life in The Future

Last night I dreamt that soulhaus and her husband lived in a huge stone mansion in the middle of a city, maybe New York City. The mansion was falling apart. Facades had long crumbled, no electrical lights worked, and the place was stripped of most large movable objects, though the bars were filled with stored, dusty shot and wine glasses. On a side of the building there was a fountain outside a sunroom where I found someone (in hindsight, that reminded me of myself) sitting. Their old wrought-iron chair was standing in the shallow water of the still-running fountain, and I kicked water down the terraces to the collection pool below. Back inside I found Matt and Kim sitting in a giant ballroom. They had pulled one of the old grotto tables into a corner of the room near the bar and were sitting there, drinking cocktails, getting Fudge to run among the ruins of the aristocracy.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

Shirley Jackson, "The Haunting of Hill House"

Many people see Jim as an extraordinary creator and I realize that I see Jim first as an appreciator. He appreciated so much. He loved London. He loved walking on the heath. He loved Parliament Hill, flying kites. He appreciated his family and his colleagues and his Muppet family and he appreciated the performance and the design of a puppet. He appreciated the detail on a Persian rug. He appreciated beauty. I really don't believe that Jim could have been such an extraordinary creator if he hadn't been such an extraordinary appreciator.
—Frank Oz

I find that it's very important for me to stop every now and then and get recharged and reinspired. The beauty of nature has been one of the great inspirations in my life. Growing up as an artist, I've always been in awe of the incredible beauty of every last bit of design in nature. The wonderful color schemes of nature that always work harmoniously are particularly dazzling to me. I love to lie in an open filed looking up at the sky. One of my happiest moments of inspiration came to me many years ago as i lay on the grass, looking up into the leaves and braches of a big old tree in California. I remember feeling very much a part of everything and everyone.
—Jim Henson

It's Not Easy Being Green, pages 134 & 135.

Alone in a centrally heated, air-conditioned capsule, drugged, fed with music and erotic imagery, the parts of his consciousness separated into components that reach everywhere and nowhere, the private citizen of the future will have become one with the end of effort and the triumph of sensation divorced from action.

From "The Private Future" by Martin Pawley, 1973(4?).

Someone buys the cheap beer but the expensive kitchen garbage bags. What does that say to you?

1. Jason pointed out to me how the invention of the farrowing cage decreases piglet mortality by preventing the mother from rolling over and killing the piglets such that we humans do not suffer economic losses in our march toward killing the animals ourselves for profit.

2. Today I am doing some background reading on something tangential when I stumble upon a lineage of research into the development of porcine Circovirus 2 vaccines to reduce pig mortality such that we humans do not suffer economic losses in our march toward killing the animals ourselves for profit.

It's just kind of fucked up.

There are occasionally mornings where I'll wake up pre-dawn because of some intense dreams and then not be able to fall back to sleep. Today is one of those mornings. Fortunately, the universe seems to conspire to give me something in exchange for those couple hours of peace and rest. I usually get up, put on a sweatshirt and read in the living room until the sun squeezes through the blinds. Then it's time for breakfast.

Leaving the house, I forget to grab the good rock I found at Mom & Dad's house. Twice. Getting in the car, I did not have Green Machine to play music. I turn on the radio and it's 89.5 (NPR). I switch to 94.9 (alternastream) and it's Halloran: "this is Halloran on 94.9, live from the Belly-Up, Grizzly Bear." And they launch into Two Weeks. So you can imagine how I feel. I am having a significant moment in my car. Driving to lab. Late for a show. A good show, too, goddamn, they are on. So I'm driving along because it's the same way both places and they play While You Wait For The Others. Then Halloran announces, "going to be a great show, line's already around the block, totally sold out." And so then that all kind of whacked me sideways. So THEN I'm driving up the road to lab and the lines on the street are like, playing in time with the music, and the shadows on the trees were just lit up, so quiet and crazy. So, like I said, a series of moments. The world is quite something.

I went to bed at 10:30 last night and consequently was woken up by a dream at 5:30. After tossing and turning until about 6:12, I went for a run.

The sunrise was incredible.

If there is one song that summarizes my life right now, it is probably The Dirty Projectors' "Fluorescent Half-Dome." That said, I spend a lot of time listening to Panda Bear's Person Pitch as well. When I need to focus, I am liking Flying Lotus' live sets. Word.

Kiwi and I were out having some deep-playa time after the Man burned. We saw a giant light and a forklift off in the distance, but were headed for the apex of the trash fences to see what there was to see. Some engineers from Berkeley had just worked out a hand gesture communication system for solving the giant Rubik's cube. After making a few rounds, we saw that the forklift was back extended again so we walked over. It was Spark (artists' site). It was amazing watching the reflections dance around...but then My Girls started playing.

I freaked right the fuck out.

[The] promise of the post-industrial society has been realized.

Thomas M. Siebel, addressing Stanford engineering students in February of 2009, via NYTimes.

aphelion

I was in the Bay area for 19 hours. Next week I'm going to beat that record by flying out of San Diego at 8:15am and arriving back in San Diego at 10:30pm.