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Friday, August 08, 2003

It all began at the Opera 

I've been enjoying reading Henry Miller's "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare". I've never read anything by him before, and I like his enthusiasm -- there are no shades of grey with HM! Each chapter is an essay about a person or a place as he's driving around America a la Jack Kerouac. Last night, I read a chapter on his friend Edgar Varese -- a name I'd heard of but know nothing about.

EV is/was a composer who writes "organized sound", and from the descriptions, it sounded pretty modern, probably "discordant". Certainly no 1940s Big Band sentimental journey smoke gets in your eyes. HM loves Edgar! So, I've sent off an e-mail to my friend Greg in Colorado, asking for his thoughts on EV. Greg likes discordant stuff, or some discordant stuff like Schnittke and "later" Stravinsky. (When I first heard Schnittke, I thought PUKE, but later on, when I was being more open-minded -- and drunk probably, I got a good listen and it wasn't so bad.)

I researched EV on none other than our very own google, and found something written by Frank Zappa. Frank calls him the "Father of Electronic Music". I am interested in hearing some of his stuff -- perhaps the library has a CD. Perhaps the missing ingredient that prevents my appreciating contemporary music will fall into place.

How did this train of thought begin? A month or so ago, my friend Dave and I went to see three one-act operas, one of which was a contemporary piece called "Medusa". It sounded as if all the instruments were playing random notes, along with the diva: It was Godawful, and one part, near the end, almost sent me into uncontrollable giggles -- after Medusa is dead, something happens involving Pegasus who -- (yowled out against a background of violins sounding like mosquitos) -- is "The God of Muuuuuuuuuuusic.... Sweeeeeet Muuuuuuuusiiiiiiic".

I don't know much about opera (before this summer, nothing), and this piece brought everyone to their feet with tears in their eyes HOooorah Bravo! Was I the only one that thought it sucked?

I Just Didn't Get It, so that started my e-mails with Greg for his take. If I discovered that one missing piece of the music puzzle, I could make sense of it all. Maybe it would be something like watching "Mulholland Drive" where the story comes together in sharp focus. The one purpose I can think of is that discordant noise makes it memorable, and maybe even if it's a shrieking bad memory, maybe that's the point. I'll remember more about "Medusa" than some of the other, standard operas.

On an unrelated note, any insight into HM's life via the movie "Henry and June" was pretty dull stuff -- it was a movie about Anais Nin and Uma Thurman staring at each other a lot. If they made a movie about Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady On The Road, they could turn something interesting into a yawn-fest by having them stare at each other a lot, too.

A few years ago, I was reading new-age pop-ologies such as "The Celestine Prophecies". I forgot which sacred prophetic insight it is, but one is "Notice the Coincidences": Perhaps reading about Edgar Varese following close on the heels of seeing "Medusa" *means* something....? (This would set Greg over the edge.) Hmmmm, a topic for later blog entries.

# posted by B. Arthurholt : 1:37 PM : Luscious

Thursday, August 07, 2003

Later that same day... 

After completing the initial CBT on product design, I would like to express irritation at how corporate politics can turn a relatively simple process into a morass of seemingly complex and insurmountable rules and regulations. Chief among these is the liberal creation of acronyms: The process is simple, the memorization of acronyms is the "test". On the one hand, I'm happy to be learning steps and tools by which this company operates; on the other, I should have taken these over a year ago and saved myself the frustrations of having to always rely on second-hand answers.

On a completely unrelated note, I've been invited to a clothing-optional pool party this weekend. I'll probably hit my head on the diving board or something. I hope it's going to be "normal", meaning, I hope this party doesn't devolve into something else. MInd you, I"m no prude, but I've been a little too loose lately.

A few days ago, I tricked with a couple of guys, and one of them had a seizure. We were standing there, small-talking, and suddenly he dropped onto the floor, his head and arm twitching, his eyes rolling back and his mouth making funny gulping forms. When I say suddenly, well, it was more a slow fall, and almost graceful -- he was fainting. Amazingly, I remained calm and called out to the other guy: "Do you know anything about seizures?" Ha ha ha, luck of the draw, turns out the other guy's an ex-nurse. It was probably only seconds, but it seemed longer, the guy came round and began apologizing: "This happened a couple of weeks ago in Montreal, very embarrassing." We helped the guy off the floor and walked him to bed. The ex-nurse speculated that it was drug use.

This incident, and a few others of recent, have been on my mind -- mostly about what they may mean and their impact on my outlook. My friend Dave here, and my friends Paul and Chris in Colorado, think these are funny stories -- but I don't agree. While I don't believe in choices being moral, I do believe in ethics, and events like these can harden emotions -- toward myself and others. This subject will be explored more fully on this blog.


# posted by B. Arthurholt : 8:26 PM : Luscious

Greetinks, Blogginks 

Hello. This is my first entry in what I hope will be a beautiful blog relationship. Some blog objectives: Useless ventings better saved for here than directed at the object or person who caused the vent; meanderings that can lead to further creative writing (or other); self-obsession of the sort from which I can spare those who still actually listen to me (!); writing down ideas that I can pursue.

As I type, I'm reminded of how I felt when I began my written journal, New Years' Day 1996. I'm not quite ready to completely replace those written entries just yet -- I don't always have access to a p.c. -- but then again, I don't always have access to my journal. I'll consider these two as simultaneous, complementary forms...

I'm at work. Now that I've (guiltily) read the initial instructions, chosen a blog template and created my first entry, I should be signing out CBT's (that's computer based training) modules on how to build a database. Completing these courses will not only enable me to speak authoritatively on building our company's new and no doubt highly important G project library (sarcasm), but give me the skills to be considered that much more of a valued employee (sobbing noises).

# posted by B. Arthurholt : 4:15 PM : Luscious