Close Meditations of a Visual Kind

Tripod.




And, having said that, I will now blame it all on fizzylizard. Bwahahahahaa...

ahem

We now return you to your regularly scheduled debacle.

Not quite everything.

Amongst other things done last weekend, not yet reported on, I copied music files onto the Treo 750 Smart Phone. Actually, I copied the files onto a mini-SD card, which is working in the Treo via a Mini-Micro converter card. This will lead to a couple of things here.

First, the Music. I copied mostly a bunch of Windows Media Player files (as in, when I ripped the CD Windows made them Media Player files), and some MP3 files. It's a 2 Gb card, so there's a goodly amount of music there. Sound quality is rather good, particularly with the headphone set that came with the device. I've not tried another headset yet, only this one. The headset includes a mike, as it then serves as the phone's headset. Eh.

Volume control is perhaps my biggest complaint, and that not very big. The iShuffle provides very fine volume control. The Treo 'steps' the volume, no fine tuning. Playlists becomes a potential issue, just as with the iShuffle. There is apparently one playlist; what is loaded. I've listened to it straight through, since it is a grab-bag of pieces I like. Random Shuffle play is an option. Not a different playlist.

Receiving a call does mute the Media Player, just as I suspect making a call will. Hasn't happened often, so I don't know if the Treo is 'pausing' the current play, or simply muting it. Either is acceptable, considering this is also my phone. Other applications will also run (i.e. Calendar, Contacts, or other application altogether), without any problem. Power consumption is not noticeably higher than before starting to use the music features.

Advantage, then, lies in only carrying about one device.

Second, the card, and actually this is more about the first card I used. That one is also a 2 Gb card, but is a mini rather than a micro. The one difference I've noticed is that the Treo seems to like the Micro in a Mini-Converter better than the Mini card itself. With the Mini in, the device frequently informed me that the card had been removed, when it hadn't actually been touched at all. Not sure what's up with that.

We now return you to your otherwise even more boring Friday.

I've not been using my iShuffle a lot recently. Got a lot of use back in March/April for travel and such, then I set it down. Kept thinking I should pick it up, yet other things distracted me. This morning I did pick it up, and started listening on the walk to Hospital from Garage. They are curious devices, they are, and some of this is reflected in that frequently seen meme, 'Pick up your MP3 player du jour, hit shuffle, and the song titles are the answers to the next (insert number here) questions'. Because, you know, sometimes it hits it every time, and other times not so much.

No, this isn't that meme. But this morning on the walk, the playlist just seemed, you know, right.

Bob Seeger: Roll Me Away
CSNY: Almost Cut My Hair
John Denver: Colorado Rocky Mountain High
Bob Seeger: Like a Rock
Jimmy Buffett: Son of a Son of a Sailor
zaidaco: Mamma Said
Jimi Hendrix: 3rd Stone from the Sun

Last weekend when I drove to Orlando, I listened as long as possible to the local NPR station. It being a Saturday, the morning info/news show ran on a bit longer than weekdays, fine by me. One feature caught my attention in particular because of the topic and how they handled it. Titled CSI: Beethovin, it is a story looking at and investigating how, why, and when Beethovin went deaf.

Now, Beethovin is one of my favourite composers. My Dad didn't particularly like him because according to Dad, Beethovin shouted at him. I don't agree totally with that interpretation, but I accept it. Some of Beethovin's pieces are intended to be rather loud. Then again, Beethovin was going deaf. Likewise, so was my Dad, though not to the extent that happened to Beethovin. Dad's loss of hearing is directly attributable to industrial noise. He made automobiles.

The CSI Beethovin article (found here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18619720 ) combines the work of several people, but the two that stand out for me are the conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Martin Alsop, and Dr. Charles Limb, from the Department of Otolaryngology at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. Otolaryngology is a fancy way to say Ear Nose Throat, and Dr. Limb is a foremost authority on deafness. The goal of the program is to look hard, as hard as possible, at the reasons Beethovin went deaf, while asking other questions. Could his deafness be prevented, or cured, today? How did his deafness affect his life? Most importantly, would he be the composer, the artist he is, if he hadn't been deaf.

It's pretty well accepted, for example, that Beethovin was completely deaf when his 9th Symphony debuted. It's recorded that he became quite angry with the orchestra when they would not follow his commands to continue into the 2nd Movement, until the First Violinist turned him around to see the standing ovation the audience gave him.

My own involvement in exploring Healing Art also brings me to wonder about this: people who promote their own healing and recovery by creating art, much of it incorporating imagery which comes from their illness and treatment.

Following the trail, as it were, over to the NPR web site brought me to more Beethovin features. You can no doubt guess this also led to additional thoughts, which I will inflict upon you. Correct. The next feature I followed on was titled "Why Do We Love the Moonlight Sonata" with the article found here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18577817

Yes, the Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Opus 27, No. 2 (Most commonly called the Moonlight Sonata) is one of my favourite pieces, by any of the many people who've played it. It's one of the best known of Beethovin's works as well, for the opening triplet. There are five recorded versions available to listen to associated with this article. However, all five of them are only the first movement. A piano sonata, much like a poem sonata, is comprised of three parts (movements in the case of music, verses for the poem, a rose is a rose is a rose). Listening to only one-third of the piece is... lacking. Dissapointing. Leaves the listener with a disquieting sense of Starvation.

Beethovin wasn't quite deaf when he composed this piece. Beethovin also doesn't have much to do with what's going to wrap up this little essay either, other than his being deaf.

I don't watch the Superbowl. Pro football doesn't much interest me; everyone who's playing is supposed to be very good (they're Pros, after all), and it just doesn't much interest me. So I don't watch the Superbowl. Not even because of the ads, though I usually do like a lot of those ads. Since it's such a big deal, being the Superbowl and all, a lot of energy goes into making those ads, and often they are amongst the best of the Best.

This year is no exception. I've not seen them all, but I believe I've found the one that stands above all the rest for me. There's no sound in it at all. It's simply great theatre, which also sells a product.

( So, behind this cut are the embedded YouTube features on the Ad, and the Making Of )

Not long ago I recall a meme going around that involved at least one question about high school. My response was, despite other things at other times in my life which certainly qualify as worse experiences, I would not choose to re-live high school. Last night, though, I received a insight that even then, there are things I enjoyed, and treasure. These two in particular involve music.

Cream: Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce. Three musicians who formed a trio in an age were quartets or more were becoming the norm for rock groups, and in particular for the "British Invasion." Despite having heard many of the pieces the Yardbirds did, my introduction to Clapton as an individual artist came with the first Cream album, Fresh Cream and the solo from "I'm So Glad." Baker's driving virtuoso on the drums brought me (and probably most of their fans) to consider him a madman, and Bruce's bottom bass rising into the high range was just too radical, too cool, too fine.

I've worn out, and never replaced several copies of all four of their albums, Fresh Cream, Live Cream, Disraeli Gears, Wheels of Fire, and Live Cream Volume II. And I freely admit, while I enjoyed all of the music, it's Clapton I followed through the years.

Still, yesterday evening I did something I rarely do: I watched our local NPR station during a pledge week, becuase they featured the Cream Reunion in the Royal Albert Hall. Even with turning the volume down during the pledge breaks so I could read and know when the music started again, it was two hours of bliss, and a nostalgic recollection that not everything about my high-school years was unpleasant.

This led me to recall this morning, while walking into hospital from the parking garage, another piece of music which profoundly affected me the first time I heard it. That first hearing proved to be during a choir dress rehersal for the Christmas concert. I was there because I'd become one of the people (through participation in the Drama Club) that knew how to run the light board in the school's auditorium. Three of us were responsible for lighting the concert, and while I'd missed earlier rehearsals that involved organizing the lighting, I couldn't miss this one (duh... dress rehearsal, eh?).

Nearly all of the program consisted of well-known music, the great holiday stand-bys which pretty much everyone who grew up in the U.S. would know. This all makes me wonder, sometimes, how it passed that this rehearsal provided my first hearing of "Do You Hear What I Hear." It's not that the lyrics are particularly great in their own standing, it really is that the performance totally clicked. Each member of the choir (there were no solos in this piece) hitting each and every note, and the accompanying arrangement by the school's band director and ensemble bringing just enough accent to paint every sound with the appropriate color.

The dress rehearsal rendition surpassed their concert performance of the same piece. Maybe that's a part of why my memory for this stands out so. The public performance isn't always the best performance to experience.

I awoke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off I sat and wondered
Started humming a song from 1962
Ain't it funny how the night moves
When you just don't seem to have as much to loose
Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in

Bob Seger

It's taken a bit out of context, considering the entire song, and yet it doesn't feel like it. Lately I've been listening to CD's while driving home from work. Used to be I listened to NPR, then starting middle of last November I started listening to the engine and little else. Not really the sounds of silence, because there was that engine cycling its four beats per cylinder, taking me out of town, back to the ranch.

That trip out of town is always a decompression table: exit the parking garage (head up), get to 34th Street (pause), then I-75, Tower Road, Parker Road... Somewhere, somewhen between Tower and Parker is when the enlightenment starts, like the gentle re-absorbtion of gasses into the bloodstream as a diver aproaches the surface. Somewhere, somewhen between Parker Road and Archer, and the surface glitters at me, sometimes reflecting that which I'm leaving below/behind, sometimes obscuring what the future will be after I break through the surface tension.

Joe Walsh and "Rocky Mountain Way" is what I broke the engine routine with before Bob: put the CD on repeat, count the beats, count the beats, one and two and three and four. I'd like to learn to play that one, sort of a joke to me now. John defered receiving Mom's guitar when Dad died. Dad bought it for her when she started taking lessons in "night school" using the very low-end box my parents bought me for Christmas one year. I never did much with that box; really poor action, not so good sound, but what do you expect for something that cost less than $20 even in 1966 dollars? Dad was so impressed that she worked at it with that excuse for a musical instrument that he went out and bought her a fairly nice guitar, from her teacher (a luthier). It was imported, made in Japan; low end for his shop since he made guitars. However, he picked that line because they were well made, good sound, good action.

Mom kept at it for a couple years. About a year into that guitar being in the house, I started playing it, using her class notes, and then doing a class via Public TV, Fredrick Noad. Took off from there with a guitar that could actually sing, to the extent that when I left home in 1970 to go to college in Grand Rapids, Dad promised me an equivalent guitar for my birthday. I found one in a local Grand Rapids music shop, too.

Mom offered her guitar to John because he'd tried to learn in his teens, renting a guitar or picking one up from a pawn shop, I'm not sure which. He piped up right after Mom asked me if I wanted her guitar, and I replied with "I think John should get it because he wanted to learn." I don't remember his words exactly, but the message was an acknowledgement of dreams, and acceptance that dreams change, and even further, that his abilities didn't stretch in the direction of making music, unlike his brother. Listening, yes. But not being able to find the connection to the instrument and use the synergy to sing. I could, he said; he never would.

So I brought Mom's guitar home with me from Detroit in January, 1996. Mom died in May that year. I played her guitar on my birthday that year, in September. That's the last time I've played since.

Now John's gone.

I'm not particularly good at reading music. I can, but I'm not good at it. I can hear the notes, replay them, when I hear someone else make the music. I can puzzle out the notes on paper and given enough time, make them recognizable. Or... I could. Once.

It feels very strange to be counting beats again.

Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in