I had a good day today.
Catherine is away at a barbershop jolly, and has taken the kids with her, so I am at liberty to plan my own weekend selfishly ;) In the morning I went into town to get a haircut and do some shopping for food and also some building materials – it’s glorious weather here, so I was buzzing around with the ragtop down, with a blast of U2 thundering from the speakers :)
Whilst I was waiting in the barber’s, I read a few more pages from one of my current reading list,
Rights of Man by Thomas Paine. I am constantly refreshed by the vigour and elegant simplicity of expression, coupled with extraordinary intellectual precision. What a man, what a giant – where would the USA, where would France and modern Europe be without him?
Over lunch I read
The Times, and the extraordinary images of yesterday’s appalling instalment of the farce that was once the best railway system in the world was graven into my mind’s eye.
This afternoon I spent building a wall destined to be part of the back wall of my sitting room, to hold wall-to-ceiling bookshelves; it was pleasant in the sun, and I had the radio on to satisfy my need for “input”
hi, Nova Robot! After some pretty forgettable R&B I tuned into Jazz Record Requests, and heard the vintage
Potato Head Blues by Satchmo, and Bix & Tram (see here for details:
http:// www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/playlists/jrrn.shtml) and later some very cool Charlie Mingus amongst other good stuff. Late afternoon turned into evening, and I broke off for a beer in the lowering sun: Radio 3 was transmitting
La Vestale by Gaspare Spontini – a wonderful opera that was completely new to me, recorded in London a week or so ago. The plot concerns a girl who puts love before slavery to an oppressive orthodoxy, and who is finally saved from the wrath of the priests by the intervention of the gods, who naturally side with true love.
hi, you! The producer, Francesca Zambello, was interviewed in the interval, and was extremely lucid about the dual interest of works of art revisited for the twin reasons of assessing their contemporaneous impact and also for measuring their current interest to modern auditors.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/classical/opera/lavestale.shtmlWith Mum away in Oz for the duration, I invited Dad around for some supper – a quick chicken stir-fry with a Thai curry type sauce. We sat and drank an agreeable French wine with the meal, and talked about the incredible changes that his lifetime had encompassed; we were glancing through a book he had pulled out of storage, which was ‘The Silver Jubilee Book – The Story of 25 Eventful Years In Pictures’, presumably published around 1935, when Dad was 5. With captions made quaint by the passing decades, it encapsulates what the producer was saying about a dual perspective of interest: the straightforward photographic record of that tumultuous period of history is captured, with the additional insights of changing social mores underlined sometimes with tragic piquancy – the proud boasts about train speed records caught my eye, for example, as did news of major investment in the London Tube system. And as we sat chatting, a Beethoven Quartet played to us, courtesy of a recording made by the BBC two years ago.
As the evening got later, I put on a disc of Dave Brubeck, many tracks recorded around the time of my birth; when Dad went home the final tracks leached out into the clear night sky as I stood outside in the garden, enjoying a cigar and a last brandy. The fumes of the smoke and brandy blended with the honeysuckle scent from the canopy of Clematis Montana, and seemed to insinuate into the chopped rhythms of Brubeck and the lilting alto sax of Paul Desmond.
So apart from having drank well and deep of the blushful hippocrene, you may ask, what does all this rambling amount to? Well, I got to taking stock today, and realised that a fundamental constituent of what makes me who I am and what makes me better informed, sometimes deeply happy, always more aware of my fellow yuman beans, is this: that
I count myself fortunate beyond price to have been born in the age of information.From the two-hundred year old formative text, to the sepia photographs of WW1, to the news pics in a daily broadsheet, to the range of music I have listened to over the course of the day, to the manner in which I chat to friends over the web – all depend on storage media and technologies beyond the dreams of many generations of our forebears. What an extraordinary blessing this is, and how little we are inclined to give it due weight in our casual acceptance of our modern luxuries.
So, obligatory word post element! ;)
Are there any special words associated with recording (or data transfer of any kind) that are special to you in any way? And are there any particular media that you cannot imagine living without?
What a lovely day you had, l---y. I am so glad. Your post made me think of several things, none particularly connected to another. First, it made me remember that tomorrow is Mother's Day. I suppose this will reveal how selfish I am, but. The one thing so many of us mothers who are still raising kids would like the most is the one thing that we cannot ask for on this day of all days: a temporary vacation from motherhood. How I love the rare occasions when I don't have to worry about getting supper together by a certain time, or whether there are clean clothes and milk for tomorrow morning.
You and I are alike in many ways, my friend, but not in all ways. I very much appreciate the privilege of hearing music that moves me, and learning new and interesting facts if I happen to catch something on TV. (For ex., the fact that the platypus has venom, and can squirt it from its hind feet.) Reading has taken me to even higher levels of wonder, as has my access to the internet.
Without doubt, yes, I am fortunate to have been born in the age of information. But it comes with a price. Different kinds, in fact. One kind that is particular to me is the fact that I prefer not to know about unpleasantness that I can do nothing at all about. Only--once you know a thing, you cannot un-know it. I am still sorry that I read "Old Yeller"; the agony that my imagination put into that little dog still haunts me after 40 years.
One price that is common to all of us here is due to the fact that there is too MUCH information. Nobody could ever read everything that's on the internet. So we must choose what we look at, leaving us to wonder about what we're missing. Then there's the question of reliability--how do we decide when to believe what we've read? Our present-day wealth of sources, in whatever media, does indeed offer access to more information than in any prior era, but...just how much of this is mis-information? Not that this is anything new to mankind--think of the old medicine shows, for ex. But there is so much MORE of it, now.
However, warts and all, the information superhighway is here to stay, and I for one believe it has done/will do a lot more good than harm.
P.S.--I love your vision.
One of the best pieces of writing I have read on Awad Talk. Reading it made me also live your day. Soak in the pleasure of happy tasks and leisure, and joy of sharing something someone else has enjoyed over boundaries of geography (in this case) or time, through its recording. You wrote about the joys of information age and the nature of your post illustrated just that very beautifully. Thank you
Yes, the information age is a technological marvel, yet there is something even more marvellous in the remembering and retelling of stories handed down orally, as in the bardic tradition. We've had members reciting songs and poems form long ago memories on other threads recently, and that, to me, is more a marvel than digital Dave Brubek ever will be.
It was and is, indeed, a good day!
The "age of information" is such a incomplete word for *it. I'm sure there are more we could list for different reasons, but, three points of focus: the printing press (1500's?), public broadcast networks (e.g. US Radio 1927), and the internet. The permanence, permeance and now volume of info. Each hold an independent significance. Recorded music, although significant to a developing culture base, is a bit lacking in 'information'. The "age of communication" may be a bit more accurate, but I suppose, like everything else, it depends on your focus. My life would be considerably different without recorded music and do enjoy all I *hear and all I *listen to. It would be different without AWAD as well, which goes toward your point about not acknowledging the extraordinary blessings. I see (currently) AWAD as "what the internet means" or the most diverse collection of information, people available since I don't have much time to spend, nor do I wish to spend more.
Pardon my *digression.
---------
Are we creating an addiction to input or is this satisfying human nature? Are we supplanting a desire for interaction with just interinformation?
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Mav - The way the word "digital" sound is *revered and equated with "high quality" is a pet peeve of mine (since you asked). It would be tough to live without a piano.
Special medium that I couldn't live without: the book. I don't think paper books could ever be replaced to my satisfaction. They may yet invent some digital book, and it may someday catch on, but I doubt it would ever appeal to me.
I don't mind digital recordings so much, but I do love the vinyl LP. I have this poster over my bed to remind me of them:
http://www.streamlined-prints.com/images/m0002.jpg. There was something perfectly grand about sliding the delicate LP from its cover, placing it on the turntable, and placing the needle on the disc. And the sleeves were large enough that they could serve as substantial media for interesting graphic art, or lengthy, informative liner notes, or both.
On the other hand, I can play CD's in my car!
My medium of choice is the radio. I'll be taking BBC Radio 4 to my desert island. I love listening to the sound of voices. I love the way that that the programmes take time to produce (as opposed to talk-radio with streaming vox-pops). I even enjoy the programme where people complain about it not being as good as it used to be.
At the weekend I was driving through stunning countryside on my way to a wedding in a Scottish castle so-oo romantic when I heard John Culshaw (of BBC R4's Dead Ringers) doing his favourite impression of Russell Crowe as Maximus Decimus Meridius - a British actor doing an impression of an Australian playing a Spaniard in a American film set in Ancient Rome directed by a British former BBC employee. It stuck me that even heading deep into rural Britain, the rest of the world was only a twiddle with the tuning away.
Thanks Maverick for sharing a day in the life of man enjoying the pleasures of the brave new world of information. It was so cleanly written that my own counter comments seemed heavy and clumsy in contrast. So I didn't want to but you forced me to bring in a heavyweight ringer to present another view.
...excerpts from THE MURDERER - RAY BRADBURY
"...remember, I did a dance on my wrist radio? Well, that night I laid plans to murder my house."
"Are you sure thats the way you want me to write it down?"
"That's semantically accurate. Kill it dead. It's one of those talking, singing, humming, weather-reporting, poetry-reading, novel-reciting, jingle-jangling, rockabye-crooning-when-you-go-to-bed house. A house that that screams opera to you in the shower and teaches you Spanish in your sleep. One of those blathering caves where all kinds of electronic Oracles make you feel a trifle larger than a thimble, with stoves that say, 'I'm apricot pie, and I'm done.' or 'I'm prime roast beef, so baste me!' and other nursery gibberish like that. With beds that rock you to sleep and shake you awake. A house that barely tolerates humans, I'll tell you. A front door that barks: 'You've mud on your feet, sir!' And an electronic vacuum hound that snuffles around after you from room to room, inhaling every fingernail or ash you drop. Jesus God, I say, Jesus God!"
"Quietly," suggested the psychiatrist.
"Remember that Gilbert and Sullivan song-'I've Got It on My List, It Never Will Be Missed'? All night I listed grievances. Next morning early I bought a pistol. I purposely muddied my feet. I stood at our front door. The front door shrilled, 'Dirty feet, muddy feet! Wipe your feet! Please be neat!' I shot the damn thing in the keyhole! I ran to the kitchen, where the stove was just whining, 'Turn me over!' In the middle of a mechanical omelet I did the stove to death. Oh, how it sizzled and screamed, 'I'm shorted! Then the telephone rang like a spoiled brat. I shoved it down the Insinkerator, I must state here and now I have nothing whatever against the Insinkerator; it was an innocent bystander. I feel sorry for it now, a practical device indeed, which never said a word, purred like a sleepy lion most of the time, and digested our leftovers. I'll have it restored. Then I went in and shot the televisor, that insidious beast, that Medusa, which freezes a billion people to stone each night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little but myself always going back, going back, until - Bang! Like a headless turkey, gobbling, my wife whooped out the front door. The police came. Here I am!"
He sat back happily and lit a cigarette. The psychiatrist sat there in the sunshine of that beatific smile.
>Are there any special words associated with recording (or data transfer of any kind) that are special to you in any way?
I've always liked the word 'Flanger' from digital music recording. It's used to describe the effect where an offset and varied form of the original wave is created and it sounds phunky as phu..., well, it sounds good:-)
The etymology of the word is interesting too:
......................
flange Pronunciation Key (flnj)
n.
A protruding rim, edge, rib, or collar, as on a wheel or a pipe shaft, used to strengthen an object, hold it in place, or attach it to another object.
[Possibly variant of flanch, device at the side of an escutcheon, perhaps from French flanche, feminine of flanc, side. See flank.]
flange
\Flange\ (fl[a^]nj), n. [Prov. E. flange to project, flanch a projection. See Flanch, Flank.] 1. An external or internal rib, or rim, for strength, as the flange of an iron beam; or for a guide, as the flange of a car wheel (see Car wheel.); or for attachment to another object, as the flange on the end of a pipe, steam cylinder, etc. --Knight.
AHD
.................
As to your other question: I couldn't do without audio digital formats:-)
We ever find out what a barbershop jolly is?
Interesting thread altogether.
Coincidentally, we had a huge wind storm in Dinwiddie last night and all our power went out. The wind was too strong for my father to go get the generator, so we just lit candles throughout the house and listened to the winds gallop down the chimneys. I talked to a friend on the cell phone, so that was a technological advancement well appreciated. However, even cell phones are dependent upon batteries.
But after the call, after going downstairs to check on my daughter and father, carrying a little red votive in my hand, I accepted the silence in the house and marveled at the winds dying down...
It was a darkness that would not be broken for hours--we could do nothing against that darkness. It held us captive other than the little flickerings of candles here and there. And I had such a sense of peace and relief in the darkness and the quiet--all I could hear were the sounds of diminishing wind and my daughter's and father's muted voices in the kitchen.
When crawling into bed, I happened to look out the window onto the oak grove and hay fields beyond, and what I saw made me smile and nearly laugh in delight:
There were literally hundreds of fireflies blinking like mad! There are fifty acres in the fields beyond the grove to the front of the farm, and every spot of that front fifty was being illuminated with flying fireflies. I was held enthralled by the beauty--and seeing it all in a nearly silent house wrapped in unchanging, comforting darkness.
What I want to make clear is, for some mystical reason, seeing the fireflies in such profusion in the fields was better because the house was silent and dark. It was better without the sound of the television in the family room, and better without the porch lights on. Nature had taken out the force of technology and had replaced our blarings and brightness with such sweet undisturbed darkness other than the flickerings of hundreds of tiny, softly blinking fireflies. The fields looked filled with softly glowing jewels. It was as though Nature tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Now, I've calmed down this domain. Take a deep breath and look, really look, at what I can do--and do every night if anyone would bother to slow down enough to really notice me."
I understand the house murderer in Milo's passage...the ears would benefit most of all from a return to times without technology, and, consequently, the heart. But this was a spring night, and, to be perfectly honest, nothing was more wretched than living in darkness imposed upon us for five wintry days due to an ice storm.
Bottom line? If I really had to hone it down, it would be one acoustic instrument, a dictionary, lots of writing paper...and a cell phone with a good supply of batteries!
Best regards,
WordWaffler
> We ever find out what a barbershop jolly is?
C sings with a barbershop girlie choir, and they went to Southport at the weekend for a competitive beanfeast organised by the British chapter of the USn Sweet Adelines organisation. It was their first outing at the competition, judged on mucicality and style etc by four experts from the States, and they won the award as Best Small Choir ~ so all was *very jolly, especially in the bar(s)... ;)
edit: Latest news ~ the choir's subsequent grading apparently places it as amongst the 20 top such small-scale barbershop ensembles in the world, so an invitation to competition next year in the USA sounds on the cards. *Extreme jollity is likely to prevail :)
Will we ever find out what a beanfeast is?
Is it related to a wayzgoose (I love that word!)?
what a beanfeast is?It's when y'all come to dinner at my place, duh!
What's a wayzgoose, Jackie?
digital
hmmm, it’s interesting the way a simple word like that gains an emotive impact, isn’t it Musick? Most of the connotations for me are positive, like for BY, but I recognize exactly what you mean too about the loaded shorthand!
From the world of print I get significant images with words like type, lines, stereotype, press... any others?
From photography the violent electric brilliance of a thunderstorm last night made me think about flash (including flash in the pan), and a host from movie’s impact including pan and zoom, and most archytypically for our age perhaps would be cut…
Sound recording has given my lexicon particular resonance in words like bass, reverb (no, not a return to the verb from a noun!), fade, splice, and many others. I think we take for granted how much of our mental landscape has been altered and adapted to see the world through the possibilities opened up by these technologies…
Early 'Hi-Fi' gave us
rumble and
hiss. I still have an amp with a 'rumble' filter switch. 'Rumble', of course, pertains to the *fight your amplifier would have with the speakers to get the low frequencies out of them!
Being "wet" and "gated' are other words that have their roots forever embedded in recording technology. (For those of you unfamiliar: when you add reverb to a sound the sound gets "wet", and when you limit the length in which a specific acoustic effect is applied you "gate" its length (literally shutting it off before it tapers off).
I'm gating this post befo-
For me, nothing transcends that musty, burnished aroma of old books...books of all sizes and shapes and topics, stacked in mottled shelves waiting eagerly for yet another reader to fumble and dogleaf their pages. I spend many hours browsing our local used book store,
Hooked on Books, and, truly, those moments do wax eternal for me. Not only am I liable to find one of those out-of-print old friends I relinquished decades ago, but I sense around the spirit of the authors, the muses, the former owners and readers, the transparencies of the the layers of life and travel that have ushered these books to their home on these shelves pleading to be read once more. How can I refuse their offer? Typically I leave overflowing with reading material, rescuing paper gems from their exile, glad to replenish
my shelves with their favor, even if it takes years for me to read them. Nothing better than turning a musky, browning page, nostrils swirled with the delicate frangrances of antiquity (or just plain oldness), savoring words first printed perhaps forty years ago, like the seductive prose of the old paperback of William Faulkner's
"Intruder in the Dust" which I'm now absorbing, page by page, word by word. There will always be a book in my life, nothing beats the mesmerizing read of an immortal classic, or even good pop fiction...I'll never forget the experience of
reading tomes like
Jaws and
The Exorcist before seeing the movies. Read on!...
And, then, I am truly a vinyl dinosaur! My love for music generated such a respect for my album collection that I kept the disks (though not all the covers) impeccably fresh through all the years of inebriate partying...how, I'll never know. How I loved zipping the album out of its cover, handling it on its edge to ensure no fingerprints would ever appear on its fine lustre. Then its gentle planting onto the turntable, the aroma and velvety, almost soundless, sliding of the Parostatik over the spinning black grooves as it preened away every particle of dust, then a dab for the stylus as well. Then the reject switch and the music was off and running into the heart of another countless party. Many were the friends who offered to "put on some music" who were told "don't get your fingerprints on it...and make sure you use the Parostatik". Rituals repeated too many times to count (or remember
). And, to this day, I'll never be convinced the sound of digital recording is superior to the sound of vinyl stereophonics on a good system. Many folks agree with me. It's as if a quality creeps into the digital sound that somehow makes it less real, less present, alerting you to it's technological supremacy to spite the music it spews. A vinyl record just plays it's guts out for you. How many moments remembered rushing home with an armful of albums (bought onsale at Korvette's Dept. Store at $2.25 a clip with lawn-mowing money), so eager to hear the new music it felt like Christmas morning, opening the most-anticipated and flinging it onto the turntable while cradling that wonderful, welcoming album-cover with its artwork and artist info, and, of course, following along the lyric sheet on the first listen word-for-word. Yeah, I've got CDs, etc., etc. But I'll never get over record albums. And they say turntables are coming back! Once I find a record booth or vinyl store I'm lost among the album racks, thumbing through for new and old musical treasure. And replacing those three or four favorite albums that had a habit of disappearing at every party was more of a chore than I thought. I got back the Rolling Stone's
Hot Rocks fairly soon. But it took forever to find The Allman Brother's
Eat A Peach and Traffic's
Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys again! And Jonathan Edward's first album...took fifteen years to find that again! I got him to sign it at a concert (I rememeber he laughed at the picture and said, "Who's this guy on the cover?", holding it up next to his "new" face
) Go vinyl! "We're gonna sit around the shanty mama/and put a good buzz on!..."
I also have to admit, that as hard as I've tried to get away from it at times, I am a child of the boob tube. I don't get hooked on many made-for-TV shows anymore (a handful a decade), but I just can't wean myself away from the small screen for sports, news, and old movies (not to mention relatively new offerings like The History Channel, Discovery, and TLC).
yes, WO'N, there is something special about books, and the worlds they take us too.. far away from the mundane, or worse, world we might inhabit.
i remember lying in summer sands, reading the last 100 pages of Wuthering Heights, that summer between grade school and HS. the white sands and cool ocean breezes, the broad Atlanic gone, as i climbed up the rocky craigs over the heather, looking for Heathcliff!
and that fall reading great expectations.-- and later that year, Jane Eyre.
oh, the sheer luxury of having a library in your own house, even if you are a poor cousin, and a window to sit in, and read. less than 10 years later, when i was married, and we bought an old (victorian house) with a bay window.. that sagged, and leaked, and that i insistened be repaired, not torn off, and replaces with a modern bow window.. and after all the work was done, i had a quiet window to sit in, with a small window seat, and the rest of the room was fitted up as a library. the old fire place had long before been boarded up, and the old chimney now was used by the gas fired boiler, but i embroidered a fancy screen in crewel work to hide that fact.
we had to add a lolly column under the beam in the basement to support the wall with the bookcases.. but what a room! i felt for the first time in my life, like i had a place i belonged, that was mine. i felt rich! to have a room as library, and all the books to fill it, and window seat to sit in and read. what more could one ask for, or want in the world.
and i had money too, not a lot, but enough that i could buy a book if i wanted to. not a paperback, but a real book..
and a dictionary! and not just any dictionary, but the OED!its way to heavy to pull into your lap and just read, but what a joy! a complete dictionary! words, nestled like jewels in the a dark blue case.
i read gluttonously, devouring words.. a book needs to be swallowed whole, and then, read again, in sweet, indulgent leisure, each word, slowly being touched, examined, and taken in, like a small rich chocolate bonbon, held, and allowed to melt slowly melt, till it releases it's flavor and texture. it is smooth and sweet? yes, that's nice.. but, this word, is rough, and acrid, and almost unpleasant, but for the contrast.. or does it suprise you, with hidden depths of meaning? or a sudden sharpness? what joy, first to read the story, whole, then to read the words, seperate, and yet connected to the whole.
<a book needs to be swallowed whole>
Yes, of Troy. For nearly 20 years there's been a poster stuck on our family room wall with a quote from Sir Francis Bacon: "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." Words to live by, indeed!
to have a room as library, and all the books to fill it, and window seat to sit in and read. what more could one ask for, or want in the world.
Ohhh, Helen, isn't that the truth! How I would LOVE to have that kind of a room ! Our house is totally unsuited for something like that.
I've been thinking, lately, of the things we have in common, here; a love of words and language, obviously. I think my personal favorite is the double-entendre, but I love unexpected gems such as wayzgoose, and Alexis' word calendrical, that she used today. I so rarely see that word, and never use it--but it just rang, silver and tinkling, for me.
But we share more than that. Obviously we're all able to use a computer and to write well enough in English to be understood (mostly!). I would almost bet money that every last one of us has a love of reading. And, you know what? I think that, quite possibly, one of the things that keeps so many of us here, that has bound us together in so many different ways, is this: I suspect that nearly all of us can only find this type of word/language interaction here. That is, I imagine that very few of us are close in real life to anyone on a frequent basis, with whom we can share enthusiasm over a new word or usage, even those of us who do not live alone. I know my husband, though he enjoys a good wordplay, comes by here and does the same thing he does when I'm doing word puzzles--shakes his head, clearly indicating that he has NO comprehension of why I am fascinated, and eases away. If there's something funny I can read to him without a whole lot of background explanation, he'll appreciate that, but he has no interest in staying. So...here I am! You all nourish me, and I gulp greedily.
Another thing I have noticed is that so many of us are creative, in some aspect of the arts or another: music, drama, writing, art (hi, you!). And, oh yes--high intelligence.
Oh, I do agree with you, Jackie. The other night I was reading something on the board that was cracking me up--there were two threads, one about the hamate and the other I can't remember, but it had something to do with Bill's explanation of breathing. There I was in my little world, laughing at the computer screen, and my daughter asked, "What's so funny?"
So, I read her one of the threads and she looked at me with glazed eyes. She also had a good friend here, and the friend had glazed eyes, too.
So, undaunted, I read them the other thread. They shook their heads at each other and returned to watching Nottingham Hill.
Sigh,
Wordwind
[kingston trio music]
"When will they ever learn? [/music]
(Leaving ambiguous whether this is addressed to Dub-Dub, or about Dub-Dub. )
> the spinning black grooves
yes, such deeply evocative experiences ingrain themselves in our minds and memories and language!
does anyone know if the expression, originally from the jazz age IIRC, about grooving or groovy comes from the introduction of the early phonographs (hah!) or did it come from, er, something earlier? [unshocked]
(and thanks all for the evocative responses about books, old and new - yes, I think we can all relate to that one!)