Entries tagged with "spinglobe"
Sunday 13 January 2008
Video shoots, lightning strikes, and a red dress
The dust’s settled on 2007 at last, and does it ever feel like a new year now. Here’s a few highlights, including some stuff I didn’t write about the first time round:
January: Spinglobe moves into a brand new office in a neat building in the east end. One of the first projects is a music video for the Mahones. It’s a takeoff on that Fellini scene where la Saraghina dances the rhumba on a Mediterranean beach - except it’s January, on Ashbridge’s Bay, and the warm spell of the previous week is most definitely over. We should have called the production Minus 8½. We freeze our collective asses off, but the video ends up looking pretty darn fine.
February: Played in the band for a musical revue put on as a fundraiser by some friends - my first time playing Broadway style is a fun challenge; I stress way about it more than I have to. Reconceived long-running audio drama idea as a podcast; later in the year would reconceive it again as a comic. Expect it to morph into a novel, a musical extravaganza and finally a series of haiku in 2008.
March: In the studio with Ellen Carol to record bass tracks for her new CD, produced by Don Kerr. Restarted work on Flickershow CD; we get some solid demos done and some cool results on a trip-hoppy new song called “Hold Up Donny”. It doesn’t last, however; I end up firing myself as producer later in the year. If all goes well we’ll be recording with Don in 2008.
May: Played with Flickershow at the Sammy Sugar Day Festival, the kickoff for Ellen’s fundraising bike tour of Eastern Canada. Finally launched a site for Presonance, a collaboration with Rezo Largul.
June: Attended OpenCities, an “unconference” about the convergence of civic engagement and the open source movement. Among the topics are the waterfront revitalization, public space, DIY electronics and public art, dancing in the streets. Coincidentally, the next day, Flickershow played at Pedestrian Sundays, a monthly car-free event in Kensington Market (other events occur in Mirvish Village and on Baldwin Street); our first outing with keyboard player Rich.
Later in the month, Sean’s mom comes up from Pennsylvania for a visit. Tuesday we’re at work while she takes it easy; she’s out having a smoke on the front porch when lightning strikes a tree two doors down, and a gale-force gust of wind tears off branches for several blocks. We return home to find our street a maze of police tape, tree limbs and downed power lines. Neighbouring streets are almost unaffected. “I didn’t do it,” she pleads.
July: Played Newmarket and Brampton - our only out-of-town gig prior to this was our TVO appearance taped in Parry Sound. First steps toward developing an analog-to-MIDI interface using that splendid new toy, the Arduino.
August: Cottage outing with co-workers. Lots of laughs, plenty of good food and drink, and some cool photographic exploration of natural forms and painting with light.
October: A week from hell. Two or three clients go through reorganizations, and a number of key projects go on indefinite hold. Contractors removing a cellular tower break a sprinkler pipe and flood part of our office. None of this registers, however, because our co-worker’s 21-year-old brother has just died in his sleep. Things are very quiet for several days.
November: Two good friends of ours invited us to play a song at their crazy cabaret-style lesbian wedding. The only question was what to wear. (As MC for the evening, Sean had no such dilemma, since they’d put him in a rather lovely kilt and feather boa.)
At the end of the month, a beautiful, awe-inspiring, mad trip to Marrakech with Sean, his mom and stepdad, and a new friend, the irrepressible and energizing Katie. We stayed in the heart of the medina, a maze of winding alleyways full of people, tiny shops, mopeds and stray cats. A handful of local kids kept asking for money; Sean juggled for them instead (years ago he did it for a living in Dallas) and became an instant hit. Later, we drove through the Atlas Mountains to ride camels into the desert and sleep in a tent. Beautiful country, lots of wonderful people. And occasional strange family moments.
December: The partners make the tough decision to sell the company to a bigger firm. Some of us move over, the video business splits off (taking on the name Robotnik Films), and I start looking for work. I’ll miss the place, and I’ll miss working with the Spinglobe crew. But it’s a huge opportunity, both to find work in a field that’s important to me and to have some actual free time again. Here’s to the new year!
Tuesday 4 December 2007
Thoughts from the Moroccan desert
I just spent a week in Morocco. Not somewhere I would have gone of my own accord, but for my partner it was something akin to a spiritual mission. And what an incredible, overwhelming, intense, emotional week it was - Sean likened it to gestalt therapy. (Some day I may even write about what we actually saw and did there!)
We’d planned the trip for quite a while, and as it turned out, it came at a moment of big change for us. About a week previously, Sean had made the decision to fold the little company where we’ve been working for the past few years. It’s been a tough time, getting everything in order, helping one another find new work, and finishing up a few last projects.
The biggest question: what next? For me, at least, the journey provided some time to think, and opportunity to contemplate our place in the grand scheme of things, from our vantage point on the edge of the Sahara.
The desert is a powerful symbol for me: it represents Death; the end of all things. It’s what happens to ecosystems when they go belly-up, when the soil dries up and blows away. And as we consume more, as the climate shifts, as more water is drawn up from the water table for irrigation, for the cities, as less snow falls every year on the Atlas Mountains to melt and feed the valleys below - our deserts grow.
It didn’t help matters that we’d flown across the Atlantic to get there, leaving high-altitude jet exhaust in our wake. I hate thinking about these things, but I can’t turn away. The coming decades are going to be hard ones for humanity. What we’ve got ahead of us is nothing short of a war effort - a war against chaos and collapse. I would rather not live to see half the species on the planet disappear. I would rather not live to see modern civilisation break down. I would rather not see haves and have-nots pitted against one another in a struggle over dwindling resources. But these are the possibilities we face, and I’d rather be doing something constructive than sitting in a hole pretending everything’s fine.
Far too much of our way of life has come at the cost of misery for other people and other creatures, and the destruction of ecosystems around the world. But at the same time, we’ve accomplished a lot that is great and meaningful, and I don’t believe the solution is to roll back the clock. I don’t believe that life in the past was better - merely less precarious on a grand scale. We have to move forward, not back. We have to innovate like mad - not just mere technical innovations but ways to connect with each other and with the world around us, to find our place, to recognize the part we are playing, to find opportunities to make the world better.
The day after we got back, I spied a copy of GreenTOpia at Grassroots (very much awesome) and bought it on the spot. In the opening pages Pasha Malla writes:
What can you do? You can do what you can do. Can you type? Type something. Can you walk and talk? Walk around and talk to people. Can you use your Ph.D. in environmental science to test for and uncover the alarming release of polyvinyl chlorides from shoreline industry into the Great Lakes, then publish a report, coordinate a media campaign and pursue legal action based on your findings? Then by all means please do that, too. Ride a bike, write a letter, save a plant. We are not powerless against the They we’re up against.
It echoed perfectly what I’d been feeling (if in slightly more combative terms). I’ve decided, now that it’s transition time, that I want my next job to be in the sustainability sector, something involving permaculture, or appropriate technology. I need to be working with people who are thinking along the same lines.
I’m also hoping to have a lot more time to write and devote to creative projects, and to post more here. There’s already a section on this site called The Big Here which I intend to write for much more in the coming months. Ecology, both human and non-; architecture and design; how people relate to each other and how they adapt to different situations… it’s all part of a greater whole.
I feel like I’ve just awakened from a long sleep. I’ve got a lot of tangled underbrush to get through now, finishing up the last few projects before we close up shop, not to mention two gigs coming up. But already my head feels clearer.
Wednesday 7 March 2007
Spent an awesome lunch hour today playing Go for the first time. I’d never really gotten into any sort of strategy board game before, but I’ve wanted to learn the game for a while, ever since I took home the folding wooden travelling board that used to belong to my grandfather. So I brought it to the office for the heck of it, in case anyone else wanted to learn, but nothing came of it.
When we moved to our new office, in the back of a former factory, we and our landlord built the space pretty much from scratch, along with a kind gentleman who’s setting up a metal and wood shop downstairs. Turns out he enjoys Go, and he pointed me to some good resources on the web (see below).
It’s so very abstract, so uniform. There aren’t any special pieces with special moves. The rules take all of five minutes to learn, maybe ten if you count scoring. And I think part of the appeal for me is the astonishing complexity that arises from the implications of such pure, simple rules. I’m still getting the hang of it, of course, but I love it already.
I tried my hand at a few games against Goban, a Mac OS X Go engine that includes GNU Go and network play. Not bad for learning, but of course nothing beats an actual game with an actual human being.
So today we sat in the cozy café area out front with the noonday sun slanting in through the windows. We used a 13x13 board (using the full 19x19 board might have taken all day), and my friend pointed out strategies and taught me scoring, while our neigbours from the coffee trade wandered past on errands, occasionally carrying cockatoos and plumbing fixtures.
A couple of other friends have expressed interest, too, and there’s been talk of chess-playing too. Perhaps it’ll be the start of a new tradition around here.
The links:
Friday 16 February 2007
Last night we had one of our coffee chats, for the first time in months. There are about half a dozen of us, including everyone in the house, and we get together to talk about life and issues and philosophize a bit. And since the office where most of us work now shares a building with a coffee place, we’ve got a great place to do it. The talk last night centered mostly on “truth” and “letting go of things”, and it really was refreshing.
Among other things, I think it jarred something loose in my brain, something that had been blocking my writing on this on-again, off-again audio play podcast. It’s been percolating for months now, if not longer, and I think I’d grown very attached to a certain arrangement of the characters, a certain approach to the story and the world… and I think I’d set it up to be too big a deal, way more work than it had to be. As usual, I was trying to run before I’d even got the hang of the crawling thing.
The main viewpoint character, for example, was originally an amalgam of several cool, funny people I know. But I wanted to get her right, to make her believable / cool / funny / worthy / whatever. I couldn’t get into her head, into her life. I couldn’t get her or any of the other characters to sing.
So I tossed out all my notes for the characters, along with Aborted Episode One Draft, Version Eight. The characters and their roles have shifted several times along the way, but this was the biggest shift yet.
The premise still holds: it pretends to be a real podcast about life in Toronto, but it’s a fictionalized, slightly fantastic Toronto. And podcasts tend to be personal things, so I’m making it a lot more personal. I’ll host the thing (in character), and there’ll be more room for music and commentary on local issues.
I realize part of me was worried about seeming egotistical, since I’m already filling so many roles (writer, lead, engineer, composer, producer, director?)... but deargod, why? This isn’t a big show on stage or radio. If I think of it instead as just a fun little project, a way of learning all those different roles, a seed that can grow into something bigger, involving more people, everything snaps into place. I get to play with new voices, new aspects of characters. I don’t have to worry so much about it being “good enough” to drag other people into helping.
It’s fun again.
Tuesday 9 January 2007
It’s January, and this year, that means a new office for Spinglobe. We’ve spent a lot of the past month building a new space at the Merchants of Green Coffee building (you can see it from the Don Valley Parkway; it’s midway between Dundas and Queen), with the help of our new neighbours: putting in studs and drywall, mudding and painting, and generally turning a raw space at the back of an old warehouse building into a new home for our crew of oddballs.
Above: the old Spadina office (left) and the new office on Matilda. Toni, the more gregarious of the building’s two cats, comes to pay Sean a visit.
We’re still moving in, but we love it already. For one thing, we can actually walk around the place without tripping over one another. We have a meeting room, and space for all kinds of plants, and some wonderful neighbours in the building, including two cats and two cockatoos.
Lots more to tell. I have a few book reviews to do, for one thing, and possibly some television as well.
Tuesday 14 November 2006
Monday - worked like mad on a new blog-based web site for Spinglobe, and several other projects.
Tuesday - more of the same; nearly burned myself out. Largely self-inflicted. Must remember to take breaks. At least I didn’t spend ten hours straight at a desk again. Blog is looking good though.
Wednesday - jammed and hung out with the gang out High Park way, which made everything all better again. I didn’t have my bass with me, so among other things I tried to get as many different sounds as I could out of one cymbal and one gong suspended from a radio-style mic stand.
Thursday - recorded bass tracks for Ellen Carol’s upcoming CD, at Don Kerr’s brand new basement studio. I’ve recorded myself a lot, of course, and been in lots of studios, but it was my first Actual Recording Session. And it went quite smoothly, too. Afterward, went bowling as part of a fundraiser for Gallery 44‘s youth programs. I am a terrible bowler.
Friday - All a blur. I think I worked on the company blog some more.
Saturday - much sleeping in. Also headed in to the new office-to-be to help install some receptacles for the network. In the evening, some very adventurous jamming with Roulette and friends (I played mostly bass and drums).
Sunday - sore as hell. Must have been playing like a maniac last night.
Monday - met up with office mates at the new space again. It’s gonna be pretty cool. And as a sort of reward, I finally snagged those monitors I’ve had my eye on for months. Lots of work to do on the studio now to get it into shape. But: progress!
Wednesday 1 November 2006
This summer we moved to a house just north of the Danforth, near Chester station. It’s a cozy neighbourhood, an old “streetcar suburb” from the early years of the 20th century, fairly well off, mostly single-family homes on snug little lots. And holy geez do they do Hallowe’en. It was a lovely mild night last night, and the sidewalks were absolutely crammed with parents and kids. Every other house seemed to have elaborate decorations. It really felt like a celebration, a time for neighbours to mingle, chat, try to outdo one another, and generally have fun. As a non-parent, I was very much an outsider, but it was still cool to see.
I really love it when the sound of people drowns out the sound of traffic, especially on a warm night. I strolled down Baldwin early this past summer, on the first “patio” weekend, as the sound of clinking glasses and cutlery and soft conversation drifted across the road. Between that and the lights on the trees (for some reason I love the sight of artificial light filtering through tree branches at night) it was really magical.
In other news, we looked at a great new potential office space today, near Queen and Broadview. Many cool possibilities. The hot water’s already partly solar heated, and there’s talk of a green roof, solar and wind power, and other initiatives; we’d have a lot of freedom to shape the space; they’re planning to rent out other parts of the building to other like-minded initiatives (architects, artists, and ‘green’ companies). It would be really cool to work on building a community of little workplaces there, both socially and physically, in the built/landscaped environment.
So I’ve been raving about Christopher Alexander‘s A Pattern Language, which talks about the sort of ‘building’ I mean. It’s an approach quite at odds with modern development practices, one that seeks to create spaces that have a real, genuine life, that instill a sense of wholeness, wellness, humanness, and do so at all scales, from regions to streets to rooms to windowsills. We can only do this, Alexander has argued, by allowing people to shape their own spaces in a real and direct way. I can barely do it justice in a short entry. Go read his books - they completely deserve the term “classic”.
Speaking of books, I ordered a copy of Worldchanging, the book for the office, and it arrived today. It’s a hefty little compendium of ideas and resources for making human civilization more sustainable, filed under Stuff, Shelter, Cities, Community, Business, Politics and Planet. I’ve heard it compared to the venerable Whole Earth Catalog series, and it’s not a bad comparison - page after page of useful and inspiring stuff from all over, aimed at bettering the world. Go buy it now.
(And it just so happened that when I opened it at random, the first page I came upon was the one about “Place-Making” - complete with a discussion of A Pattern Language...)
Tuesday 15 November 2005
Recently Sean, Stephen and I visited Everdale, an organic farm/education centre near Erin, this side of Guelph. We may be doing some neat work on their web site, and part of the visit was to discuss that. Part of it was just to see the place, though… which was quite thrilling.
We’d never seen a real straw-bale built building before, and they have several. The main one is Home Alive!, a cozy little two-story house with a well thought out heating and cooling system, a rainwater catchment system, plus photovoltaic and wind power, and radiant heating in the floors and bathtub(!) The thick walls give it a wonderfully snug feeling, and deep reveals for the windows… so much of it is straight out of Christopher Alexander and co.‘s A Pattern Language. The beams are made out of recycled timbers, for an extra rustic touch.
Anyway, that got us excited all over again about the idea of building. Sean’s started talking about building a small set of offices that could serve as an “incubator” for green businesses. Sean suggested a music studio too. I’m picturing a network of people to hang out with, a room for coffee and hanging out, perhaps a little quiet space for people to do yoga or nap… I still have reservations about moving out of town, but all these ideas have me a bit more optimistic about the prospect.
Of course, the more elaborate it gets, the more time and money it takes. So I’ve been wondering what sort of stages we could go through to build something. We could start by getting land with a conventional building on it and living there, or using it as a retreat.
The initial buildings could be little detached cabins, usable later if we decide to offer the place as a retreat… but simple enough that it’s not a catastrophe if there are some mistakes. We’ll learn as we go.
The office could grow piece by piece too: one room, with some tables and a comfortable couch, a desk. Then build a second section, this one with plumbing, a two-piece bathroom and kitchen. And keep growing from there. The third section might be two stories… and so on.
Monday 24 October 2005
Sean and I just got back this evening from spending a weekend with our officemates - the five of us trekked up to a cottage about three hours north of town, and hung out, ate lots, strolled around, had a bonfire, and talked big crazy talk about the company. They’re a cool bunch (two partners plus three freelancers, the latter including me), and I’m really glad we’re all working together.
I’m such a city kid now. I hadn’t been looking forward to the trip at all. But in all, it was a lovely time.
On a little hike through the woods, it struck me that I’m especially fascinated with fungi, ferns, lichens, mosses… non-plants, proto-plants, primitive things. Things that can survive on bare rock. Beautiful things that grow out of dead trees. Things that might have around when the dinosaurs ruled. I was filled with glee when I found a boulder maybe the size of a chest freezer, which was covered in several sorts of moss and lichen, and a unique species of fern. Everywhere else, a more complex-looking fern had out-competed it, but this one had found a niche in the thin soil atop this rock.
And the fall leaves were quite gorgeous, too. As the years go by, I’m slowly starting to appreciate autumn.
Tuesday 31 May 2005
Things I am currently obsessed with, or which just make me happy:
- The stompy, swinging beat that appears in songs like Iggy Pop’s “Lust For Life” and “My Generation” by the Who - it probably goes back further than that too, but I can’t quite remember at the moment. Anyway, it all started when I was casting about for a new arrangement for one of J’s songs, and I’m starting to think some sort of weird mashup medley is in order. We could throw in “This Charming Man” while we’re at it. Have to find someone to play the Johnny Marr guitar part though.
Update: Wow. Those songs have been going through my head non-stop for the past day and a half. In the middle of it, I walked into a grocery store where they happened to be playing “You Can’t Hurry Love”. (I knew there was a Motown connection in there somewhere…)
- Coffee. We’ve taken on a job for Merchants of Green Coffee, a local outfit that sells fairly traded, sustainably grown coffee beans and the equipment to roast and brew them. As part of the deal we got a little coffee roaster. From what I’m told, coffee beans keep for years if they’re green, but once roasted they only last a few days, and once ground, mere hours. Fresh-roasted stuff is quite lovely. I only started drinking coffee at all about a month ago, now that I’m working pretty much every day at the Spinglobe office. It makes me feel so professional and productive! Even if I’m not.
- The phrase “losing one’s shit” - which I’ve usually read in reference to a singer’s over-the-top performance. I’ve never actually had occasion to use it myself; it just makes me giggle.
Might have a couple of interesting musical collaborations to report on soon too. Yay!
Tuesday 29 March 2005
Flickershow news: a friend of ours has it in mind to do a tiny-budget video of “Invincible”, and we’re aiming to shoot it on April 9th. We won’t have time to record the final version of the song before that, but we’ve put together a demo to use for shooting.
Been doing a lot of covers lately, trying out things I can sing and play bass on at the same time. In the midst of all that, I’ve been doing some work on original tunes - as always, I have about half a dozen of them going in parallel, none of them finished. But it’s a nice feeling to be making progress. Maybe this weekend I’ll devote a day to wrangling them into shape and making a CD for the rest of the band…
Latest web site: SpinHost. I’d been puttering around trying to come up with a logo, when the spin -> wind turbine idea finally wandered up and thumped me on the head. So the logo and site take their cues from streamlined Air Age stuff. There are some further refinements to come - the photograph of the turbine isn’t final, for one thing. I’m gonna replace it as soon as I can get down to the Ex to take a picture of the one there.
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