SurrDave

Can you see emotion?

2009-11-07T05:20:26Z

Can you see it rising like mist off the pavement?
Can you see it coalescing gray on fabric walls?
Can you see a wave cresting in the air, a following sea?
If you look at someone's head, can you see their mind?
Can you see thoughts form and spring, dissolve, orbit, spiral out, trail behind?
What does attention look like?
Can you see music? --not heads and stems and staves, but notes with evolving shape and color
and motion.
Can you close your eyes and see the shape of an orchestra, and name instruments by genus and species?
Can you see the form of a sonata as it lives?
Can you make out the composer's signature in the corner?
When you look at rain, do you see the river and the sea?
When you look at mountains, do you see sediment? Do you see mountains waiting underground?
If you can see these things, then see one thing more:
The inside of your eye.

OVFF 2009

2009-11-01T01:52:38Z

Thursday evening's Old Ones concert--bedlamhouse, ladyat, Juanita, Roper, Judith, filkertom. I knew a couple of the songs. The lady in front of me commented with some disdain that everyone on stage was significantly younger than she. It was a good in-the-round format, each taking turns and occasionally someone jumping in with harmony. I remember a lot of doo-wop on one of Tom's, but I don't recall what song it was.

The Chamberfilk rehearsal Friday morning was two trumpets and a violin, not in tune. Saturday, however, it expanded to include a jumbo guitar (acoustic bass), a cello, and a flute. Having the lower registers made all the difference, it really did. Also, the additional voices freed me up for doing some harmony. See, it's very tiring on the chops to be adjusting intonation all the time, so unison between instruments that have different off notes was wearing me out. With harmony, however, not only do you not have to work as hard, many minor sins are forgiven. Also, it can involve small counterpoint phrases that keep rhythm during long notes. Add to that the additional tone colors, and we're starting to hear music. Our cellist, who was very skilled, came up with an arpeggiated ground for the waltz that really made something out of it.
The challenge in arranging for pickup groups is that you don't know what instruments and skill levels you're going to have. To some extent, Phillip had commitments from people, so he had a fair idea of at least a core group. There are some arranging techniques for managing the unknown factors, but of course the most effective (and most likely) is to let the musicians who show up make contributions. It isn't the kind of deterministic approach typical for modern chamber music, but hey--written arrangements involving improvisation predate jazz by centuries.

I was a bit at sixes and sevens Friday afternoon, not really sure what I wanted to do. So I caught snatches of Toyboat and Duane Elms and paused outside the rooms with the lyric writing and home recording workshops. Because of some rescheduling and the popularity of the twofers, there was a dearth of one shots, so I signed up. Couldn't decide what to do, but partly on the advice of quadrivium I went for the unusual and just played "Hymn" on trumpet. It's interesting getting on a filk stage, in a genre that is terrifically text-based, and using no words. As in the arrangement done by Play It With Moxie at the GaFilk banquet, the first chorus was straight and the second was New Orleans jazz. Fun. The acoustics were perfect for the horn, with a nice reverb off the ceiling that mitigated the extreme directional character of the instrument's tone. I'm curious how the recording came out, though; I think I backed off too much from the mic.

After that, I stayed for all of Heather Dale's concert, at the end of which I bought her CD "The Road to Santiago" because it had "Sedna" on it (and a couple others she did in the concert). She signed it. Then, at the dead dog, I bought her CD "The Green Knight"; by this time we'd played a bit in the same circles and in the jam, and I got a more personalized inscription--something about a trumpet, can you believe.
As for Heather's performance, she really knows how to involve an audience. judifilksign was not on stage, and much as I love her, she would have been a distraction because Heather is very physical in her singing and playing. Gestures and poses are a large part of her singing delivery, and the movements when she plays the recorder are neither dance nor gesture but accents of the musical phrasing. She also communicates joy throughout the performance, as if to say she's glad to be there and grateful for our attention. That's gratifying to a listener.

At the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, I wore my GaFilk toque, which is a point of pride because there are only two in the world, and Karen Anderson owns the other one. Bonus, she was there and wearing hers. (See, normally guests at GaFilk get black baseball caps; the year I was Toastmaster, all the guests except me and Karen were from Canada, so the concom gave out black toques, but we two got white ones.) Hat highlights included Mary Bertke's panache and hsifyppah's face on a milk carton.

I was late to Larry Warner's concert but caught most of it. I first started attending housefilks in Phoenix in 1994, which amounted to Larry, the Duras Sisters, once or twice Leslie, Diana Challis, and Nancy. (If my memory isn't accurate, believe me, I have a good excuse.) I hadn't seen any of those people since 1995 until running into Chris Dickinson at Consonance 2007. The point is, Larry was among my first impressions of filk, so it was a trip in the Wayback machine hearing him.

quadrivium was tasked with performing "Fey Grass" in the om-nom-nominees concert, and to allay nervousness, she recruited some backup players. I put my brains on the rack trying to figure out how on Earth to play bluegrass trumpet and ultimately failed, but it turned out she didn't have a guitar, so I did that. She was in negotiations with bedlamhouse for some mandolin, but he had his own fish to fry, so I played the mandolin part. Here's the thing: the chorus names each instrument and gives it a measure to show off with a flurry of notes. First line: fiddle - and Amy throws down. Second line: mandolin - and I played something on guitar. Third line: guitar - well, OK, talking about what I just did, and besides, the lyrics say I'm drunk. The redemption of this piece is that it was written by a guitarist, and it's in C, which is the best key for doing fast pentatonic licks because of the way the open strings fall in the first form. So, in any other key I couldn't have done much of anything. (Well, in any other key I would have used a capo.) Anyway, my mic cut out after the first chorus, which was just as well because I flubbed the lick the other two times and really I was there for atmosphere anyway. Mary played all the fancy stuff on the keys (and inserted some jokes in the lyrics: "I just happened to have my piano with me on a hike in the mountains... wheeze, cough, pant... in my back pocket...").
Last time I was at OVFF I participated in "Stray Dog Man" playing the jug. It was a fun shtick, using a bottle of cider and drinking from it during the song so that it was in tune by the final chord. There was some talk of repeating that immortal performance, but eh.

There were only a few programs I really cared about attending: Chamberfilk, the nominees concert, the auction, and MEW's concert. MEW talked about having me in on some songs, but she had plenty of people up there and upon reflection, there wasn't much I could have done really. Some harmony or descant on "Rise Again," perhaps. Instead I got to listen and enjoy. I've almost never heard her live and only on a few recordings (The Wedding Project, the Black Book Band). Good voice, well used. And I'd have to say the project management on stage was good as well, because there was very little dead time between songs, and what there was had smooth transitional patter. (It owed a lot to the sound crew's efforts in setting up at the start of the show.) I expected it to be one of the better pieces of programming at the con, and it didn't disappoint. She delivered.

I have mixed feelings about the auction. There's an amount I'm wiling to donate each con, and of course I'd prefer to get something I'll enjoy out of it. Usually the things I want go above my budget pretty quickly, but this year I won a dulcimer. It's the one peteralway mentions here as being made by a reputable craftsman... before he was reputable. Basically, the bottom two frets are misplaced, so those notes are never in tune.
A brief digression: up until now, I had no experience with fretted instruments that were diatonic rather than chromatic. On a guitar, ukelele, balalaika, mandolin, or sitar the frets are spaced geometrically, getting closer together as you get to the middle of the string. It's physics. I know the physics. On a dulcimer, you don't get all the frets, just the ones for a modal scale. That means they aren't evenly spaced. So I really didn't know how to evaluate it, and my ear isn't accoustomed to the vagaries of intonation over a perfect interval drone either. Short version, I didn't do a good job checking it out before bidding. Shorter version, I didn't care. I gave money to Interfilk, and I can make it do something useful. In fact, I'm messing with it now tuning the strings to D Ab A instead of the normal D A A. That way I get all my chromatic notes and some really interesting chord inversions, and yet the drone is still available. It's going to take some practice, but I'm hoping the unnatural uses to which I'll put the tuning change will distract people like Peter so that the fret issues seem less important. Jazz dulcimer, baby. Put that in your pipe.

Saturday night I joined the circle by the piano, but not until later, about the time Rand and Adam packed it in. Before that I had been talking to Peter and several other people about dulcimers etc., had a leisurely dinner, started a song. In the main room, Peter was working on a song, and Kathy was working with someone I didn't know to overcome stage fright. This is important, and I'll come back to it. Out in the circle, I played a couple covers of songs by independent folksingers I know. Basically I stuck to those because the guitar was in open G and I by God was going to use that before I went through the hassle of putting it back to normal.

Sunday we finished up the Chamberfilk rehearsal and then performed. I thought it went pretty well. Afterward I stayed to hear the song contest, "Starstruck". There were several I liked, including one that read it as "Star's truck". Skipped out on Whose Line for sustenance before the jam.
I spent most of the jam at the keys of quadrivium's piano but also got the horn out. She and I traded licks up on the stage, although she had to exit to the floor to reach a microphone on some louder tunes. I'm anxiously monitoring to be sure we didn't wind up on YouTube. Barry picked some fun songs: Brown-Eyed Girl, which allowed for some decorative high parallel sixths on the piano; "Wild Night", which has a great left hand line; on "Ripple", I walked up to the center mike with Barry and MEW to do harmony (such a beautiful song); pulled out the horn for some screaming on "House of the Rising Sun"; stuck with piano on "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" because the singers were doing the descant--last time at OVFF Phillip and I dueled trumpets on that song, but this time I just did single-line harmony on the piano for the verses. MEW and I did get a chance to do some voice-trumpet duets.

In the dead dog I was out in the hallway rather than in what had been the dealer's room. I played my new song next to Heather. It is in open G tuning--I had to write something in open G if I was going to keep covering those other two songs--and it is a story based on the contrast between Heather's stage presence and the person Kathy was helping with stage fright. The lyrics were a bit rougher, but the idea and general music got across and went over well. I'll try to do a recording of it.
I really don't remember many specifics of the dead dog, but it was an excellent circle. (OK, I remember Mary's "so-risque-I'm-going-to-pretend-I-didn't-play-it" song, but I won't kiss and tell. And by kiss I mean, well, "appreciate the performance".)

Tempest

2009-10-29T01:14:54Z

She's in the corner
Or the middle of the room
You never remember when she tells you her name
Her hair is dusty
Until caught by the light
Her eyes are overcast but there's no rain

She doesn't meet your look
As she shuffles down the hall
Her figure hidden in her calico
She stammers if she speaks to you
And mumbles nevermind

She's hearing sweet music
In the air around her head
Her eyes break through the clouds,
Her throat from bud to bloom
Her flute floats to her lips - a kiss
Warmth comes to her cheeks

There's a tempest all around her
But it's calm when she's alone
And the thermals lift her heart
To the light above the storm
She knows she can fly
She knows she can fly

She's a shining spirit
Up upon the music stage
You never forget the first time you hear her sing
Her hair is flowing
And her feet are light
She's swaying in a breeze of melody

Her flute articulates
A branch upon a tree
Reaching out beyond her canopy
She's eloquent and lovely
And she speaks her mind

She steps down from the stage
The glow fades from her face
Her eyes fall to the floor,
Her feet drag in the dirt
A song lives in her heart - a hope
A song can come to mine

There's a tempest all around her
But it's calm when she's alone
And the thermals lift her heart
To the light above the storm
She knows she can fly
She knows she can fly

Chords (open G major tuning):

A section:

G
Gmaj7
C Cmin D/G
G
Gmaj7
C Cmin D/G

B section (twice):

G
Bmin/G
C Cmin/G
Amin7sus4/G
D7/G

Chorus:

Emin
Bmin
Amin7sus4 C
D

Intro/break/ending:
(harmonics)

G
D
G
D

OVFF 2009

2009-10-29T00:25:04Z

Arrived Wednesday after an uneventful drive with hawklady, in fact with very nice weather through the mountains. We managed to miss rush hour in all cities.

I took advantage of the breakfast the first and last days, but in between I got up just in time for Chamberfilk rehearsal. Caught bits and pieces of concerts the whole weekend, but I was careful to catch Heather Dale, Larry Warner, MEW, and the Pegasus Om-nom-nominees concert. (Actually, I was in the last one and almost in MEW's.) I forgot to bring my copy of Rosemary and Rue for seananmcguire's book signing, so I bought one in the dealer's room.

Visited the auction and wound up buying a dulcimer. I haven't mastered it yet. The Chamberfilk concert actually went pretty well. I confess, when we started in the first rehearsal I thought we had a long way to go, but we made it. I offered to do an arrangement for next year. Caught the Iron Filker contest and got a copy of peteralway's song because I liked the chords. Also liked mrgoodwraith's "My Gafilk Song" in the one-shots.

Then on Sunday afternoon, the jam. Oh, the jam, the bonny bonny jam. I don't remember the last time I really cut loose like that. Maybe in the studio for quadrivium's CD. Barry does a good job leading a jam. I should have spent more time with him and Sally. For Sunday evening's dead dog, I was in the second circle in the hallway. I really enjoyed seeing the west coast contingent--tfabris, vixyish, Sooj (who I hadn't met but mentioned in this entry), Seanan, hsifyppah, who else? The glorious Amy, whose fiddle was everywhere that weekend. Mary, catalana, Roper, MEW and Ed, Merav, Mel, Phillip. Heather, who was kind enough to sign her CD with a rather nice inscription.

Returned Monday, after another drive in good weather missing rush hour in all cities, this time listening to new CDs. I've actually returned to work refreshed and more productive. Maybe I should do this again next year.

Do you remember?

2009-10-13T03:37:58Z

It seems that the only option supplied by MITS for those who actually finished building the [Altair] was a machine language program that you could key into the machine only by the row of tiny switches on the front panel. It was a program which used the 8080 chip instructions LDA, MOV, ADD, STA, and JMP. If everything was right, the program would add two numbers together. You would be able to tell by mentally translating the code of the flashing LEDs out of their octal form and into a regular decimal number. You would feel like the first man stepping on the moon, a figure in history--you would have the answer to the question stumping mankind for centuries: What happens when you add six and two? Eight! Harry Garland would later admit, "You might have a hard time explaining to an outsider why it was exciting."

--from Hackers by Steven Levy

Walk Away Renee

2009-10-08T18:08:17Z

For a long time I knew only the Lefte Bank version of this song. The Four Tops made a miniscule change in rhythm on one line of the chorus that alters the whole message. Well, that and Levi's more forceful vocal.

Here someone has extracted just the vocals, so you can hear the full effect of the tight harmony contrasting with the raging freedom of the lead. I'm thinking this was another one where they intentionally transposed it one step above the key that was comfortable for him in order to get more emotional tension. (Also, in this track you actually understand the words.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp0OHYnuuXs&feature=related

50 Book Challenge

2009-10-04T15:23:20Z

Lost track of my list, but here are the latest.

Benford, Gregory. In The Ocean of night, Across the Sea of Suns, Great Sky River.
The first half of the Galactic Center series. Benford is good, very good. He plans far ahead. Particularly in the third book he shows that he understands what language means to people as well as he understands astrophysics, which is no small compliment.

Braun, Lillian Jackson. The Cat Who Could Read Backwards. The Cat Who Went Into the Closet.
My family's been into this series for years, passing the books around. I finally started it, and I love it. Qwilleran's a fun character, and the way she dances on the line between the cats just being cats or being something more is also fun.

McGuire, Seanan. Rosemary and Rue.
I'm posting a separate review of this one. Very good.

Wallace, James & Jim Erickson. Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the making of the Microsoft empire.
History of the computer industry. Well, no, history of Bill. I found this one unusually impartial. The authors scrupulously provide multiple accounts of events, for example the missed meeting between Gary Kildall and IBM--it's a funny story the way it's usually told, but it turns out the various parties actually had reasons for doing what they did, and ultimately it was one of the many miscommunications that make up history. The point that seems hardest for the authors is making Bill a real character while illustrating his iconic geekiness with stories of obsessive work hours and poor grooming countered by equally extreme examples of brilliant programming and business moves. It's hard to see him as anything but a caricature, but successful people sometimes seem more homunculus than human.

Adams, Scott. Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!
A collection of blog postings. Typical.

The New Wessex Collection of Thomas Hardy's Poetry.
I love Hardy, though he can get a bit depressing in his goth moments.

Robinson, Spider. Callahan's Crosstime Saloon.
Brilliant. "The Law of Conservation of Pain" is among the most beautiful stories I've ever read. Vox mirabilis.

Hilton, James. Lost Horizon.
The utopia based in Shangri-La. I enjoyed reading it more than some of the other utopias I've been reading, but partly that's because it was a nice physical book that I only read in the dining room with the curtains drawn. I'd still have to say Bellamy's Looking Backward was the best of the utopias I've read so far. Next up would be either We or Herland.

Writer's Block: Interspecies Communication

2009-08-25T00:12:38Z

Have you ever had your feelings hurt by an animal?

Submitted By nyaoran

View 530 Answers

After cooking myself dinner, I set the pan down for the cat to lick. He tried to bury it.

Women In the Round

2009-08-24T02:38:02Z

Went with weirdsister and kiltedwitch and some future Grammy winner to see Caroline Aiken and DeDe Vogt and Meike Koester at Eddie's Attic Friday. The three ladies were sharing the stage but playing solo, taking turns.

At first Meike seemed a bit shadowed--good, but lagging behind the other two. Whatever it was, she got over it; when they came back for the second half, she threw down. DeDe never knew what hit her; she decided to play mandolin instead of following on guitar. (Try these samples from Meike's site: Steam In Your Eyes and The Right One At the Wrong Time.)

DeDe, however, had the treasure, a song called "Starling and Gardenia". I've spent the weekend learning it. I got it working but had to tune to EGDGBD (to get the inversions) and capo 4 (to be able to sing it). Those who have won bonus points, email me for a link.

Caroline was brilliant as always. She started off with a song called "Copper John", which doesn't seem to be on any of her CDs, but you can dig up an mp3 on archive.org. She played slide 12-string while doing percussion with her snakeskin boots. The guy at the next table obviously hadn't heard her before, because he was silent the whole song and blurted out, "Oh my God!" when it was over. The highlight of the evening was her song "Another On the Rise" as a duet with Eddie himself. It's powerful enough on her live album, but she did something on the second eight of the chorus where she dropped the bassline out and did really smooth sliding picking chords on the high strings. I haven't figured it out yet (her stuff is hard!), but it was great.

After Hours Quintet this weekend

2009-08-12T01:58:56Z

Friday night (Aug 14), we're back at Trilogy in Marietta off the corner of Lower Roswell and Johnson Ferry. 7-9 pm; be there or be L-7.

surrdave @ 2009-07-30T19:47:00

2009-07-30T23:47:04Z

Reminder: After Hours Quintet at Trilogy tomorrow, 7-9 pm. Be there or be L7.

Lovelace & Babbage

2009-07-27T23:22:18Z

Via shaenon. Geeky even by steampunk standards.

http://2dgoggles.com/

Recommend starting with Lovelace & Babbage vs. the Economy.

Fourteen lesbians against the wall

2009-07-26T22:12:59Z

Went to see some live music last night and had a properly surreal experience. First, there was the birthday party, the long table on the side wall. Girls kissing ten feet away from me, and I didn't do anything about it. (There really wasn't anything I could contribute to the whole evening beyond observing--not even quantum effects.) There was room on the dance floor but no spot for me, know what I'm sayin'? I needn't have bothered with a fresh shirt.

The band was two hours late showing up, so at the time they were supposed to start, we got to listen to the sound check and rehearsal. The bass player was introduced to everybody, and then they started teaching him some of the songs. The headliner was Diane Durrett, a fine singer who knows three chords on guitar (and two of them are a barre of the first). Fortunately, she was surrounded by pros, plus Caroline Aiken, who is a card-carrying guitar wizard. Similar to telynor's box of fairies, she has two invisible Vorlons behind her playing guitar, because no one human can do that much at once. (And that was before she got out the 12-string.)

It was a spectacularly disorganized show. Aside from starting two and a half hours late, though they played long to make up for it, they seemed not to have a playlist. Further confusion was added because they saw friends in the audience and kept calling them up to sit in. (And one actually crashed the stage, sneaking on between songs and sitting at the Korg, but she was really good.) In fact, the impromptu guests actually outnumbered the band on stage. I was probably the only musician who didn't get up there. People came on, people stepped off, and more than once Caroline found herself alone up there. She just shrugged and did a song solo; frankly, a lot of the ones she sang lead on, the band wasn't necessary as she was playing bass, rhythm and lead on guitar.

The drummer was really cool, though. She was the birthday girl at the long table against the wall (remember them?). She had a modified trap set: in place of kick and snare she used a djembe, but the rest was pretty standard. She's going to have trouble down the road with microfractures in her fingers from playing cymbals with her hands, though. She used brushes a lot of the time. Smiled like Stevie Wonder and danced in her seat as she played--a joy to watch.

Oh yeah, did I mention the guy in the wheelchair doing wheelies on the dance floor? Anyway, I got home quite late and, being overstimulated, couldn't get to sleep. I was online until an hour I haven't seen in a long time. Getting up in time for tomorrow morning's early meeting is going to be unpleasant, but it was a grand time. I do try to catch Diane, because she always has a great group around her and puts on a very entertaining show. Caroline will be at Eddies' Attic in Decatur next month--anyone want to go?

The Gift of a Day

2009-07-25T03:16:09Z

Owing to the agency of a pugnacious comet, the Earth's orbit has been altered, and this current year only will be one day longer. By decree, this day is a freebie for everyone, a holiday not recorded on the calendar. It doesn't even count against your lifespan.

However, whatever you do will be summarized and revealed for all to know and judge. What would you do?

Lord knows I'm glad a lot of my days aren't broadcast, but lately I've been doing okay with my evenings at least. It seems to work best if I pick one project. I'm not yet tired of learning enough of a language to render another Every Blue. Tonight I did most of a choral arrangement for a gloria. One of these evenings I'm going to start the city-building project, if I have some D- or E-size paper.

Or I could fritter it away, leaving some 15,000 (or fewer) for such things.

Tous bleus

2009-07-23T02:29:58Z

Permettez-moi de vous dire comment je vous vois.
Vos yeux sont le faisceau eau
Votre voix est violet
Vos lèvres sont le lilas, mmmm;
Votre sourire est saphir
et la touche, topaze
Votre coeur est la mer de corail,
Ou céruléen, ou je n'ai pas vu;
Votre âme et le organisme sont toutes les couleurs.
Nous vivons entre le ciel et l'océan,
Et vous êtes tous bleus émotion.

Let me tell you how I see you.
Your eyes are watery beams of light.
Your voice is purple.
Your lips are lilac, mmm.
Your smile is sapphire,
and your touch, topaz
Your heart is coral sea,
or cerulean, or I don't know what I've seen.
Your soul and body are all the colors.
We live between the sky and ocean,
and you are every blue emotion.

Permettez-moi de vous dire comment je vous vois.
Vos yeux sont iris
Votre voix est violet
Vos lèvres sont le lilas, mmmm;
Votre sourire est le cobalt et le toucher, la lumière au tungstène
Votre coeur est la mer de corail,
Ou céruléen, ou une ombre, je n'ai pas vu;
Votre esprit et le corps sont l'ensemble du spectre.
Nous vivons entre le ciel et l'océan,
Et vous êtes tous bleus émotion.

Any thoughts? joyeuse13? I fear I got a bit tangled between nouns and adjectives, and I gave up trying to parallel genders.

After Hours Live!

2009-07-22T03:49:31Z

Join After Hours Friday July 31 and August 15 from 7 to 9pm at Trilogy, 4930 Davidson Road in Marietta (one block from the intersection of Johnson Ferry Road and Lower Roswell Road). Trilogy is north Atlanta's premiere entertainment and private events destination. Call 770-971-4770 for more information or reservations.

Visit us at our web site at www.afterhoursquintet.com for more information or to book After Hours for your own event.

Come for dinner or to just feel the jazz vibe!

Apau polu 'oe

2009-07-19T01:31:22Z

This time it's to Hawai'ian and back.

E wehewehe ana aupehea 'iko au 'oe.
K-o-u maka molehu
K-o-u lehelehe lilia.
K-o-u leo aloe, mmm.
K-o-u 'aka'aka 'ako'ako'a a k-o-u pa poni
K-o-u 'uhane uliuli, a aouli paha,
a kala 'ike maka ole 'ia paha
K-o-u mana'o a kino anenue polu.
Ke noho nei ma-kou mawaena papa lani a moana
a pu'uwai kela polu keia 'oe.

I'm explaining how I see you.
Your eyes are twilight.
Your lips are lilies.
Your voice is aloe, mmm.
Your laughter is coral.
Your welcoming embrace is royal purple.
Your spirit is deep sea, and the high sky maybe,
and maybe a color not seen by my eyes.
Your mind and body are a blue rainbow.
We all dwell between the firmament and open ocean,
and you are all the blues of the heart.

I found this a bit more limiting, and less illuminating, than Japanese. However, I particularly like the voice and laughter lines.
Aside from switching the order of lips and voice and moving the "mmm" to the voice to go with "aloe", the only real choice I had to make was whether to use ma-kou for we ("everyone") or ma-ua ("you and I only"). "We two" probably makes more sense, but "everyone" is closer to my original thought. The poem was sufficiently intimate that it didn't lose focus by making one statement on the human condition as opposed to issuing an invitation.

Every Blue redux: Explication

2009-07-17T00:35:25Z

The idea here is to see how the choice of language influences the way thoughts are put together and pictures are constructed. My medium is a poem of very simple structure called "Every Blue", which I wrote and posted some time ago.

Let me tell you how I see you.
Your eyes are iris
Your voice is violet
Your lips are lilac, mmmm;
Your smile is cobalt and your touch, tungsten light
Your heart is coral sea,
Or cerulean, or a shade I haven't seen;
Your mind and body are the whole spectrum.
We live between the sky and ocean,
And you are every blue emotion.

Primarily I chose comparisons on alliteration. So, that's the key to preserving the integrity of the poem in translation; it's not so important that the eyes be compared to a particular flower, just that each part be compared to something blue and euphonious. The question is, would another language provide a more interesting metaphor?

So, to go to Japanese, first I found a list of words for the color blue (conveniently assembled here). Then I started assembling the nouns for comparison--eyes, voice, etc. For each, there were multiple choices; sometimes one had the particular meaning I wanted, and sometimes I chose based on what matched a color word. For example,

Eyes:
shisen (n) one's eyes / glance / look
uwame (n) upward glance / upturned eyes
uwame tsukai (n) upturned eyes
kuroi bou (beautiful) dark eyes
kurome (n) black iris / black eyes
kyou me penetrating eyes / insightfulness

"kurome" might be the closest literal translation of "Your eyes are iris", but I want "iris" or whatever word is felicitous to be separate. I went with "kyou me" because it added a new layer of meaning, though "uwame" would have been interesting as well.

Then, looking over my colors, the literal choice is "hanairo", iris, but the alliterative choice is "kon", navy blue. Thus I went from "Your eyes are iris" to "Your insightfulness is navy blue". In Japanese, when planted in the grammatical form of the poem as one among several metaphors, that is acceptably poetic. Going back to English, I needed to change it around, which was more complicated. More on that below.

With the elements I got into trouble. Smile and touch are nominalizations, so I chose nouns that radiate--cobalt, tungsten. Cobalt and tungsten, proper nouns, translated as loan words--no fun at all, though I wound up keeping cobalt. When I go looking for my comparison,

Touch:
shokkan (n) sense of touch / sense of being touched / tactile sense
furi (n) touch / feel / impression (of a person) / most impressive passage / punch line

I couldn't decide which to use. Lining up my nouns against the color words, I get two nice matches:

shikon: bluish purple
fujiiro: light purple

So I used both. Thus I went from
"Your smile is cobalt and your touch, tungsten light" to "The impression you make is light purple, and my experience of it is a bluish purple." That presented a wonderful opportunity in the reverse translation, exactly the kind of thing I wanted.

The last two lines got dicey. They move into more complex grammar, which I really couldn't work out, so I stuck with the comparison format and thus had to rearrange thoughts.

Here are rhyming words for emotion and, conveniently, the blue area of the spectrum:

aoi (n) the whole range of color from blue to green--but also fresh, unripe, potential.

omoi (n) thought / mind / heart / feelings / emotion / sentiment / love / affection / desire / wish / hope / expectation / imagination / experience

Among the synonyms for sky and ocean I chose a double rhyme in syllabic progression,

ichi ten (n) the whole sky / firmament
ichibou senri the boundless (ocean)

"We live between the sky and ocean, and you are every blue emotion" became "The sky and boundless ocean are feelings, and you are the blue colors."

Now, to structure it, I need to figure out how to do the simple structure (2nd person possessive) (subject) (be) (object). That's almost as basic as it gets, and yet it took hours to find an example that I could ratify by running some reverse translations. Ultimately I settled on "Anata no (subject) wa (object) desu", literally "You possessive-marker (subject) subject-marker (object) is". "wa" essentially seems to mean "before this was subject, now here comes the object and verb". An imperfect understanding likely put some grammatical errors into the "heart" line, which has "or" clauses, but nobody's called me on it yet.

So all the comparison lines will have strong rhythmic parallels and will rhyme by English last-syllable standards, which is nice but hardly necessary since the original relied on internal alliteration rather than rhyme. In Japanese I had better luck with assonance and rhythm: onsei-taisei, kuchibiru-mizuiro, shokkan-shikon. Works for me.

So aside from the choices made on structure, mostly I exchanged colors of flowers for jewels, sky for sea, etc. (I gave up on the first line. It wasn't necessary, and I would've made a hash of it anyway.)

Anata no kyou me wa kon desu
Anata no onsei wa taisei desu
Anata no kuchibiru wa mizuiro desu, mmmm;
Anata no isshou wa kobaruto desu,
Anata no furi, fujiro, Anata no shokkan, shikon
Anata no kokoro tamashii wa sangokai desu,
Wa sorairo, wa fukashi iro;
Anata no zenshinzenrei wa renzoku supekutoru desu.
Ichi ten, ichibou senri omoi desu,
Anata aoi desu.

Literally:

Your penetrating eyes are navy blue
Your voice is blackish blue
Your lips are aqua, mmm.
Your smile/laugh is cobalt,
You touching me is light purple, and me being touched by you is a bluish purple.
Your heart and soul are ocean coral, sky-blue (cerulean), invisible color.
Your complete devotion (body and soul) is a continuous spectrum.
The sky and boundless ocean are feelings, and you are the blue colors.

So, rendering this back into English I wanted to take the shifted comparisons and state them in a coherent poetic form. "Navy blue" didn't do anything for me, and adding all these adjectives was too many syllables. So I let go of the "Your (subject) is (color)" structure and made it narrative:

Deep blue eyes searched mine

Then I took the adjective colors and replaced them with nouns, like in the original--flowers that have the shade rather than describing the shade.

Your voice is twilight

That's pale after the first line, so turn it around to get

twilight sang to me

Your lips are liquid, mmmm preserves the original alliteration, but the simpleness no longer works with the style begun in the first two lines. It also became narrative and more evocative.

The best change resulted from using both senses of "touch". Because "you touching me" was a light color and "me being touched" was a dark shade, that implied an action and a time response--to wit, a bruise.

So here is the finished result (as previously posted):

Deep blue eyes searched mine,
and twilight sang to me.
Her kiss was like a waterfall,
her smile a burning beam.
The brush of her flowers left a deepening blush.
Her heart was coral, cool and sharp,
part sea and part sky,
and could not be seen by mortal eyes.
The works of her life flowed from dark blue to light.
From sea to sky, all emotions are water,
And she was every blue color.

Gig from Hell

2009-07-16T21:48:43Z

Not one of mine, but part of the collection of ones to make me feel better after one. So far as I can recall, I haven't fled across state lines following a bad set.

Comment seen on http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1672723189&v=feed&story_fbid=103500019909#/photo.php?pid=623542&id=1151133810&ref=nf via Carla, natch:

"I once sat in a Waffle house in Indiana with a bass player who was wearing his eggs. It was after a hard night in Louisville."

$employerFail

2009-07-11T21:37:42Z

Received a box at my desk. It was plain and a bit beat up. It contained a vast amount of padding and a perfectly preserved individually-packaged crystal bowl, which I had chosen for my five-year service award. It arrived three weeks in advance of the anniversary.

It contained a blank "Congratulations" card and a sheet with suggestions on how to give a presentation that will make an employee feel appreciated.

It's a nice bowl.

How I See Music

2009-06-28T04:53:55Z

It's a bit like one of these optical illusions (which side of the cube is the front, how many faces do you see). I'm hearing things and imagining a visual--we're not talking synaesthesia here--and it's a visual in motion, ever changing. I can steer it or let it shift back and forth.

Among the visuals: notes on a grand staff, notes laid out on a piano keyboard (easy to go between those two), notes as fingered on a guitar etc, notes as fingered on a trumpet (with that one there's an additional component of which partial is being played), or a Fantasia-style sinuous crawling dancing series of notes lighting up. The extra axis when I'm thinking in terms of trumpet is sometimes a mathematical representation (like graph paper) and sometimes feeling it in my diaphragm as if I were playing and sometimes a grand staff without lines. There's also the feeling of what my fingers and lips would be doing if I was playing those notes.

Any given visual lasts a matter of seconds, perhaps two to five, before one of the others is more apt for what's going on. The exception is if I'm watching carefully as someone plays a particular instrument, in which case I'm concentrating on what notes look like in that representation. Even so, it's useful to see another at the same time, just so I can relate this instrument I'm trying to learn with one I know.

So in this swirling protean blanket I can focus in on a phrase or instrument as it's going by or just let it all be blurry. More often than not I lose it in the transitions and pick it up again a few seconds later, not knowing what notes were played during that time. Under exceptional circumstances, in a small combo, I can pretty much know every note that's being played; but usually it's just one line, and chords are really hard to get in specific--just that it's a C9, not that it's a 6-4-2 or whatever inversion. Well, sometimes, but rarely.

When playing guitar or piano, that's how I'm visualising because I'm concentrating on playing. On trumpet and sometimes piano, when I've warmed up and gotten into the zone, I'll start mixing it up a bit. When I'm able to get past the instrument and be in the music itself, that's when the really good improv happens.

In a gig or practice, I can't sustain this sort of constant visualisation. I'll look at the crowd or whatever is hanging on the walls and often get lost. Then I have to find my place on the page like anyone would.

Again, this is just how I'm thinking of the music in my head--I'm not actually seeing floating piano keyboards and ethereal staff paper. But it makes it possible to do things like harmonize or play along with someone who is making it up as they go, if I'm watching their fingers and the notes aren't going by too fast and I know the key and I'm fluent on my instrument.

surrdave @ 2009-06-20T18:17:00

2009-06-20T22:20:48Z

She is dog and he is cat
He is air and she is fire
And he is consumed.

She is red and he sees blue
She is legs and he is wings
And she's under siege.

He is South and she is East
She's looking into the light
And he seeks the heat.

She is tin and he is zinc
They are church bells and trumpet
At penny fountains.

She's a voice in wilderness
He's an orchestra alone
Love is blind, not deaf.

She's the altar where he prays
He does not think she's a saint
Love may be the way.

Every Blue redux

2009-06-20T17:48:30Z

Retranslated from Japanese:

Deep blue eyes searched mine,
and twilight sang to me.
Her kiss was like a waterfall,
her smile a burning beam.
The brush of her flowers left a deepening blush.
Her heart was coral, cool and sharp,
part sea and part sky,
and could not be seen by mortal eyes.
The works of her life flowed from dark blue to light.
From sea to sky, all emotions are water,
And she was every blue color.

Anata aoi desu

2009-06-20T06:18:38Z

Let me tell you how I see you.
Your eyes are iris
Your voice is violet
Your lips are lilac, mmmm;
Your smile is cobalt and your touch, tungsten light
Your heart is coral sea,
Or cerulean, or a shade I haven't seen;
Your mind and body are the whole spectrum.
We live between the sky and ocean,
And you are every blue emotion.

Anata no kyou me wa kon desu
Anata no onsei wa taisei desu
Anata no kuchibiru wa mizuiro desu, mmmm;
Anata no isshou wa kobaruto desu,
Anata no furi, fujiro, Anata no shokkan, shikon
Anata no kokoro tamashii wa sangokai desu,
Wa sorairo, wa fukashi iro;
Anata no zenshinzenrei wa renzoku supekutoru desu.
Ichi ten, ichibou senri omoi desu,
Anata aoi desu.

Your searching eyes are deep blue
Your voice is twilight
Your lips are liquid, mmmm.
Your smile is cobalt,
your touch a darkening bruise
Your heart is coral sea,
sky-blue, invisible color;
Your devotion is a continuous spectrum.
The heavens and ocean encompass all emotion
And you are every blue.

I welcome comments, especially from those of you who actually know Japanese (and who probably got some unintended laughs).

Fan Service or Narcissism

2009-06-17T00:16:44Z

I've gone back and tagged entries from the beginning, including the best of me. What do you think--too precious?