0531 strands

0531 strands

spent the afternoon on the beach with many of my dearest friends in the world, one of whose birthdays it was.

looking around at the many hundreds of people sharing the beach, I thought about the experiences shared and not shared for each individual there at the same time

it's the same beach

the same weather

more or less the same sand under our feet

most of us heard and saw the drone zipping overhead at one point

but not everyone

if we were to make a comprehensive Venn diagram of how we experience the world, a blobby field for each individual..

I think that it might look less clustered together than it did, say, 30 years ago

but people will always need to share physical spaces with each other

perhaps more so for the extroverted, but introverts still need contact in order to remain mentally/emotionally healthy

the other day, my video production teacher, Matthew assumed that we 2 students attending class were "more or less extroverts" bc I'm a performing musician, and the other works as a bartender

we looked at each other and said, nope we're not at all. it is ironic, I admit. It tells me that perhaps many paying jobs require exposure to strangers, and introverts simply must roll with it.

I got a bit off track there, but it's vaguely relevant, I suppose.

0530 apathy

0530 apathy

death of a USGS webcam

killed by a Hawaiian volcano last year

0529 sterling

0529 sterling

0528 commit

0528 commit

0527 as above

0527 as above

0526 bouy v2

0526 bouy v2

If this weren't a daily thing, I'd replace yesterdays with this, but..

a) yesterdays version is not bad (I think) and deserves to exist

b) I thought of a different way to score this video of something you don't see every day

c) once a piece is published, it's on a few different platforms.. changing it would be messy and confusing

I want to try more of this idea. Film something worth staring at for under a minute and do sound and music that provides a new way of experiencing the image seen. Then title it. "bouy" is a pretty boring title and I think the overall piece suffers for it, but at the very least it answers the potential question: "what is that thing?"

This thing washed up after a typhoon in 2023. It was 2 meters in diameter at the base (facing camera).. the enormous chain was tangled in the rocks. We heard it from about 300 meters away. I even ran home to grab my tripod and microphone. The resulting booming sounds ended up in the score for the film Disorder 2025 by Tim Paugh.

0525 bouy

0525 bouy

0524 hydrolensing

0524 hydrolensing

My friend Noah and I have been locked in a constant conversation about art and its got me in a state of  simultaneous enlightenment and confusion, which doesn't at all feel like a contradiction. I think he's going through the same thing. It's flung me into a dilemma of identity.

As a composer/audiovisual person, I think I exist on 2 points of the same spectrum, that being between "Pure Artist" and, for lack of a better word, "Entertainer". There is a side of me that makes things that no one else will be interested in (unless you appreciate the honesty behind the making of things, which I'm not sure I even do) and the public be damned - not an act of defiance, because no one but me will hear/see those things.. defiance requires someone getting deliberately butthurt to prove a point) - and a side of me that wants to make people feel something and not be the only one who assigns value to what I make.

I think a lot of people exist on a point, but I feel the pull between the two points, and some of the work I do is further to one side or the other.

It seems to me that if you want to be marketable, one needs to pick ONE point on that spectrum and be consistent. I'm not and I don't. (I'm fame curious, but I've always been attention averse. I think my last birthday party was about 16 years ago.

I'm not sure I need or want to abandon either one. The down side is.. I think it confuses people to the point of they are reluctant to even call me a composer unless I do something like a film score and when I do, it kind of puts me in a state of grace to a lot of people. Add to that the current state of the relationship between art and the public, short interest spans. Seriously, when's the last time you went to an album release party? No one is interested in something long enough to celebrate it. We're so saturated with CONTENT that it's deflated the perceived value of EVERYTHING we experience. Oh cool, [scroll] oh neat, [scroll] bo-ring.. [scroll] oh cute, [scroll] yawn.. [scroll] oh wow, [scrollscroll]. That's most people.

It's annoying, but my default response to it is apathy and I quietly get back to work and forget about the whole thing. 

If you're reading this, I'm probably not talking about you. You rock.

0523 wicket

0523 wicket

more croquet than cricket, and not about the Ewok.

0522 glimmer

0522 glimmer

book day

5/22/26

 today = books 

I'm reorganizing my shelves (again) and at this moment all the books in my room have formed categorical piles on the floor, with Bruckner F symphony and then Brahms 1 on in the room.

Days like today always end in self-discovery. 

There are a couple of piles of books that seem to be waiting for my life to fall apart in some way. They are the ones that helped put me back on my feet in some way in the past. I like to have them in my line of sight in the room I spend most of my time, if not at arms reach. Just because they remind me of how I've evolved somehow. They're useful just sitting there. Instead of tattoos, I have the Principia Discordia, Tom Paine's The Age of Reason, David Graeber's Utopia of Rules and 5 of Dave Sim's Cerebus graphic novels.. all ready for me to reach over and reread. Unlike tattoos, they're not there to start conversations about myself (unless you are among the handful of people to ever have entered my studio/library and looked around), they're there to remind me of my foundations, and that those foundations are still there and are ready for a remedial course at any time.

If I stacked them in 2 huge piles of fiction and nonfiction, the former is dwarfed by the latter by far. But there has been a recent uptick of fiction. 

For example, today I intend to finish Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary. Against my plan, I saw the film before finishing the book bc three friends of mine ganged up on me and dragged me to the cinema one day just after I started reading it. I love those three friends and there is just no saying no to them. It hasn't spoiled the book for me at all. There are lots of differences and I love all the juicy science details of the book. But I kind of wish my imagination could visualize it alone, and though I like Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace, I kind of wish I could imagine him another way. This is why the book should ALWAYS come before the film.

Brahms 1 is over. 

Now I'm going to try not to injure myself stepping over the piles, go do some banking, eat out and find a place to finish PHM with Misun. Today's daily piece will have to wait until later.

-later-

finished PHM.. what a great ending. One of the best things I've read in a long while. Now the question is.. what's next? I think I'll hit some of the shorter things on my TO READ shelf.

0521 triptych

0521 triptych

0520 data

0520 data

0519 pareidolia

0519 pareidolia

0518 shadows

0518 shadows

0517 terrarium

0517 terrarium

this here's a zoo and the keeper ain't you

0516 city squall #1

0516 city squall #1

we think of nature as decoration within the environments we build

0515 strand

0515 strand

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRIAN ENO

0514 insula

0514 insula

the insula is a certain part of the brain

0513 trio

0513 trio

shot several years ago at OL'55 in Busan

0512 귀 감염

0512 귀 감염

if the mix sounds like I have an ear infection, that's why

now i'm going to pour chemicals into my head per the doctor's orders

that sounds like a 90s alt rock lyric

no fun chemicals, though

0511 typog 2

0511 typog 2

0510 dusk

0510 dusk

staring at the wall can be fun

Patrick writes:

The frogs began before dark, scattered chirps rising from the reeds in small clusters, two calls, three calls, at a time. Clouds drifted through a fading blue-grey sky. The damp air carried a soft oscillating hum, like the evening itself breathing. The marsh vibrated with tiny hidden voices from the grass and black water.

0509 suspend

0509 suspend

0508 daysome

0508 daysome

Ju-shin Min is a phenomenal musician that I have lately had the good fortune to play alongside a lot these days. Last night was a concert of his and I participated (on trumpet) for a few tunes. It was great fun to play with a quintet of such wonderful, musically adept people.

This piece was made from a short clip from the monitor in the green room during the opening solo piano number while I waited for my turn. Sliced and diced with audio spice sauté.

my playing schedule is here if you're wondering what's coming up.

0507 stare

0507 stare

0506 hocus

0506 hocus

0505 pocus

0505 pocus

this one went through a bit of a journey

it began with the boiling water images arranged in davinci resolve before music

but when the music was finished, it was at odds with the visuals

so it was re-edited to suit the music

it ended up more about rhythm than texture 

title is more about what cartoon magicians say than prenatal healthcare procedures

0504 awash

0504 awash

yesterday's rain on a decorative bus stop bench

0503 nascence & glitchy photography

0503 nascence

For a long time I've been interested in what digital cameras do to when struggling with low light conditions. The artifacts it produces sometimes look similar to visual white noise on an old TV, but it's not produced in the same way. When a digital camera zooms in to something it can't quite make out, these blotchy approximations, to me, are similar to what our imagination does when we can't quite hear something clearly. For example, when we are in the shower, and music is playing at a level too low to make out what it is, with all the noise from the shower and the bathroom reverb, our brains seem to fill in gaps in the information and we "imagine" a piece of music that is surprisingly different that what is actually playing. When we turn off the water, the music leaps into focus and the illusory music vanishes.

In the 90s for a time I went through a photography phase. I had an old SLR and bought a couple of lenses and a monopod on Ebay. I did some reading and found that high ISO film was good for shooting in low light, but that I should expect a grainy result. This attracted me bc I love photos with lots of grain. So I took my camera out at night and experimented with shutter speeds, apertures, and 3200(?) ISO B&W film I got from a camera store. After a ton of disappointing results coming back from the developer, I took my camera into a rock club. I was glad I had a monopod bc it didn't take up much space and was easy to move my setup around. There were dancing drunk people all over the place after all. These shots were the best successes I had. I didn't shoot the band much. What interested me were the faces of the goers enjoying the music and having a good time. I set up close to the stage, off to the side and got the camera up as high as I could and shot down at clusters of people. I had a bunch of faces in each frame and I loved the many stories and feelings captured in each frame. No flash, of course. That would pull everyone out of the moment I wanted to shoot, and probably get me kicked out. When those came back from the developer I was super pleased with the results. I stuck with B&W low light especially when my friends came over and drank, etc. For some reason I left all that stuff with other people when I moved to Korea, and then digital photography became affordable, then ubiquitous, then smartphones had it. Now I'm back at it and that grainy aesthetic still intrigues me, even though it's generally considered crummy photography, I like to use it to generate more abstract images and video that (to me anyway) is more interesting than portraits. Give me a cloudy, amorphous trembling blob on an undulating field of blotchy chaos any day.

0502 nearly

0502 nearly

the first of 4 beautiful days with no playing gigs..

I love that I'm playing a lot these days. I love the people I'm playing with (mostly). I love that I'm still somewhat valued in the jazz scene here in Busan. But I need these few days to decompress before the next string of daily gigs hits.

0501 visibility

0501 visibility

thank you to Sebastien Simon for providing today's visual source: a shot through his window at Gwangalli Bridge during a night light show. No other images were used to make this.