Author: Dale

A new understanding of “Fly and fall”

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I’m going to brag on my music, which I don’t normally do.  Bear with me.

Last night, in the labyrinth, I put on my headphones and gave a listen to “Fly and fall” (mp3) because I wanted to hear what it sounded like under the full moon, which was doing this incredible Dance of the Seven Veils with clouds and fog after the storm earlier in the evening.

Here’s what I heard:  it sounds like—I suppose because it is—a commercial for a new luxury car.  Daedalus is very proud of his achievement in sending his son skyward every year, and it shows.  Icarus is sleek, gleaming, fast, and sexy.   The monitors onstage would show this neatly packaged vision of the Event.

For example:

Cool, huh?  Yes, I spent time on that image (Icarus image credit here) instead of hammering out orchestration issues in “My mother, bored and pampered.”  Or napping.

Only at the end, in the unexpected key lurch, do we hear Daedalus’s actual excitement and pride—and with “just as surely fall,” his fear—for his son.

I do hope that I get hired to direct this thing.

In other news, Scott, make a note: I just noticed that in this annual Event, Daedalus is no longer making the flight himself.  That’s probably a point for Icarus to make in the great debate in Dream Four.

The firepit

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Well, that turned out nice:

There are a couple of interstices that I have to plug—naturally, chair legs ended up going right where the stone ends—but otherwise it’s done.

When such things come back on the market, I want to plant creeping thyme or some such in the joints.

Have I said recently how much I love my back yard?  All of this—the labyrinth, the fire pit, the stone walls, the compass point sculptures, the patio, the hammock, the work tables—has come about since September 1, 2008.  Before, it was just weeds and scrub grass.  (The Child was not an outdoors kind of kid, at least not at 24 College St.) Then, for some reason, I decided to build the labyrinth.  It really was a Close Encounters kind of moment.  All the rest has followed from that.

I’ve learned some things—or at least had them confirmed—through my experience in transforming that space.  Grand plans can be awfully fun, but slow organic growth is usually a better way to go.  Nothing is permanent: if something doesn’t work, change it. Rip it out. Discard it.  Improve it.  Whatever it is, it will grow back.  Unless it doesn’t.  Make the space conform to your needs, not to some Platonic ideal of what the space “should” look like.  Be alert to what is missing and fill the gap with meaning.

At this point, there’s only one more major project to achieve, and that’s replacing the old bamboo fencing with something more permanent—and taller, for privacy issues.  (For kicks, click on that link—the difference in the firepit area is wonderful!)  Ideas for said fencing are already bubbling up in my head…

Dream One, “My mother, bored and pampered”

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Okay, the bothersome passages are getting there, but I’m still quite unsatisfied.

Part of the problem that interests me is the shift from the cheesy, honky-tonk, and really kind of funny tone of the first part into the “woman scorned” fury of the second part.  What I have at the moment is tremendous, sound-wise, and I think what I’m trying to suss out is what kind of motivation I’m trying to assign to the mezzo.  Does she really need the snare drum roll and the explosive tam-tam to make this work?  Does it work?  I don’t know yet.

Anyway, I’m posting what I’ve got.  It’s not right, and it’s not finished.

Dream One, 4b. “My mother, bored and pampered” | piano score [pdf] | orchestral mp3

In other news, I will probably finish the flagstone around the firepit today.  Photos later.

Fireside additions

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I think it’s absolutely insane to compose in the morning and then get out to work in the labyrinth after lunch when the day is at its hottest.  Don’t know why I do it.

At any rate, I’ve been slogging away at putting down flagstone around the fire pit.  I’m about 80% finished:

It’s going to be a nice touch.  Going barefoot won’t meant stepping on unexpected gravel any more, if by “barefoot” you mean “with no clothes on” and OF COURSE I DON’T MEAN THAT WHY WOULD YOU SAY SUCH A THING EVEN?

Those who visit on a regular basis will be relieved to see that I am leveling out the area on the right, where it’s still a pile of dirt.  No more feeling as if you’re falling over backwards.  Well, not from the horizontality of the chair, anyway.

It looks as if it’s going to be one more trip to the flagstone store, and then I will be done with that project.

Still struggling with the orchestration of Ariadne’s big outburst. It’s getting better. I’ve added a snare drum, a tam-tam, and the xylophone to the big moment.  Probably too much, but I’m going to let it sit there and annoy me for a while.  I keep avoiding brass for the simple reason that we’ve just heard the brass underscore Icarus’s big moment, and I hesitate to repeat the motif.

In general, I feel as if I really need to start exploring percussion more—it is a 21st century opera, after all.  I can kind of hear all kinds of wild rhythms on the quad toms, but I have no idea how to do that.  (Spoiler: just start slapping notes up there, idiot, just like you do with everything else…)

Dream One, “My mother, bored and pampered”

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Nice weekend—we traveled to Abingdon, VA, to visit my in-laws and to go to the Highlands Festival, a not-bad little arts festival celebrating its 66th year.  No great purchases, but I did get a handful of handmade-by-hand hooks on which to hang my shaman drums in the basement.  Currently they hang on bronze-colored 3M thingies, which are OK, but the whole vibe of that corner is “artisan crafted.”

I also picked up a small silver-plated vase which we might use to contain our body paint for 3 Old Men:

It’s probably too ornate for our purposes.  I’m open to further ideas—I had originally thought of an inexpensive ceramic bowl, but more and more I think we need to break-proof the whole process.  We saw a lot of hammered aluminum vessels from the 50s and 60s over the weekend that began to appeal to me.  Perhaps my fellow Old Men will have suggestions.

It occurs to me too that we need an acolyte to hold said vessel.  Hm.

So this morning I got back to work on “My mother, bored and pampered,” and I am not happy.  (So what else is new?)

The first part is fine.  It’s all appropriately honky-t0nk and sleazy.  But when Ariadne launches into her big moment and gets all opera-y, the accompaniment went to hell. What sounded really interesting and gorgeous in the piano score just sounds horrific with strings, too muddy and inarticulate.

So I’m not posting that part.  Here’s the part that makes sense:

Dream One, 4b. “My mother, bored and pampered” | piano score [pdf] | orchestral mp3

Dream One, “Hark, the sound of screaming fans” orchestrated

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At this point I’m just flinging instruments at the screen to see what sticks.  Theseus’s cheesy opening still bugs me per se, and the orchestration has not improved it.  I think part of the problem is that it’s in the wrong key for the French horn really to shine, but that ain’t gonna get fixed.  (Now I’m intrigued by the idea and will waste half the morning futzing with that.)

Anyway, give it a whirl and make suggestions for improvements:

Dream One, 4a. “Hark, the sound of screaming fans” | piano score [pdf] | orchestral mp3

In other news, the baritone sax is not as low and sleezy as I expected.  Bass sax?

Random thoughts while walking

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On my morning doctor-mandated walks, I cover basically the same path every day.  Almost every morning I listen to whatever I’ve accomplished vis-à-vis Seven Dreams; it’s the only way I can smooth out all the rough edges.

But I also find myself returning to the same ideas about my surroundings, mostly ideas about how others can improve my surroundings.  Here are some of them.

This is in the park down at the end of College Street.  For one thing, there’s this line of shrubbery stretching right across one of the only level areas in the park.  I would hate to think this was a deliberate design to keep people from picnicking and playing chase there.

The more immediate problem, obviously, is that no one in Parks & Rec has maintained these shrubberies.  Sure, they’ve come in every spring—too late for pruning—and reshaped them, but slowly and surely those shrubberies are eating the sidewalk whole.  My vote is to rip them all out and make it all lawn.

This is at the back end of the erstwhile Scott’s Bookstore.  I’ve lived here for more than 50 years and I don’t know that I’ve ever really noticed that little garage building.  I’m almost positive I’ve never seen it open.  What is it??  Can we tear it down and install a little garden cafe in the alley?

Here’s a thought I’ve had for years:

This is the AT&T complex, which stretches nearly the entire block between Jackson Street and First Avenue.  I was always told that it had been city property and AT&T snagged it through some kind of deal, which would have been before my time.  Outside the frame of the photo, City Hall is to the left, and you can just see the C Building of the theatre peeking up in the distance.  Goodyear fronts the property on Jackson Street.

So I’m thinking, what would it take to convince AT&T to move out of downtown and reclaim that property?  They’ve got to be hurting for space, and the facility has got to be so outdated as to be held together with duct tape and twist ties.  Surely they’re ready to move.  Perhaps they could build on the old EMC building site at the Bypass.

Best use would be of course a new building for the theatre, but I could also see another park there. Or how about a facility for all the nonprofits in town?  Meeting spaces, storage, etc.  It would be best if we could convince Goodyear to  move as well so we could have the whole block front to back.

See?  I’m just full of helpful ideas like this.  I need to start charging consultant fees.

Dream One, “I am alone”

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All right, here it is.  It’s overblown, and who knows if the tenor can be heard over all that noise?  But it has some nice moments.

Dream One, 3. “I am alone” | piano score | orchestral mp3

In other news, I was surprised to find that what I thought I was hearing in my head orchestration-speaking-wise for “Hark, the sound of screaming fans” does not work at all.  Blergh.

Body paint

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Those of you who have been reading along can skip this post.  This is for those who, like me, were looking for a cheap white body paint they could make at home for whatever reason.  I’ve tagged the post so that perhaps it will show up in searches.

Brief history: I and my compadres in the 3 Old Men ritual troupe needed a cheap white body paint.  There is no such thing as cheap commercial body paint, and so I had hoped that the intertubes would provide me with a recipe to make it myself.

Alas, all internet recipes I found were completely ineffective.  They were based on cold cream, which would have been problematic in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert anyway, but worse, they weren’t actually white.  I regard the accompanying photos of happy, whitefaced children as fraudulent.

Luckily, here in Georgia we mine kaolin, a white clay used for various industrial purposes such as making paper white and shiny and for Kaopectate.

Knowing that some people eat it for whatever reason—you can go do that research yourself if you like—I figured it would be available somewhere around here.  I asked the Facebook and got more than a couple of kaolin resources, the best of which is a nearby grocery store, where it sits in the produce section:

You thought I was kidding, didn’t you?  Yes, the price is $1.49 for about a pound of kaolin.

So here are the instructions to make an incredibly cheap white body paint based on my experimentation.

Dump your kaolin into a bowl and add 1-1/2 to 2 cups of water to it.

Just let it sit for about half an hour, stirring occasionally.  You will want to use a little larger bowl than I have here, and my advice is do this outside.  It can get very messy very quickly, and as you will discover, a little bit of this stuff can go a very long way.

Add water if necessary:

It should be the consistency of sour cream.

Buy yourself a bowl large enough to hold your final mixture; a strainer that will hook over the bowl; and a spatula, one that is completely flat on its face (unlike mine).  It is possible to use your household utensils, but if you’re going to be making a lot you will want dedicated equipment so that you don’t have to completely clean the kaolin off of every nook and cranny.

Scoop the goop into the strainer, and force it through with the spatula.  The finer mesh your strainer had, the finer your body paint will be.

As you moosh it through, you may need to add water for any clumpy bits.  Also, of course, it doesn’t fall straight into the bowl.  A lot of it will cling to the other side of the strainer, so be prepared to scrape the bottom:

Finally, you will have a bowl of white, yummy kaolin.  Stir, add water, etc.

I was smart to buy a stainless steel bowl with a rubberized bottom, but I wish it had come with a lid.  You will want to keep it covered to keep it wet, although if it dries, it’s not difficult to reconstitute it.

How well does it cover?  Here’s about a teaspoon smeared on my arm, still wet:

And here it is dry:

Used in a fairly liquid state, it dries smooth and does not come off.  If you don’t use as much water, it may cake and crack—that’s a definite look as well.

It’s comfortable on the skin, and best of all it just rinses right off.  Pretty much perfect: cheap kaolin, water, comfortable, and removable.

Unanswered questions: how much does it take?  I started with a pound of the stuff, and I covered my entire body with maybe a fifth of it.  However, that was the first formulation, which was thicker and cakier, so it ought to go even further if you use a runnier consistency on fewer body parts.

Also, I don’t know whether this could be tinted or not.  I’m sure you could use food coloring, but you would risk dyeing your skin.  Perhaps sidewalk chalk or tempera paint?  I may or may not play with that; we just needed white.

Could you add cold cream to it?  I don’t see why not, but why go greasy when it’s perfectly comfortable the way it is?

Finally, there are online sources for kaolin, but it’s not cheap like that.  My advice would be to start checking around convenience stores and groceries that cater to the African-American community; it is mostly older black ladies who eat “white dirt.”

Bottom line: you can spend $12.95 for 4 oz. of body paint, or you can spend $3.00 for a pint.  You’re welcome, internet.