Moonlight Over New Albany, Ohio / Drone Shot by John Fraim
Lullaby for Kara / Rick Sowash
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John Fraim
In my last post to Midnight Oil, “Return of the Muse” I talked about the return and departure of various artistic muses in my life: Music. Writing. Photography. Filmaking. Dioramas. A lot of people are going to say that these artistic spells or periods never come over them. But then, what about particular moods people have that linger over life like some perpetual weather. What brings on these shifts in focus and interest to new things to be explored and new things and people to meet? And the various tests one is put through by someone (some group, some force) out there. And be tested by people one has met?
In effect, maybe we’re really talking about particular spells or enchantments or, as the Oxford Dictionary says “a person or personified force who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist.” In other words, really any creative forces in people that give to the world more than take from it. And periods in life where the same person might take more than they give back to life. In many ways the battle between the “takers and givers” to life is really symbolized today in the entire genre of Vampire Movies and TV being everywhere. Is everybody in life a giver or taker at certain times in their lives? Or, or there’s simply those types which were always takers in life. Or, the Vampires.
Maybe the art muses are really various moods of mine, or many of us, disguised in other ways? Here, moods or some period of my life defined my a new return to one of the older art form interest I had. Yet it seldom came back from any type of focus on my part, or me wanting it to come back. The old art form came back again. Like the music equipment, there was a lot of camera equipment in my basement. Much less since I took a trunk load to Gary’s shop in Grandview.
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Certainly mass moods come with many things in our nation. The comings and going of individual artistic muses, like mine, might somehow be connected to larger issues in the air at the time. Who knows. Who communicates with friends about moods today? Hardly nobody. Who communicates face to face with friends among the nation’s young, hardly nobody.
I think the new change will bring to my music with using just the Hydrasynth alone. The piece I just recorded proves the point well in just two tracks. (Posted later right HERE). Again, check out my track in the Page link above, recorded just one month into the Pandemic.
All of this makes me think more about the idea of researching the 550 posts I’ve been made to Midnight Oil since 2016. Sometimes five times a week. Thanks to the many followers and fans we have out there. But I can assure everyone I do this simply as my own therapy and way to comment on things in my life going on at the present time. Like right now as I write this. The idea of having some AI system scan the entire 550 posts (so far) of Midnight Oil Studios since 2016. Might there be some pattern to the images and the posts to Midnght Oil? Some various subjects and themes of the posts? A difference during the Pandemic.
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Many of the posts have music added or my own photos. (Like above) I think my moods might be tracked by looking at the images in the various posts. In the above, I was thinking about one of Ansel Adams’ most famous photos. As these moods might be traced with someone who has kept a journal in writing or a Diary over the years I have. Keeping some form of a record. Keeping up with an observation and reflection on the days that go by in one’s life.
Not the direct contact with the days into the pages of a Journal or a Diary. The daily recording simply didn’t work for me and I came to prefer the blog to Midnight Oil when I had something to say, to get out about music, a book or film. Something discovered for the first time. Something remembered again. Brought up to current attention like the music instruments from my basement I discuss in “Return of the Muse” in the above link.
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The current post to The Midnight Oil is around the 626th post to the site since starting in 2016. The famous founder of that area of science (many would say quasi-science) called psycho-history, Lloyd DeMause, always used popular images in culture, expressed in newspapers editorial cartoons. Other editorial decisions of the media expresses by selection of images around grand moods of national change. How to frame the news of the day.
I wonder if there is something to be studied and taken from the information (both photos and music) and somehow translated into some description of the times. Here, though, not using a Diary or Journal like many use. A good way of keeping track of observations on oneself and the passage of time. But here, a different way of keeping a record of things. Through posts to Midnight Oil images and objects in the news when I didn’t have a lot of comments on the world other than resting and getting ready for another battle of writing something.
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But also reviews of new and old music and various films. Many things but comments on the world from more than comics in the newspapers, the method of monitoring large collective changes in the national mindset. In a way, though, somewhat like Charles Schultz did with his Peanuts over the years. (He’s in my mind as I visited the Peanuts museum in Santa Rosa, California not long ago with my son Chris). Like Schultz in some ways, I see myself commenting on culture of the time from an outside, critical perspective on it. Sometimes satire and humor and sarcasm. Not from inside of it as much as from outside looking in perspective on life in the past seven years through 626 posts to Midnight Oil.
I wonder whether this record of the world in blogs finds any similarity to large scale events in the world like the pandemic. Is there a certain preference for images in these posts to Midnight Oil? A certain focus on a subject or a person? Over the years, I’ve read and written much on Carl Jung and symbolism. But I mix my interest in Jung with an interest in jazz and John Coltrane and Marshall McLuhan.
Midnight Oil Studios has been a method for me to keep a record of the world, comment and reflect on it. An online blog of ideas, images, music and videos. I’ve never gone back and reviewed it. Or attempted to match its topics and images with events happening in the world. Or, about to happen.
The content of Midnight Oil – when perhaps read by a new type of AI program – could offer valuable insight into both individual and collective psychology. Just as 626 posts (similar to those of Midnight Oil over a period of eight years) might offer the same thing. If there in fact ever was one. The cost of an AI reading of the Midnight Oil Studios site is one of the questions I now have. Also, asking AI what market for the Midnight Oil blog site content it suggests. Autobiographies written via blogs. This seems the way to go with all of this. Not try and select single blogs or categories of blogs. Simply provide the entire 8 years of blogs to an AI system.
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And publish what the AI system suggests. Or at least, strongly consider this. Query whether two basically different types of AI involved with 1) reading all blog content of a site and 2) devising a forward thinking strategy moving ahead in marketing. Can both be placed under one system? If not, what is the best collaborators and partners in this venture into a new form of autobiography. Or, even a new form of biography by examination of another’s daily blogs. It is a great untapped area for two genres of literature that might create some new form. More appropriate for our moment in time than the rather out-dated system we now have.
As of now, late March of 2024, the system of auto-biography seem outdated to me. I’ve published one biography and have at least five others in the early stages of outlining. The system of capturing all the content in Midnight Oil via AI and asking questions of AI after it has read all the content. If this moves ahead, I plan on writing about the entire publication process to help others who want to publish down this path.
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