where the magic happens

S 37 Soviet Fighter

I haven't seen Top Gun in a while but I'm pretty sure these are the planes that give Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer all that trouble in the skies. One can see the disassociation which is expressed in the sheer evil shape of this aircraft. The movie only suffered from overblown acting and a confusing cold-war plot-line.

60's Mini House

If I'm still living alone in ten years I'm going to get a mini house. Have it brought out to a nice quiet place where the people are friendly and the weather is nice. I've been searching the internet for Mini Houses on the market, this one: http://www.momoy.info/uploads/interior-design/January-2009/minihouse-01.jpg is the most popular by far. It's because I don't need all that room, I would just end up cleaning all the time. Give me a nice cozy Mini House, where I can let my stereo rip anytime I want. Just don't go and offend me by calling it a Trailor Home.

well-worn typewriters

The best thing about typewriters is that thick sound you get each time you type something in, its not a sissy click like a computer keyboard but a satisfying and final thud. Because not one letter is erasable, nor is it pastable, no phrase is capable of being lifted magically to some other place on the page. No. With typewriters you ponder, you meditate over what you will pound out, everything is permanent. If you fuck up you start over again, slower and with more focus.

Rochester Castle UK

Well-Worn Barn

There are so many barns falling apart in Ontario, I would make a picture book of all the collapsing and well-worn barns across the rural portions of eastern Canada. Each one would have its own lovely characteristics, a hollow side, a slow and devastating slant, the rotting pieces of wood. Something is infinitely poetic and tragic about the abandoned barn.

My Apologies

sorry bout the swastika on the tail here, didn't mean to offend anyone, just thought this image was too good not to post, happened upon it while looking for images of Russell Ontario. Hope it stays up, enjoy for now.

How Does One Enjoy Ambient Music?

"Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting."

-Brian Eno

The everyday life of an ambient listener is unchanged mostly from that of a regular person. We go about our workdays and weekends; eating, sleeping etc. Perhaps every now and then we step inside a music store and buy something unusual like Eno's Music For Films or maybe a John Cage piece or something newer like Stars of The Lid. We proceed home, to listen to said record and perhaps our immediate neighbors wonder about our sanity.

Of course who cares about the opinions of other people? Though the ambient listener exists somewhere on the fringes of the rest of the listening world. Others might wonder what we are hoping to extract from the laconic and synth riddled tracks? Certainly we don't have the same expectations held for more accessible musicians in the genres of rock or pop. When I bring home an ambient record and cue it up on my turntable I'm not looking for the quick-fix of a four-chord punk song, in fact I am deliberately eschewing all forms of acceptable songwriting. I will not come away from the experience humming even a quieted tune, because to pinpoint a tune or a rhythm at all would be exhausting and counter-productive.

And yet I listen to ambient music the same way that I listen to most all my music, while cooking supper or reading a book or if the selection is notably impressive I prefer to do nothing at all.

Ambient music is perhaps founded on negation, a blatant refusal of anything resembling the components of song, the best ambient artists aim for immenseness, an expansive landscape of sound to recapitualate like a thought. Or to imitate the very acoustics of nature and sometimes to compliment them. In the case of Ambient Noise there is likely a surge of distortion which conducts the compositions. Though in most every case, from what I can tell, there is an underlying musicality in ambient music, and maybe this is a matter of acquired taste. Though an ambient track moves in particular parts, it is like an organism; at points the breathing indicates something you can nod you head to, if only once or twice. The overall sense is slightly removed but non-distarcting, in fact quite ideal for writing.

Though I wonder if listening to ambient music brings me closer to being a robot.

Are Cathedrals As Cool As Castles?

From what I've seen most of them are very clean, with washed white sides in the warm European sun. I would like to see a dirty cathedral, an unkempt one, with various weather-stains and other indicators of time and age. Though a good old Gothic cathedral touches me somewhere close the heart, it's hardly as comforting an image as a well-worn castle, half-crumbling in the countryside.