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Last year one of Luke's friends recorded a song (and nine others) in our dorm room. It was tough to fit the timpani in there, but we managed.



And if that fails to load:
http://www.willamette.edu/~acsmith/weather.mp3

Call me Ishmael

Against my better judgment (I have no judgment), I am posting the finished chorale. This is the result of basically the entire day. Nine measures. Twenty-seven beats. About 2 1/2 minutes. Anyway, if you're into pdfs, it's here. If you're into mp3s (with me singing, by the way, refer to the pdf.) it's here. The singing is a simulation of what it will sound like when the second violin and viola break out into child-like song while the violin and cello play behind them. The text is from Wallace Stevens's "The Snow Man," now in the public domain.

Additionally, (if you're into pdfs) the "7" markings refer to the 7th harmonic, approximately 1/4 of a half-step down from the equal tempered note, while the naturals with the down-arrows refer to a 5th harmonic, about 1/6 down from the written note. The sharps with one vertical line mean a half sharp, which is roughly the 11th harmonic. This is all in the recording, however. If it sounds like an out-of-tune string quartet, that's because it is actually much more in tune than you're used to hearing.

This chorale is my white whale

Avast, ye. This chorale melody is one of the first things I wrote all year, something which just came to me. I don't even recall working on it, revising it; it just was. You can heckle it all you like, because frankly now I'm ambivalent. Now it's a challenge. It's like trying to work "vortex" into a conversation, or "various states of disrepair" into a blog post.

I have tried:

1. A chorale prelude, meant to simulate improvisation at the piano; the chorale is like a set of jazz chord changes to improvise upon.
2. A traditional four-part arrangement, slowly dissolving into obscurity.
3. A fugue, a la Die Kunst der Fuge.
4. A four-part canon (it was a disaster).
5. A four-part canon using only eighth notes (it was a [expletive deleted] train wreck).
6. Having two players play the melody, one normal and one inverted, while the other two sing the parts to the words "In the sound of a few leaves, which is the sound of the land full of the same wind," from the Wallace Stevens poem "The Snow Man." This one was just goofy.

It is a 19-note Rasputin. I dare someone to come up with a coherent arrangement of it. If you want, I can lend you my notes and attempted analyses (i.e., bar 1 is D Maj. 7 to F-OCT0, 1; bar 2 pivots from G Lydian to an inverted G harmonic minor scale; bar 3 is roughly B Locrian). Go ahead, I dare you. Call me Ishmael, or something.

Edit: By "one normal and one inverted" I meant that the second melody was inverted, beginning with a fourth down instead of a fourth up. Not the actual player. Not that goofy.

After Death

I thought I might pick something up from the library, something not involving death. These past few weeks--an essay on Philip Larkin, another on Hamlet, been reading Beckett for fun(?)--just too much death. I pick up Tony Harrison's long poem "v." and read it downstairs in the library (where there are couches), for class on Wednesday. Turns out it takes place in a graveyard. Okay, I need something else. I browse the late-20th century authors and see Thomas Pynchon. I've started his book V. (different book from the long poem), got about 40 pages into it and just didn't get involved, bought and started Against the Day, but after 150-200 pages (it's 1200 pages long) just got exhausted. I've heard great things about Gravity's Rainbow, though, so I pick that one up. I get home, start to read.

The epitaph: "Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death." (Werner von Braun)

One point.

L'État, c'est moi

Entering page 22 of death (the first 21 were on Philip Larkin, the last 20-something will be on Hamlet) I thought I should begin including epigraphs in my essays. It seems that all the well-published literary critics do this, and--although I haven't made a spreadsheet--I'd be willing to bet that the quantity and quality of the epigraphs correlates with the quality, or at least scholarly recognition, of the article itself. JSTOR (for those of you who came of age before internet databases, a searchable database of scholarly articles from hundreds of published journals) just added a new feature where you can see other articles which cite that particular article. So, from now on, I will keep score:

Hypothesis: A higher EPiSoLA (Epigraph Pretension in Scholarly or Literary Articles) will correlate with more citations, and also tenure at a major academic institution. This may also be used for especially pretentious poems or fiction.

The EPiSoLA is calculated on a point scale, as follows:

1 - Epigraph in English or translated living Continental language (e.g., T.S. Eliot, Nicholas Sarkozy)
2 - Epigraph in English by someone dead more than 200 years (e.g., Christopher Marlowe, Adam Smith)
2 - Epigraph in a living Continental language (e.g., Flaubert, Nietzsche)
2 - Epigraph in an non-Continental language, translated (e.g., Omar Khayyam, Sun Tzu)
3 - Epigraph in a living Continental language by someone dead more than 200 years (e.g., Kant, Voltaire)
4 - Epigraph in either Greek or Latin (e.g., Ovid, the Latin Mass)
5 - Epigraph in a living Continental language by either Derrida or Heidegger
10 - Epigraph in Chinese or Persian, actually written with the Chinese or Persian characters (see: anything by Ezra Pound)

I think this covers all the bases. By this account, the article "Bad Taste and Bad Hamlet" receives a 2, for its quote from David Hume, while Basil Bunting's poem "Briggflatts" gets a 5, 3 for "Son los pasariellos del mal pelo exidos," and 1 for "The spuggies are fledged," and 1 bonus point for juxtaposing a 13th-Century Spanish account of Alexander the Great with a Northern English colloquialism.

I encourage all of you to compile your own lists of epigraph pretension. For now, I'm starting out at a healthy 3, with "L'État, c'est moi," or "I am the State," attributed to Louis XIV--you know, because old King Hamlet dies, and thus the characters fight to retain the state of sanity/State of Denmark. Should probably shower/get to the library.

More fresh than Will Smith circa 1990

The farmer's market is absolutely brilliant. I don't know why I never knew about it, because it's year-round every Saturday in Temple Bar (Meetinghouse Square, named after the long-standing Quaker Meeting House there). I circled the entire place six or seven times, bought some coffee (Kenya), a veggie burrito (salsa was good, not believably Mexican though), went to the cash machine, bought more produce (garlic, peppers, parsley, portabellos), natural yogurt with plum compote, organic granola (€7 / kg. -- very cheap), fresh goat's cheese (€2!), and kalamata olive oil (€8 for 75 cl!). Really, my new Saturday ritual. In fact, I'll just try to do all my shopping weekly there.

It feels good getting back into the city when the sun is out and there are people. A huge mix of tourists, immigrants (one cheese stand was speaking Russian, or maybe Polish, while the olive oil girl was probably French), and Dublin natives, just browsing the produce, usually friendly enough. Aside from any environmental issues, farmer's markets are the most social interaction you'll ever get out of grocery shopping, not to mention the health benefits of being surrounded by produce instead of by boxed meals.

That got a bit didactic there. But, then again, I'm cooking my goats cheese and portabello omelet in kalamata olive oil, using organic garlic. And beautiful, beautiful tomatoes.

Update: It was the greatest omelet I have ever had in my life, ever.

You can check out, but I have to clean up

Two roommates are gone to Japan, so visitors stayed at my house four nights this past week. Tuesday, someone from Willamette visiting the Galway kids, Friday, Sheila and Colleen, then Saturday and Sunday, Dylan with a total of five friends--three one night, two others the next. Needless to say, the house and I were in various states of disrepair by the time Fiona came back from Denmark on Monday morning.