2004 Small Failures From Several Years Ago (mp3)On 8 March 2010, Peter posted this on his flickr photostream:
"Year 2004.
I'm 17 years old. I recently moved out of my parents' home and to the city (Portland). I take a trip to Guitar Center and buy some recording equipment to use with my computer. And then I just start recording. There's a folder on the desktop of my computer, quickly filling up with all my hard work.
A few months later, I have 10 or 11 songs, enough to call it an album. One day I'm browsing the internet, and I download an mp3 from somewhere. The file goes onto my desktop. I put it into iTunes and have a listen. Then I grab the file on the desktop, throw it into the trash, and empty the trash.
But why is it saying it's going to take two minutes to empty the trash? That's weird. It only takes a long time to empty the trash when it's really full, and I only put one mp3 in there, and it was empty before . . . Wait . . . That wasn't the mp3 I threw away. It was the folder with my album in it.
No back up. Gone. I take the computer to a store and pay a couple hundred dollars for a data recovery service. They aren't able to retrieve anything. Really gone. All I have are the rough mixes. My mind is baffled by the modern world and how one tiny mistake like that can destroy an infinite number of valuable 1's and 0's.
I don't even want to look at my computer. I definitely don't feel like recording music on it. So I borrow my sister's four track cassette recorder and record these two ridiculous songs:
official.durtonstudio.com/1_balalaika_song.mp3
official.durtonstudio.com/2_work_and_play.mp3
Then I make my first and (so far) oil painting (above). One day a friend comes over and asks me what I'll do with it. I say, I don't know, throw it away. She asks if she can have it. I say, only if you hang it backwards, with the painting towards the wall.
Last time I talked to this friend, she still had the painting hanging backwards on her wall."
