rhythm

Thinking about the DIY aspect of remix culture-  how today it seems like such a given.  Much of our cultural existence is online - touch it and it's yours.  The comedian making fun of those ads that run before movies, those anti-piracy ads: "Illegal downloading is stealing.  Would you go to the record store and steal a CD?  Would you take a DVD off of the shelf?"  "I would if I could just touch it.  And then it would be mine.  And it would still be there on the shelf.  But I'd have it too."  We have access that we're beginning to take for granted.  We can sit on a chair and access virtually and virtually nearly anything.  And with relatively few hours of study, we can master software that allows us to make things - learn garage band, make a cd.  You can edit your found video footage the first day you open final cut pro.  We can all be makers.  Consumers.  Re-makers.  Re-consumers.
One of many things that struck me while reading Paul D Miller's Rhythm Science is how DJ culture in the late '80s and early '90s prefigures the DIY zeitgeist in which we find oursleves.  I remember walking through the East Village in the mid '90s.  It seemed every corner there was another DJ with a table full of cassettes with hand-written inserts.  What you want?  Drum and bass?  Dark trance?  Some jungle shit?  Industrial?  All kinds a breakbeat shit...  And you know, I didn't want any of their tapes.  I had MTV.  I had no idea how important the work they were doing is was and will be.
Re: Praxis
Miller is interested in stepping into the rhythm.  Rhythm of/as/in space.  Rhythm of/as/in art.  Rhythm.  It is a 21st century way of identifying the imaginative aspects of the creative process.  Lorca had the duende.  Keats had negative capability.  Spicer had dictation.  Homer had the muses.  Baudelaire had drunkenness.  And Miller has the beat.  In a way, in a very real way, they are all talking about the same thing, the thing we can't talk about.   They are all trying to identify the the unidentifiable.  They're trying to make sense of the senseless.   We rely on metaphor, we can't make sense of anything - especially the things that are entirely senseless - without it.  And "rhythm" is as good as any - maybe a little better, because you can dance to it.
Rhythm of life
Rhythm of the cosmos
Rhythm of my day
Rhythm of the human heart
Rhythm method
Rhythm of the night
Rhythm of the machine


be the flaneur


walk through the web and observe: walk through the city of sites: walk through the mind and listen to the melodies: note that the melodies cannot exist without the rhythm:  rhythm is tied to temporality: a thing cannot exist without rhythm:  walk through the city and look at the garbage beneath your feet:  pick it up and make something of it:  walk through the aisles of discarded items at the salvation army: collect the old records, books, clothes, toys and broken dishes:  make something:  walk through your own mind:  mix what you know with what you find:  walk through a library:  walk through a web archive: walk through Ubuweb: make something:  make something