meta-roj

actor. dildano.

singer

it’s news in lots of places, but i picked the guardian for a link.

“What we have done is stupid. It is, I would say, an insult to the military, to the evolution of the military justice system.”

it’s not quite the model described, but thanks to a tip from joi i stumbled into a “phase 1” implementation on livejournal, described here.

who’s got the pharma connections to finish this up?

reuters has it.

add one more to the fray. hp plans to do the hardware too, which puts them back into a business they folded after acquiring compaq.

i’ve occasionally toyed with concepts of dimensions in music, perhaps as a tool to transcend genre for the process of discovering music – a potential solution to the discrimination problem. deep in my brain, i know this isn’t a new train of thought – people have been trying to find good music since the second person started banging on a log (and sucked, by the way… what ever happened to that first guy?).

back in late october (so long ago, now), i left myself a note when i found one thought – a visual approach – to this question. i found that thought among interesting collection of other thoughts on music (recommended reading). i think dan has some great questions – maybe even a few answers in there.

even longer ago – in may of 2002, inspired by quest to map musicians, dan came down a path quite similar to the one i find myself on, and wound up with a “six dimensional” concept (later extended to seven dimensions in the comments). this gives us artists, genre, time, location, esoterica/theme, technique/instrument and utility as potential “dimensions of music.”

i’d like to add that two very, very important dimensions are still missing…

the personal dimension

one is the personal dimension within the set of relationships for a given individual – the stuff that might be called “our songs” – it’s important not for anything thats in or about the music itself, but for some personal connection it’s made with me. an example from my own life is the sickeningly pre-electronica superhit “popcorn” which i will, forever, associate with someone dear to me and 3000 miles away. i’d tell you more, but she’d have to kill you (there is a small, but legitimate risk that she will wander in here and catch you, so i’m doing this for your own good). what i can tell you is that within a small group of people, it’s an “in joke” – so that group of people can mention (or play) “popcorn” and it brings with it a whole array of context and meaning that have nothing to do with the song itself, and everything to do with a particular person. (you’ll find another example in the footnotes).

it’s the minutiae of every individual life that add up to this dimension. it can apply to individual songs, artists or even whole genres. it’s context, on a one-to-one personal level that add relevance to the music. just to complicate things, it’s not a symmetric dimension either. a song means something to me because of my association between the song and someone else, but it’s entirely possible (even likely), that the song was personally associated with the other person for an entirely different (and perhaps now irrelevant) reason – or perhaps not even personally associated with them at all – it’s all in my head

coding this dimension is [probably] fundamentally impossible, so from an application or utilitarian perspective, there isn’t much to work with here. i doubt a person could even “list their personal songs” – but when they hear them, the associations come flooding back, and it’s generally a lifelong relationship.

the cultural dimension

for many people there is a common set of cultural themes that run through their lives and the lives of their peers. this is the power of pop icons – they are the themes of your life. these are the songs that will haunt you forever, that will play on the oldies station when you’re stuck in a nursing home, and that your kids will never, ever understand.

this is a concept i’ve touched on several times (just recently with missy), heavily in the discussions with tim oren. vaguely related to the “time” dimension and the “personal” dimension, this dimension is much easier to define because it’s a pretty solid bet that it’s the popular songs, within the genres you listened to, during your “formative years.”

this dimension will overlap with the personal dimension – that sappy popular hair-metal ballad was playing when you first got to second base. whoups. now you’re stuck with it. don’t feel too bad – that same sappy popular hair-metal ballad was playing when thousands of other people got to second base too. you probably don’t know all those people, but you all know the song.

the cultural dimension defines generations, serves as a common touchstone, and will give you the “echoing through your life” effect as it’s played – seriously or humorously – at reunions, weddings, funerals and all those other events that bring you together with those lifelong friends. these songs give you the quotes, the lyrics, the chord progressions that will “click” for people. it gives you a code, a shorthand, that you feel some ownership with, that you have some confidence “your kinda people” will understand.

still looking for a map

so i’ve complicated the picture, and now there are 9 dimensions. but i still haven’t found what i’m looking for¹….

….but that’s how it works.

¹ that’s the letter u and the numeral 2^2
2 that’s negativland^3
3 that’s ripped from casey

(and you thought this whole derivative music free culture thing was new 🙂 ).

a while ago, i wrote about the gothic ice palace coming to alaska.

not so fast. this ap story says the project was frozen (ahem) by the state fire marshal for unspecified building code issues.

so it’s not a hotel anymore. it’s art, mmmkay?

as mentioned recently, there’s a bit of a stir happening over at the magic kingdom.

another board member, stanley gold, has left the board of directors and joined roy disney in an “outsider” campaign to oust michael eisner.

eventually, an american

i just wasted entirely too much time making things pretty. lots of posts here at the meta-roj blog have been reformatted so quotes are more consistent and obvious. a few things were re-categorized.

and now, back to something “productive” 🙂