Plan Libre

Music only for myself.

Lately I've been losing myself practicing piano. I think, I should be doing this ten hours a day, not laboring over a Rhino model in studio, sipping my third Venti Black Eye of the night and hating myself for not having any good ideas. But then I realized that if I was forced to fulfill a certain quota for music every day, I would probably begin to think of it as more of a burden than an invaluable source of play and pleasure, as things currently stand.

The relationship between architecture and music, for me at least, is similar to the one between system and facade in modern construction. No longer are bearing walls my only option in design, a system limited in spatial aesthetics because it also has to dutifully hold up the building. I can dump all of my formal educational and moral loads onto the disciplined framework that is architectural education...so that I can freely pursue music as if it were a free plan/facade on a modern building. Nobody cares if you didn't follow the state building code in music. There is no Code in music. Code is one of the most unforgiving things ever, because it is meant to protect those that hold little power by arbitrarily constructing a line of acceptable behavior for the others. And if the boundaries are constructed with little thought and lots of stupidity (they often go together), then you're fucked. In comparison, music doesn't have to make the world better. Music takes no responsibility for the future. Music doesn't have to bear the weight of my existence, neither financially nor psychologically, and I dear hope not physically. Music is detached from, yet still perceivable by others!

"Humans have their feet planted into the Earth and their heads in the heavens," said my Building Systems professor in his last lecture. In the same way, I am grateful to architecture for grounding me, for producing me thus far in order that I can lust for endless possibilities in the musical heavens, in order that I can converse with deceased white male composers through the ethereal medium of sound. So let it be that I have to leave every practice desperately wishing that I had played my pieces just one more time, even if my fingers are on the verge of contracting tendonitis. When I crawl out from the nightmarish practice rooms into the piercing sun-bleached quad, I am at ease with the knowledge that the Crouse dungeons, in all of their musky, wooden, dirty, cacophonous glory, will always be the welcoming womb of engagement for me and my music. Those are the bedchambers for a psychedelic lover that is everywhere and nowhere, a lover created by and existing only within myself.

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Here are some T-Squares. We use them in architecture sometimes.

This is a lemon.

In case you are an idiot, this is what this blog will be about.

(photos courtesy of the G-man.)

Introduction to Bullshit Course Description: ITB101

Unspoken thoughts have this habit of accumulating behind my sternum until they have created enough force explode a hole in my physical body, leaving nothing but my bag of skin looking like a deflated husk of rubber.

I don't think something like attempting to translate them into text is the right way to get them out, nor do I feel as though language is able to properly work out all of these microscopic knots that are constantly forming in my mind/heart/soul/whatever the fuck is responsible for them. It's like trying to hand sew an entire outfit in one sitting. You become exponentially emotionally depraved with the passing of time, and suddenly stitches become crooked, which turns into poking holes into the same finger and then you're taking off a hand and then you take an axe to your head and-

I can't trust myself to write about anything I actually care about. I can speak bullshit with (false) clarity and precision, but when asked about my underlying moral standards or beliefs, I have a difficult time convincing others (and mainly myself) that I stand for...well, what I stand for. Feminism, Anti-Human Trafficking, Sustainability, your typical GenY shit. I don't think I have learned enough about these politically-charged ideas to withstand a barrage of nit-picky, lawyer-type questions from expert non-believers. Socially accepted terms such as "Conservative" and "Liberal," are so damn deceiving, since people that identify as such wish to be seen as a part of larger, positive entities. But have they ever considered how much that would confuse a a political noob (aka an international student)? 

Conclusion: more digging is to be done on said controversies. 

If you are inherently made of complex and informative entities, or are an entity of complex nature (I do hope you are), then you should be able to reach inside of yourself and excavate something of value in your identity. But this identity that you possess constantly changes and produces changes which cannot be measured or predicted. In which case, how do you grow? And why do you grow in response to particular experiences and not others? Or do you positively respond to all changes? Changes changes changes changes changes. Is change itself conservative after all?

Watching a field of text grow before my eyes soothes me, just like dumping my shit in a toilet or removing trash from my room. But where does the trash and garbage and non-recyclables all go? In the end, sweeping your room doesn't get rid of the dust; it just transports it from a place in which it displeases you to somewhere where it has no active relationship to your mood or public persona. Is this really how we should live, by covering up that which was once useful but is now just an eyesore or health hazard? We created these health hazards, and someone else, or something else, or somethings elses is/are/will be taking responsibility for it. Shit doesn't just disappear. Even when you die, the atoms which have made you to be who you were in your lifetime still exist in the air...they just sort of come apart and are free from any humanly recognizable identity. YOU don't exist, but your particles do. Forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.