The Long Now

Went out with Sez on Saturday to check out the Brian Eno art show "77 Million Paintings" at the Yerba Buena Center. I laughed when I walked into the exhibit hall ... it was a bunch of people sitting on the floor looking at a giant screensaver! OK ... I'm along for the ride, right? Sez and I find a spot, we're just getting settled (keep in mind this is a 6 hour show that goes from 8pm to 2am) and we get shushed by this guy in front of us! Hilarious. There is nothing to listen to except for Eno's minimal computer generated four note soundtrack, and the whole place is as quiet as a library. So we scoot back to get of this guy's sacred Eno space. I would say about 20% of the people there are "in on it" that this installation is not meant to be taken super seriously, it's a visual/auditory experiment, it's really long, it's very free-form, it's not your frikking yoga class ok? I get a gin and soda and I get Sez her third glass of white wine and I start to really enjoy the show, I make up names for the abstract paintings like "intergalactic insemination," "donut boobs," "gay marxist american flag," and "luminous sewer grate." A coin falls out of my pocket and rolls on the floor for what seems like forty five minutes. I see a particular combination of forms I like and I take out my camera, which I have set to silent in consideration of the more reverent patrons, and take a picture. Apparently silent mode does not extend to the fake shutter sound effect of my camera phone which resonates reverberantly throughout the auditorium. Good thing the irritated patron who shushed us earlier has already left (due to boredom I guess, or maybe concentrating too hard).

In the lobby is a prototype of a chime generator that will supposedly generate a different tone sequence every day for 3.5 million years. It will be part of the Clock of the Long Now.

After that we stopped by Minna for a quick drink and checked out some "laptop live" performances at Faction. Big, crazy, hardcore beats and noise in the "let's clear the dancefloor on purpose" style. It's a thing, and I can appreciate it. Some good performance energy behind the laptop ... that's something that's hard to pull off. Nobody looked like they were checking their email.

I didn't have the cash on me at the time but later I bought some posters by Tycho that were displayed at the venue. Great stuff, check it out at www.iso50.com.

I talked to a nice girl who teaches yoga but the conversation went a little south when the subject of astrology came up. Why do all these yoga people have to be so into the Zodiac? Why not stick with Hinduism, where yoga came from, and believe in ten thousand deities who are the many faces of Brahman?

But don't listen to me, I've even given up on Teilhardism which I think is at the root of most of these yoga/astrology people's philosophies.

After the Minna show we stopped by DNA Lounge for a bit to check out Spesh's set. He played both the new Royal Sapien remix of the forthcoming Loöq track by Stereo K "I Don't Wanna Be An Astronaut" (which sounded fantastic) and the new Jondi & Spesh track "I Drank It" which I think sounded fantastic too but I'll let you have a quick listen and decide for yourself.

Jondi & Spesh - I Drank It (Original Mix) - sample

and here's another mix that I played out for the first time at Anu last week:

Jondi & Spesh - I Drank It (Real Sugar Mix) - sample