just answer the question

are you hung over? is this sash sexy? do I appear elementary to you? where were you when I died? am I still dying? have you paid the race car driver yet? has the priest given CNN its last rites? is my shirt dry? does this lighting scheme hurt your eyes? do you want more coffee? did I get beer on your pants? have you considered joining the national guard? did you check the pot roast? are we out of toilet paper? does your tooth hurt from all that candy? did you pay your parking ticket? have you heard the new Sonic Youth album? where did you buy that sweater? is your community service finished yet? what did you think about the president's speech last night? did you ever get more lead for your pencil? did you ever get tired of answering the door? were there enough paper clips to go around? how's the Red Sox treating you? was there a discount on 3-ring-binders after all? did you ever decide which version of creepy you are? what did that online quiz say about your personality? does spicy mustard have anything to do with it? what about the way that dog paused when I whistled? will we ever get back to the Grand Canyon? how many more leaves are there to rake? did you buy enough butter for the fondue? did you ever decide what "duende" means? how is your dad's detached retina doing? did you catch the last episode of Jeopardy? when will it stop raining? does the thought of running out of water frighten you? is your neck feeling any better? what was the last part of that man's question? do you have any quarters? do you have anything in mauve? do you like red sauce or white? neither? where do you think the geese flew off to? does Julie Andrews piss you off as much as she does me? what will you do when the mail gets here? how will we ever get that tea stain out of the carpet? am I losing my touch? is it a small world after all? really? what did you say to her when she congratulated you for being in first place? do you ever feel trapped? do you mind if I call you Alistair from now on? why does that girl put socks in her backpack? is your headache gone? do you want to get an ice cream cone? are you feeling any better?

solar-powered glasses

me: are we still young?

him: yeah




me: where's our optimism?

him: we're not that young

The park at noon on Wednesday

The bells of the Lutheran church rang a hymn
by Martin Luther at noon on Wednesday
when I ran through the park on concrete paths
laid by union workers; for example, one
blew leaves from the patio of the over-
priced park eatery. We both saw each other
but neither smiled; no one smiles in this park
because most are strangers running around
on concrete paths laid by union workers
who definitely aren’t smiling because they
are on the clock in the heat, trying to fathom
the amount of leisure it takes to go for a run
on a Wednesday in July.

Lost Dogs Found

Dog Reunited with Owners 10 Months After Hurricane Ike.

Quote: “Kathy Bauer late Thursday whistled for the pet. She says Daizy came running and ‘lifted her paw for a handshake.’”

This is important: Dog Reunited with Family After Catastrophe. It’s a story of loss brought on by an accident or nature and the reunion of a bond that apparently couldn’t be blown away. Even though a dog isn’t human, we have anthropomorphized these animals to the point where we are positive they will return to us and not some other loving family of a closer proximity. It's why this story keeps making the news.

I’m sure the people who post Lost Dog flyers around my neighborhood eat this shit UP. Yes! Your dog will not rest until it finds you again. No! Your dog does not just love you for your food and warm blanket, and no your dog won’t settle for another loving home with the same food and warm blanket, because you are singular with your dog and it’s singular with you.

These stories are important today, “especially with this economy.”

Dog Lost for Six Months Reunited with Family.

Missing Dog Reunited with Family.

Missing Dog Reunited with Family after Ohio Turnpike Crash.

Dog Reunited with Family after Fire Destroys Farmhouse.

I’m reminded of a poem by Pablo Neruda:

A Dog Has Died

My dog has died. I buried him in the garden next to a rusted old machine. Some day I'll join him right there, but now he's gone with his shaggy coat, his bad manners and his cold nose, and I, the materialist, who never believed in any promised heaven in the sky for any human being, I believe in a heaven I'll never enter. Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom where my dog waits for my arrival waving his fan-like tail in friendship. Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth, of having lost a companion who was never servile. His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine withholding its authority, was the friendship of a star, aloof, with no more intimacy than was called for, with no exaggerations: he never climbed all over my clothes filling me full of his hair or his mange, he never rubbed up against my knee like other dogs obsessed with sex. No, my dog used to gaze at me, paying me the attention I need, the attention required to make a vain person like me understand that, being a dog, he was wasting time, but, with those eyes so much purer than mine, he'd keep on gazing at me with a look that reserved for me alone all his sweet and shaggy life, always near me, never troubling me, and asking nothing. Ai, how many times have I envied his tail as we walked together on the shores of the sea in the lonely winter of Isla Negra where the wintering birds filled the sky and my hairy dog was jumping about full of the voltage of the sea's movement: my wandering dog, sniffing away with his golden tail held high, face to face with the ocean's spray. Joyful, joyful, joyful, as only dogs know how to be happy with only the autonomy of their shameless spirit. There are no good-byes for my dog who has died, and we don't now and never did lie to each other. So now he's gone and I buried him, and that's all there is to it.

This is the clarinet duck

I must have read in a book on soundtrack theory that chromaticism in movie music is often used to accompany an unstable brain. To be honest, many books I’ve looked at on soundtrack theory were so dry and focused too much on specific examples, I ended up skimming them. Books like Listening to Movies: The Film Lover’s Guide to Film Music and Changing Music: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film had a few good points to make, in my opinion, but most of the text became too much like a catalog for which movies used which music, and that specific director’s habits, etc. I guess I should have known from the academic-ness of the titles (it's not a title unless it has a colon) that they would be dry. Back to the point: Chromaticism = Instability. I watched Sybil (Sallie Field plays a young woman with multiple personalities formed to cope with her abusive childhood) for the first time yesterday, and was not surprised in terms of the soundtrack. As the audience is introduced to her first psychotic episode during the first fifteen minutes of the film, she is running up flights of stairs trying to escape a neighbor’s piano playing. The piece is Chopin’ Etude op.25 no.11, known as the “Winter Wind” etude, and it involves complex descending chromatics on the part of the right hand while the left hand plays a minor melody:



Sybil runs up four or five flights, the camera above her focused on her head simulating a feeling of a whirlwind, until she enters her apartment and closes the door. The viewer is left outside the door but hears her talking to herself, changing her voice and way of speaking. The music was not the catalyst for her episode, but instead, foreshadowing for the audience. However, chromaticism is not always used to initiate a feeling of instability. Alfred Hitchcock used one composer for most of his films, Bernard Hermann, and while chromatics were involved in much of the thematic structure, chromaticism did not take the front seat. For example, Vertigo’s theme consists of dissonant arpeggios going up and down, up and down, creating a sense of – you guessed it – vertigo.



The effect of the spatial arrangement of the notes plays a big role in the listener’s “feelings,” but even if the notes didn’t fully accomplish this, those spiraling images placed over the woman’s eyes complete the job.

I guess these two instances of spatiality can be easily tied together. Chromatic piano for climbing up stairs (ascending and descending "steps" in the music mirroring physical step-climbing), vertiginous arpeggios and spiral images initiating dizzying heights. Yes, and Queen has "word painting" in their song "Bohemian Rhapsody" that includes the sound of a xylophone when they sing, "Sent a shiver down my spine," and Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" and Saint-Saen's "Carnival of the Animals" imitating animals and Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf," this is the clarinet-duck, this is the french horn-wolf, blah blah.

This is an old idea that has been appropriated for the screen during the last 100 years after a long history of appropriating music with the stage via opera, plays, circus acts, etc. I suppose tricks like these always seem lame during the age of (though I thought the Sybil scene seemed pretty cool but I'm partial to piano); even Debussy writes:

Wagner has set us a number of precedents in how to fashion music for the theater. One day we shall see how useless they all are. For his own benefit he invented the "leitmotiv guide" to aid those who cannot read a score. It's perfect: it enables the listener to get through all the more quickly...But what is more serious, he has accustomed us to making the music servile, in being responsible for the development of the characters. I feel I should try to explain this, for it seems to me to be the main trouble with dramatic music these days. Music has a rhythm whose secret force shapes the development. The rhythm of a soul, however, is quite different---more instinctive, more general, and controlled by many events. From the incompatibility of these two rhythms a perpetual conflict arises, for the two do not move at the same speed. Either the music stifles itself by chasing after a character, or the character has to sit on a note to allow the music to catch up with him. Nonetheless, there are miraculous moments where the two are in harmony, and Wagner has the honor of being responsible for some of these. But they are for the most part due to chance, and more often than not awkward and deceptive. All in all, the application of symphonic form to dramatic action succeeds in killing dramatic music rather than saving it, as was proclaimed when Wagner was crowned king of opera.

Well, everyone's a critic.

Fresh Air

The new issue of Born Magazine is out.

My favorites from this issue are Zoology and I Can No Longer Think.

(Plug.)

A Nice Science Lesson

It’s always a little satisfying to have one’s suspicions about the corporate world proved correct, though that amount of satisfaction is met with a similar amount of dismay. It’s always a little dismaying to have one’s suspicions about the corporate world proved correct. These paragraphs have gotten me fired.

Apparently, one does not need names named. Corporate paranoia gives way to general recognition. Is that metaphor me (do I hold congress with vampires?)

C’est la vie. Haven’t had any of this since I left:

…and I’ve found a new company for which to work:

In an unexpected way, I now join scores of my unemployed brothers and sisters, though mine is not due to a drop in production, but a soured system of ethics.

But bad leads to good, as the popular press often purports. I know my volcanic event will lead to beautiful sunsets, even if the ash is in Russia and the sunset is in Kentucky (?), I will not question the connection as long as the view is pleasing and it gives way to a nice lesson about science, or life.

Reflecting Excitement Reflecting Excitement

Watch this video.

In a second, I'll get to the teen texting part, but first, I have to say that without the existence of the internet and her Myspace presence (which led me to this video), my adoration of Amanda Palmer would not exist. But since the internet and Myspace do exist, I have adoration for Amanda Palmer, because her constant creative energy, captured on audio and video, is inspiring to me.

The idea that teenage girls are so excited about Panic! at the Disco, they can't stop texting during the show, is a little upsetting. It is almost beautifully upsetting. Upsetting in a very vivid way. Someone, somewhere, is mourning the loss of their vision which they have exchanged for the screen.

But is this a new manifestation of teenage* emotion, like AP suggests, being excited and showing it through reflection to others? Or is it another manifestation of a core desire of teenagers, which is not necessarily to enjoy a thing for the sake of the thing, but to "enjoy" a thing as a method of reaching another teen? In this instance, maybe the cell phone is like an old-school fire alarm that would spray paint the hand that pulled it. All those blue-handed teenagers out there, betraying their true desire at the Panic! show: not to enjoy the music, but to relate to friends via the music.

I like that. We blue-handed people exhibit our vulnerability by text messaging in public, acknowledging that we desire something that hasn't materialized next to us, willingly distracting ourselves with gadgets that tunnel through the physical barrier.

In this way, texting both unites and divides us with our fellow teenagers.

*In this context, "teenage" is to be politely used instead of "human"

"Whimsical"

Take Me Home

The following is an introduction from Aurgasm, a music blog I got into last summer (the music was better, then):

"I once spent a week in Madrid, feeling more comfort there than any place I’ve ever been. Leaving on a whim, having never thought of Spain before, I learned words and phrases concerning food and direction after arrival. Most of this trip I was alone, wandering in pursuit of distant intrigue: a hill, a park, a museum, or the oldest restaurant; with curiosity fulfilling me. Nourished by surroundings, I found heightened sense of romanticism, joy, wonder, play, friendship, detail... so much vibrant detail in art and life; flourishing endeavors, hellos and goodbyes, zest and woe. Lourdes Hernández’s I Love Your Glasses encompasses all of my experiences in her hometown; dazzling me in abundance, and passionately reminding me of a time felt dearly like home."

Essentially, what this writer is getting at, is that this band called Russian Red has a new album out suitable for the American tourist. I would imagine that, for someone who lives in Spain, they aren’t exactly “fulfilled” with curiosity about a distant hill or the oldest restaurant. Lourdes Hernandez is Russian, not Spanish, yet sings in English with an echo effect applied to her voice, occasionally accompanied by a steel guitar, sounding like another Neko Case. (Just what we need.) So unless the above-referenced writer happened to be listening to Neko Case on his iPod during his week in Spain, I’m not quite sure how this Lourdes can remind him of being fulfilled (can’t stop saying it) with curiosity in Spain.

But maybe Lourdes does remind him of Spain. Why not? Britney Spears can remind someone of Paris (though the reverse doesn’t work). We are revisiting a previous subject of this blog, which is the loathed Adult Contemporary. Also on the subject of being "fulfilled," maybe the most despicable fact about AC is that it couldn’t exist without the old-tyme religious gospel song (though this could be said about any rock song), which morphed into a few different directions during the 1930s; one of which was the white man’s blues (country and western). With the women of the Carter family being a rare exception (and they sang their fair share of gospel), it took another three decades for the white woman to adapt the white man’s blues into her own sound, which retained the Christian purity of a virginal voice (coughjoanbaez) with the “rustic” acoustic guitar. Thus was birthed the sound of the adult contemporary.

This is not to say that I am completely blaming this on the white woman’s blues. After all, she deserves a chorus for her woes, too, despite what it becomes. So much of this is predicated on marketability (if not all). But I’ve gotten a little off track. In 2009, adult contemporary is not about giving the reflective/melancholic/sensitive human a voice. Instead, AC is about soundscape, like almost every other kind of music (exceptions: anything that jolts you). AC isn’t popular because it’s a steaming hot plate of good music with a side of ambience. It’s popular because it’s a martini glass of ambience with a garnish of neatness (this word indicating the organization of a compulsive sock drawer). Think American Eagle and Pier One. A place for everything and everything in its place. Verse goes here, bridge goes there, a little vocal styling at the end of the second chorus, throw the olives you didn't eat into the trash and end on the Tonic.

Congratulations to us! We managed to employ all the trappings of viral music while still holding onto our religious roots. Virginal voice, steel guitar dripping with desire, hetero-normal lyrics. It's the mix of sexuality and restraint that is found everywhere in American culture. No wonder AC makes it.

Leftovers to Examine:

1. Radio and TV advertising bears the brunt of cultural synesthesia.

2. Fashion (or clothing style) is inseparable from its music, and vice versa.

Feblahary

It’s the last day of February! About fuckin time. February is the worst month of the year for me, and has been most of my life. I wish I wasn’t attached to the climate as if there was an umbilical cord involved, but despite my self-coercing (and the coercion of others) I can’t seem to forget that it’s winter, it’s cold, and it’s dark.

I haven’t written a blog in a few months. It’s not that I’ve stopped thinking or even stopped writing. Au contraire. I’ve been tired. And I lost my free internet connection, so now I’m online on the weekends when I can get myself to a coffee shop and pay $1.50 for a cup of tea.

Laptop also died, finally. It had been seizing for months, with sudden bouts of blue screen fever, compulsive rebooting, inner ticking and clicking. Apparently it contracted a virus at some point, and it was defenseless. Now when I turn it on there is an endless stream of data lines looking something like this:

C:\\WINDOWS\PROGRAMS\DATA\SOMETHING\WENT\WRONG\A;20959S7238948-S;LRKJ304
C:\\WINDOWS\PROGRAMS\DATA\SOMETHING\WENT\WRONG\A;20959S7238948-S;LRKJ304
C:\\WINDOWS\PROGRAMS\DATA\SOMETHING\WENT\WRONG\A;20959S7238948-S;LRKJ304
C:\\WINDOWS\PROGRAMS\DATA\SOMETHING\WENT\WRONG\A;20959S7238948-S;LRKJ304
C:\\WINDOWS\PROGRAMS\DATA\SOMETHING\WENT\WRONG\A;20959S7238948-S;LRKJ304
C:\\WINDOWS\PROGRAMS\DATA\SOMETHING\WENT\WRONG\A;20959S7238948-S;LRKJ304
C:\\WINDOWS\PROGRAMS\DATA\SOMETHING\WENT\WRONG\A;20959S7238948-S;LRKJ304
C:\\WINDOWS\PROGRAMS\DATA\SOMETHING\WENT\WRONG\A;20959S7238948-S;LRKJ304

No respectable software business will retrieve the data for under $300. Goodbye, music and pictures. Goodbye, familiar user interface. Goodbye, two poems I forgot to save to my thumb drive. I’ll miss you, “Stockhausen vs. Bus Ride Home” and “Janitorial Filing.” I’ll miss you, compulsive Zappa collection. I’ll miss you, photos of drunken revelry.

Enough of that. Turns out, my brain has a hard drive of its own, and its viruses haven’t completely materialized or taken over (yet). The other day as I was opening and categorizing mail for 12 corporate attorneys, I found my blood pressure rising at the hopes of not fucking up (slicing through Stipulations for Compromise documents, Settlement documents, and other official court documents), and softly I heard the opening chords to “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama” and I became almost as calm as an insurance rep. Musical memory can be good for something. It doesn’t always have to work against you, like when you hear someone’s ringtone playing Shania Twain in the elevator and it stays in your head for two hours. Spontaneous Zappa is possible.

Shorter than February will this blog be! The following mp3 is something I stumbled on Ubu Web’s Contemporary Chinese Experimental Music page. It’s titled “Satisfaction of Oscillation.” (I recommend wearing headphones.) It's what Philip Glass has tried to accomplish through woodwind arpeggios for decades now, but Dajuin Yao does it more intuitively and, despite the synthetic sound quality, more naturally.