Xmas

Here lives the family that is absolutely free to be at peace with itself. 12/25 is its day of renewal.

Three

These are for my mom for Christmas. I hate family photos, they always look blown out by on-camera flash, everything flattens into the background, and everybody always has that same dumb "picture smile" on. They're awkward. I wanted to make something closer to what we really look like.

(I'll post those requested amp/guitar diagrams later.)

Tech: Pedals

It occurred to me that a few of you who read this might be interested in some more mundane tech stuff. People ask about pedals more than they ask about amps and guitars. This is the effects setup I use touring with Rosetta. I just rebuilt it to accommodate some new components.



This is completely nerdy but I like talking about gear. Usually when we tour with other bands, one of the early friendly connections is gear talk. It's like shop talk, or book talk, or hey-you-like-Twin-Peaks-too talk.

Comfort / Space / Steadfastness

I keep returning to this place. I first came to it in person a little less than two years ago, to explore it with a 6x6 manual TLR camera as a metric proxy for my eyes, which were overwhelmed.



As much as half of my constructive output over the last two years has made use of this site. I have finally concluded that the reason is comfort. I was explaining to a friend recently that there are some things which, though they are simple, overlooked, or odd, are comforting and beautiful to us because they are steadfast. They remain. In the context of that conversation I somewhat facetiously referred to peanut butter as one such thing. Though everything fall apart, I will still enjoy peanut butter. This is reassuring.

These towers, though both hyperrational and ethereal, are comforting like peanut butter. Every night since I first moved to Philadelphia at age 8, to this day, I have been able to see their pulsating red lights from the window next to my bed. Thus, to me they represent steadfastness and transcendence in a way that can never be expressed in words, because the subjects themselves stand silent. Their idiom is the glow, the hum, the breeze, grass, metal, and radiation: a quiet spring of enormous power, a bridge between earth and sky. (Given my sentiments about media and information, it would be entirely appropriate and expected if I hated and feared them. Quite the opposite.) Ironically, though they are implements of broadcast, in my mind they do not impose or interject. They watch. Their vigil is not invasive, judgmental, or in any way reminiscent of Big Brother; rather it is patient, reliable, and benevolent --- as friends ought to be. As such, the towers stand as a tangible, monumental, omnivisible reminder of the unseen power which guides my steps and Remains, though everything else be ruined. Perhaps this is naive.

Another weekend tour

This time, with Tides, Giant, and Balboa. I am currently having a fabulous time. These pictures are all from Norfolk, VA on 12/15, and taken by Dave Pacifico, whom I have missed very much these last few months.

I feel like lately Rosetta has started sounding "trashier" (not in a bad way) and less refined. I'm not sure if that's because the fall has been more stress and less practice than usual. In Norfolk we had to play without Armine and it was pretty weird (but again, not all bad; it was challenging).

Trnsmssn

HDR

This photograph was constructed using a relatively new technology called High Dynamic Range imaging (HDR). A computer program compiles bracketed exposures of a single scene into one image with a contrast ratio of about 100 times what a normal computer screen can reproduce. The resulting file can be "tone-mapped" to a normal dynamic range (somewhat analogous to multi-band audio compression/limiting) such that much more detail is visible, and contrast can be boosted locally instead of globally. The resulting images are often quite beautiful, if a little unreal.

I suppose it's only a matter of time before this particular micro-aesthetic becomes an annoying visual cliché, like dozens of Photoshop effects already have. Can it then still be "beautiful"?

For that matter, does technological development of this kind actually spring from need --- or is it more simply novelty for novelty's sake? That is, to what extent does technological development respond to actual needs, versus creating by its onward march a felt lack that would not have been perceived otherwise? Perhaps need and development feedback positively. I am of course talking about consumer technology here, those developments which are targeted at a buying public. I suppose it could be argued that we don't need 99% of what gets developed for these markets. If technology does address needs, it almost always exceeds them too, creating a gap in which we realize that what we have must not be enough ("Ooo, I want that"). The amplification of this gap is accomplished through advertising --- forcing us to acknowledge the obsolescence of what we have, to usher in the novelty of what we do not.

Considering this particular case, I had thought about this issue as a "problem" before. But I might have accepted it as a limitation of the medium, since display media have greater limitations than the associated recording media. Now technology enables me to work around those limitations --- but what I produce in so doing is not more lifelike, it is in fact less so. As such, the new process seems less addressed toward solving an existing problem than it is toward generating a "gee-whiz" reaction. When the novelty wears off, does the technology remain worthwhile?

Which came first, the disease or the drug?

Back

to 1992.

I found this in a drawer that I hadn't opened in many years. I had lived in Philadelphia for 7 months when it was taken.