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OPERATIONS: script, trailer notes round 2, tv doc, newsletter, development, eyestrain. Offline until I get hold of this.
READING: BEYOND THE LIGHT HORIZON, Ken MacLeod (UK) (US+)
ORBITAL:
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter. Forthcoming 2024: THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT, DESOLATON JONES: THE BIOHZARD EDITION. 2025: THE STORMWATCH COMPENDIUM.
- a pint of water with a shot of lemon juice in it
- 100g coconut-based yogurt with fresh berries, honey and almonds
- pea protein smoothie with frozen berries, oats, cacao and oat milk
- frozen watermelon juice if I remember (I don’t)
- plant-based wrap with hummus, salad leaves, tomato, cucumber, red pepper, herbs and a shredded chicken thigh
- kale and black grape juice made with 300ml water in the Nutribullet
- gluten-free rosemary crackers with cheese, an apple, walnuts
- chicken and rice in some form
- nutritional-powder smoothie with oats, oat milk and one frozen banana
This and trying to cut down on the smokes? But I need to cut weight after a long winter and keep the brain running fast, so this is the horror I live in for a while.
The thing about devoting some months to reading the things I meant to read years ago means that, sometimes, I sit down with a book and am furious with myself for not reading it twenty-five years ago, because it was everything I needed to know and needed to hear. This is one of those books.
It’s about the seeds and roots and emergences of ambient music, and Brian Eno is rarely mentioned. It goes really far and wide and granular, a huge work of scholarship and memory – because Toop is an experimental musician who was also a music journalist, and he met most of these radical composers and inventors. He goes everywhere:
“There’s a wonderful story about Taxi Driver”, says Schütze. “I think it was the first and only film where, when the censors saw the film, the only requirement they had in order to pass it for a screening certificate was a sound cut. What completely freaked them out was the fact that Walter Murch had taken the idea of the gun, which is a tremendously symbolic and disturbing thing, and he put cannon fire underneath the gunshots. So these gunshots are not a pop; these gunshots are like your lungs are blown out through the back of the theatre, which is probably what it would feel like if you were holding the gun. I think the censors realised that this was subjective sound from the character’s perspective. You were feeling the recoil because you were holding the gun, therefore you were empathising with Travis Bickle which is a deeply disturbing thing to realise you’re doing.”
I am so stealing that one day.
On reflection afterwards, the book seems to have a tidal structure – Toop goes all the way back to the mud, then rushes forward to the (then-current) shore – it was written in 1995.
There’s a wonderful sequence towards the end where Toop describes one of his journeys down the Amazon to meet and record shamans. Which had especial interest from me, because my partner has spent a lot of time with the Shipibo and the ayahuasceros (I got a similar jolt watching TAR, where Tar talks briefly about the Shipibo-Conibo and the icaros, the medicine songs, which she’s also described to me). We still pay for the villages she knows to throw a Christmas party every year.
And this line, my god:
That night I go to sleep listening to someone chanting a myth in the distance.
I made a lot of Kindle highlights, and am still tracking down and listening to all the unfamiliar work he references. It’s an absolute treasure chest of a book, and beautifully written.
Chilly, rainy day. Hoping to get into the garden this weekend, not least so I can attend to these tomatoes.
OPERATIONS: Boards updated, Zooms set, one more coffee then it’s five straight hours of scripting followed by six hours of development work. Inbox 83, I’ll start processing tonight.
READING: FUTURE DAYS: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany, David Stubbs (UK) (US+)
LISTENING:
And now the doorbell and the spam calls are starting, so I’m off.
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter. Forthcoming 2024: THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT, DESOLATON JONES: THE BIOHZARD EDITION. 2025: THE STORMWATCH COMPENDIUM.
Taking a moment to look back on my mark-making here recently and pick out the pieces I thought worked better than others, mostly for my own consideration going forward.
“It is good to chase one’s dreams, but bad, as it mostly turns out, to be chased by them.”
There are older, and therefore cheaper, editions of this, also known as the Zirau Aphorisms – but this is the newest, and I always go for the newest translations of work, because they tend to build on the older ones and therefore may be more informed, considered and exact. On top of that, here each aphorism comes with a few pages of context, which are very rich and add a great deal to the experience. Some of them even include aphorisms Kafka discarded, of which this is my favourite:
“Sancho Panza, who, it should be said, never boasted of it, was able, over the course of years, in the evening and night hours, to divert his demon—whom he later dubbed Don Quixote—away from himself by amassing a great many chivalry romances and picaresque novels.”
Many of the aphorisms concern Kafka’s obsession with the Biblical Fall, which I found less interesting than the pure notes of invention he was capable of sounding in this abbreviated form, of which the most important for me was:
Leopards break into the temple and drink the sacrificial vessels dry; this is repeated over and over; eventually it can be calculated in advance and becomes part of the ceremony.
That’s the sort of thing I picked the book up for, and the sort of thing that makes me sit for an hour with it.
I’ve been thinking for a good while, on and off, about this particular form of writing. Kafka shows its value and its potentials. It’s a wonderful, educational and even sometimes funny little book.
OPERATIONS: Very full day already, hopes of a relaxing day scripting already dashed. I’m going to be up and down from the desk all day. I’m on my fourth ristretto and it’s barely noon.
READING: FUTURE DAYS: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany, David Stubbs (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: Night Tracks
LAST WATCHED: EXPENDABLES 4. In this house, we always give a Jason Statham film a try. I both detect and ignore your judgement, reader.
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter. Forthcoming 2024: THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT, DESOLATON JONES: THE BIOHZARD EDITION. 2025: THE STORMWATCH COMPENDIUM.