how's that for a possibility? well, true for me, and as a cyborg I can't find any shame in saying so. I certainly value my hours away from them, for sure, taking days (even weeks) off from time to time, but most of the time having a lot of (draining) creative fun like some poet who was left out Neuromancer's narrative; totally wired, and into it…
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of course, just as soon as I write this and head out to the studio to make a recording the hardware bites back. my objective was to capture the sound of my one long fingernail scraping the surface of the Chinese xmas gong (2 tracks) with a poem I found in a 2001 notebook. Set the wiring, recorded the gong tracks (sounded fine at the time), then did a half dozen treatments of the sounds (using different crazy processes), before discovering that the recordings were totally full of pops and dropouts. Why? I guess because the laptop was on the desk & soundcard on the floor, cause when I moved the soundcard up & re-recorded, no problem. Anyway, patience & perseverance wins, and "Optimization Progress" is up at the myspace and itunes sites previously mentioned. I'm proud of the poem but not completely pleased by the vocal take, but a reasonable sketch, & Glad to get my piece for the week (a goal for 2007). like in any good relationship, trials, conflict, problems but if one perseveres (and is lucky), reward.
I am starting to feel a bit limited (beyond my own self-limits) by ableton, which essentially give me 3 tracks and only let me use 2 effects. I realize I could keep mixing tracks down and creating more layers within the ableton scheme this way, but not compelled to do it that way. but for some reason I haven't loaded the other software yet (reason, sonar, sampletude) that might help me out. & thinking I'd like to figure out how to make some beats automatically, as another layer sometimes.
Listening to a cd of John Cage's in the car (a VW beetle, if you're curious), Sonatas, my mom gave it to me more than a decade ago. Made me realize my next recordings will involve the Steinway baby-grand that we have in the studio. unfortunately a bunch of the keys are broken, but it is tunes and the wires inside work fine. a few years ago (96) I made some great piano recordings with deborah goudreault inside a big piano at suny-albany & it will be fun to return to the terrain. perhaps a good occasion to break out some new software & see what it is like…
we had a visitor for a couple of days this week, which was a positive change. Jason Nelson, the ace digital poet/web artist, came for a visit from ..:NAMESPACE PREFIX = ST1 />australia. We had a good time hanging out (for the first time), getting to know each other, cooking up collaboration ideas… His sessions at NJIT, a public presentation and talk with my Advanced E-publishing class, were informative, entertaining, & went well in general. Mostly Jason talked about his works (you can see) at secrettechnology.com, but one idea he talked about was a gps driven poem. I really can't wait to see how this develops, & would like to be part of it somehow. The morning he left we luckily had a few minutes for a brief recording session, some of which came out really well. Jason improv-ed a funny monologue about the Boy Scouts, which I'm toying with now (mp3 file already too big for myspace) .
spent time ripping, editing converting video of Jason's NJIT gig. unfortunately something went wrong with the audio on the tape after the halfway point of the talk – so discussion of his idea of making GPS poems isn't there. some delays in posting the files, however. itunes is really slow and isn't playing the file for some reason. eventually it'll be up at the itunes.njit site (I hope).
very cold week, days and nights, trying keeping busy. got the plane tickets for the may/june trip to brazil, so work to do for that & plenty else to look forward to…
Aleatory and I, warmly on the couch in the house, watched the first few videos on the dvd that came with beck's latest cd, which I totally loved for its low-tech aesthetic (circa early 90s radioshack mixer look, done on an avid or some such no doubt). Later watched the rest of it with Stella and Amy, and it just got weirder and weirder (also enjoyable if sometimes redundant). We tune in from time to time with Beck, who, as Allen Ginsberg pointed out to me, is a really good poet. well, not really understanding the scientology scheme, can't say much about the person but inspired to build some "poems" in response to it (not yet ready to be posted).
But what is a poet? I read the newsletter of a respectable new york poetry institution recently, and though familiar with almost the entire cast of characters, it seems I share so little in common in terms of viewpoint, landscape (literal and figurative), concern, attitude and activity. no point in making much of this because it is great to be in touch with all kinds of people and activity, right? & may we all write on.
that's the weekly report & enough already. time for something else