Fish Hunter
28-08-10
One could count the scales on it's lateral line, spines in it's dorsal fin and check if it has an adipose fin. One could look at it under a microscope and examine its deoxyribonucleic acid.
As a past fish breeder and long time aquarist I have seen a number of dead ornamental African fish so I speak from experience. They just lay there looking dead and uninteresting.
This is interesting.
I have witnessed minuscule fish, tetras, remember who feeds and who doesn't feed them.
I have witnessed a cichlid recognize me from a pet store aquarium where he was consigned after outgrowing a tank.
Recognition is intelligence. Think about it. Could one not learn more from fish intellect than from fish corpses? Observe how the fish live, for example, how Jane Goodall observed the chimps without killing them, and in the process discovered many lovely, wonderful new things instead of leaving a trail of dead.
The NY Times asks rhetorically how did the Congo River got all the different fish?
Well, they slipped through.
The Medieval East
06-08-10
What?!
We all have a Mother and if we are good people, we love our Mother, good or bad, no matter what. Same with our daughters. No matter what. I am sure any man with a daughter shares my revulsion at "honour killings" in the community.
If you don't have a daughter may you be lucky enough to be so blessed one day.
I propose we start calling The Middle East "The Medieval East".
Criminal society, religion or state? Which is it? The lines seem deliberately blurred. What is not blurred is someone is committing heinous crimes against women with the seeming sanction of the state in the guise of an inquisitive Kangaroo Court. So unblur the lines that I can take deliberate aim.
Honour killings when sanctioned by an authority? Simply serial murder of the Pig Farm sort on the authority's sanction.
Where is the morality in The Medieval East, behaving in a manner consistent with Medieval thought in this day and age? Can they not see the drones and missiles?
Okay, here it is, from out of Hubble's deep left field: Adam and Eve is a fairy tale. No?! Really!? S'truth. Adam and Eve are not the foundation on which to build a society for the future. Adam and Eve are perhaps Moses's forebears but certainly not mine. Or yours. Seriously.
Also, take note Religious Fundamentalists. The word "Fundament" is in the dictionary. Look it up. It is descriptive.
There are facts that you can prove by a method called the "experiment". An experiment proves or disproves an hypothesis. For example, The Hubble Space Telescope allowed an experiment the be performed that proved the existence of Einstein Rings, exactly as Einstein said they would be, based on his hypothesis. There are photographs. Eureka!
You can use an experiment to prove an hypothesis right or wrong yourself. Any scientific fact in question can be tested by experiment.
This is Einstein's most famous equation: e=mc2 where e=potential energy, c=300,000,000 meters per second and m=atomic mass. Consider the numbers using the atomic mass of Strontium-90. E=mc2 was proven by experiments conducted severally at Stagg Field, in Nevada, on Nagasaki and, 65 years ago, on Hiroshima.
E=mc2 renders all speculative religion moot. It does not remove the mystery or beauty, in fact, it increases the beauty an infinite amount. The time scale stretches back and forward longer than Moses to Armageddon. The light burned into The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is billions, billions, nine zeros, of years old.
So, poof goes The Garden of Eden in a blaze of light. Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, all figures of the Pantheon, but hardly Cosmopolitan. The poetry remains. And what in this life is more important than poetry? The Koran is a poem. As is The Bible. Were Moses or William Blake here to see The Hubble Ultra Deep Field instead of me there would be immortal poetry instead of webklutter.
Nowhere in The Koran does it encourage barbaric behaviour. Not one word advocates for mutilation and murder, in fact, The Koran forbids it explicitly: "Thou shalt not cut off the nose and ears of your mistress and send her back to her father because she displeases you", I paraphrase but any Koran scholar knows absolutely that I am right. If I am wrong, show me the passage in The Koran where The Prophet encourages this kind of barbaric behaviour, to take after women with knives?!
What The Koran does say is "thou shalt not kill" with the disclaimer "unless absolutely necessary". So, it is "absolutely necessary" that the behaviour of these parts of society change. Not to do so is a crime and in this case it is a crime against humanity, - a crime against women, a crime against all women, including your mother.
I am being unfair? That there are moderates in that part of Earth? The Medieval East? The complaint falls on deaf ears. They must either change their minds or I must kill them. So I send the army as my proxy to go kill these men. Canada does. We all do. Nicola Goddard does.
I was filled with revulsion when the 800' Buddha statues were destroyed and we did N-O-T-H-I-N-G to stop it. Nothing!
Then The World Trade Centre attacks galvanized Earth opinion against The Medieval East. W nearly became Earth hegemon. But Dub fumbled the ball.
W had a vision of retribution and war and here we are, alone again, an Earth divided. W couldn't help it. Dub's as much a victim of The Medieval East as any other barbarian. Earth peace?! Shudder.
The vision, by the way, is Earth Peace. Embrace it. It can be real.
Don't worry about Earth peace bringing on the Battle of Armageddon. Revelations are just ravings brought on by a bad mushroom stone. To hear similar ranting listen to Terence McKenna. One feels better in the morning after a good night's sleep, if not a little sheepish for talking so much and laughing so loud.
Besides, the Battle of Armageddon already happened, around 2500 years ago at Meggido. It was so bloodthirsty Armageddon became a byword for slaughter. That's how the word "armageddon" came to symbolize the end of the world in Revelations. Either learn from history or be forced to take the test again.
It is incumbent on me to do something about the women being murdered in The Medieval East. I protest.
"I don't believe in magic, I don't believe in I-ching, I don't believe in bible, I don't believe in tarot, I don't believe in Hitler, I don't believe in Jesus, I don't believe in Kennedy, I don't believe in Buddha, I don't believe in mantra, I don't believe in Gita, I don't believe in yoga, I don't believe in kings, I don't believe in Elvis, I don't believe in Zimmerman, I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me, Yoko and me, and that's reality."
"God" by John Lennon
Yoko and me. I conclude that the army must stay until The Medieval East changes it's way of thinking, or they are dead. Fuck 'em. In order to defend the women they have to be stopped and if that means they have to be killed then they have to be killed. Change or die. You cannot treat women that way - only women bleed. They bleed for me and you. And they.
Abject lessons. A Recital.
30-04-10
Mrs.Bartsch's axiom "One Performance Equals Ten Practices" translates into one performance equals boiled in oil. The horror is all that remains as a goad to never forgetting. Where do these things go when they fade from memory. Or fumbling the climax on the slow movement. How to learn the lesson of restraint again but this time in front of an audience. To subject oneself to public humiliation is masochist because it hurts, hurts, hurts to blow the most important transitions, unfailingly, in front of an audience, I apologized, even. I want to bang my head aginst the wall. Where did it go? hmmm. Hurry. Haste. Need to take the time to play the music and not hurry. Well, I never said I was a pro but I made $40. Now if I could draw a crowd this big every night, I could make $1200. a month.
Sarah Maclaughlan does not need to quit her job.
Thank you to everyone who was able to make it out. I hope you enjoyed yourselves. I certainly had fun. Sorry about the glitches but this is the amateur hour.
Amateur hour? So why try then?
Because of the good parts. Every now and then a glimmer of the composer sparkles out. I have to admit the fantastic Yamaha piano made sounds I didn't know a piano could make. In defense, I had some moments.
I'm putting off doing the video capture. But that is the point of the exercise. Have to post the recital. Ouch.
I wish I hadn't made the mistakes. I fought so hard against them. Solo piano. Like being gored in the plaza des toros by a fighting bull.
Part of the strategy Mrs. Bartsch set out includes playing in master classes and performing. For some examinations this can persuade the authorities to forgive prerequisites.
The lesson of performing is never make a mistake of any kind, crunched note, tempo, taste, memory. Performing is like rock climbing in it's fear of the unknown. Another case of creativity requires courage. Sculptors hammer with a chisel on a piece of stone for 12 months until it is full of holes and one day soundlessly breaks apart. A waste of life. But who's to know until the time comes? Who's to say when that time is?
Gaye Alcott worked me through the good parts of all these pieces, David Snable and Marlene Bartsch helped me with the Beethoven. I am responsible for the Chopin Etude in E, Op. 10, No.3.
Performance Anxiety VI
24-03-10
The side project which has consumed my life continues to eat several hours daily, but, for me, worth the time and effort.
Performance is mandatory for anyone after a music degree, you are not allowed to make music alone, alas, so I find myself on stage rehearsing for a performance of advanced piano repertoire in idioms that don't match my style.
Bach and Beethoven are precise in their demands on the performer. Precision on the piano not being my strong suit, either rhythmically or technically, both composers present me with enormous challenges.
Over the years as I have pursued music there have been many who suggested that I abandon my efforts and perhaps take up the kazoo. Hubris does have it's rewards after all, where would we be without those that turn their backs on well-intentioned advice to follow some dream. Our friends are at their best when they are comforting us after a loss. When we are pursuing a dream, friends are usually not much help. Which is where piano teachers come into play.
I cannot recommend Mrs. Marlene Bartsch highly enough. Nor can I leave out the other teachers that have encouraged me or not, Betty Povall, Gaye Alcott-Fleet, David Snable, Anthony Vandenberg, Harold Krebs and briefly Dr. Helmut Brauss.
The instrument I am playing was chosen by Mrs. Bartsch for the Langley Evangelical Free Church. It is a stately 7' Yamaha, and a lovely instrument to play.
Mrs. Bartsch's motto is "one performance equals ten practices". This is most of the programme specified by the Royal Conservatory of Toronto for the certification I am pursuing. To put this in perspective, Glenn Gould graduated from the Royal Conservatory when he was 16.
Today's ten practices.
Business as war, redux.
24-10-09
Arctic Glacier is in big trouble in the States for price fixing collusion with two of the largest ice companies in North America. A liter of water cost more than a liter of gasoline and both are a blight and eyesore. Blade steak, a garbage cut sells for nearly the price of sirloin and soup bones that should cost thirty cents cost nearly five dollars. Every ounce of the cow is used, from the ribs down to the long bones. What's left that isn't dog food or sold to the consumer, the brains, spinal column and whatnot, is ground and fed back to the cattle which contract bovine spongiform encephalitis from it. For humans, Jakob Kreutzfeld Syndrome or Mad Cow Disease. Sponge brain. Selectively breed ungulate herbivores into carnivorous cannibals. Hmmmm. The context of getting our food is also an eyesore. Retailers would pride themselves on service. They would fall over cleaning their place of business. Everything gleamed, including their faces. Then retailers prospered and grew and began competing with each other like healthy nations do militarily. They began raiding each other's market for customers by lowering prices. In order to cut overhead and sell for less they started spending less on lease-hold improvements and began watching their customers, their clients, their livelihood, from behind two-way glass, laughing behind their hand at Mrs. Smith who has just filled a bag full of strawberries worth fifteen or twenty dollars by going that's a nice one oh and that's a nice one. Patting each other on the back for doing a shrewd business. Instead of helping Mrs. Smith because she's your neighbour. And it's a duty. And then retailers started making excuses for the shitty way their stores look by saying it's how we keep prices low, bullshit. The prices aren't low. A neighbourhood coffee house that is a dystopia where the staff have to check with B.A.S.E. to see if their regular can have a free refill when they have been coming there daily for years. Atlantic Salmon swimming in the Pacific because we put them there and say "what? what?". For greed.
Performance Anxiety V
14-10-09
Lest anyone who has been following my efforts to learn to work the piano thinks that I only murder Beethoven, Bach to the resce.
The exam I am studying for has a repertoire that can be mixed and matched to arrive at the program for the recitial that has to be played for the practical examination.
Originally I had planned on Prelude and Fuge VIII from Book One of The Well-Tempered Clavier. The Prelude and Fuge are enharmonic in d# minor and eb minor. Lots of accidentals in the key signature.
The Fuge proved intractable after a number of years of trying to master the notes I decided to let it lay fallow and come back to it. The Prelude is etherialy beautiful.
I returned to another Bach piece in the repertoire and am working on that. This is my first "performance" of the Bach Toccata and Fuge in e minor in the protocol started by Mrs. Bartsch where I embarrass myself public in order to learn in private. Enjoy! I will be, in the masochistic sense.
I am astonished to see how much hair I am losing from the crown of my head. Why didn't anyone tell me?
Performance Anxiety IV
06-09-09
I cringe when I see photo-ops of Harper surrounded by props; wearing a fly-fishing vest or ceramic helmet and flak-jacket peering out through a chimney crack in the cover provided by an Afghanistan crag, all the while the photographer is standing in the clear in order to get the shot that makes Harper look like he is exposing himself to enemy fire on the Khandahar front line like Alexander The Great before him. Harper's feet dangling out of a helicopter, --the expression on his face is concentration on passing a stool. Bush dropping his dog on the tarmac. Putin bare-chested on a horse. I am laughing as I write this. Everyone needs a good laugh.
In the same spirit...
Here, in what the thugs refer to as "Gangley", I continue to work on my piano. Mrs. Bartsch demands a performance be what it is so this is what it is. She says 1 performance is worth 10 practices. It is a painful experience, I don't know how Vincent does it.
I hope to be able to perform the entire repertoire perhaps in summer 2010 or 2011 or 2012.
I would and could correct the musical glitches in this movie but that would be more gauche than making them in the first place. The mistake is one way to know thyself. So the parts I add to the music are the moments when I become aware of what I am doing and ask myself who told you you could do that as I have been asked many times over the years during the labour of love that the piano is.
"Nature's cruelest gift is insufficient talent." I believe that is from Even Cowgirls Get The Blues by Tom Robbins. Insufficient talent. Ouch. I am and always have been an amateur pianist. I have never charged or made or been offered a penny for making music. My musical education for what it is has been my exclusive purlieu and undertaken without assistance from any agency or supporter other than my teachers and they have all been paid. Hubris is a merciless motivator.
For prospective clients or employers who arrive here please accept this as a demonstration of my ability to follow and remember complex sets of directions and attention to detail. Music is an art that exists in time and requires extremely fine time management skills as do deadlines. Music is also highly creative, kinaesthetic and mysterious in it's nature. It requires abstract problem solving and the ability to synthesize new ideas, alien points of view and language concepts. Piano playing requires the ability to maintain two or more concepts or melodies simultaneously in the consciousness. Music aspires to beauty.
Under Deconstruction
06-07-09
The past few weeks have seen me undertake the deconstruction of normanfournier.com in order to more accurately describe the way I think and work to my prospective clients in order for them to make the best decision for their business.
To that end I simplified the homepage to one of two choices, the Real World or the Unreal World.
When I first heard the phrase "is that in the The Real World" it struck me as irony as there really is no other than the Real World. Even the World of Imagination takes place in the Real World. Movies are in the Real World. The imagination is in The Real World.
The internet is in the Real World. But it is really one of the few things that are in The Unreal World is the virtual www. There and not there. All illegible, poetic, terrifying code translated into numbers into light back into numbers back into code back into the www we enjoy in the office.
The Real World. The Unreal World.
Clever marketers bring them together. Obama.
Performance Anxiety III
06-03-08
This is the May 18 "performance" of the part of the repertoire I will need to know in order to write/play my music exams, including a Bach Prelude, Brahms Rhapsody and Beethoven Sonata.
Gerry Hambleton added to the pressure of performing for my "Guinea Pigs" by rushing out and getting his video camera once he realized what I had in mind for my "guests". I have not been filmed since I was a child, a long time ago.
It is a valuable learning experience to hear yourself recorded. These "performances" are cringe-inducing but throw into high relief where I need to pay more attention and do more practice. My guests must also feel high relief when it is all over.
Faust and Gould
04-04-08
The Faust legend has a famous real-life parallel in 20th-century Canadian music history. And what a hoary old legend Faust is; Marlowe's Faust swimming under the turgid water of "olde englishe" poetry in order to accept Mephistopheles' seductive offer; Goethe's long-winded poem about the hapless rake; the Walpugisnacht revelry so scandalously illuminated therein; Thomas Mann's Adrian Leverkuhn listening to demonic children sing his yet-to-be-latest composition as a small green worm crawls out of one of the talented little devils' nose; Gounod's on-stage operatic orgy; Bulgakov's addition to the literature with the fantastic "Master and Margarita". Just this listing of a few of the Faust masterpieces known covers nearly a thousand years of cultural development.
Why is this idea and it's attendant legend so enduring? The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden is undoubtedly the prototype "'Let's Make a Deal' with the Devil" scenario, but my memory escapes me if Eve ever got more than an apple and an arranged marriage to an incredulous husband screaming blue murder. The Lord of Hosts had a fiery sword protecting the gates leading to the East of Eden installed (the Garden of Eden eventually turned into a desert in southern Iraq and the fiery sword dismantled by the Great Satan, G.H. Bush, Sr.).
In secular literature, Faust, the roué, gets the girl, the apple of his eye. Thomas Mann playing God gave Leverkuhn a grim little Mermaid walking on her painful legs. Not quite what the vain Leverkuhn had in mind, he was expecting a little more robust a Helen for his part of the agreement. At least if she didn't complain about the pain during sex. Gounod stages an orgy from which his buck-naked Faust swoops out over the audience, bellowing at the top of his lungs. Make a deal with the Devil and get lucky. Islam has you make a deal with Allah to get the girl, except you have to die in order to collect. Ergo: Islamic fundamentalist suicide bombers making deals with Mephistophelian-looking characters in the casbah. But I digress.
Question: why on earth would you want to make a deal with the Devil? Answer: the payback! Ingenious knowledge, prodigious talent, fame and fortune, orgiastic sexuality or fresh fruit, Satan has offered them all! The critical path follows a well-known course of events. First, the covetous heart pines for the object of desire with soliloquizing and appropriate speaking of the Devil until who appears, but Mephistopheles himself. True, a mere underling and not the Great Satan, but a senior practitioner nonetheless. Often Mephistopheles is seen wearing a chequered jacket and funny cap. He is always described as a snake and lowest of the low; lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut, in fact. Next, a little song and dance number where the two actors parry and thrust offer and counter offer and a deal is done. Then comes fulfillment and the epiphany that it profiteth him hot to gain the entire world and yet lose his soul. The final scene is the "Damnation of Faust" and curtains.
Picture the virtuoso as expectant applause greets his return to the Moscow Conservatory stage after the audience rushes out to the phones during intermission and the previously-empty theatre is now packed. The brilliant career playing international halls, a life as a concert pianist, the elitist of the elitist, the ne plus ultra of Western Civilization and the young virtuoso at the pinnacle of his talent quits the stage! A storm of controversy follows the genius as he devotes himself full-time to recording and debuts with Bach's "Goldberg Variations". The recording causes an international sensation! The world's premiere pianists line up to pay compliments. He continues to produce earth-shaking recorded masterpiece after stunning recorded masterpiece. Years go by in this way. He never returns to the stage but become a recluse working by night and avoiding the contact of his neighbours. By mid-life he is haggard and in ill-health. He returns to the material of his youth and re-records the "Goldberg Variations" nearly twenty five years to the day after the first he made. He has a massive stroke shortly after his fiftieth birthday, falls into a coma, never "regains consciousness" and dies.
Glenn Gould, 1932 to 1982, said of himself that he was a man who made the world a better place by not being in it. It is interesting how his path parallels that of the fantastic Faust legend. He devoted himself to recording for, numerically-significant in the Faustian canon, twenty five years. His fame endured over twenty five years of his life. He was very eccentric; wore checked coats in warm weather, along with a hat, wool gloves and galoshes. He died, as I said, a few days past his fiftieth birthday. I wonder for the five or six days that went by after his birthday if he thought he had been forgiven his agreement, if he wondered about his trip to the crossroads and if he and the other Mephistopolitans he met there had been forgiven the terms of their contract. Then the lights browned-out, and the beautiful genius passed out of our world and into that of Bach.
Perhaps poetic lives lived like Gould's keep the Faust legend alive. Faust explains so much about life that cannot be otherwise explained. Like how the Garden of Eden came to be a desert in southern Iraq.
Performance Anxiety II
06-03-08
This is the March 2 "performance" of the Beethoven Sonata played on my old Victor piano, which I found for $0.00 on craigslist.org. It is idiosyncratic and has a few really out-of-tune keys, as you will hear. There is also a click on one of the a's. At least the keys repeat of their own weight. All the missed beats are my sole responsibility, and not the fault of Steinway and Sons.
Performance Anxiety I
02-20-08
I am working on a music degree in piano performance, and have been forever. A clear case of mining too shallow a vein in B.C. speak. In order to complete the degree I have to perform any number of arcane piano pieces to a professional standard. I have my work cut out. Nevertheless, in order to practice playing the performance, recordings are made of performances of the piece. This is Beethoven's Sonata Number 7 in D major, Opus 10 Number 3. Presto, Largo, Allegra, Allegro. One take, no edits. This will be updated as I complete the torturous process of recording and worse, listening to myself recite Beethoven. Roll over Beethoven. What is the point of performing them if no one will ever hear the performance? For better or for worse...
Putting the pinch on Pynchon
02-13-07
As any Thomas Pynchon reader knows, it is a long time between his novels, even though "only" three years passed between "V." published in 1963, and "The Crying of Lot 49" published in '66. I learned everything I know about the auction from "The Crying of Lot 49". Ditto Vaporetto from "V.", which is not a lot, but it sure was interesting reading about it when Pynchon does the writing. Interesting, hell, it is unspeakably good.
Seven years later, in '73, "Gravity's Rainbow" was published.
Only an idiot would write anything about "Gravity's Rainbow" other than "read it". Trying to write something about Pynchon's writing at all is a Pissing Contest with Niagara Falls with regards to quantity and quality.
My thirty-year-old paperback copy of "Gravity's Rainbow" is not more than a mop. It's back is cracked and signatures fall out on their own. I can't find a hard cover so I am going to bind it in boards myself.
Brigadier Pudding's nom du guerre and scatophagy are typical of Pynchon's juvenile bathroom humour; something some people never grow out of. In "Gravity's Rainbow", as every one knows, Tyrone Slothrop crawls head-first down a toilet in a jazz bar after a harmonica. He is very concerned for his virginity and can hear deep voices discussing his predicament. Dingleballs in his nose. To watch Ewan MacGreggor do the same in the movie "Trainspotting" after a packet of heroin gave me a sense of dêja vu,-- is that scene in the "Trainspotting" novel?
Did Irvine Welsh not read "Gravity's Rainbow", which would be oddly blind for a contemporary novelist, or did he read "Gravity's Rainbow"? And if he did, the "Swimming Down The Crapper" scene might be plagiarism. But, hey, going down or coming out of the toilet is no original, big idea any way. There was even a kid's movie, was it "Ghoulies" or something, and Lawrence Kazdan's "Dreamcatcher" featured "Shit Weasels" from another planet that "landed up" in a toilet. No, the "Shit Weasels" were Steven King's idea, Kazdan merely put them on film. Ahem. "Dreamcatcher" was not "The Big Chill", -- "The Big Chill". What a quaint title, after Al-Queda in New York and the Battle for Iraq.
"Vineland" published in 1990, was given critical rebukes for not being up to Pynchon Snuff. I have to re-read it to see if I missed something, but I never had that rush of appreciation and emotion that great writing gives while reading "Vineland" although I really liked the setting and way the characters were drawn, particularly the antagonist, whose name escapes me, but it was vaguely Van Veen or Dirk Dark like. I should look it up.
"Mason & Dixon" was published in 1997 and seemed a return to Pynchon's pre-Vineland form and reaffirmed Pynchon's status as one of the finest authors in the English language. In particular, the way Dixon is portrayed is hilarious and reminded me of first meeting Tyrone Slothrop.
"Against the Day" published forty years after "V", in 2006 and cracking 1000 pages is the latest Pynchon Magnum Opus. Bigger than The Bible.
There was a review of "Against the Day" in the Globe and Mail in January, I think.
The review seemed written by a speed-reader. The reviewer confused the protagonists of "Mason and Dixon" with Lewis and Clark, different people, different event, different mission, different stories entirely, -- I don't recollect Sacagawea appearing in "Mason and Dixon", but I am not finished re-reading it yet. Ben Franklin does. Perhaps she does appear. (Sacagawea and Pocohontas are the prototype sufferers of the Stockholm Syndrome. Sacagawea died at 25. Pocahontas was "married" at 12 to a 28-year-old pederast named "Smith". I digress.) The Globe review left me wanting to know for myself, being a Pynchon fan for many years. More years than are polite to mention. So the reviewer, in an upside-down way, encouraged me enough to buy the book. Cha-ching. Support your local artist.
Shortly before that, being starved of Pynchon for so long, I began re-reading "Mason and Dixon" a Rabelasian Romp across Africa and finally to the Eastern States with a Surveyor and an Astronomer as they draw the Mason-Dixon line across Pennsylvania. Penn Sylvania Not So Sylvan. Beyond "Gargantua and Pantagruel", "Mason and Dixon" owes debts to "Bouvard and Pecuchet", as well as "Don Quixote" and "Planes, Trains and Automobiles". Only joking a bit. Like John Candy, Pynchon is a master of Slapstick Humour.
About 300 pages into "Mason and Dixon", "Against the Day" was released, which as I mentioned, I immediately acquired.
I am now nearly half-way through "Against The Day" while simultaneously re-reading "Mason and Dixon". As I suspected might happen, the two books are merging into a super-Pynchon novel.
The thing both "Mason and Dixon" & "Against the Day" have in common is an American-historical flavour. "Mason and Dixon" occurs about 150 years before the action in "Against The Day" and from my vantage of 2007, they appear nearly contemporaneous, kind of. Pynchon's storytelling is episodic. The normal episodic mode of reading serves to meld the two story lines for me. I might be doing myself irreparable harm.
Hemingway once described his discovery of a book and reading it in one sitting, and the regret he felt when he was finished, as like an alcoholic with a bottle. Pynchon would be impossible to read in one sitting, unless you're a "Speed Reader", but the drunk with a bottle analogy applies.
And unlike Mark Twain's assessment of Henry James, "once you put down one of his books, you just can't pick it up again", Pynchon's work bears re-reading, like "War and Peace", "For Whom the Bell Tolls", "The Alexandria Quartet", "The Twelve Caesars", "The Secret History"...
Pynchon turns 70 on 8 May 2007. Long live Pynchon.
The photographer on location, hunts a victim
01-18-07
burningMan 2006 continued the Disneyfication trend that I, a mere neophyte, noticed happening between 2001 and 2002. More Hollywood-inspired floats and less Drive-by Shooting Gallery-style participatory art, that I could see anyway, from the disadvantage of looking at everything through the eyepiece of a camera.
The camera I refer to is a relic of the last century. Made in 1962 it is a Hasselblad 500C. When the stars align, it takes beautiful photographs. When I am behind the lens, well, it takes my photographs. There is also a venerable, indestructible 1983 Nikon F-3 HP which is much easier to use.
Who can help but notice a plethora of photographers at burningMan? Nearly every individual documented their burn. The sheer number of images! To what end? Who will ever see them, these billions of images? What will their final purpose serve to be?
I began to think about photographers and how they create their photographs. Not so much the technical but the creative aspect of their work. I watched them work, and in the boredom of the afternoon desert heat, when everything is still, the photographers were the only creatures still moving about with any purpose. They were certainly the most interesting thing to watch.
I began to photograph them without their knowledge, as a way of documenting them create their reality.
I noticed the gleam in their eyes, and how they enter a dream state of imagining their photograph and how it is going to look, oblivious to me standing there lining up a shot.
Then I began to think of them as a species entire of themselves, having a common ancestor with human beings and apes, but requiring a Capture Apparatus Marking Every Ridiculous Assembly (CAMERA) in order to live in the earth's poisonous atmosphere.
Here on earth they hunt their prey, the elusive subject, the picture, the one unforgettable image, portrait, undefinable something. You can tell they see it in their mind's eye, can hear it's song in their inner ear, it's on the tip of their tongue, seemingly at their fingertips but as elusive as peace.
They bring the camera between them and the world, compose a view, compose themselves; every photograph is a message.
Senior photographers betray their identity by their equipment. Larger hardware and a multitude of accessories. On closer inspection a casual bystander metamorphoses into a photographer's assistant, carrying camera bags and a look of boredom. Frustration? Or is it contempt? Perhaps they were once lovers and she now watches as the photographer performs a sacred act and reaches across the plane, breaks the picture plane, to make a miniscule adjustment to his subject's hand. He is photographing her navel. A navel subject, navel intelligence, unadulterated navel gazing.
He takes a shot...
Business is War
10-28-06
Next to luck, it's the Quartermaster General that's responsible for winning or losing wars. An army marches on it's stomach. Can't kill people without bullets and bombs. Need shelter and clothing. Administration and planning lay the foundation for "military genius" to bloom and blow.
Business bears many similarities to war, as has been oft noted, ad-nauseam. It is a shallow metaphor for the one thing that separates human beings from our relatives. You might think I am going to say speech. I think the one activity that sets us most apart from the animals is work.
Sure, there are many creatures that have social structures similar to humans, structures that require the creature to "work". And communicate. Birds sing, beavers slap their tails on the water, dogs bark, jackasses bray, humans often speak to each other but rarely communicate.
Once the dam is built the beaver stops working. Humans go on working on the dam until the light bulb, electrical utilities, employment and credit are "worked-out" so other humans with a similar compulsion to ceaseless activity can satisfy their funktionlust.
Pianists play pieces over and over because they can. It is fun to watch your hands operate like another entity, like they are possessed of an intelligence.
In a way they are possessed of an intelligence, kind of.
The fingertips have nerve ending arrayed in a matrix in order to transmit information about size, texture and other sensory information to the brain.
These and other nerve impulses gather at a ganglion located on the back of the hand, a nerve centre where all the network of nerves in a human's remarkable hands gather before shooting up the arm to the spine and brain.
Now, say you just laid your hand on an electric stove-top. The nerves in your burning hand are madly sending messages to the brain that they are burning, "I'm burning man!". But the message isn't handled by the brain. It is handled by the ganglion in the back of the hand. It issues the command to jerk the hand away. A little intelligence centre to handle low-level nervous impulses.
I think that ganglion is why getting slapped on the back of the hand is such a strange kind of pain, generalized like taking a bump on the head, a distressing and uncomfortable deeper felt pain. Even a light tap is sufficient. Ask any old-school piano teacher.
I digress.
Humans marvel at the organization and objectives of migratory birds, the architecture of the beaver and termite, the planning and resourcefulness of the squirrel. But nothing in nature explains the human compulsion to work.
I am interested to know if language was invented as a result of our need to communicate in order to satisfy funktionlust, a more basic motivator than the need to be understood -- the need to be understood so work could carry on, business as usual.
Nevertheless military thinking has contaminated business to the extent that concepts like Beachhead and Penetration are made the tools of predatory business practices.
Saying Business is War is to contaminate a profoundly positive human quality with the taint of a savage activity that any compassionate human acknowledges as the most heinous crime that can be committed, War.
War Crimes are typical hair-splitting military-intelligence. The entire act of war is a crime of the highest magnitude.
The Lord that Jews and Christians and Muslims all profess to love, spared Abraham's son from ritual sacrifice, yet Christians, Jews and Muslims alike send their best-beloved sons to death fighting endless, ritual battles that could be ended with the application of the smallest grain of common sense -- they are still marching and dying in Ardoyne after hundreds of years.
Stop killing. Put down your guns. Share your food, shelter and clothing. No one will come to cut off your sword-arm. Strategic weapons are not. Rogue States need help not hatred. What is so difficult to arrange? If Gen. Schwarzkopf could move 600,000 people into the Persian Gulf in 6 weeks, armed, equipped, fed, transported, what can't be arranged?... why is Darfur being bled white?... what happened in the old Yugoslavia? Where does this hatred come from? For what is this hatred husbanded? War.
I digress again.
Business risk assessment is thought, perhaps, to be subject to a finer focus if each dollar is believed to be a trooper, available to be sacrificed for the objective and that the exchange of money for goods or services is a battlefield.
A veteran Warrior would say it is a business exchange and bears no resemblance to a battlefield at all. Ask Schwarzkopf not Schwarzenegger. The latter was only an actor who has never really been to war or smelled the stench of a battlefield. Imagine it. Ever smelled a rendering plant?
Abandon these metaphors and find more suitable concepts to govern our business activities, the best of which are concerned with growth and creating opportunities for positive societal changes with improved products and ways of doing things, "doing things" meaning "work".
I prefer to say Business is Natural. As long as a human works the social contract acknowledges their worth. What ever they choose to work at. All Work Has Dignity.
The sooner human beings abandon atavistic savage, barbarian ways; war, territorial dog-in-the-mangerism, racism, nationalism... the sooner the stated objective of all of the warriors that ever stated an objective will manifest, the peace they all say they were fighting like hell for.
More importantly, like Leonardo said, "even when it looks like I am not working, I am". It doesn't take a genius, it's not brain surgery.
The Way
10-01-06
"rock and roll remains one of the last honorable callings" Thomas Pynchon
The Way is a punk rock band formed by Vincent Fournier in 2003. The Way plays original music written by Vincent and has recorded a demo cd "The Way EP" and a debut cd, "Mistermental" of 12 songs.
The recording was produced by Kirby Kaye of Topspinn Studios and was recorded over the better part of 2006.
The music is garage band grunge, alternating the playfulness of "Pissing in Public" and "Electronic Elephants" with the darker "Knowledge (Take Care)" and "All That's Left" to "Nobody Cares" assessment of post-modern life: "I believe in equality because I am worth nothing and nobody cares."
Vincent, 14, has an expressive, rough-edged vocal style which he sometimes contrasts with a plaintive singing voice. In "Knowledge (Take Care)" he sounds alternately accusatory, as if asking for understanding, then observational, then distant and removed.
The guitar playing is instinctive and incisive. Cole Wilson, 15, lends effective guitar work to set up the harmonic underpinning of Vincent's lead.
Jamie Hale, 15, keeps everyone moving with an organic beat that is in tune with the meaning of the music and only metronome-click steady when the music demands.
What ever The Way isn't, and it isn't rap, it is young and new!
The Way's influences include Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, The Clash, Sex Pistols and Jimi Hendrix.
"Mistermental" is available on the web at thewayband.ca or here:
The Way competed in 2004 The Battle of the Bands at Walnut Grove Secondary School and placed fifth.
The 2005 Battle of the Bands they were excluded entirely, as were other great young bands.
Another concert was arranged at Walnut Grove Secondary School. The Way performed at Grovestock in April of 2006.
The Way held a sold out cd launch party at West Langley Hall on the 29th of September 2006 with "Note To Self" and "Interlink".
Bob Dylan was said to have a voice like an educated vacuum cleaner. Remember how you went *hink* when you first heard The White Stripes or Smashing Pumpkins? Saw a beautiful woman with her features, lips, eyes, too large for her face until they harmoniously fit together? The Way is a bit like that.
I could be accused of impartiality because Vincent is my son, but I am an accomplished pianist and have studied harmony and music history. I have played the piano for 37 years. I am finally starting to progress. In truth, I now know a little bit about music, and Vincent's music stands repeated listening.
Vincent's first exposure to music came when he was 8 and started piano lessons. They did not take and he soon expressed a preference for the guitar. He is a natural performing artist.
Once he acquired a guitar his progress was intuitive and rapid - Vincent is autodidactic - and lead to his improvising and writing songs. He put together The Way and they worked up a number of original tunes and covers.
Vincent was 12 at this time. I was living in Bragg Creek, Alberta and hoped he would join me there but The Way took precedence. Vincent's music was declaring itself as true and compelling and worth supporting. I returned to the West Coast and picked up my work where I put it down.
After seeing "Walk The Line", Vincent expressed an interest in recording his songs - Johnny Cash must be counted another of The Way's influences. We picked up the Straight and found Kirby Kaye and TopSpinn, who engineered and mastered "Mistermental".
Vincent has been the driver of the entire process, I have merely enabled a number of things to be done in branding, but the product is the music, and the music is Vincent's. It is my opinion that it has artistic integrity and should be taken as seriously as any other rock musician takes their own music. If you question how deeply those convictions can be held, ask any musician how important their music is to them.
Vincent is a talented young musician and performer. I am excited to see how The Way makes way in the record business.
The Way on YouTube.
burningman 2006
09-15-06