Thursday, May 1, 2014

on second thought, those numbers are too static. i'll have to let it be more fluid. i'm having difficulty defining precise categories. that'll have to define itself as it goes through.

like, i'm averaging a little under 100 hits a day, so i could theoretically hit 1000 in under a month. but it's spiking up and down. the curve is upwards. so, those bigger numbers might be less ridiculous looking in a few months from now.

this is a surreal thing to read, perhaps. well, i'm talking to myself, here, i'm just letting you listen in, if you'd like. it's for the wikis of the future, really. you're just experiencing it in real time. feel special, or something.

see, the numbers aren't really the important part of it. i think that's my point, here. it's the ramp up tied to the chronology. and i suppose that's premised on the assumption of a continued ramp up, making it pointless to make strong predictions in the first place. 5000 hits in may is very different than 500.

so, i guess i could take it down around 1000. or maybe around 500. i'll have to see when it feels right to continue the emulation. it's the emulation i'm announcing, whatever the numbers end up being...

uploading fire to youtube

i keep cycling back to these super old tracks, but i hadn't really conceived of how to do this well until right now. see, here's the thing...

The Game of Youtube is to get things sent viral. now, this isn't a game i'm into for two reasons. the first is simply that i don't think i have a high chance of winning. there's nothing about any of this music that is likely to break through any mainstream barriers - thankfully. i'd have a lot less respect for myself if i thought these pieces could potentially go viral. the second is that having a viral video seems to be something like having a cocaine addiction: there's a painful crash involved that i'd rather not deal with. fifteen minutes of fame isn't worth ten years of derision.

what i'm interested in is getting the ideas out. i've had this discussion with so many people that just don't understand my thinking on this. no, i don't want to be famous - shockingly. some of us really don't want to be famous. really. some of us just want to be able to live a comfortable, mostly anonymous existence producing art. it's very sad just how confusing so many people find this. it really reflects how shallow the culture is.

but, the cycling algorithms i've been using have been too short to get any kind of a point across. i need to leave songs up for a week or two at a time, not a day or two. i'm consequently cycling back for a third and final time and partitioning the set of tracks into the following subsets, which i plan on mapping to the following number of views:

100 - meh
1000 - dead experiments & extended tracks
10000 - completed symphonies & epics

i'm purposefully doing something else wrong, here. i'm supposed to pick my best tracks and push them, right? that's pretty rational, really. why market something i feel is a "dead experiment" at all? because i'm the product. it's the story.

i feel that if i stick to this kind of approach, and increment chronologically, while continuing to post comments, i'll be able to slowly get the pieces out in a way that mimics the construction of myself as a character.

the first track up is fire, which is either a dead experiment or an extended track. i'm a little over 100. this catastrophe needs to get past 1000, which i'm thinking should take about a month.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2E0p0sWW4c

as for the oldNew track i'm working on, i spent yesterday doing grocery shopping and today tying up some other beginning of the month type loose ends. i forgot to get new strings, but that can wait until tomorrow. i will be laying down tracks overnight.

i've also set up a companion facebook page for the comments. it's a front for the google+ page, which goes all the way back (although, sadly, not as far as before i was forced to switch). but in a sense i'm starting again right now. and this should really all be interpreted as integrated.

https://www.facebook.com/deathtokoalas?filter=1

the hits are more about staggering the process, and trying to emulate the timing associated with a musician beginning from scratch and building it's way up.

think of it like a virtual reality.


==

this is literally the first thing i recorded, when i was 15, so i'm not particularly invested in defending it's quality. yet, it remains an intriguing listen. i was trying pretty hard to be weird. all these years later, i'm sort of impressed with myself in accomplishing that.

i suppose it's sort of fitting that my first musical statement reduces to some kind of anarchist rant about burning the world down, or more accurately about letting the world burn itself down. somebody said that destruction is never negative because it is required to rebuild. that's stuck with me for many years.

so, the crux of this is an orchestration of a world on fire, as i imagined it, when i was 15. which, oddly, sounds somewhat like kurt cobain jamming over a throbbing gristle workout. it's easy to see why i've pulled it out and salvaged it, despite it's many flaws.

yeah. heating situation here is now officially ridiculous, and something buddy and his brother are going to have to work out.

it hit a low of about 7 degrees this morning, with an overcast high of 12. even so, there was enough retained heat in here from yesterday that the heater didn't really kick in until this morning - and even so, only weakly. but, see, the air conditioner wasn't on. nor should it have been, with temperatures ranging between 7 and 12 - in addition to it being overcast and rainy. so, it was *actually* close to 21 in here. which was nice.

in addition to this, it seems like nobody was home up there for most of the day, which allowed this normal situation to go undetected. the air is now noticeably on, which is triggering the heaters again.

it's 12 degrees out. the heat came on because it's cold. that's what heaters are supposed to do. but the heaters were in fact barely even running. i'm being totally normal here; it's turning the air on to reverse normal heating operations when it's 12 degrees out that is anomalous.

and, i had the bathroom heater off, but am going to have to put it back on.

i mean, i can get that these are bigger people. so, it's like they're always wearing a few extra layers. ok. but, why not open the window, then, when it's overcast and twelve? that makes a big difference for the surrounding units, due to the way air conditioning works.
it's been a slow ramp down, but i'm willing to finally (albeit cautiously) declare myself a purely social smoker. the last three weeks of april were pretty much cold turkey, we're talking one or two opportunistic puffs over three weeks, and it's really put me over that final hump. i've been slowly disassociating the habit from the things i had it attached to: wake up, after meal, etc. at this point, those connections are just not there anymore. i even spent my smoke money on mushroom soup, which sounds weird but the expenses related to fixing my pc had me broke all month and i found myself down to spaghetti and canned beans the last week, which is something i don't want to repeat. hence, a large stack of mushroom soup (which i use as pasta sauce).

so, i have no nicotine budgeted for may. if i get to june 1st without breaking, i'll be done with the "cautiously" part.

it was weird walking around this morning, though, 'cause i found myself hypersensitive to other people smoking. smokers will mostly agree that they can't really smell the smoke coming from the guy at the bus stop. i can't say it ever bothered me before i started smoking, either. but, when you've stopped smoking for a while, you start to notice it, and it starts to bug you because you're trying to avoid it. it's especially been the smell, for me; once it gets in your clothes, you start carrying it around with you and it's a constant reminder. i mean, i'm sure i'll get used to it over time. but that was a surreal experience that i took as indicative of something positive...

the new cloud nothings record

i was a bit weirded out by the first single, which is at least thankfully left at the end so it can be, err, quarantined, but this is definitely near the top of the year-end list, if the year-end list isn't full of pretentious garbage. i tend not to agree with most critics this side of the pitchfork abomination, but the acclaim on this is warranted. i just have a few suggestions for those reacting badly...

a) try headphones. it's not a stereo thing so much as it's a volume thing.
b) turn it up as loud as you possibly can.

i guess if you don't like loud, fast, energetic punk music then that's another issue. and i suppose a lot of people that are actually closer to my age (maybe a bit younger) really don't like that kind of fast, energetic music. which is a part of the record's appeal to those that are going to get it for what it is.

but, you know what they say: fuckin' hippies.