Following up: Same level. Same album. Same odd lyrical style. Starting with the title... 😁
https://video.mecp.de/watch?v=IklwCCucG9M

@z428 I finished yoga practice and then clicked on this link. Thanks, friend 😂😱 … .🙏🏻

@lzbth Hope it wasn't all too disturbing...🙈 This is the music of my noisy youth. And seeing this was in 1993 makes me feel so tremendously old it's hard to put into words.😬

@z428 on the contrary, it was inspiring … one of my favorite things to reflect on is poetic depictions (even noisy ones) of the Trojan war. It is in some sense true… the horse was full of whores 🤷‍♀️

The thing from that era by which I measure time is the death of Kurt Cobain (in 1994). Maybe it’s not the number of years that makes one feel old, but a certain wisdom, which becomes heavy to carry?

(As usual, I have hypotheses, I guess that’s getting predictable..🙈)

Good morning, enjoy all the coffees🌈

@z428 Good afternoon🌈 (night here). I enjoyed this music, I had no previous knowledge of it, it even solves a slight problem (or just ongoing prompt). I’m open-minded, but my true preference for music is (maybe to others) boring and limited, there are a few artists that I feel very close with and go back to all the time, with songs that are lyric-forward, or have more delicate (sometimes "feminine"..?) sounds. (I wasn't even a huge Nirvana fan, I was 13, but the feelings were very much in the air. .. I did have a riot grrrl/punk phase, but honestly don’t remember it very well🙃.) Anyway, my “now” music is good for private or intimate listening, (and I love the music I love), but I'm in a slightly communal situation these days, often sharing space with people (mostly men) who have somewhat "noisier" tastes than me. (Indonesia has an interesting political history with heavy metal, Metallica fandom specifically played an important roll in the overthrow of Suharto's very scary regime in the 90's.) So (I found the album) it's perfect for me to bring to the table, as a kind of vintage musical bridge.😊🙏🏻 Thank you (and sister).

As for your image of the highway, I think I see what you mean. It seems associated with "mid-life crisis" themes, maybe, the uneasy sense that the past has more life in it than the future, and you are slowly draining of possibility... For me, I sort of blew up my (American, lol) highway, 5 years ago. And my personal answer to this is very Care Bears, (did you have Care Bears? they didn't have them here in Indo), which is, that cluster of uneasy feelings is "solved" by love.. .. (which does bring with it other substantial challenges, for sure.) ... (And maybe there are less drastic ways to do it than I did…🌊)

Enjoy your afternoon and evening✨🌔

@lzbth What kind of music could you recommend by then? I'm pretty open-minded here too, with some preferences that are more "current" and a long backlog of old stuff, bands I always loved and never got away from, as well as those which I still love but adhere to a certain period of time. It's great to discover new music all the time, though. Indonesia however still is a white spot on my mental music map so far. Basically, all I know are these girls ( www.youtube.com/watch ) from over there but I'm unsure whether they're still active. Heard in some documentary on metal "worldwide" that countries like Indonesia have a tough stand when it comes to metal and related genres due to the political and religious establishment but honestly, I have no idea. So... whenever there's something you can recommend, feel welcome. 😊 As for the highway and the Care Bears... well... yes. I think love solving some of these issues and uneasy feelings might be, maybe is a valid approach... but I also feel that there are more and different layers to it. Like, that "draining of possibility".... it seems a different thing. Like, in some odd conversations before, I used to joke I'm by now too old to still fly to the moon or become a professional musician. Now, in the second half of my 40s, I for sure am. That's not necessarily bad, and maybe the problem itself is clinging to the past too much, or simply fear of missing out, and yet sometimes one wonders... 🙈 But... it seems your change of highways has been rather profound... hope it works out for you the way you hoped it would.🙂 Have a pleasant day, back to work here now!☕

@z428 Laughing here, because I am completely the wrong person to ask for music recommendations (sorry🙈), I am very habitual with music and I almost never hear anything new that sticks with me. (A reason I am excited that Pitchfork Project may be interesting enough to “stick”😊.. it’s so dance-able too!)

The Indonesian music that I know is through personal/local connections with performers. (Through my husband, who is a vocalist.) This goes from traditional mantra and ceremonial music to more pop or folk fusions with traditional, and then to experimental/electronic/noise fusion with traditional sounds. However, here is the thing I have found, with Indonesian artists that are around our generation (40’s), they do not get themselves or their work online. They don’t like or trust the internet, so there is a lot of artistry that fades out, leaving not a lot of traces. (I am not unsympathetic to distrust of digital world, which they call “dunia maya”, but obviously, I… have my little blog adventure, here.) The Indonesian music that appears online has usually passed through the city-based music industry, which polishes away the life of it, as far as I can tell. (And E., having written songs for the Indo music industry for a while, speaks of it as a terrible, soul-sucking experience. I’m sure you can imagine.)

I got (very reluctant😂) permission to share this with you, in case you would like it. This is a project my husband did, some years ago. (He has other work in-progress, but this happens as amateur art happens, without institutional pressure/power of timelines, production budgets, etc.) Hope I did that link right.

@z428 I didn’t change the highway, I blew it up!😂 Which has not been a controlled demolition at all. What I mean to say is, anybody can “blow up” their highway, do a crazy reset, go wild. Not really based on hope, but maybe on desperation, or a sort of mad blindness that I call love. (Hope is an uneasy thing for me, something I don’t really identify, especially not as a virtue, in myself…) // Anyway, maybe you can’t go to the moon, but as a serious question, why would you want to go to the moon? Being a musician, on the other hand… This, I think, is something you could absolutely do, and even devote yourself to. It is the “professional” part that is the main obstacle, it seems to me. And the professional part of being a musician seems miserable, as it was miserable in the profession that I left behind. (Money becomes the issue here, I guess? Money, when it becomes an obstacle to doing something you love, I believe is very nearly evil… ) If you love music, I say, (in a supportive way, and this is sort of my own mantra, although borrowed from a teacher), make music. // So it’s Saturday morning where you are, and maybe you get to sleep late,.. “hope” you have a restful morning, with leisurely coffee, and a great weekend too😊🌈☕️🌿

@lzbth Hah. Yeah. I guess you're right. Most likely, maybe then, doing that reset and blowing up the highway is something that happens out of madness (love counts here) or desperation indeed... maybe you stay on that highway as long as there's no really strong "pressure" or the risk of blowing up said highway is higher than the gains to be expected. Not sure whether this is reasonable, or a matter of comfort zone and leaving this one. Not sure. Or maybe, too, a matter of hope (or lack of hope). Maybe I'll get into doing music some day. Actually, when I was younger, I spent a lot of time in front of the computer gaming, later writing code. Now, I'm more into writing texts or doing images. Maybe a different kind of spending ones days becomes visible on the horizon, but isn't feeling all too familiar yet. 🙈

@z428 in relation to your highway, I was thinking about the image of crossroads. A lot of folk traditions have a mythical idea of crossroads, rituals of visiting crossroads at odd hours, leaving “offerings” and seeking council, or telling stories of the power of crossroads to bring unexpected things. I think there are a variety of strategies like this to keep one’s life (and one’s imagination? or capacity for belief?) open to unexpected possibility. Blogging seems to me to be like this, almost like a crossroads, and you (being honest!) seem good at making “offerings” and finding connections this way. So, at the risk of sounding “woo”… I wouldn’t underestimate the power of inviting that energy into your life! 😊 Enjoy your day, however it turns out 🌦️🌈

@lzbth Thanks... 😊 Hmmmm ... yes. Maybe that "highway" image in itself is not that good after all, as ... it always includes the idea of moving on a straight line, moving fast, leaving others behind. Pondering life as a walk on narrow paths through a dense forests, eventually resting for a while on that shrine near the crossroad, maybe even crossing the same path again and again, might be a more "realistic" approach... or it's a highly individual thing. When I left school and entered university, I still had in mind that idea we used to be educated with, the idea of getting from this to that to there - school, studies, education, job - on a straight and clear line so to not "waste" time on deviations left and right. And the older I get, the more I start wondering whether it might be these deviations that cause actual insight into things. (Maybe, too, with these moved, dark, sometimes outright threatening days, the idea of embracing uncertainty seems to become more important for other reasons but guess that's an issue of its own). Still ... too many things to wrap ones mind around. But not now, back to work for the morning. Salām and have a pleasant - afternoon?☕☀️

@z428 Connecting from the other thread, to this. I think the highway image could have uses, but I've grown wary of using images of human-made things to understand natural or spiritual things (like life and death, and the meaning of these). So I definitely feel more possible connection with a forest, with the crossroad shrine(s), and not just deviations, wanderings, but like you say, also repetitions... going back to the songs of our youth, for example. It may look like going backwards, or "wasting time", but this is how music works, you know, with themes that have a different meaning each time you return to them. (Maybe sometime I will share what I wrote down after listening to Cat R-pes Dog 😂) I completely agree, returning to the past is an important way to gain insight or wisdom. And worth doing, even if it's difficult. As you say, there is so much pressure to drive forward, and not look back, not even look to either side. As if the future far outweighs, in importance, the past or the present... in which case, we of course look down on the old (whether parents, music, poetry, etc.), including our own older-every-year selves. // It has started pouring down rain here, like I made it happen by writing too many words 🌧️🙈🌧️ Please be well, and if possible, enjoy your day. I hope I didn't overwhelm by inundating the conversation..🌈✨

@lzbth Thanks, again, very much for your thoughts... Starting to catch up with this one, while day's underway. Looking at myself, then and now after writing that last post, I am still trying to experience and understand my own process of change with the years that passed, sometimes overwhelmed by a load of questions and few answers. Like, looking down or back at the old - especially music, poetry, self-written texts, ... ... and wondering to which degree returning to "the old" to gain different meaning from it while seen through older eyes and with a different context is a good thing, and at which point it starts feeling like being stuck in the past. That Project Pitchfork stuff, in example, is part of it... and sometimes I remember how I smiled at my father when he was listening to 1960s, 1970s music in the early 1990s, wondering how to get him interested in "contemporary" music. Now we're talking mid-2020s and I'm back to music that is even older in comparison.🙈 It's not that I am not interested in new music anymore, or that new music fails to touch me (far from it) but still these old things, the tracks I somehow grew my own early identity with, still resonate in a different, more intense way. In other aspects, I ... learn that I moved on and am somehow "returning". Like, the first-ever encounters I had with "the internet" basically were about reading odd-to-obscure stuff about philosophy and spirituality, stuff ranging from meditation to lucid dreaming and a lot of topics way "worse" or strange. At some point, this vanished also with diving into my professional life (I'm a tech person, spend literally all day in front of a computer, do write code and run servers and that kind of stuff) and experienced more and more being absorbed with these topics, until I moved to a different company and with that, my personal mindset also somehow changed, to a point where I ... not necessarily "rediscover" these old topics that once mattered to my life (because they've never been gone) but slowly learn to leave more room for them in busy days, to embrace "the forest" a bit more again. And even here I'm unsure, I love the forests in general, but I also love cities, concrete, glass. Sometimes it feels split, but then again I'm wearing a yin-yang around my neck for as long as I can remember, and maybe that's for a reason...🙈 (Well. That was longer than I thought I would write by now. Hope it wasn't too confusing, though I by no means am sure.... 🙈🙈 Enjoy what's left of your afternoon, salām and take care!☀️🙏)

@z428 Good morning and selamat kopi (as we say here ☕️😊✨), happy to keep this up☕️, kind thanks in return for these refreshing exchanges. (Never too confusing, then again, I don't mind confusing, ... Hopefully nobody's too annoyed by text-wall (🙏🏻)).. // I also have ambivalence, two-mindedness, about the city, (often steered back to this by "my teachers" 🙈). I wouldn't be who I am without the concrete, steel and glass, including this "tech" stuff, and the whole f-ed up USA, these are all somehow inside me. (Although, side-note. I have never felt at home in online "places". It's difficult to socialize without the presence of faces and bodies, even environments, and I look at people who can do this fluently with some amazement. I feel hyper-conscious of writing's indeterminacy here--It seems easy to write things that agree with what everybody expects you to say, to rehearse in-group tropes, or to write something so detatched/abstract as to be nonthreatening. But to write something from a perspective that might not be expected, but still trying to /connect/, it feels so easy to be misunderstood or accidentally offend. I think this must be related to the way social or internet media reifies opinions, deepens lines of division, amplifies insecurities, and that terrible shame-like feeling of being misunderstood.) I might er on the side of being "romantic", I mean, a tendency to fling myself too far out into "nature", (😂), which is false and unsustainable too. I also inevitably find my reflection in photos or songs of highways, streetlamps, city walls, etc. Written words are also (a both weird and ancient) technology. ...

This is all active research for me, I guess you could say, but gestating for a while, and you can probably tell I have my "preferences". I'm experimental in my (inherited, sort of) approach (to the question of "human nature", which I think is what we're ultimately corresponding about here). This requires at least some leisure, (a sort of wandering), and will always be subject to accusations of bullshit, as from grouchy fathers, dogmatic scientism, reductive utilitarians, etc... I think that's poetry in general, as well as anything approaching philosophy. It (experimentation) also means living with more questions than answers. But one thing is, it's often possible to see that something is wrong, even if you can't quite say what is right or true. (Youthful rebellion, to me, remains valuable for this, even looking back from "old age", as a spirit of "negation" enabled by naivete.) And another thing is, questions, when you pursue them in a sensitive but sustained way, start following patterns. Poetry and theological writing are full of images of these, (patterns, questions, hypothetical ideas), giving them different names, you know, of dis/organized worlds, or gods and monsters, and everything in between. For me: when an image resonates, like it hits a chord inside of you, this both is and isn't "an answer", but it's possibly the most soul-sustaining thing? And that resonance can make "distance" through time (to 1960's or 450 b.c.e. or whenever) (also between places or people) somehow obsolete. Tech of the modern web presents a sort of exponential amplification of this, for better and for worse... (Following the "wrong" resonance can, as demonstrated by "history", lead to ethical, political disaster.) And again, one not-accidentally returns to an image of balance☯️, so as not to become.. well, the monster. // Ok. Enough for now, will follow up with other thread later, probably tomorrow! Salam and enjoy your Friday 😊🌈🌴🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

@lzbth Good afternoon .... and thank you very much for the "wall of text" - greatly appreciated. Actually it's fun reading through that, getting thoughts sorted and then letting words flow. Each and every time curious where they get me... 🙈 ... but for this very time I'm shorter than usual, still climbing through a filled day to again, later the afternoon, be off for parents and family for at least tomorrow, so I'll at least not be on a computer and may be slower and shorter in responses; writing "long texts" on the smartphone somehow doesn't work out very well for me even while I still try...😬 Just wanted to, by now, briefly dive into one aspect you touched before: Feeling home "online" in this way or the other. Guess we differ a bit here... and as far as I am concerned, I have a clear idea why: Having grown up in that particular village, life was limited. Period. Maybe you have to be made for this kind of life or I was too demanding or whatever - I had brief acquaintances bu no real "friends" out there, in the idea of people who I would share intimate details with, or people who I even would "just" be able to discuss music, books, art, spirituality. The village kids were (and still are) usually rooted in different kinds of interests here, and they (too, still) are sceptical towards people who don't share their interests. Like, I wasn't into soccer, motorcycles (at a certain age) or (again at a certain age) getting drunk at the lake, so I was kind of an "outsider" - and likewise, no one really cared about the things I felt like talking about. This way, I went on "the internet" for the first time in the mid-1990s and it drastically changed, I suddenly got in touch with people, communities, conversations I was craving for, I needed and missed in my life when disconnecting. It feels both odd and detached from reality in a certain way, but it then again worked and seemed about linking a lot of like-minded souls sharing a similar "problem". Moving to the city eased that a bit, but still, in many situations, I feel attached to communication here partly because it still gets me in touch with people who I can share things with, and (ok, maybe that's a personal aspect of mine) because I'm much more ... easy with written, asynchronous communication where I can read up to a point, think about it, come back add my $0.02 to it. I'm probably a difficult kind of guy in real-life conversations, I'm by no means a starter of conversations, I dislike smalltalk (also because I totally suck at it) and the same time I feel very very very uncomfortable in situations for silence to sneak into a conversation because no one knows what to say...🙈 Online communication eases this a bit, living my professional life (at this point considerably outside my comfort zone, sometimes) helps, but at the very core sometimes I still feel like that village kid hiding from those who don't care about what matters to it...🙈 (Ok, so much for the self-pity.🙂 I'd rather get me another coffee and then, this day done... Salam, have a pleasant afternoon, enjoy whatever the day brings!😊☀️)

@z428 Good morning ☕️☀️ Hope it's restful for you, and the complications don’t cause discord... Still enjoying this very much😊🙏🏻 // Yup, I think your idea is right on. I also have social anxieties, but I grew up near a city (Washington D.C.). Or, I lived in a suburb, which was alienating and unpleasant, with kids... I didn't relate to. (At all. Right there with you. I get it.) (Before that, my family moved around a lot, but I went to a Montessori elementary school, which was intensely interactive, "present", and encouraged uniqueness and independence. It was a very rough, even punishing transition, from there to public school in uptight suburbs.) Then, I got bussed into a huge and diverse high school (I think 2300+ students), right on the edge of the city, because I was in a math/science/comp sci program (and the govt wanted more white kids in a school full of non-white kids🙃). I somewhat rebelled against the academic aspect of this, (gave parents grief), but the social and cultural adventure was amazing (also gave parents grief, lol). D.C. is a wild city, apart from the political class. I ended up wandering all over, as a teenager, using the metro, being a little fringe-y and punk rock, meeting different, weird people, exploring urban, underground, sketchy environments. (I took it all for granted, at the time..) Then college switched to a different extreme, where it was a very insulated community of just a few hundred of us, but constant close-up communication that didn't really differentiate between what we did in class and what we did for socializing. No news, minimal email access on that tiny campus, no smartphones yet (but a lot of alcohol…). All of my subsequent education and professional responsibilities were face-to-face. (It's funny you mention that, anxiety over the silence of in-person conversation. I don't like it either, but I got good at enduring it, even using it strategically. In my old life, when it was part of my work to encourage people to discuss things... Judiciously-applied silence could be an effective torture device 🙈🙈)... So I'm glad for my urban wandering as a youth, otherwise my life path took me into less diverse environments. None of it encouraged online activity. My slight social media was to keep in touch with real life friends/acquaintancces. (Okay, brief internet bio: My first favorite thing was to design my own "very mysterious" myspace profile, which in retrospect was an obvious prototype of my now-blog. To this day, if you search my name, the first image result is a botanical drawing of a poisonous mushroom🍄😂 Then I had a tumblr, as a personal blog and not very interactive. I enjoyed writing on that. But there was a problematic interference from my university employer, not big, but it spooked me and I got off the web completely🙃…) So my blog here is the first time I've had sustained online presence.

(Interesting to write these different accounts of "where do I come from", I find myself noticing different things about myself. I really have always resisted "fitting into a mold", online and off. There was a chance back in high school I could have become a sort of anarchist hacker type, if the comp sci I learned had just nudged me over into online spaces, but that didn't "take", instead I went into it with very old books...)

I also dislike posting long messages from the phone. (I need the control of a bigger screen for all this🙈 They might have to change the timeline formatting, to deal with these text walls?🙈) And I don't like to be distracted from dynamic surroundings. So if I'm out running around, posting or messages usually have to wait until a quiet moment at the end of the day. This back-and-forth is good. I like the wandering, hope my own is ok, and the other thread, about family, feels very special. I replied here first maybe because it's a more fun, nostalgic topic, good for a Saturday😊 I will get there, next... In the meantime. Have a pleasant time with family, and some quiet moments in-between, and enjoy the surroundings wherever you go🌈✨🙏🏻

@lzbth Good evening... ... and for now, just a short note from out here.. returned to the city a while ago and spent most of the afternoon offline, do now I've got some reading to do.... thank you very much and apologies for being brief, I'll catch up later... for now, Salam and have a pleasant night!🌙😊