January 4ths

Antipode: July 4ths

1/4/2000
            
If you asked someone what the urban landscape sounded like, they would recite slam poetry and/or play rap/hip hop.

1/4/2004

Mars rover lands successfully, first pictures beamed back. At first, you think they look boring—a shot of the sun from Mars, then you realize the significance. It’s like a baby’s first step, a rite of passage. 

1/4/2017

Musical phrasing is the corollary to phrasing in language, with sentences (or fragments of sentences) separated or “delimited” with punctuation. On a wind instrument, phrasing is delimited with breaths. (The comma used in music notation is actually a breath mark). Non-wind instruments don’t need “breaths”, but inherit the expectation of phrasing. Guitarists use phrasing probably as an imitation of winds.
            
[1/4/2025: When AI generates music with singing in it, the “singers” are taking breaths as they normally would, but it might be interesting to have vocals where there are no breaths, and you can have really long phrases].    

1/4/2025

What’s interesting as a metaphor for life in general is that as you move through, you’re forgetting about things you’ve done before, or thought about doing and never did, then you stumble on it later and you realize that it was a good idea. But because of the flow of life you can never really see the same river twice. If your ideas were lighted lanterns floating by, sometimes you realize you’ve seen that one before. They are friendly reminders or omens good and bad. Yes, you’ve seen it twice, or several times. How do you react? Do you wait thinking it will come back around? It's also the idea that we are able to repeat good experiences or results or avoid all the bad experiences by being superstitious--that if I go back to that spot it will be good mojo.

    

The ensemble arrangement with female choir:

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The AI-generated country album with every track with the same lyrics:

 

1/4/2026

Sometimes I question the practicality of the continuous collection of ideas as I've been doing since I started the Songdays 2 years ago. Even if you don't use an idea you created a seed. Then you can gather the seeds and decide which ones to cultivate--and in the cultivation process even more ideas will emerge as the seeds start growing. What you want is a flow and you can dip in at any moment. You don't need the whole river but you're aware of the continuous potential. For example, if I choose only 12 different seeds I'll have plenty of variety, but I also want to know what else is possible and expand it to 15 or swap out some of the plants to keep the 12. You're always going to have something satisfying without having to keep expanding the number of seeds to get what you need. 

1/4/2047 (Anthony Townes Diary)  

Dr. Stone runs clinics that assist war veterans and athletes that have sustained brain trauma. He also has a son that has Progeria Syndrome. 

Reset 2046: "Discuss Josef Stone"