| flitting |
[Aug. 6th, 2008|06:34 pm] |
This journal will cease to be my main front on live journal.
I have another account I will be using at ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) robinsonner
I may continue to post odd youtube things here in order to make the other account less busy.
If you would like to keep up with my posts then friend me at the new place if you like.
Have a listen to some Barry Ryan while you decide.
They are all good but I really like "You Don't Know What You're Doing" and "Love Is On The Way".
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| In the garden with Gluck |
[Jul. 29th, 2008|06:16 pm] |
Borage is such a lovely flower for a "weed"!
The way this guy hovers and surveys the potential of my Parsley flowers is a joy to behold!
The neighbours are wondering why I spend so much time taking the scent of my beloved Meadowsweet. |
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| you've been framed |
[Jul. 25th, 2008|02:47 am] |
Looks like Harry Hill has mugged the Labour Party in the Glasgow East by-election for the Scottish Nationalist Party. Labour's third safest seat in Scotland falls to a Protestant anti-abortionist. "What are the chances of that happening?"
 
His grin behind an increasingly hysterical Margaret Curran was something to behold. Curran was a disgrace during the results for the Scottish Parliament election result and her plea to remember the heart of Labour and its fight against inequality is too little too late.
A transfusion of new blood is needed as we remove the dead hand of New Labour from control. |
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| piracy is promotion |
[Jul. 24th, 2008|10:03 pm] |
David Tennant in his first major TV role plays a young patient in a psychiatric institution who is an eager to become a hospital radio DJ in the ground breaking Bafta-winning drama serial Takin' over the Asylum, written by Donna Franceschild and screened on BBC2 in 1994.
Franceschild talks about the show and the story of its eventual release on DVD by the BBC this year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jun/04/mentalhealth
"On June 20 2006, an enthusiast called Catyuy posted a 10-minute video on YouTube. It was a montage of scenes from the 1994 BBC drama serial Takin' Over the Asylum about an ageing wannabe DJ and double-glazing salesman called Eddie McKenna who, together with a group of patients, revives an antiquated hospital radio station at a fictional mental institution. Within a year and a half, between Catyuy and another enthusiast, called Midcirclenine, the entire six-part serial had been posted on YouTube in 10-minute chunks, in flagrant violation of Section 512(c)(3) of the US Copyright Act.
I was the writer of that serial and had devoted three years of my life to creating it. So you can imagine how I felt when my teenage son brought this gross piracy to my attention. I was delighted.
In 1994, I was a 40-year-old writer with little to show for my 20 years of graft except an inability to take the hint and stop. David Blair had left his dreams of being feted as a "hot young director" behind him, by virtue of him not being young any more. The actor Ken Stott was then almost unknown, David Tennant had yet to be seen in a television role with more than 10 lines in it, and we were about to take on a taboo subject in a media environment that was almost toxic.....
....Thanks to the painstaking efforts of Catyuy and Midcirclenine, Takin' Over the Asylum was seen by a whole new audience on YouTube. Thousands of people, many of whom were small children when it was first aired, sat through the whole serial in 30 10-minute chunks on a screen the size of an index card, and left enthusiastic comments. Fourteen years after the last episode was broadcast, Takin' Over the Asylum was again a cult hit. In response to the surprise re-emergence of the serial on YouTube the BBC has decided to put it out on DVD."
Ahhh. The pirates as good guys.
Or is it the current drawing power of Dr Who and Inspector Rebus? |
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| misheard lyrics |
[Jul. 24th, 2008|12:05 am] |
| [ | Music |
| | Heart - Magic Man | ] |
The "word" "pwn" is defined as a simple typo of own and is pronounced "pone".
I see these things every now and then and flit past them assuming I have understood.
Not being thoroughly conversant with "leet" culture, there are gaps in my knowledge and without investigation or "googling", I think I unconsciously treat these terms as signs.
They mean what they look like.
So, "pwn", to me, looks like pawn without the a. This led me to always think someone had been pawned, an interesting variation on owned.
Googling to me is a form of goggling.
I had to bring up the word "heart" with some speakers of American English the other evening. "Heart" as in "I heart NY"
It was explained to me that it was originally a symbol or sign which had infiltrated a sentence of words. The symbol would be sounded as it looked - a heart. At this point "heart" becomes a verb. It may be possible, that to those younger minds than I, the symbol means nothing but an image.
This means there are whole conceptions of text and prose which are informed by the image rather than the dictionary definition.
As I said I flit by these things. Time is tight. I have to get my read on before I flake.
Three pages of a book later, mulling over a spiral of tissue memories unrelated to the text but inspired by part of it, I snap out of my own internal footnote and realise I cannot remember the last three pages I have been looking at.
Was I reading them? If so, in what sense?
I still sing along to favourite songs, out loud and in my head, and repeat misheard lyrics I have formed myself. Those singers with bad enunciation are ripe for total rewritings of their lyrical intent.
So, if you ever tell me I have been pwned, I am going to ask how much you got.
Here's some Heart!
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| a dream logic |
[Jul. 22nd, 2008|12:17 am] |
New destinations sometimes necessitate new modes of travel. Or is it that new modes of travel open up visions of new places to go? In Basil Kirchin's case his present position has been reached after many years of travelling along more traditional music routes.
I wondered how to lure you into the world of composer Basil Kirchin.
Heres the opening of The Abominable Dr. Phibes.
Vincent Price leads the clockwork orchestra.
As I compile a Basil Kirchin playlist on Youtube to collect all the movie clips featuring his soundtrack work, I came across one description for the 1974 movie Mutations aka Freakmaker, which sums up where I am at with this Internet thing. stylish chase scene from Jack Cardiff's THE MUTATIONS. pure dream logic even in context. watch for the signs. Tell me you get it. The chord changes and plucked bass moves. The occasional horn blare. The rippling vibes and bells. The merging of incidental field sounds with music composition.
Kirchin was a house hero of field recording and found sound fans on Soulseek and elsewhere in the early part of this century. His musical career spanned the 60s and 70s. His name was dropped by arch psychedelic obscurantist, Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound which may have brought him to the fore in the Solar Lodge (a Soulseek Room). Others reviving the textures of soundtrack music and lounge interests for the space age pop thing of the Nineties, like Stereolab referred to him.
Here's a 2003 interview with Kirchin on BBC Radio 3's eclectic Mixing It show. Ahh I remember that night well!
His soundtrack music follows certain formats extending his earlier jazz band training with his father. There are touches of the ITC big band sound of TV series like The Champions.
  
Later, the electronics and recorded found sound infiltrate the music as in the opening and closing credits of Mutations (1974). This is when he released an album called Worlds Within Worlds, which was a real prize piece of experimentalism to catch hold of during the digital potlatch dream of all night chat and share around 2004.
Eventually this pressure resulted in releases of his rare material by Johnny Trunk of Trunk Records.
The soundtrack music is uncollected at present and - apart from Dr Phibes - is unavailable, except from the new breed of potlatch, who like myself moved from audio to audio/video and the way sound services the image. Finding old obscure films sometimes looks trivial but it does yield some interesting and beguiling gems in the fabric of dream logic!
It's almost like the buzz of what crate digging samples of obscure old vinyl did for Rap and Hip-Hop DJ's.
Of course that whole lounge scene has been and gone and yet did the train ever really arrive in the station of your minds!!
Finally, there's a bit of personal psychogeography to add to this bubbling hypnopomp:The Kirchin band, co-led and directed by his father Ivor, originated when Basil took their London-based band up to Edinburgh for a residency at the Fountainbridge Palais, beginning there on September 8th, 1952. The band made several broadcasts from Fountainbridge My parents may have even danced to his early music!
Here's my Kirchin playlist on Youtube. Dig it before it gets nuked!
See Oliver Reed as the island psycho.
Jenny Agutter and the old house.
Vincent Price and his clockwork orchestra.
Northern girls stripping in seedy Soho during the "swingin' sixties".
"If you take the human voice and slow it down five octaves, immediately everything you can hear drops away. Take birdsong, all those harmonics you can't hear are brought down - sounds that human ears have never heard before. Little boulders of sound. In 1964 it was hard to capture. There was only reel to reel tape, and it took eight or nine years of my life. It was long and hard and painful. Now with the new technology you can hear these boulders of sound without changing the pitch, which is miraculous!"
On and off through the Sixties and Seventies, Kirchin stayed in an autistic community at Schurmatt in Switzerland. "These autistic children, the sounds they make when they try to communicate are unbelievable. They jabber away and of course it's gibberish and meaningless. But if you record it and apply the techniques I've mentioned...trust me, you can hear what they're trying to convey."
Interview with Bob Stanley, 2003 |
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| spine shifting bass |
[Jul. 17th, 2008|02:43 pm] |
Genius killer bass!
The First drum machine on a record!
Sly Stone's siblings Little Sister do "Stanga" from 1970.
A vintage year y'all!
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| Kubrick's Boxes |
[Jul. 16th, 2008|07:35 pm] |
There was a TV highlight of the year last night.
Stanley Kubrick's Boxes - Tues 15 July 2008 10pm
A biography of a remarkably talented man as seen though the rich collection of material he left behind.
The man's attention to detail is stunning and quite inspiring.
Click to read large size
"Stanley Kubrick's films were landmark events – majestic, memorable and richly researched. But, as the years went by, the time between films grew longer and longer, and less and less was seen of the director. What on earth was he doing?
Two years after Kubrick's death, Jon Ronson was invited to the director's estate to explore the hundreds of boxes the legendary film director had collected during his decades at Childwick Manor in Hertfordshire. He's been returning ever since, and the story of Kubrick and the archive, now housed at University of the Arts London, is revealed in this fascinating documentary.
Ronson asks: is it possible to get to understand such a man – and his extraordinary working methods – by looking through the hundreds of boxes he left behind? "
The Hunt For The Clockwork Orange Hat.
Highlights for me were:
- his wife being asked if the house full of boxes ever overwhelmed Kubrick. She replied, "Nothing overwhelmed Stanley."
- Kubrick's own designs for the boxes themselves.
- his joke(?)about starting a stationery memorabilia museum.
- getting his fans in places like Alberquerque whose mail he catalogued away, to be his "agents in the field" and report back viewings of his films in various cinemas with full details of location dimensions and effects on audiences.
- the interview with an author of one of the letters filed away as "crank".
- the hunt for the perfect droog's hat for Clockwork Orange.
Oh it's endless and also just leaves you wanting SO much more.
Let it never be forgotten - Stanley Kubrick was a genius.
read Jon Ronson's Guardian article explaining the story in detail.
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,1177734,00.html
Pictures by Stephen Gill from the accompanying magazine article are here at kubrickonia.
http://kubrickonia.blogspot.com/2008/03/citizen-kubrick.html |
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| more navel gazing...oooh fluff! |
[Jul. 13th, 2008|10:52 pm] |
Below are the results according to Regressive Imagery Analysis of what I have written in my LiveJournal over the last 4 years. RIA is a plug-in for LJ-archive which analyses the frequency of word usage and the implied psychological interpretation
Now, let's think about this. It's not just me who writes my LiveJournal! Cut and Paste my dears! There are links to other people's text and also statements or expressions written on the Internet by people trained to promote websites. There is also the internet language itself.
Having looked at some other "people" 's personal results posted online, there IS a varying degree of difference. This could defeat any idea I had that I was being misinterpreted as some coalescence of Internet expression.
Moral Imperative is secondary thinking. Positive affect and Anxiety are Emotions.
"Unknown" is Regressive Cognition in Primary thinking. "Depth" is Icarian Imagery in Primary thinking. "Glory" is Emotional thinking.
Primary process thinking
- Primordial thought - the type of thinking found in fantasy and reverie - described by Freud as the "id". This kind of thought is associative, free-form, and takes little account of reality.
Secondary process thinking
Conceptual thought - abstract, logical, reality oriented, and aimed at problem solving. In Freudian terms, this is the domain of the "ego".
I think we all know what this one is about. Or do we?
I think what it is telling me is that I have an interest in heroic ordering of social expression through getting deep down beneath the secret, strange and unknown. As my secondary (conceptual, constructive) thinking is below average, I am either not very practical about it or I prefer not to talk about it.
As I said to a friend, I like to jump into a scene, stir it up subtly and watch the action. Sometimes even a non-contributing presence can induce this. I am then very likely to go home and positively bitch about it. The pearl is an irritation of the oyster. |
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