Author: Dale

Labyrinth, 1/10/11

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We haven’t had a photo of the labyrinth in a while, so here are some from today, after the storm last night:

A nice long shot. My original idea was to go out and walk it, since it was mostly a uniform sheet of white, then take a photo of the path my footprints left. But my feet left no prints, none discernible to the camera at any rate. Then it occurred to me to take the chakra candles out and light them.

Actually, I lighted the candles first, then distributed them.

I always think of this angle as the “Kubrick/2001” shot, because of several shots from that movie like this:

Or like this:

What, you thought I meant this?

Okay, so maybe when I’m seriously meditating, I think of that kind of thing.

But isn’t the labyrinth pretty in the snow? If only I had a hot tub from which to meditate on it.

Better living through sound effects

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Bereft as I am of any assistance in the media center, I have had to be very resourceful in keeping myself sane. And no, I am not talking about tequila.

One of the problems I encountered last year, when the entire school was tightly scheduled into (and out of) the media center, was that kids would be browsing and searching and suddenly there would be the next class at the door. Pandemonium ensued, as the outgoing class had to be rounded up and checked out and the incoming class moved in. If there were instruction involved, it was even worse.

So, using GarageBand and its built-in resources, I constructed a sound file: timetocheckout.mp3. Then I sent it to youconvertit.com to change it into a .wav file, since that’s all that Outlook is willing to entertain.

You should have been there the first week, when this went off. The kids were like stunned rabbits. It was great. Now, of course, they’re like Pavlov’s dogs. As soon as that first blast hits the air, they’re on their feet and lining up.

However, it soon developed that the warning would catch some students unawares, and then there would be a lot of motion away from the circulation desk as they scrambled to find a book, any book, to check out. Mostly of course these kids were the slackers who hadn’t been looking for anything anyway, but it created a chaos where there should have been order.

So I went back to GarageBand and came up with the three-minute warning. Now no one has an excuse to do anything but move towards the circulation desk (or the exit) when the final warning comes on.

This year, while I am no longer on an imposed schedule, I do have two instructional classes every day, for third grade info skills. I often found myself looking up and seeing that we were out of time. (I may not be on a schedule, but everyone else certainly is.)

This time, I went to www.freesound.org and downloaded this set of sounds, one Herbert Boland’s “Piano Moods.” From this set of nearly 40 little piano bits, I was able to assemble (in GarageBand) a three-minute, new-agey kind of piece. I built it so that it starts quietly, then builds, then fades away. I cued the deeper base notes to begin when we had one minute left. Now, when the “time fairies” start, we know it’s time to wind up whatever we’re working on and put our paperwork back in the folders. The first few times, it took us longer than three minutes to get all packed up, but now, everyone’s all lined up by the time the final little chimes are pealing.

In my Outlook calendar on my circulation computer, I have the infoskills warning set to repeat on a daily basis, three minutes before that class period is over. The others I have to set every day, based on who’s signed up for what time slots. It’s a little bit of work, but it’s also a nice ritual with which to begin the day, and it keeps us all on track.

Excelsior!

Proposed Efforts 2011, Part 2

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Continuing my 2001 Proposed Efforts:

Create the new age album Stars on Snow

This has been on my back burner for probably 20 years. I actually played around with it back in the day when I was still on a Mac SE/30 and the music program I had actually printed to a dot matrix printer. The title track I have managed to bring with me through the years as I progressed from one system to another. It was originally written for handbells, but proved too difficult for the players I had available. I converted it into a new age piece, adding string pads and a descant. It’s never been scored, just resides as a direct MIDI compilation.

However, it’s very pretty, and I think this year I want to take the time to write some more miniature, purely attractive pieces to go with it. I have one from the old concept folder, called “Air Pudding,” which I think still works, although it relied for its effectiveness (as did most of the pieces) on sounds that I manipulated on my old Ensoniq VFX keyboard.

In fact, I will probably find myself using those sounds (which I have as VST sounds around here somewhere) within GarageBand rather than Finale, i.e., playing around with sounds, melodies, and harmonies directly rather than “composing” on virtual paper, and creating interesting new instruments with which to orchestrate. I remember the key instrument on “Air Pudding” was something I called SqelchFlute and involved a basic sound called Duct Tape. Imagine a flute sound that started with tearing a piece of duct tape. (Marc, I may require your assistance in getting up to speed with these technologies; I haven’t done any of it since everything went virtual.)

I have a few other pieces I could use already: “Ginny’s Valentine“, and “Bring a Torch“, also originally for handbells and soprano. Both would be re-orchestrated. (Sharp observers will recognize “Ginny’s Valentine” as the cheesy paean to love at the end of the penguin opera, extended and lyricized.)

In the back of my head, I imagine myself producing the next Deep Breakfast. If I keep in mind that the goal is to please and delight, then I might just do it.

Create the westpoint sculpture

For about two years now, I have had in mind a focal point for the western point of the labyrinth. I’m going to make myself construct this thing this year. I am. I will.

2011 Proposed Efforts, part 1

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Let’s talk about my Proposed Efforts for 2011. Some of them are rollovers from 2010. A couple are new.

First, the list:

  • finish the cello sonata
  • write a good short story
  • play with the 24-Hour Challenge again
  • continue painting
  • create my new age album, Stars on Snow
  • create the westpoint sculpture

Since I have today and tomorrow before 2011 actually begins, I’ll break this up into a couple of posts. More blogging for me, more reading for you.

Finish the cello sonata

This is a new goal, but actually it’s cheating. Of course I’m going to finish the cello sonata. However, what I’ve written so far does not satisfy me. In the first movement, the two themes are good, but my approach to the development is more strophic than I think is appropriate. I want to double back and really break those two themes up into their basic elements and use those to play with the listener’s perceptions. As for the third movement, I really like the first part, but that “stopping for a pretty interlude” thing is threatening to become a crutch. Why do I keep doing that?

All of this, especially idea of reworking of the development in the first movement, is making my stomach hurt.

Write a good short story

A carryover. Nothing to be said until I actually start working on it. Sharp observers may have noted that I did not rollover my goal from last year of starting A Perfect Life. I’m going to leave that one to the universe. If it happens, it happens. First I have to clean off my desk.

Play with the 24-Hour Challenge again

Another rollover, but a worthy one. After I finish the cello sonata I have no more projects (other than the new age album), so it will be fun to do this again. Last time, I actually came up with a great deal of usable material; it will be like storing up nuts for the winter.

Continue painting

Of course. It’s more like “pick up my brushes again,” but still.

To be continued…

An hypothesis

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I have an hypothesis.

You are probably aware of the fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis which turns ants into “zombies.” If not, check it out here.

I have become convinced that something similar is happening all around us. Somehow, a parasite has adapted itself to the human race, specifically the males. I’m not sure how it happens, but somehow this parasite finds a way into the body, probably in the adolescent period—I’m not prepared to speculate how, but suspect it’s sexual—and embeds itself, biding its time.

Then, as the victim reaches an advanced age, 60 or greater, the parasite climbs to the brain, where it compels him to go out and buy a little red truck.

Then, having purchased this vehicle, the victim takes it out on the road and drives slowly. Everywhere. In front of me.

Now, I have no idea what evolutionary advantage this gives the parasite, but I am certain that this is the only explanation for an otherwise inexplicable phenomenon.

Discuss.

Lichtenbergian goals, 2010

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Last Saturday night, the Lichtenbergian Society held its Annual Meeting around the fire. As longtime readers of this blog know, part of our ritual involves setting creative goals for the coming year, and before that confessing how well we did on the goals of the year just past.

So, before I get to my Lichtenbergian Proposed Efforts for 2011, let’s look at how I did in 2010. As longtime readers of this blog may recall, I had achieved all my goals last year , a matter of some shame to me , so my goals for this year were deliberately calibrated to be worth failing at.

Here are those Proposed Efforts for 2010:

  • continue my painting, both the abstract Field series and my studies for the Epic Lichtenbergian Portrait
  • restart the 24-Hour Challenge, which to my surprise I had proposed last year to do only for six months, which is just about what I managed
  • compose one complete work, any description
  • write one good short story
  • begin work on A Perfect Life, my proposed description of what it’s like to live a life like mine
  • and in conjunction with all of the above, produce a lot of crap, i.e., produce boatloads of work

How’d I do?

I did continue my painting, although I didn’t really work on the Field series (sorry, Seth.) I worked on the ELP for the first half of the year, and yet the very week I went to visit Diane Mize for instruction on mixing color, I stopped painting to concentrate on music.

I did not restart the 24-Hour Challenge. I still have #12, #13, and #14 on sticky notes on my monitor, waiting for me to pick up the whole thing.

I did not write any short story, good or otherwise. The idea for the good one is still in my head, though.

I did not begin A Perfect Life, despite having the entire summer to do so.

I did produce a boatload of crap: drawings, paint sketches, music detritus.

Where I did succeed was in composing a complete work. In fact, I finished three and a half: Pieces for Bassoon & String Quartet; Six Preludes (No Fugues); Variations on ‘Resignation’; and made great strides on the cello sonata.

All three complete pieces are what I would consider worth hearing, especially the Preludes. I listened to all this year’s output this week, and I am very pleased at how well they hold up.

All in all, a respectable finish. I achieved some of the goals, and was completely unable even to start a couple of them. All praise to Georg Christoph Lichtenberg!

A thank you

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We sent Christmas cards this year for the first time in a couple of years. (When I say “we,” I mean “my lovely first wife,” of course.) Elizabeth Schuett’s came back as undeliverable. I went to the internet to track down her new address, and that’s when I found out that she died in 2007, a fact we would have learned had we kept up with sending cards.

Elizabeth was one of the people in my life who created me. I met her when I was in high school, after returning from GHP in 1970. My love for theatre had been reignited that summer, and so I joined the Newnan Playmakers upon my return. (Actually, I rejoined: I had been involved from sixth through eighth grades.)

Elizabeth was new-ish to town and was at the center of a small, hardcore group of creatives who had coalesced at that time and place. She was a self-described “tough old broad,” a drinker, a smoker, profane and funny. She was also one of the greatest ladies I’ve ever known, educated and kind and creative.

Over the next two years, Elizabeth took me under her wing and began to show me the possibilities in life. She owned a knit shop downtown, and it was the salon for what passed as intelligentsia in Newnan. We all hung out there in the back room, drinking coffee, make jokes, making plans, and talking, talking, talking.

It was Elizabeth who first made me aware of what “cosmopolitan” meant: she had lived other places, done other things, had other lives. She taught me that the horizon was not a wall but a goal. She showed me what it meant to go to a great restaurant, to attend the symphony, to explore ideas and their expression.

She showed me that not everyone would always think I was weird—or that my ideas and dreams were foolish—or that I would inevitably fail to find love or happiness if I didn’t learn to act like everyone else. She accepted me—and others—for not only who we were but who we needed to be.

I went off to UGA and returned to find that the gang had split off from the Playmakers to form the Newnan Repertory Company. They were frustrated with the old group’s hopelessly unimaginative approach to theatre, and it was their spirit that flowed on down to the Newnan Community Theatre Company. I picked the group up from them; if you ever benefited from NCTC, you have benefited from Elizabeth Schuett.

Eventually, she found the restrictions of Newnan too maddening, so she closed the shop and for reasons I never found very clear moved to her ex-husband Robert’s hometown, Gibsonburg, OH, where she taught high school and college, and wrote a syndicated column for years.

During those years we kept in touch sporadically. I would offer her a job in CommArts at GHP; citing the hellish heat, she would decline. We’d send her Christmas cards. She’d email. But we never communicated on a regular basis, so it is comforting to me that while the news of her death saddens me, I am happy that sometime in 2006 I wrote her a letter that told her everything that I have told you here. I thanked her over and over for making that pitiful, skinny Baptist kid into me.

Thank you again, Elizabeth Schuett.

Honey please

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From the Huffington Post:

Newt Gingrich, who is currently mulling a presidential bid in 2012, said at a political event in South Carolina (12/16/10) that most of America’s problems can be blamed on the “leftist news media,” Hollywood, tenured academics, overpaid federal workers, and unemployed people.

As opposed to Bush’s two wars; unregulated, criminal financial shenanigans; GOP obstructionism in Congress; and feed-the-rich tax policies?

Or as opposed to a disgraced has-been who deliberately poisoned America’s political discourse with his vituperative buzzwords?

Putz.

Task avoidance

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I went back and listened to my output for 2010 last night, and one piece stood out for its stubborn opacity. That would be, of course, the SATB a capella piece Phoenix, set to a stubbornly opaque text by Marc Honea. Of course.

Here it is in its piano version: Phoenix

There’s something to it, after all. I listened to it twice to make sure. I’m thinking I should arrange that for orchestra, just cut out the human voice altogether. It would certainly keep me from finishing the cello sonata. It would give me some practice in orchestration as well.

Variations on ‘Resignation’

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After weeks of listening to it obsessively, and running it past at least one strings teacher of my acquaintance, I have tonight submitted Variations on ‘Resignation’ to my contact at the Ayrshire Fiddle Orchestra in Scotland.

My stomach hurts. I have no idea whether they’ll actually like it, or , more likely , they will find parts of it too challenging to play. If that’s the case, I just go back to the drawing board and take it down a notch. Somehow.

I’m supposed (I think) to write a second piece for them, and that will be Rondo Mobile, the sketch of which you can hear here. I’m thinking I want to make it a rowdy, PDQ-Bach-esque piece, musicologically-speaking-wise. In the sketch, you can already hear the theme falling apart and restarting. I want to make more of that idea, with the sections getting crankier as things go wrong, lots of finger-pointing, ending up with a full-scale riot which the conductor has to silence with a coach’s whistle.

I have been remiss in my blogging for the last month. I promise to make it up to you. I have several posts in the works even as we speak, and after tomorrow , school’s out! , I will have time to churn these out to the delectation of readers everywhere.

I have a post on my Lichtenbergian goals, both a look back at this past year and a look forward; a rant on school funding and running schools “like a business”; a rant on why I oppose the legalization of alcohol; a serious rant about U.S. drug policy; and a strange little meditation on better living through sound effects.

See you then!