Month: April 2020

Coronavirus – Sat 25 Apr 2020 – Where we’ve been

My first post was on Thu 12 Mar 2020, six weeks two days, when the president made his first address on the virus. It’s not easy to remember what’s changed.

6 weeks ago

12 Mar 2020 – My first post and this was fucking deep into the problem. At the start, it was mishandled and downplayed by Trump. Govt studies and deliberations were being marked as classified. Racist terms were being floated to distract. Italy is imploding. NBA asshole Rudy Gobert acts like an idiot and causes the shutdown of all sports.

15 Mar 2020 |16 Mar 2020 – My company starts working from home. Airports overrun by arbitrary shutdown causing untold infections. Massive state-by-state shutdowns begin (schools/bars/restaurants). Bernie and Biden debate. DJIA tanks.

18 Mar 2020 – Growth starts looking exponential. I start documenting numbers and projections.

Thu 19 Mar 2020 – Continued racism from the president. Attacks on media as cause/source (?) of virus. Favipiravir/remdesivir/HCQ as potential treatments? China emissions down 25%. 13k US infected.

Sat 21 Mar 2020 – More lies from the pres: no testing, no medical ships, no Google website, and his preemptive shilling of HCQ does not look good. Our numbers start looking worse than other countries.

Mon 23 Mar 2020 – Republican passes stimulus that ends up benefiting large corporations. More proof of HCQ failure.

Tue 24 Mar 2020 – Medical teams discuss morality of choosing who dies.

4 weeks ago

Mon 30 Mar 2020 – Time line of this all went wrong.

Wed 1 Apr 2020 – Are masks useful?

Thu 2 Apr 2020 – Kemp sez he just now learned about asymptomatic infection.

2 weeks ago

Sat 11 Apr 2020 – Govt is stealing supplies from the state; SCOTUS allows people to die in the Wisconsin primary; Nichols: “With each briefing, Trump is making us worse people.”

Now (Sat 25 Apr 2020)

Wed 22 Apr 2020 – Battle for the shutdown, astro-turf to “re-open”, and ???s as to whether we have “contained the virus” (we have not).

Red Sonja comics, Volumes 1-3

Updated 27 May 2020 with Conan collections

I’m not sure where but I’d seen covers of old superhero comics recently and, though I read mostly sci-fi comics growing up, it made me nostalgic for some classic 60s/70s pulp art cheese. Enter, somewhat unrelated, Comixology. I had resisted them in the same but greater way that I resist ebooks: physicality is important and especially so with art. However, also as with ebooks, for much of what I purchase physicality is not needed because some of the books are more… ephemeral? In other words: some are worthy of taking up space on a shelf and others not so much.

Continue reading Red Sonja comics, Volumes 1-3

Three Pieces for Orchestra

Cover: Andrew Kosten, Ghosts, 2015

Audio exported from MuseScore:

Score exported from MuseScore:

three-pieces-for-orchestra

Audio mixed and exported from Dorico (14 May 2021):

Audio uploaded to YouTube with cover art (15 May 2021):

Cover: Andrew Kosten, Ghosts, 2015
  1. “in this time of quarantine”
  2. the djinn
  3. breathe

The first one comes from a comment someone had made on Twitter that, though simple enough, felt resonant when given its own context. It stuck with me unexpectedly so I never bookmarked the source. The second is from a parable by Howard Taylor (which I referenced here a few weeks ago) regarding the cost of our responsibility to others. The last is both a hopeful and not hopeful outcome.

After obsessively listening to the New Complexity pieces, I realized that I haven’t gone far enough into the atonal world. Although much of New Complexity is tonal-ish, the extreme range was creatively inspiring and I tried to go as far as I could with that approach for “quarantine”. That section is also a stretch towards the “tapestry of sound” described by Piston for when many simultaneous voices work with drastic melodic contrast. It’s our unnerved disbelief at what we’re in right now, responding with nervous laughter. That moves on to a piece, “the djinn”, emphasizing primarily rhythmic contrast across voices. It’s the destructive, will-less bouncing of contagion. Finally to a harmonic/rhythmic consonance, but that’s ultimately bruised by what occurred previously.

(This is exported from Musescore and I’m working on the cleanup in Dorico.)

Updated 30 min later: Speaking of New Complexity, I just picked up the mail and my copy of Finnissy’s English Country-Tunes was delivered. (Pic added below.)

first page of I’ll give my love a garland from Finnissy’s English Country-Tunes