catsittingstill

And I haven't forgotten that I owe you the song about the candy-bar; it is coming, honest.

But I was planning on mixing on Friday.  Which I really need to do because I have way more stuff recorded than I have actually, you know, mixed, and mixing is an important step where you find you need to re-record things, and anyway.   I have more songs already than I can fit on a CD, and at the end of the year I laid down a "you must be at least this old to go on this CD; new songs will have to wait for the next one" rule. And I already have two songs I wrote in January.

And instead of mixing I sat down and wrote another one.  The lyrics, anyway; I still need to work on the tune.

I felt like I was kind of on a roll, you see, and I didn't want to stop in the middle because maybe I wouldn't be able to pick it back up again, and I kind of felt like I owed the library a song. 

But this kind of embodies my issue with the album; I mix too slowly.  I'm pretty sure I could keep up with it just recording, but I don't mix fast enough.  And a big part of the reason I don't mix fast enough is that I keep doing other things when I should be mixing.

Is it a general thing that it's easier and more fun to do the starting creative work than the finishing creative work?  How do you persuade yourself to do the finishing creative work?

I'm going to put up another Alice Day post, but Kip's using the laptop the lyrics are saved on, and I don't feel like chucking him off even though it is entirely my right because it's my laptop, but anyway.  Plus I still have to record the mp3, so it won't be tonight.

In the meantime I was just thinking about song seeds.  I wrote a song about this a long time ago--Nuts From The Hazel Tree, but that was mostly about how songs can be inspired by other songs and stories.  Which is totally true, and which I find very satisfying both when my song was a prompt (Under the Gripping Beast and Wings both pop to mind) or when my song was a response (Wedding Dance and SwanMay are examples.)

But if songs always came from other songs and stories, the whole community risks becoming--self referential?  So wrapped up in responding to existing ideas that new ideas and directions get overlooked.  Not that I think there's much risk of that in filk.  Because there are song seeds all over the place.  They're like weeds. Something comes up in conversation (All YouR SongZ R BeLOnG 2 US, or If The Last Spaceship Leaves On Time).  Or a dog looks up at me and I suddenly remember again why they are so appealing (Good Dog) or I paddle out from a week long canoe camping trip thinking that if somebody handed me a fresh week's worth of food and another camping permit I would turn around and paddle back in without a second thought, shower and soft bed be damned (Quetico.)

Or a mouse has gnawed deeply into my Very Last Candy Bar.   Which I will totally put up soon.  But not today.

Where do you find song seeds?

This afternoon I looked up my Senators and my Representative on Vote Smart, and called them and told them I opposed PIPA (the Senate version) and SOPA (the House version) respectively.

I hope you will consider doing the same.

The URL for Vote Smart is www.votesmart.org.  If you put your ZIP in the search box at the top, and then scroll down to +Congressional on the results page (if there is a box that says "problem" try ignoring it and scrolling down; the election stuff isn't the issue right now anyway) it will list your Senators and Representative--if you click on them you can get contact info, including their phone number.

--------less important stuff------------
In other news, I wrote the second song of 2012 today.  I was so entranced by the song idea, I accidentally killed the microwave by putting my tea mug in there without any water in it.  I was dancing around the kitchen singing and the microwave started making scary noises and flashing its interior light. 

So I unplugged it for being scary.  And promptly went and wrote down my song, because I have my priorities straight: first prevent fires; then write songs.

Then get a new microwave, which I did this afternoon, which was an expense and an extra chore I could have done without, plus the new one takes up a lot more space on the counter.  But it has the blessings of Consumer Reports so hopefully it will be a good one.  And really, the old one was 20 years old, so this was not an unexpected development.

Does anybody know of songbooks (I was thinking especially of con songbooks, but I suppose other types are fine too) looking for submissions of songs?

So.  Wow.  What a con!

( Read more... )

I intended to put this up a couple of days ago, but have been kind of pressed for time due to the whole family visit thing.  I am having a good time, but am so busy I have a hard time even *practicing* (I have been doing it, though) let alone anything else.  But I can't sleep right now, despite the fact that sleep would be really good if I could just manage it, so I figured it was a time to get caught up on LJ more or less, and hey--this post is all ready to go and sending it out just takes a few minutes.

I guess this could be considered "another of my atheist songs" given that I've now written two. 

Scale
lyrics by Catherine Faber 2011
mp3 here
a capella mp3 here

   G            D            C             G
I hope, when I die, that my worth will be clear,
      G            D            C           D
That life will be different, because I was here.
   Em             C          Em           F
I hope that some measure of knowledge or grace
   C                G           D            C
I brought, will outlive me, my track and my trace.

  (chorus)
     G            D      C        G
  I don’t want Infinity noticing me;
    G       D           Em          D
  Eternity crowding my shoulder to see;
           G            D           C          G
  There’s quite enough pressure to triumph or fail,
         C         G         D       C (end on G)
  While living my life on a humbler scale.  

Four point five billion, the earth’s years unfold;
The sky that surrounds us is three times as old--
So it’s easy to see, and the answer is flat:
No one is going to matter to that.

A drop in the ocean; who cares if it thrives?
And yet in that drop may swim thousands of lives...
To measure your value, the scale will be true,
That measures the beings who matter to you.*

The earth will not love me, and time will not spare;
The Sky won’t respect me, but what do I care?
One scale is the measure of merit and strife,
The scale of the humans I hold in my life.

*What I am trying to get at here is that you can't get an accurate measurement of the distance from New York to San Francisco with either a ruler or a radio telescope--and if you're measuring your value on the wrong scale, of course you get a reading that's off; sometimes by several orders of magnitude.  In my opinion this means it you will never get a reliable reading measuring your own life against "the universe" or "the meaning of the universe."  It's like trying to measure your age by determining the amount of carbon 13 in your baby teeth. 

So it's true that nothing anyone can do in her life will make any difference on a cosmic scale, but personally, I don't care what a pulsar thinks.  The correct scale is the scale that measures what matters to you.  For me, that's other people, on a human lifespan. 

That is both the central idea of the song and the central idea of this verse, and sometimes I think I captured it, and sometimes I think I didn't.  The acid test, of course, is whether it comes across to the listener.  What do you think?

I saw someone talking about a children's book about a snowman that comes to life and does all sorts of things with a little girl who is apparently the book's protagonist.  And they play in the snow, and drink hot soup and walk up a hill, and run down a hill--

And then they start flying together.  At which point this person's spouse (reading the book to this person's child) said unhappily--"Wait, that makes no sense."

And this person's response was (roughly) "You're okay with the snowman walking and talking and playing and even drinking hot soup, but you have a problem with the snowman flying?"

And my thought was twofold.  First, if she has a problem with the snowman flying, she has a problem with the snowman flying.  It's not going to get better because you tell her she shouldn't feel that way.

Second--there's this great book called "Religion Explained" by Pascal Boyer.  And one of the things he covers is what kind of ideas rivet the human attention, and are easily transmitted, reconstructed from minimal cues, and remembered.  These things are often concepts we have specialized brain structures for learning about and thinking about, plus one counter-intuitive characteristic.  For example, "person with no body" = ghost or spirit.  The concept crops up over and over again in various cultures.  We have specialized brain systems for learning about people and keeping track of them, and the counter-intuitive characteristic "has no body" serves to make this more than just an ordinary person, more interesting, better remembered.

And when one is thinking about such an idea, one models how it will behave based on the base concept, or the counterintuitive characteristic, if the latter applies.  So you can imagine a ghost can see people, because people (mostly) can see people.  Or you can imagine that a ghost can't see people, since it has no body--thus no eyes for light to interact with.  But a ghost with roots--that just doesn't make sense, because now you have "person" with two counter-intuitive characteristics.  1) has no body and 2) has roots like a tree.

So the snowman in the story is a person, with the counter-intuitive characteristic "is made of snow."  This is the kind of idea people tend to find interesting, to handle easily, and retain.  And thus with the hot soup you can go with "can drink hot soup" because people mostly can do that, or with "can't drink hot soup" because something made of snow better not try it.  It's all good. 

But when you try for "and also can fly" you have a problem.  Neither people, nor objects made of snow normally have the characteristic "can fly."  It's just not in either template, so to speak.  So, at best, now you have a person with *two* counter-intuitive characteristics.   And those just aren't as compelling.  And at worst you've violated the rules you set up for the character, and that's just bad storytelling.  As far as I'm concerned, adding one counter-intuitive characteristic is not the same as "now, anything goes."

In case you haven't seen it, here is a link to the NPR article about rats turning their backs on chocolate (?!) to free trapped cage mates, then sharing the chocolate.

This is not the first time behavior that appears empathic or compassionate has been noticed in animals, of course.  Just another flower in the bouquet, so to speak.  But I thought it was cool.

I finally got it together to buy Christmas presents for my Dad and brother.  Now that there is Internet, this doesn't even seem late to be doing it.

I have been asked to contribute a couple of songs to Jefferson City's Christmas caroling on Friday of next week.  I explained about not having written much Christmas stuff, but the organizer didn't seem to mind.   I am thinking of going with _Blowing Winter In_ (but maybe it's kind of mournful for this?) and _I Meant To Do That_, which went over very big at the library.  Seeing as _Axial Tilt_ and _Happy Holidays_ , which would otherwise be perfect, are probably too secular for this crowd.

I just called the only other atheist I know in the area.  I got her answering machine so I didn't even say "atheist" in the message, because who knows who might be standing next to her when she plays it back?  I said I'd written some holiday songs she might like, and would she like me to come carol at her sometime?  I shouldn't have to worry about this.  But it would be foolhardy to ignore it, and downright unethical to ignore it for somebody else without her permission.

I'm going to have Alice Day a day early, because I wrote this yesterday, and I'm pretty pleased with it, and it really only applies around this time of year (as in, I'd like to get it in before Hannukah is over)

Happy Holidays 
lyrics and melody by Catherine Faber 2011
mp3 here
a capella mp3 here

        G              D            C             D
In the nights of long darkness, we face winter's starkness
    G      D            D              G
And many among us will reach for good cheer
    G                       F              
Whatever the candidate, we find things to celebrate
        C              G           D           G
In the dark days that come at the turn of the year.

        G               D                  C                   G
        Hap-------------py------------    Hol-------------i----days----
Bright Solstice, Happy Hannukah, Good St. Nic'laus Day, Joyous Kwanzaa

G       D            C           D    G
Hap-----py---------  Hol---------i---days
Io Saturnalia, Merry Christmas, Good Yule!


May fortune befriend you, good wishes attend you
Whichever such customs have answered your search.
In this season of kindness, may all our hearts find us
Good will that extends past the walls of the church.

In saying “Happy Holidays” we all in our different ways
Present our good wishes for your special day.
In the spirit of the season, good will and  sweet reason,
Receiving a flower, we give a bouquet.

So way back when, when I got my first Kindle, the Nook was a gleam in Barnes and Nobel's eye (or possibly beads of sweat on the brow of their engineers).  And when I got my second (which I won in an online drawing, quite to my surprise) the Nook and the Sony were out, and could check out e-books from the library.  And they were very proud of this, and rightly so, in my opinion, and the Kindle couldn't do it.

A few months ago I started seeing murmurs about a deal with OverDrive (which apparently handles e-book lending for libraries) to let Kindles check out library e-books too.  I didn't pay it much attention at the time because I live in rural Tennessee, which is not the bleeding edge of technological or social change.  So I figured the libraries near me wouldn't be doing it for quite some time, if ever.

Now I don't recall if I mentioned it, but several weeks ago, my recording efforts made the local paper--I mentioned to a reporter friend in passing that we should get together and do Y, and would Friday afternoon work, because I was recording Friday morning.  And she said "Recording?  Tell me more about recording." and from that grew an article.  And a couple of weeks ago, a member of Friends of the Library who had seen the article asked me to do the Library's winter concert.  For those who are interested, it will be on 7:00pm December 9th at the Jefferson City Library, and will last for 1 hour. (It will be a concert of music I have written, not a Christmas concert.)  And she asked me to attend the library's board meeting.

I spent a few days wondering if they were concerned I would be too controversial or were worried I couldn't actually play, but it turned out they wanted to write the publicity blurb for the whole thing and wanted to consult me on the wording.  (For those who are concerned, I am planning on leaving the controversial songs out of this set--it's like going to Thanksgiving dinner with your mother in law's second cousin; we want to make sure that everyone leaves the table happy.)  The meeting took place in the library, and I happened to see a poster about OverDrive e-books on the wall.

When the meeting was done, I asked, excited and pleased, and yes, it turns out I can check out e-books on my Kindle!   I was concerned it might be difficult and arcane, but it's pretty straightforward--the hard part was working out what "region" of Tennessee my library was in, because I live kind of at the intersection of four regions.  I basically tried them all until I found the one that had my library.  Interestingly enough, after check-out, Overdrive just passes me over to Amazon for the actual file.   I have finished one and am most of the way through another.  The first one was fairly forgettable--the second book in a series I may or may not pursue.  The second book is "Four Fish: The Future Of The Last Wild Food" and it is very thought-provoking.

The selection is not excessively big.  But it's popular; a lot of books are already checked out and some have waiting lists.  So if money permits, I bet they will be expanding it.   This is a great way for me to read some of these books when I couldn't afford to buy them all and then, if there's one I want to re-read a lot, just buy that one.