While practicing piano recently I had a particularly frustrating session working on the Bach fugue I picked up a month or so ago. For a normal practice session I play slowly through the whole piece, or what I have in my hands at that point, noting any trouble spots, and then work on logical sections from start to finish or sometimes the reverse. Sections may be a few measures or more likely eight or 16 or what feels independent. I learned the approach of working from the end backwards from my piano teacher. It helps with memorization and makes it easier to start playing at any point in the score from memory.
During the frustrating practice session I would work through maybe eight measures and by the end my mind would completely wander and lose the notes. Go very slowly, get it right several times, try a slightly faster tempo, and yet fail near the eight measure point. I had some to drink the night before, and considered that as cause, but I also worried that the event last year may be affecting me. Or maybe age? I probably had bad practices years ago and just never had an excuse to go all hypochondriac over it. There have been many sessions since that Bad One, both good and less good.
While commuting I have been listening to Locatelli’s Art of the Violin (see the L’art del Violino scores at IMSLP). I have a relatively inexpensive 4 CD recording with Susanne Lautenbacher that was burned to MP3 and uploaded to Google, so have been getting familiar with the work instead of looking at it on the shelf. Recommended performance. Anyway, I’ll often keep focused on the melody and structure for several minutes, but then wander and start thinking about work or life or whatever. But then maybe I’m just focusing on traffic, which is good. Still, the diminution of attention span is frustrating. I’ve also been listening to and following the score of Elliott Carter’s Piano Sonata (jazzy harmonies with Carter’s complex rhythms and part writing). Dedicated listening is key.
Because of the lack of sustained focus, frequent or just sporadic, I’ve been thinking about meditation, whatever that may be. I guess I’m just trying to sit and think of nothing which is the opposite of focusing on something but it feels like an attempt at controlling my thoughts and so controlling my thoughtfulness. We shall see.
My first visit to Vancouver and Canada proper from Fri 28 Sep to Mon 1 Oct for music shenanigans that changed before departure and became much weirder once the night of the concert arrived but could still be categorized as Shenanigans proper.
The trip was initiated on impulse when we saw that Childish Gambino was closing his last tour there qua Gambino. Tickets purchased, other tickets purchased, and hotel etc. However comma the week before our weekend there CG broke his foot during a performance and so cut the performance short and cut the Vancouver performance much, much shorter as in “canceled”. Make-up concert is the beginning of December IIRC, so we’ll probably be visiting again. Beautiful, fun city so no regrets.
Fri 28 Sep 2018
Drinks and snack at Cat Cora’s before departure, a tradition since some previous trip I don’t remember when, but do remember that said name sounded made up, and so was as good a choice as any for departure. Wine, cocktail, hummus, and chat with a 76-year-old who was visiting family and needed to get back home for work. Travelers are the best.
(Mid-flight, I glance at the video screen of one of the people in the seats in front of me, voyeurism we’re all guilty of, and see that Sen. Flake has made some ruckus in the senate Judiciary hearing. Everything since has gone to shit, but watching that 12th hour pause in the apocalypse was exuberant. (I’m sorry to even remember it now.).)
Stopover at SeaTac and more snacks at the Dungeoness Seafood House. The general environment has changed from South East to become Pacific Rim/Northwest. (Last Seattle trip was for the Peter Gabriel/Sting concert.) West coast, man. Current pulp sci-fi novel was left on the plane as we arrived in Vancouver and Lyfted it over to the Marriott Pinnacle.
The most holy of crabs, met the next day. He followed Lisa all the way from Louisiana.
Pause at the hotel bar for drinks before going out (over the weekend we had a stopover three times at that bar and the drinks were bad each time, ugh, if the hotel bar is not good I question the hotel). Still, we had a nice confirmation of dinner choices when the bartender recommended the restaurant we had already planned to go to: The Flying Pig in an area called Gastown (how Mad Max!). At Das Fliegende Schwein, waiting for our table, the hostess sent us across the street to the bar at The Lamplighter Public House. There, we chatted with a barfly incredulous at our Presidential Idiot. You and me buddy. Light dinner of shared squid and caprese was perfect.
Sat 29 Sep 2018
Day 2! Cold, light rain, and generally what you expect in the northwest. Sun would be good, but this weather fit the locale nicely.
Brutalist salmon hatchery seen in our park while walkin’
Locally-sourced late-breakfast/early-brunch at Forage–double fried pork sandwich, bison hash, scones for the next morning–to prepare us for our foraging in the wonderfully betreed Stanley Park. As we entered the park we saw one of many groups of people in various rope-based tree climbing competitions. We were promised coyotes and beavers (apparently nocturnally sleeping in their muddy pile of a beaver dam) but ultimately only saw ducks and squirrels and many dog-walkers. I had not dressed for the day, so in the gift shop planted in the middle of the park I picked up a woolen red plaid jacket with elbow patches (Professor Lumberjack!). Near the shop was a display of 8-or-so totem poles carved in the past decade by local artists, each telling the stories of various origins: the art of canoe-making given to local tribes by a water spirit (IIRC?), wolf god be-knighting a family, etc.
Land, sea, and sky
After an hour or so of wanderings around the many isolated park trails, we exited at the water to circle back to civilization and relax at the Cactus Club Cafe. Hot waitresses and a crazy chalkboard filled with inscrutable writings and drawings (ed. Lisa has a pic of the blackboard, need to get it to relive the mania). We continued our day of walking with a walk back through the city and its little neighborhoods: a distinctly asian area with shops and markets, quaint houses, and a Louisiana restaurant called The Holy Crab (see above) that had a crab with a halo as its logo. Eschewing po’ boys and jambalaya, we continued back to the waterfront for local beers and margarita pizza at the TAPshack. Late afternoon, the walk and the time change finally hit us, we had a power nap back at our room at the Pinnacle.
Snafu! from the TAPshack. What does it mean?!?
The evening’s major plans were a swanky dinner at the 11th best restaurant in all of Canada: Hawksworth. It’s also on West Georgia Street, so that’s nice. First stop on the way was the bar at the Fairmont hotel. It had great atmosphere and an excellent Manhattan and, even better, a female pianist who during her set did a loose cover of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off”. On to some of Canada’s 11th best food! I had fretted over not having a nice-yet-casual sport jacket to wear but, though very nice inside, there was a healthy mix of styles from somewhat casual to some very trashy club dresses to proper swanky. Dinner was on fleek. We shared appetizer squid (again) in peanut sauce then a sliced ribeye, haricot vert, carrots, cauliflower gratin. Any steak I have in the future should be ashamed of itself because I think I blacked out from deliciousness.
Back to the hotel and an early end at around 11:30 because we are old.
Sun 30 Sep 2018
Rain rain rain.
This was the day of the Childish Gambino that was not to be but it was still filled with hi-jinx. First was a long walk to breakfast at Cacao 70 Eatery where, sadly, it wasn’t that good. You get a delicious little fruit and chocolate appetizer, and the waitress was soooo nice, but what followed the appetizer and the soooo nice waitress was just meh. Next, the dotted line of walking to the Contemporary Art Gallery took us by The Moose Garage which was a must stop dive bar situation. Very Vortex-like so we were right at home. A wall of old blown-out stereo speakers, be-stickered walls, and music from Donnie Darko (along with, oddly, some 80s hair metal). Coincidentally, the bartender grew up in Adalaide (though he says he would never go back) and we chatted about our recent trip to Sydney and Lisa’s frequent Australia work comings and goings.
Dove Allouche’s works: Petrographie RSM 5 and Surplomb 7, 8, and 9
The Contemporary Art Gallery was much smaller than expected, only two large rooms reminiscent of the The Contemporary Austin, but the featured artist, Dove Allouche, had some stunning pieces that, so complex in their preparation, process, and ultimate expression, I can hardly describe. My best attempt: he sometimes works with old, pre-1900s photographic techniques and, with them, photographs and post-processes molds that grow on paintings, cross-sections of millenia-old stalactites, pearls, and the Paris sewers, using crystals as lenses, crown glass (that I think he created?) as part of the frame, and added hand-drawn tones. The processes’ results were almost overfull with content. The other artist, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, was a tonic to Allouche’s density. She works with short, alliterative phrases that kindof break the words contained. Think Jenny Holzer or Barbara Kruger who, weirdly, I just saw referenced in BoJack Horseman season 2 episode 4.
Other, enumerated wanderings before the plan B concert (and that concert was… oh, jeez, I can’t even…):
Uva Wine and Cocktail Bar around the corner from the gallery. Our first quality wines of the trip, many local, paired with groovy French pop music. A nice British Columbia pinot noir.
Beat Street Records. We had a choice of I think a dozen record stores in the city, most near Gastown which seemed to be hipsville. The only near-purchase I had, I had unfortunately forgotten the name of the album and realized later that it was one of those that I looked at: Pete Rock and CL Smooth’s All Souled Out. Dammit. However, it is a pain flying back with vinyl so, hooray… question mark?
Stop off at the hotel bar across the street from our hotel, because we thought it looked cool but ultimately wasn’t, for some bad wine but delicious house made chips.
Dinner at Taishoken Ramen. Great choice! And five minutes after we sat down as one of maybe three other patrons, it completely filled up and people started lining up out the door. We’re trend-setters. Neat.
One thing Lisa spotted when researching where to go before before our plan B concert (again, oh jeez…) was the Vancouver International Film Festival. Dozens and dozens of films to choose from, I don’t know how we picked what we picked but it was amazing: a Singapore film by the Singaporean director Siew Hua Yeo called A Land Imagined. Generally it was about Chinese guest/slave laborers that come to Singapore to work construction and disappear under suspicious circumstances. A sleep-deprived detective follows the immigrant underground in an attempt to solve the cases. The unifying theme, in a somewhat magic-realist story, was The Ephemeral. Workers without a home and without respect as human beings, land being created that seems to exist outside of any country, sleeplessness, homelessness, lack of self. 5/5. And as if echoing the film, we saw it in a multistoried mall that, like most malls you can think of, was at its end of days.
We chose DPR Live based on the fact alone that he’s a Korean rapper. Could be weird; could be fun. I expected maybe a club scene letting the beat drop and having a unique DJ behind him with maybe some odd, Southeast Asian sampling. Instead with DPR (which stands for I am not kidding you: Dream Perfect Regime) we got a teenybopper, ahem, chigga. Think of him as a Korean Justin Bieber (who’s a Canadian. huh). Thinking that he was going to start fashionably late and that the opener would run late, and not that the audience would be 14- and 15-year olds out on a school nite, we arrived to see only the last three songs. Mercifully. The look on the bartender’s face when we arrived and grabbed beers was classic. A worse night he could not have had.
Still, interesting is interesting and we definitely got interesting.
Post “concert” was across the street at the Cinema Public House which, it was assured, there would be no DPRats. Cool scene, man. A very bar bar with cute waitresses that hung with the best snark I could muster and the soundtrack was old school hip hop that was cool but made me more angry at my missed opportunity with the Pete Rock and the CL Smooth and the fact that they were All Souled Out. Still, good bar, yo. Post hip hop was DJ High Toones with some good cuts. And throughout were Temples of Dooms on like seven or eight TVs. Consistency is a virtue.
The end.
Mon 1 Oct 2018
But not.
Flight home but not too early and the reverse layover at SeaTac landed us in The Africa Lounge for drinks and snacks and talks with bar neighbors I don’t specifically remember. The vacation end was not all depressing like most vacation ends are and I credit Canada.
I had two large shelves of CDs that were gathered beginning with the one My Brother gave me when I was in college before I even had (or maybe when I first got?) a CD player when they were rare-ish and my and others’ primary means of music w/r/t listening was The Turntable. It was Elvis Costello’s King of America.
First and last songs open with the same melody.
Fun fact: after the obtainment or maybe before, I went to a Costello concert following said album/CD’s release with bro and his then girlfriend at The Fox. It was neat. Also fun fact: I got into EC in HS when I dug through My Brother’s albums and decided to listen to Imperial Bedroom. It was a revelation.
CDs were kept; CDs were moved from college apts to post college apts to shared apt (hey Lisa!) to condo (hey Wife!!) and sat for years on shelves and were looked at like Ulysses the book we want to read but don’t. Still, they had memories. I resisted getting rid of them and appreciate that. Getting them in digital form was more than overdue. I still have everything that I’ve ever burned to digital on local, RAIDed, 4x2TB (~5 TB total) drives backed up to the cloud, but I see that as an old person habit that is irrelevant-ish. Google Play allows 50,000 songs and all purchases are download-able w/o copy-protection. Although I think copy protection may be an old person’s concept also.
So now those shelved CDs are less visible but more easily accessible. And the act of reviewing what got burned reëmphasizes what was valuable.
Stereolab
I got “into” them when I had a subscription to IIRC CMJ. They were a magazine I subscribed to that contained a CD of a dozen or so new artist that, Pitchfork-like, predicted possessed coolness. I discovered so much from them. And one was Stereolab. If I dug through the CD tracts I would remember the exact song but it doesn’t matter.
Years ago and years after the discovery I went to a concert with Wife and Robert and Shelby at Variety Playhouse. They don’t disappoint. I wonder if they still tour.
Sonic Youth
This is the one.
I discovered them one weekend during college when friends and I came in from Carrollton to L5P to dig through what Wax n’ Facts had to offer. I had heard of Sonic Youth, for how long I don’t know, and that, via Rolling Stone of-all-places, Daydream Nation was a masterpiece (same publication that called Imperial Bedroom a masterpiece). It was like discovering Dark Side of the Moon. The double album provided the right amount of prog framing with noise-rock experimentation. I had been informed by Glenn Branca et al. from high school and so I easily absorbed the rock band consisting of the musicians of Branca’s symphonies.
Played this for my college music theory teacher and he was… intrigued? Hey, Dr. Dan Bakos!Found on the internet. Ah, memories.
This I had on cassette from … ROIR! (Google search). Obtained from mailings I would get with alt noise rock and no-wave. Sonic Youth’s first album was also offered in their catalogues but they were very Branca at the time and less Sonic Youth.
Shudder to Think
I had found these guys via an early internet radio station that was more like a pirate AM station than anything else. Two Austin (?) guys who just played the shit they liked and were as much talk as music but it was great. Besides StT I learned about math rock and the math rock bands Durian (which for no specific reason did not make the cut to be burned to MP3) and Faraquet (same, no reason?). StT I revisited as I re-listened and found that they were a bands’ band and of the Pearl Jam time milieu indie. Respected and influential.
Thingy
These guys were the weird ones in a field of weird. They are math rock via Sunny Day Real Estate (maybe?) via The Minutemen (short song, yet pop not punk). I cannot recommend them enough as forgotten missed potential. I really have no idea where I found them (see May 2004). There was random internet radio, RIOR, Wax n’ Facts, CMJ, a brother? Probably something else.
Now, the musicians from Thingy did as musical theatre a piece based on G. Stein’s poem (see Jul 2006) called The World is Round. I only had access to short clipes but goddammit I loved that music. A few videos were available the time, but research for this blog post brought up the rarity of a complete performance.
I had two large shelves of CDs
Updated 4 Oct 2018
Nice coincidence: Sonic Youth is celebrating the 30th anniversary (1988!) of Daydream Nation at an event in Portland, OR. Included will be documentaries of their performance from 2007 along with archival footage. Gordon Withers just released cello versions of two Sonic Youth songs including “Youth Against Fascism” which rails against Clarence Thomas (today I’ve been glued to the Kavanaugh news). Days after the Daydream Nation screenings, Steve Shelley will be performing a fundraiser for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Over the past few weeks I’ve started playing piano again.
A few years back I started getting weird deficiencies in my right hand. Descending arpeggios started becoming odd then difficult when my 3rd finger would cross over. Degeneration increased over several months, carpal tunnel surgery was performed and completely ineffective, physical therapy was attempted, but here we are. My PT therapist did fascinating research and came up with focal hand dystonia:
in focal hand dystonia, the fingers either curl into the palm or extend outward without control
That about sums it up.
It’s depressing if I think about it so I usually don’t. I’m pretty much unable to play any of the songs I’ve written except for the more basic ones, and I never got my last rock opera in my hands at all. That’s probably the most regretful.
I got itchy recently and so picked up Shostakovich’s Prelude #5 from opus 87. It’s a nice little piece in D major-ish and distributes the themes across both hands. I’m at speed now with not too many stumbles with my 3rd and 4th fingers. Working on memory. I just started Bach’s 7th fugue in E-flat from The Well-Tempered Clavier edition that I received after donating to the Musescore Kickstarter project. Difficult (for me) four note descending arpeggios that kind of tax a very weak fourth finger. Getting stronger though. I’m still surprised with the difference in competence between the two hands.
It feels very good to get back. I hate that I’m not composing and playing my own stuff but am still enjoying and hopeful.
