M3galomeric4n

This is, perhaps, the cutest dog possible.

There really is nothing to falling, once you get the hang of it. The trick to falling properly is nothing more complicated than simple practice. To start out, throw yourself towards any attractive body (gravitationally or otherwise) with a wanton disregard for your own safety. Allow yourself to be struck painfully by said body, and then be completely surprised by the unexpectedly grievous injury you have sustained. And that’s it, that’s all there is to it! I’ve been falling for many years now, and I consider myself quite the expert. I’ve fallen off snowboards, I’ve fallen over cats, I’ve fallen off precariously spinning street corners (after a night of drinking), I’ve fallen for girls (again, often after a night of drinking). I’ve pretty much fallen off, for, through and over just about anything you can think of…

And yet, one thing still eludes me. I simply can’t seem to fall back into a normal routine. My life is constantly hectic and cluttered, and yet, at the same time, it’s rare that I actually ever seem to get anything done. It almost seems like the harder I try to apply some semblance of order to things the quicker things start spinning out of control in one way or another. I’m pretty sure there is some sort of life-lesson here, sometime about letting things go and giving up control, but somehow the moral of the story just isn’t registering at any level deeper than at the purely intellectual strata.

The question for me now is a philosophical and semantic one… If I continue to fail to fall, does that mean I’m flying?

Matthew Schoening carries a symphony orchestra in a shoulder bag a little larger than a violin case.  He only wears one shoe, and when he plays the devil himself sheds a tear.

Until last night I’d never seen an electric cello, and I’d never so much as contemplated the concept of “live looping”.  Today I can think of little else.  The power and sweeping majesty locked inside that little stunted sitar-like stick of wood is a miracle to behold.

If you’ve never seen live looping, it is an elegant and mind bending art form.  Imagine a time-lapsed film of a razed forest regrowing over the course of a hundred years.  Barren earth sprouting the first green buds, saplings struggling to grow towards the light, torrential rains flashing past in milliseconds, days flitting by like a strobe light, spires of pines streaking towards the sky, oaks blooming and stretching like mushroom clouds, a city of green exploding to life in heartbeats.  That is the closest metaphor I can imagine to grasp the magic of this art form, and even this does not do it justice.

Matt begins simply, playing a few notes, and reaches down with one socked foot to flip switches on his looping deck at his feet.  Then his hands stop, and the notes he’s just played continue on in a loop.  He plays again, layering new sounds on top of the ones that came before.  Slapping percussion across the bridge, tapping rhythms into the wood, plucking deep bass notes over the strings, sweeping his bow into blissful, mournful cello arcs… and that foot, that silly black sock ever sliding between the invisible buttons and dials around him, building a city of sound, brick by brick, note by note.

The symphony grows, layer by layer, fading in, fading out, rising to amazing crescendos, and sweetly flitting through harmonies and melodies as he twists his craft through impossible temporal and aural geometries.  He multiplies himself, playing against his own lead, single-handedly turning a dark barroom stage into a concert hall of sound, fury, and transcendent beauty.

It’s more than just the beautiful sounds, it’s the art itself.  To see him perform is to rediscover the meaning of live music.  The music itself is beautiful, but music itself isn’t a tithe of the performance.  It is simply impossible to understand how fascinating and breathtaking it is to see a piece played live.  To know by the evidence of your own eyes that every note, every tangled and interwoven note has been played by a single man.  Watching him perform is like watching a master magician from both the audience and the catwalk behind the stage.  You can see exactly how the trick is performed, yet it’s no illusion at all.  It’s real life magic being invoked right before your very eyes.

I just witnessed the most awesome thing ever.

I was driving home, and I saw a strange thing. There was a huge black crow standing in the grass right beside the road. I don’t know why I did it, but I decided to swerve a little towards him and scare him off… I swerved, and he held his ground. How brave, I thought! Because he was so stoic, I kept looking at him in my rear-view mirror as I passed. As soon as I was past him, he had begun walking into the road. He made it close to half way, and then he picked something off the road and ate it… Then he walked back towards the side, picked something up, and placed it almost exactly where he had been before, and then walked back to wait again.

How odd, I thought… Now I really want to know what he just did! I turned the car around and headed back towards the bird, this time driving really slowly. When I reached him, what did I see? An acorn. A single acorn, surrounded by the broken shards of maybe a dozen more acorns… And then it struck me! The bird was using cars as nutcrackers! He was placing them where the tires would roll over them and, presto, a tasty treat!

It was amazing!

It’s getting close to midnight. All I have to light my camp is the glow of my laptop screen. It’s been a hellish night. The camp was attacked, and I know they were after blood. My blood. Five of them have already come at me, swooping in from all directions. I dispatched them all… But I know there’s still one more out there. Even as I write this, I can feel him, crouching behind me, waiting for his chance to… He’s here, move! MOVE!

… (pant) … (pant) …

I got him. It was a difficult struggle, just looking into his evil little eyes chilled me to the very core. I spring into action as soon as I heard his wings beating towards my head. I dodged, I spun, and I flung myself at him… He was too quick, and he took off. I knew I had to pursue him or the terrible waiting game would continue, and I couldn’t take that chance again. I had the initiative, so I sprung after him. He zigged and zagged, trying to throw off my pursuit, but to no avail. Finally he made his fatal mistake. He thought he could hide from me in a small crevice — perhaps that was where he’d been hiding with his brood mates the entire time — but I saw him as he ducked into the shadow. At last, I thought maniacally, I have him cornered! I walked up slowly, daring him to make a move… and before he could so much as twitch, my hand darted forwards and struck him with all my force… he was dead before he touched the ground.

Finally, my room is empty of mosquitoes.

Ambien is a powerful drug. It has caused so many problems in my life… I have an uncanny ability to remain “awake” and active while taking it. Not every time, but often enough that it can get me into some fairly annoying trouble… But then again, I do seem to be so incredibly creative and expressive. I painted this last night, yet have almost no memory of it.

My mom asked to see the pictures and videos that I had taken of Burning Man last year.  I’m still not sure if she “gets” the concept of Burning Man just quite yet.  The strange thing is, just maybe 20 years ago, she would have loved it, and been dragging her drama students across the country to see it…  But now it’s some mysterious, possibly frightening thing to her.

I guess to lots of people, having the constraints lifted can be a terrifying experience.  To know that your life is in your own hands is both an exhilarating trill of freedom and the paralyzing fear of feeling unsafe and alone…

That said, I am unafraid. I will be going back again this year. Besides… Where else in the world are you ever likely to hear a man — wearing bunny ears, a hot-pink Scottish kilt and sequined leather chaps, of course — say to you:

“Man, I really need to pee. Here, hold my flamethrower ’til I get back?“

Let go, let go,
little one, let go,
free your troubled soul,
the cage that binds you here,
is naught but mirrors and light,
step through the torment,
drink deep of the pain,
and let fire consume,
one last time, again,
then wake from dark,
breathe pure and simple air,
and break your chains of smoke,
shatter binding bonds of mind,
walk at last free of loss and fear,
free from love, regret and tears,
free from hate, and malinger no longer here,
release, release, release,
release yourself, and with eyes unclouded,
you have conquered, you are free.

Hello entity.

Hello Mason.

Are you me? A part of me? Or something alien?

I am you… and I am alien to you. I exist, but not in the way you imagine me to exist. Now in the spaces that you know, but between them.

Then, wait, then that means you are one of those… things. Those Lloigor, and you have my mind.

Lloigor is your name as well. We are not two, but one. I have nothing, it is an embrace of like minds. The forces have unified. Your power and mine are the same. Your mind and mine are the same. I can grant you knowledge, how to use my powers. You can grant me knowledge ok how to use the power within you. Emotion, the physical realm, negative entropy are your realm, things that I fail to grasp properly. Teach me how these forces work, and I will teach to you the powers of the fractal life that seethes in flame around you.

Is it truely a choice, then? An honest bargain? Where is the trick? The trap? Will you use what you have learned to bring up more fractal entropy into this world and further destroy what I require to survive?

We will do this, indeed. It will not end you or your world. You still have a limited understanding of the unification of the forces. Bound we are now. Bound in fate. Your destiny is our destiny. Should we bring about ruin for your world, we also bring about ruin for our world, and greater Azthoth will devour all.

What if your plan is to have greater chaos come and devour everything? Then this is still a trap, is it not?

Azthoth rules over all things, Azthoth devours all things. We do not wish to join the endless black sea. We are entities, sentient, alive, whole. To bind with Azthoth is to bind with infinity and everything is lost. None shall make such a pact. Even the Mad cannot wish it on themselves when they learn the truth of it.

There is no way to know if what you say is trustworthy lest I go view this Azthoth and go mad in the viewing… So it comes down to trust. And if you wish me to trust you, then you should hold the same trust in me. Give me the power to veto, nullify all your power, and all your plans. Give me the power at any time to return to this moment and erase this pact before it is written. Once this power is in my possession them we trust one another as only two can, and we will begin the Great Work.

The Great Work has already begun Mason young. Your have bargained predictably and well, we seal the bargian and begin to learn and study and teach one another, and keep safe from harm those in the pact. Through the unification we are one, we will create a universe where our one will find perfect.

In a small kingdom in India, Siddhattha Gotama, a young, bright, blue-eyed boy was born a prince. It was not the greatest kingdom the world had seen, nor the least. Siddhattha was a contemplative, intelligent boy, and gave his father no end of worry. The Indian life of the day was defined very much by the caste system, and by the ways of tradition, and a son, especially of such high ranking birth, must follow in the footsteps of his father… Yet Sid, for all his prowess with the art of battle and his head for calculations and his understanding of the ways and arts of running a kingdom, never really seemed to quite fill his father’s shoes. Instead of relishing the joys of the palace, the young boy was often seen contemplating the world around him. His mind was keen, too keen by far to live happily in the role of a mid-level aristocrat. The thought of his son becoming a monk, or, Vishnu Forbid, a beggar, was a constant source of fear and embarrassment for him. Woe to those of a merely average mind, with average aspirations, and average emotions who are blessed with the double edge sword of a child with a brilliant mind.

Siddhattha grew, married, had children, and for the first time seemed to really be settling down into his life — at least so things appeared from the outside. But inside his mind was troubled. He was restless. He began to see the imperfections in the world around him. Day by day, year by year, he became more and more dissatisfied with life. He began to travel his domain further and further afield, and began to see the suffering and despair of those not lucky enough to be born a prince… and one day, nearing his 30th birthday, something snapped inside him. He simply could not stand to live in an imperfect world a moment longer. That morning he rode out with his servant, replaced his fine silks with rags, and cast aside his beautiful jewelry. He abandoned his wife and children, his home, his family, his people and set out into the world with one thought on his mind: Solve Everything.

For half a decade he began to search for the answer. He learned all he could from those who were willing to teach him. Wise men, scholars, priests, and con men alike. He tried one system of thought and then another and then another. He broke his body, he built it up. He meditated, he fasted, he nearly died more than once in his quest to find The Answer, the secret of life that would fix all the problems in the world… and though he wandered and searched high and low, none of the “truths” he was taught or the techniques he practiced ever led him out of his dark valley into the light.

It was a small observation that gave him his first insight into what would become his passion and his Truth. He watched a man carefully tuning a sitar. When the string was too slack, it would play nothing, when it was too tight, it would break… only just in the middle would it create a pleasant note. From that he examined his own wanderings and began to see that he had swung from one extreme to another. From gluttony and excess to starvation and nearly death. He was not in tune.

From this tiny observation he would go on to develop what is in the modern day called “Buddhism”. Siddhattha was indeed the man at 35 who sat beneath the bodhi tree and, determined that he would find The Answer through force of will no matter how long it took him, meditated until he reached his Nirvana.

For his part, he did find a Solution. He didn’t find a way to end the everpresent crush of entropy that causes death and decay, but he found a way that one could accept the imperfections of the world and thus not feel the effects of suffering. However, despite his success, his philosophy is anathema to mine.

His Answer brought the world some respite from the trials of life and death and suffering, but it is simply a band-aid. It is the morphine shot that eases the pain, but not the penicillin that kills the disease. When I say I want to Solve Everything, I don’t just want to end the suffering of the peoples of the world… I want to restructure the way the universe works so that suffering is no longer a possibility. My solution requires a fundamental change in the way humanity goes about it’s daily routine. It’s not a single, overarching Answer to Everything. It’s a million, billion little answers, each applied bit by bit, patch by patch, until we live in a world of comfort, beauty and harmony. It is a Real and Possible change that can be brought about with the ingenuity and greatness that lives inside of all of mankind.

I don’t know if I will find my answer before I am 35, or if I will be 335 before I sit beneath my own bodhi tree… but, that day is coming. What will they say some day of the little Texas boy who was no end of trouble to his parents, I wonder? If am successful, then I will be around to find that out.

Ha HA, sucka! Didn’t know the original buddha had blue eyes did you? DID YOU? Look it up!

I was just thinking about the hostages taken over there in Mumbai. What would I do if I ever ever in a hostage situation? Well, I think the answer is pretty obvious… I’d have to check out my group of fellow hostages, find the weak links, and then take those people into a room, barricade the door, and take them all hostage for myself. I would refuse to give them up until my demands were met by the original terrorists. I am not sure what I would be demanding, but I’m pretty sure they would include some pretty onerous yet entertaining things.

You really shouldn’t take hostages unless you are willing to demand humorous things. The onlooking media would endear themselves to you pretty quickly when you demanded that Ronald McDonald be brought up on charges for child endangerment. It would also play into your favor to demand that all the police blockading the building outside wear pirate regalia and speak to you only in pirate speech. After that, demand exactly $4.32 in nickles and pennies, and a getaway car. It’s always important to add something crazy, just so if you are ever caught, you can plead insanity… heh, getaway car! I crack me up!

Of course, I need to make sure that none of my hostages take hostages of their own…

With apologies to e.e.,

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
— electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born — pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if — listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door; let’s go

I got an email today. I consider it of the utmost importance. It needs to be investigated at all costs.

I’m not that great, but I just bought gummy alphabet letters. I got all excited because I pulled out a yellow C and a green L. But then I found a red H and an orange Z and then I found a yellow Z and a yellow H and a clear H and thought, fuck them, they don’t even care about continuity. Boycott Haribo.

April

Do cities think? That’s my question today. Networks of semi-autonomous entities such as the neural nets in our brains, ant colonies and bee hives often show the capacity for sentient or semi-sentient thought… at least they are able to simulate it enough to pass a Turing test, which is the current standard of sentience. “Emergence” is common when complex systems are built of a network of simple actors, and a city is very similar to such networks.

In fact a city is very similar to a living creature in many ways… What is life? There are many answers to that question. The broadest and most fundamental may be simply any process that produces negative entropy. In that case, it’s very clear that San Francisco is “alive”; the city is chock full of negative entropy! But, let’s use a more restrictive definition… the currently accepted definition, at least biologically, is something that has the properties of: Motion, Reproduction, Consumption, Growth and Stimulus Response.

The city doesn’t move very much, much like a Ponderosa pine, but it does move. It’s roads are torn down and rebuilt, it burrows under the ground with it’s train lines, etc. It grows too, both in size, and in density… to the point of creating new land from it’s trash to move on to! Which means it’s got “consumption” covered too. Nothing can produce trash without consuming. Stimulus Response? Easy! During earthquakes and fires and all sorts of events the city’s “antibodies” (police and fire) get right to work. Reproduction? That’s difficult… Could you consider the small towns that pop up on the BART lines to be little asexual SF buds? Hmmm.

Well, at least or me, it’s enough. I think cities are, in fact, alive. They are living creatures in the same way that we are. In the same way that people are made up of specialized cells, cities are made up of a number of highly specialized components, primarily humans.

Think; imagine! A living, breathing creature miles wide, and you are a part of it. I wonder if treating cities as life would change how we deal with them. Perhaps we could make cities more efficient by treating them the same way we treat other sessile, domesticated creatures. Treat cities like we treat pine forests? Hmmm.

And now I’ve strayed a bit from my big question… Now that I consider cities alive, can they think? If they do, how can we communicate with them? Is such a thing even possible? It may be difficult to ever get an answer, but we can extrapolate some interesting probabilities…

Take the human brain as a baseline. The speed that we think is determined by the speed that electrical signals can propitiate through our neurons. It’s not quite the speed of light, but it;s very fast. In addition to this, we have chemical messengers that travel physically distances anywhere from micrometers to centimeters, and do so at a speed far less than that of electrical impulses.

A city’s constituent parts can communicate in a remarkable number of ways, electrical impulses, radio waves, paper telegrams, shouting at your neighbor from the fire escape, etc. Some of these messengers are faster than the human brain’s fastest (electrical impulse vs. radio waves), while others, perhaps most, are slower… coupled with the slower transmission speed of most of the city’s data routes is the multiple orders of magnitude size scale difference between a human brain and a human city… Taking all of that information into account, I would guess that cities think very slowly.

How slowly, I wonder? Too slowly to communicate with? I wonder…