Stable Kate

I've been a fan of Kate Bush since junior high school. I prompted Stable Diffusion to come up with some "witchy" portraits of the artist; here's one of the best ones. 
 

It's in the Trees, It's Coming

I prompted Stable Diffusion to offer its interpretation of a Halloween celebration. Here is the first, and so far the best, result. 

Prompt: Artificial intelligence celebrates Halloween, beautiful oil painting by Norman Rockwell and Grant Wood, highly detailed, intricate, elegant, centered, artstation, pixiv, smooth, sharp focus, chiaroscuro, vivid color, spooky, frightening, horror, the Terminator, killer robots, scary, darkness, 8 K
 

Rocket Woman

 

10 Albums: 9

Love and Anger

One of my favourite songs from one of my favourite artists. 

A Small Selection of Singles

Apropos of nothing, on the way home from work today I considered what might be my single favourite works by my favourite musicians. Here are a few selections:

ABBA: "Waterloo"
A-Ha: "The Sun Always Shines on TV"
Marc Almond: "Tears Run Rings"
Louis Armstrong: "We Have All the Time in the World"
Asia: "Heat of the Moment"
The Association: "Windy"
The B-52s: "Deadbeat Club"
Barenaked Ladies: "I'll Be That Girl"
John Barry: "007 Takes the Lektor"
The Beatles: "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"
Pat Benetar: "Shadows of the Night"
The Box: "Closer Together"
David Bowie: "Heroes"
Sarah Brightman: "Eden"
Kate Bush: "Love and Anger"
Johnny Cash: "Ring of Fire"
Collective Soul: "Gel"
Chemical Brothers: "Galvanize"
Nat 'King' Cole: "Unforgettable"
Alice Cooper: "Hello Hooray"
Crash Test Dummies: "Superman's Song"
Daft Punk: "End of Line"
Bob Dylan: "Lay Lady Lay"
Elastica: "Connection"
Fleetwood Mac: "You Make Loving Fun"
Foreigner: "Say You Will"
The Four Tops: "Standing in the Shadows of Love"
Garbage: "I'm Only Happy When it Rains"
Jerry Goldsmith: "Leaving Drydock"
Lou Gramm: "Midnight Blue"
Amy Grant: "Lead Me On"
George Harrison: "What is Life"
James Horner: "Genesis Countdown"
The Ink Spots: "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire"
Billy Joel: "Downeaster Alexa"
Elton John: "Love Lies Bleeding"
Tom Jones: "Sex Bomb"
Chantal Kreviazuk: "Before You"
Greg Lake: "I Believe in Father Christmas"
John Lennon: "Imagine"
Madonna: "Ray of Light"
Paul McCartney: "Live and Let Die"
Bear McCreary: "The Shape of Things to Come"
Stevie Nicks: "Stand Back"
No Doubt: "Hella Good"
Pet Shop Boys: "Where the Streets Have No Name"
Elvis Presley: "Burning Love"
Queen: "One Vision"
REO Speedwagon: "Roll with the Changes"
Marty Robbins: "Ribbon of Darkness"
The Rolling Stones: "Ruby Tuesday"
Roxy Music: "More Than This"
Lalo Schifrin: "Mission: Impossible"
Spoons: "Nova Heart"
Bruce Springsteen: "Brilliant Disguise"
Ringo Starr: "Photograph"
Strange Advance: "Love Becomes Electric"
Talking Heads: "Once in a Lifetime"
Pete Townshend: "Let My Love Open the Door"
U2: "God Part 2"
Vangelis: "Heaven and Hell"
Wang Chung: "To Live and Die in L.A."
John Williams: "The Big Rescue"
The Who: "Baba O'Reilly"
Yes: "Love Will Find a Way"
Neil Young: "Philadelphia"

How I Experience Music

While I love music, I've often regretted my almost total ignorance of the art and science that makes it possible. I can't read music, nor do I have most of the vocabulary necessary to even speak intelligently about the subject.

Nonetheless, I feel compelled to throw caution to the wind and ask a question that's plagued me since junior high school: do others experience music in the same way I do?

When I listen to a song, especially in pitch darkness, my mind constructs structures of pulsing light, each piece of the structure corresponding to an element of the music. A song's bass line, for example, might represent itself as a coil of purple light stretching north and south to infinity, compressing and stretching like a spring being pulled in time with the music. Keyboard sounds (again, forgive my lack of proper vocabulary) might appear at right angles to the purple coil, again extending into infinity, perhaps represented as a jagged zigzag of a different colour: green or yellow. Drum impacts might burst like fireworks all around, while lyrics and supporting guitars might create spheres or pyramids that fade in and out of existence.

The effect is most intense with songs that, for lack of a better term, have a lot going on to my untrained ear, like "Heroes," above, or "Love and Anger," below.

It almost sounds as though I'm describing the common visualization effects that have long been seen on home computers, but my experience really isn't like that at all; it's much more vivid and three-dimensional, and there's also what I almost hesitate to call a transcendental feeling going on, a feeling of falling in multiple directions at once, like the music could carry me off somewhere if only I'd release my stubborn hold on conventional reality.

I've never spoken to anyone of this, and there's no pressing reason to do so now except that it's been on my mind for some time. It's quite possible that many people experience music this way and that I simply haven't been around when others speak of it. I'd certainly be very interested in knowing if others go through the same process, or one similar.