3 views of the new studio (with the boxes half unpacked)
« April 2005 | Main | June 2005 »
May 23, 2005
in the middle of the hurricane
Today was the final day of moving into my new apartment with Lee. On top of moving, and teaching this weekend, my friend Juho, a cellist from Finland currently living in Manhattan, was in town for a visit. Hopefully someday soon I'll have something to actually write about on these pages, but I think I'm just going to turn this blog into a photoblog for the time being, I just don't have anything to say, too much of my energy is just spent on doing things, not thinking about them. But I'm sure Europe will change this situation in a few weeks.
Here are a couple of pics, one with me and Lee and one of me and Juho. They're from Arrow bar in San Francisco, we were waiting for Gold Chains and Sue Cie to play, listening to the Knife while having drinks improvised on the spot by the friendliest bartender the world has ever seen. We finally gave up and left before we heard them play though, they were so not fashionably late, but simply late.
May 21, 2005
saturday morning...
It's a Saturday morning, 10:40 AM, I'm teaching this weekend at NorCal DJMPA. Right now I'm sitting on the floor, waiting for the staff to arrive to unlock the door. Luckily there's a wi-fi network floating around the hallway, maybe it's drifted over from Macromedia across the street. Or San Francisco Design Center a block away from here.
Anyway, hello world.
.jpg)
May 16, 2005
architecture, salvation, politics, and music
The title of this entry is the name of the 4 tracks I'm putting on a sampler CD of my music to take to Europe with me next month. I'll be in Amsterdam for about 2 weeks starting June 12 to teach at STEIM's summer school, during which time Lee will join me, then we're off to Paris for fun, museums, friends, and good food for about a week.
The culture shock of making my base in the United States this past year has not worn off, and I hope it never does, I really don't want to become re-acclimated to this culture. But at the same time, there are a lot of things that draw me to San Francisco. Just got to figure out how this little city can form its own republic.
May 11, 2005
STEIM/Amsterdam vs San Francisco
Robert van Heumen has a nice write-up of the Dutch electronic music invasion of San Francisco last month complete with sound samples, some from our performances together. Was a treat to finally play live with him, the music we made sounded strangely similar to what I used to do in Tokyo with Tog, especially this recording of our show at the Lab.
home it's where i want to be
I'm moving. Lee and I are getting a studio in lower Nob Hill.
The landlord is a Quentin Crisp-like character who immigrated from Russia. He speaks with a slight lisp and asks strangely personal questions.
The building is from the 1920's, one of those apartment buildings for sailors on leave. Nowadays, in San Francisco, you can't tell who's a real sailor and who has a uniform fetish. Well, that was probably always the case in this city.
I have no idea what the word home means, I just know I haven't been there. But now I'm really into the idea of it. I'm going to make sound installations for different corners of the house, say like tiny microphones installed in a vase that activate a micro-soundscape when you speak into it. I've got an old Powerbook I can set up in the closet to run SuperCollider all the time.
Thinking of sound installations for your home is a completely different process than than planning something for a gallery. I mean, for fuck's sake, you have to live with it.
May 4, 2005
music. and ropes.
Lee and I went to see a concert in Berkeley a couple of weeks ago, by a student from CalArts. I was fascinated by the concept: a kind of bondage music, for ropes and violin. I wrote a review of Vidatone that got published on New Music Box. Why they titled it "Literally Spellbinding" is a mystery to me, the audience wasn't tied in ropes, we could leave anytime we wanted, we weren't literally anything. And I don't think the performers themselves were spellbound. Can you be spellbound at something which you are in the act of doing? Strange.
For music in the San Francisco area, this is a good resource: too many hippies spoil the soup.
The future holds the promise of more blogging, but right now life is all chocolates, planning, writing, making music, daydreaming, and bicycling around the city.