THE TASTE OF WIDE OPEN SPACES

I just received a text from one of my Korean friends in town that read: "It snows heavily." I'm sure he either thought I might be indoors with the curtains drawn or he was just confirming with resoluteness the frozen white particles falling and swirling by outside by the millions.

So this is my mix for the now resolute transition of fall into winter. It's called "THE TASTE OF WIDE OPEN SPACES"

The author of the history of Citrus book I'm reading used these words to describe the flavor of a particular type of orange. I really liked it because it's a very synaesthetic idea. Also, I don't get the chance to visit that many wide open spaces in Korea. It's a mountainous country, most areas are encircled and closed off by mountains, especially in Gangwon province and especially where I live in Gangwon province. I miss feeling the vast expanses of the desert.

Here's the tracklisting, download links are below it.
THE TASTE OF WIDE OPEN SPACES

get it:
part 1
part 2

Also, there was a CNN article by Bob Greene on the subject of time that I thought was really fascinating, specifically this part about how social networking sites have significantly altered the concept of time during actual non-virtual social events. What fascinates me most is how the way and rate in which we are compelled to document and share the visual residue of these social events in images has accelerated to some mind boggling degree. One of my friends who lives in a city about an hour north of me once told me over the phone, "I've seen that you've been hanging out with Lindsey and Pat a lot lately." Being new to facebook at the time, this really struck me as an odd thing to say, since in reality I hadn't seen him or anyone he was hanging out with, and I assumed he wasn't spying on me. In fact, just a few years ago, this would have been a completely impossible thing to say unless I was a public figure or celebrity where everything I did ended up in magazines and on TV, or he actually was stalking me.

It was then that it dawned on me that virtual online reality and tangible physical reality had started to irreversibly merge. While before, terms like actual reality or real reality would have been redundancies, I think now they are necessary as terms of contrast, since in actual reality my friend had not seen me, but because other people I know publish images on facebook, he had seen me in a reality that now includes this virtual online social realm.

Here's the part of the article that talks about it. I love the last sentence about "proactive nostalgia for something that hasn't finished taking place yet."

"'What's new?' has ceased to be a casual pleasantry, and has become an urgent demand. Indeed, the word "new" itself has lost its punch; in marketing campaigns, the adjective "new" has increasingly been tossed aside and replaced by the adjective "next." "New" now seems somehow old.

At family gatherings and get-togethers of friends, something is happening that would have seemed outlandish even a few years ago. People at the parties are posting photos and videos of the events on social networking sites even as the parties are still going on.

Thus, friends and acquaintances around the country and around the world are looking at the party pictures and videos and evaluating them before the party is even over. And people who are at the parties themselves, checking in on the same social network sites, are looking at the publicly posted pictures of the party they are still attending. It's like a bizarre form of proactive nostalgia for something that hasn't finished taking place yet."