December 8ths

12/8/2000

20th anniversary of John Lennon's death.

Victory for Gore. Florida Supreme Court allows recount. The pundits are saying that it will turn into a constitutional crisis.

12/8/2006

Interesting: Los Angeles is a difficult city to make architectural statements. Even with cutting-edge work by Gehry, Mayne, and Liebskind, the city lacks context, as the city is so dispersed—unlike Chicago where most structures relate to the surrounding buildings. In a sense, it’s like a gallery installation of sculptural objects.

[12/8/2025: In the 60 Minutes interview with Frank Gehry in 2002 he was asked about the inspiration for the design of his odd house in Santa Monica. It was the overlaying of the various architectural styles of the houses on his street. This is postmodern both as a philosophy as well as the postmodern art movement beginning around 1980 where artists and architects were doing a 180 against minimalism. A good example of this is 190 S. LaSalle in Chicago, designed by Philip Johnson which is a mash-up of several styles, some from the surrounding buildings. I think this is clever and brilliant but most don’t share my views].     

12/8/2009            

Read article on the advent of smart systems in cars. It presents interesting analogies to Broken Cello and the idea of agency, where smart systems connected to the cloud make accurate decisions on your behalf.

12/8/2010

30th anniversary of Lennon assassination. 1980 was such a clean breaking point in world history—a boundary between generations. Of course, there are many younger generations who couldn’t care less, or even know who he is...It’s the art that endures, shifting in the ever-changing light of history.

First launch of privatized space travel, a SpaceX rocket.

12/8/2015

On the retirement of Neil Peart: I have to wonder how such a wonderful musician can ever retire. Musicians and artists really never retire—they do it until they drop. There is a feeling of “homesickness” when you haven’t done something for a while. Instruments really do become extensions of our bodies, and there is the “phantom” effect when they are absent. 

12/8/2016
            
RIP Greg Lake. I love the songs with just voice and guitar. They sometimes remind me of western European Celtic folk music, Jacques Brel or Edith Piaf or a Portuguese morna, as does “Still...”. The 12-strings he played really are a proxy for the lute. The mornas are played on a nylon string and are African-influenced but they have the same emotion behind them. 

12/8/2018

Black Neon:

                
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[I also used the title for a piece of music. I’m always reusing titles].          

12/8/2021
            
One would presume that the arts are a vehicle for a sense of well-being or a form of sustenance for health, but that’s never the way that it’s been in postmodernism—as opposed to say, the 1920s, with the theosophical movement. I can use music as a form of “therapy”, but essentially, it’s the feeling of satisfaction of finishing something. It’s not a sense of well-being when you’re starting a project and ruminating about its meaning or how it’s going to position itself in culture. That’s not how you’re going to get well-being. You have to be at peace with yourself before you can start anything. If I want to write a string piece (which nobody’s doing anymore), but if I get a sense of satisfaction out of it just for me, then it’s useful. We shouldn’t care if it’s not useful for someone else. Perhaps in the future, someone will find it useful in context with other things. I like the artists who are creating on both sides of the fence—like Gerhard Richter: He does representational painting as well as conceptual work for a nice balance of mediums. I think that’s how we use art for a sense of well-being. #riff 

12/8/2023

The idea of a “short” is a creative universal. A seed idea is essentially a “short”, so a short can become a Netflix series for example. It also works in the other direction by excerpting from longer forms. They are another form of exformation. ["Discuss Exformation"]

Watched Geddy Lee’s TV series. It’s interesting to see how musicians retire to a life mostly about doing other things besides music. 

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In many interviews with Rick Rubin, he’s said that he considers the audience last; you should please yourself first. That’s exactly how I think. But an artist can get to a place where they’re pleasing both themselves and the audience. I always cite the band Rush on this score. The loyal fans always loved everything they did, even though in my opinion a lot of it was suboptimal. But it was performed well and people liked the live shows. People respond to people just doing it. But it begs the question of whether deciding who to please is something that we consciously do. If the audience is pleased, you reflexively start to make more of it, and do you really want to?  

[12/8/2024: Clear intentions are even more important when AI is in the loop because once you’ve been using it it’s always running in the background as you wonder what it might do with a certain idea you’ve had, as opposed to approaching it as you always have. With lyric ideas it was always with a guitar, a bass, or a keyboard. AI changes the order in which you do things in yet another way. Once the idea is running in the machine loop it’s harder to put the human back in it. The other day I was playing bass parts against an AI-generated piece of music. I had an earworm for hours afterward, and I realized it was the AI idea, not the one I had. It had shifted my intentions because I capitulated to the easy way. All I had to do was add a bass part, as opposed to 23 other ones. It’s okay for things to be easy–but not all the time]. 

12/8/2024

They say that artificial intelligence can have ideas. I actually agree with that because as I’ve been using it for creating music, I’ll start with one of my own ideas and it will have another idea of its own. But 8 out of 10 times they are not usable, and I have to regenerate them again, and each spin is yet another idea that gets introduced. 

What makes it more interesting for me are the visual elements and the conceptual framework in which individual songs might exist. This way I can call it my own and know that it’s been resolved in some fashion. I also like to make an acoustic version, or transcribe elements generated from the AI and re-contextualize them with a new groove or riff. #riff     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12/8/2025

A "meter" day, as is February 2, March, April, May, June, July, (September), (October) and November 4; March, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 8.