March 20ths

Antipode: September 20ths

3/20/2016
 
Film: My Beautiful Broken Brain. What better producer than David Lynch? When a brain changes it shows new “films” on the screen of consciousness. What this might suggest is that AIs that are anthropomorphized are by default “broken”, yet have recoveries and setbacks.

They can be best described through the metaphor of film and will run on millions of little “film clips”. There is a common correlation between visual disturbances and film effects, some of it done in After Effects. 

3/20/2021

I'm currently at Scoville Park. It's about 55 degrees, and obviously it's sunny with blue skies. About two blocks behind me is the Hemingway birth home. The boyhood home is a couple of blocks away on Iowa. The reason I brought it up is that I have started to sport this gray beard now, and in this particular pose, I'm sort of looking like him. And I wonder if I should shave my beard.  

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In order to be a good musician, music has to be done all the time, and has to be your main focus for at least an hour of undistracted attention. If you’re just scattered around you can’t get into the musical mindset. That’s one of the reasons that I can’t always shift gears quickly. This morning I was doing some reading, but what I should actually be doing is practicing or working on new music. But who does that–who can do that in today’s world? We’re in this new flow of things–it’s like a river and with all the tributaries flooding in and you don’t know what to pay attention to. It’s the paradox of our time. 

When you've been doing something for almost your entire life it's always on the edge. For me it's music. For example, when I'm reading I'm seeing and hearing things that could be music or lyric ideas and I jot them down then go back and develop them. It’s always in the flow. Once you've been wired to do something it's always percolating in the background. It’s the default mode network that you operate from.

3/20/2022

Equinox Moment 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3/20/2024

If people are going to take music seriously as an art form, they’re not going to want to just generate music without designing some element of it. Music AI can be a “department” of music, as a traditional representational painter might also make conceptual art. So I think it can fit into the mix, but I don’t think it can stand alone on its own, and there’s simply too many people doing it, just like there are too many artists who are generating art and photography with AI. It’s sort of an art “fascism” now, where people have to make certain kinds of art in order to fit in and get attention for it. If they went off and did their own thing, then they wouldn’t get any attention for it because it’s too “out there”, whereas that’s not something that would have been an issue in the 60s and 70s. But it is like that period because it’s a wave that washes over us, and we don’t know why we’re doing what we’re doing, but it’s the thing to do. 

3/20/2025

"It Is What It Is" has a music in it, a funky "Headhunter" vibe. This would be the entire basis, although it could go with the IV.

3/20/2026

I'm starting to share MP3s again, like it was 1999. It's a "slow" technology now, untethered to algorithms. You load them into your phone, and you're listening to music without commercial interruptions. It's the new "vinyl". 

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One thing I've noticed about generating music with AI is that I get persistent earworms that affect how I write new lyrics, because I'm always running through the last one. Also, AI music is truly a form of musicism--not music per se. I'm a musicist and lyricist when in that department.

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Very often what we once thought was good is no longer good. After about 30 years, I think that changes for most people, especially creative people, when they look back on their old work and they think, "Well, that wasn't so good." But it could have been in fact good. But since they've moved on in their lives and they've explored other possibilities that were equally good, perhaps they're comparing them and the old stuff just doesn't resonate anymore and it could have in fact been good and better than the things that you're doing now or making now. There's this pervasive idea that just because it's new, it's better. I think history has demonstrated that that's not always the case. Things are now more poorly made, including artwork and music and it seems to be a continuous process of things renewing and losing quality at the same time. But we don't notice or we don't care to not notice because it's just better to think that the new is better.