hi! today i ran a little test for my ambient radio idea. brought my micro audio interface and clippy mics to a coffee shop, found a corner, and am typing away..
this is also the first time that i pushed the updates onto chia.audio
to expand:
perhaps the ambient radio concept can be in its own space, with many ambient radio recordists. i would like this to be a way for me to hear my other friends, and for their friends to hear them. perhaps we can form an ambient radio collective and take turns broadcasting.. if you want to do this with me, let me know!
i’m currently using https://www.radiomast.io/ to host the icecast stream, using ladiocast for broadcasting. i’m too lazy to set up a vps, but if i weren’t, i would use azuracast. might do this soon since it’s so easy to set it up on a digitalocean droplet (but i have to pay right away and radiomast has a 2 week free trial) — if anyone is curious about current infrastructure
bought a smalll portable air conditioner that will likely break on me in a few, because it’s 32 degrees in new haven
came back from a 5-day trip in chicago with friends to go to pitchfork music festival. pics of that below
am waiting for the monome norns + grid july restock and haven’t shut up about it; using op1 more as a sampler and very expensive midi keyboard now
have been making useless things on max for live
am trying to pick out the best (read: interesting) blog posts from when i was teenager to compile into a little book before i leave new haven
am thinking about really starting tha label
haven’t been able to feel my body for a few days – maybe from overstimulation? now it feels incredibly null. touching things but not really feeling it, when a lone brush of shoulder would make me scream.
am currently watching an old but ripped white man do crunches on the maya lin women’s table (at least not on the fountain area)
got accepted into a weekend sound art residency in the woods of washington called campbient. i tweeted about it and dont know why i did
am scared of moving to san francisco, but am excited for my job (? is this bad?)
am tired from talking to too much people. . i think i need to be alone for a long long long long time.. its not as energizing; i like periods where i am distant but connected, you know? i like feeling that the world is here waiting – i can drop by any moment
reading too much philosophy books
writing scary words like the ones i used to write when i was locked in my bedroom for most of my life before eighteen at graveyards and parks and in the outside, kind of reveling in the idea of the droves of tourists walking around yale seeing absolutely batshit insane density of text. in truth, nobody really cares and these words go on
don’t know whoi am
life is unusually still lately; i’m segmenting myself to better understand it (this body) and am both discomforted & comforted by the only realization that has ever mattered: that the world is something i can just as easily change and make; that i owe consistency to no one (so the choice to give it is particularly priceless) and constant radical reinvention is the only way i’ve made it this far
this is of course thinking in the short-term. how i act and my affects are apparent to myself alone, and the only way others can realize my changed self is through the act of consistency—which is conveniently something i’ve been evading for the past few years. my favorite thing to do is disappear and count clocks and feel so small until i snap out of it and realize the smallness is the good thing about the living.
i started uploading pictures of what i do each month to chia.pics, as mentioned before. i still am writing in my diary, albeit slowly. i’m scattering my thoughts everywhere with no intent but for the certainty of seeing them written. my idea of perception is that i love feeling everything all at once and blurring my senses as necessary. when i read letters they are unfiltered and when i speak it tends to go the same. i don’t know if i’m interested in stories, but i like hearing them. i wonder how much of this generation is growing up in a way that is self-referential, constantly checking in on some idealized perception of themselves/following some code of being and comparing themselves against this metric. what i mean is there are standardized identities of being and the desire for ‘subversion’ is still pitting yourself against a construct, falling into another construct. i fell into this quite badly as a teenager and am still teaching myself to regress to normal brands of lookism (last night i reread ted chiang’s calliagnosia short story and thought it was shit) that do in fact dominate how we think—by hating nice looking things less. i revel in this reversed brand of trust-distrust but look at myself in the mirror too much while not liking what i see, knowing too that this is something i can change at any moment—but is also so useless and superficial. i hate optical assessments. i hate representations. i hate how no one makes the good abstractions these days. i hate how i refuse to contribute to most conversations i’m in because no thinking goes beyond the first order and all i hear are the obvious. maybe human conversation is about saying the obvious to each other, because the obvious as we see it cannot be readily accepted unless it is obvious to everyone else. i like it when things are only obvious to myself. i love it when i am in spaces when these things that i thought only obvious to myself are obvious to everyone around, and i can suddenly operate in new social contexts with (i guess, looser, free-er, healthier willpowered) the self without filter. but i have to find the self… and it’s been eluding me for quite sometime
i think i will find myself after i remember them. lately have been thinking a lot about my relationship to the internet and memory and what it means when i participate (or maybe even ‘lead’) in the creation of culture, which i suppose is what anyone who exists digitally (and moreso someone who finds a huge part of themselves in it) tends to find themselves in. it’s not good to be in control of my self-representation here; i feel too curated so the best thing i can do on the internet is show all of my life and let someone else find the wonder in it. that’s just like existing in the real world! i don’t think i have many nice memories. i don’t think many people have memories with me in it. so my only solution, for now, is to contribute to culture in other means — something more subtle but wide-reaching, perhaps. to allow myself to be content with dedicating the self to a pursuit that will not be remembered. to be content with, myself as the memory, remembering my own self— and nothing else after.
i’m listening too much — interrogating what i am listening / an overload of abstraction is just as bad as wandering aimlessly; i have an idea now of what i like and what i don’t like but how much of it is rooted in an unnecessary resistance? i’m getting easily tired of things that normally bring other people joy, and am not feeling any particular pressure to do anything but prove that i am myself and i can survive as (the self) alone after being a figure always paired with attachment. of course, to forego all connection to the world is the surest way to leave it quick
i like it when things ask for love because it’s a stupid thing to ask for and a stupid thing to be seen doing, so it must be less stupid when they do
reading a book about walking that differentiates the stupid lunch break type “this is sufficient” 10k steps counting and emphasizes the need to let the mind roam. wander mountains or webs and let the mind rest on what it wants to seize. this is how i might want to live. unlearning a lot of things about how to see the world is hard, especially when you want to formulate how you want to see all by yourself. it’s sometimes nice to hear someone else tell you what they see. maybe i should stop being sad when i don’t see the same things as someone, but i am burdened with the need to experience and know every emotion and sight that has ever been felt — not because i want to feel that particular way too, or hold onto it, but because i want to experience the full spectrum of the world over and over. i have control now, over the pang, the suffering. i’m particularly good at hating things that are supposed to be the most joyful moments, like when i graduated from college like two months ago and walked on a stage thinking about how to kill myself quickly and silently. i love to feel the deepest ecstasy when i am doing something relatively mundane. all these emotions i can control and suddenly smallness is an indeterminate factor to the joy of being
holding onto physical objects is another particular joy for me. i want to leave marks and scuffs on everything, show that something has been used. in the new age nobody cares about keeping anything for themselves: pictures and media, things left to resell. i’m collecting things so i can form some picture of what had mattered to me, when and where, maybe even as to tell a bit of a ‘why’ to the meaning i find here (on this earth). im destroying the boxes because they dont offer any clues as to what had moved me to love a thing. documenting the things in use, what has been produced, how ive thought about them
saving myself in the margins, thinking about the perfect poem as a box unopened, thinking about how the perfect emotion is the one you havent felt. ive been longing for lots of dark things lately. ive been thinking plenty about the end
I have never been more certain about the meaning of ‘optionality’. This life, mine, is optional——
…
Too much to redact
…
My heart must feel the very bottom of spring it must face the things it has always feared (exposure therapy?) — if you are so obsessed with death, you must try it.
