i do at least feel better now than i did last week, but it's been a lot of wasted time cleaning up the mess. if i get the chance to smash these idiots' brains in, they'd better fucking run, because it's going to be a brutally violent outcome if i catch them.
i just want to write this down while i'm thinking of it.
something that's different about this place and every other place i've lived in since bronson - which was from 2007-2011 - is that i have my books unpacked and on a shelf, here. i had a handful of the books out and on a shelf in the last basement i was in, and i had a part of the apartment put aside for building shelves in, but the basement turned out to have some weird water issues and i never got around to setting anything up in there. i intended to build shelves in the basement i was in from 2013-2018 but my focus was almost 100% on my discography at the time and i never got around to it.
the reality is that the culture on this continent has changed enough for the worse over the last 5 years that i'm not confident i'm going to find myself very interested in the nightlife in detroit or windsor. i've scanned. it's truly gone to shit. i've complained before about the ubiquity of folk music displacing more interesting genres that require higher levels of musicality, but the techno scene has also gotten horribly boring. something i'm learning about the young people via proxy is that they're incredibly shallow, because they live in a world where nothing exists except marketing demographics. the idea of creating something new or creative is just beyond them and from what i can see from sorting through shows, they even seem to inherently resist the idea of novelty on it's face. to the younger generation, everything is a cliche, because all they've ever known is a cliche. you can do rock music, but only if you're a novelty act. rock music was heading in that direction anyways, but the cliche-ification and memification of everything means electronic music also only exists as cliches, which means the concept of music is running up against a brick wall of commodification. i'm not even sure much of this is being grasped. i think sitting down and trying to explain this might result more in blank stares than any sort of creative spark. i see a kind of dead end of ultra-commodificaton in the near future (commodities are not art), which was about where we were in the late 80s, but the difference between gen z and gen x is that gen x realized this was bad and resisted it and gen z doesn't seem to understand why that would even be considered something to criticize. the fucking fuckers seem to have finally succeeded in completely brainwashing the kids.
there's no underground left, post-pandemic. it's ok if things shut down. but nothing's replaced them except social media, which is not an underground in the same sense, it's just hyperlocalized cliques. all of this networking should be making it easier for people to find each other, but it's instead made it harder.
and, from what i can see, the venues are just confused that their marketing isn't working when they pump out cliches over tiktok and nobody reacts.
what we're going to need is raw unfiltered venues and it may require a generational shift, as young people seem to be afraid of the idea of this on it's face. who will protect them from getting offended? it's common sense to them that a venue should have a moderator and somebody to kick-ban anybody that doesn't fit in. you can't have a counter-culture, then. it's a contradiction.
so, we're going to have to endure a period of 50s style conservatism by a younger generation that just doesn't know how to think and just doesn't want to learn how, and i'm going to be too old (if i'm not already too old) to rebel in solidarity with whatever comes next. if the next generation rebels against their parents by ditching tiktok and twitter and reading books and essays and blogs, maybe they'll find me and enjoy what i have to say. if not, the future is probably quite bleak.
the art scene is always the first thing to fail in a culture that is embracing anti-intellectualism and entering a dark age. ai provides a glimmer of hope in clawing out of this, but it won't save us unless it breaks the ongoing commodification and marketization of everything through the social mediafication of everything by giving us more free time to think for ourselves.
what i'm getting at is that i'm less and less interested in going out to party and more and more interested in staying in to read and create, instead. that's ok. i was maybe partying a little too much in the late 10s, before the pandemic shut me down.
i have yet to recover from the pandemic. that's where i am in life. the restrictions and changes were so devastatingly harsh that i'm still struggling to climb out of the hole i was thrown into, to die.
the first couple of years of the 2020s weren't so bad for me in terms of productivity; i changed directions, certainly, but i got a lot of writing done from 2018-2022, even if not much of it has been pulled together, yet. the data is waiting to be compiled and will be in the end. since then, it's just grown in volume and complexity, but i still have time to finish it.
the last four years, since the house i was renting got bought by investors in early 2023, have been horribly unproductive because i've been struggling to exist rather than able to focus on working on anything of value. it's been utterly catastrophic, in sum - years of constantly wasting all of my time on boring and tedious shit. i think the place i'm in is stable, so long as i can block the smokers here, and so long as i can ultimately get the stalkers thrown in jail, and i don't want to move again. so i'm intending on returning to productivity as soon as i can finish installing the place, and hoping i can turn the installation process into something productive, itself.
the fact that i have my books out and accessible and cataloged again means i want to get back to the book project in addition to the journal project, which i got a start on when i was healing from my orchiectomy in 2021, but put on hold when i was concerned about my site getting hacked by what was almost certainly the same entity that ended up stalking me, and is still trying to take control of and take credit for my writing. i haven't touched the main book report project since i put it down to focus on the discography, in 2013.
what i've learned about myself and the way i work since is that i'm not a good multitasker because i'm very much a workaholic. i find that multitaskers tend to do many things poorly all at once, and that single tasking results in lower outputs but higher quality. it's consequently better for me to do revolving tasks than multitasks, or to restrict my multitasking to one major project at a time, and a series of minor things on the go.
i've tried to build schedules in the past, but i never stick to them because i constantly run over. i tend not to want to put something down.
i'm also anxious to return to musical productivity and am struggling with finding the pathway to it. i have worked on some music since, and have further incomplete projects, but i haven't released very much since 2018 because i've been focused on other things and unable to get anything done.
the journal has to be the main focus because it has to be a linear movement. that's not negotiable. i can't pick up in 1996 or 2004 or 2013 or 2022. i've tried and it fails. i have to start in 1989 and move through sequentially, completing projects as they finish. it's the only way to get anything done.
but, that doesn't mean it has to be the only thing i'm doing.
the seven workstations i need to set up - and i had this idea previously, but there's more space for it in here - are as follows:
- the offline web interface, connecting everything together, in my bedroom
- the journal, which reads through the fiction shelf, and connects to the book web, in my bedroom
- the book web, where i read through the reference books on my shelf, and continue to build it out, in my bedroom
- the music web, where i'm doing reviews (starting with davis), in the listening room
- the recording studio, where i'm going to need to start again with inri000, recompile and then get back to rereleasing music, in the studio room
- the eating station, connected to the oversight committee, some blogging analysis of that, and the diet vlog, in the kitchen
- the video station, in the side entrance
the book web will work the same way as the music web. this isn't a new idea for me and i've already started on it.
so, for example, i started reading the rights of man, which was in response to edmund burke's attack on the french revolution, which sent me to richard price, which sent me to thomas hobbes. i stopped there. i was also reading malaterra because of the genealogy project.
the genealogy project is not something i'm actively interested in but it will come up when i get to 2000/2001 in the journal project. i will eventually re-read everything i studied in school (that i remember) for the journal project, and will try to redo as much of the genealogy as i can using better methods. i wasn't that concerned about sourcing and eventually realized that a lot of what i was doing wasn't grounded in fact. i wasn't aware of the genealogy industry when i started (i didn't understand why somebody would fake their ancestry, so i didn't see an incentive to bullshit, and it didn't cross my mind until i began to understand that people were selling dubious books to a middle class from peasantry backgrounds that wanted to climb ladders into the aristocracy. i also underestimated the reality of female promiscuity and had to deal with that firsthand before i understood it better. an official genealogy might not be real. the necessity to find clear sources is more apparent to me now than it was then, when i just pulled data down off websites without checking it or looking into it.)
i will not start again with hobbes, but with adam smith, because the theory of moral sentiments (lcc: AC7) is the first item on my shelf. i will read through each item on the shelf sequentially, and every text cited by that item, only returning back to the shelf when i've snaked my way through everything cited. it is likely that smith will cite locke, so i will likely put the smith down at some point to read some locke, and order it when i do. i may need to put the locke down to read some bacon. etc. i will eventually get back to the next item on the shelf when i finish reading through the smith. if i read through items already on the reference shelf, i can skip them when i get there. this work, along with everything else, will eventually get subsumed into the journal project (i didn't read smith for school, i got that book for $1 at a garage sale, but there's a big psychology text at bf and kant and hegel, which were read in a course on german idealism, near the top of the shelf, in the bs)
the revolving tasks will need to be:
- one journal author (starting with asimov)
- one discography project (starting with second class citizens)
- one book on the reference shelf (starting with adam smith)
- one artist in the music web (starting with miles davis)
i will be listening as i'm reading and updating the music web throughout.
the other stations will be mote sporadic, with each new project transferred to the offline station when it's finished.
the journal project, moving forward, is now the main project, not the discography project. that is to say that the discography, while the major end result, is now actually a subset of the journal, and will be formatted and presented in the end as a component of the journal. components in the discography cannot close until i get to them in the journal. in the case of music re-recorded in the 2010s (or upcoming projects yet to be finished in the 2020s or 2030s), it could be many years before the projects close.
this will let me work through my recording, my reviews, my reading and my writing without losing track of any one thing, which i have not been able to do since i rebooted the first time in 2013/2014.
in fact, i'm currently in the process of a second reboot and what's about to come up is going to be the start of a new narrative in 2027, meaning my narratives are not going to be in the following collections:
alter-reality segment:
1989-1996 - period 0 (journal period)
1996-2000 - period 1 (inri period) <--- i initially started here but want to start in 1989 now instead. basically done.
2000-2003 - period 2 (post-inri to bc trip) <---basically done
2003-2007 - period 3 (return to ottawa, the sarah period) <---i left off here. about 30% done.
2007-2011 - period 4 (bronson) <---not done. many demos to complete. 10% done.
2011-2013 - period 5 (occupy period) <--- many ideas, not even demos. no studio. 0% done.
first reboot:
2013-2018 - period 6 (reconstruction period) <----highly productive, but mostly remastering and rebuilding. some demos. 0% done.
2018-2023 - period 7 (reorganizing period) <----mostly writing and compiling. i will need to address this the way i addressed period 1-3 in period 6, with a later reconstruction period.
2023-2027 - period 8 (deadzone) <---completely unproductive, totally dead period. almost a total wash. will largely skip over in the end, except to compile a linear narrative through blog posts and vlog videos. no major products started that need to be finished.
current reality:
2027-2033? - period 9 (second reconstruction period) <----hope to completely finish and close periods 0-6 at least, with further ideas put aside for future completion.