The designer of this bookshelf, Leo Kemp, has come up with an idea to keep books and CDs from falling over. [Link] Got this link from Digg.com.

Last night for some reason, I worked on learning “Gatekeeper” by Feist. This song has been in my head lately along with “Secret Heart.”

First I worked with the recording for a while. I found some of the chords a bit ambiguous. Then I watched her play it on Youtube and realized that I wasn’t getting it quite right. I found a tab transcription of her chord positions on the guitar neck and all gradually became clear.

I wrote out a rough draft of the melody which I quite like.  This morning I got up and copied it in a clearer hand.

Met yesterday with Linda Graham the chair of the Dance department at Hope College. Drove out to her home near the lake and sat on her back porch and talked for a while. We seemed to have a sort of meeting of minds regarding music and dance. I’m still processing our conversation. It’s so unusual for me to get past the first step of connection with new people these days. I’m ill prepared to consider going on into deeper and more interesting collaborations.

I sort of got the idea that she was trying to draw me into working with her and the dance department. This is very flattering, especially considering the fact that I find her aesthetic extremely palatable and coherent (high praise from me).

I am trying to figure out why she is so interested in me. First of all, they have lost a rehearsal keyboard player who seemed to be highly satisfactory. Secondly, I think she is impressed that I was able to hang in their as a keyboard player with the summer ballet dance people. I got the impression that this might be a bit unusual with the Ceccetti people. I’m not sure I’m as good as she thinks I am.

On the way out I was remembering a meeting that a friend of mine and I set up with some prospective bar band collaborators. My friend and I were sitting and having coffee in the designated meet place. Two clean cut men walked in and desperately started looking at everyone but us (avoiding our glance and murmuring to each other). They were obviously put off by my friend’s and my scraggly appearance. Some bar gigs need clean cut, good looking guys I guess. They sat down and we had an awkward chat.

But my meeting with Linda Graham was much different than that.  It was fun to talk to someone with a bit broader view of the world and art. I sure do like that.

Basically I think she needs a rehearsal pianist for a pretty picky ballet teacher. She left me with another offer (I had declined the first one by email). I’m really not sure what to do with this. I haven’t actually gotten my freedom set up for the fall. I was hoping not to have a commitment (beyond church and other little projects) this fall and see what that was like.

Yesterday, a woman flagged me down as I was leaving to go give a piano lesson. A black woman in late thirties or early forties waved a plastic bag at me. I pulled over and she explained that she “didn’t mean no harm.” But that she needed a ride. After determining it wasn’t too far out of my way, I took her where she needed to go.
This is the second time in a few months that someone has flagged me down and asked for a ride. I find this particularly startling because often local people look at me as though I were an ax murderer in a bad disguise. Or so it seems to me.

Today I have an appointment with the chair of the dance department of Hope College. She emailed me asking me if I would be interested in accompanying dance classes this fall. After giving some thought, I said no. But that I was looking for other more interesting projects. She asked if we could meet.

I’m trying to get my hopes about this. So often I have found that I am unable to connect with other people. I have just about decided that I am eccentric. This is perfectly okay with me. And while it’s still sometimes hard to accept that people aren’t interested in music, art and literature in quite the way I am, I keep reminding myself that this is okay. And that I should stay open to the possibility that I might run across someone locally I have more in common with. Hence today’s meeting.

I have been listening to records. This is lots of fun for me.

Monk by Monk  (1953)

Back in the seventies I bought several Jazz records at a used shop just outside of Higgins Lake. Most of them were in plastic sleeves and had no cardboard covers. Yesterday, I googled these as I listened to them to find out who is playing on them and when they were recorded.
Work (1953)by Thelonius Monk

This album is very interesting. Monk continues to arrest my ears with his unique compositions. The more I listen I think he was making some very cool music. On this album there is a cut called “Friday the Thirteen” in which he features a french horn as one of the soloists (the other soloists are himself on piano and Sonny Rollins on tenor sax).
John Coltrane from 1957

I’m not absolutely sure I have the right albums covers for the records I own.

Byrne has a very interesting new blog:
he calls it Graduation, Ethics, Spaceships

Another cool thing about the record player and receiver is that I can plug my remote speakers into the headphone jack and transmit to the kitchen. Wow. Life is good.

The first thing I did with my new receiver was listen to this Willie Dixon record I own:

Apparently, it’s the first record that he did all the singing. Dale Wright’s liner notes are embarrassing: “[T]here is no attempt here to interpret the blues with sophistication in the manner of, for example, Joe (Everyday) Williams, or Dinah (The Queen of the Blues) Washington. Willie’s slapping, strong bass and uninhibited lyrics are dominant throughout and his style is only a ‘holler’ away from the Mississippi corn and cotton country where he was born.”

Sheesh. Willie (Back Door Man, Hootchie Coochie Man, Built for Comfort) Dixon seems to hold his own to me. I do like listening to this record.

After playing a bit of Charlie Parker and both sides of my Dave Brubeck, I indulgently put on

This record is a series of unique arrangements of standards. Nilsson sings. Gordon Jenkins arranged and conducted. Schmaltzy with tongue firmly in cheek a lot of the time. Great record.

How discouraging to wake up and find that Congress didn’t slap Attorney General Gonzalez on the wrist yesterday.

In the words of Maureen Dowd at the time:

Gonzalez is ‘Torture Guy, who blithely threw off 75 years of international law and set the stage for the grotesque abuses at Abu Ghraib and dubious detentions at Guantánamo, seems to have a good grasp of what’s just. No doubt we’ll soon learn what other protections, besides the Geneva Conventions and the Constitution, Gonzales finds “quaint” and “obsolete.””

I poked around in the right and left wing blogs. Nobody is actually defending his work as Attorney General. I remember during his confirmation hearings thinking, isn’t this the guy who thought the Geneva Conventions were quaint and came up with the legal rational for torturing (o I’m sorry. We don’t torture. We m. I think it’s clear that our government is broken. Just my opinion.

After writing yesterday’s blog, I re-read the section of Plato’s Republic about shadows on the wall.

Plato
My previous understanding seems to be a bit eccentric. I was interpreting it to mean that there are absolutes such as beauty and truth and that we experience them in a way that reflects but is not reality. I was also saying I didn’t buy the notion.

While this idea is in the passage, it sounds more like Plato via the voice of

Socrates

is harping away on the ideal ruling class and it’s ability to look the bright light of real truth in the eye and inform its behavior as the leaders of the society. Typical “Republic” stuff.

So I wasn’t totally off, but my interp was a bit self-serving. Ahem.

“I spend all my money on books. Books are my greatest pleasure.” J. Brahms

I relate to this quote. Not that I actually spend all my money on books, but that they are such an important source to me for ideas and imaginary conversations.

Last night I continued reading in Gore’s “The Assault on Reason” and Swafford’s bio of Brahms (the source of the above quote).

This morning I awoke and was thirsting for some intellectual stretching so I returned to “Interaction, Improvisation, and Interplay in Jazz” by the local prof, Robert Hodson.

Gore’s book is getting depressing as he ticks off the many ways the Bush administration has completely changed America. It is a familiar litany for me. One that I think about as I read the news. And he returns depressingly to the misconceptions majority of Americans have about the Iraq war and global warming. Americans just don’t use their brains these days. Basically, Gore says all of us have responsibility for the erosion of the balance of powers in our government and the banality of our tepid public rhetoric and news media. I agree but it’s not a happy read.

Reading the Brahms bio is interesting. I have played Brahms piano music for years and enjoy it. I struggle with the Romantic style as I struggle with the whole notion of a style of music that seems removed from so many listeners today. I do find Brahms full of beauty. His bio is not that familiar to me so Swafford is holding my attention. As a young man, Brahms seems perceptive, creative and very aware of his career. Schuman seems to have launched him (I was aware of this). But Brahms himself was so conscious of his place in music history it’s amusing. Swafford constantly points out the early works that Brahms destroyed later in life.

I wonder why he destroyed his works. It seems as though he was possibly worried they would show something about him he did not want known. Could it be his own perceived inadequacies? I knew an artist once who wanted to destroy all her works. She offered to let me and a friend of mine take what we want before she burned the rest. My friend took everything. The artist was reduced to frustration and tears. Not a happy memory, but instructive.

This artist was probably self-destructive. But I think Brahms was worrying about the laurels of history.

I find this amusing because I am increasingly convinced of the transience of all human cultures.

“Big old buildings
seem like they’ll never fall,
but they’ll all be gone someday.

We’re a big old country.
We’re weak and we’re strong,
but we’ll all be gone someday.”

to quote my song, “So Many People.” Heh.

So if human culture is both transient and a source for meaning (as I believe it is), it’s necessary to ask questions about our approaches to music, art and literature.

Hodson obviously thinks that Jazz is something worth preserving. But is that what art and music is all about? Preserving a canon? If art and music doesn’t mean anything to listeners and observers, does it still have inherent value? Is it like the shadows on Plato’s cave that reflect the essence of some kind of permanent eternal values?

I think Plato was a genius, but I reject many of his notions. Especially regarding the arts and the cave.
So I struggle with the idea that there is a canon of art and music for all humans. I think that humans make meaning and that some humans have made some incredible meaning with their art and music. It has significant and constituent meaning for me personally.

Then I find myself standing in front of fifty young adults and wondering how much meaning Beethoven and Bach have for them. Even can have for them.

Despite this, I personally continue to turn to other people’s music, writings and art for inspiration and edification. This morning I have been going back and forth from Hodson’s book to the piano to play through the examples of Jazz literature he (almost) cites. He almost cites them by making up silly little versions of them instead of using the originals. Fortunately, so far, I can find the orginial tunes in my library. I plan to ask him why he makes up ones instead of using the originals, if I ever get a chance. If he says copyrights I will be unhappy.

Eileeen was exhausted yesterday and retired very early. I listened to the radio (and later the computer) and cooked.

I made the two pie crust recipe for a pecan pie and a quiche.

The pie burned. Bah. I made the mistake of going by the time in the recipe. Usually, I am more cautious and check it about half way through. Mistake. Interestingly enough, it doesn’t taste so bad. I cut myself a piece out of sheer masochism and was surprised that it looked a lot worse than it tasted.

The quiche was from a Jane Brody cookbook and amazingly only used two eggs.

It was quite successful despite my inevitable variations on the recipe (I added blue cheese which it didn’t seem to need, substituted mozarella for the swiss cheese it called for and sprinkled fresh basil on the tomato slices on the top…. mmmmm!)

While I have had no reaction to my new MP3 (Deja Vu) on the web, I had quite a bit of reaction to the live performance of it Jon and I did on Friday. This was its WORLD PREMIERE!   Heh.

Dave Crider sat in on drums and was very enthusiastic about this song. I could also tell from the way the crowd was responding that they enjoyed it. Nothing like a live performance, I guess. I even had people in the crowd I didn’t recognize shouting back the answer to the question I ask in the third verse: “Is this plane moving?”

This is a nice vibe to remember.

“One day many years ago, a smart young political consultant turned to an older elected official and succintly described a new reality in America’s public discourse: ‘If it’s not on television, it doesn’t exist.’ ”

“…[S]o long as the dominant means of engaging in politiical dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue in one way or another to dominate American policits. And as a result, ideas will continue to play a diminished role.” (emphasis added)

“The mental muscles of democracy have begun to atrophy.”

“…[T]he human nature of our Founders — a nature that they understood sp well— is the same as our own. We have the same vulnerabilities and the same potiential, the same weaknesses and the same strengths.”

“People who watch television news routinely have the impression that the cities where they live are far more dangerous than they really are. Researchers have also found that even when statistics measuring specific crimes actually show steady decreases, the measured fear of those same crimes goes up as television portrayal of those crimes goes up. And the portrayal of crime often increases because consultants for television station owners have advised their clients that viewership increases when violent crime leads newscasts. This phenomenon has reshaped local television news.”

“… Bush uses a religious blind faith to hide what is actually an extremist political philosophy with a disdain for social justice that is anything but pious…”

“The essential cruelty of Bush’s game is that he takes an astonishiongly selfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals and then cloaks them with a phony moral authority, thus misleading many Americans who have a deep and genuine desire to do good in the world.  And in the process he convinces these Americans to lend unquestioning support for proposals that actually hurt their families and their communities.”

Last night went well at Lemonjellos. I played on five tunes. Jonathan seemed please with the way the evening went.

The way it went was that Jonathan basically just pulled different people up on stage throughout the evening to do different songs with him. He started off with a young woman whose name I keep missing and don’t remember meeting. Then me. The bulk of the evening was performed by he and his high school/college buddies and brother, Mike.
I found it very interesting to observe the crowd. There were (according to Jim Sullivan who seemed to be taking notes for an article or something) around 120 people there, 80 inside and 40 sitting outside. At any given time, the performers only had the attention of maybe half the people. And most of the listeners sat very still and watched closely. No body movement.
Before the evening began, a congenial looking man came over and introduced himself to me as the father of Matt Scott, the owner of Lemonjellos. He was very enthusiastic about my music. He and two other (ahem) gentlemen of my generation seemed to be very interested in my songs and had come to hear them as well as Jon’s stuff. This is very flattering.

I had many nice comments from members of the audience. But as far as I could tell, there were no people from my emailing list there. I even had one person on my mailing list (which is made up strictly of people I know personally) request that I not mail him any more mass mailings since we were not even communicating on a regular basis. There was no one from my church or choir. Also, I saw another blogger friend of mine early in the evening who sat and chatted but did not stay for the music.

This morning feels like retirement from one phase of my life. The gig last night was Jonathan’s last Holland gig. This week he leaves for the west coast. With him goes most of my audience potential I think. Jonathan and I have had many discussions about music and listeners. He disagrees with me about the fact that I think my music has very little commercial appeal. He keeps telling me that many of his friends admire my work. I believe him and I believe that he in particular appreciates my work as I do his. I actually think we have a shared aesthetic about our work together. While Jon’s audience seems to like my material, I’m pretty sure that if Jon had not been performing last night the audience would have been up of my wife, the three men who seem to be interested in my songs and possible some of Jon’s fam.
Poor me observation: I have been thinking more and more that I really don’t have much of an audience for my work as a composer/ musician. As far as I can tell very few people download my mp3s. When I play in public, people do not make a point of coming to hear me. I am beginning to think of myself as the Holland Moondog. For years Moondog played on the streets of New York and only afficionados of street music and the avant-garde knew who he was.  Eileen thinks this totally doesn’t matter. I agree with her, but can’t help but notice the phenomenon.
I was watching Jon’s high school buddies last night. When they were on stage, they were full of energy and seem to revel in the moment. When they got off, their attention immediately went somewhere other than what was on stage.

The energy was palpable last night. But Jonathan’s energy differs from most of his contemporaries. While they have energy, Jon’s approach to what he does represents the willingness to take risks and be truly spontaneous. I think this is what makes his performances so engaging. At least that’s what I like about them. Those qualities are very important to my own aesthetic. I think this is why Jon and I are friends and colleagues.

At the end of the evening, Jon seemed exhausted but happy. He had a good number of family there. His Dad ran the CD/T shirt/bumper sticker booth. His mom was there. His brother Micheal played a lot and was totally engaged the entire evening. His uncle Joe was there and came up on stage and did a number with him. Very cool. I was glad that contrary to our original plan I had brought my yamaha for him and other keyboard players to use. Jonathan had only brought a yamaha organ unit. His uncle (and Chris from his high school band) wailed on my keyboard. I think Jon was pretty satisfied with his last Holland Hurrah. Heh.

“In Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney completely misrepresented how we ended up in Iraq. Later, Mike Huckabee mistakenly claimed that it was Ronald Reagan’s birthday.

MIT News: “Research deciphers ‘deja-vu’ brain mechanism.”

According to this recent article, some scientists think that deja-vu takes place in the hippocampus and is related to how this area learns and remembers.

Apparently, we have different kinds of memory working in our brains. The Amygdala stores memories associated with emotional responses.  This little part of the brain is a giant of an influence on how we color our cognitive memories. Memory goes through a consolidation. So if you learn something, you remember it with a different part of your brain. As the memory becomes part of your mental terrain, the memory pattern itself consolidates. This involves other parts of the brain. The Amgydala can change the way your remember something that you have learned with a cool head.

This little notion of brain science helps me think about how brilliant minds (like people on the supreme court or creationist scientists) can reason and still be obviously subjective.

The BBC has a cool interactive brain map online.

The first chapter of Gore’s “The Assault on Reason” is called “The Politics of Fear.” In it, Gore talks about brains, memory and fear responses. That’s what got me poking around and thinking about this.

Okay, Meijers has been pretty weird to me lately. But, I took my airgranite-recycleable-goofy-liberal-“I believe in global warming” bags (pictured above. Mine are purple.) with me shopping today. And it went okay.

Eileen and I bought four of these at church recently. She keeps one and I use the other three for grocery shopping. At least that was our plan. I have had some pretty bad experiences with clerks at Meijers around bringing my own bags. So, I was stealed today to be polite but insistent.

I recognized the woman who checked me out. She and I have had dealings before. I think she’s probably afraid of me. But anyway when she looked dubious at my bags and said something about not being very good at packing, I offered to bag my own. This seem to give her a feeling of relief and it went fine after that. I have linked in the company that makes these. They sell for 17 dollars US. Our church sells them for 10 dollars. What a bargain!

So far this book is more about the dire situation of our public rhetoric than anything else. Gore is clearer and more to the point than Neil “Entertaining Ourselves to Death” Postman ever was.

He points to many of the problems as symptoms. The problems: extreme partisanship, superficial public debates, money in politics, public apathy, declining citizen participation and other stuff.

He makes an interesting point about the partisanship. While the talk has heated up and the parties are at each other’s throats, at the same time Americans see less difference than ever between them.

Here’s how he says it:

“Excessive partisanship is identified as a source of the problem by Americans of both political parties, and — especially — by the growing number of independents. Those on the Right lament the intrusion of government via taxes and regulation, while those on the Left decry the wholesale abandonment of the government’s prior commitments to public education, health care, science, medical research, assistance to the poor, the young, and the elderly, and the withdrawal from regulating corporate behavior to protect the public interest. Paradoxically, more and more Americans also say they perceive few substantive differences between the two political parties.”

So what does he think the true cause of these symptoms. Basically, TV.

TV has replaced the written word and the coherent public rhetoric. The problem with TV is not just it’s banality but the idea that communication only goes one way. So there is no conversation, only passive observation on the part of the viewer. TV itself is at best entertainment/information and at worst manipulation/bad information but never conversation.

This fascinates me and helps me understand many things about the current environment (actually it’s not just in the USA).

I will read on. So far this is not a vanity issue political book. Gore grew up with politics and TV. His father was a Senator. I heard him say recently that not only is not politicking for the presidency but that he has finally figured out, he’s not that good at politics. To me, this sounds like someone who is actually thinking.

Recently I had a conversation about the way people do not read now. This conversation was mostly about how people get their news. Of course, it’s mostly through the television. I find the television a very poor source of information. I am still one of those Neanderthal newspaper readers. Also, since I grew up with TV myself, I tend to think of it as something that has been made and reflects the views and needs of its makers. People seem to forget that at some level.

Gore thinks that the Internet holds out a possibility for helping resuscitate the public conversation necessary for a civil society. He says maybe TV was a transition from the printed word to the Internet. This feels a bit on the false hope side to me. Maybe because I want so badly for it to be true.

The Senate Committee on  Commerce, Science and Transportation will be having heardings on Tuesday 6/12/07 and Thursday 6/14/07.

They are debating a bill that will tier the internet and sell the new 700 mghz pipe to the highest bidder.

Good-bye to Internet freedom and accesibility.

“Last year, more than 1.5 million Americans contacted Congress and stopped phone and cable company efforts to kill Net Neutrality. Now industry lobbyists are pressuring the Federal Communications Commission to abandon this fundamental Internet freedom.

It’s time the FCC heard from you. The agency has launched a public inquiry into whether it should protect Net Neutrality or let companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast dictate which Web sites you can use. Take action now and help stop the big phone and cable companies again.

In your own words, tell the FCC why you need a free and open Internet. Your story will be sent to the FCC in Washington.”

You can participate in this hearing by “Telling your story”

more from S.O.S. — Save Our Spectrum

“Congress and the Federal Communications Commission face a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring universal, affordable Internet connections to all Americans.

The issue before them is who should control access to the radio spectrum. As part of the digital television (DTV) transition, a prized portion of the public airwaves is being returned to the government. Implementing the right policies could mean more competition, faster service and lower price for consumers.

The FCC is about to auction the exclusive “license” to this spectrum, called the 700 MHz band, to the highest bidder among the big telecommunications companies. But a coalition of public interest groups has filed comments urging the FCC to use this auction to create a much-needed “third pipe” competitor to broadband services offered by phone and cable companies.

At the same time, Congress is considering what to do with “white spaces” — the unused parts of the public airwaves between TV channels that could expand broadband service to underserved areas. Bills pending in the House and Senate would set aside this spectrum for “unlicensed” wireless Internet.”