January 24ths

1/24/1999            

10-year-old boy writes essay about Clinton perjury. The irony will be that the kid grows up and does the same thing the president did. (It’s not perjury, it’s “creative lying”, “poetic untruths”).

[1/24/2026: We think that presidents set an example, but rather it’s the culture at large that sets the example, perhaps through the Copycat Effect. "A survey of 18,000 Americans revealed significant political and generational divides, particularly concerning young voters. Regarding attitudes perceived by some as sexist, racist, homophobic, or violent, the study suggests these are not solely a result of Trump creating a permissive environment. Instead, generational trends are more significant. Notably, the belief that violence might sometimes be necessary in politics is strongly generational. Younger voters, particularly Gen Z, perceive the political system as not functioning well for them and are questioning its flaws and potential solutions. This sentiment may explain the finding that one in five younger Americans believe violence can occasionally be necessary in politics"]. [More] 

1/24/2012

SOTU address. Things everyone can cheer: Osama Bin Laden’s head on a plate; Obama’s “Can’t we all just get along?!” harangue continues; Wrong comparison with postwar zeitgeist: the truth is there is no such growth in this era; “Economy Built to Last” slogan; “America is Back” slogan. 

1/24/2020 
            
Pano: Forest Avenue, Oak Park: 

1/24/2022
                       
I like the expression “second tier” because learning music by using the internet is not as good as more formal music education. This might have been the sentiment 50 years ago when older generations didn’t like young musicians learning from pop radio. (It’s funny when I think back to my first bass lesson which involved playing boogie-woogie bass lines. I think a part of this had to do with the blues zeitgeist in the 1960s which was seen as an exalted art form, and so could be pedagogic).

1/24/2023 
            
More surreal Santos lies: assassination attempts, mugging at 3P in New York where they stole his shoes. 

 1/24/2024

Surrealist sculpture dream

1/24/2025

It has been the tradition to release new music on Fridays, now new AI apps are being released. OpenAI releases Operator which is the 2025 version of what web surfing was in 1998. Does everything have to be automated (or agentic)? I see this going off the rails quickly. Another moral hazard for humanity-- overloaded on hazards from every direction.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1/24/2024

Sometimes we have to be careful with men to call diaries “journals” because men just don’t keep diaries. When we say “diary”, we envision a younger female keeping a private diary. But people always kept diaries and they called them that. It wasn’t done publicly but many diaries were published and still are. The way I decided to do it was to extend the diary as a list into more of a calendar, in my case grouped by day of the month. In the very beginning, the “diary” was a 5x7 index card folded in half which I kept in my top pocket (back in the day when I wore Oxfords with a suit). I would use it as a things-to-do card but also used it for jotting down song titles and lyric ideas. I had a friend who did that and I started to do it. Then I started using spiral-bound notebooks and Moleskines in the 90s and then an electronic diary with Evernote on a smartphone ~2009. 

1/24/2026

Another fatal shooting of a US Citizen in Minneapolis, all the while I'm getting text notifications and emails that the electric company is committed to keeping us safe during the winter storm. I realize I have been witnessing the slow collapse of the US since Rodney King in 1992--on TV. But if you ask people in their, 80s and 90s they saw the same collapse--perhaps even without TV. 
 

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Film: Carpet Cowboys. I kept thinking of William Eggleston, then took pics of the TV. There's a pathos in the stills. I was also reminded of that woman who painted the carpets in her home. 

1/24/2046 

(Tony Townes Diary) 

Dinner with N. and Ramona. She was talking about this piece she wanted to do about “Covidism”, the art that was made during the COVID outbreaks. N. said it had the same effect on her songwriting. I feel indifferent. 

Discuss Covidism

"There was also a strong DIY and provisional quality to much of the Covidism work, with artists like Karborn and John Fettering experimenting with lo-fi, "crappy-sounding" music and blending it with bleak, dystopian imagery. This captured the surreal, dream-like quality of everyday life during the pandemic, where fiction and reality had blurred."