Monthly Archives: May 2008

Hablamos Tu Idioma

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As I watch myself in third person I connect the dots in my chaos. I really enjoy writing, but it doesn’t happen until my mind is clear and I feel free to express myself, like it’s a privilege I earn. First I have to put in a good day at work and then get out to stretch my legs. The irony’s not lost that I’ve got it backwards; I contribute to society to clear my conscience to indulge in writing. Like a sleuth I’m piecing together evidence for residence in the padded room with bars slitting the sunlight. I’m pretty thrilled to finally get the little box from Amazon today for some new records. Never mind that the free shipping means they pack it on a donkey that treks the long way around the world to get to me. I’m confounded that I should wait two weeks for the physical media to get to me when I could fall back in with good old instant gratification from bittorrent. Continue reading →

Memory Playlist

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Music is my memory. The pseudoscience of the mind would tell us that our memories are intertwined with sentimental rhythmic pulses from life experiences. I know that certain records do better than pictures and court certified transcripts to bring back the vivid, palpable stage pieces from long past scenes in my life. Some of them well up very happy memories, like flipping a switch, and others are predictably painful. It’s as though my brain were an instrument that I could use to play out a performance in recalling a lifetime by leafing through my CD collection. These albums trigger very specific sensations from those times like sight, emotion, and even taste. These occur to me without intention and the recollection is unmistakable. Continue reading →

Listening

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There was some day long ago when I became too busy to stop everything else, turn down the lights, and listen to music in the open air. If I plugged in cheap ear buds to listen to WinAmp or iTunes it was good enough as a background for Quake or reading online travel brochures for Asheron’s Call. Standing in front of the giant speakers at dance clubs screaming back at The Prodigy probably lost some subtlety. So now that I got some decent speakers and I unpacked my tuner I have rediscovered the qualities of my music collection. I had forgotten the mortified despair of listening to The Pink Opaque in the dark; the deep, hollow barrage of the synthetic percussion filling and haunting my walls. (Guess who’s goth). Electrafixion is kick ass, and Esthero should not legally be a red-headed Canuck with that kind of soul. That was just up to ‘E’. These records I’d half ignored scores of times sound completely different when I’m actively listening to them. Continue reading →

Digital Movie Barn

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I’ve been out for a round of vacuous movies to kick off the Summer season. It’s not like it was under duress, strapped into a chair with hooks holding my eyelids open. I just realized I didn’t have a higher cause to champion than to endure my failed suspension of disbelief, and I do it every May after a long, dreary Winter (still underway in Utah). Just so I won’t offend anyone who likes shameless merchandising and tastelessly showy CGI spectacles I won’t mention any names (it’s all of them anyway). I went to see one of these movies at Thanksgiving Point, the same place I saw Morrissey and the goat petting zoo. Once the movie got to be too much, and I couldn’t sneak out because I was with a friend, I began to focus on the sound system and on the quality of the projection on the screen. It was a remarkable revelation to me that the “cigarette burn” marks for celluloid reels were absent. The color white looked like it was projecting sharply from the screen instead of diffusely reflecting, and the sound was pristine and clean. Who knew a movie theater next to a barn would have made the leap to digital projection and sound? The next movie I went to was doubly unbearable because the picture and sound were as muddy as the story telling. Continue reading →