May 14ths

5/14/1898, Berlin 

(Harry Kessler Diary) 

Kessler lunches with Hofmannsthal. He ruminates on how aristocracies are out of touch with their own people and are only exalting their status by “stoking of ethnic hatred.” 

5/14/1977 (Keith Haring Diary) 

“I am in Miles City, Montana, sitting in the sun. Thinking about the Grateful Dead, ‘cause the last ride was 77 miles of AM Radio.

5/14/1998

Journal of Pop Culture article on slam dancing and modernity. I like the references to "flow" experiences described as "a state which exists between boredom and anxiety and requires that the participants skill neither exceeds or falls short of the task demands”, or “a loss of ego infusion with the world." The slam dancers always felt free and released, but with a "hangover"afterwards. Most said that it was the music that moved them, which I can't entirely believe. “Music” is something your parents listen to. Slammers go for the "numinous" cultural experience.

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Final episode of Seinfeld. 

5/14/2019

Words Face the Wall, 16.25 x 22.25, acrylic on paper. It was inspired by this sign on a scanner at the library. In some ways this is frivolous, or even “cartoonish”.  

Hash Art: Art meets computer science through hashing. This is the kind of art that really requires an explanation. Talking about it helps me clarify the process that I used, and I hope you get something out of it as well. They say that art should speak for itself, but not in all cases.    

5/14/2023

Watched documentary on the Velvet Underground. As much as I like repeats of cultural history, something like the 60s could never happen again. Culture is now in the second generation of Remix, so all the remixing gets added the culture “smoothie”. Everything is the equivalent of a glass of Soylent. Also, it was interesting to see the early years of the attraction of the camera—in a DIY sense—with Warhol pointing it at anything and everything and suggesting that it was a magical celebrity machine, which in many cases destroyed people’s sense of reality—just as social media is today and YouTube videos. The Warhol videos were ultra-cool but would go nowhere on YouTube now. Who would want to sit and watch video art, that incidentally was something that was once cool in the YouTube early days. What people should realize is that there was a solid aesthetic sense, carrying over from Matisse for example, as a colorist who inspired Warhol. Now I’m unclear whether there is an aesthetic with any roots at all.    

[2026: From the recent book, Trust Your Mind: “It takes courage to be your nuanced self in a world that wants to lump you, group you, simplify you. Identity orphans know this, and neurodivergent people know this. It can be very alienating, but when we summon the bravery to stand out from the crowd, we give others like us the chance to discover that we're not as alone as we may feel. Group dissenters and identity orphans don't take refuge in any label, especially any term that came into being in reaction to the past. We should never be defined by one sliver of ourselves, but rather allowed to emerge in our fullness. that can't happen under conditions of self silencing.”] 

I’m reminded of the Exquisite Corpse, defined: “(From the original French term cadavre exquis, literally exquisite cadaver), is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. “The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun.” as in “The green duck sweetly sang the dreadful dirge.”) or by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed.” The whole internet is now grist for the Exquisite Corpse.    

5/14/2026

Sam Altman has reportedly said that data centers will cover the earth. Pastoral landscapes will resemble a motherboard.  

Meta that I generated this with AI. It's what the First Turning will look like circa 2030.

As much as AI music seems coarse to a trained musician, it allows the lyricist in me to write songs I never could have done myself. But in the 90s I wasn't really writing them for myself because I knew then that I couldn't pull them off, and would always do demos with me doing the vocals for the purpose of ultimately hiring session singers. Now I have entire session bands. However good the virtual talents, they would be a producer's nightmare because they are being controlled by a black box somewhere. Imagine hiring a band and they seem fine at first, but it turns into a Westworld.