I collect fragments of this, that and the other.  Quotes, lines, ideas, thoughts.   I used to write them down on assorted pieces of paper, and post-it notes, which got lost, and later found when I took out my battered vacuum cleaner from under the stairs.

I collect fragments, and have recently attempted to note them all in an oracle.  Namely a collection of battered moleskin books, like the sort you can get from Waterstones.  I started with a red book, and now am working my way through assorted shades of green.   Red remains my favorite.  There’s an urgency about it.  That book became a backbone in my life.

The books are slightly curved when placed on a flat surface, like a 1950′s coffee table, which I once carried all the way from Exeter to Plymouth.  The curve is due to the flat that they live in my back pocket, and have been subjected to ‘arse impact’.

The books also contain potential sources of conversation.   This is due to my poor recall, which has gotten progressively worse, or more sustained over the last few years.  Forgetting what it is I want to talk about during a conversation is absolutely crippling, and frustrating.  I am sick of it.

I have absolutely no idea what to do with these fragments.  I lack the confidence and, indeed patience to write lots of words, and engage in intellectual debate.   I enjoy anecdotes.  Sometimes I read your words and go blank.  I like this.

I want to write some anecdotes on blank post cards and post them through a door or two at some point in the future.

One will be from Rotterdam.
One will be from Amsterdam.
One will be from Berlin.
One will be from Paris.

Oh yeah, and one from Plymouth Hoe.  But none from Liverpool or Rome.

Where can I get some decent blank postcards?  I went to Wilkinson’s this morning, and they were rubbish.

Tim

I have written a lot of words but not said nearly as much as I wish.

It’s one of those things that I cannot believe really happens, I must prefix my response by mentioning I grew up in one of London’s most “right on” boroughs through the 1980’s. It is the origins of the Daily Mail’s “political correctness gone mad” regime, I believe.

So while I sit at my computer burning 20 DVD’s one after the other I wish to respond.

In my heart of hearts I cannot believe that people are bad, I don’t think anyone is born bad, circumstance and external factors make them or force them into that way of being. Racism is interesting in the fact that it seems to be learned, rather than ‘naturally’ occurring. Always throughout history ignorance causes this way of being to flourish and surely its fundamental routes are the media, if the second world war taught us anything, is that you can galvanise a population and reinvigorate its economy by victimising a section of that population and gaining support in unfounded accusations. Unfortunately this still happens, the ongoing war(s) with the middle east and north Africa prove that racism is a very important political tool.

This makes me sad.

Imagine I am starving and I go and steal some food from someone, in the process and through my desperation I hit that person with my stick. The media reports all disabled people are evil.

Suddenly all disabled people become evil.

It is a rather efficient way for society to ignore the fact that I am starving by victimising everyone who shares a similar obviously visible characteristic.

David Icke has no excuse, apart from potentially having a nervous breakdown and being encouraged, I suppose. But again he is a man with enough media savvy to understand how to use his ignorance to encourage people to behave like him and therefore gain control.

I am sad that he is using sound as a metaphor.

So this brings me to:

Racist particles outside the range of human hearing.

I wished it were true, although it lends a certain odiousness to those particles. Gradually working on your psyche while you are unaware of their existence, like the media, like David Icke.

I like your poetic statements Tim,

In a bit to capture my physically able youth I have been listening to Underworld again (amongst others). At the pop end of the spectrum, they present some interesting lyrical content.

I will copy you links to blogs to listen/refresh:
Second Toughest in the Infants
Dubnobasswithmyheadman

I have also been watching youtube videos of the Knife performing live.

I think I am (currently) interested in lyric but maybe not poetry.

Tim, I think you need to compile your collection of fragments, statements and words (you may already be doing this?). You can figure out what to do with it later.

Neil

Racist particles outside the range of human hearing.

Tim

Mixing is total craft, from records to baking, mixing is simply craft.

You can learn how to count beats

You can learn what texture dough should be before rolling

Mixing is as craft as it gets.

The art for sure is engaging an emotional response, but this is not a new development and surely has always been there. I am unsure, but I believe we are both discussing the same idea, holding the same opinion, but from completely different ends. I feel you are evaluating this from more of a radio DJ perspective and myself as the sonic continuum of meticulously woven streams of audio; and this clearly relates to our lives and fields of experience.

I despise the quiet within a listening experience, the “breath” disengages my listening and again my brain is pondering, and therefore: not listening. Can you not view this mix tape as a sonic continuum? Trevor Wishart discusses notions of planes of sound, of these planes becoming webs or meshes that our brain can appreciate, the spatial movements, the flow (literally) like waves. Where is extreme quiet in all of this? The wave “breathes”, but it is not quiet – it is a gesture, a shape, a morphology.

The track ordering is curation, not mixing, the ordering is the set, the tape, the art. Mixing is combining of two (or more) things, the multiplication, the crossfade.

In your method songs do not “siege” or “mutate” into each other, they simply see each other from a distance before they are gone, they never touch or attempt to make contact, they do not combine, they just see the other across a plane of quiet before they disappear.

Surely you would know me well enough by now to know I am not only talking about beats.

None of this is or ever has been a mix

Neil

Nothing is ever left that long.  And few posts result in me thinking about our collaboration, namely how long it takes me to put my finger out of my arse, or how long it takes you to reply as your brain races at the speed of light.

So are you saying a ‘good mix’ is defined by paced rhythm, builds, tempo and changes?  Is this the ‘craft’ at work?   Do you think the art of the mix tape has evolved, embracing ‘emotional response’ over time?

To answer your question.  No, I do not liken moments of silence to periods of waiting.  To me the silence, or at the least ‘extreme quietness’  is only about waiting when in the doctor’s waiting room, the eventuality of a knock at the door, or at the worst, doomsday.  To me the silence in a mix tape IS a form of mix.  A breath between a song, a period of reflection, or the tension before a new track.  Maybe what I am trying to say is that the order, or sequence of the tracks is the real mix, before the fun of the actual fade in/fade out occurs.  I never really think too hard about how the songs siege into each other.

Speaking of which, I like how you have highlighted my use of the word ‘siege’.  Maybe I don’t really mean that.   I’m moving towards ‘mutate’.  But that will probably have changed before the next post.

Tim

Tim

I know you said to not reply immediately, and I haven’t, but I didn’t leave it very long.

A ‘good mix’ would adhere to the conventions of traditional mixing, and I assume these conventions originate from dance (music) culture. There needs to be a constant continuum of similarly paced rhythms in order to keep listeners dancing, or of course carefully blended builds and tempo changes. Even within the realms of the DJ, there is nothing left to silence; any fades or moments of quiet are filled with speech, conversation and/or spot sound effects.

There should never be any silence no matter what forms of music, or audio, you are mixing, but this doesn’t mean that there can’t be moments of quiet.

In the world there is never silence. You cannot ‘mix’ nothing.

I am interested in your use of the word “siege” in: “how one track sieges into another?”

Siege is like battle, but mixing is about harmoniously weaving together, there has been little room (so far) for dissonance in mixing.

But think about it: is there ever room for dissonance amongst mixing?

Weird tasting food? Bizarre smelling perfume? Paint?

Here’s questioning consonance.

Do you wish to liken moments of silence to periods of waiting?

Neil

I’m playing devil’s advocate here, so go with me on this one.  I’m intrigued by why there should be no silence between tracks in ‘good mixes’.  What is taboo in this respect?  Is the ‘mix’ in mix tape about the craft of how one track sieges into another?  Or is how the listener is taken on a journey, or how an emotional response is communicated the ‘mix’.  In my mind a period of silence could be part of the mix, the stream of consciousness, the emotional resonance as equally as the two tracks blending into each other.

Tim

I agree that it may be truly unnessary to establish a rule for mixing the text, but I feel it is essential that we do attempt to mix the text. And I hope you are attempting this. Like the mixing, as per Paul D. Miller, pulling together the disparate streams of our consciouness and combining them for a couple of sentences would add a really nice flow/continuum.

To textulate?

I like blank space in books, I feel we should look for canons of how to lay out text, immediately I can think of John Cage’s collection of writings: “Silence: lectures and other writings” and my personal favourite “Nova Express” by William Borroughs.

Nova Express

REMEMBER:

1. As in all good mixes – there should be no silence between the tracks.
2. We are not writing a blog, this is the place to discuss ideas, or pose questions, but you must still be writing the text in secret.

I am glad that you are on board.

Neil

Neil

Do we try to establish a rule for mixing text?

Does text mix, or can it crash?  Can the length of the silence between tracks or text be communicated by blank space within in book?

The transitions are so important and flexibility is the key in my eyes.

So Neil.  You wrote this many weekends ago.  And I didn’t respond for many weeks.  So already I have breached the agreement.  So much happened.  On the page, I would like a long gap between your last post and this reply.  That is the mix.  That was the narrative.  That was the time spent.

Tim

I just saw a barge called “bagheera” like from the jungle book. Is clearly a pun on the word barge. I’m at the harbour side in Bristol and I’m really cold in the wind. I am always cold because I have no fat or hair on my head. But a lot of time I’m sweating.

There is a bespectacled fat man with glasses and a football team. He is wearing a suit jacket and football shorts. I think it is his only jacket.

This is not a question.

Neil