Hello, World

Walking the cliffs of East Yorkshire with the sounds of a Coldcut Solid Steel afrobeat special in my ears. Yes. Sometimes it’s good to connect to your immediate audioscape (currently the sound of my own heels on the path, the waves on the shore below…) and sometimes it’s beautiful to be able to carry pieces of your own sonic identity with you, out of the context you usually place them in.

In the words of Saul Williams: “not until you’ve listened to Rakim on a rocky mountaintop have you heard hip-hop…” Or something like that.

(via Melon: A Headband and Mobile App to Measure Your Focus)

Now wait just a minute. How the… When the… I mean… ?

Wearable tech is really 50/50. Recognisable form factors can be pretty cool (anything you can wear around your wrist, for example). Other things seem destined to be pilloried by all but the most ardent lovers of tech (ahem, Glass…). But that said, and whichever side of the nerd/not-nerd fence you sit on, does it not feel like The Future has actually arrived, or at least is standing at the door waiting for an invitation to cross the threshold?

A headband that reads your mind. That you can use for brain training exercises. “Fold the origami paper with your mind…” The part of my brain responsible for sci-fi narratives is doing cartwheels right now, just thinking about the possibilities.

It’s just happening soooo quickly…

apoetreflects:

“There is nothing more difficult to outgrow than anxieties that have become useful to us, whether as explanations for a life that never quite finds its true force or direction, or as fuel for ambition, or as a kind of reflexive secular religion that, paradoxically, unites us with others in a…

apoetreflects:

Doesn’t the world demand
We dance?
Doesn’t it insist on it?
And why not?
                      Look
At the leaves,
Look at the weeds.
Look at the least blade
Of grass in the breeze.

None of them begs off
Or offers excuses.

None of them refuses

—Gregory Orr, from “Doesn’t the world demand,” in River Inside the River: Three Lyric Sequences (W. W. Norton & Co., 2013)

badwolfcomplex:

“Remember that the present day is given to you in order to gain the future day of eternity; make a firm purpose to employ the day well for this intention.”

—St. Francis de Sales

Murmur — From sound to light, by talking to walls. (by Chevalvert)

Any Processing gurus out there? I’d love to do something like this mashed up with a poetry reading. Imagine a graphics engine that could reacted to words and word combinations with light, shapes and colour… Mmmm.

Taking a moment after teaching today, I’ve found an exhibition of African beauty. This is probably the most conventionally “beautiful” portrait I could have picked as an example, but the exhibition celebrates a wide range of representative portraits from African groups and sub-groups.

As an aside, I bumped into photographer Franklyn Rodgers while browsing through. Had a brief but intense conversation about exoticisation in African portraiture, the need to continually challenge one’s own perspective, and the need to ask questions not only of the subject but also the eye that sees. We also spoke about the phase of life we’re both living through, whereby we’re both responsible for parents and elders whose lives have been reduced to smaller parodies of the lives they’ve lived before, through illness or even simple familiarity.

How do we see? How has your seeing been constructed? How easily do we take our respective perspectives for granted? How do we challenge ourselves authentically? And how do we stay fresh and alive to the world and all its offerings? How to resist that tapering of perspective that often comes in hand with age and experience?

new-aesthetic:

“The internet is ubiquitous, yet its detailed inner workings remain wrapped in mystery. We rely on a wide range of myths, metaphors and mental-models to describe and communicate the network’s abstract concepts and processes. Packets, viruses, worms, trojan horses, crawlers and cookies are all part of this imaginary bestiary of software. This new mythology is one of technological wonders, such as live streams and cloud storage, but also of traps, monsters and malware agents. Folk tales of technology, however abstract and metaphorical, serve as our references and guidelines when it comes to making decisions and protecting ourselves from attacks or dangers. Between educational props and memorabilia, this series of objects visualises and celebrates the abstract bestiary of the internet and acts as a tangible starting point to discuss our relationship to IT technology.”

David Benque: Specimens of IT Fauna

The Spokesman (by dean saffron)

I geek, therefore I am.

I’m known for a certain obsessive streak. When something piques my interest, I’m in, all the way. That’s how I got started with writing (in all the forms I’ve experimented with, before and after settling into poetry), that’s how I am with tech (the number of Apple machines and apps I’ve experimented with is, quite frankly, embarrassing…), that’s how it went with photography (I have a small collection of 35mm and Medium Format cameras, which this video casts my mind to— a collection that would have been much larger if my drive to be fiscally responsible hadn’t won out), and now, cycling. 

There’s something honest, in the most romantic sense of the word, about speeding around under your own steam. Late last week, I cycled up to Kilburn, met up with the poet Katrina Naomi at the Pistols and Pollinators exhibition she’d invited me to be a part of and had a wonderfully warm conversation about the necessity of seeing new things to keep one’s writing fresh, then down for a quick stop at Muji on Carnaby Street, on to dinner in Bermondsey Square and finally back to Lewisham. All the while, I passed through parts of London I’ve been aware of but have never really known, and the city seemed to open itself up to me in a way it hasn’t since I was young and learning it for the first time…

Of course, my first real test will be how I handle the inevitable shift in weather but, for now, I’m geeking out on bike construction, maintenance and accessories.

See you on the road…

Robert Greene - ‘Mastery’.Not sure about the absolute need for “utter worthlessness” in learning, but I appreciate the ideal of continually starting over in search of truth. Consider alongside Bruce Lee’s “a punch was just a punch” thinking.

There’s a question I try to ask myself when I’m creating something: “Is this true?”

I define truth here not as factual accuracy, but as fidelity to both intent and embodiment. A design is true if it fulfils its requirements judiciously, and yet surprises and delights its intended audience. An app is true if it has a purity of vision and focus, and serves its intended customers on their terms. A piece of writing is true if it resonates with the people who read it – even if the details must be changed in order to better do that.

Truth, in this sense, is the opposite of betrayal, or carelessness. It’s the antithesis of compromise, for any reason except making something as good as possible.

I’m also using “true” to mean essential; not in the “required or indispensable” sense, but rather fundamental and elemental. Containing everything that should be, and nothing else.

(via Dawn of Grime | Accent Magazine)

Things change, things stay the same. It’s a joy to see this Dawn of Grime feature; how much it reminds me of some of the raw reality captured by photo-features focused on the early days of US Hip-Hop, and yet how quintessentially English (or rather, London-ish) this feature is.

Still keen to hear more about poets who are capable of tackling and articulating the contemporary Black-British urban experience from fresh perspectives, particularly where that experience is aligned with or driven by the music of the same period. Kareem Parkins-Brown and Kayo Chingonyi, I’m looking at you…

Who are the UK’s closest equivalents to African-American poets such as Terrance Hayes, Major Jackson, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Tracy K Smith and so on? What poetic tradition, school, tribe or movements do we use to speak of poets such as Malika Booker, Roger Robinson, Charlie Dark and their like?

(These are more notes to myself for further expansion, but I’m certainly interested in a dialogue if anyone’s interested…)

myjetpack