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Oh, absolutely I told him you're fine, just do not keep doing it because I don't want you to get sucked into that and he agreed. If he's staying with me, I don't do coke, and he wouldn't care enough to score it on his own. Worry is more about it simply being around where he's living and temptation |
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many years ago, one of my first times trying acid, i commented, "i feel like i've just put my brain into debug mode." analyzing my analyzing. then analyzing how i'm analyzing anlyzing; i analyze everything, even this, i'm analyzing it right now -- then, some giggles. i'm so ridiculous. it's hilarious. who do i think i am? there was, however, an odd, almost forceful sleepiness to it. just washes of sensory input, lulling you into a snooze. perhaps that's the serotonin aspect never tried dmt. but am admittedly curious |
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why do we hiccup? perhaps In a study led by University College London (UCL), researchers monitoring 13 newborn babies found that hiccupping triggered a large wave of brain signals which could aid their development. Lorenzo Fabrizi, the study's senior author, said in a statement that this brain activity might help babies "to learn how to monitor the breathing muscles," eventually leading to an ability to control breathing voluntarily. He added: "When we are born, the circuits which process body sensations are not fully developed, so the establishment of such networks is a crucial developmental milestone for newborns." the implications of this are staggering: perhaps, hiccups are a calibration mechanism to teach you to breathe voluntarily. in particular, i think about meditation technices, aaauuumm, chanting, breathing, and how much it could be like hiccups, a calibration/mapping mechanism so to, yoga asana, form and pose |
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A lifelong swimmer leapt into deep water near his lakeside home, and was horrified to find himself completely unable to swim. Had his wife not rescued him, he might have drowned. He had recently received an electronic brain implant to control tremors and other symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, and somehow the signals from the device had knocked out his ability to coordinate his arms and legs for swimming. He was one of nine patients, all good swimmers despite having Parkinson’s, who had the same strange, dangerous side effect from deep brain stimulators. Three of them tried turning off the stimulators, and immediately could swim again, according to an article in the journal Neurology by a medical team from the University of Zurich. this is fascinating to me. the way movement feels when you're in the water is totally different from plodding around the earth, perhaps that has something to do with it? or perhaps it's interfering with learned physical patterns somehow, as the article also says Dr. Baumann said that the patient who jumped into Lake Lucerne never swam again, but that several others did not want to give up swimming and were taking lessons to learn all over again. |
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sometimes, it is rather murky as to how much lewis is to blame for some mishap. he left the door unlocked, but the owner of the condo was there, and the overdose son's former girlfriend said hello to drug question lady, smoked some of lewis's weed with lewis, then stole drug question lady's phone along with lewis's wallet. or was drug question lady there? did lewis just let him in, and half-fabricate this? it is not clear. his story varies from time2time, and i get the sense that perhaps she was not. in any case, drug question lady tracks down the crackhed that has her phone, and it's some scam like, "well i paid $50 for this and i have to get my money back" and she shoves him and the phone breaks but at least she can exchange it now. she is a waif of an old woman and even vs. a waif of a crackhead that kind of impressed me but, meanwhile, lewis's wallet is gone. he promptly cancelled all his cards, but he's a mess getting replacements in order. tried to get him to go to the bank or dmv friday, nope. but i suppose if i were in his shoes i'd be all "fuck it" too |
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i guess if her phone was there, why wouldn't she be there too? and, while lewis left the door unlocked, drug question lady's lack of protest lets him off the hook? or perhaps she was out cold and it was lewis's fault for assuming this bitch was legit |
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sounds like chaos, i'm not sure i follow 100% but it sounds like lewis is getting his ass exploited by somebody in this mess. everything and everyone is a hustle to crackheads, deeply lame drug |
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but also that he's not being straight with you, tbh. nobody's coming out of this very well |
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current status: somewhere between glum and stressed. i am doing loads of laundry on sunday night because i know this week will exhaust me. last week there was snow and i was all "go on then" and so my car is an ice sculpture all week. saturday, i spend an hour chiseling it off, moving it, cleaning the driveway, chiseling some more. the steps to my apartment are solid ice. the week before last week, i had a terrible flu. this week, the weather is going to be shit. getting to and from work is going to really suck. the company i work for got acquired about a year ago. they cut some of the sales team but also hired more people for other things. nothing dramamtic. the water-cooler experts, however, have it that at the one-year mark, well, that's typically when things get dramatic. the first year, they're just figuring out what they have. the second year, action. so, after this week, there's a meeting for that, next week. the people in charge are generally nice and i doubt we'll get broadsided but there still might be a "we're closing your office, if you want to keep your job past six months you will have to move" or something like that. or maybe just random budget cuts. or maybe nothing at all. we'll see, next week. lewis is not doing well, and i am worried about him. i asked my mom for an electric razor for christmas and now she's badgering me to research it for her. my car is a shitbucket and something may break soon. i am still paying off my taxes woo. fucking. hoo |
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hoping 4 less glessed / strum times 4 u man |
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all these beautiful ideas i am too busy/drained to get to, like a fake autechre EP called "Hostile Architecture" or herpaps stylized as Hastaelrqtectr or somethin thanks belb |
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Hastaelrqtectre missed it |
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dancing in the Hastaelrqtexqlic |
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[word to be determined] ~ the fear of knowing attempting to analyze an ongoing mechanism will disrupt its chances of success weighed against the reality that not analyzing the potential outcomes will be like the world's most itchy mosquito bite |
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[???] ~ weighing the knowledge that attempting to analyze an ongoing mechanism will disrupt its chances of success vs. the mosquito itch of not thinking about it better once we've applied the fractollapse networks. |
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the fear of ANALyze |
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i analyzed your post and that’s what you are trying to say |
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current status: somewhere between crabby and effective. the monday meeting got delayed until wednesday. through more intelligence-gathering efforts, apparently, it's mostly gonna be about sales, or something... but, still, the gnawing questions remain about what the fuck they're gonna do, if anything. next, just byzantine shit. we have a contract with some data provider and the company that bought us does too but their contract is their contract and our contract is ours and we can't power "solutions" on their platform with data from our contract, we have to use data from their contract, even though the data is identical. so we have to wait for them to build a system to consume the data and then develop the ability to spew it back at us and then we have to develop the mechanisms to absorb it. and we are ingesting this crap already, just fine, but the people in suits are very territoriality pissy and so we have to do weeks of work for zero technical reason then, the icing on the cake, i get another ~required training course~ about sexual harassment. like, yeah, you don't have enough of this one-size-fits-all corporate horseshit in your day yet, let's drop an hour watching a condescending presentation with an obnoxious multiple-choice test they're all condescending. the one about how not to get phished, i let it play offscreen, with the sound off, and then just answered the questions. the video was high-test isometric diagrams and some obnoxiously perky female host/narrator. i am going to do my best to neither see nor hear the video on harassment, because i don't need it to answer the stupid goddamn questions. just give me my test ~certificate~ and let me get back to work between all this and the train, perhaps i should dust off my CV. |
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lewis is doing the thing where he ghosts everyone. i called drug question lady's boyfriend and he yelled for lewis and i heard his voice for a bit but then when he was handed the phone he just hung up immediately. he's done this to me multiple times before, along with pretty much his whole family. the first couple times absolutely destroyed me; i felt like he was gone forever. however, he's always come back. meanwhile, though, i worry. he's clearly in a bad place. this time, actually, is the first where i've had someone i can call and essentially verify that he is alive. i'm trying to keep it to one a week to not wear that line out the general arc ~ sadness, panic, then worry, then more panic, then anger when panic-induced reactions fail to change things, then love, then i try calling him and nothing, then anger, then depression. then i have a good sleep but still wake up a bit angry; hang on to it quietly. then i'm out having a smoke when i'd usually give him a call and i miss him terribly. one key insight was learning to remind myself not to take it personal, even though it's all very personal. it's not me, it's not him, it's his mental health issues. that he's done this a few times before, yet he's always come back to me in the end. and that is the point of clarity: having been through many rounds of this, phases that previously consumed me for months flicker in and out. it's almost like tying my shoelaces; so familiar i've become impatient with it. right to the end, where it's just this: he's my best friend and i miss him. perhaps it was a bit cornball, but the last thing i texted him was a photo of a bar we both go to sometimes with the caption "wish you were here" |
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you've got the right idea not to force the issue with him, i think. it must be hard having your best friend skip in and out of yr life when yr so close though. the situation with drug question lady and her boyfriend sounds a bit unstable unfortunately but if he needs you i think he'll come back around in time. once a week just checking in and keeping lines of communication open is all you can do for now. like you say, it's the illness, not him, and not you |
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mental health care is so incredibly fucked in america. he stopped talking to me because he was certain i'd been replaced by someone else. meanwhile, though, he got carted off for a three-day stay at the mental hospital, and when he got back, they demanded he leave, or something, and he claimed his stuff had been ransacked, but it could have been him so they bring him to a homeless shelter that they'd called ahead to and the homeless shelter is oh "uhhh sorry" and here's a bus ticket to boston, an hour away. lewis promptly says "yeah, fuck that" and finally calls me. now i'm listening to him trying to find another place to stay and the housing assistance people are like "you make too much money to get assistance" and he only gets that income because of disability. meanwhile, lewis is not supposed to be staying with me. he caused some incidents, and i worry if my landlady -- or anyone else -- sees him, i'm fucked. his mum and sister will only host him if he gets an injection of abilify, and he is of the position that he would rather go to a homeless shelter. i respect his independence, but, ugh |
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never been prescribed abilify but a quick glance at the wiki tells me there's better drugs. i guess everyone's different and he might not want to get into some drug bargaining / arguing thing with doctors but if he's had a bad reaction to abilify before maybe the doctor would listen. personally flupenthixol fortnightly injections and daily olanzapine has given me my rationality back, though the weight gain kinda sux. worth it though. is it all medication he's opposed to or just the abilify shots? btw, i know it's easy for the mentally ill to become homeless in america but it's still shocking to hear. i've been so lucky with the nhs |
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i read your post to him. he's never heard of flupenthixol; apparently it's not available in the us. olanzpine, well, let's just say that was not a positive reaction |
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yeah i can imagine, i don't think there really is a magic bullet for schizophrenia, i wish there was, believe me. he could talk to the docs about procyclidine maybe, that takes care of some of the nastier side effects of antipsychotics. hoping for better times for you both |
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Whenever you organize people into a group you instantly create two forces on any individual member of that group. One is their stake in the outcome of the project that they're working on. And the other is the perks of rank within the hierarchy. So if you're a two-person group, let's say each person has 50 percent stake in the outcome. Whether you call A, or B, the captain, and the co-captain, is irrelevant. If the project works, everybody is happy, and if it fails, they're depressed and unemployed. With four people, you're now at 25 percent stake. You're probably going to have a team captain and three team members, but it still doesn't matter very much. But when you've a hundred people, your stake becomes, let's say, 1 percent. You can't have one person with 99 people reporting to them. That just doesn't work. So you have one CEO, five VPs, 25 SVPs, and the rest are the associates or worker bees. Now, if your stake is 1 percent, what’s your reward for getting promoted? It's probably more than 1 percent. All of a sudden we've had a shift. Somewhere between four and a hundred, there is a shift in balance between these two forces. That's the phase transition. That's the qualitative aspect. You can write down what that looks like more mathematically, with realistic incentives. You get cash: that's how much your base salary goes up in the hierarchy. And you get equity. That's your stake. You write those two terms down, and then you see what the break even point is, where the derivative is zero. That gives you the equivalent of the critical point. It also tells you what controls that size. Those are the dials that you can adjust. |
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somewhere in here, i've written about being dragged to phd of psychiatry therapist whatever and i'd be given personality tests. with the MBPT, i'm probably an INTP. more interesting is the MMPI -- or, at least, that's what i suspect it was. it would ask me the same question multiple times. "ah," i thot, "they're just trying to see if i'm consistent." appreciating them wanting valid results, i did my best to answer consistently. then i got to one question: do you ever have the urge to do something shocking? i thot: oh, yes, i know what they mean. having a bizarre urge to tear off all my clothes in latin class and wave my dick around, then being mortified in response to the urge. but it was something that had happened, oh, maybe a few dozen times, and, no, test, this is not what my problem is. appreciating them wanting valid results, i checked "strongly no" and then again when a similar question came up. i thought the doctor crap was annoying and stupid, sure, but my parents took it seriously and for my own interests i'd be best off squinting through the test trickery and admitting to my actual problems like depression, anxiety but that thing about stabbing urges has stuck with me, because it's a bit of an unsolved puzzle: the fuck is that, anyways? why, brain? my current theory -- best i can do for now -- is that one walks about life restraining all sorts of urges, like not reacting when a person on the train is being a complete asshole. over time, this fills up a bucket, and sometimes, something deep in your brain rebels, firing off an urge that is a childish bolt of insolence against any sort of societal norm but, recently, i have been meditating a bit more regularly, and i've felt more of this sort of thing. it's paradoxical, since i've felt calmer, more focused, and miles less irritable. so, now, i also suspect these neurons are always firing about, but in healthy people, the conscious mind never hears about it |
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*MBTI |
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dat's mi 2 n mbTi |
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this popped into my hed just now out of all the crap i've written on here, this is top ten favorite bits if squarepusher is to ever to un-reverse-tube-sock, he needs to stop playing simulations with himself all day and get a live funk band. coathangar hed band, led helmet band... man, get hand bands banned so they don't get out of hand. on the other out of hand, this joke got out of my head as many mines were simulated out of my butt that i realized that squarepusher is the joke. so far gone up his own butt he's come out the other side and realized: shit, i'm the joke, let's go with it. hug it and see what it likes for lunch. simulate bands so more squarepusher jokes will self-organize on forums and explain to me exactly what's so funny about myself. i take my music career very seriously and i don't understand the rude comments, guys |
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lewis called me monday nite in a panic. i was a bit put off, because i'd just used the car autostarter to warm things up, putting on my jacket and shoes, and he calls and he needs me now because he's in a crisis. they -- despite my protests about overloading such a central word, he often calls them they (but, when he's better, he calls them 'my friends') -- they are telling him he's going to die tonite. "they've told you that before," i reply, "and you didn't die." "but, i never said 'go ahead' before," he elaborates. i could swear we've had this phase of the conversation before -- that he's told them 'go ahead' and still hasn't died -- but, unlike the more general case, i can't call up specific incidents to mind, and so i give it the benefit of the doubt. a little. "i think you might have. but, i bet you're here tomorrow." and then just talking him down a little. tuesday, he texts me, essentially stating he's "not very well today." "but you are alive," i reply. i texted him this morning; didn't hear from him all day. i suspect he is at a bar. it's noisy and he never calls at 10pm. his first concern is establishing that i am ok. he regularly thinks something horrible has happened to me, or that it might, and i really do my best to assure him as quickly as possible no matter where i'm at. but then he's worried he might die, or such, and tonite, it's more a distant concern, rather than an urgent certainty emotions are irrational. you feel, and then your rational mind interprets the feelings. anger is stupid, for example: if you're mad because the sink clogged and your toast burned, you'll be mad at people on the bus, too, but you won't say, "it's because my morning started off as shit," you'll say "it's because they're a stupid piece of shit and why do you have to be such a piece of shit" so, there's some sort of mechanism in between emotion and rationality that translates the emotional feeling into a rationale as to why we are feeling what w |
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...hat we are feeling. he had said, "oh, i kind of stormed out of there" w/rt to his current abode. now he worries he's going to die. in lewis, i feel the scales are exponential when they should be, like, logarithmic. his situation is complex, and he is not wrong to be feeling significant amounts of anxiety. most anyone would, in his situation, even without schizophrenia. however, instead of his rational mind being all, "my living situation is crap and stressful and it is stringing me out" he's all "i'm going to die tonight." it's actually more like he's saying, "i'm going to have a rough nite, tonite." i rambled all this to him in a less-composed manner, then effectively said: "your emotions are real, normal, and completely justified, but your rational interpretation of your emotions is vastly skewed." i felt, in the moment, he got it. but if he gets past a point he'll text me saying he's worried he's going to die. again. you will someday, duder, but not tonite |
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w/rt emotion, there is a feedback loop between body and mind. accelerated heart rate triggers neurochemical response in the brain, neurochemical response in the brain either elevates heart rate further, or backs it down. if you get really, really mad, it can take almost an hour to fully calm down, because your body is pumping like mad. the ongoing physical pump keeps prodding the mind to stay mad and, from personal experience, it can be like a dying wildfire with hotspots constantly threatening to set it all off anew. i think this is really where classic yoga canon shines, because it's about 1) learning to recognize the physical cues 2) learning what the physical cues do to your mind 3) doing something to your mind about it |
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the voices just won't shut up sometimes, and it's a negative feedback loop where the more you push back against their accusations / commands / prophecies / whatever the worse they get while i'm an advocate of "checking in" with em (it seems to let off some kind of pressure valve) getting into long conversations or listening too hard for their reply is usually harmful. and no matter how hard you try to banish the negative from yr interactions, if yr voice-hearing morning, noon and night, it will erode yr rationality and eventually turn nasty, at least in my experience it sounds like he's back to trusting you as you, not a replacement, and that yr reassurances are helping at least for awhile. said it before but it bears repeating: you are a good friend |
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yr right about anxiety feedback loops too |
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the voices just won't shut up sometimes, and it's a negative feedback loop where the more you push back against their accusations / commands / prophecies / whatever the worse they get anger and depression are similar except it's just one voice, your voice, instead of some galatic peanut gallery |
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while i'm an advocate of "checking in" with em (it seems to let off some kind of pressure valve) getting into long conversations or listening too hard for their reply is usually harmful. and no matter how hard you try to banish the negative from yr interactions, if yr voice-hearing morning, noon and night, it will erode yr rationality and eventually turn nasty, at least in my experience i'm on him to just not engage, and he seems to generally agree it's the right approach. so, it's not an issue in that regard. it's simply that he's hearing a lot of it, all day, and i can imagine after four hours of ignoring it i'd be all dfghjkdfgdf WELL FINE KILL ME THEN too it sounds like he's back to trusting you as you, not a replacement, and that yr reassurances are helping at least for awhile. said it before but it bears repeating: you are a good friend the replaced-by-robots delusion is generally not something he does, unless he's been spiraling out of control for weeks on end. before that is worrying i'm betraying him, that i don't care any more, and generally he'll call me up and flat-out ask me if it's real. he actually hasn't done that in a while... instead, what i've gotten is worry that something awful has happened to me, and, odd as this sounds, i'm touched. i read it as moving from worrying about my loyalties to simply worrying about me. |
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aaand he's gone off the hook again. hope he's ok |
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yes, apparently, he was at a bar, he got a bit too drunk, he was screaming at his voices and they carted him off to the hospital. this particular scenario has occurred before. he gives me a call as i'm doing my morning stretch/meditation/yoga/prioreceptive tuning/etc. and i am rather chilled out and philosophical. i am actually deep in the middle of a beautifully satisfying stretch, contorted on my bed, my face nine inches from the phone when it rings. he's worried about his friends getting lost. but, if the voices are lost, can't you focus more easily? no, the good voices. ok, so there are good voices and bad voices, and you're upset about losing the good voices? i go out on a limb: "i suspect it's a representation of how you're having feeling. the voices represent your emotions, and right now, in your situation [the hospital], you're having trouble keeping up hope." he doesn't argue. i'm not sure i'm right, but it does fit: instead of experiencing certain things directly, he has a dashboard of sorts, voices, blinking at him like mad. perhaps it's some sort of protective mechanism; avoiding the pain of feeling it directly. in any case, if i'm right about this, why can come later. "i was thinking," i tell him, "memory is an associative thing. when you sit, perhaps bits of everything you've ever experienced while sitting comes back at you. same if you're standing, a tiny bit of everything you ever experienced standing that way comes back at you. then more specific stuff for leaning... like, your body, movement, position, is this weird quagmire of memory, and this is part of what makes us think what we do." i'm always on him to take this stuff up, too. |
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he feels bad about screwing up. i can tell. "there's a lot that goes into a moment like that," i tell him. "perhaps if you hadn't gotten too drunk, it wouldn't have happened. perhaps if there's something else you hadn't done, it wouldn't have happened." he agrees. "but maybe if you'd also been paying attention to what was going on inside of you in a more scientific manner, you'd have been able to spot the warning signs and positive action, rather than simply avoid bad decisions. the way i deal with my condition, with depression, is i've studied it. i know the stages, and the signs. i know when i'm getting bad, and things i can do to de-escalate." he's bored out of his skull in the hospital, clear of all substances (except for ativan, which they dispense there) and it seems like a good time for these discussions |
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my running theory on synchronicity is based on the analogy of a random number generator -- or, well, a pseudorandom number generator, and the concept of a . it is a gloriously incongruent phrase, essentially meaning "the point of order from which a sequence of 'randomness' is generated." if you call rand(1), you get 3, 5, 19, 1. if you call rand(2) you get 9, 21, 6, 2. but call rand(1) and you get 3, 5, 19, 1, again. typically you're all rand(current_time) and thus, get a new sequence of "random" numbers every time. but, really, it's just an algorithm that generates something rather unpredictable, but still from a formula, based on an input variable. synchronicity is, by example: you're thinking of an old friend you haven't spoken with in years. right as you are, the phone rings, and it's them, calling you. how did that happen? how did you know? perhaps, say, you went to college together. you were both into the same music, and you went to see one of your mutually favorite bands live, and had a really memorable time. earlier that day, the band had been on the news, announcing they were reforming. perhaps other, more nebulous cues: maybe it's tuesday, and you spent the most time together on tuesday because of class schedules. lots of little details add up into the same sequence of random numbers, and, boom, it's not a matter of one person calling the other, it's more about who will make the call first. i came up with this years ago, and i still feel it's solid. just now, though, i thought, perhaps it goes further. earth is a closed system with rippling patterns of increasingly more information. perhaps consciousness, and, underneath it, life, all comes down to a common, cosmic seed. perhaps synchronizing with this seed allows travel anywhere, simply via the math. yoga and buddism describe such a state |
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so lewis has "they/them" which, when he refers to it, is not some transgender nonsense, but the negative/mean voices in his head. "my friends" are the positive/nice voices in his head. "they always embelish!" he almost yells at me, over the phone in the hallway of the psych ward. when i called, it rang for quite a while. i began to worry i was just bothering people with a ringing phone they were not currently able to answer. "three more rings," i think. on the third ring, some orderly answers. i ask for lewis. now he sounds somewhat sedated. he had a bit of a meltdown earlier today, he tells me. i ask him a question here and there, but mostly just ramble about things on my mind. before i could read, my father would always read books to me before i went to sleep. there's something about the sound and vibrations of a familiar voice that's very soothing. like, it doesn't really matter what i say, as long as he feels that i'm there. when he is agitated (as opposed to sedated) i've found the opposite is true -- it matters very much what i say. prompting him with practical, factual things seems to help. i'll be all, yeah, you remember last friday when [thing happened]? and then i'll pause for him to remember; reply. it really feels like, for a moment, he's coherent, because i've given his brain a very specific job to do. i hear it in the pause, and the "yeah." but then, if i don't immediately follow up (get into the details of it, connect it to a similar event in the past, etc) he will be off in the clouds again within a couple seconds. it's almost like trying to start a siphon |
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depends on what they're medicating with i guess. if he's agitated it could be benzos or maybe haloperidol. the latter will make him "compliant" but is fucking unpleasant; you feel unmoored yet so heavy and tired. a familiar voice, in this state, is welcome. when the sedatìon wears off, and he's back to being more concerned with the content of what yr saying, just bear in mind he may be having 2 or 3 conversations at the same time with subsets of "them" as well as you; trying to keep them all happy or at least pacified. it's like spinning plates |
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uri |
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That is the nature of metaphors, which have been intensely studied by philosophers of science and by scientists, as they seem to be so central to the way scientists think. But metaphors are also rich and allow insight and discovery. There will come a point when the understanding they allow will be outweighed by the limits they impose, but in the case of computational and representational metaphors of the brain, there is no agreement that such a moment has arrived. From a historical point of view, the very fact that this debate is taking place suggests that we may indeed be approaching the end of the computational metaphor. What is not clear, however, is what would replace it. Scientists often get excited when they realise how their views have been shaped by the use of metaphor, and grasp that new analogies could alter how they understand their work, or even enable them to devise new experiments. Coming up with those new metaphors is challenging – most of those used in the past with regard to the brain have been related to new kinds of technology. This could imply that the appearance of new and insightful metaphors for the brain and how it functions hinges on future technological breakthroughs, on a par with hydraulic power, the telephone exchange or the computer. There is no sign of such a development; despite the latest buzzwords that zip about – blockchain, quantum supremacy (or quantum anything), nanotech and so on – it is unlikely that these fields will transform either technology or our view of what brains do. how about ? kind of funny that they've written a very long version of an xltronic post. thx guardian |
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i used to have a lot more time on my hands. early pages of this thread, i'm deep on some quasi-insane self-mapping trip, and i discovered, i dunno, some strange meld of osho, qi going, asana, and software engineering. or something. then i got a proper salary job, and it kind of drifted off on me. recently, however, i kind of slapped myself, and said: the fuck did i stop doing all that for? the answer was, i was busy, i was lasered in on the day-to-day demands, and i did not see the bigger picture. i dunno what it was, but around two months ago i felt the need to get back in it. ideally, i need two hours of praxis in the morning, but, depending on how early i am able to drag myself out of bed, it is generally less. but i'm getting better proper form would be to have a large, open space, with a large oriental rug to form a box of sorts to gauge yourself off of. i have neither; i start off by sitting down on the kitchen floor. gradually waking my back up. stretching my arms from there, lots, in no specific order. i have dozens of, i dunno what to even call them. just gradually going around and communing with all my muscles. doing breathing exercises. singing a note, then trying to sing lower notes, focusing on vagal breathing and the sensation of resonance particular frequencies garner within my guts. using indian clubs to sort out my arms and shoulders. being very on myself to stop tensing up the muscles in my neck as i do so; these groups of muscles are improperly coupled together as thought foments movement and this must be debugged |
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often, towards the end of the session, i'll put on some music and just dance. yesterday, on a whim, i switched on my moog grandmother after i was most of the way through my (non) routine. started playing with it, practicing playing keys in time. i'm quite out of practice, eesh but, i think, my brain had a reason for the whim, as i started to connect the same feeling of meditation to letting my hands move down the keys. but it's still not quite fluid. i stretch a bit more, then put on some music. dance a bit then i have JJ Fad's "supersonic" stuck in my hed. i pull it up on youtube, and, to my delight, find that my moog noodling is in the same key as the song. suddenly, i feel that disconnect i was striving for -- letting my hand move on its own, more thinking about target notes than struggling to move my fingers. today, going through my (non) routine again, i switched on the moog earlier -- 'cos, hey, that was dope. then it hits me: there's a huge depth to this. pages back in this thread, my obsession with driving -- it was because i'd had to sell off all my gear, but i managed to hang onto my (fairly new) car, and so instead of making music, i drove to music. i've written of a moment where i experienced a moment of aphasia/confusion because i was driving and suddenly my brain was all, "why are there cars here instead of faders?" and i realized the starved, deprived music neurons had all glued themself into driving. from driving, i started to get into dancing, yoga, practicing general movement. so, now, it's come full circle, where i've suddenly switched on my moog as part of a morning meditation routine... when i developed all that in the first place to replace making music it's made me suspect i've had the wrong attitude: work takes so much time, i can't devote 10-hour blocks to music any more, so i can't music. but, just like the exercise, i'm an idiot for being so all-or-nothing about it. i just need to stretch my legs/keys daily and it'll pick up steam |
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how is the bullshit in this thread different from the bullshit in other threads i don't understand? are we supposed to expect some different flavor of bullshit in this thread |
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No, but it’s where he can focus on his writings without flooding the board with tons of other threads. Which he does anyway to a certain extent. Anyway, I hope this thread will be published as a book one day. I mean who could resist reading about Geoff’s life, ups and downs, and daily observations? |
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I do love you, EMTvenen. You’re an integral part of Xlt 2.0. |
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