September 13, 2003

Finally achieved the point today where I had competing social engagements. One of them was to help Elaine (the chellist from last night's bonfire) move into their new home. Lucky for me, she ended up having that one under control. So, I ended up joining a merry foursome to go to a members-only event at the Yerba Buena. It was a talk/demo of some modern music centered around the koto by Miya Masaoka. This was layered over things like hissing insects and EEG sensors hooked up to azaelias - conceptually very cool. This would have been more than enough in my undergraduate days, when listening to a fractal waveform piped out of a 1970's era synth was All That and a Bag of Chips. But I think I've reached a point where "experimental music" unfortunately needs to incorporate an element of "sounding pleasant" for me to really appreciate it. That's probably a step in a good direction if I want to mesh well with Joe America. Anyway, the artist was apparently a master of the koto. But as far as I'm concerned, Mingus has got her beat - he can get a koto out of an upright bass (and he can sing).

In addition to that, I've spent some time at Berkeley for the past two days. Then tonight Anand, old friend from MIT, had a housewarming party. The house was in the Southwest Berkekely suburbs, which are largely unpretentious and quite lovely inside. Some crazy tile work in the john. But not a lot of solid social traction there. Good to see Anand and some other folk from MIT representin' though.

Woven throughout this tale was young Jesse Thompson. This is a guy Meredith met through Friendster. Now, I have severe issues with Friendster - mostly that it sucks people out of the real world and has people staring at a screen to do things that would be better accomplished face-to-face. But I guess it's cool that it helps you hook up with new people in unfamiliar places. I have a definite feel of connecting with people who are trying to push through to The Good Thing. I think that's a large part of what this trip is about.

Anyway, the main reason for bringing him up is that we had dinner on the way to the Berkeley party at a gucci pizza place. And I think we had better luck connecting with the waitresses there than we did with anyone at the party. Maybe our mood was wrong.