An anniversary

Posted on by Dale

Today is the anniversary of the premiere of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15, Op. 141, in 1972.

Two years previously, I had returned from Governor’s Honors hungry for more: more art, more theatre, more music, more literature.  In Newnan at the time, the most immediate source of a lot of what I wanted was to be found at the Carnegie Library downtown. I’m sure the librarians there were thrilled to see a young patron digging into the more refined corners of the collection with such hunger and avidity; I know as a librarian I would have been.

The Carnegie had a small, weirdly eclectic record collection of classical music—about which I’ve written before—and one of the records I discovered was Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 4, a work which puzzles many critics but which I found to be a complete planet of musical ideas.  Since I was simultaneously reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time, the symphony became cinematically linked to the landscapes of Middle-Earth in my mind.[1]

You know how it is when you’re young: like a freshly hatched duckling you imprint on your first experiences, so that Eugene Ormandy’s interpretation of that work remains for me the standard against which all others must be matched.  I moved on to the composer’s 5th Symphony, his most famous, and then I started collecting the man’s works on my own.  He remains one of my favorites.

So you can imagine my excitement when it was reported in my senior year in high school—how?  How did I learn things like this back before the internet?—that he had written a fifteenth symphony, that it had been premiered in Moscow, conducted by the composer’s son Maksim, and that it had been recorded!  I began a waiting game until it was released here in the U.S.

By the time the recording came out, I was at the University of Georgia in my freshman year.  There was a record store on North Lumpkin St., and I checked it religiously until one day, there it was. I wrote my check—I’m telling you, I’m old—and scurried back to the dorm.

Back in the day, O my younglings, music came in these sizable cardboard sleeves with enough room on the back for a great deal of information.  The basis of my knowledge of music history comes largely from those liner notes, as we ancient ones called them.  The liner notes of Shostakovich’s Fifteenth seemed to indicate that the piece was a great puzzle to listeners and to critics.  What was the deal with the William Tell quote in the first movement?  The liner notes couldn’t pin that one down, almost suggesting that it was tacky (as did other critics at the time).  And then the quote from “Siegfried’s Funeral March” from Götterdämmerung in the final movement—was he resigned to his “fate”?

This inability to pin down the “meaning” of Shostakovich’s intent was in turn puzzling to me.  It’s like the reputation of the Fifth, with its final movement of triumphant joy.  At least, “triumphant joy” was the phrase used to describe that last movement, but from my very first encounter with the piece I found that hard t0 believe.  That was not joyful music; it was angry, furious, destructive music.  Why did anyone believe it was “joyful”?

In 1979, after Shostakovich’s death in 1975, Testimony was published.  It purported to be a book-length interview with Solomon Volkov and was immediately assailed by the Soviet authorities as bogus; the jury is still out as to its authenticity and there are strong arguments on either side.  Nevertheless, in it the composer says:

I discovered to my astonishment that the man who considers himself its greatest interpreter [the conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky] does not understand my music.  He says that I wanted to write exultant finales for my Fifth and Seventh Symphonies but I couldn’t manage it.  It never occurred to this man that I never thought about any exultant finales, for what exultation could there be?  I think that it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth.  The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov.  It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, “Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,” and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, “Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.”

What kind of apotheosis is that?  You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that.[2]

Precisely.

Shostakovich’s relationship with the authorities—Stalin in particular—was always precarious.  His Fourth Symphony, my favorite, was pulled from rehearsal shortly before its premiere in 1936 after Stalin was offended by the composer’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mzensk . An editorial entitled “Muddle Instead of Music” appeared in the papers, condemning such modernist garbage.  The opera company closed the production and Shostakovich pulled his new symphony, which did not have its premiere until 1962.  His Fifth Symphony is subtitled “A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism.” He kept his bags packed by the front door in case the secret police showed up to disappear him into the gulag; it had happened to others.

So with my first listening to Shostakovich’s new symphony, I heard him saying things that were pretty clear.  The William Tell quote?  The famous rhythm, of two sixteenths and an eighth, is also Shostakovich’s signature rhythm.  He relies on it constantly.  The triteness of the quote?  Shostakovich’s assessment of his own output: “This is what I have produced because of the regime under which I have struggled. Screw you guys.”  (The opening theme of the first movement is the same rhythm and indeed the same intervals as the Rossini.)

The other movements are shot through with references to his past compositions, culminating with that Wagner “fate” motif in the last movement.  There the massive passacaglia harks back to his Seventh Symphony (almost an inverted version of it, in fact), and the whole thing ends as the structure evaporates into fragmentary quotes of the symphony’s main themes, the percussion toys ratcheting out a clockwork reminder of his Fourth, his grandest failed experiment, the path not taken because he was forced from it.

Dmitri Shostakovich was a deeply unhappy, depressed, and grim man—and who can blame him?  He survived when others didn’t, and he kept his artistic integrity even while knuckling under to the despotic regimes of the USSR.  As his life came to a close—he had cancer as well as heart problems—he limned his misery in his final large work.

I raise my glass to him.

—————

[1] It is a tribute to Howard Shore’s genius that his score for the movies surpassed that linkage in my mind. As if Howard Shore’s genius needs a tribute from me.

[2] Shostakovich, D. D., & Volkov, S. (1979). Testimony: The memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich. New York: Harper & Row.

So about those brave patriot rancher dudes…

Posted on by Dale

You have probably looked askance at the crew occupying a bird sanctuary in Oregon and wondered who the hell those guys are and what the hell they want. You are not alone.

Ammon Bundy, son of welfare cheat Cliven Bundy, sums it up for us:

“We’re going to be freeing these lands up, and getting ranchers back to ranching, getting the loggers back to logging, getting the miners back to mining where they could do it under the protection of the people and not be afraid of this tyranny that’s been set upon them.”

What are they yammering on about?

The basis of their argument is that the Constitution, in Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 2 states:

“The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.”

…which they have interpreted to mean that the United States government cannot therefore actually “own” any land belonging to a state and so all that public land they’ve been grazing/logging/mining on needs to be “freed” from the control of the United States. (Many of these people are part of the III% movement, i.e., it only took 3% of the population of the colonies—according to them—to free us from Britain. Such patriot, much liberty.)

Here’s why they’re full of shit.

You may dimly recall that after winning independence, the thirteen former colonies had their eye on the land to the northwest of their boundary (hence, the Northwest Territories), but there were some disagreements on how it was to be added to the United States, or whether it could be added, and all that stuff. Much of the property was already in dispute between the bigwig states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Virginia,[1] and so a radical idea was proposed: everybody give up all your claims and cede the land to the United States, aka the federal government.[2]

This was the famous Northwest Ordinance , a brilliant piece of legislation passed in 1787 and a document that is, as far as I’m concerned, should be considered part of the Constitution itself. The deal was that Congress would set up rules about how that territory—and all future territories ::cough Manifest Destiny cough::—would be administered, packaged, sold off, and finally admitted as states to the United States.

In other words, all land not already part of a state was land belonging to the United States.

Let’s take a moment to ignore the fact that this property was already occupied when we got here. Even as we fast forward through the timeline, ignore the fact that the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican Cessions were of land that didn’t actually belong to the people from whom we bought/wrested it.

So, ignoring all that, as we added those vast swaths of territory[3] to our purview, Congress kept doing its job of drawing boundaries and selling off the land as they could.[4]

Oops—almost missed that there, didn’t you? The III% crowd certainly has.

All land belonged to the United States. It was sold off as they went. That which was not sold remained in the possession of the United States, even after the territory became a state. That’s part of the deal of becoming a state. Strange, but true. About 47% of western lands is still public lands.[5]

So the III% shibboleth that the United States is constitutionally prohibited from owning land is bullshit in every way, both de jure and de facto. (See Update below.)

Most of the western territories remain public because no one wanted to buy it, back when we were selling it. (Or letting people homestead it.) In the last 100 years, of course, we’ve begun to take a more custodial view of those lands. (Thank you, Teddy Roosevelt [R-Really?]!)[6]

Which brings us to grazing rights. For 150 years, public lands were absolutely public. You could homestead a ranch, which gave you a certain amount of property, and then you just let your cattle roam as far as they could go to survive. Total freedom—no tyranny here nosirree!

If you are familiar with my oeuvre, you know that the Tragedy of the Commons is a recurring motif. We have in our present circumstance a perfect example.

As pointed out in this tidy summary at The Wildlife News, by the 1930s the grazing lands were a disaster. Introduced by a Colorado congressman, a rancher (!), the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 was designed to “stop injury to the public lands by preventing over-grazing and soil deterioration; to provide for orderly use, improvement and development; to stabilize the livestock industry dependent upon the Public Range and for other purposes.”

The U.S. Grazing Service—and its successor, the Bureau of Land Management[7]—instituted grazing fees to help control overgrazing of the public lands. It’s that simple. It’s not tyrannical overreach (thanks, Obama!), and no one has “taken away” any rancher’s lands. It’s a sometimes complicated contractual agreement into which ranchers/loggers/miners enter with the United States, but the bottom line is that it is simply that: a contract.

Further, the fees charged by the BLM—by the United States—are far below market rate. The United States will charge you $1.35 for per AUM (the amount of land needed to support a cow and her calf for a month); the market rate out west, i.e., what a private land owner will charge you, is $20.10/AUM.

So when the Bundys whine about tyrannical government, remember that they’re whining about a 93% discount in what they’re charged to use our land, and that discount is provided by you, the taxpayer.[8] Cliven Bundy and his sons are welfare queens.

Or when they proudly proclaim they’re holed up in a remote bird sanctuary to free these lands up, to get ranchers back to ranching, loggers logging, and miners mining, remember that the whole reason the BLM exists is that unrestrained use of public land was a disaster—the idea that present-day corporations and welfare queens would be better at land use now than they were 100 years ago is risible.[9]

The irony is that if they got their way and the United States divested itself of the land, the Bundys couldn’t afford to buy it. Speculators and corporations would snatch it up and would charge the boys full market rate. And how do you think it would work if Cliven Bundy chose not to honor his contract with those people?

So you will pardon me if I mock these mighty patriots holed up in a bird sanctuary, fighting against a tyrannical government that exists only in their imagination—an evil entity which, for the rest of us, is simply the United States. The U.S. Us.

Update: Further insight at RawStory. [back]

—————
[1] Georgia once claimed all the land west of the colony, first all the way to the Pacific, and then more modestly to the Mississippi. Part of the deal of joining the United States was giving up those claims. (Virginia was not about to allow that cracker state to supersede it in empire building.)

[2] The conservative nutjobs have done an effective job of making “federal government” into a bad word, a shibboleth that gives them tingles down their legs as they imagine it hiding in their closet or under their bed. I will therefore use “the United States” instead to remind these yahoos that what they’re talking about is our country.

[3] Oh, all right. Huge tracts of land. There, are you happy?

[4] For a hugely interesting and entertaining look at the process, see Mark Stein’s How the States Got Their Shapes

[5] This Salon article is a great overview of the issue.

[6] Let’s see you wrangle punctuation like that, bucko!

[7] Yes, the same BLM that manages the Playa where Burning Man takes place.

[8] FiveThirtyEightPolitics has a very good article about it.

[9] The Salon article points out that even if the United States wanted to devolve the property onto the states, the cash-strapped—and need I add, deep Republican red—states would be loath to accept the gift. They couldn’t afford it.  Talk about a welfare state!

More Blindness

Posted on by Dale

Merciful heavens.  It’s time once again to rant here on my blog rather than on a Facebook friend’s post.  This time, it’s not the friend who posted the insanity—it’s one of her associates. My friend was telling about being in the Rose Bowl Parade crowd while the skywriter was bashing Donald Trump over their heads.

Her point in posting was to note that everyone around her essentially agreed with the skywriter, which was enough for her squirrelly friends to pile on.  One of the comments was as follows:

If Trump was in office…
#1 We’d have jobs back
#2 No more outsourcing
#3 Sanctions strengthened
#4 Veterans taken care of
#5 Hostages in Iran back
#6 The 1% will be taxed
#7 No teleprompter speeches
#8 No lobbyist & SuperPac control
#9 We would stop submitting to other countries that we give handout after handout to with nothing in return
#10 The border would work more efficiently & end a lot of modern day Mexican slavery

What floors me about these people is their seeming refusal to do any real thinking about their candidate or their country.  Let’s look at the results, shall we?

If Trump was in office… Subjunctive voice, dearie.  “If Trump were in office…” is your lead.  Always use the subjunctive when the issue is contrary to actual reality.

We’d have jobs back.  How, exactly?  In what areas of the economy?  Would the unemployment rate be lower than it is now?  No details on this, because Trump hasn’t given us any.  “All those jobs that got lost to Mexico, to China?  I’ll bring them back.”  Perhaps he’ll use his Ring of Power.

No more outsourcing.  Like Trump does? (Also.  And also too.)

Sanctions strengthened.  Against whom?  And why?  I imagine this commenter is talking about Iran, which is of a piece with the ideology of Trump supporters: why use a carrot when you can use a really big stick?  It’s much better to hit the other guy instead of negotiating, right? It’s very important to these people that we be the biggest badass in the world.

Veterans taken care of.  How, exactly?  What would President Trump do that his predecessors haven’t?  And how exactly would President Trump convince a Tea Party Congress to spend that money (since unfortunately most of his supporters are also going to vote for the most rabid, brain-damaged weasels on the down-ballot)?  Other than that, great goal.

Hostages in Iran back.  I had to stop and think what hostages this person is concerned about.  Hostages?  A quick websearch shows that there are four Americans imprisoned in Iran at the moment, and that the recent negotiations did not include the fate of these people.  Naturally, the rabid weasel faction seized on this as evidence of the Obama administration’s fecklessness.  Could it be that the main goal of the treaty was hard enough to get without loading it down with additional challenges, and that perhaps the prisoners’ fate is being dealt with by other ongoing negotiations?  Nah, it’s because Obummer is a traitor—the only possible explanation.  What Trump would do instead?  Use his Ring of Power, I guess.

The 1% will be taxed.  This is astonishing, because the rabid weasel faction usually will die on the hill of “less tax/smaller government,” but somehow the whole income inequality thing and how it contributes to the downward pressures on the income of the middle class appears to have made it into their brains.  More power to them, but I’d suggest that they take a look at Bernie Sanders if they want to see that happen.  (Although, again, they’ll vote for a Tea Party Congress and completely doom our government to a death spiral.)

No teleprompter speeches.  Jebus on Melba Toast.  What is it with the weasels and TelePrompter?  Do they honestly believe that only weaklings (i.e., incapable of using Rings of Power to bully the world) use this handy device to keep their public address on track?  Do they not understand that everyone on the teevee uses a TelePrompter?  Do they honestly believe that Trump simply speaks from his heart (or other part of his anatomy)?  And when he does, do they really think that’s the kind of thing we want to hear from our President?  (Spoiler alert: yes.  Yes they do.)

No lobbyist & SuperPac control.  Cool story, bro.  Actually, what are they talking about here?  No outside money in the Donald’s campaign because he’s paying for it himself?  Or no outside money influencing our legislation?  If it’s the first, it clearly has not occurred to them that if he’s rich enough not to be beholden to special interests, he’s rich enough not to be beholden to the voters either.  If it’s the latter, good luck with that.  What’s he going to do, issue an executive order???  (Spoiler alert: it’s OK if the Fearless Leader does it.   With his Ring of Power.  Which that feckless Obummer is too weak to use.)

We would stop submitting to other countries that we give handout after handout to with nothing in return.  Ah, “submission.”  As if the U.S. has submitted to any other country in the last 100 years.  “Handout.”  You would think, listening to the weasels, that for some reason our country is shoveling your tax dollars right out the door to those ungrateful furriners.  This of course has nothing to do with reality.

The border would work more efficiently & end a lot of modern day Mexican slavery.  The commenter’s concern over the working conditions of our immigrant laborers is touching.  Would they, I wonder, agree to laws which a) punish with jail time anyone who hires undocumented workers; and/or b) require the minimum wage to be paid to all such workers, and taxes collected from same?  Because if we successfully drive the Brown Peril out of our country—with Rings of POWER!!—it’s going to be their children’s asses cleaning hotels and picking lettuce.

So here, in 1000 words, I have given more thought to the realities of the Trump candidacy and potential presidency than any of his supporters have.  Have mercy.

Why didn’t I post any of this under the comment?  Because none of the facts have any impact on weasels.  They really do believe in the Green Lantern/Ring of Power theory of governance.  Actual facts are trifling details which can be blown away with a blast from any Leader worthy enough to wield the Ring of Power.  Trying to show them the details only makes them gnaw at the cage more ferociously.

BONUS: The millionaire who paid for the skywriting is also the owner of anybodybuttrump.us.  Buttrump.  Heh heh…

3 Old Men: The 1000 Commands

Posted on by Dale

One of my 2016 Lichtenbergian Proposed Efforts is to continue my work with 3 Old Men, my Burner theme camp.

For over a year now we have joked about expanding the camp to include a 50-foot square, roped off, with a deer stand at one end where one of us would sit with a megaphone and yell commands at any hippies who stepped into the square.  Well, deer stands are a) expensive; and b) heavy, so we’ve never gotten around to doing it.  (Needless to say, we already have the rope from the old version of the labyrinth.)

But I think getting this idea off the ground is going to be my major 3 Old Men focus for a while.  First of all, we can give up the deer stand idea—just a tall bar chair would do, especially if we put it on a small platform.  So that’s a major hurdle we don’t have to clear.

The second major item on the agenda is what exactly would happen if hippies wandered into the enclosure?  I have a vague idea of contact improv/InterPlay/Twyla Tharp movements, but once I’m sitting in that chair,  what happens?

To that end, here’s my newest Waste Book:

When I’m trying to avoid other projects, I can pick this up and start imagining what would be interesting, amusing, or beautiful in the arena.  I also intend to engage the rest of the troupe in the project, probably through a Google Doc.

Also too, I have to come up with a name for it.

Lichtenbergianism: the Nine Precepts

Posted on by Dale

Since I just realized that I have never actually blogged about the Nine Precepts of Lichtenbergianism, I shall do that now. (I have mentioned them once, but gave no explanation of them.)

As I explain in the upcoming Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy, these Precepts spring from a seminar some fellow Lichtenbergians and I gave at GHP in 2013.  In preparing to sit in what turned out to be a crowded room and to discuss how putting off doing any work had actually made us more successful creators, I boiled down our experience to nine keywords.  In the seminar, we simply threw each term up on the screen and then all shared how they affected us as artists/teachers/programmers/veterinarians.

Here are the Nine Precepts:

  1. Task Avoidance: Obviously. Cras melior est.
  2. Abortive Attempts: Give yourself permission to create crap.  Lots of crap.
  3. Successive Approximation: Give yourself permission to change what you’ve done.
  4. Waste Books: Create a system to record your ideas willy-nilly.  Sort them out later.
  5. Ritual: Find ways to make your work flow.
  6. Steal from the Best: Pay attention to the past, learn from it, then run with it.
  7. Gestalt: Look at your work and see what’s there and what’s not there, what needs to be there and what needs to be not there.
  8. Audience: Have someone in mind.
  9. Abandonment: Give up.

There’s a lot more complexity to these ideas, of course.  I discuss that in the book.  Reserve your copy today.  Or tomorrow.

An interesting IP scenario

Posted on by Dale

In our topic today, ‘IP’ stands for ‘intellectual property,’ i.e., copyrights, patents, all those kinds of things that are not physical property but which are protected by various laws and lawyers.

Mostly lawyers.  Have you ever tried using a Disney character for some purpose of your own?  Try it sometime.  Leave the number of cease & desist letters you get in comments.  (For a saucy explanation of copyright protection and fair use of copyrighted materials, see:

So here’s my interesting scenario.  I’m working on Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy, and I’m clipping right along at about 1,000 words per day thank you very much.

As I work, I’m collecting examples, images, quotes that support the Nine Precepts.[1] As I do so, I am quite aware of whether or not I will have to seek permission from a copyright holder in order to use those items in the book.  (I am aware mostly because Dianne Mize, in a letter describing her progress with her editor/publisher for Finding the Freedom to Create, described several roadblocks in finding a translation of the Tao Te Ching that she was allowed to quote from in her book.)

For the most part, I’ve used materials that are either in the public domain or have a Creative Commons license.  Direct quotes are cited fully in footnotes and bibliography and so fall under fair use.[3]

But today, in discussing the precept Steal from the Best, I directed the reader’s attention to Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and explained how a good artist would “copy” the African masks which inspired part of Picasso’s painting (leaving them and our world unchanged), while Picasso, a great artist, “stole” the masks, changing both them and our world in the process.

I know for a fact that there are usage restrictions with the Museum of Modern Art’s image, because their website says so, right there on the painting’s webpage along with a link to the company that handles licensing for MOMA.  For such a small scale work as Lichtenbergianism is bound to be, I figure it cannot be worth even a small sum to secure the rights to the painting’s use.

So I’ve linked to it in a footnote.  The reader who is unfamiliar with the work can put that URL into the browser and see the painting immediately.

Will I have violated copyright law by doing so?  This is an interesting question to me.  I haven’t reprinted their image without permission.  I have referenced it, and I’ve provided the information for my reader to find it, and in fact I’ve benefited MOMA by driving traffic to their website.  But it could be argued (in court…) that I have used Picasso’s Demoiselles as an illustration in my book: the reader simply opens up the webpage and then reads along in Lichtenbergianism with the painting there before him.

updated to add: Moreover, it could be argued that I intended to illustrate my book with MOMA’s image, that if it were public domain or CCC-licensed, or if I had had the funds to license it, I would have included the image. (Why am I contributing to the unraveling of the Commons here by doing their lawyers’ work for them??)

The floor is now open for comments.

—————

[1] It occurs to me that I have not blogged specifically about the Precepts of Lichtenbergianism.  Tomorrow, perhaps.[2]

[2] That was a joke.

[3] The biggie is the book of Lichtenbergian aphorisms from which I pull quotes.  My use of them exceeds fair use, and the translation I’m using is definitely copyrighted.  So I see a couple of exchanges with R. J. Hollingdale in my future…

Lichtenbergian goals, 2016

Posted on by Dale

It’s time now to post about my Lichtenbergian goals for 2016.

As I’ve discussed before, the process of deciding what my goals will be for the coming year is a serious thing. I don’t want to overload myself, but neither do I want to be the guy who shows up at the Annual Meeting having accomplished all his goals. That would be gauche and liable for Censure.

I will have to say, though, that this year’s choices were tough, as I’ll explain below.

Lichtenbergianism

First and foremost, of course, is to finish Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy, the book explaining the Lichtenbergian approach to the creative process. If we presume a word count of 25,000 words, I’ve written a little over half of them, i.e., the easy part.

Now I have to go back in and smooth things out—make sure that I’m not falling into the “ignorance of knowledge” trap, over-assuming my audience’s contextual understanding of what I’m talking about. I need to keep refining my idea of who the audience for the book is. I need to start making sure it flows and doesn’t just lurch from topic to topic.

3 Old Men

Once again, I want to expand our theme camp to include the “yelling at the hippies” area. Brief recap: it’s a 50-foot square defined by our old ropes and tent stakes, with a tall chair (like a deer stand) on one side. One of our camp sits in the chair with a megaphone and shouts instructions to any hippies who have gotten inside.

These instructions include contact improv/InterPlay/Twyla Tharp kinds of movement and play, so that we have an impromptu performance of sorts.

Recently, at Scott’s Antiques, I came across these:

Carefully labeled FOR OUTDOOR USE ONLY, they’re sturdy plastic flipcharts for scoring events, and they were only $1 each! Suddenly our arena got more interesting—we can put up three to five chairs on the sidelines where hippies can choose to sit and score the efforts of the performers. This has led to the description of the project as “ludicrous totalitarianism, with judgment—but in a good way.”

Part of the project will be to compile a list of commands that will create a neat-o experience for participants and for onlookers. That should be fun.

I also want to continue working with Flashpoint Artists Initiative, the nonprofit which runs Euphoria/Alchemy, as a small-time volunteer on various projects.

Backstreet Arts

Local artist Kim Ramey has a vision to establish a venue for an art studio for homeless/underserved populations here in Newnan. I want to become more involved in helping that to become a reality.

My personal agenda is to provide within the facility a space for writing and publishing, as exemplified by Temporary Services in Chicago. As Kim wants to provide a place for people to “do art,” I want to help people to tell their stories.

???

For lack of a better word, I’m calling this the Undefined Universe Project.

I was actually stuck on deciding what else to do for a goal, and here’s why: after years of writing music that has never been performed, I just didn’t have the spirit to attach myself to Seven Dreams or to SUN TRUE FIRE again,[1] nor to start Simon’s Dad or anything else new when I know it’s not going to get performed.

I know full well that that’s part of being a modern composer, just writing your heart out and then hitting the pavement to try to sell it. And I’m going to work more on that aspect of the business, both for the music and for Lichtenbergianism. But in the meantime, I want a little validation, you know?

So my goal is to allow the Universe to send me a project which is attached to actual production. I will help it along by putting myself and my work out there (#playdalesmusic, anyone?), but I’m going to start by using my woo skills to put the Universe on notice that I’m open and receptive.

I’ll keep you posted.

—————

[1] Which is not to say that I won’t be futzing around with those pieces or even something new, just to keep myself flowing.

Blindness

Posted on by Dale

Makes me sick knowing that this silhouette will soon be gone & the view of this “yet-to-be-named” Square will forever be missing Jackson’s statue. Boggles my mind that the Square was built in 1721 & Jackson’s statue erected in 1856, yet in 2015 it’s going to be removed by people with an agenda following a prescribed agenda.

This was the comment under a lovely photo of Jackson Square in New Orleans, in the fog with the equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson silhouetted against the cathedral.  It was posted by a Facebook associate—I refuse to call them “friends” anymore—and I had to come blog about it here rather than be rude over there.

It’s in response to the city of New Orleans deciding to divorce itself from its Confederate past.  (You can read about it here if you like.) This kind of thing is always problematic, because no one likes the idea of trying to erase the past. It smacks of Stalinism at its propagandistic worst.

However, I don’t think that’s what New Orleans is trying to do.  I think they are simply voting to disengage from the part of their past which celebrated the ill-conceived (and even more ill-executed) Confederate States of America.  There is no way we can ever erase our embarrassing rebellion, but I don’t think anyone would ever deny that since our defeat in 1865 our region has clung to the Glorious Cause as if it were an unmitigated good.[1]

So good for the city council of NOLA in trying to put all that behind them.  Better to put it in the closet than sweep it under the rug, I think.

But in regard to the comment above, eyebrows must be raised and lips pursed.  I am always astonished at how un-self-aware persons of this ilk are. His mind is boggled that the Square existed for 135 years before the city honored the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, which occurred at the end of the War of 1812,[2] and then laments that the city has decided to make another change.  Because that’s an “agenda.”  The “agenda” that renamed Tivoli Circle to Lee Circle[3]… well, that’s not an “agenda.”

And there we have it: the mentality that the privileged history of the commenter is the default reality and everything that deviates from that is actually deviant.  It’s the source of much butthurt in our rightwing brethren these days.

Because here’s the clincher: this is pure butthurt.[4] If you go read the article in the footnote below, you’ll see that the monuments that are being removed do not include Andrew Jackson’s statue in Jackson Square because Andrew Jackson, whatever his other heinous faults, was not a Confederate general.[5]

How does a brain like that remember not to leave the house without pants?  Jebus.

—————

[1] Yes, I am aware that many among us still consider it an unmitigated good.  They are as wrong as their ancestors.

[2] Technically it occurred after the end of the War of 1812, but news about peace treaties traveled slow in those days.

[3] The white New Orleanians who put up the Lee statue in 1884 and renamed Tivoli Circle for him didn’t hide their motives. “We cannot ignore the fact that the secession has been stigmatized as treason and that the purest and bravest men in the South have been denounced as guilty of shameful crime,” The Daily Picayune wrote. “By every appliance of literature and art, we must show to all coming ages that with us, at least, there dwells no sense of guilt.” [The Editorial Board, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. (2015, December 18). With vote to remove Confederate monuments, City Council embraces New Orleans’ future: Editorial. Retrieved December 18, 2015, from http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/12/confederate_monuments_new_orle_7.html ]

[4] Yes, I see what I did there.

[5] That would have been difficult for him, since he died in 1845.

Lichtenbergian goals from 2015

Posted on by Dale

Hi there!  I’ve been busy getting A Christmas Carol on its feet, so apologies all round for the lack of fabulously interesting content around here.  But now the Lichtenbergian Annual Meeting[1] is upon us and I must take a look back to see how well I’ve done on my goals for this past year.  Let’s take a look, shall we?

Seven Dreams

Nada.  After I finished Dream One last year, I was waiting on my librettist, C. Scott Wilkerson, to provide more text for our opera (based on his play Seven Dreams of Falling, a retelling of the Icarus myth).  Alas, he’s been caught up in finishing his PhD, so I twiddled my thumbs.  There were some abortive attempts to set the opening and ending of Dream Three since I knew what it was going to be, but I failed utterly to crack that nut.

3 Old Men

Check.  My goal was to expand the camp, which we did but not in the way I originally intended.  As documented here, I constructed fabric “walls” to go over the tent stakes of the labyrinth, replacing the yellow rope and improving its looks quite some.  We also added some really cool new Old Men to the camp, one of whom brought fire art to the entire concept.

Five Easier Pieces

Done! I can check it off my list, where it has been for at least two years.

Christmas Carol

My goals for Christmas Carol for this year were a) finding an affordable software music sequencer that works like the old EZ•Vision sequencer did; b) learning to use it; and c) completely rescoring Christmas Carol again with a full orchestral accompaniment.  And d) directing the show.  I did it all and infinitely more.

SUN TRUE FIRE

It remained a back burner project.

design & construction of labyrinths

Not a major goal to begin with, I designed two labyrinths for “clients” that ended up being unnecessary.  Still, a pleasant diversion.

general work habits

This one was a success—I re-established a daily routine that worked for me and actually was more productive than the short list above would indicate. The principles of Lichtenbergianism teach us that having goals is important even especially if they only serve to provide reference points to avoid, and that’s what happened here.

Next…

Lichtenbergian goals for 2016—let’s see what comes out of my mouth at the Meeting.

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[1] For those just joining us, the Lichtenbergian Society is my group of friends who support each other in their willingness to procrastinate their way to creative success.

Easier Piece #5: another update

Posted on by Dale

Soooo close…

The end is particularly wonky, but I can’t decide if it’s dazzlingly kaleidoscopic or just inept.

Easier Piece #5 (12/17/15): mp3

update:  Oops, I finished it.  (Minor futzing, and a tweak to the ending.)

Originally, I intended the piece to be a nocturne, a dreamy quiet  finish to the five pieces, and definitely more Arvo Pärt than it turned out to be.  Oh well.  I suppose I could make it Six Easier Pieces, but then I’d have to put it on next year’s Lichtenbergian goals.  Not going to happen.

I’ve left a lot of the articulation of the moving parts to the pianist, although there are a couple of deliberate staccatos in there that anyone who plays this should feel free to ignore.

Now, are these pieces actually easier to play?  Compared to Six Fugues (no preludes) they are, but are they in fact objectively five easier pieces?  Someone who can actually play should play them and tell me.  #playdalesmusic

Five Easier Pieces: No. 5 (Sonatine) | score [pdf] | mp3