Alien Signals

This isn't exactly the same, and isn't a new thought, but is at least tangentially related. One of my memories is around finding my dad's record collection and seeing the music he and my mom would listen to. There weren't any mind-blowing secrets, but it felt like a window into a world I didn't know about before and somehow was a slightly formative experience. I don't know what that experience looks like in a world with subscription services where there's nothing to be stumbled upon by others. There's fewer bookshelves or movie collections to leaf through at a friends house everything is guarded by a password and hidden away, there's less opportunity to stumble across that secret hidden collection and that feels like a little bit of a loss to me. Probably just me getting older and complaining about the good ole days though haha.

I remember there used to be this old AM late night coast-to-coast radio show that had the strangest topics sometimes. I only occasionally tuned in by accident on the hours-long drive back to college from home. It was always when it was dark and the highway was empty and endless yellow highway street lights were all you could see.

It was like an x-files for radio. It was the first time I'd heard of Bob Lazar. It was mysterious and inquisitive and something you fell into unexpectedly.

Wish I remembered what it was called. I feel like that sense of mystery and discovery is hard to replicate today. Everything's at your fingertips.

When I was a kid in the 90s we had two old walky-talkies, the kind that predated the digital FRS systems you can buy today. They were the size of a brick, took 9x AA batteries and the antenna was a solid 3 feet long when fully extended.

We used to use them to play cops and robbers, but late at night in the summer, if you fiddled with the squelch settings and the antenna length (and I assume when the ionosphere was cooperating) I could pick up what in hindsight must have been some kind of numbers station.

It was a male voice repeating a bunch of nonsensical phrases, most of which have faded from memory except for something about having Buffalo Soldiers and then the recording would end with the phrase "I just got downnnnn" where the word "down" was drawn out in some kind of strange electronic vocal fry, like a tape recorder running out of batteries. After that it would loop back to the beginning.

This was in southwestern Ontario in the summer of 1996, maybe 97, and it thoroughly creeped me out. I've always wanted to figure out what it was.

Alien signals indeed.

The internet has made so many of my youthful amazements obsolete. I don't think kids who have been exposed to high speed internet and youtube would find much interest in exploring HF radio signals or using an acoustic modem to talk to people on the other side of the world.

That said, the internet has a whole new dark underbelly. If I were young again and granted the "get out of jail with a slap on the wrist" card again, I'd be poking at open ports and using an SDR to probe security weaknesses in modern RF systems. Getting strange music at Tower Records or from anarchist collectives out of zines has given way to youtube and a thousand other outlets. The effort may be less but there is still a world to get lost in.

There was a lot of magic in the old days, but it's still there in other ways now. Maybe the biggest danger is the end of boredom and the torrent of on-demand dopamine surrounding kids of today.

Listening to Hearts of Space as a child was my first experience with "experimental" music - definitely formative.

You can still listen to it online: https://v4.hos.com/home

Another place to find "alien signals" back in the day were in comic book shops and card shops (those that sold various sports cards).

They'd almost always have sections of weird periodicals that were made by completely unknown people. We used to share them at school, full of inappropriate content that would probably get kids expelled these days. Also things like the Anarchist Cookbook (and similar collections) which felt extremely illegal at the time, but you can pick it up on Amazon now.

I remember one that was dedicated to gruesome crime scene photos and detailed descriptions of horrific crimes. Half the pictures looked like photocopies of photocopies, which is far less jarring than what you can find online these days.

There's all kinds of things which would blow kids minds if they were exposed to it. A friend of mine who grew up and was (mis)educated in Berkeley was mind-blown by the old BBC art history documentary Civilization.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxEJn7dWY60

There's a whole lot of British material from the early era of color TV which makes most of what is watched today look like the low-IQ childish rubbish (albeit with high production values) it actually is. Compare BBC 1979 "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" with, I dunno, anything made in the last 10 years.

I like to listen to foreign radio stations on http://radio.garden. They speak languages I don't understand and (once you find a good station) play music I'll never hear again.

I would say that some of the recommendation engines for media services have this feeling. Walking home late at night, sometimes it feels like Spotify recommends a supernaturally appropriate song, a little gift from the robo-gods.

Or go take a look at the comments for those beats to study and relax to streams on YouTube, young people seem to sit at home and think about how those songs connect them with each other.

How to get alien signals today: browse art from a different culture. It doesn't have to be high art. I'm fond of youtube videos.

The surface impressions are available immediately. All the references and set dressings and context in the literature, however, slowly bubble up over time, as you learn more about other works and the origin culture.

Delay, distance, and mystery.

(I had a friend in school who remarked that his mother watched exclusively movies about "two people who love each other but can't marry because they have different forehead dots." I often think about that phrase while watching non-bollywood fare, asking myself how the director+team have communicated the colours of the virtual dots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF6W1XD25Dc

e.g. 2:08 marks the switch from V- to T-pronouns. As for the band's name, it's ambiguous, and I still don't know which is the intended referent for native speakers.)

I remember the magic of sending away for and then getting a stack of Ubuntu Warty Warthog install cds in the mail from Brazil. In all it's dirt brown glory.

Listening to wfmu is a great source of altmusic these days. These shows among others: - https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/SN - https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/SF - https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/PM

I saw John Darnielle in a coffee shop in Durham, NC a few years ago. Me and a coworker walked up to him and told him we loved the Mountain Goats. He said thanks and immediately started talking about Durham and how great it was. He talked about the vibe and the community and how weird a place it was. What a really cool guy.

The radio work of Joe Frank [0][1] often had a similar surreal and captivating quality.

[0] https://www.joefrank.com/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Frank

I remember discovering reruns of coast to coast AM and listening to them while driving around at two in the morning.

The closest thing I can think of that emulates a similar feeling today is the "group buy". Kids (of all ages) see new/interesting things online that aren't mass produced and they can kickstart or otherwise pay for a spot on the next/only run of this item.

I like the sense of seeking in the world that the author speaks to, that's how it came out to me.

The radio - one of the last refuges of opaqueness - is still alive and well. I recall tuning into a random station a few months ago and hearing some insane industro-psychedelic drone-jazz (think Coil plays "Bitch's Brew").

I love the very slowly changing hue of your site. It's very artistic. When I started, it was a golden brown, by the time I reached the bottom, it was a lime green. I thought I might be crazy until I spotted in in dev tools.

I remember an alien signal from the Internet:

https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.wobegon/c/1kGvHOu-hEI

> The safety and serenity of Alaska provided an atmosphere conducive to deprogramming, despite the pandemonium that ensued. Mark Phillips was the first man who not only did not abuse us, but cared for our welfare and well being.

rec.arts.wobegon Dec 28, 2001, 2:32:26 PM

That's a snippet of the Epilogue from "Trance-Formation of America" by Cathy O'Brien, a book about how Cathy O'Brien is either a schizophrenic or acts like one for publishers. It got spammed across Usenet right when I was into it the most, reading alt.religion.scientology and alt.fan.cecil-adams and a few others, so I got slapped across the face with it one night completely unexpected. I've since come across stranger, such as the QAnon cult, but that was my first taste of High Weirdness.

Browsing shoutcast fm through winamp kinda gave me the experience I think the author is talking about. There was some weird stuff on there.

I remember a station that played ambient music that was mixed with voice recordings from nasa astronauts.

So maybe the next time we all get hyped up for another Apple keynote we can reflect on that sense of excitement, anticipation and - holy shit is this still possible? - delayed gratification.