[woman]
Honey are you singing to the cats?

[man]
Um yeah

[woman]
Why?

[man]
It calms them while they eat.

[man]
who pisses on blinds anyways?
who gets ideas like that?
only a cute little tuxedo cat.
who pees on appliances
on the stove, boiler and microwave?
it’s the fuzzy little grey psycho that’s who…
too bad it’s not snowing
and freezing with ice
i’d lock you out all day
it would make me feel nice…

Tortoise: You’re a little close to my rock, you’re making me nervous.

Man: Sorry. [Steps away from rock]

Tortoise: Hey, nice shoes!

Man: I… carry on, don’t let me distract you.

Tortoise: You have any more of that lettuce? For once I finish here? What’s up, you look down in the dumps.

Man: No, nah. I’m fine. I have time on my hands, is all. Just not infinite time, so I’m forced to prioritize my goof-off agenda, which re-stresses me.

Tortoise: Have you vaccuumed?

Man: Yep.

Tortoise: Mopped?

Man: Just finished.

Tortoise: Made the bed?

Man: Eh, yeah, sure I made the bed.

Tortoise: Decided what to cook on Sunday and done the shopping?

Man: I’ll do that tomorrow.

Tortoise: [Nods]

Man: I mean, should I play the cello, fire up the theremin, try to compose something, record something, write something?

Tortoise: Have you weeded the vegetable garden?

Man: I did that last week.

Tortoise: It grows back, you know. Mowed?

Man: I’m putting that off until tomorrow, in the hopes that it rains and gives me an excuse not to.

Tortoise: Respect.  [Stares at man]

Man: What?

Tortoise: Did you really make the bed?

Man: Mostly.

Tortoise: If I were you, I would write an erotic novel entitled Transit of Venus.

Man: I think that’s been done.

Tortoise: Can’t copyright titles, dude.

Man: Plus, aren’t you supposed to write what you know?

Tortoise: I would totally write it, but I’m busy.

Man: Maybe I will try to come up with a name for the musical genre in which I compose. Unfortunately creepcore is taken.

Tortoise: Crashcreep?

Man: Hrm. Nice.

Tortoise: Don’t mention it.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE6D425DBE5B6623E

Maybe don’t watch them all at once. They could, potentially, get a little monotonous. Gamma thinks maybe I ought to try a little structure.

Some theremin and accordion (and a cereal box and a jar of bolts and a screwdriver) for St. Patrick’s Day. Footage shot by Gamma, and taken from the Prellinger Archive.

It took the waitress a while to find me, but I was in no hurry at all. I used the time to observe a couple guys at a nearby table and when that grew too depressing I looked at the single malts in the cabinet. They were beautiful and alluring, but when the waitress found me I ordered a gin martini. As I have mentioned before, I specify gin when I order martinis but that was unnecessary this time. Maybe they know me there by now. She asked if I wanted ice. This time I said no. She asked if I wanted olives or a twist of lemon, I said olives.

My drink came. I sat there and meditated on the single malts.

My wife called and said she was almost there. I considered ordering her her frankfurters and the glass of mineral water she wanted, but decided to wait until she arrived, to avoid the frankfurters getting cold and wrinkly. Service is fast in that bar anyhow. It was the right decision because she called a few minutes later, in tears. Right after she had called me the first time, a police officer had knocked on her window and pulled her over and gave her a €50 ticket for using a mobile phone while driving, but she was unable to pay because all she had was €40 so now she was wandering the streets of Vienna looking for a cash machine and the one the policeman had directed her to was closed and she didn’t know where another one was.

I said okay. I expressed sympathy and told her no problem, we have plenty of time and so on and I’ll be here when she gets here.

We did have plenty of time.

All the single malts, or many of them, had names that reminded me of Tolkein characters. “The leathery wings of the Laphroaigs beat the darkling skies like a drum, and their screeches turned Frodo’s bones to ice.”

“He is an archer, of the Lagavullin tribe.”

“And the race of the elves abandoned Tallisker, and sailed to the Western Lands.”

“Betrayed by the treacherous traiter Auchentoshan, King Glenfarclas died a hero’s death beneath the Giant Elm in his beloved Glendronach.”

“Is it a Cnoc? You have a Cnoc in your pocket, amirite?” hissed Gollum.

My wife called after a while and interrupted an epiphany I was having about Tolkein. She changed her order to champagne, no sausages. It was on the table when she arrived a few minutes later. As was my second martini.

The waiter also brought more nuts, dispelling my fear that they had my picture behind the bar with the note, “don’t give him too many nuts, he’s like a goldfish and will absent-mindedly eat them until he bursts.”

My wife was a bit stressed but in a better mood because she had been so miserable when she finally returned to her car that the police officer, who had been abandoned there by his colleagues, standing guard with her registration in one hand and the ticket in the other, took pity on her, tore up the ticket and told her to have a nice evening. So champagne was a good call, I guess – to take the edge off the stress, on the one hand, and to celebrate not getting a ticket after all on the other.

Something you should know about my wife is that she gets out of about half of her tickets by winning the sympathy of the ticketing officer. Not always, but more than me. We both have the same approach – throw ourselves at their mercy – but maybe she looks unhappier. I have, in fact, never gotten out of a ticket.

The concert itself was, as always, good. I didn’t fall asleep until the last piece, when the hall ran out of oxygen, despite having two drinks in me. As always in this series, they performed compositions by modern composers. All but one were living, and present, and took bows on the stage afterwards. We especially enjoyed the first piece, and the penultimate one, which featured electronics and a burping soprano (an idea I had considered for a composition, but discarded out of pity for my singer. I guess that is what separates the men from the boys in the world of composition).

Needless to say, we have renewed our subscription.

This piece I’m composing.

What kind of piece?

String quartet.

Can I listen?

Sure, here.

(the piece is 2.45 long currently. the guy starts getting antsy around 2.00, gives up at 2.30) Okay. What’s the, um, theme?

Fish.

Fish? It didn’t sound like fish.

It’s about fish. Grunion.

Grunion.

They’re special fish. Once a year during the same full moon each year they swim onto the same beach and mate and… (sees the guy has lost interest) … and so on.

Okay.

Grunion.

Okay.

They’re special fish.

Okay. You ever post compositions to MySpace or something so people can comment about them?

No.

Useful feedback.

Grunion. Remember that.

I’ve been thinking about writing a clinical study on the interaction of muscle relaxants and Jameson Irish whiskey.

Abstract:

Large, mostly dark Gestalt appears to pursue two lighter, one reddish, one grey, and much faster shapes through a lime-green space, suggestive of infinite time/space.

See, this morning after Gamma left for school the kittens got into Gamma’s room and I, still a bit groggy from my “back pill” last night, was chasing them, in my usual black suit and tie, cursing like Harvey Keitel (I like to think) in a Quentin Tarantino film (Bad Vet, maybe). And the elusive little critters were diving between the bed and the trundle bed beneath it, and I would wait 30 seconds silently and, missing the attention they would climb back out, and I would chase them again, and they’d dive back under the bed. This went on for six minutes, or twelve tries, until I caught the female and tossed her out and closed the door. The male is easier to catch, generally, but by this time I was impatient, and my back was killing me from all the diving around, goddammit, so I endeavoured to make his trundlebed hiding place less comfy by sliding it back and forth with increasing velocity until he opted to join his sister in the hallway at which point all was calm again.

I have not combined back pills with whiskey since the first time due to the previously-mentioned (elsewhere) side effects which include falling down (due to excessive relaxation) and being treated well by my wife due to her mistaking me for a friend.

I have, besides this study, also been thinking about dementia, and two relatives directly affected, and how they are coping or not and also, as one does, at least if one has hypochondriac tendencies, wondering whether this dark hole haunting me has any connection to this.

You know the dark hole, right? Not really a hole, just this vast darkness in your mind? Or your meta-mind? This darkness back there, so dark it’s hard to say anything more about it but I’ll try? And you wonder if the names you forget, or switch, or the words you have trouble accessing, are somehow connected, and whether your pursuits, such as ballroom dancing, or music lessons, or artistic pursuits, or composition, are a good insurance policy against this, or useless.

Time will tell, I guess.

Also, fucking back, man.

At least I’ve been dreaming more lately. Great dreams, I am very grateful for dreams. Thanks! Two nights ago I was on a ship of some kind on a stormy nighttime sea, with a Danish singer of whom I am fond, and the ship was sinking, and maybe there was an airplane, and water was coming in, but the ship was very buoyant and my singer friend was reassuring me that this was entirely normal and the ship would not, in fact, sink, and that we would make it to Iceland just fine, or something. In the second dream that night I was pointing a plastic rocket launcher at a family about to escape in a helicopter, waiting for them to take off so that they would die in the crash when I shot them (they were bad guys) (there was also a cargo plane in this dream) when my alarm went off.

Last night: my wife walked into a wall in a seaside Japanese town (or so I was informed by a young man in the dream) and I was a spectator at a massage contest, and one of the masseuses and her friends had decided to massage me, when my alarm went off.

And so it goes.

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!

The composition is for theremin, voice (spoken and soprano) and cash register.

I need voice recordings of people reading, say, the last ten or so things they have purchased, with or without prices. I.e., “milk, $2. oranges, $3″ or “automobile, €20,000″. Or whatever. “Shirt, stereo, earrings, kitten.”

Please mail to metamorphosist@gmail.com.

Thanks in advance.

I promise to do a better job with the voice track this time.

Please mail me a recording (metamorphosist@gmail.com) of you reading your shopping list, okay? In your native language. The last time you went shopping. Groceries, or hardware, or seasonal holiday gift items, or whatever. It can be as long or as short as you want.

Thanks in advance!

Deadline, let’s say deadline sometime in January, okay?