ALERT ALERT

2009-05-30T21:27:00.007-04:00

Here is a partial list of the musical instruments and accessories fellowship funding from the University of Pittsburgh has exclusively enabled me to purchase. Most of these items are now sold, but the list is alarming. '*' denotes my still having possession of the item.

1. Roland KC-150 keyboard amplifier*
2. Dave Smith Instruments Mono Evolver Keyboard
3. 1978 Wurlitzer 200A electroacoustic piano*
4. Calzone ATA case for the Wurlitzer*
5. Moogerfooger FreqBox
6. Moogerfooger MuRF (x2)
7. Moogerfooger 12 step phaser
8. Voodoo Labs Sparkle Drive
9. Keeley 4-knob compressor
10. Keeley Katana clean boost
11. Ernie Ball volume pedal*
12. BBE Boosta Grande *
13. Onstage keyboard stand*
14. Onstage microphone stand*
15. Sennheiser e835 microphone*
16. Onstage guitar stand*
17. Ibanez Performance acoustic guitar
18. Sequential Circuits SixTrak analogue synthesizer
19. MIM Fender Deluxe Jazz Bass
20. Lexicon Alpha USB recording interface
21. M-Audio UNO USB-Midi interface*
22. Maxtor external hard drive*
23. MFB-503 Drumcomputer
24. Peterson StroboFlip
25. Sonic Research ST-200 strobe tuner*
26. Boss Dr. Beat DB-30 metronome*
27. Fender Deluxe electric bass guitar case*
28. Genz-Benz Shuttle 3.0 bass amplifier
29. Markbass Traveler 102p bass cabinet
30. Markbass Little Mark II bass amplifier
31. Aguilar Tone Hammer preamp/DI box
32. Aguilar GS112*
33. Aguilar GS112NT*
34. Aguilar DB 750*
35. Roadrunner 4 space ATA-style rack case*
36. Fender MIA Standard Jazz Bass*
37. Proline memory foam keyboard stool*
38. Hohner Symphonic 320 analogue organ
39. Pair of Mackie MR5 studio moniors*
40. G&L USA Legacy guitar*
41. 1978 Mark I Rhodes Seventy-Three electroacoustic piano*
42. THD Bivalve 30 guitar amplifier*
43. Apogee Duet*
44. Sennheiser HD 280 headphones*
45. M-Audio Keystation 49e MIDI keyboard*
46. Ultimate Support hanging guitar stand*
47. Vox AC30 headphone guitar amplifier*

This proves, without any ounce of doubt, that my musical reinvention has been a direct consequence of the very generous financial support provided to me by my doctoral programme. In what other scenario might I have had the time and funding to pursue being a professional musician from the ground up -- on an instrument (or, as it were, a series of instruments) I had never even played before?

2009-02-13T01:30:00.002-05:00

The process of making a jazz recording may require a high level of mastery and attention to detail, but the impact they have on the world is noteworthy in its smallness. And deservedly so.

Philosophical books have a weaker initial impact, but they linger. (Like a bad smell.)

2009-02-09T13:33:00.003-05:00

A few months left. Then only a select few know what.

2009-01-05T09:04:00.001-05:00

KCL now offers an MSc in the Philosophy of Mental Disorder.

2008-12-10T21:40:00.003-05:00

Clark says the best way to learn about virtue ethics is to date an academic. No matter what you do, it is strictly a default of character which ends or sustains it.

2008-12-09T22:18:00.004-05:00

I feel bad.
Why?
Because I am more selfish than you.

2008-12-07T20:46:00.003-05:00

D#m
Dmaj7#11

2008-12-06T12:39:00.003-05:00

2008-12-06T12:29:00.001-05:00

Consider the failure of Socrates to defend the contrary position in the Cratylus.

2008-12-06T12:03:00.005-05:00

Have I bestowed too much significance upon my drum machine? I worry. For I have always believed that technology is in no way one of the elements of music. (As distinct as phonology from semantics.)

2008-12-01T21:04:00.003-05:00

I am undergoing a second-degree personal-administrative meltdown. At this point, there is nothing I can do, except reinvent myself anew.

2008-12-01T13:36:00.002-05:00

Arpeggiators threaten the distinction between harmony and melody. And melody is primary. So there goes harmony.

2008-12-01T12:26:00.001-05:00

Aleatoric art died at conception.

2008-12-01T12:21:00.003-05:00

A good percentage of contemporary music is about to die. The time has come to emphasise an intuition common to all those with an aversion to rarefied music: art is sensuous, not theoretical.

2008-11-29T01:09:00.002-05:00

There are obviously cases which expose a tender spot in our practical ability to distinguish ordinary objects and events from the aesthetic ones. (Consider a Warholean Brillo Box.) Yet it goes without saying that what we classify at the ends of spectrum is seldom open to debate. A meeting with your municipal tax collector is not art; a symphony is.

2008-11-29T01:08:00.005-05:00

What is art? This question is a metaphysical question -- one concerning the composition of the fabric of the world. An answer to it would have to provide us with the criteria which distinguishes the artifacts from the artworks, the cafeteria banter from a romantic chorale and so on. I would not know where to begin in providing such an answer. (And the lack of consensus among philosophers of art is itself an indication of how difficult the question is.) But there is an answer. There must be. For there are artworks, and there are non-artworks, and that is the beginning and the end of the matter.

While we ourselves may not be able to articulate an answer to this query, and, accordingly, provide a set of criteria for what constitutes a piece of art, we unquestionably possess a reliable capacity to distinguish between the two. That we have this capacity is enough to secure that there can be fruitful debates concerning the value of a particular work. This discourse is art criticism. Exercising our practical capacity, we identify our target piece of art, and there begins the activity.

2008-11-21T11:24:00.001-05:00

You need to keep the important people close to you. Keep them close at the exclusion of everyone else, the unwashed dross without magnetic allure.

2008-10-31T08:33:00.001-04:00

Vote for Obama. There are so many good reasons. But here is one. Consider the alternative.

2008-10-22T08:27:00.002-04:00

I have nearly severed my ties at school. But I remain connected to the internet. I must do better.

I aim for this to change. 'Productivity' takes on a different sense for the person whose life takes place online.

2008-10-16T13:12:00.002-04:00

The rock trio is not a natural kind.

2008-09-24T09:47:00.004-04:00

I am the sum total of my dispositions. This includes the latent ones, of which only I am aware.

2008-09-23T21:52:00.001-04:00

I hear a tragedy.

2008-09-22T09:13:00.003-04:00

After working a few years in the CIA, someone wants to write a non-fiction memoir on her experience in Vienna and elsewhere. I agreed with the reporter that this would probably be a terrible book. But why?

The answer is as follows. Certain topics -- for whatever contingent or necessary reasons -- are too particular to express a universal appeal. The details obscure the message. They alienate the ignorant.

Why are there no mathematical thrillers?

2008-09-22T08:40:00.001-04:00

The thankless task of saying what I do not mean.

2008-09-22T08:20:00.003-04:00

Self-sabotage: I wonder whether there can be personal progress without it. Eliminating possibilities did more for me than getting a good GPA ever did.

2008-09-21T23:40:00.003-04:00

There is a book on the horizon. Funny that the urge to write should only happen once my ties to my academic career have been severed. Not that I have cut the cord quite yet. But the deliberation has concluded.

The idea centres on many of the aesthetic thoughts I have enthymemetically expressed herein.

2008-09-15T10:59:00.001-04:00

I wish you would direct your literary ambition elsewhere. Forget 9-11.

2008-09-15T10:49:00.002-04:00

It took me a long time to realise that I am exactly qualified to do one thing: nothing in particular.

2008-09-15T09:15:00.002-04:00

That DFW wrote about death is no clue that he would hang himself. His books are not, as David Gates naïvely suggests, suicide notes.

2008-06-26T02:24:00.001-04:00

I am going to take a little bit of a break from this.

2008-05-19T11:21:00.001-04:00

The thickness and intimacy of electronic communication is underestimated. It is why people fall in love the way they do. (Over MSN.)

2008-05-18T21:22:00.004-04:00

When you lie, you confine yourself to the depths of dishonesty -- a space from which no apology will permit you to escape. The weighter fibs delineate the darkest circles from the fainter. But both rings are in the series.

2008-05-18T20:10:00.002-04:00

Consider my hypocrisy. Subtle and venomous.

2008-05-18T17:36:00.001-04:00

On the very idea of knowing yourself.

2008-05-15T21:24:00.003-04:00

I could not imagine being a historian. Imagine the constraints!

2008-05-14T12:53:00.002-04:00

I am always a little surprised to see how the public reacts to sexually suggestive advertising like this. Even on that gossip website, where I would imagine many people to be comfortable with the saucy, over 80% of its readers think that a clever advertisement is in poor taste. It leads me to question how such conservative attitudes might arise from their own intimate exploits.

2008-05-14T10:34:00.003-04:00

Someone sent me an email asking me to donate money. She told me she needed to raise $4500 for a marathon hosted by a charity they were running in Anchorage, AK this summer. The idea of helping to pay someone's airfare from Houston to Alaska so that they can run a marathon to combat cancer is ludicrous to me. It is a backwards approach to goodwill.

It reminds me of a friend of mine that biked across the continent to raise money for the Heart and Stroke Foundation. He did the trip with his girlfriend (who accompanied him in the largest van I had ever seen). His 45 day trip raised a total of $1000 for the charity, but he raised thousands more than that. A lot of it went toward gas and sustenance. Despicably, when he arrived home, he had a $4000 carbon fiber bike to show for it.

Funding someone else's recreation under the guise that you are supporting a charity is deplorable. That is not goodwill.

2008-05-12T16:07:00.000-04:00

I can send things here from my cellular telephone.

2008-04-13T13:00:00.004-04:00

Everything is broken right now: my camera, the zipper on my new jeans, the nose piece on my glasses, my iPod, my front derailleur. It is painful.

2008-03-08T18:40:00.002-05:00

I edit all of the photos you send me. I adjust the tint. I fix the levels. I want them to look more like you do. I match your digitised face to the one stored inside of me.

2008-02-27T13:40:00.001-05:00

I am teaching ethics next fall.

2008-02-27T12:30:00.000-05:00

We do not see coloured things.
We see things in colour.

2008-02-26T10:20:00.002-05:00

Musicianship matters. I did not see that hint of greatness in St. Vincent that I saw in My Brightest Diamond. We tolerate play-along tracks in live concerts, but I wonder why?

2008-02-26T02:37:00.002-05:00

I am glad we walked to the Warhol and back. Otherwise, we might not have had a chance to listen to the creaky ice together.

2008-02-24T16:06:00.001-05:00

I see glimpses of myself in Chad Vangaalen.

2008-02-24T14:57:00.002-05:00

I would call it 'an irrational attraction to arms'.

2008-02-24T12:30:00.002-05:00

I spoke too soon. My personal stereo is destroyed.

2008-02-23T22:24:00.003-05:00

I put my iPod through the washer and dryer. And it still works and looks the same. Impressive.

2008-02-23T21:57:00.001-05:00

Things are beginning to bloom here. I see it. I see it in the way they say.

2008-02-18T01:33:00.003-05:00

My peers are questioning my narrative strategy. They say that my point of view is displaced in certain instances. But who is to say that there is a point of view at all? And why would I trust others whose writing I had no desire to emulate?

The difficulty is that I expected nearly every comment I received. That is a good sign for me. It shows that I was precisely aware of what it is that I was trying to accomplish. It is a bad sign insofar as it is unclear how I am to revise my fiction with their remarks.

Follow the key signature. Do not play wrong notes.

2008-02-17T01:26:00.001-05:00

Remember what happened 31 December 2005 - 1 January 2006.

2008-02-16T20:55:00.004-05:00

Can I write a story without fantastic events? Not until episodes of that sort cease to occur in the ordinary.

2008-02-16T12:35:00.002-05:00

My fiction reads like a mongrel of news articles and poems.

2008-02-15T12:24:00.002-05:00

Do not mistake opacity for profundity.

2008-02-15T01:12:00.000-05:00

Exercises of the Imagination.

2008-02-14T10:35:00.005-05:00

I have been having these heretical thoughts that the function of a story is not to present a closed system occupied by fictional individuals with determinate traits that assign them motivations which explain their behaviour. What a story does is present a host of sentences which place restrictions on the generation of a make-believe world. But anything might happen. Even direct specifications of events and attitudes might be doubted. And there is nothing incoherent about that. As always, is a distance between what is reported and what occurs.

We use heuristics to read. We synthesise each sentence and incorporate it into our representation of the fictional world, and using theoretical vocabulary like 'character' and 'plot' help us do this. But heuristics, as Newell and Simon have shown, do not invariably yield the right results. An algorithm, of course, would, but, if what I am saying is correct, there are no interpretative algorithms by which we can specify an underspecified system, nor could there ever be any.

This has the consequence of casting doubt on any notion of there being a 'logical ending' to a story -- something taught to me in my fiction workshop yesterday. In a world without empirical constraints, anything conceptually possible is possible, and this is true even if it upsets our hermeneutics.

The story did not have to end with the young woman finding her place in the world, which, in this specific instance, was in a gourmet kitchen.

2008-02-13T11:00:00.003-05:00

Let me syntactically prime you with my idiosyncratic prose. I want to see you employ odd conventions.

2008-02-13T01:29:00.002-05:00

Surrounded by thinkers.

2008-02-09T22:49:00.000-05:00

I wish I had a little cat roaming around my apartment.

2008-02-09T14:36:00.000-05:00

Did I do something out of character? I hardly recognised myself on the phone.

2008-02-08T11:31:00.001-05:00

I have the luxury of idle time.

2008-02-08T03:36:00.000-05:00

It is of no interest to me whether characters like this have ever been generated. That the possibility of their generation exists is all that matters. It is a philosophical point with aesthetic consequences.

2008-02-08T03:26:00.000-05:00

Fictional worlds are underspecified worlds.

2008-02-08T03:23:00.000-05:00

Narrative.
Character.
Exposition.
Backstory.
Symbolism.
Metonymy.

These are theoretical words. If you wish to use one, you had better understand what it is that you wish to succeed in doing by using it. Say you want to analyse a fiction, and your goal is to succeed in understanding of why it is that someone in the text did such-and-so. The answer might plausibly be that he or she had a certain character. But what if we abandon this value -- the idea that we might explain such-and-so with respect to some static property that person has? It would seem that the utility of the theoretical expression would vanish altogether. We may as well abandon the tool.

I get the sense that nearly every writer takes these words to pick out static literary kinds. I suggest we abandon them in conceptualising literary work, and see how far we can go.

2008-02-07T11:28:00.000-05:00

This line between fiction and reality is impossible to keep straight. There is no clean division between the two.

There are sometimes disclaimers at the beginning of novels explaining that any similarities between fictional and real characters and events are entirely coincidental.

As if fictions are developed in a vacuum! As if dreams come from nowhere!

2008-02-07T01:33:00.001-05:00

It is an intellectually fertile place: the Cathedral of Learning.

2008-02-07T01:27:00.000-05:00

I read Hemingway next to Sellars. Because that is how I do things in Pittsburgh.

2008-02-06T12:26:00.000-05:00

I refereed a paper in the philosophy of mind for a conference. 23 pages of well-written nonsense. It was defending a realism and internalism about rules. I tore it to shreds, and recommended it -- with revisions -- for a poster presentation.

One of the memorable dummy arguments against internalism was that what I feel as painful in the actual world might be felt as pleasurable in a world whose material constitution was different.

2008-02-06T02:49:00.001-05:00

My adviser refuted two months of hard work in two sentences. His criticism is so devastating that I cannot help but smile a little. I am already thinking of my next paper for him.

2008-02-05T22:58:00.000-05:00

These job talks are tiresome to watch. One of my professors put it succinctly.

'It makes me worried about Gresham's Law in philosophy.'

None of these candidates seem particularly special. This is to make no claim about their academic achievements. They are all sharp and accomplished. It is only to say that there is a serious dearth of people on the market with any intellectual character.

It makes me depressed and happy to be here.

2008-02-05T10:44:00.000-05:00

Anyone who has ever done a technical search on cycling-related matters has found Sheldon Brown on the internet. He died yesterday. It is impossible to test, but I think it would go without saying that he knew more about bikes than anyone ever has. And we have the closest thing we could get to proof: his website.

I emailed him once four years ago when I was first getting interested in fixed-gear bicycles. Believe it or not, they were only a fraction of us back then, though I still felt like minor poseur when I started. Anyway, the one gap I found on his page is that there seemed to be no thoughts on the bolt-on cog design for LeVeL hubs. He replied saying that it was pointless to reinvent the wheel. Lockrings work just fine. And now we know.

2008-02-05T01:43:00.000-05:00

She told me she was a country mouse.

2008-02-02T18:13:00.000-05:00

The cure to wanting to be a philosopher is an Analysis subscription.

2008-02-02T03:23:00.000-05:00

I really want my copious punctuation marks to slow down the speed of reading. Because I should like to be read slowly. (As I myself read.)

- L. W.

2008-01-31T01:05:00.000-05:00

Goodbye, friend. The co-op will never be the same without you.

2008-01-30T21:31:00.001-05:00

Our standards for electronic communication are so low.

2008-01-30T17:47:00.001-05:00

This story is making me explode. I am getting sentimental.

2008-01-30T00:45:00.001-05:00

Helicopters and head trauma.

2008-01-29T13:09:00.000-05:00

You have me thinking about community.

2008-01-29T03:47:00.001-05:00

I do not recognise these legs.

2008-01-29T01:50:00.000-05:00

That an organism responds to electrical stimulation, lacks a central nervous system or cries is no demonstration that it ought to be edible or inedible. We need better principles guiding our dietary restrictions than that.

2008-01-28T23:46:00.001-05:00

I get overly enthusiastic when blood pumps through my body like that. Accordingly, I spent too long questioning your description of quinoa. You said it was crunchy. I could not let that go.

2008-01-28T23:44:00.000-05:00

I liked the way we were in that cave.

2008-01-28T14:10:00.000-05:00

I doubt there is a department quite like this for me. The course offerings for next semester look perfect.

2008-01-28T01:14:00.000-05:00

My system breaks down when someone asserts something flagrantly false. If he or she continues to endorse it despite being committed to other incompatible propositions, it becomes evident that our disagreement is more than a matter of taste. We inhabit different logical spaces althogether.

2008-01-27T14:39:00.000-05:00

The night she might: it was a possibility he could not ignore.

2008-01-27T14:26:00.000-05:00

I am annexed in my apartment, writing fiction. It is even more solitary than writing philosophy. In philosophy, you are forever engaged in a dialogue with towering historical figures. But you construct your world from the bottom-up in fiction. You generate your own history.

2008-01-26T12:54:00.001-05:00

A wonderful card came in the mail today, housed in a little textured envelope. The words were inscribed with colourful metal point pens.

2008-01-25T21:35:00.000-05:00

I had a dream yesterday that you were cradling me in your arms. We were sitting in front of a pair of computer speakers, listening to sleepy music. I touched your arm with my head accidentally, and then you brought me into you.

2008-01-25T21:06:00.000-05:00

I enjoy food the way I do because of you.

2008-01-25T03:19:00.000-05:00

A former coworker of mine had a climbing accident last week. He was evacuated from Mount Harvey with severe head trauma. He is alive, but his condition is unknown. He played a key role in generating my interest in the activity.

2008-01-24T12:02:00.000-05:00

They brought me rice cakes.

2008-01-23T14:25:00.000-05:00

The concept of a pink houndstooth dress.

2008-01-22T23:05:00.000-05:00

How many thoughts do I think each day? Is there no determinate number, or is it that the barrier to enumerate is strictly pragmatic?

2008-01-20T21:33:00.000-05:00

Even I was impressed with the execution of my Sunday lunch party.

2008-01-20T04:17:00.000-05:00

I am on a radical sleep schedule.

2008-01-19T18:48:00.000-05:00

I am constantly using new methods to get where I want. Not because I find my old modes of engagement to be ineffective, but because my destination keeps changing.

2008-01-18T02:58:00.001-05:00

It is the most ambitious fiction I have ever attempted to write. There are recurring images of alphanumeric characters, gourmet foods and snow. It ends in great sorrow, but not without palpable beauty. I will invite you to read it soon.

2008-01-14T22:51:00.000-05:00

Oh! How you say it!

2008-01-14T08:02:00.001-05:00

It is hard to read what you write
because it barely matters what you say.