Humanism

(Early January 2025)

In the spirit of having written every day on this blog, as in having written some kind of post every day for three days in a row now, which in the history of this blog is totally unprecendented, I will keep it going, and write yet another post. The challenge this time is, what to write about?

I am not much in the mood for writing, to tell you the truth. I am in the mood for living. But my environment is not currently all that conducive to living. Or, not living, exactly, but living passionately and with gusto, and savoring life and tasting the joys of life, as I kind of want to do right now, in some way.

I picked up the guitar, but I’m not quite in the mood. I am beset on both sides now, literally on both walls of my room, by people who I will be bothering if I unleash the beast, as has now happened multiple times. It’s dark, and I feel confined, in this room, and in my spirit.

Something I have learned about rock and rocking – you can’t do it without making noise. You must make noise. And if you are going to do it right, you must unleash. You can use headphones, but it’s not the same. We all know that. It’s not the same, and you’re bound to the headphones. It’s like a silent rave. Not a fan of the silent rave, even though I like the idea. But it’s not about being quiet. It’s almost the principle of the thing. It’s about making some fuckin’ noise. It’s about unleashing the beast, freeing your spirit, that’s what the fuck rock is all about.

I went to Gibson Garage today. I work in the same building as the Gibson headquarters, and their main store, the Gibson Garage, that has all the fancy Gibson guitars. It is a guitar player’s dream to be working in the same building as this Gibson Garage, and in the last week I’ve been in there probably four times. Today, again, I played the Kirk Hammett 1979 Flying V. The Epiphone verson. That guitar is absolutely amazing. I want it now. That’s the first one I was interested in, and I also have been interested in the Epiphone Extura Prophecy Explorer, but I picked it up today, and I just wasn’t that into it. But that Flying V, I picked up afterwards, and was once again, extremely into it. So that must be the guitar for me.

There is one other guitar that I really want to try out, and that’s the Fender Mustang, whatever. Some kind of Fender Mustang, with the racing stripe. I want to see what that guitar is all about. I first saw one at the Nashville New and Used Music store. Caught my eye, that one did. But I haven’t played it yet.

These days, I’m all into rocking. Punk rock, metal, heavy metal, grunge, rock of all of those flavors. That means Metallica, Nirvana, Sex Pistols, Ramones, Superheaven, Disturbed. Not much Disturbed right now, because I’ve already listened to it all and am waiting to crack into playing Disturbed. I have my hands full learning Nirvana stuff, and now just recently, Metallica. A completely different ball game. We are riffing the fuck out now. I LOVE it. I’ve been playing Blackened. Genius song, and genius writing, and heavy as fuck. The riffs outstanding. The Ramones and Sex Pistols is fun to play, but the Metallica so far is something else, because I’m actually getting to work the neck and do some riffing, some interesting fret work, that I haven’t done yet in my guitar player career, which is still pretty short. But today, at the Garage, I have been hooking into a $2700 Mesa/Boogie amp (the Mesa/Boogie Rectifier Badlander), and I played around with the knobs and settings, and with the Flying V, and I landed on a sound that was so heavy and chunky that I can say 100% it was the best sound I have ever gotten out of an amp/guitar combo. That was the sound for me. I need that sound in my life. I must have it. I asked the guitar pro guy, who’s name I should really remember, how can I get something like this sound but not pay $2700 for this Mesa/Boogie, and he recommended the Marshall DSL to me. And I keep hearing the name Marshall pop up, so I might have just found my next amp.

I titled this post Humanism because I had to think of something to title it, and I looked up and directly across the room in front of me was a small framed Keith Haring artwork poster, with this word written across the bottom. I can tell you a little story about this, the story of how I came to own this poster and three Yayoi Kusama framed posters. Here is the story, not the most riveting tale but mayhaps thou’ wilst enjoy it nonetheless.

When doing my Christmas shopping with my dearest sister we attended a local thrift store that I must have passed by many times and never noticed, although it was much further down Gallatin than I originally thought, so actually I have not passed by it so many times, and it looks like it would be a CVS or Wallgreens, and that’s probably what it once was, but it is not a thrift store, and I went with her to this thrift store that was so close to my house on Gallatin, and it was amazing and full of treasures and gems, and I spied a Yayoi Kusama poster, framed, for $18, that was calling to me, sitting in a wicker chair, all alone, and I thought, that this is here for a reason, but did I need it? No. And was I shopping for myself? No. I was there for other people. I was there to shop for other people, for Christmas, so I resisted and did not buy it, and I have often thought, if you aren’t sure, just don’t buy it, and if you are still thinking about it later, maybe then you can go back and get it, and be sure about it. That way you avoid making impulsive purchases. Well, guess what? After Christmas, and during Christmas, I kept thinking about that Yayoi Kusama poster. That frame. I wanted it, and I could justify it, because I am a Yayoi Kusama fan, with nothing to show for it, and it fills a niche in my room that I don’t have, which is any kind of connection to visual arts and the art world, that I do love and am interested in, and currently, you wouldn’t be able to tell if you looked around my room, except that I have one large handmade couch throw hanging on my wall, that I bought at a local Indian restaurant called Surya when I lived in Ozu machi, and then I have a fluid painting that I made awhile ago. So, my room is sorely lacking in wall art and especially of the art world, in the visual arts way, and so I wanted this poster, and I could justify it, and I had a little Christmas money to spend. Well, when I got back home to East Nashville, I went back to the thrift store to see if they still had the frame, and they still had it, and they had two others, and then they had the Keith Haring up on the wall, and I thought, I must buy all of these. I need to have all of these. I absolutely must, and this is important. And they were all $18. So now, in my room, I have three of these framed Yayoi Kusama exhibition posters, and one Keith Haring, and this was money well spent, and I don’t feel guilty at all. The reason being that it truly is a reminder and a link to the visual art and art lover in me, and I appreciate these frames and am reminded of that world every time I look at them. When I look at these Yayoi Kusama frames, I think about going to her exhibit when I was in New York, and I think about her story, from what little I know about it, and it makes me happy. My room, if it were going to be a representation of me, is now more complete, having these artworks. And someday, if anyone were going to enter into this room, they might say, “Cool pictures!” or they might say, “You like Yayoi Kusama?” and I would say, yes, I went and saw a Yayoi Kusama exhibit in New York, I love Yayoi Kusama. Keith Haring I don’t know much about and have not been to a Keith Haring exhibit, but I have always liked his work. I couldn’t say that I really knew his name or connected him with his art until I bought this frame, though. The Yayoi Kusama also ties in with my Japanese self, and that’s important. I have a nice bottle of Kagoshima shochu on my bookshelf, that also is a reminder. The word iconography has been in my mind, recently. The iconography of my room, that brings certain things to my mind. It is powerful.

I have been hanging out in my room more than I would really like to, because it’s winter, and after staring enough at these blank walls, I started to have ideas about how to decorate them. I have been leaning records against the wall, on the back of my couch, and I can display five records that way, which is amazing. After the Superheaven concert, I bought a record, which contained two copies of a folding album artwork, and I also got a free poster with my purchase, so here were two large rock visuals that I could tape to the wall, and then after doing that, I had the real brilliant idea, to rip up the picture book that come with my deluxe Bleach album (Nirvana), and stick all those pictures to my wall. I wasn’t looking through that book anyways, it was just sitting there in the record case. So I tore it up and stuck it all over the walls. Now I have had rock iconography, and I think more about rock, which is great. But the Yayoi Kusama and Keith Haring are something else, they give me something else to think about, and represent something else I care about, and love. So I’m glad I got those.

The Life Of A Rat

Scene – Student is sitting in college philosophy class. Professor is in a particularly tempestuous mood. Every other student is scrolling through Tik Tok on their phones.

*Professor is unaware of every student on phone. Professor has singled out Student not on phone.*

“Tell me son, is the life of a rat’s any difference from that of a human’s?”

*Student feels skin on his face concernedly.*

“Professor, my skin is so dry. Do you have any lotion? I forgot to put my African Shea Nut Butter on this morning.”

“Damn your skin! And no, sorry I don’t have any. Listen to me!”

*Professor slams hands down on table and looks directly at Student.*

“Answer me this – Is the life of a rat’s any different from that of a human’s?”

*The Student think this over.*

“Where does the rat live?”

“New York City.”

“And the human as well?”

“Yes.”

“I would say they are about equal, then.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, the rats don’t have to ride the train. I hear they have pretty good mental health care in their community as well.”

“If you believe this, then would you have any problem with trading places with a New York City rat? Assuming that you do live in New York City.”

*Student thinks this over.*

“Can I pick the rat?”

“No. Completely random.”

“Ok. No problem.”

“Interesting..”

*The Professor lifts hands up off of table and brings finger up to mouth in a contemplative gesture.*

“Ellie!”

*Professor attempts to get the attention of a female student in the back.*

“Ellie!!!”

*Ellie is lost in the Tok.*

*Student throws eraser at Ellie.*

“Wha- Oh my god.”

*Ellie is jolted back to reality. Professor slams hands back down on desk. Professor likes doing this.*

“What were you watching just now?”

*Professor is accusative.*

“Uhm.. I can’t remember.”

“Just try.”

*Ellie’s brain heats up.*

“There was.. an attractive man.. He had curly hair and was speaking fast.. Something about planting seeds..”

*Professor is encouraging.*

“Go on! What kind of seeds? Why were they being planted? Why, Ellie?”

*Ellie’s brain is really cooking now.*

“Seeds.. yes, yes they were lemon seeds! I remember now! I can do something with water and a paper towel and dirt! With just enough sunlight, I can grow minature lemon trees in my apartment window, and enjoy my own minature lemons!!”

*Ellie is excited.*

“Good Ellie, good!! Now, let me ask you one more question. Ellie. Ellie, stay with me girl!”

*Ellie is deep into another Tik Tok.*

*Student throws highlighter at Ellie’s face.*

“Wha- Oh my god.”

*Ellie is once again forced to return to this horrible plane of existence.*

“Ellie, I have one more question for you.”

“Ok.”

“Does the average rat in New York City have a better life than the average New Yorker?”

*Ellie sets her phone down. With a flourish, she tosses her hair back and stands up.*

“Professor, I have been waiting for someone to ask me this question for my entire life.”

*Ellie proceeds to expound upon the struggles of human existence, on the quest for individual freedom, of collective suffering, of easy access to pizza, on the differences between rats and humans.. Professor is completely engrossed. Student is furiously taking notes.*

“..moreover, in New York City both rats and humans are free to piss anywhere, on anyone, and at any time they so desire. If that is not true liberation, what is? And so, on the grounds aforementioned, I would argue that your question is fundamentally flawed, and can only be substituted by an altered and improved one – Is there any difference between the average New Yorker and the average New York rat at all?”

*Professor and Student are awestruck. They begin to applaud. Some other members of the class who have a particularly strong Pavlovian response unconsciously join in the applause.*

“Brilliant, Ellie! Brilliant!”

*Ellie bows and returns to her phone. A student in the front row, sensing a viral moment, recorded the entire speech and uploaded it at 4x speed paired with a Minecraft toilet-building compilation and a video of cats dancing to Odetari’s “GOOD LOYAL THOTS”. The video was an overnight success because Ellie was hot.*

“Class dismissed!”

*The Professor shuffles papers and walks out. Student picks up highlighter and eraser off of floor and follows him. One student has a crush on the professor and follows him out. All other students remain and continue scrolling.*

Sat Aug 5 // Sun Aug 6 // Mon Aug 7 – DiffusionBee and More Phantasmagorian Creatures

As I was typing this sentence (on Sunday), something caught my eye from the window. It was a small rabbit, or should I say large bunny, bounding across the lawn. I’m writing this time from the second floor bedroom, on a desk in front of a long rectangular window that allows me to look out over our humble kingdom. From this perch I can gaze out over the yard and – wow, there goes another bunny! That one was not bounding, that was a hurried scamper. A comical scamper. Boy those things can move quick, can’t they. I don’t think that was the same one, I would have noticed it come back across the yard. Same size though. Could be siblings. Could be twins. I guess they’re all kind of like twins, aren’t they, because they all come out at the same time. Twins, triplets, quadruplets. There’s a word for this – littermates. Yes, littermates.

This is extremely stream of consciousness. You’re right along for the ride with me here. I can see all of these things from this window, and more, because I can see the feeder from here. And the lake. I should say, the feeder complex. I have been here for the various stages of this aviation feeding station’s development, and would say that we can now officially call this a complex, the most recent addition being an oval-shaped mulch patch with African Lillies, for the hummingbirds. They like those African Lillies. Here’s a photo, courtesy of the internet, of what they look like.

In the last paragraph, I wrote, “oval-shaped”. When I wrote that sentence, I first wrote ovular, you know, like circular, or rectangular, but it immediately struck me as sus, and my intuition was correct. That word is already taken. For things related to ovules, of course. The English language is weird. The other day we were watching soccer and I said something like, “She’d just shotten the ball” and the parents stopped me and said, “Shotten??” Got, gotten, fine. Shot, shotten, no sir. Gotten is still alive in the common vernacular but doesn’t have to be used (I just got home, I’ve just gotten home), but it might go the same way as shotten, and die out someday. Because, I just did some Googling, it’s not that you can’t say shotten. It’s not incorrect, it’s just a dead word, listed by the dictionaries as obsolete. Once upon time it was used, if we can trust this nice graph from Collin’s Dictionary, some time in the 1700s, and who knows how much before then.

*source*: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/shotten

Anyways, back to the African Lillies.. Ours are yellow and orange. They’re dainty things. So now we’ve got some of those below our feeders, of which we have four hanging from two metal poles, that are four feet high or so, and one hanging from a cottonwood next to the mulch oval. From one pole, there are three smaller feeders: one with the sugar water for the hummingbirds, with little fake flowers for them to stick their tiny beaks into, a standard one, we’ll just call it that because I can’t really tell what’s going on with it from this angle, but it looks similar to the feeder hanging from the cottonwood, which has a little ledge in front of it that the birds and the undesirables (the squirrels and the chipmunks) perch on and pull seeds out through a slit in the bottom, and then there is a sack of smaller seeds, with a thin sieve-like mesh skin, that is favored more by birds with skinnier breaks. I’m thinking that the nuthatch might go for this one, and speak of the angel, the nuthatch has just landed. The hummingbird has just shown up as well. It’s a whirlwind out here. At this moment, I can see these birds: a female cardinal, four, then six sparrows, a hummingbird, a nuthatch, a few geese, far off, and some other kind of sparrow, or maybe a chickadee. These guys n’ gals are out here partying every day. Attached to the sack is a small bowl with jelly for the orioles. They were around earlier in the summer, with the red-winged blackbirds. They’ve both gone away now. Hanging from the other pole is a massive multi-storied megafeeder. This is monopolized by the sparrows. There is currently a sparrow at every feeding port, and they’re fighting to keep it that way. The nuthatch keeps trying to get in there. He flies back and forth, looking for an angle, a way in. He finds it, or forces it, gets a few seeds, and is chased off. He’s my favorite of these birds, I have to say. Something about the way he hops and skips, the way he swivels his head, and pulls seeds out of the feeder with his long, sharp beak. He trawls the sides of the cottonwoods, poking and prodding, snapping juicy morsels up out of the cracks, and possibly hiding seeds. I read that birds do that, wedge seeds into the cracks of trees. He’s got a very pretty blue, grey, white, black coloration. A lot of personality in that bird. He could be a she, I actually don’t know. Another hummingbird has just shown up as well. It’s now confirmed that there are two hummingbirds around.

A lot of action going on down there, man. You could watch it all day, especially if you were a cat. From here would be great, but from our downstairs window, a large, three-paned window with a fullscreen view of the feeders. That view is every cat’s dream. Cat heaven. And Daisy heaven is looking at fish. It doesn’t take much, with them. I was sitting out on the deck in the rain yesterday, right under the ledge of the house. I was only being sprinkled on. It was a soft rain, the temperature was cool, but a very comfortable, perfect cool, not chilly, and with low wind. It was just quiet, but not unsettlingly quiet, not dead silent, just quiet, with only the gentle white noise pitter-patter of the drops, on wood, water, and leaves. And with the fresh scent in the air, the fresh scent of earth, of wet wood, of rainwater. Daisy was out with me, laying beside me near the steps, staring off into the distance, out between the large trunks of the cottonwoods, at the geese in the yard. I sat there, watching her, watching the ripples of the water on the surface of the lake, watching the sky, watching the geese, and in that moment, so full of calm, my senses so pleasantly stimulated, a little thought popped into my head, that this was heaven. It was a fleeting thought, really. But it was a solid one. I wasn’t out there for too long before I felt restless, and I didn’t stay. For that short time, though, I guess I had a little taste of it. A brush with the divine. And you know, it really doesn’t take much. It doesn’t take much, to be happy. And it doesn’t have to cost a dime.

Now it’s Monday. Enough talk about the birds and the wind and crap like that. Let’s get down to business.

The text prompt for this image was “Creatures from a phantasmagorical universe, Pastel Art, Beautiful Lighting, Warm Color Palette.” And this image was built in 22 steps. Last post looked at the effect of step count on image generation, and now we’ll talk about the effect of prompt text and seed number. First, the seed number. Like an actual plant, the seed is the basis for the image. How exactly it works I don’t know, but I can tell you that if you use the same seed for an image, even if they come out wildly different in the end because of all of the other parameters, they must have started the same way. So, if you generate an image twice, keeping all parameters the same, including with the same seed, you will have nearly the same image in the end. If you keep all parameters the same and change only the seed, you will have an entirely different image in the end. The seed for that first image, our experiment image, was 54445. Below are images generated with seeds 54446 and 54447, and otherwise the exact same parameters.

This means that you could download DiffusionBee, set all of the parameters to exactly what I had them as for these images, and you would get nearly the same thing. You don’t get exactly the same thing, because the algorithm that generates these is as they say in the biz, nondeterministic. (Also.. how freakin cool are these pictures. I think I could have a promising career as a Phantasmagorian AI Art Programmer. Wouldn’t that be fun to tell people.) It would be interesting to know what exactly a seed is in the code, how that works. I’m trying to think of what it could be, like a set of numbers or parameters that are related to the growth of the image. I generated three more images with totally different text prompts off of the same seed, to see if that would reveal anything about the seed. 1. “Gorilla in a top hat, by Vincent van Gogh”, 2. “a bowl of cereal, colored pencil, children’s drawing”, and 3. “Barack Obama riding a skateboard, 8-bit”.

I can only really see one similarity between them. All of these images have multiples of the subject. I’ve wondered about that, because sometimes there are multiples, and sometimes not, and it doesn’t matter if you specify how many gorillas you want in the prompt text. That may be outside of the prompt’s control, and dependent only on the seed.

Now looking at the effect of prompt text. In the next image, I changed only one thing. In the prompt text, I changed “warm color palette” to “cool color palette”, and now you have an image that is in one way quite different, and yet similar. Take a gander.

Warm Color Palette vs. Cool Color Palette (slide the bar to compare images)

Many differences, and many similarities. You can see that the bones of the image are the same. That’s really where the seed is coming into play. The bones are the same, but the flavor, the details have changed. There is much more of a pronounced glow to the image, which I really love. The whole thing is glowing in mystical blue light. All of the flying fish are gone, and the firecat, the little glowing mushroom lamps, and the red sun in the upper right corner, gone as well. In the cool color palette, you have more detail in the background, less of a foreground (on the sides of the image), and now a really interesting scene at the bottom, with an incredible pink-purple boar creature, and a large, curly, pink monkey. There are new plants, and some yellow thing that my brain is interpreting as a butterfly. Would you expect such a different image just from asking the program to change the color scheme? I didn’t. I thought it would take the same image and just color it differently, but it’s much more than that. I had a lot of fun trying other color schemes and styles and seeing what popped out. Like the chocolates in a box of chocolates, you just don’t know what you’re going to get.

*Green (without the words “Color Palette”)*

They all have the same foundation, but the aesthetic is totally different. So how about changing something else, say, “Watercolor” instead of “Pastel Art”?

Amazing. So amazing. Look how the branches of the tree on the bottom right become the hair of the green rhino pokemon creature. The leg of the firecat becomes the leg of the dragon whatever. (I’m trying my best to describe these phantasm creatures to you. It’s hard, ok. I could make up names for them. The Wakkanok, the Schmerkelvitz.) The background just disappears and becomes stars, and the foreground is made of creatures, and colored gas. Now we really are out in the universe. I love it.

Warm Color Palette vs. Cold Color Palette

This one was “creatures in a phantasmagorian universe, Pastel Art, Cool Color Palette” but without “Beautiful Lighting”. That made a huge difference. I’ll take my beautiful lighting, please.

What if we change “universe” to “desert”?

Incredible.

Some of the best, here. On 10 steps, we could more creatures. I love the blurry, dreaminess of the watercolor.

Very cool. I’m really in love with these. You just never know what you’re going to get. So much to play with here, with DiffusionBee. This is a very simple program, no coding required, no importing models or anything. Also, they have AI video now, I’ve seen it. A full movie trailer, 30 seconds live action, apparently made with AI. Think of the implications. We could, potentially, the average person, easily generate hundreds of videos of penguins riding horses. Into battle, at the Kentucky derby, joyously through a meadow, along the beach. This is coming, this is the future. It’s exciting stuff.