This page contains all entries posted to Manufactured Environments in March 2002.

involuntary eye movements.

Posted by Daniel Stout on Thu 14 Mar 2002 at 11:39 PM

i’ve been listening to this cd i picked up recently. it’s called reich remixed. it’s the minimalist compositions of steve reich as remixed by various dj’s. pretty interesting stuff. there’s a number of stand-out tracks on the disc. some of the dj’s i know listen to reich’s music. they see a lot of connections between his work and electronic music. for me, i listen to both a lot of avant garde classical and a fair amount of electronica. the connections? perhaps they’re there and perhaps not.

we’re a few days away from spring break. i’ll have a break from teaching for a week. i’m looking forward to a few days off. i’m planning on visiting the grave of my great grandmother who died a week ago. she was 95 years old.

there’s been a lot going on the past six months, and it’s good to finally take a breather for a moment. i bought a place here in the city a couple of months ago. it’s very styling. i’m still working on getting things up on the walls. i’m in the market for some rothko prints primarily.

have you ever heard the cocteau twins? they’re quite fine. sometimes when i’m feeling especially mellow, heaven or las vegas hits the spot. of course if you’re ever looking for true soul soothing music, chopin is the finest there is.

in website news, i finally got around to redesigning some of danielstout.com. the blog, fotos, and books pages have all been redesigned from the ground up. how do you like this redesign? i wanted the blog to load fairly fast so i kept it simple — heavily on the tables and moderate on the graphics. i need to go find some javascript so i can have a random picture load with the page. to do: i still have the music area to revamp — including adding my classical recordings to the page and adding some mp3 files for hard to find music — i’ve seen a lot of people reaching my page because they’ve been searching for the band trip shakespeare. also i’m mulling some designs for the front page. i’ve been rather smitten with the art school’s front page — i’d like something that aesthetic but with a bit more color.

over the past six months i’ve been sending out my mix series — the duality of lovers — to friends and various people. 3 80-minute mix cd’s with nearly 4 hours of music and 54 songs. i’ve got a new series in my head. it’ll be two mixes — one a classical mix and an accompanying electronica mix. of course i design my own booklets in freehand. i like these slim cases that the cd-r’s come in these days. they’re much more manageable than a stack of regular jewel cases. if you’re interesting in getting a copy of my new mix series, send me an email — the address is at the bottom of this page.

at any rate, a smooth week venturing out in a week of vacation. just one more day of business and then i’m off. take care, folks.

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missives to the massives.

Posted by Daniel Stout on Thu 7 Mar 2002 at 11:16 PM

it was a pretty good day after all. i lingered this morning in a bit of a fog, but the haze lifted. things turned out well. i picked up some bagels this morning for my colleagues. they devoured them, nary a one left by noon. had a couple of fairly interesting meetings this morning, and the afternoon was basically calm.

a day devoid of tension. i met with a professor i know over in the medical college. she called me her “favorite.” was she buttering me up? or did she really mean it. she’s a damn nice person at any rate. she talked of her family today, how her father is a mathematics professor and her brother a lawyer. we traded notes about teaching. such a smooth, cool day.

it’s wonderful to have one of these days once in a while. spring break isn’t too far away and the semester seems to be automatically moving forward at this point.

i sent a package to one of these old high school friends that emailed me recently. a package full of music — three wonderful mixes of all the stuff i’ve been listening to. actually they were from my mix series i did last fall called “the duality of lovers.” three mixes i sent her — love builder, seekers who are lovers, and soft as fire. 80-minutes each they shake and shimmer. i listen to them myself fairly regularly. i’ve got a new avant garde/classical mix in my mind and it’s about time i burned the thing to cd. i do love music. i saw kronos quartet again this past week and thoroughly enjoyed the concert. string quartets and pianists are extra special people in my universe.

isn’t it funny how things run together? have you ever heard that song off of the “o brother, where art thou?” soundtrack called “big rock candy mountain?” it’s a fine song. the interesting thing about it is that two of my friends led off mix cd’s with the song. a friend of mine from los angeles sent me a mix a few months ago that started with that song. and recently a friend from minnesota sent me a mix starting with the same. otherwise, beyond that song the two mixes were completely different. the fellow in l.a. is more into beats and dub, and the gal in st.paul is into folk and van morrison. life is full of these common threads, if you look for them. st.paul and los angeles are worlds apart and yet this common cultural currency binds us together. and yet in these days of mega-media and mega-corporations, one wonders if some of the variety of life is being squelched.

that’s enough for tonight. i’ve got other matters to attend to tonight. take care, my friends.

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innocent kids turned cool.

Posted by Daniel Stout on Mon 4 Mar 2002 at 10:40 PM

i’ve been replaying the kronos quartet concert on saturday in my mind. they’re a fabulous group. i’ve seen them several times here in the city. this was the first time i had seen them with their new cellist. quite good. they were debuting “neuvo” — a concert of latin american pieces. as usual they put on quite the performance. the future is in their hands.

class went pretty well today. i’m continuing my life as an adjunct professor — thinking of future degrees and the goals i want to accomplish in my academic life. there are a lot of avenues open to me right now, and i’ve been focusing on a couple as proving the most fertile for future examination. directions i had been going in recent years are being refined and examined — the direction of the future is becoming that much clearer upon a certain amount of introspection.

a salute out to all of the people who saw my name in this month’s issue of the luther college alumni magazine. there’s always a certain thrill to see one’s name in bold print even if it is in the damned alumni magazine. perhaps it’s a sense of accomplishment or just a strain of sheer vanity. at any rate, it’s *always* interesting to see what other people are up to these days. those first five years after college are meddling and trivial but after that things get kind of interesting. what have you been up to lately?

two of the most beautiful women i knew growing up in high school have seen fit to email me in the past month. after not hearing from them in something like a decade, how wonderful to have news. i feel blessed.

it’s strange — i must admit — to look back over the passing of years. to some degree i think, “where was i headed?” and to some other degrees i think, “i can’t imagine being anywhere else right now.”

i turn 30 this june 8th. it’s a cause for celebration. only three months away, feel free to send birthday messages. mark it on your calendars. i’m planning a grand old party — lots of beer and wine and plenty of loud music. it’ll be just like old times.

so enough of this looking back. what have we all been up to lately? it’s been interesting to see the web develop as it has. the blogging thing has captured my fancy, and hopefully yours as well. it’s a good thing to keep contact with people — they don’t have to email to see what’s up — they can simply log onto the website and catch the latest news from the technological cutting edge here in the city where i keep my residence and employment.

okay. that’s all for now. keep it coming.

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thinking about patterns.

Posted by Daniel Stout on Sun 3 Mar 2002 at 9:10 PM

i’ve been thinking about the ways things come together after many years spent traversing the outer limits. friends who were long lost have since come back into the fold. ideas that had been frozen out in siberia, have since made the long journey back to intellectual currency.

it’s been an interesting week. i bid for a cd on ebay. i enjoy the ebb and flow of bids on the auction system. i’ll know in an hour if i won. tomorrow i’m being scrutinized. they’re coming to observe me teach. should be interesting. at least i’m much familiar with the person doing the observing. have you seen that recent film “pi”? it’s quite good. kind of paranoid, kind of brilliant, kind of david lynch in a way. it’s a good flick about a mathematician gone abstract.

speaking of mathematics, i finished the other week, the book “a beautiful mind.” a fabulous book. i really enjoyed it. it did a wonderful job of capturing the intellectual environments of the day. this movie “pi” seems to be a fictionialization of some of the trends noticed in the book — taking math to extremes, numerology and such.

did you read the article in the new york times last week about the six investment bankers who spent $62,000 at one dinner in london not too long ago. pretty brazen stuff. i’ve been thinking about all of these articles i see in the wall street journal about how so many industries are conglomerating. competition is being extincted. huge multinationals are taking over the scene. it all comes down to a simple point folks: too much power is being held in the hands of too few.

it’s a simple law of nature. human nature — no matter how high-powered the individual — can only handle so much power. with the international conglomerates, unfortunately, people who cannot handle the responsibility are also in on the game. perhaps enron is just the beginning. but in another sense, it is the end of an era. we shall see what the next ten years bring. the protests at global capital summits are no mistake. the general population is becoming more frustrated with the state of corporate america. the number of mergers has shot off the charts in recent months. what next?

just some of the questions i’m pondering this weekend. at any rate, the skies were clear, but the air was cold. we had a blast of winter this weekend. fortunately we missed some of the winter snow that other places nearby received. now that i have a garage, i’m pleased to say that my car heats up quickly. i knew some folk that had a wood cabin. what a wonderous thing! they had some acres of forest land and plenty of room to walk and roam. what a better tonic for the soul i do not know. there is something about the quiet sound of a forest in the morning that has a brilliance about it. something that will never be replaced by the city.

as much as i yearn for the future, i harken back to days of time spent in the woods.

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