EXPRESSION OF SOUL

Hey there! Over here!

It's me, that guy, the one in the pictures.

As you will read, I appear online, and offline, in various forms, taking on different alliases, interests and activities, and through this page I wish to consolidate those forms into one cohesive flow of identity. Each of these identities are in fact an aspect of me and I am in no way pretending to be someone, or something, that I am not, except maybe for the ridiculously good-looking parts or any other mention of great wisdom and grand things such as that. This is, of course, not the whole of me but merely a perspective, an interpretation in words of my thought and experiences.

In essence what this page says is that I am a writer and an adventurer. A writer of words, a writer of code and a writer of music. Besides that I am also an adventurous fellow, a knight-errant on a quest to find his damsel in distress, and battle the occasional dragon along the way.

So have a look around, mentally correct my spelling mistakes, entertain yourself to my escapades, and see what I get up to with my time here on this great planet called Earth.

I like the colours and contrast in this picture. Besides that, it also makes me look cool. Don't you think?

S.Tarr aka Sean Tarr

about.me/seantarr

Chronicles of S.Tarr is the extremely well written and ridiculously entertaining online journal of Sean Tarr aka Starr, an everyday adventurer and explorer of life. He hails from the Cape of Good Hope, on the southern point of Africa, and when not retelling stories of his epic adventures and of the thoughts going through his head, he likes making electronic music, walking around exploring places, writing stories that never were and whenever possible floating around in the ocean on his trusty bodyboard.

His greatest inspiration is God, who in and through Jesus displayed the ultimate gift of life and grace, and in human terms what it means be alive and to know God. His quest is to live his life in honour and in gratitude for this gift of life, to that which is seen and unseen, and to that which is beyond.

And his hope for his writings is that maybe one day some wayward wanderer will come upon this place of his and find inspiration, and possibly the way to their unanswered questions and dreams.

An adventurer of sorts, an outdoorsman by nature

facebook.com/sean.tarr

I see myself as an adventurer and an outdoorsman, a man of the mountains, the forests and the sea, as I am always up for an adventure, be it hiking in the mountains, walking across fields and busy highways, or exploring new places.

I am an adventurous adventurer with adventurous tendencies. You may follow my everyday adventures via twitter.com/sir_starr.

Standing at the foot of Lion's Head with the great Table Mountain in the background. (It is there, just squint your eyes and you'll see it there just past my right shoulder)

Bodyboarding enthusiast

sixty40.co.za/profile-sean-tarr-3032

Aye, I am a surfer. Not the stand-up type but more the lie-down type with the occasional experimental dropknee attempts.

I am in awe of the ocean, calmed by it, inspired by it, delighted when I am floating on or in it. Why I prefer bodyboarding to surfing I do not entirely know but what I do know is that I like it a lot and there is nothing that comes close to gliding down the face of a smooth wave with your whole body in it. I therefore take every opportunity I get to be in the ocean, riding the waves, relaxing and reflecting on life. This to me is time well spent and most refreshing to the body, the mind and the spirit.

My quiver (board bag) currently contains a Science E3 41" board that is really light, compact and fast down the line (a bit too small for me maybe). My other board is my trusty Hydro 44" (not sure of the model) which is quite broad and thin but solid in the water.

As for my wet suit, I currently use a Derevko Alpha which is in the process of coming apart. I acquired an epic rast vest in Jeffereys Bay that fits snuggly and has extra lining to keep me warm in colder waters (ie. my backyard the Atlantic). My fins have no markings so I'm not sure what make they are but they work beautifully, except for an occational wound that one of the fins causes on a small spot on my foot. Overshare?

Keyboard Cowboy by day

shapeshift.co.za

During the day, and sometimes at night, I code, program, markup, write website front-ends for Cape Town based Shapeshift Interactive, where I am also a co-founder.

Front-end coding consists of me using the languages of HTML and CSS to replicate, as close as possible, website interface designs into functional and standards-based websites. I also use a good measure of Javascript and jQuery on the side to write and incorporate interactive elements to the websites.

I have become quite adept at this, seeing that I never studied web programming but rather software development for Windows, and I am always keen to learn new techniques and skills from other pioneers in this dynamic field of programming and creativity.

Follow my work-related, and not-so work-related, tweets at twitter.com/sir_starr.

Virtual band by night, The X-Structure

thexstructure.com

In short, The X-Structure is an experimental virtual, or fictional, electronic band that I started in 2008, through which to release my electronically produced and composed music.

I liked the idea of a virtual band, with different characters representing different instruments and moods in the band, and drew some inspiration from the very popular virtual band Gorrilaz. Although I liked the idea of Gorrilaz, musically and philosophically, it is not the same at all.

To me the music is often difficult to classify, as I do not go out to make any specific genre-based music, but in general it can be described as Downtempo, Trip-hop, Electronica, Ambient and Cinematic, always Experimental, with my own genres added to the mix called Space-Trip, Space Hop and Spacetronica.

The music is available to download for free at thexstructure.com and you may also share it with anyone and everyone.

Starrzan, the ridiculously good-looking frontman of the band, also has his own blog where he blogs about various things that Starrzan would blog about. Check it out at starrzan.tumblr.com. You may also follow him and The X-Structure on Twitter at twitter.com/starrzan and twitter.com/thexstructure.

Chief of the Bushmen

bushmenrecords.co.za

I started Bushmen Records in 2009, shortly after I formed the virtual band The X-Structure.

Bushmen Records' main aim is to be an online platform for lesser known South African electronic music artists who wish to be part of an establised and recognised group who can showcase and promote their music to a wider online audience under the Creative Commons licencing model.

Our tribe of artists are slowly growing and we have already had great success in collaborating with other internationl netlabels and becoming a pioneering netlabel in South Africa.

Champion of the Internet Underground, Dj Khoisan

djkhoisan.wordpress.com

Dj Khoisan is my attempt to pay homage to the many great Netlabel and Creative Commons artists around the world who make brilliant music but who are not that often heard.

I have downloaded, and continue downloading, countless releases by these "free artists" whereby I compile themed mixes featuring the finest tracks of my liking.

I have a lot more mixes still in the works and I am excited at the prospect of having even more people hear the great music to be found in the internet underground.

Stay tuned to twitter.com/djkhoisan for updates on this.

Music from the past, sir nightowl

sirnightowl.wordpress.com

Back in 2003 I started playing around with Reason 2.5 (a compact, all-in-one, digital music production software package), learning the ropes through trail and error and late night experimentation, and that is where my electronic music journey began.

In 2004 I felt that I had made adequate headway in creating full length tracks and released my first album under the name, nightowl. I had at first used the name Chacma, the name of the Southern African baboon, but I found that another band had already used that name and so nightowl it was (with a small case n for some obscure reason). I released two albums in 2004 and 2005 under this alias.

At this stage I had created quite a prolific amount of songs, not all good, not all bad, and continued making more music, with the plan of a number of future releases. Me, being a bit of a perfectionist, decided not to release any of the albums, due mainly to the lack of mastering knowledge, and also because another idea for a musical project was begining to form in my head.

In came The X-Structure and with that a renewed sense of purpose and creative inspiration. I then continued creating even more music for this new virtual band. A lot of The X-Structure's first releases were actually nightowl's music, tweaked a bit and released as The X-Structure. "Westcoast Trip" and "days of night" are prime examples of this. Even now some of The X-Structure's new albums contain music from my nightowl era, updated and completed because most of those tracks were incomplete.

In 2011 I poked around my old music files and found that I still had 3 good albums that I could complete and release under the nightowl name and decided that that was what I would do. After some online searching I discovered that the name "nightowl" was quite popular among artists and I decided to rather use the name "sir nightowl" instead, due to my fascination with knights and chivalry.

I also listened to the first 2 nightowl albums that I had released and realised that they weren't half bad, and I was sure someone else out there would enjoy them too, so I re-mastered them a bit and re-released them through Bushmen Records in 2011 before the release of the other 3 remaining albums.

The rest is for the future and it too shall come to pass.