Today, a collection of this and that, a chop suey of unlinked thoughts in the vein of an Eno-esque swollen-appendices journal entry.
Finished the manuscript for The Last Tour. My biggest longform project to date at 99,300 words. Writing the synopsis is turning out to be the hardest part, but alas one of those necessary evils in hopes of getting someone somewhere interested in putting it to printed page.
Currently training for a marathon as kind of a page-turning after several years of not running (and as a "reward" for finishing the book). I think I've strained my ankle on a weekend training run. I hobble like an old man. Things are different now.
Sturgeon's Law - 90% of everything is shit. We are certainly testing this at scale with the incoming wave of generative sludge has begun to hit Spotify, et al. Is there a place for AI in a creative process? My thinking continues to evolve. When George Lucas was coming up with Yoda, he asked a bunch of designers to come up with dozens of designs based on his description (prompt) and then said "That's the one."
Is it the same?
How much automated sludge can we all take? McDonalds didn't put fine dining out of business, but it did create a lot of unhealthy people. There's surely a line between using an automated system to fool around with ideas, and using it to create the end product itself.
(This article, itself AI-generated, will tell you how to easily make a song, upload it to a streaming platform and make passive income with no emotional commitment whatsoever. Echoes of drop-shipping schemes, print-on-demand design theft, and lazy creative pretenders.)
Where is this going?
Another school shooting. Controversial take: If gun ownership is what keep us from an authoritarian state, their proliferation seems to be grooming us all to the opposite effect. We're wanded every time we go to a concert. Patted down at the gates of Six Flags. Clear bags only. A generation exists now against a backdrop of dead friends, life-altering injuries, and internalized active shooter drills from preschool. Some of them will run for office one day.
Where is this going?
Starting work on my part of the Emotions by the Tied Hands participatory art project by Scottish musician Bill Drummond. The DL;BR stop on his virtual experimental tour begins in late November, after a series of random stops that include Welsh performance artists good cop bad cop, Liverpool philosopher think tank The Thinker Hub, Canadian experimental ambient artist Electric Moo, and Malaysian street food restaurant Baba Hawker in Melbourne, Australia. I will be designing a printed poster and recording an interpretation of The Shangri-La's Past, Present & Future. Thinking the poster could draw influence from Polish film posters of the last mid-century. The tune could be something long and building along the lines of Bark Psychosis or GY!BE.
Where is this going? Still thinking.
Working on the structure for a long-running demo cassette story-series. Indiana: A Field Guide will feature dozens of imaginary bands linked by the same, searching voice. Hints of Kalevala Records. Catalog as art. Trying hard not to make this an indulgent vanity project, even though that's precisely what it is. But isn't that what all art projects are?
Related...back catalog. Have heaps of digital-only releases that now are calling for their own physical artifact ten years on. Stacks of 50 cassettes each, like we did in the old days. Hard drive to hard copy. Chasing becomes documenting. Imagining what those could look like as well.
My house (the historic Prosser House) has a history that was lost to time and a courthouse fire. I want to dream up what those years looked like. Ghosts of previous owners and esoteric Victorian architecture. Another book to organize/agonize.
Solo album gestating. Created by exporting everything I've ever recorded into stems, cutting it all up with the texts of the books I've written, am writing, or will write, and crafting them into a massive découpé writ large. (Not sure if I'm using writ large correctly.)
"When you cut into the present, the future leaks out." - William S. Burroughs.
Songs of the subconscious.
Where is this going?
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What I’m reading: Facing the other Way: The Story of 4AD (Martin Aston)
What I'm listening to: Clan of Xymox (Clan of Xymox)
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