Final section (bar credits) of 'O' is up. Also, you may like to partake of some free mp3 downloads courtesy of Artistdirect.com - some of them (Pnau, Department of Eagles, Wilco, Annuals, People in planes) quite good.
Peace out-
I think one of the sadder things about music is that it's only ever an expression of a very small part of a person, or in the case of pop music, often no part of a person.
This leads to some disillusioning situations wherein the listener identifies with the composer, only to find later on that they don't really relate to the composer at all-
I'm reminded of Kevin Smith's encounter with Prince (who he was a fan of) in his college-talk DVD, who he discovered was a somewhat rabid deluded and oblivious religion nut.
Culture builds heroes. We like to identify with the protagonist, be it in the song or otherwise. Perhaps it's like C.S Lewis's purported comment on books - that we read to know we are not alone - in the same sense, we listen to find identification in other's expression, experiences and moods. But often the culture is where the identification ends and the reality never matches up.
I believe this is why music is more a youth culture than other forms of media - it's more emotional for one (youth are known for that), but also the false-identification aspect of it is a large part of it's appeal - by the time you get older, you realise perhaps not all of the music you like is written by people you'd necessarily get along with (and that these guys take a dump like everyone else).
In closing, I like to think that honest musicians honestly communicate themselves into their work - even if it is only one or a couple of facets of themselves that get communicated;
and although I've had my share of disillusionment regards musicians (and audio engineers), I believe I'd get along with at least 80% of the musicians I like, even if I was knocked down by how ordinary they are. Here's hoping.
m@#
For all those who were using my crappy hacked-together version of ImgLikeOpera, the original author has now put out a new version, which fixes many of the buggy aspects in Firefox 3. Go to it!
If you're using forums I still recommend turning on image placeholders with arial narrow size 9.
Quite possibly one of the strangest and most touching anime I've watched, Barefoot Gen is based on the autobiographical manga of the same name, based on the authors experiences of having survived the hiroshima blast as a six year old boy, watching his entire family die.
Equal parts embarressingly cartoonish and devastatingly tragic, it really does the head in to watch. Sometimes you're laughing at how cheesily cartoonish it is, how innappropriate the music is, or you're bemused (as a westerner) at the cultural differences - then at other times you're confronted with an image of a baby trying to produce milk from it's dead mother's breasts. Not a film for all the family, but then, films about horrendous historical accounts seldom are.
I'm guessing the reasoning on the half of the production team was to, rather than play down the horror, attempt to counterbalance it with happiness and ligtheartedness of equable proportions - in this they'd succeed, though not without a somewhat bipolar nature overshadowing the entire film.
Worth watching, if only to understand simply how utterly horrific the consequences of an atomic blast are from someone who actually survived it.
Getting close to the finish of the 'O' releases: Wii - a dark nightmare.
BTW the names for the different sections are mayan. Neat.
The fact that this scenery doesn't require any soundtrack of it's own to be appreciated, but I'm listening to music anyway, shows how habituated I've become to it. Not a bad thing, necessarily.
Desert road is magical this time of year.
Mt Ruapehu is capped, crowned and covered from head to foot in pure white snow, the sun glinting off.
The waterways are clear and running from the recent storms, the plains look greenish for a change.
Okay, desert road is magical any time of year, being honest.
For anyone to say the power pilons, which stand like ancient guardians here in triple-file, stretching the plains,
that they are ugly and must be removed, is a blow to the active imagination. Why deny a future generation the opportunity to imagine these giant robots stomping across
the tussock?
My mood is influenced by the fact that I had no sleep last night, as I'd eaten too much during the day and hadn't burnt enough off to counterbalance my energy load.
I couldn't sleep, so I practised meditation much of the night- which doesn't make sleep happen more, it just makes the no-sleep more tolerable.
Beautiful day to be travelling.
Stop in Palmerston north was pleasant - have no idea why John Cleese gave the town such a bad review - it's nothing special,
but it's not -bad-.
Driving along in the dark not as pleasant as daytime but quite frankly the last 25% of the journey to Wellington is
pretty bland anyway. Okay I'll stop writing now.
Forgot how cold, grey and hard wellington really is. Impersonality like a personality, graffiti, all style, no soul.
Can't stand being here. The suburbs are lovely, why would you want to live close to a city like this though?
So cold here.
Okay, better today - I think I understand now how and why society is becoming more vapid and obsessed with intellectual trivialities. Takes less energy to use intellect than the emotions, and society is fast, rapid, and burns people out. After all the tiredness they get a little bit more jaded, and feeling things takes too much energy to deal with. And that's what this city is, at it's hard atavistic core - one big ball of ice, fatigue and stress-related anxiety. Fascinating weather today. Pine trees knockin' against one another like hand-grenades, kept wondering if one would come down around me.
Forgot one great thing about wellington - live band scene - live original band scene. Something which hamilton has never and will never have, unless you count screamo and garage bands. Just the quality is higher here, the vibe is better and more people pay to see live music.
There's nothing unusual about walking around Wellington and coming across incidental entertainment (intentional or otherwise)- Today, a bunch of guys doing, or trying to do, parkour
in town, and a free concert of cathedral organ in the town hall. Cathedral organs have the seldom-seen quality of being
(a) An instrument of size roughly two hundred times larger than the human being playing them, and
(b) The only instrument I'm aware of capable of producing infrasonic frequencies (which are otherwise usually only generated
by natural disasters such as earthquakes in nature, and which produce feelings of fear, excitation and 'spiritual presense' in human beings when 'heard').
Although organ music is really much of a muchness timbre-wise, it's still intriguing to watch being played, for a while.
There's not much to do on a bad day in wellington but stay inside and huddle up to heaters. Ultimately though, there is no spare time here, and you can feel it. All spare days in Wellington are spent doing stuff like shopping and doing chores, as the rest of the time most people are busy with other stuff. Travelled to Wilton yesterday- it's still the same, I would still call it home, if I lived there. The sheer bulk of noise is getting to me - not just sound-wise, but visually and generally as well.
Kung fu tonight. Kin - my old kung fu teacher - was absent but it was great regardless. It's amazing how the old feelings come back. Feel somewhat less attached to my beliefs today, having had an argument with a friend over philosophy. Ultimately, anything that chips away my faith is both a distraction and a hindrance, and a blessing at the same time.
Very tired from Kung fu the night before - could barely lift myself from bed in the morning, and even then it took me 30 minutes before I could do much past getting up.
Very much coming to the opinion that the age I grew up in is dying out - which I'm very, very happy about.
People are sick of self-congratulatory ironic humour, tired of the old nineties narcissism and negativity, as well as the mockably frumpy feel-goodness of the eighties, and generally
there is a feeling of something new happening. These are all good things.
There are a few things I'll miss - comedy based on witty parodic societal observation circa 1990-1995 e.g duckman, as opposed to the witless character-focused comedy which's become the taste-de-jour in an age when a culture of vague fear advises against lightweight social comedy (The Daily Show notwithstanding).
A viable, if closed-off, music industry, which, despite having virtually no chance of succeeding in, gave young musicians hope for the future.
Because of the growth of worldwide conflict and turmoil in the past
5 years, and the music scene more-or-less dying off in real-world terms (and moreso, progressively, the entire digital entertainment scene as piracy progresses and 'net neutrality' becomes more trouble than it's worth), culturally things have been kind of halting.
Older, successful musicians from the nineties have hung around longer simply because the music industry has been too
afraid to take risks on anything new, due to the f*ing piracy.
Now all bets are off as the industry grinds to a sheer screaming halt and the money stops getting to newer musicians. Out of the chaos new things are emerging. It's not sustainable, but it's interesting, and that in and of itself is positive, even if the long-term outlook for music and tv as a career is absolutely appalling (due to piracy - am I beating you too much with this particular stick? I'll stop). Everything appears to be shifting now, and though the economy is in an apparent (I don't see anything other than food and petrol being slightly more expensive) downturn, things are moving on. All for the best.
Baby has been born, is cute as all babies should be, and both mother, child and father seem to be in good health. Hoorah.
None too soon, as I'm really getting over this place quickly after two weeks of being here.
The fact is, life in Wellington really is clustered toward the city central-
you can't get most places without going through it, almost all of the jobs are in there and all the entertainment too.
There's almost no getting around it - if you have to live in wellington, no matter where you are you'll have to be comfortable with the inner city - and I'm not, really.
It's great in small doses but after a while it really does get to you, a little.
Not only that but the buses, while frequent, are often appalling timing-wise. For the less-frequent services this results in a near-unusable service, such as the 22/23 and 17/18.
This is not their fault, simply the fault of far too many city-livers driving far too many cars, and will hopefully be solved with the GPS system in future.
Were I to live here again I would invest heavily in a powerful electric scooter.
On an aside, last night I had dreams about the singer from They Might be Giants being a complete jerk - I have no idea why he featured heavily in my dream, or whether his witty sarcasm was genuinely velociraptorish or simply bonhomie being lost in translation, but (in my dream) he came of as a talented, but annoying jerk. Such a disappointment! I'm sure he's great in real life.
Then there was something about needing to play through a computer game to find the secret level where they record their music. ... Yeah.
Absolutely ready to leave. Done with here for the time being. Checked out Weta FX's newly-opened "Weta Cave" public display area out at Mirimar North, yesterday - thoroughly recommended.
On the way back home now. Weather incredible. Good to feel warm again - nothing like getting away from a giant ball of cool to make you appreciate the sun again.
Hamilton, ho. Desert road stretched end-to-end with endless glistening snow.
Brother's having a baby (where does it come out!?) so gonna be awol for a few weeks. Welcome to the (belated) second half of 2008!
In the meantime, enjoy this guide I put together on the topic of online bidding, based on the experiences I've had over the years:
All bullshit opinions & writing (c) Copyright 2008 Matt Bentley except when quoting others