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Re-thinking content, with new video content.
I’m rethinking the scope and purpose of this newsletter ‘content’. What started out as pressure-relief from a boring job has run its course, just like the job. I am now functionally unemployed, and I’m rethinking a lot of things in life.
I won’t be writing about just music any more, but music and the other streams of creativity and ideas that run in parallel lines. More creative explorations, and thoughts on the function of creativity as a respite, a safe zone and a humane temple of resistance against the slop, the bullshit and the destructive.
More on the daft times we live in; more on the need to widen the heart and keep the cynicism of reality at bay.
It feels like the world (esp. as experienced digitally) is entering a phase of hard and fast transition that doesn’t ultimately have our best interests in mind. AI might look like a faddish shiny bauble, but its ultimate agenda… The politics of populism might seem harmless at first… The era of unaccountability that embeds us…
At the same time I’m trying to reset my brain/habits/outlook to be a more honest creative person, more engaged with the heart of the matter, or just with more heart. A broad realignment to better serve the second half of life.
I’ve been thinking a lot (and thinking in therapy) about how humans are meaning-making and meaning-seeking animals. And that deep down we have to create meaning for ourselves, both in order to understand ourselves (and ourselves in the world), but also to fulfil the promise-potential of our identity. To make and do the things that only we can. Because when there is no meaning, we clearly suffer.
Sure you can adopt the readymade opinions and listicles and factoids of life, but the true responsibility is to distil and create your own purpose. Which, again, I think, comes down to a relationship with your heart, with intention and a desire for something bigger, better and new. Frightening and disturbing as that may be. Finding a meaningful life (which is all we ever wanted) means simply making meaning.
Sure, these are bold claims for yet another needle in the substack, but I want these writings to be a record (a broader accountability) and a covert guide or vade mecum for finding a path of meaning through the slop and slurry of late-capitalist life; to claim more personal satisfaction and control over what we can control, and thereby maybe (and it is a statistically tiny maybe) help someone else feel less alone.
Thankyou.
Sound textures
[“Keep reading so you can be featured!” he says]
I've been experimenting with soundscapes and moody ambient music. Exploring sound design and synthesisers and trying to vibe like the Boards of Canada (because they’re a touchstone for so much modern music to relax/study to, cough). Using apps like Phase Plant and some Decent Sampler VSTs and mixing and effecting and reverbing and what have you. Lots of fun noodling and exploring at the nichest edge of the niche. And drones, oh lordie howdie, do I love long slooow drones and textural shifts like strange places unfolding.
And but that’s just one side of the equation. I’ve been attaching them to some very still, unmoving landscape videos with very little going on. Maybe a bird takes flight, maybe the light changes slightly. Ambient vision with ambient sound.
Because I have an experimental agenda: to create anti-content.
The kind of content that makes you aware of attention, that makes you patient for something meaningful. That’s completely devoid of the usual “content” and attentional tactics like fast cuts, loud dialogue, cheap animated sticker gags, cramming-everything-into-5-seconds-without-saying-anything bam bam boom. No ‘stick around for a secret tip’, no course links, no need to subscribe.
Because in our algorithmic era, the supposed path to success is to do everything the algorithm wants you to, format-wise. Make it maximally engaging, testing your optimal title and thumbnail, posting as frequently as possible in the hope of going viral, and churn churn churn. Optimise for short attention spans, optimise for ad leverage, cross-post your socials etc. All the facets that AI will make sloppily easy for us. More, more, maximally more shit.
With all the negative assumptions about the viewer that entails, the insult and the pain to their attention, the negation of care and nuance and time.
I propose to go against all that, with maximally minimal content. Content with nothing to sell, nothing to condescend to, nothing much at all. Just a view of nature with some vaguely pleasing sounds. Something that’ll never get picked up by the ‘suggested’ algorithm, something that isn’t commercial in any way, but something that calms your attention and gives you a breather from the slop. Which wouldn’t even make sense as AI generated slop.
Here’s some examples.
Here’s how you can help! [he says]
If you have any nature footage — especially still or slow-moving video — send it on, and I’ll make ambient music for it and post it to the web. It could be nature, it could be sand drifting on the beach, it could be the gentlest of breezes through the trees, it could be headlights reflected on wet streets. If it can be slowed down to look like a gently dynamic painting, please send it on. I’ll make the sounds to match.
A visual-sonic calm piece. No-content content. Mood-work that anti-reflects our times.
It’s the nichest of niche, of course. But that’s where new meaning and viewpoints are made. That’s where I hope to regain or de-fracture our attention, at the furthest edges from the all-the-same. Where maybe an optimism of sincerity renews itself…
Contact via comment!