My ears aren’t used to a ‘bass’ anymore. A whole long year long I’ve been listening to music & barely been able to hear a good low bass sound. I’ve been listening to loads of mp3s through either little headphones or the tiny speakers of my powerbook. There’s no bass there.

I just connected my powerbook to ‘real’ speakers – Tannoy MX1’s – that have quite a heavy bass-sound. I do not believe my ears. I do not understand anymore what I am hearing. My ears have to adapt. The sound is so much richer, and it is so ‘low’…

It makes you wonder – again – what the iPod-craze is doing to our perception of sound and our perception of music.

(Not that I am a stereo-freak. Far from it. I think one’s ears do adapt, fill in, filter, imagine what is missing. Maybe when listening one always imagines what the music should sound like?)

The days pass by quiet. A bit like the weather: quiet and grey. I am waiting more than anything else. Waiting to move. First back to Amsterdam. Then start a new job. Then move on to a new appartment in Amsterdam. In the meantime I am writing. (F. is also finishing work – so I’m not much of a spoiler of Xmas-festivities).

I am writing in a strange way, working on the same article now since 2 weeks? It’s a round-up of my research at the Jan van Eyck; the story is the one I’ve been telling in the public lectures earlier this month.

The framework was already there (in my head, in the powerpoints that I used in the lectures). I basically wrote everything down and added all the necessary or nice quotes and references. I could only get it ‘out’ by not being totally involved with the sentences that I typed out – by simulating that I was not wholly present while writing. Simply too much material. maybe afraid to finish? And although I consciously threw out quite a few subjects (like a comparision of blogging and notebooks, of blogs and commonplace books; and the whole public – private issue), I still ended up with over 20.000 words.

That was 4 days ago.

So it feels almost as if I’m trying to write a thesis.

I’m used to write texts of 1000 – 2000 words. Sometimes, sometimes I may write 4000 words.

I spent the past days making a first edit. Not working too hard – a few hours a day. Cleaning up, deleting doublures (there are still a lots – I tend to state everything five times in the same text), shifting whole paragraphs. Again doing that while feeling not totally involved.

The first edit is done. It still is 20.000 words long.

And I am afraid it still is too much of a simple description of the history, present and possible future of blogging – zooming in on issues of authorship and software – mostly software. (Well, I know what Latour says about descriptions, but I’m not so sure that my description fits his criteria…)

But, well, I hope I now have all the ‘material’ – to get fully involved with the ‘sentences’. I know I’ll be able to throw out at least 10.000 words.

Peet http://sneaker.nl/articles/2006/12/20/wil-je-ook-eens-een-keertje-minder/ tells me about this software: http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/product/writeroom – and hmm, although I’m quite often doing the apple-tab thing (swithing quickly between programs), I might like this.

Just text text text!

Alas, it’s only for 10.4 & I’m still using 10.3.9 – maybe this will make me upgrade (when I find the time — …)

Laatste ritje. Waarschijnlijk. 11 – 13.30. Vise en het dal van de Berwinne en van de Voer. Klassiek dus.Dikke mist, soms niet meer dan 25 meter zicht – dus ook nergens uitzicht. Kletsnatte weg. 5 graden. Misschien wel het beste weer om mee af te sluiten.

Kanne – kanaal – Vise – Lorette – Dalhem – Mortroux – Val Dieu – St. Jean de Sart – St. Pietersvoeren – St. Martensvoeren – Gravensvoeren – Moelingen – Lixhe – Lanaye – Kanne

Eennalaatste ritje. Denk ik. Mistig. 5 graden. 15.00 – 16.20. Raar om te bedenken dat ik niet zo snel meer op de Hauts de Froidmont zal komen. Ik ga het missen, volgend jaar.

Kanne – Eben – Emael – Halembaye – Froidmont – Houtain St. Simeon – Bassenge – Wonck – Eben – Kanne

Am here at the Jan van Eyck, writing. But it feels as if I have already left this place, as if the year is over. (Well, some days left en a few thousand words to write & edit).

2007 has started already. In the sense that 2007-activities have already started.

If this mood continues I think I will not go for any last goodbye-bike-rides. If this mood continues then, it will mean that I will not go for a bike-ride once in December.

To be honest, I can not imagine that will become true.

As I write this, I begin to feel the desire to go for a ride. (But it’s dark and it’s misty now).

I bought an ipod-nano — for all the train travelling I’ll have to do next year. I must say, it’s such a stylish & fashionable thing that I feel very tempted to cover it in ugly stickers.

“So”, the professor has gone on to explain, “if one acccepts the idea that maps begin as dreams, pass through a finite life in the world, and resume as dreams again, we may say that these paramorphoscopes of Icelandic spar, which cannot exist in great numbers if at all, reveal the architecture of dream, of all that escapes the net-work of ordinary latitude and longitude.” (ATD p. 250).

“Wernfer, damn him, keen-witted but unheimlich, is obsessed with railway lines, history emerges from geography of course, but for him the primary geography of the planet is the rails, obeying their own necessity, interconnections, places chosen and bypassed, centers and radiations therefrom, grades possible and impossible, how linked by canals, crossed by tunnels and bridges either in place or someday to be, capital made material – and flows of power as well, expressed for example in massive troop movements, now and in futurity – he styles himself the prophet of Eisenbahntüchtigkei, or railworthiness, each and every accomodation to the matrix of meaningful points, each taken as a coefficient in the planet’s unwritten equation…” (ATD p. 242)

For more on this see for instance Matterarts The Invention of Communication…

“As if innocence were some sort of humorous disease , transmitted, in a stage farce, from one character to another, Lew soon found himself wondering if he had it, and if so who he’d caught it from. Not to mention how sick exactly it might be making him. The other way to ask the question being, who in this was playing him for a fish, and how deep was their game? If it was the T.W.I.T. itself using him for motives even more “occult” the they’d pretended to let him in on, then this was serious manure pile, and he’d best find a way out of it, soon as he could.” (ATD p. 223)

Hmmm, remember Slothrop, paranoia & anti-paranoia in GR…?