What can I say about Driftwood, year two? It was kind of perfect, in that way that throwing the same party all over again never is. I suppose the setup is part of it, so I’ll start there. In the hottest part of the year, out on the Sacramento/San Joaquin River Delta (“The Delta” to its friends), we all got together again for a weekend of swimming in and floating on the water, music and friends and good times.
To get there, you drive onto a car ferry because there’s no bridge. There was cell phone signal this year, but it’s pretty far removed from the world. Haul in your water, food, ice, tent, floaties, party favors, and haul out your trash. Our friend Jack has a plot on Bradford Island he graciously lets us come out to.
Jack’s place burned over the winter; the outhouse he had was gone, and a lot of his infrastructure was damaged, but he still had some solar, and threw up a new bathroom in a better spot. It was a lot clearer this year. kind of bigger open space, as opposed to just having a little area cleared. The main structure he had, an elevated deck and cabin, also made it through the fire, so we still had a place to cook and put up the PA.
It was also the first time Sophia played a set in ‘public’. Half an hour, in front of a dozen people, but I think it counts. She played for… 45 minutes? But all recordings of sets at Driftwood are cursed, so you’ll just have to imagine a 45 minute drum and bass set. Or you can go to this SoundCloud Mix where she recreated it later.
Speaking of cursed recordings, OTHA played for four? six? hours after that, just a truly epic journey of a set. We laughed, we cried, we sat and stared at the stars. Then, his hard drive crashed. Possibly after we left the island, I’m not clear on the finer points of it all. Technology. So you’ll also have to imagine the rest, too.
Posted on 2023-04-27T01:17:12Z GMT
Just a quick post; these are from the first day I had the new camera (Leica M11) and took it out in the world a little. My little walk for sanity, as I’ve come to think of it. I’ve had it a month now, and I’ve got some opinions. With one notable exception, everything is better than the M10 was. Resolution, obviously, but that’s not even that important to me; I’ve had enough pixels since the d700 gave me 12MP. The battery is bigger, such that a whole day’s shooting will likely only require one. The menus are simplified, easy to use, and the wifi connection to my phone seems more reliable, too. The optical viewfinder is the same, excellent, the just best rangefinder. Live View is more responsive, both on the back display and through the Visoflex EVF (More on that in a minute). The shutter lag is the same, or at least I can’t tell a difference; if the camera is ready, and you’re fast enough, it’ll get the shot.
That is the camera’s one flaw though, that you have to make sure it’s awake. you turn it on and have to wait 3-5 seconds for it to be ready to take a picture, and what’s worse, the shutter opens and the viewfinder lines light up but it actually needs another half second to be ready. 3 seconds is an eternity. And the wake from sleep is also slow, on the order of 2ish seconds. Leica: please, dear god, figure your shit out. Nikon, canon, sony, even my dang Ricoh GR3, all get this right, ready to go in under half a second. The nikon is ready to shoot faster than I can roll my finger from the on switch to the shutter button. I feel like this is something I could fix with a couple weeks with the source code ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
A could other minor things: the internal memory is nice to have and has already saved my bacon once. I only took one card with me to OKC for a week, and that card started acting up on day one. 64gb, as it turns out, is plenty for a week in Oklahoma. The rear screen glass is nothing special; I can say this because mine is already cracked. Edit: turns out it was a screen protector the previous owner installed, which I discovered after my screen protector also cracked. Moral of the story: screen protectors suck.
Posted on 2023-04-21T08:02:09Z GMT
This was one of those nights that it was just such a privilege to be there. Picking up the camera and using it opens strange and wonderful doors, and this was one of them. Marisa, founder of Third Wall, above and below, is a total rock star, someone I know through Odd Salon, and puts on this thing. I had little to no idea what it was, but saw on facebook they were hoping to get someone to come and take some still pictures, and someone to take some video, and I was happy to volunteer.
Marisa is a real rock star, incredible voice and energy, trained as an operatic voice if I recall correctly. It was her show, her idea, although this was the first one they’d had since 2019. The same family that hosted the last one was hosting this one, but they had since moved house.
Anyway. The idea was: back in the day a lot of music happened in ‘salons’ with live players, sometimes even the composers themselves, demoing new ideas, fragments, etc. And everybody had a whole cultural context in which the pieces were experienced; they knew the history of the players and the composers, who was sleeping with who, who studied with who else, etc etc.
So what Third Wall events are is introducing some of that context with the music played by people that also know that history. The theme for this one was “Unrequited,” about, you guessed it, unrequited love. Really, a fascinating way to spend an evening. I don’t know when the next one will be but they have an instagram.
Posted on 2023-04-06T05:32:45Z GMT
