As with most work notes, just a log for myself: just filed the first draft of HEAVEN’S FOREST 108, the final episode of the season. So there’s nothing left but a rewrite and a polish of episode 1 because I thought of a tweak to add there. But, basically, all the heavy lifting is done, it’s off the board, the hard part is all over, and it’s in the hands of my poor co-directors to make sense of and turn into something worth watching.
I’m off for a whisky.
Well, it’s been a shitty week so far, and I don’t expect today to be much different, so I’m switching off for a few days to plow through what’s on my desk, because it’s all backed up and I still haven’t gotten the newsletter started. Also I caught a look at myself in the mirror and I think I have Pandemic Beard now. I’m not quite at the “sitting in the garden tying twigs and stones into the beard” point, but let’s see where I am by Sunday.
My friend Jason Howard’s new book from Image got announced.
Inbox 17, I have at least one phone conference today, I have a near-permanent mild headache, I probably smell of unwashed cave bear, but the sun is out and I’m not dead yet. I consider this to be entirely good enough for (asks Echo what day it is because who even knows anymore) a Thursday.
I have Bloomberg TV up and everything is red except pharma and digital cinema. The word “cataclysm” is being used a lot. No wonder my brain hurts.
Listening to THE ASCENT TO ABSOLUTE BEAUTY by blacktantra.
Been tied up with a bunch of stuff today, and I have a lot more work stuff to think about, so I’m out, BUT there’s a new Julianna Barwick record coming! juliannabarwick.bandcamp.com for those reading this on IG.
Bon mot from Geoff Manaugh today, as he too notes the passing of Beyond The Beyond:
“… the pull of regular blogging—the urgency of it, the personal routine and daily discipline of writing online, the sense of audience, the faith that other people out there share these interests—has changed dramatically with the new internet, today’s cramped and disappointing version of online life that is now nothing but reaction GIFs and Donald Trump.
“I remember hearing a story once when I was a kid about a guy who crashed his car out on a remote country road somewhere. He got pinned in place somehow, unable to move or call for help; his car’s tape deck was the kind that would auto-flip to the other side of the tape, play through to the end, then flip back over and do it all over again, in an endless loop. The guy allegedly spent like seven hours pinned in his still-running car, listening to Wham! the entire time, over and over and over again, with no way to turn it off. That’s what the internet feels like now, only it’s not George Michael, it’s Donald J. Trump and the Hydroxychloroquine Cure, and it’s enough to make anyone quit blogging.”
A Finnish label who do not use Bandcamp, and who do not sell downloads, but simply offer limited samples on Soundcloud.
Descriptions of their offerings can go like this: “An outlandish touch ignites the earth-bound stellar components into bi-directional currents. Abstract electro-acoustic currents, coarse drone ambience and meditative rhythms guide onward on the pathway eating itself. Telemorphic-statues are burning, spectral-horizons collapsing into sub-atomic states which linger omnipresent among the threads of blooming semblances.”
Therefore I had to drop a lot of money on a bunch of their stuff, and it was totally worth it. And they threw one in for me!
My entire body hurts today, but it could be worse. Also observe this bird batting airborne allergens towards me. It’s that time of year, folks.
Inbox 18. I am still very behind on a lot of things, because my brain is down to 75% of working capacity, so if you’re waiting on something for me, I swear I’ll get to it soon but right now just moving and breathing are challenging enough.
Last night I sat here ordering more pens and gear for my shoulder bag, on the deeply flawed assumption that one day I’ll be allowed outside again. But it felt nice to plan for it, and to get things ready for The After Time. I’ve loaded about five gigs of music on to my phone, I have two working sets of wireless earbuds, and I’m allowed to dream.
Okay, now I have to go back to scanning through a film company’s IP library. And get coffee. Good morning, reader.
Poking at SoundCloud in between clearing things off my screen. Wow, I haven’t looked at that in a while. I used to check my Stream page every morning to see what was new, and I guess I fell out of that habit. And, it turns out, haven’t updated my follows or profile in forever. I really need to clear that out soon, at the same time as I clear out my twitter lists, for the day when the internet has something to talk about that isn’t The Current Thing.
I keep a very basic wordpress.com instance that is a log of many of my actions on the web – pinned links, likes, posts and reposts, that sort of thing. When I like a track on SoundCloud, the track embeds in that simple instance, a playable element in the trail of clicks the site collects. This more sophisticated and advanced WordPress hosting system arranged by WordPress Special Circumstances resists a lot of that jerry-rigged automation: I suspect simply because it is more secure. This bugged me a little at first. And then it made me realise that it’s not a bad thing. It makes me have to think and act a little bit more in order to put things into this log. I’m leaning into it.
Not as much, of course, as my companions on the Isles of Blogging who do well-considered weeknotes or carefully constructed daily-ish single posts. Because I’m me, and because somebody has to show those people how to not do it. But blasting out a trail of my half-awake clicks is, I suspect, not how to do it any more. Going full-channel requires someone to act as a director of programming, after all.
Now I just need a programming guide. Radio Times.
