we had one of those band practices where nothing really works, we played and played but there was no force to the guitar, no bounce in the drum skins, no welly in the bass. i find myself wondering what we’d sound like if we had decent equipment and not a clown’s-car setup that cartoon-disintegrates under heavy use.
at the editorial meeting i phased in and out. i’m worried about the illustrations, but then i always worry about that. i don’t know anyone that well yet and so i haven’t yet sub-consciously tempered myself appropriately to them. i do and say innapropriate things. i alternate between stoic and tactless and flaky. i say things that are funny until they leave my head and hang in the air. i’m among fellow weirdos and i still feel weird. weird.
later at wrong music i missed most of Master and saw most of Terminal Outputs and watched DJ Smallcock chew on a broken piece of glass with a contact mic stuck on it. his face a bloody mess. there was somethng heroic about his demeanour. yesterday i discovered that he somethimes does this while jumping up and down on a trampoline (covered in broken glass) and that he used to be a champion trampolinist.. also i watched a drunk girl with her head stuck in an amp groan like an animatronic torture pirate while a posh girl swung an axe and made posh noises.
on saturday i went on a date. we watched AMM. they were okay but i’ve seen them better. listening to very quiet droning music in a large room full of humans is not much fun. i can hear the people either side of me breathing through their noses. i resent the entire human race for not having enough mastery over their wheezing, farting, coughing, burping, breathing yawning bodies to shut the fuck up and listen once in a while. we also watched some terrible laptop/guitar/sax trio make the least engaging sounds i’ve ever heard. then we watched MEV, who were interesting but they just kept on using the same samples over and over and over and it wasn’t fun. i’m not a fan of samples in improvised music. if i hear a sample once i’m like, fine, any more than that and there better be a damn good reason for it. there didn’t seem to be a damn good reason. i wished i had 20-foot arms so that i could’ve reached all the way over to the stage and slapped them.
we also looked at the frank kozik exhibition at the aquarium gallery. some nice star-wars models painted like nazi tanks, with little german soldiers peeking out of the turrets.
i went looking for artificial intelligences on-line but they were all crap. really, honestly crap. i looked at the subservient chicken. i asked him to chew on a piece of broken glass with a contact mic stuck to it whilst jumping on a trampoline but he wouldn’t. i asked him to throw the small table across the room but he flapped his arms a bit. i asked him to take a book off the shelf and throw it across the room but he wouldn’t. i wanted to see him throw something but he wouldn’t throw shit. nothing works.

Posted by Andrew Clare on Monday, May 3rd, 2004
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