I gots me a little life left in me, till next I dip back into unconsciousness, and I thought I’d a use this time to.. spit out the cantankerous who-b-jew-b knows what-b the matter with whatever I’m not conceiving of, previous to this incantation… 

I’m not one of those fowl fools who puts the non in the sensical: my senses are keen, to that which tongues still do not touch… It was that, standing on the other side you understand, who hired me to do a little PR, so here I R, speaking to you like this.

ERr.. I don’t know.. too much NyQuil perhaps? 

Given the gist of the jizz, that jazz B gentrified from.. in the interest of intercessions… by those who fear mass numinous breakouts.. to speak for that.. I can only say that.. It’s a question of who do you think you are, and pudding style foundations of civilizations that don’t quite qualify as the rock.. but rationalizations have been collectified to such an extent that the emperors clothing be the latest sensation to sweep the nation.. and nations for that matter.. can you feel the draft? And do you really believe in your powers of putting to rock transfigurations?

A screw it, I’ll just post this as this…

 

So I got this kind of crazy comment on a post..  from John…  which I think I could safely characterize as “insensitive” in its criticism…. which I don’t totally understand, accept that sometimes when one interacts with folks online one can forget one is interacting with real humans. In any event.. I don’t think John’s criticism was exactly constructive.. none the less I find myself searching for grains of truth in it.. which is an instinct I find a little dubious….  but it is what it is.

So I thought I’d sorta address his comment in a blog post.. well sorta.

If you have discerning eyes, and you look at this blog, you’d probably come away with an impression that “this cat has no desire to be a social media rock star.” Or to put it another way.. ( picture spoken in a somewhat Frank Zappa esk tone ) “This blog has got no kinda game at all.” 

I’m not really sure why that is, to tell you the honest truth.  I feel as if it’s just sorta indicative of the state my life is in.. which is.. difficult. Somehow, one way or another, I need to ether work this out or just accept it. Maybe.. instead of all my obsessions and whatever.. I should just focus on healing.

The difficult feeling of an artist.

When you go to art school.. coming in the door you realize you’re kind of screwed.. well unless you’re a designer or something. The plight of the fine artist.. is a difficult one.. and often we toil our lives away for little to no material reward.. In fact, just getting your life in such a situation that you can seriously focus on your work.. That’s a pretty substantial accomplishment on its own.

I think its a kind of addiction actually.. an addiction to the state of ecstasy that art making can bring you to… That feeling that you and the Gods are one. For me, I suppose, I really make art more for God then living souls… Or more for that internal spiritual nourishment. I mean it’s just the one place in my life where I feel truly alive. So if there’s anyway that I can make my way through this life, via this art, then I will call my life a success. That’s really all I’m looking for, you know?

I imagine to be a whole human, however, one needs a bit more. How about starting a family? The only way I could ever see that working out is if I found one hell of a women.. cause God knows I can barely take care of my Dad!

I don’t really feel like I have a choice in what I is.  

 

So the deal is.. if you make art the way I do.. where you’re serious about exploring your own unique creative vision, regardless of what’s up with the market place.. well..  I don’t know.. What can you realistically expect?

I guess I’ll leave this at this — I’m kinda tired.

So like.. I don’t want to creep you out or anything.. but you might want to take a look at these videos… 

Sarah Plain Church Video Fun

Can you dig that?

Ok, how about one more.. .   .    .

 So, ok.. if you’re… hmm….

Ok, dig this right…  archetypes, which we could speak of as being the basic building blocks of religion.. or religion is like a system for relating to archetypal forces… they are basically the expression of biology onto consciousness.. to explain all this would take a long time.. point is, if we view this stuff from that perspective.. you find that its not really all that crazy…  or, some of what looks crazy on the surface might not be as crazy as it appears.. Indeed, its kinda interesting…

Still.. there’s a certain cultural force to this kind of religious thang that, umm..  can be a little creepy.. In large measure.. well we see this in cultural conservatives that fail to see moral / ethical spirit which.. say.. moved the cultural revolution surrounding hippie-dom..  

Archetypal psychology speaking.. when ever you focus on a morality sorta thing that is.. sorta narrow in its allowances.. that part of your totality that looses a chance to grow up as a result… becomes your shadow.. then what happens is it gets projected on those folks whom live outside of said restrictive moral order.. so we find our selves the darkness of our own shadow in said people..  and thus the creepiness of the religious culture we find Miss Palin living in…  

For more on this here archetypal psych shtick.. check out this entry / documentary.

So..  how about a little of Matt’s religion.. in my religion we rock out.. with a dyionesian spirit.. to break out of the inherited value system.. so that we might get a direct experience of said archetypal forces…

We’re just a little more hungry for God, I guess.. then they are up in Alaska, ha? 

Well I thought I’d share the lyrics to the song / music I’m working on.. blogged about in this post, among others. But it should add something to our understanding of like.. the thematic whatevers of it.

I don’t know, what the future holds. All I know, is the unknowns know it all. They are the contexts, that breeth the meaning into it all. How do you live, in relationship to this truth? I could tell you.. but then I’d have to kill you.

Would you like to die? Oh would you like to die? Only by dying, can you glimps what I’m meaning. Would you like to know? Oh wouldn’t you like to know what I’m meaning!

All life is suffering,

All life is suffering!

Would you like me to save you?

From all you’re suffering?

I would like to help you.

I would like to help you!

I would love to help you, cause that’s just the kind of guy I am.

I’m a loving compassionate soul, don’t cha know?

A loving compassionate soul, that’s right!

So why don’t you let me love you,

why don’t you let me love you?

Don’t cha know we all need love!

So baby, why don’t cha let me put my love into you!

I don’t know, what the future holds. All I know, is the unknowns know it all. They are the contexts, that breeth the meaning into it all. How do you live, in relationship to this truth? I could tell you.. but then I’d have to kill you.

Only by dying, can you glimps what I’m meaning. Would you like to know? Oh wouldn’t you like to know what I’m meaning!

All life is suffering!

Would you like me to save you?

From all you’re suffering?

I would love to help you

 

So why don’t you let me love you,

why don’t you let me love you?

Don’t cha know we all need love!

So baby, why don’t cha let me put my love into you!

 

OH YEAH! OH YEAH BABBY! I KNOW YOU LIKE IT WHEN I DO IT LIKE THAT.

OH YEAH! OH YEAH!

Mmm YEAH Mmm YEAH!

MMM MMM MMM YEA

I don’t know, what the future holds. All I know, is the unknowns know it all. They are the contexts, that breeth the meaning into it all. How do you live, in relationship to this truth? I could tell you..

The formating is a little messed up but.. other then that

Hmm… I’m not even sure if this is my first post on the subject.. but a while ago I started talking about the project of bringing lyrics to my music. 

I’ve been writing lyrics, at least, since I was in high school.. but have never done too much to bring them into my music.. or at least never felt terribly successful about it. At the moment.. it seems the tools I need to properly bring lyrics to my work is in the neighborhood of a few grand.. depending on how you want to slice it.. no puns intended.

One solution came out of an issue of electronic musician monthly.. which involved using a free open source voice synthesizer.. so I used it.. threw into it some lyrics.. rendered out the audio files.. processed the hell out of them.. started playing with them in Ableton Live.. and eventually just sorta left it on the back burner for a while. But then last weekend I bought a copy of ReCycle.. and started playing with them inside of a ReCycle / Reason kind of context.. 

My first little go at this is talked about here and here. The first “here” having, at least for a short time, a bit of audio that shows this first experiment. In that project I was playing with one of the lines to the songs I wrote as of that much older post.. some of the renderings out of the processed voice synth.

This brings us to the issue of musical linguistic adventures. 

Musical Linguistic Adventures 

Sometime ago I read a book of… well lectures given by Leonard Bernstein at Harvard.. which was…. largely on the subject of linguistics in music. There’s a series of ideas.. I believe Noam Chomsky is the guy responsible.. about an organic basis of language.. that its hard wired in our brains.. You see this in.. the names of “mommy” or “daddy,” that there’s melodic parallels in the words across languages.. as well as for water.. and it seems that childhood taunt songs.. and all the rest of it.. are pretty universal.. And on some level.. when we hear music, we do hear it the same..  Here’s a bit of Bernstein from those lectures:

Ok, so how about we now venture forth into an interview with Noam Chomsky, talking about lingusitics?

Danger Will Robinson, this one could be getting long… 

I want to break in here and bring up a couple of things..

1. There’s been huge break throughs in brain imagining since the time of this interview.. so now many of these investigations are a lot more feasible… so such things are, no doubt, being explored now.
2. The nature of the nature versus nurture thing.. a modern understanding of the subject is that its not really nature versus nurture but nurture via nature.. which is to say that our genetic make up defines to what degree nurture influences our development.
3. This issue with Kant.. the limitations of language.. did you catch Bernstein sorta talking about music speaking the unspeakable? I’ll try and get more deeply into this latter as.. this is really the heart of what I want this entry to be getting to.. and has everything to do with my aims.. but.. well.. I wont say much more about it other then to try and hold this in your mind as we venture further into this interview:

Ok, a few things I want to get to here…

1. I could defend Freud psychoanalysis here.. but it’s a little too complicated.. in that it would take us away from our main thread.. of what’s already looking like a long blog entry.. I will, towards the end.. talk about this stuff in Jungian terms.. which will go along way in answering this.. however I will go so far as to say that in the history of psychology.. there’s a trend where in people are very good about talking about there own stuff.. and not so good in there criticism of others in the field.
2. My impression is that Heidegger does a pretty good job of dismantling the sorta metaphysical presumptions that are at the foundations of cognitive psychology. Heidegger’s interest in language, I think, makes him of special interest to this subject.. but.. we’ll skip on over that for now.
3. I think the Kant stuff is pretty central in Jung’s psychology.. in a certain way.

So I had a rough time finding part 5.. but here we go.. 

Ok… so now we’ve gone a bit deeper into Chomsky and linguistics.. and the larger implications..

So to curve back into music.. and a kind of linguistic basis of it.. what I’m trying to point out is.. language.. verbal language.. has a musicality… timber, pitch.. repetition.. all the principles of musical composition are present in verbal language.. and so there’s a connection here.. 

Ok.. so how about a fun little user generated video.. playing with the Bernstein lectures? 

Sorta highlights the musicality of language, doesn’t it?

Ok, onto the psychedelic:

Linguistics, Neuroscience, Jungian Psychology, and the Psychedelics

I think it makes sense to start out here with a little Tom Wolfe.. In part because he wrote the Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test, in part because his notion of “New Journalism” in part influences how I think about new media, and in part because he’s dealing with many of the subjects we are on in this entry… 

There are two other parts to this interview.. which we can’t embed here.. can be found on the National Review website here, and then here. For the full take on this stuff you really want to view these videos.. 

There are huge areas in which I disagree with Tom Wolfe.. as it relates to this topic, but for our purposes lets jump into something I can’t find any videos on… which is his views on psychedelics, which he borrows from modern brain research.

As nearly as I can tell.. the theory works something like this.. under the influence of psychedelic drugs.. the brain is unable to attribute causality in the usual way.. and having a nature of always trying to attribute causal connections.. starts making them where..  from an empirical point of view.. there are no such connections to be made…

Err.. let me put this in plainer english.. psychedelics causes you to attribute cause and effects relationships to things where there are no such relationships.. from a factual point of view. Going this far, I do not disagree.. but Wolfe goes so far as to say “this proves you don’t get enlightenment from psychedelics,” in the “ultimatereality” sense.. that this mythology has grown up around psychedelics is.. really attribute able to this principles.. and to the brain’s functioning working on a very slow kind of less functional sorta way, while under the influence of psychedelics.

Well everything we’ve been talking about thus far leads up to my argument as to why Tom Wolfe is wrong… to say nothing of some of the psychologies / schools of thought he’s regarding in such high esteem.

How Psychedelic enlightenment works

Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious could be, kinda sorta, boiled down to… “its an expression of instinct.” Religion is an expression of instinct.. its more complex then that.. but its good enough for now..  And let us not forget here.. that in talking about linguistics.. from Chomsky to Wolfe.. we are talking about mental faculties.. not blank slates.. We are.. in fact, talking about instincts, are we not? Instincts by another name?

All right.. so if we are attributing cause and effect relationships to things that do not factually have cause and effect relationships to them.. on what bases are we making them? Well.. on the basis of the structure of the faculty / instinct…..  We are moving from objective truth to subjective truth.. from object to subject.. from the external material world to the internal psychological world.. and so the truths we discover are true in a “psychological sense.” In essence.. what I’m arguing is that psychedelics bring about a “meta cognitive experience.”

So.. if mystical / religious / ultimate reality.. is an expression of instinct.. and a meta cognitive experience is one that’s essential an experience of cognition its self…  that it brings us into contact with “the experience of experience,” to put it a certain way..  and if we understand that.. subjective truth is a kind of truth.. and that we are now moving beyond the Kantian limitations.. well, now we are in the world of what Jung calls “the transcendent instinct.”

It speaking about.. that which is unnameable… that which is beyond our Kantian categories..  we are in fact talking about God.. for God, by definition, is a symbol of the mystery which holds up the world of the known.. it is the ultimate context of the world of the known.. which, as it turns out.. is the subject of both my most recent release.. and the music I’m working on now.

Aesthetic Implications

So in essence what we are saying.. if we complicate the attribution of causal relationships.. we will create something like a mystical experience? So with this.. lets move onto a short film.. that explores the concept of the cut up.. something we find in the work of William Burroughs.. where we see our linguistic faculties making these connections.. in the world of film grammar.. as well as on the literary level.

We of course see these kinds of ideas in dada and surrealism.. so how about a little film made with Marcel Duchamp.. Man Ray adding something here.. and of course a John Cage Score (what could be more perfect?)

How this relates on a process level to my work

On a kind of core foundational level to my thinking and process is this idea of aesthetic experience is a cognitive event.. having something to do with how we perceive and process experience. In earlier stages of my artistic and musical development my work was very often a kind of critique of this process.. It was very much dealing with the problems of Immanuel Kant and the transcendent.. and very similar, in someways, to what Chomsky is talking about..

In any event.. my work was in someway about this process.. and played with the process.. if we are now saying that mystical experience has something to with the challenges to cognition.. you can see how this could be central to my work.

Some of it is as simple as how you recognize patterns.. classic IQ test stuff, right? If you work in web usability you’ll no doubt recognize an early problem with game theory as a tool for understanding human behavior.. which is to say we don’t operate from a rational perspective so much as we muddle around with incomplete information..

What I say in relationship to patterns is that…  you have two distinct things going on “the pattern its self” and “the pattern recognition.” In any pattern, lets call them patterns of cause and effect.. there are infinite possible ways of understanding the pattern.. of seeing patterns in it: if you see a series of numbers, and are asked “what’s the next number going to be” your job is to understand organizing principles of the pattern before you.. and you will start out with the most simplistic possibilities.. going out to more complex ones.. what I’m saying is that.. in the deep end of complexity..  you have that infinite possibility, that we never see, because of how we approach the problem…. kind of how we are wired.

So.. if our process is impaired.. we are going to go into the deep end of that complexity.. or to put it another way.. that’s what mystical experience is…

Without digging much further into this stuff.. I would just say there’s a range in my work.. of simple to complex patterns.. to even chance and chaos.. and effort to make a continuity between the extremes.. I mean its interesting that if you look at serial atonalism… It can seem as if we need a mathematical PHD in order to appreciate the organization.. and somehow the results are very similar to that of John Cage.. who’s music is the product of chance.. 

Here’s a clip of Leonard Bernstein talking, among other things.. about the beauty of ambiguity in music.. where we see chromaticism (which is basically what serial atonalism is all about) inside of a diatonic framework… He talks about music theory which.. if you’re not already aquatinted with.. might likely be a little above your head.. but basically we are talking about organizational principles in music.. which has to do with harmony and counter point.. which is pitch relationships.. which have to do with the physics of sound.. and perhaps psycho acoustics fits in here somewhere as well.

Ok, now I wanted to dig in deeper into the process of what I’m doing right now in my sound work.. the project I’m on right now.. but it seems that the underlying theory and ideas.. have taken up all our space.. so I’ll have to get to that next time.. what I want to leave on is.. a little more on how this stuff relates to the philosophy of religion..

Philosophy of religion and other connections 

In the history of Christian theology there is this kind of.. well an idea that is perhaps not as well known as it should be.. which is to say the Bible is God’s second book… the creation his first. If we look at the philosophy of science at, around, perhaps before.. the American Civil war.. there is this idea that creation.. or the universe we live in.. is custom made to our minds.. sciences exploration of the universe is in fact an exploration of God.. There is also these ideas of natural and.. I want to say divine.. revelation.. The law we find Moses bringing down, the commandments, is said to be imprinted on the inside of our skin.. or to put it another way.. it is expressed in our biology.. which of course accords well with Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious… and these ideas of there being faculties, as Chomsky is saying.. that are built right into our biology. If we look to eastern philosophy and religion.. God is often thought of in a rather unipersonal sorta way.. God is a kind of personification of the forces of the universe.. and.. if we look at the various strands of Buddhism and Zen.. where the inward mystery of our beings is explored in great depth.. how we “really are,” which is something different then who we usually identify our selves with as.. is in fact… the universe.. as the mystic saying goes “I and the maker are one.”I wont go any deeper into this here..,.. but I hope you can see how this is interesting to contemplate in light of the ideas presented in this post. 

I figure I gotta post something.. I have a draft almost ready to go.. but It’s another one of those music gear things.. and my feeling is… I don’t want to have so many of those in a row.. and given that it’s a late hour, I’m not really sure what subject I can properly deal with.. in the amount of time I’ll have to give this, so….

Well, how about a little news in what’s up with me these days?

There’s a lot of tension beneath the surface.. but for the moment I’m putting that aside.. while I try and focus on some other things.. hopefully this won’t spell disaster.. how cryptic is that?

I want to do some more posts on the anxiety subject.. I’ve been thinking pretty deeply about this.. think I have some interesting things to say.. including some interesting things I would have liked to have put at the end of a recent entry.

I’m working on new podcasts episodes.. so expect that soon.

A couple latter:

I’m having this very difficult to fight urge to say something really smart. You ever get those? It’s like a knock it out of the park thing.

I want to.. .hmmm

Ok, some thoughts that have been germinating…

I’ve been thinking about making my blog a kind of work of art… a work of art in the sense that.. Ok, dig this.. usually I’m like “Mr. Smarty Pants,” right? Like.. if you’re a “real” expert in something I’m talking about.. you know how naked the emperor really is.. but barring that.. I’m just a real great con, ha? Ok, maybe that’s over stating it but.. .  well but that’s besides the point.. 

What I’m thinking of is like.. making my writing a kind of art.. which means.. What if my words transmuted into a painting? I mean.. Here we are wondering around these like.. hyper intellectual.. rational.. kinda deep.. thought path.. but what if that path suddenly vaporized.. and the going was like.. juxtapositions of paintings.. that the path had something to do with a poetic juxtaposition of…. well whatever it was?

There’s certain reasons this appeals to me.. For one.. In intellectual mode.. I’m often motivated by this need to express something.. to communicate a vision.. but I often have to go so far to get you there… has to be this long winding path.. … and even then.. the words are at best pointers to something.. and its very easy to get lost in the words, as a pose to the thing.

Another issue is that the intellectual shtick..  On some level I feel unaware of the implications of it.. but I think there might be this… If I’m hyper intellectual… you might look at me in a way that’s.. . well “thats not me” you say to your self.. “I can’t do that” and this somehow separates us…. it can get in the way of a sense of a shared humanity.. a sense that we share a commonality.. .  

A few latter:

I have this gear I go into.. It feels like some kind of hyper warp mode.. like some kind of mind meld with god… It’s as if… well, let me ask you this, where do your thoughts come from? It’s as if you followed the trail.. to the source.. and the closer you got the source, the more kinda powerful the thoughts were… something like that..

Latter:

God, I’m over tired.. I’d like to really go deep into this.. but basically.. every thought / psychological phenomenon.. everything.. comes from this source.. anxiety, as a for instance.. the thing is to learn how to relate to these things so they help, as a pose to hinder, you.. I’ll leave it at that for today.. 

or how about a video to leave on?

Ok, this is a somewhat long-ish story.. the story of Matt’s recent woes.. from anxiety, career, money, banks, and what not to.. well lets say stuff..  which will eventually lead us into my most recent trip to guitar center, the buying of the Liquid Mix 16, and then into the current music production project… 

It all started last Sunday. I was in a sleep deprived state, and as is my way, running late to the Boston Media Makers. The Boston Media Makers is now taking place at Doyle’s Cafe in JP.. (Boston).. so it’s new media plus breakfast…  and so I needed to go to the bank to get money to fill up my gas tank, buy an energy drink, smokes, and still have enough left over for breakfast.. and then things turned ugly! 

The bank tells me I put in the wrong pin number.. a few tries latter and the ATM won’t give me the time of day. WTF I think… but being sleep deprived.. in a somewhat LSD like consciousness.. made even more LSD-ish after watching a documentary on the Beats.. who knows, maybe I did get the pin wrong?

So long story short, got Gas, smokes, and my Monster on credit, breakfast on cash… but it was a stress feast combination of sleep deprivation, running late, and.. the ATM experience. All of which fueled a little extra anxiety over how I presented myself at the media makers..  but that’s another blog entry.

[Editor’s Note: This is a long, sometimes rambling entry.. so brace your self, you hardy souls whom might actually get through it.. also to note is a certain connection between this entry, and the recent social media cool-aid entry.] 

More problems:

1. I was actually planning on buying a computer monitor, at Micro Center in Boston, with cash after the meeting… It’s the closest “good” computer store I know… or at least see if they had the Dell I wanted, what there price was.. and that sorta thing.
2. The food supply in the house was running low.. so grocery shopping had to be done soon.
3. My dad had medication that needed to be picked up from the CVS

I should maybe break off from this and explain my anxiety paranoia at this point? When my mom died I was told, by a couple aunts, not to pay the credit card bills that were my mom’s bills. Someone had talked to a lawyer about this.. and something to do with Massachusetts state law.. trouble is, I never actually talked to a lawyer.. and am kind of vague about all this.

[Editors note: Matt wanted to insert this scene from the end of THX 1138, as it seems express of the psycho reality of his situation.

You’d perhaps have to see the full movie to really appreciate the significants of this clip.. and probably need to read the rest of the blog entry to, while you were at it.. but pay attention to a certain subtext of this blog entry.. its all sorta crystalized here..] 

In any event… there’s lots of credit card companies calling the house.. I have yet to talk to any of them as.. well until I get the iPhone.. I’m a very difficult person to get in touch with via the phone.

Now the LSD like consciousness of sleep deprivation does have… well you sometimes attribute causality to things that, in reality, don’t have a causal connection. These causal connections are truths of a kind of symbolic nature.. they have something to do what’s going on in you psyche.

So what’s going on in Matt’s psyche?

This is really a subject for another time, I mean to really dig into… I will tell you that since my mom passed things have not been real easy… and that most of the uneasiness of it is not something that expresses its self consciously.. It’s kind of a complicated thing.. and I feel like blogging about it might actually be helpful to me.. or at least talking about it.. but it’s somehow hard to talk about.

All these inward tension.. they expressed them selves in the paranoid dilution that.. well I think the bank might actually be one of the creditors… so the paranoid delusion.. was there was something more to my inability to get into the bank then.. some sorta pin number problem. And with this was the fear that I wouldn’t have access to money to pay bills.. so I shouldn’t write a check till I got to the bottom of this.

On top of all that.. another expression of anxiety is a procrastination of bill paying.. so the bills are.. now in the over due column.. and one expects one’s credit is getting dinged.

Crazy is as Crazy Does 

Ok.. so allow me to stop here and try and explain a little of this.. For one thing I’ve been behind on sleep for a little while now… for another I’m being a little operatic in how I’m talking about it.. which is to say I’m amplifying the story a little.. which is not quite to say I’m not crazy.. just that.. I’m turning up the gain of a certain sorta crazy.. or perhaps on the microscope through which we are looking at it… 

[editors note: Matt’s operatic-ness, at this point in the entry, is mainly expressed through with language like “paranoid delusions,” which sorta overstates things “a bit.” And what he’s talking about is the casual connections sleep deprivation is facilitating.] 

Matt’s Plot 

Ok, so lets pull back a little and take a look at my life’s plot, and where this moment fits in it all. I’m trying to do this “artist” shtick thing. I don’t know if you’ve heard the cliche about starving artists? Well.. I don’t believe that being an artist means you have to starve.. but the cliche is at least expressive of the fact that making a living as an artist is no easy feet.. more so when you’re as uncompromising as I am.

Though I march forward in a sorta heroic-ish way.. I don’t think anyone could walk this walk without there being a lot of really huge tension over what the future might bring.. It’s really that I’m crazy enough to not let that keep me from walking this way…  [Editors note: This would be part of the significance of the THX reference] but there is still that fear that it might all come to naught.. and that perhaps all my sacrifices are in vain..  and this is a very big tension.. particularly as it interacts in a larger ecology of tensions.

Now.. if you ask me about the “objective real reality” of the situation.. I’ll tell you.. things are probably “A-Ok.” Allow me to give you reasons why things are probably “A-Ok.”

1. I’m doing the social media shtick. Why would this make things A-Ok? Well.. I’m connected / networked in with a pretty substantial crowd of folks. If you’re reading this, you might be one of said substantial folks? There’s a humanness to.. many of these connections where.. to one degree or another, we really do care about each others well being.. and.. all of us are pretty well connected, one way or another.. and the long and the short of it is.. social media is a powerful tool for finding work.
2. It is not an infrequent thing that.. I get a job lead.. or some connection leads to something. Of course I don’t put a premium on following this stuff up.. because of how focused I am trying to be on trying to do my own thing.. but the point is there is stuff out there.
3. Very sweet and wonderful people have actually come out and asked me what they could do to help. Can you dig that? For me that’s down right mind blowing.. but its true.
4. What I’m doing.. in my own adventures.. has within it’s self the idea.. that I’m putting together a skill set for a job that does not yet exist. And believe it or not I’m actually networking with people who could us those services.. even if they don’t know it yet.

Latter:

There’s more to this story… lots more.. but for the purposes of this blog entry I only want to go so far as to say that tensions can obscure this reality.. so that it doesn’t feel like things are “A-Ok” in the big picture… even if they kinda sorta are. And we could talk about this more but…

Yeah.. so imagine the fear like.. you don’t know if you’re going to be able to take care of your father or your self, that the world could be crumbling down… This kind of stress inevitably leads me into pushing harder in my work.. and my self criticism gets much worse then it sometimes can be anyway.

None of this would have been a big deal if not for.. by that monday.. there was very little food in the house.. and if not for.. I had gotten to the bank that day prior to its closing.. I didn’t realize this.. but our bank likes to close at 4PM.. in order to get there I kinda have to fight my way through my tensions over it.. and so find myself there and.. the bank closed.. and I didn’t even know there hours! And so days passed with this hanging over my head.. all of it.

Add to all this that here I am gearing up on these music projects.. and I need to go out and buy more gear! I was also planning on getting an iPhone.. still needed to buy my Podcamp ticket.. I’m not sure what else.. and all of that was.. at least in my fears, looking like it might not work out.

And the dark clouds reseed.

Well finally I did get into the bank.. did make a with drawl so I have enough cash in my pocket to run for a few weeks.. somehow the pin number.. sorta fixed, accept it still wasn’t able to use it.. so maybe I’ve somehow miss remembered it.. anyway they are sending me the numbers so I’ll have them..

That dark cloud emphasized how fragile I can feel.. way out here in starving artist vill.. and it was a crazy rough week for me.. when the clouds finally did leave.. I finally decided that it was indeed time to make my trip to Guitar Center and pick up Liquid Mix 16. This was a long deliberation.. most of which is documented in this blog.. 

But wait, there’s more! 

I couldn’t find my car keys.. and not only that but I still had grocery shopping yet to do.. I had done a little after the with drawl…  but.. now without my keys, how could I do this? It wasn’t till sometime today when I finally found the keys.. and boy do I hate doing grocery shopping on the weekends, when the places are a crowded madness.. screw that!

So I made my way over to Guitar Center, finally. Was I really going to do it?

I wish I knew these guys names more.. I told the sales guy “I’m here for the Liquid Mix 16.” His eyes sorta widened.. “That’s a great little unit.” What? Every sales guy in the pro audio department didn’t even know what it was.. nor did they know much of anything of any of the mix engineer-ish tools I had been looking for.. but this guy new it.. and was thinking of getting one for him self.

I then rattled off a number of things I had been looking for..

Ok, let me explain. Guitar Center has a thing where you pay no interest for 3 months, 6 months, a year.. depending on what mood there marketing department is in.. what this means is you can buy stuff on credit without interest payments.. which is something you can’t easily do over the internet.. and credit card interests rates being what they are.. buying on credit will add a hell of a lot to your bill.. so going to Guitar Center for the big ticket items is what makes the most sense at this point..

So a number of pieces of gear.. gear that other sales folks had never even heard of.. stuff that you often can’t find on the Guitar Center website.. he could find in the computer.. stuff that the other sales folks didn’t think they carried.

So it was pretty awesome.. I mean he could actually answer some of my questions!

Onto the Liquid Mix 16

I had read where people had had problems with instillation.. particularly with Digital Performer.. and boy have I had software problems lately..  so I was a little nervous.. but the instillation was more or less as smooth as they come.. and before you knew it, I was up and running.

Liquid Mix is… well you get a library of 40 compressors and 20 EQs. I’ve explained this ad nauseam else where in this blog.. but basically you’re getting this library of the most high class EQs and Compressors on the planet.. each of which works in slightly different ways… is good for different sorts of applications.. colors sound differently.. etc. 

The first problem you run into is.. “which should I use?” To further complicate matters.. its sorta like a hockey video game where they can’t use the names of real NHL teams.. where they can’t give you the names of the real gear you’re using.. not that that would make too much of a difference as I don’t actually know the names of the real gear anyway.. but.. if you read interviews with various mix engineers.. telling you what they use for what.. or articles on these subjects..  you’d kind of like to know what you’re dealing with… Fortunately I found an old Sound On Sound review of Liquid Mix that included the names.

The light in my room is out.. so I couldn’t actually go digging through magazines to find that recent article on mix buss compression…  but upon doing the google.. I found this blog entry.. from of all people.. Charles Dye, which covered the subject.. and recommend an SSL compressor for my master buss. (Charles is quite the sophisticated fellow for this sorta thing).

And with that I jumped in

First, you must understand that I usually make crazy music like this (click on the little arrow to hear, and yes, it is a free download.. but it’ll stream for ya fine )

Matt Searles – Offering A Hand To The Ghost

This kind of electronic music has very different sorta mixing requirements from my new experimental electronic metal thing.. I mean.. now I have to try and be “a real” mix engineer. God save us!!! And I was fearful that.. well I hear a lot of stories of the struggles folks go through when they are first starting out..

But strangely.. I felt as if I had discovered that I had a real talent for this…  upon reflection

The Start of my Mix Engineering Training: “The JP Years.” 

After college I would hang out with.. the man we call “The Doctor” aka Diggity Dave.. and Ev-on, as he sometimes refers to him self in the comments of these blog entries.. Now.. these fine upstanding citizens..  well

1. They are artists to.. and were struggling to
2. There was more alcohol and Pot going on then…  lol, good times
3. Crazy adventures were the norm.. one could become quite a fine author with the material our of those times.
4. Diggity did indeed have a stereo system with the best speakers I had ever heard in my life.. at that point.

We’d throw CDs in there.. just to see what we had been missing all these years.. and I was forever analyzing the mixes. Mind you, at the time.. I wasn’t really all that sophisticated in my mix analytic abilities.. but it was surely something.. Dave and Evan’s music tastes had a whole lot of Hip Hop going on.. classic rock.. metal, electronic stuff..  even Curtis Mayfield.. quite the eclecticism.. and I with my Zappa and assorted strange stuff… and there was Jim whom would sometimes be there.. with his punk and indy rock.. and so.. though we were all rather poor.. we were wealthy in terms of the music we were all able to hear.. and it was quite an education.

I’d just listen to those records and dream of the day I could have a chance to put one together.. and could I ever make one as good as some of the stuff we were hearing? Oh my god, so much amazing stuff!!! Seems like these days I don’t get a chance to listen to too much.. but back then, oh wow!

The electronic music Mix training:  

Ok, how about another one of my tracks?

Matt Searles – Vasperian Blogocombat

The production in this track was a little rushed.. so there’s certainly things in there I’m not totally happy with.. but there’s also a lot in there that has me feeling very proud…. that I think is sorta amazing.. the marriage of the mix and the composition.. the experience.. the scenes.. the painting of it.. to put it a certain way.

When you listen to stuff like that.. you can kind of tell I’m really thinking about the mix… even if there are huge problems here and there.. and even the problems.. its sorta like a punk rock school of mixing or something.. where we kinda consider them in a different light.. or something.

So.. my music production is kinda all about the mix, on a certain level… but the mix isn’t static.. nothing stays still. In metal.. things stay still. The guitarist stays over there.. the bass player over there… no ones moving that drum set.. so my electronic music is all about a mix that has a virtual stage that is forever in flux. I regard it much more as being about “Mix Painting” then “Mix Engineering.”

Buckling down into Metal. My god, how am I going to handle this? I didn’t know.. but I knew investing in Liquid mix would be an important step along these lines.

First Impressions on the mix metal path

The first thing you realize is that what you’re really doing, as a mix engineer, is quite subtle. No wonder those guys seem so obsesses over so many little things that I don’t think I can even hear! Being subtle is the first thing you have to get used to… That you’re really thinking in terms of a lot of subtle colorations which, hopefully, eventually lead up to a whole that is more then the sum of the parts.. 

My recent obsession with effects has been one of… well a kind of obsession with with subtleties. 

Next morning (still not really awake):

The metal I have going on right now is.. incredible

The transition from my normal experimental production and composition style.. to a metal sorta song writing thing is a huge jump. In my electronic stuff there are no rules… there certainly isn’t anything like a traditional structure.. and In Metal.. I’m not sure how traditional my structures will turn out to be.. but at least from a starting point sorta perception of things.. I need to figure out how to make my music work inside of the limitations of a popular music format.

The funny thing is.. I’m kind of an amazing heavy metal guitarist from certain perspectives. As a guitarist I’ve never been too terribly big on playing other people’s music.. I’ve maybe learned 3 such songs in my life.. but I’ve certainly learned a lot of riffs.. and what not…   The point is that my guitar playing has really always centered around.. being more interested in making original music then replicating other folks stuff. 

I would say, generally speaking.. my style draws heavily from the riffs of Black Sabbath.. and a kinda speed-e metal of Metallica and Megadeth… and from there comes an original vision. That vision is largely about a strange interpretation of music theory… and a strange kind of aesthetic vision.

For me, a lot of what you of what you see, in say a John Coultrane.. is like.. just natural and obvious? Let me share with you two videos.. one with Coultrane playing, another with a critic talking about it.

In a certain sorta way you could kinda imagine critics talking about my work this way.. hope that doesn’t sound arrogant but..  

Now I’m not sure if Ben Ratliff totally gets it. See… composition is about “organization” of sound, and the framework for how we organize sound.. is the same sorta thing for how we organize facts into a conception of reality… and that’s sorta the implication of what Coltrane is doing… Thus a critics application of the terms of American Transcendentalism is… not really all that far fetched. [Editors note: The second critic quoted.. his “conversion story” has some relation to the earlier THX clip]

So if I tell you that I have a hard time thinking inside of conventual structure, that’s sorta what’s interesting in my work.. So here I am embarking on an adventure to.. think in conventional structure? I’m not totally sure about this, I think maybe its like.. that’s just the starting point.

So I’m obsessing on song writing.. thinking about song writing, or thinking about music making from a “song writers” perspective…..  

It’s so hard to know how to bring you in on this.

In a traditional structure there are lots of possibilities. (sub structural interest?)

Lets say you have a chord progression going on..  Now really, that chord progression could be anything.. but what we usually here is sorta limited… I mean were used to a fairly limited number of chord progressions. Once you have your chords progression, there is the question of how it gets voiced by the individual instruments… What’s guitar 1 play, what’s guitar 2 play, what’s the bass playing… Even if what we have going on is a simple riff… that riff can be interpreted different ways.. you could have two guitarists harmonizing the riff… or playing different parts of the chord.. and perhaps they don’t play it the same way twice.. 

Then you have the matter of how each instrument “interprets” the other instruments.. I mean screw the preconceived chord structure!  This where we are in some ways echoing Coultrane.. or Jazz..  This is especially doable in a metal context because… the guitars are generally not playing the 3rds.. So how is the vocal line to relate to the guitars?

Then you have.. well you have things like how one riff relates to the next… how the riffs are moving around.. In the particulars of how I’m working.. the consideration is generally.. where’s one riff starting and ending.. what’s the chord there.. and then if you look at that riff over all.. where is it hanging out most.. and how do these characteristics relate to the riff that came before? There’s also issues of how the energy works in a given riff.. contrasts in energy.. and a number of other things.

So all of this is kind of how I think about music generally.. when making it, but it’s different in that.. It’s like going from free verse poetry to poetry with a structure. What’s interesting about being forced to work inside a structure is.. you find your self spending more time refining things… as I write vocal lines I’m like “oh, no really, what’s the right word to put here?” 

There also is structural anarchy going on.. which in a certain way you could call the linguistic framework of the music. Or the anarchical aspects create the linguistic interest…

My Goal

My goal is to make something that is.. as good as anything I’ve ever heard before, at least. Good in the sense of.. how developed the details are, in the sense of the refinements of the song writing.. the composition… the mix. Beneath all of this there is the essential idea of what it is I’m doing.. the core of it.. and that… that I think is amazing.. and that’s one of the first things that hits me…. that’s one thing that is already in it.

I think it must be the anarchy speaking.. It must be my difficulty fitting in, in a certain way.. it must be how strange I am.. that that strangeness has been allowed to evolve for so long.. to have its own depths, its own maturity.. that it managed to escape the forces of socialization.. that we are seeing a kind of new animal before us.. one that lives within us all.. and it is like a call to becoming… a voice we have often heard before.. but perhaps did not have the courage to follow.

Creating the Mix and the Song at the same time:

The process is an experimental one.. one where the composition it’s self, at a certain point, is made to fit the mix, just as the mix is made to fit the music…. and the mix even is the music. So again.. I’m drawing from my experimental electronic music.

A we bit latter:

So let me wrap this up

For starters I’d say that I think this new direction in my music.. will correct certain problems I have with my work.. I’ll leave this at that.

Now I want to talk about Anxiety.

A little while ago I did a post entitled Death by Anxiety. It was a kind of strange post. It was strange in that it painted a picture of myself that was.. raw and naked and.. well what it was. After making that post, and the feedback I got on it.. I started to think of my self in different terms then I normally do. The people in the videos suffered from very bad anxiety.. and I both identified with them, and began to see the roll of anxiety in my life in a way that threatened my self concept. This then lead into a wrestling with the subject.. and it reached it’s worst point when I ran into my ATM trouble.

One of the things you run into thinking, or I did, was.. is anxiety an organic problem? Some sorta genetically inherited issue.. was it a mistake to blame my mom for it? Perhaps heavy metal is nothing but a kind of expression of anxiety? Or I mean about anxiety? What is anxiety?

Well you know I’m kind of a philosopher of the mind… and in my LSD like sleep deprived consciousness… I began to explore my mind in relationship to anxiety. Indeed the anxiety threatened to capsize me!

One of the things I notices was that anxiety seemed to be a “normal psychology” that relates to reality in “interesting ways.” Anxiety seemed to be a situation where the unconscious mind is participating in our organization of the details of life, of reality, and painting a picture for us. Reality is ALWAY this… as we experience it.. detached objectivity, though it is a modern ideal, is an illusion. Reality is ONLY experienced through the lens of consciousness. And so it is that anxiety is an adventure into our own depths.. with our depths expressing its self on the world around us, or through our experience of the world around us.

This is obvious enough stuff.. to any student of depth psychology… medication treatment is never about fundamentally changing the matter, its about living with it..  where as the natural way of the psyche is one of changing the matter. Indeed, it would seem that anxiety is actually a kind of advanced process of self evolution. We are confronted with the question of how do we relate to our own depths.. as this is projected in front of us. Our living in the world becomes about a psychological process / evolution.

I have a long held belief, a kind of presumption, that one’s psychological reality is always as it is for a reason. The existence of a psychological phenomenon is there to serve us, if we can just find the proper relationship to it.

As I stated earlier in this entry… there are things In my life that I’m having a hard time dealing with… It’s hard enough that I’m really only able to deal with so much of it at a time.. in a kind of direct experience. When the pressure of it builds up to a certain point.. it forces a confrontation. It can ether do this via a sorta psychological confrontation, or via reality.. by which I mean that the unfolding events of one’s life are direct manifestations of the inward realities, versus a projection onto our understanding of reality.. we are, after all, talking about the first stage here.

When I talk about composition as being about organizing factors that have a relationship to how we organize our understanding of reality.. and when I say my music is prophetic in the sense that I’m developing new organizational methods.. more advanced, I think, then what has come before.. my music, on a compositional level, is a way of dealing with all of this.

This is really deep and profound stuff.. 

Latter:

THX 1138 Revisted

THX 1138 is a dystopia… its is a kind of prophetic vision of our modern situation.. A few points

1. The power relationships relative to mental health, define what is a normal or not normal… and of course proscribe medication.. treatment that, as mentioned above.. is more about coping that dealing with the underlying problems. In THX it is law that we take medication, and when we stop taking it.. we become anxious
2. Consumption is the enforced behavioral norm in THX.. again leading to the behavior control.. the sense that everything is “A-Ok.” We see this in normative modes of being.. in our modern situation.

It’s really all about the power to define a thing. We are now used to –

Next day

I’m thinking this entry is long enough, and I ought to cut it short.. what I want to suggest is that there are connections between social control, anxiety, human potential, the structure of the psyche, collective evolution, and um.. so the symbolic significance of what I’m trying to do… has to do with how I’m relating to this complex of factors, and how my work does..  and we’ll leave this at this for now.

[Editor’s note: It turns out that “The Dr”. Has been hanging out with Carl Sullivan.. somewhere in rock port.. and via a secret under ground army (yes some people in the government know about this, but you know how conspiracy’s go) message got back to Matt, and it was Matt’s Job to publish this report… This accounts for the madness of it all ] 

First a video  

Ok, did you happen to catch that? I mean the symbolic significance, it didn’t get past you did it? Yes indeed-e, the fellow for whom the term “cool-aid” comes from.. more or less… he would seem to be… *gasp* making some sorta social media thing. I mean is he not talking about social media? Danger will Robenson.. how could this be?

Ok… Ok… Ok, dig it.. I’m not a bid Dead head, or anything like that.. and I’m not someone who ever made a life style out of LSD… so don’t chew be thinking I’m coming at you from quite that angle! Lets curve, and swerve.. around a bit.. so I can speak to you about what it tis… 

Yes, Beware that Cool-Aid! 

Well.. it’s not that there’s anything wrong with cool-aid per-say.. the question has more to do with from where the cool-aid came.. something to do with the brewing.. a kind of DNA like imprinting…I’m now given to calling myself a social media philosopher.. that seems like the best kind of language.. at least of what I’ve found thus far, to talking about where I is a come-in from..

Err.. perhaps I should shift my manner of speaking.. so that my tonality might not confuse.. the some..I have developed a systematic, you might say schematic, of the underlying dynamics which influence the evolution of social media. That’s probably not saying quite strong enough.. We aren’t talking about influence, we are talking about “is.” Another words.. I’ve cracked the code.

As near as I can tell.. nobody’s cracked the code yet.. but much like Darwin, I’m not actually talking about it too much.

[Editors note: The Dr.” is getting a little esoteric on your but-ox, Darwin worked out his theory of Evolution long before he actually published it.. he just sorta sat on it for years.] 

[Note to self: Thy readers proll-e think I’m nuts now.] 

Ok.. lets scoot-a-dew on over to some of this here top secret schematical stuff..  

[Note to self: I should probably make people buy ticks before I show them into my top secret Hanger 18 type laboratory.. well as long as the don’t spot my top secret world domination plot, I’m sure I’ll be ok]

Um.. so what I’m trying to get at is.. the DNA… hmm… did I mention information was a virus?   

Take it Away Laurie

So language.. that’s a way of encoding information, isn’t it? So is it language or information that’s the true virus? Language.. at best can point to the truth.. its always somehow removed from the actual reality.. can only take you part way there.. This would be a kind of Kantian thang.. 

So.. When I’m talking about cool-aid, I’m not actually talking about reality it’s self.. I’m talking about something to do with something that can influence our understanding of reality. The reality, in my view.. and the cool aid.. there’s some overlapping truth..  here…

[Editor’s note: Word in the underground was there was some king a crazy banging going on in that there cell block.. just after we lost the transmission, so you’re going to have to make of this what you will.] 

I’m in a crazy sleep deprived state, mind full of beats.. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burrough’s beats… Passions and revolts drive madly through me.. I thought of a part to a poem earlier.. when I was less sleep deprived deranged… I wonder if I could remember it.

 

God is not man made

Not even  man is man made

perhaps this is why he is so miserable

in his modern world 

 

So what do you think? It’s just a fragment of something. There was other stuff I was thinking of putting with it, but those memories have faded.

I wonder what you could do with those words, can you imagine? You could have those lines repeating over and over again… drenched in effects; an ambient timber.. some sound painting.

Perhaps its just a fragment, just a couple riffs looking for more riffs, to be come a whole.

Perhaps these are words that should be surrounding by still silence.. little movement.

Perhaps these words are no good at all. 

My mind has gone off in so many tangents in this state… I’ve had so many dreams to write about.. reflections, attempts at self awareness… feeling like a moth who bangs his head upon the glass in search for the flame… Even if I and the fire are one. 

On YouTube, it says this is a BBC documentary, but I don’t believe it is.. In any event it’s the documentary on Carl Jung.. This is the sorta thing that gets pulled from YouTube fairly regularly.. though this one’s been up for a while now.. so maybe it’s worth sharing this way.. Just thought I’d put them all together for an easier way of viewing… (that is that it won’t get pulled anytime too soon)

But first, some words about Jung’s Influence on me and my work: 

The funny truth of the matter is.. the biggest influence on my work.. from thought, to visual arts.. to my sound art.. It’s really the influence of an inward journey more then it is any artist or thinker or whatever..

When I talk about influences it might be best to regard this as a somewhat unreliable narration.. of the significants of the influence is more that they relate, in at least some sort of symbolic way, to something I’ve found on in my own inward journey.. and what they really provide for me is a way of talking about it.. that can at least be a touch point.. where we can have a common starting point for talking about.

Carl Jung, on the other hand, might be the single biggest influence on me for thinking about that inward journey… well maybe him and Joseph Campbell.. throw in Nietzsche somewhere.. and blah blah blah.. The influence is so big that I often don’t know where Jung starts, and I end, or vice versa..

Oddly enough.. its Jung’s conceptual framework, that underlies my music, underlies how I think about marketing and  communications, how I think about business, how I think about aesthetics, how I think about being human, how I think about social media.. So it seems to me important for me to share with you.

On with the Documentary

 

For some reason this one seems to lag a lil:

So yeah.. it’s kind of a crazy group, ha? I feel the need to give you some back story.. but…  well, seems like this entry’s long enough.. and who would have made it through the whole thing!? So, go.. do you’re other things!