KhaledIs.Me Blog

I was recently doing a shoot with my friends Matt Frickovsky and Julia Lachimova in Time Square. In case you haven’t been, it’s packed with people, lights, advertisements, and lots and lots of cars and cabs. If you turn down any street in New York City, chances are you will see a yellow cab. That’s besides the point. The point is all these cars just honk, and it gets quite annoying. Walking away from our shoot, it came to me…”What if a series of car  horns played music?”

I’ll ask again. What if a series of car horns played music? Think of how pleasant the busy city streets become, the traffic jams? The problem and solution are quite practical and simple. I put my Engineering hat on and my solution goes a little something like this:

Each car is equipped with a sound sensor and a computer program. The sound sensor will listen for certain frequencies that car horns generally fall under, or it can be any sound on the street. That way all street sounds will fall in harmony. The sensor catches the sound and feeds it to the computer program. The computer program then picks an arbitrary note based on the number of sounds it picked up (how many horns sounded), and the notes/frequencies it heard. A series of different notes will sound like someone is playing a chord or a scale, and that sounds beautiful!

Originally, the car horn is designed to catch your attention, and with this solution it will! The horn will still have its familiar timbre so it is not confused with any other sound on the street. The computer program is quite simple and doesn’t take long to develop. I’m pretty sure something like that already exists. The hardware (i.e. sensor) is also cheap. Practical!

Don’t you think it’s worth a shot? I’m thinking about getting a grant for this and developing it.

Passage 1
“Your soul is often times a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.”

Passage 2
“For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.”

Passage 1
“you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfilment.
You shall be free indeed when you days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief.”

Passage 1
“You delight in laying down laws,
Yet you delight more in breaking them.
Like children playing bu the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter.”

Passage 2
“What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless?”

Passage 1
“Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world.
But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,
So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.”

Passage 2
“The murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder,
And the robbed is not blameless in being robbed.
The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked,
and the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon.
Yea, the guilty oftentimes is the victim of the injured,
And still more often the condemned is the burden bearer for the guiltless and unblamed.
You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good form the wicked;”

Passage 1
“To you the earth yields her fruit, and you shall not want if you but know how to fill your hands.
It is exchanging the gifts of the earth that you shall find abundance and be satisfied.
Yet unless the exchange be in love and kindly in justice, it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger.”

Passage 2
“And if there come the singers and the dancers and flute players, — buy of their gifts also.
For they too are gatherers of fruit and frankincense, and that which they bring, though fashioned of dreams, is raiment and food for your soul.”

Passage 1
“Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.”

Passage 2
“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”

Passage 1
“And tell me, people of Orphalese, what have you in these houses? And is it you guard with fastened doors?
Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
Have you remembrances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?
Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?
Tell me, have you these in your houses?
Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master?
Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.”

Passage 1
“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.”

Passage 2
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

Passage 3
“When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”