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taliesin's log (voices of women)
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lundi 31 octobre 2005
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Here are two unsolicited images that bubbled up to my brain's "surface" early today: the scene in 'Battle of Britain' when air chief marshal and pilots alike wait, ready to scramble again, for the bombers to come but they don't, because it's over.
So it's safe to stand down, take it easy.
Next came a memory of teenage breaks I adored, staying with a fun uncle then a stage and scene designer in "rep theatre" of a kind long found in English provincial towns that changed shows once a week or a fortnight and had very loyal audiences that kept them going until maybe it was telly that put an end to it.
This was so vivid I could see the woodwork shops, smell wet paint and glue, hear the whistling offstage and the hubbub on it. I shan't detail the why of such recollections, but I know all the same. The second has to do with hammers, nails and saws, as well as enjoying mingling with show-people, finding what they were like when not performing. But it was clear my hopes of getting some off-stage preparations for weeks to come and this log arising from them had been dashed for some days.
The first flash was blessed relief because it had felt like a private hell of a blitz, that bout of pain I wrote up emerging from it yesterday. The instant I woke up, still feeling very fragile, there was a nervous wait for wave after wave of renewed pain and the searing, explosive flashes if I dared move.
That's the closest maybe I've got to telling you how unpredictable and strange they can be: the mental pictures, sometimes mini-movies, where smell, touch and sound all play their part during what I've called "morning meditations", the time coming out of sleep and its dream consciousness to gear up for a day that brings its own set to follow those.
This morning's were simply "out of order": more frequently they're about music or things people have said that marked me, need exploration and bringing a bit of thought to bear on them.
If you seek a uniting element between a film whose DVD release I once wrote up ('Of pros and demented deities at work', Aug 21, 2004) and the avuncular sharing of what some found a "bohemian lifestyle", it's pretty obvious.
She's still my screen goddess. Some things never change, I was very lucky to meet Susannah York one day, find she's a lovely person as well ... and to wake up this morning able to contemplate women again though why her I'm not sure and it doesn't matter.
Apart from a few of the words written yesterday about Cass Brown when my own two days of agony proved a rather selfish reason to recall others who've long kept very focussed blogs about matters of sickness and health, I'm sticking that entry in the orchard.
But while I'm glad of Cass's "Fame at Last" note on Cancergiggles as I wrote, he's long had it anyway since that site's become a wealth of direct experience, wise ideas and a host of references for people in need of his brand of courage.
Before all musical progress and any other part of my life came to an abrupt and scary halt with the latest and longest of the savage migraine assaults that occasionally knock me flat, I'd had rather different "deep thoughts" for any October piece in the orchard.
I'd been writing about those, a personal exploration of things about just me that are much clearer now on the strength of slowly ripening insights granted by friends and lots of singers, but today, I feel less ready to write it.
Instead, there can only be hints in yesterday's piece I've shifted, called 'A real pain to rush things...', which should serve as a reminder to me of what it usually costs when I don't listen to myself as well as I should.
You don't need a full front-page entry about a terrifying blitz of brain pain and nausea I almost never get on "normal" working days, just only too often when I stop. But last week all the same, someone else asked to be given back more of the old personal blogging.
Well, it's there, this month's dose, where in both music and reading an underlying theme I've been following has more to it than simply what's particularly poetic, since it includes two other notions hard to write anything about on such a bleak, sunless morning as this.
One is the notion of Utopias.
For that, you'll find I've said a little about how my other lifelong "goddess" (who would rightly hate to be called one) in literature uses those to address the ways of own world, all that's wrong with it. The other is the notion of solitude, where I've given you two quotes that could seem in near total contradiction, about what most of us feel when confronted with our own loneliness.
I believe both to be true, but it took me a long time to get to the point of being open to such "truths" since they take languages other than words to express and above all to reconcile into the kind of sense that's not about "logic".
I don't plan to log much more about knowing I'm through with my own years of solitude, that's been said; today's just too nasty to tell you what I plan to do about it with any lightness or wit. In any event, the half-buried scare I got at the weekend was just one many of us have when sickness suddenly hits us like that and there's nobody around to offer comfort, cold compresses, a big hug and a promise it won't go on forever.
I can't and don't want to live like that any more.
I'm too ancient. In soul, I should add, because that's what some people tell me and when they do, I no longer find it just flattering but true. Most plans I had for this week were about giving anyway, not taking or asking.
My unbounded admiration for the Ursula I approached again yesterday is partly born of knowing, just as she does in book after book, that no society will work harmoniously unless it's one where people find giving is the source of all their real wealth and sharing the only responsible and wise way to behave.
We all find this out sooner or later.
But some just lock away the love they have in themselves so deeply or so hurt they feel that can't do it, it's too risky.
I know what needs to be done this week -- which includes fixing a few iPods as well as reviews yet to be posted -- but right or wrong, take that scare as a warning about announcing or even making plans when I'm too damned tired.
You'll soon, nevertheless, be hearing about Lauren Kendall, who proves to have an original sound in her approach to how we live our lives and especially our loves and our dreams, the most constant of themes for almost every musician featured here.
It's come to me, you see, along with thoughts of Ms. Le Guin and Utopias, that in lyrics -- and without wishing to make pigeon-holes of my own when I can't abide other peoples and nor can the singers -- the innate tensions that keep us listening to and loving superb singer-songwriters lie in their own such Utopias.
I shan't build this into a theme then twist musicians to fit it, but it's hard not to hear how part of the appeal that makes an album timeless rather than the latest and temporarily greatest to write up is in the emotional tension, expressed in words and enriched in music, between what is and what could be.
Unless you're a nihilist, there can be no creativity of the kind that makes for a career and for growth without tension and an acknowledgement always of something a little beyond what you've got still to aim for and achieve. When they cover politics, singers make this pretty explicit and have views of what's wrong. When it's more personal, the tension can be less obvious.
I'm spelling out one of many reasons for feeling a strong disregard for a music listener and especially writer who gets uptight, as some do, if a singer they like "let's them down" by doing something too new for them. For sure, some musicians change more than others, but if you don't like this, why bother with their new work at all? You wouldn't like it if somebody told you, "You know what's so great about you? You never change, you stagnate!"
I'd rather avoid any immediate straight music entries, though this is a week for them, when I feel as unwell as still I did this morning and the images that came to me weren't what I've become more used to in the natural flow of things. Those are harder to describe, since they're fleeting and usually about very recent events, musical or personal, and part of a networking process that keeps me in tune.
Thinking about blitzes and stage-props doesn't make me feel in synch with anything much, so until I've got that back -- and my insides have settled down -- once this is said, I'll start listening again but not writing it before I'm ready.
3:30:31 PM 
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dimanche 30 octobre 2005
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In a year where developments find me making ready analogies among how people behave, music's patterns and what I find sound and unsound, I've said little of those in the blogroll with reason to make physical and mental health the very focus of their work on the Net.
But they're there, like Cass Brown, who last week laid claim to 'Fame at Last' -- though to my eyes he had it years ago -- for a news item about Cancergiggles, a terrific blog where Cass has long written about living with cancer.
The subject sounds gloomy and painful, but Cass is almost invariably neither, though he writes about the downs as well as he handles the ups of life and love with such a disease, so I still follow his blog, catching up in depth every now and then.
Cass is more down to earth than people who irritate me occasionally by saying I push musical analogies to such a degree it seems I've found them a "cure-all" for everything, as if an awareness of our inner harmonies and those of others were enough to drive sickness away.
I don't believe that for an instant.
Nor do I often write about physical pain because usually I'm lucky, don't get very much of it; except for one kind that scares me badly whenever it happens, all the worse for being unpredictable. It did at the end of the week, an appalling bout so bad there just was no Saturday; it's been one of the worst yet.
During my last fortnight at work, I've also been busy on several pieces, either on specific musicians or further long essays more of the deep background kind. These latter are not always log entries, they'll one day be parts of the book that's definitely going to grow out of this site once I get down to writing it in a few years.
On Friday night, I went to bed having made lots of progress on two such pieces, but I soon woke up feeling far less cheerful, indeed terrible. Those hours between about 1:00 am Saturday and late Sunday morning I don't want back any time soon, preferably never again, but that's asking a lot.
I was very violently sick, there were cold sweats and hot ones, and for almost a day and a half the hellish migraine and nausea wouldn't stop. The poor cat didn't get fed because trying to move made it worse, I must have overdosed insanely on painkillers and nightmares when knives and metal bands in my skull seemed to take on colours and physical shape.
It seems silly to log about Cass and people like him mostly when this happens to me, since such people are always a part of my life. Still, as I very shakily, slowly emerge from bouts like the one I've just had, I find myself especially wondering how on earth people manage it, those who have to endure constant physical pain.
In our society, we're fortunate: we've got money, usually, and medicine and doctors, but it's not so for lots of people in Africa with no such relief.
My doctor has never been able to tell me exactly what triggers these ghastly experiences, but while they're happening, it's like they'll never end, yet they do, just leaving me gasping and thankful and weak as I am now, wondering if just maybe I've understood a reason for them.
They would make sense if I'd been smoking more than usual or had an unhealthy day without enough food and exercise; but it begins to strike me a possible common factor is they invariably land me on my back on my bed just as I'm starting to unwind.
Well, I think I'm very bad at unwinding and really doing nothing, denying a body that says "I'm tired" and a instinct that says "Take a rest".
There's a much better reason than my last dose of getting that wrong for talking about Cass again, all the same. He's already done what, for one day, I have in mind and turned a well-written and focussed blog into a book, with a note typical of his approach:
"With about 3 years experience of living with cancer and having come close to being a very dead person, I thought that I may be able to pass on a few thoughts which may help or comfort people who found themselves in a similar hilarious situation."
I don't know about a hilarious situation, just that his blog often is wise and funny because he sees much humour in facing up to something too many people find nigh on taboo or very uncomfortable, which it doesn't have to be when you're honest.
The book's called 'Cancergiggles (Mountains are Easy)' (Lulu, Inc. is one place to get it) and I liked one reader's comment and 'Bravo' that said: "Here you are, embracing life and all it has to offer in the face of this bastard cancer. You are far braver than I, and I'm only fighting a mental illness."
One entry I've been working is about what could be called "bastard cancers" deep in our society and how some singer-songwriters confront them, finding music and words to help the rest of us do so. Without going more deeply into this right now, here are a couple more quotes that particularly spoke to me recently:
"I know we are always essentially alone, in the dark hours of the soul, and to think that a spouse will make that go away is mere fantasy. I know that a spouse is not a panacea for all that ails the lonely beast, and if one has those expectations, one is going to be desperately disappointed."
Those lines on such misplaced expectations are part of a passage on partnership by one Mary, which the eclectic Kathryn Petro found 'Achingly, Beautifully Said' in A Mindful Life, another blog I look to sometimes for focus.
Mary writes toughly at Fly in the Honey about what it is to have someone "willing to bind himself or herself to your sorry ass" and her entry moved me.
But so did these words by the Seraphim, who entitled them 'Totally impossibilities':
"Change is the most beautiful thing when you allow it to pass freely. The reminder that all things end does not have to be unsettling. It can be a comfort to rest in, like a good spot of grass. Life is fleeting and must be mindfully attended to. Like an intoxicating agent, simplicity can entirely deteriorate the illusion of our own self importance, and reinforce the finality of our existence, and what we are as a whole, thus we feel joined. Then, all loneliness can do to us is vanish, for there is no place for it anymore, when you realize that being alone is a total impossibility.'
That was Sarah Fimm's journal entry on October 18.
What I've been seeking myself to explore, not always for anyone but me so far, has drawn mainly on intuitions and the new kinds of "knowing" that come to me sometimes since last July's 'Night of Unknowing', which is the sole term I'll ever have for it.
The everlasting process of assimilating it helps me juxtapose passages like the above, full as they may seem of contradictions, feeling there are none the instant you stop worrying about "logic" and start realising "truths" can be contained in their opposites.
Some weeks after overdoing a fuss -- without understanding why -- in an "elastic birthday" entry on turning 50 that obstinately insisted on writing itself, then finding a place on its own here, I've realised there was more to it than I thought at the time.
In my weeks back at work, after that stubborn piece and the naked non-musicians who illustrated it defied everybody's common sense about a day everybody told me was no different from any other, some of my morning meditations have left me feeling it was a bit different.
But what I was also trying to say, beyond the parallels I drew between creating music and making love, wasn't yet ready to be expressed, not in any words I could find. Anyway, but that entry was quite long enough as it was as well as maddening somehow to give some kind of shape.
The many pages I've written since have been inspired by my listening, more research and reading where I'm often struck by fine observations on other people's blogs. Perhaps I've done too much, so by Friday night it was deep exhaustion that had set in.
That's particularly absurd.
A bad kind of "bastard cancer" we tend to tolerate for no good reason is self-inflicted: a sense of urgency where there is none. Cass knows and says "I don't have a lot of time" but he doesn't rush life on that account; one reason so many people like his blog is it's the work of a man who makes best use of the time he does have.
Well, I've still not found the words for further insights that came together somehow around October 2, making it a date to put a few more things permanently behind me, then stress some of what's left as songlines for my future, finding they express a quest for health rather than dwelling on with sickness.
In short, I gave myself a deadline, but one was quite enough for a month except at work. Foolishly, I've been setting more deadlines since -- in contradiction to what motivated me to turn again to Ursula K. Le Guin and read 'Always Coming Home' for the fourth or fifth time. I've done the same with virtually every book by the woman who is my personal Nobel Literature laureate.
On this volume, I've written essays elsewhere to describe how it's a collection of tales, poems, music and even the anthropology Ursula sometimes practices with genius each time she invents a Utopia. Her Utopias are immensely varied; some of them comprise several books, often taken up after gaps of many years when she feels like going back to one of them.
As ever, this book manifests her best-selling ability -- far too popular worldwide for her to win a real Nobel from a snooty committee -- to give readers a vision that's always credible, with characters developed in great depth sharing qualities and flaws like anyone, while never preaching.
I think I chose this particular Utopia as a book to read almost all year long because Ursula's story-telling focus is a culture that's outside linear time and whose people live by natural cycles. Thus in the extensive collection of essays and notes forming 'The Back of the Book', the narrator observes at one point:
"It is hard for us to conceive, to approve of, a serious adult person not in a hurry. Not being in a hurry is for infants, people over eighty, bums, and the Third World. Hurry is the essence of city, the very soul. There is no civilisation without hurry, without keeping ahead."
What Ursula does is to imagine a world that stands ours on its head, one way or another, so effectively that many readers return to her again and again for a more sensible perspective. I just don't know why I'm still setting myself deadlines and rushing at life or log entries when I've never before had as much time for people who aren't in a hurry.
Next time I start one of these breaks from a world full of deadlines, I think it might be a good idea to remember the Saturday that just disappeared. I can't be sure, but maybe the silliest thing I could have done on Friday was to quit work for a week then plunge straight into music writing.
My body and guts said "Don't do it", I didn't listen, and here I am writing about it while the idea of listening to music until I've had a proper night's sleep gives me the shivers ... for now the big question is dare I yet eat anything again. Can you get much more stupid than that?
8:46:06 PM
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dimanche 23 octobre 2005
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After testing it, I now dare inform any readers who've learned to share my considerable caution in upgrading iTunes on Macs you can safely update now to version Six, which adds a video capability but came out almost frighteningly fast after iTunes 5 put "podcasts" on the market.
Thanks again to Michael Brewer for being braver than me and unveiling some of its secrets at the MacDev Center. Michael also commented on my almost routine "Wait!" warning when I linked to his article on October 14, essentially to back up what I wrote but on grounds different from mine.
At Apple's Cupertino headquarters, probably after further trials and collating the complaints from courageous computer users who played guinea-pig for iTunes 6.0, it's just become version 6.0.1. That little change makes all the difference, but won't stop me being a pain because it's so shrouded in secrecy.
On installing the upgrade and ensuring the most widely noted bugs have been squashed, I again noticed the little hitch Apple so often puts in the way of the fun they offer with music. It's an inability to spill the beans when things have gone wrong that bugs me no end! Just this once, I'll show you exactly why I see red.
Jargon messes with the music!
Here's some characteristically unclear lingo from a Mac's software update panel this week:
"With iTunes 6.0.1, you can preview, buy, and download over 2,000 videos on the iTunes Music Store and sync your music and purchased videos with iPod to enjoy on the go. To watch purchased videos, you must have Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later.
iTunes 6.0.1 features several stability improvements over iTunes 6."
Stability improvements?
As we'll see now I'm decided to get the point made, that's a wicked euphemism of the "collateral damage" kind. In part, what it means is: "This version is less likely to make a dog's breakfast of importing songs off your CDs, etc. & etc., than 6.0 did for many when we unleashed it."
Details of other problems people had digesting the new iTunes are amply written up, as usual, on specialist sites.
To get iTunes 6 functioning as it should, you need to upgrade QuickTime, Apple's homegrown video player, which also has important musical functions. On this related update, the company has the grace to be less economical with the truth (my italics in this extract):
"QuickTime 7.0.3 delivers several important bug fixes, primarily in the areas of streaming and H.264 video.
QuickTime 7 Pro users also gain the ability to create video and audio files that can be played back on compatible iPods. This update is highly recommended for all QuickTime 7 users.
[An] Important Notice to QuickTime Pro Users (...)"
then gives advance warning that if we've not paid the fee QT 7 requires of "pros" who plan to download videos or work with them, but already have a "pro" version up QT 6, we'll lose those extra capabiitie on upgrading unless we hand over the cash for a new licence key.
Fair enough.
QT 7 is, in some respects, a genuine improvement on 6.
So if Steve Job's firm can be perfectly straight there was something needed fixing in that, why merely mention "stability improvements" in iTunes when what Apple means includes making "important bug fixes" to the music software as well, before I felt able recommend it's now ready to install?
Who are they trying to kid?
And why? There's been a visible change among passengers, just like last year, in the Paris Métro ever since Apple Expo came to town a few weeks back. In an average rush hour, if you look around any carriage now, you're likely to see three, sometimes more, people with iPods.
It's an annual sales success story. Prior to the Expo, you'd probably see somebody else, but not several.
You can tell the iPods are new partly because the users let the wires hang all over the place, which is ill-advised, while a minor change in wire design is a give-away to their having the most recent headsets attached to the latest models.
Yet I've still had no reply from Apple Europe to the protest I mailed them just ahead of the Expo, exasperated by the latest dangerous software update. I felt it was bad practice to expose unwary music-lovers to the kinds of risks I detailed in writing.
My insistence about this is becoming tedious, I know, but take a look at these two items on iTunes and QuickTime, posted yesterday at the most comprehensive Mac trouble-shooting site around:
"Late-Breakers -
iTunes 6.0.1 (#2): CD playing/importing bugs not resolved for some users (...)
MacFixit reader Bill writes:
'As with iTunes 5.0, you can insert a CD, it appears on the desktop and in iTunes but the CD does not play nor can the songs be imported. iTunes freezes solid.
'I talked to an Apple expert in White Plains, NY, just before iTunes 6 launched about this problem with iTunes 5.0.1. He claimed that 5.0.2 would have fixed the problem. I never saw version 5.0.2 nor has version 6.0.1 fixed the problem.'
It appears that in some cases, changing the bitrate settings for importing data from CDs can allow the process to occur where it otherwise wouldn't (as explained in the iTunes 5.0.1 special report)".
Well, that may be easy as geek-speak goes but it's perhaps too technical for the inexperienced newcomer who just wants the iPod and the software to work, and the MacFixit special report link won't work for you unless you're a paid-up subscriber. Also
"Craig writes:
'The iTunes Podcast 'Categories' search feature remains broken. I had hoped the 6.0.1 update today would fix it. But for several weeks now, you cannot search for a Podcast via the 'Categories' selection that appears in purple at the lower left portion of the Podcast home page.
'An Apple representative has verified that this is a known bug in iTunes.'"
Isn't that reassuring?
What, then, of the new QuickTime?
After some more technical stuff posted yesterday at MacFixit, we learn how
"One reader writes:
'It looks like the Apple QuickTime Movie trailers site has had an upgrade. Whatever was done, I cannot run most of the trailers in the large format without them skipping and losing sync [the person means sound synchronised to the image]. I have the latest Quicktime (7.0.3) and am running Mac OS 10.3.9 ... which is supposed to be supported. Well, I guess it is, if you want to watch the miniscule version of the trailer'."
Being wrapped up in music, I've not bothered to check this yet but I do know the free and French-made VLC media player behaves better with some made-for-QT movies than QuickTime itself. VLC is multi-platform and one guy said to me the other day, "Where's the problem, Nick? Everybody uses VLC."
They certainly don't. Many haven't even heard of it.
If the movies stashed on my hard drives consisted of porn queens rather than women making music, I could almost understand why QT refuses to play more than a couple of minutes of some of them; it would be like someone whose definition of "liberal" is the one used by "right-thinking" Americans.
But there's no secret censorship built in by Apple and it's not because VLC comes from a country where adult or R film ratings aren't nearly as tight as they are across the Atlantic that the French player can handle stuff that gets QuickTime making arbitrary decisions about how long some movies are. In some cases to believe what the QT player says in its window, a clip about 15 minutes long is only 1'57" or something.
Such points now made, I'll shut up about the hindrances Apple puts between you, me and the music that the company's products should be giving us without such technical considerations to worry about; these encourage many of us to pay our MacFixit subscriptions to stay safe.
In a moment, I'll detail routine precautions to take when installing upgrades plus the tests I did, while there'll also be a follow-up mail to Apple. The gist of it just may be a little ironic:
"I'm glad your saturation ad campaign across Paris ahead of the Expo worked so well and new iPods are everywhere.
Now will you please tell me how you plan to respond when some of those happy people in the Métro and on the streets start to send you their new iPods for repair because shoddy software has stopped them working properly?"
Software update safety first
Once iTunes 6.0.1 was installed, I wouldn't even start up the programme before doing a "permissions repair" using Apple's Disk Utility, as I always do when such a software upgrade, from Apple or a third party, goes into my Mac.
Once completed, the repair panel showed nothing special had needed doing; that's fine, but the precaution is vital to prevent problems later because some updates do mess with those permissions.
Last night, I imported some singer-songwriters off CDs to go from iTunes to iPod.
Snce MacFixit warned iTunes 6.0.1 proved problematic about this for at least one person, I took one new file containing an album's worth of music out of the iTunes library, put it safely on the desktop in case I had the same difficulty, then bunged the same album back in the CD player to try a new import. It does work.
If it did because those import preference settings matter, it might be worth adding I don't use the default ones, but have customised them for AAC encoding at 192 kbps. That bit of geek-speak means I go for extremely high quality copies at the cost of using extra storage space.
This is because I often plug the iPod into my hi-fi to be able to jump quickly, using its own controls, from one singer to another or replay bits of a song I want to write about rather than mess around with the original CDs.
The iTMS sells music at 128 kbps, just fine for most people, but if you want higher quality off your own CDs you should skip 160 kpbs to jump from 128 to 192.
Since we're now talking "codecs", forget my informed reasoning; it's enough to know that 160 kbps is a good "bitrate" for the .mp3 songfiles most people are familiar with, but not for Apple's "advanced audio codec", which I happen to prefer.
The other key test was to ensure iPods plugged into the Mac still work and sync the data with iTunes. Mine do, but I checked since sometimes an iPod is no longer "recognised" by the computer after a software update and that's very bad news.
The last of language and likeness
Both my iPods, "kalessin's air" and its small sister "gaia's minstrels", have no problems synching with the Mac: the former's the new one Apple sent me instead of repairing a previous new one that came to grief because of bugged software.
I've not yet investigated the brand new video panel in iTunes, so will simply supplement Michael Brewer's helpful comment about a week ago by saying I understand it will work with iTMS outlets outside the United States -- but at a quick glace that's another incitement to spend money!
More shape to the substance
In the wake of other entries exploring the nature of music -- including one with a lot of nude pictures -- some readers have asked for more essays along with the singer-songwriters. Well, one of those is about ready.
My daughter's insistence on an overview of princesses and frogs is behind it, as well as a feeling I have it's time for a hefty swipe at one of the most absurd musical myths on the web.
This apart:
- while I appreciate kind words about such "insight" pieces, they take a very long time to research and write, as I found tackling that French angle shortly to come and others still in storage.
But most people's feedback says "keep the women coming" so the essays will be infrequent. As for the women some find simply distracting, now I made my serious point a few weeks back, the lass here is scarcely "gratuitous eye-candy" (to use a revolting expression), but I'm shutting the lid on a Pandora's box! A woman who's said pictures of sexy men she finds a kind of music has seen to that...
- a "scrooge" I may be, no fan of Christmas for purely personal reasons. But most people like it more than I do. So between now and then, you'll catch particular effort here to cover musicians and albums you might like to give or receive.
It won't be a "Best of 2005".
Others offer theirs abundantly, particularly in magazines; I enjoy reading them, but to make such lists here would entail invidious comparisons I prefer to avoid.
Instead, with luck, care over some recent purchases has filled my sleeve with a few stunners for your stockings since this is a young site and part of the aim is to make plenty of room for younger women whose reputations have only just begun to get around;
- for the long-planned index of who's here and what kind of coverage they get, I've realised we Mac users are lucky: the answer as to how to do it has been sitting on my machine right under my nose. It's called DEVONthink*.
Occasionally, it operates much as I do with iPods when I want to tease out those underlying patterns intuition brings increasingly to mind regarding women and their music;
- some of the "iMixes" are almost ready.
But a few people who know about the iTMS now it's open to more and more of us are asking, "What is an iMix?"
It's fun!
Good ones are imaginative, while mine tend to stray far from beaten tracks since I enjoy doing so. iMixes are simply a way of crafting and publishing personal music compilations at the iTMS, where anyone with iTunes can sample your selection. Better still,
"you can write liner notes about the picks, explaining your influences. iTunes saves your iMix for a whole year (...) For an iMix, iTunes creates a mosaic of cover art from your purchased albums, just like printing a cover for a mix CD. You’ll see your mix on the album page for songs in your mix, and other iTunes Music Store customers can rate your iMix" (from Apple's 'Create Playlists' page.
Mine will soon start appearing at the iTMS France and you don't need an account at that particular outlet to be able to sample them, start making rude remarks and giving me rotten ratings. Or even nice ones.
Either way, I look forward to it.
__________
*Software from DEVONtechnologies never came cheap but the firm realised the potential of the Mac OS X platform at once and has since steadily improved what I find the best database and organisation potential there is.
The company started in Germany before going international on the strength of a terrific reputation among people ranging from academics, researchers, creative artists and journalists like me.
The database DEVONthink offers can these handle any kind of file, from text and Net pages to music and video. For ages, it's been a favourite for tasks often for my main job, but I've just realised how smart I could make it with all my music.
Given what it can do, I use the "personal edition", seeing no reason to upgrade to the Pro one now that's also available
Now US-based, the company also produces some very good free software, such as a quick search tool if you've "lost" some document on your Mac, also well worth checking out.
As for DEVONagent, this is a "heavy duty" Net research tool that leaves Google light-years behind and can be customised according to your needs.
It interacts smoothly with the data base and other Mac programmes; what I realised is that by running this log through both, the software will do most of the searching, thinking and linking for me!
The only drawback -- for the lazy -- is that it takes a long while to set up the way you Iike, but that effort is rich in rewards.
It's "only" technology, of course, and no better than the mind that use it, but for a brain like mine that increasingly relies on intuition and networking of ideas where parallels may not be immediate obvious, you can bet I love smart software that's also intuitive.
Once you're on top of it, the unexpected links and connections it makes between pieces of data it considers related can be a helpful aide to whatever seems to go on, rather deviously sometimes, in my neurons!
Such technology may not be alive, but occasionally its workings are alarmingly close to our human processing capabilities.
2:39:53 AM
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dimanche 16 octobre 2005
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... if I've been there.
And at long last.
The last of times past
The true count for words on this log, now I know how to set up the search engine properly and understood the work required of me for a free service from Atomz (now part of WebSide Story), is about 735,000 words since February 2003.
In one entry, when the technique was still beyond my competence, I said I'd done more than one and a half million, but couldn't work out how that was possible, though that's what Atomz had counted.
Given that publishers tend to recommend 80,000 words for an average novel, there are more than nine of those. Nine novels written in spare time by somebody who isn't glued to his Mac in less than three years. If anybody has read them all they are certifiably insane, and that number is after stuff that shouldn't be here got removed. One or two people think what's left says more than I should, but it's a life.
The point about archiving accounts of wildly being in love or facing up to mental illness to get better has been made: they elicited "thank you" and even "guidance please" responses, do me and nobody else any harm, and just might do some good if they remain.
My own answers to life's hardships, if I've got any, combine what I learn from wiser people, alive or dead, science it suits me simply to absorb, and mainly from music and women and putting them together.
Many entries are well over 600 words, some digress and the search engine is no luxury -- I need it myself sometimes when past writing is relevant to today's me. When I find search engines on other people's blogs or journals, I appreciate those too.
How to track down a musician
The log's search engine has been optimised and suffices for anyone who types in the right words.
Given new and permanent priorities, that little box is tailored, since to do otherwise I'd have to pay a fortune to give immediate access to everything on hundreds of pages.
Anything written since I began to feel myself towards the end of last year, no longer a bunch of rivals inside me half the time, comes up straight away.
Importantly, that includes virtually all the music entries.
If you're after words prior to October 2004, they'll be in one of the entries done during the month whose full archive will come up on your screen as an answer.
With most browsers, it's easy enough then to hone down the search on the page in a few seconds, by using whatever your command key is (usually it has an apple on Macs or "ctrl" on Windows) + F for "find".
That's the logic behind the note on the search box.
Being able to index the music and other new stuff for a long time to come so it's easy to find will do fine until I've got time separately to list musicians; I've written about scores of them already and plan one day to give you direct access to the relevant entries.
6:37:51 PM
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vendredi 14 octobre 2005
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Would you chance it?
Not me, not yet.
Michael Brewer has, now 'Apple Releases iTunes 6', at the MacDevCenter in his weblog. He checks it out. Most likely it's just fine, but iTunes 5 suits me and everything works. Can it really be a month since that last upgrade was offered, swiftly to be followed by a bug fix?
In another weblog from the same stable, Giles Turnbull spoke of the 'New Beginnings' with iPods and now video.
"Video is 'the wrong direction to go', 'there’s no content,' 'the screens are too small" and competitors to the iPod putting R&D into providing video are 'digging in the wrong place'," Russell Beattie wrote a year ago.
Beattie was quoted by Giles quoting the Apple boss, in an entry called 'Mobile Video: why Steve Jobs is Wrong'. Now Steve's on about desperate housewives who don't sound like part of my world. Wonderful, isn't it?
Both blog entries are sharp pieces.
My words on the potential danger in installing a software update because it's there are still fresh; yet when notice of iTunes 6 flashed up within moments going online, the bad old habit welled up: "Oh, right. Let's install the new one, find out why it's version 6 so fast."
"You're no longer one of 'em, Nick," the inner voice warned, "you gave up being a guinea-pig with Cupertino's last hasty release. You're luckier than some you've still got your music."
That was the voice to heed.
Apple has yet to reply, if ever, about the details I sent them on what's happened to me and others when we've taken risks I'll no longer run.
As logged, I'll read what's new, learn if it's more than fancy tricks of little musical interest, take a look at the specialist sites, check up on any woes others may encounter and tell you once it's widely considered "safe".
I must mention Fiona Apple again, since her "extraordinary machine" album again constituted much of the day's listening on the remarkable device that goes everywhere.
There's no rush to write up Fiona and this album, which is an unexpected gift indeed, has yet to be heard on the home hi-fi and passes the hype test with flying colours.
9:27:45 PM
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dimanche 9 octobre 2005
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An unusual birthday present
Having briefly introduced her on a recent weekday rich in contrasts but short on time, this is about Angelique's music. It's not her real name, the one I log, since her story, her former jobs and a new life are such she wants to keep anonymous.
Angelique chosen by one of the most intriguing and open people ever to have said "Hi" in reply to anything I've logged, but she said far more than just "hello" in a tale she thought I'd be open to sharing, which I certainly am.
Instead of her real name, the nom de plume she used lets her "hide behind a 'popular heroine' too wilful, wild and sometimes too plain dumb to be true! What you may put on your log, if you're interested, is how I feel about what you've written.
"We feel the same way about making music and making love, but your way of putting it is just not quite how I heard it, as a woman. Your words make me want to write it down because they have evoked too many memories to keep to myself."
I am vaguely aware of the fantasy Angelique she means, often depicted with full, flowing locks the like of which are rarely seen in real life. Even my pigeons might make a nest in women who seem happy spending fortunes and hours when I come across them in mixed hair salons. They emerge from under those big globular things looking more unnatural than when they went in.
The real woman behind the words is very different and her letter sent early in the week -- a response to an appalling mess before it had a last thorough rewrite and wound up where it should be on the log, on its own and behind me -- beats anything I've been sent for a long time.
Angelique may know me less well than Cathy, friend and former wife who was my choice companion at Susheela's concert two days ago, but has far more in common with her than a similar head of short light-brown hair, brown eyes and a very attractive coming of age, made to last.
They both read me almost alarming well.
Cathy found me looking "drawn", she said, but the day had begun early, taken me far out of town to freeze in my smart suit, coming home to post a quickie here and want to clean up, only to find the water was then cut off.
It was perhaps unwise to venture a few words about the "birthday story" and the sigh of relief with which I saw it to bed, followed by an agreeable observation, for me anyway, that at concerts men are almost always a smallish minority in the audience.
Now anyone who cares knows I want the best of both worlds, I don't imagine Cathy's been alone in remarking that, through music, "you do seem to have rediscovered sex again with the enthusiasm of a ten year old!"
It's true enough, provided she doesn't know more about "ten year olds" than me. I know society isn't how it used to be and need no more experts telling me early in childhood our "sex lives" start, but still!
The pertinence -- or impertinence? -- of such banter to what Angelique asked me to post is in the nature of her own intimate story about what music does to people, for to be very enamoured by that again is where I like being and this time, for keeps.
Exactly what I love to hear
I found qualities in the style as well as the content of a very long letter out of the blue, half in French and half in English, which touched me so much I phoned Angelique for a chat today before writing this.
Angelique's 37 and she's gay. She long worked in various music industry jobs and even sent me a revealing photo of herself with a very dry humour which is not for sharing but maybe says more than I did about women who are or can become music.
The mail's a well-written weave of simple fact, both a career tale told and a story of successive love affairs, with an occasional poetry about places and people extremely evocative in someone uncertain of any gift for writing. As soon as I learned more, I could simply suggest, "Why don't you do write or make music again, your skill's too fine to keep in check when you express yourself so well."
Her letter contained an obvious unasked "Should I?" She wrote knowing she's reached a point where she could say, "Like you, I feel I've done my trashing, but of what's left I'm still unsure of what I have to share, the way you expressed it once you found that, for yourself, you knew."
Angelique's way of telling me more of what musicians have given us both, first in writing and then with humour on the phone, left us completely ear to ear about a thing or two.
She's an accomplished musician herself, but on the quiet, having once chosen instead to become a part of the "industry" wanting to help others, until she felt she'd had enough. She told me much I had yet to know of what it does at its worst and why she put that part of her life behind her, to feel only then she was on track for a fulfilment that long evaded her.
On reading my "birthday suit" -- a belated one for some, given the age that suddenly did come home to me, yet apparently ear-opening for others -- the tales of her heart met such an echo in my words, after a number of entries I've begun to discover who's reading, she found her own time's come to get it "out of my system, the better to move on" though she wants to tell people by way of this place.
Flattered by such an approach to my log, which is certainly here to be shared, I thought at first to co-operate simply by publishing text and translations, before Angelique agreed that perhaps she might do well to explore her own voice, when I offered instead to help her on way as best I can.
If she's got more to say here until she does, she knows she's welcome, particularly since she's the first former "insider" to tell me more of what it is that drives increasing numbers of musicians to seek direct outlets rather than the limitations they feel the industry and expectations it raises among music fans currently allows them.
A fine ear for an 'industry' ends an inside career
Of her time in the business, she used both ways of telling: the blunt and the less so, saying in writing she
"rejoices to read words that aim to make bridges when other men make a marketplace, and some listen to nothing of the dreams they sell and care little for the fate of dreamers they have a power to destroy.
"I've seen how some steal joy, they take hope, they take so much from young flowers they claim to nourish. But they keep many a talent behind glass walls in hothouses fed with falsehoods. The farmers where I live today abuse fertiliser to force growth with no regard for the soil, so they are lost even when they have stayed, not abandoning their land long in the family. Our grandfathers cared for the land, out every day in any weather among the crops they grew and understood.
"In just decades, their business has become an industry; you fall into step with it or you do it your own way. So it often is with music, until I could tolerate no more of men whose pleasure is perverse: men who force the art in others until the roots are dried, the bloom is faded, dreams are dust, and hearts once full of hope can be so hardened by hurt there are no petals left for the streams of which you've begun to speak [...]
"If their puppet playthings dance no more to the dreams they first brought the industry I worked in, such men and equally women seek to shape them to the whims of others, so they please those who pull the strings and form fashion and taste, they find themselves discarded. I've known musicians sadder than any broken dolls since toys have no hearts to deceive.
"Strolling down to the shore, sometimes I think of those who were unable to withstand so fierce a Mistral as the sturdiest plants do here. Some become tall but twisted trees without sufficient succour, others are flattened reeds that can rise no more.
"I could pick up stones and cast them over the agitated sea where all rivers flow to watch how they sink and feel very sad for what I've seen and heard [...]."
My English reads poorly next to Angelique's native prose, but she was warned I can translate but lack that special talent of those who do it well with literature. Angelique acknowledges any bitterness expressed in those words as being only the worst of what she's known and balances it with much she finds good in an industry where little is as straightforward as it sounds.
But when she finally quit a last well-paid job abroad and returned to the far south of France and that Mistral wind Angelique's known since childhood, she didn't just "come home" because of this disillusionment with companies I won't name.
What one woman made of a 'big bang'
There was also a man and a sudden end to a deep love affair, the one she detailed the most. A man, yes, when I've told you Angelique is gay, but her story isn't mine.
Long "just a friend, a very good one," he somehow fell wildly in love with her about three years ago when she says she was getting pretty mixed-up in her private as well as professional life.
Most of her response to my own story, initially in writing with an acute insight and sensitivity regarding those concerned and the web they wove, is now hers to tell, not mine, along with other tales from a life full of passion but with a lucidity of insight born, as she had it today, mainly of hindsight.
Now she's got more to think about, given some ready encouragement. Does she really need to look back when she could put the gifts she's got and what's she's made of them into a promising future instead? What she found in me was a reflection of what's in her, even if it's mostly under her bridge as well.
Angelique, both on my log and in her new life, knows what music has given her with none of the long break I took from it when listening became hard, but the real story is what she did with music the day she experienced a life change as deep as any I've known, and shared it.
Music used as "therapy" is a banal enough subject and no big deal here, when I'd rather keep on looking and listening out beyond that; not least for the kind of woman I wrote about as a music I'd like back in a life fully to be shared once more.
In years past, I've touched on the ambiguity of blogging as sometimes a combination of "self-therapy" and sharing where it's hard, when you're at it, to be quite sure which you're doing, if not both! Indeed, there's a practising therapist on the revised blogroll, since I hold Kathryn Petro's 'Mindful Life' in high esteem.
Angelique, as Kathryn has, dug far below the surface, hence a rapid response to my disclosures about how and why I hear as inextricable the way the language of the very building blocks of any music is so closely mirrored in the language we "talk" when we make love.
The man Angelique describes developed "a complex of his own invention". She lives for music and poetic expression; he knew this, of course, but for all she aroused in him, he considered himself a "tone-deaf ignoramus, ever outdoors with a very physical job."
"B's no intellectual," she continues, "but he was often a fun, sporting and endearing companion. He's an attractive man, rarely talkative, but comfortable to be with though I couldn't meet all the need he said he felt for me. This mismatch, however, was slow to come as an obstacle between us, we didn't want to lose what we had [...]
"When the three of us [the other being Angelique's lover with whom things were no longer quite how they had been] went out one night and had some drinks, B. became very maudlin about music. He felt excluded by what P. and me were laughing about when we talked of the day we'd each just had [...]
"B. drank a lot that night and kept harking back to his ex-wife. Then he started touching me like he never did before and began to make a loud fool of himself in the bar. He knew how he was and went off to find a taxi, we'd never seen him that way. Then he staggered back inside and blew up, told us we 'wasted time talking stuff that makes no sense to me whether you're into music or not.'
"I couldn't understand why he was so aggressive and upset, we'd changed the subject, I've no idea to this day exactly what was going through his mind, but he kept repeating music's nothing to get engrossed in, we just got a private kick out of it, he didn't and 'So what's all the fuss about?' [...]"
Anyway, the women decided he was best not left alone that night and took B. back to their apartment, where he fell on to the sofa to sleep it off. Angelique and P. went to bed themselves. P. was the only one who had to work the next morning and B. was still asleep when she left.
What happened then Angelique says she's long since given up trying to figure out, having already given me her twist in the tale that consists in mutual discoveries. The letter's entertaining evidence of my assertion that when women set about describing sex, in almost any circumstances, there are few men who get it so funny and also so right.
Angelique doesn't have a view on that, she simply told it how it was and there's no need to follow her far into the physical side, but it could make for a good song! When she asked where I am with a "tough love" iMix I've occasionally mentioned, I admitted it's now about 25 songs long already. Someone at Amazon in the States, moreover, took a similar thought I came across last week, but I. M. Sanchez Prado is a "Professional broken-hearted" and into "music as therapy for heartbreak".
There you have his, Spiderman included! To each their own; when it comes to Angelique's physique and what she did with that and music, she wrote of her considerable surprise at herself that morning she roused B. with a cup of coffee and a loose night-gown.
"Are you sure you really want the world to know you found yourself so 'wet for it'?"
"Today, you could even tell the world I was hot and dripping for it, Nick! I wanted to give him the shock of his life, I scarcely knew myself, I'd never felt that way about a man before. Just don't ask me why."
Why isn't of much interest anyway since this is a story not about lust and our motives but of music, expressed any way we can when the urge takes us in its hold. Emotions are complicated enough as it is.
Angelique's feelings got on top of her and she found herself all over B., who may have known the kind of wrangle and tangle I can well understand in a man confronted with feelings he can neither suppress nor hope to resolve when someone who doesn't feel the same becomes the object of them.
That's old history now, just as for Angelique her sexual preferences are no longer as firmly fixed as she had felt before the shock they shared in love because "something just drove me!"
But once the tensions eased and lust was sated, they were both relaxed, she seized none too gently on a chance to show him his "lack of an ear for music had nothing to do with being tone-deaf". He wasn't. What B. had needed was a right way to find out.
Angelique gave me this story on reading my own since it seems to her that memorable day was one where she knew what I felt has fully retured as a part of me; but for her it was simply the other way round and in sex, she opened B. to music.
'Would you count the grains of sand...?'Now she's got a life in southern France and a still new and deepening relationship with a woman where a love of very many things is shared, she reckon what happened inside B. saw his whole view of life not just given a bit of therapy but radically changed by music.
They've stayed long-distance friends, often call each other, now "he's the music-mad one" and no longer somebody "so anti-intellectual and hostile to arty-farty people he was deaf to the language he speaks with his own body in his work and in bed."
This was a response beyond anything I expected, from somebody I didn't know. What Angelique's mail addresses at length -- she says it took hours to write while I've also spent time meditating on it between opening Tuesday's mail and phoning her today -- is her sense of that harmony we each hear beyond both sex and music.
"Pour moi, la musique est devenue l'expression parfaite d'une réalité toute autre que nous ne comprennons pas... ['For me music has become the perfect expression of quite another reality we don't understand] ... except as a profound knowledge of a truth we can't grasp though we can approach it with the senses and know it to be the nourishment of our souls," she wrote.
"Musicians who apply reason to this reality begin to lose their ears and make noise, no longer music, as with those of us who bring excess logic to bear on our understanding, when such a truth becomes no more than shattered shards of glass, a broken prism.
"Would you number the grains of sand on the beach when you might just lie on their warmth, perhaps as naked as you'd like to swim or dance in rain, and hear instead the countless voices of the sea even as it laps over your feet?
I'm delighted you have met the Seraphim, as you sometimes call her, for she's among my memories of these days I've recounted, with others who have heard these voices. Water is another way of hearing music, is it not?
I'm finding my own way here, close by the sea and at the feet of so many mountains, the spine of the land that is my home. Soon I shall decide which peak to climb next. My answers lie in music and the arms of the woman with whom I'm sharing my life."
This story I found about as musical as anyone can get, and with heartfelt thanks to a first "guest contributor" in a long time, since writing about music is just one way of talking about harmony if once you heard it so deeply you want to become just a part of it.
Teasing remarks thrown my way since I took days to express things as they've come together for me aren't taken very seriously. The way I said it will strike some as a little senseless, but I shan't pretend to have "grown out" of anything!
I merely feel disinclined in future to illustrate my conclusions on deep and like needs common to many of us with the juvenile enthusiasm that went into that entry. Angelique's own remarks about my musical-looking young women were those just of a very funny woman.
She'd so like this story shared I postpone Susheela Raman's changes since I've told you how good the concert was. The new album we didn't get very much of on the night is a great listen straight off, but there's such a mix in what she, her husband and friends have achieved, I've yet to take it all in.
Should that partner I'd like to meet, now I no longer feel it right to go on living with less than music in human shape very close at hand and heart, prove to be someone happy to explore soundscapes with me, then I'd be delighted, but that's more than I'd dream of asking.
To someone who may read this before I finish answering the mails, I'd just say I'm no longer deaf to offers of help when freely given. Losing the habit of saying "No thanks" will take a little longer to come easy. Like Angelique, I'm kind of listening out for the right "peak to climb", knowing nothing yet of her own hills and valleys, the flows of her body. Should I one day hear a chance like that during a concert, it might be the least surprising thing about her!
An invitation leads to another
Angelique is also the first to play a game I've invited of anyone and has put up a good pretence of not knowing the answer. I tease, but so did she. Requests, I have said are welcome, hence her two-fold one.
A song she said once haunted her happens to be one I listened to again just a few days before she wrote. It haunts me too when I'm in that kind of mood. The singer's Johnette Napolitano, and lyrics Angelique quoted very nearly right are part of something sad and mysterious by Andy Prieboy:
"It is complete now - two ends of time
Are neatly tied
A one-way street, she’s walking to the
End of the line
And there she meets the faces she sees in
Her heart and mind
They say -- goodbye -- tomorrow Wendy’s
Going to die"
(from 'Tomorrow, Wendy' thanks to Lyrics Freak).
What's so haunting in the band Concrete Blonde's "cover", meaning simply their version of somebody else's music and words marked by almost cinematic flashbacks, is how we're not told why Wendy's doomed, but we can hear it in the scary boom of guitar echoes that punctuate the song like death knells.
It works very well on 'Recollection' (2004).
Johnette Napolitano, band frontwoman with a spellbinding voice, was "known to introduce 'Tomorrow Wendy' as a song 'about a woman with AIDS'," the Wikipedia says.
Some day, now in mind, is a piece about women and bands who make music as a modern incarnation of centuries of folk narratives to sing brief but full life stories on an album as varied in mood and content as 'Recollection'.
Very much ado about nothing
Angelique closed her mail with the kind of request I'm delighted to receive, as long as I'm careful. If I've already got the music or it's on my someday list -- one you're welcome to extend -- I'll get to what you want. As of yesterday, the latest Fiona Apple is for soon, and you'll get a write-up of 'Witching Hour' by Ladytron, eventually 'The Beekeeper' by Tori Amos, and even indeed 'Peddling Dreams' from Maria McKee.
Patience, though, because some of these I'm discovering for the first time myself, inspired by tip-offs, and obviously I won't rush people who come new to my own ears any more.
If people think I made more fuss than needed about the business of being one side of 50 and then the other, well ... so do I now. I'm looking forward to the unfolding of the rest of my life and still feel the gratitude I've expressed to your varied responses.
When another next decade's through, who knows where any of us will be, but for me, that one will be an affair to celebrate less openly. I'll still be writing about music, that's for sure, ever closer to those who make it, and boring women with reminders zeroes are nothing to fear.
Angelique is one of several, including some men, whose way with water flows far too deep for thought; she's a surprise indeed, but I hope that in taking up such an opportunity to share what she's come to know about when to let go and grow, I've managed to convey something of the easy calm she's found in so doing.
While grubby fingernails are not a good idea, scribbling notes in the dark as again I did at Thursday's concert can get dirty too if your pen's leaking, but at least they made sense when I tried to read them afterwards! I'm bidding again to say something here I don't think I can.
But enough of looking back.
The laughter and poise in Angeligue's voice linger with me tonight: she's clearly through with seeking answers we shan't find in languages that aren't shaped for them when we have others that are.
"Music," she says, "has always been my way of hearing all the rest.
"It's no recipe for youth, it's always landed me back on my feet. You can't feel old when you're anywhere near it, was that what you were saying?"
Perhaps it mostly was.
If you've any hope of me showing her picture, forget it; some jokes are best kept to ourselves.
I do gabble on, but my liking for people with Angelique's kind of clarity who enjoy different ways of getting through to the rest of us grows deeper every day.
4:34:51 AM
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jeudi 6 octobre 2005
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...and I do apologise for it!
Thank you all very much.
Especially since by now, the final episode of what turned out to be an extremely elastic passage through the zero tagged on to the end of the Big Five-Oh, I may have lost you on the way.
I know it's really October 6. Honest I do.
But I went to a funeral today, you see, a happy one, as such gatherings can be when they are celebrations of a long, wise and generous life! There's been work and I'm off after reassuring you I've still got my marbles to a concert, which I promise is definitely the last bit of my 50th birthday.
Meanwhile, doubtless with increasing bemusement, far more people than I expected have been trying to reply to a birthday post on Sunday (the middle day of it) as it changed every time you looked at it!
The glitch was the way that entry rewrote itself, I disclaim responsibility ... nearly! And now it's moved and there's a new one where it was on October 2. I would like to answer mails very soon, including some from people I didn't know. Lots of people said very nice and kind things and even made some good suggestions about the log.
Now that time appears to running in one direction again, I'll write you individual answers at the weekend, all being well.
Some of your suggestions I've implemented. Others are ideas I'll think about, like one from Angelique who would like me to share a bit of her story; she's not a musician, at least this is what she says, but she sounds very much like a woman who is music.
Anyway, I've got these trains to catch.
So thank you, just thank you again -- I'm a bit overwhelmed; people who come here are a most remarkable lot.
It's been such a nice birthday!
Music and life beyond 50 resumes next time.
5:31:31 PM
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lundi 3 octobre 2005
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When you fancy a bite of the Apple if it's on offer, occasionally it helps to listen to your friends when they're wise about software to be handled with care and attention.
iPods and iTunes, like people, need careful updates
So may I lend a hand if you meet specified conditions and like being careful with touchy software? I mean iPod software and the iTunes interface. It may be boring, but Apple is out to make a killing with by selling the things and fails to warn new buyers of how their pleasure in music can be ruined.
Even if you use Windows, not a Mac -- I'm less sure what it's like on the 'other side" of the main computer operating systems -- here's the lowdown and why I'm fed up since I wish Apple stopped doing stupid things with software somebody has to say clearly what often they cover up.
It's rare, granted, that the firm issues a dangerous update, but I've had occasion to write to senior Apple executives about three so far and number four got me very heated. It's such a waste of time to exercise a public obligation to do their job for them!
"This came for you last week while you were off."
A mate handed me a sizeable package.
I knew what was in it, took one look at the date of despatch and my eyes almost fell out! The iPod repair after damage by software seemed too good to be true, it was so fast. I'm rewriting because on closer inspection, it's a new iPod, not the one I sent them, without a word of explanation.
When I asked Apple staff on their hotline and then in good music and Mac stores how long the average iPod repair takes in France, answers varied if I got one, but nobody said less than a fortnight.
Staff at one renowned store where lots of people buy music and nowadays many Apple products, reported very long delays.
Yet going by the date and my mate, the iPod Photo 60 GB model I logged was damaged by a risky iTunes upgrade -- one that caused grief to many music lovers -- must have gone off and come back from repair in record time. At least, that what's I wrote before I looked at the serial number.
A remarkably quick fix for frustration
A veteran journalist has a probing nose when odd things happen, like a response time that smells of "special treatment". I accuse Apple of nothing, let's be clear. But as the iPod went off for repair, I sent mail to top people at Apple Europe to express frustration at the premature duff software release.
I timed my protest for the start of Apple Expo in Paris. No doubt they planned to sell lots of new iPods. I said I wouldn't log details here -- if I did, anyway, you'd be reading a long list of examples from people other than me since they come to me as someone who takes up such issues - but told them the firm's dodgy record with software releases is a matter of public interest, no longer a personal campaign.
I've had no indication those mails were received, no notice of non-delivery as you usually get these days, and, unsurprisingly, no reply.
Whatever. My iPod -- okay, a different one -- was back with me inhabitually fast. This may be a coincidence. I made clear I wasn't out to benefit from my professional position (that's just knowing who to lodge protests with. If an non-journalist is looking for someone who's a decision-maker in many firms nowadays, these people make it pretty hard for you to get them: no contact details on the Net, etc., and first names only from the staff who deal with the public. So what do you think?
I know what I plan to do when I have the time. I plan to find out. An honest plumber gives you an estimate, an account of work done and spare parts replaced and tells you why there was a problem in the first place.
What exempts Apple from any such obligations? Why do so many senior executives in firms, at least in France, make their contact details known only to an "inner circle"? When you talk to them, they're like you and me, if they have a problem you eventually get it out of them. They turn out to be decent people.
I understand a need for privacy, peace and people to do the PR for you. With Apple, often I find I know more about the mechanics and possible ways of solving a problem than the guy on the other of the hotline as the phone runs up a massive bill!
There seems to be some kind of secret arrangement among people who work at nearly all Mac magazines, I don't know. I do know after many years of such lack of transparency, it's like a manufacturer tells journalists, "We'll let you in on this, provided you write nothing about that". That's not my kind of deal (what with my X-Files and a few inexplicable events logged here, no wonder some people say "Go find yourself a Scully," if you'll excuse me a little light relief).
The package waiting for me at work in my absence aroused interest obviously among my colleagues.
When I explained, I found very few music fans who have iPods and use Macs and iTunes even knew of the risks inherent in software updates that could bring disappointment to people rushing out to buy iPods. I see more every day. Many belong to first-time users. Here's a golden rule:
NEVER DOWNLOAD AN "AUTOMATIC" SOFTWARE UPGRADE IF YOU DON'T KNOW JUST WHAT YOU'RE DOING.
IT CAN A RISK YOU RUN: "THINK DIFFERENT" AND WAIT.
Such "shouting" isn't polite, but most people tell me they find it a bore to read small print and accept such offers straight away. Me too, sometimes. I'm not going to bother reading the licence agreement before clicking on the button saying "I agree" to get software and install it. You've read two or three, you've read them all, everyone knows the conditions.
Many people now say they hadn't noticed Apple software comes with the option of getting the download and hanging on to it until you're sure, rather than installing it at once. Apple can rightly say, the info's all there somewhere on your Mac. Indeed it is, but only former geeks like me have bothered to read it. I "hack" computers to get them working just the way I want them to work, I need to know what I'm doing.
If you don't, you know how it can be when what you fancy comes right your way and you're in a hurry to get close. You could well wake up feeling great, but once in a while you wind up with one heck of a hangover.
Recently Apple's brand new iTunes 5 saw a version 5.1 released as fast as the company could because "bugs" needed fixing. They got told by people like me. Your iPods depend on software updates your computer offers you when they come out.
If you're here for the music and use Mac, I don't want you reading half a dozen specialist sites to know when the software is "safe" and find it irresponsible of a company to make first rate hardware and then unleash software that can wreck it on an unwary public.
People's iPods go wrong. They tell me "I don't know what I did wrong, I just installed an update, that's all." Worse, they think it's their own fault. On this issue, I'm summarising years of conversations with geeks -- and more importantly, non-geeks, "normal users -- to deal with it once and, I hope, for all.
I fear that while Apple can't test all eventualities in recent years the firm has rushed out upgrades for us without sufficient care.
Apple has begun to acquire a reputation for lawsuits. In other words, the firm is at risk of ceasing to abide by its famous "think different" slogan. One French paper last week, in a good Expo story, said "Maybe 'think different' now means 'think secret'."
I know other computer firms intimidate their critics, buy off people in the media one way or another. Some push it to such an extent it's a Mafia operation.
I've removed the Mac specialist sites from the blogroll, but you can trust me as a source when it comes to safety.
It's a pain in the ass to be aware that you own a top-of-the-range piece of computer hardware that cost you more than many equivalents because you expect real quality now it's at risk from unwary updates.
If you're in any doubt, ask me or somebody who knows what I'm telling you and how to be sure before you install one. For some people new features like "podcasting" are so "sexy", now that word's used for everything, they go for it without a second thought.
Apple perhaps does this because of the cutthroat nature of the market and competition, but puts a first-rate reputation on the line. True, really bad bugs affecting thousands of people are rare, I don't want to be alarmist.
You just need to know that even some "geeks" wait a week at least and check out what risk-takers -- like me -- have learned, for better or worse, before doing an upgrade.
Somebody has to take such risks, otherwise nobody knows what's gone wrong.
Was it money well saved? Oh, Nova!
I'm also a twit.
Given the quotes about being natural, creative and gorgeous I included yesterday from Heather Nova, I'd see her live like a shot, but didn't know she's in town tonight before today. It's too late.
What a write-up you'd have got then, I've scarcely heard a dud in anything she's done. Oh well, I'll catch up with Heather one day. This is the week I get to see Susheela Raman, having avoided almost everything said about her latest album because I want to enjoy it to the full.
11:05:16 PM
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dimanche 2 octobre 2005
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Photo warning: you may want to steer clear of me, since I'm no longer on my best behaviour, in the office.
You know what she is for me, don't you?
Michelle and others like her spell trouble.
She reminds of a lot I've been in before and more to be looked forward in future!
Some people know I enjoy eye language, especially Michelle's, she's got a lovely pair and they're intriguing to read. Unfortunately, though she's rather older than she looks, it's not me she's addressing, she likes women too!
It's late, time for bed and with no more than the cat to jump on me when I'm least expecting it, but I've just made quite a few changes here after an odd week where I even had a wonderful whiff of country air.
I didn't give a warning just because nearly the next thing is to be totally ruthless with the blogroll. I promise those destined to vanish it's nothing personal, your sites got there over more than two and a half years because they appealed to me. Many still do, but there's too much else cluttering up the main pages no longer a big part of my life.
Animal magic and Ana Gracey
"Stop this itch from contaminating me
I can feel your blood beneath my skin"
That second line from one of her songs has haunted me on and off for more than a year now, so I really should drop one to Ana Gracey (home), who had the first voice of a woman to reach me out of nowhere and help make this site what it's well on its way to becoming.
Ana may even be wondering what happened to a screenplay I was working on so hard then and suddenly realised was pointless, though if ever such an idea pops into my head again, she could do some great songs to go with it.
"I can feel your head between my breasts
Going down, down, down," she kindly adds.
"Am I alive? Can you feel my heart beating?
Am I still here? Am I redeemable?
When it gets dark I feel surprised
Don't know why I don't remember each time
Don't know why your touch twists my thighs
Right around, round, down
I've thought for hours about that night
Just before you ..."
... but the rest of what a man did to Ana in that song, 'Redeemable,' you can find out at her place, above, since's she's stayed generous as ever, while she and the fellows have another one for the Ana Gracey Band, plus a new album I won't wait very long before buying and telling you about some day soon. One she markets her own way.
Her lyrical openness, honesty, and courage as an independent soul -- being a good-looking woman as well is something I'd nearly begin taking for granted in such people if it wasn't quite a turn-on sometimes! -- can let Ana stand in this morning for all of them, the scores of singers and fine musicians who've won my respect and admiration and has determined me to make this one of their web sites.
Plenty of vitamin C
Today, as you may have realised, is my birthday.
That's hardly a thing to log, is it, when the last thing I need is to be showered with gifts? But it's not just any old birthday. They don't often come with zeroes tacked inexorably on the end.
So I don't plan to sleep in late, simply get some and then tell you right here up front, whether you're newcomers to this log or among those who've for incomprehensible reason stuck with through some very testing times, what I'm up to and why!
Regrettably, having meditated on the past half-century of women, sex, music and love, guess what?
I intend to get more personal than ever. If you kick up a stink when I very occasionally log pictures of women who don't wear much, if anything, and still do this when it doesn't bother musicians inclined to bare their bodies as readily as their souls, then it won't just be trouble I'm, it's boiling oil!
Seeing just isn't enough.
It's impossible to go on writing about musicians who often also even give us soul-food to keep us together better than any medicine can -- now I know they too would like me to join those trying to treat them the way they deserve -- without letting you in on a few secrets.
With luck, you might make a wide-eyed protest or three, but that makes no odds to me if I can manage to tell you how I learned to listen as so often asked to do, mainly by women with whom I'd got into trouble, until this lot came along.
That calls for a lot of yoghurt, then a kip with a cat who's not so bad really. Then I'll tell you about some scholars who astonish me far more nowadays than the ladies do, because they persist in producing even more drivel about music than reams of rubbish I've logged sometimes about sex...
I'll probably own up to that!
I know what I wanted for my birthday.
So did some of you, when I think about that, but I struck lucky. Because one morning I got it, I really did and now all I've need to do is find her. It won't be easy, but I shall.
This time I'll get the one I'm talking about right, so I don't mind telling you what went wrong. Who knows? Most singer-songwriters know a thing or two and that's one reason we like them, even love 'em, because we're adrift on the same old sea.
Sleep tight! But not too tight if you're lucky enough to have any choice about that.
4:22:45 AM
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© Copyright
2007
taliesin.
Last update:
21/09/07; 22:22:31. |
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