Curio No. 258
Seed: ***
Posts
Tumbledown
Robert Adams, Pikes Peak Park, Colorado Springs, 1969 Ideally, what you want from a set of lyrics is a” package” of some kind, where the original spark creates the ultimate shape of the lyric, combined with various other things that you wouldn't have imagined in the beginning (including images). The original spark was the word “tumbledown”, a term that's used in auto design (or "tumblehome"). But it gathered other meanings along the way because of the rhymes: “tumbleweed”, “humble town”, and "Levittown", which makes the lyric veer off in interesting directions. In the end, what it seems to be about is American Suburbia (and American culture overall) and how it's declined since the 1950s. The bouncy country music setting is ironic considering where the country is now. *** Down here Tumbledown Here we are in humble town Postwar Goin' 'round Cookie-cutter Levittowns Big sky Border town People tunnel underground Tumbleweed Blowin' 'round...
9/17/2025
Interesting: When I passed the Potbelly on Lake, one of the tables had an array of Hispanic theological and religious paperbacks (as a revival of “The Book Table”?) The one I’d be interested in is The Secret Holy War of Santiago de Chile, apparently published in 1989 just when Chile was in recovery from the coup. What caught my eye was that someone decided to display these in Oak Park, the gesture of it, as a “wink” of what is happening in the US.
September 17ths
9/17/2001 Louis Farrakhan on radio this morning. It was quite moving. Director of the NEA to be re-elected, Michael Hammond. Apparently he's some sort of polymath who sees a return to a sense of craft in art. 9/11 certainly reversed the swing of a pendulum. [2026: A shift to metamodernism started around 2022 for me as a post-COVID effect. After a traumatic event, we want to soften and slow down, but I don't think the postmodern world will ever end...] 9/17/2004 Woman killed by a falling cross in Rome. “Instant Karma’s going to get you...” As a riff. Any prose can be made musical by making it musical Interesting cross-discipline metaphor, blurring of boundaries between arts: “that’s how I push myself in my jazz solos—I want to see if I can get out alive on the other side.” [The current sentiment is that AI will never be able to improvise jazz. I think it will be ...
August 17ths
8/17/1999 A better strategy for making a record is to build perpetuity right into it, avoiding dated production. But the paradox is that you have to date your work in order to garner enough fans to inform the pricing of records. [8/17/2024: All production is eventually dated–especially when music is generated with AI, as those elements are present in the training sets. The only real perpetuity in music is the fact that instruments can always be played manually without software. The monetization of music now comes in the form of what is generated from ads and subscriptions, not people buying records as they did in the 20th century. It is the internet itself that created this paradigm shift because the question has always been how to monetize its content, now made by listeners, not musicians. Music is also elementally about imitation, and generated music removes human imitation and r...
0717
What That Do? (7/17/2025) by meta4s Soul is the slang of music... What that do? What THAT do? What that do? What THAT do? Salt peanuts Salt peanuts
June 17ths
December 17ths 6/17/2010 Harbor Walk : Continued walk past DuSable Harbor towards the Abegweit. There was a blues band playing on deck which you can hear in the background. A passerby says ‘Party Boat!’. The strong breezes make for very clanky boat masts. As I walked south along the curved shore along came several hundred joggers running past me. Continued path past yacht club and into Monroe Harbor area, traffic noise from LSD on right, end at Balbo Drive. 6/17/2024 When you look for synchronicities and don’t see them, they are happening to someone else which may involve you in the future. *** If AI-generation is a toy, or a toy tool, and we can get accessories or different materials to use—for example different kinds of clay or putty with different attachments or extensions—it would produce very little variety. Anyone can make art with some crap ordered online. That’s what AI music is to me. I make prototypes with ...
February 17ths
2/17/1998 “The virtue of abstract models is that they enable us to keep an enormous amount in mind while paying attention to a minimum of detail.” (Jerome Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds ). This translates to music as follows: the virtue of well-wrought forms is that they enable us to keep _____.” This also reminds me of polyrhythmic African music, where we’re playing a simple repeating line that contributes to the intricate layered gestalt of rhythmic figures. [ Explore ] 2/17/1999 The web is the medium by which people can offer things outside the mainstream, a way of giving people a fix for their dreams. The medium is the message. 2/17/2021 Part of the reason that I've gone back to doing music is that it doesn't make objects. I see music as being “plans”. As I've said before, once I have something written down in a lead sheet or in a score, I see that as a finished piece, even if I haven't tracked it. It's one of the reasons I’ve become “neoclassical...
January 17ths
Antipode: July 17ths 1/17/1969 Yellow Submarine released. 1/17/1999 At studio: pedal steel and piano parts on The Inner King . I still can't find the lyric that rings true. [This is the AI-generated version which I like very much] [1/17/2025: This piece evolved again by transcribing the AI music for a small ensemble]: *** Lyric idea (a tongue-twister); Simple twist of truth Simple truth of faith Simple twist of faith Twist the faith in truth Twist the truth in faith Face the truth in faith Face the faith in truth Simple Twist of Faith (AI-Generations) 1/17/2004 Idea for story: humans are cloned specifically for interplanetary travel, but wind up taking over the world. 1/17/2011 Tunisian social unrest is literally spreading like fire with self-immolations to spark a coup. 11/17/2024 With AI art we don’t necessarily have to own everything; we can use what we like and leave the rest. However the archetypes might be active below the surface. If I generat...
December 17ths
12/17/1998 Demonstrations on the streets about Iraq bombing. People being thrown in paddy wagons. Everyone curious about the spectacle because it’s not something you usually see. Interesting that now most protesting is done on the Net, and probably more effectively. Excerpt Library (History) : "Discuss the history of war protests in the United States Excerpt Library (Technology) : "Discuss the efficacy of social media as a form of protest" 12/17/2016 Ambient music in headphones at low volume works well as a foreground-background experience in urban environments where there can be lots of pitched elements: Certain junctures in a piece of music will randomly coincide with a pitched element in the environment. This is essentially “Audio AR” (the headphone sounds augmenting or overlaying what is in the environment (the “Reality”). A useful aspect of Audio AR is that it can be used for...
October 17ths
10/17/1997 Book: Thought Contagion . Interesting theories on mimetics. My theory is that memes can only form where there is sufficient uncontested conformity, or where collective thought is totally subverted. How does this tie in with morphic resonance theory? [10/17/2024: There was another book, Virus of the Mind about essentially the same thing. “The Trojan Horse method of [brainwashing] works by getting you to pay attention to one meme, then sneaking in a whole bundle of others along with it. If you’re an intelligent educated person you may be thinking, you must have to be pretty gullible to fall for that….A Trojan Horse can take advantage of your instinctive buttons, pushing them to get your attention and then sneaking in another agenda.” Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic resonance theory applies but he steers clear of politics, even though his theories attract it. Is politics a morphic field that shapes reality like it shapes organisms?]...
9/17/2021
Music heard in a dream. I played it for a friend, and he said “That’s Spirit of the Radio ”. So it is—at least the chord changes. September 17, 2021 Dream by meta4s
9/17/2017
Rules : ‘Hash Art’ based on MD5 hashes as a form of new text art. It’s the “fingerprint” for the original Three Laws by Isaac Asimov.
9/17/2011
My favorite Border’s closed. I loved the coffee shop there with entire ceiling a skylight.
July 17ths
7/17/2007 7/17/2022 Book: The Power Of Daily Practice . There was an interesting part about who we identify as painters, regardless of domains. Are you a Paul Klee or a Joan Miro in your working style? How do we show up for creativity, and where are we on the spectrum of serious to playful, left-brained to right-brained? When I am in divergent mode I’m in idea-collection mode and open to happy accidents. But at some point you have to get started on making something, which will tilt you into left-brain mode. If I’m working in a score I’m almost all left-brain. Since I’m not a skilled orchestrator I have to study more. The Songdays are now my daily practice, whereas before it was the daily riffs, which I stopped doing. 7/17/2025 On relying on AI to make music: Your skills would devolve and over time would lose the ability to "fly". You'd become a musical penguin. "People who’ve never driven a car without GPS can’t drive using road signs, for example. Your brain ...