2127 Saturday 29 July 2023
The storm has subsided. What’s left are the damp remains of a weather system moving towards the coast. Dewy, cool air tempers the stillness, post-deluge.
Even traffic has relented.
I’m mulling over the three-part structure of ‘hypoxia’. It’s in a primordial stage where choices have the most weight. I dumped the Roland synth line; the mute button still holding its breath while I assess the tonal geography.
I’m walking along a river. The droning notes of an electric piano reverberate across the still water. The bass line rolls over the riverbank, steady, reliable. Light piano chords draw the contours of the landscape in the distance. Guitar feedback wails like a steel girder under duress, influenced by the translucent cirrus of an ethereal synth pad.
It promises melancholy surrender.
The arrangement works well enough. And yet, something is missing.
Sitting by the window, a cool breeze insists as Mother snores fitfully in the sun room.
1559 Sunday 30 July 2023
I’ve decided to change the working title of this piece. Listening to it, the music feels mournful, passive.
The Roland synth line is back. The mute button finally exhaling. Last night’s palpable absence materializes as nostalgic yearning. A basic square wave filtered through the Chase Bliss Generation Loss pedal. Its degraded tone sounds like an anguished trumpet, struggling against mechanical failure. Early 90’s Mark Isham, even.
Mother is overcome by a coughing fit downstairs, as if to give her approval.
It’s taking shape now. The landscape clarifies like a fresh Polaroid.
The arrangement feels ready now.
I notice the black, blank LCD on my Yamaha effects processor in the rack. I push the power switch a few times, but it’s gone. The way things and people do; without fanfare. Banal, even.
I feel the pressure of regret. The obligation of it. I should have spent more time with it. Really got to know it. I promise to learn from this. Indeed, I have other effects processors that are still around; aging gracefully so far. We’ll do better.
I know I’m lying to myself.
0735 Tuesday 01 August 2023
The Polaroid of the song “cover art” sits on my workbench upstairs. I sip chicory-flavored coffee from Cafe DuMonde, planning the day’s activities.
A nurse from Elder Services isn’t coming today for personal reasons. Rescheduled for tomorrow. A coworker is sick. Another meeting rescheduled for tomorrow.
Time inexorably following the laws of conservation, dictating human dynamics.
I’ll need to find the aluminum tray I use for soaking the Polaroid film. And clear off the table-top buried by receipts, official institutional communications and the tools and pageantry of soldering audio gear.
The Polaroid will be easy to pull apart. A simple lift and transfer. An analog transplant of delicate gossamer material, to a new paper host. The risk — the critical creative choice, really — is whether we let the hot water separate the emulsion from the backing plastic for a clean lift, or force the issue early, giving it a distressed look.
The image captured inside the print looks like blossoming fire underwater. A paradox made real through food dye in water and clever filtering. It’s not a great picture.
I wonder whether this captures music, or even, this music. It feels discordant.
Exfiltrating the image from its host will irrevocably change it; no doubt. It’s a violent process fraught with peril. The integrity of the Polaroid irreversibly compromised as a snapshot of a moment in time :: an index of reality :: of the objectified dynamic interplay between the present and the past. Instead, it transmutes into something new and unexpected. Perverse, even.
It’s my favorite part of the process.
The digital scan decomposes the image into discrete bits. The paper image is a husk now; having fulfilled its meaning and utility value. The transfer is consummated as I move the file into a directory with other images.
It’s still not a great picture. We’ll have to do better.
2226 Wednesday 02 August 2023
I’m moving a slider in the Affinity Photo app.
A river, rendered in greyscale, convulses. I’m comparing filters with a scan of the Polaroid transfer, superimposed. The texture of the emulsion blinks through a grey shroud of film grain. The scene is a photograph of the Iowa river around Christmas. The camera is a 50 year old Rolleiflex. The film, Ilford 3200, my favorite, pushed at least two stops to bring out the grain. The chemistry is Rodinal, also for the grain.
The negative bears the damage of a rogue airport Xray machine. Fogged up and flat.
I add a mask to the colored pixels and whip it across the image. It’s invasive surgery, grafting the digital to the analog. The image convulses again; it’s off brand Mary Shelly nightmare fuel spilled across the screen.
I’m envious of the mask most of all. Its veil is a promise; but also an enticement.
I’m reminded of a theater director I worked with years ago who wore a flesh-colored mask. It was almost invisible. His face, what was left of it, riddled with cancer. But you wouldn’t see it. Never knew it was there. The cognitive dissonance was too great for your mind to parse correctly. Your mind would conspire with your eyes and reprogram its ontology on the fly in order to keep “perspective”.
Self-consciously, he pushes the mask into place as he bellows “Edwin Drood isn’t going to choreograph itself! From the top LADIES!”
1410 Thursday 03 August 2023
It’s always sad to pull the patch cords out when the piece is done. Late last night, I re-tracked the drums. Its tighter, more reliable. The harmonies converge, pushing and pulling across time, feeling more open, choral. A potent chord of synths, feedback, longing, and damage. Jumbled memories project into the present, merging and subsuming the corporeal rhythm of the bass and drums.
I wonder what its like to slowly lose your mind. Do the edges start to fray first? Would doubts about perspective even be part of your ontology? Does the body enact a defense protocol to reduce your critical thinking threshold?
This morning, while giving Mother her meds, I wondered what her experience was. She called me by my brother’s name, quietly, as she questioned the number of meds being given to her. It’s a lot, she says. It’s the same as its always been. Really? I thought it was less.
Sometimes it feels like I’m pulling her into the present. Without me, she would be lost in the gravitational pull of a timeless void. Where she is, I can only guess. Salzburg most likely. When she is; probably 70 years ago. She tells me she couldn’t sleep all night. I ask her about it, but she demures. Or doesn’t hear me. Secretly, I hope she just ignored me.
What happens at night when she can’t sleep (and why)? Is that when the edges start to fray? Is that when the ontological customer service department make their adjustments?
Will I feel anything when it happens to me?
I pull the patch cords out of the bay, reinitializing it. Its memory cleared.