live music

I'm embarrassed about this, and can hardly believe I'm writing this here, but I just made the decision that I don't want to go see one of my favorite bands in concert, so here it goes:

I really don't like to see live music.

It makes me pheel like a philistine to write this, because - just like locally grown vegetables - live music is something that's good to like. But this winter when invited to a concert for a band that was trendy in the 90s, i had a striking realization about my relationship to this cultural pastime.

I'm saying it again: I actually don't enjoy live music.

Maybe I shouldn't say that so baldly. There are live shows that I love, for example, Zakir Hussain. But aside from vituosic instrumental/acoustic (usually "WORLD" music), I'm can't get into it. I don't enjoy it.

OLD REASONS:

In my heart of hearts I've known that I didn't enjoy live music, and I've had a host of reasons over the years that ran through my head when I found I wasn't enjoying the show.

REASON NUMBER ONE:

Too damn loud. I always prefer to be social when going out with friends, and live music is too damn loud. I'd rather be able to talk to the people I'm with when I'm out, and live music is universally too amplified. Club and bar music is also often too amplified, which I've never understood at all (why would a bar with bad speakers play music at deafening volume?), but live music is the worst for this. I always feel like I leave live music venues with a hoarse voice and ringing ears. I can never hear the music as well as I can even on a terrible recording. It's almost like the performers are scared you might do something other than listen to the show. They'd rather you lose your hearing than hold a conversation.

REASON NUMBER TWO:

Lack of focus. This is the part that's most embarrassing for me - my own personal deficiency.

It has been a number of years since I felt like I could really focus for two straight hours on listening to a band. My mind starts to wander, and then the sheer discomfort of the venue (per reason one) is more of a hindrance than anything.

(I should say here, that there are times when I can focus on music for long periods, but I can't do it on command (such as at a show), and I'm usually alone when I do have that kind of focus and interest. So the combination of the ostensibly social venue and the private focus on music really just doesn't work for me.)

REASON NUMBER THREE:

Awkwardness. The standing still thing that happens at some concerts doesn't agree with me. It's so awkward! I'm bad at pretending to be enjoying myself, or pretending to be interested. I'd rather sit down. Or listen to a CD in my living room. Instead I wander in and out of the hall, adjacent rooms, and the bathroom.

------------

So, those are the standard reasons that I have had for not enjoying going to shows. Looking them over, they're not very convincing, and only do more to make me pheel like a philistine. These reasons are pretty lame, really. So there's good reason that I haven't been comfortable saying this out loud.

NEWER IMPROVED REASON WHY AARON DOESN'T LIKE LIVE MUSIC:

But then this winter, I was invited to see an old band who I didn't really like even when they were popular in the 90s. The first thing that passed through my mind was, "why are those people still on stage?"

That's when I realized why I don't like live shows. The question "why are these people on stage" gets stuck in my head as soon as I lose focus on the music. So for me, going to see a live show is exactly like going to a two hour session of pondering, in mental isolation, the nature of the cult of personality.

It's a terribly boring mental exercise: analysis of performers' manufactured image, questioning of motives, criticism of staginess and posturing, projected aspirations to fame, criticism of the stagy passivity of the crowd, internal criticism of my own stagy passivity, repeated recognition of the vampirism of cool.

Clearly, I end up in a really terrible head-space. At this point, even if I could regain interest in the music, I'd be immediately distracted by the orchestration of "the performativity of celebrity culture." It makes me even sadder in small venues, because it's such a hollow recreation of celebrity.

So, in conclusion, seeing the show actually detracts from my enjoyment of hearing the music. For a second I thought maybe I should try going to a concert blindfolded, but then I got the better of that idea. I mean, so what, I don't like live music. Why fight it?

Goodbye, attempts to enjoy live music,
Hello...
...other things.

i should note here, that some types of music and performances are exempt from this analysis. notable exceptions: dance bands, some jazz, much "world", most street music.

I should also note that much theater, however, is not exempted; I find the stage of theater to be similarly distracting, though perhaps to a lesser degree.

algae to the rescue

Here's a video showing a development on the algae-bio-fuel production method.

cool stuff. I hear that with this method they're past 50,000 gallons/acre per yr, and they're shooting to double that yield in the next year. This sort of production could really make virgin veggie make a lot more sense.

I'm not quite sure where the carbon is coming from with those numbers above. There's mention of using the algae to sequester the carbon dioxide from fossil fuel power plants, so I don't know what the rates of production would be like using atmospheric carbon dioxide, but this is still really cool.

bubbly boom

hi.

Tomorrow is Jessica's birthday, and she likes Prosecco, an Italian champaign-like drink, so we have some on special occasions. This is dangerous because when you drop a bottle of champaign it goes off like a bomb, flinging glass-shard-shrapnel and alcoholic beverage everywhere.

I'm just glad I wear glasses, and that this afternoon I was wearing layers.

WVO storage and settling

i finally put together a settling setup for the waste vegetable oil that I've been collecting. Doing this has made me realize just how much energy I put into feeling organized. It seems that I really am committed to the idea of creating clean (and potentially time-saving) systems, even if they require a lot of time initially.

This is one of those cases. Linton had just been storing the vegetable oil in the containers he picked it up in, and letting it settle in those. In a lot of ways, that makes the most sense. I could have just settled on a system for keeping those buckets organized, but no. I wanted to build something, Not just shelving to organize the oil, but something a bit more 'developed'. I put it under the stairs, and I think it looks pretty good, and the first part - the collecting and settling - is done. I still need filtering and delivery, but that will come later.

Doing this, I could really see the pressure differences between a gravity drip and a siphon system. It really speeds things up to get the air out of the system, and now I have a mechanism for doing that. Still, even though it looks really organized, and I'll know I'll feel good using the system, I do wonder how much overkill this was. Ultimately, I think my satisfaction here is based on the assumption that this will save time in the long run. After doing this, though, I wonder if that's a faulty assumption.

biofuel debate?

I'm on some bio-diesel listserves, which I occasionally read just to get a sense of what can go wrong with my car. But recently there's been some debates that have caught my interest, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts here.

The chatter started when San Francisco decided to start a waste vegetable oil collection program. SF is going to start running some municipal diesels on it. Cool, I think. But then these articles surfaced on the list talking about the ecological dangers of biofuels.

First this not so good BeyondChron article, got it started. It really misconstrues a lot of arguments, and generally bashes everyone running anything bio. It references a couple of articles by George Monbiot which are much better written.

I had a very negative and defensive reaction to the BeyondChron article. At first it was knee-jerk defensiveness, but looking back at the article, it is a pretty shitty piece. I think my own negative reaction would have been mitigated if the following point (from the first Monbiot article) had been acknowledged first:

Before I go any further, I should make it clear that turning used chip fat into motor fuel is a good thing. The people slithering around all day in vats of filth are perfoming a service to society. But there is enough waste cooking oil in the UK to meet one 380th of our demand for road transport fuel(2). Beyond that, the trouble begins.
--monbiot.com

I'm not going to summarize the article here, just comment on it, so go read the Monbiot stuff if you're interested.

The line of criticism in these articles is interesting and deserves some attention, but I think both articles suffer from seeing biofuels as a one-fuel substitute for fossil fuels. This comes off as plain stupid to bio-diesel users and WVO users who want to encourage the diversity in fuel supply -and use a waste product- rather than be yet another vehicle burning dinosaurs.

Some of the claims made in the articles are also a bit misleading. The figure of "10 times more carbon emissions from bio-diesel" than fossil fuels seems particularly suspect because those carbon costs are primarily one time costs, rather than recurring costs. I don't know how they're glazing over the math there, but there's something disingenous about it.

That said, I do think that users of virgin veggie have some rethinking to do. The bio-fuels vs. food issue is one that is not quickly resolved, and while bio-fuels are becoming popular because they could address the spike in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, we've got to recognize that climate change is not the only environmental problem we face. Reaching some of the biofuel targets - producing 25%-33% of transportation fuel from plant matter - is only possible with huge increases in the environmental footprint. Switching to virgin veggie at that scale would certainly have huge environmental impact - not only in loss of biomass per acre, but on countless ecosystems, available water, food supplies... Adding those costs into the production costs for biofuels does change the balance considerably, and virgin veggie starts to look pretty shabby.

But virgin veggie isn't really what I'm into anyway. I've never considered running virgin vegetable oil as a reason to get a diesel. For me, it was about utilizing a waste product to make a fuel. This has been said everywhere before, but the solution for the transportation fuel problem is in a diversity of solutions - a combination of public transport, greater efficiency (hybrids, etc), renewable electric power sources, AND waste-flow utilization. Picking on bio-fuels because they can't be the whole solution doesn't make sense.

But a knee-jerk defense of bio-fuels doesn't make sense either. The criticism of biofuels surrounds virgin veggie, and the large-scale mono-cropping producers who would have bio-fuel be everything to everybody. Seen from this perspective, I don't feel a personal need to refute those criticisms. It also clarifies my interest in bio-diesel. I wouldn't be excited about doing bio-diesel myself if the waste-stream of used veggie oil was already completely utilized.

Another issue is representation-
I think it is important to realize that the home-schooled grease monkey burning WVO make great publicity for multi-national conglomerates cutting down virgin forests and draining peat. A sad problem. How much does publicity for waste vegetable oil re-use get confused with agri-business push to expand into fuel production?

I think it would be great for the environmentally minded (and re-use focused) bio-fuel users to be able to differentiate themselves from the agri-businesses who are promoting bio-fuels as the next fossil fuels. How would that PR coup be managed though? The small-scale recyclers don't really have the advertising or lobbying budgets...

something to think about.

halloween 07

Jess and I had a great Halloween this year. We ended up going over the hills to Canyon for a party with some friends. Not only did we have a great time, but we were at the cutest cob house.

I hadn't seen any cob construction before. This one felt like a hobbit grotto (but human sized). Jared does very nice detailed work - stained glass, mosaic, living roof... really cool. Makes you wish you could do it yourself, but I don't think Mariposa has the space for that sort of thing. Maybe if we someday expand into some other yards as well...

Jess and I dressed up, which was also fun. The only problem was that I couldn't fit through any doorways. Sad. Watching the movie, they edit out any points where Daniel San moves through a doorway. Ah, the magic of cinema. While it was very comfortable outdoors, this costume turned out to be rather impractical for party hopping.

I also carved another pumpkin (I haven't done anything with this in a while). I kinda felt like this was a practice pumpkin in a lot of ways. What would it be like going for a more minimalist twist?

Answer: I think the level of detail and the complication of the forms on earlier attempts actually resulted in a more effective experience.

Drawings of cubes may be classic optical illusions, but I feel that in this case, the viewer's ability to interpret a "normal" cube in multiple formulations (convex, concave, open, closed) in some way over-rides the sense of distorted space. There are other problems, too.

Ask yourself, is the top of this cube open? or reflective? To my eye, it could be either. This ambiguity somehow makes the form less interesting. In the end, this carving does not make you reassess what the source of the lighting is. While it's possible that the top of the cube is a solid reflective surface, the prior knowledge that the pumpkin is lit from within actually pushes you to interpret that the top of the cube is open, even though this means that there's a missing line. It ends up looking almost like a paper bag with a candle in the bottom of it. And that's not such a leap to make from a pumpkin with a candle in the bottom of it.

Here's what the pumpkin looks like:



if that doesn't work for you, you can see it on youtube.

kissing alone

hey there. I changed my address again. I'm now in 828 B 59th St. Oakland, CA 94608. We moved from A to B at the beginning of September. It's slightly larger, more central to the community, and is finished more to our taste. We've been painting and had some construction going on until just recently. We're very close to very happily settled. But that's not what this post is really about.

Sometimes when you leave a place, you leave things behind that you would never know you left. And sometimes those things expose you in a very personal way.

The previous occupants here, in the room where my office now is, left something like that. She was a very nice 14 year old girl at just the age when a lot of teen stuff starts happening. I didn't know her well, just the externals. Her window was always covered with a black cloth, and she started dying her hair black while we were living next door. A lot of this is my imagination, but to me it seemed she was on the cusp of making a decision - to goth or not to goth?

Anyway, when she moved out, at first glance there was nothing left in her room. The thing she left was completely invisible except under specific lighting.

I knew nothing about her except the externals and that she was new to the area - a new kid at school. But then that changed. When I saw these prints, I could identify.



Practice kisses. Suddenly I wanted to listen to New Order. I think that's what I was listening to at the adolescent moment when I was kissing mirrors.

I should really clean this mirror, but somehow I don't want to. I don't want to be the one to erase the record of that age. Even though most of the time it's painfully awkward and it really sucks, it's still a precious time of life.

Sheesh. Fall makes me nostalgic as hell.