This site is currently under construction. Though the blog is active semi-daily, the portfolio has been mostly archived and will only showcase newer work—anything done before 2020 will remain offline. As I’m currently working on a variety of new projects, there will be significant updates throughout the fall and winter. (There will also be a regular front page directing to the portfolio instead of the blog, but due to the fact writing is the only really active part of the site right now, I keep it on the front page.)

Anyway, thanks for visiting and hopefully the actual content of the site will be up sooner rather than later.

Charlamagne Palestine at The Brick Annex

Body/Head at Zebulon

I’ve seen a couple avant-garde musical acts in the past couple days that, while sonically couldn’t be more different, seemed keyed in to the same door of utilizing sound to connect to something greater in the universe. Charlamagne Palestine used intense repetition and tonal improvisation on the piano while Body/Head was a nonstop barrage of distorted guitar with various effects layering a collage of pummeling sound.

The similarities between the two acts was striking, however. They both used long-form, anti-format performances to keep the music in the moment. Seeing your regular band at a show becomes predictable if you’re familiar with their songs—you know what parts are coming up, and they might have a slight variation, but for the most part, you’re getting a louder version of an album cut. These works were very much like, This is how the room feels right now, and there’s something inherently special about that.

It seemed very telling that the two were also helmed by musicians in their 70s. Charlamagne couldn’t even remember the year he was born when giving a brief introduction to his work. Kim Gordon is 73, although you wouldn’t know it from the noise she makes (as well as how generally youthful she appeared on stage). They are both obvious masters of their craft and respective instruments and, while giving into the moment, always seemed to have almost complete control over what was happening with the sound in the room.

Being able to walk that kind of tightrope in the arts is the type of great mastery we can all only aspire to. It’s also why, when AI executives claim making music is not enjoyable or some other bullshit, they obviously have no clue what they are talking about. These sounds were extensions of the human experience, reaching beyond what our physical bodies can feel and sense, into a place that requires a guide to go. That’s what great art is, and what the best technology will never be able to replicate.

Downtown LA is the strangest metropolitan center I’ve ever seen. During the day there are cars everywhere. The freeways surrounding the area are packed, someone is always honking at a stoplight, the busses maneuver around cyclists. But the people? Almost the opposite. A few areas, like the 7th street Metro station or Little Tokyo, have a fair amount of foot traffic but a substantial amount of the city is proportionally sparse compared to New York (or even a smaller city like Boston or San Francisco).

At night, it’s even emptier. I was early for a concert Monday night so I walked around for half an hour or so and saw maybe a total of ten people, most of whom were walking their dog. Granted, I was up by the museums where there aren’t really any restaurants open but it’s a pretty common sight all over—unless you’re on a block where there’s a venue with a performance scheduled, you’d probably be able to count the amount of people you see on one hand.

I’ve heard downtown wasn’t like this before the pandemic but I don’t have a reference for that. Maybe it’s because this is such a car-centric city, you don’t have people generally walking from subway stations to a destination in any given neighborhood, and the closest most people come to public interaction is seeing someone through the window of a car. But it’s still very strange and emphasizes a certain loneliness one can feel in LA. You understand there are four million people in within a 15-mile radius, but you wouldn’t know it to look around.

Zionists will be lamenting the attack against Israel today in 2023, and it’s a load of bullshit. Not that the attack didn’t happen or anything—but that Israel is somehow the victim. When decades of oppression and violence result in retribution, you can’t collectively claim innocence.

There’s also the fact the IDF was ordered to enact the Hannibal Directive, which basically says to kill anyone and everyone—Israeli soldiers and citizens included—to avoid hostages being taken. These casualties were blamed on Hamas, even if they were not the ones who pulled the trigger. (This is from a report by Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper.)

The years since have seen non-stop violence perpetuated by Israel, predominantly against citizens, with complete support of Israelis and western governments alike. American colleges punish protesters and quelled free speech while allowing for violent counter-protests and police intervention. England mass arrests the public who support Palestine. Primary media sources—The New York Times stateside and the BBC across the pond—both have repeatedly published support of Israel and frame headlines constantly to portray them as the victim and downplay what is happening in Gaza.

Simply put, if you support Israel now you would have supported Germany then. Perpetuating a genocide can be swept under a flag of any color. Seeing other people as subhuman to the point they deserve extermination—especially when your justification is some millennia-old myth from a book—is ideologically grotesque to the point there probably isn’t a word vulgar enough to describe it.

I don’t care much about Trump’s speech where he riffed on Iran ‘taking out’ Los Angeles and San Diego. Like, whatever. Guy says more egregious things in a week than most politicians do in their entire career. Anyone surprised or offended must live under a rock. What is kind of funny to me is just the people who cheered in the crowd.

The speech took place in Nebraska, where earlier this year over 2,000 people climbed some stairs to honor the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. It’s just one of those things that goes to show how absolutely warped the red-state perspective is. Like, nothing on 9/11 affected fucking Nebraska.

So many of the people in these places will say bullshit like Never Forget while, in their next breath, hoping that some ‘liberal’ city gets wiped off the map. It’s a weird, fake patriotism where political morality adjusts to whatever point they’re trying to make (or support) in the moment. It’s the epitome of spineless American stupidity, so no wonder these people support a guy like Donald Trump.

These days I’ve been thinking about the boiling frog.

The boiling frog is an apologue describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to or be aware of sinister threats that arise gradually rather than suddenly.

Obviously this can be used as a metaphor for power and greed, which I think the United States is a prime example of in its 45-year decline since Reagan took office and conservatism has chipped away at just about everything that was beneficial to the people at large. Today, though, I’m thinking about it in a more literal sense.

Los Angeles is currently being hit with its third heat wave this summer. Usually in LA, the season is certainly on the warmer side, generally ranging between 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit with a few days that reach the hundreds. This year we’ve had three separate occasions where week-long heat waves where the low temperature would be 95 and even the middle of the night will be 80. While this is also a side effect of the Super El Niño going on, it certainly raises some eyebrows when it comes to climate change.

At this point it’s deadly obvious the United States has no interest in preparing for the possibly apocalyptic levels of displacement and death that could occur over the next 20-50 years. It’s not like the wealthy would care—they will most likely profit in air-conditioned offices and afford to avoid any catastrophes, and if a substantial amount of the population dies off, that means the remaining resources on Earth are proportionally larger. And they certainly don’t care about animals.)

While we’ve been the frog in the pot metaphorically for some time, now it seems like we’re in the literal phase. The climate is going to get more extreme, but not all at once. It’s just going to get slowly worse, with a few more deaths every year, until it’s far too late. Those in power will throw up their hands and say, “There’s nothing we can do about it now, you’re all on your own.” The domino effect of social deterioration will accelerate and there’s a decent chance Mad Max: Fury Road is retroactively seen as some kind of prophecy.

And the only way out of the pot is through wealth—and who knows how long that will really extend your life with the possible consequences of this looming crisis.