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Labyrinth, 10/5/08

Here’s where I picked up today.  Actually, I started by pulling out my new cutting thingie and assembling it, reading the directions more carefully than anything I’ve ever read. This thing will put your eye out, if not cut off your leg.

Alas, it only produces a cut that’s less than half an inch deep. What the hell kind of masonry is only half an inch thick?  These paving stones are two inches, so the paltry little slice the fairly expensive device made is worthless.  It goes back to Home Depot tomorrow.

And now I’m back to where I began: how do I cut the curves for the center?

I decided to forge ahead and start laying the thing out.  I can always come back and cut curves later.

I had already figured out east/west/north/south, but now I staked out the whole circle.  I cut a piece of wood exactly three stones wide, and began by laying out the three axes:

And then, something that I have never seen before in all my studies of modern labyrinths.  I think it might actually be An Innovation.

All right, class, can you see what I’ve done here?  Would anyone like to tell me what I’m up to?  What is this Innovation of which I am so inordinately proud?

Along the western axis, I have laid out bricks in the circuit:

They’re kind of hard to see in the photo.  They actually extend the idea of the Innovation, if you consider its role as a Tolkien reference.

Finally, I began to lay out the circuit:

Here’s the southwestern quadrant, all laid out.  I was gratified/amazed to find that the outer circle exactly touched the brick edging.  It was absolutely a perfect fit.  Here it is from the picnic table area:

It will probably take most of my remaining pavers to do the northwestern quadrant, the other half of the great semicircles that form the top of the labyrinth.  I’ll have to order another pallet, have it delivered Friday.  Ginny’s going out of town to Virginia again, so I’ll have all weekend to finish laying out the bottom half, with all the turnarounds and switchbacks.  That will be the interesting part.

So, has everyone figured out what I’m doing down the middle there?

2008 10 05 Dale Creativity
Labyrinth
Life Comments (11) Permalink

Esprit d’escalier

Things Joe Biden might have said after Sarah Palin asked him, “Can I call you Joe?”

  • “That would be fine, Governor Palin.”
  • “Whatever you like, sweetcheeks.”
  • “Say, that’s pretty cute.  Isn’t she cute, ladies and gentlemen?”
  • “Really??”
  • “Did John put you up to that?  It sounds like his lame sense of humor.”
  • “Sure, Sarah.  Cute shoes.”
  • “No.”

And winked at her.

2008 10 05 Dale Liberal Rants Comments (2) Permalink

Labyrinth, 10/4/08

So I went and rented this:

Self-powered, huge, mama-jama rototiller.  And it still couldn’t cut through the dry, hard-packed soil.  I had to park it for a couple of hours while I watered the yard.  That worked.  I still was having problems getting it to dig in—instead of running away from me—until I figured out there was this little extendible bar between the rotoblades that I needed to lower so that it would actually drag through the soil and slow the machine down and get the blades to catch.

Then it was tutti all the way, as Prof. Peter Schickele says.  By supper time, I had tilled the whole circle and raked it flat.  It’s still a bit dicey on the far edge, where it dips down the slope, because when you rake tilled soil, all the vegetable matter ends up at the end of your raking, so that whole outside path on the northern side is for the moment a mite spongy.

Anyway, here’s what it looks like:

Those who saw it in person may be able to tell how much more of a plane the surface is now.  My main goal was to even out the bone-jarring dip in the southwestern quadrant (to the left in the photo above).  That has been accomplished.   I’ll decide whether to build up that northern arc to be level with the rest of the yard as I go along.

Next: the excitement of using my new cutting tool thingie to begin cutting the stones for the center circle.  Actually, the next exciting thing is to get that huge tiller loaded back into my van.  A big thank you to Marc and Galen for providing the extra muscle necessary for that.

2008 10 05 Dale Labyrinth
Life Comments (1) Permalink

Another odd moment

I’m again sitting in the back yard, surveying my handiwork (more about that in a later post), and I notice in the rays of the setting sun scores of little white dots hovering above my freshly tilled soil.  They are members of a tiny fly species of some kind, and they fill the bands of light with so much Brownian motion. Accompanied by something playing on my “Tosca” station on Pandora, they assume a significance that would surely be enhanced by entheogenic substances of one kind or another.

These tiny points of life are visible only when they are in the sunlight.  As soon as they drift into shadow, they vanish.  If the sun were blocked, one would never know that the yard is full of life.

In contrast to their lazy—to me it’s lazy, to them I’m sure it’s frantic—floating about, there are occasional meteors of something dropping straight to the ground.  It seems to be coming from the trees.  Exudations of some kind?  Caterpillar excrement?  I don’t know and cannot tell where it’s coming from.

More determined insects—predators?—zip through the space, bursting into view from one side of a block of sunlight and blazing straight across the band before vanishing again.

The sun is about to drop into position to blaze directly into my eyes.  Time to go find something to eat.

Another poem, if I were a poet.

2008 10 04 Dale Life Comments (1) Permalink

Odd moment

I’m in the back yard, drinking my absinthe and just generally enjoying the lovely evening, in front of my fire, when I notice that there seem to be a lot of leaves falling.  I look up and see that the fire, which is in its first throes of consumption, has produced such a violent updraft that it is shaking all the newly dead leaves of early fall loose into the air, and so they fall in a gentle shower around the fire.

There’s a poem in there, if I were a poet.

2008 10 03 Dale Life Comments (1) Permalink

Sir Christémas redux

You may recall, if you’ve been a faithful reader, that last year about this time I sent off a choral piece called “Sir Christémas” to the Welcome Christmas competition.  Last year, the required accompaniment was celeste.  (This year it was French horn, and I didn’t get anything written.)

You may also recall, or maybe I never shared, that after it didn’t win I tinkered around with it and reset it with organ.  It’s been floating around out there, untouched since last fall, and now I have dusted it off for another round.  I have added percussion this time to the organ accompaniment: tambourine, glockenspiel, tom-toms, and bass drum.

Here’s the score, and here’s the mp3.

I’m submitting it to the Masterworks Chorale for our Christmas concert. After reading through the stuff we’re considering last night, I figured that mine’s not as strange as a couple of them, as long as we’re being adventurous.

Also, today I put A Visit to William Blake’s Inn in the mail to George Contini at UGA.

I’ll keep you posted on both items.

2008 09 30 Dale Creativity
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William Blake’s Inn

The University of Georgia Department of Theatre and Film Studies will be considering A Visit to William Blake’s Inn for their 2009-2010 season.  I haven’t blogged about this and haven’t even really mentioned it anywhere, except at some point over on the Lichtenbergian site someone blew my cover and I had to respond.  I haven’t even told Nancy Willard about it yet.

George Contini is a professor at UGA who moderated the panel on regional/community theatre that I spoke at last fall, and I jokingly suggested that his interest in computer graphics and projections made him a natural for William Blake’s Inn. I sent him a CD and a cover letter, and this past summer, he emailed me and told me he was submitting it.

The old gang got together last week at Craig Humphrey’s studio to record the work for UGA’s consideration.  The committee requires some form of performance recording; it’s easier to hear it sung—even if shakily—than to try to figure it out by reading the piano/vocal score.  I’ll submit the CD, the vocal score, the orchestral score, and a cover letter with all kinds of details from Lacuna Group’s exploration of the work last year.

I have to do this next week.

And then… I just have to wait to hear.

Everyone says this is exciting.  I am not excited.  I’ve had this piece shot down before, and I’m not holding my breath.  If they choose to do it, then I’ll be excited.  But getting excited about the possibility would be completely pointless, unless I enjoyed the agony of suspense and disappointment.

So there you go.  I’ll print everything up on Monday, get the CD ready, and mail it all out sometime during the week.  Then I can return to my current status as a non-composer, wondering if I’ll ever sit down with score paper in front of me again.

2008 09 28 Dale Creativity
William Blake
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Literacy

I was appointed to be a member of the State Literacy Task Force.  We are charged with developing a proposal for a long-term plan to improve literacy across the board in Georgia.

Our first task, which we’re already behind on, is to define literacy.

I am not being flippant when I suggest as a definition the ability to find and use information.  Yes, it’s totally colored by my day job as a media specialist, but think about it.  If we charged schools and communities to make sure their students and citizens could find and use information, then we don’t have to get into reading and technology and blah blah blah.  Do what it takes to make it happen.

In chatting about this with Kevin on Saturday morning, I allowed as how, despite what you might think, I was not interested in including padding like “self-enrichment” in the definition, because that’s not something the state has any control over, or vested interest in, if I were to turn all Antonin Scalia on us.

Then Kevin said something that I though was very important and I wrote it down immediately to steal: “Sort of like a Maslow’s hierarchy for literacy?”

Bingo!

So whattaya say, dear readers?  Help me develop said hierarchy, and we shall be as gods.

2008 09 22 Dale Curriculum Liberation Front
Reading
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Labyrinth, 9/21/08

It was decided at last night’s Lichtenbergian contemplation of the labyrinth that I would outline the paths instead of paving them.  Much easier and cheaper.

It was also suggested that instead of digging a trench into which I would set the stones, I should lay out the labyrinth and then bring in truckloads of new topsoil and just shovel it into the labyrinth, leveling the ground with the stones.  I could then plant grass in the new soil.

This morning I removed all the stones except the center.  My next step will be to draw the circle on the stones and find someone who can cut those for me.

Then I have to find a topsoil supplier who can get a truck through my carport.

Excelsior.

2008 09 21 Dale Labyrinth
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Acting

I’m in the back yard, sucking down life-giving beverages as Bertie Wooster might say, and learning Valeria’s lines for Coriolanus. I love Valeria. She’s a total butterfly.

There are several challenges to her, however.  One is the fact that she precedes nearly every line with a silly oath: “O’ my word,” “O’ my troth,” “Indeed, la,” “Verily,” and on and on.  It’s never the same twice. Since she’s in prose and not iambic pentameter, I don’t suppose it matters which one I use when.

The more interesting thing I’ve observed as I’ve walked to and fro about the labyrinth between sips of my vodka and tonic is how inflections will creep into my delivery which are absolutely right and absolutely hysterical.  I stop to try to analyze the emotional/social impulse which caused that delivery, and while it may be blameable on the vodka tonics but is more likely to be attributable to my general inability to define emotional impulses, I find those impulses to be very slippery.  Mostly what I find myself thinking about is the craft of acting.

These inflections are subtle and comically apt, and I can’t think that I would be able to hit them by musing ahead of time on the social impulses that created them.  Instead, I think it comes of observing people and knowing the kind of person Valeria is and linking her to similar people I’ve seen, either in life or in performance.  And in either case, the lady in question is still “performing,” so her delivery is always a bit arch, a bit “on.”  So the social impulse I find myself following most often in her speech is “society performer.”

I don’t think that’s bad acting, either, actually.  If the vocalization feels right, then, like Larry Olivier, I can develop the physical stance and the inner life to match.  Outside in.  If it works, use it.

2008 09 19 Dale Creativity
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