Lotsa stuff
This should be at least four different entries, but it’s not. I made the decision to just deal, you can too.
Had just a wonderful day today with a client. Worked with her on her site, got fed, played with the kid and listened to live jazz from the next room all day. Days like this make the financial struggles worth every penny and sleepless night.
Backstory: The client is a friend who gives piano lessons. Hence the web site. When we met several years ago, she had an old upright. A couple of years ago she upgraded to a baby grand. A couple of months ago, she upgraded again to a Steinway. Six-and-a-half footer, largest of the baby grands, or smallest of the studio grands, I forget.
Not many people have a Steinway in the living room of an average suburban home. At least that’s my experience. Maybe I don’t hang with the right crowd. (Well, never used to anyway.)
So this morning we did breakfast on sidewalk at Jine’s, then travelled out to suburbia to work on her site. Another of her friends, who is also her piano tuner and an excellent jazz musician in his own right, spent the day there rehearsing with with his vocalist in preparation for recording their first CD on the 19th.
It was just awesome during the afternoon rehearsal. Then after dinner, the jam session started. Now, this wasn’t your ordinary jam session. Joe on the Steinway, Jean on the electronic keyboard and violin and Emily on vocals and violin.
I have never heard jazz—either standards or improv—on violin, let alone two of them. Just blew me away. And the jazz improv interpretation of a Beethoven piece for piano and violin completely blew me away. Hot, slick, sultry, yet Beethoven. This really twists your mind because
- Violins played like jazz piano and with jazz piano is just not right, but oh so right.
- When you hear Beethoven, your head says, “It’s not supposed to be jazz chords”
- When your hear jazz chords, they’re not supposed to be following a classical piece.
I encouraged them to include either (or both) their jazz piano and dual violin renditions of Amazing Grace or the Beer Barrel Polka as a hidden bonus track on the CD.
I mean, I hate Amazing Grace. It curls my toes and, if not making me completely suicidal, makes me want to run screaming from the room. Not this version. Uptempo, downbeat and smokin’. And the polka, well all I can say is it worked as an aural pun. After all the laughter subsided the comment was heard, “Aw, man. That was so bad it’s good!”
The best fun was listening to working musicians rework the standard, Love Me or Leave Me. The bridge wasn’t working. It was just too fussy. It took several run-throughs and variations, then it just worked. When it got right, it smoothed out, but sitting there on the couch, in my head, it snapped into place like a big-ass Lego or something. Just beautiful.
I was really sad when I had to return to the city before dark. But, I’ve been invited to the recording session.
More client stuff
We’re doing a “rolling redesign” of the Presbytery site. That’s working really well too. Collaborating with the staff and a couple of ministers has been a wonderful experience.
I’m calling it a rolling redesign because, contrary to usual practice, it’s going on live, on the web, page by page. Things get changed along the way as we tweak the design and convert the old content over a page at a time.
Collaboration and iteration over time is the way I work best and it shows on this new version. Check it out at http://www.pbygenval.org/ and let me know how you think it’s coming.
And layered semi-transparent graphics are becoming something of a signature piece for me. I’m not trying to impose them on any given design, but on three sites in the past two years, it just seemed to be the right tool in the toolbox. See if you can spot it and tell me if it works for you.
Summer reading
On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt should have been fun reading. I couldn’t finish the thing. I tried. Three times. And at only 63 pages—63 paperback-sized pages of largish type with huge margins, there aren’t many words in this book.
It starts out just fine. The first page is wonderful and sets the tone for another book entirely. This book, however, veered off-course into an turgid examination of another English professor’s work on humbug, then transforms itself into a dense examination of the linguistic, textual and contextual differences between humbug and bullshit, before dropping to the floor from my unconscious hands. Three times.
I can’t fathom why this book is on the bestsellers lists. It’s by an English professor, published by a university press, for English professors. I can only speculate patronage, payola or some other form of bribery puts it there. Or everyone is sold, as I was, by the title and the first page. Trust me, the 62 that follow it aren’t worth the price.
Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham has been widely panned by the critics, yet I quite enjoyed this book. Both reactions might be explained by it being so far outside formula.
It’s three novellas linked by characters who spout Walt Whitman, a common object and a character name. They are set in New York City, the first in the early Industrial Revolution, the second in present day and the third in the future.
Each story worked for me. The linking took a bit of a stretch, but I eventually got it, and pulled it together as a whole. Maybe the reviewers didn’t get it. Or maybe it’s just too far off-beat for them to swallow given Cunningham’s other books. Either way, I liked it and you may too.
I came home from the library Monday night with three books. Two “holds” by favorite authors and a debut novel by a new author. It seemed least likely that the new one would keep me up into the wee hours. Playing the odds, I lost.
Improbable by Adam Fawer combines the mathematics of probability, quantum physics and Eastern philosophy with the Russian Mafia, mad scientists experimenting on human subjects and everyones favorite TLAs (Three-Letter Acronyms) the KGB, the FBI, the CIA and the NSA; into an unbeatable thriller.
Along the way, Fawer does a clearer, more thorough job of explaining my personal philosphy of life and higher power than I ever have.
It’s a gripping, riveting, page-turner that, if it doesn’t change some of your philosophy, it will at least give you some insight into mine.
CBC
I got to talk with CBC today. It was so nice to hear her voice. See, I made the decision last month when it was clear I could either go to Toronto or pay the phone bill, that I’d go to Toronto. Shortly after my return, the phone was shut off and it’s been a couple of weeks since we’ve spoken.
We IM every day, but that’s just not the same. Amazingly, CBC was overjoyed to hear my voice too. Said so. Twice. Felt good.
We didn’t talk about anything big or important. Just chit-chat between friends. And it reinforced for me that I’ve never had a friendship quite like this before.
They’re allegedly quite common, so it also occurred to me that while I can’t replicate the person, I can replicate the relationship. I can’t say I have a plan for it, but rather, a goal. And a hope that one of them will be with an actual gay man who is also looking for a BF. Wouldn’t that be nice?
