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Death of Jazz

I’m so disappointed in the way this whole Ken Burns film ended, so dismissive of everything that happened after the 70s. True, jazz lost its direction in the 70s and no longer counted for more than a fraction of total record sales — it wasn’t driving the heart of the nation. But it took off into so many exciting realms, so much exploration, so much inspiration, and they characterized it like it just petered out into nothingness. Sun Ra never even got mentioned. It was oddly respectful, even if it was dismissive and missed the mark so widely. Ugh. Makes me depressed on two counts — that people forgot how to listen to great music, and that the most important historical document ever made on the music got its final conclusions so wrong.

I blame Wynton Marsalis, both for embodying that “worship the retro, nevermind what’s happening today” atmosphere, and for being given too much creative control over the direction this film took. It would have been so much better if it had had more voices contributing perspectives.

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Requiem for a Dream

Just watched Requiem for a Dream with Amy… what a heavy way to end the week. What an intense movie. Also one of the most originally shot and edited I can remember seeing, ever. Inspirational in that sense, but if anything has ever sent a successful “don’t play with fire or you might get burned” message, this is it. Also about delusional goals, irrational justifications, and the seductiveness of the rabbit hole. Unh.

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Front lines

It’s funny… I thought I knew everything about the history of Be and BeOS… but I’m learning so much more working where I’m working. Not all of it is stuff I necessarily want to be learning, either. I mean, it’s not like I shun the truth, only that I’m realizing that I’ve only known part of the story, and have been naive in some respects. Won’t say more about that here. Only that I’m feeling a little down on account of having my eyes opened.

Jazz pt. #7 was tonight. WWII, Bird and Diz. Intense and amazing tonight, as every episode has been. Made me realize… if there was a war right now and I got drafted, and they brought the music of the day to the front lines to entertain me, I would curse the stars that it was Ricky Martin and Brittany Spears. 50 years ago, it could have Ellington, or Basie. Amazing that those geniuses *were* the popular music of the day, not some historical curiosities. What has happened to great music? Is it really all but gone?

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Horse Before the Cart

Still putting off that Byte column. Don’t know why… it’s harder to find the motivation to do these than it used to be, even when things are going well for Be and I should be totally enthusastic, I have trouble whipping up the motivation I used to have.

Looking back, the reason I got into BeOS to begin with was to explore new avenues for creativity. After a while, the cart started coming before the horse, and I found myself more into BeOS itself than in the creative avenues BeOS was supposed to be all about. The religion of it overtook the reality of it. It’s been fun, and still is, but from a certain perspective, it feels like a case of misplaced priorities.

Lately I find myself more and more wanting to get back to the roots of it all… to create, regardless what OS the tools are running on. Face it: Be didn’t come through in that department, and the available Windows tools are just so much more evolved. So if I want to get into indie film making, I’m going to be spending more time in Windows. It’s just an ugly fact of life for me right now.

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Anticipating Sad Planet

Finished shooting footage for “Visit To A Sad Planet” last weekend, and intended to start editing this weekend. But there won’t be time for that, and personalStudio for Windows isn’t quite ready for a full editing job yet. Very close though. Simon and Paul are in CA now, and the development cycle is really picking up. Betcha I’ll be able to do most of my editing next weekend.

Got a stack of “Short” DVDs from Amazon, and it was a wakeup call — just like web publishing — put the means to make films into the hands of the masses, and the world will be filled with bad films. Maybe Adamations’ motto should be “Enabling bad film making for the masses.” That’s a joke. Sarcasm. I’m totally into enabling people to make whatever kinds of movies they want, even if it’s clear that most of them will suck. The point is, it’s a creative tool, and people creating is better than people not creating.

Eating inordinate amounts of junk food for some reason lately.

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Note from Future – Pruning

In January 2006, I went back and did some massive pruning, and unpublished a ton of old entries on this site, removing content that was not of general interest. So if you see massive gaps in this old content, that’s why.

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Day One

Fried. Worked 12-14 hour days, three days in a row. Amy returned from Oroville, where she’s been photographing a Chinese Joss House (a temple). s at the Red Tractor, trying to work up the energy now to write my next Byte column. Urgh… I need about a week off.