Friday, July 05, 2002
Tooooo Local
LEGAL DISCLAIMER - Nothing on this page should be taken as true (though some of it may be but I am not telling you what).
Our local paper gave away a Holiday Insect repellent kit as a competition prize this week but it was worth £30. I think I will set up a workshop forging Bus passes or something. That will get them really worked up. Still, we did move here partly because it is quiet(er) and there are parks (of a sort).
In light of this week's plane collision, I am reminded of the NATO code name for the Tupolev TU154. Of course this was not chosen by the designer or the manufacturer but what possessed some brass-hat in NATO to call it "Careless"? I have actually flown on one. In 1978 I went on a school skiing trip to Bulgaria and along with about 100 other kids (mostly from Yorkshire I remember) and a few nervous teachers, we left Gatwick on a very battered TU154. I think we arrived in the middle of some security alert because we were forced off the runway by military jets (Mig 23 - "Floggers" - I took note of those sort of details in those days) and had to land on the grass which was VERY bumpy. All of the overhead lockers flew open and the red cover on the handle of the emergency exit sprang across the cabin.
Bulgaria was very grey then. I expect large parts of it still are. The road from Plovdiv, where we landed (!) winds through weird towns with strange woody plants entwined around everything. It reminded me of the illustrations in 'Doctor Dolittle in the Moon' for some reason though I have not seen that book since well before I went to Bulgaria. Bulgarians live on Steak, Yoghurt and awful chocolate. Well, we did anyway. The Steak was alright, the Yoghurt was wonderful (not all of us thought so which meant that I often got triple helpings) but the chocolate was truly terrible. It had a layer of 'good' stuff on the top while the rest of it seemed like brown lard with a little bit of sugar in it which is probably what it was. Oh and we could buy beer quite happily even though we were only thirteen and if it wasn't cold enough we would leave it on your windowsill outside for about 10 seconds, grabbing it back just before it froze solid. I think the beer was nice but it had something missing - alcohol. We could buy beer but NOT newspapers. It is interesting to note what the Bulgarian authorities thought was corrupting. I did manage to get a very cheap looking propaganda poster, by pretending to be East German. It was on our wall for ages until my brother destroyed it in case our own government thought he was a communist. I did manage to borrow a newspaper from the hotel receptionist and though I couldn't read Bulgarian ( I still can't oddly enough) I managed to spend half an hour being fascinated at how one whole broadsheet could make such a fuss about one Bulgarian Cosmonaut. I wish I had nicked that paper but I never ever nick anything, especially not in a country where the Police look so friendly.
I do hope that Bulgaria has shaken off its problems. It is a beautiful country, quite unreal but I obviously felt that because it was NOT the UK and it was the first time I had been abroad since I was 18 months old and went to France.
Thursday, July 04, 2002
Planned Obsolescence or ... Security by Obscurity
This page is just the tip of what there is. I have so much behind me that I just cannot write about. The back is off the machine but you only see the top layer of the workings inside. You may be able to guess the power source (Twinkies and Iced tea); you may be able to determine various other characteristics which I have not explicitly mentioned but you will never be able to re-construct the motor from what is put down here. I start with the memory of running around a large field with lots of very green grass, on the edge of a cliff (Wow! Like 'The Catcher in the Rye' - that was unintentional). I was three. Now there is a visit somewhere in South Wales to a family with lots of daughters who fussed over me and my brother. They gave us goose eggs and my brother ate them despite not liking eggs at all. I was five. I remember the vaccinations, the sugar lump for polio, in a large room. I still have the medical card with the various injections listed on it. I remember sitting on a tree stump we had in the garden of our house and the two girls next door called 'Manda and Angela (mandaranangela). The facing on one wall of our house fell down and killed the tortoise. Our dog, a big Alsation called Cleo, used to eat Bees. I stood on a bee once and it did the obvious. I went to a school where the classrooms were on stilts and a playgroup run by a Mrs Depechetoir (Spelling?). I was not allowed poetry books or fairy tales by my mother though my Grandmother rebelled and bought us loads of old books (I think they used to belong to my mother but they were still the 'correct' things to read. I dreamt about My Grandmother's copy of 'The Just so Stories' ( not this version) the other day. It was original but she gave me a facsimile copy that looked the same but for the age.
F-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s Intact
I am a Kosmonaut
This is rather good in a constructivist sort of way.
(From http://www.kosmonaut.se/gagarin/)
I was going to dedicate this entry to Space missions but I don't really feel like it now. Too much cold hard metal rather than diversionary spirit I think. Boiler plate and Bathos. I have always wanted to know what Bathos is and now I know. It obviously has a lot to to with Zen. The story in Seymour about the old monk dying and trying to overhear a conversation about washing, over the pious hubbub of the surrounding crowd is bathetic in the true sense. Come to think of it, is not every Zen koan you have ever heard bathetic? Here is a good one from http://www.utah.edu/stc/tai-chi/stories.html :-
Tea Master
A master of the tea ceremony in old Japan once accidentally slighted a soldier. He quickly apologized, but the rather impetuous soldier demanded that the matter be settled in a sword duel. The tea master, who had no experience with swords, asked the advice of a fellow Zen master who did possess such skill. As he was served by his friend, the Zen swordsman could not help but notice how the tea master performed his art with perfect concentration and tranquility. "Tomorrow," the Zen swordsman said, "when you duel the soldier, hold your weapon above your head, as if ready to strike, and face him with the same concentration and tranquility with which you perform the tea ceremony." The next day, at the appointed time and place for the duel, the tea master followed this advice. The soldier, readying himself to strike, stared for a long time into the fully attentive but calm face of the tea master. Finally, the soldier lowered his sword, apologized for his arrogance, and left without a blow being struck
I am trying to find a Koan which ends with the Master breaking his begging bowl over the head of the questioner but this is probably a spoof though it certainly fits with my argument above. It must be difficult to spoof Zen koans bearing mind that there can be many lessons from each one. I will leave you to search for your own koans as I am overwhelmed by the results of the search. Technology is not very Zen is it?
"We are being sentimental when we give to a thing more tenderness than God gives to it." - R. H. Blyth
I have just read this review (where I found the exact quote) and it says that this applies to Salinger and the Glass family. (No! Not Philip, though he could be one of them thinking about it). Drone! Repetition!
LIfe in the Dictionary
My wife who has an intense dislike for the Music of Philip Glass ( I may have understated that) actually quite liked his version of Low. I myself prefer what she calls the 'diddly-diddly' of things like Music in 12 parts. or Music With Changing Parts. There is something 'environmental' about these long pieces. They are like the Peter Greenaway tracks I mentioned in my first week of logging. Maybe they wouldn't go with an episode of Eastenders but for an hour of relaxation you can't beat them. I first heard (and saw) Philip Glass on a Channel 4 program and I was hypnotised. The fact that people would actually practice circular breathing in order to play the Saxaphone parts which had no allowance for breathing was stunning and it gave the whole thing a dangerous edge. My Aunt has a Didgeridoo and although I can get a satisfying note out of it, there is no way I can extend it beyond one single lungful of air. How do they do that?
Is it me or is it no longer cool to be weird? I have just put on 'Outside' by David Bowie and looking at the sleeve notes, which at the time I bought it .... oh dear - I have a mobile comma. A small worm-like bug just alighted on the screen after the phrase 'bought it' and walked around. That was very weird and very apt. Editorial comment from the insect world. Back to the game in progress folks. ... the sleeve notes, which at the time I bought it (1995), were very weird, are now just a bit silly. Bowie himself was on the Jonathan Ross Show on Saturday and not being a mad keen fan I have not heard him speak for ages - (actually the only time I can ever recall him being interviewed before this was when he appeared on a current affairs program in the 60s as the spokesman for a group of men complaining that they were discriminated against because they have long hair. I need to be able to do footnotes don't I?) - and I was struck by how 'normal' he actually was. It was as if all the old strangeness and Eno archness had been swept away. Maybe children do that for you. I suspect this could be put down to Postmodernism but I have never really understood how to describe Postmodernism and that fact is part of it in a self-referential way.
The album is still very good and makes we want to click my fingers in a sort of beatnick way. All they display in the foyer of the Tate gallery are Christmas Trees (of varying weirdness) thank God. The Tate is a modern art Gallery for goodness sake so why complain when their Christmas tree is modern art? I so much want things to be interesting. So much is boring. I still look at The Great Bear and find interesting things I hadn't noticed. Lets try it with the London Underground map.
My wife who has an intense dislike for the Music of Philip Glass ( I may have understated that) actually quite liked his version of Low. I myself prefer what she calls the 'diddly-diddly' of things like Music in 12 parts. or Music With Changing Parts. There is something 'environmental' about these long pieces. They are like the Peter Greenaway tracks I mentioned in my first week of logging. Maybe they wouldn't go with an episode of Eastenders but for an hour of relaxation you can't beat them. I first heard (and saw) Philip Glass on a Channel 4 program and I was hypnotised. The fact that people would actually practice circular breathing in order to play the Saxaphone parts which had no allowance for breathing was stunning and it gave the whole thing a dangerous edge. My Aunt has a Didgeridoo and although I can get a satisfying note out of it, there is no way I can extend it beyond one single lungful of air. How do they do that?
Is it me or is it no longer cool to be weird? I have just put on 'Outside' by David Bowie and looking at the sleeve notes, which at the time I bought it .... oh dear - I have a mobile comma. A small worm-like bug just alighted on the screen after the phrase 'bought it' and walked around. That was very weird and very apt. Editorial comment from the insect world. Back to the game in progress folks. ... the sleeve notes, which at the time I bought it (1995), were very weird, are now just a bit silly. Bowie himself was on the Jonathan Ross Show on Saturday and not being a mad keen fan I have not heard him speak for ages - (actually the only time I can ever recall him being interviewed before this was when he appeared on a current affairs program in the 60s as the spokesman for a group of men complaining that they were discriminated against because they have long hair. I need to be able to do footnotes don't I?) - and I was struck by how 'normal' he actually was. It was as if all the old strangeness and Eno archness had been swept away. Maybe children do that for you. I suspect this could be put down to Postmodernism but I have never really understood how to describe Postmodernism and that fact is part of it in a self-referential way.
The album is still very good and makes we want to click my fingers in a sort of beatnick way. All they display in the foyer of the Tate gallery are Christmas Trees (of varying weirdness) thank God. The Tate is a modern art Gallery for goodness sake so why complain when their Christmas tree is modern art? I so much want things to be interesting. So much is boring. I still look at The Great Bear and find interesting things I hadn't noticed. Lets try it with the London Underground map.
Wednesday, July 03, 2002
Mushrooms
This gravely gravid plantwise shelter
is for the spores of something massive,
an underground intelligence
stretching coast to coast on motorways
of magic, roads of doom
for all of us not attuned to beta particles.
We could not last a war,
or post ourselves across the world
to break down all the fetid, rotting ground
we walk on.
We could not die and yet survive asleep
amongst the humus.
These mushrooms walk and talk,
as Angels on a pin they dance;
so many millions in your breath,
hearing all the infra sound,
the wilderness of plant-life music,
the orchestra of entomology.
We could eat nothing but them;
fungi with every meal or snack,
and yet they would outlast us,
bright and white and warning
of the poisons in them, on them;
A single mind; the middle kingdom.
Of course anyone with an ounce of memory of what I have written before will know which poem inspired this, though of course I don't pretend that is anywhere near as good as that.
I didn't realise it, but although there ARE three kingdoms, they are Plant, Animal and Mineral. I always thought that Fungi were one on their own. Maybe, that is what one radical taxonomist suggested. Anyway, in this small world, fungi ARE the third kingdom and will remain so. So what about Protozoa you ask. I had to do a biology project on protozoa once and fascinating little beasties they are. We used to collect the pond water to look at the pond-life through the microscope along with the scrapings from the inside of our cheeks. It was when my brother suggested that we look at blood and MY blood to boot, I decided against any further investigation. I don't recall either of us going down with dysentry or typhoid from playing in the water but as it was filtered off the Malvern Hills, it was probably quite clean. My mother once said something about COLD water being bad for you but nothing about dirty water and she was a doctor so we did trust her. We are still here.
This gravely gravid plantwise shelter
is for the spores of something massive,
an underground intelligence
stretching coast to coast on motorways
of magic, roads of doom
for all of us not attuned to beta particles.
We could not last a war,
or post ourselves across the world
to break down all the fetid, rotting ground
we walk on.
We could not die and yet survive asleep
amongst the humus.
These mushrooms walk and talk,
as Angels on a pin they dance;
so many millions in your breath,
hearing all the infra sound,
the wilderness of plant-life music,
the orchestra of entomology.
We could eat nothing but them;
fungi with every meal or snack,
and yet they would outlast us,
bright and white and warning
of the poisons in them, on them;
A single mind; the middle kingdom.
Of course anyone with an ounce of memory of what I have written before will know which poem inspired this, though of course I don't pretend that is anywhere near as good as that.
I didn't realise it, but although there ARE three kingdoms, they are Plant, Animal and Mineral. I always thought that Fungi were one on their own. Maybe, that is what one radical taxonomist suggested. Anyway, in this small world, fungi ARE the third kingdom and will remain so. So what about Protozoa you ask. I had to do a biology project on protozoa once and fascinating little beasties they are. We used to collect the pond water to look at the pond-life through the microscope along with the scrapings from the inside of our cheeks. It was when my brother suggested that we look at blood and MY blood to boot, I decided against any further investigation. I don't recall either of us going down with dysentry or typhoid from playing in the water but as it was filtered off the Malvern Hills, it was probably quite clean. My mother once said something about COLD water being bad for you but nothing about dirty water and she was a doctor so we did trust her. We are still here.
Dear Old Tyger that Sleeps
Phrase of the Day :- That's a bit Freudian.
Soundtrack of the Day :- Nine Objects of Desire - Suzanne Vega
Elder Statesman of the Day - Chris Patten (but don't forget the bleep machine)
(This may go offline - I need to come back as this is almost realtime)
I have just arrived here through a very heavy downpour, the sort of grit-splashing deluge that makes the very air seem like water. The clouds are dark, as you would expect, with a threat of thunder though it has been too cold for me to believe that there will be a storm. I love days like this but as soon as the sun begins to come out, I feel let-down. Rainy days should be the whole shebang not the wishy-washy mix of "Sunshine and Showers". I can't control the weather like some people seem able to do but "Set for the Day" is a lovely phrase.
I have nearly finished reading "Seymour - an Introduction" though in a Zen-like way I don't really want to say anything about it. Except that the whole thing seems to be a longer version of the poems that Seymour wrote - seemingly mundane descriptions which go beyond what they describe to explain the subject in great depth. Just like the story of the Horse Wrangler at the beginning of "Raise high the roof beam, Carpenters" (Which is in the same volume). Be quiet and excuse me; I am straining to hear a conversation and you are making it difficult for me to catch all of it. I am going to start a rumour. J.D. Salinger has a whole manuscript of what happens to Holden Caulfield after "The Catcher in the Rye". Just to be safe - this is NOT true! I have written it here with a plain statement that I do not know what manuscripts J.D. Salinger has hidden away for publication after his death. The above text would be nice (and very dangerous) though in Margaret Salinger's book she mentions a short story which says that Holden Caulfield is missing in action during the war or maybe I have misread that.
Lost Vowels for today. There are over three hundred Troops listed as being "Missing in Acton"
There is of course a site for "Lost Consonants" and other things. As the above offering suggests I always end up thinking of Lost Vowels rather than Consonants. I always think they are very good and wonder why Graham Rawle doesn't ever do them but he has been steadfast in his refusal to use (or lose) vowels rather than consonants in his series. I said I wouldn't talk any more about "Seymour" but there is a paragraph at the beginning which quotes either Kafka or Kierkegaard (I had to look that up by the way and of course the parentheses are a tribute to Salinger himself) about clerical error coming back to hauntt an author. Lost Consonants are just a recognition of this whole thing. If you can't beat them, join them. My log is full of errors but thankfully my wife points most of them out. She told me yesterday that she thought that the surname of Tom and Barbara from the Good Life was "Goode" rather than "Good" but I can find no proof either way. Of course for such a throw-away ( and mostly un-read ) text as this, none of this really matters as no-one is going to use THIS as PROOF of ANYTHING at all. What next?
A Double Haiku like Seymour's :-
Above the Mountains,
Eagles Soar with wings of Gold.
The river tumbles.
Through the garden wall,
To keep order with the plants.
The woman listens.
I would assume that you are not allowed a title. I know that this is not very good and probably only fits being a classical Haiku by virtue of the 5-7-5 structure. My point is not to write a 'good' Haiku but to illustrate how little text Seymour had, to fit in all the descriptions which Buddy gives of the poems. Its like the Sketch (done various times) where someone is translating for a person who talks for ages only to have the interpreter respond with 'He says "Yes"'. I can only say that Seymour's Haiku must have been very good indeed. It is fortunate in the extreme that Buddy is not allowed to quote any of the poems in his story. Maybe I have misread what the actual structure of the poems is. Maybe several poems are used for each of Buddy's events. But then maybe Salinger chooses the Double Haiku format just so that he can get away with longer descriptions. Maybe that defeats the purity of the Haiku form. This kind of goes against Salinger's rule (described by his daughter) that you should not be an artist, a writer or a person of religion unless your heart is purely in it. Maybe this is his clerical error, something like a treasure hunt for a concept. Or possibly, the poems are not quoted directly because Salinger knows he cannot write them and won't compromise being "fully in it".
How big is the world? How much destruction can it swallow up without it spilling over. I don't want other people's wars coming my way. Oh that sounds so NIMBY doesn't it. My country or even my continent has had so many wars and traumas, that I have to thankful that it is so peaceful now. To go one step further, I don't want wars at all. I like to think I am passionate about things, and that if I was ever in a state of repression, I would be prepared to do something about it ( getting over my natural cowardice) but nothing that makes the news at the moment is worth fighting for. All the big problems could be overcome. There is a futility about it all at the moment. It's the other ludicrous stuff which doesn't make the news, which needs fighting for. Like patenting rice or exploiting cheap labour. Three thousand people died in the World Trade Centre ( And I will shout loudly and obscenely at anyone who makes light of that fact before you get enraged and write to RDeWeyden@Hotmail.com) but we could save many times that number with just a slight change in world balance. Maybe the media in the parts of the world which most of us like to think of as bizarre (but in actuality represent the majority of the world's population) should run pictures of people dying of starvation or HIV or any of the other things which the 'west' does to the rest of the world either by virtue of action or inaction.
Maybe the phrase of the day should be changed to 'polemic'
It is the kind of day when you want to dance to the music in your headphones or do Tai-Chi at the very least. Oh no! I'll be doing one of those "which Care-Bear are you" type things next. How to define the world using a few stereotypical behaviour patterns. Why does that sound familiar? Ah ha! Astrology. And you CAN write to me at RDeWeyden@hotmail.com about that. I am me and no-one else (Though there is a guy in Australia who's life has been an exact mirror of mine (except that he is a Kangaroo Wrangler in Dubbo and actually likes ice beer). I recognise the cadences and rhythms of real speech. Oh yes I do!
As you may have guessed, I got in here really early ( I was woken at 04:30) by a "Slow Motion Blackbird". This is actually a real track. It is the call of a blackbird repeated but gradually slowed down (Like Four Organs by Steve Reich but done by slowing the recording down without changing the pitch). The annoying things is that blackbird call is from a soundtrack album and I hear the exact same call on TV or radio all the time. Or is it that all blackbirds have the same call. No! I know they vary. Anyway, Chris Hughes used it first so that is all that matters.
Enough for now (Who said 'Too Much'?)
Phrase of the Day :- That's a bit Freudian.
Soundtrack of the Day :- Nine Objects of Desire - Suzanne Vega
Elder Statesman of the Day - Chris Patten (but don't forget the bleep machine)
(This may go offline - I need to come back as this is almost realtime)
I have just arrived here through a very heavy downpour, the sort of grit-splashing deluge that makes the very air seem like water. The clouds are dark, as you would expect, with a threat of thunder though it has been too cold for me to believe that there will be a storm. I love days like this but as soon as the sun begins to come out, I feel let-down. Rainy days should be the whole shebang not the wishy-washy mix of "Sunshine and Showers". I can't control the weather like some people seem able to do but "Set for the Day" is a lovely phrase.
I have nearly finished reading "Seymour - an Introduction" though in a Zen-like way I don't really want to say anything about it. Except that the whole thing seems to be a longer version of the poems that Seymour wrote - seemingly mundane descriptions which go beyond what they describe to explain the subject in great depth. Just like the story of the Horse Wrangler at the beginning of "Raise high the roof beam, Carpenters" (Which is in the same volume). Be quiet and excuse me; I am straining to hear a conversation and you are making it difficult for me to catch all of it. I am going to start a rumour. J.D. Salinger has a whole manuscript of what happens to Holden Caulfield after "The Catcher in the Rye". Just to be safe - this is NOT true! I have written it here with a plain statement that I do not know what manuscripts J.D. Salinger has hidden away for publication after his death. The above text would be nice (and very dangerous) though in Margaret Salinger's book she mentions a short story which says that Holden Caulfield is missing in action during the war or maybe I have misread that.
Lost Vowels for today. There are over three hundred Troops listed as being "Missing in Acton"
There is of course a site for "Lost Consonants" and other things. As the above offering suggests I always end up thinking of Lost Vowels rather than Consonants. I always think they are very good and wonder why Graham Rawle doesn't ever do them but he has been steadfast in his refusal to use (or lose) vowels rather than consonants in his series. I said I wouldn't talk any more about "Seymour" but there is a paragraph at the beginning which quotes either Kafka or Kierkegaard (I had to look that up by the way and of course the parentheses are a tribute to Salinger himself) about clerical error coming back to hauntt an author. Lost Consonants are just a recognition of this whole thing. If you can't beat them, join them. My log is full of errors but thankfully my wife points most of them out. She told me yesterday that she thought that the surname of Tom and Barbara from the Good Life was "Goode" rather than "Good" but I can find no proof either way. Of course for such a throw-away ( and mostly un-read ) text as this, none of this really matters as no-one is going to use THIS as PROOF of ANYTHING at all. What next?
A Double Haiku like Seymour's :-
Above the Mountains,
Eagles Soar with wings of Gold.
The river tumbles.
Through the garden wall,
To keep order with the plants.
The woman listens.
I would assume that you are not allowed a title. I know that this is not very good and probably only fits being a classical Haiku by virtue of the 5-7-5 structure. My point is not to write a 'good' Haiku but to illustrate how little text Seymour had, to fit in all the descriptions which Buddy gives of the poems. Its like the Sketch (done various times) where someone is translating for a person who talks for ages only to have the interpreter respond with 'He says "Yes"'. I can only say that Seymour's Haiku must have been very good indeed. It is fortunate in the extreme that Buddy is not allowed to quote any of the poems in his story. Maybe I have misread what the actual structure of the poems is. Maybe several poems are used for each of Buddy's events. But then maybe Salinger chooses the Double Haiku format just so that he can get away with longer descriptions. Maybe that defeats the purity of the Haiku form. This kind of goes against Salinger's rule (described by his daughter) that you should not be an artist, a writer or a person of religion unless your heart is purely in it. Maybe this is his clerical error, something like a treasure hunt for a concept. Or possibly, the poems are not quoted directly because Salinger knows he cannot write them and won't compromise being "fully in it".
How big is the world? How much destruction can it swallow up without it spilling over. I don't want other people's wars coming my way. Oh that sounds so NIMBY doesn't it. My country or even my continent has had so many wars and traumas, that I have to thankful that it is so peaceful now. To go one step further, I don't want wars at all. I like to think I am passionate about things, and that if I was ever in a state of repression, I would be prepared to do something about it ( getting over my natural cowardice) but nothing that makes the news at the moment is worth fighting for. All the big problems could be overcome. There is a futility about it all at the moment. It's the other ludicrous stuff which doesn't make the news, which needs fighting for. Like patenting rice or exploiting cheap labour. Three thousand people died in the World Trade Centre ( And I will shout loudly and obscenely at anyone who makes light of that fact before you get enraged and write to RDeWeyden@Hotmail.com) but we could save many times that number with just a slight change in world balance. Maybe the media in the parts of the world which most of us like to think of as bizarre (but in actuality represent the majority of the world's population) should run pictures of people dying of starvation or HIV or any of the other things which the 'west' does to the rest of the world either by virtue of action or inaction.
Maybe the phrase of the day should be changed to 'polemic'
It is the kind of day when you want to dance to the music in your headphones or do Tai-Chi at the very least. Oh no! I'll be doing one of those "which Care-Bear are you" type things next. How to define the world using a few stereotypical behaviour patterns. Why does that sound familiar? Ah ha! Astrology. And you CAN write to me at RDeWeyden@hotmail.com about that. I am me and no-one else (Though there is a guy in Australia who's life has been an exact mirror of mine (except that he is a Kangaroo Wrangler in Dubbo and actually likes ice beer). I recognise the cadences and rhythms of real speech. Oh yes I do!
As you may have guessed, I got in here really early ( I was woken at 04:30) by a "Slow Motion Blackbird". This is actually a real track. It is the call of a blackbird repeated but gradually slowed down (Like Four Organs by Steve Reich but done by slowing the recording down without changing the pitch). The annoying things is that blackbird call is from a soundtrack album and I hear the exact same call on TV or radio all the time. Or is it that all blackbirds have the same call. No! I know they vary. Anyway, Chris Hughes used it first so that is all that matters.
Enough for now (Who said 'Too Much'?)
Tuesday, July 02, 2002
Picture Sound
Isabella by John Everett Millais
"Principal Boy" in the Balinese Barong Dance
My Daughter pointing at the Camera
The Virgin and Child with a Saint by Bartolomeo Montagna
The Magdalen Reading by Rogier Van Der Weyden
The photo of Sylvia Plath from the back of "Ariel's Gift"
My Daughter riding a scooter
The cover of "Dream Catcher" by Margaret A. Salinger
Ian Curtis of Joy Division (The link is NOT to the exact picture)
A Soviet Nurse in a Trench during WWII from the Phaidon "Century" book
Self Portrait by Zinaida Serebriakova.
Collage of Sylvia Plath and an Aztec picture from Scientific American.
My Wife
My Mother
My Daughter
I wonder if I can find all of them on the web?
Here is one at least :-
Isabella by John Everett Millais
"Principal Boy" in the Balinese Barong Dance
My Daughter pointing at the Camera
The Virgin and Child with a Saint by Bartolomeo Montagna
The Magdalen Reading by Rogier Van Der Weyden
The photo of Sylvia Plath from the back of "Ariel's Gift"
My Daughter riding a scooter
The cover of "Dream Catcher" by Margaret A. Salinger
Ian Curtis of Joy Division (The link is NOT to the exact picture)
A Soviet Nurse in a Trench during WWII from the Phaidon "Century" book
Self Portrait by Zinaida Serebriakova.
Collage of Sylvia Plath and an Aztec picture from Scientific American.
My Wife
My Mother
My Daughter
I wonder if I can find all of them on the web?
Here is one at least :-
The Nine Billion Names of the Next-door-Neighbours
(From Amazon.co.uk)
My Dad used to call the man who lived across the road, "Swoop" because he used to feed the birds with Swoop bird-seed.Of course, us kids didn't realise this was only a nickname and I am sure we must have called him "Mr Swoop" several times resulting in a very puzzled look. I wonder if he still lives there. My Dad doesn't live there any more but my sister lives in the next door house to Mr Swoop and I haven't seen him at all when I have been visiting. Our road was very like the road inhabited by the Goods and the Leadbetters in The Good Life though the houses were newer and not quite so big (All newer houses are not so big any more - there seems to be a conspiracy to reduce the size of houses or is it just that I am bigger?) When we moved out of the town to a house which wasn't even in a village, my Dad grew lots of his own vegetables - potatoes, carrots, beans etc. My worst time of year was when we had loads of bitter, little new potatoes with the skin left on. I wouldn't be bothered now but then I hated them.
We also used to get Mushrooms and Puffballs off the common on the edge of which, we lived. We had a book called Food for Free which I am glad to say is still available. My step-mother wouldn't cook anything but the obvious Mushrooms so occasionally Dad would fry up Puffballs. They have no taste whatsoever but a brilliant texture (mouthfeel I think it's called these days). They would be good for marinating or using like Tofu. (Before I was born, my Aunt went to Australia as a nurse and as a leaving gift my mother served her a giant puffball into the skin of which, she carved a map of Australia). My Brother and I would eat almost anything including some very unappetising shaggy-caps and even the odd bracket Fungus which was listed in the book. We really wanted to find a Truffle but although my Brother was not unhappy to scrump a few apples, he didn't really want to 'borrow' a pig and I don't think they grew near us anyway.
You would think it is a real wonder that we didn't poison ourselves with Fly Agaric but I think if you look at a picture of one I think you will agree that we might have been put off by their appearance if we had ever come across one. A friend of my Dad's, I think, worked for the Ministry of Agriculture durring WWII and he was involved with a project to define which fungi were (was ?!?) edible and he said that they were surprised to find that most were actually quite safe to eat though a high proportion of these were either tasteless or of little nutritional value or both.
The Herb Garden at the Center for Alternative Technology at Machynlleth in Wales is full of various plants which they are happy to let you pick and taste just to see how easy it is to get some great Organic stuff of your own even in a small garden. We already have Rosemary in our Garden and I think my wife is contemplating planting some herbs.
Nettle soup anyone?
(From Amazon.co.uk)
My Dad used to call the man who lived across the road, "Swoop" because he used to feed the birds with Swoop bird-seed.Of course, us kids didn't realise this was only a nickname and I am sure we must have called him "Mr Swoop" several times resulting in a very puzzled look. I wonder if he still lives there. My Dad doesn't live there any more but my sister lives in the next door house to Mr Swoop and I haven't seen him at all when I have been visiting. Our road was very like the road inhabited by the Goods and the Leadbetters in The Good Life though the houses were newer and not quite so big (All newer houses are not so big any more - there seems to be a conspiracy to reduce the size of houses or is it just that I am bigger?) When we moved out of the town to a house which wasn't even in a village, my Dad grew lots of his own vegetables - potatoes, carrots, beans etc. My worst time of year was when we had loads of bitter, little new potatoes with the skin left on. I wouldn't be bothered now but then I hated them.
We also used to get Mushrooms and Puffballs off the common on the edge of which, we lived. We had a book called Food for Free which I am glad to say is still available. My step-mother wouldn't cook anything but the obvious Mushrooms so occasionally Dad would fry up Puffballs. They have no taste whatsoever but a brilliant texture (mouthfeel I think it's called these days). They would be good for marinating or using like Tofu. (Before I was born, my Aunt went to Australia as a nurse and as a leaving gift my mother served her a giant puffball into the skin of which, she carved a map of Australia). My Brother and I would eat almost anything including some very unappetising shaggy-caps and even the odd bracket Fungus which was listed in the book. We really wanted to find a Truffle but although my Brother was not unhappy to scrump a few apples, he didn't really want to 'borrow' a pig and I don't think they grew near us anyway.
You would think it is a real wonder that we didn't poison ourselves with Fly Agaric but I think if you look at a picture of one I think you will agree that we might have been put off by their appearance if we had ever come across one. A friend of my Dad's, I think, worked for the Ministry of Agriculture durring WWII and he was involved with a project to define which fungi were (was ?!?) edible and he said that they were surprised to find that most were actually quite safe to eat though a high proportion of these were either tasteless or of little nutritional value or both.
The Herb Garden at the Center for Alternative Technology at Machynlleth in Wales is full of various plants which they are happy to let you pick and taste just to see how easy it is to get some great Organic stuff of your own even in a small garden. We already have Rosemary in our Garden and I think my wife is contemplating planting some herbs.
Nettle soup anyone?
Monday, July 01, 2002
Blank Verse
Something of interest here. This is like when Adrian Mole sent a list of explanations of British terms to his American friend Hamish Mancini. This site actually has a definition for cat's eyes. Don't they exist in the US? For some obscure reason, my wife knows the name of the man who invented Cat's Eyes, Percy Shaw (I just had to look it up again). Here is an interesting musing on simplicity related to Cat's Eyes. Percy Shaw lived in a house in Halifax set in the middle of the works where the aforesaid reflecting devices were manufactured, the driveway of which is studded with them. We have just had a short discussion about Cat's Eyes here. I will leave you to guess why one of our number has just gone to stare at a pencil sharpener. (Clue :- it is a VERY old joke).
I think I may start up a special page for double entendres by Blue Peter Presenters. There is of course the famous Durham Cathedral Door Knocker and the Hedge Laying episode. I once saw one of the famous engineers tapes and it became difficult to know what was real and what was made up. Maybe that is enough of that for now.
Anyway, just in case you want to know what Simon Groom looks like these days then go here. Blue Peter is a bit special. You may be a Magpie kid or from outside the UK but Michael Stipe knows about Blue Peter so living outside the UK is no excuse. I found a picture of me when I was very young recently and I am wearing my Blue Peter badge with obvious pride or is that pain because my dad had made me wear shorts outside in the winter again? It wasn't a proper badge by the way, just a sew on patch but at seven years old that is certainly enough.
The best presenter they ever had :-
Time to go. See you on Thursday at five to five (or whenever it is or was).
Something of interest here. This is like when Adrian Mole sent a list of explanations of British terms to his American friend Hamish Mancini. This site actually has a definition for cat's eyes. Don't they exist in the US? For some obscure reason, my wife knows the name of the man who invented Cat's Eyes, Percy Shaw (I just had to look it up again). Here is an interesting musing on simplicity related to Cat's Eyes. Percy Shaw lived in a house in Halifax set in the middle of the works where the aforesaid reflecting devices were manufactured, the driveway of which is studded with them. We have just had a short discussion about Cat's Eyes here. I will leave you to guess why one of our number has just gone to stare at a pencil sharpener. (Clue :- it is a VERY old joke).
I think I may start up a special page for double entendres by Blue Peter Presenters. There is of course the famous Durham Cathedral Door Knocker and the Hedge Laying episode. I once saw one of the famous engineers tapes and it became difficult to know what was real and what was made up. Maybe that is enough of that for now.
Anyway, just in case you want to know what Simon Groom looks like these days then go here. Blue Peter is a bit special. You may be a Magpie kid or from outside the UK but Michael Stipe knows about Blue Peter so living outside the UK is no excuse. I found a picture of me when I was very young recently and I am wearing my Blue Peter badge with obvious pride or is that pain because my dad had made me wear shorts outside in the winter again? It wasn't a proper badge by the way, just a sew on patch but at seven years old that is certainly enough.
The best presenter they ever had :-
Time to go. See you on Thursday at five to five (or whenever it is or was).
nineteen-eighty-eight
This is a picture I took in October 1988 at the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington DC. I walked randomly down the path and selected a point to take a photograph of the names on the wall. As the shutter came up, my eye was drawn to my own name (including the middle initial which on later investigation turned out to be for Allon where mine is Alan).
Robert Allon Brown
LCPL - E3 - Marine Corps - Regular
20 year old Single, Caucasian, Male
Born on Mar 05, 1949
From HOUSTON, TEXAS
His tour of duty began on Feb 25, 1969
Casualty was on Jul 06, 1969
in QUANG TRI, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
GUN, SMALL ARMS FIRE
Body was recovered
Religion
PROTESTANT
Panel 21W - - Line 68
I know of course that thousands of people visit that memorial every day, and that this sort of thing must happen to someone by virtue of sheer numbers and of course my name is more common than average (I can name you at least two famous Robert Browns and neither of them are me) but is doesn't stop it being spooky. Of course the picture above also gives you a clue as to what I actually look like though I think I may have altered slightly since then. I do not believe in synchronicity. Statistics are very often mistaken for synchronicity.
Soundtrack for today - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
The world is sort of 'correct' this morning; a sort of connectedness between the music on the radio coming in to work and the strangeness of the weather. A friend of mine used to describe this sort of day as having 'no weather', nothing out of the middle range of temperatures.
Another random picture for you :-
I got asked what the Bridgit Riley picture was supposed to be the other day!! I thought of making up some rubbish about 'representing the futility of the existence of an individual human in a post-modern Military-Industrial complex' but I suspect the questioner would have believed me. It's a picture. It looks sort of ok. And talking of random pictures, the final one for today :-
The Found Objects cupboard. I am not sure it actually looks like this any more as it is still in the garage with all the outside stuff packed on the inside. It is not very clear here but the white framed picture of what looks like dark tiles stuck inside the door of the cupboard is actually my first attempt at video art as the picture is a sample of a picture of a colleague which we got into the computer using a video camera attached to the input card of a very early digital camera. The sampling gave the picture a very raw quality which I liked like those throw-away video cameras which worked using standard audio cassette tape. I repeated the image and posterised it in an attempt to make it look like a Warhol repeat. Of course, the computer is not very good at doing this automatically and Mr Warhol had to do a lot a real work to get his images looking as plastic as they were. We printed the image out on a huge colour printer we had on evaluation which seemed to plaster the colour on to the paper to a depth of about a millimetre; I think a blind person might actually have been able to 'see' the picture just by running their fingers over it. Anyway, enough of this. I am bored now.
Clue for the Psycho - Reservoir Dogs link - what other films was Arbogast in?
Offline list
Brownian Motion
This is a picture I took in October 1988 at the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington DC. I walked randomly down the path and selected a point to take a photograph of the names on the wall. As the shutter came up, my eye was drawn to my own name (including the middle initial which on later investigation turned out to be for Allon where mine is Alan).
Robert Allon Brown
LCPL - E3 - Marine Corps - Regular
20 year old Single, Caucasian, Male
Born on Mar 05, 1949
From HOUSTON, TEXAS
His tour of duty began on Feb 25, 1969
Casualty was on Jul 06, 1969
in QUANG TRI, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
GUN, SMALL ARMS FIRE
Body was recovered
Religion
PROTESTANT
Panel 21W - - Line 68
I know of course that thousands of people visit that memorial every day, and that this sort of thing must happen to someone by virtue of sheer numbers and of course my name is more common than average (I can name you at least two famous Robert Browns and neither of them are me) but is doesn't stop it being spooky. Of course the picture above also gives you a clue as to what I actually look like though I think I may have altered slightly since then. I do not believe in synchronicity. Statistics are very often mistaken for synchronicity.
Soundtrack for today - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
The world is sort of 'correct' this morning; a sort of connectedness between the music on the radio coming in to work and the strangeness of the weather. A friend of mine used to describe this sort of day as having 'no weather', nothing out of the middle range of temperatures.
Another random picture for you :-
I got asked what the Bridgit Riley picture was supposed to be the other day!! I thought of making up some rubbish about 'representing the futility of the existence of an individual human in a post-modern Military-Industrial complex' but I suspect the questioner would have believed me. It's a picture. It looks sort of ok. And talking of random pictures, the final one for today :-
The Found Objects cupboard. I am not sure it actually looks like this any more as it is still in the garage with all the outside stuff packed on the inside. It is not very clear here but the white framed picture of what looks like dark tiles stuck inside the door of the cupboard is actually my first attempt at video art as the picture is a sample of a picture of a colleague which we got into the computer using a video camera attached to the input card of a very early digital camera. The sampling gave the picture a very raw quality which I liked like those throw-away video cameras which worked using standard audio cassette tape. I repeated the image and posterised it in an attempt to make it look like a Warhol repeat. Of course, the computer is not very good at doing this automatically and Mr Warhol had to do a lot a real work to get his images looking as plastic as they were. We printed the image out on a huge colour printer we had on evaluation which seemed to plaster the colour on to the paper to a depth of about a millimetre; I think a blind person might actually have been able to 'see' the picture just by running their fingers over it. Anyway, enough of this. I am bored now.
Clue for the Psycho - Reservoir Dogs link - what other films was Arbogast in?
Offline list
Brownian Motion
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Another weekend, another trip to the beach, another dead seagull. Oh ... and a starfish. Actually several which my daughter decided needed t...