and then what happened?

Well, then, on the morning of February 14th. christi and I took the train back to Portland. the train was nice and had miles of leg room. We went bowling that night with Renne on account of it being her birthday. All of her Portland dyke friends are kind of good bowlers, which is something to consider when considering the Pacfic Northwest. After bowling, we got fondue. the next day, christi and i went to Powells and got too many books. I still haven’t read all the books I got from the visit before that. the music section is too much temptation, but they had no Esperanto books, except one mighty expensive one.
we sat in front of the fireplace and I started writing a symphony. then Matthew returned to Portland, after being expelled from the South Bay. Despite this occurance, he seemed well. Happy, friendly, at ease, (balanced if you will) and otherwise, also balanced. Looking good. It’s always good to see Matthew doing well. He’s a nifty guy. Also, he seems not to bear a grudge as far as I can tell, and that’s also a very good thing. since he’s family and all. anyway, I was glad to see him.
And then we came back on Sunday. Yesturday, I started one of the tape and Cello pieces, at least the tape part. I found an old recording I made in March of 2001. I had just gotten a new toy microphone and for some reason, I spent half an hour recording myself talking about my mom. So I’m pulling samples out of it, right now, I’m grabbing out very time I said, “my mom” and am going to loop them, but I’ll pull out more stuff too. At some point I was talking about how my family was dying off and how my missed all her dead relatives. (Basically, everyone she remebered from her childhood except her brother died. I can relate to this because, like her, I’m also experiencing a shortage of family members. I thin it might be related.) anyway, there’s prolly good samples about that. Also, my grandma was still alive when it was recorded, so there’s a section about taking my mom and grandma to see a symphony for mothers day and the kind of music that my mom likes. Christi will write a slurpy, lamenting cello line to go over the tape. I think the human condition is fundamentally sad, because one day everyone you love will die or leave you or you will die or leave them. why people want to increase misery through violence (and pverty, which is also violence), I do not understand. Anyway, it would be cool to do a series of lamentations, drawing a connection between the inevitability of death and the needlessness of war. those things are strongly connected in my mind. Why kill people? They’ll all die on their own eventually. The trick is to avoid cliches and lameness. Pauline Oliveros and the Kronos Quartet have both recorded excellent anti-war pieces incorporating sobbing, gunshots, screaming, etc. the trick is to do it well, it would be terrible to take sounds of mourning and put them ina cheap, poorly constructed context. so this project is definitely adequately challenging.