So yeah, this is why I haven't been really talking to people for the past several weeks.

Finally finished with this quarter. 'Twas fun but I need the break. So many things were made. I can't quite remember them. What did I accomplish anyway? This at least:

Three Out of Eleven

I'm glad that's over with. I need to go make something different.

I was working with a friend last night on a sound project. We were happily patching sounds and things together in MaxMSP, a fine little program, with the goal to make a computer performance piece of some sort. We had sounds that we had previously recorded and were then trying to find things we liked by processing them in various ways. After four hours he was starting to tire and get doubtful. I thought it looked promising. Another hour after that and we had found an amazing sound, had practice the performance and called the time done.

The problem I have are those first four or five hours. Without his doubt, I would have kept on patching and transforming random things until I would have have been sick of my own ears, a fate I usually don't quite realize I am in. I find that I just sit there, wandering around in the mud of sound that is unusable and utterly fall in love. I love listening. I love just exposing my ears and brain to sounds. The fundamental problem, of course, is that it took me hours to get to this point. How can I ask an audience or at least myself in 36 hours to use that amount of time to get to a point where I felt happy with it? No, Sisyphus eternally playing the clarinet with a broken reed: bad. I just don't realize how much I settle for sound because I'm used to it. I forget why I'm here. I forget what I will think like when I'm listening off the cuff. I forget what's it's like to hear a sound for the first time and smile. I forget what it feels like to be truly turned on, physically and emotionally.

This is my biggest problem recently. It annoys me. I go into a studio and end up washed in reverberations. I hear a sound and become so used to it that it no longer maters how I set it. I hear it no matter what. I love it no matter what. I can't say no to sound.

There are, apparently, two things that can grant me an inordinate amount of nocturnal drive. The first is of course some sort of chemical stimulant. The second is trying to figure out how I can make my own digital pan knobs in Max MSP. Two days into seriously learning this program, and I'm already half way into building a mixer. Oh and I taught it how to randomly generate NES music.

And I can't stop… :(

Embedding is disabled so go here. THIS IS WHAT I GREW UP ON.

I've been really concentrating on audio lately. I sit at a mixing board for hours just listening to the same eight or nine instruments. I don't necessarily get tired by the work, but I do often loose perspective. I sometimes "walk around" inside a mix. I listen to an instrument or a sound or a frequency or a timbre. It's useful but I sometimes get lost that way. I find myself through the looking glass and unable to return. Lately, I've been trying to find ways of keeping myself listening to the whole mix. The easiest way is to just get up, walk around for a bit, come back and then listen again. That is nearly always helpful but it does take time. Tonight I stumbled upon candles. If I stare at a candle, my eyes and brain are doing just enough work that I don't quite move into the minutia. I am very slightly distracted and very much entranced, a state which is perfect for listening to all of the music.

There is a downside to candles. The down side is that my computer is now slightly covered in wax. It was more than slightly covered in wax as I knocked the candle onto it. I was able to remove most of it although with great difficulty and frustration. And due to the heat and the poor quality of plastic, my tilde, function, and escape keys are now warped (the escape keycap is no longer useable). I had nearly forgotten what instantaneous panic, anger, and despair was. It had been a month or so. I also found out that I can catch moths in my hands when angry.

This has all been brought to me by my love of sound. That in the least can be comforting.

Today I turn 23. Things are going well despite the increased unit in time. Hopefully, a sack of bricks will not fall on my head when I am walking to the record store. If a sack of bricks falls on my head, I hope that they are the colorful cardboard ones I used to have when I was kid. I miss those.

You know what? Screw sleep. I don't need you. I got so many things done today without you. I went for a wonderful walk in the woods, becoming lost and enjoying the dawn over the sound; I had a good class today in which I became more proficient with the golden oldie mixing console, patch bays and computers; I found a copy of The Official Prisoner Companion at the used book store; some research and planning was completed on my presentation of the art, music, and productions of Brian Eno; Bartók's Mikrokosmos was acquired; several good films were watched. All of this was done while being sleep deprived for over two days.

Granted I did throw up my lunch but hey: BARTÓK, ENO, McGOOHAN, and ALTMAN.

Huggers just wants a hug.

For those who don't know, I'll be coming home for a short visit on the 15th! That's right, the west coast has not completely taken me away and I still have a fondness for the City that Reads (I resorted to watching old episodes of Homicide for my fix). I'll only be in town until thursday but I'd like to get some sort of shindig together, if possible. I've missed you guys.

Recently, I have had a lot of idle time on my hands due to a lack of purposeful things to do, a sense of escapism, and depression. I also have had access to many films. The natural thing, for me anyway, is to consume them. For no reason, other then for my records, I am listing the ones from this quarter.

( 54 Films )

A gem of wisdom:

Never try to tune any sort of musical instrument that you actually want to be in tune whilst listening to Swordfishtrombones.

I am awake at 4:16AM after writing a paper. This is something that I have not had to do in quite some time. I have forgotten how much I like it. That might make me really weird.

Also, I think I found a way to get nearly a third of my entire program into Doctor Who. The third who took the Evolution in American program, anyway. I just wish they didn't restrict bittorrent traffic so. It takes me quite a long time to download the new episodes.

*sigh*

Ladies and Gentlemen, if you don't know by now, I am a geek. Who is really tired.

I am leaving Baltimore. I don't know when I'll be coming back. I don't really know if I will come back. I assume that I will at some point. I just don't believe that I will ever think of it as home anymore. I don't really know what to think of that. There is a part of me that remembers every event that happened here and says to me in a quiet voice "You can't leave, for there have been wonderful and horrible things that have happened here. I know how much you love wonderful and horrible things." There is another part of my mind who is more undefined and seductive that says, "Go you idiot! See the world! Meet people! Have an adventure! Fall in love! Create! Learn! Succeed! Fail!" and other exclamatory statements. Both of those are quite normal, I assume. This time, I am following the latter, for good or ill.

The odd thing is that, for once, I am not nervous about it. I seem quite at ease with the general idea of leaving what I have known. This is unusual for me. I am a nervous and neurotic person, usually caused by or about things that I can't control or can't understand or can't know. Change is, quite often, all three. I generally abhor change, at least to the point where major shifts in direction, whether helpful or hurtful, are just loosely ignored. Hilarity of the hindsight kind sometimes ensues, sometimes not. But it is a common thing for me, the worrying. So, the lack of anxiety → unusual. It is also unusual because this decision was mostly spurred on by my own bootstraps (I know, I'm mixing footwear based figures of speech; please, bear with me). I'm not really sure what the cause of that was. Possible hypotheses have included a genuine desire to learn and work, a response to stagnation, a personal test of my abilities, and other things that are just as equally boring in nature. That's not something that I am overly interested in nailing down at the moment. It seems unimportant. Whatever the reason is, I'm going. Now. Well, not now, now. More like at the end of the week, now. That's the kind of now I am using. The flexible variety.

There is a thing that remains problematic. I am leaving for the other side of the country and will not be in physical contact with many people that I would prefer to remain in physical contact with. Again, this is quite normal, I assume. I call these people my friends. I mean that in the greatest sense of the word. I have had issue with the degradation of the word friend for quite some time now. Social websites have effectively contributed to this with what many can only call the "Gotta Catch 'Em All" approach. Yeah, thats being a little spiteful and facetious. I know that by design, they are just ways to meet new people and keep in touch with established friends; one is silver, the other gold, and the like. Yet, to me, it should be more then that. Maybe it's an old fashioned approach or maybe my own anxiety induced social paranoia but I define friends by intimacy, honesty and compassion towards one another. That's what I wish to keep. I don't know if I can over such a distance. I'm afraid I can't. I'm afraid that I won't. The only thing I can be other then sad and full of guilt and regret is thankful for the people who have been my friends over the years. I am thankful. I don't really know what else to call it. It just feels good to remember. That's the good part of my memory. The part that no fear or anxiety can touch. The part that recalls and shouts "What wonderful people!". For that I am glad. I am glad that I knew each and every person. I will miss you. I really will. You are my friends. No matter what the distance, physical or otherwise, I will remember you as friends.

An Epiphany:

Situation – Three windows were open on my computer. The first was iTunes playing Jon Hassell and Brian Eno's Fourth World, Vol 1 : Possible Musics. The second was the first act of Waiting for Godot which I was reading at the time. The third was the dreaded (at least by me) Facebook.

Epiphany – The sudden, sickening realization that I was again, a college student.

Thanks Flynn.