the timboucher experience

Of Energy channels, Electrical Circuits, Musical Modes, Qi Meridians & Ley Lines

Another concept I’ve been dwelling on a great deal lately in my travels through the psychogeography of Baltimore is that of “usepaths.” Looks like the term “usepath” is used in some other context in computer programming - one which I don’t fully understand and intend to ignore for the purposes of this discussion. What I mean by a usepath is simply a a channel upon which transit occurs naturally. That is, an observable way of getting from here to there which is actually utilized by those native to the area.

In the early days of online cartographic aids, companies like MapQuest made it big because they could automatically output highly customized maps with driving directions from point A to point B. The only problem was that a lot of the directions didn’t make sense on a human level. Sure you could go that to way get where you’re going, but people from the neighborhood use this other path, pattern, way or method because it’s more useful if you’re traversing the landscape on a regular basis - whether on foot, bicycle or by car.

There’s a turn off approaching my neighborhood, coming over the hill from the Super Fresh where if you don’t make it, you end up stuck at a light which even when it finally changes rarely seems to go your way. So it’s better to duck off down a side street whose proper name I never bothered to learn. It’s a convenience of the landscape, a pattern of use within the neighborhood which outsiders would never apprehend without a local guide.

Usepaths, then, are things like that. Ways of doing things which are typical and which tend to work according to the people who most commonly perform the activity in question. The activity could be geographic in nature, such as traversing a landscape on foot. Or I’m thinking it could also be applied to computing, to designing successful interfaces and interactions across immersive interactive realms of visualized data. I have usepaths on my computer. Folders I go to immediately as second nature for various specific purposes (invocations, almost). I’ve customized my web browser to facilitate quick access to the screens and online applications which I use to manage my communications with the outside world of media, with cyberspace. It is very much a kind of geography, a method of getting from here to there.

Just found this comment from somebody in my cloud:

Sat down to re-learn phrygian and mixolydian modes and I just figured out like 50 metal songs in 10 minutes. When a formula works, right?

The body too is made up of usepaths. Where does food go when you swallow it? How does blood pump from your heart through to various parts of your body? What happens when you take a breath? Usepaths in action. Chinese medicine says that Qi, the vital energetic life force flows through and around the body in resonant arcs called meridians. Within the Daoist philosophy, the ideal way of being is the way of nature. Biomimicry. Usepaths. #whatworks

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