Dream #723: Fortune-teller who seems to understand peer-to-peer networking.

"You have his name on your forehead but you can't see it dear. It's visible to the others around you but subject to their interpretation. You are a unique package being forwarded from peer to peer in a small-world network, to where each node believes your end destination lies. However, that is not static. He too has your name on his forehead and is being transferred to where his peers think you should be. Who knows how long it'll take before your paths cross?

But until then, remember, music is your boyfriend."

I'm desperately seeking the algorithm for the iPod's shuffle. Here's an article on it.

Incidentally, my iPod is partial to "Ray of Light"-era Madonna.

By this time next week, I'll be in Italy. And yes, I'll be coming back.

Nearly a year ago, two people were walking round a winding exhibition in a museum in New York. One of them stopped to read a poem on the wall, and liked it so much she keyed it into her mobile phone to remember.

This is how the poem goes:
"Give me a sharp knife
and as I cut the stars
cover the sky with a grey cloth
and tell the flowers I do not want perfume"

She remembers hoping that she won't be this way, and that she'll always want perfume.

Today I did nothing but sleep and watch Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura. Because Antonioni also paints, every scene in his film has a breathtaking photo-like sensibility.

In another film, Jack Nicholson wryly recalled Antonioni told him once that he meant no offense, but to him the actors are just moving space.

Random thought #313 on why I've not ventured into listening to audio books.
The thing is: I listen to music when I read. So if I listen to an audio book, will I have enough concentration to read a book too? Won't that be like reading 2 books simultaneously? Or does that mean a role reversal, like reading magazine fodder while I listen to an audio book, making the visual activity the background task instead?

Latest library haul includes:
Duncan Watts' "Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age" (on network dynamics)
Adam Cohen's "The Perfect Store: Inside eBay"
Glyn Moody's "Rebel Code: inside linux and the open source revolution"
Dan Rhodes' "Timoleon Vieta Come Home" (Timoleon Vieta is a dog, or to be precise, a mongrel with the most beautiful eyes)

Sometimes I wonder to what degree people who know me in real life but don't know I blog, understand who I am. I don't normally talk about the books, film, music or other oddball facts to people who don't know I blog, and to that extent a certain dimension of me is missing. Or maybe I'm just sprouting nonsense cos a new friend thought I'm commitment phobic. A better description though is commitment lethargic.

Maybe I don't want anyone who is capable of changing me.

Accepting the show's Linus Torvalds Award for Community Service-an award named after Linux creator Linus Torvalds-on behalf of the Free Software Foundation, Stallman wisecracks, "Giving the Linus Torvalds Award to the Free Software Foundation is a bit like giving the Han Solo Award to the Rebel Alliance."
- Sam Williams, Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software

No-frills online version of Sam William's book "Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software". I'm never tried to install GNU but I think this will be an excellent read.

Even though I don't bake now, I'm glad I'm still interested in the kitchen. lol.

Another free eBook. Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture" is highly recommended.

Hippocamp ruins Pet Sounds.

Downloading the songs into my iPod so I can listen to them today. Yes I've taken up with my iPod again. Converting every mp3 into a wav file to be burnt onto a CD ROM is too tiring. The truth of the matter is, I've run out of CD ROMs.

Some films I watch to have a sense of closure. Like watching "Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith" to complete the Star Wars series. Or watching Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" to finally see the oft-quoted last freeze-frame closeup of the young actor's face. Or watching "Gimme Shelter" because I can't foresee not watching the Hell Angels riot at the disastrous Rolling Stones concert in this lifetime.

I don't need to watch them obssessively and repeatedly, but I do need to watch them just that once. Because.

The point of life is to fail at greater and greater things.
- Rilke

After reading Michael Ondaajte's book on conversations with Walter Murch on the art of film editing, I've extracted some quotes from Walter Murch which have impressed me:
You sometimes get a situation in chemistry, where a solution is supersaturated: a vessel full of water and salt, and the salt is unable to crystallize. An unbalanced situation, where it's ready to react but not quite yet, because the vessel is so polished and perfect. But if you tap the vessel, you can shock the solution into crystallizing suddenly. I think film is one of those shocks, an invention that was unanticipated, in all its glory. And the shock of it caused certain things to crystallize within the supersaturated solution of nineteenth century culture.

+++
There are two approaches to reducing the length of a film: There's what I call the spaghetti-sauce method, which is simply to put the film on the stove with some heat under it, and stir. You taste it occasionally and say, That's great! Now the carrots are working with the tomatoes in a good wat, or, No, it's a little too thick, let's add some water! Gradually, organically, the volume of the film reduces to the appropriate level.

The opposite approach is more brutal. There was a brigand in Greek mythology, Procrustes, who lived on the road between Athens and Sparta. He had a cabin at a place where the road got very narrow, along the coast. Everyone who happened to pass his cabin was obliged to spend the night, and sleep on Procrustes' iron bed. While you were sleeping, he would either stretch you so that you were as long as the bed, or he would lop off things that stuck out, so that no matter how tall or short you were, by the time you left his cabin, you were the sam length as everyone else who'd been there.

+++
From my early editing experiences I became convinced that there was a connection between the patterns of a person's eye blinks and the patterns of their thoughts. That blinks are the equivalent of mental punctuation marks - commas, periods, semicolons, et cetera - separating and thus providing greater articulation to our thoughts... The upshot of all this is that I believe the pattern of cuts in a film, to be at its best, needs to reflect or acknowledge the pattern of thoughts of the characters in the film - which ultimately means the thought patterns of the audience.

+++
(On Walter Murch's father, a painter)
He said to me once, I don't paint the object, I paint the space between my eye and the object: that space contains the object the way the mould of an object contains the object. I am painting space and I am also constructing something on a two-dimensional piece of canvas that has its own dynamics, irrespective of the objects that are being painted.

And that's exactly the way I think about sound recording. If I go out to record a door-slam, I don't think I'm recording a door-slam. I think I am recording the space in which the door-slam happens.

I listen to what I can leave out.
- Mile Davis

Random memory #252:
The first time I pronounced the word "Christ" was when I was in Primary 5, and I said it wrong. I recall simply truncating "Christmas" and pronouncing the "Krees" bit. I think I stunned the teacher with this glaring mistake cos I was the top student in English class then.

Strange why I suddenly remembered this. Perhaps it's cos I've just finished reading Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code". Yes I know I shouldn't have bothered, but some things you just have to learn for yourself.

When Russell Banks was asked about the narrative voice he used in his novel "Rule of the Bone", he said he imagined two young boys lying in their bunks, in the summertime, almost asleep. One is looking up at the ceiling and talking. Russell wanted the narrative voice to have a similarly open confessional tone, as if saying: "It's dark and I trust you, and you're lying next to me and we're near sleep, and I'm going to risk telling the truth."
- Michael Ondaatje

There are underlying mathematical influences that determie how a film gets put together, which are amazingly consistent, seemingly independent of the films themselves. Over the years, I've come to rely on these influences - navigation points - as I work on each film. For instance:

2.5 - an audience can only process two and a half thematic elements at any moment;
14 - a sustained action scene averages out to fourteen new camera positions a minute;
30 - an assembly should be no more than thirty percent over the ideal running length of the film.
- Walter Murch, on the art of editing film

(Intellectuals).. used to regard ideas as weapons but are now more inclined to regard their ideas as property.
- David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise

The only reason I REALLY want to watch Episode III of Star Wars is to make sure Jar Jar dies, and I've just been given a tip-off about his fate. I don't know if it's true though cos I can only tell next week.

Kill Jar Jar. Please.

Having heard that they've split up and knowing these are their latest albums, I have a strange twisted feeling listening to both Rachel Yamagata's "Happenstance" and Tom McRae's "All Maps Welcome".

Today I woke up and realised who it was who did finish reading Hofstadter's book, but we've not kept in touch for more than a year. On impulse, I sms'd this friend and asked if he would like to join the old gang for tea today and he was luckily available. What ensued was a long lively conversation which lasted from tea to dinner, and then tea again after dinner.

So I can remember, these are the words which peppered our conversations today:
Kikiton. Stikfas. Bearbricks series 9. Casinos. Positively 5th Street. Star Wars. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Kraftwerk. Neil Young. Harvest. Mirrorball. Patti Smith looking like a man on the album cover of Horses. Resolution in classical music. Uncomfortable bourgeois. BitTorrent. Hitlerjunge. Freemason. Bobos. Queen and their bicycle song. Bob Dylan being more rock star than poetic on DVD. Sight & Sound. Mojo and its long info-overloading bios on musicians. Very short introduction to Empires. The two John Williams, one of whom is the composer for the Star Wars soundtrack. Japanese composers doing movie soundtracks. Japanese writers. Glenn Gould. Arvo Pärt.

Thank you everyone. Today was lovely.

Had my third run this week while listening to Mr Scruff on my Discman. Mr Scruff said: "The bigger the beat, the better the bass, baby". You don't say.

Just watched "Donnie Darko" despite owning the VCD for ages. What took me so long?

And till now, I've never been able to find any Dan Brown book in the library. Nearly everyone I've known has read "The Da Vinci Code" and 4 of his books are supposedly still on the Top 10 bestseller list here just last week. Maybe it's time to check out what everyone else is read.

The best thing that happened today was I just got a copy of Douglas Hofstadter's 700+ page book "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid". A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll summed this book up pretty well.

I remember the guys were discussing this book a couple of years back, but I can't recall which of them actually managed to finish reading it. Was it K or Yoyo? :)

What is it about me that attracts strange men to follow from a distance while I stagger along with blistered feet in heels? Must you repeat the same line like a mantra, and must it be such a cheesy line like "Miss, want to be my friend, miss?" Hello, do you really expect me to stop and say yes of course? Urgh.

Maybe friends are right and I should follow suit to check out Tibetian dzi beads. I need hardcore luck.

Oh, on a sidenote.
Starbucks Boy: I've located a friend with a copy of "Mulholland Drive" and I've bullied him into lending it to me. Muahahaha!

Coffee and Dusk have been consumed today. Coffee is the more satisfying.

Anarchy compared my current state to a PC awaiting reformat. After that, it's a matter of switching OS from Windows to UNIX. I wonder.

I am reading David Brooks' "Bobos in Paradise", which is about the Bourgeois Bohemians and how they got there through education rather than birth.

I will go shower and perhaps watch a serious film before I sleep. I'm still upset that my Mulholland Drive DVD hung on me and I never got to finish it. Sigh.

My life is my message. I must remember that.

The longest time I've ever looked at myself is only in the hair salon. There, while I have my hair washed and cut, I'll stare intently into the mirror and wonder if this is really the face I've grown into.

Today is my saddest since I've turned jobless. I've spoken truth too bluntly and perhaps unnecessarily. Some things need not be told.

I've picked up drinking coffee. Today I drank 2 mugs of coffee, and had to swap away another mug of coffee my mum got me for a mug of tea my brother wanted for himself. Recently my mum has taken to getting coffee for me too while she's buying her regular brew back home from the neighbourhood coffee shop. Though I'm fine with drinking coffee from the clear plastic bag, I was reluctant to drink it from a bowl when we ran out of clean cups to pour the coffee into. Since I could drink hot soup from a bowl, my mum couldn't understand why I couldn't drink coffee from it. And I didn't understand myself either, so I drank the coffee anyway. It felt odd cupping the bowl with my hands and sipping the coffee that way.

I am still busy. Being jobless doesn't mean squat.

Listen to Autumn Thieves.

Just realised that Antony & the Johnsons covered Julee Cruise's song "Mysteries of Love", which was originally in David Lynch's film "Blue Velvet". How I know this is cos I'm watching "Blue Velvet" now and desperately hoping to get my hands on both these versions of the song.

Help, anyone?

Quick update on my life now.

I'm still jobless.
I've gone to a Buddhist temple for the first time in my life of my own accord, and dragged a girlfriend along too. We went to ask about our fortunes, and I was asked not to fear the present. That's nice to know.
I've read 22 books in April and 2 in May, the latest being Craig Thompson's graphics novel "Goodbye, Chunky Rice".
I've watched a lot of films at the Singapore International Film Festival, but even then it's about 10 films less than last year when I was slogging hard at work.
I've added Hou Hsiao Hsien as one of my all-time favourite directors.
I've re-discovered older music, like Rolling Stones, Patti Smith and Elliott Smith. Hmm, two Smiths.
I've only started watching some DVDs I've owned for ages.
I've gradually turned brown from running outdoors in the late morning sun.
I should be writing but I'm procrastinating.
I'm thinking about filming. I'm thinking about learning Flash.
I've learnt that people add hot water to Martell to dilute it in karaoke lounges. I've never drunk that before though, and am not inclined to try.
I've eaten Roti Boy for the first time and found it's overrated. But that didn't stop me from eating it again.
I know what kind of tai tai I will be if I should ever become one.

Hope life is treating you well too.

Just went to the Steve Lawler/ Roger Sanchez gig at Zouk. It's been a long while since I've clubbed there but the music is thankfully superb tonight, and we were lucky to get some limited EP given away at the Heineken event. Also drank from the metallic Heineken bottle for the first time (yes it's a souvenir at home now).

Met a friend there whom I've not clubbed with for a while. On the dancefloor, he suddenly leaned over to say he waved his hand in front of my face without any reaction from me. "You still dance with your eyes closed!" he laughed, both amazed and amused.

I don't dance as long or as hard as I used to, but I guess the basics don't change.

Oo. Blogger ate my entry.