Street Sunset & Urban Landscape
10:10 AM 6/10/2009Yesterday afternoon some thunderstorms rolled through my neighborhood. At five o'clock, I noticed that the sky was getting dark. I checked the weather online, and sure enough, there was a long line of severe thunderstorms bearing down on the city.
I went out to the fire escape to look at the sunny half of the sky, and the storms were rolling in overhead. The clouds were very active. It didn't start raining just yet - for about fifteen minutes, I watched the clouds above me tumbling like the boiling water in a pot. Most of the sky had become swirling turbulence as the updraft air baked by the city ripped into the cold air above.
But the best part was the breeze. My air conditioner was just not cutting it, and suddenly the temperature difference between inside and out was something like thirty degrees Fahrenheit. But then, there was rain too. I had to sit in the doorway to take advantage of the cool. Just out of splashing range, and I could actually read a book.
When the rain throttled back to a drizzle, it was still too hot inside, so I went out for a walk...
I had to fight with my camera a little on exposure, which means navigating through its menu interface, but eventually I got what I wanted. It was also a challenge to hold still for some of the zoom shots. I didn't know that I would regret not lugging a tripod around.
This color scheme reminded me of something I cooked up a couple of weeks ago: Audacity does a spectrum plot for audio tracks, and I took a screen capture of one to play with the colors in Photoshop. Today's photos of the sunset reminded me of the colors I saw while doing that. I see now that I settled on something different.
This plot is taken from Robert Fripp's "Urban Landscape". I realized one day that this particular track ought to provide a very coherent spectrum plot, because it is a gradually developing 'frippertronics' piece with guitar tones accumulating on a tape loop. The plot does look like a bit like a city skyline, which may or may not have been intended. When you listen to the tones, they paint a sound picture of alienation.
A few weeks ago, I watched the film "Radio On", and that Robert Fripp track was featured on the soundtrack. It was a German-English production from 1979 with not much plot to speak of - A radio DJ whose life is disintegrating out of apathy or drug abuse (it's not clear to me which) drives from London to Bristol to 'investigate' his brother's death. His wife/girlfriend has walked out on him (it's not clear to me why), and while in Bristol he encounters a German woman and helps her search for her daughter. In one scene, he stops for gas and the attendant is an aspiring musician played by Sting.
It is one of those absolute classics of unwatchable cinema. Shot in black and white in 1979, and full of disaffected, disjointed 'dialogue'. Don't watch it for its redeeming social values.
The Fripp track is playing over a moment in the film when the main character is gazing out over Bristol from his dead brother's apartment window. It lasts about ten seconds. It made me want to go back and listen to the whole track. And that was when I realized that the spectrum plot might look cool.