November 7ths

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11/7/1914

Wittgenstein longing for the company of a decent person because "here I am surrounded by indecency". 

11/7/1978

(Keith Haring Journals)

"Everything in this notebook is subject to change. When I re-read an idea two or three days later, sometimes (usually) I have a more defined, altered, or more simple version of the original idea, or a new interpretation of the idea, or a totally new idea that develops as a result of the first one. This book contains thoughts that are spontaneous. Every day I think differently, re-evaluate old ideas, and express my ideas in different terms."

[11/7/2024: Many artists work from indeterminate concepts, as opposed to a fixed plan (like mechanical or architectural drawings), so the thinking about the work as it is being made is constantly changing, all the way up until the work is finished, at which point the artist realizes, “That’s what I was thinking and doing”. Understanding the process usually comes in hindsight, and only matures after many years or decades. Sometimes making another version of it helps you to understand it better, or to fully put it to rest].

11/7/2007
            
Edward Burtynsky lecture. He spent months in China taking large-format shots of coal mines, Three Gorges Dam, huge factories, etc., and documented what is happening in China now. The work is not purely documentary, but cameras just do this very well naturally, without having to categorize it as such. Unlike painting which reworks reality over long periods, the camera gets it in a few seconds. The difference with Burtynsky is that the work is engineered as architecture, with research, planning, and construction done from the blueprint of an idea.

[The Now You Can See Everything film is essentially a documentary, but looks and functions like a feature film. If Elizabeth Holmes had a different name it would have essentially been a roman a clef and would have been more (or less) impactful. It's the cinematatography and scoring that make it what it is. Cameras are powerful contextualizers in how you use them].

Discuss the slippage between a documentary and a feature film. 

11/7/2021 
            
Watched a performance of Pat Martino who just died last week. It was a duet with a piano player on a standard. A friend commented that he didn’t think that it was substantive—he was just playing scales and it didn’t seem to have any form at all. I made the counterargument that younger metal players just play fast arpeggios. It’s not compositional. But he argued that it is compositional and improvisation in the sense that it looks like it’s improvisation. That kind of playing is almost scored. It’s practiced over and over again. It’s essentially a cadenza. Cadenzas don’t exist in jazz but they do in pop, rock, and metal. Both styles have their roots in classical, but different roots.
            
[11/7/2024: When we say something or someone has “roots” we tend to think it’s just a few branches, but roots are huge entangled networks. They are ‘fungible” in the sense that you can’t separate one root from another. One or two roots might be from the classical tree, a few others from the jazz tree, but they still look like any old root.] 

11/7/2024





















AI Treatments: 

 

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11/7/2025

A good drummer can be irreplaceable if their way of playing makes the music unique in some way. Drum machines never really replaced drummers in the 80s per se because they were simply another option—or “convenience” for simple beats that would bore a drummer—and then the drummer would be freed up to play another instrument. AI is yet another option for such conveniences.

Perhaps people are afraid to use AI because they haven’t found a way to reconcile the whole “man-machine” phenomenon that started in the late 70s with Kraftwerk, yet was quickly embraced as a viable way to make pop music. The bigger issue now is the that entire bands are replaceable. What can’t be replaced is the drummer, or any musician, who can play in the moment with a unique style—which is what jazz drummers excel at. 

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November 7ths 

 
 

 






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