Arc v' April 2004

cow* matches in my iTunes library:

1. Johnny Cash, "Even cowgirls get the blues"
2. Kid Rock, "Cowboy (LP Version)"
3. Merzbow, "Cow Cow"
4. P16.D4, "Half Cut Cows"
5. Petty Booka, "Cowboy Hula"

As was prophesied in the vision of The Twain,
redemption was still annihilation.

So, back down that path.

The rest of our group walked off. One Half of Twain and I sat there, knowing that we had to stand up at some point, and that standing up meant waking up. I made an attempt, but found no energy {or will} and collapsed back onto the cushion. One Half of Twain and I smiled at each other.

"I still don't get tie-dye," I said, looking at the passing students and travelers careening around us.

One Half of Twain looked at me, cocked her head, and replied, We're such peer creatures.

Chuckling in agreement, I nodded and stood to wake up, alone in my room.

More than the caught voices, more than the tape hiss amplified to sleep inducing levels, Fay fell hardest for the recorded electric hum of the asylum's subterranean power system. Even when it clipped out all signal, the buzz was intoxicating. She remembered the feeling, laying there on the steel floor, the hum of machines around her, knowing the troubled voices two stories overhead. She could still smell the tape recorder lying next to her, hear the quiet whirr of its motors distinguished from the environment.

Back on Halo Street, Fay ensured the tape deck was set to loop. She opened the window and curled up on the leather bench beneath it, mixing the hum from what felt like another world with the district outside.

I may be admitting more of my overambitions and setting myself up for future failure as I fail to live up to them {and the full list of potential projects that are rattling around the gate upstairs}. But here we begin to unveil the latest Séance de travail.

Two copies of the {cable tension and submersion} environmental manufacture series, Laa 3 remain. Perfect for baths, soft exhilaration, and hauntings {acquiring, embracing, releasing}.

William Langewiesche, one of my favorite correspondents for The Atlantic has a new collection coming out very soon now called The Outlaw Sea. One of the main pieces of the book comes from the September 2003 issue of The Atlantic, and remains one of my favorite magazine pieces in recent memory. Titled Anarchy at Sea, the article covered the wild system of modern shipping, piracy, weak regulations, shipwrecks, and more.

Last night, I read another sea story by Langewiesche about the wreck of the Estonia - a luxury ferry that sank in the Baltic in the early nineties, causing the loss of over 850 lives. That article is in the May 2004 Atlantic, and I believe is also to be part of Langewiesche's new book.

The rain hit hard, sending pedestrians below scrambling to hide under awnings. He felt home just in time. It rattled the windows and faded the city view to grey. It was over in thirty seconds. The stunned foot traffic below ventured back out from beneath the awnings, always amazed at such occurrences no matter how long they'd lived here.

Three new galleries posted today, covering December 2002 and January 2003:

Christmas 2002 - Birthday 2003

NYC TMAX

JFK-SLC

Amazon has unveiled their new search engine, A9. A couple of curious bullets based on first experiences:

• From the site that gives us such wonky URLs (Amazon), comes a search engine with incredibly clean URLs. Witness http://a9.com/Eucci and http://a9.com/Eucci%20Pants. In otherwords: a9.com/whatever you want to search for.
• Site Info: Interesting results already for toulouse.amber.org and euc.cx.

On the way home last night, I decided that I needed to pick up some Azure Ray and Dixie Chicks, and stopped in a local CD shop. The Azure Ray I wanted was easy enough to find, but I could not find the Dixie Chicks album I wanted. I crawled through the shop, looking for assorted curios: Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, Tom Waits' Rain Dogs, Merzbow {any that I don't already have}. No luck. So I started to think to myself, I should just order The Hafler Trio's normally. It's rare to see any of the new Hafler Trio releases here.

But then, as I was getting ready to check out, there was ae3o, a release combining The Hafler Trio and Autechre. It's put out by Phonometography, who seem to be doing H3O releases exclusively at present. And doing an amazing job. ae3o comes in beautiful packaging: a hard textured outer envelope, which when opened reveals a hard cardboard inner envelope, covered in grey text. Inside the envelope are a pair of 3 inch CD's in 5 inch clear plastic, one each for ae3o and h3ae, accompanied by a small stack of abstract negative transparencies.

I haven't paid too much attention to Autechre, I must admit. But they deliver well on their disc. There are no rhythms here - more electronic drones and noises. The Hafler Trio touch into the quieter ambient style that is characterizing {generally} their modern sound, which remains subtle and complex, beautiful and terrifying.

There is apparently another Autechre / Hafler Trio release in the works. Hopefully this series will succeed in expanding concepts and expectations of the fans of each.

Never trust a man who claims to be straight yet is terrified of the female breast and can't win an election against a DEAD MAN!!

There was a scene in The Simpsons where the kids attended a stock footage film festival. Now, in a curious fashion, that dream has come to life with this interesting film festival. Stock footage is sent out to filmmakers who register, and new short films are made from that footage to be displayed at the festival.

The 911 call was more dreamlike than the event playing out before her. The voice, heavy in accent, slurred like syrup to her ears. She went back to him with cold wet rags and wrapped his wrists. He was coming out of it now, realizing the gravity of the moment. By the time the ambulance came, its medics moving far too slowly to be real, the gashes were already closing.

All on his birthday too.

The bus trolled through neighborhood after neighborhood stuffed with grips and squeezes. Benotz cast his focus on the Bjornic Mythologies to distract himself from the white, red, and yellow brick that signified each change in distant memory. How many lives could possibly intersect that street? They went on without number, differing only in weight.

A splash - a violent river really - of silver came piercing through the center and held itself there, inescapable from attention. The more subdued of the two forces made itself strong tonight. I crept from bar to bench to shed, looking for interpretation. And there, again {briefly} was the couple-weeks-ago ghost made flesh. Unfortunately, unresolved.

Some of the changes and shifts in concepts and scope that have passed through Industrie Toulouse have brought out some new classifications.

Informd

Informational entries about Industrie Toulouse, its author, its rules, its regulations, its import/export habits. While one would hope man could find his way without a guide, history and industry continue to dash said hopes.

Photo Anyday

First, I want to preserve a link to the LS4 Party Photos entry - snapshots of one night of lux life here at The Meredith Street Studio. Second, this is my way of unofficially participating in Photo Friday, which I came across as I wandered into the Photo Friday Japan webring, which I came across in my search for a Baby Holga, which I came across for reasons unremembered.

Perfect and Unbelievable Hearsay

Word virus. Exploration of ve ah'Ski and ve klihnn. Sound experiments (beyond or being ancillary to those in the sound design archives). Stories and memory fragments. The results of this I hope to someday combine into Laa 5 or into some other publishable format.

And because the pictures from the Luxury Spring 2004 launch event are so pretty {even though the camera spent a good part of the evening hiding in a ski boot}, I present them here again. Both pictures are linked to the full album.

There have been some changes, gradual and immediate both, here at Industrie Toulouse. There is a new chain of entries that are more prosaic in nature than the technical and political posts of the past. That's not to say that that the technical/political will stop, but there are better pens and voices than mine and I want neither to just regurgitate links nor to go off on half cocked rants {if for no other reason than that is usually much better to go off whole cocked, according to A Bit Of Fry And Laurie}. Further, while I am having fun at work, there's barely enough time to actual work on the technical bits, let alone write about them.

The graphic design of the site has been updated to reflect this prosaic nature. It also allows individual entries to render nicely as full pages in news readers like NetNewsWire. Fonts are larger and darker. There's a new category dedicated to the new writings. But there's a fairly big part of me wanting more.

Read More...

A rain walk through the city to the office this morning. My heart, as usual, was in an anywhere-but-here mode (rain in cities raises memories of Philadelphia and stapled pain pricks in coffee shops). On the other side of the tunnel, the thoughts converged on the breath and memories of the Blavatsky books I started reading so long ago. This contrasted nicely with the breath changes brought about by tonal shifts.

What happened to Gina, and why did I not make a better application of her? My experiences with environment manufacture could no doubt be improved with what she could have taught me (on top of what else she volunteered).

Where now those books?

Three copies of Laa 3 remain. As for me, my next purchase will be The Hafler Trio's Normally. My experience with the trilogy in three parts (as well as the older unfinished trilogy, of which Andrew's been documenting as well as the reasons for the delay in the third part) has been substantial.

This morning, the stereo switched over to my copy of Laa 3, and I jumped straight to track two (the newest). I had forgotten the details of what it sounded like, especially on a real stereo system. A powdery fragrance note rides the edges, like some notes in subtle colognes and perfumes, evoking a [rather] subtle but noticeable sexual energy. Completely free of cloying structures such as strawberries, rhythms, pulses, and bass. Just sound. The sources remain protected at this time.

As happened a couple of weeks ago, but bound together in different shape, there was ghost again. Made flesh, briefly, one half of the two forces to which I cannot find and bind proper names. [yet].

What does it say of our environment when we can manufacture a new environment by building successive layers of the existing environment and find dazzling tonal pleasure by mixing the two?

A half answer is waiting in the wings.

Famous, but only to my story (related to the forces described in recent posts).

So hypnotized that when closing my eyes I had almost zero frame of locational reference, including to the chair I was in and the window my feet were hanging out of; and some grip was needed to ensure I didn't push forward too far in this physical space.

Outside of it, I saw two distinct forces. Swirling and charcoal, moving like gods. I want to call them redemption and annihilation. Yet I know that each is very much both. And both forces are strong in not only their own individual being, but in these names I yearn to give them. These two forces, their strengths differ, but only in relation to distance and time to their direct and indirect effects upon the author.

I stood, hoping they would avoid my notice, feeling their winds.

I finally got around to completing my collection of the latest trilogy by The Hafler Trio. This is a fairly substantial, if austere, collection of drone based work, theorized by many to be built around the sound of a cello. Each member of the collection shares the common characteristics of the same foundation drone, out of which small shifts, processes, and other tones grow and shrink - again, in a very austere manner. This collection is in no hurry to get any where, nor does it spend too much pride emoting its minimalism. Each piece comes with an accompanying booklet and envelope, double layered with fly paper and textured card stock. Along with the subtle differences in sound between the three members of the set, there are subtle differences in the design and content of accompanying physical material.

1. Cleave: 9 Great Openings. The underprinting of the booklets cover is silver.
2. No Man Put Asunder: 7 Fruitful and Seamless Unions. Gold. Falls into more sinister sounds than Cleave, and perhaps more austere.
3. No More Twain, Of One Flesh: 11 Unequivocal Obsecrations. White (can only be seen by lifting the fly paper on the cover and seeing the etched text underneath). A little fuller sound than the previous two parts.

Each part is bound to one of faith, love, or hope, as applied to consciousness, feeling, and the body. And each part praises consciousness, lambasts feeling, and seems indifferent (or a tad cruel) to the body. In the realm of consciousness, the series is a fascinating tool. I sat high up in my apartment last night, with my feet hanging out the large south windows from which I can see the entire valley sprawling out from the city. I stared, unfeeling (or just uninspired) by the twinkling lights. The psycho-acoustics would flare up, significantly, at times, filling the apartment space in a way that a turn of the head would cause different tonal sensations (a technique powerfully employed on Ryoji Ikeda's Matrix [for rooms] disc). The tones fused with the sounds of the street so that at times the source of some of said sounds were difficult to ascertain.

Deep into No More Twain, Of One Flesh: 11 Unequivocal Obsecrations, I was deep into trance and ripped apart by my own twain - two entities guiding and dividing my life right now - and had to fight my way out of such deep and frightening consciousness and back into the body. Scratches and cold medal were put to use to reinvigorate the breath and to bring myself down out of the super present to the merely present.

The closing line of a recent Kuro5hin post about Dave Letterman and CNN:

A final note to CNN and the Republican party. You do not want to get into a fight with David Letterman. Trust me on this one, he's simply more believable than you are.

When did it become status quo that new orgs are assumed to have an agenda while entertainment is expected to be accurate? This should point out how bad a shape the 4th Estate is currently in.

After breakfast with friends this morning, left back to my own abandon while my body continued to vibrate at the wrong frequency [hangover], I wandered slowly contemplating a ghost walk. I wandered slowly hoping a bus would show, and if it did, I'd hop on board.

It did.
I did.

But realizing that my bladder was full and my psyche was drained, I hopped off at the university and wandered the grounds. Foolishly without camera. I saw potential shot after potential shot. So I stood there, again listening to A Thirsty Fish, reading The Atlantic and waiting for the train with the conference going crowds in springtime sunday best. The ghost walk lay aborted.

After a stop at the book store [and restroom], I came home, stopping by the market to restock beer and cigarettes. Feel asleep watching Dog Day Afternoon.

Had I wandered down that path, this is where it would have likely began. One of these days...

One thing that I absolutely love about the LC-A is its ability to work in low light / interior light conditions.

These pictures are of the dinner I prepared the other night - first one is finishing preparation (you might get a sense of how tiny the kitchen here is), the other one shows the two meals half eaten (taking a half time, clearing some items off the table for more room for drinks). On each plate is:

• Bosc pear half with Myzithra Cheese on whole leaf lettuce
• Big fresh strawberry
• Squid ink spaghetti, tossed in extra virgin olive oil and topped with Myzithra cheese and garlic pepper.

• My kitchen is tiny. Doing dinner for two is tricky.
• Topping squid-ink spaghetti with myzithra cheese and garlic pepper is visually stunning.
• There is a nice hint of seafood taste in squid-ink spaghetti.
• My table is also tiny. Full coarse dinner for two is tricky.
• The Glenn Gould, A State of Wonder CD set is absolutely stunning.
• Redbox and Laa 3 orders continue to trickle in. Only one has been from the United States.
• Good conversations last night. I think it's agreed that although this year has been very intense and full of highs and dark lows, that transformations (for the better) are occurring.
• Mail order goods are finally coming in. My Baby Holga micro 110 camera is waiting for me at the post office.
• I scored points on presentation of the food last night. Considering that I don't normally cook for others, this makes me happy. Hopefully the pictures of the food turn out.

There is a span of missing time as the camera was hiding in a ski boot. But for those who couldn't make it to the Luxury Spring 2004 Launch Event (CD Release, Housewarming, Gallery Show), this series might give a taste. Color pictures of the art should come soon.

Click on picture to visit gallery. Pictures taken using Holga 120SF.