Re: #8 on my list of 50 things down below there (which has been updated and more or less completed), as John Cage writes in his book “Silence”,
WOW.
Excuse me, that Red Bull belch made my eyes water. Taurin or something. That’s what I get for drinking the large can.
John Cage writes, composing, performing and appreciating music are three different, unconnected things. Id est, it would be totally legimate for me to compose such a piece, and no doubt an audience could appreciate it, but my guess is it would be the performance part where the whole thing falls apart.
Not so with my latest composition, which is going to be performed tonight. The composition is done, a duet for theremin and soprano, with a background tape of the voices you sent in (both natural and highly distorted). It has been rehearsed, and works. My biggest problem is avoiding being enthralled by the singer’s beautiful voice and forgetting to make sounds on the theremin.
I am curious about the reception it will receive. It will be recorded, and videotaped, and I will post something if I can work out all the rights and stuff.
Originally, I had hoped to get someone else to play the theremin part, but it seemed fair to me that the composer play his own composition, no matter what Cage said.
Wish me luck, or to break a leg or whatever thereminists say.
Rupture an eardrum!
Reverse a chakra!
Get a shock!
Good electromagnetic resonance!
You’ll do great, Mig. Shatter some spleens!
Thank you. Electromagnetic resonance was excellent, spleens were shattered. We killed, thanks to my soprano. I.e., the woman who sang soprano. She was wonderful. Really, really amazing. I’m more of a tenor, myself.
The piece was maybe a bit long in places, could use a little tightening. Ironically, I originally wanted to make it shorter but was advised to make it longer. So I learned something again this year.
I’m very excited about the Austrian entry in the Eurovision. I presume that’s where it all happened?
I sing soprano. :) Well, lots of women do, but I just wanted to say, I’m part of the club.
I’m part of the club that sort of sings soprano. :) Technically I am a mezzo-soprano (at least that’s what my choir teacher said), but I spent a lot of time singing regular soprano, and also sometimes alto. And I had to sing tenor once, just because the guys sucked, and because I can. :)
Now I mostly sing loudly in Italian to annoy my son.
once a year, when the eurovision song contest happens, i wish i had a television.
We have a television, but not for watching. It exists almost exclusively for playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band. And every now and then the kid will watch a DVD.
what, you don’t get the eurovision song contest in oregon?
see, this is why i left washington state for austria, man.
Well, the short version of the story is that I am not much for any form of what I call “passive entertainment”. (You know, sitting and watching other people do stuff.) I don’t watch television, I don’t have long enough of an attention span to get through a movie, if there is sports going on I’d rather play than watch, if there’s music I’ve got to be singing or playing along, etc.
So naturally we do not get whatever the Eurovision Song Contest is, because not only do we not watch television, but also I have not bothered to pay for cable. And as a side effect of that, my kid plays outside and gets dirty and uses his imagination. I think it’s a pretty good system.
Kid gave me quite a laugh last night… he was getting out of the tub and drying off, and told me he had to dry behind his kidneys. I found this statement rather confusing, so I pointed to his side and said, “Your kidneys are in there.” He looked at me for a minute, then said, “Oh really? I always thought my kidneys were these ball-thingies under my penis.” I managed not to laugh until after he went to bed a few minutes later.
those ball things *aren’t* the kidneys? srsly?
Not according to my high school biology textbook, anyway.
Too bad you haven’t got any sons, eh?
But what makes it even funnier is that three or four days previous to this incident, my mom bought my son a toy gun and he was running around the house pointing it at me and my mom and my sister and yelling, “I’m going to shoot you in the kidneys!” I didn’t remember that even until I told my sister the first story and she started cracking up and reminded me that he’d been shooting us all in the kidneys. I laughed too, but I’m mostly confused becuase my son *is* in fact aware of the basic anatomical differences between men and women, thus he should have assumed that girls do not have “kidneys”.