Author's Note

I thought I should meta-write something about these writings.

Although many of these experiments are about the cycle of the seasons, first-person sensory input, or internal thought processing, a few are actually links to other people's ideas. But it isn't merely copying or hyperlinking; my "value added" so-to-speak is that I'm trying to create a larger whole from the parts created by others: a collage.

I found an article describing something vaguely similar, but it's a little too grounded in the web infrastructure itself. I'm interested more in finding and pointing out new links within and between the ideas of others, regardless of the medium: books, recordings, web pages, it's all just information.

The 9/11 Playlist is an earlier attempt at this. It's a shame that the state of the music industry doesn't allow me to put the actual MP3s on my site. Many more people might be able to "get" my point by just playing the songs while they're doing something else, and let it subliminally play in their minds. It's more effective to listen to the 9/11 Playlist than it is to merely read the lyrics. The conceptual linkages just leap out unexpectedly, sometimes sadly, forebodingly, humorously, sometimes frighteningly: the experience is recognizing the links and feeling the impact.

Although I must admit I started creating the 9/11 Playlist intuitively (it just "accidentally" came together while trying to assemble a playlist for a party), mid-way through I saw what was happening, and smoothed it out, tightened it up, by re-arranging and adding and removing some songs. The original version had 42 songs, I later trimmed out a few to tighten it up even more. (Although keeping 42 would have been cool.)

I say "accidentally" because the 9/11 attacks were still very much infecting my mind and this might have been much more subconscious than accidental. Lots of strange things kept happening as the design evolved. For example, a long time later I discovered that the 9/11 Playlist could be split up into 3 CD's in a very natural way that perfectly fits the main sections. I did not do that on purpose. It just came out that way. Also, I kept discovering more and more layers of links that I hadn't noticed while I arranged the playlist. I recall that it felt like the songs were snapping into a big jigsaw puzzle much by itself. Muses perhaps?

I also was playing with the effect that an old familiar song can suddenly take on new meaning if your mind has been altered by new events in your life. (You know that old story, a guy breaks up with his girlfriend, and suddenly all the songs he hears are about breakups, often they seem to be about *his* breakup.) I had personally experienced something like that when I listened again to a song by the Solar Twins but post-9/11. It was devastating. When it starting feeling that same way while I was creating the playlist, I realized I was on to something.

Carl Jung's idea of synchronicity plays here too. Life's random confluences bring together people and ideas that often seem to have extra "meta-meaning" - there must be a purpose to coincidences. I think that's how pattern matching systems like our brains would be expected to react: we are constantly trying to analyze our surroundings to make sense of it all. It's not too hard to see how people could get wrapped up in it.

I really enjoy the idea that all the pages on the web are cross-linked. I've been playing around with putting phrases in my writings that you can do a web search on and find a page that presents ideas that are similar to, contrasting with, or otherwise adding more depth to my page. Trouble is, this puts the onus on the reader to comprehend the meaning. "Happiness to the people of Pozzuoli."

Creating collages brings together elements that can exhibit this synchronicity effect: "I feel like I've been here before." I know others have been here before too, but it's a fascinating form of art. With all the issues about right of ownership, I hope collage creation won't become totally impossible. I'm sure if I wanted to create a movie out of clips of scenes from other movies combined with clips of songs, it would be a monumental copyright and royalties nightmare to actually release it to the public.

There are other related forms of what I would term "meta-art," for example from http://www.turnmeondeadman.net/DSotR/Intro.html:

"Several years ago a rumor began to circulate about a strange connection between Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and the MGM classic film The Wizard of Oz (1939). If you properly synchronize the film and the album, as the rumor goes, a number of coincidental events occur. So many, in fact, that a large audience is convinced that Pink Floyd intentionally created Dark Side of the Moon as an alternative soundtrack to the film."

Here I am, writing this and listening to Electronica. Assemblages of samples of old familiar tunes. Ditto. Ditto. Ditto.

Create your own meta.

The Information Age is a great place to play.

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