How are you sequencing your existence?

Please let me explain.

One of my favorite ways to work with tools is adaptation through repetition: not blindly looping the same steps over and over, but like how a printer head does multiple passes over the paper, spurting out the same ink in different patterns, this is how I go forth and accomplish what I need to do.

A specific example can be found in the very fountain of Second Life photography: I've pressed Ctrl-` to take a snapshot well over 100,000 times by now, by conversative estimates, and I keep discovering new tips, tricks, 'n' techniques to employ in future photographs. But unless you start rolling, you'll never get rocking! 

I love a lot of the post-processed, glamorous photography that comes out of SL. However, lately, I've been banging into the more raw, visceral — some might even say gonzo — side. I enthuse about being resourceful with the inworld tools, including Client menu rendering options and my trusty View menu > Zoom controls, and squeezing a lot out of what's innately possible before moving onto post-production… which I do too.

I often strain to find words to describe what it is I do: sometimes, that's simply because I've used the same terms many times and am in search of new ones. I could say "Let the art speak for itself", but to some, that's an indulgent cliché. And yet, everything old was once new.

And through repetition, we get used to it.

Sometimes, I see life as one big electronic music arrangement: loop starts, continues for 8 bars, leaves. Hi-hats clatter like autumn leaves, while the steady thump of the kick drum characterizes the 9-5 workday. For those who prefer less predictability, a splintering of snares gets dashed across the spectrum like vintage Coke bottles meeting concrete on a tense summer day. Throughout it all, ambient pads, looming and bristling, make their way to the inevitable climax.

A breakdown section. Dolphin noises, maybe sampled ethnic chants (recall nostalgia, like enjoying your second childhood). Alien effects oscillate inwards —

then, a reverse cymbal cues the gated rhythms of an aggressively stuttered synth pad, and the beat begins anew.