They’re from Toledo. They play polkas based on Pink Floyd tunes.  Link and listen.

Magic Bus: Last stop against Racism

Yesterday Jermaine Jackson added his voice to the campaign.

From the top of the bus he thanked Mirror readers for standing up against the racist bullying in the Celebrity Big Brother house, where he was a contestant earlier this year.

Eileen and I watched part of Orson Welles’s The Trial recently. We were very tired and didn’t make it all the way through. But I was impressed with this adaptation of Kafka. Welles starts out with one of Kafka’s parables about the man waiting for admittance through the door of the law. Very cool. Welles’s camera angles are very effective. Of course he gives himself a role as The Advocate. Tony Perkins as Joseph K. gives off vibes of Norman Bates which I liked very much. The only thing that struck me was the changing or interpretation of K’s relationship to the women in the story. Even buy valium next day delivery Welles doesn’t resist making them defined dumb flirtation Hollywood things. I don’t remember that in the book at all. Of course movie people change things. But since Welles really did a remarkable job with a lot of this, that stuck out to me.

He shoots it outdoors somewhere in Europe and the landscape is perfect. The office scene is reminiscent of Gillam’s Brazil and the move of Orwell’s 1984.

If we ever finish the DVD, I’ll recommend this one.

This is funny. My local paper didn’t come this morning. That’s not that unusual. Usually it’s the New York Times that screws it up. Anyway, I called over to the office and asked for another paper. They called back and told me my account was 24.00 in arrears. When I mentioned that I had paid them online over a week ago, they solemnly assured me it takes three weeks for them to receive a check from an online bank.

Three weeks?

I don’t tend to argue with people on the phone. They said they would bring me a paper today and tomorrow anyway (despite my delinquint status, I guess). So I hung up and called my bank.

The lady at the bank pointed out that an online bank that took three weeks to process a payment wouldn’t be all that convenient would it? Heh.

Good old Holland Sentinel.

I picked up the phone to call them and tell them what the bank said. I put the phone back. Screw it.

For some reason Western Michigan customer service has a flair all it’s own.

When I emailed the Holland Sentinel’s Web site master telling him how outrageous I found their clunky registration in order to access their paper (and at that time I was a subscriber in good standing. ahem.), he emailed me back a strong defense for registration and keeping track of customer preferences and information. It took me a while but eventually I caved and registered.

Before that… way back in 2000, I wrote to the local Grand Rapids TV station WOODTV complaining about their bias and their policies about selling advertising (they had refused a democractic ad). I got a furious letter back from their PR guy telling me in no uncertain terms why I was wrong.

Odd customer service approach. Must be something in the water over here.

Chinese performers in traditional costumes perform during a sacrifice ritual for Huang Di in Huangling County, Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, where legend has it that Huang Di (Yellow Emperor) is buried. About 10,000 people attended the grand ceremony on Qingming Festival, also known as Tomb-sweeping Day that falls on April 5, a day for the Chinese to remember and honour one’s ancestors China Daily article
Wikki article I guess if you read Chinese, this looks helpful.

Link for Slashdot article on turning TV thingo in Apple computer. My brother pointed this out to  me and I mentioned it in class on Thursday during a discussion abou tintellectural property.

MIT’s site: OpenCourseWare.com has a site that links it’s courses and course stuff extensively. I poked around. It looks like you can download videos of lectures as well as the basic syllabi and resource links and stuff. Beware, there was a pop up asking me to fill out a questionaire about my usage. I did it, but probably won’t again….

Yesterday there was a ripple of concern through my class when I suggested that Michigan (and other states) were looking at laws that would allow Internet Service Providers to tier their service to web sites and prorate the (new) fees accordingly.

It is not a stretch for me to think that something I have  access to now will change into a more restricted flow of information. This is exactly the experience I had with the old illegal Napster.

The file sharing there gave birth to the concept of the Celestial Jukebox. To me this meant that if someone somewhere online had an interest in some recording it would be available to me to listen to, download, burn and think about. Napster’s interface was simple, bare and pretty fast.

Today I subscribe to Napster and restrain from illegal activity online (for the most part). I’m not sure why I restrain exactly. Some of it is that I think the rules are wrongly conceived and in a warped way feel that I should advocate discussion and questioning of things without personally benefiting. Fucked up no doubt, but it’s me.

Napster’s commercial interface takes forever to load. It gives no indicator that it is doing anything while it slowly loads tons of visual graphics. It’s searches are laughably inadequate. God help you if you spell something wrong.

I am forever looking for things that Napster doesn’t have. Usually I can find it somewhere else on the web. Also, what they do have changes. When I try to access playlists from a year ago or even a month ago, I find that files that I was once able to listen to are no long available to listen to for free. Bait and switch? I suspect that it’s not that intentional, more like everything else humans touch and try to organize just the result of lack of foresight and vision. (Just my opinion by the way)

Slightly on this topic, I have also noticed how blogs get weird press. Maybe it’s partly because of the LONG PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN which is gathering strength in the US, but the sterotype that I see in the paper and hear on the radio is that bloggers are out of control. They bitch. They are unreasonable. They flame.

It makes me wonder.

I have a dream. Heh. A dream that the internet can provide a means for conversation. That means discussion of ideas without ad hominem asides or hurt feelings or anger. And with humor.

Part of what I think is going on is that words on a screen are devoid of affect.

Let me type that again: Words on a screen are devoid of affect.

O. Maybe that’s not right. The reader adds the affect. This additional reader-added-affect takes us by surprise sometimes. Hence the concept of flaming was born.

I theorize that flaming was initially someone flying off the handle half tongue-in-cheek and venting realizing they were out of control and slightly inappropriate. This might be offered in a spirit of … “I have to say this now and it’s kind of stupid. I’m being silly but this helps me. Don’t take it seriously.”

On the other end someone reads the flame who has had a bad day and is particularly sensitive in the area of the chosen venting topic and reads the words on the screen in a nasty voice in their head with emphasis that awakens their latent masochistic tendencies just enough to respond angrily. And they do. And flame wars online are born.

In class yesterday I brought up the idea that if all music is sound, and one definition of music is “organized sound”  then Ziporyn suggests in his article “Who listens if you care?” that the organizer is the listener.

This makes sense to me.

Instead of groping about for Beethoven or Mozart’s master plan for the first movement of a symphony, a listener now is apt to intuitively relate to what they are hearing initially on a subjective basis.

FWIW, Ziporyn goes on to suggest some pretty cool criteria about what makes music likable to a breathing listener:

1. the beat is good
2. the words are compelling
3. you can dance to it
4. it’s catchy
5. it has vision and imagination

He was speaking of David Byrne’s use of Cuban rhythms in a specific piece, but I extrapolate the idea that why he likes it is related to why I like pieces as well.

So to bring this back to the flaming discussion, words on a screen are waiting for a reader to organize their affect.

This is an interesting phenomenon that I don’t completely understand but do think obtains in much blogging. And not just the blogging that gets people fired from campaigns or  sneakily checked out by Human Resource people making hiring decisions or College Admission people googling prospective students.

Right now there’s a lot happening online. Who knows how long it will continue but in the words of Tom Wait:

Everything you can think of is true, 
The dish ran away with the spoon,
Dig deep in your heart For that little red glow,
We’re decomposing as we go.

I was thrashing about at church today. There is finally a new copy machine, but you have to put in an access code to use it. And then it’s at least two more keystrokes to a simple copy. The code is very simple and was on the wall near the machine but it still felt like someone tripping me and laughing. I began sputtering at the secretary who was there (not the usual lady).

I admit I was in a foul mood, but that’s not excuse. After I bitched for a while, the priest came in and I bitched at her. I felt stupid for doing it, but if I hadn’t it would have felt like I was complaining behind her back. I know. I know. It’s Maundy Thursday and everything. I’m over stressed. The web we weave between us is over stressed (this is a Friedman comment).  I felt embarressed about fussing at my priest whom I like a great deal.
I  went off and tried to prepare for this evening feeling dumb. After I sorted out the copies I need for this evening, I thought I would practice organ. I needed to go over a few things and it might calm me down.

As I was playing, I noticed two little girls who had been lurking around the church today. They were obviously in their own make believe world and were sort of sneaking and hoping I wasn’t going to stop them from whatever they were doing. I didn’t of course.

As I launched into a Bach chorale prelude, I became aware that they were quietly sitting about five feet from me and listening intently. They sat there for the entire piece. After I finished, I looked at them and smiled. I told them I was done. They smiled and got up and walked away.

After that I felt better. Went downstairs and apologized to the secretary. Good grief. Thank goodness for kids.

Chris Maher, composer and massage artist, articulated his vision of what he termed ‘Marxist music.’ His idea was simple: no musical material could be owned — all music makers should be able to take whatever they want from whomever they want and use it as they see it. ‘Material’ could range from a melody, a sound, a formal principle, to an entire piece…. [He] contended that only in this way could music — rather than an individual’s musical career — grow and develop freely. By invading and destroying the notion of musical ‘property,’ the cope of musical possibilities would be infinitely expanded. An individual’s ‘piece’ would still exist and could still be valued, in any and every sense, but, more importantly, his or her ideas — or, more precisely, any real or imagined musical ideas that could be construed from his or her piece — could be built upon, taken in unexpected directions, used by all.

from “Who listens if You Care” by Evan Ziporyn (1991) in Strunk’s Source Readings in Music History

Proust suggests that his character Swann looks something like this:

Luini’s fresco “The Adoration of the Magi”

And Swann’s lover and tormentor, Odette, he sees this way:

Botticelli’s Zipporah, Jethro’s daughter from “The Trials of Moses”

I like Proust’s use of image references and also music references…. cool.

These are taken from Temps Perdu.com

There’s a thin layer of snow over everything this morning in the early Michigan darkness.

Thinking about my intellectual isolation a bit this morning. I was realizing that in the course of my daily life, I don’t run across another person who seems to have read much Proust or reads David Foster Wallace, Dickens, Getrude Stein. Or listens to a wide array of music or reads poetry. I’m trying to think of this without too much confusion and self-pity.

Last night I was enclosed in my warm car with a retired college professor. As I rambled on to him about my own experiences with college right now as a teacher, mentioning that it takes me a great deal of thought and preparation for each class and that it is taking away from my time for writing and recording music, I realized that he was avoiding talking to me about teaching college, something he spent most of his life doing. I keep hitting this blank wall of either a refusal to engage me at an intellectual level or a simple inability to recognize what the fuck I am talking about.

Of course, one does not choose to live in a small provincial American town and then wonder why it’s provincial, anti-intellectual and lonely. That’s silly. And I’m pretty sure that I have a genetic or inherited prediliction to keep myself an “outsider” in any situation I find myself. In many ways, I am comfortable with isolation and being misunderstood. As I said with a smile and in a consoling tone to my class on Tuesday as they sat mute after I asked them a question, “It’s okay. I can be scary even when I’m not the teacher.” I suspect that there are people who find me easiest to take in the antiseptic world of the blog. Hello lurkers! Heh.

In much of Proust he evokes images of classical paintings and relates them specifically to the people in his story. The enervated and introverted intellectual Swann (one of the main characters) is always privately comparing the faces he sees to ones he knows in Botticelli and Giotto and others. I keep thinking there has to be a web site  or book with a collection of reproductions of these particularly evoked paintings with specific references to Proust’s story. I mean for goodness sake there’s a Proust cookbook (which, ahem, I do own) why not a Proust art book.

Last night after a particularly arduous choir rehearsal, Eileen went upstairs to “rot her mind” with TV. I took up my usual station in my reading chair and noted with self-irony that I was reading an essay called “E Unibus Plurum: Television and U.S. Ficiton” by David Foster Wallace from his collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. I don’t watch TV so much as read about it. Good grief.

Ahhh. I am savoring my first cup of coffee and preparing to prepare today’s lesson. Life is good if isolated.

I found this site recently. It’s LibriVox and has a bunch of free mp3s of people reading stuff. Also you can volunteer to be a reader. And links to online texts of the readings.

I started out liking this reader‘s voice (Bill Koon). I downloaded his recording of “The Mark of the beast” by Kipling.

I’m not in the mood to watch tv so I will put this and another short story (Wagner Matinee by Wila Cather also read by Koon) on my mp3 player and go lay in bed and ignore the tv and listen to audio books.

People his age have new assumptions. They’ve grown up believing in the orbiting eye, the subdermal microchip, the circling drone, and they’re no more afraid of them than they are moonlight. Perhaps that’s because they’re born onstage, these creatures, and the first thing they see is the snout of Daddy’s Handycam. Their first steps, their first words, their first Little League at-bats are all directed toward the lens. In time, they have nothing inside them that hasn’t been outside. No depths. No interiors.

from “The Unbinding” by Walter Kirn

International Music Score Library Project hosted by WIKI

Cool cool site…. lots of music…. Mike M. passed this along. He just emailed me that some of the scores have a lock on them that disallows printing them. Of course there is a way around this. ….  I just test printed the Allemande from Bohm’s suite in C minor. No prob there…. I only own one volume of his organ music…. cool cool cool

In recent years, many scholars have drawn parallels and contrasts between the internment of Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the treatment of hundreds of Muslim noncitizens who were swept up in the weeks after the 2001 terror attacks, then held for months before they were cleared of links to terrorism and deported.

from “Relatives of Interned Japanese-Americans Side with Muslims” by Nina Bernstein, NYT 4/3/07

I broke a string on my guitar today practicing a strummed version of “Naked boy” I want to record.

The strings need replacing anyway. I laid the guitar down on the table (on the tablecloth). Went and got strings and needle nose pliers and wire cutters. I laid these down on the table and picked up my college satchel to move it out of the way. The strap caught the heavy wooden chair as I lifted the fake leather bag. It flipped the chair directly on to my foot. All I was wearing was socks, no shoes. It hurt so bad I thought maybe I had broken toes.

I limped around cursing and dreading taking off my sock. I got ice and took a look. Not too bad. Was my third toe always pointing that way? Ouch Ouch.

Right now, I am sitting at the computer reading “The Unbinding” by Walter Kirn holding ice to my throbbing toes and drinking La Croix Sparkling Water. The reason I am sitting at the computer with this paperback is that the novel has links in it. Originally published online at Slate (see the above link), Kirn thought it would be clever to make the links part of the story. So if you are reading it in the flesh, the links are bolded but you can still click on them here.

I’m on chapter 7 and have only found one broken link. It’s the one that’s called wise old priest. You can kind of get the idea from the original web site link which was http://chicagospsychicjohn.com/….

He does some funny things with links that are important to the plot.

My foot is not hurting as much. I did get the guitar strings changed….

A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought with waking thoughts. But really a novel goes as dreams go in sleeping at night and some dreams are like anything and some dreams are like somthing and some dreams change and some dreams are quiet and some dreams are not. And some dreams are just what any one would do only a little different always just a little diferent and that is what a novel is.

Getrude Stein, “The Superstitions of Fred Anneday, Annday, Anday A Novel of Real Life.” from How Writing is Written Volume II of the previously uncollected writings of Getrude Stein edited by Robert Bartlett Haas

I walked downtown and sat in the coffee shop and graded quizzes. On the way, a collge student who has sung in my church choir stopped me and said hello.

After grading the quizzes I went to the CD shop to order a CD, then to the bank, then to Street Performer’s office.

While there I met Officer Mike who apparently is the on the street policeman for downtown Holland. He was very nice. I think this is a good idea, but you need mature people like Officer Mike.The guy they had at the farmer’s market last year was pretty stand-offish. Or maybe that was just me.

Anyway, I have to wait for the police dept to okay my application to play music on the street with amplifcation.

It’s a bit chilly and overcast in Holland today  anway.

I have been escaping by reading O Jerusalem by Laurie R. King.

Sherlock Holmes and his new side kick, Mary Russell, are sent by Mycroft Holmes to the Mid-east around 1919 to solve a mystery.

I wish that Micheal Chabon had written his current New York Times Magazine novel serial, Gentlemen of the Road, more in Laurie R. King’s readable style. I have actually given up on the Chabon. He seem to be writing in a deliberately pretentious dense style. (Nice illustrations, though)

Here’s the first sentence from back in late Jan.
For numberless years a myna had astounded travelers to the caravansary with its ability to spew indecencies in 10 languages, and before the fight broke out everyone assumed the old blue-tongued devil on its perch by the fireplace was the one who maligned the giant African with such foulness and verve.

I gave it several weeks and finally found the style too much work. Hard to remember the plot from week to week when I’m shuffling through his prose.