Flower Day

Flower day!
Some daylillies

The True Vine

It must have been in the summer, about 1979. Or, I guess I should say, a long time ago. I was at the University of Illinois pursuing a doctorate in chemistry. At the same time, all of my ghosts were in rapid pursuit of what was left of me. I had pretty much lost interest in most everything because I was drunk or stoned all the time. My lab group got together and presented me with a guitar on my birthday the previous winter. By that summer, I used to sit out on the Quad and play the few chords I knew aimlessly. A young woman walked by and dropped a note into my case inviting me to a "music party". I showed up with my guitar, and realized that I was looking into a subculture infinitely below the radar, but at the same time, grounded in an undeniable reality so intense that it was like a neutron bomb going off in my head.

New Lost City Ramblers
Robert Johnson
Utah Phillips
John and Alan Lomax and 78 rpm records
Holy Modal Rounders

et cetera

I told my demons to get lost, stopped ingesting chemicals, (managed to get my Ph.D.), departed the world that everyone is familiar with, and joined... Wow, that is hard to describe. I would advise you to see the movie "Ghost World", read Bill Morrissey's book "Edson", and spend a week at the Clifftop old-time music Festival in West Virginia.

Here are some tracks from the vault, ca. early 1990s.

http://home.comcast.net/~steventrish/Track2.mp3

http://home.comcast.net/~steventrish/Track3.mp3

http://home.comcast.net/~steventrish/Track5.mp3


I became a blues singer and banjo player.

Happy/Sad

Sometime, just before I fall asleep, I listen to late-night talkshow standup comedians deliver monologues. One of them has a weekly sketch in which he presents newspaper headlines either out of context or containing grievous spelling errors. The audience goes into a frenzy of humor when presented with misspellings like "shit" in place of sit, or a Chinese name that suggests an off color remark. I'll invite you to propose, as I propose below, actual excerpts from today's New York Times that are screamingly funny without embellishment or error. This is an exercise that is truly subversive as opposed to the television version, which is just mildly stupid and soporific, indeed, just what the advertisers want.



Under the state’s Airline Passenger Bill of Rights, airlines operating at airports in the state could be fined up to $1,000 a passenger if they do not supply water, fresh air, power and working restrooms during lengthy delays. A federal judge in Albany upheld the law in December.

But on Tuesday, that decision was reversed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which agreed with the Air Transport Association of America, an airline industry group, that New York’s law had been preempted by the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 and hindered the Federal Aviation Administration’s ability to maintain uniform standards for air travel.



The Pentagon announced Tuesday that the United States mistakenly shipped to Taiwan four electrical fuses designed for use on intercontinental ballistic missiles, but has since recovered them.

It is the second nuclear-related mistake involving the Air Force in recent months. Last August an Air Force B-52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and flown from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to Barksdale Air Force Base, La. At the time, the pilot and crew were unaware they had nuclear arms aboard.

President Bush was briefed about the mistaken shipment and is glad that the parts have been recovered, said White House press secretary Dana Perino. ''He appreciates that they are taking action, and that there is a full investigation under way,'' Perino said. Asked if Bush still has confidence in Air Force leadership, Perino said: ''Yes, yes he does.''



Tim Matheney stalked the silent hallways of South Brunswick High School one recent Wednesday at 1:07 p.m., peering into dark, seemingly empty classrooms and jotting down room numbers whenever he heard giggles behind locked doors. Students were supposed to remain silent and out of sight.

A teacher was locking a classroom as students keep out of sight in a drill at South Brunswick High. Mr. Matheney, the school’s principal, was roaming the suburban campus as if he were an “active shooter,” à la Virginia Tech or Columbine, as part of a “lockdown drill” now required twice a year here and in many schools around the country.

Gone are the days of the traditional fire drill, where students dutifully line up in hallways and proceed to the playground, then return a few minutes later.


Why cry when you can laugh?

Funnies Day

Monday is funnies day! I read in the New York Times something about "the real Eliot Spitzer". Well, here he is.(click image for full size)

Flower Day

Friday will always be flower day here. My wife is an avid gardener, skilled photographer, and imaginative user of Adobe Photoshop. Images from her library will be presented every Friday.

Algorithmic Composition

I have been living with Lou Gehrig's disease for some time now. It has
progressed sufficiently that I am unable to play musical instruments.
However, computer technology allows me to do as much music as I have time for. I do some engineering, producing, mastering, composition, design of software instruments and effects, as well as some DSP algorithm construction. Luckily, my life long musical experience includes traditional classic training, electrical engineering and computer science, as well as knowledge of how to get around in a traditional music jam session on the banjo and play rock 'n roll in
shitty bars. Most of the learning process began in elementary school;
therefore I am a very firm advocate of fine arts training in elementary
and secondary schools. After all, music saved my life.

One of the areas of composition I am exploring is algorithmic
composition. I am particularly interested in software that can
generate MIDI data by strictly mathematical processes in which the
composer does not interact with the process of generation after setting
up the initial conditions. You would think that the truly beautiful
results obtained by visualization of the solutions to various fractal
equations could be translated into beautiful sounds. In my experience,
this is not the case. Most of the fractal music I have generated and
have come across sounds like crap to my ears. However, when you
severely restrict the input set of musical possibilities (for example,
multi-octave chromatic scales can be limited to single octave
pentatonic, modal, or synthetic scales), approximations of Oriental and
Balinese material may be produced, and the results begin to sound
like music. Multi-voice algorithmic composition can also produce
interesting harmonies and unusual harmonic directions. In addition, the
algorithmic output may suggest a basis for further standard
compositional applications. I still find it hard to believe that this
approach yields so much garbage.

Occasionally the chaotic output of algorithmic composition produces
the desired results. Below is my composition titled "Neurological
Disorder", something I can relate to.

http://home.comcast.net/~steventrish/Neurological Disorder.mp3

America: Myth and Reality, 1850-1950

I have always been fascinated by the disconnection and mutual reinforcement of myth and reality in the development of the American "national character". Unlike its European antecedents, America had to develop its own mythology in tandem with the unfolding of its history. This makes it extremely difficult to separate fact from fiction, as well as collective societal beliefs from reality. In other words, it's hard to tell where art stops. Ken Burns, a master of the manipulation of images, myth, and reality has created what are essentially "photo stories" that jump back and forth over the American myth-reality gap with breathtaking facility.

I would like to present a photo story concerning the epoch in which the American Empire may be construed as undergoing its final burst of vitality before consuming itself.

The video below is titled "America: Myth and Reality, 1850-1950". The images are selected from all over the Internet; the music is the sextet arrangement of Aaron Copland's Short Symphony.

New Blog

The reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. Therefore, I have decided to reactivate the weblog I began in 2004. The archives of that effort may be found on my web site, a link to which is provided below.

I will begin this edition with the same introductory caveats:

Welcome to my Web log. I am not really sure what I'm going to write here. But I can assure you, it will be much different than the articles I write for the old-time herald. The tone will be more like a monologue; indeed, it is a monologue, because I'm using voice-activated software to write this. There'll be almost no personal information about me. I don't care to share that type of information with the entire world. This log will contain mostly opinions, observations, sometimes works in progress such as short stories, photographs (mostly taken by my wife), first person (by definition) reports of things that I'm doing which may or may not be of any interest to anybody...the typical thing you find in blogs. I hope this log is entertaining, but I'm going to make no effort to make reading it an enlightening experience. My teaching days are over. I'm off-duty. And I really don't care if anybody agrees with me about anything anymore. So if you have questions about the real nature of the pharmaceutical industry, I have no comment, even though I spent all my adult life working for Glaxo SmithKline. If you want to know the secrets about playing music, about all I can tell you is that I'm a crummy teacher, even though I've been studying and playing music all my life. And if you need practical advice about anything, check the World Wide Web. I am not sure my life experience would be very useful to many people.

2004 archives: http://home.comcast.net/~steventrish/blog.html