Out and Away

JWise Thoughts

Gold Beach, Oregon

Yesterday’s entry was not even published before I started writing this post, which was supposed to be that one. I wanted to talk out loud about travel and its disappearing event horizon. I think travel, to some extent will return, but the industry is in for a convulsion that will have ripple effects that seriously damage many areas across America.

Consider the cruise industry: who in their right mind will venture onto the seas? Sacrificial lambs would be my answer. The number of people flying right now is down 95%: who thinks those numbers will recover this year or next? Thirty-three million Americans have lost their jobs in the past 60 days; if a second wave of the virus hits, which is almost certain, there could be another 10-35 million Americans losing their jobs. For those who continue to be employed, I doubt many of them will be thinking about dropping a few grand on getting away when another run on toilet paper, sanitizer, and various food items will be with us over the winter. Thus begins the cascade of cruise ship operators and airlines ceasing operations; with them we’ll see a wave of lodging operators having to shutter their businesses, which will have a follow-on effect on restaurants, coffee shops, and gift shops. This then will all add up to consequential financial impacts on tourist spots that will trigger yet more layoffs which has an impact on local tax collection that pays for local services.

The idea of supplying each American a couple of thousand dollars a month in income from the government would likely save many of these businesses as I could see a point where the risk of harm outweighs the advantage of using this found money to purchase some experiential time outside of quarantines. The trillions in debt will be nothing compared to the infrastructural carnage of trying to rebuild communities we allow to wither.

Over the previous 20 years, Caroline and I have made 214 trips out of Phoenix, Arizona, which equates to at least 952 days on the road. On average, we have traveled 48 days per year or 4.5 days per trip, but that is just our average. Sixty-two of these vacations were a minimum of 5 days, and more than a handful were a few weeks. Of these, only five were outside the United States leaving us with 846 days that were spent exploring America from coast to coast.

Our busiest year was 2003, when we were out almost every other week. We took 23 trips that year alone, but consider that each adventure was just under three days on average. We traveled cheaply as money was tight, but we had moved into an inexpensive apartment and picked up a Kia so we could afford to do more. Seventeen years later, we are in the same apartment, and we are back in a Kia.

That year, we visited California numerous times, along with New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, and Oregon. Nineteen states in 12 months, and not one of them involved flying to get there. In our Kia with an ice chest in the backseat, we packed up our food and map and drove. We stayed in sketchy motels that raised the eyebrows of most everyone we knew, but we were having adventures at the rate of nearly two a month.

This year was supposed to be a return to form where we were going to try to replicate the frequency of 2003 regarding our getaways. In early January this year, we spent three days up in and around Winslow, Arizona, and then two weeks later, we were in Duncan, Arizona, near the New Mexico border for a few days. February was supposed to see us on the road, but COVID stopped me in my tracks as I saw what was going on outside of America. By March, we were self-isolating

Things are going to be reopening soon, even if the convenience of visiting places has changed. We now have to consider that some of our favorite locations may not be accessible at times we’d like to visit. This creates the imperative that Caroline and I will have to venture out every chance we can from now on. Some of the luxuries we’ve indulged in the past years might be in short supply, or we simply may not want to risk being in busy locations. Sure we’ve enjoyed apple strudel late at night at a famous cafe in Vienna and had grilled rib-eye on the shore of the Colorado River after two weeks of white water rafting in the Grand Canyon. We’ve walked in the White House and went canoeing in Indiana, rode bikes in Portland and went snowshoeing in Yellowstone, so we certainly have a broad taste in experience, but even our most recent visit to Globe, Arizona, for some Mexican food after taking in wildflowers earlier in the day ranks up there with the most amazing trips ever.

We will once again pack an ice chest into the backseat of the Kia and go somewhere, anywhere, for the sake of enjoying our limited time. Gas is cheap; we expect the prices of motels will be cheap this summer, too. We may not feel comfortable eating at restaurants, but we can always get our food to go as everyone is now prepared for that, and in some instances, we have favorite places where we can eat outdoors, such as at the Mexican Hat Lodge in southern Utah that is the “Home of the Swinging Steak.”

The point is that Caroline and I have taken advantage of our opportunity to go out and away even when the circumstances were less than ideal. That ability to adapt and make compromises has allowed us nearly 1,000 days of travel from our mid-30s to our mid-50s. We used to think that at some point in our old age maybe we wouldn’t be comfortable traveling anymore and that we’d be able to find appreciation that we did it when we could. Now, with COVID in our midst and a future that could be restricted due to environmental concerns, there’s a potential reality that it won’t be old age, but it could be damaged lungs from a virus that limits our activity or another lockdown. What if pollution is tied to the risks surrounding this mutating virus?

Nothing is certain at this time; nothing ever has been, but using this rare thing called free time to venture into our life and novel experiences is something that requires serious intention. We owned that intention and found ourselves alone at sunrise in Hawaii as lava spilled into the ocean. Where was everyone else who was free to be there? They were self-isolating in their hotel rooms or at breakfast. We’ve spent many a November on the blustery coast of Oregon, walking alone on a windswept beach while others must have been in lockdown watching TV. How was it that we were able to afford rafting the Alsek River from Canada to Alaska? Shouldn’t the demand be so keen that we couldn’t afford such a luxury? No, we could afford it because so few are interested in pulling away from their boring routines.

As long as good health, maintained roads, services, and facilities are available, we’ll find ourselves back out there returning to places we’ve been again and again. We’ve been lucky that we recognized 20 years ago that we should never count on being able to do what we might dream of at some future date; we changed how we lived and took advantage of the moment, letting others make plans for an uncertain future. Sadly, that uncertain future is here, and I must admit a kind of melancholy at the tamp down on spontaneity but also gratitude that we never hesitated to get out there.

The photo that accompanies this entry is from Travel Day #470 experienced on November 26, 2006. We are at Meyers Creek Beach in southern Oregon. The day number comes from a project I’m working on here where I’m sequentially cataloging our trip away from Phoenix into one extremely long blog post so I can see a highlight from every trip we’ve made in the past 20 years.

Not

JWise Life, Thoughts

John Wise behind his words

What I’m not doing is caused by the void that is our current reality. What I’m doing is vague and unstructured. The result is not my expectation, nor is it cause for concern, though I would like to discover what is going on during this time of great uncertainty. There’s no precedent in my life for the witnessing of the entirety of humanity hitting the pause button. I look into the past for clues about the present so the future can be revealed, but that’s a dead end as nothing in the past is relevant to how a modern interconnected global economy and the cultural engine of shared spaces come to a halt.

Life is not like a videotape we would hit pause on and, upon pressing play again, continue where we left off. This paradigm from the time before COVID was an artifact of the industrial age, but we don’t live back there anymore. Our now is not even the now we’ll learn to know as it’s not defined yet.

I find these months rather confusing as there’s no trajectory any of us know of with any certainty. I suppose it’s good that we think we’ll just continue with business as usual as soon as we feel there’s a clear enough break in the viral mayhem, but why would we return to what was when everything leading up to this brought us to our current situation? I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s been a failure of humanity that has us at these crossroads, but it’s certainly not worth returning to our business-as-usual paradigms.

I don’t think I’m the only one bereft of answers and adrift, wondering where we are going. Reports of dream patterns being disturbed were part of the early narrative as we humans stopped much of our routine activity. This was blamed on many things, but I have a hunch it was because, deep and intuitively our species knew that we are going to have to dig within to find answers to the implications of where we are headed. A new map is being drawn, but collectively, we have no real idea what that looks like while we are still recovering from the shock of everyone being thrown out of their complacency.

If I had to guess, I’d ponder that after our species harnessed fire, we needed many centuries, millennia, even to understand just how life for our species had been altered by this skill. As a matter of fact, I might even guess that our frantic behavior before COVID-19 was some kind of primal response to our mastery of electricity and global communication. Today, maybe we are on the precipice of requiring our attention to be drawn in tighter on moving without traveling, living without waste, and organizing in ways that are sustainable to not only our own species but to the other creatures and the planet that we all call home.

I get that this is nothing novel and that we’ve had people for decades calling for us to adopt a more harmonious balance with nature, but we’ve never had an intellectual tsunami strike every one of us in a relative blink of an eye.

Travel is dead, very dead, and while we are hoping for an awakening this summer, there is no guarantee that anything will really draw people back to the sky or open waters. Hotels are planning on opening no later than June 1st and are priced like it’s going to be a normally busy summer season. Even if the rates by mid-summer go down by half there’s still the issue of restaurants, gift stores, and coffee shops that might see visitors reluctant to take a pause anywhere other than their room or out in nature away from others. The point is that we don’t have any idea yet how our behaviors have already changed. This can only be compounded by those who can still afford to travel but might be nervous about job prospects should a second wave of the virus attack us come fall. Will they be part of the second wave of layoffs? Will they recognize early the need to save for that emergency? Maybe they’ll spend part of the summer ensuring their pantry is set up for a long winter when COVID or a new variant comes back with a vengeance.

For two months now, I’ve not been able to bring myself to watch a movie, as everything I could watch features groups of people that look archaic and beyond my comprehension of the current situation. Occasionally, I catch an ad in front of a YouTube clip, and the outdated nature of it shows me, people in settings that no longer exist; it’s as though they are from an antiquated history that some previous generation lived in that is not my time right here right now. I am doing okay with the music I’m choosing to listen to as it’s used once and disposed of, which is made all the easier with how many people are live-streaming performances I’ll never hear a second time.

I had low patience for things nostalgic prior to COVID aside from the relevant practical knowledge passed up through history, but now, most of our former contemporary culture is being stricken from my senses. Maybe a poor analogy exists where I can compare what the music from the Roman Empire might sound like to a kid who appreciates the mumble rap of Lil Xan. No matter as any comparison is mostly useless when what is needed, what is wanted, can only be found in a future that is beyond the horizon and undefined.

Our next journey is to figure out how to cross the unknown divide, how to hurtle ourselves over the chasm that’s been created by an invisible molecule that challenges us to navigate its terrain as opposed to our previous 500 years of conquering the terrestrial territory. It feels ironic that we placed ourselves at the top of all life on Earth, and now we are held hostage by an invisible enemy. We should have heeded the invisible enemy within called consciousness and intelligence, but those were in the way of power and brawn; who needs books when you have guns?

But maybe this enemy is our liberator? The existing powers are trying to show that they believe it has answers because to admit weakness or uncertainty would impact the tools of control they’ve wielded for centuries. This relationship of forced conformity cannot last as they lack a forward vision that is an equal but opposite amount of zeal when compared to their love of money. Opening society because of markets and economies is the natural move that should be made by those who haven’t yet recognized the paradigm has shifted; this is after all that they know.

Then, on the other hand, just as early hominids could have never comprehended that their use of fire would someday be harnessed to aloft a rocket into space to deliver robots to nearby planets, I don’t think we can understand how we are supposed to utilize electronic knowledge systems to propel us to new heights. Other domains of enlightenment are either on our horizon, or we can fall back to existences that are feudal, fraught with uncertainty, and founded on inequality. I hope our path is forward.

Preoccupation With Dumb

JWise Thoughts

Sidewalk art in Phoenix, Arizona

The abominable preoccupation with placing the dumbest amongst us on a pedestal in order to titillate the masses and each other has got to stop. We elevate mediocrity to the front of our American culture in order for the average person to feel empowered that at least they are not as stupid as that person. The problem is that we’ve normalized the absurd, and now they are the measure of normal; they are the heroes, leaders, and mentors.

Instead of elevating those who are worthy through accomplishments and intellect, we besmirch the learned and curious by insinuating that maybe they’ve done something unfair (cheating) and used advantages (bought) to gain their positions. If these “easy” gains were available to the average person, then things would be fair or at least that’s what some want to believe.

We thrust a bizarre kind of celebrity into the limelight as it’s easier to celebrate the strange anomaly than spending effort to recognize the greatness of the average person, which is far too common. During this time of global self-isolation, we are seeing heroes in the people who have to report for work in hospitals, grocery stores, law enforcement, farms, and those people who work in factories making our food, along with the truckers who deliver it. From the gig economy, we can be thankful for those who are now delivering to-go food and groceries; imagine having to ask a politician to bring you your food.

What the impetus will be to force a wake-up to the damage we have done is an unknown, as maybe there’s no shock too big to knock us out of our obsession with stupidity. After the pandemic passes, maybe all people will want is a return to the banality they were comfortable with. But to me, it is this relegating of any intellectual rigor that has exacerbated our becoming the most infected, least prepared bunch of troglodytes to suffer from COVID-19.

Drifting

JWise Photo of the Day, Thoughts

Fascist propaganda in our neighborhood here in Phoenix, Arizona

I live in America, where we love us some good hate. Liberty for those who are like us is what we want, and death would be a fitting end for those who offend our pure sense of an archaic aesthetic. It’s tragic how this works for every racial/ethnic group on Earth in some way. Everyone is different and not like us unless they belong to our cult. There’s almost a hint of comedy in these groups that speak of great individualism and true freedom while practicing conformity that has no room for freedom outside of strict guidelines.

Humanism is my brand of wackiness where, delusionally, I have this half-baked idea that we are better off embracing one another, sharing knowledge, and enriching each other’s lives. Of course, I could be naive, and the conveniences of modern life could be had by enslaving minions who have no other options, but what do I know, as I’m not a white supremacist? Why is this even here on my blog today? Because Caroline found this sticker on a lamppost in our neighborhood while we were out walking in the morning.

No guns, no virus at the Social Security Office for Child Care in Phoenix, Arizona

Normally, we just walk around the block, and I tend to avoid the businesses and offices along our route as they hold nothing that appeals to me. Yes, the shops in our area are mostly worthless to us. For example, we have a local Department of Economic Security office that is a near-constant shitshow. I know this sounds harsh, but prior to the COVID shutdown, if I were to drive by (because in those times, I’d never walk along this particular stretch of road), the people who would loiter and cavort in the parking lot were not of my social group. (Hmmm, this sounds nearly as dismissive as the right-wingers I was just writing about in the paragraph above.)

So my bias and contradictory bullshit obviously put me in some kind of elitist position in which I think people of lesser means are below me – though that’s not right as I certainly believe everyone needs some help from time to time – but back to the shitshow comment before I explain the photo. My reference is about the fact that on any given day (prior to COVID), there was an obvious modus operandi at work at this facility where meth, alcohol, lack of birth control, poor education, and poor choices all around are part of the DNA of many of the applicants. True, there are always extenuating circumstances due to abuse, violence, brain damage, fetal alcohol poisoning, and various other traumas that might be influencing things, but that doesn’t excuse our society from putting people through even more bullshit by forcing them to congregate at the Church of Begging for Assistance or CBA.

This has gone way off track and is indicative of me drifting from one thing to another with little to connect the disparate elements of my wandering. Back to the photo: On the other side of the CBA is the Child Care Administration. I didn’t know this prior to walking up to check out all the signage. That’s when I was struck that between the signs about social distancing and not coming in if the visitor or their child has any symptoms of illness or respiratory distress was the sign informing visitors that guns are not allowed.

Here, you are visiting a place to request help for your children, but maybe you are packing a weapon just in case you have to leave empty-handed. You know what you came for, and you ain’t leaving without it, so you brought a loaded weapon in the off chance you have to waste the scum asshole at the desk who could deny you cash right in front of your child. The plan was to pull out the .45 and shove a bullet in their head in order to maintain self-respect and teach your child who’s the boss, except that’s not allowed here, and there’s a sign that enforces this rule.

A bee collecting pollen from a cactus flower in Phoenix, Arizona

If it wasn’t for the bees, flowers, clouds, cacti, trees, sky, stars, birds, lizards, and even the pesky flies, I’d be overwhelmed by our lack of compassion, common sense, intelligence, and passion to better ourselves. The bee is bettering the hive by selflessly taking many trips to random flowers and then tediously flying up to the uncaring stamen to collect some, not all, of the pollen. Packed onto her hind legs, the corbiculae are delivered back to her mates, where the feast ensues. At the hive, she will allow the other bees to suck the nectar she drank along its journey from her stomach, draining water and adding enzymes until only honey remains. This cooperative existence of sharing abundance works for an insect with a brain 20,000 times smaller than ours and is a testament to just how stupid we humans are.

Hidden in the Shadows

JWise Photo of the Day, Thoughts

Shadows of Caroline Wise and John Wise in Phoenix, Arizona

We no longer live out on the stage of what was a normal life; we are not on vacation in some iconic location; we are not on our way anywhere familiar. We are instead existing at home, living in our minds, traveling beyond the shadows of who we were. On the other side of those former persons that were us, of the people who saw the world through the eyes of “things are the way they are,” are different people who cannot take for granted that those “things” will stay the way they were. The waves of the ocean no longer crash upon the shore we knew but, instead, roll in towards senses hungry to feast on such rarities momentarily forbidden.

Of course, it’s always been this way, but we didn’t want the brevity of our experiences and time on Earth to stand in front of our consciousness, flailing the arms of certain death that this is all temporary. We trick ourselves and reassure our inner dialog that we can do this or that tomorrow, next week, next year, or simply, someday. We remain largely unaware that as the day passes, the shadow of our life expectancy grows shorter. Early in the morning, our shadows stretch far, and likewise, early in our lives, the horizon is difficult to see, while comprehending it may forever elude some. What are we supposed to do with an infinite horizon where time has no meaning?

Disappearing from our normal lives in this state of self-isolation, threatened by the hostility of an invisible stalker called COVID-19, should awaken those who cannot see beyond their noses. Fear of the unknown and desire for the familiar have them waiting for a return to their routines. This has not become the opportunity to find new regard for the transient nature of life and the ephemeral, fleeting impressions brought to their senses by novelty. It is the control mechanism of the oppressor. It is the abusive father, the demanding teacher, the tyrant found in one’s boss. This though is a myopic view of the person who never learned of their own agency. They have mastered the role of the victim and have grown comfortable hiding in the margin of life, not emerging from fear.

Granted, there are those who are in dire need of counseling, continuing education, or financial assistance who simply must do what it takes in order to survive, but that, too, is a consequence of living in the moment of not understanding what’s ahead. The inability to have been prepared for life is the same as walking towards the cliff and hoping that the hand of God will be there to catch you before you fall into the void. If we can understand the folly of such a stupid act, how do we blind ourselves to the need to have life safety nets? The answer is relatively easy, even if assumptive: nobody really cares about those around them. In that sense, we are not holding one another’s hands and helping each other along.

Masked John Wise and Caroline Wise in Phoenix, Arizona

Too many live behind masks even when they are not wearing ones of a physical nature. When I go shopping, I see many men obviously not comfortable wearing a surgical mask, and yet the masks they are wearing, as a consequence, speak more about them and their selfishness than simply being out shopping can portray. How well do these people really know themselves if they cannot empathize with those who are looking to live? Am I suggesting that those without masks are likely narcissistic, angry assholes? Yes.

The funny thing about my gross characterization is that I’ve often been called a narcissistic asshole myself because of my determination to get what I want. I don’t try to get things in life at the expense of others (though there are those who would call bullshit on that); then again, they want someone who will do for them what they fail to inspire themselves to do, so there’s that. Their masks are the ones of having lived under a shadow of isolation where love was something found in movies for women or was experienced as a good fuck, but still, their lives remained empty.

I’m taking inventory of things I might be taking for granted, though I thought I was fully appreciative of all that I stumbled upon. For example, Caroline and I were always pinching ourselves at our good fortune of being able to travel so much that we had the means. Maybe I didn’t quite understand how lucky I was to have eyes, ears, and other senses that are able to be present at places of beauty, historic importance, or some other element of grandeur. I knew that I had the characteristics of a person who wanted to explore, but I thought those were common. I’ve assumed that others, if they had the financial capability, would indulge themselves in a lifelong ambition to seek out knowledge and experience, but COVID-19 is showing me, or maybe to some degree reinforcing, the idea that those who want to remain in old habits have no interest in what the unknown has to offer.

It’s easy to know that Caroline and I on a desert island would need 60 rolls of toilet paper per year or that we eat about 200 pounds of onions between us over those same 365 days, so we can now plan accordingly before we’re shipwrecked. Yes, this has been gleaned over the past 44 days of self-isolation. As a matter of fact, seeing how COVID-19 might return later this year, this knowledge may prove helpful during the fall and winter. What’s not easy to know is how we are changing after hearing so many birds in our neighborhood or seeing so many lizards growing fat as the days grow warm. We could not have known how generous we’d feel to help others during this crisis or how mistrustful of those who are not aware of the space they are in. There’s almost no food waste in our lives right now and we are happy to be frequently making our own cereal and bread. We are happy to explore our hobbies and wish there was even more time in the day to explore the interests that feed our minds.

Once we are able again to venture out to other places we’ll be in our car and heading somewhere, likely to the Oregon coast. This next trip, though will be aware of what part of us we have to leave behind and of that part of us in self-isolation that was dormant as our new routines had us stuck in our immediate environment. I hope our senses will be flush with the symbiotic and profound awareness of awe that our real freedom is always there and is ever-present so long as we maintain intellectual forward motion. Our happiness seems premised on the idea that we can neither live in the shadows of hope nor behind the mask of fear and uncertainty. We cannot trade one form of self-isolation for the illusion of freedom found in another flavor of self-isolation. We must go forward and deeper within every day.

#STREAMPUNKS

JWise Moments

Colin Benders at the synth During Modular Lockdown

We are watching the Indie live music industry change with an emergent streaming movement that is happening by necessity because the club and concert hall have temporarily disappeared.  People’s need for grouping around artists is still a large part of the context of our culture, but the venues that support these activities are closed. There is no certainty as to when public gatherings might take place again, so in the wake of our global shutdown; there are those who are going live on the internet.

In some way, I see this as the Westernization of the Japanese idea of the otaku. This type of person was seen as being obsessed with particular aspects of popular culture to the detriment of their social skills. Right now, our social skills are on hold as we become accustomed to being at home. For the majority of the global population, being ripped out of the social fabric that was our day-to-day existence was obviously not something cultivated over the early years of our life, as might occur to the young Japanese person who gradually becomes an otaku.

In an instant, though, we were rendered homebound. While students took to Zoom for group conferencing with their teachers and fellow students and companies also started meeting more frequently on everything from Zoom to Skype, Teams, and WebEx, there was something afoot in the music world that is largely unknown to the masses right now.

Colin Benders Patching His Synth During Modular Lockdown

We are starting to see the emergence of the #STREAMPUNKS. The term, as far as I can find, was first used in a forum back in January 2008 before being co-opted by an executive for YouTube for his 2017 book titled Streampunks: YouTube and the Rebels Remaking Media. While Robert Kyncl and his co-author Maany Peyvan used the term to mean those in the content creation business on YouTube, today it is again being redefined as “Those who move en masse between content streams.”

Back on March 18, 2020, almost two years to the day after he paused his live streams, Colin Benders, a synthesist from Utrecht, Netherlands, started broadcasting again. There was obvious pent-up demand to see him play on his extraordinary electronic instrument. I say instrument as Colin is approaching mastery over his Eurorack synthesizer, which is a beast of complexity.

During the first week, we watched Colin sitting on his floor in a small room in his home with a few sections of his modular rig he brought from his studio. Even his small sample of modules represented a large system for most other people. Specifically, he was working on 1,264hp. Squatting in front of it and patching it on the fly, he was making some banging techno for a few hours and mixing things up as he went along.

Discord from Colin Benders During Modular Lockdown

On the second day of his return to streaming, with a commitment to do this “every day” that he’s in lockdown (hence the stream name “Modular Lockdown”), he started up a Discord channel. While I was one of the first half-dozen people to sign up it wasn’t but a week or two before a couple of thousand people joined the channel. The buzz around Colin was becoming a swarm.

Part of this might have had something to do with the fact that Colin was promising never to charge any of us for the music he was streaming, but, more importantly, that it was his intention to give it all away to others to work on remixes and derivative works. Things were getting complicated fast as Colin wasn’t set up quite correctly yet, and the infrastructure was about to buckle.

By Day 8, Colin was standing at a wobbly primitive desk, and so began the community effort of donating money through YouTube Super Chat for Colin to buy a proper Ikea desk. He had by this time also collected a couple of other things including a mixing desk that would let him properly record 16 tracks of audio, thus producing what is known as STEMS. A STEM is typically the stereo master track and the individual grouped components such as the bassline, lead, drums, and harmony.

These STEMS were going to be put on Dropbox for collaborators to download, but within about 48 hours, his bandwidth allocation was maxed, and a new solution had to be found. His users on Discord organized the infrastructure by seeding Torrents around the world so the gigabytes of data could start being shared again.

Streampunks in Chat on Colin Benders Modular Lockdown

The foundation of a large group of people working independently through a faceless interface in the background of an artist, with everyone volunteering their efforts, was taking root and moving at a breakneck speed. Some of us who’d been on the stream from day one and even some of us who were watching him back during his “Modular Mayhem” days of 2016 to 2018 were recognizing one another. One of those users, named Datalek, dropped the word STREAMPUNKS on YouTube in live chat to describe the gang that was jumping from Colin’s stream to other artists’ streams. From that moment forward, the group of people who started on Colin’s stream would start dropping #STREAMPUNKS into the live chat of the person we were switching to.

Fast forward to Day 20, and Colin brings in his prized MacBeths along with more gear. The “MacBeths” I refer to are some of the best-sounding oscillators there are but which are also considered “Unobtainium.” There were now 2,344hp of modules stuffed into this small side room with a 16-channel mixing desk on the floor to Colin’s right. The mini-side room studio was growing, and so was the audience. Discord ballooned to over 2,500 people, and others such as Hainbach, DivKidBen, and Chris Meyer at Learning Modular were appearing more often in live streams. Streampunks were starting to be recognized by others in the community.

So how and why is this becoming a thing worth dedicating this blog entry to? Live music experienced in person, for the time being, is a thing of the past. To have an artist who is interacting with his/her global audience on a very personal level on a daily basis is something new. While certainly not the first musician to interactively stream to fans, as DeadMau5 was already on Twitch back in 2014 building his community, there is a big difference in approaches.

Patch Notes from Colin Benders during Modular Lockdown

Colin is engaging with his audience on multiple levels redefining how the relationship between artist and community functions. He’s actively sharing his skills and explaining his techniques to such a level that I’ve been able to document in a Google Doc on Discord under the #ACADEMY heading a number of patches and the thoughts behind his methods. Not only is this freely posted for others to learn from but the document is meant as part of a collaboration space. While many are followers, there is an active number of enthusiasts who are also musicians trying to learn more about the difficult task of patching voltages and signals across disparate modules that can be mind-numbingly problematic.

As for the vibrant audience that has formed, we are recognizing each other and forming friendships via chats that are occurring simultaneously as Colin is performing. It’s in some way reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s Factory days when artists such as David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali, and Lou Reed would be part of a New York City “Scene.” Today, the scene is being played out in live moments that stretch around the globe. While few might know the likes of Datalek, Alphastare, PifPaf пиф паф, Omri Cohen, or Knobs&Strings, there is a vibe that suggests we are in one of those epochs that could be a turning point within one small corner of culture that is going to have larger implications for society at large.

Colin Benders on Day 20 as the Synth Grows During Modular Lockdown

Back on Day 20, while deconstructing Colin’s performances and being captivated by the music that rose out of nothing, I wrote: I can’t help but feel I’ve been watching a modern-day Richard Wagner compose in real-time the electronic version of Ride of the Valkyries where aural paintbrushes are harnessed with patch cables to splash love onto the canvas of emotion.