Posts
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the not knowing: cage and calvinism
it’s been a while since i’ve been deeply unsettled by the lack of resolution in a film, especially if the film’s conceit is overall preposterous. however, having just experienced the disquieting jouissance of such cinematic bombast last night, here i am, with a need to verbalize and process this tormentand whom else would i have to thank for this but my favorite member of the coppola family, nicolas cage, rumplestiltskin of the dramatic arts that he is. what, then, of the film that originated this long-winded introduction of this disquiet from theological and epistemological perspectives? it would be none other than KNOWING (2009, dir. alex proyas). spoilers follow, so be forewarned, lest ye find not your salvation.
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lostalgia
for a good part of my life i’ve had trouble with the past, at least my own. it was uncomfortable to sit with, to remember, to make sense of. however, music has been the notable exception. even therein this feels fraught when i start to think about reunion shows and tours which continue to arise with an alarming frequency as bands and albums i grew up with push their 30th anniversaries (in some cases more). at varying points, i felt like these reunion shows were ridiculous. i didn’t full-on object from the standpoint that a band would be “cashing in” well after the fact. internally, though, i felt sheepish: was i trying to live in the past yet again? was i refusing to move on? such questions really prevented me from exploring these ways to reconnect to an earlier time and place. what tipped the scales, however, was the decision to see The Doobie Brothers about a year and a half ago. -
on jubilee
a poem inspired by receiving #PSLF -
a secret third thing
this is neither a year in review post nor a resolutions post, but a secret third thing.
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grief and rage makes us do funny things
or at least makes us deal with abjection in new ways.
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It's not really leaving if you have somewhere better to be
2022 is proving to be a year of many profound changes. There are two big transitions going in my life: one professional, and one personal.
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On finishing what you started
In the best of times, “year in review”-style blog posts can be inspiring and provide an important sense of closure. When it’s not the best of times, they can be painful reminder of your own misgivings and missteps. Time has moved differently over the last two years, and the calendar itself no longer feels like a good marker of even the progression of days and months that have intervened. But here I am, wanting for the closure that such a review would provide. It feels dissatisfying not to remember that I have finished many things over the last 13 or 14 months, but the struggle to articulate them all has been incredibly real. While I may not touch on all of them, the goal is to describe some highlights to help me retain some perspective.
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Cons(train)ed music: a kit for the traveling ambient artist
After an intense year and a half (pandemic, work, other personal stuff) I needed a vacation. I booked a trip on the Amtrak Empire Builder to go from Seattle to Milwaukee and Chicago. Because of persistent low-grade burnout, I wanted to use the considerable time I’d have offline to work on creative projects including music and writing. This is a brief writeup inspired by The Setup that talks about what I brought with me in an effort to travel relatively light.
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On Sourcery, or the enclosure(?) of remote access
In this post, I try to unpack some of my concerns around Sourcery as raised in my Society of California Archivists keynote, and how they relate to the visibility of archival labor, austerity, and enclosure. -
IAH Forecast - Disquiet Junto Project 0476
An experiment with recording a new single using VCV Rack and REAPER based on a compositional prompt. I ended up recording two tracks.