Some October

What I really like about October is the subtle fragrance of prairie grass which emerges around the middle of the month. October is an "inverted" April, a month also known for seasonal fragrances. In the first week of October in 2001, the United States waged its first post-9/11 retaliatory strike. On that same day in 1914, October 7, 1914, Ludwig Wittgenstein was on a ship sailing towards Russia amid the threat of being fired on. He feels his death is imminent. Over 50 years into the future, The Beatles were in the studio on October 7, 1968, recording The White Album, after a "fragrant" trip to India earlier that year. In October 2003, the Chicago Cubs were in playoffs for the first time since the 1940s. The last time they won the pennant was 1908. In October 2005, The White Sox won the World Series with the victory parade taking place on October 28. 7 years later on October 28, 2012, Hurricane Sandy was bearing down on New York. As in all the months, climate change was becoming obvious, either with very cold or very warm temperatures in Chicago. It snowed on Halloween in 2019, a first impression in my lifetime in Chicago. 

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The AI-generated blurb, derived from the full text:

Barry maps the evolution of a cultural anxiety"that spans generations. The book delves into the "Aesthetic Erosion" caused by digital saturation and the rise of AI as a "Promethean fire," investigating whether manual craft and the "human in the loop"can survive in an age of automated creativity.

In the chilling landscape of 2025, the diary takes a dark turn into a world of "slow-motion coups" and "techno-totalitarianism" amidst a Chicago under siege and the collapse of the postwar zeitgeist, Barry seeks a metamodern synthesis, juxtaposing Old Master paintings with EDM grooves and traditional scoring with AI-generated seeds. 

"Some October" is more than a record of events; it argues for the endurance of art even as the world enters a new, uncertain age. It invites the reader to look at act of looking itself,  reminding us that in a world of collective delusions, our individual capacity for slow, deliberate observation remains our most vital defense.

The evolution of these journals is like a fractal line—never a straight path between the beginning and the end, but a complex, recurring pattern of rebellion, nostalgia, and hope. 

 

Available On Amazon

New Riffs: 10/7/2007 ("Death Of Music"), 10/19/2021; 10/23/2010 (7-year old guitar shredder), 10/27/2012 (Essay: Alt-Print-Screen), 10/12/2019, 10/21/2021 ("I Used To Dance"), 10/29/2021 ("Life As Software"), 10/4/2023 ("On the Sphere"), 10/11/2023 ("What Century Do We Live In? ), 10/13/2023, 10/20/2023 (On "Geek"), 10/27/2000; 10/29/2023 ("Petrified Trauma", "Future Focus") October photographs have been moved to the In Sum Photo Diary

 

Print Edition Footnotes

1. October is G Lydian Month. From Rifts: Nevada Seaway: https://leebarry1.bandcamp.com/track/b4-nevada-seaway-october
2. Field recording at Occupy Wall Street Protest, Chicago: http://bit.ly/3ZElDro
3. America Cannot And Will Not Succeed In Afghani­stan/Pakistan: https://bit.ly/3Rg3peQ
4. On Elevations & Aerials: https://barryartschicago.blogspot.com/2018/04/
5. Dome City released: https://leebarry1.bandcamp.com/album/dome-city
6. The Power of the Charlatan: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2066078
7. Differences between liberal and conservative brains: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/many-differences-between-liberals-and-conservatives-may-boil-down-to-one-belief/
8. Cloud Sequence: https://musescore.com/user/30768085/scores/7067165?share=copy_link