Thursday, August 18, 2005
saturated
I have been listening to a lot of Dad's old tapes, transfered to digital and dumped onto my iPod. For a number of months, they have been like an anthem to my daily routine - I would turn on the 1972 session and leave for the Lab in the morning. Getting coffee in Davis Square, I'd put the headphones around my neck, then once back on the road, skip tracks back to where I was before. I'd read all the way in on the T, listening to the tracks go by and thinking about Dad's musical influences... Bert Jansch, Doc Watson, John Fahey, Davey Graham, etc.. He covers some of these songs, adding his own flavor to them, and then plays his own originals. I have been addicted to this album, unable to break my daily routine. It's the only thing on, the only place I want to be, the only album to listen to. But this slight haze of grief continued, and I started to wonder if maybe it wasn't the best thing for me to do, to immerse myself in a daily dose of nostalgia. Maybe hearing my dad's voice from out of the void, from a time when he was a young man (23 years old), talking and singing every day was keeping me stuck in a layer of sadness. I didn't want the thought to be true, since I also consider my avid listening to be a tribute to my dad, who brought so much music into our lives. But after talking to mom about it one evening, I thought I'd give it a try. So I haven't been listening on the way in to lab lately. But I have still had the songs running through my head. Maybe that was the real purpose of my faithful listening, to internalize the songs. Now they are a part of me - actual, physical neurons have rewired in order to encode those songs. So dad's legacy is now "living" on, in a very real way.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
go home, said the bouncer
I went to try to see a show in Central Square on Saturday, but I got there pretty late - around 11:35. The band I wanted to see was "Say When" - a great rock band whom we've played with several times now. I got to the club about 35 minutes into their set, and there was only one band left to play after Say When. Figuring that I could bargain with the doorman, I asked how many bands were left. He told me that the current one had about another 10 minutes, then there was one more.
So I decided to take the bouncer's advice and go home, rather than spending my $10 to get inside, then maybe another $5 on a beer. So because they refused to negotiate, the club got nothing from me.
When I got to Davis Square, I found the square full of people listening to a woman playing acoustic guitar. She was covering Joni Mitchell and the Indigo Girls, among other artists. She was a pretty good performer, and my interest was held for a good 15 minutes. Before I left, I decided to contribute to her open guitar case. I went up to her in-between songs and asked her about the tuning that she was using, mentioning that my dad used to play with what he called a "Joni Mitchell tuning". In an Australian accent said that Joni used to use a lot of different tunings, but that the open D was one of her favorites. She also recommended the Joni Mitchell documentary, saying that it was fabulous (this recommendation was into the microphone, when she realized that our one-on-one conversation might have broader appeal to the small crowd that was listening from around the square).
I thanked her, told her to keep up the good music, and left a $10 bill in her guitar case. I figured that since I didn't give it to the club for admission, I may as well give it to a hard-working street performer who deserved it even more. That felt good.
me: Hmm... could I get a discount?
doorman: (thinks about it, looks at the clock) no, not yet. the place is only 2/3 full, and we're still selling tickets.
me: but I've missed most of the bands.. There's like one-and-a-quarter bands left at this point. I don't feel like paying a whole ten dollars for just a small fraction of the show.
doorman: sorry, I can't do it. If you come back at 12:15 I can let you in for cheap.
me: no discount now? my alternative is to head home..
doorman: (shrugs)
me: how about this - if you can let me in for half-price now, I promise that I'll buy a beer downstairs. So I'll spend five dollars to get in, then another five or ten downstairs. The club makes some money this way. Otherwise I'm just going to go home.
bouncer: (looks me right in the eye) GO HOME
doorman: I'm polite about it, but he doesn't have to be. sorry.
So I decided to take the bouncer's advice and go home, rather than spending my $10 to get inside, then maybe another $5 on a beer. So because they refused to negotiate, the club got nothing from me.
When I got to Davis Square, I found the square full of people listening to a woman playing acoustic guitar. She was covering Joni Mitchell and the Indigo Girls, among other artists. She was a pretty good performer, and my interest was held for a good 15 minutes. Before I left, I decided to contribute to her open guitar case. I went up to her in-between songs and asked her about the tuning that she was using, mentioning that my dad used to play with what he called a "Joni Mitchell tuning". In an Australian accent said that Joni used to use a lot of different tunings, but that the open D was one of her favorites. She also recommended the Joni Mitchell documentary, saying that it was fabulous (this recommendation was into the microphone, when she realized that our one-on-one conversation might have broader appeal to the small crowd that was listening from around the square).
I thanked her, told her to keep up the good music, and left a $10 bill in her guitar case. I figured that since I didn't give it to the club for admission, I may as well give it to a hard-working street performer who deserved it even more. That felt good.
what part of "Yes to All" doesn't Window$ understand?!
When copying over the "My Pictures" folder from one drive to another in Windows XP, I wanted to just copy *everything* so that I didn't have to pick and choose which files to copy. This was about 20 gigs of photos. After the copy operation got going, windows noticed that some of the folders or files had the same name, and asked me if I wanted to replace the files that had the same name. The choices were No, Cancel, Yes, or Yes to all. (I think..it was something along those lines) Anyway, I chose "Yes to All" and then about a minute later, there was the same box again, asking me about overwriting the system file "Thumbs.db" - again, I chose "Yes to All". And then, a minute later, Windows was back, asking me about another JPG file - again, "Yes to All". Why did I have to do this multiple times...? What part of "Yes to All" doesn't Window$ understand?!
