if you really want to entertain the notion, breaking the cycle would necessarily mean erasing yourself entirely from history. there's interesting consequences of that (as history would take a different path without you, however miniscule), but it's not what i was thinking about at first.

what that means is we could never know of anybody that's actually succeeded, because all trace of them would cease to exist.

it follows that all claims of enlightenment through this process are necessarily false.

but, frustratingly, it doesn't eliminate the possibility. it even opens up explanations as to why the event seems so rare - we can only remember the fakes.

it's remarkable how these ideas can reinforce themselves through seeming absurdities.

do dogs understand that they're being used for nefarious purposes?

like a drug sniffing dog for example. do they have enough awareness and empathy to say "yeah, i smell it on this person, but they seem cool so i'm not going to draw attention to it.".

well, we know that dogs are very good at sensing personalities. they seem to react differently depending on your emotional state. so, it's not pure fantasy.

i don't think i'd want to be the one that tests that idea....

you have to wonder if wolves have similar capacities. i mean, they're pack animals. it makes sense that some kind of concept of emotion would develop out of that. but, i would think that contact with humans would be a driving force in evolving that trait. knowing which humans are cool and which humans are assholes is something a semi-wild dog needs to be able to do on a day-to-day basis in order to survive.

you can see something similar in elephants. apparently, they react negatively to people who speak certain languages, because they associate poaching behaviour with those languages. that's something of value to pass on to future generations, even if it's kind of racist.

but what i'm thinking of is pretty sneaky. i think dogs may need at least a few more centuries before they can do sneaky things like that...

i'd love to come across a file of mine deep in the state (i think i'm getting my psychiatric evaluation, just from a distance) somewhere that has this broad stamp of deduction on it, in startling blunt clarity. like, a file marked BONKERS in red stamp. presented as a medical diagnosis...

our evaluation of this suspect is that she is simply bonkers.

....signed off for by a doctor, illegibly, but with credentials typed in boldface. to scream it's legitimacy.

yeah. this guitar sampler has consistency problems, overall. the idea that i could have created this ideal sound by mixing several streams together isn't sustainable. no two renders sound exactly alike.

in fact, i've had to mix a few of the guitar parts down to lock them in place, then add some filters and eqs. i was trying to find stasis in flux and becoming confused by it. i may have to lock a few more down. so, it's looking like it may be a tomorrow upload.

it turns out i have an email list...

so, i just randomly checked my bandcamp settings and out of the blue realized i have a small email list. i've never asked you for your email addresses, because i kind of didn't plan on doing this. but given that you seem to have gone out of your way to provide me with your email addresses, i'm going to oblige the request.

i've been releasing a lot of singles lately, and i'm not generally going to send out an email update when i do. part of the reason i didn't want to do this is that, as a consumer, i find the email update route a little invasive, but i can't tell you how to interact with things and people and ideas, so hey, whatever, man. it does mean i'm going to reserve these messages for major updates. so, email updates will happen only when official records are finished. that's my own rules and bounds for this.

i'm in the final stages of finishing the material i wrote during a "serious music" phase i went through from roughly 2000-2002. putting the singles aside, i'm going to get two official full length records and a number of lps that are not official records out of this. so, this is the update:

1) i finished my fifth disc back in october, which is this one:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj

it's comprised of material written mostly over 2001 and recorded between 2001 and 2014. it's heavily oriented towards the idea of music as a written form.

2) i'm putting the finishing touches on my sixth record over the next few weeks, which is this one:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj-2

this record also has a lot of written ideas, but integrates more fluid writing as well. it was written mostly over 2001 and 2002 and finished mostly over 2014.

3) there are two lps of rabit is wolf material from this period, but they are not official releases in my album chronology.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-wave
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/rabit-is-wolf

4) there will be a double-cd concept record housing the written music written over this period. the first disc will feature the tracks played through a 1990s soundblaster card. these versions are what the songs sounded like as i was writing them, and there's an interesting quality to the sound produced. the second cd will be a mirror image of this, but updated to include more modern vst-synth arrangements. it will exist here:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/thru

so, that concludes this update. until we meet again....

j

if mixing is about making decisions then the mix is done. i just have to make some final edits in the morning.