Tsunami

So what has happened. I apologize for my election eve, optimism and faith in the american people. I apologize for any one else within whom I may have lit a flame of hope for a moment, only to be painfully extinguished. Probably hopelessness is more fertile ground for the hands of the artists to till. Hopelessness is maybe a strong word. I don't feel particularly hopeless, sad perhaps. I don't feel that I am part of the culture which has reelected the great manipulator to office. I am part of the culture that cringes every time that man opens his mouth, and fights to balance the world against the juggernaut of incompetence.

So this is Christmas, and what have you done.

So the masochism of fighting the never ending fight. One thing I feel good about is states rights. States used to just give the government the finger and do whatever it was they wanted, I'm interested in seeing where the balance is in that power these days. I am also excited by the idea, that the time is drawing nigh to redefine our political organization for this world. I feeel like geography doesn't have to be the largest determinant of my political identity. Hasn't anyone started a borderless party yet. Hmm, there was communism, but that didn't quite take off for a number of reasons... and there were a number of religious movements which were almost political movements... But I'm looking for something different. I'm looking for the party that says, hey we should try to make a sustainable community amongst our members, we should reduce the ecological footprint of our members, we should find a new organizing principle for our society.

I feel there is a growing concesus of people around the world, that our society is not the way forward, a growing concensus that we need to do more, we need to do better. How hard is it really to make an automobile that doesn't rely on fossil fuels. Not very... I bet it could be done this year with the proper incentive. But where is that incentive what could it be. Maybe apple needs to design the car that doesn't need gas. I mean clearly, conceptually its cool, great I don't need gas for my car. Does anyone really like putting gas in their cars. If people demanded cars that didn't need gas probably some factory would start making them. They don't need to be the best cars, Ipods aren't really the best music players, but they have been imbued with that Apple chic.

That, oh your not really an artist, youre not really in this decade, unless you have the player that matches all of the posters in the subway. Its a certain level of consumer inspired peer pressure, I think of my co worker who knows maybe thirty songs from the last twenty years but of course has to have an ipod to store them on. If we could turn that consumerists peer pressure onto something that was actually good for the planet... that would be something. If theres a slick new gleaming single engine iRide, with a decent sounding stereo and matching headphones whose gonna want a Hummer. All of a sudden they will look like the glorious 1989 Iroc that everyone thought they needed at one point.

I've been playing the cello for a couple of months now. I don't really know how to play much yet, everything I can do so far I will attribute to my own curiosity and the celloacademy. Hans "Enke" Zentgraf teaches really great lessons that you can download and practice over and over until you get them. It's pretty incredible playing such a beautiful instrument. On the one hand the cello feels like a sculpture that you get to hold and know intimately, and on the other hand when you plack or bow it, you feel the who instrumant vibrating like a living organism, or like another organ of your own body, that just holds emits and becomes the sounds in your head. Its really amazing, even when you don't know how to play.

I picked my cello up on ebay, and it wasn't a total whim I guess, Ive felt for a few years, since I first heard Joe Clausells remix of homelands and thought about what it would be like to really create beautiful music, that if I were to learn an instrument I would learn the cello. The smooth buttersound of bowed strings and the fretless in between blue pitches that can add so much emotional intonation to a sound have always captivated me. Amazing time when a factory in china can turn out thousands of solid wood carved instruments, ship them to California deliver them to California by boat with dual matching cases, bows, stands, where they can be shown on the internet, packed into a box and delivered to my door, for the price of two good seats to the chamber orchestra.

first finger second
strings and hollow body hum
each mind sound shakes room

Being the nerd that I am I started my musical experimentation very electronically learning what we could do to sound via analog manipulation. A couple years of experimenting in this realm has given me a clear voision of how I want to create music. it's interesting that I find my self more drawn to the logical structure of music, than concerned about the sound of it. I find most sounds beautiful, its more a matter of organizing thm into patterns that your body and your sould can understand even when your mind is left grasping. Anyway, more on that later. For now, I am just really appreciating the cello for the instrument that it is, for its analogness, for its amazing feedback and response, and for incredible range of tonality and expression.

fan drones whirs sputters
fatigue eyes look screen flickers
tap tap the keyboard

I almost lost two friends this weekend. last heard from travelling towards quiet beaches of Phuket to chill and chill some more, waiting at a train station for whichever train arrived first, taking the one not to Phucket but further east. Waking up sunday, not submerged in their bungalo beneath the wall of ocean which covered that town that morning, but rather with the beach and a few coconut trees between them and the ocean, as it has been in Thailand for as long as anyone knew. I was really terrified for a while as I heard of more and more damage through the region. I did feel to some extent though that if their hearts brought them to the edge of that ocean on that weekend, and the earth moved, and the sea rose up and swallowed them in thier sleep that morning then perhaps it was the way they were meant to leave us.

water slips away
shifting earth sea floor bone dry
all rise death returns

I hope I do not sound to heartless. I am currently awestricken by the devestation that has taken place, even only knowing of it tangentially, through pixellated pictures of grieving survivers picking through the debris of paradise. I feel terribly connected with the whole of this world, tourists and fisherman at the bottom of the sea, prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo, signatories of the Kyoto protocol, dillusioned souls driving Hummers with save our troops stickers, Native-Americans seeing their rituals innocently enough melting into hippy sweats. It all feels like different faces of the world I have sewn through my actions and inactions.

idea stream slows now
salmon flip upriver spawn
mercury content

Posted by Kirk at December 29, 2004 02:30 AM