Okay, so first order of business: Hot Dawgz rule the fuckin' school!
Secondly, there are a lot of people that I really miss down in the SoCal crew. I'm not going to name 'em all, and a lot of them are coming up to Portland to visit and I'm super stoked about that, but I owe a lot of hugs to a lot of people. Tons, in fact. Actually I owe a super huge hug, a delicious meal, a drink, a long talk, and then some serious chill time to a lot of people. I really love you guys. This doesn't always come off eye-to-eye or anything even close to that but I am really hurting for some of that love. Just hearing Laura's voice on the phone tonight made me feel like climbing into one of her adorable bear-hug embraces. I miss that. I miss knowing where are all the cracks in the streets are. I miss late nights with Daniel and the Village Bakery and the eucalyptus tree that smells like dill and parking really far from Azusa Gardens and...I don't know.
I do feel really good about this new place - so good in fact that it's tempting to think about not leaving. I think often about the fact that I'm spending another year, the fifth year, at school and that maybe there was something I could've done, some class I could've worked harder at or some part of myself that I could've understood better to get "on track" sooner, to finish in four and then now have the option, the ability to run with the feeling I have now and begin. It's hard to think about beginning this new exciting part of my life continuing on back at school. I'm feeling the heavy vibe of the people here and now with the drive, the possibility to run. I sort of feel like when fall rolls around it'll all be reversed into the same school year drone - and this time without most of my closest classmates. Without a bunch the core homies. Now that ain't no way to roll. Shit...
But a couple of close buddies are gonna be back in the fall and my friend Kurt is one of them, a friend I've know since freshman year. This guy is music itself. He's a timid fellow, soft and full of light. He knows what's happenin' with music trends before it drops and he's informed me about something I'd like to pass along. It's called Reactable and it looks a little something like this:
Interactive through a camera-sensitive surface that communicates with a modular synthesizer through objects placed on top of the "playing area", it's not a far leap from this graphical musical environment called MAX/MSP made by Cycling '74. I've been wanting to tell ya'll about this for a while - it's super cool! MAX/MSP is an graphical environment for controlling various multimedia objects, specifically designed for performance art. It can be used with lighting schemes (make a door light up with a purple hue when you walk through it at a certain speed), interactive audio pieces (read on), audio visual incest to the max kind of shit (let your mind do the math). Lucky Dragons explains it pretty well and utilizes it with a key idea: everyone is not only involved but shares in the unique experience of that exact moment's energy. Basically, the sound is effected by people touching strips of wire embedded into a tapestry and when two people are touching opposite ends - or even better, each other (!) - the frequency wave evolves by the tension and flow of the participants. The computer interacts by providing the sampling but the people act as the actual connecting wires that allow the music to be created. Together they bring the experience into existence. Not without the other is this possible. And speaking of metaphors, this is kinda how I feel, and I miss you...yeah, you.
