“It’s monolithic and needy at the same time, like a godlike being who just wants a shoulder to cry on.” — Dave Bloom on Tim Hecker’s Ravedeath, 1972
n. the smallest measurable unit of human connection, typically exchanged between passing strangers—a flirtatious glance, a sympathetic nod, a shared laugh about some odd coincidence—moments that are fleeting and random but still contain powerful emotional nutrients that can alleviate the symptoms of feeling alone.
I still have some of these that happened years ago, stored away in areas of memory that I even sometimes remember to go looking in at the right times.
Reminds me of something John Darnielle said once that has also stayed with me. I don’t remember the source, but I think it may have been a radio interview?
“Loneliness is something you carry with you, it’s not something you experience because you’re alone.”
(via cleversimon)
“She reads a book about Zen and she writes down on a piece of paper the eight parts of Buddha’s eightfold path and thinks she might follow it. She sees that it mainly involves doing everything right.” — Lydia Davis, Five Signs of Disturbance
“She cries and may be crying only because it is raining outdoors and she has been staring at the rain coming down the windowpane, and then wonders if she is crying more because it is raining or if the rain made it possible for her to cry in the first place, since she doesn’t cry very often, and finally thinks the two, the rain and the tears, are the same.” — Lydia Davis, Once A Very Stupid Man
So I was all like “Oh get a life you people, who gets excited about looking at video game sunsets” and who’s laughing now? It’s not me. Definitely not me.
Having spent I don’t know how many hours of my life playing Morrowind back in the day, it seems pretty inevitable that I’ll get into Skyrim eventually. But I resisted buying it during the Steam sales at the end of last year, and I’ll keep resisting. At least until the next time it goes on sale.
“… a mad person not helped out of his trouble by anything real begins to trust what is not real because it helps him and he needs it because real things continue not to help him.” — Lydia Davis, “Liminal: The Little Man”
[video]
About to start my fourth listen-through of the demos you get for preordering from Sub Pop.
Happy days.
Today’s unexpected encounters:
a big fat tabby cat on my way to the supermarket in the morning, who wanted to be patted for a while and then got cranky and hissy;
a tiny three-legged Siamese cat on my way to the supermarket in the evening, who when I sat down to pat her climbed into my lap(!) and proceeded to snuggle there, purring(!!), clawing at the front of my shirt now and then so I would bend my head down where she could lick my face(!!!);
a very small ringtail possum looking down at me from a power line on my way home.
The lack of animal encounters and company (and pats! and cuddles!) in my life recently has caused a surprising amount of suffering (and also a LOT of looking at cute pictures of animals on the internet). I feel like I got a good-sized refill today.
“808s” was a landmark record for Auto-Tune in black pop, proof that it could be a compelling aesthetic choice rather than an R&B-crossover crutch. Stripped of its natural authority, West’s singing becomes a pixilated whimper, the sound of a man trying and failing to insulate himself from hurt; the treatment throws the cracks in his voice (and his psyche) into sharp relief.It sort of seems like Alex Pappademas is being an asshole when he says the above, after opening this piece on Auto-Tune by just about tripping and falling, mouth-first, on Bon Iver’s dick:
Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, whose “For Emma, Forever Ago” is the most acclaimed recorded-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods record of recent years, has made use of Auto-Tune both subtly and blatantly. Vernon’s “Woods” is proof of Auto-Tune’s potential as a creative tool; in their own way, all these songs are, too.When a sensitive beardy uses Auto-Tune it’s an unmitigated “creative tool”, but when T-Pain uses it it’s a “black pop crutch”. And by the time Kanye uses it like, ooh, looky looky, black pop musicians figured out how to make “aesthetic choices”.
So many people are so terrible.