Seasonal Soundtrack:  Fifty-Fifty Clown

Inside a data center in Hillsboro’s Silicon Forest hundreds of electricians and I run wires to numbered servers and the next day we are told to move them somewhere else.  “I’ve been here for months and I still don’t know what’s going on” my coworker offers helpfully.  Anonymized AI clients pull the strings behind the curtain, an ethically murky landscape of weapons manufacturers and my friend asking CHATGPT to create a recipe that will heal their chronic illness*.  

After hours in loud, hot, and dimly lit server rooms I step outside and breathe in the scent of rain misted rosemary inexplicably creeping around the entire 420,000 sq ft building.  As I pull out of the parking lot blasting “Bad B” by Ben Pest to cleanse my spirit a line of cop cars and ICE vans cross the intersection.  My coworker rolls down his window and flips them off.  I may live in a technofascist state rushing towards oblivion but at least I am surrounded by good people.  

“Why do you stay up so late?”  My coworker asks the next day when I arrive at work barely able to keep my eyes open.  I contemplate explaining a lifelong struggle with insomnia starting when I realized that death was inevitable and the universe is infinite at age 13 but reply “The night is my time.”  

My time to light candles and dance in my converted attic bedroom to Pencerenin Perdesini by Gökçen Kaynatan smiling to myself as the fuzzy guitar riffs wriggle and squeeze through effects pedals.  Time to meet a friend at the local kink club and pointedly ignore everyone while she holds my face lightly in her hand and kisses me.  Leaving before the main event starts (a pageant of clowns) to go to Moment** at Process.  

Another vision of AI in the form of a rectangle of light beams into a room of curious clubgoers.   A beautiful human emerges and addresses the light as Starlight AI assistant and asks it to tell the story of Julius Smack.  With neon eyeliner brushed across his eyelids he dances and sings over softly epic beats.  Tears well up in my eyes as he tells the story of a post-apocalyptic world where artists collaborate with AI to generate art during a shooting star.  Later standing in front of a vaguely threatening DRINK WATER sign I apologize to my friend “I’m sorry I don’t feel very talkative, it’s past my bedtime.”  “It’s ok,” she reassures me “We can just listen to the music”.  

When I drive home my car unprompted begins playing songs that start with C.  As Cherry Colored Funk by Cocteau Twins pairs dreamily with the city lights I wonder if my decade long Treasure era is over and Heaven or Las Vegas has arrived.  “Nahhh” I say out loud.  But as if possessed by Frou Frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires (whatever that means) the next day I listen to the album twice and again the day after that.  

I let the heavy ambience of the swirling vocals and guitars move through me and hold me.  I have been changing with the season.  Detangling my synapses from social technology, remembering how to bookworm, learning how to rest.  The compulsion to check apps I’ve deleted lingers, a disassociation device providing a false solution to overwhelm in a political climate of Palestinian genocide and mass deportations.  Minor heartbreaks like Automelodi getting his visa to play in Portland denied after I unearthed and obsessed over Surlendemains Acides .  Work takes my diminishing energy and feeds it back into the machine.  

The portable tape player is helping.  I carry it from room to room like a security blanket, listening to my friend’s new anti-fascist dungeon synth tape Verderer that reminds of the time we rented a grainy vampire vhs from Movie Madness and accidentally started it in the middle, watching only the part of the movie where the vampire takes their revenge.  Or Realms of Wonder by Production Unit Xero, infusing myself in a bath of bergamont scented salt attempting to feel like myself again after a long workweek, traveling to fantastical planets in my mind.  Digging out a tape from my early Seattle days, the screenprinted labels peeling off the side, Stay Holy from The Webs, listening to Dweams and wondering if sleep will ever be easy again.  It’s dark at 4pm now and there is more night for me to cherish.  

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*It’s delicious. 

**Moment is a “Portland-based organization, producing and curating events in the city with a focus on sharing adventurous sounds from local and international artists.”