A lot of things happened today and I am just sort of now realizing it was all only Saturday (as most of my weekends are plain and boring, the fact all this crazy shit happened in one day is kind of weird). But here I am with Laura who helped get me a last minute write-on to a plus one at the Levis Workshop closing party that had an open bar and a fuck ton of great print work on the walls and I took a lot of pictures but this is the one I was in.
I have a lot of thoughts on the workshop, the ideas of capitalism and the patronage of brands as far as marketing goes, but this is not the best time to write up such intense dialogs.
My boss and I were talking about the implications of social networking on people at work the other day (he and I see eye to eye on many different things, sort of another reason my job rules) and he brought up a point I’d not yet considered; the way that the suburbs exist due to the automotive revolution and a person’s ability to commute to work from distance with ease, seemingly next would be how people think as it relates to their existence in a digital world.
Do you go places knowing you’ll check in on Foursquare? Do you not check in to some places, because it might affect how your peers would see you? Do you write about certain things in your blog, but not others? Tweet some ideas, or preemptively think about what you’re going to do and how you’ll tweet it?
I thought about writing this post before I wrote it; granted, writing with a point in mind means your thoughts should be organized, and I’d probably write similarly were this for a book or project I was working on. But the medium is the message, and it is all affecting how our brains work.
This is a pretty interesting read on people overwhelmingly absorbed by technology. And I’ll gladly admit I’m in that realm; while I don’t have a zillion social networking accounts, I am on a computer about 12 or 13 hours a day. At work I always have my Google RSS reader, GMail, and Adium running. My iPhone makes it impossible to ever really avoid work or personal communication. And while lately I’ve been taking a more pro-active approach against always being around technology, at this point it’s become consumptive, if for no other reason than being employed by a forward-thinking company means it’s practically required to always be aware of what is happening, or about to happen, in the world. And that requires at least a similar amount of immersion in the same technological ocean a majority of the world is.
Guilt by association, if you will.
And so as our lives become more dependent on technology, or our social networks become more digital and less personal, we adapt our brains to survive in such environments. The root of human nature is simply self preservation, and a large amount of that is now wholly based in one’s ability to utilize and perhaps manipulate the technology available to forge the next step in society’s “growth.”
But it is something to think about; when I come home from a day of shooting photos, while developing and sifting through the ones I’m happy with, I think of what I want to be put up as Image Of The Day and what would go better on the blog. I think about what stages to document paintings at, and then if I want those to be made public or just kept for my own records.
The prominence of Facebook Status Updates and Twitter, well, tweets or whatever … have created a sense that the immediacy of what any individual does at any moment is actually important, so much now that I fear big picture idealism is getting muddled and lost. The ability to see the whole board, understand complex situations and cultural nuance, political relationships and religious beliefs takes a brain developed to believe such things are important (which they are, and moreso in a globally digital world). Yet here we are, spending most of our time tweeting about the fact we just, well, tweeted, or something.
I don’t give a shit where you get coffee or what mall you’re shopping in. Let’s talk about some substance, let’s have a discussion, get into a debate. I’ll meet you there and you can check in to Facebook Places and everyone can read all about where we are. I care more about where we’re going.
Six designers who have names that start with M: Mike Giesser has some pretty looking design work, as does Mikael Floysand. In to a few of the works that Marco Muller does. Masato Nakada has interesting navigation to say the least, but the work is pretty solid. Mike Abbink has some top notch cleaned up work. Mathieu Lambert has some good stuff going on.
The Oh, Snap! blog consistently reminds me I need to improve my photography skills, and recently gave a shout out to an old pal Rob Dobi. In to Joe Skilton’s images.
I am seeing Sleeping In The Aviary next week and that makes me pretty stoked because they just happened to have a show in Minneapolis the night I am flying in. Expensive Vomit In A Cheap Hotel Room is a pretty good album for people who go through shitty breakups and so I’ve been accompanying my martinis with it this summer and the fact I’ll be flying in to a completely new city and end up seeing them five hours after landing is a pretty awesome deal.
Although I have to give credit to this girl, who not only turned me on to the band but also convinced me to visit Minneapolis after about five years of promising to do so, and whose couches I will be sleeping on for five days:
Shuttered newsstands and crowded trolleys. Weird how some aspects of the past remain romanticized, while the more important ones die. Sentiment is a motherfucker.
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Sent out an SOS call, it was a quarter past four in the morning when the storm broke our second anchor line. Four months at sea, four months of calm seas to be pounded in the shallows off the tip of Montauk Point. They call ‘em rogues, they travel fast and alone. One-hundred-foot faces of God’s good ocean gone wrong. What they call love is risk ’cause you always get hit out of nowhere by some wave and end up on your own.
The hole in the hull defied the crew’s attempt to bail us out, flooded the engines and radio, half-buried bow.
Your tongue is a rudder, it steers the whole ship, sends your words past your lips and keeps them safe behind your teeth. But the wrong words will strand you, come off course while you sleep. Sweep your boat out to sea or dashed to bits on the reef. The vessel groans, the ocean pressures its frame and to the port I see the lighthouse through the sleet and the rain. And I wish for one more day to give my love and repay debts. The morning finds our bodies washed up thirty miles west.
They say that the captain stays fast with the ship through still and storm. But this ain’t the Dakota, and the water’s so cold. Won’t have to fight for long.
(This is the end.) This story’s old but it goes on and on until we disappear. (This is the calm.) Calm me and let me taste the salt you breathed while you were underneath. (We are drowning.) I am the one who haunts your dreams of mountains sunk below the sea. (After the storm.) I spoke the words but never gave a thought to what they all could mean. (Rest in the deep.) I know that this is what you want, a funeral keeps both of us apart. (Washed up on the beach.) You know that you are not alone. I need you like water in my lungs.
This was just a good song until it came true. Then it was a great song.
Funny how that works.
I remember when the demos for Deja Entendu leaked, whenever it was, like 2002 … I sent them to Sean and we just played Starcraft while listening at the same time and at the end he just said, “Did he just say ‘I need you like water in my lungs’?”
I don’t know why that memory sticks with me about this song, but it does. It’s funny how ten years have passed since I first heard a demo to this song, and I can relate to it now more than ever.
I. (Thee Olde Dirty Flag)
If she should come and greet me again with the pains of this world writ ‘cross all her limbs, like a bewildered child I’d hold her in mine and stroke her sweet head evermore. Bound unto wonder we’d carelessly stray like low-rolling shadows through the end of our days. There’s trumpets in heaven six feet underground. Mighty and muddy, they faintly resound.
And love and love like proud flying doves with hearts full of pebbles and feathers and mud, though there’s bedlam beneath us and no sky above; just a dark fucking hollow that smothers and gusts.
The flag, the flag, the olde dirty flag, we lay down like dry stalks ‘neath that stick and that rag. Shine up them buttons, baby bury the band. And the flag, the flag, and the olde dirty flag.
II. (For Darling)
Oh, my darling. Believe! Oh, how they do breathe! There’s a heart inside of everything that nestles deep with tiny wings, lay your hands inside this hand and gently sing. Oh, my darling, believe.
III. (Bury 3 Dynamos)
There is no dream that sings anymore. That ship sailed a long time ago. But true as the rust and the soil and the trees, Lord I still believe.
Gave my right hand right hand gave my right gave my right (Ball of fire burning ball of light). Gave my right hand to that long thin long thin man (Ball of light ball of burning light). Gave my wrong hand gave my right hand to that long thin long thin man (Crown of gold crown o’ gold crown a golden crown). Touched his hem touched his hem touched his golden crown, touched his hem and touched his golden crown. Did you see did you see did you see that long thin man?
Gonna bury three dynamos where the trees where the don’t grow.
