Dance and Trance

Today’s direction was doled out by the dear, dependable, doting, devoted… Dog Whisperer! And she has determined that the dissertation of the day shall be:

Delirium

Which is a state of confusion which I tend to dabble in thanks to regular sleep deprivation. But I’ve written about that quite enough, thanks, so how about we fudge one letter:

Delerium!

That’s better. Now, back in high school some of my pals would talk about this new Canadian band, now referred to as “industrial dance pioneers,” called Skinny Puppy. I never once looked into them which in hind sight might be a mistake. One of Skinny Puppy’s premier regular guests was Austrian-born Canadian Wilhelm Anton “Bill” Leeb who is probably most famous as the founder of group Front Line Assembly.

But Bill Leeb is also the founder and constant component of a long evolution of partnerships who passed through blended phases of industrial, trance and dance  recording projects under the commercially successful brand Delerium.

Leeb and his Delerius partners have produced fifteen albums since 1989, more than a dozen charted singles, twenty music videos and two Juno awards; the last in 2000 for single Silence with vocals by Sarah McLachlan. It charted number three in the UK and number one in both Ireland and Scotland and it’s in pretty much every conversation about best trance songs of all time along with best dance songs of all time.

Rockin’ Roddie put me on to Delerium early in the millennium and I really dig them for all the same reasons I dig Enigma. Though I’ve never been a dance music guy they have many songs I just straight-up dig, and partly for the ambient ethereal qualities which have been a regular component through the decades, to varying degrees, and which makes all their music (like Enigma) very prone to the sci-fi, fantasy and mystical moods which make these two groups constant features on almost every writing project music playlist I ever throw together. I often write to music.

Here are some great lesser-known offerings from my fave albums if you wish to sample:

Consensual Worlds from Semantic Spaces, 1994

Tectonic Shift from Nuages Du Monde, 2006

Chrysalis Effort from Music Box Opera, 2012

And of course: One of at least 60 remixes of word-wide hit Silence with vocals by Sarah McLachlan:

Contractual Obligation

Hey hey! Today’s chapter was conceived by my clever, considerate, conservative, Christian, community-conscious creative, word-counting writing cohort… Chess Champ… and he has charged me with this topic:

The Cars.

But first! A confession. This article is a catastrophe! Not nearly concise enough! I allowed my dear comrade to dictate not just the topic but what he wanted me to do with it, and while his conditions were clever, it wasn’t quite right with regards to my experience with this particular group. I am advising you move on to D-Day! Unless you are a big Cars fan in which case… you might relate.

A good high-school buddy who lived down the road was a year older and the first of our gang to drive his own car; a compact Toyota Tercel which he zipped around town in as constantly as possible. Half the time he blasted the Doors’ Break On Through from the stereo and the rest of the time it was Let’s Go by the Cars. He was clearly making a public statement about his particular brand of coolness. A couple years later I got my own car and it was coincidentally the very same Toyota model but I was way too mature for such bombastic public broadcasting. And by that I mean my speakers were too small.

The exhilarating Let’s Go “double-edged anthem” (as described by critic Brett Milano), one of dear Ric Ocasek’s finest offerings, is the kind of epic that could rev an arena crowd into a frenzy. Personally it always brings me back to the summers of late adolescence where we were always revved up to fucking do something but with few places to actually go, and with those endeavors which could barely satisfy us being covertly plotted beneath the radar of our seemingly-clueless pain-the-butt parents.

But we survived. Our dear parents survived us, and with more than a little sadness, Ocasek has not. Though I suppose that 75 years is a pretty good run by rock star standards.

He wrote Let’s Go during the late seventies but in music-years it’s a solid eighties phenomenon and magnificently one of at least five Ocasek pop-rock or new wave masterpieces any of which, if attributed to any similar songwriter in pop history, might qualify as their best song ever written.

… In my humble opinion.

Bye Bye Love is another. Similarly anthemic, it was one of those giant songs I had to wait years to acquire while it spent some of that time at the very top of that list: that magical roster of songs which I don’t think that net-entwined youths of today have: songs you dearly wish to possess but which elude you and which prompt you to swiftly murder any loved-ones who dare open their mouth and distract you when it has suddenly, magically leapt from the radio and made your whole day.

The third of the giants is My Best Friends Girl, less frenzied but with an addictive goofy rockabilly twist. This was the piece which endeared me to the very cool but slightly nerdy and vulnerable Ocasek and the I’m gonna do whatever I want here, goofy-or-not and if you love it, fine! attitude which I perceive.

Cue 1984 and an impossible barrage of masterpiece pop and hard rock music albums including the Cars’ Heartbeat City, my apex of eighties new wave and one of my fave discs ever. It was produced by the the legendary Robert “Mutt” Lange who ran straight from its completion right into the production of Def Leppard’s epic album Hysteria!  

Here’s my Heartbeat City experience (are you still reading? I warned you not to!):

1. Hello Again: A simpler song perhaps, middle of the road by Cars standards, but the pounding energy, the rising call-and-answer, is a wake-up call. You’re in for an experience here! All my memories of this song revolve around the album itself and anticipating another full listen, perhaps with drumsticks in hand for air-drumming, likely the lights out and maybe even an illicit can of beer from my cleverly hidden cache: the bottom drawers of the basement fridge which, I found out years later, my folks knew about the whole time.

2. Looking For Love: Lyrically it’s the thematic epitome of this album’s tracks, though it might be the only perspective not in the first person (I can’t believe I noticed that. Are you finding this a torture yet?) Not one of the album’s highlights by any normal measure but a great tender, melodic tune according to my ears and a mighty big step up from the opener.

3. Magic: …And then, bang! Another huge step up, right to the top. This is, upon most recollections, my favourite Cars song ever. The chorus utterly soars and I dig the transition back to verse with the resounding straight-up guitar riffs. I am reminded of summer holidays (all these songs take me back to high school) with sunshine galore, no summer jobs yet, and no fucking school. For years I assumed this was the most popular Cars song ever and was shocked to find out years later that while it charted and proved an MTV darling, it didn’t even crack the top two of this album!

4. Drive: The Cars melodic masterpiece. A ballad. I assume this track charted highest. Deep and patient and every single word, note and moment delicious. Very oddly, it always takes me back to earlier summer vacations which happened well before this song was released. Weird, I know. I once sang this at Karaoke with a 20-year-old pal who glared at me when I sang “Nothin’s wrong differently in it’s last incantation, exactly right, the way Ben Orr (not Ocasek!) sang it. Later I left his body in the dumpster behind the pub. Wait! No I remember now. I let him live. I didn’t even mention it afterwards.

5. Stranger Eyes: Filler. But filler doesn’t get much better.

6. You Might Think: If I had to pick Ocasek’s epic six, instead of five, this would probably make it. It’s got all the hallmarks of the Cars best, charted second best after Drive, as far as I know and won MTV’s (first ever I believe) Video of the Year. So there.

7. It’s Not the Night: Hard rock filler like Stranger Eyes. And yet it hit 31 on the rock charts. Oh well. Beats me.

8. Why Can’t I Have You: Not as great or quite as slow as Drive but it’s a keeper. Melodic, tender, sincere, with the same harmonic diversity in the vocals and the electronics as the faster songs. The album’s fifth single but I don’t think it charted.

9. I Refuse: The rapid, jumping, simple track that pretty much every rock album reserves a spot for. But consistent with its peers in almost every way (Only Drive was a departure).

10. Heartbeat City: I know of very few albums besides this one, where this engaging whimsical title track couldn’t crack the top three. Musically this is the mystical magical track. It’s wondrous, wonderful and lyrically the deepest. All my memories of this track revolve around the act of deliberately absorbing the album, and its deeply satisfying conclusion.

Ee-gads. Am I done? Yep. I’m done. If you read the whole damn thing you win a prize. Something priceless like a pack of toilet paper.

The Brain

Hey hey, I’m back! Today’s bit is brought to you by the bright, bold, brave, brash, boastful, benign, bighearted (and bipedal)… brother of mine. And he has assigned the topic…

Blindness

One of the most fascinating bits of science documentary I ever absorbed was an experiment with regards to total blindness in individuals who suffered a dysfunction of the eye but whose visual cortex (in the brain) was intact, meaning they were equipped to interpret sight but not to gather the light to start with.

They were equipped with headgear featuring a camera, headphones and some software which performed this little trick:

The incoming video was converted into sound as follows: An array of musical notes played simultaneously at constant repeating intervals. Each tone referenced a row running across the video frame; the highest tone representing the top row; the lowest at the bottom. Each wave of sound in terms of its duration measured the row running left to right for each tone. The tone for a given column sounded softer or louder as it panned, in accordance to dark or light. Thus each brief wave of sounds referenced every (albeit course) pixel In the moving image. The sounds were delivered to the subject’s ears through the headphones.

And that’s it. There was no key; no primer; nothing to inform the brain what was being attempted.

The subjects would train by holding an apple in hand for instance, feeling the apple while their headgear camera filmed it.

Magnificently… amazingly… the brains of many of the subjects caught on. Using these devices the subjects gained rudimentary sight. They saw shapes and shadows.

Their brains made observations, recognized patterns and spontaneously put their visual cortex back to work. The brain assumed there was a problem that needed to be solved and of its own accord, it adapted in order to solve it.

These days they are working with neural implants instead of soundtracks to relay visual information but the science still has a long way to go in terms providing any rich degree of visual detail.

The original experiment, though, provides vital evidence that humanity has the capacity to evolve quickly, given the opportunity.

Augusta

Hey kids: Welcome to April A-to-Z blogging 2020. I’ve been farting around with this for a bunch of years, actually completing the entire challenge in 2015 with 26 must-read books, which may have been some of my most useful blogging ever. I followed that up in 2016 with 100 must-see films which I am very happy with - so far - and I still plan to complete this effort one day!

This year I have outsourced my topic assignments to my associates. Without further ado, I give you the amiable, affectionate, almost-altruistic, athletic and academically apt… Aqualad! And he has assigned the topic:

Albatross

The very prestigious invitational Masters golf tournament was first launched at Augusta National Golf Club which was built specifically for the occasion (as far as I understand), in 1934.

Craig Wood was a damn fine golfer in the day; though perhaps not as big as the threesome of Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen and Walter Hagen for each of whom the Masters would prove fairly elusive.

Wood finished the inaugural tournament second only to Horton Smith at 2-under and 4-under par respectively.

Then in year-two of the gig, 1935, Craig Wood kicked ass, leading his nearest challenger by three strokes as he entered the clubhouse on the final day. That challenger was Gene Sarazen who was informed by playing mate Hagen that his chances “were dim” with four holes remaining.

“Oh you never know,” Sarazen is reported saying. “The ball can go in from anywhere.” He then hit a mighty drive on the 530-yard par-5 fifteenth hole, and then aggressively opted to go for the green in two. Today there is a plaque at that very spot, titled “the shot heard around the world.”

The long ambitious shot bounced, then landed on the green, then rolled… right into the cup.

The incredibly-rare three-under par shot suddenly tied him for the lead with Wood, who at that moment first coined the phrase “Are you fucking kidding me?” [not true that I know of].

Sarazen finished the round still tied and the two then played a 36-hole playoff (unheard of today) which Sarazen won decidedly.

The three under-par result is called a “double eagle” in America due, I assume, to some amazing American mathematician concluding that -2 (an eagle) multiplied by two is, not -4, but -3. Who knew? In the British Isles/UK/Great Britain/whatever such a feat is called an albatross. So there.

This feat gave Sarazen his only Masters victory and combined with previous PGA Championship, British and U.S. Open victories, gave him the very first Career Grand Slam status in golf history. That feat has only been replicated by Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.

Craig Wood, meanwhile, did not so much wear “an albatross around his neck” having finished runner-up twice, but more of a “monkey on his back.” Always the bridesmaid…  

This first phrase loosely refers to being haunted by something you are guilty of. It comes from lyrical ballad The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in which an angry crew hangs a dead Albatross around the captain’s neck, believing the captain doomed them by killing this bird who had evolved to be a good, not a bad, omen. Or something like that.

But Wood would finally shake the monkey off in 1941, winning the Masters three strokes ahead of two-time Masters champ Byron Nelson.

See you tomorrow!

Day seven already?

So I was a sleepless wreck for a few days. Finally last night I enjoyed a couple decent little sleep sessions and am feeling motivated today. I put all the garbage and recyclables out to the curb and am now still basking in the glory of this accomplishment.

But I have also committed to writing for the rest of the day and evening except for a skype break with my dear family and have invited my writing buddies to a virtual write-in on our google hangout. Two have joined so… here we go. Wish me luck.

Day three

The housemate and I hit the grocery store first thing after they opened. I managed to score a 12-roll pack of poop tickets. So hooray. What little was there will not have lasted long. Or maybe they cleverly held more in the back? Sadly there were only a couple boxes of instant noodles remaining, which I grabbed. And I noticed the egg section was barren. Everything else looked fine that I noticed.

The cashiers were already stressed though their shifts had just begun. They were not pretending they wanted to be there. I thanked mine and wished her luck. She appreciated that and softened and connected.

Trust me when I say that this is the time to be grateful and not to bitch to cashiers about your dissatisfactory shopping experience. But if you are a special kind of out-of-it and do choose to bitch about your dissatisfaction to the cashier, have a look around at the human beings in line and notice the complete revulsion in their eyes. This is because you are the new terrorist/pedophile/drunk driver of the pandemic era.

We lugged our treasures back to the car, attacked the hand sanitizer and retreated back to the sanctuary, prepared for the siege.

With regards to the egg section, here's a short message from Lachlan Patterson:

Y is for YouTubers: Day two

Well, no breakthroughs yet. Only day two and I spent the whole of it fighting against solitude. I actually spent some time up on the second floor while the roommate came down from the third. We had a good chat and she even let me eavesdrop on a skype with her dad.

I had my own family skype in the evening, followed by a catch-up on my fave youtubers; Smosh Pit, Ozzy Man, SciShow, Miranda Sings, Fail Army…

Outside of that I made a rare plunge into facebook, trying to catch up on everyone. And guess what? That’s impossible. I spent hours and hours and there were many good friends I didn’t get to at all. Facebook is a full time job - times three.

Oh and watched a few effective documentaries including: All Governments Lie - about I. F. Stone and those devotees who followed, on Kanopy.com and The Fruit Machine on TVO.

As for the super-important to-do list, I didn’t even get around to taking my blood pressure pill.

Smosh Pit

Ozzy Man Reviews

SciShow

Miranda Sings

False start: Day 1

Here’s a little suggestion for the few of you who still come peeking around here now and then: If you’re home from work now or otherwise diminished from the COVID19 business, keep a little isolation diary. It’s a healthy pursuit for different reasons, and a chance it will help you learn from the experience by facilitating reflection. Solitude is critical to real learning.

The virus has stormed into my life like Ganesh and bulldozed nearly everything in sight:

My security shifts
Circle meetings
Dismas gatherings
“Poetry Corner”
Write-Ins
Movie Club
Regular visits with Gramps and the Flaming Liberal
“Tigers” training camp
Scheduling and preparation of video shoots and Trivia Night fund-raisers
Sponsorship endeavors
Family gatherings
A paycheque...

Oddly my cell phone has been simultaneously knocked out of commission which prohibits still other activities!

It has not bulldozed:

Work on the kids easy-reader storybook.
Work on the Crazy Legs race horse novel
Blogs (I have another anonymous blog)
A ton of other writing and research projects
Work on Tigers web site, social media, articles, research etc.
Prep for April A-to-Z, Camp NaNo and Story-A-Day-In-May
Reading
A plethora of video pieces and board game projects
Bedroom restructuring
Sleep improvement project
Diet change
Exercise (no pools though)
Several other self-improvement endeavors…

Somehow it has forgotten to knock out Mindcrack and the youtubes. Day-one I did too much of these things. My only productivity was in correspondence and failed attempts to fix the cell-o-phone.

Perhaps it is up to me to manage the distractions and diversions and to make use of this golden opportunity to put some of my life back on the rails.

And I wonder… I dare to wonder… could solitary confinement be part of the answer that allows me to re-engage spiritually again; to value people again; to retreat from some of this contempt, back toward pity, back toward love. I know the wisdom of it. I have not forgotten.

Absence has made the heart grow fonder before.

Progress

I finally concluded that some degree of my reluctance to surrender important writing projects to a sleep-deprived brain, was edging into the overly-cautious realm. I won’t say paranoid. And so in my fair-to-middling condition I pushed forward and finished the rewrite of Mom’s Spring is Coming kids’ story and sent it off to her.

Relatively content with that endeavor I summoned the gumption to make my way to the Cat House (home of the Scooterville Tigers) where the Scooterville Stingers junior hockey club currently reigns, and caught a game.

But first I slipped in the home team door where I was met with a hallway full of stampeding husky young hockey players. Like some kind of fat Indiana Jones I scurried head-on and ducked into an alcove just in time to let the pack pass. They then about-faced and regarded the route back. I turned to the stragglers, now at the pole position. “Do you know where I can find Ken the Reporter or Chris the Marketing Dude?”

“Never heard of them.”

“Really? They’re part of your organization. Are there any execs here at all at this time?”

“Yeah. End of the hall on your left.”

“Oh. Okay. That’s a long way. If I head there now are you guys gonna trample me to death?”

“Yes,” he stated flatly.

I made the leap that he was prodigiously gifted in the art of irony and not a young psychopath and made the trek without tragedy. I finally tracked down their VP.

“Hi. I’m with the Tigers,” I said, “The guys who stink up your dressing room in your off season.” I offered a lightning-round summary of our shared concerns and opportunities as I saw them. “I’m hoping we can have a proper chat some time.” I then accepted an invitation to attend one of their exec meetings. Primarily I hope to land them as a partner in an ongoing trivia night fund-raising enterprise I’ve been putting together.

Okay. Were getting somewhere.

Going East

“I think of it as going east,” said Cat Man. “when I choose which direction to step in any moment; which frame to enter next, knowing that as I turn the world the world turns me.”

“Nice.”

“Because for me East represents the source of my… guiding forces… according to my culture. You would give it a label that suits your own views.”

“No I like that. I’m more directly attuned to Buddhism and Hinduism then the other… philosophies. So yeah. And also the most inspiring thing that’s going on right now is following my friend, the Eloquent Potter on his journey in Cambodia and Vietnam. It’s actually one of the few motivators for me right now. I want to lose enough weight that I could travel there. I want to spend some time away from here… with people who don’t speak my language. I want to communicate primitively and not be shown a person’s menu of insanities so easily. So yeah. Going east.” 

X is for eXpress window

I pulled ahead with one hand on the wheel and the other clutching my coupon and cash.

The youth in the window wore a swoopy golf shirt, a golden arches baseball cap and a big smile. "Hey is that a Chrysler Intrepid?" he says.

"Sure is."

"My dad LOVED his Intrepid. He still talks about it."

"Yeah I know." I handed him my papers.

"Oh wait; I talked to you before about this didn't I?"

"Yep!"

"Sorry!"

"No problem. It's nice to see the same employee twice in this place for a change!" said I. "I guess things are going really well for you here."

"Ah..." he gave me an awkward grin.

"Or should I say really not well? That you're still here?"

He glanced over his shoulder before whispering "Exactly."

W is for Wavelengths

I met with Video Kid for the first time in months. We started making plans for a series of promotional videos with Scooterville Tigers players in pairs interviewing each other. I aim to provide all the necessary props and environments where they can just have fun with each other and bring out some humour. The idea is based on the Leaf to Leaf videos on youtube. I believe that potential fans need more than just a great product on the floor. We have a great team (and a strong organization to guarantee future great teams), and lacrosse by any criteria is a fast and fascinating sport but that’s not enough. Besides making Scooterville’s half-million-plus population (with pro and semi-pro teams in football, hockey, basketball, soccer and field lacrosse all competing against me) aware of us, let alone convincing them to come out and put their asses in a seat, I believe that fans need the opportunity to get to know the players as people, or at least feel that they are, in order to really build a solid fan base.

Video Kid has excellent equipment and shooting and editing skills but I don’t yet know about vision. We talked about the telling of stories, whether written or on film. I talked about their complex structures, in terms of novels, how multiple types of rhythms interact like wavelengths: writing flow; emotional resonance, the pattern of tensions building and dissipating…

I know that similar structures must exist in video but I am not experienced enough in this realm to view the accounting. Or am I? Have I actually tried?

We agree that there is too much video work worth doing for him to handle alone, and he is only ours for free for a limited time, and that I need to acquire some good equipment and get in the game.

I have put some lo-fi artsy fartsy little vids on youtube but this format won’t cut it in the realm of sports journalism.