2004-08-20 - 1:34 a.m.
UGH. Life is so up and down. Right now for instance, I feel so utterly content with the blessed and painless life I am lucky enough to be conscious through. I have this smile on me that, admittedly might have been slightly heightened a tiny amount by the ingestion of numerous Jack and cokes and the similar late night lethargy that my lifestyle affords me (sorry for the paragraph long sentences, Delicious is asleep and I don't think she would have enough time to actually try and proof read this dribble)
Yeah so.... UP AND DOWN was saying wasn't I.
I just had another hour long crashing session with my dear G4 (K.D. Lang sings "Con stant crash ing, is all I ever get") and I managed to contain myself enough to write the following letter that I think fairly closely "illustrates" (nice analogy) my irritation. I would dearly love that Steve Jobby Jobs fella to actually read and respond to. The bastard.
Here 'tis.... Be advised its a decent drunken ramble.
Dear Steve Jobs.
I have totally and utterly not only lost faith in this apple thing but have actually now become resentful and angry as to the time and energy I have put into it for what is becoming a vast and deep lagoon of NO REASON. I am a very creative and eccentric man. I am 32 and escape reality in my basement that would cause any clean living parent to seek medical help should it be occupied by their 17 year old son. Still. I adore the abilities that my 4 year old g4 promises me and have spent the better part of that 4 years learning how to navigate and control, to my advantage, numerous technological marvels. Photoshop, Illustrator and, most interestingly and exciting for me, Cubase and Reason.
Tonight, I sit here, amongst my meager studio of outboard effects units, some synth keyboards, an outdated but legendary sampler and a decent 32 channel desk... using simple text. Simple text is a 120K program that probably took an intern about a day to create.
I have spent the better part of my creative juices for the last 6 months restarting my mac around 7 times a night in order to ensure that usb, midi and audio all work at the same time. Every time I believe I might be getting slightly proficient at the ins and outs that need to be understood in order to run such applications, an interesting thing happens. Some inexplicable application preference or system program or language or some such bollocks will need to be be updated or adjusted. This means that everything that comes into contact with it, will need to be adjusted somewhere or re organized. Preferences, settings. Preferences, settings. Sorry did I say that twice?
As time goes by and my ability NOT to constantly spend a very large amount of money on these things continues, The system is getting slower, more unpredictable and basically just sick and tired. Which I am now emotionally mirroring. It is the epitemy of the planned obsolescence that seems to be an accepted business practice gone horribly wrong. Gone are the days when designers actually tried to build things that lasted 25 years rather than 2. I understand that the very nature of this technological, eccological wave is ever changing, but surely the extortionate fees for these machines cannot be justified - given the amassed knowledge from the growth and the previous success of it. The artist?, the reason behind the invention?, is now reduced to just a monetary supporter of the icon it has become.
Here I am, the man investing my money, being damaged and soiled by this crap. My dream as an artist is to create pieces of art that reflect happiness and harmony. How can I possibly do that when I have to think far more about how much memory I am using and weather I will crash or I will run out of processing power or need the better faster 6.5 version? Soiled by the promise of unimaginable ability I wither like an addict to a drug.
So, in a nutshell (or nut case, it's debatable now) for me to continue to promote the wonders of these machines with the fervor I still do, you need to supply me with a 2ghrtz g5 with 2 big monitors. I will then be able to spend the three to 5 thousand dollars I will need to on applications so I can move forward artistically. Failing that I will return to the analog world bitter and twisted and end up writing loads of music about how resentful I am of those 4 years and the 7 thousand dollars I spent on a 433 g4, 2 17 inch apple monitors, an extra visual card, a 250g hard drive, a 60 gig hard drive, a 50 gig hard drive, an external cd burner, a 1 thousand dollar 8 in 8 out digital audio card, an ipod, an ibot, a DVD ram storage device, a g4 titanium laptop and printing and scanning hardware.
Yours with deepest regrets and a tinge of heartache,
Porl Gordon
www.groovespook.com
Yeah, sorry about that. (gets off high horse and falls into pile of manure to amusement of three)
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