| The Return |
[Feb. 12th, 2008|04:21 pm] |
[Surprise]
My new blog is teetering on the edge of existing! I just don't have a name for it yet...
Watch this space in the next day for a link. New art, new music, new animation, talk about why I'm back, where I'm at, what I've been watching/listening to/eating, an archive of all my old pieces that lived here at the livejournal, and my quest for a new name. Adventure! Excitement! Links! DON'T SLEEP.
EKUNDAYO |
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| Unceremoniously |
[Jul. 1st, 2007|11:42 pm] |
aaaalright, I think when your sister gets married and you don't blog about it until after the fact, its a clear sign that you're pretty much done. (It was great by the way)
Ladies and Gentlemen, This Is Me Breathing is going into indefinite hibernation. I'm instead going to create an account at imeem or uber or one of these other web 2.0.1 type places and post snippets of all the new music I'm doing (just sent out a 19 track, 27 minute mix of new beats to all the MCs I'm working with), and probably some select examples of the sound design I'm doing for all these short films (A Graduate student's thesis film, 2:30 minute homage to John Woo, a spec commercial about a robot, etc), and probably an archive of visual art too.
Post with suggestions! What services have you folks used? Do you like them? Your comments may steer me to my new home on the web.
Thanks all you readers who are still checking in! If you lasted these 3ish years and numerous stretches of time without activity, I salute you.
Ekundayo |
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| late notice |
[May. 20th, 2007|12:12 pm] |
WATCH:
The Sci Fi Channel at 11 pm tonight to see Dreamworld, a short that I did the sound design on!
DO IT! |
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| The Week |
[May. 11th, 2007|01:22 pm] |
| [ | state |
| |  jubilant | ] |
•I had a scary experience early in the week that was then resolved, after I learned exactly what I needed to from it.
•My father and I spent 45 minutes locating, perusing, and just barely out thinking and capturing a mouse that had gotten in to our office. He was dark grey, and about 1.5 inches long not counting the tail. We called him "Lentil Brain".
•I'm all but sure that I'll finally get the job I've been chasing since January. And its parameters have changed in such a way that its gotten 20 times better.
•My sound design projects are going well - I continue to get comments from the director that I'm breathing new life and enthusiasm into this particular project for everybody on the team with my early test mixes - suddenly they open their in box and they can HEAR their short film for the first time. It makes all the difference.
•Lost was F-ING CRAZY. And Thanks, John Locke, for taking out 3 seasons of fan frustration by head-butting Patchy and wailing on him till he was bloody because he suggested that there was something more important than ANSWERS. Where the devil are they going with all this?
MUSIC, Other Peoples':
Today, in the same 10 minutes, I realized both Bjork and Gosub had new albums up at Bleep.com (the nicest online music store there is - 320kbps quality mp3s from an absurd selection of lables, no DRM, $10 an album).
Bjork- Volta: wild. She's really opened the floodgates on this one. Its crazy.
Gosub- Watchers From The Black Universe: DAMN! My favorite Miami based old school Electro producer is finally back, after 8 years and a few singles and eps, with a full album of pure ear candy for a kid like me. Imagine Transformers break dancing while you roll by in a tricked out Honda CRX, sipping on blue koolade. And you've got TRON riding shotgun, peeping all the fly data structures. Compute!
MUSIC, Mine:
I'm tryin to push out a beat tape for my all collaborators, a 15 to 20 minute free association mix of new tracks I've been working on. This weekend maybe. The idea being, stop guessing who'll wanna write to what, and just let everybody I'm working with hear whats up.
Thats that. Its gonna be a wild weekend.
Peace
EKUNDAYO |
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| A Rant Upon the Subject of Telivision. (Here be Spoilers) |
[Apr. 3rd, 2007|06:23 pm] |
The current trend of "Highly Serialized Dramas" has officially run out of creative steam. The market has been flooded–the plot twist has fallen sharply against the dollar, and runs the risk of becoming so completely devalued as to be worthless. The story-reveal futures market has crashed as high risk short term cliffhangers fail to perform at their projected rate of return. Character development on already overdeveloped characters is being used as filler in order to plug leaking episodes. The outlook is bleak.
It's a ghost town. Late comers like last fall's "The Nine" are being told "Best to keep movin', youngster. There ain't no more ratings here fer you. Stick around here and all you'll get is canceled. Aint nothin' here but dust, and the souUUund of the wind."
"Prison Break", just finishing it's first full season of sucking, has been the perfect example. Its set up, if you didn't catch the previous season, was: Dude gets thrown in jail to help his brother (wrongly accused of killing the vice president's brother) escape. Dude has massive, intricate plan which gets more and more convoluted as various prisoners force themselves into it. Dude gets threatened by angry white and black people! Guards are mean! Meanwhile - massive conspiracy hinted at as friends on the outside try to prove Dude's brother is innocent. People get shot! Scary!
Obviously, they stretched it out for 22 episodes or so until the actual escape, and the narrative got pretty strained there a few times. You know what that looks like: "OH! Last minute reprieve! YAY! UH-OH! Massive setback! Threat of Death! AHH! Last minute reprieve again! YAAYYY!" But for the most part, it was still fun to watch.
Season two's concept plays out like this: Dude, Dudebrother, and 5 or 6 other prisoners escape. Magical airplane to fly them to panama takes off without them! FBI tracks them. Prisoners argue, fight, backstab, disfigure each other while trying to be the first to find BURIED TREASURE. OOOO! Meanwhile, massive conspiracy kills lots of people a lot. Other prisoners get killed one by one! Lots dead, creepy guys responsible. Dude & broher escape! Oops, they don't. They do! They don't again! They find evidence to blow the thing wide open! It's destroyed! They find more! It's faked! They find a witness! It's a trap! Wait, they escape! They really escape! Panama! They're proven innocent at the last minute! Its All Over! ***AWKWARD SILENCE*** OHH NO! SUDDENLY GUY FROM CONSPIRACY JUMPS OUT, GIRLFRIEND SHOOTS HIM, AND MAGICAL PANAMANIAN POLICE RUSH IN AND ARREST EVERYBODY FOR MURDER! Dude is BACK IN PRISON! TUNE IN NEXT FALL! PLEASE!
But really, my point in all this is that these shows, both the bad and the good ones (Lost, Prison Break, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, etc) have played a losing game with audiencs, creating huge elaborate back stories (or in the case of Prison Break's make-it-up-as-we-go-along second season, not so huge), and dribbling a meager portion out to the fans each week. The idea of generating excitement and repete viewing by trying to make an ever more sensational cliff hanger each week, and playing promos that claim, fraudulently, that the next episode will finally tell you whats going on - it can only work for so long. And I think we're seeing that "so long" is 2 to 3 seasons, give or take.
It isn't just that the audience loses faith, feels like they're being strung along for a payoff that's never coming. A bigger problem is that no matter how big the payoff actually is when it does come, they still feel cheated. Remember last season's Lost finale? Two hours of rip-roaring, other-shooting, hatch-exploding, Desmond-flashbacking madness? After it was done, I was thinking "yeah that was pretty crazy, but... wait that's it? That's all till next year? A purple flash and some fake beards?" Or this season's Battlestar Galactica finale. "Thats all? A Bob Dylan cover and some hallucinations?" It's like the writers are running up a debt of expectation, and the more they borrow against it, the more they'll have to pay for us to feel like we weren't waisting our time every week for up to 5 years. And that stuff is accruing interest. If, for example, Lost doesn't pick up the pace (it has been lately, but will it last?), then they'll have to end season 5 with a 6 hour marathon of pure, uninterrupted explaining. They wont even have time to make it a story. They might have to just get Hurley and Eko to stand in front of a white background and take turns saying "Ok, so this is what's gong on with (mysterious thing). Oh yeah, and that (mysterious character)? He/she was behind that. The (bizarre event) is because of that. The (random thing) doesn't mean anything, they where totally messing with you! Ha!" Etc.
______
I know, I've got a lot of things going on in my life, and after yet another month of not writing, I could be writing about so many other things. But this strikes me as important in a certain way. I hate it when an artform, thanks to the vision of a few, becomes suddenly meaningful again, and for a while it's inspiring, surprising, and fulfilling. And then it makes a killing, the artist(s) realize they've got a racket that they can drive into the ground, the copy cats show up, and suddenly the whole scene starts leaking its purpose out into a big, oozing commercial oil slick. And what is this space for, if not for rants?
Oh, my phone is back on finally. Good think too, because everyone assumes I know everything already. I've been out of the loop for more than a week. And the outside of the loop is a scary, cold place.
EKUNDAYO |
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| Something for the lost fans |
[Mar. 1st, 2007|12:35 am] |
I've figured it out - it explains so much!
The voice that does the promos for next week's episode right at the end?
He's one of the Others.
"...know this -- he will lie -- a long time. He will lie." |
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| Good Weekend |
[Feb. 26th, 2007|12:42 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Hellbent - Superdrag | ] |
Friday - uhh, yeah... don't quite know how to say this... my uvula was swollen. yeah. gross. made me gag constantly. I thought I was giving birth to an alien.
Saturday - better. felt good, had one of those huge small parties at my parent's place. we have this tradition of decorating the home with hand made paper cuts for Ayami-ha. this time we invited friends over, and suddenly the place was brimming with people, young and old (including Emilano & Kim's newborn son!). I made guacamole.
Sunday - ahhh the Oscars. the superbowl of cinema. It's always huge amounts fun to watch with friends, food, and open mockery of the proceedings. It's a grand spectacle, its a close race, and its always brutally unfair. Team Children Of Men got f*ing robbed, but I think we knew it was coming. Otherwise this year was a good show, funny, with some truly surreal moments thanks to Ellen's casually bizarre and fresh take on hosting. Highlights: coming down into the crowd to give Marty a script and make Speilberg snap a shot her and Clint for her myspace page. Even better: Walking up on stage after the powerful Dreamgirls medley, and saying, with a completely straight face, "Wow, I'd hate to have to follow them." Brilliant!
We, of course, and by we I mean the finest team of freestyle amateur surrealist satire hecklers and riffers in the greater Chicagoland area, including myself, Jon "Junkpuncher" Ellis, David "David Precht" Precht, Emily "Palomino tap-dancing Christ" Price, Lindsey "Rockstar" Lugsch, and Patrick "The Harbinger of Infinite Sorrow" Parish, and special guest player Tuck "The Coup-de-Ha" were in top form. We where knocking ourselves dead out there. And thats mostly what its all about.
This week, I'll be narrowly escaping from absolute professional failure and utter financial ruin. Stay tuned. |
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| PRESS RESET |
[Feb. 14th, 2007|10:44 am] |
Ok I'm starting over here. Like the last post, I keep setting up obligations for myself. Then I avoid posting anything else for months because I haven't fulfilled that obligation! Its silly.
So: People who want to know about my trip to Ghana, ask me in person. Or on the phone! Ahhhhhh. That feels better.
Now -
We here at This Is Me Breathing have made a tradition, on the 14 of each February, of physically threatening Valentine's Day, complete with vivid, striking illustrations. These have worked well. Perhaps too well, in that they've kept Valentine's Day from approaching within 500 feet at any time. This year, I've decided not to issue any direct statements, hostile or otherwise, in the direction of the Day. This neutral approach will go some ways towards easing tensions between myself and the 14th, and perhaps pave the way for the re-opening of diplomatic relations at some unspecified time in the future.
As for the continuation of posting in this space, it'll happen. I just wont pin myself down as to when, or what.
Thanks to those of you who may be still reading this!
Ekundayo |
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| Happy Old Year |
[Jan. 2nd, 2007|09:04 am] |
Ok folks, lets do it this way.
Ask me questions about Ghana. I'll answer in comments, and put the highlights in this post below the dotted line! Hit it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok Ok, Sorry. Its all coming. I've been dealing with some serious money/communication problems, one of those classic really really shady situations with roommates that you're supposed to have at least once during college. It's close to being over now. I hope. Stay Tuned. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 24th, 2006|10:33 am] |
| [ | state |
| | ok, probably not malaria. | ] |
I'm back from Ghana & Israel!
more later.
EKUNDAYO |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 6th, 2006|03:13 pm] |
It was just like any goodbye
and I regret that
but our friendship had too many habits
and even at the end that thick layer proved
to rough for me to bust through (many ways)
I'm crying now not for an ending
but 3 years of pain and joy and anxiousness and jealousy and hope
that went down unsung just 10 minutes ago
without even the marker "I love you"
I'm looking
to the eyes and arms of another
to help remind me in theory what may someday
exist in real life. |
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| insomnia edit |
[Nov. 28th, 2006|03:08 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Georgia Anne Muldrow - REALLYTHO | ] |
# ,,--
"peace is work
when there's a world thats filled with pain"
&
[
+2 weeks till I go to Africa. -
+2 weeks to finish school. new: [tuesday]
+Battle continues. ] on 2 hours of sleep
got 5 vaccinations
(2 shots in the left arm, 3 in the right)
then: 9 hours of sound mixing
everything started getting really
3 am and I'm up funny about half way through
stirring the fire **( the computer kept freaking out
stomach ache *D* and all I could think was
and?, "The meningitis shot is totaly
gonna beat up the typhoid booster"
wh is that first a burn =
whe w, agai stinct an rience
uched the fla ain
and it r a while.
ing forward to that,
knowin nothing b at can help new [wed]
gambles that didnt pay off:
"Leave" is what the voice actualy said. • turning my car off at jewl after getting
same voice that spoke when I was in the Shrine it jumped by a neighbor
with a young woman's face held in my mind (had to get some security dudes to
(that time it said "No") jump me again)
thats why. •drinking a Rockstar to fight off the
woozy.
(now I'm superwoozy. or... rockwoozy?)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>!!!>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Subject to Change (this post is being edited often)
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| st uck |
[Nov. 20th, 2006|12:15 am] |
Did a set at the open mic on friday. All brand new beats with some remix bizness thrown in. I'm really not sure how it went. I didn't have my drum pad, so people didn't have much to look at. I keep having to remind myself that instrumental music of any kind is a niche thing, especially so with music that cant be 100% live.
_
I've been thinking a lot about what PAIN! said. That perhaps we should approach all challenges as if we've failed already, and all we can do now is our best. To aim for Excellence, not Success.
Out of all the things I'm facing now, there was one "battle" facing me that I rode into without a true understanding of how to use that wisdom as my weapon. I tried, but it fell appart. The odds against me where vast, but for some reason I didn't truly make peace with failure. I didn't really scatter myself to the winds. Now failure seems all but certain, and I really don't know what to do about it. It hurts.
What's left to me now is losing nobly, or going down in flames, kicking and screaming. I have strategies, but will they work? I suppose thats the catch: who cares, as long as they're the best, the most true, the most satisfying strategies.
Back to the drawing board.
EKUNDAYO |
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| SNAP |
[Aug. 28th, 2006|01:01 am] |
| [ | state |
| | physicaly nasty but spiritualy | ] |
Back from the, what was it 47th? Annual Green Lake Baha'í Conference. I've been almost every year of my life. Always good, always exhausting.
I drove back to Evanston with my fam, then it was off to sunday night soccer at Northwestern. It was the most people, the most players, the most crazy game we've played yet. I went nuts, then flipped over and sprained my ankle. One of gross, loud SNAP! sprains. I'm back at my parents place now, on an inflatable mattress, with the delayed shock hitting me - nasty shivers, coldness. Now I'm sweating actually!
All kinds of wild stuff is/has been/ will be going on. I'll talk about that soon. A few select moments from this year's Black Men's Gathering, new musical collaborations coming up fast, shockingly amazing people I've met lately, and so on.
ekundayo
*********
Update! Apparently almost nobody at the game realized that I had injured myself. Apparently my freinds are so used to seeing me limping that they didnt even think to question it! Hmmm...
Also, Ethiopian takeout rocks just as much in the living room as it does at the restaurant. Thanks Lev + Negin! |
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| alright alright |
[Aug. 24th, 2006|09:52 pm] |
So I haven't updated in a long time. I'll admit it: it's been pure laziness. Just haven't done it - its not like I'm busy or anything. Yesterday was a good example of what a typical, relaxing day has been like for me in the past 2 months: I got up at 8 am after a nice long 4 1/2 hours of sleep. The previous night I had stayed up for a while to talk with two out of maybe 6 of my good friends who are leaving town with little or no warning, for places like L.A., N.Y.C., Ghana. But when 3:30 rolled around, I called it a night. So I rose with the construction fumes and rain, taking a short time for my morning routine, then headed out into some light trafic. I arrived for work at my father's office in Evanston at 11:00 am or so, switched keys and vehicles with my sister, and drove to the north suburbs of Milwaukee (only about a two hour trip one way - the traffic wasn't bad that day) to pick up some printed programs for this weekend's Greenlake Bahai Conference from a tiny print shop in a shady part of town. Then I turned around and drove to the south side of Milwaukee to pick up a van load of tools and display materials for another client from a shipping warehouse. Then it was straight back to Evanston to stuff down some lunch, then run over to World Market with a business check to pick up some back - ordered bookshelves we've been waiting for to finish the last few workspaces in the office. I waited as their under-staffed team push the boxes around and finally got around to telling me they didn't accept business checks, so I left, made another stop at Office Max for some other materials, then stopped by a client's office to pick up a check directly so we might have a chance of paying down some bills. I returned to the office, where my father had been having an equally relaxing day, discovering that various clients wanted various things changed at the last minute and that, for example, a printer who was supposed to begin a job the next day had realized that it was their policy not to do jobs without a credit application. They must have forgotten to tell us! My father decided to come with me in the van, head to the bank, turn the check for the shelves into cash, hope that nobody mugged us in between the bank and world market, and just head over and drop the cash on those shelves. We did that, then returned to Office Max because we had forgotten to get enough of the previous item that I had gotten on my first trip. Fortunately, since it was by then late enough that the place was full of back to school shoppers, so I had some time to collect my thoughts in the check out line. Relaxing! Then, since my mom and sister where out for the evening at the Field Museum, we went out to get some dinner before settling in to fold and stuff the printed programs that I had picked up earlier. There where only about 1200 of them, and with my sister, a friend that I bullied into stopping by, the other designer who works at the office, and her exhausted husband, it only took us till about 10:00 pm to get most of them finished. The rest would have to wait until tomorrow, sometime before the noon deadline for that project. Then myself and the bullied friend rushed off to join a going away get together for another close friend who had told us on tuesday that he was leaving for 6 months on Sat. It was a low key evening. At one point the friend who was leaving broke a small guitar on another of my friend's butt, which produced a delightful sound. We watched the "lost episodes" of the Chappelle show and tried to have a bit of discussion on the issues raised by it, though it was interrupted by various outrageous things that where said and done at various times throughout the night, including a tangerine and raisinette fight, as well as other assorted verbal and physical attacks, and a good deal of un-aimed screaming. As 2:00 am rolled around, I headed out, taking satisfaction that only a short 20 minute drive and packing for a weekend long trip stood between me and much deserved rest.
So I apologize, Dear Reader, for my long absence. Surely, looking back on the day above, I could have found some time to create an intricate, obtuse design of some kind, or wax critical about some cultural phenomenon. I resolve to turn over a new leaf! Here's to many happy posts in the future!
Regards,
Shannon Ekundayo Reddy |
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