The characteristic of rambliness

"The characteristic of meaning is that not everything has it."
-Jean Baudrillard, The Lucidity Pact

I've been thinking about this for about a year and a half, and I'm still not sure whether it's true. There are three possibilities: everything is meaningful, nothing is meaningful, or some things are meaningful. Baudrillard dismisses the first two. My worldview dismisses the second (disciples of Richard Dawkins can stop reading here). It's not a question of whether meaning is intrinsic or constructed (or both). The question is, when interpreting the basic events of our daily lives, which is more burdensome: a knowledge that Everything is meaningful, or the task of determining what is and isn't?

Take, for example, our obsession with self-knowledge:

This is the Wordle visualization of the content of this site for the last year. Is there meaning in the fact that the largest word is "people," seemingly incongruous because of my extreme introversion? If I knew that it was meaningful, but could have no grasp of that meaning, would that be worse? And that's only considering one word in the hierarchy...

This is where you call me a loser for thinking about this.

Ideal living is often summed up in trite phrases, like "live every day like it was your last," or, "look for the diamond in the rough," but these don't work in practice because they amount to veiled propositions about meaning. The propositions themselves usually remained obscured and unexamined, so we can never really accept or definitively reject the aphorisms. Of course, now that I've criticized the conventional wisdom, I'm supposed to offer a different spin on the same "truth." But I don't have one.

The reality is that everyone has a set of presuppositions about whether events and things are meaningful, and 90% of the time these presuppositions are not examined --- because to do so nearly guarantees unresolvable internal dissonance and paranoia.

I think this emergent self-examination is what happens to many academics somewhere between their 2nd and 4th years of graduate school. Like groundhogs, most of them see their shadow and run back into the hole (the hole is called "the tenure track"). It usually arises because of a question about whether their epic thesis on a clay pot from a 2nd century Welsh town is truly significant labor.

Yet we can't dismiss significance and meaning out of hand, because we all crave transcendence on some level. Everyone has reached momentary heights of blissful interconnectedness and holistic epiphany --- maybe while listening to a moving piece of music, or experiencing genuine intimacy with another person for the first time --- which tell us that either there is or ought to be Meaning beyond survival. Whatever it is, we want it.

The grapefruit(s) of doom become visible

They paid us a visit in Melbourne.

I've been reclusive lately, building things mostly (when I'm not working on Rosetta mixing/mastering). Usually I say that I'll photo-document my DIY projects and post about them here, but it never happens because I like the building process too much and don't want to ruin it by having to take pictures every 15 minutes. I post links instead.

These are some of the things I've been working on:
"Flexy rack" (a more tasteful variant), passive sealed subwoofer driven by a third bridged-mono amp in an existing active bi-amp setup, supertweeters using vintage 70s KSN1005 piezos, an outboard effects rack for my guitar set up (I will post new maps of that soon), and a DIY power conditioner.

If by some chance you want help working on something similar, don't hesitate to get in touch.

Australia 3

All finished; going home in 18 hours. It's nearly impossible to reflect on such relentless sensory stimulation (even in the quiet at the end) without some distance from the events. I don't think I'll understand what happened here for a while.

In a tangible plane, this has been a very successful tour. Every show has had higher attendance and sales than we normally expect in the U.S., and four of them had higher sales than any show we've ever played in our own country. That being said, it's going to take a lot longer to evaluate the emotional and spiritual impact of the trip. In reaching so many people in such a short time, I can't tell who's giving and who's receiving, or to what degree it's an exchange. I'm stretched thin and exhausted, but vaguely satisfied, for the moment.

Australia 2

I'm in Adelaide now. I don't know what to say.

Favorite words

Epic
-adjective
1. noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in which a series of great achievements or events is narrated in elevated style: Homer's Iliad is an epic poem.
2. heroic; majestic; impressively great: the epic events of the war.
3. of unusually great size or extent: a crime wave of epic proportions.

Brutal
–adjective
1. savage; cruel; inhuman: a brutal attack on the village.
2. crude; coarse: brutal language.
3. harsh; ferocious: brutal criticism; brutal weather.
4. taxing, demanding, or exhausting: They're having a brutal time making ends meet.
5. irrational; unreasoning.
6. of or pertaining to lower animals.

Nitro
-adjective
1. Chemistry. containing the nitro group.
2. Colloquial: describes a person, place or thing as being unequivocally, quintessentially spectacular and dumbfounding (UD).

Granola
–noun
A breakfast food consisting of rolled oats, brown sugar, nuts, dried fruit, etc., usually served with milk.
-adjective
A person who dresses like a hippie, eats natural foods (granola), and is usually a Liberal, but in all other ways is a typical middle class white person, and is likely to revert back to being straight when they finish college (UD).

...and, I almost forgot (gasp! thanks, egalitarian-liberated-life-partner!):

SALT
-noun
A crystalline compound, sodium chloride, NaCl, occurring as a mineral, a constituent of seawater, etc., and used for seasoning food, as a preservative, etc.
-interjection
1. expression of distaste or unhappiness about a situation (UD)
2. describing something unfortunate or unfavorable happening, or one's angered mood (UD).

No April fool

Science can explain these things, but it can't interpret them. You have to step outside of time (chronos) and into Time (kairos) to be present to something this powerful. Land and text both want to be read and understood. I felt afraid when I realized this, especially since the realization only came while unprotected, at the mercy of the environment.

Getting married

I'm getting married in two days. I don't feel that I'm losing anything by entering into the institution. It's a kind of death, but one that's desirable, insofar as there's something worthwhile to be gained on the other side. I don't have cold feet or anything, just a sense that an ending is approaching.

(Again, to reiterate: everyone is invited to the wedding on Saturday)

The hookah

This issue has come up in conversation on multiple occasions in the last couple of weeks, as well as occasions in the last two years, and I feel a need to address it with the relevant research attached.

I am repeatedly surprised by the number of intelligent, educated people --- who know smoking is harmful and would never touch a cigarette --- who smoke hookah and think nothing of it. If you're a regular smoker, I'm not talking to you. This is directed at people who "know better" than to use tobacco in its more pedestrian forms, and yet show a wealth of ignorance and misinformation when it comes to more "exotic" forms. But smoke is smoke, and tobacco is tobacco.

Let's address the misconceptions each in turn:

1. Shisha tobacco doesn't have any nicotine or tar, or those nasty additives in cigarettes.

Wrong: tobacco contains nicotine in any form, including chewing tobacco. Nicotine, however it is delivered, is extremely addictive. As for tar, any smoke contains tar because it is tar. Tar is the particulate matter (as opposed to gas) that you can actually see, which makes up the smoke --- it's just called tar when it's been deposited in your lungs. Tar contains thousands of chemical compounds, hundreds of which are toxic and/or carcinogenic (you know this already), and tar is what makes you sick and kills you. Many have used herbal substitutes for tobacco (such as Soex), most often to get around indoor smoking bans, claiming that they have none of the negative effects of tobacco. While it's true that herbal substitutes contain no nicotine, they deliver every bit as much tar as tobacco does, simply because all smoke is particulate matter --- chemically altered and discharged by burning/heating, and suspended in air. Herbal smoke will give you cancer just as easily as tobacco smoke.

What's more, a WHO study and several independent university studies have shown that in one hookah session, a smoker inhales the same volume of smoke that they would get from 100-200 cigarettes. This is because the smoke is less irritating (due to being cooled by the water) and therefore the smoker inhales far more deeply than they would from a cigarette --- as well spending much longer smoking, and inhaling much more second-hand smoke. Hookah has the reputation of being "easy on virgin lungs", but this is a heat issue only. Commensurate with the volume of smoke, a hookah session will deposit the equivalent tar of 100-200 cigarettes in the lungs, regardless of what is being smoked.

2. But hookah smoke is filtered by the water.

Wrong: studies show that the water has no effect on the smoke other than to cool it down, enabling deeper drags. This makes sense because as the bubbles pass through the water, there is only contact on their outer perimeter, so the smoke inside the bubbles is untouched. Furthermore, the non-particulate, toxic gases in hookah smoke (most notably, carbon monoxide and cyanide gas) are also unaffected and delivered at full strength.

3. But the shisha isn't burned, it's cooked by the charcoal, so it's not as bad.

Wrong: if something is heated hot enough that it gives off smoke, chemical changes are occurring --- the same changes as if it was burned directly. Heat causes these reactions, not "fire." The smoke from the cooked shisha has all the same compounds in it as cigarette smoke, and many more. Furthermore, the burning charcoal that heats the shisha gives off carcinogens and toxic gases of its own, which only compound the damage done by the actual shisha smoke. This is probably why the measured carbon monoxide in hookah smokers is much higher than even pack-a-day cigarette smokers.

4. But the smoke is just different, it's sweet, and doesn't feel harsh to me. It's relaxing.

Wrong: shisha is plain tobacco, soaked in molasses and fruit pulp. So not only are you inhaling the tar of at least 100 cigarettes, plus nicotine and charcoal burn-off, you're inhaling burning sugar and fruit matter, and artificial flavorings. These additions to the tobacco only serve to mask its acrid smell and taste, creating an illusion of safety. The total effect is that there is a lot more muck in the smoke than even in cigarette smoke, and you're getting a lot more of it.

As to the claim that hookah is "chill" or "relaxing": nicotine is a stimulant. It makes people feel "relaxed" because it raises the level of arousal of their autonomic nervous system (ANS), giving them a feeling of being empowered and in control. Just because it doesn't give a "buzz" is not reason to believe that it isn't active on the nervous system. This claimed sense of "relaxation" is most likely related to the drug effects of nicotine.

----

All of the above information is pulled from research which is listed at the bottom of this post. I encourage you to read through it if you have the interest. From numerous studies, we know that even the smallest tobacco exposure is irreversibly damaging --- I don't need to rehash that here. There is no such thing as responsibly moderate consumption. I cannot stress this enough. Every time you do this, you permanently damage yourself. The damage may be small, but it is irreversible.

Hookah is a silly trend that will probably pass in a couple of years. Still, that doesn't negate the damage that it is doing right now to ignorant young people, who are all too willing to be duped by marketing hype and misinformation. Concentrating and inhaling known toxins and carcinogens just doesn't make rational sense. Yet hookah gratifies that singular trait of people our age --- the feeling of invincibility and the willful ignorance of our mortality. It lets people get lost in a fog of the senses, abandon themselves to something that seems at once sensually close and exotically foreign. But it's the same poison repackaged to gratify our culture-consuming eyes. Exalting the body does not mean drowning it in short-lived and harmful pleasures --- in so doing, we treat it as a thing disposable and cast it aside. Exalting sensual pleasure does not exalt the body. When we care for the body and preserve it, train it and strengthen it, and give it up for a higher purpose --- this is exalting to the body.

I'll lay my cards on the table here: I watched three grandparents die horrible, painful deaths because of tobacco use. I have very little patience with a trend that is just another disguise for the same old life-destroying product. Admittedly, I would like nothing more than to see the entire tobacco industry in utter ruin. But this doesn't come from some kind of political affiliation, or abstract know-it-all attitude, or a desire to police people's decisions. It comes from seeing, repeatedly, the slow suffering and unbelievable pain that terminal lung cancer victims endure. Earlier generations made this costly mistake because they were ignorant of the danger, but we are not. And if we gloss over the facts to gratify our fleeting pleasures or a desire to be cool or adventurous, we show enormous disrespect to the dead and their suffering.

----

A few references, in chronological order with most recent first:
ABC News: Hookahs No Safe Alternative
UNT Daily: Hookah trendy, not as safe as some may think
ABC7 News.com: U.C. Berkeley Study shows the dangers of hookahs
Letter from Berkeley Pub. Health prof, JAMA -- Exhaled Carbon Monoxide With Waterpipe Use in US Students, January 2, 2008, El-Nachef and Hammond 299 (1): 36
US News and World Report: The Rising Allure—and Danger—of Hookah
HealthDay: Hookah Smoking as Tough on Lungs as Cigarettes
Medical News Today: Shisha Smoking Is More Harmful Than Cigarettes
AFP: Shisha smoking is more harmful than cigarettes: report
NewsDaily: Water pipe use as addictive as smoking
Medical News Today: Evidence Suggests That Waterpipe Smoking Is Not A Safe Alternative
New York Times: The Claim - Hookahs Are Safer Than Cigarettes?
Times of India: Is hookah smoking safer than cigarettes?
Brunei: Shisha More Harmful
United Press International: Beware the hookah
NY Daily News: Water pipes have the same dangers as cigarettes, experts warn
The Boston Globe: Smoke alarm
CBS2 Chicago: Trendy Hookah Lounges Have Hidden Risks
Daily News Egypt: Hubble bubble points to toil and trouble
Clickwalla.com: Shisha 200 times worse than a cigarette, say Middle East experts
American Lung Association: Trend Alert -- Waterpipes.pdf
PR Newswire: Hookah Use Carries Many of the Same Health Risks as Cigarette Smoking
Science Daily: Hold The Hookah --- Researcher Warns Against Trendy Tobacco Use
Science Daily: Avoid The Hookah And Save Your Teeth

Also:
Another blog post along these lines | And another
Tobacco.org
WHO Report (linked above)

Wedding countdown & usual curmudgeonly ramblings

I am getting married in 12 days. Surreality reigns! If you would like to come, the info is here.

Believe it or not, I am done with my planning work for the wedding, and not particularly stressed about it. Instead, I'm thinking about a string of recent interactions/observations wherein I'm increasingly finding --- in my fundamental disillusionment with both the trappings of corporate globalism and the silly contemporary remnants of the "countercultural idea" of 40 years ago --- that I am not alone. Not by a long shot. I am looking forward to seeing what happens in the next couple of years, and whether the hopeful grouches of our generation begin to stand up and insist that "thinking different" has nothing to do with purchasing another Apple iProduct.

Stars of the Lid

Many of you know how deeply attached I am to the music of Stars of the Lid. It's shown quite dramatically in my play counts, and this blog is even titled after one of their compositions. They are performing live at St. Mary's Church on May 3rd. I can't recommend this highly enough --- I had assumed (as did many others) that I would never have an opportunity to see SOTL in person, but what a gift!

I'm just as jaded about contemporary music as the next person --- this is usually true of people who make music, and I'm no exception. Yet I've been listening to SOTL for many years now and can't seem to tire of them. Their music has been the quiet accompaniment to my reveries, anxious night-watches, joyful solitudes, and "aesthetic expeditions". Their sounds have helped me plumb emotional depths I might otherwise never have known. It sounds like hyperbole, but just as the music itself is intrinsically non-verbal, I'm unable to put in to words quite how it's affected me. I am an overly-rational person, and words are my tool, my barrier, and sometimes my weapon. I don't wear my heart on my sleeve, and it's difficult for me to explore or express emotion without filtering it through reason. The language of my shadow-self, then, is relentlessly non-verbal, non-textual --- and it is precisely this language that SOTL's music speaks, fluently and flawlessly.

I hear:
+The beauty of untouched spaces
+Environments to inhabit becoming equally as meaningful as Programs to be read
+Philadelphia
+The sadness of seeing a loved-one hurting
+The ebb and flow of my memories
+The quiet resolve of old love
+"Nocturnal hum"
+Wonder

It's probably also incredibly redundant to say that the Lid is perhaps the single strongest influence on my own music.


Apreludes (in C# major), with visuals, from Stars of the Lid and Their Refinement of the Decline


Live "cover" of Arvo Part's Fratres

Bethany's bike / Ohbadiah

I wanted to post about this a while ago, since I finished it in early November, but that would have ruined the surprise for Bethany. I built this for her out of Ebay parts and things I had laying around. The best component find was the Miyata 710 frame (in her size, 48cm! wow) for $50 on Ebay. It came as a complete bike, but needed a new fork because of shipping damage, and most of the other parts were not worth keeping.

The drivetrain is 1/8", because that's just what I had on hand, 42Tx16T gearing, flip-flop rear hub. Not a racing miracle, but sturdy and lighter than my old aluminum road bike.

...

Nick wrote a thoughtful response to my post about placelessness among global elites. Talking about these kinds of topics, he presents himself in a much more human way than I do. He also has a picture of me picking apples and wearing goofy-looking cutoff pants. He asked me to post more regularly, though I don't think this entry is as content-ful as what he had in mind.

But here's a thought on that thought:

My problem with blogging is that I'm a slow percolator, and think about one issue for months before I have a coherent idea of something to say on it. My presented hypotheses often start with vague anxiety, unease, or a complaint, which I then feel compelled to internally deconstruct. By a quirk of personality, I subject all of my emotions to analysis that is almost scientific in its rigor (because I feel, ironically enough, that emotion must be validated, or even purified, by reason). This analysis must necessarily cast a very wide net. The ideas and arguments that end up being coherent enough to write something about are usually byproducts of the process, which are then slowly refined in conversation before I ever attempt to articulate them in a formal, organized way.

In other words, it's possible that I only have external insights because I find my own internal life unacceptable.

West coast foray

10.5mm DX, from Mrs. Claus. More later, maybe.

Face smashed

Incredibly, no cars were involved in the making of these wounds. I braked hard to avoid hitting a jaywalking student who was talking on her cell phone, flew over the handlebars, and face-planted on the pavement. My tooth went through my upper lip and then broke off. I have stitches inside and outside, and miraculously, no head trauma or broken bones.

This probably looks like a good argument not to ride a bicycle in a city. But let me say this: the likelihood of this happening is actually far smaller than the likelihood that you will be in a car accident. My injuries are nothing compared to the physical and psychological trauma experienced by my mother and sister earlier this year in a motor vehicle accident which was due to the very same cause -- someone else's carelessness while talking on a cell phone.

Beyond that, think about this: you can compare the energy efficiency of a bicycle with that of a car, by using calories (kcal) as a metric. A healthy human burns 0.049 kcal/minute at 15mph, or 0.139 kcal/minute at 25mph. 15mph is a nice approximation of cycle-commuting, so I use that here. So I, with a weight of 145 pounds, burn 7.105 kcal/minute @ 15 mph as I ride to work or go riding on my lunch break. This equates to 28.42 kcal burned every mile ridden, if I maintain about 15 mph.

A gallon of gas contains 31,000 kcal of energy. If I consumed gasoline like a car, I would get ~1,090 miles per gallon of gasoline! A human being on a bicycle is the most efficient machine in the universe, in terms of distance traveled per unit energy. In my humble opinion, the answer to the fossil fuel crisis is not fuel cells or biodiesel, it's carbohydrates. And if more savvy people rode bicycles instead of driving cars, injuries like the above would become far less common than they already are.

***

Addendum, 12/13/07, as I said elsewhere:

Cars do several things for us.
1. Kill people and animals and plants by polluting the air
2. Kill people by making oil into a political tool that starts wars
3. Kill people by making them sedentary, obese, and lazy
4. Kill people (this is called an "accident")

"Guns don't kill people, son, people kill people!"

Corporate Cosmopolitans and the End of Place

A recent read: "The Social Theory of Space and the Theory of the Space of Flows" by Manual Castells.

Castells' characterization of "managerial elites" in information society is an interesting (though certainly unintentional) scholarly corroborator to David Brooks' "organization kids" as the heirs of the corporate world. Castells, as I understand him, seems to implicitly rule out any dissenting participation in a corporate cosmopolitan lifestyle, suggesting that complicity in its comfort and homogeneity is mandatory for entrance. Consequently, there's no such thing as "changing the system from the inside" --- you are the system you choose to inhabit. Choose wisely.

Apparently of equal importance for entrance to the elite corporate class is an acceptance of placelessness. This most certainly is not the same rootlessness that has been romanticized and canonized in Beat poetry, and lately co-opted by advertising --- although corporate recruiters would like you to think that it is. This placelessness is a sense that all places are indeed simply different turns on a single, homogenized space. It is therefore a "safe" placelessness. The idealized itinerant wanderer experiences many places as dissimilar entities with distinct historical backgrounds and contexts, and must pay a personal, cultural, or ideological cost to participate in the life of those places. Conversely, corporate cosmopolitans experience many places as simply physical sub-spaces of a single homogenized ideal space, and their experience is insular and without cost. "Cosmopolitan" in this case is a misnomer. "Monopolitan" might be more appropriate, since while these travelers are indeed placeless; they are simply participants in one global, virtual city of the elite, with outposts all over the physical world. Castells calls this the "space of flows" and depending on your point of view, it renders a historically rooted sense of place either quaint and provincial, or completely obsolete.

In his words:

"Articulation of the [technocratic-financial-managerial] elites, segmentation and disorganization of the masses seem to be the twin mechanisms of social domination in our societies. Space plays a fundamental role in this mechanism. In short: elites are cosmopolitan, people are local. The space of power and wealth is projected throughout the world, while people's life and experience is rooted in places, in their culture, in their history. Thus, the more a social organization is based upon ahistorical flows, superseding the logic of any specific place, the more the logic of global power escapes the socio-political control of historically specific local/national societies." (pp. 415-416)

...

"A second major trend of cultural distinctiveness of the elites in the informational society is to create a lifestyle and to design spatial forms aimed at unifying the symbolic environment of the elite around the world, thus superseding the historical specificity of each locale. Thus, there is the construction of a (relatively) secluded space across the world along the connecting lines of the space of flows: international hotels whose decoration, from the design of the room to the color of the towels, is similar all over the world to create a sense of familiarity with the inner world, while inducing abstraction from the surrounding world; airports' VIP lounges, designed to maintain the distance vis-a-vis society in the highways of the space of flows; mobile, personal, on-line access to telecommunications networks, so that the traveler is never lost; and a system of travel arrangements, secretarial services, and reciprocal hosting that maintains a close circle of the corporate elite together through the worshipping of similar rites in all countries.

"Furthermore, there is an increasingly homogeneous lifestyle among the information elite that transcends the cultural borders of all societies: the regular use of SPA installations (even when traveling), and the practice of jogging; the mandatory diet of grilled salmon and green salad, with udon and sashimi providing a Japanese functional equivalent; the "pale chamois" wall color intended to create the cozy atmosphere of the inner space; the ubiquitous laptop computer; the combination of business suits and sportswear; the unisex dressing style, and so on. All these are symbols of an international culture whose identity is not linked to any specific society but to membership in the managerial circles of the informational economy across a global cultural spectrum." (p. 417)


For those of us who have a developed sense of place and a deep love of our particular cities, this is a frustratingly divisive mentality. It is emotionally charged, and can be alienating. It suggests that the only thing to value in a real place is what it can offer you --- in terms of material, ambiance, and convenience. Localized communal narrative is of no value in this scheme. Corporate globalism, if it is to maximize its profits and economies of scale, must necessarily enforce a cultural and historical amnesia that eliminates local distinctiveness. If we carry this to its logical conclusion, we might as well bulldoze every city in America except New York and Los Angeles. Whatever they got here they got there, right?

...

But why is this so polarizing? I think that those of us who desire and work to have a sense of place --- who love our built environments first and foremost because they're ours (not for what they offer us) --- often feel that something is wrong with us when we are repulsed by a set of values that seems to enjoy wide acceptance among educated people. Those of us who reject or critique cosmopolitan corporate life are regularly regarded by other educated people (often organization kids) as either unsophisticated or simply contrarian.

I was angry as I was reading the Castells piece because it was validating and giving credence to many of these discomforts, by speaking into them with a broader voice that could articulate things for which I previously couldn't find a vocabulary. I don't mean I was angry at Castells, I mean I was angry because the text facilitated a transition from "I don't like this [a matter of preference or taste]" to "this is wrong [a matter of broader moral consequence]". That's a crucial turn to take. The potential disappearance of our historically distinct places into a nebulous global space is not just an abstract semantic change, not just a paradigm shift; it is a loss with a moral component. It is a tragedy.

How can this tragedy be articulated? We're generally very uncomfortable when people make broad categorical statements in a moral space. But I think the problem with those statements is not that they are broad or categorical or moral, but that they haven't gone through the process of wider validation, reflection, or scrutiny --- they're just made out of the initial emotion with no filter. What we're actually uncomfortable with is the implicit assumption that the problem is never with me but always with the world/system/whatever. But the opposite "always/never" statement isn't true either. The problem is not always with me (that is to say: not everything is a matter of taste or comfort or culture). So the question is not whether it is right or wrong to make categorical statements in moral domains (a moral question about moral questions?), but rather how do I negotiate the intersections and divergences of the brokenness in myself with the brokenness in the world? How can I tell when I'm uncomfortable because I'm broken, versus uncomfortable because the world is broken? Our hearts have valid things to say to us (this is something I have to relearn over and over) that are rooted in truths beyond just our preferences. There is a critical and beautiful process of realizing "this isn't due to my brokenness [though I am broken], I am perceiving aright, the world is broken and I can see it."

I think Castells is helping me contextualize more broadly those elements of my past experiences. It's easy to answer the question "what don't I like about this situation?" but it's not easy to say why I don't like it. In this case he pulls that deeper question into view, naming those things which are lost, and by extension, validating the sorrow in the losing. Social science is often afraid of those things which it cannot quantify (morality is a prime example), but what I appreciate most about Castells' analysis is that he communicates in a detached and factual manner, yet without being reductive. I find that exciting and encouraging --- we can talk about these issues in a way that is ultimately productive, decisive, and generally applicable, rather than just a self-indulgent and aimless expression of tastes or opinions, with no consequence to anyone but the expressing individuals.

Not posting for a while

I am on indefinite hiatus from the Internet. There have been a lot of things I would have loved to post here since August, but I've moved and my new residence has very spotty Internet access.

I now work for these people and these people. It takes up a lot of time. I am getting married on March 1st to this blogger, and planning that also takes up a lot of time. You are invited to my wedding (not joking). It will be in Narberth, Pennsylvania, at the church I grew up in. For the 6 months before I get married, I live here with a family of four. I really like living with them.

Rosetta just released Wake/Lift and is going on tour for ten days starting this weekend. As for future releases, given all the other things going on, everything is probably going to be really behind schedule.

What little free time I've had lately I've spent mostly riding and fixing bicycles.

Fin

Lucy, 1994-2007
The smallest Weed, riotous and headstrong.

The tower

This is the tallest man-made structure in the world. It is in Blanchard, North Dakota. I visited it while staying in Fargo on tour with Battlefields. I waited a long time to do this -- a site which is the pinnacle of a personal mythology, a dream-object, like my own personal Mount Olympus. It is no skyscraper, it is the anti-monument.

New spot

My old ISP host was inoperative more often than not, so I finally gave up and bought a domain name and a real web host. Welcome to AnchorStates.net, I suppose. Hopefully, Stars of the Lid will not be upset with me.

This might mean some expansion into a real website someday...

So, what IS black and white and read all over?

On a lighter note

Here is a picture of my fiancée, or rather two pictures. In real life she is actually very much like the fun cool one and not like the evil cosmo one. But I used to be really scared she would turn into the bad one (see previous post). If you don't know her, she is super fun to hang out with. I like her a lot.

Burning the old life

We burned everything left over from Linshuang's 9 months in New York. Client presentations, business cards, plane tickets, hotel stationery, bank statements. This is our altar, a burnt offering of sorts that recognizes that the final offering has already been made, and that our peace comes only with substitution. It is liberating to destroy the artifacts of the past, while creating an artifact of liberation itself.

Long-awaited amp post

Gear nerds, at long last: AMPS.


This is the live setup I've been using since about early 2005. The only change in all that time is that I now use a Marshall TSL-100 for a master head, instead of an AVT150H. The AVT150 + 1960B was what I used recording TGS and Project Mercury. The TSL wasn't a huge improvement right out of the box, but afforded MUCH more opportunity for tinkering, so it is currently being used with the same old 1960B to record the new Rosetta full-length, "Wake/Lift" (which will be out 9/28/07 on Translation Loss).

The pedal setup was posted before. I use no distortion pedals, everything on the board front-ends the amp, and all the drive comes from the master amp. Each guitar head drives a single 4x12, and the bass head drives a 4x10. The bass head is useful because our tuning (Bb F Bb Eb G C) is low enough that a guitar cabinet can't reproduce the fundamental frequency of the lowest string. Having the low end reinforcement means the 4x12s don't have to be driven as hard.

Nearly every component listed has been modified in some way (though the old AVT head was completely stock, no modifications). All of my guitars are also electrically modified, so the "Rosetta sound" or whatever you want to call it is not really created by any one piece of equipment. It's more the result of a laborious process of matching different components to each other, and when it doesn't fly, breaking out the soldering iron and making it work better.

TSL-100:
- JJ EL-34L + ECC83s hi-gain tubes from Eurotubes (noticeable improvement, + more headroom)
- 1 390pF cap in V3 and 2 47pF caps on volume pots for treble roll-off on Lead/Crunch channels, per this thread (huge improvement)
- FRED rectifiers to replace stock 1N4007 diodes [some info here] (jury's still out)
- 10H Choke from Mercury Magnetics (noticeable improvement)

3210 MOSFET:
- Stock Hitachi MOSFETs burned out, replaced with Magnatec BUZ900/905, +25W power gain

Hartke HA3500:
- JJ ECC83s tube swap

1960B:
Replaced two stock G12Ts with Vintage 30s. Now has 2 G12s and 2 V30s. We mic the V30s for recording.

Homebrew cab:
Was once a Crate 80W 4x12 (?). Now 300W with 4 G12Ts like a stock Marshall, but with its larger size, sound resembles a Sunn0))) 4x12. Rewired with switching jacks for selectable 4/16 ohm impedance (like a Marshall).

--- ---

Eventually I'm going to put up a permanent page on here for amp/guitar mod stuff that I do, with as many of the associated hard-to-find links as I can dig up. I have also been working extensively on two Valve Junior heads lately which have been doing stereo duty with my Frankenstein-like Telecaster and a delay pedal in Temet Nosce. This setup will also make a brief appearance on the new Rosetta.

[Trans/ad/e]mission

I have recently come into a greater personal consciousness of that particular strain of anti-western [read: anti-American] antagonism that is purportedly responsible for terrorism. A lot of talking heads will set this up as a Muslim/Christian conflict: an increasingly Muslim east against a [post-] Judeo-Christian west. That's a stereotype and it doesn't hold water. It's less a feud of the monotheists and more of a violent indictment of the religion of Self that has risen in the postindustrial world. I agree with the newly vocal minority of critics who suggest that what fundamentalist Muslims really hate is the godlessness, unqualified secularism, and rampant decadence of the consumerist west.

The thing is, I hate it too. The new imperialism is more insidious than the old. American pols talk the talk of "spreading democracy" but that quickly turns out to be a euphemism for the real (or hyperreal) gospel of the corporation. I don't need to rehash here the social sins of American institutions abroad. Those are only symptoms of a deeper disease that is not simply cultural or legal or structural. Forget Secular Humanism. We're way past that, post-humanist maybe. The new American gospel is Secular Consumerism. It tears away all mystery, atomizes individuals, and hurtles inexorably towards the Total Realization of Everything (cf. Baudrillard's Lucidity Pact) --- that self-destructive paradoxical finality where there is nothing left to imagine, so everything becomes unreal and illusory.

[We're virtual now. How can the suffering of Those people over There be real? My own life isn't real. I don't care what anybody does as long as my sustained virtuality is not interrupted. Put a needle in my arm and start pumping RSS and mini-feeds.]

Militant Islam has a reasonable goal (if not a reasonable method): to retain the right to have a society based on symbolic exchange, which maintains a place for mystery and imagination, and which has communal respect for the intrinsic boundaries of human beings. Our urge to "spread democracy" amounts to little more than a desperate attempt to legitimize, for ourselves first and others second, our new consumer religion. Everyone should live as we do. We feel threatened when they don't.

It gives me pause when I realize that if 9/11 had happened 5 years later than it did, some part of me would have seen a certain justice in the event. Our quintessentially American arena of pop discourse --- the on-screen spectacle --- was expertly used against us. Our monumental, phallic shrine to pure money --- dollars representing nothing tangible, capital divorced from the object realm and Platonized to an abstract fetish --- was destroyed in a jarringly physical way. Though I would never, ever condone one human being taking the life of another, I am certain that I hate everything those towers represented just as much as the zealots who destroyed them. I see the same injustice, oppression, imperialism, complacency, decadence, and deception that they saw. I mourn for those lives lost (not innocent lives, simply ignorant lives), but I refuse to mourn for the wounds of the institution. The only difference between our "enemy" and me is that I cannot, will not, set myself up as judge and executioner --- because I and those I love have been complicit in oppression, and we are guilty as well. For that I am filled with remorse.

Tangentially: the God that I believe in does not allow us to take vengeance into our own hands. He does not, as so many others, make himself known by his capacity to destroy or to punish or inflict. Instead, He says, "Look what I have made." He is known by the ability to create that which is good and to repair that which is broken. Yet vengeance still belongs to Him, because only a God whose essence wholly contains and defines Beauty and Creation and Wholeness and Love could be trusted to take vengeance justly. Furthermore, a God who does not take vengeance could not be said to love or to care, or to be anything other than transcendently apathetic. And I believe that at the last, He will take just revenge --- not on human beings whom He loves, but assuredly on all the towering structures of human greed and oppression. Though for the moment, we are beating Him to it by destroying ourselves. The God I believe in is not spiteful, but is grieved by us.

Another thought: It is entirely possible that my sentiments here will land me under scrutiny by some kind of governmental body, or on some sort of "watch list." So be it. That is simply more damning evidence that our insipid secular consumerism is just as dogmatic and theocratic as any fundamentalist regime in the Middle East. We're the real fascists now.

[A nod to this post for provoking some of this]

p.s.

By the way, I also got engaged.

One hundred

This is my 100th post to this "blog." It was supposed to be a long essay that I could be very proud of, about the rise of Gnostic thought in American consumerism, and about how hedonism degraded the body while true asceticism exalted the body, blah blah blah. But that essay never really materialized, and I haven't posted for almost two months. Maybe I'll finish it sometime, I don't know.

Instead, there are no theses, no solid propositions, nothing organized to say. My mother and sister miraculously were not killed in a car accident two weekends ago. Instead of thinking high-minded academic thoughts, I sit in my room in silence and tinker and build; I employ my hands to root myself in a physical reality, a manual safety --- to take my mind off of the fact that half of my family could have died, should have died, but didn't. I can't explain this in purely rational, materialist terms. I watched my mother try to open her swollen eyes after emergency brain surgery and I crumbled, because all the rational thought in the world is dust in the face of something so incomprehensible. It happens every day, it's average. Yet it seems that no logic or abstraction can give any insight into something as fundamental as fear of loss. This is where the limits of our psychological supports become most apparent.

I remember when I was 18, I knew everything. By the time I turn 24 next month, I will know absolutely nothing. It's a stupid cliché: you don't know the value of anything until you face the prospect of losing it. No one knows the value of human life until they see how easily it may be crushed. You invincible captains of pleasure, epicurean connoisseurs of human sense and drama, cosmopolitans, remember: life is fragile, life is short.

St. Louis

1/1/07, 11:30am
Post-Urbana-evac, prior to 15-hour drive home

St. Louis is an okay place (buildings by Louis Sullivan = awesome), but I had three complaints. First, nobody lives in the city center; it's all hotels and offices, which made me a little sad. Second, as a result of the lack of actual residents, everything closes at 6pm. I couldn't find food after 6 except at a grocery store. Third, Wawa does not have any stores in metro St. Louis.

Urbana 06

Imagine if you had to spend 11 straight days with this person!

Xmas

Here lives the family that is absolutely free to be at peace with itself. 12/25 is its day of renewal.

Three

These are for my mom for Christmas. I hate family photos, they always look blown out by on-camera flash, everything flattens into the background, and everybody always has that same dumb "picture smile" on. They're awkward. I wanted to make something closer to what we really look like.

(I'll post those requested amp/guitar diagrams later.)

Pedals

It occurred to me that a few of you who read this might be interested in some more mundane tech stuff. People ask about pedals more than they ask about amps and guitars. This is the effects setup I use touring with Rosetta. I just rebuilt it to accommodate some new components.



This is completely nerdy but I like talking about gear. Usually when we tour with other bands, one of the early friendly connections is gear talk. It's like shop talk, or book talk, or hey-you-like-Twin-Peaks-too talk.

Comfort / Space / Steadfastness

I keep returning to this place. I first came to it in person a little less than two years ago, to explore it with a 6x6 manual TLR camera as a metric proxy for my eyes, which were overwhelmed.



As much as half of my constructive output over the last two years has made use of this site. I have finally concluded that the reason is comfort. I was explaining to a friend recently that there are some things which, though they are simple, overlooked, or odd, are comforting and beautiful to us because they are steadfast. They remain. In the context of that conversation I somewhat facetiously referred to peanut butter as one such thing. Though everything fall apart, I will still enjoy peanut butter. This is reassuring.

These towers, though both hyperrational and ethereal, are comforting like peanut butter. Every night since I first moved to Philadelphia at age 8, to this day, I have been able to see their pulsating red lights from the window next to my bed. Thus, to me they represent steadfastness and transcendence in a way that can never be expressed in words, because the subjects themselves stand silent. Their idiom is the glow, the hum, the breeze, grass, metal, and radiation: a quiet spring of enormous power, a bridge between earth and sky. (Given my sentiments about media and information, it would be entirely appropriate and expected if I hated and feared them. Quite the opposite.) Ironically, though they are implements of broadcast, in my mind they do not impose or interject. They watch. Their vigil is not invasive, judgmental, or in any way reminiscent of Big Brother; rather it is patient, reliable, and benevolent --- as friends ought to be. As such, the towers stand as a tangible, monumental, omnivisible reminder of the unseen power which guides my steps and Remains, though everything else be ruined. Perhaps this is naive.

Back

to 1992.

I found this in a drawer that I hadn't opened in many years. I had lived in Philadelphia for 7 months when it was taken.

2006.3-11.24 (8 mo.)

I am very thankful.

Internal space

Crown him the lord of peace, whose power a scepter sways
From pole to pole, that wars may cease, and all be prayer and praise.