So inter­est­ing thing sort of just hap­pened… I was too tired to tackle the “music” music tonight (though I got a few ideas off a deep-listening to the scratch tracks), so i decided I should play with some of Logic’s soft­ware instru­ments and make some cool and non-specific textures.

OK, wait, back up, impor­tant point skipped: Aunt Jenny gave Lucian a sleep-noise machine (I for­get what its real name is) which has sev­eral dif­fer­ent set­tings. Cur­rently, he is in there past the gates of deeper slum­ber whilst dig­i­tal waves crash with white-noise crests on the vir­tual shore. Lest you think I am mak­ing fun, I am not: I love white-noise machines, could lis­ten to them all day long (cf. my sound art). I am ‘mon­i­tor­ing’ the baby through a ‘mon­i­tor’ which is sit­ting next to me, god’s-eye view of my son curled up asleep.

A highly com­pressed, noisy, distortish-type sound comes thru to me, through this mon­i­tor, but I really didn’t notice it before, mostly because I had on my record­ing head­phones on which heav­ily (though not com­pletely) fil­ter out ambi­ent sounds.

Any­way, I set up some syn­the­sizer through a series of com­pres­sion, eqs, and dis­tor­tion, then played with an EVOC Fil­ter which, in total cool­ness, allows one to chop up the har­mon­ics in two ways and gen­tly morph them into each other, fueled by an LFO. I got the sound med­i­ta­tively cool, deep grainy dis­torted breaths of sound heav­ing in waves, sort of liq­uid noise undu­la­tions. I looped it for a while, try­ing to think to what pur­pose I might put the sound…

Now to the meat of the story: tak­ing off the head­phones, blink­ing my eyes, and real­iz­ing the sound i just spent 20–30 min­utes craft­ing and zon­ing on was pretty much the sonic equiv­a­lent of the waves being hushed out by Lucian’s sleep-noise-machine. I mean, nearly iden­ti­cal. Must have leaked through and bent the synapses towards the sound. Sort of viral, or inva­sive. Or maybe my brain is just sort of ‘yield’-y lately.

There you have it, the funny/odd/interesting thing. Two ends of a psy­chic elec­trode touch. An aural ouroboros. Sort of.

Except, in the end, i have to say: my sound was better.

Oh, yeah, come all ye faith­ful repro­duc­ers of sonic phe­nom­ena. Just glanced through this arti­cle, The Death of High Fidelity while I was research­ing the foibles of mix­ing specif­i­cally for the mp3 format.

I had just bounced down a few recent changes in my cur­rent ros­ter of songs, and was giv­ing them a lis­ten on the open-air Bose speak­ers (note1) and was sur­prised by what got buried v. what got empha­sized. Part of this, of course, is my own lack of skills at mix­ing. But part of it isn’t …

Any­way, inter­est­ing to hear of the cur­rent pres­sures on pro­duc­ers and engi­neers to mix for the overcompressed-mp3-plus-crappy-laptop-speakers, since this is now the stan­dard state of lis­ten­ing affairs for a good chunk of the crowd out there. I don’t yet know what I think about that, since it’s the old artistic-ideal-vs.-commercial-reality conun­drum, and i have heard sim­i­lar argu­ments about the com­pres­sion for nor­mal radio air­play, but for this lat­ter there was always a radio.edit dif­fer­ent from the stu­dio album ver­sion, so that the sonic qual­ity was opti­mized for each dif­fer­ent scenario.

The truth is, I tend to like the mod­ern– well, 90’s and 2000’s era– pro­duc­tions. I think that we have a vast amount of tech­nol­ogy and knowl­edge that tweaks our aural per­cep­tion, and i find many albums today a resplen­dent sound­scape. Granted, I lis­ten to a lot of Nine Inch Nails and Radio­head, two bands who have invested a lot of stu­dio time in cre­at­ing sounds and atmos­pheres; but I do get a bit of the younger bands unnamed but implied in the arti­cle, both from my own pas­sions and research, and from catch­ing echoes of the ado­les­cent frenzy of my daugh­ter, 16 years old and every­thing that tends to mean. And truth is, as John Oswald says, the world is a noisy ball. You have to shout some­times to be heard. But then you have bands like Low, like Sigur Ros, like Kings of Con­ve­nience, and like the Black Atlantic (my recent late-night addic­tion): bands who swim only in the soft, the med­i­ta­tive, the glacial, and/or bands whose whole ethic is dynam­ics, mean­ing the soft­est softs and com­par­a­tive ‘louds’ that are an orgasm’s release of ten­sion. So I don’t know. On this, I am agnostic.

Mean­while, the prac­ti­cal side is that I have to make sure that these songs, being built in an incre­men­tal record­ing process that is all I can afford right now, sound good on an mp3 as well as full-fledged CD audio aiffs. I will over­com­press where I have to. I am not afraid.

Some­thing that I have — through expe­ri­ence — thought myself:

Mul­ti­task­ing is bad for you {from CNN, from Hivelogic}:

“Com­pared with those who rarely used more than one type of media at a time, heavy mul­ti­taskers had slower response times, most often because they were more eas­ily dis­tracted by irrel­e­vant infor­ma­tion, and because they retained that use­less infor­ma­tion in their short-term memory.“

I do think there are those who are quite adept, per­haps genet­i­cally wired for an adroit­ness, at this this mode of thought + action. I mean, we all can do it to greater and lesser degrees, and Katya’s gen­er­a­tion seems to be con­di­tioned to pre­fer it (though I am not con­vinced that this is *not* to their detri­ment(1)); I have known peo­ple who live in this post­mod­ern, frac­tured state of mind and make envi­able progress — reJon comes to mind. But I mostly think about Schopenhauer’s essay on noise — not due to the noise itself (for noise, I do love), but rather the ‘dia­mond’ mind, which when cut into bits by an inter­rup­tion loses its value.

This may come as a sur­prise to any­one who has cared enough to track my pro­gres­sion as an artist and musi­cian, and the things I have espoused pre­vi­ously. I have been influ­enced by Cage, by chance, by Rauschenberg’s being the writ­ing on the wall ethos. I have cre­ated free-for-all struc­tures for art, I have spo­ken of chaos as other peo­ple would of ‘free­dom’(2). These things have always held an amaz­ing intel­lec­tual appeal to me. How­ever– gem­ini that I am– I think my deep­est con­nec­tions are to the Beuy­ses of this world — those who are, to use a word I am not even sure is a word, the mythopo­etic ones.

Ah, too much there to get into now. But let’s bring this back to the beginning:

I have noticed, per­son­ally and with many oth­ers I have observed qui­etly or not so qui­etly, that our con­stant state of task-bombardment is like an itchy pox: irri­tat­ing, unful­fill­ing, unful­fil­l­able. It’s like being trapped in the shal­low end of life. Itchy :) I have read pre­vi­ous stud­ies that track the amount of time it takes for a per­son, once inter­rupted, to return to their pre­vi­ous task/thought– approx­i­mately 15 min., if mem­ory serves me. Given the schiz­o­phrenic nature of most of our day jobs, this adds up quickly.

I think about watch­ing my lovely daugh­ter, Gen Y through and through, sit­ting in front of the tele­vi­sion, chatting/listening/looking up tat­too designs, while tex­ting on her phone, and osten­si­bly keep­ing track of the con­vo­luted plot line of Lost(3).

I am not say­ing that this ruins us as human beings, not at all. We’ve proven our adapt­abil­ity and mirac­u­lous natures over and over again, and we still find ways of keep­ing all our shit together. But I won­der if we– all of us beneath the enfilade (self-imposed, or no)- might be more, with the ancient art of focus.

Lord, some­times I sound just like some­one I never thought I’d be, when I was younger.

On the eve of my dear wife’s Cit­i­zen­ship Cer­e­mony I have a few moments to untan­gle the skeins and make sense of august, the most august of months: play­ground of the leo; birth day of my daugh­ter; string of sleep­less nights; frac­tured arrhyth­mia of unfo­cused days; the late night slosh-and-hum of the dish­washer; the bram­ble thicket of inchoate words that never quite man­age to stain the pages of my jour­nal. A month of blurs, with a few moments that sur­face in clar­ity: a beach party & watch­ing my daugh­ter weave her way in and out of her friends; a dis­cov­ered fever for the micro-blog; rat­tlesnake (!); an inex­orable (though anx­ious) roll towards Iryshka’s cit­i­zen­ship; a watch that informs me of the tides; stunned paral­y­sis in front of the mixer; a touch of the beau­ti­ful sun­set after weeks of cloud­less, clean fades; the weight of code and pho­to­shop files that drags my face down into a soft jelly; sleep train­ing long over­due; the teenagers’ passion-play of love & betrayal as an ancient rit­ual played over and over again, every gen­er­a­tion; the grad­ual but inex­orable meta­mor­pho­sis of songs that start out too over­run by their influ­ences but begin to sound more and more like just me every change; days of par­adise walk­ing along the ocean, feet in the clear water, watch­ing mas­sive waves curl in slow motion and pound the surf with a fluid strength that has built to break­ing over geo­logic spans of time; Infi­nite Jest by David Fos­ter Wal­lace; being reminded every day how amaz­ing humans are– what they can do with their incom­pa­ra­ble brains– by watch­ing the mir­a­cle of con­scious­ness explode expo­nen­tially in my child.

As I fin­ish this, I real­ize how Leo­nine this August really is… it’s a water­shed month, it’s a turn­ing point, it’s the peak; in so many ways, it is (impe­ri­ously) deter­min­ing the months to fol­low. In like a lion, out like a maiden.

So, those in the know know that today was Iryska’s Cit­i­zen­ship Cer­e­mony … we were both run­ning on a wave of cof­fee and adren­a­line over a deep and wide sleep-deficit (like, Mar­i­ana Trench style), but coasted through in fine form and now my loveli­est love of all time is a full-fledged U.S. Cit­i­zen, with all the rights and respon­si­bil­i­ties the rest of us Natural-Borns take for granted or piss away in a mid­dle class, angsty drug moan. I wrote some thoughts, with no par­tic­u­lar sense of style, whilst I sat in a highly uncom­fort­able seat in the Civic Cen­ter bal­cony. and here they are:

The dais is flanked on both sides by 90’s style LCD pro­jec­tors cast­ing a zoomed-in view of a flag wav­ing in ultra-slow-motion, mak­ing it sort of undu­late behind white, drop-shadowed text that reads “Cel­e­brate Cit­i­zen­ship” and other such happy bites. The large but mis­mod­u­lated speak­ers pipe out tinny but quite iden­ti­fi­able patri­otic songs– i can hear “God Bless Amer­ica” on repeat, midrange jacked up high to float over the dull bass roar of the crowd of citizens-to-be.

I notice that most every­one has a rather large entourage with them. One man, rather than an entourage, seems to be wear­ing an Amer­i­can Flag cape. Actu­ally, it appears to be a beach towel, brand-spanking & col­or­fully new, stars and stripes and all, draped over his shoul­ders. From this dis­tance, I can just make out that he has tucked it into his polo-shirt-collar. I admire this, grin­ning so much the kid next to me stares at me with huge brown eyes.

I have told this story in the past, to at least a few peo­ple: I used to drive by the San Diego Civic Cen­ter and see the plas­tic let­ters on the back­lit sign spelling out ‘Nat­u­ral­iza­tion Cer­e­mony’. It always gave me a deep con­cep­tual kick to imag­ine a dense, half-sweaty, cheap-cologne-and-perfume-and-cigarette musk-ed crowd, stand­ing, hands raised, and for­swear­ing alle­giance to for­eign poten­tates in unison.

I see Iryshka walk­ing, off to my right, look­ing tall and ele­gant in the legs, flow­ing a lit­tle (a ben­e­fit of the wide flare of her styl­ish pants) — & look­ing more than a lit­tle ‘cute mouse’-y in the head & shoul­ders region as her nerves make her head bow and her brain swim a lit­tle, I am sure. Part of that worry must be the Russ­ian pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with paper­work, and part of it assuredly is my wife’s will­ing­ness to give her­self over to worry as a sort of pri­mal, dri­ving, state-of-mind (I think she gives in because the nature of worry pro­duces a repeat­ing cycle of thoughts, forc­ing her to check and re-check and re-re-check (ad infini­tum) and so she comes out the other side with every­thing– INS paper­work, for exam­ple– in order). She’s sit­ting now, her head still bent low, sunk a lit­tle between a flat topped Pacific Rim type and a bald­ing man whose skin is the color of my morn­ing cof­fee. I am hop­ing she feels a lit­tle calmer now that she’s passed through, suc­cess­fully, the first gaunt­let of offi­cers stamp­ing paper­work on col­lapsi­ble tables.

There are a huge num­ber of peo­ple here, more than I expected. I am a lit­tle sur­prised and how unre­mark­able, in total, the eth­nic mix­ture is. I mean, it *is* mixed, with veils and burkas and dyed cot­ton wraps and silk shirts open over 6 inches to the chest reveal­ing gold crosses in wiry tan­gles of black chest hair. There are hooked nose, snub Bjork noses, skin the won­drous color of shiny coal, skin the color of soft beach sand, skin the color of Baltic mists. I see large white beards, low cut cleav­age, tight skirts, crum­pled old suits, pot bel­lies, skele­tal wrists, and a gag­gle of small US flags pok­ing out of peo­ples’ breast pock­ets. It is mixed, it’s just that this seems to be the nor­mal street melange of San Diego any­way. I am say­ing, it looks pretty business-as-usual for a stroll through down­town. Not, let’s admit, Prospect Street in La Jolla, or on most of the beaches north of OB, but surely when we’re trolling for Ethiopian food down on El Cajon Boulevard.

It is dif­fi­cult to locate Iryna again, as the seats all around her fill up. I do find her, but her two flank­ing gen­tle­men have dis­ap­peared for the moment, so it took a lit­tle extra.

Well, that was all I was able to scrib­ble in the note­book. I must say that I thor­oughly enjoyed the cer­e­mony, most par­tic­u­larly when they went through the 98 or so “host” coun­tries and had the soon-to-be-former-citizens stand, to the applause of their fam­i­lies, friends, and oth­ers who shared their origins.

The deep rum­bling oath was all that I had dreamed it would be, and I knew that when it was over, Iryna would turn and blow me a kiss– and she did not dis­ap­point. My lovely new citixen (which is my typo, which i will keep, since it calls to mind a hybrid citizen-vixen). I went out­side to buy her a cof­fee (well, we were both quite exhausted [another story]) and handed her her first caf­feinated bev­er­age as a full fledged honored-and-responsible, child of the United States. It wasn’t too great, this cof­fee, but then — few sym­bols are mag­nif­i­cent in their own right. It’s the idea that counts :)

So, my most crazy, out-of-body-and-mind, arc-of-a-falling-star, without-reservation-but-with-abandon, con­grat­u­la­tions and love to my wife, Iryna Clark, who I love in ways I never thought I might, and ways I never knew I could, and who con­firms every day that I made the best choice of a ter­res­trial life­time when I mar­ried her. Wel­come to the USA! Live Free or Die!

A quick post I should have fin­ished a while ago… while hik­ing through our won­der­ful mini-desert, almost in our back­yard, with Mr. Lushkin strapped firmly to the chest, we had the occa­sion to see some of the cooler, wilder wildlife of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. I won’t go into much detail, but the crown­ing moment was of course the beau­ti­ful adult South­ern Pacific Rat­tlesnake we saw on the 8th of August. Here’s a teaser:

It is late, it is early, it is dif­fi­cult to decide. I am hun­gry, I am wasted, I am aching, I am wired. It is dawn some­where in the world, right now, this moment. I have a puls­ing vein in my tem­ple, I have a an excess of ions in my blood, I have bur­dock in my eyes, I have two iron legs. I have found that chas­ing demons tends to bring the Devil him­self out. The baby starts to wake up, and when he does– well, then it’s his world. The churn­ing of the dish­washer merges with the soft plush implo­sions echo­ing from the speak­ers, mak­ing a sort of liq­uid insect sym­phony. That reminds me that the sound­track of life is rarely a melodic one — rather, it is com­min­gled tex­ture; com­merce with the ghosts; ethe­real entan­gle­ments– invis­i­ble, tac­tile, & some­how– in the end– inter­nal. I am rid­ing a wave of choco­late con­scious­ness, a hazy sub­tle orgasm of endor­phins and a con­stant push towards unblink­ing­ness. I know it won’t last. There is a place in your head that gives all thoughts extra­or­di­nary depth. There are only 2 ways of look­ing at your mate­r­ial pos­ses­sions, and one of them is exhaust­ing. In the end. 10 min­utes have passed. Good Night.

Sit­ting in bed, in the silver-blue glow of my lap­top, watch­ing my son sleep, sooth­ing him first with sound when he wakes. Inter­est­ingly, more than half the time he wakes with a vio­lent start, and starts cry­ing imme­di­ately — before even open­ing his eyes. So I have to ask — is he hav­ing night­mares? Or is he sim­ply hyper­sen­si­tive to his sit­u­a­tion– in the crib, not in the bed, and alone, no bod­ies next to him? I can’t decide. I know that he’s upset before he’s fully con­scious. It makes me sad to think that a child of a mere 8 months could have any­thing in his head other than warm, fuzzy, liq­uid, fleshy happiness.

So maybe this isn’t the best topic for this moment– re-inaugurating the ‘blog so to speak– but I had this dream the other night about which I keep think­ing: it’s sim­ple, and it’s also per­haps indica­tive of my computer-addled brain, but I dreamt I was using this computer-drawing pro­gram that was some weird intu­itive merger of Pho­to­shop and some 3-D thing like Maya. The idea was that I could draw any­thing, and when I held the ctrl but­ton (to be hon­est, I can’t remem­ber if it was a Mac or PC), it imme­di­ately ren­dered the draw­ing in a sim­ple 3-D. But the best part is, when­ever I did that, it would turn my pen tool into a knife tool so I could carve off bits, and they would fall off with vir­tual grav­ity. Per­fect for draw­ing a ruined cas­tle, which– you can prob­a­bly guess– was exactly what I was drawing.

As a side note, doesn’t Sigur Ros sound like some­thing like the slow, majes­tic, time-lapse march of gold– and emerald-colored lichens?

Our deep­est fear is not that we are inad­e­quate. Our deep­est fear is that we are pow­er­ful beyond mea­sure. It is our light, not our dark­ness, that fright­ens us most. We ask our­selves, ‘Who am I to be bril­liant, gor­geous, tal­ented, and famous?’ Actu­ally, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your play­ing small does not serve the world. There is noth­ing enlight­ened about shrink­ing so that peo­ple won’t feel inse­cure around you. We were born to make man­i­fest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we uncon­sciously give other peo­ple per­mis­sion to do the same. As we are lib­er­ated from our own fear, our pres­ence auto­mat­i­cally lib­er­ates oth­ers.
~Nel­son Mandela