Lee Barry Composition (And Photo) Diary

2/15/2018 Dream: I was in two cities at once: An American city and a city that I was thinking was somewhere in Egypt, divided by a muddy river. I sat on a veranda on the river and looked across to a dense wall of mud-built structures, and there was one man in a white robe leaning out a window looking at me. Gradually, the sun began to set across the river when I was still in bright sunlight. It was if there were two worlds side-by-side, one spinning at a different rate. [An AI-generated song based on the dream]:  2/15/2017               On politics, culture, and music: There has to be a genuine mid-point if all the players are from different genres, or it doesn’t work. Agreeing to disagree might result in some music being made, but it won’t hold together. Whatever did will endure, like Pink Floyd with Waters, at least in the recordings that resulted in that brief alliance. After the disagreement and estrangement, the music never rose ...

Release of the first volume in the "minute" series (Sum I--music for months; Sum II--music for days; Sum III--music an hour in length (field recordings); Sum IV--music a minute in length.  See the description in the video for titles of the art used and the songday for each.

2/14/1998 Film: Ma Vie En Rose . Excellent art film by Belgian filmmaker about a boy who wants to be a girl and throws the entire neighborhood into disarray. Psychologist in film suggested that perhaps the parents' wish to have a girl influenced the outcome. As usual lots of crazy people riding the Subway on Saturday night. and it seemed as though everyone was an actor playing a role in a movie, such as the crazy trumpet player (Chet Baker) Nancy (Sid and Nancy), and a guy wearing a plaid shawl who looked like he’d be perfect for a film about immigrants, coming in through Ellis Island. 2/14/2023 Was reading This Is What It Sounds Like, a book by the former record producer for Prince, and she made an interesting point about liking something versus wanting something: You can like a piece of music but you could like it so much that you’d want to learn how to play and or write it. That was my situation back in the 1970s when I liked a lot of music, and then I wanted the records. Then...

Shortet No. 1 ("Figured Basses") by meta4s This shortet is derived from a bass etude I wrote in 1992 based on a compound time signature and cycles through 4 dominant 7th chords (or Mixolydian modes) a minor third apart: E7, C#7, Bb7, G7. The piece was supposed to be a kind of "jazz head" for alternating solos. Actual Songday is the day the shortet was started, 1/6/2025 *** The art: In The Omnibus , Honore Daumier 

Stage curtain painted by Picasso for Erik Satie's "Parade" ballet This has a somewhat odd history: The original version was a fast shuffle titled “Paper Trampoline”.  Paper Trampoline by meta4s  The second version was generated by AI and I made a music video on it:  The Shortet (1/19/2025) Shortet No. 2 ("Paper Trampoline") by meta4s

2/13/1999 Called typist about typing up this diary. She charges $25 an hour. That's quite pricey for just typing. Perhaps I'll just dictate it. [2/13/2025: Which is what I did ultimately. Nothing like speaking what you wrote 26 years ago]. 2/13/2018 Ideas On A Napkin 2/13/2024 I’m currently in a weird limbo between albums. The idea was that I was going to continue on with the In Sum series so I would be making Sum II which is the “songday” idea. I liked working on just one song a month and perhaps I should continue on with that because it’s a way of working efficiently rather than working on this and that, although that’s been my typical way of working all along where I just make things and then at some point I collect them, curate them, and assemble them into some kind of package. Songs can be created over the course of even decades and some of the old stuff will be on the new album. I suppose all artists go through these periods where one thing is finished and you’re thinkin...

2/12/1944               (Diary of Anne Frank)  Highlight Lyric:       2/12/1997 The music scene is anarchic. There are rules but they change erratically. The rules are more tribal rather than democratic. Playing with new or borrowed rules can be interesting, but I'm not so sure that it's always successful. In music, the changing of the rules has changed the face of music forever. I don't know if "paganism", dilettantism and anarchy are successful in making good art. But I think a change in how we learn (or are taught to learn) is a good thing. It will change music education in the way that it changed music. It will have an "anyone can do it" feel to it. Remember it was this philosophy that created "alternative", techno, industrial, etc. [2/12/2025: This “anarchy” in culture, then seen as innocuous–almost a fashion, has led to fascism and the end of democracy in the US, with “rules changing erratically”.] 2/12/2005 A minimalist ...

AI is great for re-arrangement of your old songs. (The vocal in second re-style sounds like Steve Buscemi, which is why I used images from Reservoir Dogs). As lo-fi and grainy they are, I actually like them. I like my version better for its R&B influences, but no one is going to want to hear me singing. This version has an interesting context with my using of an image from the opening bumper of the Chicago (PBS) show Image Union. It has an interesting history .

2/11/1979             (Keith Haring Journal)             My interest in video is to explore the juxtaposition of words and images or sounds and images to formulate results that require the participation and individual interpretation of the viewer. My interest in painting is to explore the infinite variations of form and space relationships to produce objects and images that require the participation and individual interpretation of the viewer.                          [2/11/2025: We can probably trace this back to the rise of abstraction in painting in the early 20th century with Kazimir Malevich and other artists who created a paradigm shift away from representational art. The second sentence of Haring’s diary entry could have been made by David Lynch, an artist who fully explored the territory where painting and film overlap].   2/11/1998...