presentism...
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...:::...dr. pangloss was a gray stuffed seal my father used to keep on his pillow when i was little. i remember him tossing it high into the air and i would watch from my child-vantage point as it would climb and then slow to almost hang suspended for a moment before re-accelerating and falling back down to land with a soft, dead-weight on the ground. perhaps that is one of my earliest memories of gravity in effect...

i've been reading stumbling on happiness over the past month and have been wonderfully overwhelmed by the vocabulary it has given me to apply to thoughts i've had about where i am and where i am going. daniel gilbert (the author) uses voltaire's dr. pangloss (who was a very different creature by the same name as my father's stuffed seal (he was a 'metaphysical-theologo-cosmolo-nigology' who thought he lived in the best of all possible worlds. he believed things like noses were made to support glasses...that legs were made for pants...that stones were made to be shaped into houses...)) as a baseline to describe how we often gloss over the unwanted things in our worlds...

he writes, "There are more ways to think about experience than there are experiences to think about, and human beings are unusually inventive when it comes to finding the best of all possible ways. And yet if this is true, then why aren't we all walking around with wide eyes and loopy grins, thanking God for the wonder of hemorrhoids and the miracle of in-laws? Because the mind may be gullible but it ain't no patsy. The world is this way, we wish it were that way, and our experience of the world - how we see it, remember it, and imagine it - is a mixture of stark reality and comforting illusion. We can't spare either."

the idea of presentism (which is a word historians use to describe how the past is often interpreted through today's perspective) fits into all of this not so much in how i think about the past, but more in how i imagine the future. "Because predictions about the future are made in the present, they are inevitably influenced by the present...The reality of the moment is so palpable and powerful that it holds imagination in a tight orbit from which it never fully escapes. Presentism occurs because we fail to recognize that our future selves won't see the world the way we see it now." (-dg)

the most interesting thing about all of this for me is that i get to experience multiple feelings...i have first the psychological experience of imagining the future, and also the physical experience of actually being in it when i get there...the thing i think i am most certain of is this: that things always change (i am rich with it)...i remind myself of this when i find i am doing more imagining then participating. when every time i put a pen to paper the lines come out grotesquely wrong...or every time i open my mouth the words tumble out and melt into some confused phonetic sound with absolutely no meaning...there are so many possibilities to imagine and marry to experience. i have been learning to look for the sight lines between them. my eyesight is improving...:::...

download: 071107-modyfier-part01

carl craig – twilight (live in paris) feat. mad mike, wendell harrison and kelvin sholar : oct 2007 on planet e communuications
rocha & lewinger – miles davis : aug 2007 on minimo records
sascha dive – bdown variation 7 (spoken words at neva dug disco (dallas)) : aug 2007 on deep vibes
tiefschwarz – original (drama society remix) : oct 2007 on souvenir music
szenario – pleaseasy (raudive remix) : oct 2007 on leftroom records
jan driver – kardamoon : aug 2007 on grandpetral recordings
gui boratto - the rivington (martinez remix) : oct 2007 on galaktika records
kabale und liebe – mumbling yeah : oct 2007 on area remote
delon & dalcon - academy : sep 2007 on boxer recordings
maurizio – candegina : oct 2007 on sk recordings
oliver gregoire - empechment : oct 2007 on systematic
alejandro vivanco – dissolved : oct 2007 on cadenza
burial – near dark : oct 2007 on hyperdub

download: 071107-modyfier-part02

andy cato (groove armada) - uppers on the south downs (andy cato's hot head rermix) : oct 2007 on pack up & dance
grand theft auto – keep moving : oct 2007 on persona
upz – noiz feat. rasu (abical soul jah mental mix) : oct 2007 on objectivity
blake baxter & marc romboy - underground thang version 2: sep 2007 on systematic
fusiphorm – green chocolate (kolijah’s exploding cake remix) : sep 2007 on minimood
len faki – my black sheep (radio slave remix) : oct 2007 on figure
lump – all in your mind : oct 2007 on rrygular
robosonic – die blechtrommel : oct 2007 on diskomafia
legowelt - disco rout (freeformreform) : oct 2007 on cocoon
october – three drops : oct 2007 on caravan
jamie loyd – what we have (…is a zwicker remix) : oct 2007 on future classics
pier bucci – chiloe : oct 2007 on crosstown rebels
quio feat. afia, kwaku, nanie, lampapa & dr. data – chillaine : sep 2007 on agf production
james brown – it’s a man’s world (henrik schwarz remix) : oct 2007 on k7 records