Let's Go for a Walk :-)

My job sent me up to NYC for a conference and happened to get me a hotel in Times Square, which meant I was just a few blocks from Max Neuhaus's endless, easily overlooked sound art piece emanating from a sewer grate on Broadway between 45th and 46th St. The installation, Times Square (Nehaus) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Square_(Neuhaus)], is maintained by the Dia Art Foundation, which also maintains the Lightning Field in New Mexico, which I recorded myself walking around last year. They also maintain a room full of dirt somewhere in Manhattan, which I may check out next week after my birthday when I head back up. I think they're also doing a presentation about Steve McQueen's gallery work the same day and the Anthology Film Archive is doing something else interesting, so, why not. The recording begins with me in my hotel room and follows as I take the (very brief) elevator trip to the lobby and then walk along 40th St and I forget where all else. I think I walked up 8th Ave for a bit before turning down 44th or something. But you can hear the droning piece quite clearly around 13 minutes in and then on and off until the end. I stood there for about an hour overall, watching couple and obnoxious influencers take pictures directly overtop of it, paying no mind to the eerie sound rising from just below them. I don't know if I ever noticed it myself previously, so I have no idea what I assumed it was before. It has a vaguely mechanical tone to it, so I suppose anyone not poisoned by the Futurist Noise Manifesto haven't been predisposed to the musicality of heavy machinery. If you go to check it out, I suggest doing so at midnight. I wasn't aware of this beforehand, but I learned that night that all of the screens around Times Square present a piece of video art. I've been informed since it rotates between different pieces, but I have no idea how many. The night I went was a piece involving shifting squares of sky with black birds flying between them. It was neat.

I've been thinking about the Danish term "uitwaaien," which refers to fighting anxiety by walking or jogging against a very strong wind. It's been something I've hoped to accomplish recently but unfortunately we've been in the middle of a slight Indian Summer (or is it too early?), so the air has mostly been mild and still. Originally I wanted to upload the recording I made walking along the coast in Cape May, which was full of noisy, distorted wind, but I think I lost it while clearing up SD cards prior to recording a couple of noise festivals. I was also thinking about that recording in particular because it was about a month after my last major breakup, which took me nearly a year to get over. The car accident, car theft, two hospitalizations, both of my cats requiring countless expensive vet visits and then dying three days apart, two of my mom's cats dying, my mom's dementia growing significantly worse, a close friend moving out of the country for life saving surgery, and whatever else probably didn't help the grieving process. There was one person that suddenly appeared and unexpectedly helped a lot over a brief period, but such is life. I miss her and think about her often, but I know everyone's life is has its own unique challenges and I hope she's well and I hope to still hear from her again. But, the Lightening Field. I'm not entirely sure when I became aware of it. It was either from a documentary on Land Art that played at the International House 7 or 8 years ago or from an audio recording, like this, on an Australian radio program [https://www.abc.net.au/listen/radionational/archived/soundproof/energy-grids/6463052] in which the person recorded themselves walking around the field in the early morning. There's no photography or video allowed of the installation or the cabin you stay in, but you can photograph the surrounding areas (which I did extensively) and record audio inside the exhibit... presumably. They never said anything about audio at least. So, here we are, with my trusty $70 binaural mics and my Zoom H5. The piece is installed in an undisclosed location in the middle of the desert, roughly 3-4 hours outside of Albuquerque. It consists of however many aluminum polls set up equal distance from each other across the field. When you stand at specific angles and at specific times of day, you can't see them at all. When the sun sets or rises against them, it gives an impression like the angels standing on the beach in City of Angels (I think that's what it was called? That weird, more straight remake of Wim Wender's Wings of Desire, turned into some sort of romantic dramedy with Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan). It's beautiful. But the desert is always beautiful. I spent a lot of time out in the field also staring at dung beetles and little lizards. Also, when the sun was setting I pulled out my phone and was able to film it disappear behind the mountains in real time. I think I recorded this in the middle of the night, when it was pitch black and I could barely make out where I was. In the beginning you can hear my friend who came with me and the family staying in the cabin with us (the one was a documentarian that disliked Agnes Varda, which I think left me so startled and depressed I was incapable of conversing normally for the next 24 hours), though they were all practically a mile away. I don't hear it here, but I think I ultimately walked back as soon as I did because I heard rustling and I think the person who drove us out had noted that there were coyotes around. That might also be why I stopped about halfway through. I certainly wasn't looking at anything. Since these get a weirdly high number of listeners when I update, and I assume most people are into musique concrete and thus may be into noise, here's the trailer for the noise movie my friend and I made out in Milwaukee and Fargo [https://youtu.be/nUBxn3Mv7k0]. It'll be available for sale on his bandcamp in the next month or so. Sorry, as always, for my heavy breathing, coughing, and burping. Hope you're well.

Meant to upload this a couple of days ago for my girlfriend for Valentine's Day. She booked us a creekside home on AirBnB for my birthday a few weeks back. We could hear it just outside our window by the bed and she would go out each morning and evening and just sit there, looking off, listening. I snuck out while she packed and set up my binaural mics on a little head shaped wire sticking out of the ground, letting it run until the battery died. Enjoy whatever you're doing and listen to the river sing sweet songs.

I went outside in the rain and sat under a giant umbrella while I drank coffee and read Severance (no relation to the show, despite the article I learned about it from indicating otherwise). You can hear the rain, police sirens, an airplane, some wind noise distortion, wind chimes, and a church bell. My girlfriend says the church bell is off-key, but it sounds fine to me. Maybe I'm tone deaf.

I missed my turn and ended up back at an entrance to the Wissahickon Trails I've previously used. Or I did at least once, to check out the Hermit's Cave. The local clinic's pharmacy phone line hasn't been working for over a week, so I haven't been able to refill my prescription for my SSRI and now I can feel my brain again. These occasional brain quakes, like a skipping CD but of my consciousness, keep getting to me. It's like an internal tourette's. I don't know how many days it's been, but I've been getting nauseous, agitated, and just feeling generally uncomfortable for the past week. I don't know if I'm going to go back on, as this isn't the first time I've had trouble with the pharmacy. Guess we'll have to see how I act around people over the next week or so. I got lost. Between my brain not functioning and an apparent emergency at my work I had to respond to, I had trouble keeping track of where I was going. When the nausea hit I realized I forgot my Pax 3 and just cut off the recording. Eating the months old peanut butter filled pretzels I found in my cabinet seemed to help. Upon arrival to the trail I realized I forgot my hiking shoes too. Enjoy the squishing of the mud for me, because it was hell to stay up in. There's a giant pimple blooming on my cheek in the same area from my teens. I turn 34 in three weeks. I'm breathing pretty heavy in this one.