The Grey Static of Light Rain

Pattern Recognition and Pumpkins

"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore.” - Hannah Arendt

As information fractures it becomes less relevant as to what is true, rather it becomes what is reasonable, serviceable and within one’s framework. This isn’t overly different to “truth” in a traditional sense as all knowledge must undergo the mediation of the self. Truly we have a lens on everything, a unique lens, as unique as each individual.

One reason why truth is fragmenting is because we are now able to use our individual lenses to a greater degree - filtering and curating our feed through algorithmic, fetishised, personalised and siloed niches of the internet/social media experience.

Previously we all enjoyed fewer sources of truth. Newspapers, radio, film and TV was a uniform phenomenon that we all shared in a similar way. Choice was still there but it wasn’t tailored to your proclivities - en loop.

Are we better off with a more curated experience? Or was it better when the lie … sorry truth was more ubiquitous? One thing I’ll say in defence of the side that’s hardest to defend - the modern format of siloed experience can allow for a deeper dive. If you think about it - the internet is chucking things at you that you want … more and more of what you want, deeper, more detailed, more and more. I like this world of pattern recognition, following the clusters like topography rather than linear understanding. I leap from node to node taking note of the ridge line I used to traverse. One can still be fooled of course, easily - led down the garden path as a useful patsy for a certain agenda. Before you know it you’ve shot a president.

We only perform tasks in a certain way because it is the clearest expression we are capable of when explaining/transmitting a certain aspect of existence. Is there an intention that lay behind the manifestation of the act within the world? Are we feeding solitons into existence that code for the clusters of reality we witness?

When I view history now, with less childish eyes - I see a great many grand narratives fall apart under scrutiny. That’s not to say they still might not be true only that there is doubt, and that preponderance of doubt can’t all be due to coincidence. Something has to give in the following:

Moon landings

JFK

Nuclear weapons being a thing

Viruses being a thing

Space in general as we understand it

UFOs

The World Fairs

Dinosaurs

The theory of evolution

WWII

WWI

The Holocaust

Pedophiles in the church, government and entertainment industry with all that satanic stuff too. Adrenochrome?

You get the idea … oh and 9/11 of course. There’s more …

The patterns are too ambiguous to be chance and to corroborated to be narrative management.

But of course all of this is being chucked at me by the internet and has nothing to do with the view outside which looks like this.

I’m back in the Octagon. 🛑 Round two. Ding Ding.

It had been communicated to me by the hosts that directly across from the property was thousands of acres of crown land and after a couple of days of being here my thoughts turned towards a little field trip. The dogs would want to come of course, insist is the better word.

🐶🐕🦮🐩🐕‍🦺🐾🦴

There is Gus - the doggiest dog to have ever dogged. Gus is the ultimate warrior. He is single minded in his purpose, his only purpose - to retrieve the thing you throw in as rapid and efficient a manner as possible. This is all he lives for. Food is devoured at lightening speed lest it cut into ball throwing time. If you go out the door to grab a few logs for the fire at 3am, he is there. Waiting. A ball lay equidistant between you. He is silent and as still as the night. He barely pants because he has the respiratory system of an elite athlete and he never barks … never have I heard it. I look up and can see the breast milk of stars. A grey feather of cloud hovers to cover the moon. I look back to Gus. He stares at the ball then flips his eyes to mine in the hope that perhaps I will indulge him for the 9,788,455th time.

And then there is Harley. What a disappointment. Harley is a scraggly little terrier of some kind. He is the Walter Matthau of the two. He whines, coughs and is generally very upset with the state of the world. He has no interest in the ball. How could you even? It would be like being the midget retarded wheelchair bound brother of Michael Jordan wanting to follow in your younger brother’s star studded footsteps. Harley likes food and complaining. He will sit at the door (neither dog is allowed inside which is a rule I fully agree with) around dinner time and just whine. He will do this for about an hour or two and eventually give up or you give in, whichever comes first.

Both dogs love a quad bike ride though!

Harley sits in the front basket and Gus stands behind you on a flat tray.

I fired her up.

I am not experienced on these machines at all. But hey what could go wrong?

We left the perimeter of the farm and crossed over into crown land being careful to take the left hand path (ominous) so as to avoid the neighbour’s driveway.

You got to get a good speed up. The automatic gears are broken on this particular bike so you get them revs up and click through the gears. The wind starts rustling in your ears, sticks and rocks crash into the underside of the bike and Gus leans in on you for stability. Small streams crisscross the sandy track and one point smoke poured out from the front of the bike. “Oh no! I’ve burnt something out,” I thought but then realised it was just steam from the creek water as it struck the hot engine.

What fun!

I managed to toss Gus off the back over a particularly rough section but in true Gus form he was back on the bike in under four seconds flat. My main concern was getting lost. There is no cell phone coverage and Google maps goes blank. I only doubted myself once and I figured after all, with a full tank of gas, I would get back home eventually. I turned around after 30 minutes or so and headed back to the farm. We arrived just as a rain front was coming in. Perfectly timed, the gods smiled, I turned the key and the bike spluttered into silence. Gus dropped a ball at my feet.

A different energy this time for sure. Last time I was here I feverishly wrote the “Fire Your Arrows” Album. Probably the most aggressive music I have attempted. This time round is more like a Bioshpere album. But the studio is not with me anymore and shall not be in the future as I feel, at least for now, I have nothing to say musically. The other problem is I think I have gone about as far as I can in my partnership - me and an iMac. I’d need to play with other musicians to make the project exciting again.

Perhaps I shall turn my hand to fiction writing … I don’t know or move to the back of Bourke with the razorbacks and flies. A serious offer! Thank you Michael.

For now I’ll just admire the static grey that coats a tree-line in light rain.

This time round I have a generator so if the power goes out I can still get water. The property is on tank water and an electric pump turns on when you turn on a tap. I assume it works by pressure sensitivity. However it does, it works marvellously well and I have rarely had a better shower.

Those are not tiny show pumpkins like you get in a White woman’s instagram.

The truth of it is, if you want to enjoy life, the best of it can be found in the simplicity of letting it happen. Earth is generally merciful because the rain ends and the sun comes out. There’s no need to try to change any of that. All sicknesses of the mind can be traced back to a dis-ease with the world. Putting yourself in opposition or trying to control everything takes the fun out of it, cheapens the experience.

This is a problem with all media - it’s not a reality in that you are, intentionally or not, shaping what you absorb. Reality is the unmitigated. I watch the breeze shake a leaf of its water droplets and there is no escaping this. It is thrust upon me with no prior conditions - nothing I did or had any knowledge of. It just happened. Being a “victim” of reality, a hapless witness, is the thin edge because that is where the unexpected will surprise you.

This is my last song.

DB/