Lee Barry Composition (And Photo) Diary

January 9ths  7/9/1886 (Thomas Sullivan Diary)  Walked south to Roosevelt, then east to lake. Coal smoke and the distant sound of trains departing for territories I'll likely never see. We're all passengers on this journey, some heading west, others simply holding on.    7/9/1887 (Anonymous Diary) After arriving at Los Angeles and taking lunch in the station, we drove about the place. The houses are very scattered and the city covers a large area of ground. We stopped at the Washington Gardens where there are a few animals and we also drove to several different points where we had very good views of the city and surroundings.    7/9/1998 Sitting by Adler Planetarium basking in the beautiful temperatures as I write this. Spent a few hours in Planetarium looking at exhibits. Haven’t been here in at least 10 years, and yet nothing has changed. 7/9/2005, Saturday History overlays: Sunday (Austin Gardens--Oak Park) Over Saturday (Michigan Avenue) [Source photogr...

January 8ths   7/8/2000 The arts are like a big subduction zone, where ideas, products and so on are taken under, and rise again as new “crust”. Interesting bit in an article: “The excessive use of technology not founded on logic has done real damage where we hoped it would help.” [7/8/2025: This was in the early hours of the internet. The issue of logic in new technologies is evergreen and universal: It seemed logical that the internet would be like a card catalog–obviating the need to go to libraries to do research. It still serves that function but it went off those rails. The same question persists: why do we need AI when we did fine without it, and would continue to be fine with older technologies].   7/8/2022 It might be too difficult to read certain things into cultural objects without the proper context. “Honesty” to the composer is not always what’s important when you’re creating the work because it might all be a mechanical operation of pushing notes (or sounds)...

Idea To Product: Shortet: 

A piece of music derived from the rhythm of the phrase, "Cross-written letter from Annie Lister", also using the lyrics from The Letter by the Box Tops as a parallel or "cross-written" lyric. Lister's letter was dated June 21, 1824, 200 years ago.  It was 140 years after that there was a "psychedelic" music played on instruments that you would "plug in". Back in the 1820s, "popular" music consisted of (in Anne Lister's world) going to performances of solo flute music, then going to purchase the sheet music to learn how to play it. String Arrangement: 200 Years (Strings) by meta4s The Short (Single):

This video is a montage of chase scenes from various films including the classic Bullet . The production is almost all synth for a 2000s vibe with a syrupy string arrangement. Only For The Action (Strings) by meta4s  

6/1/1997, Sunday Dream: Saw tornado come down with tentacles reaching out and grabbing things. Then it turned into a woman in a blue sequined dress. Blue Sequin Dress (6-1-1997) Strings by meta4s The music video: 

January 7ths   7/7/1969 (Beatles Studio Diary) Studio 2, Here Comes the Sun. Another triumph for George Harrison. Inspiration from Eric Clapton while in sunny garden of Clapton’s home. His sense of liberation immediately inspires the song and perfectly captures that feeling.  7/7/1996 Mr. PC (AI Version)   7/7/1997 Song titles: “Then and There”, “Right Here and Now”             A songday riff, with sunlight on the page:                       7/7/2005 Terrorist attacks in London subway. Al Qaeda claims responsibility. Ironic that just yesterday London was jubilant about winning the 2012 Olympics. Ironic that attacks were in the subway, where people sought refuge in the WWII German blitz. Will be interesting to see all the photos and video taken with camera phones.  [7/7/2025: Decidedly a different kind of morning than sitting in a sunlight-dappled garden]   7/7/2024 Be...

January 6ths   7/6/1999 Reading Alan Lomax’s Folk Song Style and Culture . Fascinating chapter on how different cultures use text. The Navajo have very few concept categories, using mostly nonsense syllables. The function this has is to produce consensus. All the singing group agrees upon is that a certain series of verbal bits are pleasurable and/or appropriate. In this way any sense of conflict is kept out of the text. [7/6/2025: “Folk music” is an interesting topic to explore in the AI age, when we can generate it with an LLM simply by selecting the genre in a drop-down. We’re using text in a different way as well as instructions. So a poem or lyric serves as those “instructions”. Gone are the days of the spirituality of a concert of folk music. But there’s always the possibility of actually performing the folk song you generated]. [7/6/2026: Use of nonsense in lyrics is now more doable with AI because no one has to sing it. To do that kind of nonsense you have to do it yoursel...