[prufrock5150Participant]

http://imgur.com/yUcEpnX
^
http://imgur.com/a5WnnUD

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by  prufrock5150.

[prufrock5150Participant]

http://imgur.com/gYlKdRz

[prufrock5150Participant]

Sergei Rachmaninoff was going to die. What was the world to do? A luminary pianist and composer, his talent pressed firmly against the bounds of human ability – but alas, his humanity meant his effect was ephemeral. In the 1920s, there were few ways to record the efforts of musical performance… But there was a machine. A special piano was built which, when supplied with a wax cylinder, could capture the subtleties of pressure and stress imparted unto it and, by storing this tension, was capable of reproducing them. They called it the AMPICO, and with it they were successful in trapping his genius.

I don’t really know how to art. I don’t really know what it is. I see things, and I find things laying around the Internet, and I put them in the context in which they seem to belong, supplying words and images where they are needed, and I guess that counts. This is an honorarium, though, so I dedicate this pair of paragraphs to IV, because when my iPod sang to me this morning with the piece linked below, it reminded me of her… And it’s called the Etude-Tableaux Number 4. In B Minor. It’s an AMPICO recording, digitized and spread across the aether.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0rgy0uGQxn0

[prufrock5150Participant]

I don’t know you, “M,” but I would like to give you some advice, as a person who has suffered loss and grief: you cannot cross the same river twice. That’s not just something that Heraclitus thought up to mess with people, either. It’s about the flow of time, and the truth about identity. You see, the Addison you knew, she whom you loved so dearly… she was never the person you constructed her to be. This is true not because I know her, but because it is true about all of us. We make each other up, both literally and figuratively, and the way we see each other, the small subroutines of stimulus-response that form the iterations of the fractal network of self and other – this is not reality. You want to blame someone, something, some secret shadowy illuminatus hiding behind the corner to grab your girl… and you certainly can. You can construct them, like you constructed her, and you can even convince other people to accept your construction – but you don’t own it. You don’t own her. It’s time to let go, Mr. And-the-Jets. Your song is played out, and the painful repetition of a thronging crowd screaming “Benny” is just a reminder that even if you get a million billion people to believe you, that doesn’t make it the truth.

[prufrock5150Participant]

We just wanted to leave a gift for them, the who(m)ever was behind this new magic. Naturally, with the only tie to the physical world being an address in Beverly Hills, and a temperate Sunday afternoon (I think; days blend together so often in retrospect) laying ahead of us, @monkeymuffin333 and I began our discussion of what to leave.

The prior evening had been another sort of strange attractor: the Hyaena Gallery in Burbank had just celebrated its decaversary (that’s a word now), and an ad-hoc meetup with a few people had come about as an attempt to hijack the synchronicity at the CIA (for those outside the LA area, that’s the California Institute of Abnormalarts, not the Central Intelligence Agency… unless… [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I-mdoClMVA]. But no, it’s actually a bizarro-world assortment of carnivalia and Orientalist iconography which has played host to many a gathering of the oddest of fellows). The night had passed with an unfulfilled promise of an OOA observation and possible intervention. In retrospect, it is impossible to know whether it was fulfilled or not.

My intention was to donate to the OOA a painting from artist Nic Caesar, given by Lou Rosconi, whose love of random malkavian mischief is well-known in the outro-art scene surrounding the gallery, as he had just willed to us (well, @monkeymuffin333, to be precise) all of his winnings from the raffle the night before. Of course, the question of appropriateness and taste was brought up, and the sentimental value thereof being determined as too high to part with, we decided to forego leaving gifts until we had further information.

The building is fairly nondescript. It is exactly as you would imagine a large complex of business suites with a beauty spa in one corner and a postal annex in the back. The suite mentioned on the OOA flyer was on the second floor. Naturally, very few people were around, and now I’m pretty sure it was a Sunday. Maybe mid-afternoon, three-ish.

Entering the foyer, we are immediately greeted by the void of human contact endemic to a system of replacements by screens and algorithms. There was an unfinished lunch next to the bevy of controls behind the desk, however, and a monitor attached to the side which featured a touch-screen directory. We took advantage of what appeared to be a momentary oversight on security and approached the elevators. We pressed the second floor. The door closed, and we eagerly awaited ascension.

Nothing happened. I fought a brief, panicked fever-dream of “Oh no, we’ve gotten too close. They’re trapping us in the elevator and we’re going to be taken…” which immediately resolved itself as a momentary thrill at the exact same thought. Then I pressed the “Open Door” button, and we walked sheepishly back out into the lobby. I started playing with the self-service directory, which showed an error message superimposed over Windows Explorer. I was able to open folders, and launch files, and I actually did my best to try and locate an elevator-override.exe file (because that’s totally what they’d name it, right?), but to no avail. I did find my way into the actual, legitimate directory, however, and found a name associated with the suite number.

Of course, as with all things contemporary, being physically present is redundant in hindsight: this is public record. We could have googled the address and come up with exactly as much information as we were able to obtain by actually visiting. But we didn’t know that then.

We did know that we had to pee, though. A helpful map directed us to the restrooms, past the postal annex, and afforded @monkeymuffin333 with an odd conversation with a stranger, the details of which I was only able to overhear in part, and the details of which I do not recall. Perhaps she can fill in the details.

Upon our return, just as we had resigned ourselves to enduring the mystery behind that suite number, we noticed that a human was now present behind the counter, and smiled toward us invitingly. Without breaking stride, I approached her and calmly stated “We need to get to the second floor.” She nodded, and simply asked “Would you like me to unlock the elevator?”

Was this a successful Jedi mind trick? Had I just rolled a critical on charisma in the floating dimensional tabletop of existence? “Yes, please.” I replied, and she led us back to the lift, sliding a magnetic card into the slot on the side and pressing the second-floor button. Our ascension, this time, was undaunted, and we exited into a bright hallway of completely unremarkable design, beset upon all sides by brown doors and placards. Literally no one was detectable anywhere.

Following the numbers, we found the suite at the end of a hallway. Double doors. Locked. Adjacent, as an end-cap, was another suite ominously labeled “Control Room” (also locked). An odd hum emanated from behind the doors, and we just stood there, listening to the low pitch and existential miasma which accompanies standing in an office building with nobody around in the middle of the day.

We’d hit, quite literally, a dead end.

As we returned to the car, we were left with more questions than answers: was it really just some accountant’s office? Were we being watched? Would they review the footage of the security cameras and cry foul at my amateurish attempts at hacking? Did they even know who we were? There had to be answers…

And the way answers seem to come is through another’s perspective. This is why we must keep sharing our information, and listening to each other. @nosnevets, thank you for coming clean, and being a model of honesty that we all can follow.

[prufrock5150Participant]

I hate replying to my own posts, but I just had to mention that mere moments after posting, I checked my email and saw that registration@ooainstitute.com had send me something. It was a recruitment flyer, with testimonials and everything, and at the bottom was, in bold: “Our mailing address is: 8383 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 225, Beverly Hills, CA 90211.”

Granted, I’m crappy at checking my email, and it had been sent at 11:25 in the morning, but the timing… like, it *is* weird, right?

Also, that YouTube link didn’t work above, maybe because of the brackets. Maybe this time it will work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8Kyi0WNg40

[prufrock5150Participant]

Random observation 1: Always Save Cola appears to be an off-brand generic primarily available in Kentucky http://valumarket.grocerydirect.com/pd/Always-Save/Cola/67-60-fl-oz/070038341253/
Random observation 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-ah5xJz6ZU

[prufrock5150Participant]

01010100 01100101 01110011 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 00110001 00100000 00110010 00100000 00110011

[prufrock5150Participant]

http://imgur.com/RE9gBVS

[prufrock5150Participant]

As I recall, the conversation went something like this…

Mysterious lady who was just standing there as we opened the door: May I help you?
Me: Good afternoon. We are looking to deliver something to the OOA.
Her [nonplussed and confused]: The what?
Me: Your associates, the OOA Institute [Full disclosure – I had to exert great restraint to avoid launching into the Pulp Fiction bit of “You do remember your associates, the OOA institute…”]. This address is the only physical address associated with them.
Her [after a beat, and a sidelong glance]: They… they aren’t here anymore. We are no longer with them.
Me: So… what *is* your affiliation with the OOA?
Her [slightly indignant]: Nothing. There is none. Nothing. They were with us for about three years, but now are not.
Me: So, if we left something for them here, it would not get to them?
Her: No. We have no contact.
Me [after a pause and a brief sigh]: Very well. Then could we perchance leave this with you? We have no other way to reach them physically, and the flowers might accent this lovely office.
Her [befuddled]: What… why would you do that? Maybe you could find them… they must still be out there…
Me [resignedly]: It’s okay. They’re basically everywhere, I suppose, and I’m sure they’ll receive our message somehow. We thank you for your involvement, though, and appreciate your time.
[Places flowers on the table, as @nosnevets casually removes the ominous black card.]
Her [smiling in a way that makes it look extremely uncomfortable, yet quite genuine]: Well, thank you. Have a good day.
Me: You too. Glory Be.
[We exit the office, and after the door closes behind us, couch the black card between the placard and the wall.]

So, did we potentially harass a beleaguered affiliate of the OOA’s former accounting firm? Possibly. Did we also bring a smile to somebody’s face? Absolutely.

White roses bespeak both innocence and secrecy, after all.

And in the spirit of both, I bid all Glory Be!

[prufrock5150Participant]

…This explains EVERYTHING!

[prufrock5150Participant]

A newfound eight-fold path, perchance? 😉

[prufrock5150Participant]

@dlimer – Simplicity is not detrimental when it manages to communicate truth. Your truth is paramount, and you express it with beauty and depth. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing more of your words.

[prufrock5150Participant]

Good catch – that should surely read eight. Quantum Grammar is an interesting idea, but I sense that David Wynn Miller is… conflicted. Math is a language, it is true. Any equation or expression can be read as a sentence, and any language can be expressed as a series of propositions, symbolized and formalized into a logical system. Early work provided LSL, the Language of Sentential Logic (here’s an interesting start http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/sl/intro.php), and upon encountering paradox (specifically that of the Existential Statement (https://proofwiki.org/wiki/Definition:Existential_Statement)) further developed into LMPL, the language of Monadic Predicate Logic. Then came First-Order and Second-Order Logic, with which we code AI (to make a long story short). The idea of the quantum as applied to language would have to be the idea of doing away with the Law of the Excluded Middle (LEM) that forms the principle of bivalence. In English, we have the Anthropological-Semiotic history of Levi-Strauss, who (building on De Saussure and others) pointed out the binary opposition (up/down, left/right, good/bad) on which many concepts rely, not unrelated to the dialectical theories of Hegel and Confucian Taoism (https://prezi.com/1m-cn2bvetra/binary-opposition-theory-media-studies/). I think I’ve mentioned this, but one idea is to break out of the LEM by treating bivalence as a function of time, that is treating a proposition as true or false, but only insofar as it stands in terms of position along a temporal continuum, and therefore allow for the possibility of its being both true and false. This framework would reflect our understanding of a linear reality to a much more faithful degree, as evolutionary adaptation of cognitive structures will often yield reversals and changes of understanding throughout time. Extended into the framework of an Artificial Intelligence program, I imagine, would hopefully bring us closer to the goal of self-awareness.

[prufrock5150Participant]

Exw oro dw brxu vkliw fkrlfh, Frgb – D olwwoh wrr rq wkh qrvh shukdsv?

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