Congealed

Texture and form congealed
It comprised
Thin boxes
Mysterious blobs
And conical packages
The lighter shades
Were interspersed with
The occasional
Stamps, labels
And addresses

Looking out my window

Only a few hours until we fly to Paris, and as I look out my familiar window, I wonder:

What will I learn?
How will I be different?
What will I know about myself that I didn't know before?
Is there anything new to know?

Confessions of a Sociopath

I just finished reading Confessions of a Sociopath by M.E. Thomas.  It is her own story, along with a lot of quotations from research and from her blog.  I found it completely fascinating to read about a very intelligent person who lacks empathy and self-doubt.  It was a little like reading about autism from the standpoint of a very intelligent autistic person like Temple Grandin.

It is clear to me that a great many literary figures are sociopaths, from Star Trek's Khan to Sherlock Holmes and Dracula.

Thomas makes the case that sociopaths are useful to society and may be no more harmful than empathetic people, and she makes some good points. However, given her descriptions of her own needs and desires, I get the feeling that this may be partly a con. She tells us that she does nothing except in her own interests unless it is an impulse (sociopaths are impulsive). So how does the book serve her interests?

Nevertheless, I'm very glad to have read the book. It was fascinating, and in the end I had empathy for an author who has none herself.

Finding Neverland

Call me a sentimental fool, but the death scene in the movie 'Finding Neverland' never fails to move me.  

But then, I harbor a hope that fairies really exist, and if so that they are something like the ones in 'Midsummer Night's Dream'; free to play in the woods and play tricks on mortals.

Taverner and transcendent goodness

I went to the Church of the Advent on Beacon Hill in Boston last night to hear their magnificent choir sing the 'O Michael' Mass by John Taverner and motets by Peter Philips, Robert Parsons, and Orlando Gibbons.  The performances were uniformly excellent; the group sounds wonderful and tunes so well that the thickest textures seldom felt clogged or hazy.  There were so many memorable moments that I will not even try to list them; these were real composers, not hacks, and they each exhibit personal qualities within their common musical language.

I was most impressed with the Taverner piece, however.  It seemed gracious and generous, full of radiance and goodness.  In some ways it reminded me of the 3rd Piano Sonata of Boulez. Neither piece really takes you on a journey; instead you float on an undulating bed of sound.  But the differences are huge.  With Boulez the texture is dissonant and often jarring, and the piano sound is sharply crystalline.  With Taverner, the sounds are consonant and the voices are warm and sensuous.

Hearing the Taverner, I felt as if I were riding on a raft in Paradise.  Everything was safe and benign, and I didn't care where the raft was going, because it was Paradise.  The music seemed to be the embodiment of a vision of transcendent goodness.

That vision is one of the best things about Christianity, and one of the major reasons that consider myself a Christian.  That vision sustains and inspires me.

A conversation with a skeptic after the concert reminded me that this music is difficult for most people to understand.  There are no big repetitive tunes to hum, and little in the way of conflict and resolution in the structural sense.  

But an hour spent in Taverner's heaven was just what I needed.

A Koan by Emily Dickinson

I'm reading Bring Me the Rhinoceros by John Tarrant, who presents a number of Zen koans and associated stories.  He quotes Emily Dickinson in one of the chapter headings:

"Friday I tasted life.  It was a vast morsel.  A Circus passed the house - still I feel the red in my mind though the drums are out.  The lawn is full of south and the odors tangle, and I hear today for the first time the river in the tree."

This strikes me with great force every time I pass my eyes over it.  It is like a hallucination or a peek into the world of an alien mind.  I can't make logical sense of it, but it seems true, and it makes reality seem more real.

I guess this is what koans are supposed to do.

String Quartets, with more to come

I am beginning to put some of my scores onto Lulu.com, so that people can order copies.

Here is the link to my storefront:  

http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=3542096

I have put scores of my two string quartets there, and more will follow.

The Diving Bell and Butterfly

In this film, it was not the story that moved me, but the faces of the women and children, and the ocean, and the beautiful camerawork, and the exquisite sense of timing.

I love to look at faces anyway, but the main character ('Jean-Do') cannot move or speak, and human faces are perhaps the most meaningful things that he sees.  He learns to communicate using eye-blinks, writes a book, and tries in small ways to mend some of the broken things in his life.  

I would have liked more depth to Jean-Do's character; except for his paralysis, there seems to be very little there in the way of life choices.  His relationship with his father is important and touching - his rocky relationships with women, less so.

The film's most memorable scene for me: Jean-Do is dreaming that a young, 19th-century woman is wheeling him down a deserted hall in his wheelchair.  He suddenly can move, and he turns and kneels on the seat and kisses the woman.  This is one of the most erotic and least salacious things that I have ever seen.

Chuang Tzu

Reading the Thomas Merton book on Chuang Tzu.  The latter is full of little stories and parables, but they remind me more of Kafka than Jesus.  'The Hat Saleman and the Capable Ruler' is a good example, because it leaves you wondering if the (presumably enlightened) ruler is in a state of bliss or distraught.

Like Kafka's parables, these suggest much more than they state; each one seems to promise a novel's-worth of story.

I want to read those novels.

ASUS sublaptop first look

Just got a tiny Asus computer to take along on an upcoming vacation, and it seems pretty nice - about the size of a large paperback.  You can hook up a full-sized keyboard and display if you want.  No CD drive, but this thing is the size of a mid-sized paperback novel, so you wouldn't expect one.  It has 3 USB ports for extras.  The small keys don't really bother me, as I'm not a touch-typist.

It comes with enough software to get me writing by the lake, that's what I aim to do.

Sound clips, not bagels

I attended PodCast Boston a week and a day ago, and it gave me all sorts of ideas.

Because I consider myself to be a "content provider", that is a producer rather than a merchant or consumer, I decided to try to make some content and sell it online, a bit like a bagel vendor. 

But I am hawking sound clips that I have composed.  Yes, I know that other people do this (at outrageous prices, too!), but nobody offers the clips that I make but me, for better or worse.

These are tiny compositions and are cranky or delicate; some are just weird. 

Check out my site: Your Own Web Music

Technorati Tags: sound clips,tiny compositions,PodCamp Boston

Waiting for Random House

Technorati Tags: Random House,Gift from the Sea,Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I wrote to Random House about a month ago to ask for permission to use part of Gift from the Sea as the text for a piece of music.  I used snail mail, because that's what I always have done in the past.  I am dying to get started composing, but still no word from the publishers.  I don't see why this should take so long - there's no risk to them, after all.

This is why I most often write my own texts these days.

However, the Anne Morrow Lindbergh words are beautiful and worth waiting for, I guess...

Playing with Picassa

I'm working on putting up a web site, and in playing with Picassa, I created the image you see here. You wouldn't believe how rudimentary the image was before I worked it over digitally. Nice, Eh?

Technorati Tags: Picassa

Go and see this play!

First, a disclaimer - I am the father of the director of the play(Gerritt Turner), and not the most unbiased bloke on my block, therefore.

Check out the web site:  Self-portrait As Schiele

The play is in the NY Fringe Festival in August.  I have read versions of the script as it was in progress, and it looks pretty interesting.  A woman in a hospital keeps seeing Egon Schiele, the great expressionist artist.  He infects her with Schiele memes, and very odd things happen to her and the other characters.

Having read the script, I can't wait to see this thing.  In person it should be ten times better.

 

Technorati Tags: NY Fringe,Egon Schiele,memes,Gerritt Turner,Mark Lindberg,Elsa Carette,Elizabeth Hess,Adam Hyland,Doug Paulson

Quite a day of Web 2.0 action

Whew!  Setting up Facebook, looking at Tweeter messages, fielding emails, some from old friends and some from new ones (PodCamp Boston 2008), etc.

The caricature that I did of myself has turned out to be quite useful:

I am using it for Tweeter, FaceBook, and Technorati.

This stuff is exhilarating, actually.  Today I had two ideas for micro-businesses for myself as a content provider.

Time to get to work on those.

Technorati Tags: FaceBook,Tweeter,PodCamp,Boston,micro-businesses

Looking for a wee job

Ah, well, so I got laid off last week.  Not a new experience, so I'm not too upset.  I'm taking stock of my skills and options, and also am hoping to attend to some things which I have been neglecting.

Joined an artist's site

I joined a new website for artists, including composers.  Here is the link to my page there:

http://buncut.ning.com/profile/CharlesTurner

It's nicely run by artist Phillip Letts.  Check it out.

NYC ComicCon

Having developed an interest in comics recently, I took a day off and went to the NY ComicCon over the weekend.  It was impressive in many ways, just as comics themselves are; often trashy and crowded, but full of wonderful energy and creativity.

It was great to hear Neal Gaiman read and answer questions and hear Grant Morrison kibitzing with the fans in his thick Scots accent.  I also went to a panel of (relatively) old-time great comic artists and later got to talk to Carmine Infantino, whose Flash and Adam Strange comics seemed so imaginative and visually arresting when I was a pre-teen.

I also spoke to David Mack and bought some issues of his Kabuki comic that I was missing.  He was just as nice as I thought he would be.  He and so many of the other artists exhibit an impressive mastery of drawing and page composition.

Ultimately the immense crowds (mostly men in black tee-shirts, it seemed) made me claustrophobic, and I escaped the Javits Center for a quiet restaurant with my son.  But comics seem to be full of vitality these days.

Blockhead and Bubble Boy

Two fellows who showed up in my sketch book one day.

Chance and Circumstance

Carolyn Brown's book is a personal account of her dance career as a member of the Merce Cunningham dance troupe. It's a very enjoyable book to read, full of her reactions to the important people and events in her life. It does not attempt to be scholarly, and sometimes I wish it were a bit more detailed.

What interests me most about the book is hearing a dancer talk about dancing; what makes her do it, what the ups and downs are, performing versus training, her views on other dancers and choreographers, touring, etc.

What impresses me about Brown and the other Cunningham dancers is how disciplined they were for so little worldly reward. They endured many years of critical disparagement and poverty as they rehearsed with almost military intensity. Their devotion to their art surely must be an example to the rest of us.

Thanks for the book, Carolyn.

And now I want to see the dances themselves!