Returning to the Blog
August 15, 2012
I've had material on the zenglop.typepad.com domain for many years. I used it originally as a repository for longer form essays like my UNESCO keynote, some program notes, or an early iteration of Voices of the Noosphere. No traffic, unless I pointed someone to a specific article. I didn't get and still struggle with the idea that a blog is an emerging entity, comprised of many smaller unfinished ideas. I say something today that I correct tomorrow and tangentially refer to the third day, leading to a critical mass of material at some future point. Like a coral reef. Or the Pacific Garbage Vortex.
At the same time, my notebooks filled with just those kind of partial thoughts. A few months ago, I determined to write every day, 500 words or so. I won't say it was to "have fun" but I do know that the act of writing is a pleasurable one for me. It is an immersion in a strange place, a place that is both inside my psyche and not - a sensation that is in the room with me and also somewhere in my body. Spending an hour or so each morning is like taking a bath in salt water, sloughing off a layer of skin while floating in a crystal suspension.
My focus was vague but around the ideas of noise, physiology, creativity, memory. A unified experience of sound and meaning. Liturgical constructs of abstract sound. Developing an aesthetic appropriate to off-earth or extra-terrestrial conditions.
Questions about what is noise led to a discussion of randomness and complexity. Memory has taken me to a reading of Henri Bergson "Matter and Memory". Writing a finished book seems further away than ever as my reading list grows before me.
Today, I've been away from blogging for 2 months, which is almost as long as I had been disciplined in puttingh out daily updates. We travelled to England for a vacation, and it looks like while the Noise book is percolating in the library, a rhapsodic memoir of East Anglia is emerging. After England, we were home for a few weeks then off again to Pennsic - an event which always inspires me to practice hurdy gurdy. So maybe some occasional blogs to come on that instrument.
Tomorrow, I'll post the start of a builder log for the realisation of Voices of the Noosphere. The date on that first post is 2005. It's now 2012, and I'm at least 13 years older than I was back then. So I've set out to acquire a Very Low Frequency (VLF) receiver , and have started the patches that will mix my didgeridoo playing with the sonic representation of atmospheric sounds.
Interesting to note that my single most popular post ever - measured in number of views - was my prognostication on the 2012 Eurovision song contest.