The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

Where to begin when I began:

If I knew where I am, I'd have to know around my body, and then would know
how that knowledge connects to everything. The best I can do is far less
and I don't know where I am because of that. Where I am is disjointed from
what I know. For example: I database on panix.com, Gmail, Facebook, Ning,
MySpace, Youtube, Twitter, Cybermind, Cyberculture, Wryting, Poetics,
Nettime, Netbehaviour, Webartery, 7-11, and Second Life. Stop right now.
This is the energy of another location. For example, then:

sondheim  pts/18   Dec  6 01:59 (user-387hjcn.cable.mindspring.com)
sondheim  pts/18  user-387hjcn.cable.mindspr  1:59AM     0 w
sondheim:*:4564:99:Alan Sondheim:/net/u/6/s/sondheim:/usr/local/bin/ksh
Sun Dec  6 02:01:12 EST 2009 /net/u/6/s/sondheim
GoogleSearch.wsdl Mail News Note a ad book.txt course digi epoetry foo.txt
lily lisp lynx.html mail milgrom mod mus netcourse notes old.html qj.txt
resmusic.txt sl summary.txt texts theory.txt vr wvu.txt wvusummary.rtf
wvusummary.txt zz

For example, now:

sondheim:*:4564:99:Alan Sondheim:/net/u/6/s/sondheim:/usr/local/bin/ksh
sondheim  pts/14   Dec  6 03:31 (user-387hjcn.cable.mindspring.com)
sondheim  pts/14  user-387hjcn.cable.mindspr  3:31AM     0 -ksh
Sun Dec  6 03:38:19 EST 2009

This is a dead end. I am scrawling nowhere. The appetition of the theore-
tical collapses after any number of hours. Given the change in interface,
I can't access .wsdl any more. The account is full of relics. For example:

$ perl a/looply.pl hello
404 Not Found at a/looply.pl line 32
$ pico a/looply.pl
= $google_search -> doGoogleSearch( $google_key, $query, !/usr/local/bin/-
perl looply.pl typical Google Web API # Location of the GoogleSearch WSDL
file my loop, retrieving 10 results at a time my $loops = 20;
GoogleSearch.wsdl Hsearch = 1)*10; $offset += 2) { # Query Google my
$results = $google_search -> doGoogleSearch( $google_key, $query, 2009...

which now crashlands, scratching nothing. There's this to say about the
history: "1 ls 2 pico zz 3 fg 4 grep sondheim /etc/passwd >> zz 5 who |
grep sondheim >> zz 6 w | grep sondheim >> zz 7 date >> zz 8 fg 9 pico zz
10 mv zz ww 11 script 12 pico typescript 13 strings typescript >> zz 14
pico zz 15 pico typescript 16 strings typescript > zz 17 rm typescript 18
pico zz 19 grep -v "[" zz > yy 20 grep -v \[ > yy 21 grep -v "\[" > yy 22
wc yy 23 grep -v 22 zz > yy 24 grep -v 13 yy > zz 25 grep -v 7 zz > yy 26
grep -v ":" yy > zz 27 pico zz 28 strings zz > ww 29 pico yy 30 sed
's/\[.....//g' ww > zz," moving through the usual errors. Stumbling gets
you where you thought you were going. I lie, cheat, kludge, hack, crack,
stack. I can't remember the last time tendrils took root, for example /,
with some sort of mastery.

Miasma: I have just read I misunderstand code (Silvestre, who I misunder-
stand), that it's not writing in any sense of natural language. But from
higher to lower level, there are always translations. Assembly language
translates like sorted boxcars - the most beautiful emission in the cosmos
is indirect addressing, tendrils. Machine language scratches the material
itself: Better yet, scratch into the world, as if it were natural. Where
am I in the midst of databases in this dark night? where is the night
leading?

Code knows no night, no day. What affects the protocol shudders the chips
themselves, dreaming the code shuffling through them. The code doesn't
break; chips do. Chips shatter in the cold, sputter in the heat.

This is my emission in the cosmos. This is on your screen, roiling across
your machine, this doesn't stop for anything, this disappears. Our emis-
sions are always already ghosts, always already virga, portending their
extinctions in their very forms. Nothing reaches the ground that never
existed. What you can be sure of: that labor, energy, created this text.
That the text is an economy and a signature, just as paper money or check,
just as stocks and protocols are economies and signatures. Under capital,
mass amasses; identity lost remains in the form of energy spent. In the
holographic universe, information is never lost, almost always is irre-
trievable. Here in this text I give you the blueprint of my bones. You can
do nothing with it. Stumbling gets you where you thought you were going,
but you've already forgotten my name.

Sun Dec  6 13:13:34 EST 2009
sondheim  pts/7   user-387hjcn.cable.mindspr  1:10PM     0 grep sondheim
sondheim  pts/7    Dec  6 13:10 (user-387hjcn.cable.mindspring.com)

+++

The song HERUKA

I MUST do this, while I have full CONTROL over my HANDS and FINGERS, while
I am still alive. For this records a form of HYSTERIC MASTERY over an
instrument, pushing sound to the LIMIT of my ABILITY. I have no doubt I
can't go farther and I MUST construct this LEGACY of what ONCE I was
capable of DOING. For soon I will no longer have this SHARP STRENGTH to
continue, and EVERYTHING will be LOST FOREVER. Oh I must play my VERY BEST
and my VERY FASTEST and as MOST ACCURATE as possible THIS VERY EVENING
that will last FOREVER encapsulated in FILE #heruka.mp3. SOMEDAY you will
listen and I will be LONG GONE and you will say to yourself HERE WAS A MAN
or A WOMAN, gender need not be, HERE WAS A MAN AND A WOMAN, BEHOLD HIR
WORKS. And you will have CAUSE to REJOICE at the SPLENDOR of the SOUND,
produced by long-dead HANDS and FINGERS, that this SOUND still resounds
among you. THEY KNEW, you will think, THEY KNEW, BACK THEN, and with such
KNOWLEDGE were REPLETE. And you will be SORROWFUL you did not know me,
SORROWFUL, you would not see, FOREVER, those HANDS AND FINGERS moving
swiftly in EXALTED WAYS of SUBLIME AND ETERNAL BEAUTY. I give you, NOW,
this GIFT, that you may cherish it FOREVER, silently murmuring my NAME,
such as it is remembered, ALAN SONDHEIM, forgotten but HEARD for ONE LAST
TIME, remembered for ONE LAST SONG.

http://www.alansondheim.org/heruka.mp3