The almost all-analogue synth studio, with cat (mars kitty, in bubble at lower right) circa 2002. Click on picture to enlarge.

Phat props to M.C. Escher as well.

Here is a video of Mars:

What is rooted is easy to nourish.
What is recent is easy to correct.
What is brittle is easy to break.
What is small is easy to scatter. 

Prevent trouble before it arises.
Put things in order before they exist.
The giant pine tree grows
from a tiny sprout.
The journey of a thousand miles
starts from beneath your feet.

Rushing into action, you fail.
Trying to grasp things, you lose them.
Forcing a project to completion,
you ruin what was almost ripe.

Therefore the master takes action
by letting things take their course.
He remains as calm
at the end as at the beginning.
He has nothing,
thus has nothing to lose.
What he desires is non-desire;
what he learns is to unlearn.
He simply reminds people
of who they always have been.
He cares about nothing but the Tao.
Thus he can care for all things.

From The Tao Te Ching—The Canon of the Path and the Power:

In Tao the only motion is returning;

The only useful quality, weakness.

For though all creatures under heaven are the products of Being,

Being itself is the product of Not-being.

Even here, in the simplest and final distillation of Zen thought, we find that it all leads back to a woman.
{click on read more}

Freddie chilling on the Serge

Be sure to watch the movie Sleep, starring Freddie in an homage to Andy Warhol. The video features the song Serenity Applicator from the Flight of the Atom Bee cd ... chock full of Serge bulbous and flapping bleeps, squiggles, and the carefully chosen and artfully placed intermittent Funky Worm, as declared essential by George Clinton.

The Serge modular system I used for Flight of the Atom Bee.

Unfortunately, this is not the photograph of the Bee patch itself: there were five positions across several panels where banana cables were piggy-backed five-high, routing control voltages hither, thither and yon. And, of course, many more spots where plugs were stacked two-, three-, or four-high, a symphony of brightly colored spaghetti strands.

For a more detailed description of the constuction of the bee, bird, bee-thought sounds, the drone, etc., please continue reading. But first ....

Ubi Mel Ibi Apes, along with my composition 3 seconds before Maia smiled, another song built around unique analog sounds from the Serge, are in the permanent collection of the SF Museum of Modern Art, as part of Glenn McKay's lightshow installation, Altered States. What does this mean? It means I got my name on a wall not in a public restroom for once.