October 29ths

10/29/1998

It’s interesting to hear public opinion preceding an election. The main cause of apathy is confusion on the issues, and/or mistrust of the whole system. By and large people vote on charisma, like Jesse Ventura the former wrestler running for governor of Minnesota. He has good ideas without all the stereotypical politician posturing and doesn’t have to cover up common foibles (affairs, pot-smoking, etc.). We know this upfront and it’s out of the way and we can focus on the issues. This is the future of the democratic process.

[10/29/2024: I would say in retrospect it is the vague mistrust and cynicism that no one seems to really define. It’s like a typical protest, particularly the Occupy movement in 2011, that had a laundry list of grievances, many of which persist today (transformed in some way by younger generations), and so the solution is to tear it all down–and do what? That future of the democratic process has arrived indeed. I’m reminded of the book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia by John Gray, published in 2007 in the midst of the Iraq occupation. Its primary premise is that Utopias of any kind are unachievable. In 2007, the Utopia was that Iraq would flourish as a democracy and was holding its first elections. Now we can't have elections in this country without immediate claims of fraud. And yet we spent trillions of dollars on nation building to support elections but can't maintain our own democracy. Democracy itself has become a Utopian idea].

10/29/2000

Interesting: Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man took 20 minutes to write and 30 years to defend. Ironic: She divorced 5 men. Her defense was that the song was about an ideal woman, the devoted wife of the 50s. She said, “The sad thing about happy endings is that there’s nothing to write about.”

[10/29/2024: This is always how Utopian ideologies typically backfire. Everyone is so comfy and happy that it becomes unreal–or couldn’t have any real substance–certainly not for creating art]. 

10/29/2004

Osama Bin Laden airs tape, trying to influence election. Eventually, the United States will have to negotiate with terrorists. Even if you found who cast the first stone it requires casting the biggest stone to end the conflict, but then you have to militate against all the resentment. This is what is happening now in Iraq, and now even an arms race of sorts.

[10/29/2024: This is what is happening now in the US. It was unthinkable (to most Americans) in 2004].

10/29/2007

A lot of evil things happen because people are thinking this is what they ought to do. —Robert Wyatt 

(This is exactly what Philip Zimbardo talks about in his book The Lucifer Effect: We all succumb to the situations in which we are placed, taking control over our natural dispositions). 

10/29/2014

Tried out “Station in F” audio playing in headphones while going through the station. There are two versions: one darkly minor and the other brightly major. The Harlem stop on the Green Line has several key notes: F, C and the occasional _____. The turnstiles beep C-F and the vending machine beeps an F. As I was recording the tracks, the sound of the whining fan in my computer was Db and I made it one of the pitches.

10/29/2017

Music heard in a dream. (Music in dreams tends to be endless loops, essentially earworms, but arise from one’s inner sense of sound).

Cloud Sequence by meta4s

10/29/2023

The "Leo Dream:" Leo L. sent me an old 60s-era photo of the Esquire Theater sign. There was a store on the corner named "Leo". 

 Make a Video 45 (AI Music) on this image (Style/Decorate)

 

10/29/2024

Watched interview between Anderson Cooper and a holocaust survivor. She said the Nazis quickly became like animals. But it's worse: humans can become dangerous monstrous zombies, whereas animals never do, unless they are under constant threat, like we are now. Brene Brown: "Over the past 20 years, I’ve witnessed how daring leadership requires power-with and dies in the hands of those who abuse power. Power-over is the opposite of courage; it’s a desperate attempt to protect a fragile ego, and it requires the use of cruelty, shame, intimidation, and retribution to maintain a culture of fear."