C#2

One of the reasons I write all this is because the process usually helps elucidate where I’m wrong. It’s easy to latch on to an idea and run with it, but explaining it can be more difficult. Having taken the time to type it, I’ll still post, even if I undermine my own argument. There are a number of posts below this (and above, in the future) that I completely disagree with, but do not disown. It’s just a history of my thoughts, including mistakes, which I think are valuable. If nothing else, it can be an exercise in rhetoric.

I chatted to a friend the other day about the cannibalism thing. She thought I was being deliberately dumb, citing the main arguments against it as: “it’s just culturally ingrained; we are sentient; we have a soul and you simply don’t eat your own”. This is all very compelling, plus she’s an intelligent woman and phrased it very well, so I felt a bit stupid. But it’s still not a reason. There are lots of culturally embedded things that aren’t necessarily right. It feels a bit childish – and I’m not making an argument for cannibalism. I just genuinely don’t see what all the fuss is about.

New Luddism

This must have been noted elsewhere, but I’d like to discuss the desertification of social ‘news’ as an indicator of the need for meaning in an increasingly atomised society.

That sounds a bit pompous. I’ll explain: When you log in to Facebook, it goes straight to the ‘news feed’. Early on, this had novelty value – because Facebook was novel. Then cynicism crept in as a natural consequence of the passage of time. Now (and for a while), it just seems to be an endlessly repeating scroll of inane and meaningless dross. There is a large number of people who, when I see their photo, I know I can safely ignore. It is also ironic that those pages/things that I ‘Like’, are almost always ignored – despite the fact that I chose to construct a bespoke news stream from them. There’s a glitch on my phone which means that when I reach the bottom of the page, it simply repeats itself, rather than going to ‘older posts’. Because I barely pay attention, I often don’t notice until about the third time I’ve read something.

The ‘map’ that is the Facebook news feed is becoming increasingly derelict and ragged (despite being a dynamic entity, as opposed to Borges’ precise – but static – map in On Exactitude in Science) and the territory (real people) is disappearing from consciousness altogether. I forget that the person whom I completely ignore is as real now as when we were friends offline.

The more individualised society becomes via increasingly inclusive and complex technologies, the less meaning individual agents can convey. This implies a conservation of meaning, rendering ‘meaning’, like energy, a finite and tangible substance. So the pragmatic restrictions placed upon humanity by a lack of technology lead to more meaningful individual connections. There is an inverse proportionality going on. I could leave Facebook, but the observation described here doesn’t particularly depress me. Plus, we can’t go backwards – I’m not a Luddite; I love technology. It will be interesting to see how this pans out in the mid- to long term. Charlie Brooker touched upon it in his recent series, Black Mirror, but I think the long term consequences will be more insidious, subtle and damaging. The endgame will be a cancer for the soul.

Pleasures of the flesh

Why is it wrong to eat people? It’s an apparent taboo that I’ve never understood. I can think of two objections, both easily circumvented:

1) Kuru – which I think it a tropical disease similar to CJD that is transmitted via cannibalism. This is extremely rare and, more to the point, is not caused by cannibalism. It can be screened for.

2) Murder – There are many ways to access human flesh without killing someone. You could chop a small bit out, Merchant of Venice style; you could wait for someone to die (which is no different from organ donation); or you could grow it in a petri dish. If they can grow organs, they must be able to grow tissue. The ethical implications here are not connected with the ‘eating’ part of the argument.

I realise the concept may be slightly alien, but it’s only meat. Other species eat their own and, by virtue of the fact that they haven’t become extinct, it clearly does them no harm. Many meat eaters are quite proud of eating unusual or exotic types of flesh. I’m not one of those, but I still like meat. There may be certain circumstances (plane crash; eat the corpses of your family to survive) where it might be emotionally difficult – but that’s down to the individual and not an inherent problem with cannibalism itself.

If anyone can present a good argument against cannibalism, then I’d love to hear it. It seems like we’re missing a trick. I’d be very curious to give it a go, but must explicitly state: I am not asking for volunteers – we all know what happened to that German guy. I’m just making an observation.

The 27 Club

When I was young, I read about the ’27 Club’ – 27 supposedly being the optimum age for rock stars to pop their cloggs. Members include the likes of Joplin, Jones, Cobain, Winehouse et al and it seems to be where all the hep cats are at.

In one paragraph, Jimi Hendrix was described as ‘drug savvy’. I must have been about 14 at the time, but was still pretty naïve. I definitely wanted to get into drugs (partly youthful hubris; partly the inherent attraction of illegality; partly scientific curiosity; partly the logic that drugs must be good or people wouldn’t do them), but was still influenced by the contemporary propaganda message that labelled all illegal drugs: Very Bad Indeed. So I took ‘drug savvy’ to mean ‘aware of the dangers and therefore abstinent’.

What a bell end.

Although my attitude to drugs matured over time, I genuinely believed for at least ten years, that Jimi Hendrix, the man who choked on his own vomit, was tea-total. All evidence to the contrary was simply blocked by my subconscious. I now know differently, and take ‘drug savvy’ to mean ‘experienced in a broad range of narcotic delights’. I’m not sure when this revelation occurred to me, but why would my subconscious (a convenient scapegoat for just about everything) do such a thing? The initial mistake is easy enough, but why perpetuate it? I hope I didn’t argue the point with too many people.

The human mind is a funny thing. I know it’s a hackneyed cliché to ask what childhood memories assert a completely wrong influence on the adult experience – but it does make me question what other ridiculous myths I might be labouring under.

Break the mirror and act

I’m selfish (on some levels) and take relatively little interest in other people’s creativity. If a stranger hands me a manuscript, album or portfolio that I “really must read/hear/view”, then I probably won’t. It happens a lot. I’m not disinterested; I just don’t have the time. A few people can seduce me into following their recommendations, but these are rare. This is perhaps why I’ve never felt part of a community (e.g. the music community) – I don’t play the game.

As a result, I don’t expect anyone to take an interest in my own writing/music. I don’t promote, link-exchange, SEO, index or publicise in any way (so why put stuff online? It’s a good storage facility, easily accessible and easy to signpost). Deep down though, I really want people to listen to my music and read my writing. I enjoy it, but cringe with embarrassment if anyone else shows an interest. There must be a discrepancy between the way I perceive myself and the way I think others perceive me (studies of human self-perception show the latter to be nearly always way off the mark). For mental wellbeing, there should probably be some harmony between the two.

In the meantime, I will continue to write screeds of guffle on the grounds that it’s good practice; it might be therapeutic; and it’s nice to have a hobby. But should I live in a bubble? Is it possible to create solely for oneself? Is ego-gratification more necessary than I think? What I need is time. Time to make nice things. But then I’d struggle with the concept of being all surface and no substance. Authenticity comes into play, establishing a malevolant apparatus with the ego (whose health is already under question) that penetrates the dark meniscus of postmodernism. Again.

Incidentally, I used to have semi-lucid dreams about a tall thin postmodernist who stood in the corner of the bedroom. He’s long gone now, but I’m still here, talking about (rather than actually doing) stuff. I don’t explain things very well, but ‘stream of consciousness’ has internal logic and is useful to cultivate, so that’s what I’m doing. The previous few posts may give the impression of someone who’s a little dissociated. I can’t say that I’m not, but being a weirdo can only get you so far. So I’m ditching PoMo in favour of action.

Extimacy

The girl is CB. I need to stop compensating for the fact that I have no vocals by dropping samples of people I know/knew. I should also place the tape stops a little more tastefully. This is quite nice in and of itself, but it needs more of a narrative arc and perhaps cleaning up a little before mastering.

Mastering

I need to master some tracks and, despite lacking a decent set of monitors, I’ll give it a go. Mastering is a boring technical process that few manage to get right. It’s also demotivating, listening to your own compositions in such detail that every error screams in your face and you begin to hate the music. The longer you spend mastering, the more you ask: is this worth it?

The argument against visual cues is strong. Put simply, you shouldn’t use visual cues (e.g. spectrum analysis) because it should be the actual sound – the end product – that informs any adjustments. It’s particularly bad in my case, since my settings have to be even numbers or at the very least, integers. I don’t even have the benefit of OCD, otherwise my studio would be far tidier. Do I use light compression with a very high threshold, so that only the peaks are attenuated, leaving the maximum dynamic range? Or do I set a really low threshold and subtly compress the whole mix to maximise loudness? Thinking about it, the answer’s obvious: do the research.

Some people say that you should always stand up whilst mixing or mastering. This allows more freedom to move and, through dancing freely in response to the audio, fewer restrictions are placed upon the body/stimulus feedback loop. This allows for greater integration of ‘the human’ within the mix. It’s applied cyborg theory, in a sense. So it looks like I’m in for a weekend of spazzing out with the curtains drawn and a blindfold on. Kinky.

Mastering is a pain in the ass – but it would be nice to have a decent little mini-album to show for the last few months. I have enough back catalogue to be able to mentally relocate to the time/place when I was working on any given track. If I’d actually read any Proust, then I’d make a pithy observation on involuntary memory… and if I can get the mixes sounding at least realistic (I don’t really have the fidelity, but will do my best), then this phenomenon will hopefully re-emerge.