Range Life

First of all: this. (And more specifically, this.) I know I promised my sanity that I would never live in New York City, but of the prospects I had, this seemed the best opportunity to get into some serious theoretical biology. The fact that it is 3 hours and $30 round trip from Baltimore gave it an undeniable edge as well. And hey, if I'm going to let the Devil City have its way with me, might as well be when I still have my youth and wits about me. Sort of like being in a band, or being a beatnik (both of which, incidentally, are common in NYC), or something like that.

I'm (slowly) reading a book on complex system theories (emergent phenomena, self-organization, nonlinear dynamics, chaos theory etc.) and starting to regret not having studied this kind of thing from the start. It's the only scientific concept I can remember actually getting excited about, and the only one I know of remotely having any philosophical relevance; a spiritual agnostic such as myself is always wanting a theory of how components can spontaneously produce more than the sum of their parts. At least that is the way it seems to me right now.

Metaphysical hot air aside, I'm really quite lazy these days. I got this 1985 Fuji road bike, I ride it around and haven't crashed on it yet. I write Pd patches while waiting for experiments to run, granular loopers and spectral delays I can barely keep under control. I played a headlining ambient gig at the Hexagon where the only audience was the other musicians on the bill, who were French, polished off an entire bottle of whiskey and an entire bottle of schnapps, took off their shirts and made out with each other during my set. I might be starting a laptop-guitar-pop duo with writer-Joe-met-on-a-bus-used-to-be-in-Scout. 50% of what I listen to consists of Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. Stephen Malkmus, that pathological slacker, is my bard these days. I can't wait the month until I leave my current job. My PI is new faculty, which means he pushes himself as well as anyone working for him, and I have learned from my time here that I hate pushing myself, only slightly less than I hate getting pushed by others. That is perhaps my deepest, darkest secret: I never care about (most) things people assume I care about as much as they assume I must.