Names of famous people converted to hip hop aliases
- Bling Crosby
- Willem Da Foe
- AK Rowling
- GAT Stevens
- Emcee Escher
Daily
A rewatch of The Office (US) has me recognising some of the characters in some jobs of the past. There was someone who was very similar to Angela. Several Phyllis'. Kelly, Andy.
The most horrifying question, though, is who am I?
Past neighbours who maybe had habit:
- Upstairs neighbour who would practice her slam poetry loudly. A bit of a Kae Tempest thing. Not bad.
- A band who did a sort of Black Sabbath/Sleep/Weedeater thing. The aroma that came from their warehouse unit was absolutely pungent and appropriate for the music. Not bad.
- A painter. Think Tony Hancock in The Rebel. Bad.
There are digital images of analog things. Shooting expensive film that has particular characteristics and then scanning it to make it digital and shareable, and getting the particular characteristics of whatever sensor does the scanning, too.
There are analog images of digital things. Putting music originally recorded digitally onto vinyl, making some kind of perceived analogue warmth that was never there in the first place.
Maybe they're both illogical and maybe I'll just keep doing both of these things.
There was a period for me where music with the most notes crammed into the smallest space was the mark of something that was really special. I still like that, but to call on a tired cliche, it's the space between the notes that makes me feel things now.
In American Symphony Jon Batiste dedicates a piece of music to his wife, Suleika Jaouad, who was battling lukemia at the time. In between the dedication and starting to play he leaves a pause that feels as if it'll never end. It says more than any note could.
Silence in music was probably most famously explored by John Cage in his piece 4'33", though for me this was always more of a conceptual piece lacking any context for the silence. With Batiste's piece, the silence is heartbreaking.
Hindsight is not, unfortunately, looking at butts.
It's realising 20 years late that I should have got a student visa to study anything at all in order to move to New York.
There are other examples but this is the one that stings a little right now.
The 9-5 office life was, in hindsight, no good for me. For years I went further, starting between 7 and 8 so that I could leave earlier and make the most of the day. Getting up earlier and getting to work and grinding it out is sold as the way most productive people work. I do not work this way.
Being able to get up later, have a slower morning, be online for a morning meeting around 10 before doing light work until lunch. After lunch, focussed work time until around 6. Dinner, watch a film or something, then work again from around 8pm until 10. Bed at around midnight.
Remote work lets me do this, office work does not. Being able to work when I feel more productive makes a huge difference to the quality and quantity of my output.