psycho babble

I once interviewed an illustrator of children's books who said that writing for kids is especially difficult, because when you are forced to become simple, all of your adult repressed psychological baggage is unwittingly revealed. And sometimes reducing your thoughts to their purest form leaves you with something you don't expect to find.

I've always felt that Halloween costumes are similarly revealing. And they're particularly interesting to me because you have people expressing themselves who don't generally do so with such a visible act of creativity. For instance, one year a guy I know dressed up as a proctologist. Now, I'm no psychoanalyst, but what that says to me is: this guy is a pain in the ass, or he likes to be. Another guy I know dressed up as a painting, with a frame around his head. To me, this means he doesn't just want to create or inspire art; he wants to BE art. And then there was the guy with a shoe glued to his crotch. I think you know where I'm going with this...

Anyway, I started thinking about this recently because I've been thinking about what to write in this blog. The interesting thing about blogging to me is not just the accessibility of the tools or the ability to communicate with people all over the world. It's that you never know who is going to read it. It could be my parents. It could be my ex-girlfriend. It could be my ex-girlfriend's parents. And because this is such a personal form of expression, almost like a diary (diarrhetic?), it's easy to get caught in the trap of second guessing. What some might find interesting, others might find TOO interesting... or really boring. See what I mean? It's impossible. Getting caught up in this way of thinking will paralyze you.

The only solution is to be myself.
Sometimes a simple insight like this can prove itself most relevant.
See, I feel better already.

All of which brings me to our sound of the post.
It's a piece that I produced a few months ago for Studio 360, about a video game called Psychonauts (which by the way is a really excellent game, if you're into that sort of thing). The first voice you'll hear will be Kurt Anderson, he's the host of the show. And the Jonathan in the discussion after the piece that Kurt is talking to is not me, it's Jonathan Lear, a psychoanalyst and professor of philosphy at University of Chicago...

click here to listen

long lost twin

so there's this chidren's t.v. show called This is Daniel Cook that my friend Becky watches with her children, and she thinks I look just like the kid on the show. Here are two pictures of him:

and here's a picture of me, roughly the same age...

crackle

I've figured out a way to post sound.
My inaugural sound for this blog is:

Vinyl

just click on the link, you need Real Audio to hear it.
more to come...

i have evolved

click on the picture to hear what she hears

as you can see, I can now post pictures to this website.

this is the first known picture of my niece, Olivia. She will be born in October, currently she's in my sister's uterus. Already you can see that she is displaying a keen fashion sense, with a taste for polka-dotted bows.

I think it's cool that you can kind of see the 3 dimensions, and it's really quite amazing that this is happening inside another person's body.

"Hearing is the first of our senses to be switched on, four-and-a-half months after we are conceived. And for the rest of our time in the womb—another four-and-a-half months—we are pickled in a rich brine of sound that permeates and nourishes our developing consciousness: the intimate and varied pulses of our mother’s heart and breath; her song and voice; the low rumbling and sudden flights of her intestinal trumpeting; the sudden, mysterious, alluring or frightening fragments of the outside world — all of these swirl ceaselessly around the womb-bound child, with no competition from dormant Sight, Smell, Taste or Touch."

- Walter Murch, from his essay on on transom.org

welcome to ear crack

This is my blog, your online resource for stuff I want to put here.

I'll be posting audio files and other creative endeavors designed to please the senses. But I'm still trying to figure out how to post pictures, so posting audio seems kind of ambitious at the moment. Rest assured, I'm on it...