Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree

I never have been certain about the meaning of the Christmas tree.  Even so, it's a tradition.  Here's a video of Rhonda Vincent paper doll parts (in store) with Rhonda singing "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree":

The first effort is rather simplistic -- more of a slideshow.  No time for more complex video production this weekend. Merry Christmas! Thanks, Rhonda, for your music, Janet Shelby for the graphics, and to my wife and family for their patience.

Enjoy!

A Dancin' We Will Go

Who says they don't have fun on the ISS?  Here's a clear example of the ISS crew members taking their shoes off and tearing up the dance floor:

Music brought you to by the following [from: http://www.barynya.com/mp3/index.stm]:

Elina Karokhina and ensemble Barynya "Balalaika Music Album"

Balalaika virtuoso Elina Karokhina & Russian dance and music ensemble Barynya compact disk Balalaika Music Album (2011). Elina Karokhina (balalaika), Leonid Bruk (balalaika-contrabass), Mikhail Smirnov (guitar, vocals). Elina Karokhina is Russia’s top balalaika player and a musician of international renown. Her speed, grace, and fluidity on the instrument must be seen and heard to believe. She began her formal training at the Mussorgsky College of St. Petersburg and continued her training at the Rimskii-Korsakov Conservatory, which included a residency in Germany. She returned to her native St. Petersburg, where she earned her Doctorate of Music/Balalaika...

The Simplicity of Beauty

Tall, slender trees with tiny emerging leaves swaying in the winds of a wave of passing thunderstorms.

Prelude and Fugue No. 7 in E-flat major, from Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, Book 1, by Johann Sebastien Bach, played by Sviatoslav Richter.

What am I in comparison?

Today, I died a happy man once again.

Once again, I will be born to live happiness all over tomorrow.

Once again, once is never enough.

Cranial Landing Strip

BTW, if you ever find yourself passing through Kingston Springs, TN, on a Thursday evening, find your way over to The Fillin' Station for a performance by the Mohawk Slim Band.  Beer and blues, what can I say, man?

Ubiquity? Frayed Knot!

Informationicus Graphicus, carpe diem.

"I Talk To The Wind" by King Crimson takes us into the next hour.

A Little Bit Louder Now

While I was listening to a rare, unauthorised, unpublished, underground, bootleg recording of Frank Zappa's version of César Franck's Symphony in D-minor, an announcement came up via the network that you don't know about using technology that does not exist in this universe.

According to sources I don't have to reveal to you because they officially do not exist, a UN coalition force found a cave on the Pakistan border that had recently been occupied by Al Qaeda.

No news there.

The unique fascination resides in the fact that the cave is apparently a shrine Al Qaeda set up in honour of one of their great inspirations.

Namely, Tom Clancy.

According to notes buried in the ceiling, operatives use spy and adventure novels of Western countries to carry out their plans, conveniently laid out in fictional detail by bestselling and obscure authors.

With the release of new Kindle firmware by Amazon, terrorists can sync their actions via page numbers in ebooks easily read out in the open with no one suspecting they are following orders down to the paragraph, sentence and letter, period.

Analysts at DARPA are going back through novelised versions of "Murder, She Wrote," hoping to figure out which town resident is next to be played by an out-of-work and formerly controversial actor willing to be killed for the sake of weekly ratings.

Hotels, in fear of losing their valuable valets, are insisting that special guests no longer pull up under the awnings or covered entranceways, worried that WMDs will be set off by infiltrating suicidal taxi/limo drivers who will also kill the best parking attendants the hotels had ever hired.

The guests they can easily replace.

My friend, Elizabeth, familiar to most of you, assured me that her best method of dealing with such uncivilised, unruly drivers is to heavily wax the hardwood or cement floors on which taxis and limos are parked, throw an ashtray or skillet at suspected terrorists and watch them break their necks as they slip and fall.

Another test she recommends is to draw the attention of the driver, who will swerve, because he/she was focused on the ebook displayed on the mobile phone or ebook reader perched between the dashboard and the steering wheel.

Speaking of playing chicken on the road, do you think the Iranian naval vessels are hoping to pull a "Remember the Maine" event to enable Iran to launch an offensive attack on Israel?  Ahmen-a-jihad has been accused of worse.

And what of countries whose silence on such matters may point to secret funding of counterpoint-postcounter-rotisserie-revolution?

And the two young women who watched "Unknown" unknowingly?  They couldn't drink enough to be convinced to see the Justin Bobblehead teenie bopper movie.  Thank goodness, Lauren serves popcorn and Coke like a real pro - there's a future in business marketing for her, should she have the right connections through her friends in the world of sports.

And while we're on the subject of sports, fans will be standing in their seats to see if the 10-year anniversary will cause another great pileup at the end.  Thank goodness, Michael Waltrip and Sterling Marlin are nowhere to be seen.  Who will win?  As the saying goes, "they call him the streak, boogity boogity, the fastest thing on two feet."  No, DW, it's not you.

That's all, folks.  Ethel, get your clothes on!!!!

Claire de Lune Revisited

I stood outside with the Moon, you
Beside me in thought, no sound except
Orion shooting stars;
Leafless trees,
How do they breathe in winter?

You walked under the Moon, you said,
Your accent somewhere between New York
And here.
A distance, voice echoing against Little
Mountain, bouncing off moon rays, casting
Shadows like musicians' roles.

Did the Ancients watch starlight cross
Ripples in ponds?
Could I sing a lullaby or ballad to the
One I love?

Can I pull a melody out of the rope
Tied to a one-note steeple bell?
You sing in my thoughts as if you set up home
Here a long time ago.

CHORUS

Moonbeams and shadows
Cloud over my thoughts;
Long walks and happiness,
Will you comfort me tonight?

Wasn't long ago you never said you love me,
Wasn't in a song I heard your sweet reply,
Won't be long now until I see you again,
Won't be these words that put me behind a plow.

ACOUSTIC GUITAR SOLO


We rarely remember when we heard the whistle
Of the train of our thoughts passing through
The station of Mushy Memories,
But I'll always remember when you bowed
To my applause, and put this farmer's son at ease.

MANDOLIN/FIDDLE DUO WITH BASS IMPROV IN BACKGROUND

BRIDGE

CHORUS

Moonbeams and shadows,
Cloud over her thoughts...
Long walks and happiness,
Will you comfort her tonight?

Another nod, to Robert and Philip

Thanks for the American Four Seasons, conducted by Alsop, by the way!

Part of Movement No. 2, for those who are interested.

A New Nod to Dmitri N. Smirnov, An Old Nod to Margery McDuffie Whatley

In the past year or so, I have talked with many people who shared a specific timeframe with me.

And yet, if time does not exist, then what to make of musical scores?

What to make of past relationships that stopped but never ended?

What of the 48-year old woman with whom I shared our first kiss at 9?

Or the 49-year old woman with whom I continue to share my thoughts as if we live outside time, 18-year loops of silence between us notwithstanding?

Or the 48-year old woman who remembers our relationship at 15/16 as if it happened yesterday, repeating our relationship and breakup in emails turned into a storyline that merged into a novel just as her daughter passed through the 15/16 ageline?

These circles, so close to home, remind me of works by Smirnov and their descent/ascent keeping time.

The music in my head plays here in spaces, pauses, syllables and other symbolism familiar to you, but it is not the same as hearing it in real time.

Would your unmarried son look at a job application and interpret "marital status" as if it read "martial status"?  Does that speak volumes about looking at marriage like war?

This is the 34th day of 2011 and I have a lot to work through in the remaining revolutions of our planet upon its axis in this calendar year before it reaches its arbitrary starting place which begins 2012.

Do you know which pebbles' waves are affecting you right now?

Are you comfortably positioned in your set of beliefs?

How much do you let your social connections reposition the perceived centre of the core of your being?

If you could see the full set of actions available to you on this planet, then what would you want to do next?

I want to read a book but I don't know which author I want to influence my thought set.

I want to take a walk but I'm tired of seeing the same rooftops and neatly trimmed lawns passing by my view.

If freedom is whatever I want to do on this planet, what if it's not enough?  Too much?  Too little, too late?

Only one life to live, one narrative to attempt to fabricate, one set of moments to imagine calling my own.

Life is a jazz improv jam.

My part in it is what it is.

I'll just have to live with the fact that the music in my head has no instrument(s) that'll make it sound right to everyone who listens.

Practice makes the next practice more perfect - the perfect story has never been told because it requires knowing the music in everyone's thoughts, virtually impossible, at least at this time.

Approximation is the best we can do, cutting the distance to perfection another half-step closer.

If I can't have the whole thing, will half of a half of a half of a half of a half suffice?

Three more points: census data, space stasis, education status.

Thanks to Margery McDuffie Whatley's recorded performance for accompanying this blog entry.

Rooftops or treetops - which is the hotter heat island?

The cursor flashes, a sideways unibrow mocking me, daring me to show that honesty is the best policy.

But I'm a storyteller, I tell the cursor, which cannot hear or think, meaning I talk to myself, instead.

I have the licence to fib, to stretch the truth, to hide facts in innuendo and nuance.

I am not a journalist.

I am a person sitting here putting finger to key, one at a time, for almost 40 years now (and stylus to paper for much longer).

A narrator coaxes the reader forward, leaving thought trail crumbs that may or may not be picked up later on.

Ignore that which I do not explicitly or implicity spin into my web, the writer says.

But what about a thought trail that has sat there unattended for longer than I, the simultaneous writer/reader, thought I could remember with ease?

Facts don't lie although what we see in the facts is not the truth.

How much can two lives parallel each other without crossing?

And when they do, what then?

An intersection of two lines/lives is a point.

Lines point off in infinite directions from a point.

What is the point of the point?

A meeting of the minds, we used to say, when mind was something we minded and kept in mind before there was nothing in mind to mind anymore.

Two sets of thoughts, let's say in modern parlance, temporarily passing through one another, demonstrating the cause-and-effect that a superset may imply unintentionally.

If A=B and A=C, then can you safely assume that B=C?

I can't, because I'm not sure what A is.

But it shouldn't matter whether I know what A stands for, right?

Let's say, also, that B is a domestic lifestyle with which I'm wholly familiar and I can tell from here that C is about the same.

Do I know that A is truly equivalent by inference?

"Experiment and test" is the conclusive phrase that gels in my thoughts and reaches this blog entry while the Well-Tempered Synthesizer reaches my ears from the laptop computer speakers.

Results to follow.

A Voice Like No Other

I'm sure I once described to you a voice that appeals to me like no other.

Sure, my wife's voice is one of the voices I think of most.

But there's another, a person who has stood near me, singing, smiling, laughing, carrying on as if we're all hanging out at a family reunion.

She knows who I'm talking about.

But she doesn't know me and I don't know her.

How do I describe the voice without describing the voice?

She doesn't sing opera but she could sing at the Grand Ole Opry.

She doesn't sing rap but her wordplay is just as entertaining as an rapper's.

She defied the system and took a break to raise a family.

I still remember the first time I heard her like some say they remember the first time they heard Elvis.

Sitting in the carpark of a bowling alley, listening to the radio, waiting for my wife and bowling partners to show up.

Seems like a pretty appropriate place, there in Rocket City, a few miles from rocket test stands and torndown cotton mills.

Might have been sitting in the old four-dour Chevy Nova that had gone on more offroad adventures than the Ford Ranger I owned later.

They say Alison Kraus has a voice of gold but she pales in comparison to the refrain of real life pouring out of the heart and soul of Claire Lynch.

Will I ever know Claire or she know me?

Probably not.

I can't sing along with a karaoke machine, let alone a versatile performer like Claire, who jumps from bluegrass to swing with the ease of a chickadee flying through a Southern breeze bending trees and freezing bees.

Love life 'cause it's all we've got.

Sing and dance 'cause this is the only moment we know we'll ever have.

Claire, here's to you, young gal.  May that voice of yours last forever, or at least as long as I'm alive and can still hear!  ;)

Rest in Peace

Two music-related obituaries I'd missed, the death of Milton Babbitt and John Barry.

Guys, your music was an inspiration to generations and you'll be replaced with difficulty.

Our Guests Just Jest in Gest, Get Best Guess

Do you dream of getting away from the mundane?

Do you travel in a national tour of a fairy tale turned into a movie turned into a musical?

Was that your nonmundane dream?

Is that what you dream for your children, even if you/they can't sing?

And if they can sing, does it matter if they sing in the shower, sing in local community events or sing/act for a living?

If the audience (the singers themselves or others) is entertained, is that enough?

Questions some answer and some question.

Thanks to Papou's Greek restaurant for dinner tonight and Jessica at Carson's last night.

Momcession

I ask myself if the future plots are doing any good.

For instance, which group made the decision to choose the person who will sing the U.S. National Anthem and stands as the image of America that we'll broadcast to the rest of the world at the beginning of the 2011 Super Bowl?

Did that group consider the full ramifications of that decision?

Although we account for those decisions in our 1000-year predictions, how can we effect change that moves the whole species in another direction, while preserving free will within individuals?

The species is just one supercomputer among many.

I need faster substitute supercomputers to plot iterations instantaneously.

What if the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang the U.S. National Anthem?  Or the a capella group, Committed? What if the song was transposed for sitar or Irish bouzouki?

Time to run those scenarios through the supercomputer buried in the walls of my house and see what happens two years later.

I'll pass those results via the indecipherable method to colleagues who can recompute the deviations from the 10,000-year timeline to which we must adhere strictly and see if the possibility exists for one of those scenarios to occur.

How did my listening to Telemann's Oboe Concerto in e-minor, III-IV, affect my mood while writing this blog entry or SpaceX's chances for winning the ISS transport contract?

What did the movements of the swing dancers at Saturday night's Swing DJ contest do to the swing of stock prices on the Tokyo stock exchange this week?

Did the authenticity of a German pub atmosphere at Schnitzel Ranch change?

Is it time for a new brain implant?

How many law firms' efforts to sway public opinion in a positive direction for clients changed your opinions of self/society today?