November 12ths (1997-2023)

11/12/1997

Just as the earth has tectonics creating its own natural boundaries, the Net will have similar divisions, which will comprise yet another overlay to the world. Man is territorial in nature and the idea of a global village with no boundaries is inconceivable. Hence, the vast internet will eventually be [partitioned] based on similar patterns of division.

[11/12/2024: Something to consider considering what’s happening in the US].

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A diary juxtaposition on mediums being "windows":

11/12/2007

Edward Burtynsky's work is classified as "mirror" art (as opposed to "window" art) i.e. that which reflects what's actually happening in the world. When you see it in a gallery, you are actually seeing a mirror reflection of what we are and what we do....

11/12/2009

Went to lecture by John Adams. He talked about Proust and how different senses and mediums are "windows" that can be richly expressed in literature. 

11/12/2016

J.G. Ballard's line from the novel High-Rise came to mind as being in the "gap": "Looking up at the endless tiers of balconies, he felt uneasily like a visitor to a malevolent zoo where terraces of vertically mounted cages contained creatures of random and ferocious cruelty."  

 

 

11/12/2021

The metaverse will be unnerving and dystopian in the same way social media turned out to be unnerving and dystopian. They never thought it would be at the outset.

Riff: There's such a stark contrast between reading a newspaper 20 years ago and looking at a news feed these days. I have been using the Feedly app, formerly the Google Reader for 20 years. If this Feedly thing is the new front page now, it's just shocking. You can see the dystopia coming. Here's a couple from this morning: "Trump defends threats to Pence on January 6 in new audio"; "Trump dismisses rioters' calls to hang Pence". When was it 20 years ago that we would open up the newspaper and read about a potential coup and the president saying these things about a vice president? Young people perhaps think this is normal but it's just shrieking cognitive dissonance for me. It's no wonder people think that there's a coup coming and the possibility he could get back in 2024, which would be 1930s Germany or 1970s Chile...

11/12/2022

Quora: "Why can't I change anyone's mind?" Regardless of how good your arguments might be, it's not going to make people divest their opinions or beliefs, especially if they have been held for a long time.... The reason why may be because of the sunk cost of beliefs. It's one of the reasons we can't end wars. Someone has to surrender, and it is difficult for the other side to make that easier. It is inconceivable that there will be no claimed victor.

 

 

 

 

 

11/12/2023

Absolutely gorgeous November day, almost 60 degrees/clear. Color hanging on--reds and yellows, low-frequency more resilient.

Finally finished Susan Neiman's Why Grow Up? and discovered a new existential pain. Am I becoming the boomer version of Ned Rorem?

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My diaries started in the early 90s when I was tracking symptoms of a chronic medical issue then were used as a list for all kinds of things, song titles, lyric ideas, aphorisms. I also used what I called my "nerd card", a folded index card that I kept in my top pocket as a mini diary. Now there are electronic diaries, audio diaries, video diaries, and social media posts which I integrate into a series of monthly diaries that have a musical component: a song per month sometimes derived from diary entries. The next album may be songs for specific dates, but it would be networked on social media as a collective effort with other musicians and put into playlists with various hashtags. My vision is to have a "federation" of diaries such that we can cross-pollinate them and discover intersecting points and synchronicities.

The Songdays so far: