September 30ths

9/30/1997            

Roy Lichtenstein died. His use of ads, cartoons, etc. is similar to using samples in music. Music is really mimicking what happens in the art world, but with a long lag time.    

9/30/1998            

Surfed the Net on collaborative information filtering idea. Lots of great links: The Game of Life, the “Serendip” page. Must revisit. 

[9/30/2024: This was the beginning of what we now know as simply an “algorithm”—the black box that defines the world we experience online, and now in life in general because it is recommending our relationships and how we navigate them. It has not been good for society or democracy because it is about collectivism as opposed to community. Viktor Frankl: “Only the community can ensure the meaning of individuality for the individuals…only the safeguarding of individuality for the individuals can ensure the meaning of community. This is what distinguishes the community from a mere collective, or even from “the masses.”]    

[9/30/2025: Community should arise organically without walls. For me, the prospects at the beginning almost 30 years ago were about the music community and collaboration and it worked well for a few years. The Web is about human universals. We were naive to think it was only about the good ones. The Web is always going to be shaped by younger generations. Social media natives see online communities differently than GenX, Boomers and Silents. Some Silents don’t even like the idea of the internet, or even a computer. And that gap is only about half a century. Obviously I’m still interested in keeping blogs as opposed to static websites and social media accounts, with parts of it in paper form, or now in LLMs. Tim Berners-Lee:  “Today, people use platforms like Facebook and Instagram for expression instead of making their own websites, resulting in a loss of that sense of individual empowerment and digital sovereignty.”     

“Discuss music, audio, and the internet”

9/30/2009

'Mood' photos don't necessarily need to be visual--they can merely set an underpainting of context.

[9/30/2025: I’m not sure what I meant by this. One could photograph what would seem to be banal scenes, but a collection of them could reveal a mood, depending on circumstances–for example downtown Chicago in 2010 and in 2025, with the 2025 photos with a dystopian feel and mood, perhaps with treatments to all the photos, then shown in a gallery, similar to 9/11 photo exhibitions in the subsequent weeks and months].

Gore Vidal article in The Times: "We’ll Have a Dictatorship Soon in the US" 

9/30/2010

A leader is best when people barely know he exists...when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, "We did it ourselves."--Laozi, founder of Taoism 

9/30/2021

Book: Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd. One of the takeaways that I got from the book, and crossed my mind several times when I was reading it, was that AI would be a good way of sidestepping all the drama in bands. Not only can you do everything yourself--perhaps AI will do everything and not even include you. All you have to do to claim creative ownership is to be present when it does its thing--simply witnessing the creative act makes you the Artist. Gilmour felt uncomfortable singing Waters’ words, while Waters struggled with taking the lead vocal. AI will sing anything, but as a writer you're thinking about how it should be sung. The good thing about just being a lyricist is that you can suggest a meaning but it's the delivery that can shift it in a dialog with the listener. Also, as to the "comfort" of singing someone else's words and thoughts, over time it becomes a mechanical process and you don't think about the meaning. It's amazing he sang the words of a nemesis for 50 years and counting. 

9/30/2024            

Kris Kristopherson died at 88, experiencing almost the entire saeculum. Apparently he was a Rhodes scholar (English Literature). In the 60s that would have informed the songwriting and people would be interested in that connection. That is inconceivable now with fewer and fewer 20-somethings even considering going to college. 

*** 

It’s interesting to observe the evolution of technology in the 21st century. In the beginning of the internet in the late 90s it was a serious thing–it was the equivalent of going to a library, but you didn’t have to go to the library to look up things in the card catalog. Then the internet started to become wacky in the 21st century and then the advent of social media around 2004 which started in a serious way with it being connected to a university. Then social media started to become wacky. But as social media evolves–particularly TikTok, I think within 20 years it’s probably going to become more serious or will be taken seriously because the kids that grew up at the advent of TikTok would now be in their 20s and perhaps even raising families at that point. So a technology can evolve with the generations going from things that were either serious to begin with or wacky to begin with and going in the opposite direction. (Gore Vidal 9/30/2009: [Americans are] the worst-educated people in the First World. They don’t have any thoughts, they have emotional responses, which good advertisers know how to provoke.”)

9/30/2025

Idea to revisit: Artworks for the Songday series—one for each month, that I’d work on throughout the month in every subsequent year. When it’s finished I would date it a la On Kawara, or as they stencil on bridges after they’ve re-painted them. “PAINTED 9/2025”.