For several Saturdays running now, I’ve been back driving carriages in downtown Indy, and as usual you see all kinds of interesting things during the hours spent circling the streets. Here’s a few of the things I saw last night:
- Inevitably, there are always a handful of bums and homeless people on the streets. And, also inevitably, they tend to exhibit some of the most peculiar behaviors. One gentlemen, early in the evening, began to serenade one of our female drivers, who then looked like she could have crawled under her carriage and died. Another fellow randomly walked up to a couple of mall employees, who were outside on their cigarette break, and without saying a word, began dancing in front of them, glaring all the while. Then he walked away, leaving those of us watching stupefied and moderately amused.
- There are always people downtown begging for money. Maybe about half of them actually look like they need it – filthy clothing, matted hair, actually look like they’ve been living on the streets for an indeterminate amount of time. Another quarter of these people attempt to earn their income by playing various instruments, the saxophone and guitar being the most common. The rest, however, look like they got out of bed that morning, took their daily shower, put on their nice clean clothes, then grabbed their plastic cup with two or three quarters in the bottom on their way to stand out on the sidewalk to beg. Near as I can tell, most of this latter group of people should be able to get a job.
- And speaking of the guys who play sax downtown, one last night was really good. He seemed to really know how to play jazz and was jamming it up. The other guy I had to wonder about – has anyone ever told him that what he was playing were the saxophone accompaniments to larger works? Apparently he couldn’t tell that his ‘music’ held very little melodic value, which made sense, considering he wasn’t actually playing any melody. Oh, the amusement level there was high.
- I stopped at a light at one point in the evening to see a kid of perhaps 10, 12 years of age rolling across the crosswalk. No big deal, right? He was probably roller blades. Actually, he was wearing roller sneakers. I’ve never seen anything like this – he had a wheel in the heel of each of his tennis shoes and would lean back on them whenever the ground tilted downward.
- Lamborghinis are old hat by now. Same with Ferraris, Porsches, and every sports car of every variety. These vehicles are all too common downtown, especially on the weekends and especially around Formula One. (I don’t even think those cars are all that pretty.)
That’s just a taste of what I usually see in the course of an evening driving carriages, and it generally only gets more exotic and interesting after 11:00, when the night club crowd hits the streets in force. One never lacks for entertainment, that’s for sure.
Tags: carriage-driving, culture, human-behavior, music, observations
One of the things that a musician must learn to do is how to make their music sing. It’s one thing to be able to play the notes and master the rhythm; it’s an entirely different thing to make it sound musical. There are tempos to be followed, crescendos and decrescendos to give the music its own brand of vibrancy, staccatos to give it that extra pizzaz, and dozens of other musical elements that, when included into the performance of the music, give the song a life of its own.
That was one of the most difficult things for me as a fledgling piano player to master. For a long while all I could see were those notes on the page. My fingers were having a difficult enough time just finding all the right keys, let alone giving them personality. But that is what the master piano player, the teacher, is for, to push the student beyond their capabilities and stretch to accomplish new heights of musical expression. The teacher shows the student how the formulaic rhythm of the piece can be more than the sum of its parts, more than just technique. When the performer pours his heart and soul into the composition, suddenly you find that it has a life of its own. The technique of playing has found the artistry of expression, and a new creature springs to life from the fingers of musician at the keyboard.
As in music so it is in writing. Composing stories and tales involves much more than mere technique. I’ve always been something of a grammar Nazi, a strictly regimented enforcer of the ‘rules’ of the English language. In high school I devoured grammar and spelling books to the point where my classmates hated having me proofread any of their work. Invariably, I would return their manuscripts, covered in red ink where I found spelling, grammar, and syntax errors, and they would groan as they worked to revise them.
At the time I thought that was enough to become a good writer, if I had so chosen. Yet, now I am learning that technique alone is not enough to produce an interesting and captivating story. There is an art to writing, something that should be blatantly obvious to anyone who has read a novel or short story. But it is something that is not readily seen or understood until one takes on the challenge of creating a story of their own. It becomes apparent in short order just how difficult it is to weave that level of artistry into a story – to select that just-right word or phrase, to establish that perfect setting, to weave that stunning character profile – that refuses to let the reader put the book down and simply walk away. It requires practice and effort to create something so sublime, and often it takes a master teacher to help guide the fledgling writer along as they seek to better their craft.
One of the things that I have loved so much about networking with other writers is this ability to share and compare notes, to share some of the scraps of our writing in hopes of gaining honest, constructive criticism. This criticism is sometimes hard to swallow – none of us like to be told that our work is less than perfect – but it is invaluable in the longrun to becoming better writers and authors. It is a risk to share these things that are so dear to our hearts, but it is, I believe, a risk worth taking.
Here’s to helping one another along to becoming masterful artists in the art of wordcraft.
Tags: artistry, english, grammar, music, Piano, Writing, writing-technique
I love to listen to music when I work, whether it be writing one of my stories or crunching numbers at work or picking out stalls in the barn. It gets me groovin’ and gives my mind something to do while I work. It helps me focus, and I find that I’m generally ten times more productive when I have the right music jammin’ in my headphones then when I have no music playing at all. There’s something about music that just makes me feel mellow and relaxed, and my productivity levels shoot right up.
I’ve found that my favorite working music these days is the Halo 2: Vol. 1 soundtrack. Marty O’Donnell really outdid himself when he created such a memorable soundtrack for the vidoe game. I play through the disc as many as three or four times a day while I’m working. It’s playing right now, in fact, while I wait for database queries to run. If you haven’t heard this soundtrack, you should check it out, even if you have never played the game. I guarantee you’ll like it.
Now to get my hands on Vol. 2.
What’s your favorite music to work to?
Tags: halo-2-volume-1-soundtrack, marty-odonnell, music
Sage
I stumbled across a Firefox plugin for something called Sage yesterday. Sage is an extension that loads your RSS feeds right into one of your Firefox tabs. I figured I’d try it out and see if I could further centralize all the blogs I read into one application.
Unfortunately, I found Sage to be less useful and less user-friendly than Thunderbird for reading RSS feeds. Sage has the ability to automatically find RSS feeds in any webpage. You’d think this would be a good thing because it would eliminate the manual search-and-enter method of getting your feeds into your reader. The only problem is that Sage does not always find the available feeds, and to the best of my knowledge, there is no easy way to manually enter those feeds into Sage yourself. It’s either auto-detect or nothing at all.
The other thing about Sage that I dislike is that it doesn’t archive past blog posts, unlike Thunderbird, which keeps a running archive of every article it has ever downloaded. This makes it very difficult to go back to one of my favorite sites and browse through the history to find a particular article that I want to re-read, link to, or write about.
So, while Sage sounds like a good idea, it gets two thumbs down from me. To date, I still haven’t found a feedreader that I like better than Thunderbird.
Halo 2 Soundtrack, Vol. 1
One of the best things about the rise of video game technology, besides the beauty of the graphics, is the quality of some of the soundtracks that are coming out. Since the release of the Xbox, Halo and Halo 2 have remained consistently at the top of the popularity charts. Martin O’Donnell composed the score for both games, and the soundtracks are absolutely phenomenal! The music is well-written and inspiring, consisting of both orchestra and voice. Indeed, O’Donnell has set the bar high for all other video game developers to produce soundtracks of equal quality and richness.
The release of Volume 2 has just been announced, an event that has been greatly anticipated by all Halo fans. The beauty of the Halo soundtracks, however, is that you don’t necessarily have to be a fan of the games in order to enjoy the music, the quality is, in my opinion, that good. So, if you love good music, check out the soundtracks for these two games. I think you may find yourself pleasantly surprised.
Palm T2 Wireless Keyboard
I love my Palm T2. My entire life is on this handy little device – my address book, my calendar, and much of my short story writing. It’s extremely portable and extremely powerful. It also has the ability to create and edit Microsoft Word and Excel files, a feature that I frequently use when I get a story idea that I need to write down quickly so I don’t lose it forever. I simply pull out my handy-dandy wireless keyboard, pop it open, and plop my Palm down into the cradle and start typing. I have done quite a bit of writing on my Palm, synchronizing it with my PC at home later on for further editing and modification. In this respect the wireless keyboard is a lifesaver and a great tool to have on hand.
The only real problem I have had with the keyboard is that the wireless connection doesn’t always work properly. I’m not entirely sure if the problem is with the infrared signal itself or if the keyboard driver on the Palm periodically falters, but I will sometimes find myself typing – absolutely nothing at all. Sure, I’m hitting the keys, but nothing is appearing on the screen. So, I have to turn the Palm off and back on, sometimes several times, before reacquiring the signal between the two devices. Occasionally I even have to turn the keyboard off and back on, along with the Palm, for the two to work together properly. It’s a frustration and a hassle, but when the two work together, it does allow me to write, whenever and wherever, I want when the need arises. Until I can afford a laptop, this arrangement suffices.
Tags: firefox, halo-2, music, palm-pilot, plugins, Reviews, sage, software, soundtracks, tungsten-t5
Group Thinks Classical Music Will Deter Hartford Crime
I knew that a lot of people today dislike classical music, but I had no idea just how much until now. It seems that a community in Hartfort, CT, are starting to play Classical music in a park after dark to deter unsavory types from loitering there. The hope is that the music will be annoying enough to chase these individuals away. And from what I understand, a community in West Palm Beach, FL, is already an example of success with this approach.
Point 1 – kudos to these people for finding a solution that works. Point 2 – it actually kind of stinks, though, some of my favorite music can also be used as a negative stimulus. Both Pavlov and Beethoven must be rolling over in their graves right now. This is definitely not facilitating the appreciation of fine art, is it?
Tags: classical-music, music, news, politics, psychology, The Arts
Y’know, I think I resent the implication in our culture today that an artistic man must be, at the very least, a closet homosexual. For whatever reason people can’t seem to grasp the notion that even the most masculine men can still be in touch with those things that are considered ‘soft’ and ‘sensitive’. The reason I think of this is because I was listening to a woman on the radio this morning talk about her very artistic husband. The interviewers immediately asked if she was sure he wasn’t gay. At some point in the discussion, she stated that her husband is a gay man who likes women.
I’m not so much offended by this state of mind in our culture as much as I find it mildly disturbing. I guess I’m wondering where we got the idea that ‘true men’ don’t have a clue about art. (It is a further sign of the neutering of the male gender in our society, in my opinion.) I don’t know about you, but I know quite a few men who are as masculine as they come who are also some of the most artistic people I know.
What society defines as a ‘true man’ seems to me to be only half the picture. True men are defined as being brawny, red-meat-and-potatoes, heavy-weapon-wielding oafs who swoop in to save the maiden by violently destroying all enemies. They are the guys with the biggest muscles, the flashiest vehicles, and the ability to seemingly hold the world together through sheer force of will. I would suggest that this is not really what it means to be a man.
I’ve seen a lot of guys who fit the stereotypical definition of manliness who are oafish, selfish, brutal, and lazy. In fact, the more men I see who fit the stereotype, the more I see guys who disgust me because they almost always have those vices. The thing of it is that they don’t even bother to try hiding those traits because somehow those are part of society’s definition of what a man is supposed to look and act like. I truly believe that a true man is one that has the characteristics of strength that our society so admires but also encompasses ‘softer’ traits, like compassion and love and selflessness. It appears to me that so many of the traits that are considered to be feminine are forsaken by men who want to be as manly as possible. But it is many of those same traits that I think unlock the artistic abilities and talents of so many who are gifted in the arts.
It seems to me that a true man is one who has an almost perfect balance of both masculinity and femininity, who can be both strong and compassionate at the exact same time. It doesn’t mean that the guy is gay, or even that he leans that direction. It simply means that he is tapping into all the built-in resources that God gave him. He is able to look at just about anything and see beauty – and appreciate that beauty for what it is by expressing it in a way that is in itself beautiful and inspiring.
Of course, maybe I’m a little biased; I’m an artist. I love my music, and I love my writing, and I have a high appreciation for art and dance and dozens of other forms of artistic expression. I definitely have those strong, masculine traits that our culture uses to define true manhood, but I also have the softer, more emotional traits that are viewed as weak if found in men. But it is those emotional traits that allow me to appreciate and to express art in my own way. I’m not gay, nor do I even remotely lean that way (just the mere thought is enough to make me ill). Rather, I see it as having the best (and some of the worst) of both worlds of masculinity and femininity, and it is not something I am ashamed of. It does, in fact, make me stronger because it is part of who I am and closer to what I believe a true man should look like. More men need to tune in to their softer sides, I believe, and not just because it will allow them to appreciate art more. I believe that men who are both strong and sensitive are ones who are able to have richer, deeper, and more meaningful relationships with others because it opens up their ability to empathize and sympathize, both of which, again, are great tools in the appreciation and expression of art.
Tags: art, artistry, culture, human-behavior, music, stereotypes, The Arts, Writing
I heard an evangelist speak once when I was a kid. His topic was music, particularly the evils of rock ‘n’ roll. I don’t remember much now of what he said but for one thing. It was something to the effect that rock music was evil because most rock songs put their beat on 1 and 3, rather than on the traditional 2 and 4 beats (or it could have been vice versa). Being just a young kid (I think I was six or seven years old at the time), I swallowed that line completely. It wasn’t until much later (read, college) that I began to question what that man said.
Over the past couple of days, I have been ripping some of my CDs from home to my work computer (.wma format) so that I have something to listen to while I crunch data all day long. I discovered my WOW Gold album and added that one to my stack. I’ve already removed a couple of the songs from my playlist, though; they just seem a little inappropriate to me. One is by Stryper, entitled “To Hell with the Devil.” Aside from the questionable usage of the term ‘hell’, I think it might actually be a wrong mindset. I’m sure we all long for the day when we can be rid of Satan’s influence in the world, but the closing chapters of Left Behind: Armageddon shed some light on what God’s perspective probably is – sadness that one of His creations even has to be condemned to hell. I think it’s something that we can learn from.
The other song that no longer graces my playlist is one by Larry Norman, “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?” It could be that I just find this song entirely annoying, but more it touches on a couple of personal peeves – there are a lot of great hymns out there, and there is a lot of great music in all genres (even at the time that song was written) that is not, pardon the pun, devilish. This touches on my philosophy of music, a philosophy that was challenged and reshaped when I began my college career.
Growing up I believed that music was split by some defining line into righteous and evil. I felt that you could take any song and clearly categorize it as white or black. This was in large part determined by the style of the music, though if the lyrics weren’t focused somehow on God that also played a huge part in deciding which was which. Imagine my confusion and dismay then, when I got to college and found that there were quite a few Christian bands whose style sounded very much like rock to me. Initially, I reacted as I always did by labeling them evil, as wayward Christians who had lost their focus on God. Forget the fact that some of those bands had exceptionally theologically rich lyrics. Their style was too rocky, their beat in the wrong place.
Over time I was pushed out of my comfort zone, and I was forced to reconcile this internal conflict. My roommate was a huge fan of Petra, the other guys in my suite played various Christian artists whose beat was a little too heavy for my tastes, and chapel frequently featured contemporary Christian music. I couldn’t escape it and so I had to deal with it. It was a gradual process, encompassing some of my Bible classes, various chapel services, and personal study.
I was actually a bit surprised to find that I had arrived at a conclusion quite a bit different from what I grew up with – I had determined that music, in and of itself, is amoral and that it is the way people use it that determines how righteous or evil it is. I could find nothing in Scripture that stated that any particular style of music was more evil or righteous than any other. In fact there are many places in Scripture where it describes music that can’t be anything other than lively (though what it exactly sounded like we can’t do more than speculate, but it very likely wasn’t ‘church’ music). Therefore, it must be certain principles that determine the level of music’s morality.
I enjoy a wide variety of music – classical, baroque, American, rock, Gospel, contemporary Christian, for starters. I try to maintain a diet of music that 1) keeps me in touch with the current trends, and 2) is wholesome for my spiritual, mental, and emotional development. I do enjoy some secular music, but more and more I am trying to limit how much of it I listen to, as the lyrics and content of so many of those songs are less than beneficial. I also avoid metal of any variety, as that, to me, is the music of rage, bitterness, and hatred, all vices with which I already struggle and so need no more such exposure, not to mention being very unartistic.
As I understand it, music is amoral; it’s what you do with it that matters. I have absolutely no problem with music that bumps. I like to get my groove on, too. And if the words are wholesome and uplifting, so much the better and is, in fact, my first music of choice. It took me quite a while to arrive at this conclusion (the first half of my college experience), but it is, I believe, a balanced and biblical stance.
I can’t wait to find out what the music of Heaven will be like…
Tags: good-and-evil, morality, music, right-and-wrong, theology
It’s been a while since I’ve written any reviews, so I guess I’d best get my act together:
Has Been
When I first heard that William Shatner had produced another music album, my first thought was, “Another?! What was his first?!” And my second was, “Shatner?! Music?!” All I could picture was Captain Kirk, and so I had a hard time seeing him as a sensational music star. Yet, here was his album, Has Been, and it is truly sensational.
To be fair Shatner didn’t actually compose the music for this album. Instead, he teamed up with Ben Folds of Ben Folds Five fame, who wrote the music to back the poetry of Shatner. I was skeptical when I first started to listen to the album. Few actors are able to make the transition into other mediums, and with the abysmal flop of Shatner’s Tek War series, I didn’t have high hopes for a music album. Yet, I was delighted and thrilled right from the first track all the way to the end. Ben Folds is on top of his game, and Shatner’s lyricism is catchy and engaging. It is a wholly different style from just about anything else in my collection and strikes a resonant chord with this musician and artist. I give the album two thumbs up and hope that Shatner produces another in the near future.
Armageddon & Glorious Appearing
This is probably more a review of the entire Left Behind series than of just these last two books in the series. Written by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, the series follows a massive cast of characters across the global landscape of a planet caught in the Tribulational judgments prophesied in Scripture. Based heavily in both Old and New Testament prophecy, the Left Behind series shows what these judgments might be like from the eyes of those who experience it firsthand.
The series was exceptionally well-written and very enjoyable as dramatic fiction. It is certain, however, that the books cannot do justice to the terror and destruction that will one day lay waste to the world as we know it and decimate its population to a fraction of what it is today. Jenkins and LaHaye did an exceptional job of covering all the relevant prophecies contained within Scripture, though it is certain that a fair amount of artistic license was taken with passages whose interpretation is symbolic and difficult to determine. Ultimately, though, the sequence of events is right on target and encompasses a sobering description of life between Rapture and Millenium.
Intergalactic Medicine Show
A relatively new online magazine for science fiction and fantasy aficionados can be discovered at Intergalactic Medicine Show. Founded by Orson Scott Card IGMS is an outlet for amateur SFF authors to display their wares. IGMS is a quarterly publication and features several short stories in each issue, plus a short story from the Ender’s Game universe penned by Card himself (also available in mp3 format). October’s issue also included Cards first novel Hot Sleep (later republished as The Worthing Chronicles) as a five-part series and the comic Fat Farm, adapted from one of Card’s short stories. Free content features movie and book reviews and columns by various writers. If you’re a sci-fi/fantasy buff, IGMS is well worth the $2.50 per issue fee.
Tags: books, has-been, intergalactic-medicine-show, left-behind-armageddon, left-behind-glorious-appearing, magazines, music, orson-scott-card, science-fiction, theological-fiction, william-shatner
During my commute home from work the other night, a song came on the radio that caught my attention after a minute or two. It was something in the pop rock genre, but what stood out to me about it was the fact that for the duration of almost the entire song, it never left the chord on which it began. The singer put some variation into his voice—but not much. The instrumentals behind him lent a little bit of interest to the song—but not much. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the whole song was the percussion—but not by much.
I kept waiting for the tune to progress to the next chord, to throw in a suspension, to modulate, to do—something. And it never did. The chorus did actually progress through the standard I, IV, V chords, but even those were pretty bland and were so covered up as to be almost unnoticeable. And while this is an extreme example of rock, it does put into sharp relief some of the things about popular music that I dislike.
I’ve been a musician for most of my life, playing piano since the 1st grade, and adding several other instruments to my repetoire over the years. I’ve played music by many of the greats—Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, and many, many others. The music I grew up playing and listening to had a level of interest, complexity, technical difficulty, and artistry that you just can’t find today. Granted, there is a lot of popular music that I enjoy listening to, but if given a choice, I will opt for the classic works by the great composers of yesterday. There is simply a richness and depth to their work that I admire and that I find lacking in so many of today’s supposed ‘artists’. The creativity of the great composers is why I will pick classic over pop every single time.
Tags: artistry, classical-music, creativity, instrumental-music, music, popular-music
I love Christmas music as much as the next person. But the thing I hate is when you can’t get away from it The repetoire of Christmas songs is inherently limited, and to have them repeated hour after hour for six or seven weeks on my favorite radio stations gets old after the first few days. This year has been particularly trying as the only good Christian radio station in the area has given up its regular format for 24/7 Christmas music (“Little Drummer Boy” seems to be the dominating tune). As a result, what I miss is good music with good lyrics, rather than the rubbish on so many of the other stations. Why can’t there be a radio station that airs music only six weeks out of the year—between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day—and that plays only Christmas music during those six weeks? That way, when I want my Christian music, I can tune into that station, and when I want my Christmas music, I can flip to that station?
Only one more week to go….
Tags: culture, music
