January 6ths

1/6/1966   
     
Yet more overdubbing onto the tape of “Penny Lane”...none of the instruments was taped pure...recorded at 47-1/2 cycles to speed up on replay.

[1/6/2021: What a difference 55 years makes...from bouncy Beatles pop to the potential end of democracy in the US. Apparently, "We Can Work It Out" by The Beatles was the number 1 song in the US. This would make for an ironic video treatment. I’d detune the track by a half-step].   

 

1/6/1995 (Brian Eno Diary) 

“I’ve never kept a diary past about 6 January (so I know a lot about the early Januaries of my life).”

1/6/1999

In general, when people look for answers to their problems, they tend to live the information in the books they’re currently reading. There was a book that cited an incident where Jackson Pollock smashed a violin when he couldn’t get the right sound out of it, and the author related it to a similar event in her own life. She's saying, “It’s okay to smash things, it doesn’t mean you’re not creative.” Perhaps Pollock smashed it the rock ‘n’ roll way. but in any event, what he did with expressionist painting was to take the carefulness out, and then you’re freed from the fear of mistakes. There is nothing worse than a brilliant beginning because you think you won’t make mistakes, but once you do, it’s the constant fear of making mistakes. Unlike drip painting, music requires specific skills. The beauty of art is that you can make your own skill and redefine what mistakes are.  

P. wants to put MP3 files up on the internet. He's excited at the prospect, but I’m being cautious. Once the genie is out of the bottle…

[1/6/2026: It’s interesting to revisit the world when the internet was just a baby. We couldn’t fathom the idea that something could be freely shared without compensation, but it has become the norm. Norms reset (Reset 2046!) every 20 years or so, so the world in 2046 will be a similar experience with adults revisiting it as if looking at baby pictures, with the babies now in adulthood seeing the world as if it is the way it always was].

Article Compilations 1997-2001: "Discuss the effect of the internet on the music industry" 
            
Idea: label all new song ideas with numbers, like stars and planets, for example HR4796A. 

1/6/2001

Out to see film, Unbreakable. What you want to show is the integration of the opposites (Jung), not learn at the end of the movie that one became criminally insane and one became a hero (not unless this is the way it happens in comic books).

1/6/2003

Old Sun Times building now site of Trump Tower (Duotone)

[1/6/2026: Little did we know that 18 years in the future, there would be an insurrection at the Capitol. The wounds of 9/11 were still fresh, and a war was looming in Iraq. Now in 2026, on the 5th anniversary of 1/6, the man whose building would replace the SunTimes building became president again in 2025, and would unilaterally attack Venezuela--a dictator taking out another dictator. Cameras capture future historical contexts when we're not aware of them at the time. Who would have thought that in 2025 Chicago would be called the most dangerous city in the world, with the president sending in masked thugs to attack American citizens? It works nicely as a "before" photo].

1/6/2007

Interesting: people who get cochlear implants later in life, without having the ability to hear are able to learn how to hear within a short period of time. This is evidence that the brain has more plasticity than is currently believed.

1/6/2020

Attempting to copy something usually leads to your own discoveries. That’s how inspiration works. It may be wrong in certain respects, but it’s always the inexact copies that are interesting because you see the mistaken attempts—and in the process, something entirely new emerges which is subtly connected to the original. This is how synthesis happens organically.

1/6/2021

1/6/2025: It’s interesting that I didn’t make an entry for Jan6. I think I was just either too busy or too stunned]. 

1/6/2022

1/6@1. A very strange day. 9/11@1 felt much different. Half the country is celebrating and half wants to avoid it. A few years after 9/11 I wrote: “Forget September”. I want to write one for January. What we didn’t have in the first few years after 9/11 was social media. 

Jimmy Carter chilling op-ed in NYT with a stark warning about “losing democracy”.  I’ve read a few books on coups in history and it never crossed my mind that it could happen here. In fact, the idea that it could happen here has always been floated, but always dismissed as not being possible given the trillions of dollars the US has spent on nation-building and protecting the American way of life since the 1940s.

***

More on ownership of ideas: In the songwriting or “band” world–as compared to how composers used to work alone and make every decision by themselves, or perhaps in tandem with editors or conductors–the composer always called the shots, so every decision about tempo or key is crucial because people are going to judge you for the decisions you made. Composers own the ideas, although I'm open to playes suggesting changes in their parts, but that means a score change, and when you've made it, it actually might not work. 

1/6/2023

After watching many interviews with Iain McGilchrist, who has done extensive research and writing on the characteristics of left and right-hemisphere behaviors, I would (at least for now) defer to him for a definition of “best thinking” amid 21st century challenges. In John Vervaeke’s lectures, he describes flow experiences as being laser-focused, as a surfer would be, or a rock climber would be. “Relaxed” might be too much on the cusp of “lazy” where alertness is lower.

[1/6/2026: It’s interesting how the metaphor of hemispheres is now playing out in the world (left hemisphere-west hemisphere colonialism) for the purpose of getting access to natural resources like petroleum]..

1/6/2024

I don’t particularly like mastering but it’s revealing of how parts work with the whole and you also find interesting things while you’re working, which can spin off other ideas. So it’s the “continuation of the continuation” idea, where it’s continually generative. As long as you’re working at something—even if it’s tedious—creativity is going to work for you. But you have to be patient. Sometimes it takes 3 hours to really get up to speed on something that’s really interesting. 

1/6/2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 1/6/2047

(Anthony Townes Diary)

I still feel as if I’m in a dream.

Read article from Dr. Stone about how past traumas, even though they can fade over time, never lose their power. There’s always a bridge there, even if closed off temporarily.

He’s trying to sell me on the idea of “Strategic Erasure”, where certain memories can be tactically targeted, rather than strategically targeted.

Reset 2046: "What is strategic erasure?"