January 12ths

Diary Antipode: July 12ths

1/12/2003            

Interesting: Theater and film metaphors applied to “war”. The military often references a battle zone as a “theater”, and now with the impending war with Iraq, the U.S. has constructed “ movie sets” where they can practice mock warfare. (“Stage”, “arena” are other metaphors—or as a performance, or “surgical strike”—medical, although medicine I think used the “war”metaphor (“metawar”).

[1/12/2026: TV changed the political landscape during Bush 43. The Vietnam war was the first TV war, but 24/7 cable news didn’t exist then. In the 90s the “shout shows” emerged, like Jerry Springer].

Excerpt Library (Sociology): “Discuss the effect of TV on politics"

1/12/2005

Extinct sounds: a slammed phone, rotary dial sound, pop-up flash bulbs, gurgle of coffee percolators, projector clatter, typewriters, airplane propellers, car door slams from the 1960s, which were more metallic, rather than rubberized. Sounds are like smells, they can transport the listener to another time and place. Until the late 1800s the predominant sounds people heard were from nature. In 1948 Moses Asch of Folkways Records immortalized “anything that is sound”. [More]

1/12/2016

We all know great artists that passed with little fanfare, but they didn’t have the Midas Touch of David Bowie.

1/12/2019

Metropolis: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1/12/2022 
            
Are individual instrumental parts tantamount to “writing”? Personally, “yes” if it can be demonstrated that it has an effect on the success of the song. But at the same time, if someone gets an idea on a walk, writes down the chords and melody, it is their song. If someone else comes up with a counter-melody, you could technically call it a derivative work, and list the other writer on the new registration. Once the song is recorded and released, both would appear as writers, and you can set the percentage of ownership accordingly. 

1/12/2025

The ground is also shifting under the feet of every generation. Boomers had their roots in radio and early network TV, and a curated world of culture, for example, a record store. Now the same ground has shifted, as the continents have shifted over millions of years. Finding an old radio in a desert is like finding fossils of sea shells there. If you drink in the moment you can contemplate the “aesthetic erosion”, a bleak Madmaxian landscape now erased. We accept the fact that deserts were always deserts, but they weren’t always.

Dynaxiom draft: People become other people because of other people. 

Ennio Morricone: “I play it badly for him, also, because I am not interested at all in playing it at the piano. If necessary, I sing it to him in my off-key voice. There is a certain director who after years and years confessed to me that he had not understood anything in my communications with him (though I had not suspected it). I had sung the theme to him badly. I had played it for him badly. So he had arrived in the recording studio thinking, “Finally . . .” One does not have the slightest idea about what the musical level of certain directors is. One of them, a dear friend, provoked me by saying, “Try that little piece again, there where the orchestra is tuning up.” But the orchestra was not tuning up: it was executing slightly abstract sounds that I had written for his film.” 

This is my experience with my recordings, especially with the sounds I might be using. Everyone is going to object to something because they don’t have access to your initial ideas, or what Morricone calls “playing something badly”. It’s elusive how a composer can effectively communicate ideas. 

Also a bit about forcing all-nighters on copyists: “There have even been some who because of this repeated nocturnal sacrifice have become gravely ill and have died.” I know the feeling. There has always been burnout, even to the point of death. Overwork could probably qualify as a cause of death on a death certificate.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1/12/2047

(Anthony Townes Diary) 

At studio with Neone, Ox, and Jon. Ox handed me what apparently was my guitar, another thing I forgot was mine. They started to play the Tithonus songs and I remembered them, strangely. The music seemed both strange and familiar, like music I had never heard before, but I was playing it like I had known it my entire life.

Who is Tithonus?