December 10ths

12/10/1960, Saturday

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Lennon goes on long train journey back to Liverpool from Hamburg with his amp strapped to his back in case someone tried to steal it. Stuart went into temporary hiding with his girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr. She took pics of the Beatles at the Heiligengeistfeld ( Holy Ghost field) fairground in central Hamburg.

12/10/1994            

Article in Tribune about young couple in Sarajevo who were shot dead as they attempted to flee the city. This is a common story, as the numbing slaughter is a daily occurrence in that part of the world. But it is unique in that it underlines the deeply ingrained ethnic racism—to the point where humanity has completely disappeared. A couple in love is the ray of hope that perhaps humanity may still exist, but it’s disheartening to see such hope destroyed.

12/10/1999

While browsing music books at library on "the fine points of practicing lyric writing", etc., I thought, “Who cares about this anymore?” (I still do) 

[12/10/2024: I’m doing more lyric writing now with the AI experiments. What I think is coming next are algorithms that define the music we make by putting certain things at the top of the feed, obscuring everything else. Imagine that algorithms followed everything you glanced at or observed, and gave you more of that, when in fact it didn’t really mean much to you at the time. (“The organic is superior to the synthetic, as the former adapts on its own conditions.")]  

On the new wave of “collaborative filtering”: If we always find what we’ve always liked, doesn’t that put constraints on discovery?

[12/10/2025: I actually want constraints as long as I am the one imposing them. What we want is to be able to write prompts to control outputs, not unlike writing a prompt for an an image, video, or music].

"Discuss the effect of collaborative filtering on perceived identity"

12/10/2005

To Redmoon Theater for From Nothing Installation. I really liked what they did, especially with sound, speakers placed around the warehouse space. As you moved around, you would focus on another set of sounds with other sounds fading into the background.  

[Atmosphere Generation]

12/10/2021

Michael Nesmith died at 78. I’m still nostalgic for that LA-Country sound. I got a bit of twang in the 1980s when I realized I liked music that had a country influence (like Elton’s Tumbleweed), primarily in how records sounded and were guitar-y. Also interesting to revisit Headquarters. Sometimes it was experimental and silly like “Zilch”. 

Train of huge tornadoes swipes across 4 states. Some of the tornadoes were on the ground for hours, traveling almost 200 miles. 

Some December as originally written]    

[An AI-generated version that is moody and shoegazy]

12/10/2023

Two years since the odd climate-change fueled Kentucky tornado swarms–an interesting juxtaposition with John Lennon traveling alone back from Hamburg with feelings of abandonment, sort of a “Last Train to Clarksville” moment in context with the death of Michael Nesmith. Diaries are interesting in that way where you can connect points in time in interesting ways, whereas you wouldn't have noticed them before. 

The main idea behind doing the In Sum diaries was that they would be a remix of diaries, so here we have something happening in December of 1960 making a connection point with something happening in December 2023. It's interesting how you can find uncanny connections between things, which can give you ideas for things like lyrics.

As with songwriting in the context of making an album, anything that is serialized can create uncanny juxtapositions and synchronicities while you're in the process of making it. The diaries are calendrical (organized by date, all the firsts of the month, seconds of the month, and so on). I've also been creating some sets of photographs organized in that fashion, organized by the date they were taken. That's either interesting or not: If it's your birthday then it's interesting and also "cosmic" in the sense that everybody's experiencing the tenth day of the month in some way. It's a state of mind–or minds. A month and a year can be a state of mind as well. It's fertile ground for synchronicity and juxtapositions.

***
 

If you’re going to make art you might as well BRD. (I dictated this to myself in an email while on a walk and “be arty” became “BRD”. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12/10/2024

My typical way of working involves re-imagining things after I finish them, or in the flow of creating them, such as writing a string part that I may or may not use. It has worked the same with AI. They are extensions or continuations, which can have a life of their own, yet always have a thread to the original. If they start with an AI mockup and I make my own version, you could say AI had the idea and I was the lyricist and arranger yet I get 50% of the credit with the other 50 unclaimed and ultimately owned by adverse possession. This is why I don’t feel threatened by AI, at least for my creative ideas.