June 30ths

6/30/1999

On the Red Violin film: Years ago it was the instrument itself that became the memory, now it's the sound, the recording or the cultural footprint that the artist makes that gets remembered.

[2025: Containers of Music]

 6/30/2001

Interesting: Bill Kurtis traveled the world and found that he resonated with a simple place like Kansas. Everyone has one place where they fit in perfectly. What is my place?

Went to Davis Theater to see AI. It had its moments, good and bad. Kubrick was always like that: brilliant moments spoiled by stupid stuff. Things I liked: the “designed” scenes, camera angles, reflections, and so on. If they repeated some of that throughout the film, it would have made it 100% better. Also, the Amen people circa 4500 AD. 

[6/30/2025: Like all paradigmatic technologies, AI is a trope, a mythology, woven into the human experience. For artists, these things are typically grist for the mill.]

6/30/2018

Studio “Rings”: River Blyth, Chapter VI. This nicely demonstrates the desultory nature of the book: At the beginning of this chapter we are at a bridge at the River Blyth, and all of a sudden we are in 19th century China. This particular track is a remix from “Chinese Interior” in The Thorne Rooms, my own side-turning.

6/30/2020

A sense of curiosity is more important than creativity in many ways. Everything grows out of initial ideas, and the artist, scientist, or entrepreneur uses creativity to objectify those ideas.

Creativity is achieved through working with the ideas, or sometimes abandoning them or re-retooling them. Innovation and creativity are sometimes interchangeable in the sense that they sometimes require exploring more extreme ideas as a way to locate the center or core essence of the idea.

6/30/2024

The new morning Songday routine continues: A Place Like Kansas. Possible narrative: returning home after a long journey and re-discovering anew the place you left. This could be a Music For Places piece, with an atmospheric production, with peripheral references to “There’s No Place Like Home”, perhaps using a clip from The Wizard of Oz. It would have darker ironic aspects about how the US has changed since the time of that film, as well as since 9/11, and in current times. It would be a song about many nostalgias. It would be a song for traveling well. It would have color and black and white contrasts, and of course, tornadoes.

Shortet No. 8 ("Place Like Kansas") by meta4s

6/30/2025

As much as I like writing songs with AI, I still think it's "profane". Music will/should always be "sacred" to anyone who has played an instrument for any length of time. I always ask myself: "Who is it playing guitar or singing?  

Received the semi-final proofs for January, February and March. Went to park to do a quick read-through January--in ironic juxtaposition with reading about sub-freezing temps at Navy Pier. A small Monarch butterfly kept landing on the page. I don’t know what kind of omen or synchronicity it is,