RAPTOR is a sound system designed to scare birds out of your vineyard with recordings of raptors etc. Raptor Reloaded is a project by alien productions in which contemporary composers provide other sounds to keep starlings out of your grapes. You can listen to a sample here. This is the coolest thing. I hope they do this again next year.
Posted in Das Gehirn, Metamorphosism
Tags: electronic music, music, raptor, raptor reloaded
Ten years of this
“Do you think you’re profiting from these lessons,” my cello teacher asked me the day before yesterday. I was a little gobsmacked. I mean, I’ve been wondering the same thing, but why was he asking? Does he want to break up with me? Is he being contrite? I didn’t get it and said something vague.
But the truth is that my improvement has been marginal ten years of this and I’m still absolutely musically clueless. My technique is bad as is everything else. I have a nice cello, though, in a nice red hard case.
It is somewhat frustrating. It would be more frustrating were I to have actual musical goals I was wanting to accomplish, but when I try to visualize a goal all I get is haze. Maybe there’s a kind of musical dyslexia and I have it.
That would be nice, because it would be an excuse, rather than insufficient practice and impatience. Largely, though, I guess it’s pretty much mea culpa. A few brief, unfocused practice sessions per week doesn’t cut it. My teacher hasn’t been much help, he’s been pretty nice and patient and forgiving until now, whereas what I probably needed part of the time was a mean little old Russian lady with a willow switch making me play scales until my fingers bled.
I’ve bought a book of etudes I’m trying to work through. I bought a book of scales I’m going to try to work on, although, I am ashamed to admit, I am still shaky on the whole concept of key signatures and other basic music theory.
Also my bowing sucks and my breathing is ridiculous. I’ve started hatha yoga and that ought to help with the latter.
My intonation is okay. So-so. Second and third fingers a little close together, but if I concentrate on that it’s okay.
I say ten years. I do think so. Ten years is a long time.
On my end of the process, I would have to guess that insufficient practice and a lack of any sort of vision of what I really want to do are my main problems. My original goal was to find out how a cello works. So what now? I blindly stumbled into playing in an orchestra. Maybe playing competently in an orchestra? Playing specific pieces competently?
Understanding what the hell is going on? Maybe that’s asking too much.
Guest post: Mig’s tortoise on how to do it
Despite what they tell you, there is a way out of here. The secret is to keep looking. And to look everywhere. And once you have looked everywhere, look again. And if looking everywhere again didn’t work, look everywhere again in a different pattern. Because you never know. All you know is, there’s a way out. The secret is to never stop. It’s not perseveration, take my word for it. It’s perseverance. There are temptations and distractions on the way, like your reflection in the cellar window.
God, the reflection. I could stare at that for hours. In fact, I have stared at it for hours.
There’s just something about it. It cannot be explained, the fascination. They think I think it’s another tortoise, but I don’t. It’s just, I dunno.
But you keep looking. As if looking were the whole point. But escaping is the point, let’s not kid ourselves or comfort ourselves. You don’t rest until you escape.
Oh, this is a nice rock.
Just the right size, tortoise size.
Hi there. Quiet type?
Hi there. Hi there. Hi there. You alone? Do you mind? Oh, god.
That’s another distraction, the rock. But so good.
Such a sweet rock.
But you don’t rest until you escape. Unless you count the distractions. Life is one thing only: escaping.
Not just being on the lookout for an escape, but being in the actual process of escaping, constantly. Everything is escaping. The secret is this: you must already be in the process of escaping when the avenue of escape presents itself. You must already be climbing the board blocking your exit from the flower bed when the board falls over because it was poorly secured.
You must already be shinnying over the flower pot blocking your exit when it turns out you’ve grown enough to make it out.
You must already be squeezing through the little picket fence when it gets loosened just enough to make it out.
The secret is you must always be there, escaping, in order to escape.
But what do you do when you’ve escaped, I am sometimes asked by some wise guy.
Here’s what you do: You escape from that, too: It’s escape and escape and escape, all the way down.
What the magician’s assistant said to the lighthousekeeper about mermaids
Why is it mermaids are always sitting on rocks combing their hair with those shells that look like combs, on sunny days? The water is calm and their tits are out but covered with hair. Hanging down from their heads, I mean. The hair. Long and usually blonde. Or they’re wearing bikini tops, sometimes made out of scallop shells, or they have scales to their armpits or their backs to us. But how often, really, is it sunny and calm? We, who go inside when it rains, aren’t we projecting? Wouldn’t mermaids come out to play in storms?
I can see them avoiding coast and shore in storms, due to the getting dashed on rocks and coral part. But in deeper water? A good storm in deep water sounds like fun for soemone who breathes air and water both and doesn’t get seasick. Surfing waves the size of skyscrapers, just watch out for floating logs and dinghies and other big debris, but otherwise?
After a big storm you’d want to sit on a rock combing your hair, for sure. Look at that world, the gentle swells, the glassy surface, the golden sunlight coins spent for you. You can’t only rejoice all the time, but neither can you grieve to the exclusion of all else. There is a time to tape your David Cassidy posters to the wall and a time to remove them and help your dad put up a new coat of paint. There is a time to listen to the very crust of the planet groan in a good storm, and a time to smell the ozone and tease sailors.
There are so many voices in my head, or maybe it is just one voice but it speaks in a variety of accents and frequencies, so many people inside there or one person pretending to be many different people, or having different moods, saying so many things and nonstop, projecting some inner storm on the calm, and calm on storm.
If I could, I’d learn to breathe water and be like a mermaid and feel the actual storm directly and be part of the calm.
The lighthousekeeper looked at her blankly. The cut on his head still hadn’t stopped bleeding entirely. “Four cherry tomatoes,” he said, “sit in a shallow Japanese dish on my kitchen table, practically motionless, at least while I’ve been here writing this. A pitcher one-third full of water likewise motionless, but for tiny ripples echoing my movements. My coffee cup, my laptop, and four walnuts.”
They sat there on a rock and combed their hair with their fingers, and felt the quiet, and recalled the storm, for a couple minutes.
Posted in Metamorphosism
Tags: lighthousekeeper, magician's assistant, mermaids, ocean, underwater
It was so stormy the lighthouse fell over
It was so stormy the lighthouse fell over. Luckily the lights stayed on and thanks to the way it laid on the jetty ships could still sort of see it over the waves now and then, depending on distance as more of a glow than piercing golden beam but enough to warn them in a safe direction if they knew what they were looking for, so there were no shipwrecks in the area that night. The lighthousekeeper was not so lucky. He lay draped over his bedframe amidst scattered chess pieces, bleeding from a cut over his eye where he’d hit his head on a king, one with a crown with a sharp cross on top. He would have sat up, shook his head to clear it and began making plans to deal with his catastrophic situation, except a space spider alien squid (giganticus) stuck a tentacle through a (broken) window and dragged the lighthousekeeper to the bottom of the sea, where a shining city lay spread out on the seabed.
There was air inside so he could breathe.
There was light, also, because the walls – made of ships and plastic refuse – glowed with an eerie bioluminescence. Because it was at the bottom of the sea, air pressure was high, which gave him a headache like a migraine announcing itself but otherwise it was okay.
Immediately he began exploring, looking for an exit. The air had a fishy smell, but oxygen is oxygen, beggars can’t be choosers.
“Hallo?” he said, in sort of a careful shout, and not “hello” because he was a European lighthousekeeper, not an American one, as far as he knew, all American lighthouses had been automated. In fact, strictly speaking, he was a writer, rather than a professional lighthousekeeper and had sought the job thinking it would give him time and solitude to reflect and write.
What a mistake. He reflected on how his first impulse in this squid-made city had been escape. He resolved to explore, instead, maybe he’d be able to write about this. No! No! Maybe he’d be able to experience this for once, he thought. Here, in this fishy place at the seabed, he finally opened his eyes to his existence.
Someone cleared their throat behind him and he screamed like a girl. He was embarrassed. A woman dressed as a magician’s assistant held her hands up. “Sorry! I didn’t want to scare you!” The lighthousekeeper introduced himself. “What is this place?”
The woman shrugged. “I’m Winona. I was working on a cruise ship that went down. It’s over there.” She pointed.
The lighthousekeeper thought he saw what she was pointing at. “Are there other survivors?”
“Not from my ship. One per catastrophe,” she said.
“I was going to explore. Come with me?”
Winona shrugged. “For a while. Avoid the horror of the abyss, though.”
“The what?”
“That’s what I call it,” she said. “Everyone who gazes upon it goes mad because their minds are overwhelmed by what they see.”
“Okay.”
“Here, try this on.” She gave him a top hat.
It was a little big, but he had a match book in his pocket and when he put that inside the hat band it fit fine.
Little-known facts: the book
In time for holiday shoppers, I am planning to make a book of around 2 dozen “Little-known facts” pieces previously published on this weblog. It will be professionally printed on off-white paper and hand-bound by me in the traditional Japanese stab binding style. I’m running to the art supply store this Friday to look for some nice paper for the covers. The format will be roughly 8″ square, and if the current layout is maintained it will be around 50-60 pages long, with illustrations.
I may also include a bonus surprise in each book, but not sure about that yet.
I would charge around ten Euro per book, which is about 14 U.S. dollars at current rates of exchange, plus postage. Payment would probably have to be via Paypal, unless someone trusts me with cash or has a better idea.
I have a figure in my mind, a certain number of books I would produce. They would be numbered individually. What I would like to know from you is if my number is high or low. How many of you would be interested in buying how many copies of this book?
Posted in Little-Known Facts, Metamorphosism
Tags: book, holiday gift idea, little-known facts, marketing
Major Smith and the space spider things II
Major Smith suddenly wheeled about, there in his yellow kitchen, wheeled like a dervish stopped in mid-whirl. He turned on his heel and returned to his refrigerator, where he opened the freezer. God, it was full of ice. He could barely get the drawer open. When was the last time he had defrosted? He moved a package of frozen corn, and a nearly empty box of popsicles. It was in here somewhere. He found it two drawers down, under a sack of ice cubes that had frozen into a solid brick: frozen bliss. He looked at the back of the box. Best before 2007, it said. He wondered if bliss could go bad. He put it into the microwave on low. Milk turned into yogurt. What would bliss turn into when it went bad? Joy? Euphoria? Rapture? He considered the difference between bliss and joy. He wished he had a dictionary in his house, and not all these thesauri.
The phone rang. His private phone. It was headquarters. The Secretary for Alien Spider affairs was on the line. Major Smith knew the score: the alien spiders who remained – and there were several – had taken to the oceans and made shipping unsafe because in the water they developed into huge, squid-like creatures that pulled tankers and cargo ships to the ocean floor, where sonar imaging and google maps discovered that they were being cemented into some sort of structure with some sort of natural adhesive that hardened into an impervious shell. What were they building down there, was the question. Their underwater city continued to grow. The alien spider squid continued to reproduce, although it was unknown how they did so, none had been dissected or observed laying eggs, giving live birth, dividing or mating. The alien spider squid soon discovered the Pacific Garbage Patch and added that to their structure in the space of days. Swoosh, like that, the oceans cleaned in days of centuries of mankind’s trash.
People were starting to get angry. What were these space alien spider squid up to? They were making us look bad, whatever they were. World leaders debated it in the UN but Russia and China vetoed it. Within a year the oceans were pristine and world petroleum reserves were depleted due to tankers being all gone. Giant space alien spider squid were found moving up rivers, plugging factory pipes with their impervious whatever it was. The streets filled with panicked masses as pollution rates fell below the lowest levels measured in centuries.
Major Smith looked at the bliss. Elation? he wondered. Maybe it was a halflife sort of thing when bliss went bad. The problem was, none of the definitions he had was any good for figuring out a difference between bliss, joy, and happiness. If bliss was ultimate joy, then maybe it decayed into joy when it went bad, and from there into happiness, but the definitions he had found struck him as describing things as a sort of differences of degrees thing when he was sure it was in fact a difference of quality.
He found a jar in the cupboard with a little happiness stuck to the inside walls. With a small spoon, he would be able to scrape some off if he was patient. He held the telephone between his shoulder and ear and moved his eyes from the microwave to the cupboard, and back, repeatedly, as one does when shifting ones attention between two alternatives as part of a decision-making process.
Major Smith decided to give bliss a try. If it was, in fact, that. It looked a lot like joy.
“Yes,” he said into the phone.