Meanwhile, somewhere in Brisbane

Pat Metheny - Orchestrion

The Orchestrion in action - this video explains all.
And I realise, watching this now, that Pat probably uses a mix of programmed and live triggers with midi controls on his guitar, to give even more variety/precision.

A short meditation on drone warfare

 
I am indebted to this article by Nasser Hussain: The Sound of Terror: Phenomenology of a Drone Strike

Lenny Kravitz: Mama Said: Retropy

I forgot to say:

• the kids who came of age with the internet are probably better at defining music in terms of genre-specifics than in musical-cultural terms. Like we were teens playing the reference game; pretending to be smart like the critics whose reviews we read very closely, back then (Curtis... Curtis Who?). Or is that simply the culture of music now - finer and more arbitrary definitions and gradations of sub- and sub-sub-genres and crossovers. Damon Albarn thinks so.
• Lenny pre-empted with perfect timing the onset of baby boomer cap N Nostalgia for the classic Rock Sound. And hence helps show up the bankruptcy (creative-sustainability and evolution-wise) of the nostalgia industry - in a setting William Gibson calls the infinite digital Now - where the artefacts of the past are the nurtured, revived & reassuring icons of truth & certainty in a (perceived) uncertain & changing world. Ahem. Or teenage rock memories forever.
• But notice: "Retro" is everywhere now: cameras, kitchen appliances, motorcycles, glasses, watches... anything collectable, curatable via Ebay, the web... like typewriters. Dialled in like automatic authenticity.

Links

• AllMusic's discography 
• It Ain't Over Til It's Over 
• More than anything in this world  

A small, pointed thought experiment

Brisbane type-in 2014

First photos! A great day was had (with fish & chips, 29 degrees, a touch of rain, and of course all the great people of the Australian typosphere! So great to see and meet everyone again. Thanks to Scott for organising).

The Fun Features of an Atomised Society (long read)

Grow in two minds (then file under: Bad Poetry)

On doubt and creativity

Sources: Henry James - The Middle Years | Tom Waits interviewed by Francis Thumm, 1988

The emerging author (industry)

Portrait: Charles Chaplin

Portrait: Colette

But compare/contrast.

A little ditty about Home and Travel

The nine muses of social media

Portrait: Henry James

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_james 

Update: I have correctly sourced the photo. It is by Elliott & Fry, 1890, and comes from the Clifton Waller Barrett Library, special collections dep't, University of Virginia.

Our first persons are melting (Joyce, Ulysses)

The Newtonian neatness of weightlifting

The moral argument against downloading (slight rant)

Related, and slightly contradictory:

• Notes on content, creative work, hermit logic
• A music download success story

The biases of TV news (easy read)

Bad things I see (2013)

A slack, lumpen confederacy of the powerless, tweeting madly.

A diet that's one-quarter sugar.

We are suspicious & cynical of media, and yet we're *in* media 24/7. Cat videos and Downfall memes. The meme is now what we used to call 'culture'.

Lied to and manipulated, yet very nearly entertained to death. I see politicians using shiny-bauble arguments to distract us from real human issues.

Major (ongoing) human disasters & slaughters sit right next to glossy food pron.

We have all the information but no meaning. Content is a con - and mostly a commercial way to sell something.

You are not your brand or your social media presence or your gadgets or your likes. Or suckers for hype.

If there was a coherent rallying-cry we'd realise that we've been lost for a long time.

'Society' is being rewritten by the digital. Rights and civic awareness and citizenship are trumped by consumerism and the sale of privacy and spying.

There are few counterbalancing forces against the cynicism and suspicion - but they are mostly offline.

I want to see greater accountability, and greater awareness of responsibility; which makes me sound incredibly old.

I want more art, more beauty in our lives; and more coherent humanity. I want to defuse my default cynical reaction to so much these days: I hope this cynicism is the flipside of a sincere hunger for change.