Only Slightly Uphill

We're in the final stages of prep for the new communication device. I'm also in the process of finishing a new birthday tango. Once it's been presented I can't wait to post the recording.

The work I'm doing with Logic Pro is paying off. Instruments are becoming more balanced and the sound of the mix is more focussed.

So much so that I'm coming to realize just how badly - or, more accurately, how much more room for expression I left - I played in the parts.

Something like that.

There's a lot of drama in this piece - for the first time I think it has a real balance of drama, danceability and musicianship. It's a question of getting to a point where "what" I write is overshadowing "how" I write.

Which means, amongst other things, that there's a much greater chance that any false move will throw the damned thing off, rather like a fly landing on the end of a tightrope walker's pole - just enough to throw the whole thing into the drink.

The higher you reach the easier a small thing can mess you up.

Frankly, I love it.

-- Post From My iPad

Many waters cannot drown love

Fortunately there are still a lot of mysteries in my life - most of them concern the reasons for my own behaviour in situations that other adults navigate through like ducks on a pond.

From my own poor point of view most of them come from my innate limitations in seeing and understanding what is directly in front of my nose.

Case in point - we are really not supposed to use our personal tech on the floor of the Orchard unless specifically authorized to do so. I admit to being called out on it twice already so I promised the Store - by promising myself - that I would not do so again unless a real need arose...

... And that happened today.

A client asked for a trainer that either knew how to use sign language or had very clear handwriting - she was profoundly deaf and had very little intelligable speech.

But ye gods and little fishes did she have a wonderful smile in that grey-haired head.

I know, amongst many things I know I should know, that I should know how to sign. One of my colleagues - currently on vacation, of course - is also profoundly deaf; an interpeter is hired for him during storewide meetings and other functions.

But he wasn't there today and I was on my own.

Or, actually, I wasn't. It may be a truism but it really does take two to make a conversation and my client was willing to put up with my limitations in order to learn her computer.

Well, it takes two and one should have an iPad with Dragon Dictation loaded on it.

I was able to show her what to do by gesture, dictate the instructions into the iPad, email it to myself and then print it out so we could then write clarifications on it.

Strangely her handwriting was almost as bad as mine.

Still, we managed it. She learned the tasks she needed and, more importantly, learned why it worked the way it did, which meant she could then advance her work at home.

I suppose I tried to vocalize during the first ten minutes. After that, with the exception of doing the dictation I was silent for almost 40 minutes.

We parted with a warm handshake. I didn't use my voice until I got Back Of House.

Suddenly the intensity of concentration broke and tears came. Not in a choking flood, which is how I usually release intense emotion but in a quiet mistiness, a sense of overflowing feeling.

Now that I think of it I sometimes get the same feeling when dancing tango or when listening to a new piece of music I've written.

Connecting with people is important and, at least for me, is as natural a part of my life as swimming is for a fish - it's just a natural part of my environment ...

... except, of course, when it's not, and I am barely human.

But that is another tale for another evening.

-- Post From My iPad

no aumente el puente - baje el río

...and there we are, done with another birthday piece. I'm not quite ready to release it, it's not done yet.

The piano sketch seems to go over really well with people whose ears I trust - I just wonder if I have the skill to make it work when scored for our little orchestra.

Each member brings a rich, unique personality to the group, musically and personally. The group itself has a delightful sound. I'm just not sure that they are the right color for the piece.

This is rather a strange place in which to find myself - and I am looking for myself in the middle of all this.

You see, over the last couple of years I made it a point to put a sort of filter on my musical imagination, to try to hear sounds in my head as expressed by our little group. Suddenly, for whatever reason, that does not seem to be the case and it's very surprising.

So NOW what do I do?

Do I leave it in pure digital form, maybe bring out the richness of the lines, give up trying to make it sound like real instruments and just let it fly?

Do I try to solve the inner voice issues and voicing challenges and prep it for our little group?

Or do I take both roads and create two versions? I'd like to present the thing, share it with our community - or at least those who care enough to listen - correction, who care enough about ME to listen?

No, not really - if I did this to really impress people I'd have given it up years ago. Far easier to make up a fake Nobel prize for Literature - and more effective.

Looks like two versions.

Damn.


-- Post From My iPad

Fuck 'em If They Can't Take A Joke

No point in trying to catch up with every event and feeling since my last post. A lot has happened.

A lot is always happening

Big event - the annual Old Port Festival. Last year I had to work, this year my strange little schedule made it possible to attend.

Our quarterly meeting and my willingness to help open the store kept me from being a part of the parade. I tended to slide in late anyway, pick a loose-fitting pair of trousers from the can and a beat-up drum then beat the daylights out of it infront of hundreds of people which seemed like thousands.

There was an al-fresco cafe set up in frnot of the Regency Hotel, the old Armory. I liked the burger, though the service was very slow.

A big crowd ... People everywhere you turned. Usually I can depend on my cloak of indifferent invisibility to observe people.

Sadly I also indulged in my annual bag of kettle corn, which meant I wasn't really thinking straight.

There was one booth by Bard coffee, crowned with a huge sign asking "what kind of person are you...good or bad? Take a simple quiz to find out".

I admit I wanted to ignore it and spend my energy watching the Top 40 stage and critiquing the performer but the ancient lure of a theological argument woke up brain synapses dormant since my undergrad days.

So I chatted up the two young men.

The questions?

1 - have you ever told a lie, no matter how small?

2 - what do you call someone who tells a lie?

3 - have you ever stolen something, no matter how small?

4 - what do you call someone who steals something?

So now that you have admitted to being a liar and a thief you are asked to consider what happens to such folks and if you are prepared to be judged.

Since I was under the influence of kettlecorn I admit I missed the obvious comeback: If I am a father whose child is starving and I steal a loaf of bread, saving my child and fully taking the fall, then what am I now?

It all comes down to context. The larger your ability to see the inter-connected picture then the more good you can do. I think pushing the limits of who and how we are makes us more useful, a greater blessing to the world.

And it hit me that this was the face of pure evil in the world.

This willingness, this need to have things be purely black abd white, the desire to have the entire world be reduced to one neck so it could be slit ... whether for theological reasons or to support an abusive relationship ... this denial of the fundamental inter-connectedness of us all, what an former girlfriend and I called the "right game" (which she played incomparably well) ...

... all of it is a source of blisteringly destructive action.

After I had said goodbye I walked by the Vietnamese American assiciation of Maine, doing a Dragon Dance in the street.

It was giggling, delerious fun.

People would run up to the front of the dragon, holding out food and jumping back as it snapped it up.

.... and it struck me, forcefully, in the middle of my dodging the dragon and trying not to trip over a child who was shrieking with delight, that if my very-earnest friends got their way than all of this would be wiped from the earth, as surely as the Taliban blew the statue of Bhuddha to flinders.

...I heard them in the voices answering me when I was working a phone bank for the Gay Marriage referendum.

...I heard them in the voice of a waitress refusing to serve me a slice of the apple pie on the shelf of a truckstop cafe in Montanna in the middle of a Blue Devils performance tour.

As Thomas Jefferson said "I have sworn upon the altar of Almighty God eternal vigilence against every form of tyranny over the mind of Man".

So now what do I do?

What CAN I do except try to be the best person I know how to be and try tolisten and love everyone around me .... Even the one who try to trap me in a web of questions.

I think it will take more than a web of pointless words to catch a truly honest dragon.


-- Post From My iPad

Creative afterglow

Well, I've finished another piece. A birthday piece for my friend Adira who is a talented and expressive dancer. This is the first independant piece (the score for Inuk does not count) that I've written in quite a while. Usually I have to take the needs of my local musicians into account. This seems a lot easier to think about and much harder to execute.

Adira seemed to like it a lot. I hope it gives her something to work with in terms of dancing.

Now there's another birthday coming up soon and I have to get organized to sit down and get to work.

Went for a long walk after taking Adira to dinner to listen to the piece (thank-you iPad). We had a lot of rain this afternoon, so I'm told. People would come into the Orchard from different locations in various levels of dampness.

Some had encountered no rain at all. Others were recounting tales of blistering, though short, downpours. We could track the storn cells on our computers but the day was so busy we kind of lost track.

As usual there were a dozen accurate stories. We just took them where they were.




-- Post From My iPad

Life In The Time Of 2/4

Danger. Sugar crash.

I'm diabetic and have to worry a lot about balancing my activities with my blood sugar. Most of the time It's too high, so having moments, like now , when I am shaky and unfocussed (well, more than usual) is a bit of a challenge.

I should leave int he typing werroes to show how inacurate I am until the sugars derom the pizza and glass of wine I've ordered kick in to smooth out my relationship wipth relaity. Someday I'm going to, under controlled conditions, ride this out tot the very edge og passing out, may e beyond it, just to see ehatit's like.

It's a funny weakness, a kimd of craving shakiness inmy physical core. My fingers tremble, I spill olive oil from my pizza on my nice white trousers (damn!).

I've started working on a mew birthday piece for another friend. It seems like a new style for me, more "song" than the usual sympgonic approach I take. I like it but am kind of stuck for a rwxt for my firend (who is a remarkable singer ) to use.

I had one by Garcia Lorca but it just does not fit.

Not sure if it's going to be a tango or not. It will work like one, hopefully danceable.

Now working on a bottle of San Pellegrino - I feel secure enough ( and my typing seems to have improved enough) so that I can worry about hydrating rather than passing out.

OK - one of my colleagues from the Orchard walked ina nd we're going to talk politics. More fun.



-- Post From My iPad