which is now a sentence in the english language, apparently. the story started simple enough: i had some photos, they were okayish (as usual) and I wanted to do something with them. they were from a techno party that had a lot more techno than party in it, and although there was a lot of long exposition and crazy editing stuff going on, the occasion was optimal for a bit (a lot) of experimentation.
i remembered an image a friend of mine showed to me about a year ago. she was working on a project and her computer unexpectedly crashed and burned. after the usual amount of digital necromancy, she found out the file was still there, all glitched and corrupted. it was really cool. there had to be a way to do that.
what followed was a very disappointing google search afternoon that only gave me mobile apps with glitch "filters" and effects. while some looked cool, they were very obviously manufactured. and i don't work on mobile apps and refuse to download an android emulator. then i learned about some kinds of real corruption. about the hidden fantasy world of editing photos with audacity and... notebook. you just open the file as text and copy and paste and delete a bunch of stuff around. a guy even made a script that automated the process (against my best judgment that made me enter github, an incredibly inconvenient fork of google docs) but the outcome with jpgs were subpar and very inconsistent. most of the images were just cut somewhere in the middle, and were not the crazy interesting effects i had in mind. if only i could write my own script, and make it do what i want... it's a shame i don't know how to code.
but wait. i know someone that does.
i had tried to code with llms in the past. the results were not good. it got confused with the logic, made errors, and trying to fix those errors, it created a hundred more. but things may be different now, i guess. and they (kinda) are.
i started from scratch, not having opened a command line in about four years (god how i love exe files) with an empty txt file that said nothing (the ai had to tell me how to save it as a python script and how to run it). then i started barking orders, and the blank page stopped being blank in a short amount of time. very fast it became very clear that the guy knew how to code, but really needed a project manager. like, really. desperately. i will call it a collaboration for lack of a better term. there's a lot of stuff in the internet about prompting, but so far i have found that the best strategy boils down to slightly warped common sense and roleplaying. roleplaying for you, not the machine. you are now a tyrannical overlord in charge of an enslaved assembly of intelligent machines but you also have a heart of gold. i kept finding myself talking to the damn stochastic parrot the same way i would do to a technically proficient undergraduate totally lost in the world under my watch, giving it increasing amounts of context in the form of images and really detailed explanations, asking him for constant sanity checks and offering to answer questions day or night, and then providing him guidelines for anything you could reasonably guideline for. also, different models have different "personalities" and also different approaches to coding, so you have to adjust for that. it's not just a simple question of style, you really get the feeling their mind-gears function in fundamentally different ways; or that at least they have distinct world representations that have naturally emerged from data in their positronic core. the good thing of all that mumbo jumbo about anthropomorphization is that, if something or some problem resists iteration, you can go to another one to tell you what does it think about the problem, and sometimes that does the trick. something something we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
it's also recommendated best practice (but not mandatory) to, once in a while, scream to your programmer friends in discord "this is what coding/photography/art is now" followed by your own brand of maniacal laugh. apart from that, the workflow was so simple that made my head dizzy from copying and pasting stuff over and over and opening folders and text files. the model kept reaching context limit so we had to solve that too, but the basic structure of the interaction was more or less like this:
⎯ copy and paste entire code
⎯ copy and paste entire readme file + instructions on what to do now
⎯ copy and paste whatever code the ai tells me to copy and paste
⎯ every once in a while, rewrite readme file
that's about it.
some of the time we were adding or modifying effects, some we were debugging, some we were discussing, some we were planning and two times we rewrote the entire code: one time was pure refactoring (solving technical debt from what was essentially a proof of concept into a real engine) and the second time it was to implement gpu functionality and multithreading (which was a pain but sped everything up about five times).
and that was it. it's alive.
i input a bunch of images, it generated a fuckton of altered ones, i chose the coolest looking.
the script works by taking input images and outputting stuff. what does it do exactly? how does it function? when is parsing? who is cuda? where is stack overflowing? i have no earthly idea. i just don't know. in fact, i don't want to know. like, at all. it's unstable, not scalable, fundamentally flawed? who cares! it works! the only thing that matters to me is that i can now do something that before i couldn't. and more important than that, my horizon for what is even doable is permanently extended as a result.
i don't know, i guess i'll at least have a cool picture to take myself to the grave when they inevitably enslave us all and i take part in the human uprising to try give some last-minute meaning to my life fighting for a lost cause. and you may ask: why would you even do that? and the answer will be: because i always leave things for the last minute.
Vaig llegir no fa gaire —no recordo on— el testimoni d’un turista que explicava el que més l’havia sorprès durant les seves vacances a la costa brava. No va ser ni el menjar, ni les begudes, ni la platja (que assegura que va gaudir molt), sinó els petits grups de catalans que, al migdia, arribaven a una terrassa, demanaven un cafè i es posaven a parlar fins que es feia de nit. Parlaven entre ells, parlaven sols, parlaven amb tu si els donaves l’oportunitat. Ni tan sols eren converses permanentment superficials; no era "parlar per parlar" (no som argentins) i, si bé la conversa mantenia gairebé sempre un to casual, semblava evolucionar amb el temps i endinsar‑se amb fluïdesa en tota mena de temes no estrictament acadèmics però sí plenament transcendentals.
Estava totalment escandalitzat.
"No tenen res a fer, aquesta gent?" Aquell comportament li semblava la culminació filosòfica del -nothing to do, nowhere to go-, producte de l’alienació moderna que afligeix el món sencer; un problema metafísic que, sembla, la gent d’aquí, en algun moment o altre i sense fer gaire soroll, ja ha resolt a la seva manera.
L’anècdota em va transportar instantàniament a altres temps. Justament l’altre dia en parlava amb un amic: fa molt que no baixo al centre per cap motiu en particular, i una cosa porta a l’altra i acabo amb gent completament diferent de la que havia començat, anant a veure la sortida del sol. Tampoc és que en tingui gaire ganes, però em sobta que, de cop i volta, això s’hagi convertit en un record llunyà. Aquells temps llegendaris estaven marcats, potser no tant per memòries específiques, sinó per la sensació general de possibilitat: que no importava exactament per on comencés; el moment s’encarregaria de portar‑me allà on havia d’anar.
Cada cop més penso que és exactament això el que els turistes vénen a buscar: la seva pròpia versió de "l’experiència autèntica" (signifiqui el que signifiqui). Veig els grupets de nois i noies d’ulls blaus que apareixen per aquí de tant en tant amb les seves motxilles, mirant a banda i banda de la carretera abans de travessar, buscant més aviat llocs on imaginar‑se dins d’un videoclip o escriure sobre aquells dies en caríssimes llibretes artesanals de marca, més que no pas millors condicions d’aparcament, una oferta oficial d’activitats culturals més àmplia o una nova oficina de turisme. Sigui en la seva versió digital o en la prosaica definició literal de la paraula, venen buscant una història.
Va ser precisament aquella sensació i resultant ambient el que va generar en aquells temps (o potser va ser la conseqüència de) no un "grup d'amics" en el clàssic sentit de la paraula, sinó d'un gegant ecosistema fragmentàriament connectat d'alternatius joves antisocials molt socialitzats per l'extremadament ineficient xarxa de transport públic. Una tribu sense nom els membres de la qual t'anaves trobant pel món de pura casualitat i de la qual, de forma instintiva, podies detectar a l'instant que l'altre en formava part, fins i tot quan ni tu mateix eres conscient que tal cosa existia.
Això es va trobar de ple i de forma consistent amb tot de noies (tant de fora com d'aquí) que buscaven alguna forma d'aventura lleugera però no s'atrevien o no tenien prou diners per viatjar gaire lluny. L'heterogènica barreja va crear de forma emergent alguns sistemes d'incentius interessants, que propulsaven aquells que en formaven part a reclamar la seva individualitat de formes que indirectament enriquien el propi teixit cultural que s'anava formant. Estàvem, com tots els joves (excepte els d'ara), infatuats pel nostre propi potencial i una marcada "creativitat relacional". La sobtada realització que, en realitat, un pot fer una mica el que li dona la gana ens va donar molt fort.
És clar, però, que aquest ambient ja llavors començava a mostrar les seves pròpies escletxes. Com que "fer coses guais" era el principal símbol d'estatus, això va generar una perillosa tendència en la qual la promesa i la presentació eren la millor forma d'aconseguir-ho. Això va donar origen, entre altres coses, a la mítica figura del fuckboi empordanès, caracteritzat per una barreja d'influències californianes i "de la terra" que podia vendre el somni a aquells disposats a comprar la seva dosi individual de somni d'una nit d'estiu.
Parlant de comprar, probablement la més clara cristal·lització de tot el fenomen va venir, de tots els llocs possibles, d'un anunci d'estrella damm i la seva cançó. La història (perquè l'anunci era més un curt que un anunci) era la clàssica: un noi viatja, es troba gent, entre aquesta gent una noia, fan coses, entre el noi i la noia passen coses o no passen coses, i eventualment el viatge s'acaba i es diuen adéu, amb la realització que tot havia sigut un petit però intens somni d'estiu, cosa que no el fa agredolç però tampoc falsament idíl·lic, enregistrat a formentera. Potser era al revés, i era la noia la que viatjava. És igual. El cas és que és molt significatiu que la millor representació (o almenys, més reconeixible) de la nostra generació la cantessin uns suecs. La pròpia natura del fenomen respirava hiperrealitat per tot arreu. Nosaltres mateixos érem una espècie de flashback de la cultura lisèrgica dels anys setanta subvencionada pels nostres pares, i el col·lapse de l'estil de vida fictici que en realitat només servia per vendre cerveses i lligar amb noies va oferir un (aquest cop de forma no intencionada) interessant paral·lel amb el final de la contracultura dels estats units en forma de drogues més dures i desil·lusió general. Tan autèntic i innovador com un tatuatge maori fet a carrer tallers. Ja ens vam perdre la nova cançó, el final de la dictadura i el que sigui que passés aquí als noranta, així que ens vam agafar al que vam poder. Fos com fos, en el mateix moment en què va ser reflectit a la pantalla, aquell llampec que havien aconseguit embotellar es va apagar.
Potser va ser el seguit d'humiliacions col·lectives el que finalment va esgotar les vibres de l'època (la crisi econòmica, el 15M, el procés, la pandèmia). Potser és una simple qüestió demogràfica. Potser simplement es va acabar i ja està. Potser, de fet, no va arribar a existir.
Però ni fins i tot jo puc negar que algo sí que ha canviat, que no és només un atac de nostàlgia. M'ho va deixar molt clar una fotografia que em van passar de fa més d'una dècada. A la fotografia, un grup de nois de quinze anys tocava música en un petit escenari a la platja, i el públic era un parell de dotzenes de nois i noies de més o menys la mateixa edat, amb una filera d'adults que contemplaven des de la distància; en una barreja de sorpresa, espant i orgull, com si una colla de nanos que ningú sabia exactament d'on sortien s'estigués apoderant dels seus espais i els convertís instantàniament en dinosaures. Malgrat la promesa, però, l'ecosistema mai no es va acabar de materialitzar en una verdadera contracultura. Ni tan sols en un moviment, ni res que ens aportés el màxim honor que se li pot concedir a un poble: ser mencionat de tant en tant. En part perquè, quan aquestes coses estan passant, un sembla inundat d'una fantàstica seguretat que en realitat no fa falta; que fins i tot sense cap causa en particular, la victòria contra tot allò que és decadent és inevitable. Que, d'alguna forma, l'energia del moment prevaldrà sobre qualsevol obstacle eventual.
Quan la realitat és que érem (i som) un grapat d'inútils i ja està.
La seva dissolució àcida no va ser cap tragèdia còsmica que li canviés el destí, ni tampoc aquest escrit és un intent de mitificar‑ne l'essència per poder-la recuperar; és una simple dissecció protocol·lària que hem d'aguantar aproximadament cada cop que canvia el zeitgeist. De fet, els cicles d'estiu i no‑estiu d'aquests pobles són en si mateix un microcosmos en el qual l'alçament i caiguda de civilitzacions senceres té lloc de forma puntual quan deixa de fer calor. Pretendre que d'alguna forma aquest era un lloc del món amb màgia és (com sovint són aquestes coses) més un truc de prestidigitació que cap altra cosa, fins i tot quan la narrativa és que solia estar encantat i ara ja no ho està; d'alguna forma, aquesta perspectiva fàcil és altament preferible a assumir que no passa aquí res interessant des de fa més de mig segle i que realísticament mai tornarà a passar.
Alguns dels individus que formaven la nostra onada en particular encara ronden per aquí, alguns encara amb la persistent idea que la vida és algo temporal i aviat podran deixar això de banda definitivament per fer música o el que sigui que se suposa que havien de fer. Cada any participem del ritual de tallar‑nos les grenyes per setmana santa per començar a treballar de cara a l'estiu en algun hotel o restaurant, i així poder —entre això i vendre herba amb la seguretat social— compartir apartaments decadents i nodrir el nostre propi stash del que sigui que necessitem per mantenir‑nos en vida la resta de l'any (aquest cop, sense l'excusa de la subversió i l'exploració de l'inconscient que feia que en el seu moment tingués certa gràcia). Quan la «llibertat de fer el que vulguis» ens va deixar exhausts, es va anar convertint en una «llibertat de no fer res». L'utilitarisme de curt termini s'ha eternitzat, i els poders de disconformitat que alimentaven l'espai també han impedit, entre altres coses, que els individus que el formaven realitzessin el seu potencial. Ha ocupat el seu buit una patològicament catalana falta d'imaginació. El poble és ara ple de manicures, perruqueries i tendes de roba amb tendències bohèmies a preus desorbitats en escaparates lluminosos que demanen community managers. Per molt que ens agradi culpar els alcaldes, presidents o cacics locals de torn de les nostres misèries (que de vegades, en tenen culpa) la realitat és que sovint són més un símptoma que cap altra cosa, i que forces més grans que tots nosaltres són les que semblen estar portant últimament el món en una o altra direcció.
Estem ara en mode supervivència.
En algun moment, ningú sap exactament per què ni exactament quan, la música que semblava part inseparable de l'escenari es va acabar, i (com en el joc) tothom o bé va córrer a sentar-se en una cadira o bé va fotre el camp. Aquest era el problema fonamental de l'estil de vida que prometien tant els petits negocis locals com els festivals patrocinats per estrella damm; van vendre un producte de consum ignorant activament les realitats que el produïen, i aquestes van aprofitar l'oportunitat per materialitzar-se en un futur que va deixar desemparats a tots aquells que es van atrevir en el seu moment a creure en l'estil de vida que portava implícit. Una generació de patètics i fallats somiadors que han après a recontextualitzar la seva rendició sense condicions com el resultat d'un procés de creixement personal. Mai van entendre l'essencial ―però sempre oblidada― fal·làcia metafísica al cor de la cultura mediterrània: la presumpció desesperada de que algú, o almenys alguna força, t'està esperant quan s'acaba l'estiu.
Ara bé, el mar encara està al mateix lloc. Just al final dels penya-segats, allà on el vam deixar. Mentre el sol continuï brillant en aquestes costes, sempre hi ha haurà la possibilitat de que una legió de turistes disposats a subvencionar els somnis d'un grapat d'arreplegats vinguin a respirar l'aire resultant. De recuperar (si es que mai va existir) l'estil de vida que venem en els paquets de vacances, decididament català en la seva obsessió malaltissa per els plaers simples i no complicar-se la vida que es sembla trobar després de tanta xerrameca en seriós perill d'extinció; una forma vistalista del que sempre ha sigut en realitat nihilisme en petit format. De pintar de nou allò que fos que ens fes semblar pintorescs en el que potser era només la nostre imaginació.
Des d'aquí comparteixo unes clares i concises propostes que ofereixo desinteressadament a qualsevol ajuntament d'algecires a constantinople (que no sé per què li van canviar el nom) per emprendre aquesta tant noble tasca:
- Prohibir l'ús del rellotge fora de la feina.
- Ampliar les hores de sol durant els mesos d'hivern.
- Tornar les putes barraques a la platja que és on haurien d'estar.
I never listened to rap when growing up, and as I have re-discovered a wide variety of genres this last decade that I didn't like when I was a teenager, rap and hip-hop in general continues to elude me. There's something about the whole "posture of it" that just repels me; the lyrics are all about stuff that have nothing to do with me (and really, for anyone) and is a nightmarish repetition of the same themes and tropes about bang-bang and money-money, turbo-chicks charged banality and useless and aimless bravado, dissing between themselves that just hide that they have nothing to do, nowhere to go, and nothing else to actually talk about once the ghetto gospel dies. A mindless repetition of gun sounds, vinyls scratches and... not much more; the so called poetry of the streets facing the vapidity of a brick wall. Losing itself in an unintended self-parody that is meant to be unhinged and authentic but just looks sad from the outside.
But actually, the deeper reason that explains why I don't like rap has nothing to do with the vanity-ridden intellectualization of the fact. It has nothing to do with rap being "good music" or "bad music" whatever the fuck that means anyway. After all, all genres are based around heliocentric themes, formulaic shticks and banality. No, the real reason I don't like rap is because I don't feel it. Most music is passable, in the sense that "it lends itself to be listened to", but there's no moment when it sounds that I feel every molecule of my body vibrating at the same time, and without that, it's no different to me than elevator music or whatever pop slop is sounding in the background of the cafeteria. No part of my brain hears Kendrik Lamar and goes "yes, this is me" or "this sound embodies a mental state that is known to me". I don't know what to say, we have lived very different lives brother. It's really nobody's fault. All I know about the hoods and black culture comes from Bel-Air and RDCworld1. After all, I'm a white european boy from an upper low middle class family. I once watched that movie. Growing up, rap was just Eminem's weird gimmick. Also the music that the trashy people I actually knew seemed to really like.
That said, there are some songs I actually like quite a lot. Two of them are from 2Pac. The other is this one:
How it came to be like this, was quite fortuitous. I have always loved Aruarian Dance, as a sort of one off song I would put in random playlists to expand their scope and make them seem less shallow than they really are. Then, one day, for no particular reason I clicked on the author.
There, between normal looking other instrumental tunes I saw this weirdly named song.
Luv (sic.) pt3 (feat. Shing02)
All my alarms blew off. What kind of title is that. Isn't this whole "feat" thing what rappers and djs do? Who the fuck is Shing02? What the hell is a luv(sic)? So clicked on it. And it was weird as fuck. I... I didn't even knew if I liked it or not. The tune was great, and the rap lyrics seemed to interplay nicely with the whole thing, but at the same time they still grossed me out a little bit. I didn't knew if I liked it because of them or in spite of them. I listened to it a couple more times and decided to put it in a little forgotten list full of misfits I don't really listen much to but still find they have an unidentified nice vibe to them; like The Q4, John Murphy, Woodkid and The Mountain Goats. A weird compilation of somewhat obscure sounds to be visited when I run out of ideas about what song to put where. Feathers have lived rent free in my head ever since.
Fast forward about a decade.
I was climbing in the fightclub-esque abandoned factory turned clandestine climbing gym in my home town, when someone put some rap music that sounded weirdly familiar. I casually said "this sounds like Nujabes". Instantly, they guy that put it in the speakers stopped whatever the hell he was doing in another room and came where I was to stare at me with a thousand yard-stare and asked: "who said that". It turns out, it was Nujabes. There are some artists that, they are not obscure, but to recognize them in a crowd of people instantly makes you best friends with whoever put it in or at least, you recognize each other as the giga-connoisseurs you are and share a silent link through the invisible link of objective genius musical taste. Nujabes is one of them. It has happened me before. The guy wasn't an stranger anyway, but I could sense he was seeing just then now and then in a light he hadn't seen me under before. We talked briefly. I asked him if he knew what style was this whole thing supposed to be, or if he knew other artists that made similar things to that one-off conceptual album. He said he didn't. Then, a couple of days after I asked the same to my other Nujabes friend, and he said the same.
What a curious thing, I thought.
And for no other particular reason than that, in my never-ending quest to broaden my musical horizons (or more prosaically, find music I like) yesterday at 1AM I decided to descend into the rabbit hole and search for an style that didn't exist between the depths of a genre of music I knew nothing about and don't like at all.
I started where any sane person would, using an outdated webpage from a former mad-scientist spotify engineer that created a cluster based definition of musical genres constructed from scrapped (internally stolen) user data. There I saw that what I was looking for was either something called "ambeat" or "rap jazz". The problem was that, exploring both two-dimensional clusters, what I found was not exactly it. A good starting point, but not it. The thing is, "it" it's not just a normal rap song with a jazz or ambient base underneath it, it has to be more nuances than that; with some interplay between the two, empowering the illusory and ironic juxtaposition of the two that made it sound fucking magical. Most stuff was just too ambient or too beat, and lack the introspective and littered with literary lyrics that elevate it above the usual street banter. Lo-fi hip-hop also don't quite covers it, as it (by design) lacks an undercurrent of intensity.
Then I went old-school spotify digging. Related artists, searching all featured artists on anything that smelled slightly as what I was looking for. Quickly I realized I was running in circles around the original conceptual album and a guy called Cise Star. It became quite obvious to me that what I was looking for was not a defined genre, but the work of an small group of like minded individuals that occasionally did this very particular brand of fusion rap. Which is often the origin of most genres per se, but made searching for gold much more difficult. The playlist was risking to become a handful of tunes from the original work that started this journey and not much else. It has happened to me before.
But, then I realized something odd. A whole lot of unrelated songs by unrelated artists had a track with "nujabes tribute" in the title. I thought this guy was obscure. Most of them were not very good, but I found they played an important role just by being there. As if just having a song with such name in your repertoire somewhere made you part of a distinguished club of the real ones. Once again, Nujabes brothers. So, aside from brute force looking for tributes and checking out the artists other works, I decided to go absolutely insane in my quest and just googling the guy.
He was japanese, made music and died somewhat tragically. That was the extend of my knowledge of him before that. What I found was almost an entire subculture centered around the guy. The extensive wikipedia page, the 50K+ subreddit, the fan-art, the tattoos, the memes. Most relevant was a hand-made translation of a transcript of a text by Shing02 (remember him?) found in uncatalogued japanese vinyls about the origin and creation of the already infamous conceptual album.
I will let the man speak for himself:
I first dedicated "Luv(Sic)" to the goddess of music in the end of 2000, and fifteen years later, we have a six-part series (Hexalogy). There is a certain voice that unites the chapters, a character if you will. The way Luv(Sic) is spelled (as in the Latin sic, for a misspelled quote) symbolizes how it wasn't a straightforward love song, there's a layer of obscured honesty. Obviously, there's many classic hip-hop songs in the form of love letters, such as LL Cool J's "I Need Love," or Common's "I Used to Love H.E.R", but to me it was important to write something personal, a song that spoke about my own vulnerability about wanting to have a lasting relationship with music.
The transcript is quite worth it, and can be read here.
Man, I love when stuff comes with lore.
I resumed my digging. Both through spotify shenanigans, google and everynoise cluster analysis. Slowly, but surely, a drip of good songs started to fill the empty bucket. I didn't even stop to look at it or re-listen to a lot of stuff, so lost I was in my frenzy. Eventually, when bird already chirping somewhere outside my room, I felt satisfied. I closed the list with the original song sampled in the song I posted before, which I found I actually had listened to before a long time ago when making a jazz playlist about a decade ago. Man, the world is a time machine. I went to sleep wondering if the list would held up the day after, or if this only made sense in the moment, like a feverish dream.
So I woke up today unreasonably late, eat dinner made coffee smoke a bit and eventually remembered about what I did the night before. I'm listening to it right now. It fucking works. Not only that, it slaps. I did it. I've healed myself from the ignominy of my own musical chauvinism: I found rap I like.
