Get­ting ready– small, agile lap­top. Online back­ups we hope we can access. Installing server on lap­top to run dev sites. Drink­ing water.

Off to a soar­ing start, though sleep is still a cor­ru­gated sur­face. Pack­ing it up, pack­ing it in, try­ing to stream­line yet still be com­pre­hen­sive. Think­ing that expec­ta­tions are like putting a soft blan­ket on the future, but the future is like the cold vein of air that inevitably creeps in. Also thinking:

A mode is just a sequence of steps
– Nathaniel S. Clark

Try­ing to weave some new modes from old thread, to mix metaphors joy­fully. The wind is blow­ing; it’s going to be tumultuous.

I keep for­get­ting to men­tion (to the noos­phere in gen­eral) the “bloom”: here in the palm-and-desert aerie, we have the bless­ing of an early bloom.

This is always a beau­ti­ful shock to my inner-climate-sense, since I grew up in {was forged in the Iro­quois fires of} Upstate New York {and also sub­se­quently in the Mohi­can Val­ley of Waste­field, MA} where Feb­ru­ary is still bit­terly cold, and March is, more often than not, a slug­gish and grimy old Lion. Mean­ing: my inner senses do not ever expect to see soft green buds, light pur­ple umbrella-flowers, explo­sions of flower-cones, or rounded peaks of bell-like petals dot­ting the land­scape. But here they are, in this beau­ti­ful hybrid world of South­ern California.

Walk­ing through our favorite desert-in-miniature a few days ago, we were impressed to see the Yucca bell-towers, the Night­shade, the African Vio­lets, and the feral spike-balls of the Wild Cucum­ber. And, while not exactly a flower (though bear­ing a small tuft of flow­ers at the end of a stalk), the black sage has run ram­pant, weav­ing ten­drils of its par­tic­u­lar dry desert spice through the warm air.

I can’t help but wax a lit­tle poetic — it puts me in such a reverie, even while remem­ber­ing it.

More to write, more to remem­ber– but the day has started, so here we go.

Some­times I think that these days are the com­pressed moments seen quickly, from the cor­ner of the eye, in the half-light of the past… a moment of falling asleep, or of see­ing the black win­dow and think­ing that it could be any­where out­side. Tonight, out­side, it’s a ras­cal vein of cold air, slip­ping up through the canyons; inside, it’s one of those nicest pools of calm– baby sleep­ing, daugh­ter sleep­ing, wife in the bath, dish­washer hum­ming, pen­cil lines and modal scales falling away, and one soft can­dle of light, here by the lap­top screen. There is a com­fort that per­vades the palm tree aerie tonight. Which is uncom­mon. Which is whole­heart­edly welcome.

I could move in so many dif­fer­ent direc­tions right now. I sup­pose that is part of my quiet joy — a moment of implicit poten­tial always makes me smile, and the ideas are all jock­ey­ing for posi­tion in line. In the end, I will prob­a­bly leave them– all of them. It is too late, and I am too far gone. But it is cer­tainly nice to have them.

We are capa­ble of see­ing our future, aren’t we? We can, should we choose, look ahead and see exactly where we’re going, right down to the tex­ture and qual­ity of the air, at night, some decade hence. I know this because I have seen this day, this night, before– and I knew (some­how, some­where, deep within) that I would expe­ri­ence this. I feel this is one shard of a vision from a night, long ago, in my East­hamp­ton attic. For one moment, I knew New York City was out­side my win­dow. Then, I could feel the soft, cool jas­mine air on my face. And then… well, much more.

If this seems cryp­tic, I apol­o­gize. I do not intend for it to be so. I mean this very lit­er­ally– we carry within us not just the seeds, but the vision, of our future. For some rea­son, we do not per­mit our­selves to be aware of it, most of the time. So it forces itself on us, in flashes, in moments where we lose con­trol of our sin­gle focus and let our con­scious­ness blos­som… For me, I see many things when I am entrained in a repet­i­tive task. For this rea­son, and this rea­son only, the work at the ‘deli’ in Waste­field was a gift– the repet­i­tive motion was like a dream invo­ca­tion. I was a shaman for 4 to 6 hours a day, that summer.

I do not under­stand it, I can­not always evoke it, and I cer­tainly can­not force the visions to be more sig­nif­i­cant. I see sim­ple things for the most part– drop­ping coins in a stair­well, telling my father it’s his turn to row, or a par­tic­u­lar taste of the air on some spring night in Cal­i­for­nia. Of course, it would be emi­nently more use­ful to see some major events.

But there it is.

I did tell you that it was late, and I would not be able to extend the proper hos­pi­tal­ity to the small pageant of ideas who got all dressed up for the night’s plea­sure. A long long year-and-a-half of bro­ken and shell-shocked sleep leaves me defense­less, at least when the caf­feine finally trick­les out of the sys­tem. And it is that time. Bled dry. So to speak.

So I look back through the many dark win­dows of past nights, hop­ing to catch my own eye– for I know I am look­ing for­ward, some­where back there, won­der­ing at this taste, this tremor, this vision. And I look for­ward, again, to see if I can make sense of the shapes in the dark.

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