Brave New World

Good, but flawed. It worked for me all the way up to the end, where the believability starts spiralling away into the clouds. The hero whips his own back in religious fervor to punish himself for lusting after a woman. His whip til he bleeds, and he curses himself for even thinking about her. It is outrageous, for the simple fact that you just can't relate. His earlier doe-eyed astonishment of a world of extreme brings initially you into his character. When he asks why things are the way they are, we ask with him. When he criticizes some of their ways, he merely speaks for us. When he cries for his dying mother, we feel his rage and sorrow. Then he starts RAPING HIS OWN BACK!!!! It just comes out of nowhere. But, Aldous Huxley admits as much, saying that to bring it to such an absurd end was amusing to him at the time. Well fuck that.

Other thoughts

- Huxley knows what being truly alone feels like. There are alot of outsider type heroes in popular culture, but Huxley deftly expresses the pure despair of being alone. There is at once both anger and yearning, to intentionally rebel and to still feel somehow you have to fit in somewhere. You search and you search, and you may find some like-minded individuals, but you still feel alone. It becomes a spiritual journey, and you feel forever in darkness. Eventually and maybe suddenly, it reaches a point of pure terror, when you realize that nobody in the fucking universe can help you. You are stuck there in the darkness, and it's fresh and immediate and alarming. Then you realize: it's just you.

The main hero feels this despair. When he is introduced as person stuck between two cultures I was immediately hooked. The book then became something more than just a sci-fi exploration of a future technological path. Y'know, maybe it became rather an exploration of outsider status to identity. Too bad it went off the goofy side.

- This man's vocabulary is fucking amazing. I'm studying for the GRE and it's like Huxley was given an assignment to write a book with every single GRE word in there. No wonder they assign it in highschools.

- Huxley also admits another fault: instead of having to choose between a cold, clinical modern world and the brutal, violent reservation, Huxley would've included a third option that fit somewhere inbetween those two. He considers the book in it's current state philosophically incomplete, and I agree. It bothered me for a bit, because what the book as written is saying if you aren't living your emotions and desires to their complete end, you aren't living as an adult. The people of the book's modern world are genetically programmed and environmentally conditioned to be 24/7 satiated so that no strong desires arise. That state of being is related as being a child, or maybe immature. It's funny, the whole time they're talking shit about being content, I'm wondering if Huxley has an anti-Buddhist agenda. Anyways, he sets up that world as the diametric opposite of the reservation life, and clearly it's the reservation life that he champions. The reservation life with disease, mob violence, substance abuse, and an extreme in-group mentality. The reservation life that causes the hero so much misery and self-conflict that he starts whipping himself. And you read on and on til the end and you wonder why, with all these evils, is it being championed. And you read the foreword and you find that it's for no good reason, other than it's amusing. Sorry, I'd agree with Huxley himself, I'd change it. I felt too much for this guy for him to descend into some half-assed cartoon.

markmaking in drawing is a good analogy for sound in music. some use both as a means to an end, and some use both as an end in theirselves. i think you can get fucking gloriously lost in just sound with the aid of repetition. melody and structure are present, but they fall to the wayside. the same with markmaking: in figure drawing i saw pieces by other students where the figure was discernible, but it wasn't really the point. charred up, fucked up, fat and thin lines criss-crossed subject matter into oblivion, we're not dealing with representation anymore. get lost in the details, get lost in the moment.

inductive logic seems to be the cause of most of humanity's misunderstandings. ex: if A of group 2 is bad, then all of group 2 is bad.

happens with music all the time. it's easy to stereotype music, because labels give a convenient organizational method. ex: if Aceyalone is hip-hop and you hate hip-hop, you must hate Aceyalone. the end result is you're missing out on a fuckload of good music. it's necessary to generalize, but to generalize negatively in a broad absolute way means you miss out on life.

i hate conversations where you go "my experience is x," then as soon as you stop and maybe a little bit before they go "my experience is y which is only tangently related but i'll say it anyways because i have nothing to add and only heard words coming out of your mouth and not any actual ideas conveyed and i might as well be listening to a frog croaking because really i just want to talk about myself and avoid conversational dead space because then i have to actually think about what you're saying". happens all the time, especially with super-social people and even more when i was younger.

sometimes it's nice hearing someone just spill about themselves though, it's sorta confessional and voyeuristic to experience it and tells you another aspect of their personality besides the actual content of the conversation. also easy to tune out because they dont expect any real response.

i think it happens alot with good friends because you don't really need that 'connecting with' follow-up questioning portion, you already know you're connected and usually you understand where the other person is coming from. it's like saying 'oh, i understand' is implicitly said because you're already close. you don't have to ask what they mean, or the context, because you already know.

another exception to the rule is when you're drunk. god damn can you go on and on about the stupidest bullshit when you're drunk.

i guess i'm on a run of attacking commonly used words. slut is one i've been meaning to write on for a while. i don't have anything exciting to say that hasn't been said before - it's a double-standard, sexist word, socially constructed idea, yadda yadda yadda. despite it's disgusting meaning to some, it's disgusting to ME to hear it used the way it oftenly is. WHY is there a negative stigma attached to someone enjoying themselves? that's really what it comes down to.

admittedly that negative stigma can be very intense. i think it takes a bit of logic, to realize someone else is dictating what you should enjoy, and a lot of self-confidence, to stand up to the pressure of conformity, to be free of negative stigma.

i wasn't supposed to like rap. i wasn't supposed to like rock. i wasn't supposed to like idm. i'm still not even supposed to like girly shit or pop. growing up and being very impressionable, i often succumbed to these pressures. as someone who was very into alternative rock, i was ashamed for even thinking rap was listenable. even now, i love listening to mainstream hiphop, but i get disapproval from friends who are supposedly above that. and on the other side of the coin, as an asian who's supposed to like techno and rap, i felt inadequately asian for listening to rock. and as a 'normal person', why the fuck would i want to listen to weird atonal shit with no vocals? as a guy, there are times even now when i feel less 'manly' for listening to ultra-effeminate music. that is one strong ass stigma to fight.

in the end though, one of the greatest epiphanies in my life was when i stopped letting what i was supposed to like affect what i genuinely liked. i'll form my own criteria for what's good. others think who you are should guide what you like. i think what i like guides who i am.

thumpd
it never ceases to amaze me the thing thats we choose to remember, the things that we respond to, the things we are stimulated by. what's the process of 'hey, i think this is interesting'? the things that impact me, i have this huge urge to take a step back and consider 'why?'. many times it's conditioning, but equally many times i have just no fucking idea. just no fucking idea. we all are saturated with so much media in our daily lives, why do the things that do pop out from the deluge pop out in the first place? i guess what i'm trying to do with this blog is articulate the why's that i do find. i see it as a challenge. often in writing you'll see 'this is something that words can not describe'. that's just laziness.

(not to say that reading text about something is the same as experiencing it. of course not. but to say 'this is something that words can not describe', is to say 'i cant find the words to describe this". it's evading fault.)

a common liberal standpoint
is "don't legislate morality". it is always pointed at conservative lawmakers. my teacher even said this in class about gay marriage laws. but... when the fuck is legislation NOT morally-defined? it's ridiculous to think that liberal lawmakers are completely unbiased and not guided by a sense of what's right and what's wrong. it's more like saying hey, "don't legislate YOUR morality. mine's ok though". just plain hypocritical.

relating it to music...
"dont legislate morality" is like saying "dance music sucks". music has different functions, and when people say things like "dance music sucks" they are invalidating the type of music. their music can serve a function for themselves, but if music that serves a different function for others, then it sucks. like "dont legislate morality", it's speaks of more than just personal preference. it's saying what i listen to is more legitimate than what you listen to, or in the case of 'legislating morality', what i legislate is more legitimate than what you legislate.

sitting here at my house with a decent 3 speaker set up, a thought just occured to me. the way i listen to music now at my apartment is a 2 speaker boombox system that sits way up high above my head. i still love music as ever, but the images that go through my head now are pretty different than what it was when i was living at home.

the way i used to visualize music was very layered, the bass sounds occupying the lower ground and mid and treble sounds occupying higher ground. very much affected by the 3 speaker setup with the sub on the floor. the funny thing is, this is the way i visualized music for a long ass time, to the point to where i often thought, 'how the hell else could you visualize music, it just makes sense!!'. bass sounds below other sounds. how more common sense can you get. but now, with this other setup, i dont visualize the sounds in music containing such distinctiveness in layering. there's depth, but not to the level it was before. like one of those magic eye illusions depths.

i think i prefer this 3 speaker setup, even though i'm 100 percent sure the 2 speaker boombox has higher fidelity.

child sexuality
one of the most mysterious, provocative, and taboo subjects. i read an enlightening essay on it one of my sociology books of which the following points struck me most: 1) child sexuality is definitely normal, 2) the aim of most normal child sexuality is self-stimulation, 3) child sexuality is not erotic (aiming for the goal of sex and or orgasm) but rather sensual (merely pleasurable) 4) children's sexual expressions are oftened misinterpreted as adult sexual expressions.

anyways, related enough for me to write on, my mom was babysitting a three year old when i was visiting home. he's hilarious, a cute and funny little man who's always talking and laughing. We took him to the t-mobile store with us. this very pretty woman came in, about mid 20s, dressed nice, nice hair, just well presented. the normally rambunctious kid didn't say a single word the whole time. he couldn't take his eyes off of her, to the point to where when she left he contorted his body around just to stare behind him at her as she walked out the door. it was almost like watching a guy my age stare down a girl. it's not like I took this as sign of his sexuality, but it could easily be interpreted as such. either way, it was fascinating to witness because i wouldn't think the power of attraction/beauty could have such a hold on a kid.

rules (and reminders) for life 6-17

Life isn't supposed to be comfortable.

Just accept yourself as you are and live as you are supposed to. That is freedom.

Don't ever say no to a reasonable invitation to do something that might be fun. This is a WASP rule, and one of the reasons why rich white people rule the planet.

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.

Be unwavering and uncompromising. Be willing to make huge mistakes, but make them because they're on your back.

You have to honor failure, because failure is just the negative space around success.

When you arise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive: to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

The point of life is to be fully aware of it.

I am not young enough to know everything.

All meetings are once in a life time. That you have met them and are traveling with them, that is fate. No matter what happens hereafter.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Life is what happens to you while your busy making other plans.

If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.

For there is nothing hid which shall not be manifest; neither was anything kept secret but that it should come abroad.

The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.

I can argue any stupid position if I redefine all the terms that are relevant to the discussion to mean completely different things than they actually mean.

All talent defines is where you start, not where you end.

I stand in the way of the things I can be.

an expansion on music as spirituality
excerpt from an article about tantric sex discussing a full body orgasm:

"Instead of a localized genital release, you experience a prolonged series of subtle, continuous wavelike pulsations that spread through the body, resulting in the impression that you are melting in your partner."

it sounds extremely similar to what i have experienced with just music. everyone knows that you can get pleasure from music, but this is on another level - a spiritual orgasm?
(laying down on a cosmic beach at the edge of the ocean, eyes closed, tide repeatedly flowing over my body)

on another note: a friend giving constructive criticism of my writing said that i needed to write more about how the music ties in with my personal experiences (such as, this track reminds me of when my dog died, or whatever). the problem is, i just dont experience music that way. music (usually) occupies a totally abstract plane of existence. i theorize about it because only intellectual discussion can disect it. it happens that it's not that the music takes me to a time and place in MY life, but that the music pushes me to reach out towards something else.

all music isnt like this for me, but for the most part (even pop music) it is. not to say there aren't certain types of music that facilitate this mental reaching out, such as electronic music. that abstract alien quality that electronic music can do so well is definitely why i hold electronic music in the highest regard.

5 shows in 3 weeks, fucking ridiculous. pinback, caribou, autechre, prefuse 73, melt banana. i became addicted to the live show this month. i rediscovered the power of volume - how mere loudness can shake my consciousness into experiencing something higher.

or more primal, because it's a sensory experience with the thinnest layer of interpretation possible. the volume is so loud, the music is so engaging, i don't think, i just feel. maybe primal and transcendent are interchangeable though, cutting through the bullshit so you can just exist at that very moment. be here now, and stuff. the live show seems to me the best way to experience sound as revelation. i guess the purpose that religion serves for most people, i use music for - it's very much intensely spiritual. it's not uncommon for me to get chills, or rushes of physical and mental euphoria when listening to music. it literally feels like a warm wave of positive fluid that slowly envelops me. i feel connected to the very basic feelings of humanity, experiencing the universal strands that connect us all. at once both humbling and empowering.

caribou was the best show that represented music as religion. there were great twinkly melodies and chugging basslines that noodled along, then huge orgasmic technicolor explosions of sound that would blast any semblance of thinking consciousness away, leaving me to melt in the vibrations of rainbow frequencies operating at independent speeds. there times i felt as if i had to push against the cascades of noise because i was being so overwhelmed, like a lone tree in the path of a tremendous river.

music as religion, or sound as revelation, was best shown by caribou's show, but the capacity for that was in the other shows too. i hadn't even heard melt banana before, but just the allure of some really fucking loud noise drew me in. overall i think each show was pretty unique, each one emphasizing a different function that music can fulfill.

pinback showed me the awesomeness of a live band. it was very much in a technical way in which i was wow-ed, the precision of the playing and the clarity of his voice. the way they played against each other, it was like watching gears rotate in mechanized machinery. on a side note, the main singer looked nothing like i imagined. stocky and bearded as opposed to skinny and gaunt.

oh yeah, and i rediscovered dancing at this show. i think being physically moved is an integral part of live shows, whether merely nodding your head and tapping your toes or full out limb flailing spazzing out. what does it mean? it means that the power of sound has fucking infiltrated you in such a way that it breaks down social constraints/mental inhibitions that stop you from a very natural physical response. fuck art, let's dance. let's be here now and forget how goofy i might possibly look, what the world thinks of me, i just want to love and appreciate this music and be moved by it.

five shows, lots of dancing. the least though was at autechre. while i enjoyed their show, which seemed to focus on more danceable material than i would have normally expected, i don't think it was up to par as the other shows ive seen. maybe it was lack of familiarity, as i have fallen out of listening to any of their newer stuff. the venue/crowd response might've also had something to do with it. compared to haileys (which i saw the other shows at), trees seems almost subterranean, dark and cave-like. lots of empty space, with the performers way up and distant from the crowd. people wandered around, by their expressionless faces you couldn't tell if people were enjoying the show or not. the music itself actually seemed like ep7ish, heavy thuddish beats with fantastic digital strangulations of sound. i think in the right venue and with the right crowd it wouldve been a more energetic show.

snd who opened for autechre actually put on the better show. i'm just fascinated with their aesthetic. it's a limited palette of glitchy very synthetic crystalline pads and techy minimal breakbeats. it seems they've been working with this for a while - the music they played couldve easily came from 'tender love', which came out in 2002. minimalism really appeals to me though because the end effect it creates is an emphasis on the sounds used and the composition of space. when you listen to minimal music, you become very aware of arrangement. i think what i find fascinating about snd in particular is that they make this funky. you can dance to this stuff! it's like dancing to a stop motion video of lego architecture.


prefuse 73 was utterly fantastic. i recognized about 85% of the stuff he played, which i think really helps with losing yourself in the music. hearing my favorite songs played live, it was bliss. so i guess i learned recognition of songs can be a key (although not necessary) ingredient in a fantastic live show. not having to listen to a song for the first time seems like one less obstacle to have to break through, because when first listening to something there's seems to be alot of mental thought in expectation and anticipating structure changes.

melt banana, who i never heard before, but heard of, was very fun. i guess this was the show that proved to me the importance of the visual aspect. at all the shows i always push myself to near the front, i have to see the performers. i need that visual stimulation. and when the performers are as energetic and charismatic melt banana, it makes the show that much better. they were almost like cartoons, exagerrated poses and almost too ridiculous clothing, with gunfire paced freakouts and thirty second songs.

there were many times at all the shows where i didnt look at the performers, just closed my eyes and danced. but when i did open them, i expected to see visual confirmation that hey, they really ARE playing this music. in reality though they could all be lip synching, or like snd and autechre just sitting behind a laptop, me having no idea if they were doing this shit live or checking their email. it's all an illusion really, the visual aspect of a live performance, because i think what really matters in the end is the huge gi-normous sound. this is why i think raves work so well, barely anyone's looking at the dj, they're just into the music for the music's sake. the visual aspect is an illusion, but i think it's necessary. if i were to truly find out that say, hey, i'm not watching pinback really play, their instruments aren't even plugged in, that would become one more obstacle, one more mental layer to have to peel away, to enjoy the music for music's sake.

another thing i learned overall was that i definitely prefer smaller clubs. it's just plain more intimate. comparing autechres's show at trees to the rest at hailey's, it's amazing to see how much the performance space can influence crowd reaction. the energy is more contained and explosive in a smaller area. hailey's has cemented as my favorite live venue. i've seen many live shows over the years at different venues, and hailey's stands out above them all.

Frost - Endless Love (Analogue Euromix by Royksopp)
not a perfect song by any means, there's some very mediocre sung melodies here, but what makes this track stand out is the true dancefloor euphoria that hits when the singer stops and royksopp slathers on the instruments in ridiculously lush layers into starry eyed propulsion like they know how to do best. slithering flying floating lines of melody compete and bob.

Radiohead - "Skttrbrain" (Four Tet remix)
"The song is a perfect match for Four Tet, first of all. The original is stretched-out and whinsome, Yorke's voice like a piano playing gently in an empty room. Four Tet adds in jumbles of percussion, a more flickering guitar, bells and steampunk sounds. All of a sudden, Radiohead's barren, boring tune has this thick inner life: it's like we're hearing the thump and ooze of Yorke's lovesick robot heart. Organic and fascinating and a much, much better track than the original."

Music of the Moment
Radiohead - 2+2=5
Madonna - Hollywood (Jacques Lu Cont's Thin White Duke Mix)
Jill Sobule - Nothing Natural
Kylie Minogue - Slow
M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas, and Lost Ghosts

Madonna - La Isla Bonita
throughout my childhood i was only occasionally exposed to mainstream american music. i do however remember a tape of madonna videos. this was fantastic, alien music. i liked it, but i was at an age where i wasn't really sure why, i couldn't express it in words. i just sat there entranced by my senses, in a thoughtless reverie. it's exotic, it's groovy, it's melodic. there's a very vivid brightness about it, and that "transportation to another place" quality. i also felt an intense attraction towards madonna, though at that age (elementary school), i had no idea what it was. i just felt burning and heated, my thoughts a mush. so, i sat there enveloped in these sensations, being not anywhere near comprehension, but just feeling. it was an exquisite experience, sitting there watching these videos, my senses whirling around burning themselves into me, in a complete daze.

what makes this memory completely fucking awesome, is that i go through day to day with such worded out constructions. they come in almost completely formed sentences, clumsy and inelegant, but still formed. pure sensation without thought seems very rare to me, to the point where when it does happen i glorify it. live shows, blissed out songs, when it happens, it's music as transcendence. madonna happens to be one of the first artists that i associate this experience with.

listening to it now, it's almost as good as when i first heard it. the absolute catchiness of the chorus, the transcendent "aAaahhhh"s of the harmony, the funky latin backing track. most of all, madonna's totally fucking sexy voice. and i cant listen to this song without her dancing around in this smoking red outfit in my head.

but it sound's only almost as good -- my ear is much more finely tuned no. the 80s production is weak, apparenty very early in the song, like it isn't eq-ed right or something. the bassline is lackluster, and many of the sounds are just dinky. but all that becomes secondary once she starts singing.

Kings of Convenience - The Weight of My Words (Four Tet Remix)
loping thoughts musing over a string quartet recording shattered into glistening drops

LFO - 'Premacy
here i am procrastinating on my essay for finals. fuck it, i'm listening to this.

Come Into My World (Fischerspooner remix)
fat pulsating throb throb throb. a bath of unapologetically electronic textures stairstepping to sex.

Bubbles - Bidibodi Bidibu (Super Troopers Mix)
tantalizingly catchy and simple hooks and hypnotic repetiveness. this is what i thought all electronic music sounded like before i had really heard any. what little i did hear was boomed out of car stereos and funked in short snippets on tv, absolutely compelling me to hear more.

µ-ziq - Lunatic Harness
getting stoned out of my mind, sinking into aaron's massive comfy bed, listening to manic drums rain down on me from outerspace

ok, no more middleschool poetry and overwrought prose! just songs/albums and short thoughts, if i can be bothered.

Air - All I Need
aaron: is this madonna?
fred: no.

(on a separate occasion)
aaron: i love madonna.

Air - La Femme D'Argent
better than sexy boy (off the same album). works the same mercury floating through space territory, except less poppy and more heady.