DOPE BEETZ by jRaf
A track I just made recently. The calm of floating on the pond in the Relaxation Station is countered by the terrible things that lurk below.
From Sacramento through Chicago to Munich. Made this beat on my iPod while in the air, just learning how to use the program but its working out ok so far.
DOPE BEETZ by jRaf
A track I just made recently. The calm of floating on the pond in the Relaxation Station is countered by the terrible things that lurk below.
Just some skeleton dude and his cool trick. Maybe he’ll be a featured actor in a movie sometime soon, but for now I just used him to test out some animation basics. Modeled and animated with Blender.
This is what it feels like to be bearded, sometimes.
“Bearded” got its name because it started out as a uke jam that Leifo’s roommate Evan was playing: singing about the differences and similarities between Leif’s and my beards. So I figured out some other stuff to do with it the other night while I was jammin with him, and recorded a melodica part to it, then finished it up in Berkeley Espresso by syncing up the tracks and adding some synth bass and a dope beat.
I haven’t been doing it, at least not on this blog.
Just wanted to recognize that.
I got a notebook, which immediately diminished my need to write here.
Ideally, we get better and better at the process of converting personal tragedy into something we can look back and laugh at, so that the time between an event being perceived as tragic and the same event being remembered as funny gets shortened.
The hope is that eventually we can laugh at our own tragic situation even as they are happening, immediately, knowing that they will one day be funny to us.
Or, maybe this would be a ridiculously detached way of living, verging on insanity. Also, I’d like to recognize that I have lived a remarkably privileged life so far, which tends to encourage the belittling of any “tragic” experience of mine. So, I guess this entire hypothesis will need to be better thought-through.
Some days, you have plenty of time—until you are late, at which point, every segment of the day, which has been intricately worked out, begins to grate upon the next, sending you into a downward spiral in which every minute sub-task in the normal routine becomes stressed with hurry.
In the midst of these days, it’s helpful to realize that what you’re rushing to get to can probably wait a few minutes. You might have time to walk instead of bike, or to take the bus and watch strangers look out the window instead of driving through traffic.
Of course, when I say “you,” I really mean “me.” So I take no responsibility for anyone’s assumptions that this advice applies to you.
I’m feeling very, very, passionately greedy for knowledge.
I want to read as many books as possible from now on, I’ll just pick one up and invite a brilliant thinker into my head:
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell
Milton’s Paradise Lost
Barack Obama The Audacity of Hope
I’m too tired to either a) finish this list tonight, as I’m sure it will not end, ever, or b) read the books listed above, as it’s almost 2am and I’m hoping to start waking up early so as to have time to read. So I will do neither.
Charlie Rose and Hunter S. discuss Thompson’s first novel, The Rum Diary. Best enjoyed near the ocean, with some rum.
(Source: youtube.com)
Currently, I’m watching South of the Border, a documentary on Hugo Chavez and the relationship between South American countries and the United States, and I’ve been getting a feeling which I recognize from when I found myself watching part of a documentary exposing the big hoax which was the Beatles. Except, while the Beatles hoax made me feel vaguely uncomfortable like some blinders were being ripped off my eyes, it also made me laugh at the people who edited that footage… This documentary’s effect is more akin to having certain ideological assumptions being removed forcefully from my insides. Very interesting, shocking stuff. I’m glad it ended with some hopeful footage involving Obama talking in a friendly manner to the presidents of several South American countries; not so glad that the media continually called them dictators who were not “friendly” with the U.S.
It’s time for me to start figuring out politics. I was struck by a revelation some months ago when I realized that a friend of mine who was very interested in politics personified nations: this could make it easier for me to narrativise what’s going on in the world. I just have a lot of people to get to know, and will have to work out a way to not be disgusted if categorization becomes necessary here. I’ll work on it, step-by-step.
I also watched War Photographer today. This documentary was about James Nachtwey, a man with a very steady hand, considering he works in some dangerous situations and sees incredible amounts of grief. Someone close to him said that he had “his own library of suffering in his head.” He seemed mild-mannered, and most concerned with respecting the plight of his photographic subjects, saying, “The extent to which I am sympathetic to others’ situations is the extent to which they can accept me, and to which I can accept myself.” His best friend offered to the camera his take on the man, saying that his optimism was very important in keeping him going, without it, it’s easy to fall into a despair in thinking that what he tries to do may not change anything, and how could anything ever change, no matter what anyone does, etc.. It’s not hard to believe that this is an optimist’s line of work. I feel like everyone needs that, though.
