09 Jun 2010
Music, and essentially lyrics, seem to have degraded heavily in the last decade or so to become a perfect point of comparison with the prole’s habitual activities in Orwell’s 1984.
On one side we have artists who are incapable of writing lyrics about anything that happens outside their mainstream lives, and on the other side we have we have record labels that bet on this shite because they know it sells, why? because of all the people who don’t care about anything else than what happens in their mainstream lives?
Have people grown dafter? Or have people just stopped caring? Or maybe it has always been like this. However, as far as I recall, in the 80’s there seemed to be quite a lot more complex lyrics floating around than what there is today. I know this is not always true for radio hits, but groups such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan would garner thousands, if not millions of fans, and often their lyrics were rather complex and thoughtfully creative. There seems to be a lack of this nowadays.
The thing about taking on the biggest giants is that most of the time (so often as to be all of the time if you're willing to do some rounding) you fail. You don't just fail at the end, you often fail long before the end.
Yet the dreamers persist. These are usually the garage entrepreneurs, people with little market success behind them, those working without a track record or significant resources. People forget that Google was backed with millions of dollars from the biggest VCs in the world when they took on Yahoo.
- from Will Marlow’s post “Don Quijote didn’t ship”
Today I went ten-pin bowling, and in the lane next to mine there was about 7 screaming teenage girls. Every time a “hit” song came on the loudspeakers they would all yell out loud (which seemed to be just about every song). Not surprisingly every single song was about love, relationships, break-ups, or being far away from a lover. Most of the time the chorus was a single line repeated one time too many, or even a single word sometimes.
Just about everything related to love has already been said through lyrics, in one way or another, using old words and using new ones, however love songs seem to occupy the vast majority of all music produced nowadays. With “love songs” I obviously mean anything related to relationships and break-ups. And it’s obvious that the reason is that people relate to these songs in one way or another.
I mean, just study the names and content in Justin Beiber’s latest album for example.
When every single song in an album is about the same general topic, it gets me thinking… Why? Why not talk about the city life? Why not talk about freedom? What about politics? Money? Drugs? (Oh well, that’s pretty much covered by Hip-hop anyway). I mean, it doesn’t even have to be a topic like these. It could even be a love song, but at least the quality of the lyrics could be superseded with a higher level of creativity. There is so much you can do with poetry and words, and we limit ourselves to the most basic of words in this kind of songs.
Now take this song for example, Ndakuvara by Oliver Mtukudzi:
It has nothing to do with mainstream lyrics, yet it is a beautiful song, and its lyrics can mean a million things, or they can mean one thing, but at the end of a day it is thoughtful, creative, and different. Now how hard is that? Not much if you dedicate a bit of time into it.
To end this, I believe that those who write lyrics should act sometimes like poets, and those who write poetry should act sometimes as lyricists. No harm in that.
28 Mar 2010
simcity3000
Sonny,
How have you been? I hope you are feeling alright. I know things have been tough for you, but try to hold on. I’ve been remembering things lately, like your mother for example.
I also remember back then the goverment would treat us like dogs. They would tread on us. I knew how it was, not because of my age, but because of the stories I had read. Knowledge was banned, except for the knowledge that came built into us.
I had my chip removed a while back and since then I had ceased to remember most of the pertaining things of history. It cost me great effort to evolve a mind of my own again, and then to start piecing the bits and bobs of my memory back together again.
So, Gregory told me the other day that he was falling apart. It seems we are all falling apart nowadays. I haven’t been able to find a new book to read in years, and Gregory is feeling more depressed every day with the news. He really hates when the chemical injections start to kick in when he’s feeling down. It’s really annoying, you start feeling bad and the chip injects you, you’re feeling too good and it injects you again, you’re feeling like a rebel and it injects you, you’re feeling unusual and it injects you. Gregory was on the verge of killing himself yesterday but the chip altered his mood yet again, stopping him from committing such action. Not that I would care that much anyway, I mean, he is my best friend but he no longer thinks by himself.
It is ridiculously dangerous to even attempt removing the chip as when it is removed it sends out a GPS alert immediately. I had to cut my arm off, throw the whole thing in a bin several kilometres away, and run like mad. Even so, I’ve been hiding for several years now, I’m surely being searched for, you know, my arm had my DNA and stuff. It’s obvious they are looking for me. Not that they need to really look anyway, they’ve just got these readers everywhere.
I once read up on these ‘license plate’ readers they installed back at the start of the previous millennium. That was only the beginning of many changes to come. Nowadays everything seems peaceful, there are no wars, there is no crime, and the world is at peace, at the cost of the freedom of millions of people.
I wish I could go back to the old world. I mean, it’s great not seeing murder, death, suicide and violence on the TV every day. It’s great not fearing getting knifed outside your apartment in London. It’s great not losing loved ones to wars like the great Iran war in 2015, or the 3rd or 4th world war. It’s great not having to worry about the news, about the weather, about car accidents. But then again, that randomness in life was what made it particularly interesting. Now they care for everything for us, I mean, for those who have the chips. The weather is always standard, the population numbers are always the same, the amount of energy input/output is always the same, the distribution of people across planets is equivalent, it’s all bloody perfect in the end.
I wish I could get a drink of whiskey, you know, one of those Glen… Glen… oh god, I forgot the name years ago, never-mind. Maybe a Chivas would do the trick, if there only was any.
So Gregory said he’ll be stopping by today to bring me a little “fresh” milk and cheese. I better be going now son, I hope you are having a great time, don’t try to find me (not that you’d be able to leave you’re place with that intention anyway), and think not of me as a prisoner, but a free man. I hope this letter gets to you and overpowers the will imposed on you by the machine. I hope one day you acquire the power to liberate yourself. Until then, take care.
Regards,
David Paterson
28 Mar 2010
A fearless, cold, impenetrably inhumane character, with a warm heart deep inside, and a tortured psyche.
He figured out a way to escaped his ravaged city. This Robert Johnson, a man I speak about.
People thought he was going crazy, you know, walking out from his house. He left 2 children behind, little ones, one of the 2 years old.
How was his wife going to cope with it?
He barely earned enough to pay for food, and his wife couldn’t work. Disease had distraught her back in 91’.
Nonetheless, Robert left for newfoundland, searching for newfoundglory. He must have walked for weeks or years. Poor Robert, dying of pneumonia on christmas eve, on a faraway doorstep, in the middle of nowhere, where time was timeless and space was spaceless.
21 Feb 2010
Are you consistent with what you do? Do you finish everything you start? No, I didn’t think so, but if you do… Congratulations! You may skip this post.
Otherwise, I have a story to tell you…
Once upon a time I was just like you. I had many ideas, some of them quite good, and I tried to carry them out only to realise I couldn’t finish all of them. Sometimes I would get bored halfway through and leave the project incomplete. When it was something socially-related and I did not achieve an immediate response, I would leave it incomplete and/or get frustrated with it. Sometimes I simply couldn’t be arsed to continue with it.
What made matters worse was the sense of guilt I would sometimes build up after a week, a month or a few years after starting a project and not having been able to finish it. A sense of being incompetent. And the more things I left that way, the worse I felt. A constant buzz in the back of my brain telling me that I didn’t finish it, and I could have.
One example was Zyborg, a computer game (Clone of ZZT) I started developing around 10 years ago with Saxxonpike in Qbasic 4.5. We abandoned the project a few months after we started, however, I always felt a tingling sensation of having left it just standing there. I still have the code.
I also used to start (and not finish) hundreds of songs, paintings, poems, lyrics, books, ideas, scripts, computer programs, drawings and many other things. I even started a company once, and we were really motivated. But after stumbling a few times into problems, we just silently gave up on it. But the tingling sensation must have lasted ages in all of us. The sense of not having been able to accomplish our goal. The feeling of failing.
When and how did things change for me?
When I started adding a little bit of organisation into my life.
I started off by writing task lists and project ideas down on paper. If I couldn’t get through them in one go I learned not to stress about it and leave it for a later date, whenever I felt more confident or motivated about the project. Then all these ideas and tasks stopped being burdens on my mind and were converted to sentences in a notebook (later replaced by Google Docs).
Then I started printing out calendars in Microsoft Publisher, and using them to keep track of future events. I have never liked daily based diaries as I hate the format, I hate carrying too many notebooks, and I hate wasting too many blank pages. But a monthly calendar format suited me, with 30-31 rectangles on a sheet with just the right amount of space to keep track of my main tasks per day.
Further on, seeing the success this brought me in organising my life, I looked for a computer solution for my needs. I needed to be able to view it from any PC where I were at, so Microsoft Outlook was out of the question. I found comfort in Google Calendar which I have been using for over 2 years now. It was great, I could view it in any style I liked! I started out using the monthly style, however, lately I have preferred using the weekly view as I plan and use it on a daily basis.
Google Calendar, however, wasn’t the solution to my problem in storing my project ideas. One day one of my best friends introduced me to Remember the Milk. A pot of gold! Accessible from my iPod touch, updateable from anywhere, it was pure glory!
Since then, I have never had a problem remembering what I have done, what I have to do, and what are my plans and ideas for the future.
So if you have ever had one of these problems I have had, give it a try! I mean, it’s free so you have nothing to lose. And if it’s just not your cup of tea, stick around and give the net a look, there must be something ideal for you! The important thing is not giving up on projects or ideas just because you have no time for them at the moment. And if you started one, but haven’t finished it, just keep track of it and leave it for a later date. Don’t scrap it… Remember it.
04 Feb 2010
A few months ago I put together a new computer. I hadn’t done this in ages so, naturally, I did some mistakes.
My main problem was not using the motherboard spacers. Yeah, I screwed the motherboard right onto the case. This (for those who don’t know much about computers) causes immediate short circuit. Fortunately my motherboard has a short-circuit detector and did not allow me to turn it on.
So I went to a computer repair shop with the PC, asked around for the fault, and immediately a guy pointed out my mistake.
I told him “I knew something was wrong, as I had to press really hard on the PCI/PCIe cards to get them in place, and even so they didn’t fit in well”. To which he replied “When something doesn’t fit in naturally you must be doing something wrong, everything should just fit in.”
So I went back home and put it together in the right way, and it turned on without a problem.
His words, however, stuck with me. They not only worked out for my computer problem, but they apply equally to all aspects of life. If something doesn’t feel right, then you must be doing it wrong.
- If you eat something that doesn’t taste good, you spit it out or stop eating it.
- If you put your hand too close to the fire you naturally take it away.
- If you buy something you didn’t like you don’t (generally) buy it again.
So, then, if we act so naturally about so many of these things, why not apply them to cases such as the following:
- If we are in a job we don’t like, why don’t we leave it?
- If we are in a position we can’t handle, why don’t we say it?
- If we are under a lot of stress, why don’t we deal with it?
It’s ALL about communication and action. It’s not about not being able to handle something, it’s about not communicating it to the right person. It’s not about not being comfortable in a job, it’s about doing something about it. Don’t be afraid to live right.