Running After My Hat

Ridiculous pursuits, matters solemn and less so

Make Your World

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[Above: an image designed to induce binocular rivalry: an attempt by one’s senses to forge a single thing from two conflicting images. See here for instructions on how to use.]

From whiskey river:

When you have lived as long as I, you will see that every human being has his shell, and that you must take the shell into account. By the shell I mean the whole envelope of circumstances. There is no such thing as an isolated man or woman; we are each of us made up of a cluster of appurtenances. What do you call one’s self? Where does it begin? where does it end? It overflows into everything that belongs to us — and then it flows back again. I know that a large part of myself is in the dresses I choose to wear. I have a great respect for things! One’s self — for other people — is one’s expression of one’s self; and one’s house, one’s clothes, the books one reads, the company one keeps — these things are all expressive.

(Henry James [source])

…and:

We have to recognize that the world is not something sculptured and finished, which we as perceivers walk through like patrons in a museum; the world is something we make through the act of perception.

(Terence McKenna [source])

…and:

Kneeling

Moments of great calm,
Kneeling before an altar
Of wood in a stone church
In summer, waiting for the God
To speak; the air a staircase
For silence; the sun’s light
Ringing me, as though I acted
A great rôle. And the audiences
Still; all that close throng
Of spirits waiting, as I,
For the message.
Prompt me, God;
But not yet. When I speak,
Though it be you who speak
Through me, something is lost.
The meaning is in the waiting.

(R. S. Thomas [source])

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Looking for a Writing Prompt?

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Long-time RAMH friend Marta has started a new blog. It’s based on something other writers may have thought, from time to time: I bet in another world I’d be appreciated more than I am in this one…!

Marta’s taken it a step further: writing the blog as if her famous-mirror-counterpart — called simply “M.” — were writing it.

[In the following paragraph, both “M.” and “Marta” are fictional characters. “Marta” may be based on the real Marta, but there are probably points of difference, too.]

The entries so far have described how she, Marta, first learned of the existence of M.: the arrival — obviously through some rupture in the space-time continuum — of a fan letter, to M., in response to the latter’s most recently published title. An interesting twist: M.’s book is not a book which Marta never heard of. It’s from one of Marta’s own manuscripts, which she hasn’t yet shown to anyone. M. has also done usual blog-type posts, given that she’s a blindingly successful novelist of course. In the most recent, she recounts how her editor has helped her shop for a place to live on what appear to be the streets of Greenwich Village. And she’s acquired a stalker.

Marta — the real one — is enlisting interested readers and writers in creating the new blog. She’s called for them to write fan (or other) letters to M., as if they were people who know (of) her in this alternate universe… real letters, preferably handwritten (real-world Marta seems to love all paper artifacts).

To participate, just drop her a line via the comments at that new blog — called Famous in Another Universe, btw — or at her regular place, writing in the water, and she’ll work out the details with you.

And of course, taking part in this project or not, you may enjoy just reading along as it grows. Start here (the post called “The Wormhole and the Envelope”) and just click the “next post” links below each entry.

________________________

P.S. I haven’t cleared any of the above with Marta, so for any number of reasons this post may not hang around for long. :)

 

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Emerging, Blinking, into the Sunlight

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If you’ve been visiting RAMH for more than a few months, you probably know I’ve been a bit… distracted recently. And it’s probably going to happen again in a few weeks, when I again take up my rock hammer, rope, and lanterned helmet, wandering back into Seems to Fit for the Nth and final time.*

In the meantime, I’ve got some sprucing up to do — in the real world, for sure:

Heaps of printouts, notes (sticky and otherwise), fruit-and-grain-breakfast-bar wrappers, reference books, recorded but unlabeled CD-ROMs — all of that will vanish from within a dozen feet of my elbows. [Hmm. “Feet of my elbows” — now there’s a phrase I don’t think I’ve even seen before. And probably with good reason.] I’ll add things back into the daily home routine that I’d put aside; maybe I can again watch an occasional movie on a weeknight, and sleep in a little in the morning before getting ready for work. Maybe The Missus and I can play some cards. And maybe I can once again read for more than five minutes before dropping off to sleep.

I’ve also got some dusting and renewal to take care of around Running After My Hat. This won’t necessarily involve changing the look itself — replacing the “theme” — but I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve got a bunch of draft posts in the hopper on favorite but time-sucking topics, posts in the What’s in a Song and Perfect Moments categories especially.

(My erstwhile but long absent co-blogger has even knocked plaintively on my window a couple of times, signing to me through the glass, waggling granite fingers as though manipulating an invisible keyboard. He seems to long for personal expression.)

And finally, I’ll be trying to spend more time and care in visiting other people online. Yes, I know why I’ve been too preoccupied to do more than look through so many windows in passing. It couldn’t have been otherwise, and I won’t say I regret it, exactly. But I’ve missed the back-and-forth at some favorite blogs. It’s past time to go rapping on their windows, too.

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* Er, well, the Nth and final time of my own choosing. After which, others will start to chime in. They may have no suggestions at all, but I don’t count on it.

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Midweek Music Break: “Michael Meets Mozart”

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Longtime visitors to RAMH know (as I have said) what I don’t know about music could fit, barely, into a large stadium. (A roofless one, so that the heap of facts and sensibilities inside can actually rise higher than the walls.) So for me to claim that some musical performance awed me — well, that doesn’t claim much.

But this…

Before seeing this piece, I was completely unfamiliar with pianist Jon Schmidt and cellist Steven Sharp Nelson, who collaborated on it. They’d intended to do a mashup, a “Mozart-style arrangement involving several songs by modern artists” — but couldn’t get permission to use the tracks they had in mind. The original composition they came up with instead, says one site, “[weaves] together inspirations from a handful of known influences, including Michael Jackson, Mozart and U2.”

Whatever the source(s) for the final product, yes, I am awed. It’s a dizzying, exuberant blend not just of musical genres but of virtuosity and special effects, both video and audio. (And it took twelve hours just to film.)

Here y’go:

From the YouTube page:

On the recording, Steven Sharp Nelson laid down over 100 tracks including cello textures never known possible. Every single sound on the video was made using only the instruments shown: piano, cello, mouth percussion and kick drum. We utilized some cool effects on lots of stuff… for example the U2-style delay on Steve’s pizzicato at the beginning.

The extra string on the electric cellos (the black cello has an extra high string and the white cello has an extra low string) allowed us to cover the full range of the orchestra. The deep bass drum sound is a bump on the body of the cello with a little help from some effects. The shaker sound was created by Steve rubbing rosin on his bow. The record scratch is Steve scratching a quarter on the strings… you get the idea.

Those two electric cellos look like musical instruments from the planet Tralfamadore.

Jumbled together with the other things in that stadium I mentioned: knowledge of musical notation. But I did glance at some of the sheet music for “Michael Meets Mozart.” Among the annotations interspersed between and within the staves:

  • delete F if you can’t reach
  • this is what the computer prints when you slide your right elbow up the keys
  • let ring as long as possible with half pedal

There’s this, at the very top (whatever it means):

  • chills up

and later (my favorite):

  • Watch your fingers on the lid hit! (I found out the hard way)

Ha! And also: Le sigh.

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Pottermore

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From The Atlantic:

In a much-anticipated press event this morning, J.K. Rowling announced the launch of Pottermore, a new website meant to bring all-things-Harry Potter to the Web. It was revealed in a leaked memo yesterday that a central focus of the site would be an online gaming experience developed by the company Adam & Eve that will include real-world prizes such as magic wands secretly scattered throughout Britain and the United States. But the launch revealed that the site will be much more than that, though it does appear to include some gaming elements.

And here’s the woman herself:

More about JKR’s reasons for setting up Pottermore, and the interesting (to me!) discussion about which e-book format they’ll use, are at The Atlantic‘s site as well as elsewhere.

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ADMIN: Connection Problems?

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[breaking usual Saturday-morning silence]

Please let me know via comment or email if you are having difficulty accessing Running After My Hat.

Note: By “difficulty” I don’t mean flat-out impossibility — it might be just extreme sluggishness, unresponsiveness, and so on. All but impossibility counts — especially if there’s been a notable change in that direction! (If you, and only you, have ALWAYS had this problem, well…)

I’ve received one comment to this effect already, but it came from China-based Froog. He’s accustomed to late May/early June slowdowns: [irony alert on] for some reason [irony alert off] the authorities there become exceptionally nervous around this time every year, screwing down the lid on Internet access even more than usual. But this year some pages have proved unloadable for him.

No idea if this is something anyone else has experienced. Haven’t made any recent changes to the blog’s theme or plug-ins and so on. Still… Just wanted to check.

[returning to customary Muzak soundtrack]


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What You Miss When You Don’t Look Up… and Don’t Stand Still

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At the page at the Popular Science site where I first saw this video, the author says:

The video below was captured by Stephane Guisard and Jose Francisco Salgado at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile’s Atacama Desert. And it might make you cry.

What makes this time lapse particularly amazing — because we’ve all seen plenty of time lapse videos of the night sky — is the four telescopes in the foreground. Watching these instruments work against a black background would be endlessly fascinating on its own. Unfortunately you won’t be able to pay them too much attention. Because damn, what a sky.

Yes. Damn. What a sky.

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“An Echo That Did Not Die Away”

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[Image: a communications “satelloon.” For more information,
see the note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river:

There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you’ve been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw — but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realize that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you were transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of — something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat’s side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it — tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest — if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself — you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for.” We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.

(C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain [source])

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Book Review: Children of God, by Mary Doria Russell

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A few weeks ago I reviewed Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow at the Book Book review blog. I just posted a follow-up there, a review of The Sparrow‘s sequel, called Children of God. However, if you have not read The Sparrow, please don’t read my Children of God review: it assumes that you know what happened on the planet Rakhat.

Briefly, I found the later book much harder to like than the earlier (although I continued to appreciate Russell’s skill):

  • We’re forced to spend much time in the company (and minds) of The Sparrow‘s less pleasant characters.
  • Much of the fun of The Sparrow came from the kidding, affectionate, and sometimes flirtatious interaction among the humans who made the trip to Rakhat. That original cast of characters is almost completely absent from this book; in their place we have a much more serious bunch. (There are reasons why they’re so serious. That doesn’t magically transform them into a larky gang of back-slappers, however.)

As I mention at the end of the Book Book review, I’d probably rate Children of God something like 85 out of 100, vs. The Sparrow‘s 95. Still worth a read, though — if for no other reason, than that it completes the circle of Emilio Sandoz’s story, while redeeming some of its predecessor’s horror.

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