GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Notes

  • Fractured: Fairy Tales Remixed, Tara Trudel, 2023

    There’s only one possible option for today’s #MondayNightMusic — Fractured: Fairy Tales Remixed!

    Tara has been sharing her journey towards releasing this album for past half year….and now it’s out!

    Bandcamp Link

    I hope we will meet many more Tara’s online and IRL — accomplished, funny, thoughtful, enthusiastic advocates for everyone to share their art.

    When I first joined Post.news, I was overwhelmed by comparing my own stuff against best of the world. I considered clamming up. Her encouragement nudged me to keep sharing — which naturally led to more making.

    And of course the album’s great! You think she’d release anything less?

    Congrats!

    If something is holding you back from sharing, let me help you shove your self-doubt down the stairs Nomi Malone-style.

    The things you make are enough. Putting them into the world can feel risky. It’s also powerful.

    You never know when a piece will resonate with someone, or help you form a community, or catapult you into something totally unexpected.

    imPOSTer Syndrome

    Ooh, an apple! What could go wrong?

    ~

    PS: Shoutout to James Yang, the cover illustrator.

    ~

    PPS: Check out Tara’s post on the Goal Pyramid.

  • 500!

    So I hit half a thousand.

    I hear you’re cheating on Post!

    As some of y’all might have noticed, I’ve dipped my toe into Substack. So here’s a comparison of the platforms to celebrate this big round number.

    When I was at Berkeley, I hung out with the art majors. We always felt there was a divide between the East Bay folks who did wacky things and the San Francisco snobs who made boring high art.

    That’s Post and Substack.

    Over here are folks who are experimenting and playing, picking up the stray tip. Out there is a polished crowd, with their paid subscription income streams.

    Why on earth did I sneak out across the bay to check out those people?

    Well, you get tired of living in a dingy warehouse where it looks like the landlord is more interested in side projects other than the shit that you care about.

    We’ve been waiting for comment notifications for half a year. And yeah, that comment count bug in April broke me.

    What’s it like out there with the white wine sippers?

    They got a clean interface. And their notification system actually works.

    But damn, they are really geared towards newsletters. It’s possible to follow someone on Substack Notes without subscribing to their newsletter, but it’s not obvious.

    More problematic than an overstuffed email inbox, it’s almost impossible to get traction as a small account. You think things have gotten quiet here? Try saying anything out there unless you’re responding to someone else. Substack doesn’t have an “explore feed”, so the only way anyone might see your comments is to either build a big subscription base first or to hope than an author looks at their “My Subscribers” tab and notice your comment among the scores of other comments to sift through.

    Don’t get me wrong, the authors at substack are all super nice and welcoming. But it doesn’t feel great to know that anything you say won’t get engagement unless you’re actively piggybacking on someone else. (Then again this comparison might be my Post privilege speaking as an early beta user here).

    From what I can tell, the Substack crowd is super focused on the craft of writing (not surprising since it’s a newsletter subscription platform), and of course there is plenty of politics cause that’s the new established religion of our democracy. But I miss the wide variety of art and photography that I find my follow here on Post. I hope it’s there on Substack, but I haven’t found out yet.

    Still, Substack is one helluva platform for newsletters, so my recent dalliance has gotten me writing regularly again and finally make some progress my “year of catching up”.

    So where next?

    I sure as hell ain’t going to a place that is run by the current or former CEO of Twitter. If I’m doing pro-bono content creation, it’s not going to be in the service of either type of fucking incompetence.

    Structurally, I prefer micropayments over the long term commitments of a subscription economy. As one might guess from the way I’ve framed the comparison, I’m fond of the Post crowd that has coalesced in the past six months. But there’s a lot of work that needs to be done, and I’ve lost confidence that my priorities are the platform’s priorities.

    That leaves me with writing on my home blog and cross posting to both Substack and Post. I don’t mind cutting and pasting once, but more than that is unsustainable, especially if I include the distracting subconscious tug to check notifications on multiple platforms.

    But hell, I’ll keep it up for another week or two.

    Once I hit late May, I should a difficult decision.

    In the meantime, let’s keep this party going, shall we?

    On to 600!

  • Go make a portfolio!

    With all the calls and emails I’ve fielded over the past two years, this week was the first time that someone looked at my online portfolio before contacting me. (LinkedIn recruiters are shockingly lazy!)

    The opportunity wasn’t a good fit, but we had a great conversation, and I learned about an exciting position to share with younger architects.

    ~

    My portfolio is a simple WordPress site with the Twenty Fourteen template and these plug-ins:

    • Disable Comments
    • Fourteen Colors (to change the colors in the template)
    • Really Simple SSL
    • SSL Insecure Content Fixer
    • WP Meta and Date Remover

    If this looks like too much, remember the imperative is to have a portfolio. Use a free site builder. (The creative director that I met had their work on Behance.)

    ~

    I’m a paranoid employment prepper. I graduated into the dotcom bust of 2001 and finished my masters in 2008. An online portfolio is an essential piece in my professional go-bag (along with a current resume, LinkedIn account, and preprinted work samples).

    More than forestalling doom and gloom and compiling old work, building a portfolio signals where you want to go.

    It forces you to write.
    Writing makes you think.

    I built this iteration in 2020. Amidst the global chaos, it was salutary to appreciate my career and ponder the future. As always, the process is more than the final product.

    Go make a portfolio!
    You’ll get more than a portfolio.

  • OPM.39 (notes on) Dream Big, Greg MacGillivray, 2017

    Dream Big is a modern industry propaganda film with the all-American narration of Jeff Bridges, sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

    It highlights the altruistic sides of the engineering profession — building a bridge in rural Haiti, earthquake analysis in Nepal, and teaching robotics to disadvantaged children. It didn’t convince my daughter to enter the industry, but I enjoyed the heartwarming reminder of why I got into this business.

    We joined this profession for a good job, but we didn’t just stay for a tidy nest egg. We change physical reality — we walk over, under, and into our projects. Other professions can’t provide such tangible results.

    Taken one step further, this is why I joined the government. There’s great psychic value in knowing that my projects will directly benefit the public. All real estate development involves spreadsheets, but my numbers come directly from the people to serve the people.

    It’s an awesome responsibility to be employed by my fellow citizens to spend their tax dollars. And it’s damn satisfying to hand them a properly constructed building, on budget and on time.

    ~

    Jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal passed away at 92 in mid-April. Ted Gioia celebrated his work with a great essay.

    I’m slowly borrowing Jamal’s albums on Hoopla, one week at a time (I’m currently enjoying Volume IV which has a great cover). Each of album so far has had a moment that sent tingles down my spine — 3 for 3 is a great hit rate!

    Of the three so far, my favorite is The Awakening, which was sampled by many hip hop artists (as outlined in this blog post and video). It’s easily a classic alongside Waltz for Debby and Brilliant Corners.

    ~

    black and white photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge focused on the suspension wires with a figure breaking the bottom frame in the foreground.
    Brooklyn, Bridge, Jet Lowe, 1982

    ~

    Thanks for reading!
    Justus Pang, RA

  • Summer, Joe Hisashi, 1999

    In January 2020, the Vegas arts scene was struck with an early tragedy when Alexander Huerta suddenly passed away.

    Given our fears of the incoming pandemic, I skipped his wake, though I left some offerings outside his studio before the world shut down.

    I met Alex in his studio during a First Friday art walk soon after moving to Vegas ten years ago. He was working on a series of collages with old black and white magazine images on a black scratchboard background.

    As an architect, I was struck with the sparseness of the series with its urban perspectives. I lent him an exhibition monograph of black and white collages by Romare Bearden.

    Over the years, I’d deliver old architectural sets to his studio. I was excited to see his work exhibited at the library — some of my drawings had been incorporated into his collages! We enjoyed the occasional chat, where I learned that he used to valet cars at a casino, but taught himself how to paint, rescuing himself from alcoholism with the brush.

    These chats didn’t happen nearly enough, because of the arrivals of my daughter and then her brother. One day, I planned on introducing him to my kids, when they were old enough to understand what it meant, “Here’s a real artist!”

    Then again, the kids see him every day, in two small paintings I picked up from our time together. The best money I’ve spent in Vegas.

    perspective of a black and white collage with the artist in the background.

    February 2020 was a long month, processing the loss and watching the pandemic inexorably work its way towards our shores.

    During that time, I listened to this song on repeat. I was lucky to find something that meshed perfectly with my emotional turmoil.

    In America, Joe Hisaishi is known for his collaborations with Studio Ghibli, but this song isn’t from one of those films. Maybe that’s why it touched my soul. I could imprint this music with my own memories.

    Even though those personal and global tragedies came in winter, I always think of this song when it gets hot.

    The air conditioning kicked on for the first time yesterday.

    Welcome to “Summer”.

    I never reclaimed that book, I should replace my old copy.

  • Basic Structures of Buddhism, R. Eno

    While reading the Bodhicaryavatara, I was struck at its resonance with Christianity.

    It has an intense focus on good and bad (defilement), a clear conception of hell, a strident moral directive evangelize (alleviate suffering), and even included a chapter of detailed logical argumentation to prove the another world is more real than our physical world.

    I did not expect this Buddhist text to rhyme so closely to my experience as a reformed Baptist high schooler — there even multiple passages that even vilifies sexual desire!

    Over the past few years, I had focused on Confucianism and Daoism which feels totally foreign from Christianity. I assumed Buddhism would be similarly alien from the religion of my childhood. It wasn’t.

    I needed a quick primer on Buddhism to reset my expectations, and this short essay by Robert Eno delivered. It covered a lot of ground in a quick read and I enjoyed Eno’s slightly irreverent tone. Clearly, he has taught this material many times to sleep deprived college students.

    ~

    To wildly speculate on parallels with Christianity, Buddhism came as a reform religion, stripping away calcified rituals, with an focus on (avoiding) the next life, and had an egalitarian imperative that energized it to spread across the continent.

    In contrast, Confucianism and Daoism were uninterested in the question of salvation. These were elite philosophies that were wrestling with how to craft a state (or withdraw from the brutality of court politics) in the throes of a dying empire.

    ~

    As a pantheistic atheist, I often worry about the old warning “if you believe in nothing you’ll believe in anything”. Hopefully I don’t fall into that trap, but I also can’t shake the intuition that billions of people can’t be all wrong. At the very least, there must something that has made these teachings worth transmitting to the next generation again and again over the millennia.

    ~

    I never skip a chance to plug Robert Eno’s great chinatxt website. Go check it out.

    I started a Great Courses lecture series by Malcom David Eckel, I’m enjoying it so far (two hours into the twelve hour course).

  • Hangzhou Hua

    My wife and her parents speak dialect at home. It can be off-putting to be left out at the dinner table, but I speak English with my wife, so it evens out.

    I occasionally mention that she should teach the kids Hangzhou Hua, but I know that it will never happen. My sister and I also started in Chinese but migrated to English after hitting elementary school.

    The other day, we tested them on the dialect. Like my halting mandarin, they have a functional knowledge of their mother’s tongue without speaking it.

    Amidst the lunchtime banter, the decades collapsed into a flicker. One day, this unique set of vocalizations will disappear from the aural background of our home.

    Unless we move to Hangzhou, my wife’s dialect will follow her parents. Her childhood will go mute. Like other indigenous languages, it will disappear slowly then suddenly.

    Another casualty of mass culture, one more accommodation in an immigrant’s story.

  • Excerpts from Tao Te Ching, Ursula K. Le Guin

    I’ve always thought I’d read some Chinese philosophy, someday.

    That day came on a sunny afternoon my mind was blown as I was parking my car behind E-Jo, a Korean bone broth restaurant. The History of China podcast was talking about a Han dynasty emperor who used Daoism as his ruling ideology.

    That blew my mind. I always thought Daoists were crazy drunks in a forest, not competing with Confucians in the halls of power.

    Don’t get me wrong, the Tao Te Ching is great stuff for skipping out into the woods. But there is plenty of “leadership advice”. Timely stuff before landing a gig as a Project Manager representing the State.

    ~

    True leaders
    are hardly known to their followers.
    .
    .
    .
    When the work’s done right,
    with no fuss or boasting,
    ordinary people say,
    Oh, we did it.

    excerpt from Tao Te Ching 17

    My project teams have been complimentary of my leadership. Of course, I’m the source of their next project, so it’s hard to know how much of it is sincere. Then again, I guess such compliments are better than the alternative. On my end, I believe that I have the easiest job on the team. I move some paper around and they do all the real work.

    ~

    And so the wise soul
    predominates without dominating,
    and leads without misleading.
    And people don’t get tired
    of enjoying and praising
    one who, not competing,
    has in all the world
    no competitor.

    excerpt from Tao Te Ching 66

    A hidden benefit of joining the State is that any promotion includes a significant increase in stress for a marginal pay raise. There is no financial incentive to rise up the hierarchy. As such, I have no competition in my office. If someone else wants the headache, let them have it.

    John Minford’s commentary for this section includes this short poem by Li Bo for his friend the Taoist Hermit Yuan Danqiu.

    I envy you, my friend,
    Dwelling on East Mountain,
    Lover of beauteous hills and valleys,
    Asleep in the green season of spring
    Among empty forests,
    Rising long after daybreak,
    The wind in the pines
    Blowing through your sleeves,
    The stony brook washing your soul.
    I envy you,
    Lying there unperturbed,
    Pillowed high
    On your emerald mist.

    ~

    How to make peace?
    Wise souls keep their part of the contract
    and don’t make demands on others.
    People whose power is real fulfill their obligations;
    people whose power is hollow insist on their claims.

    excerpt from Tao Te Ching 79

    In the heat of the moment, it’s easy to get annoyed at an underperforming contractor or consultant. Such tendencies get worse the longer I hold this comfortable position of power. I need to constantly remind myself that I don’t have to insist on my rights — I hold the fucking checkbook. Unfortunately, I’m sometimes forced to remind my partners of their obligations and my expectations of their performance, but there’s no excuse for losing my cool.

    Whosoever lacks Inner Power will try to control Others by Force, will demand a due, exact a tithe, and Bitterness will ensue. The Tao of Softness and gentleness wards off Bitterness. Hardness and Strength, Vanity and Pride create Bitterness and Resentment

    John Minford’s translation of Magister Liu’s commentary

  • Nobody Speak, DJ Shadow feat Run The Jewels, 2016

    I was waiting for Election Day to share this banger with Run the Jewels.

    But today (with the twin firings of Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon) was too perfect not to share.

  • The Box, Marc Levinson, 2016

    I’m only a third through The Box, but I can already recommend it.

    A good history book creates context and energizes the mind. As we wrestle with the advent of AI, Levinson tells a a story of disruption that rhymes with what I fear we will see in the coming years.

    The world of shipping was completely different up through the first half of the 20th century before the invention and adoption of containers. Then the 50’s and 60’s flipped it upside down.

    • It’s mindblowing that we had a world of international trade with individually packed ships. How did we supply two world wars on opposite oceans merely with muscling things in and out holds?
    • What American doesn’t feel some sense of pride at a crazy innovator- entrepreneur stumbling into the creation of a new system to revolutionize the world?
    • The next chapter tells the utter devastation that this change wrought upon New York City. But was it ultimately for the better?
    • And chapter 6 details the struggles of the Longshoremen unions grappling with this change. (Good luck to us white collars, without any union support!)

    I’m curious what the next chapters will bring. It’s already been well worth the time. So surprising that the boring shipping container is the center of such a riveting narrative!

    ~

    Here’s a gratuitous plug for the boardgame Container by Franz-Benno Delonge. It’s one of my favorite games — a basic ruleset for a brainbursting experience. It’s been out of print for a while but can be easily DIY’ed.