Tired Of Chasing Rainbows

From the vault, this was our first song to get decent airplay in the local stations. Made on a Fostex quarter inch eight with one good mic and a lot of chutzpah, we were having fascinating times. From Ground Level Sound, The Evolution of Cool, Tired Of Chasing Rainbows.

Open Mics: Karma Bakeria

Tonight I attended open mic night at The Karma Bakeria in Fayetteville Tennessee.   My pastor and friend, Michael Stewart used to tell me about this coffee house and said I should go play there.   Unfortunately Mike passed away before I did finally go but hey, Mike was right.   Go north from Huntsville on 231/431 across the state line, past Park City and into the metropolis of Fayetteville, just past the old courthouse on the town square half a block on the right.  Ya can't miss it.   It's a nice room, good pastries, salads, sandwiches and locally ground brew that will pick you up and slap you down.  IOW, a great stop if you're headed up to the distillery or just like to ramble around these small towns that are still genuine Southern jewels.

The open mic is hosted by Taylor Hoch and Jay.   Taylor is a professional songwriter and singer with a barrelling tenor, smooth finger acousic picking and simply excellent songs.  Jay plays electric blues, tasty slide and together they are the kind of act you really want to see anchoring an open mic because anyone who follows them better be good or at least trying real hard.  It was a privilege to follow them but I made sure someone else did first because... well, ahma chicken.

All open mic nights, even The Bluebird, that I've played over the years have about the same distribution of talent.   Some people are good; some are there.  Out of ten, three acts will be stellar, four will be journeymen and three will be getting started.   That's healthy and that's why it's free.  Remember to buy enough consumables to keep the room open and enjoy the original sounds and "obscure covers'.

I remain amazed at how much good songwriting is bursting from the local countryside like wildflowers.   I don't know if it's the times, the fact that coffee houses are back, or the music business spreading out of the old major centers like Nashville, or the web giving access.   All of the above probably, but it is happening and it is magic while it lasts.  If we can just get the BMI/SESAC/ASCAP collectors to stop mugging the small rooms like this, it will last longer.  So, if you are someone whom they listen to, give them the wordL  QUIT ROBBING PIGGY BANKS. 

As for me, playing Gentle On My Mind and Arlo Guthrie, reciting Victor Buono, finger picking nylon again, just letting myself be the guy I used to be before I had a "real career" is comfort for my troubled soul these days.   I have no idea how we're going to pay the bills now that the day gig is short on 'natch and writing me out of the script.   I'll resume worrying about that tomorrow or when I wake up in the middle of the night as I usuall do.   But tonight, it's good to be me again.  I like that guy,  He was fun.   People liked him.   He had his own sound.   He had a reason to get up and he had a craft he loved.   So, thanks to Taylor and Jay and the fine folks at Karma Bakeria.  I plan to go back.  Maybe next time I'll play some Bach too.   Over the top, but heck, if I got away with King Tut, I can get away with Johann.

Cheers!

An Open Letter to The Music Industry: Quit Robbing Piggy Banks

And of course the open letter to David Lowery was received with diplomacy and serious consideration.  Not.

In his view the world is filled with "scofflaws" who are all stealing from the artists.  He says that rooms where this is not the case are "sasquatch sightings" and that people from "Alabama" are "like that".  He feels "threatened".

Wow.

In other words the primary campaigner for fairness for artists is afraid to admit that there might be other possibilities.  Or so infatuated with the status that role has brought him he has become yet another anachronism who goes over the top and has yet to realize his credibility as a representative of recording artists is evaporating.

And that is a problem for the campaign to get artist equity in the brave new world of digital distribution.  Yes, there is a lot of ripoff going on.   Yes, copyright is being eviscerated.

Yet there is another story, a story where the same people who are appointed to collect fees are robbing piggy banks.  From the original mistakes made by the recording and publishing industry prosecuting housewives for making wedding videos to now there has been a noticeable reluctance to admit that there need to be changes, that scarcity is impossible and that the technical world will not roll backward.   Some of us have worked hard to find solutions and reconcile the need for payments for copyright material with the near impossible requests to stop piracy.   But these efforts will go on because piracy is wrong and it fuels even worse criminal activity.  In short, I do support those efforts and have even before Lowery became a champion.

But badgering small coffee house open mic nights where it is obvious to even the casual observer that they don't actually have the money to pay three collection agencies every year is bullying.   Should BMI/ASCAP/SESAC be threatening the coffee houses holding open mic nights?

There are at least two extremes and no one is asking an obvious question: what is the threshhold for payments vs money made and covers sung or is it simply 1k a year per collection agency if even one cover is sung? And if so, is that right?

There is an opportunity for the professional artists and publishers to do something smart, gracious and decent.   It is an opportunity to show the world they aren't cold hard greedy self-serving assholes determined only to preserve their own income sources at the cost of everyone else.   If they can't see this or figure out how to do it, then they deserve neither our help or our respect.   And let the pirates have them.   If they can't help the new talent, then they are of no value to music as an art, a craft or an industry.   Working "only with the best", telling others not to vote for "second raters", these are symptomatic of elitism, forgetting that once upon a time it was they who "played real good for free".

Choose.

Open Letter To David Lowery at The Trichordist

When ASCAP/BMI/SESAC stops demanding payments from the little coffee shops where kids have to sing all original all night long because 3k a year really is more than they can afford, so they have to take up donations to pay for covers, maybe there will be some semblance of sanity on both ends of the copyright wars.  I went to a brew pub where four songwriters held the stage for two hours for maybe and audience of five and only one of those not a girlfriend of a performer.  All paid up. Then I went to the college coffee shop where it was packed wall to wall with kids with guitars and one gay guy with a ukelele, hot as hell, kids sprawling down the sidewalk, puny PA, no organization but a scribbled sign up list, and they were singing their hearts out.  For free.  No covers.  They can't afford them.

As the twig is bent, David, so grows the tree.   I've spent time fighting for the Bigs because the tech industry of which I've been a part is ripping the artists off.  Yet there is so much frikkin' greed that they can't cut those kids a break.   And maybe that's karma because if those kids keep singing their own songs in one generation they will forget the Moptops, flower power, and grunge.  They will remember Jason Mraz, Isbell, maybe even some Peter Paul and Mary, but they will say to hell with the collection agencies who cannot cut them a break, who force them to beg for tips to pay the vig.  You want their support?  Talk to the Boys and tell them to set a tier for collections.  Quit robbing piggy banks.   If the music matters that much, then let the backyard gardens grow.  That  is where the new music is coming from and they don't need you, they don't need Taplin who calls them second rate and they don't need T-Bone Burnett who only "works with the best".   They are the future and if you can't help them when they need help, then to hell with you.   You don't matter.  You're done.   But if you do, then maybe there is a coming generation that will see to it the right thing happens.   Your choice

Busking

The day was cooler than normal and there was an arts event downtown producing foot traffic, so I decided to go a busking.  For those unacquainted with the term, busking is street performing.  Singers, find a spot, open the case, take out the guitar and sing for tips. 

There is an entertainment district with mapped out locations for buskers and times of the week when this is allowed. Before these districts were established busking was considered pandering and a performer could pay a fine or be arrested, To boost foot traffic for the sake of businesses such as restaurants, busking was legitimized. It is Free Entertainment for the businesses who used to pay performers. Oh boy, but ok.   Couldn't be simpler.

Not quite.

1.  Location Location Location.   Where you setup makes a difference.  There are sweet spots and of course, if you need a PA (and you do), you have to plug the electron hose in.   The best spots are near the restaurants where there is a seated crowd.  The next best are the spots away from the entrances.  The why is people entering or leaving are focused on getting somewhere and they usually do not pause.  So even though you will be seen, tips are thin.  Caveat vendor,

2, May Be Hazardous.  If it was all foot traffic, it would be ok but these are streets with cars driving along them slowly.  You are singing and inhaling a not inconsiderable amount of car emissions.  It won't take long for your throat and lungs to notice.  So just as rooms are eliminating cigarette smoke, the cars are there to put the carbon dioxide back.

3.  Trolls.  The "I Have Taste and I Matter" folk are everywhere and like web trolls, they are there to tell you about that.  Smile and nod.  Or ask them if you can come to their job and tell them how to do it.  Your choice.

4.  Crazies. They can get quite physically close and you don't have the slight advantage of a club manager or bouncer,   This is an open carry environment meaning they have had time to down a few brews and if combined with other substances, they can be very dangerous.  Ninety nine percent of the passerbyes are fine folk but there will always be at least one wasted I Just Got Out Of Prison wacko wandering in.  Stay cool, nod, don't engage,  You can be hurt and very fast.   This is the one undeniable risk.

5.  Material.  Some of us are screamers, some of us are whisperers and some are a mix.   You are outside and unless you have a PA, the traffic both auto and human will drown you out.  Choose wisely.  Some acts are not suitable for the street and no one is that interested because they can walk a half block and listen to another act,

Understand the environment and prepare and busking is great fun.  You can try out new material without wounding the business of a club owner, you can meet people, you can do what you love to do.   Unless you pick the event the money won't be that good but if you pay for gas and a meal, you've helped yourself better than practicing alone.  You can check out your brother and sister performers (aka, competitors), see what is working for them, maybe make a few contacts.   Is it begging?  Sort of but that's ok. Name a job of any kind these days that isn't.  Remember if you sell merc you are not busking.  You are a street vendor and you will need a license for that.

Entertainment opportunities change with economies.  I've seen times when singer songwriters could fill stadiums and times when they have to give it away,   These times are more like the latter but these are opportunities to play if the money isn't the main objective.  And remember this isn't just about the solo artists, it is also the problem for the B-list and former A-list bands who are having to play strip malls.  So no matter how good you think it is for others, everyone is scrambling.   It gets competitive and you have to smile, play more and get by with less.   Adapt, innovate and keep at it.

Unfollowing: The Real Power of Social Media

Daryl Hannah posted a wonderfully sad, gentle, soft and salving video to her Facebook feed.   How do I know it was herself and not Team Daryl?   I asked and she replied quite quickly:  "There is no Team Daryl Hannah. xo"  Just that.  Sweet and with a kiss.   Perfect.

 Then there is Bette Midler.  She posts to her own page instead of having Team Bette do it. Or if she does, she's fooling me well enough to keep it entertaining or makes me think, And that is why she stays in my feed. The cause posts are ok. Those are passions and shared passions are essential to conversation.  It doesn't matter that she doesn't speak directly to me.  She is an a-lister with limited time and hundreds of thousands of fans.   I get that.   It matters that her posts are her voice, her thoughts,  It matters that she respects us enough not to fool us to advance a cause or sell a t-shirt or even an album.  I don't care that she does that as long as she does that.

I've begun to unfollow the celebrities who have Team Zeds, the professional social media experts who post for them, build their brand, sell their bric a brac and otherwise try to create an illusion of involvement, of engagement, of caring.   I am fatigued by the marketing, the shallow engagements, the little dismissives, the big frauds who consume attention and offer cotton candy comforts.   Enough.

This is a conversational medium. The a-listers who get that know if they don't actually communicate, if they let Team Zed do it, then maybe they don't need fans. And that turns us into consumers. Same as TV. And that turns my feed into a street lamp covered with old band posters. The best hope for changing or healing or offering a bit of comfort in daunting times is smart people having smart conversations because choosing who chooses our choices is the ultimate surrender of our power to another, not quite love because that surrenders our selves, but certainly a choice to be made passionately.

Daryl and Bette stay on my feed.  I am grateful they are offering their unique passionate points of view.   So it's a privilege to share a sweet, sad gentle song in which a genuine person sings backup, Daryl Hannah.   She is a Seyfert: a rare kind galaxy because at it's center instead of a void, there is a glowing heart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoQmHxGjR1I&app=desktop 

So You're Playing Songwriter's Open Mic:

So you're playing songwriter's open mic:

1. WHO ARE YOU? Always tell us your name. No, just because you have recorded two songs locally, we may not know who you are. Tell us your name at the beginning and end of your set.
2. Tune up BEFORE you get on stage. Really.
3. Bring your own stuff. We all forget things but best to check your gear before you leave the house. Picks, capo, spare strings, oxycontin, these are things one shouldn't have to borrow. (we all have to do it but try not to).
4. If you wrote the song yesterday, it's ok to bring the lyrics. Really it is. We all make mistakes. If you blow it and have to start over, smile and do that. Long apologies aren't necessary. Audiences understand.
5. Warm up at home. Loosens up the muscles and settles the nerves. DO NOT warm up while others are performing and don't play along from the audience.
6. If there are many performers and each get three songs before the next act, DO ONLY THREE SONGs and skip the long personal introductions to them. You are chewing up other performer's time and THEY KNOW IT. Amy Kurland, who created The Bluebird, would explain the rules for the Bluebird audition thus: "Tell us your name. Tell us the name of the song. Play until I say stop." If you violated any of these rules, you failed the audition. It is a business where following instructions is very important because time is money and she was the gatekeeper. No matter how well you played, sang or how good your song was, if you violated any of the rules you didn't pass. You could come back but...
7. New strings pre-stretched if possible. OTW, old strings pre-stretched. (IOW, see rule 2.)
8. Play Sober. Drunk or stoned, it shows. We've all done it.... badly. And COFFEE IS A DRUG. If you are not first, watch out for over caffeinating. Combined with adrenalin, it will make you shake, Water is better. Then when done, have at.
9. Everyone has a CD or iTunes site. That's cool. You can say that. Sell it later.
10. Do you have a business card? If you don't that once in a lifetime chance may just pass you by. No one remembers names and phone numbers scribbled on napkins tend to disappear.

It is a privilege to be in front of an audience; not an entitlement. Be the best you can be everytime even if the only person listening is also sweeping the floor. Good luck and enjoy it.

Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion: A Concert

While it is not always a polite turn to review the work of other musicians, I'm making an exception.  Last night it was my privilege to attend a concert by Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion.  Short version: they were awesome.

Long version:

I first heard Sarah Lee some years ago when I chanced upon a YouTube video of her performing Pete Seeger's Sailing on The Golden River with her father, Arlo Guthrie.  She has the voice of a sparrow and the nearest comparison I have is Edith Piaf in that small frames and supple voices produce a unique soprano sound.  More about that later.   She has her mother's light figure and the intense studious expression of her father on the cover of Washington County.

Five years ago I traveled with my wife to see Arlo perform at the Guthrie Center in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in the Western Berkshires a few miles from Stockbridge.  Arlo fans know this is the Church where Alice's Restaurant was filmed and the area surrounding it is where the events that are the basis for the movie occurred, or as Sarah Lee called it, "the hippie stuff".   It was one of the best journeys I've taken meeting some of the nicest most sincere caring folks I've known.  It is a journey to an ashram of my generation and I highly recommend it, but this is not about the Restaurant or the Church or even Alice.

During that weekend, we were to attend two performances of Arlo and his family in what was a dress rehearsal for their upcoming tour.  On the first night, unfortunately, Arlo had to be treated for a fall and could not perform.  We were lined up in front of the Church and thought we would have to return to the hotel when the word went out that the rest of the family would go on with the concert.  With not much time to get ready, they did exactly that and the evening was a rousing success.  Watching them it was notable that parts of the evening were Johnny and Sarah filling in with their own act.  While Abe Guthrie held the band together, Sarah was directing, quiet but determined.  She had steel in her spine, the Guthrie sense of show and the love of music and the people who had come to see them.  Tiny but tough; again, Piaf.  

Johnny was acquitting himself as a fine singer and guitarist playing blues, folk and rock with equal parts imitation and original feel. Being on a stage with a family of performers, he was fitting in, accenting and otherwise helping Sarah and the Guthrie sisters, Cathy (Folk Uke) and Annie (a solo performer) take care of the Guthrie kids on stage with them.  Even when chaotic, it was entertaining and dearly real.

The next evening, Arlo came and it was a fine start to the family tour.  I've videos of both evenings and an excerpt of that is at my YouTube site featuring Arlo and the Family playing Gypsy Davey.  As I said to friends before leaving that night, I felt that I was watching not a passing of the torch, but a reassurance of continuity, that the legacy of Woody Guthrie passed to Arlo Guthrie would be in very capable hands when he passed that torch to his children.

I was delighted to read that Sarah and Johnny were coming to Huntsville Alabama.  No Guthrie has ever come here to my knowledge.  Aside:  Johnny told the audience he lived in Huntsville when a toddler.  Sarah responded she didn't know that and then asked if he had been here why did he get them lost on the way?  In this, watching them is like watching Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme: a married couple who know how to perform together and make their family kibitzing entertaining.

The Straight to Ale Brewpub is a largish commercial building in a commercial district of South Huntsville.  A small wooden platform stage is set up at the end of the brew room across from the tanks and in front of the barrels and decorated with the brewery emblem, a red and white devil symbol with a trident in the middle (yes, the Straight to Ale name is that).  It is a cold room as in frosty.  It was sold out to the tune of 60 more tickets than seats so a well-attended show.  This is a listening room and Stephen, the impressario, was sure to remind everyone to "listen".  Dana and I arrived early to get the reserved front row seats and thus got the best seats in the house directly center front.

This is not a songlist review.  First, Sarah amd Johnny do not play songs most of us know.  They play their own songs and occasionally a song by Pete Seeger or her grandfather, Woody Guthrie.  Even then as Sarah said, they tend to do the obscure songs from other writers.  What follows is my sense of their performance.

Their songs are extremely well-crafted.  I am a songwriter and I understand how much work goes into that.  The emotions are painted not in cheerful contrasting colors but blended thoughtfully and still spontaneously.  While Sarah Lee is the name, certainly the looks and the wistful voice, Johnny is the engine, a strong player and writer, passionate ranging vocal, moving and twisting as he physically wrenches the notes from his guitar.  He is a consummate chord master and confident.  Whereas far too many so-called new tradition folkies limit themselves to traditional progressions as if the ghosts of the Nashville Chord Police and the limited style of Woody frowns down on them, Johnny's arrangements have hints of Neil Young and America with a little Steely Dan for flavoring.  There is a Beatle-like cheerfulness even in the somber ballads.  He is a craftsman, an artist and if he continues to hone his craft will emerge as one of the best songwriters and stylists of this new generation of songwriters.  He will not be constrained by a genre.  He will surpass it and there is where his inate astute genius will be realized.

They are very aware of their sound physically and emotionally.  You can watch them position themselves to take maximum advantage of microphone proximity and how it affects their dynamic vocal blending.  Their voices are perfectly matched even.  Johnny has considerable range, embraces his falsetto and uses it to perfectly match Sarah's natural high voice.  They never overpower each other and that is a difficult trick to master.  Here is where the time on the road together shows.  They meet each other in the soaring harmonies in an exquisite twisting melodicism as if their love for each other and their audience were a children's playground of slides, tilt a whirls and swings pushing each other in cascading arcs.

They are very respecful of natural sound resisting the temptation to rely strictly on the PA.  At one point, Sarah Lee stepped to the front of the stage awsy from the microphones and sang acapella directly to the crowd.  In a room that big, that was a very brave move.  And it was exquisite.  No one in the room moved and barely breathed until she sang the last note.  Sitting just a few feet in front of her, Dana and I were enraptured.  Later both she and Johnny left the stage and stood on the floor in front of us and sang to the audience Sarah asking if the people in the back could hear.  It expressed something Arlo told us once on his arlo.net website, that a good sound sounds just like it does three feet in front of the singer.  This is where the tradition of folk singers is felt, that it is an intimate sound no matter the sixe of the crowd or the power of the singer.  And they nailed it every time.

They are both natural storytellers spicing up the air between songs with tales of living among the greats of the last generation of folk musicians, the friends of Arlo, life in the Berkshires which they love, living in a family on the mountain close but not "too close" to her legendary father.  Sarah spoke wistfully of her late mother, Jackie who passed last year and of her daughter that I had seen a few years earlier stomping on Sarah's dinner as she spoke to people in the Church foyer, that the girl spoke of seeing her "Nana" becoming an angel.

It was painful and honest and so completely Sarah.  In this she perfectly projects the love that characterizes the Guthries.  They are spirited, animated, giving and disdainful of the title of being the first family, the royalty of folk music yet completely aware of a responsibility or the gift to reach out to the audience and reflect the love projected on them.  It is the heroism of the tradition, that people matter, that love cannot be overtaken by events or even death.  Love endures.  That light shines from their eyes and they share it cheerfully and honestly.

This is much too long and the concert was much too short even as she said they were keeping us too long. Folk music may not be the power politic of her father's generation.  Still it was Arlo who stepped forward in dark times, scary times, times when people were dieing in VietNam and even on the American streets, it waa Arlo who found a humor that we could share and would get us through to the other side.  For this and other reasons Arlo Guthrie is a personal hero to me.  There is enormous joy in seeing Sarah Lee and Johnny carry that heroism forward, a heroism of caring about people, of forming and sustaining a community of like minded and even contrary individuals. 

And that is the beautiful thought I came away with last night: the spirit of the family, the legacy of Woody and the Weavers, of Pete Seeger, of all the singers and songwriters who always appear when we need them, the gifts of love and music are in such capable, gentle hands.  As she sings, she fills her Daddy's shoes and with her partner in music and life and love, Johnny, will carry on his work in their own way, for their own times with clarity, joy and affection.

Invite them back.  Bring their friends here.   We are an engineering city, a heart of darkness in a world of military contractors and harsh hard metal.  And they let a little light shine last night.   And it salves the pain.

Jamaica Farewell - len bullard with chris kidd

NSA, Privacy, Security Some Thoughts

Serious mindmelds required.

If the NSA sent me the same contract as Google and other dataHoovers use, I'd sign it. Both entities have the same problems of privacy. The NSA has security. So starting with what the web has already accepted as privacy for example in a contract with Google, work out to security. Some amateur thoughts...

Privacy. The legal solution has two parts: opt-in and penalty for failure to perform. The chasm is the assertion that citizens as groups do not legally bargain with the government over issues of opting in or out of policy and that the citizen does not have the right to seek redress (at least of winning). So penalty to perform only falls on the non-governmental entity in the transaction. Should a government as I suspect ALL will maintain a covert capability, there is no means to stop this effectively or over a lifecycle(n). For the agreement among nations to coordinate internet privacy to work, there would be enforceable agreements. And that turns the web into a profitable weapons market or full transparent inspection for less profit.

The reason is the business model is to use the data for profit and the security model is to use the data for defense. In both cases, political or economic advantagee pushes the information ecosystem toward the weapons market. In a dominantly capitalist system, profits win over social responsibility unless such responsibility is engendered by the use of the system itself. Building legal controls into digital systems is doable but is not well-understood at the international level past how we name the transactions: URn. Then it is an issue of expression: say RDF.

Security means access to a file. To fix this, you will need an uncrackable unhackable mcguffin, and at the rate of development in the information ecosystems, this is hard to maintain and be connected. However because we can represent the law as integrated policies over a multi-variate transition state space, we can give domains such as privacy and security relationships that state the legal declarations to any level of information such that the transition from private to public and any other domain can be ascertained and adjudicated.

Transactions are measured at that transition boundary. Think of it as a phase space transition. The static model isn't difficult. It's the dynamic model we'd have to trust our globe to manage.

Ne Me Quitte Pas (If You Go Away) (Brel/McKuen)

I arranged and recorded this wonderful song by Jacques Brel and Rod McKuen as a study in Brel's style as applied to small orchestra, guitar and voice. The choice of actress came out of my wife telling me it has a film noir feel, so it came down to Audrey Hepburn or Barbara Stanwyck. Audrey wins for the French taste and well... expression.

French is one of two classes I flunked in my first year at college. Apologies for my lack of skill, but I chalk it up to nothing is ever wasted and one never knows what might come in handy years later. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVeAuKoemNo&feature=c4-overview&list=UUQvOiEo12qnnekOauzmXY_Q

Another Time Like Now (+playlist)

Web Piracy: The Worm is Turning and Getting Teeth

I follow The Trichordist blog (www.trichordist.com) to keep up with issues of web piracy.  I recommend it for those in or out of the entertainment industry because David Lowery and his crew fight the good fight.   After decades of hearing nothing can be done, it is good to see some doing something.

This fight is going better.  More a-listers are speaking out and there is (looking at an earlier post) finally a focus on transactional models that bring to the discussion what is necessary;  standards for tracking and reporting based on computer science concepts that can be implemented and reported.  Excellent.  I recently noted a blog from a colleague lamenting timbl explaining that drm standards as much as so many of the digerati hate them are necessary.   That is good news for the creative industry over all.  It is not possible to stop piracy on the internet.   There is every possibility to improve the situation such that it is a reasonable business.  

The revelations about privacy, government snooping etc. even the problems with the obamacare website are bursting the myth of the web bubble: that it is an irrresistable juggernaut of technology innovation, resistance is futile, yadda yadda.   The web isn't going away and no one believes the creative industries can be turned back in time,  But there is finally a sober conversation that technology serves human needs and not the other way around, that technologists are not the moral arbiters of social progress and in fact in too many cases have been social morons.

Until we have transactional standards for transparent auditing and models for transactional pricing we won't be there, but at long last the conversation is realistic and those who say "it can't be done" are being held in the same regard as the tea party for the same reasons:  fools for the pirates of the economy are still fools.

Que bueno.

They may want to write some articles about developments in digital fingerprinting and tracking for media files.   Laws without teeth are games for monopoly money.  This has to be real and it has to have consequences both good and bad.

How to Navigate ROL

An old friend commented on the scene on my Facebook page. It is a screen snap from a virtual reality album I created called "The River of Life". It is on the web at the address below.

You will require a plugin or browser that can render VRML97. A suggestion is the Blaxxun browser at BitManagement
(if others work, please say).

To experience the world:

1. Copy the URL into your browser address box.
2. Let the world load completely. You will hear music.
3. If you have Blaxxun, right click and choose view my avatar.
4. Put your avatar on the boat or right click and select Viewpoints/The Boat.

The Boat will take you to the entrance to the temple grounds. Go to the woman on the bridge. When she refuses yoo,
touch her heart and you are bound to her. Whatever she worships, touch. When she has taught you all
she knows of love, she will release you to roam the world freely.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/rol/TheRiverofLife.wrl

If the project interests you, there is a tutorial about this project including code examples in the first articles of this blog:

http://3donthewebcheap.blogspot.com

Softly As I Leave You

This is a style study for me, working out the arrangement of classic jazz ballads by ear and arranging them so I can record them. Thanks Eydie. Vaya con dios.

Enough Of Me

Do you feel that since you got the Internet you just haven't had a minute alone?

The Call

A fractured fairy tale. Lyric below. :)



Radiant creatures surely come
Dawn will be your way
The time for this has come around
Today

See you on the gentle lane
Friend to you at last
Every thought is slipping to the past

Empty only call my name
Waiting for the man
Time and all the things you wait for go
Fade away

Maybe, I’ll be here to sleep
You will cross the empty sea
Arriving now and waiting for
The Call.

The Call.

len bullard - june 2013

Let Me Be With Her In Heaven (For Sharon)

Cantor Sharon Kunitz and Len Bullard

Lord, do not part in Heaven
Whom you brought together in life
Let us travel there together
Beneath the wings of love and light
Compassion will not suffer
Separation and strife
Let me be with her in Heaven
As we were together in life.

You are the one true judge
Always thy will be done
But I cannot believe her grave
Is a wall that blocks the sun
The love we shared was holy
The intimate moments few
And now her endless journey
Draws her ever nearer to you

Lord do not part eternally
I ask in sorrowful song
For the troubled days are darker
And the darkness deep and long
But the summer evening lingers
To meet the tear filled dawn
Let me be with her in Heaven
For the sake of love now gone.

In the summerland of heaven
Past the water’s edge of Sheol
Let her smiling face there greet me
And then let us journey on
For what is Heaven’s reward
If parted from those we knew
Let me be with her in Heaven
And together there with you.

Len Bullard – May 25, 2013See More

— with Sharon Kunitz

Beth (Take a Sad Song and Make It Sadder... or funny)

My shaggy dog cover of the most famous song KISS ever recorded... to Gene Simmons' chagrin. C'mon Gene, it's a pretty song. :)

Happy Easter!

Why Do We Deactivate Our Facebook Accounts?

Why do we deactivate our Facebook accounts?

The common answer is "spending too much time". Fair enough. There are others and cleverfacebook has replied to most of these with suggestions because they don't want us to deactivate. In fact, they don't delete anything. They just set a bit that stops traffic but otherwise, it's all still there stuffed in the cracks of the iron the way a sharecropper stuffed newspaper in the cracks of a shack to keep out the wind. So, nothing is deleted and if we embarassed ourselves, we painted the rows and columns in bitter permanent red ink.

Is it like heroin or cigarettes? The only way to stop is to be sure there is none around and no one who can provide any. Fine but what exactly is IT?

Security? There ain't none. After being riff'd from my last job a "visitor" entered my home studio and checked the contents of my computer, and left a recognizable sign so I'd know it was a professional courtesy. If someone wants us, that's way easy these days and no, there isn't much one can do unless one wants to sit in a corner locked and loaded. Sorry, I can't live like that and it doesn't frighten me.

Tired? Sure. That is pretty easy to understand. Of what? Answering. There comes a point when one realizes few are doing much more than advancing the same causes with slightly different ;icks like a song one sings over and over again until as Arlo wrote about CONO, he was planning dinner and Goodman deserved better. Nothing is being learned.

Not useful? I'm not sure we should use each other in conversation like that. I deleted most of the connections to people who only used FB to send me their gig dates or announcements. IOW, if the only point of the conversation was to sell me something, I didn't consider that a friendship, virtual or otherwise. It was too much like people who called me to sell life insurance or investments. I don't need friends to do that. I could put a new song there and maybe a few real friends would notice or care.

I need friends. A friend helps, a friend needs friends to help and when I can do that, it feels good. I want to feel good but slowly and inevitably I suppose, FB came to be a political party gathering where almost everyone is trying to argue about the future, blame the past, curse the present and otherwise, talk me into doing something I'd already made my mind up about. (bad sentence construction; frack strunk and white). Because of that, I kept censoring myself, trying to be too careful, too correct, too... not me.

There is something in that. Facebook becomes a false face. It is too much like going to the office where the boss has a Romney sticker on his desk (still) and his subordinate rants about Obamacare destroying America and I have to be silent. Romney Scouse Git, so to speak.

And I can't play or sing with a false face and all it seems I ever really wanted to do was play and sing like the doomed Grasshopper in the fable. And taxes are due and the girl has to go back to college and the mortgage is killing me. I guess Betty White was right: Facebook, what a waste of time....

I miss the Curvy Girls Appreciation Page.

An Important Conversation on IP, Piracy and Culture

This is a very important conversation.

Halelujah

The journey to freedom from bondage travels a trail of innocents lost to forces both terrible and hateful, forces that cover holy robes in blood and wanton destruction, that transform the young into warriors and old women into grieving mothers. Let us not become the monsters we behold. Let us pray for peace for ourselves and our neighbors. Shalom.

This is a cover of a Leonard Cohen song and I'm sure he had a meaning but the brilliance of his work is I can find another. Shalom.

I Will Vote for Obama

Programmers Paving the Road to Web Hell

Here is one of those nifty articles from a web developer.

Some nifty ideas lead to hell. That is one of them. Most of the "we can make it easy on ourselves" ideas do that in a system that rock-bottom relies on some standards, regardless of how weak, to work.

Note that in a following article, they talk about making a standard nifty idea out of the path to hell. Let's be sure on the way to hell we are all taking it as easy and marching in lock step. The Devil likes nothing better than people who take an approved route to hell and web programmers are the Devil's Disciples when it comes to making it easier for themselves while increasing the misery for everyone else.

That's why a technical writer's standard response having spent the time to master SGML and XML to a programmer bitching about HTML and "how hard it is" is: "You're right. Now, go to hell."

:)

All of Me/Today - Len Bullard With Johnny Tona and Steve Weber

From the vaults. About 1985. Johnny was a master fiddler and pool player.

What if Mitt Wins?

From today’s Washington Post

Dismal support for Republicans among minorities is a long-term problem for the GOP in a rapidly diversifying nation. Fully 91 percent of Romney’s support comes from white voters.

It is what I feared four years ago. By overhyping then overrequiring, the left created a perfect fail scenario for Obama. All the Repugs had to do was make sure no one cooperated with him the same way the same types shut out the smart guy in an office where a social clique has taken over.

On top of that, the race card used in the last election created a force that rebounded reversing social gains made and creating a perception that it is ok to say he failed, then vote against him while hiding racist motivations. See rants about Colin Powell from Sununu. Now they feel vindicated and empowered to vote their worst habits and reinforce their worst natures. See Fascism.

That isn’t the worst of it. If Obama loses on race, the aggregate minorities and progressive backlash in the next term will be terrifying both in the US and across the world. The White Uptight will lie and deny but no one will be buying it and our adversaries will exploit it to maximum advantage. The hard right will reply with bluster and militarism. The diplomatic gains made in the last four years will evaporate as it becomes clear for the first time that not only can our government not be trusted, but the American people as well. For the first time in our history, the world will truly turn on America.

Epic fail, folks. I pray Ohio sees the future and decides to reverse Romney’s gains.

The Dark Net

This isn't a suprise. to any of us who have been on the Internet for most of our careers prior to the Web. Email relationships, technical list relationships etc. are older and consistent. Since social networks favor the oldest connections, it is not surprising that the dark net still dominates communications and link power. How the structuring of relationships work out past my generation should be a follow-on study.

How this affects so-called "disruptive innovation" is a question worth asking as that idea is increasingly viewed as corrosive to society.

The HoneyMap

If you are administering web sites or interested in the pattern of attacks on web sites, here is a useful web site.. This is advertised as a real time map of attacks. YMMV. I haven't delved deeply into this.

How To Succeed In the Software Business

In response to Headspring:

Not project management technique, nor tools nor talent are proven to guarantee success. As a wise friend taught me, promise control is everything.

Simple rules that work:

1. Every RFP is reviewed by a person on the technical staff who by practice and background can recognize features required and match them to development features required.
2. Every item is recorded in a database with citations and a succinct technical response including a time estimate based on the feature type. It is a lie that all development is custom or new if there is a base product set. What is a new feature has to be evaluated not for it's value to the customer but for it's value to the base product.
3. If marketing or contracts changes a bid based on that response, they are held to account in the review for bid/nobid. Do not bid a project that can compromise the rate of maintenance over the cost of new development (feature creep).
4. Never bid what you cannot demo. IOW, if it isn't already under development, it is probably outside your base product strategy. A demo is not a fully-developed feature of necessity.
5. Never commit to a feature that doesn't have value to at least 80% of your customers. NO one offs.

If you do not have a base product, you do not have a core market. You are creating custom one off software. This is a bad business to be in for the majority of technical businesses. That's your fault. The idea here is you should be in a market where you understand the customer's technical requirements to a depth that you can anticipate what they will need.

Use the RFP db to keep track of requests for a feature. When one customer asks, do your research. When two ask, put it on the list of items for possible development. When three ask, schedule it EVEN if you did not win the bid. You will.

Greed is the reason most projects fail in ANY business. Risk is the reason most businesses succeed if they manage it.

Thieves and The Culture of Enablers

At The Trichordist, in an article about the New Internet Association, Steve Merola asks

A thief is a thief. Don’t they know that a pirate is not a good thing? A pirate is a thief. A thief is one who steals. A lowlife, a parasite who exists simply because of the work of others.

Their response is to redefine thievery. By applying the notion that a copy does not deprive the owner of the original, they assert that copying does not constitute thievery. It is a transaction loss. This turns the argument into attempts to collect more money instead of defending a right. It is a transparent attempt to relieve the server farm owners of the obligation to track the theft. It attempts to relieve the web community of the responsibility to combat piracy. It enables a global conspiracy of criminals some of whom have begun to use violent means to establish their territories.

The justification is that copyright infringement and theft are different kinds of crimes, adjudicated differently, in different courts with different applicable laws and punishments. This semantic judo is used by some of the sharpest people I know from years of working with them on various projects. Communities such as XML-Dev became livid for posts making reference to this site. References to the "politics of IP" are to be shunned in these communities while they go about their way making it possible. Eventually it becomes self-evident that these communities however functional they are or laudable their history of accomplishments are also to be shunned.

This wrinkle in the Internet cultures began a long time ago. It has insinuated itself into the fiber of thought and will not be easily untangled. It reaches into some of the most prestigious circles of standards committees, open source communities and small start-ups. The challenge is these are people who after many years of online presence have become very adept at the kinds of arguing made in legal circles and social causes.

Demagoguery requires that the assertion have a little truth to be accepted by the audience to promote behaviors which they would otherwise not commit. See George Wallace, former Governor of Alabama. Eventually the little truths must be acknowledged and the greater good made self-evident. Otherwise, there is a lot to be said for digital forensics and proceedings that focus on the points of law instead of the laudable need to build a better world perverted into the blind support of a growing society of shiny criminals.

Web Design: It's The Browser, Stupid!

Yet another article asking why web pages suck?

And the usual answers are discussed in the comments. Let me add by typing in HTML by hand from memory in the Google HTML editing box that maybe:

1. Worse really is worse
2. The simplest thing that can possibly work produces the simplest thing that can only work for one simple thing.
3. Hypertext As The Engine Of Application State is still the slowest dumbest architecture for a Model View Controller.

When the owner of a company stood over me looking at a simple but fast, easily maintained and completely functional web site and said, "You really aren't a graphics designer." then directed me through the process of adding dozens of non-functional features that met his tastes but slowed the web site to a crawl and turned updates into full day affairs instead of half an hour, all of which he would pay for as he drove his company into bankruptcy, I ceased to care.

You get what you pay for.

Philosophers Who Poke Sticks in Their Eyes to See The Truth Clearly

Tim Bray posted a blog on bit rates and the quality of music.

First, take the topic up with Neil Young or T-Bone Burnett. Ask experts. Casual comparisons don't mean much.

OTW, having done a fair bit of recording as an amateur (analog and digital):

1. You are right that every filter past the initial mic or first input is a noise maker. This is a matter of production cost. Factoring it into the distribution format is like talking about javascript when writing an operating system.
2. Comparing digital to digital is comparing sour milk to flat beer for everything except editing. How many toes are on a normal foot? A normal foot of what? If you don't know how the example was produced then mastered, discussions of bit rate distribution are noise. Produce in analog if you can afford it.
3. Comparisons have to also rate the ears. Some people hear better. Training matters.
4. Means of distribution and how they affect piracy forensics are more important to what gets produced than technology. If you are worried about how much disk space an uncompressed file wastes, you are a music consumer, not a listener.

Barton Hollow is another trend soon to be replaced by another trend. That isn't a knock on The Civil Wars. Music lover's are more interested in the means to support a living wage for working musicians so more musicians will be working. Consumers are focused on which musicians are working. Audiophiles are focused on their gear. This is their one commonality with musicians.

Unless the costs of high fidelity production can be supported by the consumer market, the consumer gets what they get and storage wars are like riots in the middle east: largely to be ignored because they are their own cause.

Festering: The Objectivist At Leisure

Sometimes I read comments on Facebook where I feel a tang of sympathy for the sentiment, then you realize that it is a tale told by someone who never actually has to confront the results of what they say they believe in. This comes from the pages of two local stores where the person was posting to make the point as large as possible.

What a shame. Stores used to close in this country to show respect and observance of our country's hard-fought Independence Day. I am a regular TJMaxx shopper, but I will not be shopping on the 4th of July in TJMaxx or any other store...and I hope no one else will be either. I am pro-capitalism, but our country's Independence Day is a day for patriotism, picnics, fireworks, family ---- NOT a day to shop.

Truett Cathy, the owner of Chick-Fil-A, stands on his principles and continues to close on Sundays, and yet, even in this tough economy, he prospers. It's sad that many in this next generation have been so schooled in situation ethics rather than foundational principles that they don't always understand the value of doing what's right because it's right...and then trusting that, when we put our principles first, in the long run, we'll be blessed all the more for it.

It sounds good until I realize this is a person who shops a lot, who buys into the hard right wing republican nonsense, the faux economics of lightweights like T. Sowell and just "loves" Dagny Taggart. It's a pity really because this is person who writes well but thinks shallowly.

I wonder of those of you criticizing these stores, do you actually have jobs? For some, a day off is a day they can get things done and independence means just that: being independent to choose as you will instead of what a small minority says you must. My wife worked because the senior citizens at the home where she cares for them needed her. She is THAT kind of Christian woman: Others First. I went to Lowe's to buy things we needed to fix the house. Yes, we celebrated Independence Day by exercising our independence, and we still had hot dogs and hamburgers and fireworks.
How many of you are veterans or have a child or father in the service? Did you serve or do you take up the flag to wrap it around your pro-capitalism that has come to signify the 1% who took the wealth such that the rest have to work on holidays for that time and half that pays for their kids to get an education increasingly out of reach?

There was a time when we could afford to have the entire country take a holiday. What was true: one car per family, no air conditioning, houses were a third the size on average, only a small percentage got past high school, food came from family farms or not at all, we didn't drive fifty miles to try the scones in a restaurant, and mother sewed the clothes of our older brothers and sisters so we would have them.

Times change. The glory that is America is that we change with the times because when we don't we fail to be a good country. That is the true foundational principle: we change. We grow. We care. We can do and will.

Yes, Independence Day is a day to count our blessings and today that means having a job.

Making A Better Deal for the Artists

There are contentious debates about the role of the web digital service industry in the decline of monies remunerated to content artists.   Some suggestions:

1. Metadata standards for legally obligating agreements on the web. Fix this first. This is a very big bang across the services. It is in everyone’s interest that these be made soon, simple and ubiquitous because it predicates the service agreement bindings to legal documents. IOW, control the lawsuit space at jump and innovate opportunities with the same markup of the text. Even SharePoint knows how to nag an author for the missing fields in the columns. If you are an industry person aggregating content for publication, you want this.


2. Make it fair. The obligating contracts are not to the algorithms that currently sort monetization. In the case of YouTube, these do not work or are poor at best and I can prove it. The metadata is important to the fairness of the opportunity. Publish the rules for ajudication and see 3: turn ajudication into opportunity sharing. It is an opt in strategy and those are shown to be least onerous.

3. Innovate opportunities. Today, a mashup using photos that Google provides cannot be monetized because the obligation to own all content or have all attesting documentation is onerous. Facilitate this task. Google is using the photos and video too. They are the gateway.  Why do they not offer the service to inform all parties of an opportunity instead of a infraction? Divide the monetization fairly and transparently.

Big Data is here. Use it wisely and fairly. Technology can enable you to innovate opportunity but it cannot make you moral. You do that by the technology you choose to buy and use. If you wish to direct the evolution in your markets over being their prey, then the way you agree to create and foster opportunity is the ultimate tool: choice of choices.

As to the HTTP censorship code, do you think that the right frame to discuss server blocking by legal means? I don’t. It presents the opportunities in a black and white zero sum frame and none of the advantages of having a legal means with teeth to enforce our laws. For those who say this is Big Government, I say, that’s exactly what it is and exactly why we have them. A government has the obligation to protect it’s citizens and their property in my opinion. Means may be negotiated but they are found and applied.

Lord, Come Walking

Old fashioned bible thumpin stories for babies and a shout out in the hard scrabble times.   Put your hand in the hand....

Born Again

A new video for you. I made the video effects with ChaosPro (www.chaosPro.de) which is an excellent package for working with, constructing and animating fractals. Please enjoy!

Samantha Brown

When you're home ill, who is the friendliest face on TV?

al Bari

al Bari, the evolver, is one of the 99 names of God in the faith, Islam. This is a meditative piece on the idea that positive change, evolution, is a spiritual goal and exercise.

Occupy the World

For those people cold in their tents, for those people in the drum circles, for those people who march, for those willing to be arrested, for the people who know justice will come because they demand it, you are beautiful.

Pirate Polifix

A protest song for your consideration.

Let Me Be Near You

A love song..

Loves Overtaken and Wall Street

Something bitter and something sweet. The kids have it. The eyes have it.

Danny Boy

A non-traditional rendering of a traditional irish ballad. And a protest and a prayer.

If not peace, then mercy.

The Use of Religion as A Weapon of Mass Destruction

Because many of the comments I've heard regarding the recent events in Washington that led to the downgrade in our credit are about the American character and how American politics suffer by it, I will add this thought because from my perspective, this has been developing for years. There are economic impacts, but I think the theories of economics will not yield a means to change the problems of character.

So FWIW:

Americans are a deeply religious people and that is a strength in our character that has been used to weaken us. When the neocons and Rupert Murdoch and his sheik partner and other media moguls who obtained ownership over too many of our media began to accelerate the fusion of religion and state, we allowed a disease to creep into our national character that our founding fathers warned us about: separation of church and state is critical to our way of life. It is critical to our system of governance because freedom of worship must be coupled to freedom from worship. Otherwise our ability to rationally do the business of the government erodes.

Religion is not bad. It has the problem of being a very potent way to declare classes of us and them, then force people to be in one of those classes through true social networks which represent access to economy. When religion becomes the tool of choice of those who divide us for their own agendas, we are almost helpless to prevent it. It is a known hit point in our governance and our culture, and it has been exploited to the hilt.

The result is a sort of neurosis in good times. In bad times when we are antagonized and reactive, it can become a psychosis. The events in Washington are at that transition point. So now it is a matter of how many of us are still rational and ready to assert ourselves in the face of these mavens of mad but determined men.

We must not let love of God be coupled to fear for our future. This is easily understood as failing to trust God. And it is the means by which we are deceived.

Presumption of Guilt

Today I was at work after a six month vacation courtesy of the State of Alabama unemployment insurance I've paid into these past forty years. It was marvelous. I learned to play rock piano, wrote some songs, made some videos, and I thank the rest of you who kept the ship going while I sat at home in my bathrobe. It's good to have a job again.

The strangest thing today was reading a military technical manual specification and seeing paragraphs that I authored twenty years ago. Very strange. It's not like being J.K. Rowling; it's like being the first person to type a smiley into an email message and later realizing it may have been the most long lasting typing I'd ever done. It shows we have to treat the least we do like the most we do and that we may wake up one day to find out our high school sweethearts haven't aged but we have. You never know.

But to get this job, for the first time, I had to submit to drug testing.

I know this is common and that the fact I've held the positions I've had and never done this is a little exceptional, but I never have had to piss in the little cup.

And I didn't like it one bit.

The results weren't in doubt. Despite rumors and innuendo, I'm real middle of the road. I didn't like it because I have to piss in a cup as a pre-condition of employment. I don't like it because that is humiliating. I live in a country of free men and women who find that because a raving looney ex-first lady who went to astrologers to arrange her husband's schedules decided we could all just say no but if there was any doubt she and her class of friends had the right to make us piss in cups.

I want to go piss on her husband's grave. I know, that's nasty, but it seems to me one reason we can't stand up to the lunatics who run our government today is because they've managed over the last three decades to humiliate us into pissing in cups to have jobs. They've convinced us we must be presumed guilty and then prove ourselves innocent or we don't deserve to have those jobs they are creating for us with the money we gave them in the form of tax cuts.

I don't like it. Not one bit. If you don't like it, if you don't like their refusal to pay their fair share, if you are tired of their presumptions of guilt on our parts while they rob us blind, do this: next time you have to go piss in the cup, save some of that and go piss on their lawn, their car, or maybe their graves.

We aren't guilty of anything except working too hard for too many hours for too few people. Are they guilty of anything? Well, presume they are guilty the same way they presume we are. Piss on them.

You Reeka! Hooters and Shooters

“And ALERT: My character “Hollie Martin” starts her 7 episode run on Eureka July 18th - Felicia Day”

A season featuring Felicia Day that begins with footage of the launch of a Mercury Redstone is not without the irony of an inside reference to her. Cute.

On the other hand, the season premier is weak in the knees.

Leave it to Canadian production to take pieces of American history and mash them up. From the perspective of someone who lived through that history up close, the season opener was clumsy. The holes and misattributions are glaring like a 1950s pre space era sci-fi movie. I found myself laughing in all the wrong places.

As to Siffy’s season premiers: C for effort and keeping a lot of CGI types in work, but the writing is derivative and in critical need of innovative originality.

It is possible the writers are coming at this from a gamer's perspective. We've never really mastered the art of interactive character and plot development. It gets in the way of action and grinding for gold or solving puzzles that are neat in first person but terrible in dialog. When you apply that approach to a series, you get what a friend of mine calls "chicks in tank tops" or simply, hooters and shooters.

I get the same sense from the Siffy season openers and premiers as I get from gen y music; it is as if they don’t have their own experiences so they keep going to the baby boomer well and sipping shallowly. They try to make themselves look smarter or more cool than the baby boomers and simply come off as plastic heros with boob and gun fetishes. The 60s had their share of schlock too. No contest. The question is how to do better.

Felicia Day can do better as one of the most original voices of her own generation. Her best work is The Guild. She writes from her own experience as they say a writer should, but more importantly, she isn't writing a game. She is writing a comedy series that explores the foibles and strengths of her generation or gamers and in doing so, also as a writer should, reveals the universals there. How well she could craft a decent sci-fi series is up for debate but I doubt she can do worse and I'm willing to bet she can do quite a bit better. Otherwise she should distance herself from Siffy and take a hard look at offers that will enable her to develop her own considerable talents as a writer while she continues to hone her acting chops.

Give her the shot. It's time to quit imagining greater; imagine better.

Nothing More (Oblatio Sui)

A song of penitence dedicated to all those who raise their eyes to God in service regardless of religion or place in the world. The Oblatio Sui is a prayer by Ignatius Loyola and this is inspired by that text.

The Evil Mirror

We pay a price for the perfection of media. I tell my kids to watch the TV shows before color such as the Red Skelton Shows. I tell them to note two things:

a) It was a very Caucasian world.
b) Women had hips.

For the first, I am glad. This had to change and as painful as that change was for some on the wrong side of history, the world is better.

For the second, I am sad. We live in the reflections of Snow White's Evil Step Mother's mirror where all the edges are ground away and only the super luminous colors reach our eyes. We photoshop our way into believing in things that are not real and the delusions rob us of the subtle colors. So much beauty is hidden by the glare and the irony is we perceive it by the power of the shadows to give edges to that unseen beauty.

Here's an example: Leland Sklar copies the obit notice by Fred Steiner's daughter, Wendy Waldman. Leland is A-list. I know who he is and enjoy the privilege of his conversations on Facebook. Fred composed the Perry Mason theme and many other famous soundtracks, so I am dimly aware of his work. But Wendy, his daughter? I didn't have a clue. And that is tragic but I know how that happened.

The world of entertainment is dominated by the high frequencies of the A-list, the stars who become super-luminous. In the world of Red Skelton, that was all one would see and in the super competitive money-driven world of today's entertainment industry, things are no different with the exception that as some of the A-listers who are brave enough or reckless enough to actually converse on the pages that represent them, occasionally their less famous but equally talented friends shine through. It took the shadow of her father's passing for me to see her there. And that is regrettable but there are greater tragedies.

Ron Paul says he doesn't believe in evolution. It wouldn't matter because evolution doesn't care. It works whether we believe in it or not. The difference is that by his super luminosity he gives a not inconsiderable number of people the excuse to also disbelieve and to persuade others of such. Again, evolution goes on but what is lost is that evolution is not inviolate. It can be directed and those most aware of that who can gain control over self and others can do that. Some like to say 'program or be programmed' but that is just one technical approach, valid but insufficient. It isn't enough to program; one needs to know what to shape and why it might matter.

It matters that women have hips. It matters that the world is not all Caucasian. It matters that Wendy Waldman is a brilliant, gifted songwriter and producer who is one of the pioneers of Southern California country folk rock because these are the people we learn from, the people who can illumine what matters. It matters that we see the subtle colors that make up the majority of the light.

How sad that we can only see them because for a moment the Moon passed over the Sun and shadows outlined the shapes of subtle beauties. How wonderful that we are not yet so blinded by super luminosity, we can still notice and our hearts still care for that last part is the miracle of love, that we can still feel. Snow White will sleep until we cut down the brambles put there by those who own the mirror and only feel empowered if what we see there is the most fair, the most bright, the single parts because the best are often the most subtle.

The Belly of the Fish

Got 'er done. Parrotheads and demented environmentalists should like this one. :)

Thanks to HGUMC for the loan of the piano and to Carolyn King who schemed until I learned to play it.

The Belly of the Fish

These are two performances on the same day of a song I wrote for the HGUMC Praise Band about Jonah being swallowed by the Big Fish, aka, the Whale. We had a lot of fun with this. As someone said, "So Jonah fled on a banana boat, eh?" :)

The Dumb Hum

The press and the politicians can't get enough of Operation Neptune's Spear. I can't tell if I am more grossed out by the idea of the photos, the fact that they are using the decision about their release to do polybody slams, or that they are quarreling over who has the right to claim the kill?

Have American politics always been this much a blood sport? Gross.



Any high energy event(power to transform or render chaotic) emerges as chaotic as it enters a coherent domain and that is most of the real time phase of intense activity or maximum stress on the system maps. Most of what we accept is historic because locale creates an insulating quality over direct observation. As Rachel Maddow points out, it's bad to bet the conspiracy on facts as yet unverified and who you trust has a very direct effect.

The idiocy of conspiracy politics is that all accepted facts have this quality of local origin regardless of whether frequently or infrequently sampled. Attaching too much importance to any of them when not actually observed is the art of the conspiracy theorist.

There is the story of James, Son of Alphaeus, the second from the left disciple in da Vinci's Last Supper. James is forgotten to history in detail though his death by being stoned and clubbed in Jerusalem is known. Otherwise he is distinguished by being one of the witnesses to John's baptism of the Christ. Alone he is one who has no struggle to believe for he, a Jew, heard the voice of God proclaim the inheritance of his son. God named him Messiah so James only concern was his own status as the Betrayer. He knew the status of Jesus, he feared his own even though he knew what he had done.

We will always doubt. Trust is accepting sources are returning sources as close to real time with sufficient training to mentally note the items of interest. Or that the other person isn't lieing. Be it Jesus or a talking head du jour, ya gotta trust somebody. So in the end we trust whoever and whatever we like. In the end, James question is does he love his Lord well enough not to betray him to the very authorities he as a Jew in Roman palestine is bound to obey by law? Finally, he a Jew, must accept his own evidence of having heard the word of God and by this acceptance, becoming Christian.

We become whom we love, transformed by what we accept and act on. Or we lose coherence chasing conspiracies because we doubt and will not act. Obama chooses not to be Hamlet. Bene.

What's next? I guess it depends on who. For some, it's fear of getting on planes again. For others, it's finding out why the copter came down hard and had to be blown thus doubling the time of the op. For others, it's about finding a new bogey man. For a few, it's about justice and what we endure to see to it justice prevails.

For a perverse few, it is about shifting blame or taking credit. That's the dumb hum. It's the sound of generators, leaf blowers, and microwaves beeping. It is our insistence on covering up the night skies our grandfathers and great-grandfathers knew with a patina of light that obscures the millions of stars visible only if we turn it off. It is the sound of civilization but also the mechanical beat that disrupts the normal rhythms of breath, and room and ear. It divides our attention into little monotonic bits of time nowhere found in our natures.

Some ask what we did to make Usama Bin Laden hate us so much? It's simple. We put troops on the ground in Saudi Arabia to defend it while we ousted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. As much stimulation as we get from putting on a hair coat, some people weren't 'good folk' who were leading normal lives when something we did offended them. Becoming a world class homocidal maniac capable of inspiring others takes a lifetime. In his case, it was a life of privilege but reduced status as the child of a minor wife in a society where such things are normal and son to a man who served a royal family that takes the wealth of its subjects and uses it for its own intrigues including the use of religious beliefs to maintain its positions of privilege.

Regardless of how often it is claimed we did, we didn't make Usama. We used him when he volunteered his wealth to fight our fight and he used us when he could not get enough of the fight to satisfy his own egomaniacal ambitions. It's an old story and not that complicated. It seems complicated because many use stories to launch their own initiatives for their own ambitions and so it goes. Time after time.

Why?

Because then they will be heard. They stand out from the dumb hum. The easiest way to make someone insane is to remove all sources of sensory stimulation until all they are left with is the hum of their own autonomic systems. That kind of deprivation cannot be overcome by our minds or spirits. There are many degrees of that. Don't beat yourselves up over this. It is in the nature of the organism.

Societies can and do try to make a better life but as the capacity for violence increases through the machinery of violence, there is always the danger that it will fall into the hands of those whom society cannot satisfy and we will always have such people. It was this reason that caused some of us who worked on the precursors to the web to fear its capacity to deliver so much technical information to so many. It made it possible to recruit, it has the natural effect of aggregating like types, it enables a single person to quickly find out how to make weapons of mass destruction then to find resources, materiel and even funding. It is the Krell machine and we are still monkey brained mammals enthralled by the dumb hum.

So do we enjoy the conversation or turn off the web? Do we continue to learn from each other or isolate ourselves in fear of ourselves? We hesitate or we act. No free lunch.

When the planes hit the towers a friend of mine in Ireland wrote to ask me what I thought the American response would be. I told him we'd mourn, clean up and when we knew who did it, we'd kill them. We have.

Obama chooses not to be Hamlet to enthralled by the dumb hum to act. Obama hopes not to be Macbeth. I hope not to miss the night sky in a hundred square miles of darkness even as I know that soon I once again will submit to the dumb hum.

Act 1 Scene 7: I (Spoken by Macbeth)

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips. He's here in double trust;
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.

Sol Saks

I'm posting a favorite song of mine to honor the creator of Samantha, Sol Saks, who passed away today in Los Angeles at the age of 100. We all miss her too.

Celebrities, Mirrors and Social Media

Few things are as pathetic as celebrities from old school media discovering the web is a conversation and the rules that protected their feelings and egos don't apply. They emerged in an era of carefully managed engagements with the press, with their fans, and everyone they worked with. Their art went one way and so did their expression. Their fan mail was sorted; their images were hand crafted. Their art was carefully stage managed or filtered through the ears of the A&R men and women who made sure every utterance was sweet and inside the soft box of a demographically targeted marketing strategy, through the publicists who ensured the dollars would not be diminished by the tedium of genuine conversation, argument, and doubt.

Having never developed the thick skins and awareness of what it is to be a person in an unfiltered world, they still want to be special, protected and privileged. They don't want conversation. They want fans behind the barricades. They want to be stars with their own special and largely empty place in the heavens. They fear controversy because with it comes opinions and yes, proof that they are occasionally in error, that like everyone else, they can be unpolished, imperfect, not a star at all.

In the entertainment business it is said that you must keep the people who dislike you to a minimum, ideally zero.

Que lastima!

That's not the web. Sorry, but it simply isn't. Social media is... social. The nasty people you will encounter in a restaurant are on Facebook, and guess what? They have a right to it and if you engage them, they have a right to tell you what they think if you are slagging on the waitress or the people who manage those free services you are using to promote yourself. For any opinion you offer, there will be people who disagree. For any statement you make about topics outside your expertise, there will be experts who will correct you. For any candidate you endorse, there will be people who are voting for the other candidate. For any privilege you plead that does not help the rest of society, there are people ready, willing and eager to call you a selfish twit.

If all you want are compliments and to sell your wares, you've outlasted your place in culture. Get over yourselves. If you can't handle conversation, if you can't be told when you are wrong, if you can't debate with facts and emotions equally, you have no reason to have a Facebook page. You don't need friends. You need mirrors.