A growing fear erupted among the people of Los Angeles that a cataclysmic event would destroy all society before the end of the millennium. The basic infrastructure and its intertwined belief system, which had been growing at an exponential rate, would someday reach a boundary yet unknown. Rather than overcoming or circumnavigating the barrier, acceleration would implode and the pendulum would swing the other way. One reality would be replaced by another.
The majority of Angelinos started to believe that a computer glitch would cause airplanes to drop from the sky. A year only identified with 00 was thought of as being literally nothing and would force society to reboot, all because of the missing two leading digits 20. The conviction started in 1998 that everybody will wake up at LAX and find the computing machinery in the retro-future of 1900 AND 2000, re-sculpting reality into the parallel netherworld of 00.
There were signs of an impending reality collapse: the current order's density became so great that it led to a state of high parallelism, the moment reality shifts to a multi-tracked reality: one continuous finite sequential stream is broken up into multiple streams all happening at the same time. The culturally attributed meaning of elements is no longer meaningful and is replaced by groups. As the quantity and speed of culture accelerate, groups emerge as a replacement for individual elements. In the final stages these groups become aggregated and are pushed to overlap and move to the extremes of culture and the culture to extremes.
Parallelism has always existed in Los Angeles, and nowhere is it more acute than in its transportation system. The freeway is an accelerated road with at least 2 lanes going in the same direction. There are 6 levels of this at the 110/105 interchange which leads to LAX. The difference in an accelerated society just before a collapse is the double-helix combination of speed and stress to the system through competition. A group that moved in parallel, in unison, and in the same direction at the same time during the settling of the West is strongly contrasted with the supermodern freeway experience: cars are unsynchronized and compete for space at lethal speeds. Los Angeles is in a state of constant stampede.
At LAX the ordeal of the flight appears to take more and more time for the individual passenger, but to the all-seeing-eye of an air traffic controller there is an acceleration of flights to the point of constant runway taxiing and near collisions. The system is now described from the point of breakdown rather than from its initial conditions, again a consequence of stress, which leads to different but simultaneous experiential speeds.
As the paradigm shift settled into the minds of Angelinos, there were at first only the basic elements of communication remaining, but the order of their sequential organization was lost. All the circuits were present, but without instructions. Life was without its DNA. Consequently, everyone underwent a reality check: elements were rearranged and immediately tested for meaning, this time not at a uniform pace, but at varying speeds.
The fundamental difference of the new multi-tracked reality to the old one is the interaction of reality with itself, as time is bent and the forward-arrow multiplied. In states of heightened tension this was already a desired reality before the year 00 in the instant replays on Sports TV: the picture-in-picture displays the immediate past while the present continues to be broadcast. A previously televised reality becomes the model for the perception of all reality.
In the old belief system one unchanging entity was the source and endpoint of all reality, but in the new parallel monotheism, under stress and in competition, there is the realization that all underlining entities are interchangeable. Angelinos feared that their god is the same as their competitor's, that all opposites are illusionary, and therefore all reality, power, and society might cease to exist. Consequently after the paradigm shift they voted for someone who they saw on TV, someone technically in charge of the Universe, as their new Governor.
On the morning on 01/01/00 the new order of the ages arrived in Los Angeles. For some it only took a second to realize that reality had multiplied and was now parallel. Others, who were not in Los Angeles, and would rise to power a year later, reacted by restoring an old order, which as yet has done nothing but to usher in a new world order of parallel violence, the war on all fronts, on everybody. LAX became the first target.
supported by 5 fans who also own “LAX (1998-2000)”
Metal combined with piano sounds... The sound of strikethrough is like encryption... Mr. Turing is nearby)) The detached noise textures are impressive, as is the internal failure for the listener when the gluing is detected! A decent job! Notnotice
supported by 5 fans who also own “LAX (1998-2000)”
Very interesting soundscape. I imagine the gentle clanging of Tibetan water bowls, water droplet sounds in reverse and the intermittent foghorn. Richard Erickson
Julia Kent’s dance-inspired pieces for cello and electronics prove she can elegantly render the quieter, intimate moments just as well as the big, powerful ones. Bandcamp Album of the Day Jan 31, 2019
supported by 5 fans who also own “LAX (1998-2000)”
This low-fi tape / loop / drone fits my state of mind. The perfect grind of garbled voice subterfuge with various found winding devices. Richard Erickson
