In 1991 I went through a period of ill health that meant I was unable to write music in my usual manner - that is, hunched over a keyboard and staring cluelessly at a computer screen. (As you are too polite to ask, the problem was eye surgery followed by shingles followed by eye surgery. And while you're down there Nurse...) I found all this frustating as I've been writing songs since 1971, and am subject to itchy, unpleasant withdrawal symptoms if I cannot work. So, unable even to read, I passed the time by listening to and tapping all kinds of T.V and radio programmes, concentrating on phone-ins, chat shows, citizen's band conversations, military encryptions - you name it, I was eavesdropping on it.
The more cynical among you are probably anticipating where all this is leading - an announcement to the effect that I have discovered a cure for insomnia. All right, so ninety percent of the stuff I recorded was boring: but isn't ninety percent of most things? What actually happened is that, almost against my will, I started to edit mentally some of the things I'd heard. Odd words from documentaries would cross-pollinate with melancholy confidences aired on late night phone-ins; phrases that originated in different time zones on different frequencies would team up to make new and oddly affecting sentences. And I would change details to protect the innocent (or guilty), to streamline the story that I could hear emerging, and to make it all more ... musical, I suppose.
It now seems obvious that this was the thwarted lyric writers' subconscious taking control: unable to write songs, it was organizing what I had collected into something that was part love song and part lament. (Have you any idea how many sad stories are floating over the airwaves after midnight?) To be frank, the finished item required a good deal of intervention and finessing (with respect, the average citizen's band exchange is not in the front line of the war against cliche) So I own up to jettisoning a lot of the source material that had been like scaffolding for the piece, and as the narrator's character became clearer. I filled in a lot of details of her story myself.
Eventually, and ironically, I came to write and shape all of 'I Trawl the Megahertz' music on a computer. In fact, I cannot think of anything else I've written that is so dependent on technology for its existence. For it is a sad fact that I am a musical ignoramus who has found dedicatd music software invaluable. Without it I simply have no means of road-testing certain ideas. (If I asked, I still wouldn't be able to play a single bar of this record, as it was all written - after the fashion of a monkey at a word processor - straight onto the score page of my computer screen.)
PADDY MCALOON
i’ve never heard of a story like this before in my life
channeling fragments of Everything and combining them, editing them
converging all signal, all known knowledge and experience into this absolutely gorgeous 22 minute long song
i downloaded Ableton last weekend and it’s so crazy they let you do whatever you want in there
it’s so crazy you can sample anything
it’s so crazy you can channel Everything and not even know
my reality has continued being shattered in different ways and maybe it’s my saturn return or maybe it’s just what growth is, what life is
realizations of patterns and how they get in the way of truth, energy, Love
recognizing the effort and energy necessary to transcend the patterns
deciding to walk away or to actually, really try
either way, you have to remember that magic is real, time is fake, love is an everlasting layer of reality and is the light energy of the sun
money isn't real and numbers are stars
remember who you are
never take the sky, the sun, the stars, the air, the water, this world, or each other for granted
it's all love
★
—
february 17 2025 ♫
this is the year of dreaming
• rules don't exist anymore
• mystery is more addictive than ever
• the liminal period between realizing change and its actualization is addictive
• ambiguity fuels manipulation's fire
• doom cultists say we have five years, a few years, less than a year, before it's too late
• it's already too late
• nothing is real
• everything is real, feel it with your body
• the robots are trained on your data and i'm sorry but you have to let it go, it's too late
• the robots are trained on your data and it's much worse than what people think it is, and i hope it's not too late
• i know you're scared, i am too
• training data is 4chan, gangstalking forums, 00s livejournal suicide letters, obsessive manic delusional "research" from mentally ill people who are out of touch with reality, people that question every aspect of reality
• depths of cognition and subconcious are available to all, it's not too hard to stumble into an infohazard
• everything questions reality now
• everyone's scaring the hoes
• i'm worried about not being able to travel
• trump's EOs and their similarities to nazi book burnings... well,
• there really isn't anything to do about it that isn't extreme
—
• mystery is addictive
• i didn't really know what it was like to be real until a few years ago
• i really love the new oklou album
"starting life at the end,
is it even real?"
OKLOU — FAMILY AND FRIENDS
• i really love malibu's music and her belmont girl project
• it felt like the beginning of something really new when i discovered her united in flames mix series last year (i was late!)
• one of the first uif mixes i heard in realtime was malibu x evian christ
• there's this moment at 56:59 in the mix, a vocal sample asks, "are you frozen?"
• my screenname as a teenager was "frozengirlfriend", a phrase i did significant mental gymnastics to avoid confronting the reality of my true identity as a transwoman
• my grandma passed away at that exact moment on the air, she was 100 years old, i never had the chance to tell her
• a lot of other really strange syncronicities happened last august through mid november
• a friend of mine was talking to the robot and it inexplicably referred to her as my first name
• a friend of mine let me stay at their apartment while they were out of town performing in miami. the moment i left for the airport, a glass inexplicably shattered all over the kitchen floor
• they thought i did it intentionally at first, they were reasonably upset but it quickly turned into a "wait what?" moment
• i stayed at this incredibly beautiful home in California last august, it felt like breathing the right air for the first time in my life. a lot of people told me that California sun looks good on me
• i'm not great with compliments but i actually believe people when they say them now
• it felt like a new dream had been born, a new version of a new version of a new version of an older dream. but this one felt much more real
• it's strange to finally develop a sense of confidence when you're starting life at the end
• i hadn't listened to lana del rey until last year
• she's so good are you kidding
• she really gets California
• last october i kept seeing the word "imagination" everywhere
• it's like i read the word "fantastic" for the first time
fantastic (adj.)
late 14c., "existing only in imagination, produced by (mental) fantasy," from Old French fantastique (14c.), from Medieval Latin fantasticus, from Late Latin phantasticus "imaginary," from Greek phantastikos "able to imagine," from phantazein "make visible" (middle voice phantazesthai "picture to oneself"); see phantasm. Trivial sense of "wonderful, marvelous" recorded by 1938. Old French had a different adjective form, fantasieus "weird; insane; make-believe." Medieval Latin also used fantasticus as a noun, "a lunatic," and Shakespeare and his contemporaries had it in Italian form fantastico "one who acts ridiculously."
• i looked into the etymology, hours went by, and i found myself looking at Système figuré des connaissances humaines for the first time
• history/memory, philosophy/reason, poetry/imagination
SYSTÉME FIGURÉ DES CONNAISSANCES HUMAINES
• i have this routine with two people close to me where we listen to uif at the same time and text each other "omggggg"
• people are really just people, and the range of intensity in expression is amplified by that addiction to mystery
• i had never heard of the musician ballad before january's uif, they're really phenomenal
• LA fires burned down malibu days before that uif
• it felt like that dream i had, the realest dream, was dead forever in an instant
• the smoke from the flames killed david lynch, a massive inspiration and hero of mine
• that uif hit like lightning
• i made this website that day and wrote about everything, about Love. my first time i've put writing onto the internet
• lots of tears in january
• now we're where we are now
• i hate my computer but i'll probably get over it
• the pendulum always swings
• it's really swinging right now but it's about to much more
• the robot told me my north/south nodes were taurus/scorpio, but i just found out yesterday that it was wrong, it's actually scorpio/taurus
• i think that makes a lot more sense
• i don't want to entrust the robot with my stars
• i'm worried about you
• everything's happening as it needs to
"is the endless still unbound, or am i just different now?"
OKLOU — ENDLESS
• i hate baggage and i wish everyone would just let go of everything that's already happened
• that's not to say erase it, but to embrace the new
• i'm really exhausted from thinking
"In its flight from death, the craving for permanence clings to the very things sure to be lost in death"
HANNAH ARENDT, LOVE AND SAINT AUGUSTINE, 1929
• you can go back but it will never be the same
• i realized that my dream i thought was completely dead isn't fully dead, it's just different
• maybe that's what this all is
"The Seasons are emblems of the incessant ticking of time and, flanked by an erotic scene and theatrical masks, symbolize an eternal love that overcomes the passage of years and changes in appearance."
VILLA ROMANA DEL CASALE, PIAZZA ARMERINA, SICILY, ITALY
4TH CENTURY A.D.
• you love, you live, you die, all over again
• see you in the stars
★
—
january 16 2025
there’s something about this moment that i just can’t put my finger on
it’s like
it’s vaguely familiar
but not quite
memory flows through all the glimpses
every single glimpse
it’s awe, it’s mystery, it’s stillness, it’s everything
it’s pure, it’s perception
it’s acknowledging and accepting at the edge of understanding
“i believe you should take all of the elements and let them show you the way
so i definitely would not want to read the meaning of my life”
it’s all a dream and it’s everything
everything is everything and everything is also nothing but nothing is everything and it's endlessly infinitely collapsing into itself recursively while expanding and multiplying at a pace far beyond the speed of light
every moment that has ever happened and will ever happen is happening right now all at the same time and will continue to do so forever
it’s pure energy, it’s Love
Love isn’t oxytocin or infatuation it’s a layer of reality that’s always there
Love is the light energy of the sun
Love interacts with reality in the form of abstraction
it’s always so perfect together
nothing is ephemeral, everything is and has and will be
everything is analogous, analogies are a zone where communication and understanding flourishes
the grey area of implicit to explicit is pure beauty, Love
if you’re too abstract you’ll lose your voice, and if not you compromise depth
this beautiful endless dance of Love
language is how it reaches us
without it, everything is incomprehensible
light can’t shine without the sun
ambiguity isn’t necessary but it’s essential
it’s the catalyst of the essence of magic
that thing that you can’t put your finger on
but that you need to know
it’s awe, it’s entrancing
it’s incomprehensibly vast, it’s infinitesimal, it’s supermassive
it’s the sun, the beautiful gigantic cinema above us
it’s this shared hunger for meaning, but not in a cynical or desperate way
this quiet electric yearning, this intimate collective weight we’re all holding together
of course there’s a shadow but there’s an unspoken acceptance of it, levitating with it
it’s the universal symbol, it’s on the edge of being understood
communication despite barriers, energy through stone
it’s resonance, it’s divinely connected imagination
sometimes it feels like we’re growing beyond the need for written language
there’s this incredible depth and sensitivity in the simplicity
especially in the current moment that is, was, and has been
there’s this song Luv (Exit) by Lb Honne with this sample over an ambient minimal deep house beat, i haven’t been able to find the source despite endless searching
it’s a recording of a person talking about the Soul
and this quote —
and so
not everyone is in connection with the soul
most people are actually not
they are touched but they don’t know it
they don’t understand it because it cannot be grabbed, right?
this is why when you ask a person, “what is the soul?”
they say “yeah…”
they cannot know it
you cannot know it by your mind
you have to be touched by it
and you have to want it even if you don’t know it
…
so very important to remember
what we can touch is not what touches us
but what we cannot touch is what touches us the deepest
i don’t know a lot about spirituality
i don’t know a lot about life, to be honest
i hadn’t felt what it was like to know Myself until a few years ago
i hadn’t felt what it was like to know Love until a few years ago
and you learn these things, these incredibly small things, these supermassive things, incrementally over time, whether it’s emotional or academic
i don’t want to be wise in an academic sense
there are a million things i actively avoid understanding, completely benign things, for no reason other than preservation of my naivete
the phrase “childlike wonder” has this stigma, but that’s it, but it’s also not it because of the stigma
naivete is what sparks awe, it’s angels, it’s ambiguity, it’s abstraction, it’s Love
it’s laser focus while maintaining an immense peripheral
the ability to collage energy, to perceive things in the world by the energy they hold and connect them together in a completely unique way
Burial went godmode with this on Boy Sent From Above, like, all of these glimpses of completely individual things coming together into something so intense, and it just makes sense
it goes beyond written language
or maybe it doesn’t, and maybe that articulation is just something i don’t know, you know? it’s all paradoxical
but i believe it goes beyond
i think a lot about Dune but i have absolutely no idea how to articulate how it’s impacted me
i think a lot about memetics and symbolism
like, the semiotics of an Image, a symbol, a sound, the qualia we encounter by Experiencing
beyond an inside joke, beyond a safe word
i think about these things so much, like, it’s my job as a creative director, art director, designer, and artist. my desire to make the most compelling and resonant Image, the perfect Image, and I have to sit in this abstraction layer, ruminate in it, Dream, to translate emotion and vision into Image
this energy has become more apparent in recent years as a reaction to AI generated media
it can’t create resonance on its own
signal pierces through noise more loudly lately
i think a lot about Arrival and its use of nonlinear orthography
i think a lot about perceiving things through a sacramental and gnostic lens simultaneously
everything is both real and illusory concurrently, but it’s hard to dream within the real
mystery is everything
and by writing this…. well, you know
i’d rather not explain what i mean
embrace Love
★