013110

Those of you not on Facebook have not had a chance yet to watch my spoken-word videos; I have just uploaded a bunch to Youtube. These are 25 of my best pieces. Guaranteed to amaze and excite you, with me reciting my work (no books, no papers, just me on a high-wire). Check it out! Found here:

youtube videos

*Lord's-Jester*

This week we've been preparing materials for the custom-perfume process. This process is the ultimate manifestation of the art in that, judging from which smells alone a person likes, a perfumer makes leaps and bounds to create a complete, bespoke perfume. Some perfumers like to do oodles of questionnaires so that they might better "get to know" a given client. Anya McCoy convinced me, rightly, that, since I'm not a psychologist or counselor, the only thing that matters to me is what smells a person likes. (My clients will get a brief five-question questionnaire, with questions like, "What color, if any, comes to mind when you think of your would-be perfume?") Then comes a slew of individual essences to try (not a slew, 18 to start). The essences are anonymous to the client (only I have a record of what's what). Depending on the sense I get with each individual, I then will send out a second batch of essences, judging from what a person liked from the first round.

These "essences" are actually diluted forms of each essence; that's what we've been busy doing this past week, diluting aromatics to 10%. After a little give and take, we arrive at groups of likes and dislikes; I then move quickly to making attempts at perfumes, until we get one the person really likes. There are two things I'll probably do to streamline the process: 1) knowing that I'm a good perfumer (I'm confident I'll be able to customize for each person), I'll put a limit on the number of iterations we go through (between three and five), and 2) make two price levels, one for inexpensive and common materials (benzoin, clary sage, fir), one for rarified and uncommon materials (flouve, boronia, honeysuckle). Most base-note custom samples I've found will need to be filtered; heart and top notes not so much (being, as they are, often from distillations; absolutes from solvent extraction have waxes and other gunk to make alcohol solutions cloudy and/or cause there to be a lot of detritus).

So far, I've got three female test subjects and two male. That should get the ball rolling. Just as my Australian professional-perfumer friend says accommodating changes in odor profiles of given aromatics is where the true art of natural perfume lies, so too I think it encompasses being able to do custom perfume, to get an olfactory sense of a person, to have the imagination to envision what smells might work on a test subject or client. This does take up a fair amount of time, and the process will be priced accordingly. Once you pay for a custom perfume, the recipe is secret, only for your nose and those you love. And refills, separate from the cost of doing the whole custom process, will be the same price as my regular perfume. Additionally, a client may get the perfume in any strength or forms she or he desires, pure parfum to eau de cologne, liquid and solid. As far as I'm concerned, this whole deal is going to be sheer joy. I can't wait.

*Sustainable-Development*

In my upper division studies in college I investigated the meaning of Sustainable Development. The Brundtland Report, which brought the term Sustainable Development to the mainstream lexicon, was released in 1989, so I was doing my work not five or six years after the release of that document. To investigate fully, I had to do two main things: 1) I had to find a college that let students design their own majors, 2) I had to do minors in about six subjects, and (hardest of all) my 10-page essay about the larger issues behind my work _and_ every single class in my two years of upper-division studies had to be okayed by the three Ph.D.s who oversaw my "concentration." I'm very pleased to say that none of my three doctors could say anything negative about the efficacy of my work; honestly, I don't think any of them knew quite what to say. They couldn't argue with my reasoning, and I was a pioneer in this field.

I had a doctor of physics (my main mentor), one of resource assessment and analysis, and one of economics. The school I went to, Fairhaven College at Western Washington University, allowed me to take all my classes on the main campus while still designing my own concentration. The concentration was called Economics as if Thermodynamics Mattered: Development without Growth (and that's a play on the many 'Economics as if X Mattered' titles that abound). As part of this effort, I studied: physics, engineering, economic theory, moral philosophy, civic planning (and land-use law), and environmental science. Needless to say this struggle nearly killed me; I had to drop out for a year to gather my thoughts and stamina for the final push (28 credits in one quarter). I learned more from forcing myself to do the required work than I've ever learned in my life, and not just about Sustainable Development.

There was this overarching theme to my studies of acting on the needs of future generations, and I looked at the subject in every possible way, the engineering to get us there, the philosophical underpinnings which drive the very idea of considering the future at all, the economic theories behind development without growth (that our lives should become qualitatively better not quantitatively larger), etc. Also, in stretching myself thin, I was arguing in my way for The Unity of Knowledge. In effect, I ended up espousing the conviction that, in this knot of development theories, the physics could not be separated from the philosophy just as the environmental science could not be separated the urban and regional planning just as the economics could not be separated from the agroecology. I wrote a 75-page thesis paper; my main mentor, the physicist, told me it was on par with what would be expected of a doctoral thesis.

And I gave a presentation called The Unity of Knowledge, a presentation in which EO Wilson's book Consilience (which argues for this unity of knowledge) played a prominent part. As I remember it, I was truly all over the map, drawing graphs, showing off spoken word, reciting passages from books, etc. My point was simple: that all the sciences and art and language I've ever come across display the same patterns, and that in the meta-disciplinary art of combining them, conflating them, uniting them, we get closer to what really matters, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's idea that the only real profit we take from life is the sheer enjoyment and experience of it. Everything else on this green earth turns to dust in the long-term. The idea of our only profits being the enjoyment of our lives is one very dear to me, and is an idea which I would see become the tether which ties us all together.

*Quotations*

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery.

--Virginia Woolf

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

--Churchill

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

--FDR

Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer's daughter.

--Julius Comroe

One aspect of serendipity to bear in mind is that you have to be looking for something in order to find something else.

--Lawrence Block

A novel is a long answer to the question, 'What is it about?' I think it should be possible to give a short answer--in other words, I believe a novel should have a thematic and narrative unity that can be described.

--David Lodge

["A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer."--Karl Kraus]

The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike.

--Colette

[I'm fairly certain that's the way I smell.]

The hood-winked husband shows his anger, and the word jealous is flung in his face. Jealous husband equals betrayed husband. And there are women who look upon jealousy as synonymous with impotence, so that the betrayed husband can only shut his eyes, powerless in the face of such accusations.

--August Strindberg

[I have felt impotent ever since my ex-wife walked out.]

If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, then you will have betrayed yourself

--Rollo May

[Insist and insist do I, and where has it gotten me?]

I have been constantly betrayed and deceived all my life.

--Taylor Caldwell

[It's been forever that I've felt outside the realms of human understanding.]

*Music*

On the latest Decemberists record, The Hazards of Love, which I've been liking more and more (my true test of good music), there is a retro feel that reminds me of classic rock like Jethro Tull, while still sounding eminently hip and Now. There is a hard-rock flavor to the outing, especially with the likes of Becky Stark on vocals, sounding like a cross between Heart (of Barracuda fame) and maybe Aimee Mann. This record never fails to please, especially if you like some hard rock with your alt-pop.

Peace love and ATOM jazz

012410

It amazes me that we can feel moisture, can tell if something's wet or not without looking.

*Lord's-Jester*

I now have at least a quart each of Ares eau de cologne, Heracles eau de toilette, and Zephyr eau de toilette. They're waiting to be filtered; to filter that much perfume, one needs special equipment: an Erlenmeyer flask (mine is 500mls, about half a quart) with an air-evactuation nozzle, a Buchner funnel to fit the flask with a stopper, a vacuum pump to force air out of the flask and draw liquid down through the funnel (using the air-evac nozzle), and fine lab filter paper. My idea is that we can filter half at a time; that may make for a mess, but I doubt it. The night before one filters, one adds about a teaspoon of bentonite clay, shakes well, then stores the perfume in the fridge overnight. In the morning, all particulates and cloudiness will have dropped out of the solution and one can filter away. What's left should be crystal clear.

I made a large batch of Heracles for one reason: boronia is expensive and hard to come by (this is my boronia perfume). If I'd made another test batch, I might not have had enough boronia to make a big batch (I probably would have had enough; I guess it was more that I wanted to try it). Several things about this batch potentially could be problematic: I adjusted the recipe by weight, the ambrette I used is brand new (it possibly has a different odor profile from what I've smelled before), and the boronia is from a new batch that I just received which definitely has a different odor profile from what I've smelled before. So the whole thing could be a wash; if it is I will have learned this lesson: be sure to make test batches with the ingredients you have on hand. The variation between different batches of the same aromatic material can be dramatic.

The one potential problem with Zephyr is that, I suddenly realized, this latest batch of orris-violet co-distllation smells quite different than the previous batch. I'm starting to realize that one should always make perfume with the materials on hand; one should _never_ expect that botanicals from different sources, or even different _years_, will smell the same. I've noticed this phenomenon with a few other botanicals I've gotten recently, things I had before but now are coming from a "better" source. Boronia, juniper, nutmeg, jasmine sambac, and cedar are a few that all smell different than what I had before, different but not worse; different enough though that recipes need to be changed/adjusted to make for a perfume that smells like what I want. With Heracles and Zephyr we made large batches without ever testing to see how they might have been changed. We can only hope for the best--and never do it again!

As one friend has it, this forever changing aromatic landscape is where the true art of natural perfumery lies, in knowing how exactly a given recipe must change according to specific changes in the odor profiles of components. Ares eau de cologne I've heard several positive reviews of (from men), and there are no changes to the recipe; I'm confident it will turn out right. As of now, I plan to send in six perfumes to the Natural Perfumers Guild to gain the title Professional Perfumer (PP), all liquids: Ares EdC, Heracles EdT, Selene EdP, Demeter EdT, Chronos EdT, and Zephyr EdT (Zephyr used to be called Cuir du Farceur, and is my leather scent, with 19 notes altogether). Solid perfumes will come with my next submission: Anthea is my ode to jasmine (seven notes altogether), the point of Helios is to highlight patchouli with citrus (15 notes altogether), and Selene is a powdery carnation/orris affair.

That's a lot to submit at once, but I'm certain I'm ready, and I have all packaging, labels, boxes, etc.; my view is it'll be good to get the PP title sooner rather than later. This will enhance numerous aspects of the business, the price my perfumes will command at market, instilling confidence in potential customers, getting apprentices, etc. The hardest part will be getting ecommerce up and running; I can do it myself; it's a matter of how long it will take. I want total creative control over how my web site works and looks. As with every other web site I've designed, minimalism is the operative word for me. Also I want it to be a "manly" site; that is, a site where men will not feel funny ordering. This will definitely not be a feminine site, no pretty flowers, no quaint but insipid imagery, none of that stuff. This will be utilitarian, elegant, and simple. Check out the beginnings: lordsjester.com.

*Basketball*

From The Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1892 [January 20] that the first official basketball game was played, in Springfield, Massachusetts. Basketball was the brainchild of James Naismith, a Canadian who was teaching at a YMCA training school in Springfield, which prepared young men to go out and be instructors in YMCAs. Naismith was teaching physical education, but the winters were cold in Massachusetts, and his students were frustrated that they couldn't go outside. He wanted something physically challenging but that could be played indoors, in a relatively small space. He tried all kinds of new and old games, but nothing worked. Finally he remembered a game he had played as a kid in Canada, a game called Duck on a Rock. He took a few rules from that and adapted it into a game he called Basket Ball. He nailed peach baskets to the balcony on each side of the gym, but the baskets had solid bottoms, so if anyone managed to get the ball in the basket someone else had to climb up and get the ball down. The rules evolved, and basketball caught on fast, helped by the spread of YMCAs. Naismith helped establish the sport at the college level, becoming head coach at the University of Kansas. By the time he died in 1939, basketball was an official Olympic event.

*Quotations*

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

--Martin Luther King Jr

All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography.

--Federico Fellini

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God, do you learn.

--CS Lewis

I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.

--Bob Dylan

Survival is the second law of life. The first is that we are all one.

--Joseph Campbell

If I had to choose between apathy and violence, I would choose violence.

--Gandhi

By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy--indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction.

--William Osler

So much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating effect.

--Eleanor Roosevelt

I'm disgusted with my generation's apathy. I'm disgusted with my own apathy too, for being spineless and not always standing up against racism, sexism and all those other -isms the counterculture has been whinning about for years.

--Kurt Cobain

That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real, only proves their apathy and deeper degradation.

--Elizabeth Cady Stanton

*Music*

I've been listening to Pink Floyd for more than 20 years. There is no question in my mind that The Final Cut is far and away their best record. It's also the record Roger Waters always wanted to make. Talk about orchestral rock! It contains all the blending of one song into another that Floyd pioneered, the all-over-the-map instrumentation (pianos, guitars, backup singers, strings, saxophones, etc.), along with, of course, Roger Waters' inimitable soaring guitar solos. Overall it's a scathing rebuke of what Waters sees as the failed post-war ideals for England; Waters' father was killed in WWII, and the story is detailed in the tremendous, auto-biographical song When the Tigers Broke Free. This album contains some of the most insightful, personal, and tormented lyrics Floyd ever recorded; and it sums up the forces and the troubles of the war with stunning clarity. It is not a happy record, but it's definitely a desert-island disc for me.

The lyrics, which are epic, confessional, and, at times, brutal, speak for themselves; imagine these lyrics together with the massive, larger-than-life, no-holds-barred orchestration characteristic of Pink Floyd:

"Tell me true, tell me why was Jesus crucified?

Was it for this that daddy died?

Was it you, was it me? Did I watch too much TV?

Is that a hint of accusation in your eyes?

If it wasn't for the Nips being so good at building ships,

the yards would still be open on the Clyde.

And it can't be much fun for them beneath the rising sun

with all their kids committing suicide.

What have we done, Maggie, what have we done to England?

Should we shout, should we scream:

what happened to the post-war dream?

Oh, Maggie, Maggie, what did we do?"

[Showing here the self-loathing, racism, and sardonic aspects of Waters' youth.]

"In derelict sightings the poppies entwine

with cattle trucks lying in wait for the next time."

[Cattle trucks waiting for the next time there are legions of corpses to transport.]

"It was just before dawn one miserable morning in black '44

when the forward commander was told to sit tight,

when he asked that his men be withdrawn.

And the generals gave thanks as the other ranks

held back the enemy tanks for a while,

and the Anzio bridgehead was held for the price

of a few hundred ordinary lives.

Kind old King George sent mother a note when he heard father was gone.

It was I recall in the form of a scroll, with gold-leaf and all.

And I found it one day in a drawer of old photographs hidden away,

and my eyes still grow damp to remember His Majesty

signed with his own rubber stamp.

It was dark all around, there was frost in the ground,

when the Tigers broke free,

and no one survived from the Royal Fusiliers Company C.

They were all left behind, most of 'em dead, the rest of 'em dying,

and that's how the High Command took my daddy from me!"

[The track above did not appear on the original record. I think the Suits thought, rightly, that it would bring tears to too many. It comes off like a dirge.]

"Floating down through the clouds

memories come rushing up to meet me now.

In the space between the heavens

and the corner of some foreign field,

I had a dream, I had a dream:

Goodbye Max, goodbye ma.

After the service when you're walking slowly to the car

and the silver in her hair shines in the cold November air,

you hear the tolling bell and touch the silk in your lapel,

and as the teardrops rise to meet the comfort of the band,

you take her frail hand--and hold onto the dream!

A place to stay, enough to eat,

somewhere old heroes shuffle safely down the street,

where you can speak out loud about your doubts and fears,

and what's more, no one ever disppears,

you never hear their standard issue KICK in your door.

You can relax on both sides of the tracks,

and maniacs don't blow holes in bandsmen by remote control,

and everyone has recourse to the law,

and no one kills the children anymore."

[Heartbreaking in its insistent and blind hope. The latter part, beginning with 'A place to stay..." is exactly what Waters had imagined for his father's post-war dream.]

"Brezhnev took Afghanistan,

Begin took Beirut,

Galtieri took the Union Jack,

and Maggie over lunch one day

took a cruiser with all hands

apparently to make him give it back."

[Bringing up the sheer folly of the post-war.]

"Take all your overgrown infants away, somewhere,

and build them a home, a little place of their own,

the Fletcher Memorial Home for Incurable Tyrants and Kings."

[More follies.]

"They disembarked in '45, and no one spoke and no one smiled--

there were too many spaces in the line.

Gathered at the cenotaph, all agreed with hand on heart

to sheathe their sacrificial knives.

But now, she stands upon Southampton Dock

with her handkerchief and her summer frock

that clings to her wet body in the rain.

In quiet desperation, knuckles white upon the slippery reins,

she bravely waves the boys goodbye again...

When the fight was over, we spent what they had made.

In the bottom of our hearts we felt the final cut."

[I assume the first part is about a statue on Southampton Dock. The second part is dismal, but you know it's true. The final cut in Waters' mind is the maladjustment of at least two generations of men.]

"The rusty wire that holds the cork that keeps the anger in

gives way and suddenly it's day again.

The sun is in the east even though the day is done.

Two suns in the sunset, fff!, could be the human race is run."

[Waters is clearly not very hopeful that we will ever learn to solve our problems with oppression and violence without resorting to violence.]

The whole thing is very much like an opera, complete with numerous "idée fixes," musical or lyrical variations on or repetitions of musical or lyrical content. This is a dense, rich, complex exploration of various aspects of Waters' youth, continued angst, and the devastation war brings.

Peace love and ATOM jazz

011710

I've had decades to think about this and here's what I conclude: if you're not scared before you perform (anything) then you're no good. Sir Lawrence Olivier, possibly the greatest performer of the 20th century, puked before every single performance, right to the end. We are _all_ terrified before we get onto a stage, into the spotlight. The difference between performers and non-performers is _definitely not_ that performers don't get scared; we who perform are compelled to perform for many reasons; we have no choice; we _have_ to overcome our stage fright because we can't imagine any other way of living. If you're not scared, that means you're taking no risks, you have nothing valuable to say, you've lost your edge.

*Lord's-Jester*

Here's my latest article for Fragrantica, a perfume site with more than 550,000 registered users. The editor added a number of gorgeous images to the text. (Link is Alchemy and...):

Alchemy and the Power of More (and Less):

There is one imperative with natural perfume, an artistic one. That some natural perfumes have aromatherapeutic value, while itself important, is not the point of natural perfume. I feel strongly that this art is the highest of all arts. I make this grand statement only because I myself have practiced numerous arts so I feel justified. I've been, and still am, a writer in various genres, but I've also been a professional photographer and graphic designer, a jazz musician, a spoken word artist, and an actor. In my mind, natural perfume ties all these arts together into a complex, incredibly rich, and emphatically spiritual endeavor.

For many of us, natural perfume is a multi-sensory experience, showing us colors and music and poetry. Needless to say, because of this fact, inspiration is never hard to come by. I know perfumers who base their perfumes on their favorite paintings, or their favorite classical music, or their favorite literary works. How could a perfume be based on such things? You see, this is where the magic of the art comes in: each individual decides for her or himself how, say, a sculpture might inspire a perfume. And we all have different sources of inspiration; for some it could be a beautiful lady (I myself am guilty here, as charged), or a beautiful day, or a play.

The possibilities are as endless as there are people on the planet, and certainly as rich as the wild earth Charles Darwin saw when he wrote, "It creates a feeling of wonder that so much beauty should be apparently created for such little purpose." Ah, yes, Mr. Darwin, but we natural perfumers have a purpose for much of what the earth provides. The real art of it lies in compounding perfumes which speak to, sum up, and reflect the various facets of this great blue marble, the memories, the joy, the fantasies. We all have fantasies and natural perfume, all of perfume, speaks to no one if it isn't, even just a small bit, fantastic.

How does natural perfume work exactly? The gist of it is that you take a handful of aromatics and dissolve them in high-proof alcohol; solid perfumes are a tad different in that the aromatics need to dissolve in fixed oil. Many aromatic materials (but not all) need to be rendered usable before a perfume can be made with them. This means a hot-water bath must be used (benzoin, for example), the material must be diluted before use (orris butter, for example), or it must be macerated for some time in a substrate (ambergris, for example). I myself made my own ambergris oil-infusion, so determined was I to make solid perfumes with ambergris; I have the tincture as well.

In most cases we are on our own to render materials usable. From there, the building blocks are known as chords, or accords, one for each section, base, middle, and top. The conventional wisdom holds that a chord is three or four notes (see how nicely musical analogies work?); I use chords with anywhere from three to eight notes. I know I have my own ways of doing things. A perfume with 24 notes? Most perfumers balk at the idea, but in my experience that many notes are needed for a deep, bowl-you-over perfume experience. So the trick is this: learning to balance all that olfactory substance. The balance might come by way of contrast (ambergris and rose), or reiteration (rosewood and palmarosa), or a tiny touch of some particular ingredient (black pepper).

Natural perfumery is in fact descended from alchemy. While alchemy was considered part of science, many of the same principles apply: that apparent opposites might actually reinforce each other, that certain combinations are synergistic (patchouli, for example, has an amazing effect on rose; when the two combine, it suddenly smells as if you're sniffing a dozen fresh rose bunches, or a hundred rose bushes), that less is often a lot more (of a particular ingredient). In our art, which is also partly a chemical science, a little bit can go a long, long way, and a lot of it simply can't be explained.

*Vegetarian*

As many of you know I spent more than 15 years as a strict vegan, militant I would say. I must confess that, while being an omnivore has done me good, because of Climate Change I must switch back to being a vegetarian. Friends and family, do not fear: I will happily eat whatever you serve me when I'm your guest (just as I did in China). This choice stems largely from my studies in college, which I will discuss in the next installment. Our contributions to global-warming emissions, as carnivores, cannot be overestimated. This time, I won't be vegan and I won't be strict. The worry for me is getting enough calories, especially with MS. This is where eating dairy and eggs comes in. This, for me, is very unfortunate: because I need calories so badly, I'm forced to eat dairy; I know from all my studies over the years that I'd be much better off eating meat than eating dairy. A man has to think of everyone else in the world, especially the poor, and there is no doubt eating meat makes us all worse off.

*Quotations*

A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.

--William James

[This concept is hard for me to wrap my mind around.]

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

--Voltaire

[I resent this sentiment, at least a little.]

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

--Teddy Roethke

[I struggle everyday to find me in the middle of this mess.]

People don't choose their careers; they are engulfed by them.

--John Dos Passos

[I'm still waiting.]

The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.

--Maureen Dowd

[I can't settle for anything less than I want.]

Love me when I least deserve it, because that's when I really need it.

--Swedish proverb

In doing what we ought we deserve no praise.

--Latin proverb

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.

--Abraham Lincoln

A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.

--Joseph Joubert

Audiences deserve better.

--Leonard Maltin

*Music*

First January 2010, mix

1. Stars, Joe Henry

2. Anonanimal, Andrew Bird

3. The Hazards of Love 2 (Wager All), The Decemberists

4. For Every Drop, Sonya Kitchell

5. One of Those Days, Eilen Jewell

6. Fugitive, David Gray

7. A Falling Through, Ray LaMontagne

8. Masterswarm, Andrew Bird

9. Suit on a Frame, Joe Henry

10. The Wanting Comes in Waves (Repaid), The Decemberists

11. First Chance, David Gray

12. Who Knows after All, Sonya Kitchell

13. Codeine Arms, Eilen Jewell

14. Nomenclature, Andrew Bird

15. Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!), The Decemberists

16. Full Steam, David Gray with Annie Lennox

17. Prelude: Light No Lamp When the Sun Comes Down, Joe Henry

Peace love and ATOM jazz

011010

I am perturbed by a trend I see among basketball commentators, who are generally well spoken. Nearly across the board, instead of saying "Knicks basketball" or "outstanding performance from the Blazers bench," they invariably say, "Watch _Knick_ basketball every Sunday," or "that's the thing about _Blazer_ basketball." I find this tendency nearly blood curdling. It is correct always to refer to the team in a plural form: for example, "your source for Knicks basketball," and, "a real benefit to the Blazers roster." There is no circumstance when "Knick" or "Blazer" is correct. It's the Knicks, the Blazers, the Cavaliers, the Nuggets, the Lakers, etc, _in all instances_.

*Lord's-Jester*

The remake of Heracles is quite good. I don't think the recipe is finished yet. I cut down too much on the black currant and not quite enough on the boronia. Also, I reversed the amounts of benzoin and labdanum, and while labdanum is also an excellent fixative, I prefer benzoin (for its fixative properties; labdanum itself is one of my top three favorite aromatics); I will return to the first way I did it. But Uta said she liked that it's lighter than a lot of my perfumes; really, the trick is to make it, changed as above, in eau de toilette strength. It will be just right at that strength. This time, because boronia is expensive (I don't want to waste any on another sample), I will change the weights themselves; I've grown accustomed enough with weight that I'm quite certain that will work just fine.

Helen, with 24 notes, is mysterious and fascinating, but it needs more time to mature maybe; it's been three weeks but think, with that much olfactory material, the more time the better for maturation. Oddly, though it has only one note in it which might be considered edible, it smells highly edible to me. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think it smells like some kind of fruit, or nut, or wine. It's exotic, that's for sure. Like some kind of exotic dried fruit. Maybe a cross between dates and raisins and earthy wine; a liqueur scent to be sure. After half an hour, it turns suddenly brighter, which is mystifying because the top is extremely bright; after a couple of hours, it's mostly balsamic, which makes sense because three of eight base notes I consider balsamic. It has good lasting power, but it's a tad odd, so whether or not a person would like it while it lasts is a question. We shall see.

*Poem*

Badges of Honor

Nic and I were infamous around town.

Everyone in Blue Hill knew us:

that couple forever covered in dirt.

We yanked enough stones out of

the meadow to build a whole new

America. And we couldn't say we

didn't want to start all over again,

build it again from the ground up,

with everything new once more,

our relationships with animals,

our harmony with the earth,

our ways of saying yes while meaning

no. We tried to be proud

despite the fact we were living in

a barn; by the time our cabin

was built, the winter was coming on

and we weren't ready.

It felt great to be the local bad boy

(though, in truth, I always had been).

We spent days making love in the woods,

digging, always digging,

waiting for the cold to come.

We wore our dirt stains like

badges of honor. We lived simply,

off the 50-pound bags of grain

we'd brought from the city.

And more than anything we were

unflappable, taking every setback

in stride, pushing on until the cabin

was finished, not caring one wit

what others thought of us.

I think mostly they admired us,

but I really could care less.

We were dirty, full of ourselves,

and idealistic to a fault.

I'd go back there in a second,

back to who I was in the beginning,

back to hope and love, but

I know now that hopes always fail.

*Fiction*

The Glass of Time by Michael Cox:

This is a sequel to The Meaning of Night. The lead character here is the daughter of the lead in The Meaning of Night. It's an interesting book, but, if you're looking for a story of intrigue on par with the first book, you will be disappointed. This is a well-crafted period piece, set in the 1800s, like the first, but it contains none of the mind-bending backstabbing which characterized the precursor. The first was a classic story of what must have been the first example of identity theft, about English peerage, full of gripping twists of fate, rich in historical detail, a page-turner; the only aspect The Glass of Time retains is the richness of historical detail. This is the story of a young woman sent on a mission by her guardian. The mission, "The Great Task," it turns out is to bring the lady who, along with her lover, stole her father's identity by making off with papers that proved her father to be the as-yet unknown heir to a large and renowned English estate, to justice.

What I find disappointing here is that, where the first story was all about momentous and life-changing _actions_, in this second one Mr Cox is happy to do a lot of _telling_. He describes the beautiful Evenwood estate that is at the heart of the novel with inspiration, but at the climax of the book, the protagonist is simply _told_ a number of secrets the crux of which she'd never been privy to. Granted these secrets are immense (the true identity of her father, that she'd always known him, in disguise, that he still lives, etc.), but the need to explain it all rather than rather than show it in action leaves the story a little flat. This is a linear tale, and all quite predictable; all of the moments when the reader starts thinking, "Oh, this is it; this is where the crap hits the fan," just peter out and become nothing more than character exploration. It's not a bad book, but it should not be considered a sequel. Here's hoping Mr Cox goes back to the inspired trappings of the first book.

*Poem*

Chalkboard Dust

About a year after I moved to Seattle

with a girlfriend, I found myself

on the phone begging her to take me back.

"Could you see your way to having

me back?" I asked timidly.

Seeing as how I was the one that left her

to begin with, she delicately declined.

All the years I lived on the west coast

I tried to make it my own, over and over,

tried and always failed miserably.

I know now, after many a tribulation,

that I am very much not a west-coast person.

You can take the kid out of the city

but you can't take the city out of the kid.

Every group of friends I had out there,

folks I thought could be my people,

and most of all my own marriage,

all set to flight on the wind

and disintegrated around me like so much

chalkboard dust. When I wonder what

I can keep from nearly 20 years of struggle

I find it is only this: I survived.

*Quotations*

When I first wanted to be a writer, I learned to write prose by reading poetry.

--Nicholson Baker

[My prose is eternally infused with poetry.]

A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.

--John Steinbeck

[If you consider this: is a prisoner, say, in his own body, really alive?]

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keep out the joy.

--Jim Rohn

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.

--Henry W Longfellow

It's easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die.

--Chuck Palahniuk

Anger is just a cowardly extension of sadness. It's a lot easier to be angry at someone than it is to tell them you're hurt.

--Tom Gates

Do you know most of the Jewish songs have the same trend of sadness as Negro spirituals?

--Mahalia Jackson

Everything's complicated, even those things that seem flat in their bleakness or sadness.

--Nick Hornby

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

--Kahlil Gibran

Sorrow is one of the vibrations that prove the fact of living.

--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

*Music*

David Gray's Draw the Line sheerly rocks. This is a record you'll want to turn up loud. Gray's evocative vocals are spot-on throughout. He has everything in here, backup singers, choirs, piano, strings, raunchy guitars; about the only thing lacking is electronica. As such, this record is more about rock n roll than any of his records in some time. This is a record about lost and unrequited love (of course), and about hopes in the face of the bleak. You won't want to miss it.

Likewise, the latest Decemberists recording is resolutely from an orchestral rock band. They keep getting better, and Hazards of Love is of the same high-caliber of their last, The Crane Wife; my impression is it's even more straight-up rock n roll, though the Decemberists have a unique take on what rock n roll is all about. You will find an array of sounds on this record, female vocals, accordions, distorted guitars, etc. Another album you won't want to miss, especially if you're a fan.

Peace love and ATOM jazz

010310

It's been bitter cold in New York this week, in the 20s, feeling closer to 0 degrees. Makes me want to curl up and read.

*Asia*

While I was living in Taiwan, I had to leave the country every few months, for visa purposes; I lied and told the government I was living in Taipei studying Chinese (there were schools who would sign off on this fiction) so in effect I was there on a "student visa;" but I wasn't even close to Taipei. I could have gone anywhere on my visa trips, and just for a day, but I quickly found Hong Kong, an overnight ferry or short plane ride away, to be a delightful place for a white person to spend some time. One of the most important reasons for this is the underground Indian restaurants which abound in Chung King mansion in Kowloon. The mansion is a complex of four or five high rises; it's a very dirty place, scummy I would say. Not the sort of place you'd want to find yourself alone after dark. And only the poorest and bravest of Chinese folks ventured here.

Mostly it was Indians and Filipinos that called the place home. But the Indian food, OMG! The deal was you had to wander around on the seedy ground floor and wait until you met someone handing out flyers for some particular restaurant on some anonymous floor. These invariably were fly-by-night establishments; there was never one that lasted longer than my stay in Taiwan, until my next visa trip. One arrived on the designated floor and searched for the specified apartment number. All of it was residential, and the restaurants were tucked away amid family dwellings. One knocked on a given door and waited a moment. The person who answered was usually a waiter, and he was sure not to show the inside of the apartment until he was certain you were someone looking for a meal.

Inside, these restaurants were, believe it or not, extremely luxurious. The staff was always well-dressed, proper, and polite, and meals came out from the kitchen with surprising speed. It was rock-bottom cheap and amazingly good. One could stuff oneself on gourmet Indian for a couple of dollars. I ate in such places twice a day everyday; it was simply too good to be true, and I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. These restaurants were probably the best-kept secrets in Hong Kong. Certainly no Chinese person would be caught dead in such a place. In my experience, Chinese folks in general look down on India and Indians; I had a student once who insisted it couldn't possibly be a civilized, cultured place since people wiped their asses with their hands. I'm sure some of you agree.

I must inform you that Indians, nevertheless, are extremely clean people as a whole (of course, it's the Brahmins, the highest caste, more than, say, the Untouchables). There are very specific rules about how one touches another. The left hand is the one used for, ahem, that which we might find objectionable, and one does not ever touch another person, or a plate, or a book, with that hand. Regardless, India and Hong Kong are former English colonies. Loathed though they were, those with Indian passports used to be able to travel freely to Hong Kong, often to start the aforementioned restaurants. Thankfully, imperialism is no more; the Hong Kong Chinese don't have to "put up with lowly Indians" anymore. But I'd imagine cheap Indian food has been part of the fallout.

*Quotations*

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

--MLK Jr.

Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know.

--Sarah Vowell

It creates a feeling of wonder that so much beauty should be apparently created for such little purpose.

--Charles Darwin

In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.

--Guy Debord

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

--Woodrow Wilson

As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly.

--Paul Rudnick

I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth--you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.

--Black Elk

TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public.

--Douglas Coupland

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

--Helen Keller

There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday.

--Robert Nathan

*Music*

When I was a teenager, Michael Hedges was one of my foremost idols. I'd been to see him perform countless times. For this reason, I had some good bootleg recordings (hey, it was different in the old days). Hearing him perform live was key to learning how to play his tunes; back in the day, before he had roadies to tune his guitars back stage, he tuned his guitar differently between each song, and if you had a recording, you could figure out what each tuning was. (My friend Adam still has a great tape we made one night at The Bottom Line; I used that recording to figure out a lot of Hedges' stuff.) I remember the first time I ever heard the music: it was on a road trip to Florida with my brother in the early 80s. The thing that struck me most back then was that even though it was new to me, and complex, and unpredictable, it felt as if it were music I'd always known.

I became a devotee of Mr Hedges, following him closely until his untimely death in 1997 in a car wreck. Once, when I was living in Seattle in the mid 90s, he came through and played in Everett, just north of town; the day before the show, he did a workshop open to all. By this time, I was fairly adept at playing his music, but I went mainly to meet him in person. One of the most important things I learned, though, was this: I had always assumed that, because he was trained in classical composition, and because his music was so intensely orchestrated, he arranged each piece, then figured out how to play it on guitar. No, he explained, he picked a tuning he liked for whatever reason and did the composing on the guitar. I was stunned.

(Years later when I was studying jazz bass at PSU, I met a guy who was even better than I was at playing Hedges' music (I tell myself that was because, by then, Hedges had published all of his tunings). One day, I happened upon this fellow playing Hot Type; when he was through I told him I thought Hot Type was Hedges' hardest tune to play. He said no, definitely the hardest tune was Aerial Boundaries. And why? Because to play that tune, one had to do something Hedges had perfected: one had to control precisely how long each of six strings/notes rang out, damping each string, with either the right or left hand, as necessary. I knew the guy was right--that's the reason I'd never been able to play Aerial Boundaries before!)

And that distinct, sublime, aspect of Hedges' playing was not a topic of discussion at the workshop. His main point was this: once you figured out the right tuning for a given piece, the actual fingerings, of importance to guitarists, were remarkably easy; in fact this ease of fingering was part of his design--he picked particular tunings according to how well they lent themselves to easy fingerings. (I think he said this habit dated back to the days he played for tips in clubs; he had to be sure he could play no matter his state of mind.) And anyway, Hedges had already published a book, with the help of John Stropes, which detailed his radical approach.

He and Stropes developed a whole new style of transcription, one that accounted for techniques such as slapping, hammering with right hand simultaneously with the left (each making up its own line), picking the strings with the left hand, Hedges own sometimes explosive and idiosyncratic attacks, and, of utmost importance, his various ways of precisely controlling each note's, on each string's, duration, etc. Note duration is a part of composition and jazz improv; a rhythm guitarist playing sing-alongs, for example, need not worry about note duration as he or she strums away at chords. It's only when you get into fingerpicking individual notes that this comes up at all; and even for many players it still never does.

Needless to say, the various methods of controlling note duration could never be learned in a two-hour workshop. We were all more than happy just to be with the man and, in particular, to learn details of how he got his larger-than-life sound. (I had the technical details I already knew confirmed.) At the end, a group of folks crowded around him. I really wanted to speak with him and tell him how much his music had always meant to me. But the crowd was thick; I waited a few minutes and decided I'd end up being there all night so I went to leave. Out from the middle of his group of adoring fans, he called out to me. He said, "You wanted to tell me something?" It was quite as if God had descended from on high to speak directly to me.

I walked back over to him; the rest of the group stood in stunned silence. I reiterated what I said above, about his music having always been familiar to me, in the best of ways. He told me that was the best compliment he could receive and thanked me for being a fan. I am often thankful that I was able to meet the man whose music meant the world to me. While I was still able, I composed two pieces which were very much in Hedges' style; though I have no recordings, I'm happy to say I performed the pieces at a hootenanny and blew the audience of a couple of hundred people away. And the last time I saw Michael Hedges, he was calling to me at a workshop, asking me to put my money where my mouth was.

Peace love and ATOM jazz