I’ve just finished Huxley’s Brave New World and I’ve had disturbing dreams for the past two nights… Twins!
Upon arriving in Bangkok three or so nights ago I was encountered with a most unfortunate situation - the national elections were being held, and no alcohol was being served whatsoever… I was, in truth, still inflicted by a not-so-chance physiological layover from Seoul that would have barred me from the instinctive immersion into those welcoming springs of the netherworld anyhow. Those waters now open to me like the pale petals of a tropical flower.
I haven’t decided decisively but I feel that I may be finished with all this travelling, all this blind exploration and unchecked groping of the unknown. It may be fashionable - I don’t really care about that. I am confronting an eclipse of terrestrial boredom - the single most threatening state of mind for depressives, I believe. Sightseeing! Ahh, how I used to love thee… Only with disinterest does my camera capture the elements within these foreign terrains.
Perhaps it is a kind of India syndrome. The subcontinent is a terrible thing, but since being there I’m virtually fearless against the world. What can this circus offer someone like me? Where shall I find meaning? I don’t know. Where are my gods?
Ahh - Slunky… A little Clapton will help the cultural digestive tract…
It is warm here. I love the temperature. I can’t see myself ever feeling uncomfortable in such extreme heat. So why Canada of all places! Snowy frontier, I long for you… The thought of that great unindividuated blanket of white brings a sense of comfort to me. A burning Christmas tree amid the aging psyche of revelation.
The sun is setting again. What consistency!
Thailand, oh, Thailand…
This is extremely gratuitous, but here is another track I’ve produced in the past hour. I’ll call it - The Top Line:
There are around 13 separate looped tracks here (save for the vocals). Again, this is the first few days I’ve played with this amazing little piece of engineering, so, not to make excuses, it ain’t much. But it is making it extremely easy to procrastinate filling out University applications…
Here are my two first tries in Apple’s Garage Band. I am really shocked that this application has lived on my hard drive for the last year and I am only now playing with it. Amazing!
The first tune, ‘Stolen Fishes’ (nice name…) is an acoustic and harmonica track recorded over the in-comp mic. Very lo-fi! The words and music combined couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes to put together, so you shouldn’t expect much. The second track wasn’t written in the proper sense at all - I just started pressing keys, dragging a bar of playing into a loop, and repeating this process. I’m blown away by how easy it is to use this application.
Stolen Fishes:
Your Childhood:
Thailand Summer Storm, originally uploaded by Stuck in Customs.
3 degrees right now in Seoul - too cold for me…
I had a hard time choosing a category for this post…
Some good blokes of the Aussie outback have embraced the notion that the pursuit of capital should and must trump all iterations of conventional morality - they have begun to plunder the monuments of dead nobodies for their sacred scrap metal. As Chinese and Indian markets have pushed the price up to a solid 4 bucks a kg, who wouldn’t consider the proposal? I mean, it’s not like the deadies are going to use it. And who are these dead people anyhow? Pharaohs? Get your shovels!
Some concerned party commented that, whereas “it’s one thing to steal copper from the railway tracks, it’s another to steal brass from somebody’s grave.” Sure, and it’s another thing still for the world’s largest exporter of coal (much of which goes to those same Indian and Chinese markets the the grave robbers have targeted) as well as the world’s highest per capita greenhouse gas polluter to have such a poor showing on the scrap metal scene. Cheers to the amoral Australian capitalists!
