Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Edited Newspaper (2009-11-10)
an op-ed calling for the US government to let the middle east keep fighting so we can solve our own problems. actually very interesting points.
an EXTREMELY LONG article about what should actually happen in the health care reform. I read this while i was waiting 8 hours at a doctor's office (true story)
some smart Harvard ladies are starting a netflix-style dress rental service. i am furious. how come this gets an article in the new york times when my underwear-by-mail service idea never got past the venture capitalists??
new studies about dreaming and what it actually does PLEASE READ THIS ONE.
apparently, there is a giant blob of trash the size of texas in the middle of the pacific ocean. finally, a place where we can put all the extra people from new jersey.
an article about a woman who reads a book a day for a year. talk about free time…
the french try to do something communal and ideal, but the anarchistic youth screw it up for everyone. when will the French learn that the youth will always rebel?
dogs so dog garn smart that they can predict medical emergencies. one of many articles in the times recently about how animals might be smarter than we thought.
my dad was right. although i figured this out by repeated controlled experimentation in college, its nice to hear it from a credible source.
a guy from Wisconsin who em-barks on a journey to make houses from whole trees and other environmentally-friendly things. going into my folder of people to call once i build my ranch.
a good review of the star wars robot phone.
an interesting article about an anachronistic all-girls residence right in midtown that is still alive and well. I can't help but ask how they determine whether or not someone applying to live there is a bona-fide woman and not an impostor.
an op-ed article about how to make america smarter. I agree with most of this article, but as usual, implementation is the real issue at hand
people pretending to be farmers on facebook. the only person more bored than virtual farmers are those who read an article about virtual farmers in the new york times.
a dope and mean article about an amazing zany brain chemical.
a story about crazy chinese bureaucrats who make kids salute automobiles. funny but true.
on a hot day, a human could beat a horse in a marathon race. the science behind crazy marathon runners.
an interesting article about feminism and how women still aren't equal with men in many statistics. "hey sweetie, stop reading that article and come help me lift this refrigerator."
Thursday, October 22, 2009
2009-10-02 art imagination
creating art
at what point do your inner thoughts, your daily flow of emotions, senses and instincts, become art?
it is when you decide.
your pounding headache, the taste of coffee in the morning, waking up starving and then slowly replenishing your body of nutrients and fuel, being in commute, traveling to work by bus, train, car, bike or foot, that sense of transport, then you arrive at your job and are in a box being yelled at to complete tasks for someone, you get a lunch break and the food briefly tells the chemicals in your brain of another time and place.
your body is happy because you feed it, so your brain rewards you with feel-good chemicals.
O sandwich, transport me to that other place, the cliche palm trees and tangerine sunset above with the heated sand seeping through your toes below, the chair below you made of a living organism, a tree, tells you its story, of growing up in a forest on a mountain, tranquility, feeling the seasons, the excitement of spring, the blissful arrival of summer, the fleeting dread of autumn, and the cold hibernation of winter.
the chair under you on the sand in the beach under the sunset in your head, a creation of brain chemicals triggered by the sandwich you eat at your job in a building, in a city, in reality
i breathe tangents. they are just geometry, which is a rule explaining an aspect of reality created by man to explain himself and his surroundings to himself. someone told me theoretical thinking is an art. "art is the umbrella" i said. art is just a word you designate to an idea. words are only one part of art; they lie under the umbrella. words only function as a protocol for interaction between two brains. like the http of brain waves. the ethernet jack from the back of my head into yours. communication=art
see? these words, they are working on something. it is a seed of an idea in your head that can grow into a tree in a forest. a forest in your head. the same forest that i got the wood for the imaginary chair in my head. the chair i sit on when i eat my sandwich during lunch at work at my job in reality (o boring listless reality.)
Oh food, please fuel me so i can zoom around in my imagination. reality is here and real. terrible things happen. innocent black children in the sahara desert die of starvation because some fat white man wants to zoom around in his private jet in reality. we were given brains and imaginations so we could realize these things (reality) but also cope with the horrors of reality (imagination)
duality, the dual-spouted funnel that all my ideas unintentionally end up traveling through.
//and on that note, my surf wave of creativity has reached the beach and dissipated into the sand. …the same sandy beach that i sit on while i eat my sandwich at lunch time. im getting hungry. need more fuel. my tangents, my geometry poured in my head from the thought cloud of electricity in the atmosphere have somehow built a shape, a shape that looks like a strange mysterious seed, a seed that will grow into a tree in the forest on the mountain in my head. the tree will grow, experiencing the seasons peacefully, until some day, my imaginary hero/villain character in my head will chop down the tree with a lazar beam and craft himself a chair that he will sit on the next time the reality me (Ben is what they call him) eats a sandwich to fuel his fragile, slowly dying body.
2009-09-24 mossy rock love poem
I need to be transported to a new world where we can wake up next to each other in the mossy green comfort of a tribal temple, glowing with the mystical radiance of 3000 years worth of ghosts, waiting, lurking the forest for something explaining their meaningless, overplayed lifetimes. with an orange yellow sunlight peering through the hazy blue green misty morning woodsy air, the birds chirping as we simultaneously are awoken from our intertwined state of unconscious subconscious drifting, the birds lazily chirping their morning song, as we lie on the mossy green temple entrance, looking up upon a canopy of leaves and shadows, coming back to the dream within a dream, awoken peacefully without a stir, only the sound of you breathing on my beating, slowly rising ribcage, my chest cavity nonreluctantly supporting the weight of your head. as we float on the rock, our body masses sinking into the damp moss, leaving a human fingerprint, a ghost disappearing with his brain love chemical creation of past experiences combined with a pinch of unconscious otherrealmly exploration…
but we sit there, a two-human figure, intertwined bone to bone, skin to skin, your mental mindset created from a culmination of past experiences of you, in a creek trying to find our sentimental relic, in a dusty dead classroom of 14 year old skeletons, us together ablaze with life and passion and naivety. looking into each other for a brief moment as our insecurities slowly settle, gold and silver flecks around us falling like silent dust to the concrete floor, as we gaze into each other's souls for a brief second, finding complete tranquility in the bonding of two incomplete humans, seeing past, present, and future as one single moment…
the silvergold dust settling, forming into a pure sphere of interlaced complexity, completeness, and infinite unity, just for a brief second, until the insecurities of the world mute the gold silver flecks, the divine dust of freefloating human interconnectedness, a dirty glass of water with metal particles allowing the electricity of love and life to complete a circuit, ad infinitum, the infinite feedback loop of love, of completeness, of non-singular human existence. the pulsating intertwined rhythm of infinite humanity combined with the droning harmonious melody of everlasting infinite true love… as we sit on that aztec temple, the mossy sacrifice stone, the stone that tasted the blood of a thousand human hearts, pulsating out red and white blood cells, the soul of this human carcass falling through the floor, through the decomposed soil of human history, down to the hell of it's warrior brothers.
we sit on the rock, our souls stirring with the morning air, the scent of fresh pine creeps into our unihumanbody's nostrils. we move our neck muscles, looking around at the light creeping through the overgrowth, the canopy of greenery providing our lazy shelter, the slightly shady misty morning mountain air flowing in our nostrils, telling us more than any book, than any movie or magazine, a chemical released by the army of pine trees guarding the true bliss of life from humankind.
we slept under a blanket of stars, a quilt of the cosmos, wrapping our internal subconscious journey with a fresh coating of the unfathomable. our mind journey a single moment of uniting, of universal understanding and tranquility and nirvana. exploring and knowing the whole universe and nothing simultaneously.
good morning my dear one. let us silently walk barefoot through the foothills. let us feel the morning transcend into the depths of our soul. let us die in these woods that bore us, along with three thousand years of simultaneous souls.
2009-08-12 HMech Manifesto
Art is communication. Art is only communication. Communication of Ideas.
The way to judge an artist is to judge how well they take the ideas in their head and transfer them into a medium. An artist can be their greatest judge, but they also need people to hold them accountable to communicate as clearly as possible. This is why as an artist, it is very important to surround yourself with people who understand you and your art.
Anyone can be an artist- anyone who wants to share their ideas is an artist, a communicator. The first step is to realize, then decide your ideas are valuable. The greatest artists explore and pursue multiple mediums as vehicles of communication. The next step is to learn different ways of communicating. Writing, Drawing, Music, acting, fashion, even the way you speak can be art. Word choice, even inflection is art- these things rely on your decision to communicate an idea- sometimes deliberately, oftentimes subconsciously.
The truth is, Art is everywhere.
You can live your whole as a gear in the American machine, or you can be your own human machine. You can decide everything about your life, or you can do as you’re told. You can decide that this writing is true or false; that’s the beauty of writing—of clear writing—which is one aspect of the human machine.
Here at the HM, we want to communicate clearly and concisely, we want our ideas to ring true. We are artists so it is in our nature to express. To elaborate, to find tangents, to seek beauty, to present ideas, to point out our humanity- to do all of these things by SEEKING TRUTH.
We want the truth. We want balance. We want to express. We want to learn, both from ourselves and from you. We want you to be a part of our movement- this dual-natured movement. We want idividualism and collectivism. We want a greater understanding of art and science, men and women, weapons and tools. We want to understand the value of being rich or poor. The value of bliss and anguish.
The only way to achieve balance is to be familiar with extremes, with dichotomies. **The only way to eliminate injustice is to find social equality, to have peace is to understand that knowledge and empathy are required.**
Men and women, gay and straight, black and white, rich and poor, individualist and collectivists, everything in between. Humans and machines.
This is a movement; movements require resonance, they require agreement. They require participation and hard work.
We understand the world through dichotomy. Through recognizing the extreme ends of a spectrum, and everything in between. We are not democrats or republicans, we’re both and neither. We are people. Humans. We live in a machine. We cannot let the machines destroy us. Join our cause. Decide to become an artist and a scholar. Expression and knowledge. COMMUNICATE. Support the Human Machine and we will do all we can to further our cause; your cause.
2009-09-30 spirit funbox
internal conflictions interfere with the funbox and its desire to freely interact with the colorful, pulsating cloudforce outside the skull cavity. the electric oatmeal moves at its own pace, but sometimes aligns with the polarity of the spirit cloud. the cloud of subconscious homosapien history, vibrating in unison with chest cavity, feet, and skull cavity. the conflictions sometimes can be shaken out using strategic pulses and waveforms. the bounce of freedom and hypnosis. the treasure of being in this mindset, this time, having the spirit cloud plugged in using a plastic tube, gasses being freely exchanged back and forth as I become an appendage of the creative collective subconscious. on the brink of the blade, the break of the wave, floating in the cloudforce, in inner and outer space, with the breath of life pushing and pulling your dead human corpse around like a puppet. the machine sleeps. the human (singular) awaketh! the megazord of life, staring death and meaningless boredom and routine in the face with eyes of glowing crystal. fly into the stratosphere, O great hero! breathe your delicious spirit into the AC outlets at the base of the lifeless corpse pile.
2009-10-16
Edited Newspaper (2009-10-22)
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Toilet Issues
Friday, July 24, 2009
Tribal Music vs Brain Music
I am going to write a lot this time because it has been a while since i wrote before.
Let me first preface this by saying that i am in no way attempting to write in any sort of standard scholarly format. I have always tried to write in a way that best describes the way i think about things in my head. since i have been mentally multitasking for the last two weeks, I might have a more varied post. If i have multiple points that i expand on quite a bit, i will try to repost them as separate blog entries.
I have always been into thinking about thinking. sometimes living in my thoughts comfortably and happily, and other times when things arent right, or when something is new in my brain, i try to separate my observational part of my brain from the active part of my brain and observe. separating my consciousness: this is why i have had brief moments of stress-induced schizophrenia in the past. i wont elaborate on that right now...
I have thought to myself, who is myself? what is this me that i speak of? who am I? who iz ME?
i was hanging out with my fiancee, Sam at the columbus circle fountain and went on somewhat of a trail-blazing stream of thought, dividing separate aspects of myself into a sort of primitive diagram. i will draw up this diagram and put it up here eventually. (oh god, this is a whole essay waiting to happen, which i will do at a later date...)
another thing i have been thinking about is "what is the function of music to us as humans?"
Based off my diagram, i have come up with a few different functions of music. The first function is the most primitive one, and coincidentally, also probably the hardest to comprehend.
I often ask myself, "why do i like this?" especially when i am really grooving out to something that is incredibly basic in terms of its use of harmony and rhythm. unlike most people who go to music school, I don't disregard a certain kind of music just because it doesnt appeal to the brain. ok, so an example: electro/house. in a previous post, i mentioned my fascination with Wolfgang Gartner, who is a brilliant electro producer. the fascination is purely physical, similar to the one when a gorgeous woman walks down the street in a thin dress on a windy summer's day. there is some sort of animal instinct that says "DANCE" similar to the instinct that says "FUCK." obviously, since i am an evolved human being and understand the concept of ego and super-ego, i can choose whether or not to act on my primal, animalistic urges.
i wont get too psychological because i am not a psychologist; i am a musician and an engineer. i am also not a writer or philosopher (but i am hoping to change that.) my goal in life is to be a renaissance man. a well-rounded well-educated creative individual who solves problems, creates brilliant art, and advances society as a whole. i dont read a lot of books, but i read wikipedia and the new york times every day (obsessively.) i read the new york times because i want to know what is going on. the choice of the new york times over any other newspaper is one that is obvious to intelligent people who live in Manhattan (I dont want to sound pretentious, but i also dont want to explain my choice of newspaper in this essay.) the reason i go on wikipedia is because i am a person who likes to have questions answered.
i have no sympathy/empathy for people in society who have no urge to ask questions or try to have their questions answered. often when an argument comes up, i will say to two people "I will not participate in an argument that could be solved by wikipedia." in this day and age, arguing over the birth dates of a basketball player or a young, attractive actress starring in a movie about wizards is a waste of time.
ok, so back to my point on the function of music. the first one, as i have stated, is a physical, tribal, communal, dance-inducing one. many people in society regard this as the highest function of music. i will not argue what the highest function of music is because it is my job to keep that belief to myself. it may be that i think that there is no highest function of music, that they are all equal.
equality. (another tangent)
equality is something i think about a lot. i tend to think about words that are used as reasons to send 18 year olds off to die for our country. equality, liberty, freedom. all words with multiple meanings that can be skewed to fit your context. I believe that people are not equal and that they are equal at the same time. it depends on the context of the conversation. individual people are not equal in intelligence, creativity, physical ability, or any sort of objectively measurable way. it is stupid to think that this is the case. if people were all equal in this sense, the world would not be exciting. it is the inequalities that exist in this world that create beauty. the inequality between man and woman, between different cultures, between different intelligence levels, between different sexual preferences. inequality in many ways is more beautiful than equality. "Ben you are racist!" no i am not. it is a shame that you are programmed to think that my belief that inequality exists (and is a beautiful thing) is a racist belief. it seems that those who most often preach (and i mean preach) tolerance are some of the most intolerant people i have met. before i end this tangent, i must say that i do believe that everyone is equal in terms of basic human rights. every person in america should have the right to all of the things explicitly given to them in the constitution. if you want to understand specifically what i interpret the constitution to mean, then feel free to come over, have a few drinks and argue all night.
ok back to music. another function of music is the part that engages the brain. this function is the reason why babies are encouraged to Mozart if they want to become smart someday. Music blatantly has an effect on the brain. i treat music like a drug most of the time, treating my music library as a pharmacy, trying to diagnose my emotional state, and spending time trying to find just the right remedy to treat my emotional disease.
oh have i ever mentioned that i treat emotions as a disease? well kind of. i think of myself as part human, part machine, a cyborg who decides his own fate. emotions are part of that human thing. some are harmful and useless to the task at hand (if the task is more utilitarian), and others are catalysts for tasks that are more "human" tasks. humans are innately emotional-driven, illogical creatures that learn things so they can get control of their animal side and become productive members of society. i sound like a total utilitarian right now. "how can you create art, you robot?" you ask. but i never said i get rid of emotions altogether. i live for emotions, for the good emotions. this is why i love music. music is a drug with no side effects except ringing ears (on occasion.) all art is a drug in some sense. this is how i run my life. i am a complete junkie. but i love it.
music treats the brain and the body. Mozart makes your kid smart; Beethoven makes your kid into a triumphant badass (...waiting for science to back me up on this one.) but understanding what music/art in general does to your mind/body will make you much more capable of controlling your emotions, or making your emotions go totally out of control (which is fun too.) i have had music overdoses before.
since i am a music scholar, i make a lot of music for my brain. HORSE FORCE is brain music. i wrote a sonata using bits of noise i collected from the internet. ROCK HOLE is a blend of the two, lyrically brain music and rhythmically tribal body music. my new project that i am working on with my Viking friend (STRIKING VIKING) is pure tribal body music. it is music you listen to before you fight someone.
anyway, i got quite a bit out. i hoped you enjoyed my Willy Wonka boat journey into the depths of my brain.
PCZ OUT AND EQUALITY FOR ALL
-Horse Man