Thursday December 9, 2004

on san francisco:
 

"today at lunch i went for a walk in the rain. as i wandered down a pier and the sounds of the cars rushing and hissing down embarcadero finally faded into silence, i found myself entering a painting.

to my right, towering above me, the imposing dark metallic westward span of the bay bridge...

and to my left, the muted hues of the gray clouds contrasted with the greenish gray of the rippling water. the only color visible was orange; the top of a tugboat departing, matching a single orange balloon to its left that had somehow strayed from amongst the maze of the skyline where i had seen it earlier.

the orange balloon drifted suddenly down to the water, where finally it came to rest.  it was a profoundly beautiful yet melancholy moment...as such solitude and beauty so often go unseen; two points of sharp color punctuating an otherwise monochromatic vision...

...i turned around to face the hum of the city again, and the colors of cement and brick and glass of architecture in the rain were a pastel rainbow in the distance..."

Saturday, December 25, 2004

"The pain is the beauty (of the world emergent)." - Brian Massumi, from Parables for the Virtual 

the sensory affect of beauty, be it in sonic, physical or thought form, is longing, and longing for something outside the self is a form of pain. there is an element of pain in everything profoundly beautiful, in everything that can tangibly impact you in some way. in the experience of love, in passion, in experience, in memory, in music, in visual art, there is a stirring of a subtle pain for what we will never be able to hold for more than a moment, for what we will never be able to be or join.that is why i claim to live for 'sonic bliss', for resigning myself and attempting to momentarily loosen the strict boundaries of my mind and conscious self in a flood of aural or aesthetic sensation. the ability to sense a dissolution of the self into sound...or that moment of transcendence that can counteract that pain and longing  to merge with the environment, if only for a moment...is truly human. 

music can make me cry at even the ordinary, at nothing but the sensory experience of life and memory functioning in union. these tears are not as simple as pure emotions like sadness or joy, but instead are an involuntary reaction to inexpressible and unattainable beauty. the synth-crafted aural textures of electronic music, in combination with the musical darkness of magnified, amplified bass frequencies have infinite expressive capabilities where i find this sentiment expressed best. you cannot live in the moment without abandon, and how else can we experience this emergence from the self but in total hedonism, away from the rigors and regimens of our daily lives? this is the core of my allegiance to the massive rock concert, the precedent set by the grateful dead, and the rave scene...

hence the quote. the pain is is the beauty of the world, emerging to your senses and personal understanding.

the streets of Downtown Berkeley: untreated Intellect and Dementia

There are things you have to see and hear in downtown Berkeley sometimes. Like the experimental yodeling. Or the tenor saxophone guy who thinks that hours of frantic major arpeggios are the path to godliness. Or the insane screaming and posing by rowdy packs of chain-smoking Berkeley high schoolers, and the angry, Tourette's-style vocals of untreated minds, violent threats and profanity startling your caffeinated eardrums from thirty feet away. One time I saw a guy calmly walk across the street and then proceed to lean over and vomit loudly into a bush next to a parking lot, at 3 in the afternoon. There was also the time a woman decided the cough syrup aisle in Walgreens was as good a place as any to ‘utilize the facilities ’. There were so many magical, mysterious moments. The wet jeans, inexplicably abandoned in the stairwell of the parking garage. The shit stains smeared on walls like confusing disgusting art projects,  the visual texture of feces assaulting your senses too early for breakfast, the piles of food and trash I stepped over every morning on the way to the office. I’ll never forget the scented clouds of bacon and piss, wafting in the morning air. Somewhere in that din and stench, as the droney rush of BART trains underground rumble and punctuate each hour, some commerce happens, textbooks are studied, and decent burritos are consumed. Some of the most brilliant people on earth earn their PhDs, unleashing the future for the rest of us, as the homeless peddle junk, babble scattered thoughts and waste away, a testament to our collective apathy and the city of Berkeley's startling exhibition of hope and success, and utter failure. 

though I’ll never complain about the street kids nimbly playing folk songs on the accordion. Or the teenage oboe duet I once heard one evening, two double reeds, perfectly in tune, defying a brisk dusk, and the girl who sang arias with her eyes closed as the world rushed by, down an escalator that smelled like machines, grease and noise. 

spill

we are a generation without a cause. the horrors we face are more numerous, collectively more sinister, yet subtler and more diffuse than the demons faced by generations past. the great myth of the battle between the forces of good and evil resonates in every era; it’s narrative echoes in the cold war, the holocaust, nuclear proliferation, the inquisition, the battle for civil rights – each an historical moment during which the perversion of power turned against us to challenge the basic tenets of our humanity, and each required a trying and painful revision of the status quo.

we are at new turning point, yet another painful awakening, a great and horrifying mistake calling on us to face our own fears.

today we face the deterioration of the world we have always known, but at our own hands, and only due to our thoughtless pursuit of something deeply human; comfort.  our collective greed, our excess, our appetite for the simple mass-produced luxuries we take for granted now have the ability, the perverse power, to alter the very fabric of the environment in which we exist. by feeding each and every one of our simple demands, we are rapidly changing the weather patterns on which we depend for our livelihoods, our moods, our sustenance.

the financial systems which fund our greed are stretched and  broken, our environment taxed and poisoned. but at what point did it become so evil for us all to dream of a bigger, brighter, faster future? can’t we all have everything we want, every device, every pre-packaged snack in every flavor, every color? we may still be able to have everything we dream and even wilder futures which we have not yet even begun to dream - but from now on, we must do everything differently.

we know this, yet we fail to rally. this is because nothing, no matter how egregious, has challenged the essential health, the comforts of our existence. one city, one coastline, even one country at a time may suffer at the hands of our foolishness, but the threat remains diffuse, because it’s born of our collective selfishness.

so what if we can’t fix the biggest problems that face us, if collectively we can’t man up, human up, or design any method to counteract the madness, the anger, the bitter toxic bile of our collective denial’s miscarriages? what if we can’t call upon a shining beacon of cleanliness and goodness against the forces of evil and greed and destruction and the toxic abasement of our humanity  - only because we are the children, the beneficiaries of the blind greed feeding us? how will we begin to resist our own desires?

we love jean luc godard : a bout de souffle

 

breathless: patricia and michel hail a taxi in paris

still life [in progress]

The dead flies in the windowsills only moved when people came in, or when people left. The rest of the time, they lay motionless, curled on their backs, their legs eternally crumpled skyward in a desiccated, pointless paean to mortality and filth. But when nobody came and nobody left, the motionless air was just dry heat, an untended oven. The cracked, once-glittered formica of the tabletops was speckled and scuffed by the shufflings of hundreds of thick white coffee mugs and road-weary travelers, who each passed through the diner, some sure to return, and some never seen again. The mugs always grew stained after a while, but at least they lasted – they were the only almost unbreakable, impenetrable thing she knew.

Outside, the road was a mostly-silent stretch of gray mirage slicing the desert’s dusty span. When a truck or car came rattling in through the heat, it usually deposited a thirsty loner, someone looking for a bathroom, a seat. Behind the counter, a fortress buttressed with plastic-domed apple pies, she silently poured another cup of hot brew into another one of the quiet stranger’s cups. She preferred the company of the heat, the impermanence, and the silence to anything else.


[to be continued]

December 29, 2009: Reflections on the end of a decade

2009 was not the capstone to any sweeping piece of well-designed architecture. It was more of a stick of dynamite, a wrecking ball aimed at dismantling the failing structures of the American dream. For decades, Americans took easy growth and progress for granted, left decisions to the thoughtless and to the greediest, without paying heed to need or future stability. 2009 was the denouement, the final curtain call after a sick, selfish stage play spanning a couple decades. For those of us lucky enough to have been raised in stable households in comfortable suburbs, it was an awakening, a call to reality, a realization that things will not always go better in the future, that we may not necessarily be better off than our parents, even if we work hard. Things may not go as planned as they did for past generations; raises and new jobs and positive returns on investments are not guaranteed by some beneficent force; the stock market is not designed to improve the quality of our lives or to pad our pockets with gradual accruals of unearned wealth. Dreams can pass without coming to fruition, and complete and utter failure is possible, despite the best of intentions, genuine efforts and well laid plans. This comfortable, stable life we dreamed up, assumed was given, is not the truth, and upward is not the only way things go. Gravity has returned to our atmosphere. Some of us may be crushed under the weight of its unexpected but inevitable return, but others will return to their exercises, reminded to build their muscle in a threatening and challenging world.

Entitlement has emerged as the illusion it is, despite twenty or thirty years worth of appearing to be the logical end of a simple progression toward collective betterment. Prosperity is a state that must be earned and carefully maintained, and is not a self-sustaining state of being, an equilibrium designed to best provide for most, as some have deceived us into believing. The blinding pace we’ve set toward the future is no longer just an exciting ride, but also a frightening one. The great American machine has shown its age, foolishness and disrepair, but continues to lurch forward. We have not cleared the hurdles we set for ourselves, and have stumbled and fallen, together. There is wisdom in this loss of confidence, and 2009 was a call to earnest, honest reflection on our collective trajectory. We must be concerned.

The decades preceding 2009 were a testament to the power of collective, willful blindness. From now on, we will no longer be seduced by our own successes, or those of others. The slick and efficient, selective forgetfulness of two generations worth of Americans has been thrust before our eyes. The future is no longer one of certainty, comfort or even stability. But perhaps for all the brutality of failure and struggle, this is more real. Now, in 2010 and onward into this new century, we will see if we have really lost our abilities, our skills and our visions, as some of us suspect we may have, during decades of ease and decadence. Our mettle will be tested again and again by new, larger challenges, and the center of our universe will shift, possibly outside the borders of this country.

Now we will see if our seemingly endless potential for denial and our appetite for ease will be our downfall. We will see if repair is possible.

december 2006: loft

last night we perched in a billboard on top of a building in san francisco, the tallest in its area. there was a ladder that led out of the music into the cold wet dark of a roof overlooking 880. you could see the iconic coca-cola sign nearby, down the freeway. the vinyl of the sign's face was clammy and the ladders of the gangways inside it were slippery and cold in the rainy wind. one side advertised la raza, the other was a stem glass of stella artois, at least four or five times my height. the sign was filled with people in knee-high goth boots and torn jeans and long wool coats and trucker hats in the mist with scottish accents sipping shitty long islands that tasted like rum, discussing how the only people who'd 'ever see this' are the taggers who'd already decorated the rooftops of the buildings all around.

i had no camera.

shine

today as i piloted my little blue corolla into the city, from one of the overpasses approaching the bay bridge toll plaza, one that allows a too-brief glimpse of the whole sprawl of the port of oakland, and the full SF skyline, as it hides, unusually shy behind the towers of the bridge:

there was a single hole piercing the cloudcover right near the western span of the bay bridge. sun streamed through the gap, a warm glow in the shadowy gray, and it lit only that span. the towers gleamed, tall triple Xs in shining white silver, against a muted gray skyline. i'd never seen the bridge shine like that before...

November 2009

I’m trying to believe what I know, and always see with feeling.

The world is almost too full, winking with history, explosive with meaning, shape and color. Our lives cross and mix, year after year, full of love or apathy, chaotic and confused, under alternating blue and gray and orange skies. Tears fall, some yearn, some forget, and children love the only innocent and unconditional love. every evening The shimmering lights on the lake are too much; the colors can’t be caught, penned or expressed. The shapes, the power lines, the watery gleaming, the buildings’ humming glow cuts perfect boxes and slices the sky’s moody blue orange indigo. It’s brooding, I’m stuck here, and I can’t copy and paste all these songs and snapshots of you into a collage or find any coherence, because they can’t fit, and shouldn’t. we’re all librarians now, custodians of our messy digital histories, and all of our iPods strung together can’t make our sounds stop clashing. The halls of the sky are ringing, the basslines pulse warmth, and these buildings, the world, are the stained glass of a 21st century cathedral glowing, free for the mind’s taking. And I’m a thief, starved, grabbing and anxious, fleeing the white noise and traffic for the dark insides, the shimmering. Selfish, self-absorbed, taking more, but never enough.

Maybe we’re all in love, or maybe we’re all alone, and some of us just know it more than others. the truth is our voices, trying to be heard, our words lost, our sound building and resonating in each other’s din, pots and pans, text message alerts, vacuum cleaners and garbage trucks. somewhere someone is screaming, in pain or pleasure, we can’t tell from here, but it doesn’t matter, because here, here, sometimes the sun is shining and there’s organic produce and dollar menus and sunsets to be had, over and over. We’re all just breathing in each other’s exhaust, staring at each other’s taillights, wondering when we’re gonna get there. as this beautiful American daydream’s nightmare dissolves before us, we’re free to feast whenever we want, grow our gardens of entitlement, wander hillsides, turn on big screens, study, work, sit, stare, shoot aliens from our living rooms. Our technology is shrinking and clinging to us, filling our pockets, our minds with noise, weight, holding us down and bringing us together and forcing us apart - and I’m fucking tired of checking for your updates, but we’re all just turning into smoke signals and nonsense is king, so let’s just keep it all, whether it's noise or meaning. Turn on your glib superficiality and I’ll do mine, because it’s gotten too loud in here to really talk anyway.

So if you show up, show up your best, and even if you’re not sure if other people are feeling it the way you do, and you’re not sure if they care or if they can, the least you can do is take the feeling, the explosive force of it, and sublimate it, and send it back out in a beam. Take that stream and make it clearer and stronger and send it back out. If you were lucky enough to be tuned in, all you can do is hope someone else is on your frequency as you’re sending out your signals. Somebody might be listening.

Then you’ll come home with your ears ringing again, smelling like someone else’s tobacco industry addiction, and your head hurts because you’ve had too much of this easy living, and the throbbing is your fault and yours alone, and everything is slow and stupid again because you didn’t find the vein but you’re so close you can tell, it’s all just building up, waiting to osmose through a membrane into your own blood. And then you could maybe breathe and subside because it would all have aligned with you for a moment. But you’re always moving too fast or too slow and can’t sit still, and you just want another hour of sleep and another coffee might do the trick, or maybe not. Maybe you’ll get there.

We’re human beings, meant to be together or apart, and laughing or crying or fucking or creating or sleeping, nobody really knows, but there’s something more out there to be had if we can just manifest it. We must hoard our energies, create and visualize, in a world designed to make us fat and complacent, comfortable and slow, angry or weak in offices with bad florescent lighting and dreams that aren’t really dreams of corner offices and luxury cars that get scratched and impossibly high high rises. we must realize the blueprints of dangerous, heroic architecture, subliminal art, and green technology futures; the only things that can save us from the crashes and greed and improbabilities of the future’s terrifying promises of the unknown.