Category: Scraps

Hello

I’ve forgotten how to be for the moment.

At some point during the last few weeks, one of the scripts on my blog stopped working correctly, so many of the automatic features of this blog are now broken. I would have noticed this much sooner if I’d been more attentive to the site, but, as the post below details, I’ve not been.

Anyone who’s signed up to follow my latest posts will usually get an email when there’s something new to read. This post will have no such email. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to fix everything again, so if you’re here reading this between November 14th and, say, the end of 2021—thanks for stopping by unprompted. It’s been a strange time, hasn’t it?

I’ve wondered more than a few times at what it might be like to be other animals—canines and felines mostly, but sea dwellers and flying creatures are just as captivating. Sometimes I’ve wondered what it would be like to be various plants, or even stones and rocks, puddles and lakes. What would it be like to be an entire pebble? Or an entire planet? Perhaps a star, or maybe a moon? There are literally so many things to be—so many beings.

What would it be like to be an airplane? I’ve recently spent a lot of time with airplanes, but only when they’re on the ground. They’re amazing creatures, but they’re completely out of their element when they’re not up in the air. They need so much careful attention to move around when they’re not flying—I feel a small sense of relief when I escort them to the taxiway and wave them off. Each craft’s home is up in the sky, and I know they’re headed back to where they get to be an airplane again.

Sometimes I wonder if an airplane would become confused at their own existence, aware of their abilities in the sky, yet bewildered at the number of entities contained within who give the impression they don’t want to be there—because now they’re out of their element…

What about an idea? What would it be like to be an idea? This is something I’ve never really thought about until lately—hilarious, I know. It’s weird: I’ve wondered so many times about what it would be like in the future, yet I’ve only now started to consider what it would be like to actually be the future. And, much like an airplane full of people, I wonder if being the future would be a confusing existence. In general, airplanes are admired for ending up where they’re supposed to and when they’re supposed to—that they’re able to fly at all is, at best, somewhat of a curious afterthought for most, or, for the rest, among the greatest or worst experiences imaginable. The same is true of the future: in general, it’s a journey duly endured by most—as long as there isn’t too much waiting or inconvenience along the way. Snacks, beverages, and entertainment are expected as well, and there will be complaints about any additional charges for headphones or extra baggage.

I’ve been in creativity hell for the last few months. I’ve not felt like working on any of my travel writing or photography. My music mixes, which I used happily spend days at a time on, have faded. I somehow knew this creative detachment would happen. There was a moment at my old apartment when I realized it (my daily life, my creative projects, and all my stuff) was all going to go away for a while. And then it all did. Now I’m in a middle of an ongoing adventure in Iqaluit—surly a creative writing slam dunk as far as content generation goes—but I don’t know what to say about any of it, other than everything is cargo.

Accompanying me in creativity hell is a constant awareness of how profoundly confusing the future’s personified existence would be, perhaps until they realized who they were. And even then, I don’t think it would get any less confusing for them. I imagine there would be an initial sense of immense relief: a lifetime of peculiarities within suddenly being tempered by context, like an airplane realizing there’s nothing wrong with who they are—it’s the passengers who don’t like to fly.

But I also imagine this sense of relief is fleeting: airplanes, commercial ones at least, rarely get to fly for free. The peculiarities of their own being will remain onboard as long as there are tickets to be sold. The life of a jetliner is a bittersweet and curated existence—one that’s meant to fly yet expected to follow.

The life of the future sometimes feels just as much so.

Okami

It’s another mix.

I’ve made another EDM mix. And like the mixes before this one, I hesitate to call it a dj set—mostly because I do not consider myself a dj. The dj prefix comes with too many expectations, both real and imagined, as well as too much baggage, again, both real and imagined. My artist name is decidedly sans dj: it’s just mutt. Why? ‘Cause it’s a mix…

My last two mixes did not get online release parties—that is, dedicated posts on this blog, like the first three got. And that’s somewhat funny and slightly typical as my last two mixes are what I consider to be my best ones to date. They’re certainly my favourites, yet they were released under the radar—only the most attentive readers have heard snjódagur, and ruffcut is an even rarer find.

My latest mix, okami, is more experimental, devolving in a sense to some of the sneaky beat matching found in digitigrade—oddly fitting as okami started off as a remix attempt of digitigrade before becoming its own mix—which it then almost didn’t.

There are so many sounds available with EDM—it’s one of the reasons I enjoy it so much—but it’s also entirely possible to get too comfortable with a certain sound, and I didn’t want to be making the same mix over and over again. I’ve tried to give each of my mixes different vibes and sounds and flows. For okami, I very much selected artists I wasn’t really familiar with and tracks I perhaps normally wouldn’t consider for mixing. And maybe I set myself too lofty a goal: I got stuck with the overall sound and flow of the tracks for weeks. It wasn’t until I spent just as many weeks away from the project that I was able to figure out what to do with it—spoiler: I was in Nunavut. But more on that later…

When I got back, and to get unstuck, I reimagined the mix as spread out over four sides of a double record set instead of an hour-long continuously playing digital file. It’s still presented as a single hour of music, but there are about three spots where there would be—and could be—pauses in the music as the needle runs out and the record needs to be flipped. Or not. It’s four sides of a whole, so each side is its own part of the mix, but each part forms a mini mix on its own. There’s no requirement to listen to it all at once, although, for now at least, that is the only way to listen to it. I haven’t put the gaps in yet, and I’ll be leaving soon for Nunavut again. Still—more on that later…

This may not be a surprise, but all my mixes have been about something. They have themes and moods. Snjódagur is about impermanence. Ruffcut is about consumption. Going back even further, Transformer is about disruption. AWD is about control. And Digitigrade is about uncertainty—likely why I tried to remix it months later.

Okami is about identity. My very noticeable writer’s gap of late could be a result of me spending more time trying to tell stories with music and lyrics instead, swapping notes for notes and tone for tone. But I can’t help it when it comes to words: I still like to have fun with them, so I like how there are at least four different ways to interpret the title of this particular mix—one for each side.

Track List

    Side A

  • Talk Amongst Yourselves – Grand National
  • Not The Only One – 16BL
  • Surrender – Eelke Klejin Remix – Way Out West

    Side B

  • Murder Weapon – 16BL
  • Pyramid – Jaytech
  • My Breath – Dezza with Dan Soleil

    Side C

  • Pangaea – Envotion Remix – Michael Cassette
  • As You Fall (Kyau vs. Albert Remix) – Bent
  • Nobody Seems to Care – 16BL

    Side D

  • Poison For Lovers – ARTY
  • Baja – Sasha
  • Abrasion – Pole Folder

The Last of the Notes

In pursuit of balance.

It’s uncomfortable how little I’ve felt like engaging with my writing projects, particularly in light of knowing it’s important that I do. My self‐styled break from my blog was mostly a cover story. Even now, with the ability to craft any retroactive explanation, the best I can come up with is the desire to keep at it… evaporated.

I know I get stuck in my own head—a particularly precarious statement—when it comes to creativity. It’s better for me not to think, not to plan. But I forget all the same. I sit down and try to think my way back into my work, try to assemble it all together, consider each piece and its placement. My ears ring instead. There are no thoughts. And then I remember—I remember…

This isn’t a thinking engagement.

Our minds create the weight that pulls things to us.

Or in the form of a quesiton:

Is it possible to have time without gravity?

These are little notes I would leave for myself. There used to be hundreds of them, maybe over a thousand of them. They’re mostly all gone now, transcribed into my computer so I can search through them for unifying themes and words—but I never do, because the only unifying theme is of mental chaos, by‐products of old psychosis. A few of them still exist as small pieces of scrap paper sitting on my desk. Though motivational in their intent, their sight is often a source of discomfort: the last remnants of an exhausted and recovering mind.

Balance is not always static.

Balance is never static, nor is it ever achieved. To cultivate balance is to acknowledge and invite the nature of change. Balance becomes a continuous journey. Its representation as a destination is an illusion, any rendition of its arrival cause for immediate suspicion—there is nothing without motion.

I gave my breakfast ears the other day.

There’s a bite out of one, because my breakfast is a brawler, and that brawler is a part of me.

Remember the feeling from your dream.

This note was under a pile of fading receipts. Written one morning months ago, it was a reminder for me to stay connected to a feeling from a waning state of consciousnesses. Now all it does is invite me to a place I’ve monetarily forgotten how to return to.

Since animals are able to dream, they're also able to have nightmares.

It became difficult for me to casually eat meat after this note. The scale and comfort with which humanity’s worst nightmares are imposed upon the waking lives of animals raised for mass consumption defies logic. It is an exercise devoid of respect or compassion, a forfeiture of grace and honour.

I am aware my brawler breakfast used chicken eggs for eyes before I dressed it up with gluten‐free ears, gave it a backstory, and then ate it. In terms of coming face to face with their own behaviour, I tend to notice humans enjoy their moral contradictions served sunny side up. It’s a tough ingredient to avoid as it’s almost always on the menu.

One of the things I tell myself is that it’s better to write while in a particular headspace, and that if I could take the detachment I experience from my human‐shaped identity and produce something other than dysphoric observation and condemnation, perhaps I’d get more work done.

It's either going work, or it won't—so now what?

This is paranalysis—a sort of mental paralysis where evaluative criteria trigger looping thoughts instead of action. Limitless mental time, resource, and expense are devoted to deciding how something will or will not work. The same formula is then applied to the potential consequences, or lack thereof. It’s a double‐down on doubt. Thoughts expand, but they don’t go anywhere. Nothing happens.

There is one more note—a couple, actually. But are they, actually, a couple? They’re linked now, but they weren’t before. That’s what a couple is. It’s not two of something, as I’ve thought for my entire life, it’s just a something. A couple is a connection—not a quantity.

I seek to reconnect to something that was once a part of my culture but now feels lost.

I remember things being different. I experience the present moving into the future and know what’s happening isn’t quite correct. I feel the absence of that something every time I’m requested to look at advertisements for curved phones or neon food, when I’m asked to care about who is wearing what coloured pants and which car they are driving. I used to play along because it seemed like a game. It’s not fun anymore now that I know it is.

Why do we remember the past but not the future? The future is remembered all the time—as hopes, as fears, and as dreams.

Wishes are memories you don't have yet.

I’m wishing I would remember more of them. One day I do.

What Would Happen

An exercise in wonder.

I’m still on my break, but this is a break from that, a break from my break. Sort of. The entire idea of a break was, and still is, for it to be a learning exercise, an opportunity to reflect on what I would like to be doing and how that might be possible, or not, given my current situation.

So… what have I learned so far?

Reading & Writing

I’ve found I like to write, and miss it when I don’t. I started reading one of my many unread books, but I started rewriting it instead of enjoying it. I had to put it down because I started arguing with the author over word choice. I’ll be giving the book another try at some point—though if its chapters are as awkwardly written as its introduction perhaps that will motivate me to write my own books rather than lament the reading of someone else’s.

The Problem With AWD

Weeks ago I recorded a music mix, and I was quite pleased with it. Perhaps too pleased. I recently listened to it again and was aware of things I hadn’t heard before, mostly that most of the first ten minutes are, uh, problematic. Way too loud and way too busy is how I hear it now. I checked the original source files, and yes, at a few points, I had two tracks playing at the same time with no gain adjustments, so I wasn’t just hearing things: that’s going to be loud, with business quickly building—oh, wait, I suppose I mean busyness. Wow. I’ve never noticed that before. Amazing. Business can’t be busy’s noun because it’s already doing that for business…

I’m fixing AWD. It will be uploaded again with the introduction remixed into something that’s a little bit less like ear sandpaper. Less appears to be more with the music I enjoy. I’ll figure out how to quantify this, but I have a theory what I enjoy listening to is more silence than sound.

Snow Day

I got a chance to finish another music mix during a huge snow storm a couple of weeks ago. I’m quite pleased with this one as well, but to avoid the mistake I made with AWD, I’ve been listening to this mix every few days to check for glaring errors. I’ve heard stylistic choices I could make differently if I decided to, but nothing suggesting the makings of a train wreck.

If I were to pick a direction for the music I would like to mix and, perhaps one day, make, it would be what’s on the album I titled snjódagur—Icelandic for snow day.

At the time I’d recently finished posting my visit to the mountains in Reykjanesskagi, so themes of different places, altered perceptions, tired minds, and falling snow took form. The name fit.

Change vs. Improve

I’ve found limited success with self‐improvement in some cases. I’ve never appreciated the foundational concept, one which presumes there’s something wrong with me and there is a better me in there somewhere—if only I could muster the courage or strength or whatever I was lacking within to be better, whatever better is. Failed attempts at self‐improvement collected as confirmation: there’s something wrong with me.

But the presumption changes if the exercise becomes an experiment. What if I stopped smoking to see what happens when I do? There’s no immediate need for me to decide if my smoking is wrong—all I have to do is observe the results of me not. What happens if I stop drinking for a month? There’s only one way to find out. What if I stop using a vape for a day? For a week? For two weeks? Again, there’s only one way to find out.

I have never found success like I have over the past few months. My experiments in personal change continue as I approach a quarter of a year out from the start of most of them. The current long term goal is to see what happens after a year, but I’ll have to get to half a year first. In the meantime, shame has been superseded by curiosity.

Everything Can Go

While working on another project, I realized there were far more things in my apartment hidden away than I previously thought. I’d say almost of these things hadn’t been touched since I either unpacked them or moved them from one hidden place to another under the guise of tidying up. Some of these things had only ever been touched so they could be previously packed up, moved, and then unpacked in some other place to await the same tactile fate. A few of these things had been through at least seven iterations of being moved to some new place to never be seen or used. The realization felt heavy and wasteful. There was a brittle quality to it as well: how these things I never see had grown in part to define me.

Later that night, Luna misjudged a jump and knocked over one of my many insane decorations made of mostly rocks and glass. It smashed in the most incredible way, an explosion of pebbles and shards at 1AM. Having never been in its path, Luna was unharmed by the falling item. I sat in disbelief at the ferocity of its own destruction.

It was a sentimental object, something I’d created out of yet another sentimental object. As single form it was no more—its glass container was in pieces, and its rocks were spread out over the floor. There was also the original object, a solar powered LED light, a plastic butterfly, one which would change colours at night, or used to. It stopped working years ago. Though still intact, the case containing its electronics had popped apart, and I saw for the first time how it all actually worked. It used a standard AA battery holder and a perfectly ordinary though now slightly obscure NiCad rechargeable battery. I can’t get them at the dollar store, but they can be ordered online. A slight battery hack for the moment means the colourful butterfly is bright at night again, and perhaps brighter than its ever been, but certainly brighter than the not at all I’d grown accustomed to. Its lightness had returned.

What Now

There is a duality to change, something which creates as it destroys, something which can be interpreted and experienced objectively and subjectively. I understand why change can be resisted by some, but I’ve always counted myself among those who embrace change. Yet, during my time off, during my time spent looking through all the same objects I continually bring to new places, I wondered if my embrace of change has been more or less at arm’s length for longer than I’d thought. Like the LED butterfly, I wondered if my own existence had become anchored with heavy and brittle things. I wondered what resilience such an existence would offer if it ever started falling—or if it already had. Sometimes I wondered if it was already in pieces. And if was honest with myself, I wondered why it occasionally felt like I was tightening my grip on familiar shards—a feeling easily accompanied by a smoke at the start of the day, a drink at the end of the night, or any number of manufactured tasks in between, where moving the same things around the same place is disguised as something I already know.

So now I wonder what would happen if I pulled change toward me instead, if I tugged at change while letting go at the same time. Now I wonder what what happen if I actually made room for something different in my existence instead of just pushing stuff around in it. And now I wonder what new lightness would develop if stepped away from heavier things.

…there’s only one way to find out.