—–THIS SECTION WAS WRITTEN STARTING 2/12/22—–

Art. Y’know? What’s the point of making art? What is the whole point?

Don’t let an appeal to authority from me sway you, but I happen to think that humans are inherently expressive things. I was taught to believe that there is art in everything, and that everyone is capable of expressing themselves in a sophisticated manner.

So art must be as natural as anything else is. As natural as the red rocks in Utah and Mt. Rainier. Inevitable, even, that everyone will eventually do something artful. I tend to try to make something of everything, because I know someone out there might not be taking the time. I empower you to read into everything you possibly can.

We live in an age of ephemeral media, driven by the march of technology and changing mediums. No matter what happens, I still find myself scribbling a poem and taking my pictures. I don’t have to say it out loud, but it’s been a weird few years, hasn’t it? It’s been almost 2 years now since lockdown started here, and the world still finds more horrors to throw upon the world.

And with those horrors come NFT bros, crypto enthusiasts, demonetizations on YouTube, the disappearing of smaller creators on increasingly corpo platforms, and all kinds of fun stuff.

I’ve rejoined instagram today with the mind to not pay mind to the algorithm too much, but to give Zuckerberg’s CPU something to chew on. I’m going to actively put myself out there. I’ve acquired so many more odd skills than I know what to do with during lockdown and the last week or so has put them all into a sort of alignment. Pyramid of needs time stuff.

—–THIS SECTION WAS WRITTEN STARTING 7/5/22—–

There’s always a fun bloodchilling moment when you realize that you’ve changed your mind on something, or discovered something that exists all around you. Either an option, a manner of communication, something to pay attention to, or even attaining some of that material wealth that’s so wonderful.

This space here has become a very interesting spot for me to wax, yes, about all the things I’m up to and all the things that have been bothering me. I do try my best to stay on topic and talk about my art and others’ art but *gestures wildly* there are many parts of the world begging for our mind’s eyes all the time to the point it becomes difficult for me to focus.

I’m certainly someone that needs to become bored to do much I feel worthwhile. I’m either burned at both ends or looking forward to the next break, most of the time (or have been) up until quite recently. And then when I am productive I come here and talk about how Xilent’s music has had an impact on me (for like the fifteenth time).

You ever have a really stubborn lawn-mower in your hands? One that you know is gassed up, has oil, and is perfectly functional, aside from the rip-cord that refuses to do its duty and start the damn thing? You work in cycles to figure it out, start at step one, check everything again, and then pull the cord.

Personally, I eventually will reach a certain level of frustration I only otherwise reserve for printers, where as best as I can describe I’m trying to make the mower feel pain. I rip the cord so fast and so hard it feels like a violence. Like I’m doing something wrong. Of course, I know I am (because if it were the right thing to do the mower would have responded way before it got to this point), but it feels really good to exact some kind of vengeance on the stubborn lawn mower. Like, in the moment, I understand I’m exercising a really vivid form of catharsis, by unleashing some kind of short fuse I must have on a thing that I’ve deemed deserving.

So too do I creatively run in a cycle where I probe myself for the things I’ve done before again and again in a weird frustrating loop; where I try to build up the magic from ages long past. I found out about Xilent a decade ago, or extremely close to a decade ago. But yet I keep going back every year or so to those first albums I found to rekindle a magic I feel I had at the time.

It’s taken a long time for me to realize that what magic I’m describing is as simple as innocence. I had very little idea what taxes were back then, and was fantastically ignorant of the state of the world, closed off in a little box forgotten about in my own mind and happy to be there. The nostalgia for that time is so powerful that I want to keep ripping the cord to get that magic going again.

But I know now that the lawn’s already mowed. I did it two hours ago. I’m in the middle of a small patch of grass that shouldn’t even be a ‘lawn’ and I keep annihilating it so it looks nice to the neighbors and keeps my property value up.

I want to plant some clover, dammit! I want to feed the bees with flowers and discover the mosses that grow in shade.

I’ve kept returning to this place in my head over and over again and it looks different every time. But I’ve tried to photograph, write, and video my way to an idealized version of that place that doesn’t reflect my creative landscape as well as it should. I’ve let nostalgia inform my art for too long.

Which is why I think I never developed a voice to express that anger I have for the world, the flaws in my own character, the deficiencies I see. Not to say those are inherently good things to make art about, they are great things to be able to recognize as a human being. There are languages of my own art I never felt able to express because I had never tried. I never tried because that wasn’t going to be true to my idealized self, my innocent self. But that’s not been who I am in a very long time.

Today I woke up exceptionally late for my job, got there with no time to spare, did my job reasonably well, and then went home after learning quite a bit about two people in my workspace. I had something from a vending machine to eat, and brought leftovers from home. I listened to a great deal of The Claypool Lennon Delirium all day. I played a bit of Destiny 2 when I got home after mowing the weeds, and have devoured what’s left of a bag of white cheese popcorn. I finally moved my progress pride flag to my window like I’ve been meaning to. Yesterday with some renewed energy I cleaned up my whole office and rearranged things so it made more sense.

I really want to 3d print something but can’t make up my mind on what, because the thing I want to print needs to be printed in ABS. I want to get into a raiding group in Destiny but I have some people coming over to drop off a bus in a few minutes before dinner so I don’t really want to make a commitment yet. I have 2 poem ideas but haven’t drafted them yet. I have the Hope EP collection but haven’t figured out what to do with it. And I’m staring at a crystal formation growing from atop a rock that my wife got me some time ago, spinning on a turntable I use to cure resin prints.

I finished reading Jenny Odell’s How to do Nothing. No spoil

—–THIS SECTION WRITTEN STARTING 7/15/22—–

No spoilers, but it was really good and you should read it. It broadly covers a phenomenon that Radio Reality City is concerned about, called the attention economy. Consume reality, right? You should know those three words by heart by now.

I admit, in the manner I imagine a chaise lounge bound patient at a psychologist, that I have had a problem. An addiction, let’s say, to distractions. Even now I find myself fractured into multiple patiences, plenty of gas in the tank, but no one place my brain can put attention to. I end up overloading myself into a frenzy or shut down and doomscroll on reddit for hours on end. It’s hard to not be wrapped up, isn’t it?

Well that’s the foundation that Radio Reality City was founded upon. As I try to recapture old magic and rehash the story of my discovery of Xilent for the fifth time, I realize that there are more magics out there. Bo Burnham might desrcibe this as a myopic worldview. Where’s my magic at?

It’s in my fingers and toes, and in my ears listening to the sounds of what’s around me, in my eyes drinking in the details like an alcoholic with no last call. But do you see how bored I got with the previous section of writing? Just gave up! Right in the middle of a word.

You see me here as a strange bundle of emotions and more focused thoughts. My heart is so unfocused now but my interests are so honed, it feels a little suffocating.

So I went slightly further back. Further than We Are Virtual. If you know me, if you know the Jake here typing this, you might have a weird inkling on where this is going. Perspective warps things like a redshifted galaxy in the JWST.

When I was pretty much a child (see: teen-age-r) I got into a relationship I thought was stellar and beautiful and new and fantastic and all that shit. First relationships have some kind of weird power in them, don’t they? I’m sure I’ve publicly waxed about that here before. I’m not a Swiftie, if you’re more interested in that kind of expression (the break up songs, the weird sappy art that’s made by someone well-intentioned) go find a Taylor Swift album or something I don’t know. Not linking those poems here, lol.

In a way I have harnessed before, but in a wholly different way, I wrote about that relationship. Usually a poem of a snapshot of a moment to cap an evening or image in my head. But this one was different, like a say, and in a strange bout of hysteria and some kind of intoxication I committed a 26-page short story about my perceptions of that relationship. Like, then and there, nearly immediately following the termination of that relationship.

There were details embellished, details removed and changed, and a spin on the perspective that should be clued in by its working title: “Fear and Loathing in Olympia”. What a pretentious little thing, huh? Christ, just looking at the manuscript made my skin crawl for a very long time. It almost feels like bad juju just bringing it up again, but it’s way easier to bring up than all the awful fanfictions that came out of me when I was an actual elementary and middle schooler. It was a golden age on the Maximum Ride fan site in 2010, letmetellya.

So why talk about this again, why hash this bullshit that’s been in the dirt for nearly a decade?

I like to imagine that as someone grows, like rings of a tree, their art and creations will reflect the things that happened while they were growing. So reading about Rothko, Zach De La Rocha, Michelle Zauner, fucking Banksy, anything about one’s output makes me wonder how I would be reflected in my art over time.

I have abandoned the pretense of my poetry being stone machinations to stand the test of time, to remain the level that they were written when they were written. I’m actually reading poetry now, actually getting more technical, learning more form, more verse, and nothing of it yet is something I want to show off.

But back to this story, about that past relationship. It’s called “Natural” (because a song I really like about relationships is also called Natural, get it?).

I wrote so much poetry in addition to this short story that I ended up collating it all into a special edition. As special as anyone can make something I might consider to be my lowest low in terms of writing.

Not that I think much (remember, much) of it is technically bad, it just has a rotten soul. Like the spirit of the meaning is so… lost to time, so made up in a frenzy that it’s pretty much impermeable to anyone but that period of time, and that person I was in that time, alone. I shiver when I read the opening paragraphs but only because I know where it came from, where it goes, and how it ends. Not for fear, but for cringe.

The story itself is a haze, a strange non-linear sequence of simple moments that I felt were magical in some way, or exposed a part of my character in some way. Even as I type this I feel like I’m still contributing to that project by writing what is ostensibly an essay as to its inspiration.

But going back, now, to Natural, is even stranger than it was before. I wrote it in a timeless dreamland, intentioned to drive the symbols and meanings into the core of the planet, unshaken. Like a weird collection of legends, I dusted off the “Capitus Edition” pdf that’s lived on my computer for years and flipped through it. Not really with any purpose, but I’ve been trying to be more attentive to my own art and what I’m good/bad at. Yeah the “romance” that the story is built upon is one of few things that are told, but the conversations now are so distant I don’t remember what actually happened in some of these moments that are more autobiographical.

Still, you can find the r/menwritingwomen tropes in some places. Turns of phrase unwelcome. Imprecise language throughout. Sometimes executed perfectly, and mostly harmless, but sometimes very obvious and immersion-killing.

There is a disconnect of place I wove in that’s surprising to come across, though, some things done very well and with a more restrained hand. I think this is the thing I’ll be probing for when I look through and revise much of my old poetry. I have a loose grasp of place, and I think it’s a reflection of how I see the world. But it definitely hampers my ability to talk too much about concrete things, super concrete tangible things.

Real places, real characters, elude me. I would rather suspend a story within a pocket dimension or write about an archetype pulled from my life, instead of something rooted in evidence or reality. Isn’t that funny?

As I get more upset at the state of the world, I don’t feel the same comfort as I once did with writing so disconnected. There is too much too real for me to ignore.

So slipping into Natural for an evening and looking for the devices, frames, and symbolism I used is more interesting to me with the passage of time and a complete ununderstanding of the person who wrote it. I’m listening to completely different music as I type this than I would have when I typed that. It’s oddly grounding for me as an “author”.

But don’t take this as evidence that I’m producing more. I am, but not because I’m reading. I feel more of a compulsion to push myself and push my rhetoric into poems. The things I say and the things I make are more closely aligning, like much of the artists I admire.

Strategy and intention. Always. Consume Reality. Always.

Consume Natural? At your own risk, I’m not posting it here. You find it or reach out if you want it. But I’m finding the magic in the story with which only I understand.

You know that scene in Interstellar? Yeah, that one, the fifth dimension insano shit.

It feels like for the first time, the past me is reaching out to future me, and demanding I find something in the time capsule that maybe only now I’ll understand. How much is there to learn from something I have raided the tomb of over and over again?

A skeleton emerges from its cask and shambles into my office, a world apart from its resting place. It says “Look, you fuck, read your meanings”. I don’t even know what I’m trying to say, but there is nothing-something magic in that sentiment.

I pick up my journal right where I left because I think there’s a reason that I’m not equipped to understand yet, so I’d better go ahead and publish it. Right?

Consume reality!

Radio Reality City!

And don’t read Natural, or if you do pirate it! Or let me pirate it for you by circumventing the publisher (me).

There’s a lot of media coming out lately that aligns with something I like to see: the extension of a chosen medium to make its artistic statement. When the very piece you’re engaging with has its presence be a part of its meaning, that really gets to me. I can’t usually get ahold of such a wealth of this type of art, but this last year has been a veritable cornucopia of content. Mostly depressing or dealing with sad themes, of course.

There is the vaporwave music kick I’ve been on, which uses the philosophy of hauntology and analog horror to imbue musak with a more overt sense of dread and unease. The audio itself sounds possessed by the dreams of mall rats from the 80’s. It’s fantastic.

Effervescent art streams hosted by musical artists once and once only.

The bringing back from the dead of old videos on YouTube.

And a weird right hook I’ve just stumbled across called Cruelty Squad. A game about a hyper an-cap future where you play as a hitman in a gig economy, and features an organ harvesting mechanic where you can sell people’s livers after you’ve eaten them. Pretty grim stuff. The thematics are underscored (or overscored) by PSX-era polygonal graphics and old-school Rainbow Six tactical gameplay, and wearing the skin of a “500 games for $10” disk. Ultra ugly textures and audio that make it almost hard to play at first.

Never taking a moment to explain themselves, these pieces of art are just waiting for someone to stumble across them, and imbue their own meaning.

As climate depression has been hitting me pretty hard this last week or so, seeing the clouds roll in and a light rain take hold has done wonders for my soul. I’ve been able to imbue my own meaning and thankfulness to the cooler air, and I’ve taken that to heart by taking my notebook out again and scribbling a bunch of lines before putting it away.

I have seen some movement here and there on my Redbubble shop which is really cool. First sale I made was from Australia, someone wanting a postcard of a Rainier shot of mine. So I’m a little over the moon.

I have also broken out the Helios 40-2 again. It’s like putting on an old jacket, how comfortable it is to have on the A7. And I’ve begun drawing out designs for an autofocus mount for it so I can throw it on the Pronto adapter and never have to turn its focus ring again. 3d printer is operable once more, so I’ll be able to manufacture a hook and bearing system with PLA and TPU. If this works out I’ll make a whole post for it and upload the files to Thingiverse or something. It’s not so much an undertaking as fighting Blender to make sure it doesn’t crash when I press a wrong button. And waiting for batteries for my calipers to arrive.

And speaking of that DIY ethic, I’ve now got my hands on an actual dual-Xeon server. I may be migrating this whole website at some point, but we’ll see how good with Linux I can get.

Let’s see… what else is there…

Halsey is releasing If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power as an art house music film, and I’ll be at an IMAX theater provided that the COVID numbers here don’t skyrocket much further. If it’s as good as the pedigrees of it’s producers, then it should be a sight to behold and it’ll be an interesting piece of media within its chosen medium.

I think that’s all for now. I’m working on sorting my old poems and releasing them as relevant collections, but it’s slow going. I’m plugging right along with slow but consistent progress.

Thank you guys for reading, and as always

Consume Reality!

Radio Reality City!

So here we are. Is it everything you expected it to be?

I almost died in a car crash yesterday. Someone jumped a median from the oncoming lanes and caught air in my direction. Thankfully, some kind of instinct took over and before I thought I saw it coming I was already swerved up onto the sidewalk to avoid it. Looking back, I must have been missed by inches. Judging by the aftermath when I sprang out after hitting my hazards and pulling over, the car was probably stolen and the guys that were in it took off in a different car that had been following them. After talking to the firefighters and police that showed up I doubt anything will come of it.

And that led to a very interesting evening where reality waved in and out, understanding just how fast that could have happened. Not exactly introspective about it, and somehow I’m managing to take it lightly. Woke up this morning with the Circle Jerks’ “I’m Alive” in my head despite not having heard that song in years.

Part of putting this here is that this is the only way to put it out there. With that withdrawl from Instagram, I’ve created a community Discord server at this link: https://discord.gg/mVjUPZrEDv mostly for chat regarding things here. Hopefully this can grow into something kinda neat but as of now no concrete plans for what it can become.

I’m also putting more stuff up on my Redbubble shop here https://www.redbubble.com/people/JakeThomasShaw/shop for some prints. I’m realizing that if I’m going to be a working artist ever I need to establish presence where it matters. Which is here and there and everywhere that doesn’t drain my time.

Part of this latest redesign of the website is to redistribute old content in a healthier format. I want to organize all the old poems and older content into .epubs and .pdfs for free upload. I think that’s a valuable thing. If anyone has any ideas of software that’s useful for either automation or bookmaking in that way, please leave a comment.

You guys really are the best for sticking with this, if I have any readers here from 2015 feel free to let me know, as well. I think it’s super cool that anyone’s been around for that long here prodding me along. If you guys have any favorite posts or poems hit me up! I’d like to make a best of compilation of some kind.

I know the site itself looks threadbare, but that’s only because new infrastructure is being laid again.

Consume reality! Radio Reality City!

A blog only seems to be a blog if you decide to use it every once in a while. Let’s roll the reel!

Another wedding down, this time again in Tacoma, and this time with an A7rii at my disposal. So I also had FE lenses, and made the most use of the G 28-70 and 90mm macro from Sony. I resisted the urge to take a Helios with me but I think I can next time. I’m way more comfortable with its quirks than other lenses at the moment.

I made use of flash more effectively than ever before, as it was a daylight-tuned indoor lighting affair. Which is hell on white balancing but hey, we can tough through it. I finally finally got the replacement hot mirror filter for the A6300, so I delegated it to having the 50mm f/1.8 mounted all night. Only to realize that no lights in the building put off infrared wavelengths, but hey! I got some good bursts with it.

Oh yeah, that was one thing about the A7rii that really told me it wasn’t for me, the buffer times are killer. Even on a high-speed SD with an extra row of pins, the cycle times were abysmal in a fast-paced environment. That’s what I get for using a portraiture camera as a main carry during an event, I suppose. That’s why the A9 exists.

That very week I was able to use the A7rii for a studio portraiture shoot, and that’s where it really shined. As I’m dipping my toes into portrait shooting, I’m realizing that those kinds of camera bodies are a little much for me and too much con for their megapixel pro.

I recently got hands-on with the Fujifilm GFX100, too, that 102 megapixel monster. It shows an unfortunate amount of detail, but in contrast to the A7rii, it can burst 5fps. BUUUUT the buffer on it is even longer after stressing out the sensor and processor that much. I have never shot with medium format, period. So this was a wicked opportunity to test the current hypercar-equivalent.

Fujifilm, when it comes to cameras, seems to really be vested in photography that simulates the film look, but having ALSO recently gotten hands on with some of the latest Leica stuff, I can say with confidence that Fujifilm is getting away from the physical design quirks in their higher level bodies that Leica is staying true to.

During the presentation for how to use the GFX, they went hard on describing the technical, Apple-like qualities they’ve infused their product with and why that makes it so much better than anything else before it. It’s almost like they don’t want people to know that the Phase One cameras exist, and outclass it if compared spec-to-spec.

Their whole point seems to be making the camera feel nice to use, but god damn did those Leicas feel so much better to shoot with.

Shooting with a Leica M feels way more satisfying than shooting with the GFX100, personally. The GFX100 just isn’t for me, and I knew that going in, but even having felt the resolving power of 102 megapixels, I’m honestly not vexed.

My perfect medium format mirrorless would also be a digital rangefinder, probably capped at 40 megapixels, and it would be made by Leica. But that would probably cost more than a GFX100 and that’s where Fuji gets ya.

Which is fine! Becauuuuseeee…

After 7 months of fighting for it, I finally earned my upgrade, the Sony A7iii has joined my arsenal.

I’ve only had it for a week, but comparing it to the A7rii and the Fujifilm, I think I made the right choice by getting the base A7iii and not going for another build/manufacturer at this time. Who knows what weird things I’ll add onto this one, anyways.

And the names have been swapped! The A6300 is now Drang, and the A7iii is now Sturm. A bit pedantic, but important to me!

So far the greatest parts of the A7iii are the IBIS, the dual card slots, and the eye-tracking. I haven’t even bothered with the touch screen, and I’ve actually turned it off because the joystick feels so much better to use.

With the stock 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 I’ve been able to do just fine in pretty much every environment because the ISO grain on the A7iii handles itself EXTREMELY well. Incredible, coming from the A6300 (which I know had its share of heating issues).

Right! That’s where I’m at right now. Next is to actually use what I have in a field someplace. Fire investigation photography is alluring for my infrared camera, but I’m looking at more practical options for my visible light photography first. Let’s get crazy, but in a moment.

More weddings, more studios, more portraits. Onwards we go.

The city is moving, but things are changing.

Consume reality!

Radio Reality City!