Hello World

I’m really getting into the idea of learning some programming. Maybe not really difficult, complicated programming, but the kind of simple language coding set up for people who want to do audio/visual things. You know, programming for artists.
This past week was full of information and experience (and some intense moments). I had my first first-hand experience with hardware. An Arduino board. It’s so pretty! All blue and silver. Shiny! I got the LED to blink and everything. Bending little wires can be so satisfying.
So Hello Wired World. I'm all ready for the next baby step.

On Thursday I went to Tresor (an historic techno club) for the closing of their IOSONO speaker system. It’s a wave-field synthesis system (if you don’t know what that is—and I don’t expect one would—look it up online. There are sites with graphics that can explain it much better than myself.) It was the closing because apparently the system wasn’t being used effectively by DJ’s who played there. So for the last night they got a DJ who could really use the system: Monolake, a fairly well known electronic/computer music artist. Also known as Robert Henke...also known as one of my teachers.
As you can imagine, it was superbly entertaining to see him in that context, turning little knobs and frenetically bobbing his shaved head above multicolored blinking sound equipment. The same goes for the various classmates of mine who showed up. We danced and geeked out, discussing and critiquing various aspects of the sound system and our teacher’s set.

Oh, did you know you can make music with waterdrops? And flame? You should check out Paul de Marinis. He came to give a talk/presentation about his work. It was amazing to hear about things he thought of….like playing holograms of records with lasers (this really works!). He was using computers in the early 70’s already to program music and also did things like hack Mr. Spells for the first time. He did a lot of things that were very humorous but obviously took huge amounts of dedication and effort. He came to give this talk on Monday and became something of an instant hero to those of us students who were present.

email excerpts from november

It's hard not to want to sleep so much more these days. It's 5 here and of course already dark dark dark. The birds have been flying around and around from roof to roof, a greater gathering of wings. Meanwhile a christmas market has sprung up at Alexander Platz. I can see the little wooden shacks through a space between two buildings and the crescent curve of a ferris wheel above another. I'm glad there will be lights there since sometimes the days barely seem to get light at all. And even then, by the time I get out of class it is dusk.

Today in uni we had a workshop where we talked about game sound. It was mostly a review of the history of computer games and how sound effects and music has been integrated. It was pretty interesting, if only because I know so little about the computer game world and never had a playstation or gameboy or something similar. It was cool to consider the way people went about inventing games and how they developed in parallel to computers. The fact that games for computer have been around almost as long as computers themselves says a lot about the way we think about using new mediums. Like the original space shooter game that took a whole room of machines to run. And now we have little silver bullet boxes that blip and light and bleep and flicker.
It started me reading about the games that people are trying to develop nowadays, trying to lift the genre out of the bloody gutter of the first-person shooter. Thinking about how we interact with/through these machines never ceases to confound me.

Pink Umbrella and Me

Berlin was a cold shudder today. Wind and sudden precipitation transforming the way home from my university into a great northern scene, images of Russian winter wisped before my eyes as I walked in a dimmed world. The falling snow filtered city sounds to a white noise giving the feeling of singular isolation. In the semi-stillness the soft patsch patsch of snowdrops on a pink umbrella accompanied my steps.

Pink umbrella and I treaded onward, slanting against the force of stinging wind. My hands reddened around its ice clear handle.

Snow muted the faces that passed, the black coats, the snow spotted girls and indiscernible bundles of scarves and woolen hats. It iced the steel girders of the station, frosted glass storefronts and washed out the cobblestones and curbs.

In the gray tundra from train to apartment the oil slicks on the tram tracks were the only colorful things we passed.

The man met in the elevator and I rustled our dripping umbrellas in warmhearted camaraderie, ruffling their wings—she a great patterned bird of paradise shedding the wetness of a tropical storm.

the long and short way to a sometimes home

the first of august saw a great English exodus aus berlin. Ms Rose, Flic and Softleyandy all headed, for various reasons and intended stays, back to their great brittle island. Whom will I ever learn English from now?
As always when one leaves a place, a great week of gathering and frenzied friendliness preceded, which was as lovely as the people and places it involved. Sitting by shimmering willow-edged water, or within the warm candlelight colored walls of a corner bar, many of the moments passing seemed suspended in an everyplace, not here or there. Orientationless and temporarily eternal.

It reminds me that I only have two weeks myself. It is time to start working on projects in earnest.

Explosions and Unkindnesses

There are fireworks out my window again. The past couple nights ive caught the display.
I don’t know what they are from, but I can just see them, far to the right, only a little bit blocked by a building some streets away.
They are wonderfully colored—subtle hues somehow—and go on for a suprising length of time.
My favorites are a certain kind of very very large white chrysthanemum ones, that have starry trails on the inside and light up everythin around.

Tonight there was something even more striking though. A fluttering of wings below the window. The cyclic migration of dark shapes. Many, dark, flapping, shapes. From the roof next door, over the trees, past the windows here, and back to alight on neighboring building-tops.
Ravens.
A swarm of them—or an unkindness, as it’s called.
They cry in a way that makes me think they must be joking; making a parody of themselves.
Their bodies look so heavy, but they whirl around in their multitude and I stare down at them—and up at them and sideways as they circle—transfixed.

Whatever are they doing? What are these mesmerizing movements? What could they be plotting? To be soaring and gyrating so aimlessly and so intentionally?

They take a few more turns and then somehow disappear. A momentary distraction by a firework explosion and, suddenly, the birds have vanished into night.

Marigolds and mums are still blooming burning blue above Berlin, but the night is cold, so I close the window.

Good mornnggnggshshzstaphzzshzzztaptapzsshshhsgzzzgzgh.....

Unbelievable. Awoken to drilling. Sharp, penetrating and, worst of all, impossible to localize. Repetitive but completely irregular making it absolutely nerve wrecking. The walls, the ceiling, the floor, my bed, my head: all these could be the origin of the sound which was not just a sound but a palpable physical disturbance. The very air molecules shuddering with every grating, vibrating drill.
Construction? Destruction? Mass disruption? The drilling was broken by an irrhythmic hammering. Even higher pitched and almost more irritating because of its unpredictability. It was tinny and cut off but still so unforgiving.
Unacceptable! I say, inexcusable! Curses! And curses again! And where to throw these worthless sounds? From what direction was this unendurable noise even coming? What untenable objections to a maddening, maddening, maddening sound!
Anytime this would be irritating, but at 8 in the morning? Torture.
Unable to stay one more moment I ran out of the apartment and began to pace the hall like a crazed dog—hunting, ears rigid, for the possible source. Upstairs? Downstairs? Up. I went two floors on the lift. 22nd floor. The halls were literally shaking. So was a very livid I.
By the 24th floor I couldn’t tell if it was louder or not. Still in an underslept dreamstate I gave up and went back to bury my head between pillow and bed. I started to imagine that a giant was taking a mega enormous drill down the whole side of the building At some point the drilling died down, but not before strange dreams emerged in which I was still restless, hunting on the balcony of the highest floor, for the source. Barging in and out of people’s private rooms, in and out of vibrating halls until giving up and retiring once again, in an endless cycle, back to my bed; only to be importuned myself by barging dream people coming in to meddle with my dream windows.

pitchers part I: living and studying

Ok here it is! What you’ve all been waiting for! A semi-demi-update in picture edition. brought to you by berlin-so-far productions.

i rent a place from friends. this is the family, she's a photographer, he's a musician. cute no?

the view from my windows, ta da
in case i need to check the time, two clock towers! (rainbow, limited edition)

and this is the sunset sideit looks over Hackescher Markt.
i wanted to take a picture of the vertical view to the bottom but i dont know if i have—oops i dropped my camera from the 18th floor—insurance.

here is berlina in my kitchen, on a night lotte was here and we all wanted brownies and ice cream and banananas foster.

note the e f on the wall. i rearranged it to my liking but it was already there before i moved in.
fate?
p.s. that was the most awesome dessert night of my life.




so..sound studies. here are some people
jan who makes records and marco from venezuela who documents everything and has amazing video art.
we explored an former brewery and
found some underground artists studio.

i mean literally underground.
















we are all working on a project about Siemensstadt, an old industrial settlement to the west.
jana and marco and i went there to do ground research and find out what this place was about. so we climbed a refrigerator.


found some tracks.







went through a dark rusted gate




and found an alternate universe

well, thats all for today. photos upload so slowly! tune in for the next installment: people, music and madness!

nightwalker

It is late. I am restless, and descend from my tower to pace. survey the realm.
Places should all be closed by this hour, concerts over, kids asleep. And there is a certain stillness, quietness to a Sunday midnight. Still, there are many many exceptions. Oranienburger is decked in its perpetual post dusk glow (tourists roam drunken, lost, loud, overwhelmed, euphoric; prostitutes pout—dotting the way like sugar candy in plastic pink wrapping and black laces; dealers lounge in the gated doorways of Tacheles courtyard; the new 24 hour health food snack store glares green from across the tram station, and all is right with the mitte world). So I wander in a wide circle, past these lights, around to Tor (the last fruit and beer stands still open, grapes for sale) peer in schokoladen as I pass, then back down through some winding way finding the right path half by instinct and half by following the blinking light of the tv tower.
It is still one of the things I love about berlin that you can walk down not just one, but even two or three streets in the very middle of the city and not see a soul. As though the night retains a certain sacredness.

why do we find out all we would have wanted to know
as soon as we don't want to know it.

sleeping like a baby

Babies filled my dreams,
Babies with oversized heads and eyes.
One with a robotic looking thing for a neck. The head atop it shaped elongated like a fetus.

On the subway somehow a group of us who were gathered for a reason I now forget, passively resisted the controllers of the train car. We refused to pay, to leave, we just wanted to get back home. At the critical moment when the controllers first came the man across the aisle, eye twinkling, looked at me and said ‘tar?’
I knew what that meant.
‘tar.’ I answered. We shook hands.
That’s how the resistance started.
When we got to where we needed to go we dispersed in small groups. My friend, I and a man with a crooked nose went to an abandoned ice cream factory, or a working one that my friend owned. Upstairs was an apartment (christines? Where lived her mother father, grandmother) with colorful but yellowed wallpaper. That’s where the babies were. It was just one at first, sleeping. But then they started waking up.

for whom

I can hear church bells out my window, interspersed at various distances. Muted by buildings, tilted widows and that gathering dusty fog that seems to settle here of an evening. Sunday, they began at half past five and are still at it. It’s something that still strikes me as quaint, church bells; something that shouldn’t be part of the city soundscape. In my dirty old town, sunday bells were the toll of ice cream trucks.

Its hard for me to hold up the first few classes (the first week) of the sound studies program against what I expected, because I have no clear idea exactly what I expected. Dissent is brewing over the sound anthropology section though. It turns out that the professor who was there before needs to leave for a while, so he is not teaching our class and there is a woman instead. She has written a lot on music and philosophy and so on and so forth and must have been deemed the woman for the job. But her program, though it includes fascinating materials and themes, is very different than the focus before. Many of the students, myself included, find it far too much music theory and traditional aesthetics and not enough of the sense-based acoustic communication approach that the previous professor outlined. How to reconcile this? to move toward the former themes without alienating our present professor? We will figure something out. The side result of this is that, I think, we are banding together more as a group.

Ah, the group. its quite funny. There are a people who seriously studied music (medieval chamber choir) and have done sound to installation art, a guy who studied acoustic engineering/mastering, musicians of rock bands, electronica, a couple people from punk music, a pr rep who’s done logopaedic singing, people who’ve done music to animation or video or commercials even, an engineer from Tokyo who’s done fluxus-type art pieces, a mixed media photo-documenter from Venezuela and then there’s, well, me. Aged across the board. I’m definitely curious to see how and what turns out. also remind me to talk about sam auinger.

The bells have stopped. It’s six.

it says so

When i heard we were to present ourselves for a 10 15 minutes and i wondered what i should say about myself and what i would present my first instinct was to turn to books. This i think in itself is a good indication of the way i go about things.

reservations

Finally by the time the bus comes i have considered the 6 plus hour train ride. I barely want to look out the windows to the last views of the bielefeld highway.
The boy a seat ahead reseves the front windows with two beers so that he can stare down at his sodoku.
We pass eckendorferstr and i feel...sad! or not so much missing as though i did not get enough sleep. Was that only this morning that they left, I accompanied on four hours sleep to the train station to bid farewell, on a long flight to ny?

I miss them already, I am anxious to go, I am anxious that I am going, I miss my space already, maybe it is the small sleep but I start to cry half a dozen times before breakfast.

Aha! I am here, am in berlin. Disoriented and sleepyheaded or dreamachy as much as six hours sedentary bus ride as sleeplessness.
Sibylle’s baby is crying in the next room, she awws and oohs to calm it. Mostly it is a cute bundle, pimply at the moment with some sort of babyacne, which just makes it look so comical and easier to laugh at, which is good, because that makes it smile too.

swords

Its beautiful thing to have ones heart burst apart first thing in the morning. By words which, irrespective of time and place cut lovelingly all your skin open and leave you only able to stand breathing lightlife hard in as all bloodlife rushes out from your veins. Pulled into old and near past, present future and even more disorienting a new present new past and those past presents futures that may have been or almost were. And those you are still not sure can’t be.
The effect of a few letters strung together. Backed by a few thoughts, the trail of one finally thinking through perhaps, what they ought to have much earlier.

The bbq and easter fire burned anticlimactically..but perhaps that is just the way in bielefeld. Existence and stability in mediochrity, all somehow just not coming to an ecstatic frenzy, not codaing into cadence just crackling in a halfway attempt and..well...come in come out, everything kind of stays the same. Pleasant but explosionless.

also i was just sent this.

now i remember'91

the fulled moons all have names

My entire family went with to berlin. I was still looking for apartments and we wanted to show dante the sights. We mostly ate a lot of ice cream and returned yesterday under a full pink moon. I have options now. I can live on my own on the 18th floor, a city like existence a view over the buildings of berlin, the radio tower and, with access to people with toneechnical knowledge (hendrik) or in a small and strangely cut room near one of my favorite streets with two friendly girls and a checkerboard floored kitchen. Is this one of those moments where I have to decide what kind of person I am?
The program is starting next week...in less than a week. I cant believe it. Somehow I’m still not sure what im doing. My dreams are uneasy mixes of people places and impressions, of past and potential, of not knowing where I am or when.

no more pencils no more books no more relativesatznominalisierung übungen

last day of class.
im converting my focus of time and energy to the downstairs radio station.

putting my foot in my mouth

I try to do this often,
as a test of my flexibility.

religion, pleasure

For fasting, i lent myself to the idea of not drinking coffee. I thought it would be easier than chocolate. I also thought it would be healthy.
So instead, I imbibe copious amounts of black tea. I also eat a lot more chocolate.
Compensation.

I went to gymnastics at the school. Anything, anything to kick myself out of this (see elenangst below). I also signed up for a radio workshop which I kept meaning to do and so am learning how to do little radio reports.
The campus station is based in a little topsy turvy room in the sub levels of the university (this does not mean underground, strangely, so there is light coming in through an entire side of windows). Our team-leader/guide person is gorgeous (I think) with big bright eyes and a relaxed laugh. Crush in the making? Hm
Our first task was to do a short survey and edit it together. I realized, shoving the mic into one person’s face after another, how much I rather enjoyed annoying people. The sense of license, entitlement to, excuse the short interruption into your private comfortable daydream, task or tete a tete, but what do you think of this, hmm? appealed to me
The truth is, just about no one will answer anything if you ask them, would they pretty please like to answer a question? You just have to go ahead and ask right off and risk them getting offended or pissed (which doesn’t usually happen). I could learn a lot from this.

There were adorable primroses at the gardenmarket today, they looked like candy, bright spots nestled in dark ripply leaves. Irresistible, I fell for a crimson one all sungold in the center. It was nice to be in the market around flowers and lushness, it was dreadful and pouring outside.
One the way back the sun finally broke through the mass of gray overhead so we stopped at the cemetery where my grandparents are (are? Do you still ‘be’ if you are dead?) .
The grave was long overgrown, choked by white grass and covered in moss. We felt bad. Why do we take care of graves? I don’t know. In the hope people will remember us?
With my foot, I scraped some of the moss off the stone path in the middle of the plot. Then uncovered a little more of the stones. It was very damp. It had been raining for days. There was a layer of slippery sludgy earth underneath. Without meaning to, little by little, we started to pull grass out between the low hedge planted there, then pulled more and more soft moss aside. Suddenly we were in the middle of a concentrated clearing up, caring for, cleaning up of the grave. A pile of pulled up green moss, dead leaves, grass grew up on the footway. When finished we carried the detritus over to the nearby proper disposal and then stood quietly a moment, fingers cold red, covered in wet and dirt. I didn’t mind the dirt. There was no place to rinse off, so I found a nearby patch of clean moss and brushed them somewhat clean. Water was clinging to tree leaves all around. We used some of that; walking along the path, grasping hands of branches all down the row. The pines were especially good for this. just dripping they were.
The cemetery felt like a forest but with more hedges and rhododendron curving through the trees. Most of the green was very dark and damp and quiet. A thoughtful place for walking. At some point I had to pee, which I have to do umpteen times a day because of all that tea I’ve been pouring in. I wondered if urinating on someone grave could be in any way a sign of respect, like marking it. A recognition among so much anonymity. I decided not to risk unhappy dreams and settled instead in a rhododendron alcove where I could peacefully pee and think about the dead.

Fat Wednesday

i never mentioned madrid, getting there, being there, or getting back.
this last was me missing carneval
returning too late, carneval passed by in a room on tracks, tired, relieved, hurting, bleeding, bearing gifts, cold outside to warm inside.
Spanish planes and german trains washed off prickling skin along with the smell of darkened rooms, oranges, sweat.
Why not submit myself to german over-hygiene. The change in location immediately apparent as soon as I walk into the self cleaning toilet.
I liked the dustiness of spain, the disarray. They are almost there, almost fully modernized Europe, but not there yet. Every corner is under construction
I imagine the only drawback to living in Madrid would be the difficulty of riding a bike through it. But then again you can walk everywhere interesting, and the metro is literally the cleanest easiest easiest system I’ve ever had the pleasure never getting lost in. good job.

This is egostistical. I’ve been reading up on depression. Apparently there is no way to snap out of it. Which I don’t like to hear because I don’t like hard work. Id be more patient but the whole crying at the drop of a hat, (or pencil, spoon or word or anything or nothing at all) is starting to impede actually functioning in daily situations. I wake up and cant get up, I go to sleep red eyed, I weep over my breakfast teacup and drink teary black tea, I excuse myself from composing correct sentences in german class in order to go to the bathroom and compose myself. I feel bad when someone says something thoughtless but am more likely to cry when someone says something nice. Its as though the idea of someone being sympathetic to me is overwhelming.
So, it’s annoying, this soppy state of being. Ive never liked people seeing me cry. I used to avoid it at all costs. For a few years I just stopped crying. I never cried. Maybe once or twice in all those years.
It would be too bad to think that now I have to make up for it. If I knew it worked that way, I wouldn’t have tried so hard back then, and maybe done some preventative wailing in some choice private moments, or semi-private moments. Crying can be powerful, if used correctly you know. Maybe I should have tried to put it to work and use it to my advantage instead of scoffing the whole idea that emotional displays are manipulative and refusing to break down. Ever. In any case, a little prevention goes a long way.

I am making sure I drink enough water of course, to make up for the loss. And also eat things with salt. Ive been saving the tissues used up so far, to weigh later on. So far they fill a chocolate box.

I think I will use this as a way to keep track of my thinking. I know that I am building patterns of negative thinking, so maybe putting them in a semi-public forum will force me to be extra aware of them. Being embarrassed about what other people think is as good a motivation as any to change back into a normal human. To norminate yourself, no, to re-adjust, whatever. In fact airing paranoias seems cathartic

i am also a philosophical argument

"'Elenchus' in the wider sense means examining a person with regard to a statement he has made, by putting to him questions calling for further statements, in the hope that they will determine the meaning and the truth-value of his first statement. Most otten the truth-value expected is falsehood; and so 'elenchus' in the narrower sense is a form of cross-examination or refutation."
"The elenchus changes ignorant men from the state of falsely supposing that they know to the state of recognizing that they do not know; and this is an important step along the road to knowledge, because the recognition that we do not know at once arouses the desire to know, and thus supplies the motive that was lacking before. Philosophy begins in wonder, and ... elenchus supplies the wonder."
"The following objection may be made to the method of elenchus: it only tells you that you are wrong, and does not also tell you why."
http://www.ditext.com/robinson/dia2.html

queen of tarts

It wasn’t until I was walking, three grocery bags overfilled in my arms, home from the market in the morning that the headache kicked in; and I comprehended exactly what (I think) I had been doing the night before. Namely, swimming in the organically formed black plastic (?) beam supported pool/tub built by Berliner-parisienne artiste amateurs comprising last room of the new MArTa exhibit which, it being the opening, was as much overflowing with gin as with salted water (heated through copper pipes run through an old oven standing off to one side of the massive wet monstrosity—which looked as though it had swallowed, rather than just contained—the collection of arms and legs drifting opaquely around).
But no time to think about that, or the carnevalesque chaos ensuing in an old villa which (a nice paris lady named elisa gave me a tour, pointing out the bright red red carpets with her full redlipsticked lips) had a basement that looked like one eyed jacks and there were cages in an adjacent room (“zcahriest pahrt first” exclaimed she in her drawling French tone “I don knoh whad waz goeeng ahn dohn hea, but eet ees zo strainge!”)…no, no time to think: I arrived home, bags about to drop, to find guests already arrived. Happy valentines, I had, for some reason, though it a good idea to get together a little tea and cakes and hearts of chocolate valentines gathering.
Ok, it was sweet. But I miss my ol valentines.

Elentier

I find out there is an animal called the elenantilope. it lives in the Savannah and is overhunted. I also find out that elen is an old poetic word for elk, or moose, no longer used. In a big dictionary in the library i read that elen is short for elentier and formerly das seltener, which means the rare one. maybe this is becuase the elks died out in germany in the 13hundreds.

blues

I listen to the sputtering of the espresso machine behind me, instead of turning it off.
The pressure is too great, and the machine concedes, unwillingly snorts, short releases of steam out around the valve—which is now no longer airtight.
It is no longer airtight because of perpetual loving abuse by those who like to steam their milk. Or soy milk.
Whatever floats your macchiato
However,
these indiscretions on the part of the coffee machine, I am convinced, are the only thing keeping it from entirely exploding—so painful do they sound. It wavers instead, only gradually nearing the brink of utter self destruction. Luckily, my father walks in the kitchen just then, and with the press of a red button, delivers it from almost certain doom.

I spent the last days wavering, on the verge of tears. This is uncommon, so it was uncomfortable for the two reasons that 1. Being an emotional timebomb is inconvenient and uncomfortable and 2. Being fairly unfamiliar with the state of emotional timebombasity, it means an added discomfort of disorientation. At least, that’s how I see it.
The fact that these states don’t always offer a reasonable ground or justification for their existence is another blow to someone, like myself, who, if they are going to spend any amount of time being a blubbering imbecile, would like to know WHY that has to be the case.
Its not that I’m against short outbursts, or some occasional stint of blubbering imbecility, but these should be a) completed/experienced within a reasonable timespan and b) have a ground, cause or identifiable offsetting event. Otherwise they are indulgent, inefficient and insupportable. All considered, depression be awful.
I have little patience for people who are depressed. No, I should rephrase that. I have a lot of sympathy and am always ready to be there/ be supportive for people who are feeling down, its not their fault, etc. but at the same time, I have little respect for the idea of depression itself. Or for people who are emotionally irresponsible—who don’t at least try to resolve, regulate or take preventive measures in heading off their own down (or up) swings. Just an ounce of emotional self-sufficiency is all I ask. Everyone feels all things at some point. Learn to deal.
Be that as it may, I hold myself to no double standard.

I think it is time for some coffee.

Pop Quiz

Q. If, instead of dipping, i purposely let large pieces of cake or cookie fall past the coffeefoam in my cup so that i have to spoon them back out, am i being messy or thorough? (show all work on separate piece of paper)

A. The dunk timing needs to be just right and adjusted for the size and density of the cookie/cake so they saturate but do not disintegrate.

applying for art school—sort of.

At the end of last week I took the train to berlin in order to partake in the mysterious task/test or interview marking the second level of the sound studies application process. [side note, cliché it is but german trains really are a pleasure which, this trip reminded me, I had not been taking advantage of].
Overnighting at the very sniffling andreas’ i entered the appointed building at 20 minutes to the appointed time and found, after some dawdling and delaying, the designated room in which also entered, had entered or were about to enter ten or so other applicants. “sooo…anyone have any idea what we’re doing here” I ventured into the silent silence following the petering out of hushes side conversations.
No, answered the concensus of shrugged shoulders and angled heads.
I asked these fellow competitors where they were from—a variety of response. You? “the US” I said. “well actually I was born…[short life story]”
There was a derisive snort to my right. “you’re kidding”
I turned, but all I could see was neighbor’s mufasa dreadlocks half obscuring black glasses.
I must have sat next to him, tawny skinned boy, because I sensed the americanismus. (consciously, it was the opposite the door, window seat thing)
He was from Detroit and somewhere else. German dad, born in berlin, raised stateside with mom. Also had twelve year old brother. (I miss mine so much! I later exclaimed as we all sat outside over coffee. I don’t, he countered. But back in the then and there..)
Comforted by the fact I wasn’t the only candidate with questionable german skills, further conversation was precluded by the entrance of a professor, and administrator, to administer the…whatever was to come.
The man stood at the front of the room looking as coy as a tall round-glassesd balding german professor can possibly look. He cleared his throat

Our task, as it were, was to listen to a piece of music and describe what we heard.
Oh
But there were conditions.
First, we could not use associative language. No descriptions of feelings or emotional effect/affect. No technical language.
We were not to try and guess at or describe how the sounds were produced (which, as a few of my fellows were sound engineers they could probably have done quite easily), or who composed the piece or how it fits in the history of music.
We could use our own ‘private language’ but at the same should produce a description of the piece such that a second person might get an idea of what it was like. Just as one might describe an abstract painting.
Please formulate this into a few prägnante phrases. Here was the written task and paper.
Oh, one more thing, this was not a piece any one of us was likely to recognize, or something remotely familiar. It was non structural and fell into the category of abstract sounds.
(“so this is a written test” asked an asian man across the room. And, as though reading my mind, dropped his head in his hands.)
The piece was nine minutes. We had a half hour. Then we were given personal interview times. See you at the interviews. Have a good day.

What followed was, literally, indescribable. Unless, of course, you use some associative language (kind of like air-warfare, or something gone wrong at the sound check) or emotional expressions (it was tense and confusing, it felt like chaos rising and discord) some technical turn of phrase (the dissonance approached resolution but instead turned into pinknoise) etc.

So we opened our ears, scratched our heads and scribbled down our de-structuralist descriptions.

We went down to the café and some of sat around in a small group waiting for the interviews. None of us had a sense of what we had to do, or what was right. They were interesting people, sounds designers or conservatory musicians or down and dirty rockers.

The interview seemed fine. I can call this week to find out the results. And then, if they are positive, I can puzzle over the practicality of actually following through with this plan.

The Big Bang

street lit up in a collective neighborhood fireworks dispelling, a friendly competition and combination of efforts— who can most outsparkle the stars. we dropped firecrackers under the manholes to make them resonate, shot off rockets and fired volcanos that spewed bright glittering geysers into the dark. it reminded me of a warzone for a moment: scaring away the last year while exploding the next into being.
comrades in a fizzsparkling champagne dizziness we let ourselves be lifted with the missiles let out of empty bottles dissappearing an instant before eruption in the smoky depths of midnight sky.