About Birds and Hidden Lakes

Amanda Palmer (musician) talking for TED about performer's relationships with their fans and crowd-funding. "Celebrity is about a lot of people loving you from a distance, but the internet... is about a few people loving you up close, and that being enough"

ilovecharts

My albums of the year 2012:

1. @iLiKETRAiNS - The Shallows

2. @efterklang - Piramida

3. @ShearwaterBand - Animal Joy

4. @sigurros - Valtari

5. @TheWalkmen - Heaven

6. @anaismitchell - Young Man in America

7. @JustinTEarle - Nothing’s Going To Change The Way You Feel About Me Now

8. M Ward - A Wasteland Companion

9. The Tallest Man On Earth - There’s No Leaving Now

10. @FirstAidKitBand - The Lion’s Roar

As usual, I have spent a disturbing amount of time doing this for the benefit of nobody but myself. But I found it so cathartic to bring order to my world that it was undoubtedly necessary.

It had to be I Like Trains as #1. Its been an album that has dominated my year. I can’t be sure exactly how many times I’ve listened it this year, but a conservative estimate would be over 75. Like all the great albums that I have obsessed with throughout my life, the play count is so high because following the conclusion of the final track, you realise very quickly that there is nothing else in the record collection that will follow it. It absorbs you and fundamentally alters your mood and mindset, and the only thing to do is to listen to it again. It becomes an addiction, a benchmark, a cornerstone. It forces itself on you, and without you realising it became an ever-present at the landmarks of the year. I had listened to the album so often and allowed myself to be immersed by it that it had become indivisible with this period of my life. In a sense, my relationship with this album became a microcosm of the album’s central theme of the human race’s increasing dependence on, and adaptability to accommodate, the changing digital world.

For me, that is why this album is the best of 2012. As a collection of songs it certainly would have been in the top ten anyway, but it went beyond that and, somehow, made me mirror the core behaviours it was studying. Like a science fiction movie where the machines become sentient and slowly take control of the earth, I eventually found myself wondering where it will end.

ilovecharts:

Color might have been a decent option here…

Happy Independence Day to all my American friends

ilovecharts:

What it takes to make a quarter-pound hamburger.

ilovecharts:

They say people don’t read, so I took that into account and made a resume that caters to visual people (and readers). Plus, it showcases my love for charts. (Front side of resume.)

-iwrotethistrash

Hire this guy!