Hey, the comments look right now. they have the same layout as my blog now.
I put up three tennis roberts mp3s, all recorded at Ian’s party. http://www.berkeleynoise.com/tennisroberts/mp3s.
Spent much of today talking with SBC and Asante about network issues for Other Minds. Their network was hosed. the router was misconfigured. the modem burned out overnight. all of these things are solved (at least for now).
One year ago Monday, my mom finally scheduled my brithday party. My birthday was, of course, in February, but she kept wanting to schedule a party, but forgetting to do it. Every monday, I would call and ask about it, and she would tell me she’d forgotten or someone couldn’t make it and it would get put off until the next Monday. This went from February to June. So I would talk to her at least once a week. She told me a few times that she thought she was getting alzheimers. I had just read an article about it, and so told her that it rarely hit people her age. Ususally it got folks older or younger. When I came down, I brought her a saint candle or a prayer card, I think a card, since she’s been out of sorts and I wanted to do something helpful. She didn’t know quite what to make of it, which was strange.
One year ago today, I went to the Esperanto Concersation group with Joel. Maybe it was a year ago next week. It was at the tail end of the Elna convention, so nobody else was there, except Joel who had left the Kunveno early, just in case someone wandered into the Conversation group. afterwards, I went ot the main branch of the Berkeley library and checked out a book by Dr. Zamenhof, which I never read. Several weeks later, Christi’s cousin took it back for me. I never went in to pay those fines.
Or maybe one year ago today was the day that I called my mom and asked if her new medication was helping and she said it was, but seemed confused. Or maybe one year ago today was the day that her doctor gave her physical and said that whatever he problem was, it seemed to be in her head somehow and so started changing around her antidepressant medication. Or maybe it was the day that I finally bought plane tickets to portland for my 4th of July trip up there – the trip I came home from early. Or maybe if I keep thinking about this I can make myself insane.
sometimes, it feels like if you think hard enough about the past that you can change it. But this is false. You cannot change the past. You cannot change the past. You cannot change the past. Hell, you can’t even change the future.
I had band practice today. We have some new songs. Polly is starting to panic about the Vegas gig. I like saying “the Vegas gig.” For example, “oh yeah, I gotta do some practicing for the Vegas gig.” or “Oh yeah, maybe I’ll see Robert dyck at the Vegas gig.” (the last one especially impresses christi.) It’s important to start “the vegas gig” sentences casually, with an “oh yeah,” to show how sauve and chill one is about having a Vegas gig. “Oh yeah, a gig is a gig, you know, like the Vegas gig I got coming up.” “Oh yeah, we’re doing some songs about military aircraft for the Vegas gig, but I’m not really into, you know, warfare or empire or US military supremacy and neocolonialism or anything.”
Where was I? Oh yeah, I’m listening to the three new songs over and over and over and over agin to prepare for the Vegas gig, so I can be solid on the bass lines. Over and over and over again. I can feel stark weather coming . . .. I spent all day yesterday trying to get the JJiCalc to write files. Today, I’m going to get it to read them, all while listening to the same three songs over and over again and it will not drive me insane. Or if it does drive me insane, it will be ok, because it’s distracting the hell out of me and distraction is good. Being driven to distraction is good.
http://www.celesteh.com/personal/chicken/
Page made for the benefit of Ellen. I give her a 75% chance of deciding to stay in Seattle. She really likes chicken tho, so maybe Chicken will lure her down. She has a Dr. Doolittle sort of connection to Chicken. Chicken didn’t destroy anythign while Ellen was here, but she did eat a muffin that I left on the counter. Or maybe Roz did. Cats eating muffins are weird.
Yesterday, I fixed some bugs in the JJiCalc. You can now enter in tunings and it will know they exist. Some action-event thing was missing. I’m working on saving and reloading right now. Anyway, while I was coding, Ellen went to her friend’s memorial service and then from there to the airport. He was part of the reason she was considering moving down here. And she was sad the whole time she was here. Last time she was here was the 2002 OM festival and she was sick the whole time. The bay area may be a bad luck place for her.
So I’m basing the 25% probability (guess) of her moving down here based on Chicken’s magnetic personality. Oh, and if you know of a responcible musician (I know, oxymoron…) who might want to rent my space for two years, you should drop me a line.
You could be a JJiCalc developer. Or you can just download the sourcecode: cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/jjicalc login and not be a developer. You can’t yet download a nightly build or anything, cuz I’ve never used sourceforge before and I don’t know how to do that yet.
We went out Saturday to see the spot where Ellen’s friend was hit by a car. It was in Emeryville on the part of Powell street that gets really narrow, I think by Vallejo street. People have attached flowers, notes and a poster to a posted speed limit sign – 30 mph, which is clearly being exceeded by quite a bit. It was worrisome crossing the street to get there. Around the base of the sign were candles, a stuffed animal and other memorial items. A flautist was there, sitting on the ground, playing a lamentation. It was very moving. Some other people came. It seemed to make them feel better.
Later, we went to two concerts at the Berkeley Edge Fest. Two concerts in one day is too many. However, George Lewis is an amazing virtuossic trombone player, so I was glad we went to the second concert. Some very hyper composer cornered Sarah Cahill ater the first concert and started on a well-rehersed arts rant. He began by asking her if she was indepenently wealthy. He thinks artists in the Bay Area play too many gigs for free or for low wages. Sarah tried to pass him off to Christi, Ellen and I, bu we escaped. However, on Sunday, he got us again and continued exactly where he left off. He thinks artists should be well paid for theit work, but they should give their work away for free. I think I heard this argument before, as part of the New Economy or something. I’m still not sure how it’s supossed to work.
The Sunday concert was a Lou Harrison tribute. His work is so beautiful. The second half was all gamelan. It was performed on his personal gamelan that Bill Colvig built for him. It’s the first time that it’s been played without him. the last piece they played was the last piece he wrote. I think the gamelan lead may have been crying when the last gong sounded. Krys Bobrowski played in the ensemble. After the concert, she showed us her instrument and explained the notation. She told me to play in the Wesleyan Gamelan Ensemble, so I will.
We went out for Thai food with Krys, her girlfriend, her other friend who just made some MIDI controlled strobe thing for crystals (I hope to see this thing soon and better be able to describe it), Brenda Hutchinson and her partner, who I can’t remember the name of because I never remeber anyone’s name. Brenda was urging Ellen to move down here and work for the next four years at the Exploratorium.
Then some of us went to Srah Cahill’s after concert party. I sat down next to a guy who introduced himself and then added, “You’re of a generation where that name probably doesn’t mean anything.” okay. He talked about early digital synthesizers and samplers tho, and it was interesting. He gave me advice about school which included working hard and getting mad. Then he left and I saw Steed there, who conducted the Mills Contemporary Performance Ensemble, when I played in it and also conducted two of the Lou pieces in the first half of the concert. I told him that I enjoyed the concert and was surprised that he remembered me from the CPE and asked if I was still playing the tuba. I introduced him to Ellen and he knew he she was, but didn’t know her.
So the big question remains: will Ellen move down here? She clearly digs the social scene at least. And the economy is porbably better here than in Seattle (it’s certainly not worse). christi has offered to construct a shack in the back yard. (Ian says that the homeowners association will have a field day with the CCNRs. Maybe we could call it a gazebo.) The shack would lengthen our space to make it long enough for the Long String Instrument and would provide adequate protection against weather, rodents, theives, etc, while being able to be easily knocked down after two years. uhuh. Clearly, Christi’s dad needs to be involved in this project, or we’re doomed to have rats, water damage and burglary. and lawsuits from our neigbors.
Or we could move the whole operation to Jerry Brown’s warehouse. Krys was just part of a collective of people looking to purchase a shared space, but they couldn’t find anything. Some of those people have bought their own homes, but some have not. Krys is still looking. This space would not require a shack.
So I’ve been having trouble talking to people all week. It seems to be going ok and then suddenly, without my realizing it, things go horribly wrong. My conversations with people have all been social disasters. I have no idea whom I’ve offended (or how) and who I haven’t. Polly packed up really quickly after flute band pratice. Maybe I acted tweaky towards her? I dunno. It’s been a crappy week, but gradually improving since Monday.
Christi’s favorite composer, Ellen, arrived today. She’s staying the weekend and deciding whether or not she wants to rent our place. One of the people whom she was hoping to visit while here died yesterday while biking in Emeryville. It’s very shocking and sudden. She’s unhappy (obviously). He’s being put into the Chapel of the Chimes on Monday.
Ellen showed me some Protools stuff, especially about nudge and grid and one of those funnylooking tools at the top. She also showed me a tuning table and explained it. Tuning people talk about “lattices.” What they really mean is a N-dimensional array. In Just Intonation, you think of notes as fractions. Your starting pitch is 1/1. A “fifth” above that is 3/2. You can create lines of fractions all related by the same distance. Take 1/1 and multiple by 3/2, then take the results of that and multiply by 3/2 and then take the results of that and multiply… and so forth, constructing the circle of fifths out ot infinity. This creates a line of fractions all related by 3/2. Now take 1/1 and multiple by 5/4. Take the result of that and mutiple by 5/4 and so forth, creating another line. Now create another line with 7/3. (the fractions I’m picking aren’t good ones, but the concept holds.) Keep doing this with more fractions. After a while, you have N lines that all intersect at 1/1. Ok, now go to Line 1, Fraction 1 and start making lines through it based on all of your fractions. Then go to the next one. then the next one. And thus an N-dimensional fraction array can be constructed. It can be useful to visualize it terms of a plane, so that one plane may have the 3/2 fractions on the X axis and the 5/4 fractions on the Y axis. This is how tuning people think about it, visualizing it as a “lattice” or related planes. But people who have taken Linear Algebra or too much CS can think of it as an array. Unless I’ve got this completely wrong.
For whatever reason, it’s much easier to talk to people who are very unhappy. I seem to disturb them less.
We went to the Edge Fest. Originally, I was scheduled to play wineglass for Daniel Lentz tonight, but he cancelled, so the whole evening was Terry Riley. He’s cool. Many of the pieces were just intoned and very beautiful. Some of them were not just intoned and very beautiful. Every piece had a extra cool moment in it. In the first one, Cinco de Mayo (1997), the moment came when Sarah Cahill stood up and starting playing a note that involved action inside the piano. The second and third pieces, the Dream (1999) and Baghdad Highway (2003) were not clearly differentiated, since Riley didn’t pause for applause between them. But they were very cool because of the East Indian / Blues fusion he had. Especially on Baghdad Highway. He was playing a really awesome, funky blues bassline on the keyboard, while also playing (improving?) a bluesy-yet-eastern influenced melody and singing in a distinctly Indian style. It all worked together amazingly well. Ritmos and Melos (1993) had it’s best moment when the piece unexpectedly became very staccato. The piano, pizz violin and xylephone all started playing short notes in the same range. They may have been in unison. The change was wonderful, just springing up. The last piece, A Rainbow in Curved Air (1968) was excellent throughout. It has just been reowrked to be Just Intoned. I’m not tuning-savvy enough to say anythign about the tuning, other than the piece sounded really great. The best moments were when Willy Winant was playing jaw hard and when he was playing handdrums. He is an amazing percussionist. The level of musicianship on the whole concert was very high.
Before the concert, we watched a movie about Riley. Long sections of the movie previously appeared in other films that were shown in the Other Minds film festival last year, but much of it was new. They showed a much higher quality print of Music with Balls than Other Minds could get last year. Ohter parts, especially recent interviews were new. The whole movie was very male-dominated. Women musicians, especially Pauline Oliveros, were mentioned as important composers and people that Riley had worked with, but unlike several male composers, she wasn’t interviewed. Other women were given very short screen time. But I had no idea that LaMonte Young was a biker, as I had never seen a picture of him before.
After the concert, we went and got beer with Kris Brobrowski (I knwo I’ve misspelled her name) who had a bunch of leads on jobs for Ellen. Hopefully, some of them will work out.
I’ve submitted a request to SourceForge.net
to have them host CVS stuff for the Just Intonation Calculator. They should reply within th
e next couple of days.
By Friday, it would be nice if the JiCalc would save and open it’s own files and also tab-dili
neated spreadsheet files. There’s some file IO code in it already, but it doesn’t work. Chand s
ays I should use some code form Enterprise Java Beans or something. I thought they just used a m
atter replicator to make coffee in Star Trek. I’m pretty sure that I saw Kirk make a mixed drink
that way on some episode.
Someplace, I have a book on Java Beans that I once read. I remember seeing Java Beans not as
pieces of code, but as a spiritual approach to code. Objects that could save themselves! Hallel
uija! They could load themselves too. In a way, any object that contains data could be thought
of as a bean, and since every object contains at least some kind of data, than every object is so
mehow a bean, which makes the whole idea of beans meaningless, since it’s just a way of thinking
of every object. Obviously, I didn’t get it. More importantly, I’d like to be able to deal with
files by Friday. Is file IO part of an “is a” relationship, or a “has a” relationship? Should
I add more code right to the TuningTable object, or should I have a seperate File IO class? Shou
ld I go read the OOP chapter of my programming languages book, or will some OOP programmer take p
ity on me and clue me in?
Mills offered a class on databases, but I didn’t take it, since it sounded boring. I think ma
ny of the programming questions that I’ve had in the years since would have been answered if I ha
d taken that class. Most of my questions have been about data storage and retrieval. I also zon
ed out on statistics in high school. And music theory in college. Alas. I’m going to try to so
ak up as much knowledge as possible in grad skool and let life sort out important vs unimportant
material, since my guesses about what will or will not turn out to be useful are often wrong. So
I say now, while I have zero study habits. If only, like a bean, I could come up with a way to
save myself.
For months, Timanna has asked for me to add commenting features to my blog. I’m testing them now.
Thursday, Peter, the guitarist in the flute band, called to say that we couldn’t use his SO’s SUV after all. So Friday morning, I rushed out to get an oil change for the pickup truck and then we loaded all our equipment into the back and the three of us squished in and drove all the way to Eugene. We bonded. Talked about all sorts of things. I drove the whole way.
On the way up, I had shared Christi’s shark story. When Christi’s grandpa was a boy, his family drove to Florida and he caught a shark. He was so prous of this accomplishment, that the family was persauded to tie the shark to the roof of the car and drive back to California. Persumably, they planned to get the shark mounted or something. But it was summer and someplace right in the middle of the country, the smell of rotting shark became unbarable and the shark body was dumped in a stream. This story intrigues me. What happened then? Did someone find the hark? Were children henceforth disallowed from swimming in the stream?
Polly got excited about Black Butte, a small cinder cone next to Mount Shasta. There will be a song about this soon, I think. We got to Eugene and met Polly’s friend KC, with whom we were to stay. He explained that he just purchased a rental property and took us over there, where he stocked the fridge and said we could stay. Nifty. Then he took us to dinner at a good Thai place and give us an advance on the door for the Saturday gig.
KC and Peter stayed up talking into the night, while Polly and I slept. I woke up the next morning around 8:00, which is early for me, and went walking with Polly, trying to find the venue. We walked a long time and finally, I got some breakfast and she asked where we were going. We had passed it and so doubled back. And founf the bookstore Foolscap Books, our venue for the evening. It’s next door to KC’s new age shop. It was still too early for either place to be open, so we crossed the street to a Just Desserts-style bakery. Half of the things they sold were vegan. They had vegan muffins, vegan german chocolate cake, vegan parfait, vegan ecclairs, vegan cheese cake tortes, vegan everythign you could think of. The clouds parted overhead and angels sang and blew trumpets. I got a pumkin muffin. It was the best muffin I’ve ever encountered, vegan or non vegan. It was awesome.
finally, the bookstore opned up and we looked around and saw the PA. Peter finally woke up and came to look at the PA too. then KC’s shop opned, so we looked at that. Peter was full of questions about everything. The shop co-owner showed him all the ritual knives and explaine dhteir meanings and showed us a replica of the Sting prop from Lord of The Rings. Apparently, some neo-pagans want to rituals with short swords pictured in movies. The shop people showed us some stuff about cleansing rituals and a huge, heavy, shap sword that was for sale. Then Peter and I went with KC to Guitar Center while Polly went out to lunch with her friends from Portland.
I Peter needed strings. I just wanted to see if I could get a sales-tax free minidisc. No dice. I realized that I forgot my instrument cable, so I purchased one. Then we left so that Peter could string his acoustic guitar. We went back to our house and he unwound the lowest string and pulled it out of the groove in the nut. The nut broke. (The nut is the grooved piece of bone or plastic at the top of the neck that holds the strings over the finger board (and frets).) He and KC went back to guitar center to buy a new nut. I stayed behind and stared at charts, trying to memorize them better until I fell asleep in the living room. Polly returned and I told her about the nut and she looked highly alarmed. She had been getting progressively more nervouse about the gig through the day. So she went to meditate. Peter came back and started trying to pry the old nut out of the guitar. He spent maybe an hour. It wasn’t budging, so he and I went to a pro-level repair shop with his wounded guitar and the new nut.
The repair guy took out a tool and had the old nut out in two seconds. He looked at the new nut and declared that it wouldn’t fit. He went to a box of old nits and started fishing around for one that would fit and explained that he was doing Peter a favor, since they never fit, you always had to make a new one for the guitar. Nut sizes vary from brand to brand, from model to model and even from individual guitar to individual guitar. Apparently guitars have not yet experienced the industrial revolution innovation of interchangable parts. The repair guy said that he needed to make a new nut. It was approaching 5:00, the shop didn’t rent guitars and we didn’t know anyone to borrow one from. The repair guy had no leads on rentals. doom. the repair guy took pity and kept looking through his nut box until he found one that kind of fit. It was too short. He super-glued some stuff to it, shimming it up until it was almost tall enough. It was still too shot and too wide, but it was playable. Peter promised to send some repair work his way and we went back to the house.
I was trying to remember how to play one of the songs and it wasn’t coming to me. Polly was more mellow from meditating, but I was getting to be highly concerned. We wet up some speakers and did a run though. It was ok, so I felt better. I think we prolly all felt better. We loaded our gear into the truck and went ot the bookstore and set up. I was hungry, so while everyone else was sound checking, I went next door to get vegan tacos. Eugene is more vegan-friendly than Berkeley, I think. the Mexican place was selling big, one kilogram bags of Mate, just like the one Tiffany bought me several weeks ago. But they didn’t sell individual cups. I was still nervous. I knew mate would help. Should I buy a kilogram?
I went back Mate-less to sound check. We finished checking ten minutes after it was suppossed to start. The place was desolately empty. The openning act, a poet, was on her cell phone, calling up her friends, trying to get them come listen to her poetry. The organizers decided to wait half an hour in case more people showed up. A couple did.
The poet was awesome. I forget her name. She mostly talked about scoring chicks.
Then we were on. It went mostly without incident. I got off in the set list and had a refrain of panic where I didn’t know what song we were playing, but managed to get back on track. Polly introduced Peter and I. She said that I was a mills alum and that Peter had many other projects. We played songs. Polly did some solo stuff. By the time we finished, there were three audience members: Polly’s two freinds and one stranger. I made a resolution a few weeks ago to go to at least one concert a week. I’ve been falling behind on it, but I think I need to renew that resolution. People need audiences. The bookstore owner was apparently pissed to have made $8 on the show.
The sound guy, Sleeve, was excited that I went to Mills because he’s into noise music. Cool, a contact in Eugene. We broke down and went over to the dessert place and then went to a bar with just is three and KC’s neice, who was into Peter. After one round of drinks, we went back to our house and slept. It was around 1:00.
I woke up at 7:30 the next morning. I heard Peter and Polly talking to each other. Peter is not a morning person. I sprung out of bed, since it must be time to leave. It was 7:30. Peter crawled back to sleep, but I was up, so I had breakfast at a greasy spoon with Polly’s Portland friends. The woman was a wesleyan alum. She gave me her email address. She’s going to try to get her frat (it’s a co-ed frat) to host us in September at Wesleyan, so we could play a gig (or a few) after I left. Pretty cool. She gave me her email address She seems nifty.
And so we went back to pack up. While we were putting things in the truck, a barefoot guy with a banjo was walking down the street. I said I loved the banjo and he played a song for us and then went on. Eugene is a weird place. We left a nice note for KC and piled into the pickup truck and drove and drove and drove. It was much warmer on the trip down. we passed a thermometer that said it was 91 degrees F. No airconditioning. No radio. No room to move. We talked less on the way down.
Peter suggested we get off the freeway and drive though historic Dunsmuir, because he was curious and it would be a nice change of scene. We drove past the muffler man from Zippy the Pinhead. The one that Zippy goes to have talks with. There he was larger than life! My bandmates were not as excited as I was.
Finally, we got back to the bay area. We came over a crest and saw the twinkling of lights below and cool breeze washed over the car. Home! The only place with decent weather outside of the Mediterranean. We dropped off Peter at his home in Richmond with his stuff. Then went to Berkeley, where Polly dumped her stuff into her car. And there was christi, who I had been pining for all weekend. I told he that I saw the Muffler man. She said, “Really?? That’s awesome!” I definitely married the right woman. She had a cold and I was exhuasted, so we went to bed.
I slept past noon. Got up, ate some food, check my mountain of email, then went over to Precision to get a tatoo of a bass clef on my arm. It took around two hours. It’s black and blue and shaded. Now I look like a real bass player. It matched a tatoos of a peace symbol, that Christi got on her arm in the same spot, during my absence. Peace through music. Or something. I came back for Tennis Roberts rehersal. We waited around for Ed to show up and then called him and went for Pizza. We called him back after Pizza and he said he was too tired to practice, so we played as a trio for maybe an hour. the mics were still set up from flute back practice, so I tried singing and playing bass for a while. “New tatoo. Black and blue.” Not good at making up words on the fly and really not good at multitasking singing and playing at the same time, but I think I could get it with practice.
Tiffany came home and was tired, so we quit playing. Everyone left. Christi and Tiffany went to bed. I posted in my blog. I was instructed by the tatoo artist to take a hot shower, so I will go do that now. Then bed.
Christi made me a new web page. Yay!