December 30ths

12/30/1897 (Paris)            

(Harry Kessler Diary)            

Purchased Seurat’s “The Models at Vollard’s” for 1,200 francs. One of the masterworks of the French school!            

(This is the image that Kessler bought. It’s interesting that it is cropped and enlarged, as well rotated horizontally):

 

              
[69 years later there is a musical group playing guitars that you plug in. They are able to trace their performances as one would paint on a canvas–but with sound. 69 years in the future in 2093 there will be young artists making some form of art that is now unimaginable. When one of the musicians turns 64 in the 2140s there will be other technologies akin to sampling in 2000 that was inconceivable 50 years prior]

12/30/1966

Mono mixing: “ When I’m Sixty Four” tape copying, “ Strawberry Fields Forever”, Recording “ Penny Lane” (tape reduction take 6 into take 7, mono mixing, “Penny Lane” remixes 1 and 2 from take 7.   

12/30/1999

In the final two days of the 20th century, a stark contrast to the heady 1966...George Harrison stabbed in robbery attempt in the middle of the night in his home outside London.

12/30/2022

Bill Bruford: “The author Henry Miller suggested once that we all leave a scar upon the face of the world. Some of us try to atone for it through right work before we leave. [This is] evidence of one musician’s micro efforts to repair through music the scar he’s made.” (All our lives are “meander scars”). https://www.perplexity.ai/search/did-the-author-henry-miller-su-lhL3Oj_MQyyt10W2gOMmKA#0     

12/30/2024

 


































12/30/2025

All music is a "short" in the sense that if you eliminate repeats, the musical elements are only about 10-20 seconds in length. In classical music it can be a motif of 3 notes. "Discuss duration"

In many ways pop music killed music because it made it about celebrity and heroism. It wasn't a fluke that we invented the guitar hero. Just a century ago, there were guitar masters. The idea of masters, mastery, and masterpieces slowly faded throughout the 20th century.  There are faint vestiges that remain but AI may wipe that out completely. What will remain is postmodernism, and I'm okay with that because that is where our ingenuity will flourish by being fiercely eccentric.