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Mar. 7th, 2007 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseOver the weekend, Brannie_bird and Dan finally got all of their wedding party together, so I met the groomswomen at last at last. I think we'll be a pretty harmonious wedding party; at least, I thought they were both cool.
That was about the last exciting thing to happen. I did do some writing, but my life has mostly been studies of St. Francis and the Franciscans (About the only saint whose story really caught my interest.), or avoiding same by doing all kinds of other time wasting things. Of course, my very next priority after I leave the computer is to do my math homework for the upcoming test. The teacher *has* declared absolutely that yes, if after this test you're getting an A, from this point you can skip the rest of the classes and keep that A. I would have thought he'd put in a proviso to his "5 tests worth 25% each, cut thwe worst one" that if you blatantly skip a whole section you lose a full mark for it. I would have. I guess he knows that his class is a class where most people are only there for the credit, not for learning, though. At least he's not bitter. He *is* a good teacher, alas, and he deserves better than to teach math dullards and rock-bottom basic concepts.
_______________________________
Soldier is kind of stalling on me, for umpteen reasons besides me being busy with other things:
The characters have just arrived in a new country, and there's a peculiar challenge in depicting the character of a country when they stick to one barracks town designed to accommodate people from their country. It's the transition between the beginning of the book (where everything is getting set up) and the dreaded middle (Everything between the set-up and the climax). I think I messed up the start of this latest scene. I'm getting close to the place the last draft petered out and I'm on my own (Which is a funny thing to slow me down, as the moment I realised that, I cheered). I'm second and third guessing my use of a minor character to this point.
Mostly, though, I'm still fighting with the realisation that I have no idea what the theme is, and since it's being written as an ongoing memoir, this means I have no idea what events to highlight and what events to slide over. (Yes, knowing the *plot* helps, but not as much as you'd think, and nowhere enar as much as knowing the theme would.) In something else, I summed it up as "No man is an island", but this is wrong as a wrong thing can be wrong. Yes, the plot involved voluntarily or involuntarily assembling companions and/or acting on behalf of others, or others on one's behalf, but Ketan already knows the worth of this. It would be like saying that the presence of ghosts and gods means its a story about the afterlife.
Still, I mean to go back to the start of the current scene (A new one even in the stalled edition) and see it through from scratch.
______________
So far I am loving having music with me at the University in my time between class, especially when I'm in a computer lab where people insist on flocking and talking loudly. (at least if I'm in the lounge I expect that and don't resent it.)
Although it doesn't help another quirk I have; which is that while I don't mind people talking behind me, I do very much mind someone standing less than two feet behind me but completely out of my sight, as the girl was who was talking to the man at the next computer. i felt my tension level drop about 5x the moment she moved closer to him and I could spot her out of the corner of my eye and tell which way she was looking.
The MP3 player has already provided me some unusually nice juxtapositions, and I haven't tried the random button. My favourite "Those should not work back to back, but oh they do!" is David Bowie's I'm Afraid of Americans followed by Madrigaia's version of La Cumparsita. Another good sequence is these three: The Road to Santiago (Heather Dale), The Sea Wolf (The Flash Girls), The Soul Cages (Sting). I'm catching other implied stories in other collisions.
An odd one happens after a live track; the album it's from doesn't always make the cuts between songs in the right place, so you get the introduction to the next song, which is "This is a song about the end of the World" before it cuts out. The next song on my playlist is Heather Dale's "The Prydwen Sails Again". That actually had me pause and think, because, well, yes, it fits. Except not.
The folders I have so far are:
Borders of Folk (people like the Flash Girls, Boiled in Lead, and Richard Thompson, who are obviously doing folk, but atypical, plus stuff like excerpts from the Narnia soundtrack that had nowehre else to go.)
Died. Is Ded. - What else would you call the one so full of ballads? Also contains some more modern storytelling, and folk instrumentals.
Emmylou, Mark, and Peter. Because they go together. Starts with "A Different Drum".
Oyster and Friends - Friends being the Big Session stuff, where Oysterband is actively singing with other musicians, plus June Tabor and Jim Moray when they're doing non-balladdy things.
Tom Waits and Other Spirituals - In theory, this should have had the most dissonance, but so far it seems like the home of things that shouldn't fit but do. Tom, of course, Blind Boys, Madrigaia, Garmarna's work from Hildegard Von Bingen, odds and ends from other people who don't write spiritual music as a habit but have one or two songs that are spiritual (eg. Blackie and the Rodeo Kings). If I had more room I'd be strangely tempted to slip in one of the recordings of our church choir, flaws in recording and choir-singing and all. This isn't ego, I have no idea where I am ion that sound. It's that at least two of them sound magnificently different, like a whole new song, when you're hearing the lot and not focused on the alto part.
Weird and Other Rock - Combined two smaller folders into another case of resonant dissonance; Tori Amos, Laurie Anderson and other weird chick singers plus the very little straight up rock; Midnight Oil, Buddy Holly, and Bowie.
Wide World: Was called Nordic until I realised more than half of it isn't Nordic. Horace X, a bit of Bollywood, some yoik.
Of all things, the next thing I'm considering dropping is Richard Thompson's "Beeswing", a song I love love love. Of course, I'd probably swap in his latest, " 'Dad's Gonna Kill Me", instead; he played it at the folk fest and it was fabulous, and now he has a free MP3 of it on his site (Beesweb). He usually not that overtly political (Note the ' in "'Dad"), but when he is, it usually rocks as much as this.
That was about the last exciting thing to happen. I did do some writing, but my life has mostly been studies of St. Francis and the Franciscans (About the only saint whose story really caught my interest.), or avoiding same by doing all kinds of other time wasting things. Of course, my very next priority after I leave the computer is to do my math homework for the upcoming test. The teacher *has* declared absolutely that yes, if after this test you're getting an A, from this point you can skip the rest of the classes and keep that A. I would have thought he'd put in a proviso to his "5 tests worth 25% each, cut thwe worst one" that if you blatantly skip a whole section you lose a full mark for it. I would have. I guess he knows that his class is a class where most people are only there for the credit, not for learning, though. At least he's not bitter. He *is* a good teacher, alas, and he deserves better than to teach math dullards and rock-bottom basic concepts.
_______________________________
Soldier is kind of stalling on me, for umpteen reasons besides me being busy with other things:
The characters have just arrived in a new country, and there's a peculiar challenge in depicting the character of a country when they stick to one barracks town designed to accommodate people from their country. It's the transition between the beginning of the book (where everything is getting set up) and the dreaded middle (Everything between the set-up and the climax). I think I messed up the start of this latest scene. I'm getting close to the place the last draft petered out and I'm on my own (Which is a funny thing to slow me down, as the moment I realised that, I cheered). I'm second and third guessing my use of a minor character to this point.
Mostly, though, I'm still fighting with the realisation that I have no idea what the theme is, and since it's being written as an ongoing memoir, this means I have no idea what events to highlight and what events to slide over. (Yes, knowing the *plot* helps, but not as much as you'd think, and nowhere enar as much as knowing the theme would.) In something else, I summed it up as "No man is an island", but this is wrong as a wrong thing can be wrong. Yes, the plot involved voluntarily or involuntarily assembling companions and/or acting on behalf of others, or others on one's behalf, but Ketan already knows the worth of this. It would be like saying that the presence of ghosts and gods means its a story about the afterlife.
Still, I mean to go back to the start of the current scene (A new one even in the stalled edition) and see it through from scratch.
______________
So far I am loving having music with me at the University in my time between class, especially when I'm in a computer lab where people insist on flocking and talking loudly. (at least if I'm in the lounge I expect that and don't resent it.)
Although it doesn't help another quirk I have; which is that while I don't mind people talking behind me, I do very much mind someone standing less than two feet behind me but completely out of my sight, as the girl was who was talking to the man at the next computer. i felt my tension level drop about 5x the moment she moved closer to him and I could spot her out of the corner of my eye and tell which way she was looking.
The MP3 player has already provided me some unusually nice juxtapositions, and I haven't tried the random button. My favourite "Those should not work back to back, but oh they do!" is David Bowie's I'm Afraid of Americans followed by Madrigaia's version of La Cumparsita. Another good sequence is these three: The Road to Santiago (Heather Dale), The Sea Wolf (The Flash Girls), The Soul Cages (Sting). I'm catching other implied stories in other collisions.
An odd one happens after a live track; the album it's from doesn't always make the cuts between songs in the right place, so you get the introduction to the next song, which is "This is a song about the end of the World" before it cuts out. The next song on my playlist is Heather Dale's "The Prydwen Sails Again". That actually had me pause and think, because, well, yes, it fits. Except not.
The folders I have so far are:
Borders of Folk (people like the Flash Girls, Boiled in Lead, and Richard Thompson, who are obviously doing folk, but atypical, plus stuff like excerpts from the Narnia soundtrack that had nowehre else to go.)
Died. Is Ded. - What else would you call the one so full of ballads? Also contains some more modern storytelling, and folk instrumentals.
Emmylou, Mark, and Peter. Because they go together. Starts with "A Different Drum".
Oyster and Friends - Friends being the Big Session stuff, where Oysterband is actively singing with other musicians, plus June Tabor and Jim Moray when they're doing non-balladdy things.
Tom Waits and Other Spirituals - In theory, this should have had the most dissonance, but so far it seems like the home of things that shouldn't fit but do. Tom, of course, Blind Boys, Madrigaia, Garmarna's work from Hildegard Von Bingen, odds and ends from other people who don't write spiritual music as a habit but have one or two songs that are spiritual (eg. Blackie and the Rodeo Kings). If I had more room I'd be strangely tempted to slip in one of the recordings of our church choir, flaws in recording and choir-singing and all. This isn't ego, I have no idea where I am ion that sound. It's that at least two of them sound magnificently different, like a whole new song, when you're hearing the lot and not focused on the alto part.
Weird and Other Rock - Combined two smaller folders into another case of resonant dissonance; Tori Amos, Laurie Anderson and other weird chick singers plus the very little straight up rock; Midnight Oil, Buddy Holly, and Bowie.
Wide World: Was called Nordic until I realised more than half of it isn't Nordic. Horace X, a bit of Bollywood, some yoik.
Of all things, the next thing I'm considering dropping is Richard Thompson's "Beeswing", a song I love love love. Of course, I'd probably swap in his latest, " 'Dad's Gonna Kill Me", instead; he played it at the folk fest and it was fabulous, and now he has a free MP3 of it on his site (Beesweb). He usually not that overtly political (Note the ' in "'Dad"), but when he is, it usually rocks as much as this.
