Physical growth is possible largely due to physical factors.  So is emotional growth based on emotional factors?  From my experience it seems like dramatic change prompts growth, however this may only be as the change is memorable, so the events immediately afterwards tend to be catalogued with more scrutiny.  Am I able to love as I do now because of thirty years of slow, accumulated caring?  Could I have realized these things any sooner if I had diverted more resources to the cause?  If that is the case, then we do have direct control over how growth as human beings.  Our free will permits us the opportunity to optimize this equation.  So it is quite true that a man is best judged not by what he has, but how he spends his time.

This is another thing I mean to understand more fully in my heart.  If I did there would be much less guilt in my life, and much more satisfaction.  Thanks to the powers that gave me the conscience to realize this.

What will you have it do with you?

What will you have it do with you?

Over time I began to find my place, through the kindness of others and the occasional burst of learning from my own stubborn demands that the world fit my narrow-minded vision of right and wrong. I moved from writing about stray cats and working on weekends to endless, repeated praise for trance music and what I quaintly cherished as community. Then at some point I decided to start doing something public with my photography, whether people recognized me for it or not, and thus we arrived at end of the decade. In the time since ubiquitous computing (to use a word that was en vogue with SIGCHI when I was in college), the fragmentation of platforms, portals, and people has made it harder and harder to be noticed, with each microtransaction of communication becoming far and far less meaningful, any rare original thought swallowed in a sea of chaff.

Sheepishly I now realize that I’ve probably driven away the three or four actual people I had reading this public journal with the advent of my adoption of that watered-down sinkhole of information exchange Facebook. I say so much more often so much less, that it leads me to wonder in twenty years’ time will my children find interest in reading my journal or my tweets? The answer is probably neither, but just the same I’m glad I took the time to sit down and actually think about what I was doing before six months went by and I was scratching my head why 2011 felt so much more empty than any of the other years in recent past.

It’s most likely not a coincidence that the speed and density of my current background music, The Plateaux of Mirror, is likely nearly half that of the floor-rattling trance I usually have on at this time of night. Thank you Mr. Eno for helping me collect my thoughts and appreciate the last forty minutes a little more.

Now the real irony is I started this entry meaning to write about love… but there we have it, the attention span of mankind pared to a millisecond.

Thirteen years and it grips me all the more. To the crowds, the cheers, the crackling energy spread across a network of hearts desperately yearning for release.

What we all need now is a little planned chaos, what we all need right now is a rave.

Trance will see me through crisis again.

With time comes change, change for all people. Fads fade and bandwagons break, the angst of youth is obviated by personal success. But although my love of rave culture, of trance will change, it will never wilt and die. It will only grow stronger with age, as will my heart. I will always be a raver, singing the praises of peace, love, unity, and respect woven in the tapestry of electronic music until the day I die.

“Above & Beyond isn’t here just to make something out of music, they’re here to motivate and inspire us to make something of ourselves.“

It’s 11/2/1, or 1/2/11. Whatever format you choose, listen to 1-2, it has been and always will be the dirge for the vacuum created by my hubris.

One thing that I currently put stock into though is the process for learning something, in particular a craft. Without going into too much detail, a cornerstone of the process is being to judge quality dispassionately. In the critical evaluation of an expression’s fulfillment of the art form, growth may be obtained through practice. Without the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff, there’s no basis to evaluate one’s work and all that ends up being produced is garbage. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough critical ability to evaluate music right now, and it’s impeding my composition. Without this I just paddle around in circles modifying the same elements over and over feeling that something is “wrong”, but not knowing what to do about it.

With software engineering, and to a lesser extent mechanical and electrical, I can tell you what is done well and what is not. It’s easier to build these skills because in science right and wrong is a lot more cut and dry. With photography, from an implementation standpoint I can hold my own, expression-wise things become a little fuzzy. In any case, musically I’m hamstrung by this and I need to grok the difference between “good” and “bad” when it comes to rhythm and timbre.

But there is a flash, a moment, when that discovery is made, and all of the tumblers fall into place. The combination is complete– a maelstrom of fervor and ectasy is unlocked. The discovery of a lifetime, the infinite sequencing of the mind dissolved. My eternal key is Mat Zo’s 24 Hours. [Right around the three-minute mark my restraint unwinds....]

本格的に写真を撮り始めたは2006年です。日本へ移住した四年目、その年色んな区切りとなる時期がありました。愛と出会って恋に落ちた。レイブに行く頻度が上がって、友達の輪が数人だけから広がりました。

なぜ写真を本格的に撮って始まったか。振り返るとコンパクトデジカメの画質に限界もなったし、展示するのことを考え始まった。自分が感じていることは凄く濃くて、経験したことが美しく過ぎて、もう頭がおかしくなると思った。人生からの眩しい誠喜びを誰かとシェアしないといけないと思った。それで、その気持ちを他の人に再現するため、第一歩で芸術的にフィルムの世界に入りました。