I’ve done another 5–10 seconds of visualization for William Blake’s Inn, hereinafter known as WBI.
So, yes, the stars are puppets, in the sense that they are held aloft by performers. There are probably stationary stars in the backdrop, but these are mobile. You’ll see why tomorrow.
Again, the music:
The event pictured above is from 0:10–0:15, approximately.
It seems that in the sovereign state of North Carolina, your tax dollars earmarked for charter schools are far more likely to go to a religious charter school than not.
I keep thinking that if I work hard and focus on the end result, I can one day kill off my morals and scruples and get in on these Jebus dollars like the shysters to the north of us are doing.[1]
But Dale, I hear you asking, what religion will your school promote? This is a good question and I will now attempt to answer a completely different one.
The philosophical/moral/ethical foundation of the Lyles Charter School will be as follows:
Let’s examine the prospect, shall we?
Those ten principles are:
Also the 11th Principle, Consent.
You already know these:
We haven’t really talked about these in a while. Here’s the main site. Essentially, it’s a curriculum structure for finding and using information, aka research.
Here’s the original language:
1.Task Definition
1 Define the information problem
1.2 Identify information needed
2. Information Seeking Strategies
2.1 Determine all possible sources
2.2 Select the best sources
3. Location and Access
3.1 Locate sources (intellectually and physically)
3.2 Find information within sources
4. Use of Information
4.1 Engage (e.g., read, hear, view, touch)
4.2 Extract relevant information
5. Synthesis
5.1 Organize from multiple sources
5.2 Present the information
6. Evaluation
6.1 Judge the product (effectiveness)
6.2 Judge the process (efficiency)
Here’s my elementary version:
1. What’s the job?
1.1 What are we trying to do?
1.2 What do we need to know?
2. Where will we find the information?
2.1 Where could we look?
2.2 What’s the best place to start looking?
3. Find it.
3.1 Find the sources of information: books, encyclopedias, Internet, cd-roms, etc.
3.2 Look up the information in the sources: use the index, etc.
4. Deal with it.
4.1 Read through all the information.
4.3 Get just the information we need: take notes!
5. Show it!
5.1 Put all the information we found together.
5.2 Present the result.
6. How did we do?
6.1 Did we do a good job?
6.2 Were we good at finding information?
Here. Read it for yourself.
That’s it. Unless I’ve missed something.
Wait, you want me to explain all this? Geez, who has time for that? What do you think I am, an educator?
Let me put it like this: if people want me to explain how this foundation would make a perfect school, they can request me to do so in the comments below. So there.
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[1] And if Nathan Deal has his way, I won’t even have to move to Asheville to do it.
From today’s FaceTube:
::sigh::
This is one of those memes that I call the rightwing “nuh?UH” response.[1] Is your black-and-white world starting to look a little gray around the edges? Simply asseverate whatever eternal truth that you think is unraveling. Rinse. Repeat. Sneer smugly.
::sigh::
I presume this is in response to all the backlash to North Carolina and Mississippi’s idiotic “freedomz of religion” bills, the purpose of which is to protect the good Christianists from pooping next to someone who may or may not have the same fiddly bits as them.[2]
Look, I know that I have no clue about what it’s like to feel as if you’re in the wrong body. I can look in my underwear and feel pretty affirmed, thank you very much.[3] But I’m not so blinkered as to think that this is true of everyone when the evidence is piling up around us that it’s not. In a conversation with my lovely first wife just last night, I pointed out that we seem to be awash in gender confusion much in the same way that we formerly seemed to be overrun with diagnoses of ADHD or reports of spousal abuse: society finally made it possible to even recognize the issues instead of hiding them.
So, yeah, suddenly it looks like crazy people have jumped on some kind of gender identity bandwagon, but the simple truth is that they were always there, they just suffered—and I mean suffered—in silence.
And further, I feel compelled to recognize their suffering as legitimate simply because of its disruptive nature. In a recent interview, Caitlyn Jenner talked about breaking the world decathlon record at the 1976 Olympic Games, and said, “I remember waking up the next morning and looking in the mirror with not a stitch on and the gold medal around my neck, and it being a really scary moment. I was thinking, ‘Where do I go from here? What is my next distraction going to be?‘” She knew even then that she was in the wrong body.
Let us take a moment to remember what body she was looking at:
Yeah. Tall, handsome, ripped, über-masculine. Holy crap, I wish I looked even halfway like that.
Here’s the point: if the man in that photo couldn’t look in his underwear and answer the question of which gender he was; if he struggled with his gender for another 40 years; if he then chose to go public with his transition (problematic though it has been); then who the hell am I to discount his struggle?
And that’s just the one handsome man on the Wheaties box. Rinse. Repeat. But never sneer.
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[1] Why yes, that is the closest approximation in the Latin alphabet to the International Phonetic Alphabet’s glottal stop character.
[2] Because I know that’s what I’m worried about when I poop in a public restroom.
[3] Other than, well, you know…
So yesterday, in my ongoing efforts to do absolutely no work on Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy or any of my three musical compositions, I started a new project, an ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS notebook attempting to visualize what a staged production of William Blake’s Inn might look like.[1]
Using the ungodly amount of art supplies I have on hand, I just began with the Prelude, and before I knew it I had the first whole five seconds sketched. That means I now have o.2% of the entire work visualized. UNSTOPPABLE, that’s what I am.
Anyway, here it is:
Where it says “appear,” imagine “twinkle on.”
And here’s the music: mp3 Remember, it’s just the first five seconds—only 37 and a half minutes to go!
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[1] And remember, if you are looking for a charming, expensive piece to do for a world premiere, I am contactable.
The labyrinth of the 3 Old Men ritual troupe: a multicursal labyrinth with four entrances/paths to the center. Each path splits twice on its way to the center, where the participant finds a temple bell he can ring and a small altar where he can leave and take small gifts.
For those just joining us, the labyrinth was designed originally to be taken to Burning Man and as such had a few basic requirements: it had to be easy(ish) to set up; it had to be pretty visible so hippies didn’t trip over it in the dark; and it had to leave no trace. The solution was 16″ plastic tent stakes and nylon rope.
We haven’t made it to Burning Man yet, but the Georgia burns are fun enough without the hassle of driving to the middle of the Black Rock desert and having to survive there for a week.
The aesthetics of the thing always bothered me, since neon orange and yellow are not exactly conducive to a contemplative state, and so I proposed that we[1] create fabric walls that would be slipped down over the stakes, ditching the rope.[2] We applied for funding from the hippies, got it, and I spent last summer creating that.
At the burn:
As I designed the walls, I was already planning ahead for Phase 3, because we knew that life, the universe, and everything would be much improved if the labyrinth lit up, you guys! So all the walls have a 2″ channel sewn into the top for lights to be threaded through.[3]
So here we are. A couple of the troupe are planning to take it to Apogaea, the Colorado burn in June, and so we’re looking at that for our debut of Phase 3, and if not then, then Alchemy this fall for sure.
I was sent a short strip of LED tape to test out a couple of things, one of the concerns being that if we ran the lights through the channel, it might not produce enough light to be effective. So the question was whether we should a) run the lights through the channel; or b) place them somehow outside the fabric.
Last night I took one of the shortest walls and created a test spot out in my own labyrinth…
and behold!
Threading it will be perfectly lovely. The plan is to run the lights through the four “long” walls. Here’s the design:
Those long walls are the ones that start at the top and the bottom and snake their way to the center. One of the issues with lighting the thing is that there twelve walls altogether, and how does one do that without a lot of complication? As you can see in the test photos, lighting the long walls will illuminate the short walls on either side. If we want to figure out the short walls later, we can.
There is probably a Phase 4, in which we program the lights to pulse gently, or even to send gentle pulses along the length to the center. WOULDN’T THAT BE AMAZING YOU GUYS?
However, we’re still in Phase 3, and one of the issues is the actual threading of 100+ feet of LED wire through the walls. We will need a bodkin or two; for this short bit, I made a heavy cardboard prototype:
Right, it’s like a big needle, but instead of a sharp point it has a bulgy tip so that after you shirr the fabric up the shaft, you can grasp the tip to pull the fabric off the other end.[4] I envision a completed version as wooden, about 18″ long, and round instead of flat. I have a simple arrangement of grooves at the back end rather than an eye to hold the tape in place without bending/breaking it. So who has a lathe and knows how to use it?
Excelsior!
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[1] And by “we” I mean “me.”
[2] If you would like to buy over 1000 feet of rope, please let me know. Some of it’s in pieces, but most of it is still on the spools.
[3] Except, ironically, the four long walls, which is what we’re planning to light. More sewing this week.
[4] Hush, Jobie. And Joe, for that matter.
Before we left for our trip last week, we paid a visit to Richard’s Variety Store in Midtown/Monroe Drive. Richard’s is one of those places that create a strain in a relationship if, for example, one’s lovely first wife had never disclosed that she knew of this chamber of wonders. One might accuse the other of holding out on him.
It’s a magical place, kind of a Woolworths for the hipster/hippie crowd, and if you haven’t been, go.
Here’s what I bought (among other things):
Yes, that is Icarus, the hero of Seven Dreams of Falling, coming eventually to an opera house near you. He’s to remind me that I do have a major theatrical work to compose. Which I’m not doing right now, because I’m writing this blog post to avoid finishing my tax returns.
If I were to link this to Lichtenbergianism, it would fall into RITUAL, as an object which represents a project or a goal and serves to remind me that it will be a beautiful thing—once I finish it.
Last week was an away game, so I got nothing done except a lot of Waste Booking. Now I’m back with a handful of (major) emails to deal with, plus all my backlog of work, plus my taxes are due.
But first.
On Saturday night, my lovely first wife and I went to the Isis Restaurant and Music Hall in West Asheville to hear a group called Harpeth Rising, a trio of young women who played cello, violin, and banjo.
You are wrong: this was one of the most amazing performances I have ever seen. The lead singer (violin) has a voice as good as anything you’ve ever heard come out of Nashville, and their songs are beautiful and incisive.
Some links, all of which I expect you to follow:
They ended their set with “Eve” and “Four Days More”, and I have to say that the tepid applause they receive in the video link above indicates brain damage on the part of their audience. The crowd at Isis went wild. I went wild. They are simply amazing, and if they ever perform within range again, you will find me there. And I will have dragged you along with me.
So what’s on my plate? In no particular order:
updated to indicate completion… or not
You will perhaps have noticed that nowhere in here is there anything about a) working on Lichtenbergianism; b) composing anything at all, up to and including Seven Dreams of Falling or my new secret project.
I am not procrastinating. I’ve traveling. And despite my best intentions to get something done, that doesn’t really happen on the road, does it?
I mean, if I were on a book tour for Lichtenbergianism and all alone in my hotel room at nights, then sure, I could be working on my next book or the new opera, but this is a family visit so my attention is otherwise engaged and rightfully so.
That’s all. Just wanted to make sure that everyone understood that I was not getting anything done by procrastinating; I’m just not doing anything.
Today we have another book that I would want to include in any book proposal for Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy. It is Get It Done: from procrastination to creative genius in 15 minutes a day, by Sam Bennett.
This is a really good book, folks. The author delves into many of the same areas as Lichtenbergianism and in many of the same ways. She addresses structured procrastination, the impostor syndrome, RITUAL, ABANDONMENT, even STEAL FROM THE BEST, and she does it in a fluid, witty, conversational style.
One major way Get It Done differs from Lichtenbergianism, though, is that Bennett gives many do-able exercises to help the procrastinator move into a productive state. It is not my intention to be so prescriptive or so helpful.
Bennett also aims to show people how to become at least semi-professional artists, and I am so far from being able to help in that department that I shan’t even try.
Where I think I differ most significantly is in aiming Lichtenbergianism at more than fine artists: people can use the Nine Precepts in more than the creative life.
I do like the sidebar features, which has always been a part of my concept as well. Probably that’s where all the personal testimonials from my fellow Lichtenbergians will go.
Summary: a very good book on procrastination for artists of all stripes.