Bobby Brown @bobbyd0g@hellsite.net

@YoteDragon Perhaps the echoes have finally returned after your morning scream

@julilyinfinite I always appreciate chats with you but particularly glad you brought this up today, it's nice to know I'm not alone pursuing these critiques as an artist and how frankly traumatized experience can inform just as much as it can foreclose

@julilyinfinite My struggle with originality is so confounding I find myself feeling compelled to write albums half-composed of partial song covers, mashups, appropriations. For many years whenever I have an original thought I'm repeatedly devastated when one chord changes in my head morphing it "back" into some familiar song I've heard. At the very least I could recognize "The Simpsons effect" -- it's all been done, you can only hope to do the same things differently!

@julilyinfinite I had an attitude shift recently about music theory that made it much more approachable to me. I think I used to see it as a perfect system that would only reveal meaningful command at an advanced point where some greater concept emerged from a broad understanding. Now I see that there is no "point" -- Western theory is only one of many, also -- and that every musical feature you absorb is just another tool in your kit maybe you'll find a use for someday.

@julilyinfinite I'm a decent (if rusting) performing musician who has trouble writing lyrics or even humming out random melodies. With our powers combined.... lol ;)

I will say that music feels like arcane magic even for talented performers until sufficient underlying systems are learned, and at that point it becomes a deliberate pursuit. My first instinct is to validate the "childlike" output but you can always pick up some tortured jazz chord progressions for flavor 🎵🎶

@julilyinfinite I appreciate your willingness to observe music in a way that decomposes the works themselves as being able to convey their own purposes or to set their own context, because that intentionality is broken somewhere along the way most of the time. Accordingly, some work you characterize landed very differently for me. I'm personally in favor of sloppily produced trap music and propose we must analyze its irony culture well before characterizing any harmful messages.

@julilyinfinite And it goes deeper into the medium than political statements and subject matter; I find myself repulsed in many artistic situations where the media failed to "manipulate" me into an emotion. Most frequently I'm turned off by the use of sad music to attempt to deepen the impact of a scene in a TV show or a movie, and in the YouTube age we are absolutely swimming in poorly-crafted emotional button-pushers often intended to make some perverse, opportunistic influence

@julilyinfinite Ohh boy, that sounds like a conversation I could fall into for hours lmao… there is no communication medium with the naturally constrained, infinitely subjective, but chaotically influential power of music. I'm only just approaching the point in my life where I feel I can even trust myself to create music that is ultimately a force for social good. Many remember Sen. Paul Ryan praising Rage Against The Machine; it speaks to more than just his being out-of-touch.

@julilyinfinite [If only some coaching would improve my email communication habits!]

@julilyinfinite Is it a love/hate relationship with the concept, the process, or the results? I hope that if making music is something you want to fully enjoy, that the path further unfolds before you. I had the honor and privilege of coaching a few friends out of "tone deafness" and both their output and enjoyment improved dramatically with only minor adjustments in a supportive social environment. All had professed it was impossible and they were just bad singers!

Yep, same old nauseating horseshit salesman.

@julilyinfinite It's a shame how the most creative kids will just get talked out of something big sometimes. Like, I'll spare you the story but I'm 34 and still not playing drums, gotta fix that lol

I'm not explaining it very well, but I just wanted to emphasize how much I just didn't understand what a ... meaty pile of muscles the eyes really are, and how they can get worn out and screwed up just like any other muscle in your body, just literally by spending too much time looking at something.

The opaqueness of their nominal function to your mind is so perfect that we think of eyes like a glass lens with a default state, but your eyes don't resolve anything useful when inert. They are a system of muscles in counter tension pulling your eye's geometry into the required shape at all times. Sight is a thing of active maintenance, and their unconscious maintenance will fall apart without some conscious maintenance decisions. Here, most importantly, adequate sleep and limiting close focus.

If you spend more than a couple hours a day on your phone, I have to warn you: it *will* damage your vision, and you won't notice right away.