Meridith Monk @ the Greene Space

I was listening to WNYC's New Sounds program tonight.  The most accurate way to describe the sounds is this: voices straining to imitate  fire engines screeching over a string quartet.

Jeez, I could just imagine what junk the host had to listen to to have selected the awful stuff he was playing.  The song came to an end to applause.  What I'd been listening to was not music chosen by the host, but a live performance by Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble along with the Todd Reynolds Quartet from the record release party for Monk’s latest album, “Songs of Ascension”.

Right away I thought of a Jules Pfeiffer cartoon in the Village Voice which showed a prototypical 50's early 60's era beat type identifying the film everyone walked out on as a test. 

Someone somewhere will claim some wretched excess as art.  Between songs the host,  John Schaefer said, "You explore the boundary between noise and music."  I think she's gone over to the dark side.

I left a post on the page indicating that I'd never heard her music before, but midway through the first piece the Garcia effect kicked in.  (I thought that was the most succinct and civil way of saying that I'd never voluntarily listen to her music again.)

Put another way, I'm too old to waste my time for this.  When I was younger I watched Antonioni's "Red Desert" twice because I couldn't believe that it was so bad on the first viewing.  It was. 

I don't intend to repeat the error with Monk.  Time has become too valuable.

Dendritic Arbor

In a Radiolab (http://www.radiolab.org/2007/jun/04/) broadcast on zoos the term "dendritic arbor" was used to describe the growth of dendrites after a monkey was transferred to a more enriched environment.

My immediate thought was to formulate a sentence using the term.  After a few attempts, perhaps influenced by having read an article about hallucinogenic mushrooms leading to a gruesome murder I settled for "Drugs were implicated in the pruning of his dendritic trees."  Not bad, but something involving topiary would have been better, e.g., "His dendritic trees look like topiary."

A Found Lyric and a Quote

I came across a piece of paper on which I'd written:

Not murder in the first
Not murder in the second or third
That woman brought down her man
as a hunter brings down a bird

 It sounds like a lyric for Frankie and Johnny/Albert.  I suspect it came from a performance on Prairie Home Companion.

A web search didn't get any useable hits in 4 pages. It did turn up a link to Raymond Hamilton, an associate of Bonnie and Clyde in a Google book, "Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde".  The book contained this quote:

Americans have fought one war to win their independence and another to preserve the Union.  Now they face a new war, between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess. " ~ former president Theodore Roosevelt in 1910

Nice quote, but doesn't seem so applicable to today's situation.

Ripped out a friend's heart and tongue

Under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms, mixed martial arts fighter Jarrod Wyatt of Crescent City, California ripped out the heart and tongue of his sparring partner.  The story (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48953331/#) and the accompanying comments just left me numb.  According to Wyatt the two believe they were in "a struggle between God and the devil".

On Thurday, September 6, 2012 Wyatt agreed to plead guilty before his trial to spare all (his family, his victim's family) from reliving the events.  He'll be serving 50 years to life.

What an obvious waste.  My father would comment, "This was so  unnecessary." in response to avoidable mishaps.  The comment was suitable for events large and small.  It's applicable here.  All they needed to do was not take the mushrooms.

Perhaps it is a curious facet of law that Del Norte County District Attorney Jon Alexander "said it was important to him that Wyatt admitted to killing Powell, and that it was a premeditated murder that wasn't the result of drinking psychedelic mushroom tea".

Recrudescence

In his 50th anniversary appreciation of Anthony Burgess's Clockwork Orange in the New York Times Book Review (9/1/2012), Martin Amis used the word, recrudescence, an unfamiliar term.  I doubt that I'd ever seen it before.  the definition is simple enough:

breaking out afresh or into renewed activity; revival or reappearance in active existence.

 Sounds like a term which could be trundled out to describe the dieting habits of the American public, but Amis used the term in reference to self-punitive guilt.

Beautiful Days

This sat as a draft for 5 months.

The days are lyrically nice.  It's early spring, girls are in their summer dresses (more on this in a second), and the weather is delightful warm, sunny with a slight breeze.  The fair skinned are slathering themselves with sun block.  Those in pursuit of a tan are well on their way.  The only fly in the ointment is civilization's implosion in the aftermath of the upcoming environmental collapse - nothing new here.

Girls in their summer dresses: many years ago I found myself staring at a young woman in my chem lab section.  I could not tear my eyes away from her.  It was embarrassing.  I'd been teaching the section for about 10 weeks, but on that spring morning I was staring at her.  Why?  After a few minutes the realization hit me and I started laughed out loud:  She was the first female student I'd seen in a dress in seven months.  For at least 8 months every female student had worn slacks or jeans.