically worthy as a base. Eventually, I will have to gather my thoughts on sound-design/song-writing … since I am watching myself work and I am seeing that I find it hard to separate these things — that is, the timbre of a given instrument will indicate a musical direction … change the timbre, change the direction, change the melodies, change the song.

Then, I dug into some old PD patches and got them working, and heard an array of implications go skittering through the soundscape and on into the clouds of implication. I got excited. Which is why I am up later than I promised I would be. Which is why, as usual, work will be a spine-grinding chore tomorrow- my brain will be only half-there.

So it is understandable that I must now say – goodnight. Goodnight.

Tracking down Turbosynth:
http://acapella.harmony-central.com/archive/index.php/t-1717183.html

Trent Reznor, techniques used for The Downward Spiral:
1) http://nothing.nin.net/int6.html
2) http://nothing.nin.net/int20.html
3) http://www.thegearpage.net/board/archive/index.php/t-293539.html

Community Suggestions:
http://www.thegearpage.net/board/archive/index.php/t-293539.html

Trying to pull off the cobwebs of sleep, leftover from the long and spine-scraping weekend. When Iryna is sick, the whole world is off-kilter. Sleep was the first sacrifice. Yesterday, a nice “day off”, was confounded by an overtaxed nervous system and a rogue stubbornness daemon that encouraged me, through delicious whispered promises, to bang my head against the walls and bookshelves. Coffee, while tasty, was furtive and reticent to lend a helping hand, preferring to nestle quietly somewhere in the more saurian parts of my brain- kept my heart beating, but that’s about all. I guess, in retrospect, that *that* was still pretty useful, and I am grateful, but when your hopes are for heaven while your body drags on the earth, that is a subtle form of hell.

Now, we (the daimon, the coffee gnome, the white noise ghosts, and the shadows-of-promise) are left with a disembodied feeling. Like a dream where you don’t notice you’re floating until you start trying to walk, and then you look down to see your feet pedaling uselessly in the air, a few feet above the ground. Good Morning.

My Home, If I Had Never Gotten Married

I had heard it said that the older people get the crazier they get. I am not so sure this is true- it feels rather more like, the older one gets the less one values the social filters that dominated one’s younger life. It takes a lot of energy to keep oneself socially acceptable on all fronts. You start to care less and less, and more and more of your genuine thoughts come through as action/words.

This is just a thought that occurred to me whilst buttering my banana bread, which I baked last night; I was thinking how funny it was that the image of self I strove to create as a younger person didn’t include such domestic tropes like baking, but how they- now- give genuine pleasure and I don’t much care about an external view, only about the end product (the baked good) and the happiness it can bring (to myself, and family).

Anyway, nascent thought, untested, must think more on it.