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October 31, 2006
Hello to November
Whoa: November starts tomorrow... and you know what THAT means today is, kids! Not that I'll be gettin' out to do much hauntin' tonight-- we went to a huge, absolutely insane party last Saturday, which should more than hold me until next year's Halloween. Let's see... (Checking 2007 calendar and beyond) --Whoa! Halloween won't fall on either a Friday or Saturday night until 2014! I had so hoped that it would in 2013, but no such luck. We temperate Northern Hemisphere residents can now look forward to almost four months of days as short as or shorter than they are now. Let's see: it's now about 52 days before the Winter Solstice, when daylight will begin inching back-- and 52 days after the solstice would be around February 12th of next year. Just think: on February 12th, the days will once again, finally, be as long as they are right now! Until then, even more darkness, cold, gloom and despair shall be our miserable lot. Naaaah-- winter's not THAT bad-- maybe we'll get some work done around here, since there aren't quite as many outdoor temptations... As I'd mentioned a week or two ago, the Swamp Witch and I are heading down to New Orleans in late November, and that should be a nice little getaway from the chill drippy gloom that is a Pacific Northwest winter. Yes, I know that winter doesn't officially begin until the solstice, but far as I'm concerned anytime after Thanksgiving might as well be winter-- and anytime after Valentine's Day might as well be spring. That's pretty much the way things go in this climate as far as plant growth, bird activity and the like are concerned, so that's good enuf for me. A friend who grew up on the Gulf Coast informs me that it's mandatory to sample the po'boy sandwiches down there in the Big Easy; he says that a body can't get a proper po'boy nowhere 'round these here Northwest parts. Sounds good to me; I'll take the shrimp version. Actually, I want to try as many N.O. signature foods as possible... when in Rome and all that. The music should be fun, too! Anyone down there in New Orleans need a flute? I'll bring a few of 'em along just in case... and oh: almost forgot to mention that we're visiting Little Rock, AR and Dallas, TX as well. In fact, we're renting a car and making a big triangular drive on the trip, with those three cities as the corner destinations. (Must soon contact some of my old college buds down there in Texas with the news.) Swamp Witch is originally from Arkansas and still has swampy kin down there, an' I'm a-lookin' forward to seein' her old muckin' and witchin' grounds for the first time. Wrapping this up: farewell to October, our 10,000 word month-- which ended up clocking in at more like 12,000. Now if we can keep that up, but with a bit more focus and less arbitrary rambling, things might start shaping up 'round heah! Happy hauntin', rb
Posted by Romy
02:20 PM PST
October 30, 2006
Pyrotechnic harmonics
Check out this video of a pretty neat trick. (TOTH, or h/t, to Clayzeness Whistleworks as they say in the big-time blogs): http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3900917557546969342&q=rubens+tube&hl=en --Isn't that something? I want one of these SOOOOOO badly-- and naturally, immediately started wondering just how big one of these things can be. Could we build one 8, 12 or 20 feet long, with flames leaping many feet in the air in musical obeisance to the thunderous tones of FLÜTEDËATHH™? Yes, the video clip is fun-- but the dude doing the demo chose some pretty lame music to pump into that tube toward the end. The first item, a Dave Brubeck piece, is somewhat effective. But that closing tune is a loud, shredding heavy-metal mashup that does little to effectively illustrate the fiery tonal response of the device; there's far too much going on at once, frequency-wise. Something more elegant, consisting mostly of single notes, and with an underlying mathematical tidiness and artistically irreproachable gravitas would have been much better. Something like this is what I'd like to see interpreted by fire. Leave it to those engineer types to choose the wrong piece of music. I really do want to make one of these musical flame devices and will look into the feasibility of larger versions. Perhaps not twenty feet, but surely they could be larger than the one featured in the video. We'll keep you posted on that one... and surely some sort of additive could be involved that would render the flame in many colors? This thing has so much creative potential: Burning Man, here comes FLÜTEDËATHH™! Finally.... -r.
Posted by Romy
11:56 AM PST
October 28, 2006
More on Dynamic Range, light and sound
I'm trying to persuade myself to finally take the plunge and buy an entry-level digital SLR. Although there are a few fairly good images in our current Gallery, they could be soooo much better overall... All of those years spent striving to take better and better flute photos on my old, tanklike film SLR -- a venerable workhorse, the Pentax K1000 -- certainly provided useful experience to apply in this new digital world. In Ye Olden Days, good film slides were needed in order to "jury into" the better art and craft fairs. However, the puny, compact, fixed-lens point-and-shoot model used to take all our onsite digital shots thus far has many shortcomings, some of which I've only recently become aware: for one thing, its dynamic range leaves much to be desired. We mentioned this a few entries ago, but in musical terms "dynamic range" refers to volume: the ease with which an instrument (or its player) can produce either loud or soft notes over the entire pitch range, from low to high. Naturally, the performer has much to do with this, and an inexperienced player can hardly be expected to fully exploit a good instrument's potential dynamic range. In photography on the other hand, dynamic range refers to subtle gradations of light: to the camera's ability to render good detail within a broad range of both dark and bright areas of an image. Dark areas might be imagined as "low notes" in the image, and bright areas the high notes. So, can detail be seen in both bright and dim parts of a photograph -- and can either loud or soft notes be played on both the high and low notes of a flute? That's dynamic range, in either case. For certain photos, lack of dynamic range is actually an advantage: on the opening page of our gallery section, the current highlight picture for the Instruments section is a high-contrast shot of the edge of an ebony lip plate. Low dynamic range -- with its consequent loss of detail in the shadows and "burning out" of the highlights-- enhances the effect in this shot. So even after I finally get that digital SLR, I'll probably still use the little compact for some special effects. After all, the LIGHTING is always the most important factor in good photography, with the quality of one's camera running a distant second. Many awful pictures have been taken with sophisticated, expensive equipment, and many sublime photographs have been taken with the most primitive of tools. We won't get into composition just yet-- although that word obviously has much meaning in both music and photography! As with most human endeavors, a blend of experience and imagination is needed for useful and interesting results-- and my olden-days experience taking slides with the old film SLR was certainly useful in getting the most out of a simple digital compact. Time to take it to the next level, though... more on that soon. --And now for a TEST:
Posted by Romy
01:23 PM PST
October 27, 2006
Very short Friday note
Have a good weekend, y'all! I'm trying to get some actual work done around here, so it'll be another day or two before we get back to our serious, substantive flutes-and-music talk. No more rum, bananas, or other frivolous fillers coming anytime soon... --r.
Posted by Romy
03:57 PM PST
October 25, 2006
149 words
I'll be glad when this is over and done with-- and probably won't be alone in that sentiment, come to think of it. If we establish a new target number for November, I promise to mention it only once or twice throughout the month, and avoid constant babble about the goal itself as a cheap, lazy, self-fulfilling device. Once is enough for that schtick. So, here's our Officially Designated Word Counting Service: http://allworldphone.com/count-words-characters.htm According to our official counter, we needed only 149 words when this entry began-- so we must be getting close already! Hmmm, hang on a second... --Only fifty to go! My, this is exciting; it's a real milestone, since it represents a successful culmination of my first-ever writing deadline! Too bad we don't have a special, powerfully meaningful word to unleash in that ten-thousandth spot... oh well. --Seven to go: Thank gawd that's OVER. ---rb
Posted by Romy
09:26 PM PST
October 24, 2006
Penultimate quest day
I'd promised just an entry or two back not to mention this month's quantity-not-quality goal again until the day before 10,000 was likely to hit. Well, here we are! Unfortunately, it appears that the word counting services available online give widely varying results. Last night we copied this month's archival content, pasted it into three different word-count engines... and got three completely different results! The lowest count of the three was about 9,400, and the highest was... 10,065. So we may already be over the top (in terms of both numbers and style, that is.) In fact, I strongly suspect that the higher figure is probably more accurate than the lower one. A more careful count could be taken to get this exactly right, but that would be a hassle. We're sure to top 10,000 in any case, so we'll just shoot for a symbolic, ceremonial designation of the ten-thousandth word. So, tell you what: we'll rely on the word counter which gives the lowest result, just to stay on the safe side. So, after this entry is posted I'll go over to the October archives, copy the whole thing, and feed it into the low-yielding word counter. The total which emerges from that calculation shall stand as our official count thus far. Then, I'll return tomorrow and finish the job, keeping careful count for the day: and who knows what that Official ten-thousandth word might be? It'll be nice to get this over with; then I'll have to come up with actual material! November should be fun, what with the stylistic fusion project... --r. [AAUUUGGHH--can't believe that I just did that: accidently double-posted today's entry -- what a time to do THAT! Now the October archives will be messed up by the extra entry... AAAAAUUUGGGGHHH!]
Posted by Romy
01:43 PM PST
October 23, 2006
Republican action figure
A "Mark Foley Action Figure" recently appeared on eBay, and I actually bid on it! This is just the sort of thing that appeals to my warped sensibilities-- which should surprise no one who's been to this site more than once or twice. The auction ended just a few minutes ago, at a final price of around $315.00; sadly, we didn't win it. Not bad for a small polymer clay sculpture... and some of the questions submitted to the seller were truly hilarious. I grabbed three pictures off of the auction and put them here. The figure is about six inches tall-- indeed, one of those questions submitted was "How long is this item? Could you get a ruler and measure it for me?" --r.
Posted by Romy
04:35 PM PST
October 22, 2006
Misspelled word alert, aaannnddd...
Oh, man: I just discovered a misspelled word in a Gallery text entry, on a photo that's had over seven hundred views! That's deeply humiliating, and I'll never really live it down. Of course, there are probably numerous misspellings scattered throughout the site, and we really ought to run the entire thing through a spellcheck program. Is it possible to do that all at once? If not, then someone needs to design a program to do so-- are you listening, codegeeks? Anyone? One annoying aspect of spellcheckers is that they also point out deliberate "mistakes" used for effect. And after all, deliberate misspellings are far more frequent on this site than accidental ones-- well, so we hope! I almost never use spellcheck-ware, preferring to forge ahead and trust in my admittedly fallible knack for... (sheesh, just writing about this makes me nervous: is that actually the correct spelling for "fallible?" We'd best move on or I'll never get anything done around here!) Several months ago, I posted a comment on a bigtime blog-- one which garners tens of thousands of visits and many hundreds of daily comments. Mine was a perfectly polite observation about a different bigtime blogger under discussion in that comment thread. Now, this second big-timer is one that I visit daily, whose writing I greatly admire, whose insight and knowledge about the world's insanity is far more comprehensive and penetrating than my own, and whose observations I almost always agree with. However, its primary author is prone to frequent misspellings and typos, which seldom get corrected. (For heaven's sake: how can one blog intelligently for years on end, draw tons of commentary and yet never learn how to spell "weird?") Anyway, my comment concerned this blogger's typo-and-misspelling foibles. I remarked that since it's already difficult enough for bloggers to be taken seriously, it would be prudent for a big-timer writing about Weighty Subjects to be a bit more mindful of his p's and q's, if you will. After all, such ammunition handed to critics is an easy tool to wield: So-and-so is Not To Be Taken Seriously: just look at all those misppellings! I went on to write something to the effect that "how hard could it be" for that otherwise brilliant blogger to be more careful, take a bit more time, perhaps engage an editorial helpmate... after all, I only wished for that writer to be more successful and influential, and such minor corrective steps would certainly help, wouldn't they? Hah! People are capable of infinite levels of misinterpretation-- and the bigger the crowd, the more thickheaded bozos there'll be in the bunch. After all, the mere fact that someone shares your political inclinations doesn't mean that they're not an idiot! (Actually, in many cases if someone shares your political convictions it's far more likely that they are, in fact, an idiot-- but that's another story. We hope.) *Ahem* moving right along: after my mild and constructive comment several subsequent commenters piled on critcally-- the full troll treatment! I was an imbecile, a douchebag, etc... to be fair, there were also a couple of sympathetic, insightful responses-- but the ratio wasn't favorable. With more time on my hands, I'd have been tempted to morph into a parody troll on the site. After all, I had dared to criticize an iconic figure whose opinions were worshipped by most of the throngs on that comment thread. And although that critique was offered with the best of intentions, it was enough to bring misinterpreting reactionary morons out of the woodwork. Who needs such crap, anyway? That's why I avoid overt political commentary on this blog-- not a thick enough hide for the inevitable abuse. So I posted a final comment, saying sarcastically that I'd been oh-so-humbled, and that I was taking a year off for penitential self-flagellation and an intensive study of politically correct blog protocol. They don't have me to kick around over there any more! It's notable that in the political blog world, those of either polarity* are quick to seize on the perceived illiteracy of their opponents as a critical cudgel-- indeed, sneering comments about the grammatical blunders of writers on the Other Side are rife on the site in question. So, how could it be that expressing a wish for one on *our* side to tighten up the writing could be perceived as offensive in that context? --Sheesh, people are just nuts. I'm glad that this is such a pathetically obscure blog, come to think of it.... Off now to weild a flute wierdly. ---r. (*I'd assert that one polarity has many more opportunities than the other to legitimately invoke such criticisms, but we won't go there right now.)
Posted by Romy
07:15 PM PST
October 21, 2006
New stylistic goals
Sorry to keep referencing the 10,000-word goal over and over, but this is my first-ever attempt at such a deadline, and it's been helpful to exploit this cheap and tiresome device: much writing about why I'm writing so damned much this October! The experiment is almost over, though-- only about 1,000 to go, so there won't be any need for another rummy and bloated 1,800-word single-day spew. We'll try to keep each entry crisp and concise as the finish line nears, and indeed I'll avoid further mention of the quest itself until the day before ten grand is projected to arrive. In November we'll try another experiment here in the blog, and regardless of whether another word count target is set, we'll shoot for certain stylistic goals. I'm thinking that it might be fun to pick a diverse group of writers and attempt to fuse some of their notable characteristics.... hmmmm... [Cue dissolve] --Whoa! Just a few seconds after this quirky notion popped up, a group of Four Authors appeared in a misty apparition--two were deceased, and two living... ready for this? Here we go: Dave Barry Hunter S. Thompson Tom Robbins Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Pretty ambitious, eh? I've got some big shoes to fill there-- probably some smelly ones as well. Goethe was added to the mix because of his gravitas: I remember reading a study that estimated the IQs of various prominent figures in the history of smartness, and ol' Johann Wolfgang landed in first place! Just the sort of guy you'd like to have a beer with, eh? (Better go and actually read some of his stuff now; I'll start with the lighter fare and work up from there. Beer couldn't hurt, either, since anesthesia may be advisable.) The idea is that good old "Wolfie-G" should more than counterbalance any others on that list whose work would be regarded with less than reverence by critics more highbrow than, say, those writing for Guns and Ammo or Modern Immaturity magazines... Oops, sorry: I just realized that those four dudes are all males of the masculine persuasion -- pure happenstance. Maybe some gals will put in a December appearance, and female author nominations are hereby welcomed! [Later] On second thought, it's probably too much to expect the gals to show up in December-- they'll be far too busy with Christmas shopping, whether deceased or not. So fasten your seatbelts: November is gonna be a doozy! (But as usual, you're certainly welcome to stay away in droves if that option's more to your liking.) --r.
Posted by Romy
03:12 PM PST
October 20, 2006
Contextual Dissonance and the Grass Ceiling
First of all, I'd like to apologize for the 8,500 words immediately preceding these. 'Twas a motley, scattershot, rum-fueled flailing, mates-- all in the dubious pursuit of our 10,000 word quest. Apparently two or three readers out there have actually been following in the roiled wake of October's journey. But what of those who stumble blindly onto the site for the first time, scan down the blog a few inches, and think: "What is this? What could the point of this mindless, chaotic prattle possibly be? Yes, yes-- blogs are notoriously self-indulgent and unfocused, but the better ones eventually stumble onto a theme -- some sort of contextual framework that pulls the whole loosely together -- while still engaging in periodic flights of fancy on obscure tangents. Perhaps the key is striking a fine balance between focus and fancy: the blogger can certainly indulge in some tangential nonsense-- and indeed, for regular readers these may serve as entertaining diversions from the blog's main themes, since those readers are accustomed to the characteristic pacing and quirks. On the other hand, overly frequent flights of tangential fancy might strand the uninitiated reader without sufficient moorings in the early going. If one has to be familiar with ten, twenty or thirty thousand words' worth of earlier material in order to grasp the straws* of the blog -- to "get" the proprietor's inside jokes and self-deprecatory irony -- it becomes difficult to establish new "regulars." The captain needs to throw out a lifesaver pretty often in order to drag new swimmers into the boat. (And a captain who mixes too many metaphors into the grog isn't helpful either.) Of course, it doesn't help when the site's ostensible purpose is as obscure, rarefied and "unserious" as bamboo flutes! Literally tens of thousands of topics, hobbies, objects and occupations would engage and interest many, MANY more people than bamboo flutes might-- and any one of those thousands would serve as a more favorable base on which to build a large and growing readership. I'm afraid we're doomed to bump up against a grass ceiling with our primary thematic material. With our bamboo-flute focus, even 10,000+ words a month of brilliantly witty, insightful and incisive writing wouldn't be enough to snag a substantial, steadily-increasing readership... and I don't claim the ability to write in a brilliantly incisive etc. style, anyway... most certainly not... (well, maybe after another 50-100,000 words' worth of practice...?) Anyway, hope springs eternal and grass kicks ass! YEEEEEAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH....CHARGE!!!!!! --r. (*For instance, did you grasp that? Straws-- yet another grass reference... and on we go.)
Posted by Romy
11:22 AM PST
October 19, 2006
Attitude Adjustment Overdue
Say... for the moment let's ignore the vast inland sea of rube-collar chumps hunkered down on this landmass: beset by knee-jerk neotribalism, superficial media-stoked paranoia (i.e., television), and toxic, archaic delusions of spiritual self-righteousness, these blundering herds of lard-core yokels are pathetically easy prey for cynically manipulative, suit-clad charlatan sharks of many (pin)stripes—and the quickening decay of this landmass’s political, economic, cultural and ecological fortunes continues apace. On this site we don’t write much about that sort of thing, since it might stir up trouble—and as recently stated, we try to keep things real peacable-like around here. This is a blog about bamboo flutes and related topics, so we’ll stick to that for the most part and keep things calm and meditative—like the serene, dreamy tones of a lilting flute floating across a mist-kissed meadow on a beautiful, bright early-Autumn afternoon. Yeah, like that—so it’s off to the meadow now before anything intemperate gets written here… back later today after an attitude adjustment. ---r. [Back a few hours later] Ahhh, that's much better: it's easy to forget at times why I got into this flute business in the first place. Sorry about that first paragraph-- I've been reading Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? over the past few days, and despite being only about 30% through the book, it's inspired a weird mix of fury, despair and resignation. Hope the sarcasm doesn't get too thick around here in the next week or two!
Posted by Romy
12:17 PM PST
October 18, 2006
Louis Armstrong International Airport, but hold the chip butty
Guess what? This blog will be visiting New Orleans next month-- isn't that exciting news? My only regret is that we won't be flying into the world's only airport named after a jazz musician... couldn't find a satisfactory direct flight, so we're driving in from elsewhere. More on that soon! Ye gods: since we're supposed to start running more food-related entries, how about this, from the front page of the NY Times today? It was about attempts to improve the healthfulness of school lunches in Britain, and this passage really impressed me: ...many schools are learning that you can lead a child to a healthy lunch, but you can’t make him eat. The fancy new menu at the Rawmarsh School here? Not sure how long I'd have to starve before eating something like that: yikes, chip butty? Those limeys really ARE perverse-- maybe even worse than saxophone players. No wonder there are so many bloated, pimply hooligans over there: a steady diet of food like that would turn ME into such a creature! And a note to young Andreas Petrou: Kid, if you're actually eating vinegar-sprinkled french-fry-and-butter sandwiches, you ought to be more judicious about dismissing any other foods as "rubbish." Just a little friendly advice... Well, unless there's another late-night manic attack tonight, this will be a fairly light day, word-count wise. The last three or four days have brought the blog well up to pace, which has me thinking of attempting TWENTY thousand words next month! However, if it comes to that I promise to be more thematically focused and serious; we'll aim for some long overdue material on flutes, music and the like. *Still shuddering* And whoever concocted that horrifying recipe should be shot. "Chip butty," indeed... ----r.
Posted by Romy
01:46 PM PST
October 17, 2006
Stop calling me violent or I'll kill you (Revised and greatly extended with gentler material)
Hey, what're you looking at? --YEAH, I'M TALKING TO YOU! Don't you have urgent business somewhere else-- RIGHT NOW? Might be in your best interest to go take care of that quick-like... we try to keep things real peaceful 'round here and don't appreciate the likes of you coming in an' stirrin' up trouble. You see this here gun? It's loaded and I know how to use it, like any good, patriotic American. Now, I'm gonna count to three, and when I hit three there'd better be nothin' put a puff of dust in that spot where your sorry, troublemaking butt's parked right now... here we go: ONE..... TWO..... THREE..... --Whew, I thought he'd never leave! It's just so hard to reason with Those People, so sometimes you've just gotta be firm with 'em. We don't need that type hanging around the Complex, stirring up trouble and lowering property values in our peaceable domain-- I'm sure that you and any other right-minded folks agree with that, right? Good, we have an understanding, then. We don't want no saxophone-playin' riffraff hanging around here, neither: don't want to have any nasty "accidents," if you know what I mean-- it's a chore to clean up after 'em. That type is REALLY nothing but trouble, and you wanna know what the worst thing is about 'em? They're all the same, and THEY ALWAYS PLAY SHARP. Here's the deal: it's much more obviously "out of tune" when someone plays slightly flat than when they play a little sharp, and even an untrained ear can pick out the "sour" sound of flatness easily. For reasons related to their pathetic musical inadequacy, The big problem with that is, it makes someone who's actually in tune sound "wrong" in comparison. Let's say a highly skilled flutist with a keenly honed sense of pitch is onstage playing a tune perfectly fine, but then some joker with a saxophone jumps on stage an' starts honking away on the same tune-- but about thirty cents sharp. In that case,our in-tune flute player will often be perceived as the one who's off pitch, instead of the guilty saxophonist-- and that just ain't right, not at all. Seriously, this used to happen all the time when I was going out to jazz jam sessions every week. Over and over, the thundering herds of saxophone-punk wannabes would get up and start caterwauling away on the out-of-control high side-- and people would look funny at me! You can see why we don't put up with 'em here at the Complex: they're nothing but trouble. I listen to jazz radio a lot, and it really is striking how often saxophone players play sharp-- truly, I'm serious about this-- no kidding! Sometimes I end up yelling at the radio-- don't even have to listen to talk radio or the news for that: get my primal-scream therapy from jazz radio and saxophone players. Sharp-playing dullards, that's what they are... Well, there's our rant du jour. Next time you hear someone blowing on a sax, listen real close and you'll prob'ly hear what I mean-- and then give 'em a swift kick in the rear for me, would you? ----Bubba B. (guest poster) ============================================================ [Romy back, later in the day] Whoa: tell us how you really feel, Bubba-- don't hold back, now! (Actually he's right, you know.) Today I took my mom for an outing on Sauvie Island, which is a large island in the Columbia River about ten or twelve miles from Portland. It was a very pleasant, nearly windless day with glass-smooth water, and we took a long stroll on the north side of the island, on a long expanse of beach whose gently sloping sand closely resembles many ocean beaches. Of course there was no wave action in those windless conditions. However, during our walk two large, oceangoing freighters steamed by, bound for the port of... Portland. They'd probably just crossed the Pacific and were on the final leg of that long journey, the last 75-odd miles of which is inland on the Columbia River. After the first freighter went by -- they're immensely huge, of course -- I said, "Watch now: the ship's wake will come along in a minute or two and that should be pretty interesting." Sure enough in a minute we could see a long row of miniature breakers approaching; the first one zipped by, its leading edge a perfect tubular roll that any foot-tall surfer would die for... past us and on up the river's edge it rolled, at what must have been almost exactly the speed the ship itself had been traveling. That first mini-breaker was followed by dozens more, spaced out in intervals several seconds apart. As each wave approached and passed, the sound was quite interesting: they were moving from left to right by our perspective, and since the rolling, breaking part of each wave was only two or three feet long, that narrow *noisy* part of the wave was quite discrete -- a distinct, separate entity in motion. Therefore, facing the river as each breaking crest approached, you'd hear its gurgling swooosh coming from the left side, drawing even and then receding off to the right -- a sequence which was repeated over and over with each successive wave -- and there were a lot of them, dozens upon dozens! When the second ship came by its waves were much bigger; although the ships had appeared to be about the same size and moving at about the same speed, this one must have had more displacement due to weight-- and it did have more conspicuous cargo stacked high on the deck. The moving waves of swooshy-gurgle sound were even more striking with this one, and it occurred to me -- we're at last near the point of this entry -- that stationing a stereo microphone by the river's edge perpendicular to the shore might produce a fascinating recording! Especially with headphones, the listener would hear a series of sound/waves gradually appearing on one side, drawing to the center and receding in the other direction, in a rather rhythmic sequence. Hmmm.... what could one do with a recording like that? Speed it up, slow it down, play it backwards... dub some flute over it.... maybe spawn some new-wave surf music! So, I'm returning to that spot soon on another nice day, equipped with minidisk recorder and stereo microphone. Ya never know! We really need to get MUCH more bamboo-flute music online soon anyway-- so watch for that (or don't.) One more tangent for today: speaking of beaches and sand, you know how driftwood looks after a long journey in the wave-tossed sea? It gets all smooth, burnished, rounded, beautifully sculpted by the gentle, unerring hand of Nature. --And you know how the finest of my bamboo flutes have a smooth, burnished, gracefully sculpted appearance? That's done by the rough, mistake-prone, clumsy hand of either me or my The crux: I'm absolutely convinced that a flute could be effectively finish-sanded by tethering it in the ocean surf of a sandy beach for a day, or perhaps several days! It would be a tad tricky rigging the thing up in the right zone, but I envision two heavy weights with a fairly long line extended between them; the weights would be placed just below the low-tide mark, with the flute secured at the middle of the line... I just KNOW it would work, but haven't gotten it together logistically to actually carry out initial experiments. A lazy week at the beach -- with the ocean doing all the work -- would sure beat those long, tedious days bending over a sink, laboriously sanding flutes by hand... and Aspenhopper would be freed up to clean my house or something instead! ...Better get moving on that plan. ----r.
Posted by Romy
11:38 AM PST
October 16, 2006
Sorry about last night, dears
Yikes: look at what happens when there's leftover 151-proof rum lying around the house. I'll return to yesterday's entry soon, to see whether the mess can be cleaned up somewhat... can't bear to look quite yet, though: first, another cup of coffee's in order... *Sip* Oh, man: I just looked it up, and The Brothers Karamazov clocks in at 353,351 words! This blog is SUCH a piker. Also, last night we originally referred to Guyana as an "island"-- which is an unpardonable blunder, since it's actually on the South American mainland. We'll make it up to you, dears... I dimly remember making a few disparaging remarks about some "writer" for a local alternative weekly: actually, I've been plotting revenge on that dude for almost an entire year! Here's a tiny sample of that awful cover story for the 2005 Halloween issue: In the weeks that anticipated my ceremonial descent, my gleeful anticipation was largely met with disbelief, fear, and a reasonably stupefied curiosity as to what could possibly possess me to conceive of such a pointless endeavor. My canned answer—that it would make a good story for this paper—seemed to placate most people, but did little to explain away the self-satisfaction with which I so happily approached the task. The truth of the matter was that it was difficult for me to concisely articulate the conflicted laundry list of motivations that drew me to pursue my own living burial... "The truth of the matter was that it was difficult for me to concisely articulate the conflicted laundry list of motivations that drew me to pursue my own living burial?" Talk about a self-evident sentence: this guy makes me look like a concise and articulate expresser of conflicted motivations! They shouldn't have bothered digging him up; that would have saved us all a headache. A bit later in the article, he writes of attempting to pee "discretely" into a water bottle while interred in an oversize coffin. I'll grant you that peeing discretely is better than the alternative, but we'll stop right there: hold that train of thought! Better to be discreet about such subjects; this is still a family blog. However, the article does provide ample blogfodder for our current quest. Now that I've made a small incision, we'll get to the dissection soon. But it won't be pretty, since my conflicted laundry list of motivations is so difficult to concisely articulate. --r.
Posted by Romy
12:26 PM PST
October 15, 2006
Rum and bananas, extended
At the library, with only twelve minutes to get something going for today... we're about 1000 words behind the pace for that 10,000-word October, standing at around 4000 as of now... but that's really not bad at all, and there shouldn't be any problem filling the quota as long as every spare twelve minutes before the end of the month is taken advantage of by typing largely meaningless bursts of filler material such as yesterday's entry. Today's effort, on the other hand, is deadly serious and meaningful-- as you'll plainly see. Many years ago, I discovered that flambeéd bananas was a very easily prepared yet showy and delicious dessert dish. Hadn't made it in ages, but since the family and friends had a "Battle Booze" dinner last night, I figgered it was an excellent occasion on which to resurrect my old burnt-bananas recipe, best as I could recall it. --Man! For such a simple dish, it was even better than I'd remembered -- and I'm not at all the type who's big on desserts! Don't even recall where the original recipe came from, or whether it was indeed my own concoction, but the key ingredient in my version is frozen orange juice concentrate, added to the dish at the rate of one tablespoon or so per banana, or perhaps a bit more. The dish is rounded out with brown sugar, butter and rum-- and as for that, my preference is for a dark, thick, rich and strong type such as Lemon Hart Demerara. About a million years ago, while living in Alaska I used to buy Hudson Bay Company's demerara rum, which seemed to be even more over-the-top than the Lemon Hart version.... ooops, time's about up; gotta run, but more on this soon. --r. ============================================================== [Returning later that evening] A mere twelve minutes remained on my alotted library login time this afternoon when the above was written... now I'm back at the Shack with unlimited time to blogviate, oh boy! Just think: if we manage to meet that 10,000 word goal for the month, then the sky's the limit: why not do 10,000 or more words EVERY month? That'd be 120,000 words or more per annum-- and how wordy are some of the world's most notoriously lengthy tomes, anyway? How many words, for instance, are in Melville's Moby Dick-- or in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov? Funny that those two should come up: I've read Moby Dick three or four times, enjoying it tremendously on each occasion-- and probably will devour it another time or three in the future. The language is so rich and fulfilling, and the book struck me as an easy read: not at all a hard schlep, nor intellectually challenging. Still, for some reason it has a generally difficult reputation, and several of my friends have confessed to foundering in multiple attempts to complete the voyage between covers. On the other hand, The Brothers Karamazov has been a tougher nut for me: three determined attempts have each been marooned on the grim rocks of failure by page 125 or so. Interestingly (or not-- it's my blog and we have a quota to meet), my good friend Chris has the opposite problem: she's attempted to read Moby D. several times, found it challenging and been miserably shipwrecked early in the voyage, every time-- BUT she's a big Karamazov fan and has read the entire book multiple times! In fact, several years ago we formed a pact: If she could finally manage to complete MD -- or if I could at last plow all the way through TBK -- the other would be obligated to complete his or her respective bugaboo book within a month. So, if she ever finishes Moby D., I have to read the K Bros. Must confess that I haven't had the nerve to remind her about this lately: she might actually DO it-- and what sketchy memories I do have of earlier, futile attempts at that book aren't encouraging. I need a tutor... perhaps learning to read it in the original Russian would actually be easier? Maybe if I commissioned one of those statuesque blonde Russian mail-order br.... never mind. (The Swamp Witch will surely read this, after all-- and I prefer brunettes anyway. Sincerely.) A few more words on books, then back to the rum, mates! Ahrrr.... OK, let's pick two more random novels: I espy Catch 22... and... Don Quixote. Wouldn't you grant that those are a fairly divergent pair, aye? See if you can guess which of the two was exasperating and abortive for me, and which was appreciatively devoured.... (Thirty seconds; cue Jeopardy theme...) *Ding* OK, here we go: I attempted to read '22 several years ago, and despite its reputation and my philosophical agreement with the central themes, I just couldn't cut it. The major gripe was that Heller had more than made his point by Page 50 or so, and just kept relentlessly flogging it over and OVER after that. I made it perhaps twice that far into the book, whereupon a cursory scan of what lay ahead seemed to indicate more of the same; the book was abandoned. It just didn't seem to be worth the effort, and its humorous aspects struck me as redundant and ultimately tiresome as well. Sorry, Heller fans! On the other hand, I greatly enjoyed Don Quixote. It's widely cited as the first *modern* novel, and despite its length, for me it flew by in a flash. --All hail Cervantes! (And cerveza, which I'm now dipping into as fuel for this gibberish-burst.) Would have been nice to read it in the original Spanish: naturally, one is dependent on the translator when reading books originally written in other languages. You never know: once I've learned to read flutently in both Russian and Spanish, I could very well end up loathing Don Quixote-- and loving The Brothers Karamazov! --Off to hire tutors now... back in a decade or two. Well, not quite: I'd promised to return to the rum. Yes, that Hudson's Bay Company rum is remembered as being black as night, strong as a hurricane and rich as a frigate laden with the King's gold... but sadly, it seems to be off the market now, mates. Still, there must be an unopened bottle or two languishing somewhere in this world... How does one go about finding such an obscure thing? It may be that my memory of Hudson Bay's rum is clouded by the nostalgic mists of time, and perhaps Lemon Hart's worthy current offering is fully comparable in quality. Still, I'd like to find an old bottle of Hudson's with which to make a direct comparison, and those old bottles did have awfully cool labels. (Photo link coming tomorrow; on the Mac right now and unable to do so.) --I see that true "Demerara" rum comes only from the Caribbean nation of Guyana, and that its name derives from the Demerara River, which flows through the country's prime sugar-cane acreage. Ever since those Hudson Bay-drinking days of Alaskan yore, I've associated the term "demerara" with a thick-black-caramelized-rich-strong rum indeed-- real pirate-worthy stuff. However, it seems that they do make lighter-style rums in Guyana as well-- lubbers take heart! (Just don't mix that light rum with Kool-Aid, if you get my morbid drift.) But we digress, mates: what was this blog entry supposed to be about, again? --Ahrr, 'twas about the rum and bananas-- but we seem to have abandoned the bananas! Time to set that aright... Aye, the burnt bananas were indeed a hit at "Battle Booze," and indeed I'll be fixin' 'em more frequently in the future. Do bananas grow in your locale? They certainly taste better in their native habitat, as do most fruits and veggies. For instance, the bananas at roadside fruit stands in Hawaii make the commercially available mainland versions taste like cardboard in comparison... And surely bananas are grown in Guyana, wouldn't you think? So, what if we visited that country and made burnt homegrown bananas with the native rum in situ? That would be an incomparable taste treat indeed. (Swamp Witch who needs to burn up her excess vacation time, are you listening? Georgetown is reportedly lovely in November...) This has all gotten very silly and non-flutistic, and yet it's proven that arbitrary goals such as a 10,000 word month are no big deal. Why, I could easily do this much and more every day! In fact, I've been planning an assault on an article published last October in a Portland-area alternative monthly: an article so very badly written, in such pompously sophomoric, pseudo-literate style-- really, it was so pretentiously inchoate that a full year was required for my stomach to stand the careful rereading necessary for a proper vivisection. That Halloween-season rant should appear here in a week or so. I'm no writer-- never have been, and this blog is abundant proof of that disclaimer. Still, I resent it when certain pompous punks claim the "writer" mantle while flamboyantly exhibiting their appalling literary shortcomings in public forums. After all, practically nobody reads this humble bamboo-flute blog-- but many thousands read that pathetic alternative-weekly article. Actual recipe for burnt bananas tomorrow... along with a thousand or two additional words. [UPDATE]: whoa, look at what my sister just forwarded! Problem is, I want a bottle that still has the rum in it! [ UPDATE: She had sent a now-defunct link to an eBay auction for an empty Hudson's Bay rum bottle.] yrs. truly, ahrrrr-b.
Posted by Romy
04:00 PM PST
October 14, 2006
How does your garden grow?
It's been a while since the Swamp Shack garden was mentioned, so here we go. This has been my first season of gardening at the Shack, and since every microclimate has its quirks, advantages and drawbacks, it takes at least a year or two of attunement to the seasonal rhythms in a particular spot to really get into the groove. We had a nice crop of summer vegetables; the beans, squashes, tomatoes and peppers did quite well, although the relative coolness and partial shade at the Shack isn't the perfect environment for such warm and sunny weather-loving crops. Accordingly, I'll take extra care to start them early next year and put them in the very sunniest spots available in the yard. Our climate here in the maritime Northwest is especially well suited to cool-season crops, and I've gone completely overboard with those this fall. It's possible to grow many vegetables clear through the fall and winter here, and it's particularly satisfying to step out on a chilly January day and harvest fresh veggies straight from the garden! Again, since this is my first season of fall/winter gardening in this location, I can already see how to readjust a few things next year-- especially to get an earlier start, since the sun dips behind the trees early in the season here in the swamp. Just about everything I planted for fall and winter this year could have been started about a month earlier. Sow it goes... Still, we should have a decent winter crop; the plants would merely be larger and better established if they'd been sown a few weeks earlier. Let's see: chard, kale, two or three types of mustard greens, cabbage, collards, various lettuces, mesclun salad mix (baby greens), arugula, carrots, beets, turnips, onions and garlic (to overwinter for harvest early next summer), various cool-weather herbs: all these and others I'm forgetting offhand are currently in the garden-- and these and many other crops all grow splendidly in our drippy but relatively mild winters. Yay! Also, the bamboo should really take off next year-- it survived last year's flood, and according to longterm weather projections, we're likely to have a relatively dry winter this year. I make flutes out of bamboo, remember? That's what this blog is supposed to be about... however, it'll be many years before the possiblity of making flutes from swamp-grown bamboo arises, since it takes several years for newly planted 'boo to reach a large enough size-- and once it finally attains the requisite diameter, it still takes each individual culm (stalk) three or four years to fully harden, or lignify. Prob'ly be the better part of a decade, overall... oh, well: y'all will be the first to know. See ya! --rb
Posted by Romy
05:33 PM PST
October 13, 2006
Here we go again
Yesterday we devoted some low-blow time to trashing a whole musical genre and instrumental family—don’t tell anyone, OK?—so today’s entry will be all sweetness and light in order to maintain a fair and balanced approach to the world in general. ---Naaaaaah: on second thought, I’m still in the mood for slime, so let’s let ‘er rip with still more slanderous abuse! As it happens, there’s a particular style of flute that I’ve always avoided mentioning; my disdain for the genre is so strong, so vitriolic, that any honest discussion of the topic might turn shockingly brutal. We won’t quite go that far today, but instead will tiptoe gingerly around the issue with a few oblique observations and hints. The flute style in question is identified by its association with the aboriginal inhabitants of a large landmass, which was relatively recently “discovered” by Europeans: in fact, this past Monday was a federal holiday in the USA devoted to the putative discoverer of said landmass. The practitioners of this flute “tradition” tend to adorn themselves with trinkets, plucked plumage and the hides of deceased beasts, and to brandish smoldering bundles of dried desert foliage while muttering incantations to the spirits of various animals, geographic features and heavenly bodies. Most of the latter-day acolytes of this flute style have no genetic relationship to the aboriginal* originators of the genre, yet they go to great lengths to identify themselves with certain perceived cultural touchstones in a fetishistic display of would-be tribal solidarity. The flutes associated with this tradition are of the flageolet family, and are extremely simple in scale design. They’re highly accessible to beginners, since their typically small, closely-spaced holes and absolute ease of tone production yield quick results and near-instant gratification to even musically challenged individuals. These instruments are therefore often touted as being in the dreaded “Easy To Play” sham-category. The fact that these flutes come complete with a ready-made metaphysical marketing package seals the deal for susceptible individuals, and a vast industry (by alternative-flute standards) has sprung up the past two decades in order to service the burgeoning demand. --Yep: we’re talking about the flutophone. (Just kidding; back a bit later.) (*Caution: don't confuse this general term with the inhabitants of a certain Southern Hemisphere landmass. Didgeri-delusional individuals are the upcoming subject of an entirely different rant.) --r.
Posted by Romy
12:05 PM PST
October 12, 2006
Burn the Diatonic Marimbas!
Time for a grumpy rant-- anything to take up blogwidth. Here we go! The Pacific Northwest is especially infested with marimba bands. Now, I don't mean REAL, chromatic marimba bands stocked with actual skilled musicians--we're talking about diatonic marimba bands, the kind that pound out tediously repetitious, maddeningly monochromatic tunes, all of which are in the very same key, for hours on end. Know what I'm talking about? You could get much the same harmonic effect with five or six minimally-trained people stationed on separate pianos, with each player assigned to just eight or twelve notes in the high, middle or low range-- and they'd all be restricted to the white keys only. Think that might get a bit boring after an hour or two? Now, quite a few people actually like this marimba stuff and find it cheerful, infectious, festive, and all that. It really drives me up the wall, though... by the third tune, I just want them to shut up-- SHUT UP, ALREADY-- WE HEARD YOUR COMPLETE ACT... IN THAT FIRST NUMBER! In addition to the tonic monotony in tune after tune, their complete lack of textural and timbral variation is irritating. The notes can't be bent, tonally modified, or varied in any of the many, many ways that even a simple pentatonic flute can mix things up: attack and tonguing effects, tone quality, bending notes, vibrato, etc., etc. In fact, the only significant potential variable is the volume (dynamics)-- and I've certainly never heard a diatonic marimba band that even took full advantage of dynamics, not by a long shot. And don't get me started on rhythm: it's conceivable that highly skilled players could make a group of diatonic marimbas sound interesting for, say, three or four tunes by making full use of dynamic shadings and intriguingly complex rhythms-- but you're unlikely to find a group of highly trained, virtuostic musicians playing diatonic marimbas. Why would they bother? Part of this hostility to marimba bands is due to the fact that I've been trapped near them in a few festival situations, pinned down and unable to flee. In one memorably awful instance, my display booth was right across from the stage where a huge marimba setup was installed, and the entire day was devoted to performances by various community groups, starting with the local elementary school and climaxing in the early evening with the headliners, an allegedly professional marimba band. Each of these ensembles hammered away on the same set of instruments, in the same key and in similar style, for the entire day! Plink plink plonk plonk plunk plunk plinkity ploonk ploonk PLINK PLINK PLONK PLINKITY PLANK PLOOK PLUNK PLOONKITY PLANK... For. The. Entire. Day. And I honestly couldn't hear much difference between the fourth-grade group and the "professionals." As for that comparison we made between the white keys of a piano and the woefully limited harmonic range of diatonic marimbas: Must...not...make...snide...comment... Bloody plank-pounders! BURN, BABY! BURN! Now, as for steel-drum bands: those I like. Their timbral texture is interesting, and with much more harmonic range to boot. Chromatic marimbas are fine too, when staffed by competent players. After all, we don't want to go all negative here ----Grumpy R.
Posted by Romy
01:53 PM PST
October 11, 2006
Time to start building momentum...
OK, I've promised to pad out the October entries by writing extensively on foodie-type subjects, and we'll be getting to the recipes soon, soon, soon. Every single word counts when a non-writer like "yours truly" reaches for an unlikely goal such as a 10,000 word month, so we should probably be grateful for the incompetence and inattention of our Department of Redundancy Department when putsch comes to shove-- there's no need to purge the ranks of that less-than-stellar department at this time, since as presently and ineptly staffed they're unlikely to notice a run-on sentence such as this this one and demand radical revisions and excisions which might jeopardize the goal of achieving the the requisite number of words herein, and as we all know, any such reductive revisions might run the risk of reducing the month's word count to the point where it falls woefully short of our admittedly ambitious target zone. Fixed a very nice dinner last night: a sort of chile rellenos souffle with home-garden ripened anaheim peppers, topped with a spicy tomato sauce and accompanied by a truly inspired original creation: baked yams pureed with a bit of sour cream, a splash of stock, and accented with cayenne and some freshly ground cinnamon and cumin! An unorthodox combination to be sure, but it worked very well-- far beyond my wildest intuitive dreams, in fact... more details on that recipe coming up before the 31st. Also, I've been experimenting extensively with the smoker which formerly languished for years in the cobweb-befouled garage here at the Swamp Shack: dragged it out of its dusty corner, cleaned it up, and got to smokin'! A few days ago I concocted some absurdly good salmon, using fine Pacific Northwest alder wood gathered along the banks of the mighty Tualatin River right here in the swamp neighborhood. A description of the exact technique involved will have to wait until we're feeling the 10,000-word pressure a bit more keenly, but rest assured: it's a somewhat counterintuitive yet brilliantly effective strategy. Specifics coming presently... Also also, more on flutes and reeds and all that coming soon, too. Never lose sight of the primary objective, as Dr. Gonzo once counselled-- although that may be a slight paraphrase; too lazy right now to look up the exact passage... ---r.
Posted by Romy
11:34 PM PST
October 10, 2006
Food is next
OK, I've figured out a way to pad the month's entries by a thousand or two words: we'll run some more food musings! Why, just look at all the blogwidth taken up by kung pao and collard greens a few months ago-- I've been cooking up a storm lately and have concocted some very inventive and tasty creations. Must be the seasonal denning instinct... So, over the next few days we'll get that culinary-blogging pot boiling again. This is about it for now, since it's been a full day... but be watching for an onslaught of foodie stuff coming very soon! --r.
Posted by Romy
10:17 PM PST
October 9, 2006
The tortoise and the hare
You're probably familiar with the old story about the tortoise and the hare-- it's one of Aesop's tales, ain't it? Anyway, I'd originally planned to reach the 10,000 word goal this month via a combination of harelike and tortoisey techniques: by posting a hundred or two plodding words virtually every day of the month in unexciting yet diligent fashion, I could make up any potential shortfall with a few crazed harelike sprints in the last week or two. Well, the plan is fraying: I've managed to fall badly off the pace over the past few days, and unless our tortoise returns pretty much daily over the next couple of weeks, that harried hare will be forced to close the gap with a truly harebrained burst of... anyhow, we'll see how this all works out soon enough. ----r.
Posted by Romy
09:18 PM PST
October 6, 2006
Moving right along
It's time to address the subject of reed instruments and we'll get to that over the next couple of days, since after a lapse of three or four years I've finally resumed work on clariboos. My dysfunctional relationship with reed instruments is a big problem-- those traumatic formative-year experiences with sadistic slivers of vibrating cane leave lifelong scars, and it's always a struggle to rise above the fear and loathing. Teenage struggles with saxophone and *shudder* bassoon -- in an unsupervised tundra setting, to boot -- have left their indelible mark, and once I discovered the blessed simplicity of flutes, with their absolute zenlike purity of musical challenge, with no unruly, capricious slivers of reed to blame, only yourself-- that was it. It's been difficult to get back into the reed world ever since, just as as with confronting one's childhood abuser and forging a newly secure relationship with him or her. --Speaking of abuse and current events, does anyone out there wanna have cybersax? What are you blowing on right now? --Never mind; forget that I said anything. We'd better not go there, so don't reed too much into that rash and impulsive proposition. I'm gonna go call a counselor right now, and it's the booze's fault anyway. --r.
Posted by Romy
10:59 AM PST
October 5, 2006
Steve who?
I awoke one day in early September to find that the leading story for every single medium on the planet covered the same earthshaking tragedy, thus: EXTRA: Steve Irwin, the universally beloved, intrepidly zany Aussie whose wild-and-crazy-guy antics and irresistible boyish charm have endeared him to every single multicellular lifeform on the planet, has been tragically killed by an evil stingray! To which my first reaction was, "Uh, Steve who?" I had no idea who this guy was, had never even HEARD of him—and all of a sudden this is the biggest news EVER, enough to make everybody forget about the last such comparably tragic demise—that is, the death of princess what’s-her-name? Crikey, you’d almost think that there was no real news happening in the world these days. It’s been over a month now, and there are still references to this event all over the media! And, you think that that bit about the “evil” stingray is a mere flight of fancy? No, people have actually been killing and mutilating stingrays in an incomprehensible display of the monumental stupidity for which our species is notorious. That settles it: I’m assembling a huge arsenal and going on a murderous rampage against the life-form that most richly deserves it. You asked for it, mates! Well, just wanted to get that one off my chest, and there’s another 260+ words for today… I really should watch cable TV at least occasionally and get some idea of what’s happening in the “reality” most people inhabit. --rb
Posted by Romy
12:57 PM PST
October 4, 2006
Another brief note for the day
We're almost on pace for a 10,000 word month in October and an appropriately Halloweenish drift is developing, as may be seen immediately below. [Oct. 4th submission] I typically make several revisions of each blog entry, and today's earlier submission has indeed shrunk as the day progressed. It would be easier to reach that ten grand count if we let each entry stand as it originally fell (?), since our Department of Redundancy Department is obviously stocked with incompetent slackers... and nepotism is to blame, perhaps? Anyway, it seems to be largely incumbent upon me, myself, and I to take editorial control and tighten things up slightly after each initial posting. If things look grim as we approach the end of the month and we're running badly behind schedule, all bets are off. In that case, we'll abandon revision altogether and give my naturally bloviating, unnecessarily wordy nature full and unfettered rein... [EDITOR'S NOTE: the rest of this drivel has been deleted, since Romy seems to be losing it in the face of the 10,000 Word Challenge. Once he's regained his senses, postings will resume without further interruption. --DRD.]
Posted by Romy
10:45 PM PST
The mystery-shrouded tale of the Funerary Flute Guild
Bet you haven't seen this site until now-- it's dedicated to the Funerary Violin and its eldritch, sepulchral practitioners. I discovered the subject in the NY Times this morning while sipping blue-state coffee in the corner cafe. October's the perfect month in which to unearth such a spooky and little-known tradition. After all, the leaves are dropping, the light is waning and Halloween's right around the corner. It soon occured to me that hey: if violins can have a funerary function, why shouldn't flutes do the same? Thus, let it be known that the Funerary Flute Guild will soon spring into being-- and special charter memberships are available for the first 100 to join! We're still working on the bylaws, Musical Mortality Manifesto, initiation ceremony, official motto and other such details. After all, careful attention to minutiae is needed when launching a group of such serious purpose. So, it'll be a while until we announce the formal procedure for joining the Guild, but y'all will be the first to know-- let's shoot for around the 31st of the month. I was actually asked to play at a funeral some years ago-- well, it wasn't really a proper funeral, but more of a post-ceremonial gathering of friends and relatives to exchange remembrances of the dear departed. The problem was that I barely knew the person who made the request -- had met him briefly only once; this guy's brother was the deceased -- and I knew absolutely nobody else who was attending the occasion. This also came up very abruptly; I was asked to play on the very day of the event, or perhaps the day before, I forget exactly which... The entire situation was bizarre and and rife with potential awkwardness. Although the surviving brother practically pleaded with me to take the er, gig, I just couldn't deal with it and begged off, mumbling various lame excuses. It felt kind of bad to reject such a personal request at that hour of needy grief for the bereaved, but hey-- I simply wasn't psychologically prepared for it on such short notice. However, once our Funerary Flute Guild has provided structure, meaning and prescribed rituals for such occasions, I'll have the professional tools to deal with future funereal engagements-- no matter how late the notice or how little the notice of the late. This is all rather exciting in a macabre way, so we're off to pore over arcane texts related to the funerary violin tradition. It can't hurt to study their methods; we can pinch a few of their practices and alter them to suit our own flutistic purposes-- while watching for potential pitfalls in aspects of their tradition which are more moribund than necessary. --r.
Posted by Romy
12:59 PM PST
October 2, 2006
October already
OK, there are a couple of new photos near the top of the Instruments gallery. One's an improved version of a bass-flute shot that's been up for a few days, and the other one is a shot of two soprano flutes, in E and D minor. All three available as of Oct. 2nd. Ya, a long time ago we'd promised to put up more specific information on immediately available flutes, but I'm still leery of taking a catalogue-style approach, with price lists and all that. It would just seem so... commercial. I'm never quite caught up with production and many potential commissions have fallen by the wayside over the last few years, so I'm still content to be ambiguous and inscrutable with the "for sale" aspects of this site; generating sufficient demand to stay juuust *busy enough* isn't a problem, so would-be flute customers still have to take the initiative and inquire on options and availability-- and the more specific the inquiry, the better. For example, we receive many messages that go something like this: I found your website and man, your flutes are AMAZING and totally gorgeous! I really, RILLY want to buy one or maybe several, so could you tell me what's available and what the prices are? Hope to hear from you VERY soon, OMG this is totally exciting!!!! --To which I'll immediately reply, somewhat in this vein: "Thanks for your inquiry, etc... I have a number of instruments currently available, ranging from large pentatonic bass flutes to smaller, more 'ordinary' models. Prices for individual flutes can range from around fifty dollars up to several hundred depending on many variables, and there is no established, standardized pricing for particular keys and styles; each piece is individually evaluated. There are many other possibilities in addition to those instruments which are completed and immediately available; these may be commissioned as special orders. It'd be best if we narrowed down the scope of your inquiry before discussing the options. First, what's your experience level with flutes? Do you currently play in a particular style, or with a particular type of flute-- or would you be beginning with one of my instruments? Are there any specific keys or scales that would be of especial interest? Do you want a flute that fits into an established tradition of technique and style (such as Irish/Celtic music, for example) or would you be open to something more unconventional? Are you male or female, short or tall, and with large, small or average hands and fingers? (Often a person's physical stature can rule out many models, although even very short individuals can play some of the larger flutes of appropriate design.) And, is there anything in our Instruments gallery that's especially interesting to you, visually or conceptually? Anyhow, give me some feedback on these basic starting points as well as your budgetary expectations and we'll take it from there. Thanks again for the interest!" --And then there's nary another peep heard from that oh-so-feverishly interested party! Happens all the time... Well, gotta run for the moment; this entry may be extended later today. Adios for now, --r.
Posted by Romy
12:26 PM PST
October 1, 2006
Establishing the pace for October
If we're to accrue a 10,000 word spew in October as was previously promised, it'd be prudent to maintain the pace from the getgo. That would entail 300-plus for today, which is in fact the first day of this quintessentially autumnal month here in the Northern Hemisphere. --So, what's the count so far... only about forty-five? This is going to be tougher than we thought! Never mind: surely something will happen tomorrow which merits several hundred incisive and flutistically relevant words words words. See y'all then... *Yawn* -----rb
Posted by Romy
09:48 PM PST |
