h. Play

Last month I:

– created dozens of sound effects

– edited and uploaded two reels

– recorded a few hours of ambiences

– produced a few music tracks, including a GoGo track

– assisted a photo shoot

– cut, grinded, sanded 18 big ass art frames

– cut, grinded, sanded 2 huge ass fireplace screens

– painted my house’s lobby ceiling, including the part over the stairs where it’s scary

I’m not counting the usual stuff and the 40 or 50 miles biked on the Women’s march. So it’s doable. I do not recommend at all though. it’s a bit too much of a stretch, from noisy hard physical work all the way to super high concept brainy work that requires silence, I’m tired like I’ve rarely been.

This month I just got a potentially super dope gig for a big name in tech to make music for and my flight reservation for the GDC17 is in my inbox. Everything’s in flames but I’m making moves.

I know things look gross from a distance but locally there’s a lot of care, love and sticking together happening and it makes me happy.

I’m just reading Herbie Hancock’s autobiography. It’s about music and life choices and creativity.

Herbie like me, like black in men is an ambassador of loving one another. He had the luck to avoid most of the rough and hard racism most of his life.

Nevertheless, he speaks about Emmett Till who was his age and coming from the same neighborhood in Chicago. He was shook when it happened, enough that he writes a few pages about it in his biography. Who wouldn’t be traumatized after seeing those pictures.

Well, we just learned yesterday that the white woman confirmed that she lied about Emmett Till doing anything to her. He did not. He got lynched for no reason.

It’s shit like this, people. It’s shit like this. Black people don’t look after racism or proof of racism. We’d rather have none of that. We’d rather have no proof, no statements, no pictures, no trauma, no trust issues, no tears, no pain.

We’d rather just live.

Man, those four years are going to be long.

It rained a lot –almost a full week of water, cray- and everything is luscious and green.

Working four different jobs, no insurance, living the dream. I probably will go to the GDC this year, I won a ticket at the lottery. Still have to find a place to crash.

4 billion people. I counted.

It was great and it also showed the divide, the absence of trust. Everyone in his own bubble from people who are “still with Her” to people who “voted for Bernie so it’s not my fault”, to interracial couples –when intersectionality exists for real- who are definitely the exception and not the rule. Virtual Unity.

I live with three white folks, two women and one dude. I’m the only one who went to the march and I know they could all have been there in the morning. I’m not even surprised and I’m mad that I’m not surprised. I just know it fits this world where a whole lot of fake shit is happening and people are OK with that.

So back to work. Back to being a fuck ton better without a smart ass sign, no bragging rights, just plain making the world better, silently. That works wonder.

Information-wise, nothing has been the same since November 8th.

Too much sarcasm, too much butthurt, too much nonsense, too many people gaming search engines, news and social media.

The thing it does to people is that they forget about the past. They forget about history. There’s too much new data everyday to keep up with while remembering the important bits from five, ten, twenty years ago. Younger generations erase everything before 2000 and broadband internet. That’s a big issue.

People indulge in pouring oil on fires, it’s so easy online. A click, two clicks it’s off to dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions of people. People are addicted to that new power. Hyperconnectivity. We can say whatever about FB  and we had tons of debates about it but real identity definitely curves the fuck out of trolls. I’ve seen countless amazing and great conversations there. Twitter is pretty much dead.

There is so, so much noise. It’s very difficult to believe anything ever, which is a bad thing if you want to communicate, solve, understand. Which is what we need.

Damn I should be supreme commander in chief.

I watched the first OVAs. I have seen all the movies. It’s a different vibe from anything with mecha coming from Japan. Mamoru Oshii –Ghost in the Shell- is/was the director. Production backstory:

In the late 1980s, Oshii was solicited by his friend Kazunori Itō to join Headgear as a director. The group was composed of Kazunori Itō (screenwriter), Masami Yuki (manga artist), Yutaka Izubuchi (mechanical designer), Akemi Takada (character designer) and Mamoru Oshii (director). Together they were responsible for the Patlabor TV series, OVA, and films. Released in the midst of Japan’s economic crisis, the Patlabor series and films projected a dynamic near-future world in which grave social crisis and ecological challenges were overcome by technological ingenuity, and were a big success in the mecha genre.

This show is not about mechas. it’s a dad mecha world. It focuses on responsibilities and consequences of having giant robots working in cities, Operating Systems that can fuck up or hackers who are up to no good.

It feels very real now that we have the first tests of giant robots happening. It feels like it’s here but I remember being a kid in 89 and being annoyed at that “serious” angle. When you’re a kid you want the fantasy mecha, flying at mach 2, 300 missiles shot at the same time etc. None of that in Patlabor (do you have 300 missiles launching money?). The unit that operates those police robots is under scrutiny, they’re broke, they’re trying to save money/keep their jobs. Their missions are mostly about heavy construction robots accidents and making sure they don’t damage the city when they operate. They are an elite crew of mechanics and pilots doing boring cop stuff.

There is just a tension, a melancolia in this universe that I haven’t felt in anything else with robots. It makes it unique, it makes me care more. It’s philosophy-based but not going all nuts like Oshii’s future work. It’s simpler: how can we balance our lives with technology? Is technology really that necessary?

It blows my mind that some guys were actively thinking about and designing that world in 1985 and on. Japanese culture is so absurdly good at the “what if” game.

I forgot something in my plans: tons of people live alone or will. Divorces, couples without kids, younger generations scared to love so they end up on their own for a long time… Plenty of social patterns that are not going to fill pretty big family houses anytime soon.

It’s OK! That just means that the subdivision would be smaller, which means a denser density akin to SoCal, but also less spread than the acre plan was creating. I can work with that.