daily prompt

Through a Wall, Clearly

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The architect Philip Johnson died in January 2005 at the age of 98, at his residence for the previous five decades: his famous Glass House (above), which he built in 1949.

The idea behind the house is intricately simple: walls are an interference (obviously) between us and the world. What if the views on your property provided your home’s natural walls? Of course, my cynical brain brings me to memories of neighborhoods in which I would have happily lived without any windows, where “the view” (not the TV show) was exactly what I did not want to see. Heck, my cynical brain brings me back to apartments in which there were not enough walls between me and … me.
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One Thousand Years from Now

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Five hundred years from now, Jem Finer’s Longplayer project will have recently passed the half-way point in its 1000-year-long performance. Mr. Finer is seen in the installation in the photo at top.

Longplayer is a musical composition that is calculated to take precisely 1000 years to perform from beginning to end and has been in performance in England continuously since midnight on December 31, 1999. This means it has been going nonstop for seventeen years and a day as of today. You can tune in at any hour and listen. It will begin its second cycle as the clock ticks the last moment of December 31, 2999.

In my limited understanding, the composition is six pieces of music that are interlinked, with each one serving as a trigger to start some of the others at set intervals. They overlap. They trigger each other. The calculation provides that these intervals will allow for the first-ever repetition of music, a second-ever thousand-year cycle, to start at midnight on December 31, 2999. The composition is programmed to not repeat itself until then.
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A Salute to 2016

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

First, the apologies. I am sorry that I have no preditioning talents, so I do not know what 2017 will bring. I can only hope that 2017 spares all of us any sadness that can not be understood, all pointless rage, or a further coarsening of attitudes into an blank-faced acceptance of hate.

I know that all of the above is not possible without work, and that all I can offer is some hope in my immediate neighborhood, which includes this website right here.

When I started this website in December 2013, no one on this planet was waiting to read what I had to write about anything at all. No one was holding their breath.

Thank you to more than 25,000 visitors to this website in 2016. You tallied up 43,000-plus visits this year, which strikes me as 42,999 more than I understand.
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