« June 2004 | Main | August 2004 »
This picture is from my favorite modern antiques store in the Mission District X 21 Modern. Somehow the aesthetic of San Francisco, which certainly exists, is embodied in that store, it's all whimsical, lite, self-knowing,and kitsch, with just a slight edge. I love it.
Hello from this foggy and cold little town!
Projet OMA with very very cool videos. (thanks for the link, frank!)
I JetBlued it back to San Francisco late last night. Bumped into my friend, composer Les Stuck, at the airport who was getting a ride with artists Michael and Aubra, who in turn gave me a ride to the subway. Then I met with my friends Shinya and Aki at the Bar on Castro (which for such a tacky place often has pretty good cheap drinks) for drinks right after getting back into the city. Martinis were much better in New York. At least the cigarettes are cheaper here.
Today: moving into my new room south of Noe Valley in SF. Later tonight, "3 Party" in Oakland for anniversary of three commited lovers, two women and one man, who are happily in a kind of trio relationship, and have been for some years now. It's very beautiful, the rules of their amorous circle are really sort of genius and pragmatic. (update: I deleted the last bit I posted earlier about what some of those rules were because after re-reading it, I realized it's telling a bit too much about my friends, even if they weren't named explicitly; it's just too personal. I still haven't gotten the hang of this whole blogging thing yet).
Rob is covering some interesting No-Input musical territory over in Tokyo.
Lunch at Noodle Town with Randy (in pic) and Colin.
The afternoon was spent doing the Chelsea gallery circuit, reuniting with some friends visiting from Amsterdam, who all seem to have chosen this week to be in New York. Some of the art was interesting, a lot not very interesting at all. The show at John Connelly gallery was fun, very pink, and sandy.
Drinks started around 5:00 and didn't let up anytime soon. (Colin on the left, me on the right)
Tonight I'm awake. I'm doing some last minute work to get ready for my 4 am train to the Brussels airport, trying to get my head ready for America. After a few weeks of immersion in the world of European metrosexual diplomacy (thanks for the article, Remi!), militant Amsterdam liberalism, French electro-music, Belgian performance art, Rotterdam architecture, and highly subsidized housing, it takes a little preparation to return to America.
If given a choice, yes, I would prefer to live in Europe over America. The diversity here is amazing, and I'm actually totally optimistic about the future potential of the EU: politics that involve such a huge number of people and cultures should be complicated. Life is complicated.
My friend Seamus thinks that the reason the USA is so successful economically is precisely because of the inability of its residents to digest subtlety in issues (as seen in the daily circulation rates of USA Today, which reads like a bad cartoon, vs The New York Times, which at least has the aura of thoroughness. It's about 2 to 1, you can guess which is more popular), making it much easier for everyone to agree on simplistic solutions, producing a kind of success through brute force.
Well, whatever, making a big issue out of the "Atlantic-divide" does get a little tiresome after a while. Of course, I hope Bush loses as much as we all do, and I also hope the Christian Democrats get kicked out of office here in Holland as soon as possible. Politics are a problem everywhere. But right now, I just can't wait to be in New York tomorrow!
Today was the last day of my computer music workshop at STEIM. These are just a few of the amazing people I got to work with:
International expert on extreme vocal techniques and active performing artist Jaap Blonk
LtoR, George Issakidis, (member of Micronauts and experimental visual and sound artist), Daniel Ploeger (Berlin based trombonist in several contemporary music ensembles), Jaap Blonk, Mart Vognesen (in front, electronics composer based in Copenhagen), Seamus Cater (in back, English composer and electronics performer with whom I often collaborate), and Robert van Heumen (not at student, just sitting in. Member of the Amsterdam based N Collective).
Teaching is great, I grow tired of hearing my artist friends complain about how difficult it is. It's actually so much fun, especially with students like these. I got enough fresh exciting ideas in the last two weeks from this group to keep me busy all year long.
Again life is busy: SC class is over soon, many questions remain, hopefully they will be answered before Friday, or at least I hope we have created better questions for the students to follow on their own. Today I finally made the connection: I have some electro-music near-celebrities in my class which made me vicariously feel cooler than usual.
Making plans for a few days in New York on my way back to San Francisco. These are shows I don't want to miss: Happy Days Are Here Again, Boys Gone Wild, and sounds at the Sculpture Center. And I've pencilled in some hangover days as I am looking forward to the pleasure of drinking with my friend, and talented composer, Randy.
EARLIER
Taught SC3 this morning, worked on ways of manipulating field recordings, great fun. Some students were so into it, others are starting to get a bit overwhelmed by text-based sound making. It can be pretty hard to make that leap from looking at pictures on your computer to making the pictures in your head.
NOW + LATER
Off to my favorite cafe across the road for a solo work session, brain-storming several new projects. I'm really into this idea of composing again, not performing but just composing. Now my medium is not live performers, but CD. Of course there is nothing new about this idea, but it is the first time I've felt so focused on just making a single product, to be distributed. How refreshing to not focus on the live elements, only piecing together and correlating sound. Speaking of nice sound work, the audio component of the Wunderland unframed exhibit at Stedelijk Bureau was one of the best sound pieces I've heard in a DVD project. I could have spent the whole afternoon just watching and listening to the piece on loop. Well, in fact, I did.
Yay! Fucking Good Art from Rotterdam was just published. I have an article in it about my recent journey down to the American deep south.
NOW
5:30 - Woke up, went down to the studios for quick network music rehearsal. Something not working, probably not in the code, but in a firewall (such an evocative name for a such a stupid piece of software).
7:00 - Working on a new piece, calling it Goodbye Study 1. More to say about it after I put some more time into it.
LATER
Off to see what looks to be a very interesting show at the Stedelijk Bureau Museum called Wunderland unframed.
Tonight, maybe off to a squatter's party downtown...
Not sure why, but I feel like a blank slate this morning, anything is possible.
To is about to be launched, I caught a glimpse of the gorgeous design and poetry mag while in Paris last week. Certainly worth 7 euros, and most definitely without a doubt worth 7 dollars.
Late at night two nights ago, I was deep in the basement studios at STEIM, surrounded by high-tech production equipment. And I was working and working, not on making a clean recording or my new CD, but instead on a mix CD for my friend Bart who's leaving for the countryside of France in a few days, and needs something to listen while working on his thesis, looking out at the wine fields. (tough life...).
Mix tapes and CD's have been a part of my life for many years, but for some reason, I haven't made them at all recently. But I was inspired down in the studio, making not just one mix CD but 3, full of changes between Tuxedomoon to the Homosexuals going into a great track by dDamage, and so on.. Too fun!
The ultimate Mix CD is this one from Digiki called You Should Play This, with art by Florence Manlik.
Just got into Amsterdam tonight after three fun-filled days in Paris with Antonin and Remi. I also got to spend a few minutes catching up with the maestro himself, Hypo, as well as an impromptu music session comprised of me and Momus on guitar (I played mine with a Bic lighter, Momus played traditional style, just with his hands), Toog, on a shiny new digital synthesier, Digiki on Windows computer, and Remi sampling and looping us in 16 bit glory with his amazing Treo palm-pilot thingamajig. I don't think the sound files will show up on this website anytime soon, they could be used as blackmail at some point in the future.
All in all, it's great to be back in Europe! My feeling when arriving, both in France and the Netherlands, is that I am back in the place where I feel most comfortable in the world. If America is from Mars and Europe is from Venus, as Rem Koolhaas said in his Content exhibits in Berlin and Rotterdam, I'll most certainly take Venus, no questions asked.
And I do like San Francisco very much also, which is good, since I just got an apartment in the Noe Valley area, it's just that it's still America, as much as it tries not to be, and America is a pretty fucked-up country at the moment, with a woefully underinformed populace and an intensely greedy upper class. Even San Francisco is full of money fascists. And you can feel that pressure in America, this intense and insane expectation by almost everyone that says that you should be working your ass off to make more dollars, and if not, then you're just a second-class citizen, condemned to ride 2nd class public transportation and eat 2nd class food. But in Europe, especially in Amsterdam, I don't sense that pressure nearly as much, if at all. I don't mean to exaggerate, it is not an artistic Shangri-la here in Europe, but it might be about the best we have on this little planet.
Tomorrow I am leaving San Francisco for Europe, the palm trees and sunshine of California for the rainy and rather dark city of Amsterdam, where I'll be teaching a summer workshop. I'm also going to visit my friends Antonin and Remi in Paris, which is always a treat. I'll even get to see a show of Digiki DJ'ing.
We had another network music rehearsal last night with the Supercollider patch that Tadashi is developing. All seems to be working well, I won't go into the gritty details, but it's amazingly bug free and super-fast. Hey, it even sounds pretty good.