Ah, Technology

[Lightning Rod]

Ah, Technology
for release 04-09-05
Washington D.C.

It's not enough that you spend a half century trying to develop your artistic sensibilities. No. You also have to be a fucking technologist in order to express yourself these days. Between all the wires and plugs and interface devices and software and compatibility problems and cross-platform incest, it's enough to drive you crazy. To be media present, you have to know about MP3's, podcasts, bit rates, internet hosts, IP's, ISP's, SMTE's, giga-wysiwyg's, RSS feeds and all manner of acronymous nano-nonsense. I think I'll quit art and take up potato farming. But even that is technology.

So, after struggling through the arcanum of wires and the twisted intellect of machines and purchasing infinite gizmos and widgets and learning whole new languages, I finally managed to plug the microphone into the back of the computer and record a song.

It's a rough draft at best. But what can you do with a computer and a free downloaded recording program and a twenty-nine dollar Radio Shack microphone and a plastic Yamaha keyboard?

Ah, the miracle and the consternation of technology. Technology enables us do the things that we want to do. Technology began with the finger. And the thumb was a great advancement. It let us peel the banana. The domestication of wild sheep represented technology. The club and the sling and then the bow were revolutions in hunting and warfare. Scraping a furrow in the earth and dropping a seed started the technology of agriculture. Stone walls around cities were technology. Then came the trebuchet and the cannon. Technologies evolve. One overtakes and destroys the other. Natural selection applies. The fittest technologies survive. Why? Because they are useful.

What amazes me is how technologies intersect with art and religion. The infamous Drag Diva Devine said, "Honey, we're born nekked and after that it's all drag." Lightning Rod says, "Darling, we're born stupid and after that it's all technology." Smearing ochre on the wall of a cave represents the intersection of art and technology. Renaissance art would have been nothing without the advent of fresco and oil paint. Most photographic art is digital now. Nobody cares what an F stop is anymore and darkrooms are a thing of the past. Bill Gates is the richest man in the world because of a fortuitous intersection of ideas and technology. Technologies evolve and they drag art and religion with them. Technology even shapes our evolution.

And religion has enthusiastically embraced technology. From the very first, secrets that were kept by the shaman and the priests were their source of power. Fire, rituals, calendars, literacy, were their magic. Now we witness the spectacle in Rome. Pope John Paul II was a creature of technology. The technology of communication was his forte. Two or three million people flocked to Rome for his funeral. It was a Catholic Woodstock. It was so beyond standing room only that they had to erect giant TV screens in parks throughout the city to let the crowds participate in a cyber sort of way. Is religion technology?

Or is technology a religion? Do we place our faith in carbon dating and DNA codes that only electron microscopes can see? Scientists produce miracles like the atomic bomb. Was Oppenheimer a witch doctor or a cardinal? Saint Einstien?

But does technology make our lives better or just more complicated? Cave men didn't have to worry about pulling feeding tubes or learning HTML code or paying for cell phones that do everything but give you head. The cave man could work on his own car under a shade tree and didn't need a four million dollar diagnostic machine and a PhD auto technician to tell him he needed a new sparkplug. And that's the trouble with technology, it's like bureaucracy. As it evolves it requires specialists and high priests just to understand and interpret it to the masses. And in our world the technology is moving so fast that even the specialists can't keep up with their own fields of expertise.

Technologies are the methods we use to control our environment. We're all control freaks. Anybody that claims otherwise is a liar. From the minute we take our first breaths, we are control freaks. We cry to get our way. We use the technology of tears and noise to get warmth and food and a diaper change. Then, as we grow older we use more subtle social technologies to get our way. We learn to use the technologies of fashion and education and complicated machinery and mathematics and marketing to get our way. It's all technology. Musical instruments, computers, cigarettes, satellites, cell phones, game cubes, miracle drugs and exit polls. It's all technology.

How did I get started? All I wanted to do was record a tune? Here it is.

So, Sue Me
by Lightning Rod

http://www.studioeight.tv/musicpost/sosuemedp.mp3

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
I love you just the way you are
are we really happy with this lonely game we play
I will lay me down
you can drive my car

And there's not one thing you can say or do
Gonna make it otherwise
Get down, baby, don't play that game
Baby, don't tell no lies

Right or wrong, gonna steal your song
so sooooooooooo me
yeah or nay, the Judge will say:
"Get out your copyright, we're havin' fun tonight
Who wrote Scrambled Eggs?"

Take my hand, I'm a stranger in paradise
I often walk on the street where you live
Don't change one hair, on my funny valentine
You ain't got nothin' to lose you got nothin' to give

And there's not one thing you can say or do
Gonna make it otherwise
Get down, baby, don't play that game
Baby, don't tell no lies

Right or wrong, gonna steal your song
so sooooooooooo me
yeah or nay, the Judge will say:
"Get out your copyright, we're havin' fun tonight
Who wrote Scrambled Eggs?"

all instruments by Lrod

[Dave The Dov]

Technology is what we make of it and what it makes of us!!!!
_________________
Mercedes Benz W120/121

[stilltrucking]

Technology began with the finger.

Some think it was homidinks with their opposable thumbs, but lemurs are so much cuter I guess I like the image of a lemur with his finger on the trigger better then a naked ape.

The fittest technologies survive. Why? Because they are useful.

Oh yes dear master of ceremonies, but when a technology gets more wastefull then usefull, then what. I think our job in Iraq will be finished when texas tea gets to a hundred bucks.

Say not to change the subject but speaking of techno vision did you see the video of the figure of a man standing in front of the capital building. The guy standing between two black suitcases. Like a pile up in the NFL

Technologies evolve and they drag art and religion with them. Technology even shapes our evolution.

Maybe so, are we not heir to the same earth as frogs.

Two or three million people flocked to Rome for his funeral. It was a Catholic Woodstock. It was so beyond standing room only that they had to erect giant TV screens in parks throughout the city to let the crowds participate in a cyber sort of way. Is religion technology?

I heard it was a peaceful gathering of four million true believers, that says something about the man. I spend way too much time watching wacko preachers, You hardly ever hear one preach against Papist’s Plots anymore.
I say, “May he rest in peace.”

What it makes of us

, good question, mix and match chemicals in our food chain, I keep meaning to learn more about Indigo Children

it rocks me I don't know how many cigarettes to do that thing I hope you been living right.

I wish I had better speakers your voice sounds so

just techno lust, I been studing for a certificate of loyalty test so I can , make some easy money, but I started wishing too hard, seduced by success, wound up like a deer in head lights, a stupid deer. so now I got no more excuse false laters, and so long for now, too early for evening melancholy, before I turn into a cyber whore selling office supplies.

i read this pitch for sub woofers and I thought if I sell my sore ass for a few more dollars the less I need to spend at my j.o.b.

I think I screwed up all my quotes,
self pity ramble/rant

[Dave The Dov]

Indigo Children???? What are they????
_________________
Special Ops Paintball

[Bohemian]

It wasn't until 2001, I put my pen and parchment aside and started using a computer to sort through my muses, and discovered the wonders of the F7 key. Yes, I agree technology produdces so may gagets I can't keep up.

[judih]

In spite of the obstacles, the song is easy and cool.

or should i say that my ears synced with technological compendium allowing me to hyperlink successfully towards digital sound enhancement.

[stilltrucking]

thanks for floating this one up to the top again judih. Not only because it reminds me of an inane reply I made but also the chance to hear Clay and Doreen. I tell her I love her voice. She thinks I am trying to blow smoke. Technology, all these "perfect" singers in technological simutlaions. I heard a serious classical musician say "recorded music is an abomination" I love Clay and Doreen's music because it is not perfect. It is "real"

On an unrelated note: about your comment no sex is death. I say fuk the sex. What I miss is a woman's POV to poke holes in my vanity. fortunately there are so many beautiful women here to help me deal with it. Hester and Doreen singing modulates my DNA. Your poetry too. Mousey1 her humor cuts like a knife, panta lets my sun shine in, whitebird takes my hand and calms my fears, and ~k leaves me speechless, no words no ego. Thank you my precious silicon sisters.
too many to name you all. my mind's a joke, but my spirit is not broke

[judih]

glad to help, still t
but truthfully,
not one bit of silicone -
this is straight nature served up and down with a smile

[stilltrucking]

[Zlatko Waterman]

Some of the most fascinating music I ever heard was played on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley in 1971 by a Vietnamese man with a one-string fiddle ( he modulated the tone by tightening and loosening the string, like a gut-bucket bass) which used a tomato can as a resonator. True, he also had a very primitive gut-string bow, whose wood was stilll partially covered with bark.

He sat contented in the midst of the tangled surge of the passing crowd on the sidewalk. His hat, the tip jar, contained a few quarters and dimes. His beard flowed down to his waist in a white wisp.

I play acoustic music whenever I can, though an upcoming gig will force us to use "sound reinforcement", a primitive PA borrowed from some friends.

There's something magical about the sound coming from the tiny wooden streamlined box of my mandolin.

I suppose you feel the same from your metal pipe of a flute. The vibration of the physical instrument under one's fingers is a special kind of excitement.

Digital recording, on the commercial scale, gives us recorded music in compact form, and our car now has a cd player, allowing my wife to listen to Alan Watts or Carly Simon or Simon Rattle as she commutes.

Having the 1930's Ellington orchestra in your Japanese car while you drive through downtown LA is a science-fiction conjunction all right.


--Z