New music?

Posted on by Dale

The Ayrshire Fiddle Orchestra, which has visited Newnan from our sister city of Ayr before (2005), will return to these shores in the summer of 2011. I have been asked to write a piece for them.

We’ll see.

Of course I want to, and I’ve agreed to the project, without question, having emailed their founder Wallace Galbraith this afternoon to introduce myself and get the ball rolling.

But we all know what happens when someone makes plans to perform a work of mine. Inexplicable complications ensue, up to and including sudden, unexpected retirement and H1N1 epidemics in China.

However, we shall proceed as if no such omens from the universe were expected.

So, what shall we write? You can hear the orchestra on their downloads page: very competent, sprightly interpretations of mostly Celtic dance pieces. They don’t list violas as part of their instrumentation, and the photos are too small to see. I see an accordion in their large group, and I hear a drumset on the mp3s, but the first question I asked of Wallace was what instrumentation would be coming next summer.

I also asked about length. I’m guessing we’re not in the market for anything as long as “Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way.”

Finally, I asked about character: would they prefer something closer to their usual repertoire, or would they like to show off in a different direction?

My goal is to write three to five sketches based on Wallace’s response and let him pick the one he’d like to see finished.

Oh, and I asked for a deadline. Of course.

Labyrinth, 1/31/10

Posted on by Dale

Today I put up the western bamboo fence:

Here’s half of it. One roll (25 feet) of the fencing neatly ended behind the tree at the westpoint.

So I used my third (of four) roll to get over to the dead tree:

I have enough of the roll still rolled up to cover the piece of fencing past the dead tree, but I need some time to think about how to get around the tree.

In other news, last weekend in Senoia, I found these:

These are cowbells, and yes, they are spraypainted gold, but they actually have a nice tone. The two larger ones are about a half-tone apart, and the smaller one is a pleasant interval higher. Together they will make a nice windchime, if I can figure out how to make the wind make them chime.

Reading: an update

Posted on by Dale

I was appalled to find that I haven’t updated my reading pages in forever. I’ve done my best, but heaven knows I’ve forgotten something that I’ve read since last summer, and I have this persistent feeling that I’ve forgotten something wonderful.

Oh well. It’s just electrons on a page.

I’m doing a better job keeping my reading progress up to date at school, where I print out a big poster:

I got the idea from some media specialist newsgroup and adapted it for myself. I have to say it works. What is it that our beloved Lichtenberg says? “If you want to make a young person read a certain book you must not so much commend it to him directly as praise it in his presence. He will then go and find it for himself.” As usual, Lichtenberg was right. I’ve created a run on the Dead dog book and a swelling interest in the Ember and Green Knowe series.

Labyrinth: a concept

Posted on by Dale

You may recall that I’ve been thinking of something to anchor the eastpoint of the labyrinth, there at the entrance, that could reflect the alchemical identification of east with the element of Air.

This past weekend we were out in Senoia, shopping about, and came across a wireframe arbor that struck my fancy. It was more than I can pay at the moment, so I left my card with my price point for the proprietor.

Back home, I envisioned, through the torrential rains, how the arbor would in fact look at the entrance to the labyrinth. I didn’t like it.

However, the idea of the two columns, open, painted white, appealed to me. What if I constructed two towers, welded pieces of wire, and placed them on either side of the steps leading down to the labyrinth?

The sketches are kind of hard to see here, but I think I’m going to keep this in mind. The towers might need to be at least fifteen feet tall, perhaps twenty. What say you?

A short rant

Posted on by Dale

A young friend of mine just announced his engagement, and we’re all thrilled for him.

Isn’t that nice, you’re thinking, but why is Dale blogging about this?

This young friend just announced his engagement. To his boyfriend. In Georgia.

This delights me. I have no idea if this is the new “thing” in the marriage equality movement, but if it’s not it needs to be.

Think about it: we have no laws governing engagements, there are barely any social rules any more, and being engaged certainly has no religious overtones in our society. A steady progression of gay engagements is perfectly designed to make the right wing froth at the mouth. I mean, what are they going to do to stop it? Constitutional amendments?

So to all my gay friends out there, if you have someone to whom you would be married if we were a sane society, not that we ever were or ever will be, then go ahead and announce your engagement. Send it in to the paper. Have an engagement party. Tell everyone you know. Introduce your partner as your fiancé.

And when someone says, “Have you set a date?”, just reply, “Not yet. But we will.”

Labyrinth: the Cloud Sculpture

Posted on by Dale

Just when Jeff thought it was safe to presume there would be no baroqueness, I unveil the Cloud Sculpture.

Several years ago we were in Decatur, doing their Christmas Thursdays thing, and in one of the shops they had these “cute” lawn ornaments constructed of screen mesh, painted and shaped. I thought at the time that one could do damage with such a concept, and I promptly bought a roll of screen mesh and a can of black paint.

And what did I intend to do with this material? I don’t know. Something like this, perhaps?

I did this earlier this afternoon, just oil pastels on a photo of the labyrinth.

Here are some more studies, done upstairs later with gouache:

I think it extremely unlikely that I will even attempt such a thing, materials to hand or not. But what a staggering concept, eh wot?

Will you spend more money for better terry cloth?

Posted on by Dale

Are you much taken by jewelry?

Why won’t the aliens step forth to help us?

Do you know the distinctions, empirical or theoretical, between moss and lichen?

Yes, they are, aren’t they? The questions, I mean, all taken from the first four pages from The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell. This book is now on my Required Reading for Sentient Beings.

Here’s a paragraph from page 4:

Can you ride a bicycle very well? Was learning to ride one for you as a child easy or not? Have you had the pleasure of teaching a child to ride a bicycle? Are your emotions rich and various and warm, or are they small and pinched and brittle and cheap and like spit? Do you trust even yourself? Isn’t it, forgive me this pop locution, hard being you? If you could trade out and be, say, Godzilla, wouldn’t you jump on it, dear? Couldn’t you then forgo your bad haircuts and dour wardrobe and moping ways and begin to have some fun, as Godzilla? What might we have to give you to induce you to become Godzilla and leave us alone? Shall we await your answer?

This small volume is comprised entirely of questions. I merely dipped into it this afternoon and am having to force myself to stop reading it.

Would you like to live a life that allows for frequent use of acronym, as in “Let’s proceed according to SOP?”

Can you stand Pat Boone?

Are you daft?

Labyrinth, 1/18/10

Posted on by Dale

I had intended to reseed the labyrinth today with a mix of winter rye and shade, and to plant the daffodils I dug up last spring when I planted the ferns, but plans change. The area where I’m putting the daffodils (the “dance floor patio” on the upper level) was very wet; tomorrow will be dryer. The bulbs seem to have survived for the most part, and some are beginning to put out leaves.

The reseeding I have no excuse for, except I began to think it might be better to wait till the end of the month. I first seeded it on February 1 last year, so I can wait until then this year as well.

I did get some busy work done, getting all the votives prepped, i.e., cleaned and restocked with fresh candles, and getting the Christmas greenery chopped up and stowed away. The air is redolent with fir behind me. We need to have many fires to get all this stuff burned by the end of February. Last year branches lay around until they turned black, and the ground beneath them. I don’t want to let that happen again.

And finally, I decided that since the weather was so beautiful and warmish, I would go ahead and get the bamboo fencing finalized around the men’s loo.

This is the area we’re talking about:

On the right is the area where the tree fell last October, and it’s even more bare now without the overgrown undergrowth behind it. The men’s loo area on the left is even more bereft and open.

So I got to work and in less than three hours I had this part of the yard all fixed up:

I think it’s going to be very nice. At the very least, it provides a modicum of privacy, and I think by the end of the summer it will probably be covered with ivy and/or honeysuckle, which will provide even more privacy. Then when the ferns recover in the spring, they’ll really look good against the backdrop.

It was not difficult getting the fence up. The back fence should be pretty easy. The rest of the fire area fence, not so easy, because of all the bamboo and having to move the firewood, and I discovered while on the other side of the fence in the Ellis’s back yard that the pecan tree directly behind the fire area is almost totally rotten. So I think I’ll probably wait until that’s down before installing that section of the fencing.

That was enough for the day, I thought, so I’m just sitting out here blogging and listening to the usual iTunes labyrinth playlist and having a drink in memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the fact that our country has more often than not decided to do the right thing.

I do have some thinking to do about the eastpoint of the labyrinth. The element connected to the east is Air, and I’ve been collecting items that I think might be an appropriate installation for the east:

Left to right, we have a windchime, a twirly sun thing, and a solar-powered mirror ball. The windchimes are not the ones I want, they’re just a conceptual placeholder. The ones I would like to install are lower in tone, the “tenor” range. I also have a handblown glass star with a gold center that will go into the final mix. Another option might be prayer flags.

Leaving aside what an idiotic idea a solar-powered mirror ball is, think about it, help me think this out. Here’s the eastpoint we’re talking about:

It’s the entrance to the labyrinth. I would like to do something like take one or two of the big pieces of rebar that I have left and create an arch or something over the entrance from which the Air items could be suspended. I don’t want it to be cluttered, like some daft old hippie’s front porch, but simple and understated like the other points of the compass are.

Any suggestions?

Wha?

Posted on by Dale

So, I’m reading Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust, via dailylit.com, and it’s a rough read. When I described him as Western civ’s biggest moonbat, I was not kidding.

And, quite possibly, this lack (or seeming lack) of participation by a person’s soul in the significant marks of its own special virtue has, apart from its aesthetic meaning, a reality which, if not strictly psychological, may at least be called physiognomical.

There you go. That was yesterday’s gem.

I may not make it.

Labyrinth, 1/12/10

Posted on by Dale

I was in a pissy mood this afternoon, and have been for several days. I was thinking about blogging and analyzing all that, or at least posting on Facebook MOV I.1 and see if anyone picked up on it, but then I got home.

All this made me happy. There’s the manila package from Summer, who returned a Neo-Futurist book. The little box is a piece of fence equipment that I couldn’t get from Home Depot or Lowe’s, so now I can reattach a pole across the top of the fence at the woodpile.

And the big bundles are my bamboo reed fencing.

Here are they unwrapped. Each 25′ length is bundled in a handy carrying case, stitched closed.

When unwrapped, we get this:

And here’s a closeup of the texture:

There’s actually quite a bit of space between the reeds.

It was too cold to do any real work, of course, plus I have to go pick up some wire with which to attach the fencing to the chain link, but I couldn’t resist standing it up over in the men’s loo to see how it might look.

Quite nice. We now have to consider whether to stain it, and how.

As soon as the weather starts to warm up, I can start installing it for sure. Huzzah for yard work! I’m ready to be outside again.