24 hour challenge #2

Posted on by Dale

from Marc, 3-751-20, which boils down to:

‘Clay Boy, you never saw
some little old gal
get all hotted up
with one of those mean low-down
Gospel choruses?’

Lines 16-20 of Paris Leary’s “Love Lifted Me.”

This is going to be tough, because clearly this calls for some mimicry, and I have a Shubian shoot tonight. I’m hereby defining “24 hours” as “midnight on the following day.”

I have actually read this poem (my sources for this project are huge thick books; I haven’t read all of them) and love it. It’s a kind of narrative, which suggests to me treating this passage in a kind of operatic way, i.e., accompaniment with loosely fitting vocal line on top.

[If you’re just joining us, here are the instructions for the 24 hour challenge, as well as previous efforts.]

5/22/09, 4:05 pm

24 hour challenge #2, “Gospel Choruses,” for Marc: score [pdf], performance [mp3], bassoon [mp3]

I have to say, I’m pretty pleased with this one. A live performance would have tenutos placed over mean and low-down, but amazingly, those are not built into Finale. They’re not even mentioned in the manual. Incidentally, I am not singing a wrong note on Clay. That’s as written. It just sounds wrong.

By the way, I now have four more challenges. I’ll get to them as soon as I can. Notice I never said that this was a daily 24-hour challenge. I promise I’m not cheating by thinking about these before I post them and set the clock ticking.

Labyrinth, 5/20/09

Posted on by Dale

After nearly two weeks, the seed for the Irish moss had produced nothing, so I broke down and got more actual plants. These didn’t look exactly like the plants I had already planted. It will be interesting to see whether they blend or not.

I got a whole flat of 10 plants and used five of them in the center of the labyrinth:

I actually split the plants and spread them out in the channels of the vesica. I have five more and may plant them over at the entrance to the gentlemen’s loo.

24 hour challenge #1

Posted on by Dale

Wow, that didn’t take long. Turff, who has made lurking a point of pride, was first off the mark with 4-872-22, which produced the first line of P. J. Kavanagh’s “November the First”:

A long farewell:

See you tomorrow. (I’ll post the results here.)

5/21/09, 4:27 pm

24 hour challenge #1, “A long farewell,” for Turff: score [pdf], performance [mp3], bassoon [mp3]

My singing is quite awful. That’s OK, so is the piece. Everybody does understand these are going to be fragments of fragments, right?

Some new challenges

Posted on by Dale

I’ve been inspired by Mike’s 24 Hour Toon venture, so I’m going to set myself a challenge, more about which in a moment.

The other challenge which I’ve set myself is to fill a couple of pages of sketches of people’s mouths. (I thought about leading off with some statement about sketching “body parts,” just to set your filthy minds in motion, but why waste the time?) Those Lichtenbergians who’ve had their reference photos taken will be my subject.

After I do mouths, I’ll move on to noses, eyes, etc. I may do chests or thighs.

OK, my 24-Hour challenge.

  1. Pick a number between 1 and 5.
  2. Pick a number between 1 and 1082.
  3. Pick a number between 1 and 40.
  4. Email those three numbers to me, in order: 2-563-24, for example.

Here’s what I’m going to do. I have selected five books of poetry from my shelves:

  • The Best American Poetry 1999 (2000)
  • A Controversy of Poets: an anthology of contemporary American poetry (1965)
  • Master Poems of the English Language (1966)
  • Poems for the Millennium: the University of California book of modern & postmodern poetry, vol. II (1998)
  • A Year in Poetry: a treasury of classic and modern verses for every date on the calendar (1995)

Those are not in order 1-5, by the way. Your three numbers will give me: a volume, a page number, and a line number. If the page number or line number exceeds the number of pages or lines, I’ll do the modular math thing until I get to a number which is contained in the volume/page. A couple of the books have essays interspersed; if the page number is within an essay, I’ll move to the first page of poetry after the essay.

And…?

I’ll post the sender and the line of poetry (perhaps the complete sentence, if I’m in the mood) and within 24 hours, I will compose a brief setting of that line for baritone voice, i.e, me, and post it here. I am not going to compose an entire piece, merely that one line, for voice and piano (or if I’m really inspired, a string quartet).

If all of you email me at once, I’ll take them in order as I get them.

Let’s see how far I get.

Labyrinth, 5/19/09

Posted on by Dale

I finished the new look for the southpoint lighting fixture:

It turned out very nice.

I have been nonplussed by how fast the grass grows in the labyrinth. I have to mow it every four days or so:

And it has rained so incessantly that it’s hard to keep up. The current forecast calls for one more day of sun today, then a week and a half of rain!

I also dug up as many daffodil bulbs as I could find yesterday, awfully hard to do through ivy, especially when the leaves have all but died off, and planted the remaining ferns, ghost painted ferns. I neglected to take a photo.

Painting, 5/18/09

Posted on by Dale

My goal tonight, art-speaking-wise, was to do at least five pages of sketches from photos I took Saturday night, and at least one painted sketch for Field III.

In all of that I’ve been successful. I ended up with eight sketches in the notebook, and this for Field III:

I think what I want to do next with this idea is explore more blogs along the horizon line.

Incidentally, this is not based directly on a photo, as were Field I and Field II. I have a photo I’m using as an inspiration, but its composition is not as strong as I want it. Of course, neither is this study.

More work is called for.

Random musings

Posted on by Dale

Nothing of import to discuss, just lots of little meandering ideas.

Yesterday was my birthday, yes, thank you for all the well wishes, and I received several nice things. Those of you who know my penchant for wooden boxes (and clearly my wife knows it) will understand the thrill I got from this:

It’s a pencil box, not an antique, but a very neat replica of one. Here you can see the inkwell on the left, and the upper “drawer” swung out to the side. The joint between the inkwell and the drawer is not distorted: it actually slants so that the drawer can swing out. When it’s swung in, the lid slides all the way in and holds it all together.

I’m thinking about making it my pen & ink case for all those many times I’m sketching with pen & ink. Well, you know, all those times I’m going to be sketching with pen & ink.

My dear wife also gave me, as a semi-serious gag gift, three little art kits: watercolor, sketching, and oil pastel. Each “artist’s kit” is about 12×14 and opens up to reveal a nice pad of paper, a tray of supplies, and a book by the series author, one Philip Berrill, the “Flying Artist.”

In what is surely a stunning example of the Newnan Vortex™ at work, Mr. Berrill died exactly two weeks ago. It almost makes me feel bad about what I have to say about his kits.

Here’s the cover to the watercolor kit:

This is it, guys. It doesn’t get any better in any of the illustrations in any of his guides. It’s awful. It’s so awful that it doesn’t even make me feel better about myself as an artist. I mean, this guy was famous and apparently rich from the sales of his books and kits. He flew to Dubai to teach ex-pats how to paint. Mercy.

Plus, the pad converts into an adjustable easel. At least there’s that.

I do think that such a kit would have been a godsend to me as a child. The quality of the materials is not the best, but it’s all there in a nifty little book/box, and there are some cheesy examples in the book to copy that wouldn’t strain the abilities of the rankest beginner, and I have to believe that these things will give the gift of art to more than a couple of people who would not have had it otherwise.

In other news, the sequel to Shubian’s Rift has begun shooting. Oh yes.

Did you know I’m in the Internet Movie Database? Oh yes I am. And in Amazon, where I am top billed.

The sequel, the title of which I am yet unaware, will be webcast in three episodes. I will not spoil it for you by revealing the dread secret of Sid Shubian and Tuka D’Nuul. Not to mention Dr. Ploo.

Today a box arrived from Cottage Garden, and it sorely puzzled me. I had not ordered anything, yet it was addressed to me. When I opened it, it was seven little plants, cunningly packed, a gift from Marc and Mary Frances Honea. They’re a little flowering shrub, Cuphea ilavea, and they’re in memory of our little dog Winnie, who passed away last month. This variety is called “Tiny Winnie,” which is why the Honeas gave them to us.

Here’s what they will look like:

For the moment I will plant them in planters, but eventually they’ll go in the planting area beside our “dance floor” patio overlooking the labyrinth.

I have a lot to get done between now and the gathering of the Lichtenbergians by the labyrinth on Saturday, and the amount of rain we’ve been having has not helped. Still, this afternoon I was able to drag some stuff together and start creating a new look for one of the lighting fixtures:

This is on the advice of my trusted shamanic advisor, who said that these lights, situated as they are by the southpoint of the labyrinth, needed metal, preferably copper. You can sort of see what it looks like in this photo. My puny camera cannot capture the glow and interplay of light in the night. You’ll just have to drop by and see it for yourself.

What else do I want to get done before Saturday? I have to finish the new lighting look at the southpoint. I need to plant the remaining ferns (Japanese painted) where the daffodils have finally died down, digging up the bulbs and transferring them, eventually, to the dance patio planting area. I have to clean off my work tables, no easy task. I’d love to get the stone circle made for the westpoint. I have to clean all the votives and replace the candles. I want to trim and sweep the stones. Etc., etc. I wonder how much I’ll get done.

Music, abortive attempts

Posted on by Dale

I had an empty block of time, so I thought I’d amuse myself by pulling up “Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way” and filling in the gaps where, in the choral version, the orchestra is not doubling the chorus, i.e., there is no melody present. There are only a couple of passages where that is the case, so this looked to be like an easy re-entry into my composing.

The first stumbling block, you knew this was coming, didn’t you?, was my old nemesis Finale itself. Somehow, whenever there’s an upgrade, it completely loses the ability to read its own dynamic or technique markings. There’s been a steady degradation of playback on “Milky Way” since 2006.

Actually, that was the only stumbling block. Filling in the gaps was an easy thing, or should have been. There were plenty of lacunae in the orchestral fabric, i.e., several appropriate instruments were sitting on their butts during those passages. The problem became, what the heck does it sound like?

Then of course the reverse fear began to haunt me: what if, rather than getting worse, Finale was actually getting better, and the lush, flowing orchestral piece of 2006 was in all reality a dreadful, clunky piece of sludge? The fact that it can’t play its own pp or mf or pizzicato is a comfort in this case.

Anyway, I plugged the holes and am considering sending it to Stephen for his perusal.

Drag redux

Posted on by Dale

Those who have been following my drag career will be especially pleased that I once again took home the trophy for the Misster Relay contest at last night’s Relay for Life. Last year I was Lucille Ball (complete with Vitametavegamin). This year, I was Cleopatra. I prowled the track, accompanied by minions and eunuchs: “My minions will pass among you and collect your donations. Or if you prefer, I have a eunuch. He’s the one with the smaller basket.” Which mostly went right over people’s heads.

Stylewise, I had some competition this year. Dale Edwards, chorus teacher at ECMS and fellow baritone in Masterworks, showed up as Madea and very funny he was, too. We took photos to send to Bizarth to let her know what her baritone section was up to on Friday night.

Fun times, and I raised $1700.

updated: photos (more as they arrive)!


Hm.

Posted on by Dale

You may recall that I had ordered Irish moss seed to plant on the vesica piscis in the middle of the labyrinth. They came today.

Here you go. I’ve included the penny for scale.

This is 5,000 Irish moss seeds. Five zero zero zero. It is enough to produce 300 square feet of Irish moss.

Since the vesica piscis is 10 sq. ft. at the most, I can do a lot of planting otherwise.

But mercy, how does one approach these things? They came with a planting guide, but even mixed with fine sand, it’s going to be a nightmare of distribution.

Perhaps I should calculate 300 tablespoons, get that much sand, mix the seed, and then I can just scoop up a number of tablespoons equivalent to the square feet I’m trying to seed. That would make it easier to calculate coverage visually. (My handy-dandy converter widget tells me that’s essentially a gallon of sand.)

Plus, it’s about to rain all week. That means I need to wait. But I wanted it at least to be germinated by the Lichtenbergian gathering on 5/16. That may not happen.

Next week’s rain is a pain in many respects, although it will allow me to work inside without fretting about missing an evening by the labyrinth. I have the orchestral version of “Milky Way” to knock out, and I can always paint.