How we made the sound for “Toad”

I haven’t been well the last few days, mostly sleeping and dreaming.

One day I was remembering an old friend of ours, who still is very dear to us, but to whom we haven’t spoken for a long time.

Around the time we hung out, I was trying to make a film about a Toad that sat underneath a giant tap to keep itself alive.  I needed a soundtrack, so I stealthily rigged up the old Juno and programmed it up with a crazy organ noise. S’ was out at the previously mentioned friends house and came back in a rather chilled mood. Unprompted, she sat at the keyboard and straight out played this, I had the 4-track ready to go and caught it.

Many years later I finished the film, and here it is.

I watched it a few days ago and realised that behind the toad thing it’s a concealed love letter from us, to our dear friend.

This post is for her.

At the Zoo (first animal in)

  • 8 year old: What are these maps?
  • Parent: Well, the red shows where in the world flamingos actually live.
  • 8 year old: Why do they live in those places.
  • Parent: Well I think it might be because all those place are hot and damp, so there’s water, they like water.
  • 8 year old: It’s not red where we live.
  • Parent: No, they don’t normally live in England.
  • 8 year old: So why are they here.
  • Parent: Well, people brought them here, built them this enclosure, and they get fed everyday.
  • 8 year old: Oh…
  • 8 year old: So they’re trapped.
  • Parent: Um..well…yes…I suppose they are.
  • 8 year old: >>wanders off giggling to herself<<

Dream 20.04.10

Charlotte Church sings me the theme tune for the new pocket notebook I just made for myself.

She sings “Paul’s New Notebook” to the tune of “Pie Jesu”.

I think: “I bet Cheryl Cole wouldn’t’ve done that for free”.

Tears in Rain

“In the digital dark ages we may lose tons of stuff. I’m worried about the death of analogue published documents, magazines, and newspapers. We may lobotomize ourselves. We may become haunted by totalitarian states that ceaselessly reinterpret the past. Actual people’s experience that are set in record then incessantly reworked. The internet lends itself to that. Things we see stored there are not really restored. We don’t have storage methods. We can have a black out that lasts years. The internet is vulnerable to all kinds of passing upsets…””

Bruce Sterling

“We have to build “resilience” into our lives to ensure that everything we have isn’t digital. This means creating communities, in one form or another, and bolstering them with every tactic we have available. It means utilizing traditional (though, no less disappearance-prone) media, be it ‘zines or books or whatever. It means giving primacy to experiences, rather than trusting in the ability of archiving and time shifting to allow you the experience later. It means finding and making things that actively resist archiving, for whatever reason and recognizing the joy of “fugitive texts.””

William Ball

Combinations by ekstasis, more here.

Conversation of the Weekend

  • 5 year old A: “Daddy, why didn’t people see dinosaurs?”
  • Grown-Up: “Well, they died a very long time ago.”
  • 5 year old A: “Before people?”
  • Grown-Up: “A long time before there were people.”
  • 5 year old A: “Oh”
  • 5 year old B: “Yes, they died on the cross.”
  • Grown-Up: “……..ermm…no, I think that might’ve been Jesus”