“There’s a line at the end of the book from a poem by Jorie Graham, which had a huge effect on me: “This is what is wrong: we, only we, the humans, can retreat from ourselves and not be altogether here.”

When she puts it in that context – “only we, the humans” – you realize: what animal can afford to be anything less than completely conscious? They’d get eaten. You realize it’s our technology, and this elaborate structure of civilization, that gives us the freedom not to be present, which is to say conscious. We normally think we’re more conscious than animals, but there’s a sense in which they’re more conscious than we are. It’s a luxury to check out on consciousness.”

“I do worry that we will think all these machines are conscious. When you form these relationships with them, they’re not real relationships. They’re sycophantic, there’s no friction. In every human relationship, even a loving relationship, there’s friction. That friction is what helps us define our identities and realize what we think. You don’t get that with a chatbot; they suck up to you.”

LINK to text

You pity the moth confusing a lamp for the moon, yet here you are confusing a screen for the world.

Is Spotify Enabling Massive Impersonation of Famous Jazz Musicians?

How did trumpet legend Nat Adderley become a white guy playing with a three-handed bassist?

and

Here’ the bottom line: This problem appears to have grown massively in just a few days. And if AI scammers can steal royalties without consequences, this will metastasize like a cancer throughout the music economy.

 

The fact that Spotify is encouraging listeners to check out these albums is especially troubling. I know so many deserving musicians who will never get this kind of promotion from a streaming service. Meanwhile impersonations are boosted.

 

Scammers are probably starting with jazz because these musicians have complicated discographies, and few listeners are knowledgeable enough to identify fake music. But if there’s no crackdown, this will quickly expand to other genres—maybe it already has.

 

Streaming platforms need to provide a simple way for users to flag illegal music. And they need to remove AI impersonations immediately. Companies involved in these scams should be prohibited from using the platform.

LINK to text

Anyone who thinks the contemplative life amounts to a form of quietism or a retreat from the world’s suffering should spend some time shadowing Joan Halifax, the Zen priest and anthropologist. I’d been curious about Halifax for years, ever since I heard about an annual trek that she leads through the mountains of Nepal, bringing a cadre of doctors and dentists to remote mountain villages with little access to health care.

Each summer over the course of two weeks or so, this Nomads Clinic covers more than 100 miles on foot and horseback, at altitudes of nearly 18,000 feet. These “medical mountaineers,” as they’ve been called, all volunteers, sleep in tents, often in freezing temperatures. But after some 40 annual trips to Nepal—Halifax is normally based in Santa Fe—she recently decided it was time to hang it up. She had just turned 80.

How to Have a ‘Don’t-Know Mind’ – The Atlantic by Michael Pollan

When I arrived at the refuge in August of 2024, to meditate and to record music (Big Cave Versions on Bandcamp) Roshi Joan told me that the previous occupant had been Michael Pollan. 

Halifax explained that even though it had neither plumbing nor electricity nor an internet connection, this was “a five-star cave” and I would be comfortable—or, more likely, I’d be uncomfortable in a spiritually productive way. I’m not much of a camper but decided I might as well put myself in her hands to see what the experience would yield.

Read more about Pollan’s experience at the above link or click here.

Tech companies have spent years perfecting their image as enablers – as tools that promise to amplify our capabilities. The pitch has always been ‘convenience’ and ‘efficiency’. But today, we’re coming to terms with the fact that we’re learning less, thinking less, tolerating less. We increasingly behave more like toddlers expecting machines to handle life’s unpleasantness.

Writing in The Cut (free archived version), Kathryn Jezer-Morton argues that tech companies are succeeding in making us think of life itself as inconvenient – something to continuously escape from into digital padded rooms of predictive algorithms and single-tap commands.

Reading is boring; talking is awkward; moving is tiring; leaving the house is daunting. Thinking is hard. Interacting with strangers is scary. Risking an unexpected reaction from someone isn’t worth it. Speaking at all — overrated. These are all frictions that we can now eliminate, easily, and we do.

Once we’ve adopted these habits of escape, the act of returning to unmediated existence feels insufferable.

“We become exactly like toddlers in the five minutes after the iPad is taken away: The dullness and labour of embodied existence is unbearable.”

The whole article is worth reading: link to free archived version. Friction is part of everyday life. It is normal. Think of friction as gravity. Earth gravity gives our bones a mass and strength that someone from another planet might not have. They might not be able to stand up or even breathe on Earth. Friction is gravity for the mind. We should be very selective about which friction we remove. Remove too much and perhaps we all become demanding toddlers.

Nearly every bit of the high-tech world, from the most cutting-edge AI systems at the biggest companies, to the casual scraps of code cobbled together by college students, is annotated and described by the same, simple plain text format. Whether you’re trying to give complex instructions to ChatGPT, or you want to be able to exchange a grocery list in Apple Notes or copy someone’s homework in Google Docs, that same format will do the trick. The wild part is, the format wasn’t created by a conglomerate of tech tycoons, it was created by a curmudgeonly guy with a kind heart who right this minute is probably rewatching a Kubrick film while cheering for an absolutely indefensible sports team.
How Markdown took over the world – Anil Dash

Lovely post about the history of Markdown and how the real internet used to be created by men and women who often gave away their work. The more I use Markdown the more I appreciate it.

The February California tour actually starts with shows in Seattle on the 9th and 10th, then moves to Southern California starting on the 12th. We move up the coast and on the 25th we play in Grass Valley for the first time before going to Kalispell in Montana for the last show of that tour.

There is a concert at the Lensic in Santa Fe, on the 27th of March.

An East Coast tour starts in Fort Lauderdale on the 23rd of April. From Florida we move to New England with the last show of the tour in Groton, Massachusetts, on the 10th of May.

I watched the first couple of episodes of this series yesterday and wondered why I hadn’t heard of this brilliant artist before. This movie is an absolute delight. Highest recommendation!

I watched it on Mubi, which I subscribe to. And if you check out Mubi, have a look at this beautiful French-Korean film: Winter in Sokcho.

In 2026, one of these calendars will again hang on my studio wall. In a digital world these hand-drawn images feel like an antidote. Sometimes such an analog paper item is just the ticket.

You can find them here.

In July of 2025, the idea for a new project grew in my mind. It centered around the idea that there are infinite ways to cross a landscape and, similarly, there are myriad ways to wrap a melody around a rhythm. Given the same recorded guitar rhythms, and structure, how will what two guitarists create differ in the end? Stephen Duros and I decided to find out. We each created our own melodies, counter lines, and additional rhythmic elements, and made new pieces of music.

A few months later we each have a new album called Rhythm Maps. These are two pieces that started out with the same Map SD02 and became two very different pieces. You can click anywhere below to go to the album page on Bandcamp.

I have never heard of anyone else doing something like this. Have you? Please let me know in the comments. Enjoy!

Amazingly, the atmospheric track that sounds like an artifact of early electronic music, includes none of the machinery associated with that genre. Zawinul talked about the instrumentation: “Horn and acoustic piano — no electronics whatsoever. But I think it’s a new way of doing something with the pedals and with the saxophone.” In 1984 Zawinul expanded on how the band created the sounds on that unique track: “I silently held a chord down on the piano and had Wayne play an arpeggio of the same chord, blowing his saxophone right inside the piano at the soundboard. The tape recorder was started on the echo at the end of the sound, not when he was playing.”

LINK to text

Listening to or playing music later in life could do more than lift your spirits – it might also help keep your mind sharp. A study of more than 10,000 older adults has found that people who regularly engage with music have significantly lower rates of cognitive decline, with daily music listeners showing up to a 39% reduced risk of developing dementia.

read on New Atlas

I think the key word is engagement… people who regularly engage with music. We hear music everywhere and practically all the time. Gas pumps play music, elevators, restaurants, sometimes entire streets play music. Music is practically inescapable. We hear music all the time but how often do we engage with it?

I think I should listen to one piece of music (each day, a few time a week? once a week?) that has some weight to it and requires engagement. Tonight that will be something by Steve Reich. I’ll pick something at random and listen to the entire piece.

I did that earlier this week. It wasn’t particularly enjoyable but that wasn’t the point. Sometimes the most engaging conversations are not with people we agree with! I will continue this experiment. Please let me know in the comments if you want to suggest some music I should listen to. Something that is different, perhaps strange, perhaps even uncomfortable, but interesting and… dare I say it again? Engaging.

Proprioception is our ability to sense the relative position and movement of our body in space. Space perception relies on the collaboration of all senses, or inter-modal perception. Cues can be visual, such as seeing perspective lines, or auditory, such as reverb or echo or any other sound bouncing off a wall or ceiling or other object.

I read that taxi and ambulance drivers have the lowest rates of death from Alzheimer’s. Perhaps that proves the importance of spatial imaging and navigation. Neither taxi drivers nor ambulance drivers are known for their great diets or high levels of exercise. Eating and exercising isn’t everything. It’s part of a good life but apparently trying to navigate on our own is important.

From the quote at the top of this post:

A study of more than 10,000 older adults has found that people who regularly engage with music have significantly lower rates of cognitive decline, with daily music listeners showing up to a 39% reduced risk of developing dementia.

What both of these statements have in common is the sense of space… modeling space in our mind. Perhaps this is one of our oldest and most important senses or abilities. Our ancestors had to navigate space through visualization. Hunter/Gatherers had to migrate with the seasons. They had to remember when and where they could find berries in the fall. Sometimes they walked great distances, They had to remember the paths. Sailors navigated by the stars and had to visualize the route in front of them… the wind, the rocks hidden beneath the waves, the currents.

If it is this sense of space that makes a huge difference in maintaining cognitive strength… then Architects should do better at maintaining cognitive abilities, Tibetan Monks, who visualize incredibly complex mandalas, should do better as well?

Also, if this is true, then merely hearing music will not do much for us… we have to visualize the SPACE in which the musical instruments appear. That is the engagement part of the equation. Without it the music is merely background. Pleasant, to be sure, but without real involvement. It follows that we have to listen in such a way that allows us to perceive the musical space created by the musician or producer. That means sitting in front of loudspeakers or using headphones. It means we can’t be doing a million other things while listening. It means making a little time for listening, just listening. Think of it as therapy, music as mental therapy or exercise. And a lot cheaper than supplements!!

The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.

—Stanley Kubrick

My name is xxxx and I’m reaching out on behalf of a major client. We’ve come across your blog and believe our client’s product/service would be a great fit for your audience.

We’re interested in collaborating by providing a tailored, high-quality piece of content for your site. Could you let us know the cost of adding content to your blog?

Companies want to add a link or content to this blog in exchange for money. While I don’t think this blog is very popular, it has been around for a long time – more or less since 1996 – and maybe that makes for a decent Google/search rating? Just like the population of a town hitting a magic number that triggers multiple nationwide chains to suddenly want to open stores there, perhaps a certain rating triggers automatic requests such as this one. I don’t know.

This blog has always been free AND ad-free. When I started this website and blog I was under the impression that we would all eventually communicate and exchange ideas via personal blogs. Long thoughts, short thoughts, content of any kind… In 1995 that was the vision of the world wide web. Then came along (so-called) Social Media and changed everything. Biz Stone told me I should try Twitter, when I met him after a show at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga (Summer of 2007, I think). I was able to get the handle @ottmar. A year later I thought it was taking up too much time and deleted the account. A couple of years later I tried once more. By then @ottmar was taken and I took @ottmarliebert. Then I tried Facebook but that only lasted a few months. Deleted. A friend convinced me of opening an account on Instagram. That lasted a little longer but was also deleted. Since then I have tried Bluesky – deleted – and Mastodon, which I have kept but rarely look at (once every two months?). Social Media is not a good fit for me.

This blog, however, makes sense to me. It’s how I can communicate with you, who went through the trouble of finding this little spot on the web instead of following several people on Facebook who call themselves Ottmar Liebert, but aren’t. :-)

I came across a handful of photos from the Los Angeles recording session for Leaning Into the Night. Was able to resurrect my old scanner and create this copy. The photographer was Dana Ross. This would have been early in 1997.

After recording “one guitar two – Big Cave Versions” in an actual cave, I decided to turn my apartment into a virtual cave by playing guitar w a huge reverb… The cave existed only in my headphones.

The musician and record producer Brian Eno delves into his experiments with ambient music, his thoughts on generative A.I. and his deep gratitude for the uniqueness of human life.

I took my morning walk and listened to this podcast. It’s lovely, it’s brilliant, and I think it’s really important. Have a listen!
You will also learn some new words, like Scenius and Munge!

Plus GQ has a very good and lengthy interview with Brian Eno by Grayson Haver Currin. GQ Interview w Eno.

Read the whole, fascinating story: How Humanity Saved the Ginkgo – The Marginalian