02024-01-11 | Book, Reading
mazer: What is the alternative to appropriation?
kotaku: I don’t know.
mazer: The alternative to appropriation is a world in which artists only reference their own cultures.
kotaku: That’s an oversimplification of the issue.
mazer: The alternative to appropriation is a world where white European people make art about white European people, with only white European references in it. Swap African or Asian or Latin or whatever culture you want for European. A world where everyone is blind and deaf to any culture or experience that is not their own. I hate that world, don’t you? I’m terrified of that world, and I don’t want to live in that world, and as a mixed-race person, I literally don’t exist in it.
I finished two books this week. The first one was Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin. The above quote is from that book. It’s quite a page turner, that book, + I really enjoyed it.
The other book, finished this morning, is Doppelganger, by Naomi Klein. Robby gifted it to me. It’s an amazing book. It’s like a piece that was missing in my understanding of history. Once unpacked + understood, it clicks in with a satisfying sound + then your focus becomes so much clearer. Already gifted the book to several people. Very good.
02023-10-18 | Book
Spotify’s new audiobook streaming could have ‘devastating effect’, says Society of Authors
The industry body says the music giant’s move to make more than 150,000 titles available has not been discussed with authors and may compete with sales.
The Guardian
May compete with sales…. that’s quaint. Of course it will. It will crash sales of audio books.
02023-10-07 | Book, HuHeartDrive, Ideas, Movies
I am reading The Books of Jacob, by Olga Tokarczuk. Not loving it but it’s a big book and perhaps I need to persevere a little longer. Also reading Time of the Magicians, by Wolfram Eilenberger, with the subtitle The Decade that Reinvented Philosophy.
Last night I watched Lakota Nation vs United States. Amazing people and amazing documentary film. Highly recommended.
Uploaded a new hybrid mix to Backstage. I call it a hybrid mix because only a few of the tracks were encoded binaurally and the majority of the tracks were in stereo. I like the sound of it and will do more such hybrid mixes.
Uploaded the last entry I wrote during my cave retreat. I’m already contemplating my next visit. :-)
Reasons to be Cheerful posted about the Miyawaki Method. Brilliant!
Founded in 2017, Boomforest is taking an approach to reforestation known as the Miyawaki method. Developed by the Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki in the 1970s, the concept is to plant tree species that are native to the area in a very dense and layered manner — three per square meter — in order to recreate the richly fertile conditions of the natural primitive forests that once covered the planet. It is in contrast to the slower, more orderly and homogeneous processes of traditional reforestation.
Dense Micro-Forests Are Thriving in France
Ted Gioia wrote about a new study of music and well being:
So I was intrigued by a new study from the British Academy of Sound Therapy—which looked at how people use music to improve their mood and physical well being.
They studied 7,581 people and learned that:
- 89% of people believe music supports health and well-being.
- Music creates an optimal state of relaxation in about 13 minutes.
- The best music for relaxation has a “slow tempo, simple melody and no lyrics.”
- Music can alleviate sadness, and 13 minutes is an optimum time for achieving this.
All these results converged on a time frame of 9-13 minutes before music demonstrates desired levels of efficacy.
Half of Waking Hours Are Now Devoted to Entertainment
Maybe I should make some extended versions of slow pieces. Which ones should I work on?
02023-08-27 | Book, Reading
SOME OF US who live in arid parts of the world think about water with a reverence others might find excessive. The water I will draw tomorrow from my tap in Malibu is today crossing the Mojave Desert from the Colorado River, and I like to think about exactly where that water is. The water I will drink tonight in a restaurant in Hollywood is by now well down the Los Angeles Aqueduct from the Owens River, and I also think about exactly where that water is: I particularly like to imagine it as it cascades down the 45-degree stone steps that aerate Owens water after its airless passage through the mountain pipes and siphons. As it happens my own reverence for water has always taken the form of this constant meditation upon where the water is, of an obsessive interest not in the politics of water but in the waterworks themselves, in the movement of water through aqueducts and siphons and pumps and forebays and afterbays and weirs and drains, in plumbing on the grand scale.
Holy Water, from the book The White Album, by Joan Didion.
02023-08-27 | Book
I think I found my next book although it will probably by next, next book. They are all lined up and waiting. The Marginalian has a great write-up about his book: Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness and Being.
Maybe this will wet your appetite too, or go to the link below and read the whole article.
The teeming hordes of living things on Earth, not only in space but in time, are actually all one massive, single organism just as certainly as each one of us (in our own minds) seems to be a distinct human being throughout our limited lifetime… Each of us is, equally, an independent living human and also just one utterly minute, utterly brief unit of a single vast body that is life on Earth. From this point of view, the passing of human generations, in peace or turmoil, is nothing more than the shedding of cells from one’s skin.
Notes on Complexity: A Buddhist Scientist on the Murmuration of Being – The Marginalian
02023-08-19 | Book, Reading, Video
I watched those guys beat each other up. It’s what passes for entertainment in the mountains. :-)
I did read a little bit every day. Novelist as a Vocation by Murakami is excellent. He writes much that seems to match with my experience. I also started to read The White Album by Joan Didion. She has a wonderful writing style. I am really enjoying this book so far.
There are so many great quotes in the Murakami book that I highlighted. Here are just a few:
The narrower and more specialized the field, I have found, the prouder the authorities tend to be and the stronger their antipathy to outsiders.
Don’t I know it!
But since I do happen to have a bit of ability to write novels, and have had some good luck on my side, plus a stubborn streak (or, to put it more nicely, a consistency) that’s proved helpful, I’ve been able, over thirty-five years, to write novels as a profession.
I am quite stubborn myself and I have had some good luck. And it’s been just about 35 years, since 1989.
A writer’s greatest responsibility is to his readers, to keep providing them with the best work that he is capable of turning out. I am an active writer, which is to say, someone whose work is still in progress. A writer perpetually groping to discover what to do next, inching forward through the perils of the literary battlefield. The task set before me is to survive, and to try and keep moving ahead.
Yes!
The Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert had this to say: “To reach the source, you have to swim against the current. Only trash swims downstream.”
Smile.
